Chapter Text
Morning finally breaks, pale blue light creeping in as if ashamed to intrude on them. Jareth summons a bath for Sarah, a deep copper tub materializing next to the fire that lights itself into an already crackling blaze. Distressingly underneath the enormous tiger's head. Though maybe being beneath it is better than being watched by its glassy, dagger-filled gaze.
They lounge in the hot water, keeping a lingering eye on the 13-hour clock as it ticks away the remaining hours of their time. It may still only be late evening on the other side of the mirror, but a honeyed glow suffuses the Labyrinth beneath Jareth's window as daybreak slips into mid-morning.
Sarah relaxes against his chest, letting the scent of jasmine unwind her. A soft tickling touch caresses her shoulders and she smiles, her eyes refusing to open as the water pulls the tension from her muscles.
"What are you doing?" she purrs as his fingers brush her neck, her voice full of suspicion.
"Playing," he answers, strands of her hair being pulled gently here and there.
Sarah's hand finds his knee by her hip in the water, strokes the silky skin underneath his leg with her fingertips. It's so new, being able to touch him like this, any little touch seems to sing over her heart with an exhausting flutter.
"With my hair?" she asks as the backs of his fingers brush her neck.
"Obviously." There's a slight tug and she feels a chuckle kept back, a swelling of his chest around the tightness of a laugh held in place. "Honestly, the number of tangles, you wild animal."
Sarah turns her head and bows her neck to look him in the eyes. "Any tangles at the back of my head are solely your fault and I won't be held accountable."
He grins, swiveling her head back around with a gentle hand on her skull.
"Worth every knot then."
Deft fingers wind through her tresses, the ends tickling her shoulders as he plaits them into a braid. She relaxes down against him as his light touch massages her scalp, raising her eyes to the chin of the monster hanging over them.
"I like your room." She sighs contently, the warmth of the bath loosening her tongue enough to offer him a compliment. She brushes his legs with floating fingers, enjoying the ripples the movement causes. "I'm not sold on your Shere Khan though."
Jareth's fingers stall, and she can practically hear the eyebrow raise. Hear the blink as his eyelids flutter in confusion. "On my what?"
She points a finger upwards to the dangling trinkets swinging above them. "Your tiger."
"Oh-" He laughs, fingers resuming their intricate weaving. "He's a dragon, not a tiger."
Water sloshes the side as Sarah moves suddenly to lean over the lip of the bath. He holds her hip to stop her tumbling out completely as she twists precariously round to stare up at the snarling teeth.
"Really?!" she breathes, shamelessly impressed. "What kind of dragon?"
He tugs her back between his legs and reseats her with a firm hand on her waist.
"Considering his head is on my wall, I'd say rather an unlucky one." He resumes winding the strands of her hair over his fingers, difficult as it is now that Sarah seems intent to continue staring up at the dragon. Wriggling like an impatient child.
"Did you kill it?" she asks, trepidation at the possibly grotesque answer tightening her voice. Jareth moves down further into the tub so she can rest her head back on his chest, accommodating her desire to keep staring upwards.
"No, he was a wedding gift to my parents. A bit unsavory, but I don't think I could bear to part with him now."
He feels her go still against him, and knows before her fingers cease their delicate caress against his skin what question is making her spine stiffen. What word sparked it. He winds her hair up and over and under, pretending not to notice how quiet she's gone as she works up the nerve to ask it.
"Jareth?"
He's impressed that there's not even a trace of nerves in her voice, even if every muscle in her back has tightened minutely.
"Mm?" he prompts with leisurely indifference.
"Did you marry me last night?" She twists a little to be able to look him in the eyes. "Is that what those words meant?"
He lets her question hang, pretending to mull it over diligently until her eyes narrow. Eventually his face creases with a chuckle as she pierces him with a glower.
"No," Jareth says, winding a lock of her hair around his thumb until it's looped like a thick ring. "Bound, yes… Eternally." He runs his index finger lovingly down her cheek. "I'll always be yours. But we're not married. Yet." Sarah's shoulders unclench, and he loosens the hair around his thumb to massage the muscles into more pliant relaxation. "I promise when I ask you it'll be with more than just a hard fuck in a soft bed."
She laughs then, her windpipe a little raw from the tension that gripped it a second ago. "Fine."
He pulls her up closer to him, and the water sloshes dangerously close to the lip of the bath.
"And?" he asks, nuzzling her neck that's already mottled with his bite marks. He lays a few delicate kisses underneath her ear, tracing the outline of it with his nose. "When I ask, what will your answer be?"
"A 'no'," she replies, shielding her face as he dips his fingers in the water to flick at her, laughing as he pinches her side. "At least the first time."
His laugh erases her worries completely, and she ponders on how everything has spun on a dime, that his mocking smugness has the ability to unwind her now. That it makes her heart sing, rather than sink.
