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Chapter Text

April 10, 1912

Wednesday

11:51am

“I can’t believe you’d bet our tickets!” the man—Jay’s already forgotten his name—in front of Jay hisses.

The other man on the first’s left shrugs with a bit of a grin, peering at his cards with sparkling greed in his eyes. For someone willing to bet freedom on paper in a game of poker, he doesn’t have a very good face for the game.

Jordan frowns at her own cards, and Jay looks over her shoulder at them from where she’s sitting next to him in the beer-stained booth and grimaces.

Jay’s luck has never been the best; he knows this. From the very start of his life, brought up on a damp sheep farm up in Wales, he’d somehow known that his life was going to be always like this. A man like him is at the bottom of the social ladder; he hadn’t even gone to school. His largely absent parents had taught him to read and write and that was basically the extent of their care for and relationship with him.

He often remarks that meeting Jordan was the luckiest he’s ever been, to which she scoffs and assures him that if he was a better man, he wouldn’t want to be friends with her—that, or he’d want to marry her. They both laugh at that.

Don’t get Jay wrong; he loves Jordan to pieces. She really is the best friend he’s ever had. She lives in a careless sort of way that both irritates and endears him, but it also makes her more exciting. She’s the kind of friend Jay Gatsby the millionaire could party with.

Jay isn’t a millionaire, and the name Gatsby doesn’t mean anything to anyone that isn’t him, but sue a man for having dreams, why don’t you?

And those dreams all culminate on an unassuming Wednesday. 

Or, as unassuming as a Wednesday can be when it’s the date of departure for the one and only RMS Titanic. Setting off on its maiden voyage from Southampton, it’s been declared unsinkable, a gorgeous, looming ocean liner with crowds on the docks that make it seem like the whole country is sending it off.

In reality, it’s mostly just the 2,000 passengers—although there are many hundreds of extras crowding the planks to see it set sail—piling slowly but surely onto the impossible structure deemed insurmountable, ready to go to America. The land of dreams, where everything could change.

Where Jay himself was determined to go, sure that somehow getting on that ship would change his destiny. Everything could change in America, and perhaps that even meant a man like him starting anew, and building up something for himself. It was a land where no one knew him yet. And he’d make them see him.

He just needs to win these tickets first.

Which leads him here, to this table in a shabby bar along the coastline, where two fools have just bet their very own Third Class tickets mere minutes before the ship is set to depart.

The first man grumbles and slams his cards on the table—and not a good set of them either. Jay almost feels sorry for him.

Jordan huffs and puts her own cards much more gently on the table, revealing just a single pair. The other man who’d bet the tickets raises a cockish eyebrow, and his grin widens, all teeth, as he sets down his hand and crosses his arms victoriously.

A straight. Jay’s breath catches.

His luck has never been the best, but as he slaps his cards down—sending them scattering on his placemat, a full house beaming their hearts and spades up at their little group—he feels it start to look surely up.

Jay can’t stop the unapologetic manic energy that washes through him as he glances at Jordan to see her eyes wide and gleaming, and then to the pair opposite them, where the second man’s hand has frozen over the tickets and little pile of betted coins that had accumulated over their rounds of game.

The first man rounds on the other furiously, a litany of curses spilling out as he fists the other’s collar, and Jay quickly scrambles to grab the tickets and Jordan’s wrist before the other two can turn on them and start a brawl—or something. Jay doesn’t want to get into a fight either way, and he’s holding in his fist the tickets to freedom and a new life, so he drags Jordan out of the booth and the daze that she seemed to have slipped into. Frankly, Jay was surprised he wasn’t dreaming, and couldn’t blame Jordan for thinking so.

“Apologies for your luck, old sport,” he says over his shoulder—though the other two aren’t listening to him anyway. He glances up at a clock hanging precariously over the front door, its hands revealing that they were on a quite sudden time crunch; 11:54 it reads, if the clock—and his limited knowledge on how to read a clock—is to be trusted, and based on the commotion outside, along with the deep bass of a foghorn, he figures it’s probably correct.

“Come along Jordan, we’ll have to hurry if we wish to make it!” he tells the brunette at his side, and she slips her fingers through his to give them a more secure connection as they burst out the door and into the thicket of people.

