Thanks to everyone for reviews and reading. I love the input! And thanks for sticking with me here…Chapter 3 to come very soon! As always, much appreciation for my fantastic betas. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

CHAPTER TWO: Relaxing in my own home is evidently no longer an option. I hate to say it, but this is the opposite of fair!

I woke up to a warm, moist sensation on my cheek. That is to say, something warm and moist was moving against me, and a liquid was tricking down the side of my face. There was only one thing that I would be okay with being the source of it. Very cautiously, I opened my eyes. Oh, thank goodness – just as I'd hoped – dog tongue. Ambrosius' large, dark eyes were inches from my own, and I registered the fact that a pillow supported my head. Moving my hands at my sides a little, I noted the softness of the duvet, so I was back in bed. Now I felt like I'd won the lottery. I'd had a seriously messed-up dream. That was all. There was a rustle of movement from the chair in the corner, and I felt the bed dip next to me under the weight of another person. Hands reached out in the semi-dark to smooth the hair back from my forehead. I closed my eyes, wondering if it was too late to pretend I was still asleep. With relief, I noted that the hands on my face were bare, in other words, not encased in leather gloves. I sighed and leaned into the touch.

"Poor Sarah," came Neil's voice next to me. "You really scared me, sweetie. I've never seen you faint before!"

I rolled over to face him, feeling so relieved that I was here, in my own bed with my husband. It was all I could think of. "Oh Neil, I just had the worst dream. You'd never believe it. For a minute there I was afraid I'd finally lost my grip." I was suddenly starving. I twisted away from him to check the time. 2:45 a.m. "Hey, have you eaten yet? I'm starved – let's make a frozen pizza or something and just watch some mindless TV, okay?" With his weird schedule, this time of night was generally when Neil was doing just that, eating dinner and watching TV. "You weren't going to sleep anytime soon, right? Will you just hang out with me for a while?"

"Uh, Sarah…that's cool, but – "

I didn't hear whatever else he said. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm self-absorbed or that I'm in the habit of ignoring people, but my mind was running truly one-track. I was full of…happiness to be alive. That was the only way to put it. You know how sometimes you just have a dream that's so awful – maybe you know you're dreaming at the time, maybe you don't – that when you wake up the first and only thing you can think about it is to just, you know, thank all of the gods and angels that it wasn't real? Yeah, that's what I was experiencing at the moment. I was so ridiculously happy to just be here, in my apartment with Neil and Ambrosius, all of us safely home after a long week, getting ready to watch something stupid to laugh at on TV. There was no place in the universe I'd rather have been. I went into the bathroom, changed into my pajamas and washed my face, which only seemed to increase my euphoria. My face in the mirror looked like it always does, the water was pleasantly cool…I wondered for a minute if I should actually take a shower. The idea of all of that real, physical sensation sounded pretty nice. But no, I was too hungry. Food first, then a shower, then a nice twelve-hour nap. I'd be good as new. I even hummed to myself as I walked back into the kitchen.

Beautiful. Everything was as it should be. Neil was fiddling with the oven; no sign of any uninvited guest. He looked up at me and smiled.

"Okay, Sar. Pizza in fifteen."

I was so happy with the overwhelming ordinariness of this situation, I felt like this might be the perfect moment to burst into song, if I did that kind of thing, which I don't. I gave Neil a quick kiss and just about floated into the living room, where I sat in my usual spot on the couch and – of course – the remote was right in front of me on the table, where it belonged. That's right, universe, I thought. You can try to freak me out but in the end I always come out on top. No stupid dream can change that.

But you, Sarah. You made me into a Goblin King….

Stop that, I told myself. Absolutely no thinking about that dream, or about Goblin Kings in tight pants, or mismatched eyes more expressive than any human's…. I took a couple of deep breaths and flipped through the channels, trying to force all stupid, childish fantasies away. The thing is, I really used to dream about Jareth a lot, once that fantasy of my fifteenth year had given him a concrete physical appearance in my mind. I think I may have dreamed about him even before that, but he was more just a bodiless voice then, telling me all sorts of grown-up things I wasn't ready to hear. The night before my now-infamous-in-my-own-mind Thirteen Hours, I distinctly remembered a dream in which I was falling asleep and his voice was whispering to me. What no one knew, my sweet Sarah…but you know it, don't you…soon…soon….

As I got older, the dreams grew more erotic in nature. Later, in my college attempts to psychoanalyze myself, I concluded that I'd just taken all of my anxieties about getting older and dealt with them – the fears, sexual fantasies, dreams – by rolling them up into a single persona (Jareth) so I could easily explore said fears, fantasies and dreams. But wow, some of those dreams! They went way beyond steamy, and I'd had them pretty much up until I met Neil a few years ago. With Neil, we both seemed to know very early on that we'd end up together and it's amazing how childish fantasies of mythical kings can be displaced by grown-up fantasies of weddings and marriage overnight.

