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]

Gently, the pirate pressed the tip against her skin for one final flourish. Then he kissed her, just brushing his lips against hers to signal that it was finished.

"Where else, darling?"

[herotypical]

Buffy was beginning to believe that most things should be heralded with a kiss.

"What?" She asked without lifting her head or opening her eyes. "This isn't some plan to fill all of my skin, is it?" Buffy shifted briefly for the sake of her wings and then began to earnestly consider where she wanted to direct the pirate's attention next. She tracked her hand diagonally across her chest and settled the tip of her index finger at a point where her lowest rib on her left side would be. Just off center and a span higher than her navel.

[all7seas]

"It could be; we've all the time in the world, remember?"

Next...next a poem, one Jack was fond of and had picked up during one of his voyages to the Orient. He straddled her legs this time, smoothing his palm over the spot she had chosen. Fair and soft; he touched the point of the pencil against her skin and wrote in his familiar, flowing script:

Barn's burnt down
now
I can see the moon

They both knew about loss. They were going to find ways to make things better in spite of it. It had nearly been a promise. Jack kissed her belly and laid his cheek against it. Finished.

"More?"

[herotypical]

Unbeknownst to Jack, Buffy had once professed an interest in poetry thanks to a freshman course at UC Sunnydale. Then, Joyce got sick. She had to drop classes and had regretfully explained to the professor of the course that she simply didn't have the time. Well, maybe short poems. But for all Buffy knew, this new addition to her skin could've been anything. It could've been an eggplant -- though that wasn't on her short-list of suspects.

"More." She responded, nearly with a sense of supplication to receive more of his input on her skin. Especially with him so focused on her stomach at the moment. It felt like better healing than her own supernatural talents had accomplished. "Maybe just one...or -- you know. Two small ones." Bargaining? A sure sign of her enjoyment.

[all7seas]

"One or two small ones." Jack lifted his head and kissed her again, before idly tracing a vine along the scar the Malnosso had left, weaving it in and out. He became engrossed in this--"one or two small ones" was left far behind. Spirals snaked out and curled across her body; leaves and petals opened. It was far more like something of the girly variety she'd joked about with him earlier, except much more spare and stark than anything in the pile of glittery tattoos he had back at Cullen House.

[herotypical]

It was now Buffy's turn to suffer from goosebumps. They had been together under the blanket for a while and she had adjusted to that warm hideaway. Now at the mercy of the air and his touch that bordered on ticklish, her skin crawled in that lovely and very enjoyable way. Making her breath catch and her toes curl.

"Or...whatever you're doing now." She could feel that he was prettying up her scar -- or, at least, she could feel most keenly when he dipped off of it and touched on her scar-free skin. "Whatever you're doing now works, too."

[all7seas]

"Don't feel threatened by it, love; it's not nearly as nice as your skully rabbit." The design was growing more ornate--perhaps too ornate. He stopped working, setting the now-much-worn-down pencil on the bedside table and picking up the eyeshadow container: blues and greens? With the soft brush provided in the kit, he began to paint in some of those buds and leaves.

Jack would have been horrified by her idea that he was "prettying up" her anything. No--he was just playing. Imagining on her body, trying to make her feel good. There was nothing corrective in his approach whatsoever.

[herotypical]

"Hey. Forget the Jolly Rabbit. That heart? Totally edgy and artistic. Probably smudged, now. My creative genius will never be appreciated."

Well, that was infinitely more ticklish. The muscles along her abdomen tightened and twitched. She laughed in that quite surprised and slightly gasping way the tickled tend to laugh. But all of it is appreciated and she bites down on her bottom lip -- regaining composure so the artist can continue his work.

[all7seas]

"Smudged but not forgotten---still have your heart, Annie." He was almost through, now, and sad for it. One more touch against the skin just below her navel--a small, curlicued vine---and he kissed her once more, signaling the finish.

[herotypical]

It was her turn to prop herself up and try to sit with someone else already sitting on her. She wanted to see. Buffy used a hand on his arm to pull herself up the rest of the way and look down at her body. The spreading plant-life was the addition most easily viewed and so her attention is first caught by it.

"...Oh."

[all7seas]

Jack moved back once she had sat up, kneeling by her side with the quilt wrapped around him once again and an earnest expression on is face. "Not so bad, is it? I might have gone a wee bit overboard, little parchment."

[herotypical]

"Just overboard enough, I think." She dabbed a fingertip against one leaf -- hesitant to ruin it but curious all the same. "And if I'm parchment, what does that make you? With your oodles and oodles of already-been-inked."

[all7seas]

"The King James Bible. Oi, look but don't touch, savvy? That's true quality workmanship, there. One of a kind, even."

[herotypical]

"Right. Touch-free." She quickly withdrew her hand and settled it on the sheets below. "It's a shame it's so...actually temporary, you know. It's beautiful." Almost a shame. Buffy wasn't sure she could commit well to any permanent ink -- at least not in such a quantity. But it seemed sad to lose the art forever.

[all7seas]

"Buffy, it was a joke. You can touch yourself if you like.

...

The tattoos. You can touch the tattoos. Or. Yes. Stopping, now." He sprawled out on the bed beside her, examining the blue and green and kohl smudges on his fingers in the low light of the bedside lamp.

[herotypical]

Well? That's one way to rattle and wind up Buffy Summers. Her jaw worked wordlessly -- soundlessly -- for a good chunk of time before she snapped it shut and sat up more straight-backed. Rigid.

She felt around for the little clutch and took out the compact. Buffy popped open the mirror and used it to get a better view on her shoulder.

[all7seas]

Jack, meanwhile, was walking his fingertips up the inside of his arm, making little fingerprint-footsteps over Jilly's name. He was studiously not studying Buffy studying his work, except for when he was studying her, but trying not to look like he was studying her.

[herotypical]

Eventually, she turned to look at him laid out next to her.

"...This is a sparrow, isn't it?" Buffy is no ornithologist but she can put two and two together. Even though she's not a mathematician either.

[all7seas]

"Aye. That's a little sparrow, just there, yes. Correct."

[herotypical]

"You might as well have just scrawled Captain Jack Sparrow was here."

She joked, of course. It was a lovely little sparrow and she continued to admire it.

[all7seas]

"Would you like that, next? But where would I draw that one. Hmmm...Suggestions?"

He joked as well, and was highly pleased that she seemed to like the sparrow.

[herotypical]

"Hmmm...suggestions?" She echoed, coyly. Buffy snapped the compact shut and leaned over the pirate. "Well? When you think about it, the only option's pretty obvious."

She reached across him for the dulled eyeliner pencil and dragged the capped end over his skin as she reclaimed it. "On the part of me that doesn't actually exist because there's no way that's gonna happen." She punctuated the last few words with light pencil taps on an uninked portion of his side before flipping the eyeliner in her palm and scribbling a simple little smiley face with its tongue sticking out.

[all7seas]

Sparrow was quite ticklish, and that made him squirm. He reached out to grab her wrist.

"Nothing---nothing says more clearly, Buffy, that 'This Pirate Belongs to Buffy Summers and so Hands Off All You Other Wench---Women."

[herotypical]

The Slayer's wrist wasn't so easily caught; however, she didn't duck away and instead snuck closer.

"That's not what it says at all." But him saying it was interesting and it prompted her to avoid his grab a little longer to sloppily sign her name on his stomach. Rushed, though. To make sure she could get it down.

[all7seas]

".......I'll never bathe again."