ooc ⚓ appointments post

[abidinglaw]

❮ "My story. It’s exactly the same as your story, just one chapter behind. I chased a man across the seven seas. The pursuit cost me my crew, my commission, and my life." ❯

catch-all appointments & messages post for abidinglaw @ luceti; please title and date your top tag accordingly -- [ written ], [ voice ] & [ action ]

Comments

May 26 | action

[seesmagic]

[ooc: replying to this]

[the smaller girl froze when he stepped in her path, eyes widening just slightly. Glancing back over her shoulder, she half-expected to see a group of others crowding in close...but there was no one. So she silently edges backwards.

She'd run, but running attracted notice as much as arguing did. Or crying. So she just slowly backs away. She could find another path into the woods]

action

[law_abiding]

Here, hang on a moment!

[His tone is beseeching, and he has raised his hand in a gesture of concern, but what he says is:]

You havn't paid the bridge tax. Order of the king.

[He adjusts the stick-rifle, the bottom of which is currently held in the palm of his left hand. In fact it is a stick-stick, but he has it propped up against his shoulder like a rifleman at rest.]

No-one has been by all day.

[seesmagic]

[she froze again when he called out to her, watching him uncertainly, but he looked more uncertain than menacing...even if he had a large stick.]

I didn't know we have a king.

[her voice is a little uncertain...but not challenging] But I live with a princess?

....I...don't have any money. [ :< ]

july 19th | written

[herotypical]

James. Got a question for you.

--B.S.

[abidinglaw]

Indeed?

- Admiral James Norrington,
Evidently.

[herotypical]

I need a partner.

For volleyball.

A volleyball partner.

[abidinglaw]

Perhaps we should start at the beginning. To save us both a great deal of time.

What is volleyball, exactly?

[herotypical]

A game. Sport, really. A sport of kings. Kings and tall people. Of which I'm neither but you're one.

[abidinglaw]

Which I suppose explains why you should want me on your side, but tell me, why should I want you on mine?

[herotypical]

o1. I'm fast

o2. I'm strong

o3. Despite the scar, I do believe I look fab in a kick two piece. You can always consult Jack if you doubt that fact.

o4. I don't cheat.

[abidinglaw]

Be careful. I almost closed the book on the third point. Be thankful that you redeemed yourself with the fourth.

Will there be time to practice?

[herotypical]

What you're really asking me is whether there'll be time for me to teach you how to even play it, right?

[abidinglaw]

I imagine it might give us the edge that we would need, yes.

[herotypical]

Then? First things first. Just how easily do you burn?

[ august 25th ; mid-afternoon ]

[herotypical]

Sometime around noon, she felt her strength once again take a nose-dive. The Kin'corans were arriving, most likely. They'd been warned, after all, that the power cap would be increased. Buffy resented it all the more for having just had a mission treat her similarly. All the same, steamed ahead with this meal. Just because other things were afoot, she wasn't going to reschedule something so personally important. Besides, if food was going to grow scarce? They'd better do something with the lettuce that was on the verge of wilting anyway. A simple salad. A rations portion of some white fish. Halibut, maybe. It hadn't been marked at the store and Buffy couldn't tell by taste. She'd meant to do something with it for days and if she didn't use it soon, it would go to waste.

She'd decided that they should eat outside, so she'd required Jack to help her move a picnic table (don't ask where she got it) around the backyard until the perfect piece of shade was found. Then game a kitschy plastic table-cover. And then setting the table. And then Norrington had to arrive.

Despite the darker undertone for the dinner and why Buffy had demanded that it happen, she'd been painfully friendly all day. Ever since the mission, really, she'd behaved sweeter than a conflicted woman ought to behave. Things had taken such an unplanned turn during that festival and she'd been doing her best to patch things up in its wake, but...

But it was difficult to play nice about one problem when another still lurked over her shoulder. Tonight, as a guest, Norrington would have his work cut out for him.

