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]

"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?

[all7seas]

"Tonight, Buffy? Perhaps we've said enough. Neither of us seems that fond of displaying our vulnerabilities, do we."

[herotypical]

"And both of us seem stupidly good at uncovering them."

This was agreement. Buffy gave up her powerful position entirely and chose instead to lay her head on his chest. Said enough, then.

[all7seas]

He gathered her against him and rested his cheek against her head, renewing those soothing touches. "It's just us, isn't it. Perhaps I shouldn't wind you quite so much anymore..."

[herotypical]

She continued her habit of listening to his heart-beat.

"I don't think you'd be you if you didn't wind."

[all7seas]

That beat was slightly quickened by her proximity, as usual.

"Right. I'm a lummox. Next time you wind me back, Buffy? I'll either simply take it, or quiet you right down. No more of these piercing little wounds. I won't allow it."

[herotypical]

This? This she quite probably did love. Hearing and feeling his heart gain pace just because of her. Like bringing a man alive. Buffy tapped the beat out against his side.

But she also chuckled. "Quiet me right down, huh?"

[all7seas]

"Mmmhmm. Silence you." That beat tapped on his side was probably getting slightly faster, now.

[herotypical]

"Because you're doing such a great job of that, so far."

[all7seas]

Jack was not in the mood to debate over this. He leaned in to kiss her, keeping it slow and tender. The last thing he really wanted to do was silence Buffy; her words might unintentionally (or intentionally) hurt at times, but they were a large part of what he loved about her.

[herotypical]

And without complaint or protest, she returned his kiss. Those beat-tapping fingers -- deprived of a beat to follow as her head tilted up and away from his chest -- drummed their own tune against him for a moment or two before settling into a loose grip.

Such an improvement over talking.

[all7seas]

Maybe tonight could stay like this---no more misunderstandings, or wounded pride, or voices, or fear about what the future was going to bring. That was what all the time in the world was, after all: freedom from all the things that threatened to undo them. To find a safe space and make it their own; to hallow it with firm trust in each other, and, of course, with the comfort and pleasure they could give one another. The Where didn't matter so much, as long as there was a measure of privacy. Sanctuary.

[herotypical]

Sanctuary? It was a little hard to imagine one without a defined space. Churches where sanctuaries and not just historically because Buffy cared little for history but practically, too. With crosses up and holy water aplenty. You run for the chapel when there are too many fangs about. And houses weren't necessarily sanctuaries, but homes were. Homes where people lived and then the bad guys couldn't get in. And if you did let them in and they did change then you could have them uninvited. Some Latin, some more crosses. Bam. Insta-sanctuary.

And people could be sanctuaries too. Bodies as temples and places of peace. She had captured one of those peaceful moments on the edge of her meditation. On the cusp of falling over and twisting her shoulder against the mat. But she hasn't been her own sanctuary for some time now and she would have a hard time believing that two people could find that together. Because two always invited conflict and that wasn't a demon so easily uninvited.

But then there was this. Skin-talking and lips-talking without the words and she was talkative in a normal situation but it unlocked a whole different kind of keenness when the conversation took place in this context. And without sentences marching forward the moment could be cut out of time -- no dialogue to give it structure.

Buffy soon forgot that they were interloping on some empty, unclaimed house.

[all7seas]

Jack, meanwhile, was trying to keep them safely wrapped up in the quilt as he slid back down onto the bed. He lay on his side, slowly letting her undo him and letting himself be undone. For some women, men would march to war or achieve great things or pile up all the world's treasure, but Jack Sparrow only wanted to forget that they needed or could want anything other than this: fast-paced blood, shared warmth, and touch.

Wanted to forget--yet there was the General's locket, sitting cold against his chest. He could not just dissolve and be with her as long as that reminder was there, and on some level he was grateful for that.

[herotypical]

And for all her apparent standards and expectations, Buffy Summers wouldn't ask for anything more than that. The expectations were mostly for show, anyway. The expectations a valley-girl-gone-undead-defeater should have.

