A/N: Please don't me for the last slurred, overly effusive bits of dialogue haha. This is the last phase of Jareth and Sarah's fun(?), drunk adventure in Dark Turnabout VR and I wanted to go full sloppy-uncle-at-thanksgiving mode for both. Sarah is due for a hell of a hangover in the upcoming chapter and... a bit of COMFORT for that HURT! *DJ airhorn*
I don't remember how I got on that spotlit stage. My body wasn't capable of moving in a straight line anymore, my vision locked into that uncomfortable obscurity comparable to when you've just come in from the sun, and time drifted in and out of a dark cauldron of sleepiness that turned life into a clip show. All I knew is that one moment I was hearing Jary's voice modified through two blocked speakers and then his voice was rich and vibrant beside me. His warm hand was at the top of my exposed back and the pastel crowd below flickered like two-dimensional projections. I leaned back into his hand, not because I wanted to, but because at that moment it was the only thing holding me upright.
"Tonight is a spectacular night to remember for more than one reason." Jary used his free hand to cup over his squinted eyes as if checking out the crowd, but his hand shook too much to hold the pose and he stumbled when he tried to let his arm fall back to his side. The mike stand turned into a makeshift cane as his houndstooth print leather loafers slid and struggled for a grip on the waxy stage floor.
I was too tired to laugh or care. My neck curled back, chin pointing to the ceiling as I flew into another blackout spell.
At some point, my head snapped back up to face the light show audience once more. There was no telling how long my latest jaunt had been or if it mattered.
Jary's eyes were half-mast and fluttering, and his voice was now rich with a guttural thickness that was more strain than emotion inspired. He was partway through another set of MC theatrics.
"...look beautiful and handsome tonight. The girls look elegant in their ballgown attire and the gentlemen are so very much the picture of chivalry. How about you, beautiful? How did you prepare for tonight?"
His hand on my back pushed me at an angle closer to his side and a large black globe was in my face. My head rocked back and forth a few times before it registered to my numbed skull that the globe was the top of his retrievable mic and the question was being directed at me.
I felt the warmth of the hand at my back circulate to every part of me.
I couldn't think. It was work just keeping my eyes open.
"I'm not..." I mumbled into the mic, grasping at the right words. Say your right words. The command might have come out of my cotton stupor but it transmitted with a power that made me glance over the stage and audience for some kind of clue. "I'm not...certain."
The standing paper doll audience erupted into applause that thundered the stage and made goosebumps up my skin. Deep down I knew it to be hollow, fake in some way I couldn't trace back, but then again, it was becoming difficult to track any sort of living history for myself. I was at prom but I couldn't have told you what crowd I ran with or what classes I took or even how I had gotten a hold of the dress I was wearing.
"Charming!" The warmth of Jary's smile echoed in his voice as he took the mic back. "Thank you, Miss Williams! That was an inspired and heart-striking response. It would seem that your immeasurable elegance is second nature then. Well, for all you students of Dark Turnabout High that do have reason to be self-conscious, the peach-shaped paper ballots that the student council laid out at your dining tables in the adjacent room have been collected to cast the final vote for Prom King and Queen of the evening's festivities."
The light lowered and a drilling drum beat started up that made me jump. Not looking at me, Jareth lowered his hand from the back of my neck to take my hand and brushed his thumb over the bottom of my palm in a soothing gesture.
Jary...he was my prom date. I knew that much. He had to be. It felt so natural to be touched by him and feel his eyes pierce mine intimately.
"Based on an overwhelming voting majority, I am proud to announce..," Jary paused to take a peach-colored card stock out of the back of his pocket and arrange the mike. His grin to himself at what he read there was knowing and devious. He didn't move to erase the signs of amused pride from his face when he lifted it back to the audience. "...the winners of Prom King and Queen are me, Jary King, and this mesmerizing treat beside me, Sarah Williams!"
A communal round of whistles, hoots, and clapping became one force wave that stunned me where I stood. All the fire in my limbs rose and bloated in my face like a new sunburn and I felt I was a stringed marionette dangling over a child's puppet theater. The lightness was unbearable and there was no way I was capable of steadying myself enough to cut the strings at my back. A mass of colgate smiles, teased hair, and taffeta costumes rose to stand and beamed their reflective light into my eyes until it hurt to keep them even half-open.
Once more I dimmed to black. It was a than restful repose.
A tingling, pulling sensation at my scalp eased me back into the light. Something was being placed on my head. The head binding stopped just beneath my hairline and closed on the widest point of my scalp to a comfortable fit. My crown.
In a removed wonderment, I lifted my hand to feel over it. I caught the texture of what I think was square-cut jewels before Jary brought my attention to the impressive bouquet of red roses he was extending out to me. They were long-stemmed and overpacked in a way that they could only be arranged leaning over the top of one arm like when conducting an infant. In accepting them, I felt the undersides of my arms brush over a scratchy material. I checked over myself and spotted the glittering white and red sash. "Prom Queen" emblazoned in shiny cursive.
Jary pushed me closer into the full moon circle of yellow light surrounding the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, how about a final round of applause for your queen?"
As I took in all the indistinguishable silhouettes that rose to stand and an even more thundering response, my chest tightened with the breath I held in. It was too much for my senses and Jary had to still my sway from my ankles up to my shaking knees becoming a collapse.
