Author's Note: Geez! This thing is going longer than I ever thought it would! I swear, I have the final three chapters written out already and I keep having to number them further and further away because I write something else or get another angle in. A few- a very, very few- of the readers from the 'Bond of...' Series will recognize that bad habit. Anyway, hope everyone is okay and that this isn't getting too boring for anyone. It shouldn't be too long now.
Author's Note: Little piece of information: the title of this chapter- Dream Reality- comes from a phrase in a David Bowie song. For anyone interested, it's from the song 'Quicksand' from the Hunky Dory album. I think the song as a whole is too saccharine and sweet, but I love certain phrases in it. This was one of them.
"I was looking for you."
He gazes at her but for some reason she seems much more fragile than he remembers, much more translucent. The light seems to shine right through her. "I was right here," he says, trying to keep himself from reaching out to take her arm. He doesn't want to break her.
She tips her head and smiles with that wicked mouth, all green shining eyes and dark hair. "Don't I get a kiss?" she teases, "No good morning hug even?"
He reaches forward, careful to distance himself just so. The sunlight is cold against his bare skin though it glows on hers and he shivers in the bed just enough that she frowns a little and grasps his fingers.
"Jareth? Are you okay? You don't look so good."
"I don't feel good."
"Oh?" She sits up and touches his forehead before trailing her fingers down his cheek. "Headaches again? You know, we should go Aboveground and get your eyes checked. They might be able to do something about that left one."
"My eye is fine."
"You get headaches," she says firmly, "You told me that yourself. It can't be good. Besides, maybe they can fix it."
"Sarah, forget about my eyes or my headaches. I do not have a headache. I just feel… drained."
"Drained? Why?"
Jareth shakes his head and shuts his eyes. He does not want to look at her. If he does he knows what he will see- a dream. A desire that was so desperate it turned into a way of life that he never really lets go of. But he does not want to let go. When he lets go of the dreams, what else will he have? He has let Sarah go three times- once when she refused him that first time, then after she rejected him the second time, and finally when she died. He let her go all three times. He could have kept her through deceit. By rights, she only won the right to make him give back the child. And he could have dragged her back to the Underground before she died. She did not need to wish, not really.
Feather-light kisses against his eyelids and his lips. He does not even realize there are tears slipping down his face until he feels her lips kiss them away.
"What's wrong, baby?" she croons, "Don't cry. Ssh! It's okay. I'll make it okay. Whatever it takes, I'll make it okay."
Oh, he has done a great job with this. His insane wish when she died- 'I wish to keep a part of her, just in my dreams'. He did not think he could get anything else. He had no memories, no mutual friends. All he had had was that burning need to be with her, to give her every wonder she desired and to perhaps see just a hint of love in her eyes.
"Jareth? Jareth, please stop. You're scaring me. I've never seen you like this. Please stop."
He opens his eyes and there she is, framed by the sun, with her face flushed and her eyes shining so brightly. But the green seems wrong. It seems… dead. Those eyes should be dead! They should not be haunting his every moment. They should not constantly be in his head, marking him.
"Get away," he says, "Please, darling. I need you to not touch me. Please."
She looks so hurt, so confused. But she sits away and pushes her hair behind her ear, watching him with worry so clear on her face that he looks out the window just to keep his sanity. She should never look like that, not even in a dream.
He craves her, and it drains him, unlocking floodgates and mansion doors in his head so that his senses slip out to escape. But he is still in the dream, and dream and reality blend until he is trapped in some hell dimension and the only thing he knows is that he is sitting up, his head in his hands, dry sobbing because everything inside of him is flowing outwards in waves and leaving a burning shell behind.
Phantom fingers ghost over his hair but he draws away. He cannot stand her touch, not now. Not this smoke-screen version of Sarah that cuts him to bleeding ribbons. He wants to love her, needs to love her. He wants to wrap her in his arms and make love to her. But even if he could let himself succumb to that, he does not have it in him to do it. The hollow inside of him is growing, burning, scratching, itching, needling… his mind is freewheeling over the land so fast that he can taste the water of the lakes as he feels the earth crumble beneath his feet.
And just as suddenly his pulse picks up.
Jareth sat up in bed with a gasp, his heart pounding and his skin freezing. He had to physically pull himself back into his head, but he couldn't. His mind wouldn't slide back into his skull, and he was still at that heightened sense of awareness that kept him stretched to bare breaking point.