“This—I—You’re insane Jay Gatsby!” Jordan yells over the din of the crowd as they try their best to shove their way to the ship and its docks, the ordeal only made that much harder by the throng of people clustering at the very edges of the planks, as if by getting close enough to the Titanic, their dreams can come true, too.

“We aren’t going to make it,” Jordan shouts, the words barely reaching Jay before he replies with a grin, “We will!” Despite his optimism, he can see how the last bridges connecting the ship to the dock are already being pulled in, because although it won’t truly leave the shores until noon, surely there’s no one crazy and unprepared enough to shove tickets at the men in White Star Line uniforms with only two minutes to spare—except them.

And unprepared is truly the word for them, winning last-minute tickets in a card game, of all things, and with nothing on their persons except the clothes they’re wearing, Jay’s rucksack, and Jordan’s small messenger bag; he hopes that she at least has a change of clothes—he knows how she can get about clothes.

He flings them both through the last barrier of people—he’d just been blindly pushing them aside, and he can’t help but think once again how lucky he had to have been to get through that—and comes face to face with one of the uniformed men, just about to close to final bridge. The man narrows his eyes at them, and Jay holds up the tickets gleefully.

“Have you had your passports checked?” he says with a sigh, like he’s dealing with two troublemaking children. Jay waves him off with practiced ease, even through his admittedly heavy breathing.

“Of course, old sport, Jordan here just forgot her bag you see, and—” Jordan elbows him with a glare, and he rolls his eyes. The man ushers them from the bridge through a porthole to the ship, checking his watch and apparently deciding there wasn’t time to truly verify their credibility; they had tickets and so he didn’t care.

They hand their tickets off to another man inside who tells them they’re on Deck F—whatever that means, but Jay is sure it will be an adventure to figure out later—and gestures at an elevator and stairwell at the end of the corridor.

“Ah, yes thank you,” Jay says absently, already hurrying along to the stairs, Jordan close behind. Jay’s chest swells with his labored breaths and that still overwhelming sense of victory—they’re on the Titanic, they’re going to America!—and he resists the urge to whoop or cackle madly as he swings open the stairwell door by its gilded handle, taking the stairs two at a time with Jordan scurrying close behind.

“Jay—for the love of…slow down!” she huffs, clutching at her side as they reach a third landing. “Do you even know where we’re going?” She pushes her brown bob-cut hair out of her face and fixes him with something of a glare.

“‘Course I do,” he lies, and grabs her hand again to tug her up yet another flight of stairs; they must be getting close to the top now. “You can only wave off your homeland from the grandest ship of all time once, you know. We mustn’t miss it!”

Jordan sighs again, but a smile cracks upon her lips, and through her annoyance, Jay can tell she’s unbelievably excited too.

“Still, the ship doesn’t move that fast, must we run up stairs?” Jay ignores her protests and goes faster just to spite her, light spilling through a circular window on the door on top of this final set of stairs. He pushes open the door, feeling quite like a movie protagonist in one of those drama films Jordan had shown him.

Sunshine pours down on him as he steps out onto the deck, a breeze whipping his hair as he listens joyously to the cheers of all the people gathered out on the bow, waving down to the crowds below. A giddy laugh bubbles up his throat, and he looks to his side where Jordan stands with her hands on her knees, fully out of breath.

He breathes in the salty air, hooking his arm around Jordan’s elbow and pulling her up from her hunch. She finally grins at him all out, and by mutual unspoken agreement they shove their way through the plethora of others leaning against the railing. Jay raises his and Jordan’s once again enjoined hands, waving them jubilantly.

“We’re off to America!” he shouts to no one in particular, Jordan laughing next to him, and it’s then that he just knows his luck is looking up—and that this ecstatic happiness is what he wants to fill the rest of his life with.

The Titanic begins to pull away from the docks, water spraying up from the force of the propellers working to push the ship out into the open ocean. It picks up speed gradually, and even as the shoreline fades away and the others at the railing begin to trickle back elsewhere, Jay stays there, hanging his arms off the edge of the warming metal.

