A/N: Hello, my dears! I have BIG news to tell you! Just yesterday, I had the immense, immense honor to speak on video chat one on one with Victor Garber. He was so, so, so very sweet, words don't even do justice. I'm still in shock. He's one of the nicest human beings I've ever had the privilege of meeting. I told him how he inspired me to write this story and he gasped when I told him and he said, "I'm SO proud of you!" and asked me what I was working on and told me to keep going and to be kind to myself, and said that hopefully one day we will be able to meet in person. I'm going to be publishing it as an unlisted video on YouTube so I'll probably share it when I get that up, but, until then, I wanted to share with you how absolutely lovely he was. He could not possibly have made me feel more comfortable and appreciated, and I hope I did the same for him! :)

13 April 1912

Molly knew.

How she could have figured out what had occurred between them just a half-hour previous and what he proposed to her before they parted, Rose was sure she would never know. But as she sat to dinner, a perfect hybrid of stoicism and savoir-faire which she had learned to exude with prowess over the years, watching with iron eyes for the slightest squirm of Gracie's or Ismay's person that might suggest he would stand and lead the men to the Smoking Room, she felt Molly's maverick eyes upon her, glinting in the light of the Dining Saloon, and Rose knew immediately that Molly knew.

Perhaps her eyes were too flighty and her pupils a bit too wide by virtue of her wandering mind, or perhaps she had caught sight of them, two small figures floating on the vision of the horizon towards the unseen southwest, and her unrest at every small movement of the men surrounding them lead Molly by the hand to a quotient of an equation she did not know needed solving.

Or, perhaps, it was none of these, and Molly could simply read her just as he could and she could the both of them, in the way that only the Elite Misfits knew how.

Rose hardly knew time was passing, for she sat in a blur as if she were within a glass box and all around her was muffled and unfelt, and she looked upon Molly Brown as a sort of mortal clock for, as the courses passed and the desert trolley danced about them and even as she fell into another one of her boisterous stories Rose usually loved so much, Molly's eyes changed by the minute and by the hour just as the hands of a clock would. They never strayed from her for long and, as the seconds ticked closer to when all would part and the night truly begin, those eyes only gleamed brighter and squinted mischievously until they were slits narrow as a cat's pupil in the sunlight, the crown atop her subtly smirking lip.

Her story wound to an end and the laughter slowly faded to a concluding and comfortable silence, and Rose dared look up at Molly, fearful of what she just might find ready to be read in her gaze, and found a knowing espièglerie that had her grasping the tablecloth brushing her thighs with nervous fingers.
The rotund woman gave her one last mirthful smirk before taking a breath and turning to the rest of the table. "Boy, I am ready to drop! You bunch sure know how to wear a lady out!"
Ismay jumped at this and looked to his pocket watch, erecting himself from his chair, at last. "Ah yes, forgive me, the hour has grown late. Join me for brandy, gentlemen?"

Without a word, like soldiers or an apparatus following an order, the menfolk stood and bowed their farewells to the ladies as they walked off. Rose felt as though she could breathe for the first time since she had entered the Saloon and let her features fall and her tired eyes drop to her knees.
"Come, Rose. I think we shall retire. I've a headache," her mother said.
It was the command of a mother to a child, certainly not to an engaged woman who had come out in society more than a year previous, but Rose could not find it within her to be upset or insulted. All she cared about was throwing herself into Mr. Andrews's arms and never letting go until the sun betrayed them and made itself known.
So, with a dutiful, "Yes, Mother," she placed her napkin daintily on the table before her and stood, slowly enough to fool all but Mrs. Brown. As she passed by, the woman in question caught her wrist and looked up at her, eyes kind and motherly, but that same impishness sat just behind as if hidden by a gossamer curtain.
"Good luck, honey," Molly whispered to no one but her, a playful and loving wink like punctuation.

