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

[herotypical]

"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.

[all7seas]

"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."

[herotypical]

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."

[all7seas]

"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."

[herotypical]

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."

[all7seas]

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

[herotypical]

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.

[all7seas]

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."

[herotypical]

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.

[all7seas]

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.

[herotypical]

"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?"

[all7seas]

"Small family of fieldmice?"

[herotypical]

"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.

[all7seas]

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

He was mostly laughing with her. Mostly.

[herotypical]

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

[all7seas]

"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.

[herotypical]

Buffy gave way and eased backwards, resettling her feet behind the small of his back. Both sitting. "Oh, I can resist. If I wanted to? I could definitely resist. You're resistible, Captain jack Sparrow."

[all7seas]

Well this wasn't right; HE was meant to be the one doing the winding.

"Oh? How resistible?"

[herotypical]

And so the wound became the winder.

"Hmm. Let me check my mental calendar." Buffy looked off into the distance as a smirk tugged at her mouth. Poorly suppressed. "At least a year's worth of resistible."

[all7seas]

"Ah...we...started badly, I know. And me, never able to resist..."

What a perfectly unbalanced situation.

[herotypical]

"Hmm?"

She leaned in. "What's that I hear? Something about you not resisting? Do speak up."

[all7seas]

"Me always at the mercy of your whims, slayer?" Jack couldn't speak up. He was stalled to a whisper, his hands settling firmly along her hips. She wasn't just playing his game, now; she had that deep-rooted feeling in her hands and was wringing it out like a wet towel.

[herotypical]

Hmm. This had not been her target. Her rigid lines sink, come undone, and she drapes an arm over his shoulder.

"..One, two, three in the morning and you invite me over and I came running. How many times?"

Lots of times.

[all7seas]

"Lots of times, love." Jack leaned shoulders and wings against the headboard. They kept catching each other's vulnerabilities tonight, but he didn't understand why. Words, maybe. Words often tripped them up.

[herotypical]

"So maybe not so easily resisted."

She told him so in a round-about way to save herself the full weight of assertion. And because words -- what good were they if they couldn't be used to obfuscate everything?