He turns back to Jordan eventually, and her faint smile makes him grin again, his cheeks beginning to hurt with the force of his smiles. “Jordan, we’re going to America. America.”

Her smile widens and she laughs helplessly. “You’re insane,” she says again, pushing her bangs out of her face where the breeze had displaced them.

They’re silent for a moment, basking in their luck and victory alike—Jay still can’t believe that just twenty minutes ago, they were playing a game of poker in a bar. Jordan turns her back on the waters, leaning her elbows on the railing and tilting her face up to the sun.

“I do hope you packed a change of clothes,” Jay says suddenly, and Jordan bursts out laughing again.

“You think when I went out today that my first thought was, ‘Hm, perhaps I should pack in case of a spontaneous trip to America with Jay Gatsby!’” She smacks his arm with a scoff, then adjusts her messenger bag at her waist. “On that note, I have an extra pair of underwear, socks, and shoes.”

Jay snorts and nudges her shoulder, thinking of his own extra pair of pants and shoes, and his charcoal and sketchbook he wouldn’t go anywhere without—and that little pile of coins from the poker game. He has the essentials and his best friend; does he really need anything else?

The salty breeze rustles through his vest, and he closes his eyes against the bright rays of sun. Every second reminds him that he’s inching ever closer to America, land of the free, and he feels it deep in his bones that this is his chance to be someone, and he’s never been so ready to seize the opportunity.

He thinks his luck really is turning around after all.

Chapter Text

April 10, 1912

Wednesday

12:10pm

Nick hauls his suitcase over the threshold of the room he and his father are set to stay in for a week at sea, tired eyes dragging over opulent furniture that he thinks would be more at home in a place like Daisy’s house than a ship, but that’s First Class for you, he supposes.

For the fifth time in the last half hour, he wonders how he came to be here, on this luxurious voyage with all his least favorite people; just a couple days ago, he was sitting cooped up in his room writing his poems and ignoring his father’s insistence that he get a proper job. His cousin and her family had just arrived, because they’d all be traveling together. He was meant to stay behind.

Somehow, between his father’s piercing gaze, Tom’s boisterous urging, and Daisy’s sweet pleading, he’d agreed to go along too.

His father’s hand claps his shoulder suddenly from where the man stands slightly behind him in the doorway, grip firm and heavy, and Nick flinches. “Splendid place to stay, don’t you think so, Nicholas?” Nick grimaces at the use of his full name—no matter how many times he asks, his father refuses to use his preferred nickname—and glances up to watch the man’s eyes sweep over the room with a critical eye that gives him the air of one who’d expected worse and was pleasantly surprised.

Nick smiles tightly. “Yes, it’s quite nice,” he offers, then shuts his mouth and decides he won’t speak again until lunch with everyone else.

His father starts picking through the room, examining a table with complimentary gin and crystal glasses, and testing out the comfort of the various plush velvet sofas and armchairs. This gives Nick a moment to let his shoulders relax a smidge, and he straightens his suit jacket uncomfortably, hoping he can change into a nice sweater sometime soon.

The Titanic had just left the shore only ten minutes ago, Daisy’s mother supervising the young woman as she waved off the English coast before they all went swiftly back inside to find their supposedly extravagant lodgings. Nick strides to the conjoined bedrooms, finding that they’re indeed as nice as advertised and silently loathing having to spend a whole week’s worth of nights so close to his father.

He sighs dejectedly and takes the one further from the door to their living space, knowing his father will want the one closer to the bathroom and giving that luxury up without a second thought: he’s not stupid enough to fight his father on a matter so trivial.

The duvet dips softly as he dumps his suitcase onto the too-nice bed he’ll be sleeping in. He starts to shuck his suit jacket off, the tight fabric starting to suffocate him, but his father raps on the doorframe behind him.

“Don’t get undressed, we’ll be having lunch with the Fays and Buchanans in an hour.” Nick sighs again, rebuttoning his cuffs. Even in his own room—as “his” as this room can be—he isn’t allowed comfort. 

