(A/N) Hi! A longer chapter to make up for the fact that I was late to publish. Oof.

-HM

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Jareth was embarrassed.

He had every right to be as it was not every day the High Selkie King , sovereign of the Labyrinth was caught unawares by a mere mortal woman.

It was an accident, all of it was.

The Labyrinth was a refuge for the creatures of the Underground and as such a denizen of the Above should not have been able to even see the place let alone enter. The ancient wards, whose strength only increased with their years since before even his conception, made certain of that. It was simply unheard of.

Hence when the young human woman waltzed in as if the place were your regular Starbucks, the Selkie King was intrigued to say the least.

The youthful mortal was beautiful, but that wasn't what initially stood out to him.

It was the almost child-like way she viewed the Labyrinth. Granted he'd thrown a strong glamour over the place the moment she'd stepped through it's threshold, so it's true phantasmagoric properties were severely muted. However, she seemed to see through the veil despite these efforts. She didn't understand or even truly recognize what she saw but she sensed it he could tell and his magic was drawn to her like a magnet despite its master's reservations.

It was her inherent kindness that drew him in too. Any other human would have turned tail the second they crossed into the Underground and he would not have blamed them. But this woman either ignored or lacked entirely the instinctive alarm had by most mundanes and instead treated the Labyrinth and her inhabitants with a friendliness that was…simply unheard of.

And, admittedly, she was quite easy on the eyes.

From there his intrigue grew. A few minutes turned into several hours which turned into many days and then suddenly…Jareth had been watching this unassuming human woman for almost a whole year. It was purely for security's sake, he told everyone and himself.

It was for security when he watched her cry over a trashy romance movie in the privacy of her apartment. The tissues he manifested onto her coffee table ensured her eyes would be clear enough for his tests. It was for security when he witnessed her helping an old lady cross the street, not knowing and perhaps not caring that the lady was a gwisin. She clearly saw more than she let on, why else would she be so kind? When he found himself making sure she'd gotten home before dark and that she'd eaten three meals a day, well, he could hardly have her dying on him before he'd learned what made her tick. And if her sorry excuse for a boss was caught in a unforeseen downpour, paperwork was lost, and his meetings were cancelled…The halfling king was none the wiser.

She was a potential threat and as such he had the perfect excuse—ahem—explanation for why the illustrious and untouchable Selkie King would need to monitor (he was not stalking, kings did not stalk) a mere human nearly twenty-four hours a day. If she could walk into the Labyrinth without a care, who know what else she could get up to? He had to watch. Security. That's why.

But it wasn't long before that illusion grew tiresome, even for a royal halfling infamous for his stubborn denial.

It was (Hig—Hoggart—Hogtie—…Henry?) a servant of his who unceremoniously revealed the truth.

The ungrateful wrinkled cretin had grown fond of the human woman, alarmingly so, and had had the audacity, the nerve, to question his King about his intentions toward her. Before Jareth could toss the offending creature into the Bog for his impudence, the fool just had to make one last remark:

"You'd better love the girl, Highness! Or yer infatuation will destroy the both of ya!"

The Bog had swallowed (Hoobastank—Horocrux—Hobble—Hooter—…Hogfull?) his servant whole for the while so anything else was rendered unintelligible but emphatically irate garbling. Unfortunately for the King, what little was said had the same startling effect as if he had been punched in the face.

Love? Infatuation? Such contrived concepts.

Except…What else could it be? Curiosity, maybe. As deadly as it was, Jareth was not immune to the desire to want to know more. Truthfully, he had lived long enough to know much but understand little. And he didn't know or understand love. So perhaps that was it. Curiosity, and nothing more.

Nothing tra la la.

Regardless, it had started off as curiosity, and to some degree still was. However, he couldn't deny that there was something more now. Something closer to what he'd believed to be improbable and contrived.

Mistake number one: Fall for a human.

Jareth had done that, he admitted it now. It was confusing, it was strange, and it was not as graceful as he'd imagined. Which led him to his second mistake:

Lowering his guard.

It was an accident, all of it was. He had felt the moment she had stepped into his territory and had transported himself to the glamoured coffee shop. To observe her and to witness her interacting with his world and his subjects outside of a crystal ball—To pine after her quite pitifully.