"How arrogant you are." He growls playfully as he lays a hard kiss on her cheek, trapping her head with the crook of his arm.
Sarah smirks, turning back to him only to be kissed harder on the lips. His name still dances on her tongue. Evocative. Dangerous and sweet. A little bit poisonous, what with the lingering flavor of arsenic. How very like him.
She thinks to herself that she'd sit in her room and say it for hours if only saying his name out loud wouldn't summon him every time. He'd never stop gloating.
Jareth leers, touching her forehead a moment with a tap-tap of a forefinger. "You're thinking about my name."
Sarah leans back out of the way of his lips, suspicion crawling up her spine.
"Can you read my mind?" Sarah asks, half joking, raising an eyebrow back at him. "I think I deserve to know if you can."
His grin widens, flashing sharp teeth.
"No," he replies, combing a swathe of her hair out with his fingers. "You just keep tasting your lips."
She hadn't realized that she had, and resolves to keep her lip firmly clamped between her teeth if her tongue can't behave itself.
A thought tickles her a moment.
"Can I taste all names?" she asks, not completely thrilled at the thought. Like the headaches, this could turn into a burden.
"Some," he says, sounding unconcerned by what an enormous revelation this is for her as he sinks down against the back of the bath again. "Of family. A few friends if you're close enough."
Sarah hesitates.
"Goblins?" she asks. The thought is an unsavory one, pulling her lip into a grimace. What could a goblin name possibly taste like? Would Grüempy's name taste like rock dust and gravel?
Jareth chuckles, darkly amused, as if she were a little kid tasting broccoli for the first time.
"You'll get used to it."
"And it's because of you?" The water swishes as she turns to face him more. She knows the answer, but is learning that everything to do with him deserves clarification in triplicate. "Since being bound to you?"
His thumb traces the bow of her lips, testing the plushness there as she parts them a little.
"Since you gave me your kiss," he replies, enjoying the fascination sparkling in her eyes. "A little piece of you is mine." His hand drops to her hip and snakes around her stomach, fingers brushing the curve of her hourglass. "There may be a few side effects."
Sarah hums, considering the headaches she'd gotten from the lies she'd told since being back.
"You really are a villain," she says, resisting the tender touches he's caressing her with under the water only for a moment before she settles back against him. "You could've warned me."
The final minutes of their time together dwindles to a close. Jareth leaves her some privacy to redress as he takes the air on his balcony, already clothed in a silk shirt and trousers in a blink of an eye. Sarah wonders briefly why he never magicks clothes onto her. Perhaps that would be taking liberties. Though after the liberties he'd already thoroughly stolen that seems like a minor one.
Perhaps he simply enjoyed the few more moments of bare skin that not doing so afforded him.
He had however retrieved her dress from the garden. As she shimmies back into it she catches sight of herself in a full-length mirror propped up against one wall. She's sure it wasn't there before.
Her skin is scratched and devoured. Clawed, and bitten in a beautiful map of their passion. Her eyes are heavy-lidded as if the night had been an exquisite toll on her energy.
But her hair…
Her hair is woven intricately in a low complicated braid. Fishtailing and re-weaving back on itself here and there, a few strands left loose to frame her face with wild abandon. Complex and stunning. Tiny miniature bluebells adorn her crown, are dotted round to the tops of her ears and scatter down like violet freckles to the bottom of the braid.
"For love everlasting," Jareth says, leaning against one of the bed's pillars, having re-entered the room whilst she was admiring herself.
Sarah smiles tight-lipped, trying not to dwell on how bridal she looks. Thinking to say something mocking back.
How sentimental, Jareth.
She can see he's prepared for such a remark from the smirk playing across his lips. From the jut of his chin. Ready for another volley of their flirting taunts.
The words spill from her as she laughs at the goading eyebrow raise, but somewhere between her brain and her lips they change form.
"I love you."
She blinks. He blinks. Her mouth opens and closes wordlessly. Shocked at how unhindered the words have finally come. Without her permission, it seems. She pales, daunted, as the daring expression drops from his face. She barely sees him move, one second standing casually by the bed the next scooping her up in a hard kiss, so hard it feels like her lips darken under his, bruising more than they already were. One arm encircles her completely to grip her waist as his other hand cups her jaw, thumbing the line as their kiss widens, locked together-
The clock strikes the hour.
"I've gotta go," Sarah says, pulling back from his lips with reluctance.
Jareth lets go a long slow sigh as she rests her forehead against his.
"Tomorrow?" he murmurs and she nods, grateful that he sounds just as heartsick as she feels.
It wouldn't matter if she agreed or not. What's said is said. In his arms. Everyday. Forever.
It doesn't feel like a trap though.
It feels like a promise.
"Bye," she says, her heart giving a sad lurch to be separated so soon after those damning little words finally made it out of her mouth.