How she loved this woman, Rose realized. How suddenly she knew when the night was through she would have a confidante with whom to recount it, one of earnest interest and assured discretion.
She had no words she could speak, for none could properly convey her feeling this unacclimated sort of maternal love Margaret Brown brought with her words unto her. All she could do was smile and lace her fingers with hers, giving her hand a squeeze which, as she relinquished Molly and caught up with her mother, Rose hoped said all she could not. Thank you, it said. I trust you with all my innermost thoughts and you shall be the only soul in this world besides us who will know the entire truth. I promise.

"I think I will go right to bed. Trudy, come and help me undress," Ruth said once they returned to their stateroom, beginning to unfasten her earrings, sauntering into her chamber, Trudy following suit before the door shut behind them.

Rose stood for a brief minute. Her mind turned to her appointment for which the time was drawing inexorably near. She wondered what would happen in the hours she was resigned to stay with him and away from reality. Yes, she refused to go the night without finally kissing him as she had so dreamed, but what then? What should they do to pass the time? The wheels within her head began to turn nearly as fast as Titanic's propellers as she smiled a wicked smile and skulked conspiratorially to her room, the article of clothing she so desired quickly procured and the safe, in which lay the final item needed for her plan lay patiently waiting, opened.

As she finished dressing, butterfly comb sitting softly within her tresses and her mink coat wrapped about her, gently brushing the floor and her more than indecent attire within, her anxious eyes spied the gold and mahogany mantel clock.
Nearly 9:30.
She was about ready to cry out and stamp her foot in frustration when she heard the door of her mother's chamber creak open and saw Trudy step gently and carefully out.

"Is my mother asleep?" Rose asked, holding the lips of the coat together across her chest.
"Yes, Miss."
She nodded and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Trudy, can you keep a secret?"
"Yes, Miss, I believe that I can."
"Well, this is a big secret. It's a secret you can't tell anyone else, but I trust you with it."
"I'm honored, Miss. I shan't tell another soul, I swear to you on my mother's grave."
"Oh, don't do that!" Rose grasped her arm in a sisterly caress. "Have you met Thomas Andrews?"
"Not formally, Miss, but I've seen him pass by and I know his maid, Lucy."
"What do you think of him?"
"It's not my place to think anything of him, Miss, but he seems a very kind man. He had never seen me before but he still smiled at me when I passed by and he seemed to bow to me as if I were a lady."
Rose smiled; she could see the picture so very clearly in her head, Mr. Andrews's instinctive kindness and dear Trudy's blush as she stood there, shocked stiff, feeling as though she were on top of the very world which looked down on her as nothing.
"Yes, that sounds just like him. Well, he and I...well, you see...we're involved, I suppose you could say."

Yes, involved, indeed. Involved in what and with what and for what, Rose could not say for certain.

"I heard Madam say something like that as I was leaving your room yesterday, if you'll forgive my overhearing, Miss. But what about Master Hockley?"
She shook her head, suddenly ashamed. "It's rather dishonest, I cannot lie to you, Trudy. But we've both tried to deny what we feel, truly we have, but it just didn't work. And you know how Cal treats me. You've seen it, I know you have. But Mr. Andrews, he...he is so different. He understands me, my thoughts and my desires, and does not judge me for my shortcomings. He is kind and thoughtful and he's a genius that I can't help but be awestruck over even as I love him as my equal. You remember seeing his name in all the papers, I'm sure."
"Yes, Miss, I do."
Her heart clenched in her chest, feeling the unbearable itch left by words left unsaid, and she grasped Trudy's hand tightly, and cried, "Oh, Trudy, stop, just for a minute. Stop the formalities. After all, in the situation I am in, it would be hypocritical of me if I tried to enforce propriety. Pretend, just for a moment, that you are my friend in high society. Tell me what you think of it all."

The girl was silent for some moments, overwhelmed with the offer and temptation of the breach of decorum. "I...I understand. I do and I do not judge you and I wouldn't even if I had the right to. I think it's all terribly romantic, if I'm allowed to say, Miss. You deserve happiness, Miss, and if he makes you happy then I can ask for nothing more."
Rose could have opened the door to their stateroom and run down the halls and up the staircases, shouting at the top of her lungs her relief and joy if she had an ounce more courage within her. They would look up then, she thought. Finally.