He didn't outwardly express her nearness effected him. She was only in the same room as him but he felt her presence like the sun, a warmth shining down on the parts of him facing her. A tingling at the back of his mind and yet at the forefront of his thoughts. Externally, however, he was calm, cool, and collected. Like a king should be.

But he hadn't thought for a moment—not when she'd sat down behind him nor when he felt her green-eyed gazed upon himself—that his efforts of feigning nonchalance would be his undoing.

He had been so focused on pretending to be oblivious that he had failed to realize that he had his attention faced inward. The Selkie King was unaware of what he was supposed to be aware of, as foolish as it sounded.

She snuck up on him, holding his coat. Just as he felt her enter his domain, Jareth felt her small, slim fingers handle his most prized possession: the very extension of his soul and state of being.

In short, he was a bloody idiot.

The blasted human woman had left without a care, although having not stolen his coat but instead his heart.

His mistake had yet to make the Underground headlines and to prolong this he had hunted his human down the next day as soon as possible. With a strange mix of hope, pessimism, and a ring in hand.

It hadn't gone well, if the unconscious woman currently lounged across his lap was any indication. He had really and truly screwed himself over.

Jareth had mistakenly believed her to be sensitive to the Underground and while she did seem to have a strange affinity towards it, she was hardly conscious of it's existence in full. As a result, he had a lap full of beautiful human which was not doing wonders for his concentration.

Lost in thought, the halfling king found himself absentmindedly mapping his unfortunate wife's face. It was a nice face for a human, he had thought many times during the last year. Round, symmetrical, and oddly Fae in it's paleness. Her eyes, though closed now, were a real treat. Silvery green and feeling as if they could pierce through his very soul.

She was lovely.

A voice broke through his thoughts with all the force of a battering ram through drywall.

"This your new lady friend?"

Jareth hummed, continuing to stroke the sleeping woman's porcelain cheek. "Yes, and I'm afraid she's like you, Nia."

"Pretty?" The brunette woman asked with a wan smile. She was dark-skinned and gorgeous but unmistakably human in appearance. Yet, she bore the touch of the Underground and that too, was unmistakable.

One of Jareth's dark brows arched but he didn't look up from the prone figure in his lap. "No."

"Ah…Cursed, then?"

"Looks as if that's the case," the ancient halfling sighed with a weariness spanning beyond mortal comprehension. "There's no other explanation. She should not be able to do things she has."

"Oh dear," Nia said somberly but her wry grin reappeared. "Even if she's untouched in that way, it's my understanding that you've become shackled to her? Definitely cursed now, if she wasn't before."

"Not funny." Jareth fixed her with a black glare. "And she's under the impression of the opposite so do not going telling her otherwise."

The look on Nia's face was convicting in its disappointment and Jareth found himself abashed on the receiving end of it. Shame was another feeling he wasn't familiar with and he thought to himself that these emotional introductions were growing tiresome.

"You didn't."

He glanced away from her. "I did."

"Oh, you bastard. You idiot. You absolute—"

"That is no way to talk to your king!" Jareth snarled. His magic buzzed and vibrated in the air like an enraged tuning fork.

"—buffoon!" Nia continued, willfully oblivious to his anger. "You've doomed yourself, you Shakespearean cliche! I can't tell if this is a romantic comedy or a Greek tragedy and at this point I'm too afraid to ask."

Jareth opened his mouth to interject but found himself unable to get a word in edgewise.

"You better pray it's the former, Your Majesty! Your mother's going to have your head and then mine because the one time I left you unsupervised you up and got hitched! How did you even manage that?"

"Well," Jareth drawled, voice dripping with irritation. "When a unsuspecting selkie and an ignorant human find themselves in an accidental coat exchange…"

"I know how it works!" Nia pinched the bridge of her nose. Oh dear. She was pacing now. That was never a good sign. "What I want to know is how you could be so stupid as to—"

"Fall in love?

"Lie,," she finished with a note of despair

"What else was I to do?" Jareth asked. "Become my mother?"

"No," said Nia. "But you're on the path to become something much worse."

Jareth, who hadn't once stopped stroking the face of his newfound wife, simply shrugged and replied:

"So be it."

And just then, Sarah woke up.