He got hurriedly out of the bed and backed away, dragging a hand through his hair to loosen the sweat-damp clumps. He couldn't stop shivering. And his legs felt as if they would give way any second. There was no air in his lungs. The room was silent as a tomb, falling in on him with each breath and the shadows lengthened and reached out to grab him.
He couldn't breathe. It hurt too much.
He needed… he knew what he needed, but he wasn't up to it.
One of the males!
He frantically tried to get his frozen mind to work. Everyone would be asleep. And this was too important. He couldn't face an anonymous partner tonight. Not tonight. Not for this. Not with Sarah's green eyes in his mind. He couldn't do that, either to her or himself.
The smallest piece left… that last bit…
'… not that we've done anything that requires either a top or a bottom…'
Toby.
Jareth didn't even stop to think. He roused himself enough to get to the door and open it. The corridor stretched on forever and he could feel it all- a thousand feet on the stone, a thousand dreams behind every door, a million breathes in soft lungs. He moaned and clutched his head, the tears catching on his lashes as he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other to reach a door not three rooms away.
It felt like the journey of a lifetime.
But he made it.
He pushed open the door and he might have let out a small wounded cry because Toby was awake instantly, blinking sleep from his blue eyes as he tried to see in the darkness. He probably couldn't see in any case but Jareth wasn't even aware of his own presence enough to remember such facts. He lurched forward and Toby was scrambling out of bed to pick him up off the floor and carry him back to the bed.
"Jareth? Are you ill? Does something hurt?"
Taking Toby's hand and pressing it wildly to his lips, aching against the rough skin. He guided it down his neck, over his chest, his eyes closed. He was overloading now, his entire body threatening to cave into the black hole left inside of him as everything rushed out. And all the fae could do was blindly follow his urges.
Toby didn't understand. His mind was still sluggish and he couldn't really see very well. That, and the vision of the Goblin King lying prone on his bed, head swaying from side to side on the pillow. It was a blurred vision but Toby could see just enough to make it out. He didn't even realize where his hand was being taken until it was pressed against a hard weight in loose sleeping trousers.
Jareth actually cried out and bucked, eyes snapping open.
Toby gasped too and snatched his hand away. He flipped on the lamp beside the table and in the flare of the oil Jareth's eyes were glowing at him, desperate and horribly sane. Horribly, terribly, sane.
"Toby." A whispered command, more than a plea. "Toby, I need this."
"You've made a mistake," Toby said firmly, "I do not want to do this."
"Please." Jareth's fingers tightened on the mortal's muscular forearm, "Please!"
Toby Williams stopped short and stared. The Goblin King was pleading? Not that it sounded like a plea, but beneath the staccato snapping, there was a very real desperation. And those eyes were so hurt! Was it possible to have eyes that bled tears?
It seemed it was, because Jareth turned his face away and dissolved back into silent crying, shuddering against the sheets as if his entire body was about to shake apart.
Toby was scared. This was not something he had ever handled before. But good sense existed in plenty and he was used to snapping out a quick decision to any problem at hand. He sat closer and gathered the Goblin King gently into his arms, cautiously beginning to rock. He remembered his mother doing this for him and he knew the Lady Pandora had nursed him so when he fell ill once as a child. True, Jareth was not ill, but Toby suspected it was more than just a raging erection. Only, it did look rather painful.
Jareth stifled the sobs against his neck, his emotions soothing at the care and the touch of another warm, familiar body. His physical condition was another matter. Immersing himself in chaos was not something Jareth had frequently done, and he had never done so without a strong focus. It was driving him mad.
He shifted against the warm weight against him and gulped, fluttering wet eyelashes open against a warm cheek. Lifting his head, looking straight at those blue eyes with the strangely contracted pupils in the yellow glow. Yellow turned to gold turned to gilt turned to ash. Warm breath and beating heart.
The smallest, tiniest, safest piece of Sarah that he had left to him. And was that why he was here, in the man's bed, at dark midnight? Silently asking to be made himself again?
Yes.
But it wasn't Sarah's green eyes he was looking at. These eyes were blue, deep and beautiful in the lamplight. The plain face was openly worried, openly cautious, displaying everything there for the fae to read. A hard chest and Jareth couldn't resist raising a hand to rub circles against the soft hairs.