He undos the latches on his suitcase, resolving to spend the hour mindlessly unpacking, a monotony of folding and refolding clothes into the dresser provided by a bedside table that allows him to draft something poetically melancholic about the ocean; the only parts of this trip he’s sure to enjoy is the sea breeze and the opportunity to write. Once they dock in America, however, he knows he won’t be able to escape.

He still isn’t sure how or when he’d agreed to this trip. Nick likes to think he’s a largely honest and agreeable person, but even he will admit those niceties don’t apply to his family. In short, he despises all of them, except perhaps his cousin, Daisy. At least she sympathizes with his woes and supports his writing career; the rest don’t even bother pretending they care.

He finishes unpacking much too soon, he finds as he walks out to the living room to watch a gilded grandfather clock tick half-past. He looks helplessly around at the velvet furniture and finely woven rug on the floor and can’t help but think he’s so out of place here.

A voyage like this, an opportunity to spread family business in America like this, the First Class privilege like this—it’s all meant for people like his father, like Daisy and Tom. Wealthy people who are rich enough to be careless, and so they are.

Nick doesn’t quite fit in with any of them, and he never truly has. Sure, he’s heir to his father’s well-off hardware industry, but he doesn’t want to be. If he could just be a bit of a recluse who writes poems and publishes shoddy journalisms in a newspaper, he thinks he’d be happy with his life. He almost thought he’d be able to fulfill that one dream of his, too.

But alas, here he is, on the RMS Titanic, being sent off on a glorious mission across the seas to America. Land of the free for everyone else, but for Nick, it will be his doom.

He’s not naïve enough to think he could’ve really escaped it. He just thought he’d have more time. Still, he has a week.

A week on a luxurious ship with all his least favorite people…and his notebook.

He goes back to his room, passing his father lounging on his bed with a cigar—does the ship allow smoking?—and fishing through the various miscellaneous clothing items still in his suitcase before pulling out his leather-bound notebook with a tiny smile.

His father narrows his eyes at him as he walks back out, but Nick pays him no mind; all his worst dreams might come true in America, but while they’re still on the ocean, he will write if he so pleases, no matter how girlish his father sees it as.

Nick debates going up to the promenade, mostly for some fresh air—it could be less stuffy in these rooms, he thinks—but decides the consequence of ultimately forgetting the time and being scolded by his father again is too great a cost to bother.

He settles in one of the armchairs, finding it much stiffer than he’d expected, before fumbling in his pocket for the pen he knows is always there and flipping open his notebook to a blank page.

It’s not often that Nick hits a slump in his writing; poetry is a very freeing thing, a style of writing that allows for practically anything to be written down and formed into something beautiful, and giving mundane things meaning is something Nick enjoys. He’s never written about the ocean before—he’s just never thought about it—and he’d expected it to be easy.

But he puts his pen on the paper, a blot of ink spreading from the point, and he just stares. Nothing comes to mind.

He tries to listen for the crash of waves, some sort of background noise that isn’t the almost ominous ticking of the grandfather clock, but the beautifully papered steel walls of the Titanic are too thick.

He tries to concentrate on the rocking of the ship, the dip of the waters around them—anything but the stiff armchair—before he remembers how Tom had explained smugly about the way the Titanic was built so that the higher areas of the ship were structured in a way such that it would be smooth sailing for the whole trip.

He sits there for five whole minutes that seem to just crawl by, waiting for inspiration to strike, before he finally releases a defeated sigh and snaps the notebook shut. He knows ignoring his lack of ideas will be something he’ll regret later—if he doesn’t start something within the first couple days of this trip, he doubts he’ll get any writing done the whole time—but he just doesn’t have it in him to really concentrate at the moment.

It turns out to be perfect timing on his part, because in the next moment, their room door bursts open, Daisy’s flouncing figure sweeping inside.

“Nicky! How are you settling in then?” There’s a tightness at the corner of her mouth that says she’s just argued with Tom about something, and Nick wants to groan. Sure enough, Tom comes striding in close behind, an annoyed furrow dug into his brow.

“Oh, leave Nick alone Daisy. Can’t you see the man’s trying to write?” Tom gestures at the pen still held in Nick’s grip, and he raises his eyebrows. If Tom isn’t mentioning his writing in a condescending tone, Daisy must really have pissed him off.

