an: It's nearly fin (thank god). So many horrible clichés ahoy. You have been warned.
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Imagined
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Titanic had affectionately been called the 'Ship of Dreams', and though Cal could appreciate the sentiment, he'd never actually been one for sentiment itself.
He didn't usually dwell on dreams, anyway.
They didn't serve any purpose in daily life. They couldn't whisk up an action plan and satisfy a business deal. They couldn't tell him what sort of strategy he should consider the next time someone questioned said action plan. They couldn't answer to his father, or try to remind him that he had a backbone, sometimes.
They couldn't do anything useful like that.
"We need to go to the other side of the ship," Jack said. "Don't lose sight of me."
Cal nodded. "I won't."
But Cal thought he could appreciate the irony now, as he gripped Jack's hand again, and didn't want to let go.
He'd only known Jack Dawson a couple of days, and yet every hour between them had been like a turbulent but not entirely unwanted dream.
Even if it didn't serve any purpose, as dreams tended not to, Cal thought perhaps that wasn't so important anymore. He clutched Jack's hand a bit tighter.
The main prerogative should have been survival, and he remembered that when they found Lovejoy; still faithful and waiting, on the other side of the ship.
"Sir," Lovejoy said, with barely the suggestion that Jack was there too. "I'm afraid the last available lifeboat has gone."
Cal nodded, the realisation was unpleasant but not so surprising.
Then he felt a hand, gripping his arm and pulling him back around.
Jack was staring at him as though he might be mad. That was no surprise anymore, either.
"...you could have gotten on a lifeboat?"
Cal smiled, with as much disparagement as he could muster.
"First class does have it's perks, Dawson. I thought you'd have gathered that by now."
"Cal..."
The ship shuddered and creaked, and then the lights around the windows dimmed to black. There was a marked silence, before they flashed back on again, and the crowd became violent with panic.
The crush against the railing was brief but excruciating, and Cal wondered for a fleeting moment if he would prefer to die like that.
He could only watch on instead, and reach out far too late, as Jack was pushed, and then slipped over the side of the railing.
Unthinking, Cal leaned over the side, shortly relieved to see Jack sprawled on the promenade deck and lifting himself back up.
He was alright.
As the crowd began to ebb, Cal shoved through them, clutching at a rage and trying to find the culprit, because he was powerless to do anything else.
"You!"
Some man in a top hat, who probably didn't know any better than himself.
Cal scrunched a fist and started towards him.
"Sir."
It was Lovejoy who pulled him back.
"Perhaps it might be more prudent to find the Dawson lad first? And let me deal with this."
Lovejoy's face was a calm amongst the terrible storm, and Cal realised he didn't have to explain himself. Not to Lovejoy.
"...yes. Of course."
He hardly ever smiled at his valet; it just wasn't done. And he still didn't now.
Instead he extended an arm, finding Lovejoy's grip in a parting handshake.
"Good luck."
"Good luck, sir."
8
Even after all that had happened, Cal still didn't really know.
Maybe Jack was just a blip. Or an experiment that had gotten drastically out of hand. But he'd gone after Jack once before, so why break the habit of a few unprecedented hours?
He raced down the staircase, paying no mind to surprised attendants. It was only Andrews, stood stoic and still in the dining hall, that caught his reluctant attention.
Cal dithered in the doorway, and Andrews looked at him with a small smile.
"Mr. Hockley. Did you find your valuables?"
Cal blinked, in a moment of honest confusion.
"Excuse me?"
"Your valuables. Or whatever you wanted in the crew quarters. Did you find them?"
"...oh."
Andrews said it far better, even if he had no idea, and Cal could have smiled at him.
"Yes...I suppose so. Something like that."
He left Andrews with good luck wishes, though they all seemed for naught now. Those who were trying to be dignified about it, and suggesting they would 'go down like gentleman' might have been wearing very intricate masks of denial. Cal could see the fear in their eyes. He felt it too, obviously, and his heart kept dropping in his chest, telling him to go back. He was still a coward.
Jack met him on the promenade, and his embrace was unforgiving. He spoke furiously but softly, in Cal's ear.
"You had a lifeboat waiting for you, and you still came after me?"
Cal gritted his teeth.
"Don't remind me. Just add it to the ever surmounting list of things I'm going to regret before we die."
Jack flinched, like another chink in his not-so-invincible armour.
"You're mad, Cal. Completely mad."
"I think we established that a while back," Cal smiled against his shoulder. "You'll break my ribs, Dawson."
The hug fell away when the ship made another agonised sound, and Cal and Jack looked over the edge of the promenade, where the waterline was gradually moving, up and up.
Jack turned to Cal.
"It'll be okay," he spoke with an assurance that didn't really translate to his face.
Cal searched it for something else anyway. He wanted to be wrong.
"Are you scared, Jack?"
"No."
Cal smiled a bit. "You're a good liar."
