The Chateau Marmont smelled like old money and older secrets when Leonardo DiCaprio walked through the velvet rope at nine-thirty sharp, the collar of his black tux turned up against a chill that didn’t exist in Los Angeles. He moved like a man who had spent thirty years learning how to disappear in plain sight, shoulders slightly rounded, eyes scanning corners out of habit more than fear. Across the ballroom, beneath a chandelier dripping crystal like frozen tears, Billy Zane was already holding court, surrounded by younger actors hanging on his every word, his laugh booming the same way it had on the deck of a half-built ship in Rosarito Beach in 1996.

Then their eyes met.

Everything else fell away.

Billy’s face split into that Cal Hockley grin, sharp and sudden, the one that used to make audiences hiss in theaters. He pushed through the crowd without apology, arms already open. Leo’s careful mask cracked; the boy who once hung off a fake bow shouting “I’m the king of the world!” surfaced for the first time in decades. Four strides and they collided, Billy’s arms wrapping around Leo’s shoulders so hard the tux seams strained, Leo’s hands fisting in the back of Billy’s jacket like he was afraid the floor would tilt and send them both under again.

They held on for forty-five seconds. Long enough for every phone in the room to rise like periscopes. Long enough for Margot Robbie to whisper “holy shit” and for Brad Pitt to start slow-clapping without realizing he was doing it. Long enough for James Cameron, standing on the mezzanine with a whiskey in hand, to feel his eyes burn the way they hadn’t since he watched the dailies of Jack slipping beneath the water.

Billy pulled back first, hands still gripping Leo’s shoulders, voice rough with thirty years of unsaid things. “You kept me waiting, Dawson.” Leo laughed, that head-back, throat-exposed laugh the world hadn’t heard since the ’90s, and answered, “Traffic was murder, Hockley.”

The room roared.

They didn’t let go after that. Not really. When Cameron dragged them onstage for what was supposed to be a five-minute toast, they stood hip to hip, shoulders brushing, trading lines like they’d never left the set. Billy remembered the spitting lesson takes that ended with both of them doubled over, real spit flying, Kate Winslet screaming “You animals!” from behind the camera. Leo remembered the night Billy smuggled a bottle of tequila into the water tank and they floated on their backs between takes, staring up at the soundstage rafters, whispering about what they’d do when the movie wrapped and the world inevitably forgot them.

It never forgot.

Cameron dimmed the lights and unleashed the forbidden reel, footage so raw it had been locked in a vault since 1997. There they were, twenty-something and fearless, Leo sketching Billy in Cal’s silk robe while Kate photobombed with bunny ears, Billy teaching Leo how to flip off the first-class extras with period-appropriate elegance, the two of them slow-dancing in third class to an Irish jig while the crew cheered. And then the deleted scene nobody had ever seen: Jack and Cal in the gym after the iceberg, sharing a flask as the ship listed, Cal’s voice breaking when he admitted, “I was wrong about you, Dawson,” Jack clinking the metal against Cal’s teeth and answering, “Water under the bridge, Cal. Or soon to be over it.”

The ballroom went silent except for the sound of grown adults losing their composure. When the lights came up, Leo’s eyes were red, Billy’s hand clamped on his shoulder like he’d fall through the stage if he let go.

They disappeared to the balcony after that, just the two of them and a bottle of Macallan 25, the city sprawling below like a sinking ship made of light. Witnesses swear they heard Billy’s voice crack when he said, “I named my company Cal Hockley Films so I’d never forget how not to be that guy.” Leo’s reply was too soft for anyone to catch, but Billy laughed through tears and pulled him into another hug that lasted until the ice in their glasses melted.

At two in the morning, they left together. No handlers. No security. Just Leo sliding into the passenger seat of Billy’s vintage Mustang, windows down, Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” blasting from the stereo like a dare to the universe. Billy floored it down Sunset, one hand on the wheel, the other on Leo’s shoulder, both of them shouting the lyrics at the top of their lungs, voices raw and young and alive.

Somewhere over the hill, the city lights blurred into water, and for one perfect moment, the ship never sank.

Jack and Cal didn’t just reunite that night.

They finally made it to the shore.