Ambrosius flopped down into my lap and I petted him gently, very grateful for the distraction. Suddenly, there was a steaming plateful of pizza on a tray in front of me. I hadn't even noticed how it had gotten there. Looking up, I saw Neil gazing at me, looking concerned.

"Sarah, I called your name three times. Didn't you hear me?"

I hadn't. "What did you want?"

"Just wondering what you wanted to drink. I figured Diet Coke…or maybe a beer…I just didn't know how soon you wanted to be sleeping."

For some reason, he was still standing up, plate in his hand. "Sit down and eat, okay? I'll get my own drink." I moved to the kitchen and decided on the Diet Coke; alcohol probably wasn't a good choice given the state of my thoughts, and coffee was a little too caffeinated for me this late at night. As I poured myself a glass, I noticed something weird. The coffeepot was on, and there was about a cup's worth of black sludge baking into the bottom of it. It was still emitting a pitiful gurgle with its burned-coffee smell. It was almost as though someone had brewed a pot earlier….

"Neil," I called, forcing my voice to be as calm and steady as possible.

"Yeah, Sar?"

I couldn't really find the words for the question I wanted to ask. Maybe that was because I didn't want to ask anything. I took a sip of Diet Coke and had a bite of pizza, not registering that it was burning the inside of my mouth. Quietly, I studied the coffeepot. A feeling of falling – that seemed oddly familiar – began to creep over me. Gravity had always been my friend until now, too. As I cocked my head to the side, I continued to regard the coffeepot with detached, almost academic interest. There had to be some significance to it, I was sure. None of my other household appliances made me feel like I was in the middle of the first drop on a rollercoaster. The red light glowed, unassumingly. A hand reached out and turned it off. Neil was next to me now.

"Sarah," he started slowly, "are you ready to talk about what happened before?"

Before I could construct an answer, he closed in on me, pinning me back against the counter in a very un-Neil-like manner. Oh crap, the events of earlier in the evening were quickly becoming clear to me. Like a light bulb over my head, I remembered something that I hoped with all my heart wasn't true. Damn, there was just no way to avoid asking him. I struggled, again, to keep my voice steady. "When I woke up – before – you said I'd fainted, didn't you?"

"Yes."

Trying to seem as offhand and casual as possible, I said, "Did I, by any chance, lose consciousness while sitting at the kitchen table, in front of you and um, a guest?"

"Yes."

I was immediately crushed against his chest as Neil's arms went around me. "Oh, Sarah, I'm so, so sorry." He was stroking my hair, my face smothered near his shoulder. "I always knew that someday I'd have to talk to you about this, I just hoped it wouldn't be so soon."

Neil is not a big guy. In fact, I'm a couple of inches taller than he is, but he can be really strong when he wants to be. With some difficulty I liberated myself from his death grip, my thoughts whirling over what had just come out of his mouth. I knew that if most women heard their husbands say something like that, they'd immediately be worried about possible affairs or past gender reassignments. Even though I was reasonably certain I didn't have to worry about those particular skeletons in the closet, I was just as sure that whatever he said next wouldbe equally threatening to my peace of mind.

"Okay Neil, you are really starting to freak me out. I order you to tell me what's going on right now." Sometimes when he gets emotional, a little hard authority is the best way to calm him down. And I know it's a bit childish of me, but up until then, I felt like I was the one who had the exclusive right to being freaked. At least the upshot of his mini-breakdown was that it made me feel more in control by comparison, so I automatically fell into step with logic.

He took one of my hands in his and led me back to the living room, shaking his head. I grabbed my drink from the counter and flipped the TV off on the way back to the couch, all the while maintaining physical contact with him. He was completely white. He looked like I felt. We sat together on the couch and I tucked up my legs beneath me so I could face him. I smiled as reassuringly as I could under the circumstances.

"Sar, it's kind of a long story, but I guess now's the time…. Just don't interrupt until I'm finished, okay?"

I nodded quickly, never taking my eyes off him.

"It all started about ten years ago…."

Whoa. Ten years ago was before Neil and I had even met. But – very quick calculation – ten years after Jareth and I had met. I wondered, a little distantly, if I was going to make it through the rest of this story without throwing up.

"So I was just starting to do some open mic nights at the little comedy clubs. I had this one set – it was really important because the club owner had told me personally that if she liked my act she'd put me on the regular paid roster – and I was nervous as hell, totally puking my guts out in the bathroom backstage."

Okay, so far so good. Even a direct reference to vomiting and I wasn't feeling like I needed to. Yet. Actually, since I'd left acting to work at the university, I didn't think I'd thrown up once. But when I was acting regularly, it seemed like I could never go on stage without emptying my stomach contents in that horrible way first. My Equity card had come at a very high price (my general physical health) and it wasn't long after that that I'd decided it wasn't worth it.

