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Jack and Rose are six years old when they meet. Jack is kicking about in one of the more upmarket areas of Chippewa Falls and simply minding his own business, when he hears shouting from one of the houses, the one that has had the SOLD sign hammered firmly into the lawn for the past three weeks; the sound is so loud that it bleeds out onto the street. He tries to sneak a look in through one of the back windows - he’s a curious child, and his mom is always telling him how it could get him in a lot of trouble - but as he’s attempting to see, the thin drapes of this particular room are ripped away, and the window is thrown open. Before he can even think about running, there’s a girl stood there, a shock of red hair tumbling around her shoulders, and there are marks on her face like she’s just been crying.
They just stare at each other for a few moments, the silence only interrupted by the argument that is still going on somewhere inside the house.
“Hello,” she says suddenly.
“Hi.”
“Are you a stranger?”
“Are you a stranger?”
She opens her mouth to scream, and gets through “MOM -” before he leans through the window to stop her by pressing a hand over her mouth, because no good will come of that. Her voice is lost in between the shouting coming from downstairs, anyway, and perhaps she realises this because she doesn’t start screaming again when he takes his hand away.
“Please don’t do that,” he says, just to make sure. Then: “Who’s shouting?”
“Mother and Papa.” There’s a note of sadness in her voice, before it’s gone a moment later, curiosity on her face instead. “Does this mean that we’re best friends now?”
It’s a pretty out of the blue question, but for some reason it makes logical sense. He doesn’t even know why, or how, but he just knows that she feels safe. Maybe it’s the innocence in her wide blue eyes; you could get drawn into them.
“Yeah. I’m Jack Dawson.”
“Rose DeWitt Bukater.”
“You’re gonna have to write that one down,” he says; she giggles, and it’s official, just like that.
-- x --
The years pass, and people may change, but Jack’s friendship with Rose never does.
Despite their different social backgrounds, Chippewa Falls has a limited number of schools, and an even more limited number that are local to their neighbourhood, which means that, by default, they are placed in the same classes and are truly inseparable from that moment on.
She’s there when his parents die in an accident and he crawls through her window to get away from the house down the street, now empty aside from that distant relative that has come to take care of the orphaned Dawson child, the aunt who is never there and might as well not be there at all. He’s there when it emerges that her father has been caught in a scandal during the year that they both turn sixteen; her mother screams and cries for at the unfairness of it all, but she doesn’t seem upset over the death of her husband, rather she’s upset over the money. Rose is crying herself when she arrives through his window, and Jack gathers her up in blankets and lets her curl up next to him on the bed where she can grieve without judgement or scorn.
“Jack,” she says, voice rough from disuse, once she’s all cried out and they’re both simply sitting in the dim room in silence. “What if we don’t care about our future partners as much as we care about each other?”
Well. If that isn’t a loaded question.
“I don’t know,” Jack admits, after giving it some thought and coming up with nothing of any real comfort. “We’ll just...care about them in a different way, I guess.”
Rose lifts her head from his shoulder, dragging the back of her hand across her eyes. “What different way?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Less.”
It might be a bit of an insensitive joke, but it’s the first smile he’s seen for nearly three hours.
-- x --
They meet Caledon Hockley on the first day of junior year.
“That guy’s staring at you,” Jack tells her as they take their usual seats next to each other on the bus that morning; Rose glances in that direction to see, but then rolls her eyes.
“It’s probably nothing,” she says, in that decisive way of hers, and they are both quite happy to leave it be, until the very same Caledon Hockley walks into their first class and introduces himself. He’s a new student - maybe the only new student of Chippewa Falls High School in recent memory - and hails from Pittsburgh, and he chooses the seat a few desks behind Rose. Rose watches him with curiosity, and he watches her back, until Murdock clears his throat and tells them to pay attention, and Jack gets the feeling that he does not like this, not one little bit.
-- x --
“You don’t like him?” Rose asks him later, when they’re sat in the cafeteria and waiting for Tommy and Fabrizio. Caledon Hockley has made himself at home on the other side of the room, at the table that belongs to the other popular kids of Chippewa Falls; he’s already been accepted into their elitist circle, being the heir of a steel fortune or something.
