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

[herotypical]

"It's got nothing to do with reflections. It's got everything to do with the crossfire. I'm not interested in being caught in it. Mud-slinging doesn't look good on me." And yet she engaged in it often enough.

Still...he was better off taking their boat than the one Giles was working on. And so she wouldn't do much to discourage it. The lesser of two piracy evils.

[all7seas]

"Come come. All that monogaminity doesn't mean I can't have a bit of fun on another man's boat, does it?"

[herotypical]

"Again, do please notice the part where I never said not to. Do I have to say it again? Boys and their toys." Boats. She had an odd conversation with Horatio about boats. She wasn't at all certain how the other captain would take to having his 'liberated' -- temporarily or not.

"Also? I'm not convinced that monogaminity is a word."

[all7seas]

"Monogaminity? The state of Captain Jack Sparrow not dallying with any other wenches 'cept his own."

There. That couldn't have possibly been stated in a more offensive manner. Or more lovingly.

[herotypical]

"Still not a word. No matter how backhanded you make it sound."

Buffy made a face but remained close. He was trying to get a rise out of her, she thought. It would work except for that part of her that was determined to remain unrisen.

[all7seas]

Bother. She wasn't even objecting to "wenches," there. "I think you need a dictionary, darling. I've heard tell Mister Johnson has made a rather large one. Perhaps you should consult it, eh?"

[herotypical]

Oh, the objection was there. Just not spoken. Just not aloud. Buffy certainly couldn't quite clamp down on that slight curl of her lip and the slightly sullen, righteously wounded expression.

"No thanks. Consulting the books? Not my job."

[all7seas]

"Are you unanimous in that?"

[herotypical]

Suspiciously: "Why? Should I not be?"

[all7seas]

"Well I'd like to think the most beautiful girl in Luceti can stand behind her courageous convictions."

[herotypical]

"...There's nothing courageous about telling you that a word that's not a word certainly still isn't a word. That's just being factual. And correct. A-and right."

Jack used a challenge and a compliment all at once! It was super effective.

[all7seas]

"Sorry, Annie, my mistake; picture of cowardice, you, what with all the fear surrounding that more-than-marginally slim possibility that you might just be wrong about that word what describes my singular pursuit of yourself romantically."

[herotypical]

"Jack."

Her brows quirked up and she inclined her head at such an angle that made those green eyes look all the wider. "Don't make me detour our whole swing-building afternoon just to take you to the library just to prove that I'm both not a coward and not wrong on the non-wordiness of that word. You know I'll do it. If I have to."

[all7seas]

Oh, green eyes. Oh.

"You'd go to those lengths to prove yourself to me, lovely?!"

[herotypical]

"...I wouldn't be proving myself to anyone. I'd be setting you straight. There's a difference."

Hardly. There was hardly a difference. Her free and unheld hand made a wide, dramatic gesture. It had been a while since she was so suddenly animated. The play-argument, it would seem, was doing a fine job of combining with the hard work of earlier to lift the Slayer's spirits.

[all7seas]

"Buffy. Already straight, me. As we've previously discussed, I like the wenches, of which and foremost of whom are is yourself. Solely. Savvy?"

Jack was enjoying it too. It was almost like courting her, this argument.

[herotypical]

"Not that kind of...do they even use the word like that in your time? Seriously?"

Solely sounded nice, though. "You know? I should come up with some wench-equivalent for you. See how you like it."

Buffy already knew that such a plan was most likely doomed to fail.

[all7seas]

"Wench-equivalent? But I only like the real thing, dearest," he answered, misunderstanding.

[herotypical]

"A wench-equivalent to insult you with. Like..."

And as she groped through her thoughts for something appropriately inappropriate, she found that there seemed very little that would be serviceable. "Huh. Gimme a moment."

[all7seas]

A hand unoccupied by coffee could be surreptitiously slipped onto her thigh beneath the table.

"Annie. You think 'wench' is an insult?! We've been over this and over it. Wenches are lovely blithe special beautiful female creations."

[herotypical]

"We have been over this and over it. And it's offensive. The only other person I've heard use the word? A troll. You're being as offensive as a troll."

Her leg twitched under his hand but not unhappily. Slightly ticklish, perhaps.

[all7seas]

That slightly ticklish thigh earned slightly more pressure from the fingers of a man who wanted SOME kind of rise out of her to win this.

"Pfft. Pirates are much more offensiver than trolls. What shall I call you, then? Girl? Woman? Girl-woman? Slayer? Milady?"

[herotypical]

"You already know what to call me."

She sat up a little straighter and called in the length and breadth of her willpower in order to quell any further twitching. She wrapped one hand around her recently arrived iced mocha -- drizzled beyond liberally with caramel, oh that hero of a waiter -- and kept her sights most firmly fixed on Jack.

[all7seas]

"I do?" he teased, letting go of her hand so he could drink his coffee.

[herotypical]

"You do. You definitely do."