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]

House Two seemed to encourage that kind of vocal abandon in Jack as well. There was no one to wake up or alarm or anger here. It was private; it felt even more private than Cullen House, in a way, which with its gigantic windows and occasional houseguests/intruders had always felt open, if remote.

Those tightened muscles brought Sparrow the rest of the way and brought him hard. When the pirate finally collapsed against her, his shuddering frame slick with sweat and the remains of the artwork they had just shared, he took care to rest against the side that did not bear a little sparrow in kohl pencil. He kissed her shoulder and murmured loving things he only half-understood and began to wonder how many bruises he would have up and down his body from her insistent hands.

[herotypical]

It wasn't until moments later that she began to feel the cooler air on her comfortably warm skin. Buffy's arms relaxed around him and she pulled him and his heat closer, softly drawing her palms across his back. In this glorious haze, Buffy decided she wouldn't trade much of anything else for this kind of tranquility. She kissed the top of his head and didn't feel the least bit wary for any field-mice families. Could every problem that ever cropped up between them be solved thusly? Because in this wake, she felt as though she could give more than fair terms on anything. Make any promise. Satisfaction got the better of her and twisted all her motives up.

An after-shiver rocked her body -- delightful and surprising and the sigh that followed it is almost musical. "I give in," she whispered. "I am officially sold on Singapore."

[all7seas]

"A dangerous thing indeed, that." Jack let his whole weight rest on her for a moment, soaking up every reaction transmitted by the lovely body beneath him; then he shifted so he could curl around her instead, pulling the comforter over them both and tucking it firmly.

The pirate wasn't entirely used to this: the afterward part. The times before when he stayed with a girl until dawn had never been like this. They'd been more for convenience, or for satiation, conning her into a warm bed, trading affections for gold.

No, now his battered soul was quietly set singing and surrendering and he thought about what more he could do for her. Anything. He'd do anything. It frightened him, this thinking about another over himself. Jack pulled her almost roughly against him and kissed her.

[herotypical]

"I laugh in the face of danger," she sad. It could have sounded quite hard but in the odd little safe-cocoon of after, it held no heroic edge. No double-meaning. No underlined suggestion of her trade.

Buffy gratefully accepted the curl of him around her and returned his kiss in kind. She was no stranger to the afterwards -- but it had never felt quite so poignant with anyone else. Riley had a habit of drifting off quickly and she, in turn, had developed a habit of sneaking out of his bed and exhausting herself on patrol. For the most part, she had always rushed to leave Spike. Even in Luceti, they had been more friendly about it than..than whatever this was becoming. It was Jack's very active kind of surrender, she thought. The way he sought out her touch and her lips.

Broadly -- with a whole hand and not just a few fingers -- she smoothed back a mess of dreads and gently held the side of his head while they kissed. Her thumb rested behind his ear.

[all7seas]

Jack's heart was perhaps thudding more insistently now than it had been through everything that had gone on before. He drew back from the kiss, trying to even out the suddenly-ragged breathing. This felt like the face of danger, somehow; like he was settling all of his weight on a bridge that might just be ready to collapse into the gorge below.

And he couldn't help but continue along that route, one foot in front of the other. It wasn't Buffy's betrayal or treachery he feared, really; it was the possibility that he would lose her that was emerging as a very real fear.

"And I laugh behind danger's back. Different, aren't we."

[herotypical]

"You know what they say about opposites."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. She left it at that regardless. She had her own fears to wrestle with. Like whether this was the kind of thing that could survive their definite differentness -- so far, all Buffy knew was that she was decidedly not going to present Jack Sparrow with a list of needed changes. He was what he was and she was what she was and neither of them were going to change each other. Too set in their ways...perhaps Jack had lived longer but she had lived just as much, albeit condensed into fewer years. They had their patterns.

[all7seas]

"They yearn to be near each other and they care very deeply about one another and they need each other. That's all I know."

If she had presented him with such a list, Jack would very likely have set about trying for her. "A Better Man in Seven Days" had been a frustrating book to read, but he'd tried to put into practice all the rules for improvement. It had not been a rousing success.

"Are we staying here, tonight?"

[herotypical]

"Well -- I was just gonna go with they attract but..." Buffy folded her hand up in his. "But what you said sounds way more Hallmark."

The Buffy who would present lists was the Buffy she was in the day-to-day. Fastidious and touting standards much, much higher than her own height. But her boxes weren't actually that tough to tick.

"I don't know." She turned her head. "For a little while, maybe?"

[all7seas]

"I'll stay," he answered, nuzzling her temple, "for as long as you'll have me." He was never more honest with her than during times like this---another deep change she had somehow brought about in him. This was meant to be the time for false promises and assurances and thoughts about moving on. Not for thoughts like these, of permanence and true promises.