Jareth lays a last quick kiss on Sarah's lips before she ducks into the mirror, his hand holding hers until it slips from his at the last possible moment.
Sarah steps through the mirror.
And is promptly deafened by the noise on the other side.
The chaos is immense. Goblins crowd every surface. The floor. Her desk. Her bed. Some are playing cards, others have rummaged through her clothes and are now wearing her sweaters. Two swing companionably in a bra stretched across the knobs of her bed like a hammock.
A couple of lankier ones have found a portable TV, and somehow magicked up a bowl of popcorn as they crowd around it. Watching what looks to be an episode of Seinfeld. Popcorn shards litter her bed, along with a whole cupboard's worth of devoured snacks. Potato chip dust adorns the carpet. Half an abandoned tube of cookie dough lies squashed on her rug.
A large goblin with a cowlike face and a horned helmet is nose deep in Court of Blood: Book Three of the Chosen Trilogy, relaxing with an air of luxury at the foot of her bed. His watery bovine eyes wide as he thumbs the page, chewing pensively on a cooked chicken leg, clearly raided from the fridge.
Sarah blinks, stunned, momentarily unnoticed amongst the goblin din, before the shock slips away and her good friend Anger steps back into place.
This is why Jareth's room doesn't have a door.
"What the hell is going on?" she shouts above the ruckus.
The goblins freeze. Most with half-chewed food in their open mouths.
Somewhere in the crowd, someone mutters. "His missus is back." She glares in the general direction of the comment, eviscerating a clump of goblins crowded on her bookcase with a withering scowl.
"Yer majesty," another mumbles and the few goblins standing on her bed try to execute a volley of hurried bows and curtsies. Most lose their horned helmets in the process. One topples over the edge and lands with a curse on the carpet.
"Alright, queenie?" says a scratchy voice to her left. She turns to find Grüempy leering at her from his perch in a hole above her desk. "Have a good night didja?"
Sarah fights the rising heat trying to flood her cheeks, pointedly ignoring the suggestive twinkle in the goblin's eye.
"Why. Is my room. Full of goblins?" she grinds out, the tops of her ears burning from a knowing snicker at the back of the room.
"Well-" Grüempy shrugs as if he'd done her a favor, no big deal, don't even mention it. "-we though' you lovebirds may wan' the place to yerselves. Make it sorta romantic like."
The room nods in agreement with a general muttering attitude of happy to oblige.
Sarah bites the inside of her cheek. Carefully not looking around at the hoard watching her. She'd never been subjected to a 'walk of shame', but the amount of eyes on her at this moment, roving over the love bites on her neck and the scratches across her back, would make anyone blush.
"I'm going to check on my brother," she says icily, straightening her spine. "If even one goblin is still in my room when I get back I will personally kick him into the bog myself."
She means to sweep out, all dignity and grace, but nearly trips over the large leathery goblin still clutching the book in his paws.
"Er…" Røem mumbles, his hands clenching and unclenching the book over his chest. "Cud I… cud-"
Sarah rolls her eyes. "Yes, you can borrow it," she mumbles, before closing the door firmly behind her.
The goblins mutter and grumble, their evening interrupted, snacks abandoned and cards discarded as they troop through the mirror. The two swinging in the bra try to clamber out, only for one to get his foot stuck in the straps. He wriggles, panicking, and spills them both out onto the carpet with a squawk.
"Fae queenz are alvays so grouchy," says Aêlst, sighing as he switches off the TV, scooping more popcorn into his mouth before climbing down Sarah's duvet.
Grüempy wriggles down out of the hole in the wall, dislodging a clump of brick dust as he goes.
"That's cus they gotta put up wif fae kings," he says in true goblin fashion, choosing to remain purposely ignorant to the devastation the rabble have left behind.
Sarah leans against her bedroom door, catching her breath, as she listens to the sounds of goblin feet, and goblin grouching, dwindling on the other side.
'Your Majesty'. I mean for God's sake.
She catches sight of herself in the hallway mirror, and brushes the bluebells at the tip of her braid, her reflection unable to stop smiling. The evening still burns with a beautiful warmth in her veins, and she finds herself already eager for the next day too. And the one after that. And an eternity after that.
She slips quietly into Toby's room, dark save for his softly glowing nightlight.
His duvet has come untucked and has rumpled down around his waist. Soft curls frame his angelic features.
Sarah pulls the blanket up over him, tucking him back in with a kiss. He stirs just a little, before sinking back into slumber, and she folds Lancelot in underneath his arm.
"'Night, Toby" she whispers.
And stops.
And bites back a delighted grin. Toby's name…
The taste of peaches floods her mouth. Sticky and sweet, the color of sunshine and the flavor of wild summers. Hot evenings and adventures waiting.
Toby.
The End.