Author: Auditory Eden
Rating: T
Warnings: Sexy Jareth. A riding crop. Self-explanatory
Notes: It's summer - rain, honeysuckle, a whispered secret, a life-size crystal unicorn...and a riding crop. A romantic interlude between the Goblin King and his lady love Sarah. For the Jareth-GK writing challenge.
Mind Over Matter
Sarah groaned quietly as she stepped free of the market's air conditioning, into the muggy stillness of mid-summer air. The close heat seemed to be stilling her movements, and walking the fifty feet to her car seemed to drag on for ages. Hot sunshine seared its way onto her skin, and she could almost feel the burn beginning, a tightness in the surface, a rosy blush deceiving the eye.
It was with great relief that she hauled her bags into the boot, slammed it shut, and slid into the driver's seat.
At least until she actually slid into the driver's seat.
With a hiss and yelp, Sarah flung herself out of the car, a hand flying to the seared skin of her back and shoulders, the other sliding briefly over the backs of her thighs, as though checking that the flesh was all still there and whole. The damn thing was a convertible, and even with top down it behaved like a solar cooker!
As she glared into the oven that was her car, the crystal unicorn mirror decoration glimmered at her mischievously. She glared at it with greater intensity.
It was a gift from Jareth, of course. No mortal craftsman could possibly create so fine a replica. Sometimes she caught herself wondering if it wasn't real, a tiny horse Jareth had turned to crystal to amuse himself, and in hopes of courting her good favor with a sparkling trinket.
She'd found the thing on her desk one morning, hanging from the light of her goose-neck lamp, perfectly positioned to catch the dawning sun and fling it into her eyes in a blaze of painful splendorous. The only proper retaliation, in Sarah's opinion, was to give the thing a name that would make the Goblin King's unnatural hair curl, something inelegant and common and hokey.
She'd called it Bart.
Now, months later, Jareth's wail was still ringing slightly in her ears.
"Don't you patronize me," she told Bart with a scalding glare, watching the ornament turn the front seat to starfire. "You'll never have an ass to burn on the car seat."
The horse seemed to give her a hurt look, and Sarah growled as she slammed the door. She growled again as she opened the back door and rooted through the pile of class supplies and books in her back seat, searching vain for a sweater, a beach towel, anything to cover the seat and protect her exposed back and legs.
"As much as I'm enjoying the view, oughtn't you to be wearing a bit more clothing, Sarah darling?" a male voice said behind her.
Even if she hadn't known that voice, all gritty and intense and doing very bad things to her libido, she would have known him by the scent now hanging in the thickness of the air. A smell that lodged behind her throat and made her swallow convulsively, a scent that seemed to rush straight to her brain and shut off all the higher functions, allowing the pleasure centers to run rampant. An insidious perfume that sent a tingling heat straight downwards, to lodge uncomfortably in the pit of her belly, between her hips.
She'd always thought honeysuckle was a scent for girls, but that was before she'd smelled it on Jareth.
It was so faint, that she almost sucked in more air to try and bring that heavenly, masculine scent back, but caught herself. It might be okay to indulge if he'd just left her, but he couldn't be allowed witness this most obvious sign of attraction.
"Jareth," she said as she turned round, managing somehow to use her tired and long-suffering voice instead of her please bed me right now voice. "How very...unexpected."
He was every inch as smug and gorgeous and tempting as she remembered, lanky and languorous, wearing a leather jacket over a white shirt and the tightest jeans Sarah had ever seen on a man. Though he wore long sleeves and long pants, not even a sheen of perspiration was evident on his face. The human glamour smoothed the lines of his eyebrows down and rounded his ears as well, and his long hair was combed back into a golden pony-tail. It simply wasn't fair, Sarah thought.
"Your state of undress, Sarah," he chided, as though she were a troublesome child avoiding the subject. She bristled.
"This is perfectly acceptable attire, all things considered," she snapped.
Jareth was suddenly a foot from her, and his hand swept through the air around her body, an elongated and lazy gesture. "What part of your attire is...perfectly acceptable in any place beyond the bedroom?" he demanded softly, focused on the tiny shorts and the bathing suit top, and somehow managing to avoid the wide expanses of flawless skin they exposed in all their absence.
Sarah rolled her eyes, the idea that Jareth regarded her current attire as roughly equivalent to sexy lingerie pleasing her in a way it shouldn't have. "These shorts are longer than a lot of girls wear, and this top is for swimming in. It's okay to dress like this right now, because it is ninety-eight degrees!" She made a sweeping but awkward gesture towards the painfully blue sky. "You want to see bedroom attire, I've got some of that too, but I'll tell you a secret. I'm not wearing any now."
"Really?" he purred. "Not wearing any, at all...?"
"N...no..." Sarah stammered.
"I see," was his short reply. Was that strain she heard in his voice? She thrilled with that idea.