Daisy sits daintily on the arm of Nick’s chair, ignoring Tom entirely. “Oh, darling, won’t you come explore with me? I’ve heard there’s a sweet little cafe and bar for the First Class, you’d love to come find it with me, right?” Nick smiles at her indulgently, seriously considering the idea just for the way Tom’s face scrunches further in irritation.

Tom rolls his eyes and steps forward, likely to pry Daisy away, but Nick stands and smooths down his pant legs, dropping his notebook behind him on the chair in a decisive manner. “Sure, why not?” he says, holding out his arm politely for Daisy to latch onto. “I’ve nothing better to do.”

Daisy beams that smile—one that others likely fall for but that Nick finds slightly disconcerting—that seems to zero in on you, making you believe you’ve caught this beautiful girl’s full attention and telling you there’s no one else she’d rather speak with. It falls when she looks over at Tom, morphing into a smile that looks much more along the lines of “there’s no one else I’d rather speak with less.”

“Won’t you join us, Tom? You’re probably dying for a scotch already, and besides, this is a trip for family!” She gives a tittering laugh, snatching Tom’s hand before he can properly respond.

Nick’s father leans against the doorframe to the bedrooms, a puff of cigar smoke lifting from his mouth when he speaks. “We’re eating at one,” he reminds them gruffly. “Don’t make me have to call your mother to find you.” He eyes Daisy pointedly, and Nick wants to point out that they’re grown adults who can tell the time on their own, but Daisy just smiles at the man with twinkling eyes.

“Of course, Mr. Carraway,” she says, a tinkling lilt in her tone that makes even her voice somehow sound expensive. She drags them both out the door into the hallway lined with intricate, lantern-like wall fixtures and immaculately detailed carpets, inclining her head left and right in an almost comically curious fashion, her dark chocolate curls bouncing where they perfectly frame her cheeks.

“Well, boys, which way shall we venture today?” 

Nick points to the right, where there’s a door labeled Stairwell in a gilded rectangle. “Start with the stairs and work our way down?” he suggests, and Daisy beams at him like he just invented the idea of stairs themselves.

“Lovely idea!” she declares, slipping her hands into both Nick and Tom’s, leading them down the corridor with a spoiled air that makes Nick smile fondly. 

As Tom’s grumbling follows them as they start down the stairs and Daisy natters on about the silk-soft sheets on her bed, Nick thinks that perhaps he can squeeze some bit of enjoyment out of this trip before it all falls down in America.

Chapter Text

April 10, 1912

Wednesday

1:30pm

Despite Nick’s earlier optimism, enjoyment is not what he thinks he’s getting out of this lunch.

In fact, he almost doesn’t want to call it lunch, or any dining-experience-equivalent word used to describe getting together and eating midday. For one thing, no one at their fancily-clothed table is eating, and Nick feels supremely awkward anytime he forks something from the charcuterie board in the middle of the table; the rest of the group seems content to eye the board as if it’s something of a decoration.

Unbeknownst to him, the Buchanans had apparently acquired a meeting with Mr. Andrews, the master shipbuilder of the Titanic herself. This in and of itself isn’t such a bad thing, but Nick thinks he would’ve cleaned himself up a bit better if he knew such an esteemed gentleman would be joining them—and perhaps he would’ve brought his notebook too.

As it is, he’s been sitting quietly for half an hour, trying to politely and actively listen to Mr. Andrews as he speaks modestly of his part in the creation of the grand ship. A lot of it is talk about engineering—things that largely fly straight over Nick’s head and that he’s sure Tom is simply pretending to understand in order to try and get in Mr. Andrews’ good books.

Even if Nick could understand and contribute to the conversation, however, he probably wouldn’t be able to speak up with how tense his jaw is. His father sits right beside him, giving him disapproving looks each time he snags another grape, like this isn’t supposed to be lunch. Nick knows his father wants him to talk to Mr. Andrews, or indeed any of the many other mildly famous people mingling in the dining rooms. He’d say something about how it’s what a proper heir to a prestigious company would do.

Nick simply doesn’t care much for such propriety.

