drown the urge for permanence and certainty; crouch down and scrawl my name with yours in wet cement

[herotypical]

Who: lists_to_port & slaying
What: carpentry; catharsis; cutting a deal
When: october 17th; noon onwards
Where: house seven
Summary: buffy wants to build something for jilly's return. buffy also wants to borrow a boat.
Rating: clean enough to start but it's these two so don't be surprised if the rating climbs a couple hundred tags in.

Today looked just a little bit brighter. Not by much, granted. But enough to make a difference and enough to sweeten the sense of industry that was unfolding her backyard. The heat helped; the day was warmed than the ones before it and strangely warm for a late October afternoon. Buffy had quickly given in to summer's last hurrah and was hoarding her last chance to wear shorts before autumn established its firmer grip on the month and on the village. Misery and grief were very, very slowly opening up to allow silver linings and miniature blessings. And one such something was working just a few feet away from her. Not quite so silver, though, and she suspected his lip would curl if she referred to him as miniature anything. Buffy worked the plane across her chosen soon-to-be-planks of wood and she watched Jack Sparrow from the corner of her eye. Perhaps a tarnished, coated kind of silver that resisted polish like two too similar poles on a magnet. Blessing was a harder one to pin down. The word seemed as though it should be anathema to a rough-reptuationed pirate. But then again? In a number of ways, Buffy knew that Jack was less rough than she was.

The afternoon's project was a simple porch swing and it was a little bit of home improvement to impress Jilly with once she returned. And it was a way to keep busy while they waited for her while they waited out their grief. Keeping busy, she found, helped her focus. The work tricked her now and then into smiling when she hadn't intended to. Silly little mistakes would take place -- fumbling with a tool or trying very hard (without much success) to remember carpentry terms once taught to her by Xander Harris -- and somehow these mistakes weren't discouraging. They were comedic. They were okay. And Buffy knew that none of it would be possible had she been left at the house alone, this week.

So she worked diligently at Sparrow's side and took moments now and then to appreciate his work ethic before it inspired her to press forward with her own. And she soon had another plank smoothed and sanded. Buffy pushed it aside and sat back with her palms crushing into the grass that was just a little too long. It wasn't as though the place was crawling with lawn-mowers, after all.

"What colour, Jack?" She asked as she blew a fine stream of breath up and across her brow. Fluttering bangs and clearing her vision. "We should paint it. It should be painted. What colour?"

Comments

[all7seas]

"Blue's nice," Jack offered. He pushed back his bandanna and wiped some sweat from his brow. "She's the artist, though. Why don't we let Jilly paint it when she returns? Ooooor she can tell us what to do."

Jack stretched for a moment, easing some of the kinks out of his neck. Nearby, Murphy was grazing. Jack had invited the pony along. After the incident with Vincent Nightray, the pirate had been keeping a closer eye on Murphy. Just in case.

[herotypical]

"Let her...y-yeah. It'd be like twice the surprise. Double the fun."

She itched a spot on her shoulder and settled back into her lounging position. The Slayer's capacity for emotional elasticity was considerable. Quick, initial glances might not even be able to detect that she had been in such poor straits, recently. It helped that she was actively trying to find good things. Things worthy of feeling better. This project was one of them. Other people's happiness was another -- and on that account she had a request for the pirate that she planned to time most expertly.

"Maybe me and her could do it. Y'know. Bonding." She breathed in deep before nodding over to Murphy. She hesitated over a joke: "Think you could persuade him to eat the whole lawn? It needs a trim."

[all7seas]

"Shush. Don't hurry him. If that pony gets a bellyache, I'm the one who has to hear about it."

A glance over at Murphy revealed the pony's ears twitching toward the couple. Oh, he was listening, but he was going to take his sweet time. Grazing a lawn was Serious Business.

"And aye: you could bond over it. And then maybe you could do some painting inside the house. Brighten it some. You know---now that you're sharing it. Together." Emphasis was put on those last two statements: Jack wanted to make sure that all thoughts of Jilly being an abandoner were out of Buffy's head entirely.

[herotypical]

"...You don't think it's too soon?"

Other home improvement plans had been swimming in her mind, of course. Paint and furniture arrangement. Anything except touching that bedroom with its door now shut tight and everything left as-is within it. She used to play-threaten Bones with moving the sofa around. Would changing it's position, now, be too sad of a thing to do?

[all7seas]

"No. No I do not. It's not a shrine, Buffy; it's your home. Got to make it yours. The both of you."

[herotypical]

"It could help. Like this -- this? This helps. I'll ask her when she gets back."