"Oh, Trudy, thank you. Thank you so much," she exclaimed. "I'm going to see him, tonight, right now."
The girl gasped. "Is it wise, Miss?"
Rose giggled. "No. No, it's not wise at all. If anything, it's wholeheartedly unwise, and that's precisely why I trust it."
"Well, Miss, your mother shall not hear where you are from me."
The red-haired girl engulfed Trudy in a loving embrace, one she had never known from anyone for as long as she could remember, and pressed a kiss to a shy cheek as she beamed to her newfound friend and wordlessly made her way to the door. Rose took a deep breath and looked back to her, seeing only support and encouragement in her eyes, and with it she opened the door and walked off, a threshold unspoken crossed over and over which she could never retreat back.

It took three small, dainty knocks upon his chamber door for Mr. Andrews to jump from the sanctuary of his desk and his surfeit of blueprints to the front of his stateroom. He opened the door to find his own personal, beloved Athena standing before him, draped in a fur that just barely veiled her ankles, her slippered feet small and shadowed just behind and below.

"Oh, Rose," he exhaled with a smile, nearly deflating against the door. "I figured for a while I had been much too forward and you would not come."
"Surely you know by now, Mr. Andrews, that I am not easily scandalized," she beamed up at him, walking into his suite when he stepped to the side.
"Oh, believe me, Young Rose, I would be a blind fool not to have noticed. Won't you remove your coat?"
Rose turned, vivid red hair brushing her shoulders in a heap of curls and she looked up to Thomas under her bristly, long, tilted raven eyelashes, the green mountains and blue sky of her eyes lined with a black horizon. "Well, you see, before I do, I should like to tell you of the idea I had."
"What kind of idea? And what does this have to do with your coat?" He asked, furrowing his brow as he walked further into the room and leaned back against his mahogany desk, apprehensive for something he could not possibly know.
"Well, you showed me your notebook out on the dock yesterday morning. You remember?"
His confusion amped within him. "Yes, of course I remember. I recall you taking a particular interest in my sketches of Titanic and of Elba."
Sparkling, perfectly white teeth showed through her plump ruby lips, a light blush dusting her milky cheeks. "Yes. I was very, very impressed. And that's when I got to thinking…"
Silence prevailed for some minutes as Rose took her bottom lip between her teeth, wringing her fingers in front of her as if she could truly fool him into thinking her a shy, demure lady. And yet, in the few days which felt to his soul the equivalent of one million eternities over that he knew Rose DeWitt Bukater, he knew she was as far from the rest of the women in First-Class as the Arctic was from the emerald hills of Ireland.
"Yes, Rose? What is it?"

"Mr. Andrews…I want you to draw me, and I want every stroke of your pencil to be filled with as much love as if you were sketching Titanic herself."

A dirty liar he would be if he said he was not shocked, and the manner in which she voiced her request, voice husky and lilted and, dare he say it, nervous, instilled in him the belief that it meant more to her than simply an artist sketching a subject. Dare he even entertain the idea, the apparition he wanted so desperately he could nearly taste it on his tongue, she sounded like a lady asking to be drawn by her lover.
"Why…o-of course I will, Rose," he cursed his stammering like a cowardly schoolboy and he felt perspiration beginning to bead at the top of his brow.
"But do you understand what I mean, Thomas?" His first name. She had never called him by his first name, and the shot of lighting, pure electricity, to his loins at this combined with her fur coat falling from her shoulders to a puddle on the floor nearly had him doubling over.

Beneath the coat was a black silken kimono, almost completely transparent and leaving little to his already wandering mind. Through it, though he clenched his hands to the lip of his desk in the attempt to keep his eyes in a more gentlemanly place, he could see a large jewel sitting atop pert, round breasts, even milkier white than her cheeks. For the sake of his sanity and decorum and her integrity, he disallowed his eyes from venturing lower.

"Yes. Y-Yes, I understand what you mean." He gave up any attempt at remaining steadfast and eschewed the temperament of a man disinterested. He could not even pretend such a thing if it would save him from death.