As Nick’s eyes wander back to Mr. Andrews from where they’d strayed over all the other First Class passengers, he laments not for the first time his niggling rebellious streak. He thinks often that it would be much easier if he were just compliant, if he gave in to his father’s wishes and let life run its course. Maybe he wouldn’t be happy, but it sure would make things a lot less complicated.

Yet he still can’t let go of that notebook, his pen and ink, his poetry. That damned voice in the back of his mind that whispers, Why should you let your father push you around? It’s your life, not his. And then he thinks helplessly that he sometimes wishes his defiance could be stronger, that he’d have the courage to completely let go of his family duties and just—run away.

But Nick has never been strong enough for that, so he sits quietly at this table of rich, careless people and ignores his father’s glares, knowing it’s the most defiant he knows how to be.

He tunes back into the conversation just as Mr. Andrews is getting up, offering his apologies for not being able to stay longer—Nick wonders absently why he’d want to spend more time with these people.

“Really, Mr. Andrews, it was just so nice that you could join us even for a bit,” Mrs. Fay says with a tinkling laugh identical to Daisy’s, and with the same warming effect.

“Of course,” the man replies, and he shakes Mr. Fay’s hand, followed quickly by Tom’s, and even gives Nick’s father a quick nod. Nick almost wants to laugh at the twitch in his father’s jaw when Mr. Andrews doesn’t acknowledge Nick in the slightest, probably not even noticing that he’s there, which Nick doesn’t truly mind anyways.

Once Mr. Andrews finally departs, Daisy turns to Nick from where she's sitting on his other side and gives a flat smile. “All that technical, mechanical talk. How could we possibly understand a lick of it?” she says wryly, and Tom scoffs, likely about to spiel about how educated and intelligent it all is. Nick doesn’t get a chance to listen to the rant, however, because at that same moment, his father grips his elbow and practically drags him out of his seat. Nick grimaces at Daisy over his shoulder, already knowing what his father wants to say, and her eyebrows scrunch together before she turns back to Tom to pretend to pay attention to him—that’s the one thing Nick seems to have in common with Daisy; despite what they want, they still have roles to play.

His father eventually relents his clawing grip, knowing Nick is following behind him, and he leads them to a little alcove by the grand staircase that loops up from the middle of the entrance hall, leading back to the First Class quarters and the promenade.

“What was that about, Nicholas?” his father demands, arms crossed. Nick’s eyes slide away from the other man’s, and he tries desperately to ignore the twinge of guilt in his chest.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Nick says, just to be contrary, and a vein pulses in his father’s temple.

“You didn’t speak a word to Mr. Andrews. In fact, you’ve hardly spoken to anyone this whole day!” His father pinches the bridge of his nose, heaving a frustrated sigh that only makes the shame grow, its tendrils clenching around Nick’s heart.

“What do you think we have First Class tickets for, Nicholas? To dine in luxury?” Nick shrugs even though he and his father both know that he knows. “We’re surrounded by some of the most important people from all over Europe. Starting to build bridges and connections here—it’s what our family will rely on in America.” His father looks suddenly weary, and though Nick will forever be angry at his father for never listening to what he wants, he’s also reminded all over again why he refuses to run away.

His father visibly composes himself, drawing himself up and giving Nick a scornful look that contradicts all the crap he’s ever told Nick about reserving judgements, and Nick feels a lot of the guilt wash away, left only with his own frustration.

“I can excuse your silence this one time, Nicholas, but that’s all. This voyage—this privilege that we have to make connections now—you’re going to make the most of it, and if that means I have to walk you through this room and force you to talk with people, then so be it.”

Anger bubbles up in Nick’s gut, and he was intending on just agreeing, walking back to their table calmly, but he finds he doesn’t have the capacity for any positive feelings toward his father right now, so what he says is a spat out, “Fine,” and then he’s turning away and out of the alcove, rushing up the stairs instead, suddenly caught with an overwhelming urge to get some fresh air and sunshine before he throws something.

He finally reaches the top of the staircase, and he weaves himself around a few others coming from outside, pushing the elegant white door open and sucking in deep breaths of the salty ocean air.

