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]

"O-oh! Jack! Do you hear that?" A grand, dramatic mockery was made of sitting up and listening very intently to some imagined clatter. "That's the sound of a pie not getting made for you. Get used to it. Feel the serenade."

1/2

[all7seas]

"Don't make me so unhappy in that special way you have. You know I'd adore a pie. You can make it with absolutely not a stitch on, for all I care!"

2/2

[all7seas]

[herotypical]

"The day I bake naked is the day I...well, nope. It's never going to happen."

She huffed and hemmed and got a little predictably prim and prudish about it all and so changed the subject: "New Feathers'll be here by that time."

[all7seas]

"Hmmm?" That was an abrupt shift of mental images. "Aye. Another cycle." Seeing Gibbs again would work wonders for the pirate. Or...

"McCoy..."

[herotypical]

"...Maybe it's too much to hope for. But you were -- I mean, when you left. It was close to a cycle and you came back."

[all7seas]

"I don't care if it's too much," was the gruff reply. "I've been looking for Jilly every day. I look for him, too."

[herotypical]

"...I won't pretend like I don't wait for him to just walk out of his room, each morning." And in the morning, she still made coffee for three out of habit.

"Thanks for staying, y'know. At the house. You've got all this stuff to get done back at the beach and here I am -- just thanks."

[all7seas]

"There are things, Buffy--" Jack shifted to take her hand in his once more-- "Things that you never have to thank me for. Just toss me out when I've served my purpose, eh? Til then you have me."

He wouldn't for the world let her be alone right now in that house. And he enjoyed being with her. It felt cheap to be thanked for something he'd rather die than not do and which he loved doing.

[herotypical]

If pressed on what was the strongest, chiefest impression of her connection with Jack Sparrow, Buffy might never think to name the nights or the morning-afters. But the hand-holding -- that stuck out so forcefully in her mind. It happened to frequently and had happened for longer than she'd loved him; it had happened even when she barely liked him.

"Don't make offers you might get called into keeping ad infinitum, Jack." She twisted in the booth corner so that she could better face him.

"What about you? How are you holding up?" Buffy was barely keeping the pieces of herself sewn together. Most of the village knew that. Jack, though? She was having a harder time with reading him despite the proximity.

[all7seas]

Ugh. This was the sort of question he didn't want to answer. Jack took a sip of coffee to stall for time.

"Not so bad," he finally managed.

[herotypical]

Her hand tightened around his -- she felt the rings under her palm as being both bulky and cool. Her fingers shifted until she could reach more of his warmth instead.

"Not so bad?" Buffy questioned his assertion.

[all7seas]

Having never (properly) been allowed to go through or understand any sort of grieving process in his own world, Jack had been reading up on it in a self-help book he'd found in the library called Good Grief: Finding Peace after Pet Loss.

It hadn't been very helpful. A Better Man in Seven Days had suggested that he reform some of his worse habits and make a new best mate. The best thing for him since the doctor's loss had been Jilly, really: helping her to build the fire the night she'd burned so many messages for herself and other people. That had been healing. But Captain Jack Sparrow wasn't one for public displays of grief that didn't involve copious amounts of drinking, and he couldn't do that when Buffy needed him. In private, there had been grief. There had been plenty of grief, with alcohol and without it.

"'S lonesome not to have a best mate about," he finally admitted. "And I can't look after him up there."

[herotypical]

"Losing a best friend's like losing...well -- like losing the world." A shrug. He had been there for the disappearance of her as-good-as-life-long best friends. But that was so very different. She would see them again, some day. Either here or at home -- whichever came first. But both she and Jack had lost McCoy for potentially forever.

In their little corner booth in the middle of what was probably the last hot day of the year, Buffy drew the pirate towards her. Not with the sort of all-encompassing, softening hug that she wanted to give him but with something firmer and stronger. The restaurant wasn't busy but people still came and went.

"He's good at what he does, Jack. And if he wasn't he wouldn't be on Jim's ship. We've gotta trust him to look after himself, now." She hoped it didn't sound too hollow; after all, she wanted little else beyond the ability to protect her old housemate.

Buffy knew there was a way to know what happened to Leonard McCoy. If Andrew or Xander were still here, she might have asked them when she grew the guts. But she wasn't sure yet that she wanted to discuss that possibility with Jack.

my TYPO. Worse should be "worst". /GIVES UP

[all7seas]

"I know."

Ever since Buffy had first told him that McCoy was better than us--it was while he had been imprisoned in the clinic, that--Jack had made it his mission to look after the doctor's best interests. Sometimes what the pirate imagined to be his best interests and what Leonard McCoy's best interests actually were managed to match up. But Sparrow had met Kirk on more than one occasion. If anyone could look after the doctor...

He leaned into her hug, availing himself of her comfort and not giving three brass farthings what anyone thought.

"I trust him."

[herotypical]

"He'll be okay. His life..." She edged closer and cupped the back of Jack's head with her free hand. Keeping him close. It allowed her voice to drop into a whisper as she talked Jack -- and herself -- through the problem.

"His life isn't demons and doom. And it isn't low-tech or lawless. He's gonna be saving lives and saving Jim and yelling at Spock and if he's at all like himself? Maybe falling for one of his nurses but suffering silently and not making a move because he's Bones. He's not the one that needs us, right now."

It was the other way around. They needed him.

Her twist, though? "Us needs us. We. You and me. We need us. You need...Jeez, Jack. You're being my very own Mother Teresa. But you need you too."

[all7seas]

"I'll be fine, me. I'm always fine, Annie, after a time." He held her loosely and stroked his fingers through her silky hair and tried to relax as he thought about how he could push a fine nurse directly into McCoy's arms if he could only be up on the star ship with him.

"Used to it, eh? Looking out for myself? This time's no different."

[herotypical]

"Sure, it's different."

Temple to temple. Her hand tripped down from his neck to the front of his shirt. Fussing, winding fingers. "It's not just yourself, here."

[all7seas]

"I think, lass," Jack said softly, "that I don't mind that so much at all. And when things get very bad I think of his little girl. And she's got her daddy back and all, and a father should be there for his daughter. And it's more better."

[herotypical]

She kissed the side of his head -- just behind his ear. And she whispered into his dreads. "I'll bet his fancypants spaceship has all kinds of ways to talk back to Earth. E-postcards. Before going to bed he'll send her a message about seeing a purple star explode or whatever it is they see up there. And whenever he gets back to the planet? He'll bring her all the cheesy souvenirs that dads are supposed to bring back to their daughters. Things she doesn't really want but will keep anyway."

Buffy wondered if Jocelyn would let Leonard in. Surely, she must. Visits, whenever he was home. She knew she was sketching a prettier picture of Bones's family situation than the reality. She didn't care. She needed the lie, too.

"Just because."

[all7seas]

"Just because," he agreed, having no idea what an e-postcard was or why a father would have to bring back cheese. He wondered if Jocelyn would let Bonesy visit whenever he wished and see little Joanna of the long dark braids. He very much hoped so.

"You up for some swing-building?"

[herotypical]

"What? No dictionary-raiding?" Buffy sat back -- searching out his eyes with hers. The path back to the joke felt too cluttered. "Fine. I win by default."

[all7seas]

"You win...this time. Default. I'd show you the...but she still has the key." The pirate slid out of the booth.

[herotypical]

"You're missing out on a few consonants and vowels and whole words there, Vanna White."

The Slayer followed -- reluctant to relinquish his hand as she exited the booth.

[all7seas]

"The Codex. Jilly---she still has the key." If she wanted it back, it would be there for her.