you're in the jungle, baby / you gonna die

[lucetimods]

Who: All draftees
What: Fighting the Third Party... and perhaps the wildlife.
When: June 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th. (Characters will be pulled out at 11:59 of the 6th.)
Where: An as-yet unmapped by the Malnosso tropical rainforest.
Summary: Here are your details. Try to stay alive, won't you?
Rating: Anywhere from PG to R.

No cut for you. Most of you will know how this works by now; if you don't, follow the lead of the others, or perhaps look to the last draft's fighting post for ideas. Don't forget to use your handy dandy character tags. Go forth and conquer thine enemies!

Comments

[all7seas]

"I had to give you something to clean, didn't I?" He eyed the flower in her hair. "I'm...rather shocked to see that it has survived."

[herotypical]

"Why?" She asked, a touch of slyness in her voice. "Wouldn't you've been hoping for a me that stayed put and refrained from all orchid endangering activities?"

[all7seas]

"Aye. Though if you'd fallen asleep at an inopportune moment and all were lost, I'd be sure to throw a handful of the blighted flowers on top of you before they took you." The pirate yawned and stretched before reaching for her. "I'm glad it wasn't too endangered."

[herotypical]

"Shift Hunters, mostly. Messy work -- but pretty easy. Y'know, if you find separating heads from bodies easy."

Which meant that she had done a lot of decapitation. The beasts that had come out to play during the last event were all over this jungle. Ugly, hell-hound looking things. They reminded her of prom. And Tucker Wells' plan to ruin it.

Buffy stepped in close. "You look beat. Catch some Zs, Jack. I'll take first watch."

[all7seas]

"But we were going to do all sorts of delightful things in the dark forest. You want me to sleep?" Truthfully the hammock didn't sound that bad an idea right now, but here they could reasonably be together without fearing the observation of Grell, who was back in the village.

[herotypical]

"Delight can handle a bit of a delay," she murmured while reaquainting herself with the pirate's proximity. She had accused a moment earlier of being a dream and now she had to call it all into question again. Waking up on that cot back at camp -- the last thing she.remembered was kissing him.

"But I guess I gotta at least tidy you up, first. That face."

[paintedpirate.livejournal.com]

"You love it. Admit it. You, Buffy Summers, wish your face looked like this. And a leather dress."

[herotypical]

"You keep on telling yourself that."

Buffy had a satchel on the ground and she broke away from Jack now in order to fish out a small canteen. "But in the meantime? Prepare to be scrubbed."

[all7seas]

"Lovely. Is there anything I should hang onto during this somewhat-terrifying-seeming process of yours?"

[herotypical]

"You can always try and keep hold of your dignity."

She unscrewed the cap of the canteen and started to back the pirate up against the fallen tree. "But -- well? Good luck with that."

[all7seas]

"You think I've lost that, love? My dignity?" The pirate felt the scratch of rough bark through his shirt and chose to hold on to Buffy's belt loops once more.

[herotypical]

She opened her mouth to protest -- I didn't mean it seriously -- but decided in the end that there may not have been call to clarify. Best to let sleeping quips rest. The Slayer had the same bandanna from earlier in the day, still muddied from the post-quicksand fussing. But Buffy dumped a generous share of water from the canteen onto it and scrunched it up in her fist, letting the dirt run out.

She reached a corner up to his cheek. Dabbing, at first. And standing closer than she needed to be. That look of serious concentration is on her face for a fair few seconds before the similarity strikes her. The flower, the fussing. Earlier and now. Mini-reenactments of things that had happened when they...well, when they hadn't been themselves.

Unless -- ? Could those have been bits of themselves, breaking through? It was a possibility that she preferred.

[all7seas]

Jack closed his eyes and let her work, not wanting to interrupt again. A sigh that was at least half-chuckle escaped his lips at one point, but he was able to bite back the rest. If she had posited her theory to him, he might have insisted she was correct. But sometimes, in darker moments of loneliness at Cullen House, the pirate wondered which Luceti was real and which him was the correct one. Discomfiting thoughts in the moaning, complaint-filled house, especially when the wind picked up outside.

[herotypical]

Buffy worked methodically but carefully. Gently. After a day filled with violence and battle when it hadn't been filled with napping, it was a little jarring to urge herself back into that mind-set. Not that it was impossibly or unwanted but gentle wasn't a thing she usually felt capable of being in the middle of so much else. Because, she by-times believed, a Slayer's heart got hardened for a reason and shifting from hardness to whatever-this-was had never come easily. Not without strict purpose and intention. And so while she may have been gentle, she was certainly not whimsical.