His reflexes and sense of balance didn't appear all that more consistent than my own, making it all the more remarkable when he led me, with one arm wrapped around my waist and one gripping my upper left arm, all the way down from the stage and onto the dance floor without tripping us both into an accident.
Gently, he held me close and rocked me to what I caught in bits and pieces to be prosaic slow pop. In my tiredness, I buried my head into Jary's throat for some time and didn't think of it until he spoke again.
"Everything goes your way here." There was an intensity in his lowered whisper that I felt to my toes. "Everything goes your way when you're with me."
I lifted my head and frowned. I couldn't recall when or what I had started binge drinking to get to the state I was in. "I don't think I would've wanted to get this sick."
His voice broke with a laugh he tried and failed to repress. "No, no of course not! But I think we were onto settling some sort of bet about drinking…" A frown creased his brow and it was striking to see the contrast between the ten years his smile took off and the years untold in his furrowed brow and countenance. "I just can't remember what it was all about."
What was anything all about? Without rhyme, reason, or some kind of precursory modulation to the moment, my throat grew thick and the back of my eyes sore with unshed tears collecting.
I was so confused and sleepy and sad, and hateful and moved. I was every emotion and untethered to anything to give it all meaning and landing but the man in front of me. My sudden misery was like a steel weight that I had to express to dodge and avoid being crushed.
My voice broke with choked sobs. "Why is anything..anything? I hate my life, I hate my parents, and most of all I hate myself for bothering with any of it. I can't even drive."
"Shhh...shhh" I was pulled back into the warm, terrestrial scented apex of Jary's throat and shoulder while he hushed my pain. My wet tears found a place to soak in his padded tuxedo coat. "Shh...Don't you dare diminish yourself, Sarah. I won't have it. You're on a whole different stratosphere than your family or the life you've been forced to believe you should live. That's why I came back. I had to make you remember that-" He cut himself off as if stuck and I felt I desperately needed his warmth and voice and clung to him around his neck.
"Yes?" I took in the silent, defeated look that had come over Jary's face.
His frown deepened and he wouldn't meet my eyes. "I had to make you recover your memories. You've suffered a bad stint of amnesia and you deserve to heal."
For no reason at all, the room stretched out like a rubber band and the music's bass caved in on me. The world seemed to spin even as the two of us stood still holding and clinging to each other upright. The energy within myself that had pushed through the drowsy spells, confusion, and lack of balance had been sucked out into the atmosphere and I felt my tongue and throat take on a new thickness and weight.
I could feel a partial paralysis of my articulation before I vented but it had to be expressed, as slurred as it was. "I've told myshelf for sho long that whatever inshident shet me off to be lockshed away wouldn't be worth remembering but really I think that if I could just restrieve a crude framework of what occurred it would shexplain what went so wrong with my life." The hot tears kept coming. "Or maybe that'sh just another excshuse."
Tiny little dollops of liquid covered Jary's face and it was a tossup as to whether it was my spit or tears. It seemed to matter to him about as much as any of my senses could be bothered to hold onto shame.
His eyes fluttered with glassy weariness and his mouth gaped slightly, the corners turned down.
"I jush hope you will shtill like me when you do find out."
We made quite the pair, gibbering over our nonsense words. It was nice not to have to suffer through the tunneling inebriation alone.
"Like you? Of coursh I like you!" I yelled in a vain effort to stabilize my tongue. "You're the cooleshest. I mean you're your own boss! You own your own fushcking company, you have great clothesh, and you're eashily the most attractive guy I've ever met." A hysterical laugh curdled up from my stomach. "Whoops!"
Jary couldn't seem to control his responding burst of laughter either. We were in on a joke unspoken and unthought and unknown. "Now that yoush put it that way, you're right!" He was laughing so hard that he leaned his hand toward my shoulder to steady himself and missed. With a pull at the front of my dress, I was taken down with him across one of the many white-clothed dining tables on the dance floor's immediate periphery. It didn't hurt to land on his hard chest and our bodies continued to stay on vibrate mode from laughter.
His perfect face zoomed in and his breath was hot and near. We stared into each other, taking note of every pore and angle and then blurred away into a short, fitful sleep. When I opened my eyes again our lips had touched. Slower than a kiss and tongueless, we felt the outline of each other's mouths and how perfectly my softness completed his hard and hungry need.
"Sarah," he whispered. "Sarah."
A tenderness entered the pit of my stomach that coincided with the room revolving faster around the lifeboat table. Jary's body pressed mine so hot and close that I was anxious I would suffocate if I didn't put space between us.
I tried to put my strength into my wrists and forearms to push myself away and used too much momentum. Back onto my knees, I reeled and acidic vomit fountained from deep within my throat. There was enough of it that it singed my sinuses and made me choke and gag. There was enough of it that I was thrown back into the awful vacuum gateway where everything was elusive and senseless except for my severe nausea and rapidly recovering clarity. It seemed that Jary's slurred sweet nothings and worried encouragements might have haunted there, but I couldn't trust my perceptions in that dimension. I didn't start believing my feet had touched the ground until the blackness constricted to the scale of a lensed headset and shaky hands were unfastening me from a caved chair. The last thing I saw was Jary's glazed, wrinkled brow, and his mouth pained and fluttering for some kind of answer I couldn't give him.