Toby kissed him. Jareth always maintained that Toby had kissed him first. Toby did; he surged forward and captured Jareth's mouth with his.
The fae melted. He whined deep in his throat and let himself be lowered back to the bed.
Toby slid his hand down and inside. The weirdest sensation of replaying that second night of his education lit in his mind before his fingers closed around burning flesh and started a quick, steady rhythm that made Jareth groan and tighten up instantly.
It didn't take very long before Toby swallowed a soft cry. He had the courtesy to caress gently before sitting back up and moving considerately away.
The Goblin King shifted restlessly on the bed and sighed, blinking lazily at the ceiling as his heart began to slow down. He could see Toby from his peripheral vision and told himself that release was enough. The mortal had done what he could. Jareth could not ask him for more than he could give.
"Better now?" The words popped out and Toby had a vague recollection of his birth mother saying them. It was a caring thing to say but the hell of it was that he did care. It scared him witless to see Jareth collapse like that.
"Thank you."
Toby tipped his head a little. He reached his hand to the side without even turning his head and turned up the lamp a little more. Jareth blinked away from it but Toby's eyes followed him closer. "You are always welcome. Now, do you feel better?"
"Yes. Better. Thank you."
Toby laughed quietly, trying to ease the situation as he brushed back a sticky strand of hair from Jareth's brow. "Are you sure? That is the second time this night you've thanked me. I think that brings the total number to four. A fifty percent increase is very high."
Jareth managed a glimmer of a smile but he was more concerned with wondering how he was going to get up and leave. He was still so raw. The flow outwards had not stopped; the hollow inside him was still there. He would spend the day in bed, curled into a ball and waiting to heal. As of now, he couldn't move.
Toby was troubled by the lack of response. It would be understandable if Jareth were to go to sleep; orgasm usually had that effect on a male. But this… there was no afterglow, no sleepy satiation. Jareth was calmed, but that was no improvement. He seemed to be curling inwards, a fist curled tight into his abdomen and another pressed tight to his throat. He was even looking inwards, not completely aware of anything going on around him.
"Jareth?"
It came out in a soft whisper that sounded like it couldn't possibly be issuing from the throat of any living, breathing creature- "So empty. All of it. Just gone. So very empty."
"What is?" Toby had never heard about a tendency to speak in riddles. Jareth was evasive but never downright unintelligible.
"Inside." The fist pressed down tighter to the source of pain.
Toby put his hand over it and massaged the wrist. "Are you hurt? Does it hurt?"
Again those eyes startled him with perfect sanity. "The chaos drained me. I'm sorry; I should not be here. Give me a minute and I can… or perhaps if you call someone. The centaur, yes, who works in the stables." Jareth dredged up a picture of the centaur in question in his mind's eye and settled the matter with himself. Discretion was paramount at the Castle at the Centre of the Labyrinth and a little bit of gold almost smoothed things perfectly.
And anyway his was a murky reputation. What was one more story, one more legend? One more kink to add to his name?
Jareth propped himself up on his elbow and levered himself into some kind of sitting position. He felt like a newborn foal with no control of his limbs. They straddled uncomfortably and he didn't have it in him to focus himself any more. His control on himself was gone and he would have to put up with it.
Toby put a hand on his arm and eased him back down to the sheets. "Maybe you should lie still for a while. The shock is still wearing off." Jareth gave him a mildly inscrutable look. "I would feel better if I knew that you were safe."
The Goblin King sank back with a sigh and then dragged himself to the other side of the bed as Toby climbed in next to him. If he deluded himself hard enough, he could almost imagine that this was all a replay of those first few months of this twelve-month torment. Toby still slept on his side and Jareth on his. They shared the bed as polite people would share a house- each on one side and neither offering to invade.
Hysteria threatened at the word 'invade'. No, not invade, he pleaded silently, just to be temporarily filled. Where he didn't have to do it himself. All he had to do was close his eyes and focus on the steady pull and push, using it to hush all other activity until everything settled back into its rightful place.
"Would you like some water? There is…"
"Will you have sex with me?"
Toby's mouth shut with a snap and he could only stare. Jareth was looking at him, carefully neutral but something tensed and hurt in the way he moved. "Er, I think we should… talk. Not complicate matters further. Besides, if you were just ill…"
Something snapped in Jareth's brain- as the fae had known it would- and he pounced.
