Work ate me up for a month. Le sigh.

I totally have an idea for the next chapter but I need to refine it in my brain a little more.

Disclaimer: see part 1

Sarah searched for what she was feeling at the moment, unsuccessfully. Her sore feet were dangling off the side of the rock overlooking the sluggish cement reinforced waterway that looped through the park near her house. Some ways away the water swirled in and out of a duck pond and made its way to whatever its destination was, downhill from here. The cement eventually fell away and allowed it to meander properly. In many ways she felt similarly about her life, pulled along by invisible forces between immovable barriers…

"You should be more careful near moving water." Jareth sat down, leaving enough space between them to prevent casual touching, and handed her a can of soda while snapping open his own. It still boggled her mind that he ate or drank anything at all, and she wasn't sure how he secured his supply, but as long as he didn't try to foist any New Coke* on her she would accept it graciously.

He perched next to her with languid grace, his bowtie loose around his neck but his formal wear otherwise unruffled. A plastic crown twinkled ironically in the moonlight atop his pale blond hair.

"Can I trust you to stop a nix from drowning me?" Sarah opened the soda carefully, letting it fizz angrily before entirely opening it. However Jareth stored them, they always came to her as if he had been shaking them furiously—something she had found out after displeasing mishaps with the first couple.

"Knowing you, I trust you would take off running at the sight of the nude male form regardless of his attempts to beguile you."

She covered up her blush with anger. "Nice to know you'd stand by and laugh."

"We have weeks before the solstice, there's little need to be on guard. Besides, they rarely attempt to poach the prey of others." He said it to make her feel better, she knew, but Sarah felt, all the same, that familiar jolt of fear: regardless of anything else she was still 'prey' to him on some level.

The points of the minty green heels Dawn had had her buy to match the poof of a prom dress reminded Sarah that walking home meant putting them back on. Even if she felt uncomfortable right here and now alone with Jareth, the shoes were a worse option for the moment. Dawn had promised she had a 'connection' for beer and would meet them at a discreet location after they got tired of the dance, but it seemed the after party where they had planned to relax and gossip had been derailed by unseen forces. Sarah secretly suspected the cute senior who had nervously asked her friend to the dance was to blame for the delay.

"So, how does it feel to be the king?" Sarah nodded to his plastic crown and he gave her a quick laugh followed by a toothy grin. "You didn't rig anything did you?"

"Pardon?"

"You didn't arrange it so you would be elected prom king, did you?" Popularity wasn't something he cared about, even if it had found him in their moderately sized high school. The speed at which he had become not only famous but actually respected was boggling her mind. Sarah had watched girls nearly swoon has he passed them, seemingly oblivious to their antics. He swore he was not enchanting the student body, so she supposed it was his natural charisma.

Jareth snorted, a rather indelicate noise to come from that patrician profile. "The very idea of electing royalty is preposterous. But if it eases your mind, no I had no part in engineering this rise to power."

The fangirl screams that had rocked the gym as he had ascended the stage had been real enough. Jareth was a junior and should not have been even on the ballot, but somehow the committee had put him on because it was a junior/senior prom after all and shouldn't they give a nod to half the population attending? And hadn't a junior girl won prom queen that one time? Sarah had heard the conversations on the tip of people's tongues as he had entered, even as speculation about them mortified her. Why hadn't they come together? Were they not actually a couple? Why would he dance with other girls? Did anyone else have a chance?

Sarah had secretly hoped Dawn and her date would join them to deconstruct the experience because there was a lot of drama to unpack before the last couple weeks of school. Right now the lanky senior from the basketball team was probably stumbling through a confession that would amount to nothing as he left for college and Dawn continued to live her life. That was how these kinds of things went. To be in the same place at the same time as the person you liked and be able to nurture the spark already felt rare.

"Just give me a couple minutes and then could you walk me home? I don't think I could outrun anything in these shoes." Sarah gave an apologetic smile, but turned her face away immediately as she saw the flicker of disappointment on Jareth's face.

"You would want the night to end so early?"

"This feels like the longest Saturday of my life. After the phone calls to coordinate, there was the exfoliating and the nail painting and the hair poofing and the makeup.. and then there were pictures in what felt like every location pictures could feasibly be taken in… and then hours at the dance itself! I feel like I've been 'at the dance' since 10am this morning." She examined his carefully neutral face. "And let me guess, you snapped a suit into place minutes before you arrived fashionably late."

It sounded like she hadn't had a good time, the way she was whining. To be honest, it had actually been fun. She had loved getting ready with Dawn and how excited her parents were to take pictures of the girls, even as Toby ran around the lawn and ruined half of them. Then there had been all the laughter as they had tried to move in their heels over the grass and get to Dawn's house so Dawn's family could fuss over them too. They'd eaten a quick meal there before Dawn's date had picked them both up and driven them to the dance.