[abidinglaw]

Convention dictated that Norrington must bring a gift to the gathering - a bottle of wine, perhaps, or something sweet. On any other day there would be no question of his obeying this imperative, but today he settled for a small cluster of coneflowers and stalks of yarrow which he had bound at the stem with a short length of string. It was a simple gift, but he hoped that it might serve as a guilt-free center-piece. He knew his hosts for a self-sacrificial sort, and there was no ration on flowers.

If he had known that they would be eating outside he might have proceeded at once to the picnic table, but presently he knocked on the front door of House 7. While he waited for the door to open he wondered belatedly - and, it must be said, somewhat awkwardly - whether perhaps he should have bought flowers for everyone residing there. Well, there was nothing for it now.

[all7seas]

Sparrow was arranging the bunch of flowers in the center of the table just-so. There were coneflowers; yarrow he'd swiped from someone's front yard.

It looked sweet. He hoped it would make her happy. Jack Sparrow could see through that painful smile from one hundred miles away and it put him on edge. Ever since the Festival --


Oh, he had gone right from plotting needful murder to shining under the footlights as though nothing had gone wrong


-- Ever since the Festival, he had been increasingly paranoid: not just about the 100 souls he had to save, but about the ones he had personally put at risk through indulging in his love for Buffy and penchant for pet-names. That was supposed to be his bread and butter. Deception. Playing a con. And he'd slipped up and put them all at risk -- even this man who was now, unbeknownst to Jack, standing at their front door.

Jack's soul felt like lead.

"There. Looks -- nice, Buffy."

[herotypical]

And so the painful smile resurfaced.

"Very. You've got an eye for event planning, honey. The 21st century would have to fear you." For her part, she'd swung so violently in the opposite direction. Nicknames and endearments were cropping up all over her speech. But they never quite rang like the sweet nothings they were meant to be.

Buffy glanced at her watch. "Shoot. He should've been here by now, right? Did you tell him we were eating out here?"

[abidinglaw]

Had he somehow gotten the hour wrong? The travel time from the beach was difficult to judge, and he had never learned to trust those transporters yet. What if they malfunctioned, and conveyed him somehow more slowly than the instantaneous transition that he had grown accustomed to? He knocked again on the door -- not wanting to seem insistent. Perhaps no-one had heard. Perhaps he was interrupting something that he should not be.

[all7seas]

"No. Did you? I'll go have a look-see, shall I?"

Without waiting for a yes or no, Jack pulled himself through the window and made his way through the house, humming nervously all the while. He had to apologize. He had to apologize. In front of her. To him. It was almost unbearable, this -- but if it could FIX things. If it could make it better? Jack would do it on his knees.

"Well where the bugger IS he?" the pirate muttered, throwing open the front door to check the porch.

[herotypical]

And in the back garden, Buffy had decided that it was such a simple band-aid to offer to a man. One little apology. Would it truly help? At least, she thought, it should start helping to help. Forgiveness had to begin somewhere. It didn't make her any less nervous. Undoubtedly, she would have been paralyzed with dinner-party nerves even if she and Jack had been merrily upon the same page.

But, at least, it was Norrington. He so rarely allowed her to fall from any kind of grace. These days. The navy-man provided a kind of social safety net that, she knew, Jack simply couldn't possibly possess. And it was possible that while she appreciated one man for his net, she loved the other for his lack of it.

The Slayer fidgeted one last time over the cutlery. Waiting.

[abidinglaw]

"Ah. I am sorry."

Norrington had no reason to apologize, but apology had been bred into him. Even, it seemed, in the face of an off-duty pirate.

"I brought... I trust I have the hour right?"

[all7seas]

"James!"

Jack sighed and stepped out on the porch.

"We're waiting for you, mate. Back yard. Annie's set up a lovely dinner for us."

[herotypical]

...And that dinner was growing cold. Panic settled on her already over-burdened shoulders. As ever, this meal had to be perfect. Bliss rested upon its success.

[abidinglaw]

He spared a forlorn glance at his flowers. What use would they be outside, and surrounded on all sides by Nature herself? Perhaps he should leave them for Jilly. Then again, he would not want to bump into her between then and now - nor Elizabeth either. He hoped they two were not waiting in the garden.

"I am relieved - we should not keep her waiting.

But...

Must we proceed through the house?"