Jack picks at the sandwich in front of him. “Do I have to?”
She smirks. “Well -” she leans forward, lowering her voice “- he seems like an unimaginable bastard.”
She sounds scandalised, and the two of them crack up laughing, which does attract the attention of Hockley, but it’s fine, because Rose’s face is alight when she laughs, and Jack thinks, not for the first time, that he might be a little bit in love with her (most definitely).
-- x --
“I want to join the school volleyball team.”
These are the greeting words that come out of Rose’s mouth as she slides through the open window later one evening. Jack doesn’t even look up from the sketch he’s doing - he’s used to it, because it’s hardly going to be anyone else other than Rose - but his brow still furrows.
“We don’t have a school volleyball team.”
“This flyer I found in my locker today says otherwise.” Rose invites herself to sit next to him, and he shifts on the bed to make room for her.
“Rose...” He considers for a moment, wondering how to word this without earning himself a friendly punch on the arm. “You know you’ve always been horrible at sports, don’t you?”
She sniffs, and pretends to be insulted. “I can outrun you.”
“That’s nothing to be proud of, Rosie,” he says, albeit smiling, but Rose is insistent - she’s always been stubborn, so he should know better by now than to argue with her on things like this.
Which is how Jack, who has skipped every gym class since freshman year, finds himself sitting on the bottom step of the gym bleachers with Fabrizio two days later, watching Tommy and Rose trying to play volleyball. Tommy looks like he would rather be anywhere else but here, and Jack has to bite back a chuckle every now and again, because they all know that Tommy is only out there to protect others from the fiery ball of determination that is Rose DeWitt Bukater. It certainly provides for an entertaining match.
“Povero bastardo,” Fabrizio says, as the match draws to a close, and Tommy staggers off to the side to get some water, and maybe have a moment to breathe again; Rose, undeterred, is still full of energy.
“Told you I could do it!” She huffs triumphantly, breathless and giddy as she throws herself into the celebratory hug waiting in Jack’s arms.
“Never doubted you for a minute,” he replies, despite the look that Tommy is giving them, and he can tell she’s smiling into the curve of his neck by the way her arms ever so slightly tighten around him.
“I know you didn’t.”
“Good job out there,” someone cuts in, and they all turn to find Caledon Hockley himself stood behind them, a slight smile on his face.
“Thanks,” Rose says, and then looks down at the floor when he doesn’t say anything else or break eye contact. It’s more than a little awkward. Tommy clears his throat a few moments later, effectively diffusing the situation, and the four of them make an executive decision to go in the search of decent food, but Jack swears he can feel Hockley’s dark, beady eyes watching them leave.
-- x --
Before any one of them really knows what is happening, Caledon - but, please, friends call me Cal - Hockley has slowly but surely become a part of their lives. He is everywhere all of a sudden, abandoning the other Chippewa Falls elites in favour of the four of them. He’s with them in the cafeteria, he’s with them on the bus ride home, he’s just there, and none of them really know what to do about it.
“Perhaps he’s not so bad,” Fabrizio tries to say, but Tommy claps him on the back of the head and tells him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
“He’s a gobshite, is what he is.” There’s no room for argument in Tommy’s voice, but it’s not like they can do anything about it. Cal is here to stay, and even more so in Rose’s case; apparently he is also a member of the Chippewa Falls High School drama club that Mrs DeWitt Bukater has insisted that her daughter join.
“You should come along!” Rose says to Jack that evening, as they sit in her back garden whilst her mother glares at them out of the kitchen window (she’s never liked Jack all that much, and especially doesn’t like her daughter always hanging around him).
He snorts, as he lights up a cigarette. “No chance.”
“Aw, come on. It would be much more fun with you there.”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, pulling a face, but they both know that he’ll be there anyway.
He’s come to realise over the years that he can’t really deny Rose anything.
