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]

"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."

[all7seas]

Sparrow was rather enjoying this frisking adventure.

But sorry, Buffy: wrong pocket.

"So you'd have walked up to me and said 'Captain Jack Sparrow, I like the cut of your jib. Come out and rob people with me.'"

[herotypical]

"I've found that being both forward and direct helps in the wooing department, yeah. Not that -- I wouldn't use those words. Why would I use those words? It'd be more like...you feel a thing and I feel a thing so we don't we go feel a thing together." Hmm. "No. Not at like that. That's not right. Maybe -- hey there, Captain. I see you're all into that stealing thing. Got room on your bridge for two?"

A second pocket, then! "Maybe with an offer for coffee, too. Coffee always means date. Always." A pause. "Except for when it doesn't."

[all7seas]

"Well that's just plain confusing, isn't it?! You'd make a terrible wooer!"

Nooooo not in that pocket either, Buffy. SORRY.

[herotypical]

"That's impossible. And you? You have too many pockets. What do you need so many pockets for?'

/going to get MAH CURREH

[all7seas]

"That stealing thing. Oh! Also? That feeling a thing together thing."

YOU HAD BETTER ENJOY IT.

[herotypical]

"Oh. So the secret's out. All I need to woo is a surplus of pockets. Next time I see a good-looking someone? I'll put on my cargo pants."

Buffy reached across the pirate and inside his coat. Feeling along the lining.

....I ended up just making a sandwich. >>

[all7seas]

Jack let her, sitting very still. She would find the shoe tucked into the inner pocket of his coat.

Not the pocket over his heart--that was reserved for other things.

"I never said that, did I, little pineapple?"

: O

[herotypical]

Victoriously, then, she fished free her shoe.

"Not a pineapple. And I think maybe you just don't want to admit that I could out-woo you with my eyes closed. Now. Go on. Say it. Say -- yes, Buffy, you can borrow my boat."

: (

[all7seas]

"But you still haven't told me for whom or WHY," he protested. "And you couldn't woo your way out of a reasonably shallow paper sack, Annie."

[herotypical]

"Why do I have to tell you why, huh?"

She tossed her shoe back with the other. Then -- a little mechanically and said with all the ruthlessness of someone who wants very much to win an argument: "Satsu would disagree with you. I think. Will. Will disagree with you. I haven't really figured that out, yet."