we have found our solace here in this unexpected place

[herotypical]

Who: slaying & lists_to_port
What: there is a tradition that needs to be upheld on the eves of horrors.
When: sunday night.
Where: good spirits, at first. then elsewhere.
Summary: debriefing and de-traumaing and all kinds of good stuff.
Rating: danger danger high voltage -- things get r-ratedish. fair warning!

Back on Friday, Buffy had scribbled a tense little note to Captain Jack Sparrow:

Need some time. Don't worry. Mission accomplished -- no deaths. Just gotta look after me for a bit. Good Spirits on Sunday night?

-- Buffy

After returning to the village, Buffy had wanted nothing more than to find the pirate and curl up next to him. But the fight with Derek had been harder than she would care to admit and she wanted to scrub as much of that from herself before rejoining the rest of Luceti. She had Giles to look after and she had her own mind to tend to and she spent hours focusing on those meditation crystals -- begging for peace. Peace was so far away.

But on Sunday, Buffy took a long long bath. She put loose, fashionable curls in her hair and she took the luxury of all the time in the world to dip into her make-up drawer and line her eyes and mascara her lashes and pick a natural, light lip gloss. The aim was to look healthy if she couldn't look happy.

She walked into Good Spirits with apprehension in her step and looked around for the man she had asked to meet with her there.

Comments

[all7seas]

"Now." He turned back to face her. Jack didn't reach for her hand again, but his posture was very open, as though welcoming her touch when she was ready to give it.

"Annie, what is all this?"

[herotypical]

"What's all what?"

Never underestimate Buffy's inclination to play dumb blonde. She hesitated on the approaching step -- eager to join him but holding herself back until this what had been dealt with.

[all7seas]

"Bein' 'civilized people' and taking Jack to task on very small things indeed and breaking up the door and---the hardness, Buffy. It's because of Derek, isn't it. All I want is--"

He stopped, still unsure. Pirates don't talk things out with the women they love. If that woman has a problem, they make themselves scarce at the rum shops or go to sea or find solace in another woman's arms. This is the first time Jack has ever done this.

"What do you want of me?"

[herotypical]

Buffy nodded. The fight was still knotted up in her. It wasn't a satisfying victory at all.

"I want..." she struggled to find the right words. The kind of words that wouldn't give away too much but would suggest the kind of battle it had been. "I want you safe and I want you alive and -- and for a few minutes out there, it managed to convince me that you weren't."

[all7seas]

"I'm never safe. None of us are." It was an undeniable truth in Luceti. "And that thought is never to compromise you, savvy?"

[herotypical]

"No, you don't get it -- I know here's not safe. It's safer than home but..."

She sighed. What had happened before Derek bit Giles? She could remember the image so very clearly but not quite the sensation. How it had filled her sight and her mind. "We didn't get any warning about this one quirky power the infected vamps have. Like -- mind manipulation. Making you see things that aren't there."

[all7seas]

Jack's hands twitched, but he still didn't reach for her. Why couldn't she just tell him?

Admittedly, he had never told her exactly what happened during the battle that lead to his death. He still dreamed about it from time to time, but, of course, the rum helped.

"Things that weren't there."

The pirate turned away and headed into the house, exploring, poking through empty drawers.

[herotypical]

"People who weren't there."

She followed after him. "Or, person. You. Look -- I'm not going to wrap it up and bows and tissue paper. That fight was difficult. And it was difficult in a lot of ways and..." Buffy leaned against a doorway, watching him rifle.

"Maybe this was too soon."

[all7seas]

"Maybe. But I couldn't have kept away from you for that much longer, Buffy."

He shut a drawer with a loud banging sound.

"There wasn't anything I could do then, and it seems like there's nothing I can do now." It was a selfish attitude in the end, but Jack's frustrations at not being able to serve her---at being a liability of all things--were beginning to surface. "So you saw me in danger, then? During the battle? But it wasn't real."

[herotypical]

"I saw you dead, Jack. That's all I saw for...a while." Insides outside. It wasn't as though she'd never seen that kind of horror before; however, she rarely knew the victims.

There was the harder part still to tell -- the part where being so blinded allowed Giles to get bitten. But that was a confession line she really wasn't prepared to cross on her own. Instead, she closed in on him. There was the underlying assumption that if she could just bring herself to reach out and touch him, things might feel better.

"But it wasn't real, no."

[all7seas]

Jack turned to face her, reaching out; he'd come to the same conclusion and did not want to reveal how upset her words had made him.

"All evidence to the contrary, darling--I'm not a bit easy to kill. Come here, if you please? I think I need to hold onto you for a bit and prove my not-deadness. Just...don't breathe in while I do this."