"Why, you seem so surprised! Do you forget I've known you to have done this before?" She laughed, the infernal girl.
"No, I haven't forgotten. But...I was so young then."
"Oh, stop it, Mr. Andrews. You're as able-bodied now as you were then, I'm sure, and even more talented and artistically well-versed. In fact, I wouldn't rather anyone else draw me, not Picasso or Monet or even Michelangelo himself. I want you to do it, and only you."

He could say nothing, and only smiled nervously with trembling lips, willing the perspiration to not weep down his temple.
"Shall you be wearing that?"
She giggled, toying with the lips of the robe sitting atop her chest. "Oh, this old thing? Certainly not. That will spoil the aesthetic, wouldn't you say, Mr. Andrews?"
"Yes…Yes, I suppose I would. Well, what shall you be wearing, then, Miss DeWitt Bukater?"
The robe parted just at her sternum in reply, bringing a giant blue faceted stone glinting into the light like a newborn. "Do you see this?"

He nodded; it was all he could manage by now.

"It's a fifty-six karat diamond called the Heart of the Ocean."
"I see. It is very beautiful, especially on you, if I may be permitted to say so, Rose. And you're telling me you'll be wearing the Heart of the Ocean in your portrait?"
"Yes, I will wear this. But only this. Nothing else."

If the blood were not thrumming so heavily in his ears and throat, he would have been sure he had died and she was an archangel, coaxing him and guiding him to Temptation. He turned from her for a brief moment, overwhelmed at the image and not at all prepared for the onslaught of its reality, and covered his weakness by reaching for and sharpening his charcoal pencil and procuring his beloved notebook. Though, no matter how much he loved his notebook, he would have thrown it over the side of his ship if it meant he could have her at that very moment, for God knew he wanted it more haughtily than anything he had ever wanted in his life. But if he had learned anything in his twenty-three years in the business of building and designing ships and the five years in which he waited with baited breath for his beloved Titanic to be completed, it was to be patient, and Thomas Andrews considered himself to be nothing if not an exceptionally patient man.

"Now tell me, where would you have me?" Rose asked, pulling forth the butterfly comb from her tresses and letting them run free in a waterfall of fire down her back. He gulped.
"Um…Right there, on the divan."
She sauntered over, the kimono flying in a black shadow behind her, the sound of silk getting caught in between her sumptuous legs as she walked like the sweetest music and the sharpest knives on his ears all at once. Mr. Andrews took a seat in the chair before the divan, lighting a candle just on the table to his left and throwing the match into some corner of the room.
They looked on one another, lustful brown eyes to lighthearted, mischievous teal, fighting a war over the candlelight between them, just begging the other to put an end to the passionate desperation that was tugging mutually on them like a rope tied to their respective souls.

He noticed distantly and with a pang of confusion that she did not sit or lay; she simply stood between the table and the upholstery, seemingly thinking or plotting. And then, time seemed to slow as she reached to her chest, pulling gently on the fabric of the gown, throwing it over her shoulders so it cascaded down her back and creamy, forbidden skin came into the yellow light. It fell over her bottom and he grasped his notebook for purchase in tight, damp fingers, clenching his teeth and feeling his Adam's apple bob in his throat as the replete, forbidden flesh made acquaintance with his eyes, and from there, her nubile and lithe legs.

The desperation to have her did not fade, and his unfailing devotion to her and every inch of her danced within his mind like a petulant wind, but it all remained a velleity, sitting like a heavy rock in his chest. The air turned naturally from lust to simple adoration, and Thomas Andrews could do nothing but admire Rose DeWitt Bukater in her somatic form with all the love his raging heart could muster. She was baring herself to him, allowing him to see with his flawed and unworthy eyes the beauty of what the corsets and stockings and slips and gowns hid away from men and the rest of the world. Without words, she was accepting him, placing her golden trust and her beating heart in the palms of his calloused hands.
This was the first act, the first antecedent of their gratified affaire de cœur, and she knew it and he knew it and still she did not falter. And she did all of this without even the slightest hesitation, second and first thoughts discarded, and he knew then that he loved her, more than he had ever loved anything on the Earth and more than he would ever love anything ever again.

