lucetilogs | we have found our solace here in this unexpected place

Entry tags:

we have found our solace here in this unexpected place

Who:

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.

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"...Feeling threatened? I could just -- well, not train. Be training-free. Then it might actually be more humiliating when I eventually win."

"Threatened? Me? By you? On a ship?"

And there was much laughter.

And the breezes of who was winding up who have shifted again. It was Buffy's turn to pout.

"You could be! I-in fact, you should be. So maybe I haven't battled it up on a boat before -- doesn't mean I won't take to it like a natural. I'm naturally really darned good at a lot of things. Like...like crossbows!"

She whipped about and waggled a finger at him. "I didn't even need a little bit of actual training with a crossbow. Hit the ground running."

"If you can best me on my own ship, darling," he began, that hungry look back in his eyes, "then you win rights to 'letting' me have this hat. But what if I win?"

"...I'm guessing the pride and joy of not being patronized isn't enough of a prize, is it?"

"You, Annie, are very sharp when it comes to guessing things about inadequate prizes."

"Name your terms, then. What's worth a victory over the head honcho-ess of the Slayers?"

Each time that she fell into negotiations with Jack, it became easier and easier to bargain. To feel comfortable with bargaining. To expect it and see it like its own kind of dance.

"That, head honcho-ess, is something I'll have to consider very carefully between now and then."

He paused as they reached the narrow trail that led off through the woods toward Cullen House.

"Perhaps it will involve that lovely gown you wore the night we danced."

It took Buffy a moment to recall exactly what the pirate was talking about. A-ha. "Sorry? What was that? Did you just call it a gown?"

She, too, paused. But with disbelief and perhaps a little bit of horror. "That wasn't a gown. That was pretty much the opposite of a gown. That was...look -- you know I don't even own that thing anymore, right?"

Or she didn't think that she did. If it hadn't been burnt or thrown out or something then might still be at the very bottom of her closet, stuffed next to other things she probably wished she could forget owning. Like that tweed skirt from the week she thought she was a Watcher. Yuck.

Buffy had to claw back a little face here and she figured she knew exactly how.

"Remember how I left your coat on the door?"

"...Aye?"

She resumed walking; this was a line she wanted to deliver while facing away and ever-so-overtly-casual as she rediscovered their earlier pace.

"Leaving the coat behind was plan B." Which Buffy supposed he could interpret as he wished but which she meant as a genuine tough choice that had been made.

He hurried after her, trailing, trying to process that. "Plan B. Meaning not Plan A. Or Plan C. Is there a Plan D? You didn't want to leave the coat, truly? Is that it?"

Questions questions questions.

She looked back over her shoulder but didn't slow down.

"Come on -- like, every second thing that leaves your mouth is drenched in innuendo. You can't really need that much help navigating what pretty much amounts up to hey, Jack! I more than a little briefly considered not leaving at all. I only had to basically be talked out of it."

Which was probably about the time she had said a little too much.

Jack was still hurrying after her, finally falling into step beside her. "So you wanted to STAY! And then we----

Talked out of it?"

Uh oh.

"You'll have to forgive me if my memory's a little on the generally hazy side, I also had to be carried home by Bones."

Which possibly gave the very wrong impression that McCoy had been the one to talk her out of going right back to Jack's apartment building and knocking on his door. But no -- that advice had come from elsewhere. The kind of elsewhere that didn't have a pulse and was on a strictly liquid diet.

She looked to him at her side. "A haziness that was, I remind you, your fault."

"Blaming me for that?! HOW, hm? I didn't pour the drinks down your throat. So Bones talked you out of it, did he? Seems like he'd be more like to come knocking on my door himself and lay down the law. Not the reasoning-with type, is he."

"Spike, Jack."

She would still blame him, of course. Never mind that she drank them -- he had brought them and, she suspected, had mixed them stronger every time. "Spike did the talking. A stand-up member of the been mistreated by Buffy Summers club."

She reached for his arm. "I wasn't exactly raring to add to those ranks so I played the avoidance game after that."

There. She breathed out. The truth -- was it really so tough to tell? Yes. She had allowed Jack Sparrow a very long time of thinking she had avoided him for some kind of social slight or offense. She had even allowed Bones to believe the worst of the pirate to protect the fact that she wasn't above what she believed would have amounted to a booty call. But she hoped that the truth about then could shed light on how very different now was.

The pirate automatically offered his arm as she reached for it, but was busy gnawing the nails of his free hand as she made that revelation.

"Oh."

While Buffy might have avoided him to protect him that night, there were plenty of things Sparrow had done to her after that which would have earned him her cold shoulder.

"Will you still wear that dress for me, if I win this?" He was mostly teasing, now.

"Hey. Like I said? Probably don't even have it anymore. Plus -- costume, not a dress."

This was all too fledgling to make promises over. But if he was going to mostly tease, then perhaps she could as well. "I guess I could agree to anything. It's not like it matters -- I'm not going to lose." With one arm firmly tucked around his, she walked closely once again.

"Would it be so horrible if you did, darling?"

Jack drew her as close as possible for the rest of the walk; the path to Cullen House was a winding one, with occasional glimpses of the lake through the trees and soft pine needles underfoot. A soft breeze wafted that pine scent around them, and he recalled their conversation while cleaning the kitchen of House 7. It was meant to smell clean.

It smelled nothing like that to Jack: it smelled like the earth and the warm sun and the dirt. Nothing to do with clean, though it did have a kind of astringent purity to it. It was rather like him, in a way, on a cleanish day: not smelling of artificial flowers or whatever these people seemed to smear on themselves but not smelling technically bad. At least not in his own opinion.

Would it be so horrible if she did what? Still have the dress or lose?

Buffy puzzled this one out while walking so very close with him. This was such a new, young thing and she was already finding herself depending just a little too much on it. Deciding that it was good and that she wanted it. Decided that she would miss it if it were missing.

"My ego couldn't take it and then there'd be no floating for anyone."

"No one enjoys losing out to another, Buffy; the trick is to turn it to your advantage: into something you WOULD enjoy."

It was a slightly tall order for an individual who most often associated losing with not just her own death but all of the deaths. But these were small, tentative steps in one direction.

"And you're somehow here suggesting that I would enjoy going all leather-wearing warrior princess? Because that's an...interesting conclusion to come to."

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