So he skulks at the back of the auditorium, hiding in the shadows as the small group up on the stage tries to act their way through a scene from Romeo and Juliet. He sketches to keep from dying out of boredom, a snapshot of Rose as she focuses on Murdock and his enthusiastic spiel about the benefits of the theatre on the soul. It’s all complete crap, of course, but it fades into the background, allowing Jack to concentrate on capturing her features perfectly: the tilt of her head, the mess of red hair, and the fire that always seems to smoulder in her blue eyes. It’s not the first time he’s been sketching her and been hit with the realisation that, firstly, Rose DeWitt Bukater is beautiful, and second that he’s not noticing that in the platonic sense.
Now that Murdock has showed some signs of letting them go, Rose seeks him at the back of the room and a smile of recognition crosses her face for a brief moment; she’s about to head over, when Cal catches her elbow, drawing her in and talking to her in a low voice that Jack can’t pick up from this distance. She looks uncomfortable, and then murmurs something in response; he lets go, and she turns away again, quickening her pace as she makes her way over to where her best friend is waiting.
“I was hoping I’d see you,” she says, as if everything is totally fine and the exchange just now hadn’t even happened.
“What was that all about?”
“Nothing.” She’s not very convincing - either the drama club isn’t pulling its punches, or Jack has been around her for so long that he can see right through her - and, after a few moments of silence, she sighs. “He wants to take me to dinner tomorrow.”
“Like a date?” He asks, a little incredulous - Rose nods once, and he realises that he really doesn’t like that idea. “What did you say?”
“I told him I’d have to ask my mother. Yes, I know, that’s an awful excuse, don’t look at me like that.” She pulls a face, wrinkling her nose, and Jack tries to not be distracted by the fact that this face is nothing short of adorable. “I just didn’t know what to say.”
“Do you like him?”
“He’s not as bad as we make him out to be, I suppose.”
Jack tries to keep the frustration out of his voice. “That’s not the same thing, Rose.”
“I want to give him a chance. Everyone deserves a chance, Jack, even Cal.” She gives a half smile. “We’ve already agreed that there will be no bad blood between us if it doesn’t work out.”
“How generous of him,” Jack says as they leave the room, and really, really doesn’t mean it.
-- x --
“You’re fucking mad, Rosie,” Tommy declares, two days later, when they’re clustered around their table in the cafeteria to listen to Rose’s tale of dinner with the one and only Caledon Hockley.
“Pazzo,” Fabrizio chimes in, and Jack has to nod in agreement.
“It wasn’t that bad,” she says with a roll of her warm blue eyes. “He picked me up at home, and Mother nearly cried with happiness, which was completely humiliating, and then we went to some Italian place in the city.”
“Stupefacente.” Fabrizio sounds impressed. “He has taste.”
“Well, I think you’re fucking mad,” Tommy says again. “Jack, boyo, tell her she’s mad.”
Jack shrugs, but he really doesn’t want to listen to this conversation. In fact, he would like nothing less than listening to Rose on a date with someone else - and Hockley at that.
“You’re mad.”
“Well, don’t worry yourselves. We’ve decided not to take it any further.”
“Really?”
“I told him it wouldn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
“What happened to you’re fucking mad?” Tommy looks at her as if to say don’t change the subject, and she shakes her head. “I told him I had feelings for someone else.”
Jack sits up in his seat at that. This is news; Rose has never mentioned anything about having feelings for anyone.
“Oh, yeah?” He’s not the only one at the table looking more animated; Tommy is now leaning forward with a smirk on his face. “Who’s the lucky fella?”
Rose gives him a smirk of her own in return. “What does it matter? They wouldn’t feel the same way.”
“Don’t cut yourself short like that, Rosie. He'd be a mad bastard not to."
“You’re bellissimo, Rose,” Fabrizio agrees, but she waves their words away and turns the subject of conversation to Helga, a girl that Fabrizio has been sweet on for the past couple of months, deflecting attention off of her as Fabrizio turns a startling shade of red. Tommy guffaws as he claps him on the back.
“Did you actually mean it?” Jack asks later, as they’re walking back from the bus stop, bathed in the light of the fading autumn, practically arm in arm like they used to as children. “When you told Hockley you had feelings for someone else?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Rose rolls her eyes at the raised eyebrow Jack gives her in response. It’s not very often that they keep things from each other, after so many years. “A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets, Jack.”
“You sound just like your mom when you say that,” he says, which makes her chuckle.
