lucetilogs | we have found our solace here in this unexpected place

Jack was more than a little interested; anyone who could pluck that much booty out from under Blackbeard's nose would be the finest pirate in the world indeed. Unfortunately, there were other concerns where Blackbeard was concerned that he did not feel like getting into right there and then.

"Let's just say he's not the most friendliest of pirates, Annie. Your Booth would have probably wanted to shoot him as well."

And as she sank her hands into his wings Jack Sparrow arched his back beneath her--it was just that right kind of ecstasy, really. The kind that burns a little going down but has a brilliant aftertaste.

Edited 2011-04-20 03:22 (UTC)

"...Yeah, Jack? Don't call him that. Just -- "

She bit down on her lower lip. It was a good moment and she didn't want to pour salt all over that. But the notion of that possessing word -- no matter how often Jack normally used it -- being applied to the man who looked and sounded like Angel? Buffy would not have been able to predict the extent to which her stomach turned. "I barely know the guy."

"I didn't mean--not like that, you know." Why was she being so defensive? "Annie?" Even though it meant abandoning that lovely feather-petting, Jack tried to twist under her so he could face her. Things had been awkward enough tonight--he needed to see her, to engage with her more than was possible in this position.

She untucked her knees at his sides and gave him the room needed to turn and re-arrange his position. Buffy had drawn her arms back and now worried her bottom lip with her thumb.

"He threatened you, hm? Did you see him?"

"I spoke to him over the bloody journal."

Well that was no good, her thumbing her lip that way; it reminded Jack of his own habit of biting his nails when he was mulling something over, or anxious, or vexed, or confounded. He gently tried to bring both of her hands down to rest against his chest.

"You see, I was interested in Temperance"--trolling Officer Brennan--"and whether or not her name had any significance as respecting the amount of alcoholic beverages she was and or is accustomed to drinking. And this Booth of your---this Booth, he butted himself right in and informed me that if I walked too near Temperance he would shoot me or some such thing. And then he told me that whittling was lame, for some reason, but I don't whittle. And she told me I had hit my head and wasn't a pirate.

Strange pair, them."

Jack doesn't ALWAYS earn the violent responses he gets, Buffy.

Okay, she had to admit that it sounded a little more than unwarranted. But Buffy knew that Booth had a protective streak a couple miles wide -- perhaps it had been the Buffybot that had spoken to him over Brennan's vampirism during that event, but Buffy had remembered his regard for his partner. It was not unlike her own overreactions for the wellbeing of some certain others.

"He's the one, Jack." Her shoulders slumped. This couldn't be worse than telling the truth about Giles and about seeing Jack dead. After those earlier confessions, this seemed almost easy. And this was also perhaps the only reason she was telling him.

But not before she spread her hands across his chest and made firm, fair eye contact. "The guy that looks and sounds exactly like Angel. Only...minus the all-pale look and plus a few tons of not-broody."

The pirate could only lie there, pinned by her eyes and hands but not really pinned, and wait for his brain to catch up with that information. To process it, and figure out what it meant to her, that this man looked like the one she had loved as a child and had killed and had gotten angry over once, leaving Jack alone in the desert. Abandoned.

Now? Unfamiliar territory. A strange house, a strange bed, and a woman he could not read perched above him---her weight was nothing, nothing at all, but almost crushing him at the same time.

Her Angel, then, Jacky boy. Not her Booth. Got it wrong, didn't you.

Foolish, you.

No...We are not a fool. We might be mad, but We are not a fool. Bastards.

"Oh."

Edited 2011-04-20 04:20 (UTC)

And older. She realized a moment later. She forgot to add that he looked older. She had added it before but it was a thought that still stuck with her. Angel hadn't looked a day over twenty-five when she had met him -- even if he had been centuries old.

But getting into an Angel-thinking rut would do neither of them any good and so she slid her hands up Jack's chest and cupped his jaw in her palms and leaned forward. Buffy hovered an inch or so above his face.

"Same face. Different man. Try not to get shot by him. I'd hate to have to beat up a garden-variety cop." It was a lie and she wasn't trying to hide it. Buffy probably wouldn't lay down so tough a smack-down but she would get grudgey. But she needed some way to signal Jack that her side of the matter involved protecting her interests. Jack was now one of those interests.

Awkwardly enough, it had been punching Jack that had reminded her how sickly it felt to hit a human who crumpled a little too easy under that kind of power. It would be her retroactive sympathy for him that would keep her from exacting the same kind of vengeance again unless the situation truly called for it.

Now -- suppression and threat-neutralization? She was still always down for that.

"Buffy? I've no intention of being shot by this man."

In Jack's mind, the other man was not much of a force to be reckoned with, in spite of the threats and reputed "long range." And the only time he'd been shot, after all, had been by a woman. Twice. In the chest. Point blank. The voices snickered at him, reminding him of this, and he lifted his chin and kissed Buffy in defiance of it all.

No one ever intends to get shot.

Her response got sunk into the kiss. Edged and with a sliver of aggression -- non-threatening, but challenging. Buffy was skeptical of guns on a good day but she had been shot a few times now and the ripping, burning sensation came so quickly and was so staggering that she wasn't sure she'd wish it on even enemies. Better a clean cut. Better a quick break. Buffy Summers never played with or prolonged her kills. Business.

But business was drifting away from her as she ran the tip of her tongue across his upper lip in a brief second their mouths had parted. Jack was warm again and she was indulging in some of that warmth. Angel? Angel, who?