"Hah. Almost as good as you."
The dig of nails in his palm was painful, but Cal did not mind, and he let Jack tilt his head, in a motion that was almost a kiss. Cal wouldn't have minded that either.
He watched Jack's face, and nothing else existed for a moment.
"Jack-"
Then all the lights went out, dissolving everything to black. There must only have been a few seconds of baited silence, but time had frozen between them, and Jack's fingers were so slight in Cal's hair. His voice was barely above a whisper;
"Are you still scared?"
His mouth was delicate, the lightest brush of a sensation. Cal reached an arm around his back, frantic to preserve the feeling.
"...no, I'm not."
It was too dark to see anything, besides the vague outline of Jack's face. So Cal steeled himself and simultaneously forgot himself, and leaned the rest of the way in.
He kissed Jack properly, and more fervently than he'd ever dared to kiss anyone.
It was kind of terrible that it took apparent death for him to admit what he actually wanted. But he was admitting it, in some form, and surely that was what mattered in the end?
He wouldn't have had suitable words, anyway. Sentimentality was not his thing.
The ship shuddered again as they broke apart, and Jack's eyes seemed to gleam, as clichéd as it was, like the stars in the clear sky.
Cal looked at the ground, too overwhelmed by his own impudence.
"I didn't mean to-"
"I hope you did mean to," Jack told him, and caught his wrist. "And I hope you mean to do it again."
They neared the very edge of the railing, and the sea was shockingly calm; a brutal contrast to the slanting chaos aboard the ship. It was descending very visibly now, and there was no time left.
"Are you ready?" Jack asked.
If it had been anyone else, Cal would have hesitated. But he didn't, and that was how he knew.
Jack couldn't have been a blip.
They dropped into the sea together, and Cal thought he'd fallen into knives.
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He didn't think he'd be able to breathe again.
The water seemed to creep into his bones, and it would have been easy to let it swallow him up. Then he remembered Jack.
He began to swim, and noticed the sky, which was alight with tiny pin pricks of stars. They might have been pretty, had he been the type to appreciate such minor things. But he wasn't, and he swept around in the water, trying to catch a glimpse of Jack.
Then a hand grasped his shoulder.
"Over here."
They swam a short but struggled distance, before Cal thought he might give up, then there was something hard hitting his chest.
"Get up, get on it," Jack ordered.
Cal held onto the edges of what looked to be a large floating table top, and hauled himself up with an effort that persecuted his limbs. He swung around, grabbing Jack's arms, and dragged him up.
Jack scrambled, and though the table tilted dangerously, there was room enough.
They both lay exhausted on their backs for a little while, as water seeped all around them. The sickly yellow lights of the Titanic flashed and lit up the sky on occasion, though it was becoming less and less frequent.
Jack nudged Cal in the side.
"We...we can't stay like this."
Cal reached across, tentative and aware of their fragile position, and then realised Jack was pulling away.
"No-" he grabbed Jack's arm before he could move. "You can't do that...you can't leave."
"We can't stay like this."
"You'll die, you moron."
"You'll die," Jack said.
"I don't care."
He did care of course, but the idea of Jack dying was much more horrific somehow. Perhaps the prospect of it was more frightening; to be left there in the middle of the ocean, alive, but alone.
Cal curled his fingers around Jack's wrist.
"I don't care," he repeated, as if he could make it any more convincing. "I don't."
"You doth protest too much," Jack joked, weakly.
Cal was not deterred. If anything, it only spurred him on.
He was stubborn like that.
He started to move, back toward the slip of the table, where water was still slowly spreading onto it.
Jack cursed, and it was amusing, because Cal had never heard him speak like that before. Nor had he ever seen his face like that.
"Don't be so stupid," Jack said, and pulled him roughly back.
Cal tried to hide his surprise, round a glare.
"...what was that for?"
"If I can't leave, neither can you."
"You can't stop me."
The table rocked, suggesting it might fail them.
Jack pressed a hand slowly to Cal's chest; the pressure there was enough to tell him to stay put, but he wouldn't.
They stared between each other instead, and though it was dark, Jack's face was so tense and alive with emotion. It almost hurt to look at him like that.
"I'm sorry," Jack said.
"...what?"
"I'm sorry," Jack repeated, and his sigh was shaken, iced breath snaking around his words. "Rose's mother was right. I ruined everyone's lives."
Cal leaned slowly back.
"What are you talking about? You haven't ruined anyone's lives, Dawson."
"...I did. I shouldn't have met Rose. I shouldn't have met you. I broke you two apart..."
Beyond them, the ship made a rattled groaning sound, as a creature might that was in absolute misery.
Cal looked at it bleakly, and then imagined the ship's majesty when he'd first boarded her; how beautiful and lavish, how she had invited him into another world. Into something that might have been too good to be true. Now she was disappearing before their eyes, completely unrecognisable.