At last she lay, sprawled in all her snowy glory like the Nude Maja, shifting around and fumbling with her arms, the smooth melody of her flesh against the velvet reaching his ears.
"T-Tell me when it looks right," she said, a hint of true timidity in her voice, tinged with the enthrallment of this new sensation, looking to him for approval.
"Put your arm back where it was, on the pillow," he stuttered, and she obeyed. "And put your other arm up, your hand right by your face."
She did as he said, and he tried desperately not to fixate on how the flicker of the fire just before them glowed on her arm in a golden facsimile. "Now, head down, keep your eyes on me, Young Rose, and try to stay still."
Rose giggled until a single precious dimple displayed itself on her left cheek, and she shuddered and bit her lip in an attempt to steady herself into calm submission. Mr. Andrews took a deep tremulous exhale, as if with the inhale he pent up every second of their past and with its release a change became him, and this new territory in which they had found themselves made home within him.
He took his notebook in trembling hands and, with the sharp point of his charcoal, made the first stroke. Slowly, her dainty thin fingers came to his vision under it, and he squinted, trying with glazed eyes to make out every particular detail.

"So serious," Rose teased, furrowing his brow and frowning in a kind and affectionate imitation of him, until her voice came out like a child just beginning to properly articulate.
Thomas could not help but smile on her, his artistic blood flowing directly to his arm and eyes so they worked free of him, while Rose DeWitt Bukater's spirit engulfed all the rest of him.
Her arm came to be and then her face, and though she was more exposed literally and figuratively than she ever had been before a man—before anyone!—and was being scrutinized by the most detail-oriented gaze, Rose had never felt more comfortable and adored than she did with his chocolate brown eyes peering every handful of seconds over the barrier of black leather alight with the fulgurating glow of the flames.

When the charcoal danced over the sketch of her breast and his finger came to lovingly caress it to a smooth shade, Thomas found himself starting and shifting about in his chair, his eyes turning suddenly nervous and the leather cover falling slightly and betraying his face.
Rose smiled again. "I do believe you're blushing, Mr. Big Artiste."
He chuckled silently with a convulsion of his shoulders and a tightening of his lips, just as he had when he sat across from her at the luncheon table that second day of the voyage when she so fearlessly displayed her poorly-concealed wit, and with another glance at her gripped the charcoal tighter until it was under the threat of snapping beneath his fingers as he delineated the half-moon of her right breast.
"I can't imagine Monsieur Monet blushing."
He tittered, suddenly breathless at the prospect of speech. "He does landscapes, Young Rose."
It was not lost on her how thick his brogue had grown since the night's beginning, flowing with the thickness of desire that she knew perfectly matched with the thundering of her soul behind her heart. She grinned and let out something of an ancestor of a laugh, forgetting how to be still.
"Relax your face, Young Rose. No laughing," he gently admonished, kind as only he knew how to be.
"Sorry," she licked her lips again and bit the inside of her cheek, and, with a single deep breath, went still again.

There was but one word throbbing against his temple.
Love.
It was simple, predictable, and yet he loved even that, how with her and about her no metaphor was intertwined. He simply loved her, the fire within her heart that bubbled over and combusted each word she spoke, the beauty unmatched in any other being he had ever witnessed or beheld, and how such beauty and such spirit interlaced and found its way to him like the kiss of sea air on the coasts of Ireland, and possessed him to create his best artwork of which he could finally be proud. It was not skill which made it so, nor practice nor determination, but pure, unadulterated, boiling love, theretofore shoved away with the intensity of time and circumstance which could be suppressed no longer. Already their love was creating beautiful things, physical and emotional, art with a depth of meaning that no one else could ever understand, and electricity in the air that was tinged with a certain sweet torture, enhanced only by the illicitness of it all.

The features of her face, delicate as they were in life, were formed with a brush of a stroke, her tiny waist forming in the valley of a curve until it blanched to nothing. It was an assembly of lines, curved and straight, light and dark, and yet it made his heart capsize in his undeserving chest, and the memory, even so fresh, of what had prompted the creation of it played behind his eyes like a dream as he glanced at the finished work, unending.