Here was the sort of prey she would toy with as she turned her hands and ran the backs of her fingers along his neck and shoulders. Finding hand-holds and deciding to reassure the pirate that vampires of any sort could, in fact, be the furthest thing from her mind.

"Hallo, Annie."

If Jack was prey, he was the kind of prey that becomes so fascinated by the predator that it waits helplessly until it is taken. Also? The kind of prey that very much tries to cop a feel.

She shifted above him and broke the kiss with a nice and finally genuine smile. "Hi, Jack."

And so a feel was copped and Buffy certainly seemed not to mind. Not too much. She settled her palms on the mattress to either side of Jack's head and watched him from her vantage point. She was gradually inviting her appetite back in. Normally? The Slayer's appetite was considerable and (as Jack had been learning) a little more than unrestrained behind closed doors. A good fight should have amped it up -- but it hadn't been a good fight. It made her choice to wait until tonight to see him again feel that much more justified.

That smile said worlds more than any kissing could do. Some of the worry began to lift. "Alright?" His palms came to rest on her, staking a claim on the advantage he had taken.

"So, I'm not the picture of a well-adapted anything but..." Buffy shrugged. "But yeah. Alright. Everything could've gone a lot worse. There's something to celebrate in that, I think."

No one had died, for example. And Giles would be okay and, while she could distinctly remember the vampire's tongue on her cheek, other details were sinking back into a purely battle-record kind of memory. Facts, not feelings.

Jack withdrew from beneath her tank top and sought one of her hands out. Reassurance. Her mind was still on the battle, perhaps, or on that blighted guilt she liked to carry. She hadn't shared the "the vampire tasted my face" information with him, so when he reached up to brush his palm against her cheek, the gesture was only motivated by how beautiful he thought she was, and by how much he wished she could be happy. Because that would make him happy, and Jack Sparrow's happiness was always of foremost importance to Jack Sparrow.

"Celebrate it, then."

She had shared so much already. Far more than she had really intended to when she had set out for the bar earlier this evening. Buffy had pre-watched the night in her mind and it hadn't involved any kind of admissions or dark and serious conversations. It had involved more joy and more fun -- but not the real kind. Her mind was just about catching up to the fact that this had been better. More painful, sure...but still better. Because she was beginning to feel a little lighter and she hoped, too, that she had been offered a better understanding of him in turn. Those voices. Buffy would try and watch for them, from now on.

But the line had to be drawn in the sharing-sand at some point and Buffy drew that line firmly before any talk of her blood. She had skirted the subject earlier in the bar and she would avoid it now. This might be the one big secret not motivated by guilt but by pure disgust. Her blood was precious by numerous definitions and having it taken from her in any amount had upset her, deeply. However, Jack's hand on her cheek didn't tug any of that trauma to the surface. It did a much better job at burying it than her fond-of-reviewing mind could do.

"There's a noticeable lack of the usual celebration accessories. Junk food. Loud music. Punch with fruit-slices floating in it." She squeezed his hand. "But I think it'll do."

"I'm as fond of celebration accessories as the next man, but I think you might be right. Least as far as tonight's concerned."

Watching for the voices? The cues were sometimes subtle: there were moments when he would stare into space, or talk to himself. Sometimes his brow would furrow and he'd look as though in pain he was concentrating so hard. The worst times featured gestures, angry mumbling, nervous pacing--the things he'd been so eager to hide from the world when he'd left the village.

Buffy's smile was filled with relief as the good-natured understatement wasn't poorly received. There may be hope for her humour yet. She sat back up and stretched the arm that wasn't currently attached to him at the hand.

"I think it still kind of catches me off-guard when we agree on something."

"Aye. We're both of us far too unreasonable to agree that often." He released her hand and stretched extravagantly beneath her, reaching back over his head and wrapping his hands around the slatted headboard. "Fun to surprise you, though."

It was a little bit like being installed upon a throne. Perched and posed and perfectly victorious in every way except for the ways that nagged at her memory. But the fight receded, slowly. She could gain her triumph some other way, if she had to. Like by having Captain Jack Sparrow -- never mind that any of this was technically more his victory that hers; after all, he had been the one chasing it for so long. But Buffy balked at the idea of playing the prize and so she had to reshuffle the facts in her head. Just a little.

"Not just unreasonable. Hard-headed." She should know, since she had knocked her head against his in the past.

"Hard-headed and prideful and strong-willed," he added, for good measure. If Jack thought of this as a victory, it was a carefully-guarded one. It was like walking on a knife-edge and, while one slip would cost him everything, staying on top was also costly.

"Don't forget good-looking. Though, I'm pretty sure my hairstyles are way, way trendier than yours."

Playful. This portion of the conversation had been a long way coming on a difficult, treacherous kind of path. But getting there was like letting go of the hang-ups and rediscovering a place where rules and conventions didn't apply.

"Good-looking in a devilishly attractive sort of way. Next she'll be cutting off my hair, and there goes the strength of Sparrow to the whims of his Delilah."

Devilishly attractive. Well -- she didn't stop herself from musing -- Jack Sparrow had just about set up his own binary on this one. Angelus was so named, the Watchers' history books had said, because he was the demon with the face of an angel. Mixing up devils and angels and lovers just seemed all too confounding.

Better for Buffy to smile and twist a dread in her fingers and tug. "The day you let me attack these things with scissors is the day...Nope, I can't imagine the day."

"Well I'd never let you, would I? Kicking and screaming, perhaps. Yours, now--bet it's always been lovely golden softness. A man just wants to drown in it, Annie."

He decided that he loved it when she played with his hair. So many women in Luceti had been completely horrified with it.

"Most women here act as though they don't like it at all."

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