She sank with him and wrapped her other arm around and enjoyed her heart's quickening beat for the first time since before the battle. Even someone so prone to violence liked to appreciate non-violence, sometimes. Often times. Most times.

She broke their kiss for breath.

[all7seas]

He leaned his forehead against hers, not speaking. Breathing---breathing, and letting his lips drift against her jaw, and appreciating the talent Buffy Summers had for silencing the voices in his head. True quiet--even that broken by two people catching their breath in the dark--was so hard for him to come by on a normal basis.

[herotypical]

She turned an angle or two in order to welcome his lips further along. With Jack still so unclothed, it gave her more access to his skin than was equal and she rose to that privileged opportunity. The arm draped over his shoulders loosened and the other -- with the previously drumming fingers -- slipped over his side and caressed down to his hip.

Buffy used to use intimacy like this just to feel alive. Now it was more accurate that she chased this kind of closeness down because she was alive. Happily alive. Death wish expunged. Almost.

[all7seas]

That sort of death wish was so utterly alien to everything that Jack Sparrow believed in. He had recognized it in Norrington when that man chased him through the hurricane and was found wanting. He had seen it in some who went to the gallows, tired of running from the powers that be and looking for rest; had seen it in the eyes of a young widow in Spain when she took him into her bed that night, hoping he was that kind of pirate. Disappointed in the morning, when he left her alive---alive and thus unsatisfied.

He didn't suspect it or anything like it in Buffy, now. Instead, he was enjoying that feeling of helplessness and trust that her touches tended to inspire. Moments like this, Jack Sparrow would be or do or say anything she wanted of him---persuasion.

[herotypical]

She would've liked to claim her death wish as simple but it really, really wasn't. It came in layers. The layer where she wanted to test out the limits of her invulnerability -- revived twice, after all. The layer where she had glimpsed Heaven and returning to the world had been the most painful relocation of all. The layer where the Slayer was expected to have a short, violent life and her time was just waiting to pounce on her. It was easier to set aside in Luceti not only because death was permanent but because her own position on the chain had been so radically displaced. One hero in a pantheon of heroes where many of them made her look small-time.

However, this didn't mean that, should the opportunity ever present itself, she wouldn't give limb and life to free these captives and dismantle either the Third Party or the Malnosso. It was exactly why she had asked Jack to hold onto the locket. But she knew that there would come a day when she would ask for its return. It would be a difficult day.

But these worries were far from her mind as she nudged a knee between his knees and brought herself close enough to catch his earlobe with a kiss.

[all7seas]

Jack began to fumble with the hem of her shirt, now, tired of the balance of power being wholly with her, clothing-wise. This was the closeness that he was slowly becoming addicted to. Typically Jack wasn't bothered by being out at sea for long stretches; there wasn't a girl to keep his mind fixated on life back on shore. This time? This would be different.

[herotypical]

She wouldn't fight to keep that shirt on; the prospect of more skin-to-skin contact was all kinds of persuasive. She may even be attempting to egg him on with her kisses turning into soft, encouraging nips with her front teeth on the curve of his ear.

[all7seas]

That was plenty to encourage a former Chief Cannibal. Jack pulled back just enough so he could coax her shirt off over her head.

"Seems you're due for another tattoo, you know, Annie."

[herotypical]

She drew back. Talking, hm? She felt more secure in not having been the one to break the silence.

"Am I?" Said with a tone of of course I am. "And you without your glittery trove of fake, grade-school tats."

[all7seas]

"This saddens me, for I would dearly love to decorate you tonight."

[herotypical]

"And I'd -- wait." A light-bulb moment in the dark of the room. Buffy let go of Jack's shoulders and pushed backward. She had left her purse somewhere in the room. She knew, at least, that she had taken it from the bar and she hadn't left it with her shoes by the bathroom door.

Getting up on her knees, she hastened to the end of the bed and leaned over to try and find the missing article.