"Anyway, I was just trying to get it together, you know, splashing some water on my face, when this guy came into the bathroom. He wasn't the usual type for a comedy club, plus we were backstage and I thought I knew everyone there. Anyway, he had kind of a fruity look and he was all dressed up in these wild clothes. I was afraid he might try to hit on me, or at the very least, try to sell me some drugs. So I booked for the door, but he blocked the way out. Then he called me by name, and he said 'You don't know it yet, Neil, but one day, you and I will become very important to each other.' So then I was sure he was gay, and I was freaking out, and he asked me, like there was nothing weird about it, if I was nervous about going on stage that night. I told him that hell, yeah, I was nervous, that this performance could totally make or break my career. So he said, 'That's why I'm here. I'm going to fix it so you can't fail tonight. The audience will love you and after tonight your career will be assured.' I was totally humoring him by this point, so I thanked him, and he moved aside and I left and went to the stage."

"So I did my act – pathetic as my material was back then – and I killed. I have never had an experience like that on stage, before or since. Even doing The Tonight Show doesn't come close. I mean, I was on fire; I could do no wrong for this audience. I couldn't believe it when it was over. I stayed and did two more sets that night, each one a bigger hit than the last. That was the night I got my first professional contract."

"When I got home I found him there waiting for me. It was a total Dr. Faustus moment – I figured he was there for my soul or something! He said he just wanted to talk. He told me his name was Jareth and that he had this friend, a beautiful woman, whom I would eventually meet. He told me that when I met her we would fall in love and be married. He described her as pretty much the closest thing to perfect this side of Shangri La. So I was like, 'Hey, man, I sure wouldn't touch any girl of yours!' He just smiled and said not to worry, that it was destiny or something and that he wanted to make sure that when we met, I'd be willing to marry her. He promised that I would really love her and wouldn't meet her until I was ready to get married, and that he knew I was a good guy and he trusted me to follow through. So I promised, again, totally humoring him – I mean, I couldn't wait to get him out of my house, you know? Eventually he left."

I don't know what I was expecting when I commanded Neil to tell me this story. But it wasn't this. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I was hoping that maybe Neil had found one of my old diaries and read it, then recognized 'Jareth' by description alone, however unlikely that might be. Even when Jareth had implied that they knew each other, I still didn't believe it until I got it straight from my husband. You know how when you're having a really sad, pathetic, pitying-yourself kind of day, you think the whole world is colluding in a conspiracy to take you down? Well, now I was officially having that kind of day. Except in my case it wasn't irrational. I guess on some level, I should have been glad that Neil and Jareth weren't old friends or something. But that was only if I was looking for a silver lining here, which I wasn't.

"Is that the only time you ever saw him?"

Neil shook his head. "No. He would come back, like, once every year or so, just to remind me of our deal. Then we had a more in-depth conversation, um, about six years ago."

I couldn't help it. A few tears squeezed their way out. My worldview had been shattered in a matter of minutes. "Neil, that wouldn't be when you and I met, would it?"

"Sarah, I think by now you know the answer to that."

That was it. I couldn't take it anymore. It was just, quite plainly, not fair. Yes, I know – what an apt thought to be having at that moment, but I was in no mood to dwell on irony. I collected our dishes as smoothly as I could and took them to the kitchen sink, scrubbing at the plates furiously. A strong pair of arms circled my waist.

"It's okay, sweetie. I love you. We'll get through this."

Before I could weigh the pros and cons of getting into a full-on fight, I got right up in his face. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me about any of this before? Did it ever occur to you that I had a right to know, that maybe I should get a say in my own life? God, Neil, this is so like you – to hide something important from me to avoid a fight! Explain yourself!"

He looked very lost and I felt (only marginally) guilty for the outburst. "Sarah, I'm sorry. That's all I can say. Once we started dating, and I fell so hard for you, I convinced myself that I'd somehow imagined the whole thing."

"Oh, don't give me that bullshit! You don't seem all that shocked by tonight's events to me! So where the hell did Jareth go, anyway? I'm sure we'll have the pleasure of seeing him again soon, right?"

"Actually, yes. He'll be back in the morning. He wanted to give you time to get over the shock of seeing him again."

"Pfft – he thinks I'll get over it in a few hours?" I forced a particularly stubborn piece of pizza into the garbage disposal. "It's been twenty years since I last saw him and I still haven't gotten over that."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He pushed away and tried to turn me to face him.

Shit, what did I just say? "God damn it, Neil!" I said. That's right, I told myself, just use that old trick of turning the focus back onto how he was the one in the wrong. "Do you really think that some kind of otherworldly entity is just here for a visit? I'm going to bed. Tomorrow I'm leaving – maybe I'll go see Dad and Karen for a while."

"Sarah, I don't think that's a good idea…."

"Shut up! I'm not speaking to you any more." Then I did the last thing that seemed in my power to do. I went into the bedroom, locked the door behind me and fell into bed praying for sleep.