So much had changed, and in so little time.
Cal blinked at Jack.
"Rose and I were already apart. You didn't make it any worse than it already was."
Jack shook his head.
"I shouldn't have got involved."
Cal clenched his jaw, ignoring the numbed ache in his bones as he shifted his body, to face Jack. He gathered Jack's icy hand in his own.
"Don't say that. Not now," he pressed his fingers around Jack's, with urgency. "Not when I'm sitting here with you, and you're the only damn reason I'm sitting here at all... don't even dare to think it, Dawson."
Jack's mouth trembled. He shuffled closer, so that their shoulders touched.
"...alright."
Cal nodded curtly, because apparently he was still too uptight to give good reason for his words, even now.
Useless.
He stared ahead, and saw shapes of people, struggling between ocean and ship, trying to preserve the lives that were most precious to them.
It could barely have been fathomed before. Cal wasn't heartless, but he was practical, and self-preservation was important, as the Hockley name might like to remind him.
But now he could recall couples dancing and laughing and crying, insignificant levels beneath him, and Jack's hands and his mouth and his laugh. And it seemed to make much more sense that way.
Cal took an uneven breath, but it was like a relief.
"You didn't ruin my life, Dawson. You just made me realise, I wasn't living it in the first place."
He didn't expect it, but Jack's hand, ice-cold as it was, was desperately wanted on his cheek.
They both watched, in disparate silence, as the ship disappeared beneath the waves.
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The screams had stopped, or maybe it was just that it was getting harder to hear them.
Cal wasn't sure.
He was trying to keep his eyes open and watch the stars. He'd never really done that before. Every now and then he forgot that he might be dying in the middle of the ocean, and that Jack was there, talking to him in trembling breaths about pointless things.
"...so we have to do that..."
Cal didn't know what they had to do, but he nodded anyway, because it made Jack continue talking, and his voice was like a little beacon of something like hope. He wasn't sure when he'd become so optimistic about that sort of thing.
"...I nearly punched a man because of you, Dawson."
It came to him suddenly, and he wanted to laugh at the superfluous memory. And his own ridiculousness for thinking about it.
Jack's laugh was more like a shudder. "...what?"
"The one who knocked you down onto the promenade. I wanted to punch him..."
"...oh," Jack laughed again. "I would've liked to see you punch a guy out, Cal."
"He would have thrown me overboard, you realise."
"I'd have come save you, though," Jack said.
His arm twisted a bit further around Cal's back, as he turned onto his side.
The heat between them was so slight, but Cal could still feel Jack's heart, as they faced each other. A slow but assured beat.
Cal thought he could fall asleep to it.
"...Cal," Jack whispered.
Cal opened his eyes.
"...mm?"
Jack was smiling at him.
"We still need to dance," he said. "Tomorrow, remember."
"...I remember."
It seemed another world ago, but Cal could remember. Every last detail, no trouble at all.
He leaned closer to Jack, spikes of frost catching between their foreheads, and the chilled air coiling between their mouths, as close as they were.
Jack's smile stretched a little.
"You have to promise, though. Tomorrow."
His fingers twitched, clinging to Cal's more tightly, as he closed the gap between them.
Cal hardly felt his mouth, too numbed by the cold.
He managed to moved his arm around Jack's back instead, into the faintest semblance of an embrace.
Jack's mouth lingered, and Cal closed his eyes, imagining it was tomorrow already.
"...tomorrow then, Jack. Tomorrow we'll dance."
He imagined it again, and then again.
He might even have dreamt about it, as Jack's heat and face faded away.
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When he opened his eyes, the sky was a bright but diluted pink, and he thought that he had died.
Then, as ambient sounds became words, and remnants of memory slowly began to fall back into place, he remembered everything.
He mostly remembered Jack.
Reckless desire, and the thrill of heartbeats and mouths, crushed together with the heat of skin, and hands that knew exactly what they wanted...
Cal raised an arm, shading his eyes against the harsh morning light. A hand was clutching his elbow, and an authoritative voice was asking him if he could sit up.
Cal did, very slowly.
"Sir, are you able to stand up, sir?"
As the shape of the Carpathia came into brilliant focus, Cal began to understand that he was alive, and that Jack was not there.
Jack was not there.
"...sir, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a moment..."
Cal gripped the side of the lifeboat. Jack was not there, and his chest and the world had become very hollow again.
Perhaps he had just been happy, for a little while.
An imagined life.
"Sir, are you well enough to climb aboard?"
"...yes. I'm fine."
He wiped the warm sting roughly away from his eyes.
But it would have been impractical, at best.
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an: there is a little epilogue to follow, so hopefully things will be a little less sad/ambiguous? Thank you kindly for reading to this point! Whoooo you made it -confetti explosion- eat this pretend cookie and continue your awesomeness. Maybe you could leave a comment for bonus awesome? :)