herotypical | ooc ↻ appointments & messages

"I want it to be worth it to you." Jack took a deep breath and tried to regard her in the shadowy room. He couldn't see her face, or those green eyes he loved.

"Dunno, though -- not if you think....not if you believe that loving myself is some sort of personal flaw on your part. Your standards will never set right with that, will they."

He'd lived in a world in which wanting and being wanted ruled the day. Not loving. Jack had learned that from a very early age. Love wasn't in the picture: you were either wanted, or you were not. You either wanted a woman, or you didn't; and if she wanted YOU, you could use that. No wonder he felt so at sea.

"My standards?"

They were never so high as he assumed -- more the shame for her. She could have saved herself so much grief before ever coming to Luceti. "This isn't a question of standards, Jack. I've told you before that if I didn't want to be here? I wouldn't be. I'm stronger than that."

Maybe. Possibly. She'd like to think so, at least.

"So you don't think less of yourself for loving a blackhearted scurvy cheating pirate?" he challenged her. "Because I'll have you know, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. I'm pirate lord of the Caribbean. And I've...become that, savvy? Ship or no ship. Cheating, swindling, or just being the smartest. The bestest...est. I've become it!"

She paused. Waited. She didn't want to answer this one without giving it due thought. Buffy leaned into a treehouse corner and crossed her arms and provided herself with the space and time to choose her answer.

Back when she'd tried to date Angel after his return from hell, she'd been ashamed. Angelus had visited such pain on her friends; how could she not be ashamed? And she couldn't accept Riley's betrayal -- it made her sick and angry even now.

And she'd hated herself for what had happened with Spike. Even...

"No," she half-gasped. Half-strangled. Think less of herself? "No, I don't think I do. I think I feel as though I should, but I don't. Not one jot less. Heaven help me, Jack, I'm proud of you.

Usually."

Edited 2012-09-01 01:10 (UTC)

A slow nod that she probably couldn't see in the dark. Jack was almost too afraid to buy that answer. Proud? Of him? With so much time spent being proud of himself, Jack hadn't considered whether others might be proud of him.

Elizabeth had said she was, once, but he would have kissed her for certain if it hadn't been for the black spot.

"And me.....so proud. So proud of yourself, you know."

Edited 2012-09-01 01:54 (UTC)

"But Buffy Summers and what people think about her isn't the point."

It was her best recourse to avoid discussing herself in this manner. She was not too interested in dredging up reasons why someone should or shouldn't be proud of a Slayer simply working the job. Because sometimes that job asked her to pass judgement on people she loved so dearly that it hurt to considering judging them at all. And Jack had been devilishly honest -- he'd given her no strip of hope that he might have been otherwise non compos mentis at the time.

There's nothing wrong with being happy here. Katara's words, unknowingly echoing so many others. Giles. Herself, when talking to others. But Buffy often failed to take her own advice.

Love also wasn't in the grand gestures. It wasn't in the ink or the jewellery. It was in the work: the twisted foil and the curries and a pretty little learner's boat without a name. It was in this treehouse and in the dedicated hours spent searching for safety between its four simple walls. Love didn't have to forget but it could, at least, forgive.

Or it could start forgiving.

"...Where are you?" She asked the shadows.

"Corner. By the hammock.

Right here."

These steps were harder to take than she could ever have predicted. It ran against her grain to be the one who had to cross the emotional no man's land spread between them. But maybe that was exactly why she had to do it.

Buffy crossed slowly from her corner to his -- feeling first for the hammock.

"We're so dumb for not taking a flashlight..."

"If you want my humble piratical opinion? Some things are best left for the dark, love."

Jack didn't move to try to help her find him. He wanted to be found.

Buffy shuddered and instantly regretted the gulps of wine in which she'd earlier indulged. You're a creature of the darkness. Like me. Jack's words hadn't come with so much accusation, no. But they sounded the same to her ears.

Her fingers tripped along the hammock's rough construction. The slim edge of advantage her perception received from being the Slayer was as good as negated by the new cap. Her instincts were so dull. She couldn't anticipate where he was.

"I prefer the light," she insisted. "Just because I work in the dark...it doesn't mean I wanna stay there."

Close. He had to be close. That shape there could be him or it could be an old sweater left hanging seasons ago when the sanctuary had been more needed. She reached for the shadowy shape.

He reached for the shadow that was reaching for him. "You're always in the light, in my eyes."

And there was that blessed difference, spreading like a salve on her very sensitive sense of self. Jack didn't want to drag her into the dark. He wasn't trying to to twist and bend her into something she wasn't.

Her fingertips bumped awkwardly into his and Buffy found herself not grabbing onto him in a vicious hug, as she'd planned, but instead just tentatively and chastely holding his hand. Her fingers slotted between his.

"...That sounds so corny."

"You talk differentlike to the woman you love!" was the defensive answer as he held her hand. "You try to explain heart-things to them. Not my fault there's no better words for it!"

"Should I be talking differentlike, too? 'Cause I'm thinking my vocab is just about the pinnacle of different to begin with."

A squeeze. That's about all she could muster at the moment. "Will you keep being patient with me? Just a bit longer?"

"As long as you'll..." have me. No. She didn't like that. "Forever and ever. And don't talk any differentish. Be Annie. Or. Buffy, if you prefer, now."

"I don't, actually. Prefer."

"Annie, then? My Annie? Forever and ever.

Don't talk different. Don't."

Her nod most likely went unseen. Sure, she could bandy about this issue of talking different for a while and it would certainly stall the inevitable but, perhaps...

"Is there anything else you wanna tell me before I jump straight to the part where I'm kissing you?"

"Jump away, sweetheart. Me? I'll catch this time."

Hmm. She had to still wonder what else was locked away -- all the things he still might not want her to know.

Buffy slid her hands up to his upper arms and leaned into a firm but reserved sort of kiss. Introductory, really.

Jack kissed her back, but let her control the how much of it. Catching her kiss, really -- and steadying her against the slightly-swaying hammock with hands just barely brushing her hips. He was glad, very glad, that she'd decided to jump.

Control was key. She'd recently lost it in so many other quarters of her life -- just one never-ending unravel since the General's trick had been played. Her nights were barely hers; nightmares unattached to her lineage persisted and were calmed only by a strong sleeping draught provided, in confidence, by Sheena. Confronting Jack upon his return had been such a clumsy attempt to keep control over something she couldn't hope to dictate.

Hands on arms soon moved up to his neck. And soon thereafter were cupping his chin and drawing him down.

"My queen. Annie." There was barely time to murmur her name before his mouth was taken again. The hammock bumped backward against the wall, and his boots scraped the floor as he stilled it.

The second kiss was warmer. Kinder. Although it wasn't that the first was cold and unfriendly, just that it had been so restrained by hesitation. So altered by the sad truth that they hadn't properly kissed since the mission.

Afterwards, she as good as drank the air. Deep, shaking breaths. "I love you," she said with such force that she seemed to be compensating for all her lost strength with those three words.

"Oh, darlin'." Soft kisses were pressed against her throat as Jack caught his breath alongside her. "Sweet Annie."

Everything always seemed clearer out here in the forest with Buffy Summers. When they could climb high enough to be above all the troubles below, and be safe, and be together...

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