Toby was only aware of a sweeping wave of sensation. It was as if someone or something had crept under his skin and ignited his nerve-endings. He was not to know Jareth was weaving magic around him. But he did know that he was watching the Goblin King lift a reddened, swollen mouth before straddling him. He knew he was watching because he saw Jareth falter.
"Tell me to stop," the fae murmured, "I will. But for mercy's sake, let me have this. I need it."
"Why?" Toby couldn't believe it. They were now back to square one and asking the same questions, even with Jareth poised just above him and his body aching to do what it had not done for six months.
"The chaos takes everything I have," Jareth said, "It drains and takes and then takes more. It leaves nothing behind. I cannot fill my own skin."
The unspoken words were there as plain as daylight. Toby watched the golden light pool hollows against ribs and arms, darkening dark brows to soot black and beckoning his hands to the indented hipbones. He took a careful hold, feeling his partner's fragility on some strange level that was not overt.
He took careful hold and nodded and Jareth came down slowly, a strangled cry aching on his tongue as muscle gave way against the onslaught. Breaching and breaking and every cell in his body suddenly swivelled from the lush call of his lands to this sudden burst of pain and pressure. A burst of pain, a burst of adrenaline and then belatedly wishing the lubricant on to slick the rest of the way. Coming down as if from a great height to feel that wonderful sense of… it wasn't completion but it was a temporary sense of fulfilment.
Toby groaned and tightened his hold, scruples overcome with need. Even with his still limited eyesight Jareth looked a vision- fully impaled, his head thrown back and a vein pulsing in his long neck; golden and taunt and slender. Washed in light and flushed.
It wasn't sexual, not for Jareth. That was obvious. The Goblin King was not even aroused. He was motivated by something entirely different, but Toby could not help but find the slow movement enticing. He gasped and clung tight and twisted his thumbs against the cup of Jareth's bone with the main desire to bruise him. To mark him. Just once. For perversity's sake. In the morning this would be forgotten. Thrown away on the memory garbage heap. But for now… for now he could allow his doubts to fall away and just revel in what was occurring.
A bed, a beautiful male, a tight grasp- what else could he possibly need?
It lasted a long time, almost as if the clocks were suspended and the world had forgotten this particular bedchamber. Jareth rose and fell, sighing softly, fixed on Toby with those disturbingly sane eyes and the face of someone at peace. Toby lost himself in the feel of it, in the sight and smell and sound of it. When he had burned the vision of the fae into his brain, he shut his eyes and methodically memorized the event with every sense.
He smelt warmth and musk and sweat and sheets and burning oil and the night air swirling into the room. He heard the steady rasp of flesh and the whisper of the sheets and the sounds of the animals in the Labyrinth beyond the City. He heard the stillness of the air and the whisper of the breeze and the nighttime silence that he always took for granted. He could even taste the air and the scent of sex placed a salty memory on the back of his throat that in the moment he allowed himself the hope of repeating. And he felt! Gods could he feel! It would be too much to consciously catalogue what he felt and so he simply imprinted them all in his mind and thrust up into welcome heat.
It ended far too soon. Jareth actually smiled as Toby arched up against him, before leaning forward to rest his back as the mortal got his breath back.
Time began again as the Goblin King finally lay down, resting his head on a strong shoulder as warm arms wrapped around him.
It would do. The slight burn remained and he focused upon it, anchoring himself down to his own body by that discomfort. Toby's strong hold helped him, gave him a sense of enclosure.
Toby looked down in time to see the little yawn and then a soft sigh as Jareth went to sleep. If he were a little more romantic, Toby might have likened that glimpse of innocence to a kitten. Since it was the Goblin King and the Goblin King was far more comparable to a viper, Toby did not allow himself to be romantic.
He readily admitted to himself that it had been a worryingly weird night, but not an unpleasant one. He had had sex. Both of them had been consenting adults. It had cured whatever had been wrong with his guardian. And now they were free to put it behind them and get on with their lives. Besides, he had been given a rare glimpse into just how the Kingship operated. It did not operate on paperwork and rationing; those could be delegated. Jareth's job was much more lonely, and much more taxing.
Unconsciously the mortal tightened his arms around the slender figure and pulled him closer. Jareth, smart fae that he was, had made sure to bring the covers with him when he settled down, so at least the both of them were warm.
It was… nice, Toby reflected, drifting off into sleep. No! It had been nice. Yes. Yes, that was the way to say it.
