New York City
Autumn 1914
Rose
She has been trying for hours to sleep– tossing and turning in the large plush bed. She's bone weary, but no matter what she tries, she cannot quiet her mind. The street light coming in through the large window is too bright, even now, past midnight, and the house is too quiet. After so long without any, a little bit of peace is too much and the warmth too unfamiliar.
She thinks about what Jack had told her the evening before: that this is her home now, too, and to come and find him if there's anything she needs. She thinks that right now, in spite of how she wishes it weren't true, what she really needs in order to feel calm enough to finally get some rest is just to be near Jack. She still cannot help but to picture him gone– sinking beneath cold water, the entirety of these past few days having been some kind of madness or dream. Seeing him, in the very least, will help.
Not owning a nightgown, she's back in a set of women's drawers and a blouse too frayed to be good for everyday wear– one of the charity finds from her first summer in the city. Getting up from the bed, she wraps one of the blankets around herself like a shawl for a bit more modesty.
She doesn't find him down the hallway like he suggested she might. The first two rooms she peeks into look remarkably empty and untouched– one of them not even furnished– and in a third she spies a white shirt and a suit jacket draped over a chair-back and a pair of brown leather shoes left discarded, but no Jack. The bed appears untouched as well, with a quilt still smoothed neatly over its surface. She closes the door again and decides to look downstairs. He had said he often works until late. While she knows that he has quit his commission for the store, she has no idea what other jobs he may have regularly lined up. In telling her about his growing career, he had certainly made himself sound busy, and she rather likes the idea of seeing him draw again, and of seeing his artwork once more.
The ground floor isn't as deafeningly silent as the second. On the landing there's a large grandfather clock, the low ticking of which echoes down the hallway that leads towards the sitting room Jack had shown her earlier: the den, he'd called it, situated towards the back of the house, more secluded and less formal than the sitting room at the front. Even before she reaches the doorway she can see the dim glow of the fire burning– she can hear the calming crackle of the flames.
At first glance the room is empty. The light from the hearth dances across the decorative sheen of the green brocade wallpaper, and it glints off of the glossy finish of cherry wood furniture. The room is cozy and inviting, but there's no Jack to be found, or so she thinks, until she spies the shine of blonde hair just visible beyond the back of the sofa facing the fireplace. Moving closer, she can see plainly that Jack is indeed alive and well, but that he's also sound asleep, head pillowed upon the arm of the loveseat with a woolen blanket pulled over himself.
She isn't going to disturb him. She's about to tiptoe out of the room and creep back up the stairs, when he wakes anyway, his doze apparently lighter than she thought. He sits up a little and squints at her across the dim space, blinking, bleary-eyed.
"Rose?" he asks. He sounds as if he's just as unsure about her presence here as she is, herself. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, Jack," she finds herself lying– and then a truth: "I just couldn't get to sleep, that's all."
To her mortification, he sits up further, a frown knitting itself into his brow and tugging at the corners of his mouth. She regrets coming down here. She doesn't really know what she was thinking– what she thought he could do about her insomnia. She also knows that she's doing that thing again that she's been doing all evening to the point of annoying herself by it, and she's pushing him away– holding him at arm's length because she's so desperately scared of getting hurt– of losing him again. It's exactly what she had promised herself earlier in the tub that she would quit doing.
He must sense something in her silence, because instead of pressing with questions or trying to fix anything, all he does is pat the sofa next to him in a clear offer for her to have a seat.
Her limbs feel stiff and awkward as she walks the short space and sits down.
Jack obviously doesn't feel the same awkwardness. He scoots in closer and lifts the blanket from his lap to swing around both of their shoulders even though she already has her own. The motion of it brings them even closer together, with his arm around her shoulders for just a moment before he lets it fall back to his lap, and she tries not to think about how it felt once upon a time to be held by him– how it had felt just the other night when she had let herself fall into his embrace to be comforted as she cried. She's so tired of crying, and yet she feels on the verge again.
"I suppose it's not surprising that you can't sleep," he says after a beat. "New place, and all… and I bet you've got a lot on your mind. The day felt like a lot for me, so I can't imagine how it has been for you. This whole week so far has been a long one."
He's being kind, she thinks. He always is. He's not quite so bold as he used to be, though, and not nearly as rude and uncouth. That seems to have changed, at least a little bit, like he filters himself now. She wonders if it's all of the high class folks he has apparently charmed in her absence, though that's probably not fair either. Still though, it's a little infuriating how polite he has been– how nice, when she's been nothing but detached, and guarded, and standoffish.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," she finds herself saying.
"Do what?"
"Say what you think you should– what you think I want to hear."
"That's not what I'm doing," he counters, turning towards her a bit, the frown deepening.
"No? It's been a long week, Jack? Really?"
"It has," he insists, and she finds herself scoffing. She just wishes, suddenly, that he'd tell her how he actually feels about all of this.
"Is that all it has been, Jack?" she presses. "Can you really sit there and tell me that that's all you're feeling? That the sheer craziness of all of this isn't getting to you? Because I think it's getting to me."
"Rose," says Jack. His voice is pleading now as if he's asking not to be made to admit something he doesn't want to– or perhaps he just wants to stay congenial and placating as he has been. He doesn't want to ruffle feathers or disturb a fragile tentative truce that has been called in her agreeing to move here with him, because she had done so on such a whim. She doesn't want that though. She doesn't want tiptoes and kid gloves– not from Jack. When she looks up at him with a defiance that almost feels like her old self, she's met with the same intensity reflected back, and then his shoulders drop, sagging as if he's been carrying a great weight that he's ready to let go.
