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

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."

The last time a man had complimented the goldenness of her hair, she had gone out and had it chopped short that afternoon. But that had been a far stranger context and Buffy kept her own kind of vanity about the length of her hair. "It used to be short." Buffy held a hand just above her shoulder. "Like, this short."

But the fingers tangled up in the dread slowly unwrapped themselves. Then wrapped again. "And you say act when the truth is probably that they are."

"Are what? Liking it?" Thoughtful. Then he shifted slightly as she came into contact with one especially thick dread. "Careful, Annie."

Are not liking it. But she didn't clarify -- too curious to do so. "Careful? Careful of what?"

Buffy wasn't even sure if she really liked the pirate's hair. There was something exotic and interest-catching to it. This was pretty much factual. But she had spent so long turning her nose up at it. Somewhere on that same spread of days around her birthday, she had gained a little more appreciation. Had indulged her inquiring mind when she and Dawn had forcefully shampooed the man and had buried her hands in that tangle. After that, it had been a little harder to forget.

And then, incongruously, she remembered braiding hair when he had been her for a day.

He caught her wrist and removed her hand from that particular lock, before withdrawing from it a long, sharp object. It looked like it could be used as a small, covert weapon, or a lockpick, or both.

"It's not altogether safe, is all."

Buffy waggled her fingers in the air above him. Shocked, wigged, and a little amazed.

"...You keep -- things -- in your hair." Ornaments were one thing. Something that looked like it could be used to spear a man's eyeball? That was just odd.

The lockpick ended up dumped on the floor beside the bed. "Never know when you'll be locked up, now, do you? Things come in handy."

More prison breaks than probably any other pirate of his age probably vindicates him for having such weird hair, but it also reveals that not all of that ornamentation is strictly for the sake of ornamentation. Escape and running: they're built right into his style.

"Maybe not, but I got my lock-breakers right here." The cheesiness of this pose -- showing off the (visible lack of) muscle in her right arm -- ran counter to the brutal truth in the statement. Buffy Summers is a girl who, when locked up, usually simply tugged apart metal bars or snapped chains.

"You don't have any other surprises up in there, do you?"

"Small family of fieldmice?"

"I'm gonna go with my gut on this one and say ha ha, very funny."

Because it if wasn't a joke? Perhaps reconsiderations were in order.

"You like my jokes, then, if not my hair. I'm good with it."

He was mostly laughing with her. Mostly.

Dramatically, as if pulling teeth: "I like your hair, Jack."

"I know, darling---can't resist it. No one can, really. Irresistible, me." Jack pushed himself up on his elbow, trying to sit up with her. Having Buffy on top of him was nothing he would ever complain about, but the process of winding her up had to be a vertical one, for some reason.

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