“Maybe I do. Maybe I’m destined to turn out to be just like her: a fool.”
“You’re not a fool.”
“I’d rather be a fool than be anything without you, Jack.”
There’s a smile on her face, a small, secretive one, like she’s aware of something he’s oblivious to, before she tactfully changes the subject, asking him about their assignment for art class, effectively drawing the matter to a close.
-- x --
Jack’s seventeenth birthday comes and goes with not much fanfare to speak of. He spends it in the small coffee house that Tommy’s family owns, with a few people from school who are in any way bothered with him getting a year older, but that’s okay, because none of them are forcing themselves to celebrate with him: they’re there because it’s genuine. Even Cal lays a hand on his shoulder and wishes him a happy birthday, which is unexpected, but not necessarily unwelcome. Jack hadn’t thought Cal capable of showing interest in someone else, and yet, here he is. Apparently Rose had been right to say that there was going to be no bad blood between them; they greet each other with a pleasant smile, and he gets roped into joining them out in the back yard as the afternoon slips away and the sunset nears.
“It’s Ryan family tradition,” Tommy insists, as he hands each of them a balloon, but Jack can tell it really isn’t and that he just wanted to give it a go, and he fights back the smile.
The idea, as his friend quickly explains, is that they each make a wish and then let the balloon go, almost like a non-festive alternative of a letter to Santa for whatever they wanted for Christmas. Jack looks at the balloon in his hands as Tommy speaks, the plain red balloon that holds nothing more than air and the fanciful dreams of high school juniors, and hopes that he never has to lose anything he has now, especially Rose. He’d rather keep what they have now, just as friends, than contemplate a future where there is a possibility he could lose her. To quote her own words, he’d rather be a fool than be anything without Rose DeWitt Bukater.
Rose DeWitt Bukater, who has her eyes screwed shut tight as she lets go of her balloon, who leaves Jack wondering what on earth she could be wishing for that hard.
He tries to get it out of her later, when they’re sitting on her bedroom floor with their assignment scattered in front of them, but she simply dodges the question - a habit she seems to have been doing a lot lately - and brings it back to school like the good, non-procrastinating student that Jack knows he probably should be but isn’t.
“I suppose I don’t remember enough of being a child in order to write about it,” she says, gesturing to the notebook open in her lap, and the page that has only a few sentences scrawled there in messy handwriting.
“You’re a sweet, little goofball, Rose, and you always have been. You must have had imaginary games you played as a kid.”
“I had an imaginary friend, I think. Her name was Cora.” Rose gives a little half smile at the memory. “She was older and much more mature than me, and, if I remember correctly, she rode horses on Santa Monica Pier and chewed tobacco like a man.”
“Of course she did.” Only Rose would dream up such a friend. “What happened to her?”
“Well -” she looks almost sheepish all of a sudden “- I think you happened.”
-- x --
“We’ve got a biology paper due in two days,” Jack says upon hearing the window sliding open, not looking up from his current sketch. “I hope you know what you’re doing, ‘cause I haven’t got a --”
“To be quite honest with you, Dawson, I couldn’t care less.”
That makes Jack turn around, nearly knocking his pencils to the floor; he’s met with the sight of Caledon Hockley himself climbing gracefully through the window, his feet landing on the floor with a gentle thud.
“Can I help you?”
“Do you always rely on Rose to remember your assignments?” Cal continues as if he hasn’t spoken, pleasant for someone that has just essentially entered someone’s house without permission.
Jack decides, there and then, to drop all attempts at politeness.
“Why are you here?”
“Believe me, I’m not here because I have nothing better to do, Dawson.” Cal takes a seat on the edge of the desk, taking a moment to leisurely observe the few photographs Jack has pinned up; a couple are of his parents, a few months before the accident, one is of Fabrizio and Tommy pulling stupid faces, and the other two are of him and Rose, taken from the summer before high school. Rose is up on his back, legs wrapped tightly around him, her head thrown back in laughter as he tries to carry her around the back garden.
“I’m here to tell you to get your head out of your ass,” Cal continues.
“Sorry?”
“You and Rose - not strictly platonic from your end, is it?”