"Okay, fine," he says, raking a hand through his already disheveled hair. "It's driving me crazy. Is that what you want to hear? These past two years without you have been hell, Rose. I've been so close to giving it all up so many times, and just running away from all my problems again like I did when I was a kid and lost everything, but I was so desperate. I just– I knew I could find you. That I would find you, eventually. And now, I guess I just feel stupid, because I didn't really think about what would happen once I did. I just assumed I'd find you, and that would be that… that loving you would be enough and that we'd be happy. I feel like an idiot for thinking it would be that easy, because of course it's not… it can't be."
"Why can't it be?" she asks. Her own voice is a whisper now, frightened, and a little unmoored by Jack's honesty, even though she had asked for it.
His shoulders hang forward a little more, like he wants to curl in on himself.
"Weren't you the one who said, just the other day, that you wanted to be friends?" he points out.
She frowns. She supposes she had said that. She hadn't meant that was all they could ever be, though, and she hadn't realized that by asking for that that she had obviously hurt him, deeply.
"I was scared," she admits, and it feels big. It's a vulnerability that with anyone else she'd never admit to. "I am scared," she says, pressing on. With a deep breath she reaches over to take his hand, and she laces their fingers together. It's the boldest she has been since he showed up at her doorstep, and her heart is pounding, but she knows that if she doesn't do this now– doesn't say it, that it's possible she never will, and then she may never sleep again for all that she'll keep thinking about it.
"You said we have this second chance, and that it would be stupid to let it slip away, and you're right, Jack. It would be stupid. I love you, and nothing would be more stupid than for me to continue to push you away just because I'm scared."
At her words his head whips up from where he'd been staring at their joined hands, and his grip seems to tighten involuntarily. His clear eyes search hers, and the flames from the hearth reflect in them. He has said, all this time, that she has a fire within her, and she realizes that he must have one, too— one that used to burn so radiantly bright that it was nothing but light, but that it has dimmed, too, to a flicker, nearly extinguished by her unwitting rejection, and the pain of their separation. Now, though, it seems to be brightening again as his gaze locks on to her own, drinking her in, seeking out oxygen.
"Do you mean it?" he asks. He seems to be almost holding his breath.
She nods, her throat feeling thick again with emotion.
"Say it again?" he asks, and she laughs in spite of herself.
"Which part?" she replies, though she's pretty sure what it is he wants to hear.
He scoots a little closer again, the hand not held in her own rising to brush a stray curl from her face. Now that its been properly washed and left to air dry, she's sure it looks wild with frizz and lack of attention. Really, she mus outlook a state, sat here in her bloomers and an old blanket, but its not like Jack hasn't seen her in less before and had no complaints.
"Any of it," he answers. "All of it." hsi fingers come to rest against her cheek, cradling her face. "Do you really mean it?"
She nods into his palm. "I do," she answers, and it causes his mouth to twitch up into a smile again. "I love you, Jack. I can't promise to be perfect, but I know you'll be patient with me. I don't want to miss our second chance."
The sound Jack releases is one of incredulity– a little huff of a laugh through his nose. "I love you, Rose. Of course I'll be patient with you. We can figure everything out, together. It's enough just to know that you want this, too."
His thumb traces circles along her cheek, and she leans into it further; into the comfort of the gentle gesture. Not wanting to second guess it any longer, she takes a steadying breath and does what she has wanted to do since hte moment she saw him in the light of that street lamp the other night, haloed by the falling snow, and she leans forward to kiss him, letting herself be transported back to the very first time.
There's no wind in their hair this time– no railings beneath their feet, but there's still enough adrenaline to spare as she banishes her fear for the moment. Instead of the thrill of an illicit affair, now there's the security that comes in knowing that they're allowed this; there's no one to stop them. Instead of a north Atlantic chill they have the warmth of a home fire. The crackle of the embers replace the crashing of waves against a bow.
Jack then had excitement and adventure and freedom, and that hasn't necessarily changed. Now though, he also represents a different kind of escape: he's warmth, and safety and comfort and security. He's all of the things she has been missing since the night of April 14th, two years ago, and with this kiss she realizes that she can finally start to have those things back; to allow them for herself. She no longer has to deny herself happiness because she feels guilty or undeserving. If Jack believes that she is enough, and that a chance is enough, then she'll simply have to try and start believing it.
When they pull back to breathe, Jack is smiling. His fingers have made their way from her cheek and up into her curls, which he smoothes now with a gentleness and reverence that she reminds herself she's allowed to enjoy. She lets herself reach up and run her own thumb over his chin and the bottom lip that had just kissed her so tenderly. She feels the coarseness of new facial hair beneath her fingers, and doesn't hate the change.
"How about that good night's sleep, now?" Jack asks. "Think you're tired enough?"
Shetakes stock of her body, feeling the heaviness of her limbs. She realizes she must have been blinking sleep away sitting here just now, content to close her eyes and just be with him. She nods into his palm again, and turns her head to plant a small kiss there, too.
The weight shifts from the sofa next to her as he stands, dropping the blanket he'd wrapped around the both of them fully over her shoulders, and he offers her a hand to stand up.
"Come on," he tells her. "There's no point in cramming ourselves onto this little couch when there's several perfectly good beds right upstairs.
Halfway through, and finally a kiss!
There's still a lot of plot and a lot of healing yet to come before they're fully settled.
A big thank you to everyone who has been reading along and leaving such lovely comments! It really helps me stay motivated and makes this endeavor feel worthwhile. Also: apologies for any typos and continuity errors throughout. I try to catch as much as I can before posting, but with the way this platform works, so errors will just have to remain, as there's no easy way to go back and edit once I've posted. Life is full, and this is purely a fun hobby. Generally, I'm okay with this, though! I'd rather get a new chapter out more quickly than spend the time agonizing over it!