And so she took her time de-crowning the Pelegostan King; she traced the line of his face and lingered in moments. Detoxing the day.

[all7seas]

"Not scary anymore, am I?" He turned his face toward her touch. "Just your pirate, now."

And it was hard to visualize himself as that anymore: giving up the marauding. Unable to sail the boat, at least in any comfort. He had taken Hellboy on his temple-exploring excursion but much of that trip was spent hanging over the rails. Barbossa would have laughed himself sick.

When they returned home, Jack decided, he would have to reclaim a bit of piracy for himself, somehow.

[herotypical]

If the unvoiceable had ever gotten voiced, Buffy would draw the bold parallel between the two of them. She had only ever staked one member of the undead demographic in Luceti -- Andrew, at that -- and despite going from staking hundreds in a year to only one in two, she couldn't visualize herself as anything other than what she was. Vampire Slayer. Similarly, the pirate would be pigeon-holed as pirate forever in her thoughts.

"Hmm? Half as scary, at least." She finished up on his eyelids. Despite the eeriness of it all, she had to admit that the patterned eyes were an accomplishment. But not one that she was surprised by. She remembered the eyeliner sparrow.

"I can pretend like my knees are shaking, if that at all helps." Joking, sure -- but her voice was quiet and distracted as she tidied him up.

[all7seas]

"I've decided, Buffy, that I don't want you to pretend anything, actually," replied the dishonest man. His hands moved from her beltloops to the small of her back. Firm. Anchoring.

"You're far more fun as you are."

[herotypical]

"Wait," she paused, dropping her scrubbing-hand down to his shoulder. "Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait."

Buffy tilted her head with a small grin. "Did you just admit that I'm fun? Me? Buffy Summers -- fun. You think I'm fun. You used to not think I'm fun and now I'm fun and I think that counts as some sort of victory."

[all7seas]

"Victory? Victory over what, exactly? Myself, or your prior un-fun-ness?"

[herotypical]

"...I dunno." It was like flipping a switch; out came the frivolous tone and the wide eyes and the slight half-shrug. "Just -- I feel victorious, ergo victory. That's how it's supposed to work."

But she couldn't for a second allow the latter possibility of her own unfunness to ring at all true: "So probably you, 'cause it proves you wrong. You don't just think I'm fun -- you like my funness." And she finally employed his own tactic against him as she stated not as a question but as an unavoidable fact.

[all7seas]

"I might like it, aye. Might be a bit fond of it."

He felt no small measure of relief at this light banter. In the midst of everything---the traps and quicksand and attacks---it was like a breath of peace and freedom. A horizon of a kind.

[herotypical]

"You're so very, totally, unavoidably fond of my fun. My fun which I definitely have and can have and do have."

Her pirate-scrubbing bandanna managed to be forgotten in the heady centre of all this imagined victory and so it fluttered to the ground. She slid her arm around the back of his neck. Wasn't there something she was supposed to be doing? A...a first watch or a diligent looking-over-him-as-he-slept sort of deal. Oh well. It would come back to her, eventually.

[all7seas]

"You have me, Annie. That is how it stands. Truth."

"Truth" marked the moment he leaned in to kiss her. There was still a great deal of exhaustion, but Jack was all for prolonging his time with her before they both had to tend to battle duties once more.

[herotypical]

She should feel bad. This was bad and she should feel bad. Not because it was Jack. No -- she was leagues beyond that conflict. But because they still had blood on them and in the deepest part of her bones knew that, out there, others were still fighting. It made her reciprocation all the more electric.

Buffy's fingers crept along the back of his neck. Perhaps she could will the interim away and pick back up from where her mind had drifted away -- pre-napping. Cut free all the in-between bits.

[all7seas]

The pirate's mind was so far from the battlefield. There was never remorse to be found from pleasure; that was a pact he'd made with himself long ago. Consequences? Yes, there could be consequences, and at times he had to accept them, but guilt for taking what he wanted when he wanted it was not typically something Sparrow felt.

He tried to lift her up against him, enjoying the play of her mouth on his. Consequences later? Maybe, but he wasn't going to dwell on that now.