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 that's it." Buffy considered standing up -- resuming the walk. Imply as though she were planning to keep his hat indefinitely. But instead she held onto her position above him and smiled.

"Right now...you're just waiting for it to come back to you. Well, I should warn you. It's not about to just hop off my head and pull a boomerang."

[all7seas]

"But that's never how it works, Buffy." Jack took a very decisive grip on Buffy's shirt. If she did try to stand up, he wasn't going to make it easy, although this wasn't the most comfortable place to be lying flat on one's back. "Hats can't hop. No legs, for one."

[herotypical]

"Figurative hopping."

Buffy's legs tightened against Jack's sides. "A hat with legs is just weird. And unnatural. Unnatural and weird." That guard-hand dropped so she could try and run interference between his grip and her jacket. She attempted the hand-holding version of crowbarring her fingers under his.

[all7seas]

"Buffy? Sometimes, lass, I simply lose track of what you're talking about." He very willingly released her clothing to hold her hand. "And other times...you're a wonderment to me, is all."

[herotypical]

She took his hand and slowly stood up. She would haul him with her if he allowed it.

"You mean wonderment in a good way right?"

[all7seas]

"Always." Hauled back to his feet, Jack found himself standing close to her once again. "Aye."

[herotypical]

Buffy had until now mistaken all the earlier parts of the evening to what healed things. Certainly, it had helped -- but this space right now felt extra-okay. More than okay. It fills her with a great deal of self-gratitude that she ever stole the hat in the first place.

Wonderment, she presumed, could be just another way to say peculiar. And that had never been quite so poorly taken anymore. More like a badge. Proud of it. But that was a fact that might reside almost exclusively in her head and she didn't think to clarify when she spoke next. "You're pretty peculiar yourself, you know."

[all7seas]

"Never quite heard it described that way, but...aye. I suppose that's a belief held by some."

Though he probably didn't understand it quite in the way Buffy meant it, Jack took no offense from the label. It was often the reaction he tried to get from others, because it was so often to his advantage to garner that reaction. He reached out to place a light hand on her shoulder.

[herotypical]

It suited her perfectly well for Jack to not quite understand the extent of the compliment. It wasn't as though she had a hard time complimenting people -- she could lavish her best friends and her family and even her tentative acquaintances with all sorts of kind words. It became an awful lot more difficult to own up to the feel-good thoughts with someone she had spent a very long time convincing herself she didn't like. And so, the sweetest things she could say would come out sounding like reluctant concessions. You don't look half bad yourself.

At the hand on her shoulder, she tried to catch his eye. Buffy wanted to go back to guarding the hat but she decided to wait.

[all7seas]

"Hallo, Annie." He took a deep breath, suddenly feeling a kind of gravity in a situation that had started off as her joke. "I--I might have made a grave error..."

[herotypical]

Buffy was caught up short. Her easy, playful smirk seemed to sputter and fight to keep ground on her face before everything contracts and she was so very quick to look concerned. It was practically the most accustomed and habitual expression for her.

"...What are you talking about?"

[all7seas]

"I should have kept you in my bed tonight. That bed. Our bed. Not---I could have left it til the morning."

[herotypical]

Buffy's sigh definitely held some relief in it. She had been expecting something worse. Some genuine calamity -- they so very often cropped up, with her. She dashed any dedicated attempt to keep the hat on her head and leaned her cheek against his arm -- creating an whole hat-shaped barrier between their eyes but not really minding. Not too much.

"It's...don't sweat it. No big deal, right? And now we get a nice night-time walk and there'll be other until the mornings." All the time in the world. How pervasive that concept has become in almost everything she planned and discussed with the pirate.

[all7seas]

"Of course. Of course there will."

And you just had to put on that hat, now of all times, when I can't ravish you.

...

When I can't ravish you conveniently.

Jack reached up suddenly to snatch it off her head.

[herotypical]

"...Only 'cause I let you." She cautioned him as it was won back. "I could've kept it, you know -- if I wanted to."

Buffy used the palm of her hand to smooth back the hair that was mussed up from the hat.

[all7seas]

The pirate settled the hat back on his head, where it truly belonged. "I dunno about that, slayer. Seems to me I operate quite independently of what you do or do not let me do."

A better word would probably have been "somewhat" independently.

[herotypical]

And Buffy reached up and straightened that hat on his head, where it truly belonged but could probably belong a little neater and not so askance.

"Hey -- I'm being impressively chill about the whole marauding thing because it's not even a fraction of the kind of bad I'm used to dealing with but...you, getting that hat from me? That was definitely letting."

[all7seas]

"And since I so heartily disagree with you, it looks as though we'll have to have a bit of a challenge to settle things. This whole matter of letting."

[herotypical]

"...A challenge?"

She either really didn't like the sound of that or liked the sound of that an awful lot. Hard to say, really.

[all7seas]

"Mmmhmm. A challenge. Slayer versus pirate. Challenging, this challenge, for the little blond challenger what thinks she lets him.

...

Still haven't worked out the details of this challenge, but there you are."

He reached for her hand again so they could resume their walk; he wasn't ready to part with her, not yet.

[herotypical]

"And this'll be the no holds barred kind of challenging challenge, right?"

Buffy wrapped her fingers around his. "Cause if you're looking for something really high on the challenge ladder, you can turn the caps off at the battle dome." Because -- pirate -- this slayer was still only chugging along at about fifty percent ability outside of the drafts and the dome. Her suggestion was hardly serious, though. Full on Slayer? That wouldn't be a challenge. It would just be sad. And there's no certainty that this as-yet-undetailed challenge would be the type that depended on things naturally boosted in a Slayer.

[all7seas]

"And me all compromised after coming back from the dead? Not hardly. Unless you'd like to wait until I'm well again, and this challenge took place on the deck and in the shrouds of a ship during a ruthless hurricane?"

Because that just might make them even.

[herotypical]

"...Oh." She would have to think on that for a few seconds. Buffy had never fought on a ship, before. The closest was probably that battle on an RV roof as it was driving. That could hardly be counted as a victory.

"We'd have to wait and see if I get sea-sick, first." This response was a little two-fold. Was this amount of soon still too soon to begin introducing humour to a subject she had been soft-pedaling?

[all7seas]

If it was too soon, Jack wasn't planning on showing it.

"Of course. Wouldn't want that to happen, now would we? Wouldn't be quite fair. But if you think you could take and keep my hat under those conditions...I might be willing to concede the point. Maybe. Possibly."

[herotypical]

"I've only got the one question," she had been unable to get a decent impression on whether the levity had bombed or not. Tip-toeing around things didn't work well for her and she wanted to know if she had to keep doing so in regards to Jack's penalty. Buffy rarely tip-toed around her own heavy issues. Or, rather, she only did when it was least useful to do so and always joked at the most inappropriate times.

"This challenge -- before, after, or during the romantic moon-lit sea cruise you're not totally contractually obligated to take me on?"