"Now, with regards to your...bedroom attire," he began, clearly determined to take control again. "You said you have some. Was that a promise, Sarah Williams?"Jareth breathed, having somehow moved closer to her again. Now those long, thin hands were draped sensuously around her bare waist, and he was wearing gloves.
"How can you be dressed like that?" Sarah gasped out, fingering the collar of his jacket.
The Goblin Kind, resident nuisance, looked up from her throat and cleavage, and smirked.
"It's really quite simple, precious," he told her smugly. "Very simple indeed. All I have to do is put mind over matter. And Sarah, dear, please do cover yourself." He removed himself from contact with her body long enough to shuck the leather jacket and hold it out to her.
She snarled at him. "You must be crazy if you think I'd put that thing on in this heat."
Jareth tipped his head to the side in that horrible puppy-dog way of his, and Sarah snarled more, backing slowly away, until she hit the dark green, and roasting, side of her car, yelped again, and flung herself back in the direction she came from.
Unfortunately for her, Jareth had been advancing on her as she moved backwards, so throwing herself forwards again resulted rather abruptly in being wrapped in glittery fairy man.
Glittery fairy man who, Sarah acknowledged dizzily, with her throat and lower belly suddenly aching and tightening, smelled deliciously male.
Jareth, ever one to exploit opportunity, took the chance to simultaneously wrap her in his coat and smooth his hands over as much of her flesh as possible while still avoiding a smacking.
"It's too hot!" Sarah protested weakly
Jareth looked down at her reddening face, the evidence of coming heatstroke, and so he quipped, "The heat's the thing, eh?" before he cause a minor atmospheric disturbance that caused the heavens to open and pour out their buckets all within the matter of seconds. The air almost instantly cooled, and Sarah shot him a look of mixed thanks and annoyance. Then the synapses fired, and she realized that it was raining.
"My car!" she wailed, spinning out Jareth's arms as the rain pounded down on them. "You flooded my car!"
"Well, how is it my fault the stupid thing doesn't have a roof, then?" he defended quickly.
"How am I going to get home now?" she asked him accusingly, sopping hair falling into her eyes. His wide, almost obscene grin was warning enough, though it set her insides doing to tango for another reason entirely.
One gloved had reached up to the mirror of her car, unhooked something, then returned to his side. "Like this," he pronounced with an air of superiority, then dropped whatever it was.
Sarah had half a second to recognize Bart the Unicorn and screech a protest, before a fully formed charger complete with built in horn was standing beside her on the pavement, pawing and snorting.
A transparent, crystal charger.
"Here," Jareth said, offering her a leg up. She looked at him askance; he'd pulled that thrice-damned riding crop from somewhere, and was holding it out with both hands, like a step.
"I'll get up on my own, thanks," she told him archly, and attempted to scramble up the back of her shiny new unicorn steed.
The problem with this was immediately obvious. Crystal anythings are quite smooth to begin with. They are texture-less, and lend no hand holds or grip. Bart was now standing above her head, and he was still crystal, and it was raining, which only added to the slickness of the surface. He seemed disinclined to aid her in her struggle as well, probably the result of Jareth making some kind of order or condition.
She swore as she lost her grip and slid into a puddle.
Jareth looped an arm around her waist to steady her briefly. Taking the opportunity to press a light kiss to her temple, he murmured, "Please, Sarah darling. Let me help you," his voice underlined with pleading.
Sarah snorted and mumbled at him, and he grinned at her wickedly. In but half a second, he's swung her up and onto the back of the horse, where she wound her fingers in the spun-sugar strands of the crystal unicorn's mane. In another moment he'd swung himself up as well, lithe and graceful as a cat, one arm reaching around her to grip the mane, the other reaching back to deliver a flick of the crop to the horse's flank.
As the crystalline creature bore its riders through the torrential storm, Sarah settled back into the warmth of the coat and Jareth's willing form, and sighed a tired and just barely friendly, "Thanks," before the girl drifted to sleep in his arms.
Behind his human glamour, the Trickster King grinned victoriously. It was only one step, but for now, one was enough.
xXx
Parting Comments: My first foray into the magical world of Labyrinth. I only discovered the film last week, via a Doctor Who/Labyrinth crossover fiction (which was rather good, by the way, so thanks to Jessa L'Rynn for that), and I have quickly become enamored with Jareth, Sarah, the film itself, and naturally, the amazingness that is David Bowie. My new favorite song is Magic Dance, and I know As the World Falls Down by heart.
This is, as I've previously mentioned, for "His Majesty's" challenge. I don't know why, but I perceived Jareth as being much less selfish, vindictive, and courtly than most people characterize him as. In the film he clearly had playful sides to him, and the resignation when he threw the crystal at the end...I can't really see him properly sulking over things, or acting overmuch like a spoilt child.
Ah well, those are my thoughts...
Hugs and Kisses,
Eden