Sarah felt perfectly content talking with classmates and watching the fashion show as people entered. Benny, the most surprising of Jareth's new friends, who was like a powder blue beacon in his suit, had come to find her and say hi before retreating back into his group of friends. He had been looking for Jareth, and it never ceased to amaze her that people thought she knew where he was at any given time. It wasn't like she was his keeper.

Besides, when Jareth had finally shown up he was unmistakable. Unlike in the classroom, where he seemed to keep a purposefully low profile, in a social situation like this she could totally believe he was royalty. Politely, he had moved through the room and mixed with just about every group in some way. It might have even been unconscious, the way he worked the room like a politician. By the time he finally made it over to Sarah, punch for her carefully poised in his gloved hand, all she'd been able to do was laugh. Naturally he hadn't understood what she found so funny. He was doing the socially acceptable thing at a formal dance. Once Sarah explained to him that most people just kept to their friend groups and danced with their date or with the crowd he allowed his displeasure to show a little. He made a comment about how modern society had lost even the most basic grasp of social niceties and she had called him a crotchety old man. Jareth had got a little stormy about that, even though she had meant it as a joke. Usually only skirting the edges of seriousness, something about the environment had brought out his sincerity and he took offense where none was intended. Attempts to laugh away the comment while not giving away any details of his fae ancestry had come out awkward and only dug the hole deeper.

After that Sarah was sure he had danced with every girl but her just to punish her. It was only a punishment if she had wanted to dance with him, she told herself. The apology for, she assumed, hurting his feelings couldn't leave her lips since she couldn't get within ten feet of him.

"I think you finally convinced the school that we're not dating." By cutting me so hard even the teacher chaperones noticed and came to see if I was ok. Her words broke the unusually companionable silence. "So there's that." If wistfulness had entered her tone she would never admit to it. And my, weren't the stars so bright it made the eyes water just a tad.

If he noticed the quiver in her tone he was discreet enough not to bring it up. "If you would prefer a return to ambiguity… I was under the impression you found the deceit distasteful."

Honestly, she would have welcomed it, but found herself shaking her head. "You might be good at fooling people, but I'm always the weak link in the chain. I can't lie about my feelings." Sarah was not so good an actress that she could pretend she liked him to the world while pretending that she didn't in private to him and all the while liking him in truth—it would be too farcical. With a jolt as powerful as when Jareth touched her, she realized from the path of her inner thoughts that she liked him. Sarah wanted more from him than friendship despite the age difference, the magic, the fear of abduction, and very real and practical issue of separating for college in a year. Stubbornly, she told her burning cheeks to halt giving away her mortification at her own easily compromised ideals regarding both fae and high school relationships. Time to let those thoughts steep until she knew what to do with them.

"So I've noticed." His hand twisted a little and the soda can was gone. She really wished she could learn how to do that, it was honestly amazing. They sat in silence a little longer, and Sarah felt her heart stretch and warp as she struggled to understand why she couldn't just let him go. She could still safely call him a friend, even if everyone had thought them more, and she could work with that. Jareth was handsome as a painting with his pale coloring washed out in the light of the waning half-moon, and after he stood he offered a gloved hand to her.

"I guess it's that time." Sarah put on a brave smile and accepted the hand to get her down from the rock face, but he didn't let her go once she was firmly on the ground. His hand clasped her waist and he twirled her into something that started out like a waltz but then lost its rigidity as he hummed a tune under his breath. Jareth was intent, his grip properly firm to lead the dance, but also avoiding eye contact until he came to the end of the unfamiliar tune. Finally relinquishing her, he gave a courtly bow and Sarah continued her stunned stillness. She could have sworn those eyes of his were each a different color again for a moment, something that only happened when magic was at play, but she didn't feel alarmed and blamed her treacherous heart for its lack of caution.

With a flourish he moved his plastic crown to the top of her slightly deflated hair, and Sarah finally let a smile break over her face. "I owed you a dance," Jareth said as she curled her bare toes in the grass, shoes forgotten and heart hammering.

At home, face down in her pillow, she would bemoan both the fact that a kiss was practically demanded in that scenario and that she hadn't had the balls to do it. He couldn't; she had been so vocal about him keeping his distance that any move was her responsibility now. Instead, she stared at the cheap plastic jewels on the crown and wondered what next?

*Note: New Coke was a product released in the mid-80s that was notoriously reviled. It lasted a few months in the US and a little longer than that in Canada before 'classic' coke was brought back.