"Would you like to see it?" Thomas asked, finally looking to her bereft of the influence of constitution, back to himself, and his devotion to her washing over him again like a wave.
She did not answer but only smiled, slowly rising from her position so her curls fell and swept against her shoulders and back, the tinkle and clink of diamonds to silver dancing about the air as she skittered, absent of clothing, behind his chair. Her face was deathly close so that he could feel the girlish, enthusiastic heat flowing from her cheek to his, the smell of lavender from her hair reaching his nose, and he could hear the breath rushing from her as she grinned.
"It's exquisite, though I do believe you were somewhat generous in your impression of me," she quipped, and he felt her eyes on him.
"Nonsense, Young Rose. I am a very serious and literal artist. I simply draw what I see, uninfluenced."
He took the charcoal between his tired, blackened fingers again, signing his signature beneath the fading sketch of her right leg, and dated it.

13 April 1912
Thomas Andrews

Now I'm a part of his collection forever, Rose thought with pride. Within those drawings of all the things he loved, she was included, and always would be, no matter if life, cruel mistress that it was, dictated that they should be separated at the voyage's end. He would always find her in the midst of his selective subjects no matter what became of them.
The thought brought a smile to her lips that she could not refuse; even if she had tried to wrench the corners of her mouth down again they remained tenacious. But she did not try, for it was a happiness she did not want to deny herself and so she let it be.

She unclipped the necklace from her throat, sighing with relief when the weight was free from her, and picked up the black robe with a flutter of silk.
He dared to look at her again, his temptress, as she slipped the fabric over her shoulders. She did it with an ease of manner and a disinclination that told him she had no intention of leaving him, and only did so because any form of civilized society would dictate it be so and even she was not prepared to betray it in full. It was like a last single thread tying her to what just four days ago was her reality, and she had not the bravery to sever it alone.

His eyes watched the mesh lay gently on her shoulders and cloak her arms as he placed his notebook safely in the drawer of his desk. All too suddenly, the heat, the burning, electrifying inferno within him was rising to a fever pitch until, like the steam from the coal sweeping Titanic across the Atlantic, it freed him from doubt and sent him forward.

A gentle hand was placed atop hers and she froze, holding both of the laces of the garment in her hands, following the blue-clothed arm all the way to the shoulder and face of Thomas Andrews, his eyes gleaming as they watched her, passing a silent declaration to her. His jaw was tense, the muscles beneath his clothes hard and taut, and though his touch was fleeting and unsure, it was desperate.

His touch was a plea.

When she did not protest, he let his fingers carefully curl in a loose grip around her wrist and it felt as though her skin burned with an illusory blaze hotter than the fire roaring at that very moment in his stateroom's fireplace. Rose's breathing quickened, her chest rising and falling quicker and struggling with a judder that neared an inability as she felt as though dreaming his tender tug on her.
Finally she let their eyes meet, and it was all too certain. There was no doubt that Mr. Andrews was there, the perpetual modesty resting beneath this withering front, masked by the glaze of the eye and the blowing of the pupil, the reddening of the skin and the quivering of the frame.
The river that flowed between them, whatever it truly was, began to rush angrily in their ears.

"Rose…" Thomas whispered, lips barely moving, speaking pages of a love letter in a single word: her name, which he spoke with more love and life than she had ever known.
The river swelled and flooded beyond its bearings at last and assailed their respective territories and selves, drowning all inhibitions and incertitudes once and for all.

The onslaught of sharp exhales was heard from both of them and those very breaths met between their bodies and danced together a jubilant waltz until they were crushed when Rose leapt and met him eagerly in his offering. She threw her arms around his neck when she felt his wrapped tightly around the smell of her back as, at long last, they were engulfed in a passionate kiss.

If Rose had cared enough to listen, she would have heard a sotto voce snap in the back of her mind as the remaining string binding her to her once-reality snapped. The threshold was crossed and the final thread was severed. There was no going back.