Sarah straightened her back in a show of casual indifference. Stiffened her jaw at the unexpected guest taking up almost the entirety of her sofa with his lavish presence.

"Jareth," she greeted him coolly. She wasn't about to use his title, not least because it was fantastical and ridiculous, and also he'd barged in here and called her Sarah as if they were such old friends, so actually how dare he!

Unfortunately, the intended slight seemed to amuse him greatly.

"Delightful familiarity," he noted, a smirk stretching across his sharp teeth, "but in such a frosty tone. It's been so long, Champion, surely you can summon a warmer welcome than that?"

"Blame it on the cold weather," she replied, steadfastly keeping her distance since his eyes seemed determined to draw her in. She focussed on the door handle still in her hand, the cold glass at her back, and not on how inviting he looked. How ethereal and enticing.

His hypnotic aura hadn't diminished in the years apart. That piercing stare still pinned her to the spot, still set her on fire from the inside out. The memory of dancing with him suddenly flared so brightly as to almost steal her breath with its intensity. The arm around her waist… the hand on the small of her back…

Why was the thought of something so chaste making her heart race?

Sarah shifted against the balcony door, not ready to move further into the warmth of the room yet. It seemed unwise to diminish the space between them.

You have a… an Ethan, she reminded herself with nowhere near enough enthusiasm behind the thought as she should have.

"Why are you here?" she asked and managed to sound stoically uncaring of the answer in a tone Hoggle had once dubbed her Piece-Of-Cake voice (and had then been promptly scolded by Diddymus for such a discourteous description of their Lady).

If Jareth found her lack of hospitality rude he didn't show it and offered her a warm, gracious smile that she could almost believe concealed no ulterior motives.

If she didn't know him.

"Because you wished it," he said simply.

Sarah let out a slow breath through her nose and drew in some composure.

…I wish…

Those two damning little words had escaped her for the first time in years, but maybe they could still be undone. After all, she'd voiced no specifics.

Oh but you did, she berated herself before squashing the thought under her heel.

"I didn't wish for you by name," she parried, and to give herself space to think, took up her mug from the coffee table and walked it through to the kitchen—

Where he was standing waiting for her, effortlessly transporting himself to lean beside the kitchen sink. Deliberately in her way.

"But by description," he countered.

God, of course he heard it all…

Sarah could feel a tell-tale flush creeping into the hairline at the back of her neck. "An extremely vague description," she retorted.

Tall, handsome—that could have summoned any number of faces, at least a handful of girlhood crushes.

She mentally batted away the last specification on her list—even as his eyes lit with a wicked kind of mirth—and brushed past him to wash her mug in the sink.

Two dark red leather gloves closed over the porcelain edge as his presence caged her in from behind.

"And yet one I encompass in its entirety," he purred in her ear, and Sarah almost lost her grip on her mug.

She could feel the leer on his face radiating warmth down her spine. She fought back a swallow in her throat and turned around, careful not to brush against his arms on either side of her, leveling a stony look at him.

"I'm with someone," she stated bluntly, purposely emotionless. It was a phrase she had used more than once to avoid having to utter the term 'boyfriend'. That felt uncomfortably juvenile and simultaneously untrue. Ethan was not a friend. She wouldn't mourn his companionship when their brief (and yet seemingly never-ending) affair finally dwindled.

A fact Jareth seemed to pick up on in her tone. He hummed in consideration.

"Not currently," he said, indicating the empty kitchen around them.

And how empty it was. Some small voice in her head was trying to tell her that she should be at least a little uncomfortable at being alone with such a menacing presence from her adolescence. But there was clearly no menace towards her. It was simply just part of his personhood.

Still, it was no small risk with him leaning so closely and his arms just inches from touching her…

"I don't cheat," she said, forcing out the words to try and encourage a bit more strength of will. She pushed one of his arms back to remove herself from his immediate vicinity. "Besides, I'm not attracted to villains," she called out over her shoulder as she flicked off the kitchen light (leaving him in the dark) and strode back into the living room, intending to lock the balcony doors and turn in for the night.

How she was going to wrangle him out of her apartment she had yet to consider.

"You think me a villain, do you, little liar?" he asked, the last two words sounding oddly affectionate in his lilting timbre as he darkened the kitchen doorway. Or perhaps lightened it, considering the pitch blackness framing him.