“I’m not -” He starts, but Cal isn’t having any of that, and so he decides to not even bother. “Is it that obvious?”
“I knew from the moment I first saw you.” Great. “I just couldn’t tell whether or not she felt the same way.”
“Yeah, well, I can answer that for you. She doesn’t.”
“And that -” Cal jabs a finger in his direction “- that, is exactly why you needed me to be here right now.” When he gets no response, he rolls his eyes extravagantly and sighs. “She’s in love with you, you idiot.”
Jack blinks - and then he snorts. “No, she isn’t.”
“Yes. She is. I know you wouldn’t think so, Dawson, but not all of us are so obvious with our feelings.”
“If you’re gonna keep up the insults, you can leave.”
Cal sighs huffily. “I’m trying to do you a favour here.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Cal repeats, and then shakes his head, as if the question is completely ridiculous. “Contrary to what you seem to believe, I’m not completely void of feelings.”
“Yeah?” Jack raises an eyebrow. “Could’a fooled me."
His uninvited guest sniffs, haughty. “Now look who’s being insulting.”
-- x --
Jack isn’t sure what he’s doing here.
Cal, who had spent a total of twenty three minutes spouting the same rhetoric about Rose being in love with him (because who else could it be? Hockley sniffed. Rose is charming, but dear god she has bad taste, so naturally my thoughts ran to you, Dawson), has left him with plenty of food for thought, confusing food for thought at that, and his feet had automatically taken him to Rose’s house, to the one person he needs to see at times like this. Maybe it’s to confess his feelings, maybe it’s to get some kind of reassurance that his feelings are as one-sided as he always believed - he isn’t sure which; perhaps it is a little bit of both.
Except he only has to get within a few metres of the house to hear the shouting. It’s like he’s six years old again, stumbling across the DeWitt Bukater household for the first time.
He’s awkwardly sitting on the window ledge, legs dangling through the open hatch, when Rose stumbles in. She’s mess, is the first thing that Jack notices, her hair falling haphazardly around her face, and her damp cheeks stained pink. She’s been crying for a while.
“Rose?” He’s through the window properly in a second. “What’s wrong?”
She jumps, like she hadn’t even noticed him there - maybe she hadn’t - but the sight of him seems to be enough, because Rose doesn’t reply; she simply folds herself into his open arms and cries on his shoulder.
-- x --
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Rose says grimly, and Jack gives her hand another squeeze. They’ve barely moved in the past few hours, still in their seats on Rose’s bed whilst Tommy and Fabrizio take the floor. “She wants to move us out to England. She thinks it’ll be better for our economic interests if we head out there to stay with her family, try and build a new life there. Like we don’t already have one here.”
“Fuck,” Tommy says again, and itches the back of his neck. “God, Rosie - I don’t know what to say -”
“There’s nothing to say. If she says we’re going, I have to go. It’s not my decision.” She sighs heavily, sadly. “I’m going to miss you guys --”
“We’ll visit you all the time, bella,” Fabrizio assures her, and then looks to Jack and Tommy, who nod their heads in agreement.
“All the time,” Jack echoes, and even though they all know it’s just empty promises made in the moment, fleeting plans that will fall apart as soon as their friend leaves Chippewa Falls, it makes the ghost of a smile flicker onto Rose’s face.
-- x --
Jack migrates them to the window once their friends have left for the evening; they stand side by side, leaning against the window sill, hands still clasped together as they watch the night sky.
“You know,” he says into the silence, “my pops used to say that you should look at the sky if you’re missing someone. No matter where they are, no matter how much distance is between you, they’ll see the same sky as you.”
“He was wise,” she agrees, and Jack nods. He’s come to accept, over the years, that there’s no changing what happened to his parents, but he can’t help feeling like Fate is laughing at him a little - the universe took his parents, and now it’s taking Rose away too, even if not in the same way (never, he hopes, in the same way).
“Over there!” Rose says suddenly, pointing; he follows the line of her finger, at the trails of a shooting star that are falling across the sky. “Did you make a wish?”
“Did you?”
“Of course.”
“What you wish for?” Jack asks, even though he’s sure he could make a pretty accurate guess, and he must be right, because there’s a sad smile playing on her lips now.
