Comfort and Joy
Who: Come one, come all! ...In formal attire.
What: A Christmas ball, old world style.
When: December 1st, beginning around five in the afternoon and ending when the last person leaves.
Where: The rec center.
Summary: Earth's eighteenth-century peeps are throwing one hell of a party.
Rating: Well, considering no one is serving water? Probably PG-13 for ( Read more... )
What: A Christmas ball, old world style.
When: December 1st, beginning around five in the afternoon and ending when the last person leaves.
Where: The rec center.
Summary: Earth's eighteenth-century peeps are throwing one hell of a party.
Rating: Well, considering no one is serving water? Probably PG-13 for ( Read more... )
But when friends and acquaintances stop by to chat she will be all bright smiles and scintillating socializing. Although she did seem rather self-conscious in the fine period-appropriate dress -- she alternated between smoothing its rich fabric beneath her fingertips and fiddling with the small pearl earrings filling only two of her five ear piercings. Ever a fashionista, she still could not manage to feel at home in this style. Eventually, she attempted a card game or two to take her mind off quieter troubles of the evening. Inevitably, she still always found herself back by the tree.
Buffy was a woman who was used to belonging. Her skills of adaptation were easily catalogued. But tonight? Belonged was not her word. Not her word at all and it kept her alarmingly self-marginalized. Let those from this time take their stage, she thought. And maybe if she stood still enough she could grasp one fraction of an inch of doing this dress justice.
Still, she was determined not to let it tarnish the evening. After all? He would come. He had to. She wouldn't dance until he did.
Reply
But there---the lights and music from the hall...he'd done it. He'd made it back after working himself ragged in order to shorten the mission and arrive home in time for the party...in time to see her.
The mission had gone by in a blur of little sleep, long watches at night, and moving heavy cargo during the day. There had been two raids; during the first, it had come to blade-work. The second had been a fight left to the gun crews, and Sparrow had found himself running powder and shot to the cannons and generally trying not to get killed. The coat McCoy had given him last Christmas was bloody and torn. Some of the blood was his; some wasn't. His white linen shirt was nowhere close to white anymore. His breeches sported a hole in the knee. Beneath all of the soot and grime on his face, Jack's skin was pale and shadowed from sleeplessness. His hands were a mess: powder stains and the general filth that accumulates from continuous manual labor.
This was why he wasn't entering the party directly, but rather hesitating in the doorway, breathing in the scents of pine and delicious food and sweat and perfume and polish and splendor. Heady tonic. He was home.
And then he saw her, and Jack Sparrow had to lean against the door frame for support because his knees threatened to buckle beneath him. Angel. She was like an angel and a spun gold treasure. Jack hoped no one had noticed him, because he had never felt so nakedly--and unexpectedly--disarmed in his life.
Slipping away quietly was clearly the best option. The safest option. Not running, of course, just...he had to at least change out of these clothes. As soon as he regained control of his limbs, he would do so. For now, he followed her movements through the crowd with a starving look in his eye.
Reply
It didn't match beyond the gold chain but she still wore his jade, dragon-smothered ring around her neck. In fact, she had slipped it onto a new chain; she had slipped it onto a longer chain. One that fell to a more complementary length with the dress's neckline. But the ring remained.
Soon, she was on one of her eventual forays away from the tree she had picked out of the forest using Jack's compass. An ingenious application of the magic, she thought. But now she left it behind in order to cross the room and collect a mug of spiced hot chocolate.
Reply
So he simply continued to gaze at her, following the line of that gown and the crowning glory of that golden hair. Grace and goodness and light.
Reply
Is he okay? Has he been left somewhere -- broken and tired? Maybe I should knock off early, go grab the compass. Patrol.
She raised the drink to her lips and turned away from the assorted beverages. And it was exactly then that she lifted her eyes and snagged her gaze on him. The very him of her thoughts -- right there, in the doorway.
Her face lit up.
Reply
Reply
"...Welcome home." She pronounced the words without a hint of agitation over their implication.
Reply
Was there a slight urge to run? There was. It was difficult for a man like Jack Sparrow to settle in after such an unsettling week---and not just in body, but in mind as well. His desires were plaguing him again. Not to madness--not that far; but to second- and third-guessing himself and his motivations. That was always an unhealthy mental space for the pirate to inhabit.
"You---" Jack tried to collect his thoughts on her, and on this place or the occasion. "Exquisite."
Reply
"And you? Alive. Always the state I most like to see you in." Though, she couldn't deny that the alive-state still held some complications. But what she saw wasn't an embarrassment or even, necessarily, a mess. She took in his state as a compatriot should and she saw his appearance as concrete commentary on the mission.
Difficult and troubling.
Reply
Jack wanted nothing more than to take hold of her right there and then, but he realized that doing so might mar this creation. Instead, his arms dropped to his sides, fingers tapping nervously against the pockets of his coat. One of these pockets held a small object that suddenly felt as though it weighed just as much as the crates he'd had to unload from the cargo ship. His reward.
"I missed you."
Reply
They were stuck, then. Two very happy-to-see-each-other people hovering in that eerie realm of not quite reuniting. Buffy decided to blame the hot chocolate and so attempted to drain it in one tongue-scorching go.
This ended in a considerable amount of sputtering and coughing.
Reply
There had never been a more fruitless search for anything. Ever.
Reply
The spell was broken or perhaps recast. Her glance recovered its sharp edge and wiped her mouth with the side of her hand, happily abandoning the mug to the seat of a nearby chair. Let someone else deal with it.
Reply
Reply
Oddly enough, she still accepted the napkin. It simply seemed like the thing to do; although, in the end, it was only yet another barrier to what she really wanted to be doing.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment