Chapter 12: Sucking Out Poison

Soundtrack for chapter 12:
David Bowie: "The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (As Beauty)"
Ian Hunter: "Good Man in a Bad Time"

Author's Note: Please be advised of strong sexual elements in this chapter which some readers might find emotionally troubling-it's not lemony fanservice. It's a bit ugly and a whole lotta effed up. No judgement if you enjoy that sort of thing either. Just be aware.

"I won't do it," Sarah said. "And you're terrible to ask me to do it. Letting an evil spirit possess me? I could die. My mother…" Sarah closed her eyes in pain, remembering the awful confrontation with Linda, how her own mother had tried to take over her body by pushing her soul out, a birth in reverse. She'd done it for hundreds of years, murdering her own children for a facsimile of immortality. "Jareth, she almost killed me. How can you even ask me to do this?"

Her face was still framed by his hands, and he leaned down and kissed her, brought her mouth to his like she were a ripe piece of fruit. That kiss warmed her down to her toes, tingled her nerve-endings like an aphrodisiac.

"This isn't nearly as dangerous as what you faced with Linda. This thing can't steal your body like she could. It's only a louder echo."

"Exorcism would be simpler," Sarah said.

"True, but it's not what I want here. I have some tasks I need to accomplish, and this will serve as an introduction to the work I have in mind. And I have an excellent veto for your understandable objection." He stroked her hair back behind her ears and kissed her again, possessive, drugging.

"That being?" she asked, breathless, half-accepting already.

"Because I'm asking you to," he said, pinching her lips together. "Please." His other hand traveled knowingly down her belly and cupped her mound, and gave it a similarly cruel and slow pinch.

Sarah moaned, half in rage and half in sensual feeling, and twisted out of his grasp.

"You're a shit, you know that?"

"What I am is a demon. And milady is at my service. What luxury." He sat back down at his table, legs vulgarly spread, and lit another cigarette. "Choose what you're going to do, Sarah. Choose carefully. You can finish scrubbing my floor—finish scrubbing it in your underwear for all I care, because one way or another I'll see you naked and sweating tonight—and walk back to your wretched garret alone when you're done. Or you can do this for me and I'll reward you. Generously."

"With what, a magic lesson?" Sarah asked wearily.

Jareth shook his head and brought his hands down between his crotch in a V, outlining and glorifying his bulge.

"You are a whore," Sarah muttered.

"Oh yes," Jareth agreed. "You'll find I'm an excellent whore. You'll find out quite a few new things if you obey me. So. Finish one job or start another, Sarah. You're cleaning up either way. Choose now. The night waxeth and negotiating with you is losing its savor."

She looked over to the whirling pattern of anti-light on the stage. Now that she had no physical contact with him, all the echoes and the thrum of magic was harder to experience. Then she looked over at where the brush floated like a corpse in the dirty cooling bucket, and at all the rest of the filthy length of the floor that she hadn't scrubbed yet.

And then she looked at him, in his cloud of white and his tight suit, an angel of sex and forbidden knowledge, looking at her with his full attention. And she gave a forlorn sigh, rolled up her sleeves, and began to work.

Sarah closed her eyes and listened. The radiators sent up a muffled and regular clanking. Like the cadence of the scrubbrush against the floor, it was like the line of a melody, slow and sensual, the sound of a forlorn voice crying out in the wilderness, crying out in song.

"You were here," she said softly. "It's your voice. A long long time ago. Do you remember the song you were singing?"

A pause, a silence, and the gentle sound of his exhalation. "Lorca. 'Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint,'" Jareth said into the darkness behind her eyes.

"Jareth, they're here because of you. All of these echoes." She opened her eyes, and he was sitting at a table in a smoke-filled hall full of men. They danced together and danced alone, moving slowly, as if underwater. "It's you," Sarah said, seeing him appear and disappear as the crowded throng moved around him. "These ghosts are hung on the memory of your voice. Sing. Sing that song."

Jareth stood up, bright, bright, shining like a lamp in the darkness, and the ghosts were shadows he cast. He stood on the stage, and clasped his hands before him, and began to sing one note—one long, soft note that penetrated to every corner.

She felt the presence of bodies around her, physical bodies, warming the cold space. She could smell them. She could almost feel them jostling up against her. "Listen to him," she told them, using all the power she could summon into her voice. "Listen. You hear him? He is singing for you. Just you. Just you."

Jareth's voice reached a wordless crescendo that broke with a cry of pain. And she could hear him beginning to sing a song whose words she knew, but the melody was new, soft, consoling.

"Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night."

Among the men who comforted each other in their loneliness she felt a presence made more powerful and recognizable in its loneliness and despair by being in the crowd. She elbowed her way among the others, searching it out.

"I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair."

There he was, standing stock-still while the rest of the crowd moved and swayed like sea anemones to the tide of the song. Alone, still, a back unusually straight as if there were an iron bar strapped to his spine, or shackles on his feet. Sarah elbowed her way past the other ghosts in the crowd so that she could see him. Tall, sandy-haired, there was too much self-control in his face for there to be room for beauty, but he was beautiful as he listened to the music. His eyes were wide with bewilderment, and his mouth was wide and sensual, half-open, panting with some sort of internal crisis that was more shock than lust. Looking at Jareth, looking at Jareth.

"Do you hear him?" Sarah asked. "He's calling to you."

"I can't," the man said, shaking his head, eyes fixed on the object of his obsession. "What is life even worth after this? I can't go back to what I have. He's ruined it for me."

"No," Sarah murmured. She took his hand in hers. It was warm and strong. "He called to you, and now you're calling him. Go to him. He wants you."

The man's lower lip trembled. "No," he said, voice full of despair. "No, never." Shaking his head as if clearing away a train of thought, he looked down at her and saw her. "Who are you?"

"I'm Sarah. Who are you?"

"Phillip. What are you doing here?"

"Helping," Sarah said. "He'll listen to me. He always listens to me. What do you want to say to him?"

He only shook his head in refusal.

"If you are my hidden treasure,
If you are my cross, my dampened pain,
If I am a dog, and you alone my master."

"Step through me," Sarah commanded him. "Speak through me. Now. Before I change my mind. He won't refuse you. I swear it."

His hand in hers was hard and desperate. He looked from her, up to the stage, and back again. Tighter and tighter, and Sarah wanted to pry those cruel fingers off of her. It was like being dragged under by a drowning victim. The ghost hit her body like the cold crash of a sudden wave… and she was the one drowning.

"Never let me lose what I have gained,
And adorn the branches of your river
With leaves of my estranged Autumn."

Terror dogged every one of his steps to the stage, where the singer was singing. He wasn't human. Nothing so perfect could be human. Phillip was torn in two pieces, wanting to run away from him, and wanting to run to him. Loneliness had compelled him to visit the club tonight, hoping that some brief sexual encounter might purge that ache for a moment. He'd been surprised outside the door, hearing the songs the musician sang, knife-sharp music that was poetry, refined, made holy by his voice. He should have run away.

And now it felt as though he'd done nothing but listen and yearn for this music for years, and years, and years.

He went up to the stage and looked up into the face of his god, who was singing a song about rescue from an underground life and the absence of affection.

"I love you," Phillip said to him in a quietly conversational tone of voice. His words were lost in the crowd and the house's tinny three-piece band, but the god heard him nonetheless.

And the god… faltered. He missed a word, transfixed like a butterfly on the pin of Phillip's adoration.

Something happened then, something magical that Phillip would remember even until the moment of his death. The god touched his fingers to his lips, and set them on the microphone, which began to sing for him. No one else in the crowd seemed troubled; Phillip wasn't troubled, he was awestruck and unsurprised. A creature like this might do anything, anything, and who were mere mortals to question what he decreed? The god descended the stage, the altar of worship, and reached out one hand to him, inviting him in to his embrace.

Terrified, Phillip turned and ran. The crowd parted before him like sleepwalkers, enchanted by the sound of the singer's voice, which went on and on… the doors to the jakes were locked, occupied by lovers or those with full bladders. The door to the utility closet was open, though he locked it behind him once he shoved himself inside.

He pressed his palms into his eyes and cried in three harsh sobs, all he would allow himself. Then he turned on the water and splashed it in his face. He looked up into the mirror.

In the mirror behind him, the god. Of course. Nothing could prevent a god's passage, certainly not something as insipid as a door to a closet.

"Why did you run?" the god asked him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I wanted to dance with you."

"No you didn't," Phillip said, hot-eyed, angry, humiliated by his own deficiency. "How could you?"

"Because you love me," he said. Coaxingly, carefully, as one might with a fearful animal, the god wrapped his arms around Phillip's chest and leaned his head against his shoulder. "Because you are very beautiful when you love me. You called me, and I came. What would you have of me?"

"What?" Phillip asked, though he could feel the arousal of the other man—no, not a man, a god!—against his ass. "Nothing!" he stammered. "Nothing. Just… just to love you. That's all I want. I'm sorry. Please, let me go away. I'm sorry."

"Tell me your name."

"Phillip," he stuttered. "Phillip Neuland Channard. Doctor-Phillip-Neuland-Channard," he said in a rush, shocked at himself. He never so much as carried ID into clubs like this, certainly never gave his name to anyone who might recognize it later. But this was no ordinary situation.

"I'm Jareth. Well, Doctor-Phillip-Neuland-Channard, you say you want just to love me. So love me." Those long and clever fingers were sliding down his trouser-front, were grasping him, and he found himself erect in the god's hands, that part of himself struggling to be touched. "Love me with pleasure."

Phillip let out a moan as he was taken in a tight embrace and stroked and stroked until he thought he might die of it, so exquisite was Jareth's touch. His eyelids fluttered, his vision strobed, and all he could see was the stern and determined face of the god looking over his shoulder, and his own face giving back a grimace of terrified ecstasy as he felt himself nearing a spill.

"No," he said, just before the crisis could overtake him. In their shared narrow space, he pulled the god's hands off of him and turned and knelt before him. "This is how I want to worship you," he whispered, unbuttoning him, unzipping him, until he was free.

"God's fucking bones," he hissed, getting a good look at the bobbing cobra before him, and then up at Jareth's face. Jareth only smiled affectionately and ran his hand through Phillip's hair. Then that grip tightened in her hair, and she found himself on her knees, and he was bare before her, and he wanted her, but his face held a certain amount of compassion.

"Sarah," Jareth said. "You need not go so far."

"No," she said, full of untapped lust, understanding what it would be like to have him in her mouth, in this moment of truly knowing what felt good to a man… "No. I want this."

As her lips, as his lips, explored the texture of his ripe and hot head, she sucked him in as she might have sucked a cherry. And he was undone by her, a god undone! He leaned back against the sink, half sitting against it for balance, thighs ridiculously spread between dropped trousers and pants, his hands in his hair not tugging or forcing, but stroking, encouraging, as he took him in as deeply as he could in one go, and then began a slow rhythm upon him, deep in his throat, opened to receive him, relishing the tang of his sweat and flowing juices. Phillip felt his own penis throb in sympathy with the pulse of Jareth's pleasure, but one moment before it could become a technical exercise, Jareth grabbed him under the armpits and brought him up against him, and he was kissing him, his tongue against his tongue, striving and sucking in tune with the crossed swords of their flesh below. One grip. His hands. The pleasure. His body!

His head went nova; he saw stars.

He slowly became aware of himself. He found he was weeping like a child in Jareth's arms. The god, who was only holding him close, and kissing his tears away.

"I died because you didn't love me," he sobbed.

"Precious thing," Jareth said tenderly, rocking him in his arms. "Forgive me. I should have reached out to you that night. I almost did. Your love was real, and I was afraid of you."

"You don't love me."

"Phillip, there are a thousand thousand stories of us, and in one of those stories, I love you. Think of that, and be free of your pain. You can go where nothing ever hurts again."

"How can I?" he wept. "How can I, when I still love you so?"

"Because this is the story where I love you," Jareth said. "Doctor-Phillip-Neuland-Channard, I love you." And he saw there were tears in the god's eyes—tears for him, each one a cut diamond of perfect and priceless worth.

He gave one long shuddering breath. He felt himself washed clean, forgiven, absolved of all burden of self-hatred and fear.

"Go now," Jareth said, laying his hand upon his brow. "Go serenely."

… and he was gone.

Sarah slowly became aware of herself. She found she was weeping like a child in Jareth's arms. Her god, who was only holding her close, and kissing her tears away. Her cunt ached with the aftermath of fulfilled lust. She had had her first orgasm with another person, and it had been with Jareth, and she hadn't been herself at all. She was devastated.

"Shhh," he said, cradling her in his arms. Her jeans and underwear were tangled around her knees, and his hands gently groped and squeezed her naked buttocks. Had he penetrated her, with his penis or his fingers? She felt sore enough that he might have, though if he had used his penis, he hadn't come inside her. Her breath caught on a sob and she swallowed the rest of her tears.

"Who was he?" Sarah asked in a whisper.

"There was a police raid on this place that night. It was … 1965, I think. Perhaps '66. Some of the patrons they beat with clubs, and some they carted off to the city jail. There were laws about public decency in those days, but this crackdown was unusually ugly. Phillip wasn't brave enough to face the public humiliation of outing. So he killed himself." Jareth flicked the tears off his cheeks as if he were banishing insects. "He hung himself in his cell. His ghost has haunted this place, and the memory of me, ever since. But it's over now, Sarah. He's over. You gave him peace. I'm grateful to you, for that."

She leaned away from him and drew her clothes back on over her nakedness and her hurting, hollow space.

"He's at peace and me... I hurt now. I let you hurt me." She refused to look him in the face. She only looked at the door. "It's only worth it if this is a story where you love me. Is this a story where you love me, Jareth?"

He didn't answer for a long moment. She heard the sounds of cloth drawn over skin as he put his own clothing back together. And then he drew his fingers through the long skeins of her hair. "It's too soon to know," he replied. "But I think, Sarah… I think I want it to be so, if you would have it be so."

"Tell me you're sorry," she said, leaning her head against the door and crying again.

And he for his part didn't rebuke her for crying or tell her to stop. He only took her hand in his and opened the door for them both. He didn't apologize to her with any audible word.