A sigh. Not a sad one, really. A happy little cloud just sailed on by and left a bright, warm ray of autumn sun illuminating their work. "You know what else helps?"

[all7seas]

"What else, sweetheart?" The pirate picked a tall blade of grass and began to peel it as he turned his attention more fully on the slayer. For the past week or so he had put most of his own feelings aside so he could look after them: Buffy, Jilly, even Kennedy, though not to the same extent of course. And since The Seven Days, Jack had been much more careful about trying to listen to this woman. More often than not, he'd discovered, that was what she needed from him most.

boo autocorrect

[herotypical]

"Helping people helps. Helping other people, I mean."

It was entirely possible that Buffy Summers had primed her pitch in the wrong direction.

[all7seas]

"Well you know what they say, eh? Sharing is caring. Helping is....whelping. Or something. Or they don't, actually, say that. You taking up charity work, Annie?"

He pulled a red apple out of his pocket and began polishing it against his shirt.

[herotypical]

"Maybe." She nudged one shoe off one foot with the opposite set of toes. "There's a guy I wanna help. He needs a boat. A baby boat. A dinghy."

[all7seas]

"A 'guy' that you wish to help, hmm?" He took a bite of the apple. Murphy's ears shot forward, but otherwise the pony pretended that he had seen nothing.

[herotypical]

"A guy trying to impress a girl."

[all7seas]

"HA! Buffy you haven't the first idea of how to impress a girl. Dinghies? Do NOT impress girls."

[herotypical]

"...The boat is not what is going to be doing the impressing, Jack Sparrow." With a sour expression, she abandoned her other shoe.

"And I know all about impressing girls. I'll bet you the use of your dinghy that I can definitely impress a girl. Have impressed a girl." Or more like will impress a girl. Buffy Summers might be banking on Jack's ability to accept hearsay. Vague hearsay at that.

[all7seas]

While it might have appeared that Jack was focusing mostly on the apple he was eating, one of his feet was slowly edging toward her shoe.

"Should I be jealous? Why are you wooing wenches, again?"

[herotypical]

"...I dunno. I haven't figured that part out yet." Buffy was too busy talking her spiraling circle around this issue to notice the advance upon the shoe. "But I think I'm very good at it and can I please borrow your boat?"

1/2

[all7seas]

[all7seas]

"No. I don't feel even remotely persuaded, Annie my love."

Oh, so close. He was so close to that shoe.

[herotypical]

"What? I have to persuade you for a favour now, huh?"

She tilted her head. "This girl. She seems pretty important to him. It's a birthday surprise."

[all7seas]

With a smooth motion, Jack stuck the apple between his teeth, hooked his toes into her shoe, and flipped it up into his waiting hands. Then he tucked it away inside his coat before continuing on with his eating of the apple.

"So a young fellow is trying to win a fair maiden's heart and for that he needs use of a dinghy."

[herotypical]

Oh. Well. That she saw.

"Glad to see you're keeping up. I'm gonna frisk you before we're done, y'know. Just so you're aware that you're not getting out of this with any of my belongings."

A self-conscious pause. She returned to an earlier slight as she stood up on her knees -- leaning towards the pirate. "What makes you think I can't woo someone, huh? I'm very...woo-y."

[all7seas]

"Wooing you was a little bit like wooing an unripe pineapple."

Oh, leaning. He liked leaning.

"Bet you if I'd had a dinghy it would've made no difference at all."

[herotypical]

"That's offensive. I don't know how, yet. But it is." Leaning was a way to get closer. And closer meant the chance to fiddle around with his pockets."

"And maybe it would've. Maybe it would've made all the difference. Anyway. Like I said. The boat's incidental to the wooing. You can woo people without boats, you know."

[all7seas]

Oh, this was an interesting sort of conversation. Jack chucked his apple over toward the expectant Murphy, who finished it in three or four crunches, and turned toward Buffy, crosslegged, leaning back with his palms on the grass.

"How would you have wooed myself, if the shoe had been on the other foot and you'd actually been interested in me?"

[herotypical]

This was a troublesome question. Truthfully, Buffy had never had to woo a person. Not...not seriously, at least. Pining after Billy Fordham in the fifth grade didn't count. Pretending to like Emily Dickinson to impress a guy for one date didn't count, either. She most often was the chased, not the chaser.

"If the shoe..." she felt into a first pocket, looking for the item in question, "had been on the other foot? I think I would've taken more than a professional interest in all your marauding. Hypothetically speaking. Maybe I would've proposed a marauding date. It all would've been very un-me-ish."