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]

"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."

[all7seas]

"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."

[herotypical]

"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.

[all7seas]

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.

[herotypical]

"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.

[all7seas]

"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.

[herotypical]

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."

[all7seas]

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

[herotypical]

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."

[all7seas]

"Not at all, not at all. Only that you might enjoy it because I would enjoy it. For many reasons."

[herotypical]

"...I don't know. Say I agreed -- say I even still had the thing, right? That puts you at winning a whole actual something and me just winning the satisfaction of what I already know is true...that I let you take the hat. Doesn't really sound equal, right?"

[all7seas]

"Not certain that you can equate different people's differing satisfactions with one another, now can you? What whole actual something would you like, Annie?"

[herotypical]

"The hat. For a whole month. If I win it? Then I win it. At least temporarily."

She named the actual something before even thinking that it fell straight into Jack's criteria of enjoyment. Not a whole lot of winning to be had there. Or -- maybe not. But she had months and if she wasn't going to use it to train then she could use it to plot.

[all7seas]

"Oh please not that anything but that ooorrrrr alright maybe that perhaps that would be just FINE Annie. We have an accord."

And he stopped, just outside the forbidding front doors of Cullen House.

[herotypical]

She held out her hand to shake on it and while she did she tilted her head towards those forbidding front doors.

"You, uhm...gonna be alright?"

[all7seas]

There was not going to be shaking. There was going to be hugging. Holding.

"Yes. I am. Are you?"

[herotypical]

Holding, then. A better kind of bind.

"Mmhmm. I'm feeling all kinds of better."

[all7seas]

"If you get so's you're not? You are to contact me, Annie. Savvy? I'll find you, quick-like."

He considered something, then:

"Tomorrow night. All night, together."

[herotypical]

"Just a journal page away," she agreed with as much dignity as she could muster because, after all, it wasn't supposed to be her place to ask for help. Not so often as she'd like to and certainly not when it came to dealing with matters like these.

Buffy nodded against his chest. "It's a promise. We'll watch the sunset and the sunrise. Both of them."

[all7seas]

"Mmmmm. Promise. Another accord." Promises were like links, bonds between two people. Jack was not going to argue with that. "Buffy...?"

It wasn't so much a question as an alert for the fact of "I am going to kiss you, now, Buffy."

[herotypical]

And Buffy wasn't about to argue with a kiss.

If promises were links then she had managed to link herself quite firmly to this pirate. The promise of tomorrow wasn't given lightly because it came with subsequent promises of other tomorrows and plans and they were planning things. No longer simply a case of when one next ran into the other.

[all7seas]

And Jack had not in recent memory promised a tomorrow to any woman, so it was an even more grave sort of pledge for him. He drew back for breath, and a goodnight, and the opening and closing of doors.

[herotypical]

Buffy held her hand just that extra few seconds longer on the side of his neck. "Then...I'll see you tomorrow." She smiled.

[all7seas]

"Tomorrow, love." For his part, Jack felt relief and just a bit like he was walking on air or some other intangible element. When the door closed on her, he tried to put those feelings aside. Rolling up his sleeves, Jack began to scour. He had to get rid of all evidence of vampirism and blood and the macabre battle and GILES. Tomorrow he could bring her here and they could restore it to whatever it had been to them before.

693 is the final count my god.

[herotypical]

And Buffy began that walk home, alone. Better -- she thought -- than him on his own in woods that could hold any manner of monster. And it gave her at least a passing sense of patrol...something that she had otherwise neglected to do since before the battle with Derek.

She felt colder walking without him -- her tank top and jacket combo not exactly made for the spring evening. But she toughed it out and kept a brisk pace. Much brisker than the one heading to Cullen House had been.

When she got home, she couldn't sleep. Not immediately. Buffy sat down and tried her hand at that sweet little origami kit that Xander had given her. She'd been toying with the paper pieces off and on since Christmas but was only now starting to produce lines and folds crisp enough to pass her own inspection. When she did fall asleep, it was with a square of the stuff still in her hand.

There were promises to keep.