He pays no mind to the way the wind ruffles his carefully combed hair, letting it reach out curious fingers to brush his cheeks, cooling them where he hadn’t even noticed them heating with anger. He strolls up to the promenade railing, resting his elbows against it and closing his eyes for a moment. The sun beats down on the ship, and he opens his eyes to watch the rays swipe over the glitteringly calm waves around them, enjoying their warmth against the wind’s slight bitterness.

He knows he shouldn’t have snapped at his father, just as he knows there will likely be consequences for it later, but just for this one moment, he can let his tense shoulders relax and breathe in gently the sound of the propellers working to chug Titanic across the seas.

A moment like this, he thinks with a satisfied quirk of lips, is something he could write about.

~*☆*~

1:53pm

“I mean, can you even believe this?” Jay breathes, awe filling his chest as he looks out over a railing edge, Jordan sitting on the planks next to him where they reside on one of the lower decks. Jay is tempted something awful to run to the very very tip of the bow, spread his arms, and let the Titanic fly him across the ocean. She already is technically, but wouldn’t that just be fun?

Jordan doesn’t bother replying to him, which he supposes he can’t blame her for; after all, he’s said something of the sort at least three dozen times in the last two hours that they’ve been sailing, and he still can’t shake the feeling that this is something of a fantastic dream. A hand dealt to him by fate in the most literal sense—a game of poker got them here, after all.

He glances down at his companion, finding her eyes closed and her head tilted back against the railing in a position that can’t be comfortable, but she hasn’t adjusted herself for at least ten minutes. He turns then to gaze over the deck, and the promenade level above them.

The compulsion to get out his sketchbook for probably the twentieth time or some ridiculous number like that hits him like a wave as he looks over all the mingling passengers. Poor men like him in vests and scruffy hats laughing and pointing at dolphins below them in the waters, various businessmen walking amicably around the deck’s many roofed walkways, and all the bejeweled women and important figures standing tall and proud on the highest decks. He’s filled so many pages of his sketchbook already, at least half of it from encounters back in Great Britain, and another quarter already from every intricate piece of the ocean liner on which he stands, and perhaps a few secret profiles from unknowing passengers. His fingers are still stained with charcoal from where he’d finally made himself shove the book back into his rucksack half an hour ago.

Sometimes, Jay wishes he knew how to write proper and good, like a published author, because then maybe he would be able to describe the overwhelming feelings that being on this ship with two-thousand other souls from all over gives him. So many people, from so many different backgrounds, all sailing on the greatest ship ever built to a new land where there is something for them all. Their paths all cross here, for this week, before they will once again go their separate ways, and yet they will all have experienced the wonder that is the Titanic’s maiden journey.

Jay wishes he knew how to write so he could put into words the comradery this all makes him feel.

And in the very next moment, as his gaze is drawn back up to the promenade, his heart swells with thankfulness that drawing is what he’s good at.

Elbows resting against the railing and eyes closed in an expression Jay can’t make out is a man—the most beautiful man he’s ever seen. Jay is so, so thankful that he’s an artist, because even if it’s the last thing he’ll ever do, he just knows: he has to draw this man.

His features are soft, almost feminine, and even from a distance, Jay can see the way his chestnut-brown hair curls at the ends as it’s swept around the man’s jaw from the breeze. His bottle-green suit jacket fits him so well Jay wants to believe he’s something out of a perfect storybook, and he has an odd hunch that the man’s eyes are hazel. 

Jay thinks inexplicably that he wants to run his fingers through that hair, but before he can even process that thought, a breath is punched out of him as the man’s eyes open, and his lips turn up in a smile that Jay wouldn’t be able to see if he wasn’t hyper-focused on every minute detail he can make out of that gorgeous, sweet face.

Jordan must’ve picked up the huffed, “Oh,” he lets out, because he sees her stand up next to him in his periphery, though he can’t bring himself to look at her—can’t bring himself to look away from him—even when she shakes his arm and asks, “What, what is it? Jay?”