“Something I can’t have.”
There’s silence between them for a moment, both of them too busy with their own thoughts to make conversation. Then:
“Rose?”
“What?”
She’s looking at him now, expectant and slightly hopeful; Cal’s voice is ringing in his ears, a constant chant of tell her, tell her, tell her. But he can’t do it, can’t make his mouth form the words. He may have poor timing, but not this poor. This isn’t the place for love confessions that have been ten years in the making.
“Time and distance aren’t gonna have any power over us, okay? We’re gonna be together for as long as we live.”
Rose holds his gaze for a long moment, and Jack wonders what she’s searching for - if she’s searching for something, because he knows he could be imagining it for want of her feeling something too - before she looks back towards the sky outside the window.
“Thank you, Jack.”
-- x --
It doesn’t take long before Rose’s first, and final, match with volleyball team is upon them. Even Ruth is there, to Jack’s surprise, perched on the end of the row like she doesn’t want to be there. He wonders how much of an internal struggle it must have been for her to actually attend something that her daughter is passionate about.
Whatever. He doesn’t want to give her his attention, if he can help it.
“You’re gonna do great,” he says to his best friend, who is nervously toying with the hem of her shirt.
“It’s all very well and good you saying that,” Rose argues, but she’s swiftly cut off by the sudden arrival of one Caledon Hockley. Of course.
“Dawson’s right, you know. You’re going to do fine.”
“I didn’t think you would be interested in all this, Cal.”
“I thought I would wish you luck. Isn’t that what friends are for?” He gives them both a smile each, but it’s more baring his teeth than anything else. “Besides, I wanted to congratulate you.”
“On what?”
“Didn’t you hear? The Hockleys just invested in the company that your father left, cleared out the debt to merge it with our steel industry. It’s in your mother’s best economic interest to remain here. It looks as though you’ll be staying with us for the time being.”
Rose looks sceptical, and Jack doesn’t blame her. “Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Cal replies, the picture of innocence (a terrible picture, Jack thinks). “It wasn’t my call to make.”
“Of course not.” Rose levels him with a meaningful look. “I suppose this means I owe you.”
“Actually, no. Sometimes things just work out like they’re supposed to.” He gives Jack a meaningful look at this, before slinking back to his seat amongst the crowd.
“Mother?” Rose is looking towards her mother now, looking out of place amongst the high school students clustered around her. “Is this true?”
Ruth simply shrugs, as if the whole thing is little more than what type of bottled water she prefers and not a decision that could impact her daughter’s future, her daughter who is now turning to look at Jack, her face mirroring the smile that he can feel stretching across his own face, like she can’t even dare to hope.
“Jack -”
She doesn’t get further than that, because suddenly she’s throwing her arms around him, and he’s scooping her up into a tight hug, lifting her off the ground and spinning her round.
Rose pulls back, and she’s laughing, laughing out of what seems to be sheer relief, and maybe some things do just work out like they’re supposed to - because she kisses him before Jack can even contemplate how easy it would be just lean in and kiss her.
-- x --
Jack and Rose meet when they are six years old, and they go off to college together in Santa Monica when they are eighteen. Jack is unpacking his one suitcase, trying to find a place for everything from his home in Chippewa Falls and wondering how he’s going to go about bonding with his roommate Sven, when there’s a knock on the closed bedroom window. He glances up, although he has a pretty good idea of who it might be, and there is Rose DeWitt Bukater, in all her glory, waving from the other side of the glass. He abandons what he’s doing and goes to open the window, ignoring the confused look on Sven’s face.
“Don’t grown ups use the door?”
“Too late now,” Rose says, and grabs him by the front of the shirt to pull him in for a kiss. Jack can feel her smiling against his lips, before she pulls away suddenly, a grin that’s a mile wide on her face and a mischievous look in her eyes. “Come on. We’re late.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“To the stars.”
She’s holding out a hand now, an invitation, and it’s an invitation Jack doesn’t even have to think about.
“Don’t wait up, Sven,” he says cheerfully, ignoring the even more confused look on the guy’s face, before taking Rose’s outstretched hand and disappearing through the window, out into the night.