[herotypical]

"Skipped the lesson on supply and demand, huh?" The best way to deflect such open-ended promises was to fall back on this kind of humour. She didn't know how to take this pronouncement. She didn't even know if she wanted it.

Buffy would dwell on the time passed here for a little while, yet. "I wonder if this place'll get snapped up next month or if it'll stay empty for a little longer."

[all7seas]

"Dunno; I suppose that all depends on who gets dragged here next." The joke cut. That was, he knew, one of the many risks of laying himself open and bare; one slat in the slender bridge breaking free and tumbling down into the depths. "You like it, then? This place?" His hands came to rest just below where her wings joined the skin of her back.

[herotypical]

"You'll be beach-bound soon." And Cullen House was now out of the question. "It might be nice, you know? To have another option outside of skulking behind Bones' back."

[all7seas]

"Skulking..." It wasn't the word he would ever use for what they'd done in that house, but--"I can see your point. I believe we've staked our claim on it, at any rate."

Thoughts of the beach should have made him happy; they DID fill him with a sort of unanswered longing. The time he had spent there, even while ill, had helped to fill that little hole in his heart that had been made the first day he woke up in Luceti and wondered whose trousers he was wearing and why there was a beautiful woman talking to him from a book.

He wondered how hard it would be on her to be apart.

"What shall we call it? You know---coded." Skulking. Journal booty calls. Whatever they were to her? He didn't care. But he could play the game as well as any other pirate.

[herotypical]

If Buffy had any idea how poorly her word choice could have been taken, she would have regretted it. The real key was in how she usually downplayed the things that mattered to her because caring too much practically guaranteed that it would get taken away. Somehow. Good things never lasted. She cuddled closer and tried not to over-think it.

"...Do we need a code?" She sounded unconvinced. Over the past month, just as many of their meetings had ended no where near this conclusion. As far as she was concerned -- although she did such a terrible job at voicing it -- they were no friends with benefits. Perhaps Buffy would hesitate to call the pirate a boyfriend but she wouldn't shy away from calling it a relationship. How had she said it, once? In her heart.

[all7seas]

"Dunno. I only thought you wanted, you know--" He shrugged and wrapped around her more firmly, stroking her back.

[herotypical]

"Jack?"

She wasn't whispering anymore. "If I want to go for a picnic? I'll ask you if you want to go for a picnic. And if you want to go swimming? You'll ask me if I want to go swimming. And if I want to watch a chick flick? I'll probably lie to you and tell you I've just made peanut butter cookies."

At this point, she decided she needed eye contact. "And if you want to get thrashed in a game of darts? You'll try and challenge me but you'll still get thrashed.

And if I've bargained away my own window-climbing so said window won't be nailed shut against other window-climbers? Then you shouldn't worry."

Buffy took a deep breath, now. This was her own convoluted version of a promise.

[all7seas]

The old wooden bridge groaned and creaked beneath his boots; the rope-made railings twisted and complained as he once more took another step over the gorge. Forward.

"I'm not. I'm not worried. Jack Sparrow, he mostly tries not to worry. He hates worrying, in fact. He does like window-climbing."

His own version of a promise. Better---this was better. A new understanding that they could both live with, at least for the moment.

[herotypical]

"Then he should do enough climbing for the both of us because I'm not about to break my deal with the Doctor. I've avoided the hypospray so far."

Emergencies, though. She would climb out a window for one of those.

[all7seas]

"Invitations? He likes those as well.

Buffy---Tia and Katie are going to see about our home by the sea, but they've not discussed it yet that I'm aware of. I'll stay at Cullen House 'til then; I'll understand, darling, if you no longer wish to come to that thrice-cursed place."

[herotypical]

"...I'll be by."

As ill-associated as the house had become, she wasn't sure she could cope with the thought of Jack still alone out there. It had taken two brutal wait-a-thons to uncover that sharp, lonely discomfort.

[all7seas]

Thank you.

He couldn't say, that, though. But he could kiss her, gently. He suspected she might understand. Possibly. She might understand about Cullen House, now, in all of its horror and everything else it meant to him.

[herotypical]

A kiss was ample gratitude enough. Slowly, eventually, they could figure out each others' languages. They couldn't be lost in translation forever, could they? And then Buffy realized her thought had included the word forever and while it wasn't so far from all the time in the world, its commitment was higher. It spooked her.

"Besides, there's still an almost full jar of peanut butter out there."

[all7seas]

"Peanut butter, aye. And you can make me some of your infamously delicious sandwiches?"

He stretched out next to her, then cuddled around her again, kissing her just below the drawn-on sparrow.

[herotypical]

"Infamous is probably the most correct word out of the bunch. You do realize that there's not actually that much skill involved in sandwich-making, right?"

[all7seas]

"Shhhh. Infamously delicious. Own it, Annie."