As if feeling his eyes on him, the man suddenly tilts his head to the side, and Jay swears he can feel the moment their gazes lock, even if Jay can’t make out the man’s eye color—or any other little details like that—from here, decks below. Jay thinks maybe he should be embarrassed to have been caught so obviously staring, probably even gaping stupidly a bit if he knows anything about himself, but the man’s small smile doesn’t fall, and he doesn’t look away, and Jay is abruptly hit with a wave of some giant, warm feeling that makes him once again wish to be a writer, because he has no clue how to describe this.

“Jay!” Jordan practically shouts in his ear—tone suggesting she’d called his name multiple times—and he jumps and wrenches his gaze away to look at her. Jay shuts his mouth with a clack of teeth and swallows heavily.

“I—” Jay starts, but he can sense the beautiful man’s eyes still on him, and nothing in the world could’ve stopped him from looking back again. His smile has disappeared this time, but he blinks at Jay curiously, and Jay feels like he’s in a movie for the second time in one afternoon, half-convinced that an orchestra will begin playing the sort of swelling music that bursts out during a revelatory scene. “Look at him, Jordan,” he breathes.

Jordan must follow his gaze, because in the next moment she’s groaning and tugging his arm like she knows exactly what’s going on—Jay would appreciate it if she would share it with him.

“No, Jay, absolutely not—you can’t—” she whines, “I know that look in your eye, you’re just going to go barreling headfirst into whatever it is you’re scheming, you cannot!” Jay sees her hair swish in the corner of his eye, and he knows she’s shaking her head, likely complete with a scolding frown.

“You don’t understand, Jordan, look at him—how could I not—I need…” he trails off, trying to figure out what he wants to say and damning his limited internal monologue vocabulary. “God, I think I’m in love,” he finally settles on, and it’s absurd, but it also feels so right—who says love at first sight can’t be real? If a man so beautiful exists, surely that means someone is meant to look at him and trip with affection like a princess in a fairytale meeting the prince.

“You’re not—” Jordan starts, and Jay can perfectly picture the scowl twisting her mouth. “Listen Jay, you can’t. I know what you want, I can see it written all over you.” She gestures wildly at the man, who might be amused if Jay could just get a little closer and see—

“Don’t you see his suit? His posture, the fact that he’s on the First Class deck? We’re—You’re not meant for a guy like that.”

Jay rips his gaze from the man to glare at Jordan, a stab of hurt in his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m not good enough?” Jordan shakes his arm again.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. Just—” she glances worriedly up at the promenade, scanning the rich crowds there and finally letting her eyes linger on the beautiful man. “Getting involved with people that like…it’s dangerous.”

The words are out of his mouth before he can think about them, “That didn’t stop you in Paris.”

Hurt flashes in Jordan’s dark eyes, and he immediately regrets saying that, even as a tiny part of him feels justified in the harsh words. Jordan’s hand falls from his arm and a breeze whips her hair into her face.

“I know,” she mutters, and Jay opens his mouth to apologize, but Jordan’s tight expression has already softened a bit, and she keeps talking. “That’s why I want to keep you away from the same thing that happened to me.” She gestures up again. “You don’t know him, Jay, not even his name. He could be anyone, he could be with anyone.” She swallows hard, letting her arms fall limp at her sides. “It’s not for people like us to—mingle…with people like him.”

Jay looks helplessly back up at the chestnut-haired man, who is now accompanied by an imposing-looking man much taller and broader, his moustached face wearing a smile so fake Jay almost wants to completely ignore everything Jordan has reminded him of and run to save the beautiful man anyway. Because he’s no longer looking at Jay, and his expression has hardened—that sweet softness is almost completely gone, Jay mourns its loss with a frown—and he looks so uncomfortably tense as the other man claps a hand on his shoulder and starts to lead him back inside.

He looks back one last time, however, and though he doesn’t meet Jay’s eyes, Jay can just barely see the way the man’s irises scan the crowds, and he contents himself with hoping that he was at least looking for him.

And—well, despite Jordan’s warning, they still have an entire week-long voyage, and there’s no way Jay will be able to just sit with the knowledge that that gorgeous man is on board and not do anything about it; perhaps he’ll just…observe. He still has to draw him, after all.

And besides, surely saying Hello wouldn’t hurt anybody—right?