[herotypical]

Another hug -- this time with relief flooding in the opposite direction. After she had brought Derek down, it wasn't as though she had believed Jack to be dead. The mental mojo had been more obvious in hindsight.

[all7seas]

Sparrow felt that relief and it nearly took his breath away. That was a first, for him. He was fairly certain that, for the most part and to one degree or another, most people he knew did not care whether he lived or died--part of what went along with the territory of being Captain Jack Sparrow. Many actively sought the latter. He renewed his hold on her with something like awe, and everything like love.

[herotypical]

The feeling had been distinct and recognizable -- when her mind had been filled with the possibility of losing him again, that was the clearest emotion she could pull from the mess. losing him again. Selfishly centred on her own pain, perhaps, but still it was an admission of having something to lose.

"Oh my God," she began in a voice flush with all kinds of sincerity. It would be the perfect precursor to some kind of confession. "You really need to do something about that grime."

Because some kind of confession would be too easy.

[all7seas]

"Save me from myself, Annie, love." Jack might have been covered with three solid inches of muck at this point and it would not have fazed him. All he knew was that he had perhaps never loved her more than right now and that this fact terrified him and any admission of it was right out of the question.

What was love, after all, but something to fall right out of again, with both parties getting more or less hurt in the process.

[herotypical]

Buffy would provide the same definition if pressed. Not that she considered this love. She believed in his but had long ago decided that Buffy Summers could either be incapable of love or loved too painfully. Therefore, it was easier to stay in the realm of like and want and enjoy.

"You'll have to manage this mission soapless, I think. Unless the previous owners didn't pull a hotel-theft and managed not to take all the mini bottles with them."

Not that this was a hotel. Not that mini bottles even sat in these houses to begin with. Not that soap mattered all too much when it would be enough of a feat to just get him soaking.

Buffy pulled back from the hug.

[all7seas]

It was hard to let go. It was even harder to disguise any of that emotion he was so terrified of, because he could feel it all over his face--seeping down through the skin, rooting somewhere underneath where muscles and bones twisted all together.

"Then I'll manage, won't I."

He took the lead this time; Jack knew where everything in this particular house was, having sheltered here before.

[herotypical]

Each new moment of seeing things clearly on Jack's face scares her a little bit more. Not the kind of fear she wanted to run away from -- Buffy Summers doesn't run away -- but just enough to set the moment apart from all other moments. Snapshot'd in her memory and now being used to paste over the grislier scene the vampire had put in her head. Because she preferred this fear to that fear.

"At least there should be plenty of hot water," she added and stuck close to him through the house's foreign layout.

[all7seas]

"Hot water!" Oh, he loved it so much, even more so after lacking it at Cullen House. Jack flipped on the bathroom light and for a moment his fingers tensed around hers. But here there was no blood---just plain fixtures, unornamented, boring. His heart rose; it was already at least 68% better than Cullen House, not the least because it had hot water.

"Lovely."

[herotypical]

"If you miss it so much, why stay out in the mansion of perpetually cold showers?"

Not that she hadn't grown her own strange kind of attached to Cullen House in the past few months; however, the walk had always been a long and lonely one. And there had been many houses here to choose from. It's a fruitless line of questioning -- Buffy knew it. Soon there would be a beach house and the Captain would be even further away.

[all7seas]

He laughed as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the floor. "Not about to move back into one of those large boxes of people, am I.

Buffy? I hate living in that house...even more, now. Now I can't get those bloodstains out. It won't be for much longer."

[herotypical]

"...I can get them out," she eventually responded. "So I'm no chemistry major but I learned pretty early on how to get blood out of all kind of places."

Still -- it won't be for much longer. But cleaning the place wouldn't be just about living there. It would be about expunging the night from any kind of concrete record. Buffy once again leaned into a door-frame, her arms loose at her sides.

[all7seas]

Sparrow turned on the tap, running the hot water to fill the tub. The last image he wanted in his mind was of Buffy trying to clean the stains up herself.

"I don't want you to. If anyone's to do it, it'll be myself, savvy?"

[herotypical]

"It's my mess, Jack. That makes me responsible. You shouldn't have to clean that up."

Especially since any of the blood not in the bathroom was probably Giles' -- a fact she knew she would have to tell Jack eventually. She just didn't want to. Not yet. Not now.

[all7seas]

The pirate nodded, unbelted his trousers, and let them drop to the floor. "No one should have to." Stepped into the tub and slowly sank into the hot water.

"Hot...water...there." He let it cover his shoulders. "Better. Annie? If I can't get those stains out, I'll burn the place to its foundations before I let you lift a finger. I should have been there to care for your hurts and not let the place get so bloody in the first place."