"You are currently dressed like the devil-," Sarah said without looking back at him, "and I'm nota liar."

"Oh, but you are attracted to villains," he argued over the sound of her bolting the locks. "Or is it simply the plural you take umbrage with? Maybe just one devil has won your heart?"

Sarah turned to face him again and found he was only a few feet away, and thought her apartment was far too small to comfortably house a whole Goblin King and all the swagger that inevitably comprised his luggage.

She decided to at least widen the emotional distance if she couldn't increase the physical.

"The wish," she said, standing her ground even as he moved closer. "I didn't mean it."

Jareth chuckled, a mocking sound that dried her throat and could have sparked her temper if it didn't sound as though they were sharing a joke. "You meant it. As you did before."

His proximity and the cold glass at her back spread goosebumps over her skin, though if pressed she'd only admit the latter affected her so.

His eyes sparkled as he came to stand in front of her, leaning in on his forearm above her head. His hand found her hip, and the warmth of his touch—even through his gloves—tightened her chest in a way that had started to feel alien to her through those last few months. A craving she'd thought had nearly starved to death, reawakening.

"You wish for release," he said, and Sarah furrowed her brow at the implication of those words.

Release from his light grip? She should have wished for it. But as his thumb stroked over her hip bone lightly she could feel her reservations melting. Convictions crumbling. Electricity blazing a burning trail over her skin despite the layers of clothing separating his hand from her waist...

"...And your paramour is failing you?" he added, and his meaning crash-landed into her brain. His proximity was making her lightheaded and sluggish.

She'd been so swept up in the bewitching depths of his warmth—of the softness of his words and the lightness of his touch—she'd forgotten the Ethan she still had to untangle herself from. Her heart had thrilled for a moment, but the abruptness of his question brought with it a chorus of doubts.

Was he just here because of poorly chosen words?

Unaware of the suddenly icy shard piercing her heart his hand slipped from her hip to the curve of her back, pressing gently as he leaned in, his lips at her ear. "How many shall I give you?"

Through a feat of great willpower, Sarah moved her head back from his.

"Zero," she answered. "I told you I don't cheat."

"And yet I recall you radicalizing a group of my citizens to help you through your trials, Sarah. Quite out of bounds within the rules of the game."

He paused, holding her gaze until Sarah thought for a second that—yes, he most definitely was going to kiss her, and she most definitely wasn't going to stop him.

He acknowledged the waver in her tenuous loyalty to her… Ethan… with a triumphant curl of his lip.

"You most certainly do cheat," He noted as his fingers caressed the vertebrae of her spine, causing her to gasp softly at the hair-tingling sensation. "If it's worth the risk," he added.

His lips were disastrously close to hers, and Sarah had to pull herself bodily out of the moment before an irrevocable line was crossed. A hand on his chest stopped him from leaning down those last few millimeters.

"My morals are worth more than a five-minute roll in the hay, Jareth," she said, but couldn't make her body obey her into wriggling out of his grip.

He chuckled darkly.

"You are—as always—utterly devastating to my self-esteem," he said, and released her waist, moving back enough to allow her to recenter herself.

Though she suspected it was more to give her a full-bodied view of him as he held her hands in his, lacing her fingers with her own.

"Would a more lengthy seduction tip the scales in my favor?" he asked, grinning.

Sarah snorted bitterly. More bitterly than she intended if the raise of his brow was any indication. She could feel his searching gaze pulling apart the layers of indifference she was shrouding herself with to the loneliness beneath.

"Ah-hah." His eyes turned brighter than the Christmas lights highlighting his knife-edge features. "You desire a courtship instead, precious?" he offered, causing another cliff-face of Sarah's resolve to crash into the sea beneath. "I can oblige."

"I didn't say that," she argued, but knew from experience the tightness in his smile meant it was too late.

"Not aloud," he agreed, and Sarah didn't have the willpower to debate that lustful look off his face.

Before she could protest he'd swept her into his arms, cupping her chin as though they were old lovers—and laid a kiss on her cheek. Sarah's eyes closed without her permission, deepening her senses as she breathed him in, cursing herself even as she did.

"Until tomorrow night, sweet Sarah," he whispered, and when her eyes opened again it was to an empty living room.