Fade into You: Chapter 10 - Crush Me
The fire had reduced to embers by the time they made it back to the campsite. Sarah soaked the remaining cinders and stirred the sopping mess of it with her boot, explaining to Jareth the importance of responsible fire dousing. They tidied up the grounds and did one last thorough search for any missed food or trash.
"Are you sure you didn't leave any snacks in the car?" Sarah questioned him, not for the first time.
"Positive," he assured her confidently.
"Good," she said, crossing it off her mental checklist. "Let's brush our teeth and call it a night."
Jareth paled.
"You didn't bring a toothbrush?" Sarah asked, forcing a serious oh no expression even as a playful smile tugged at her lips.
"I…did not," he admitted. "I usually just"—he gestured with a wrist flourish—"you know."
"Well, you're going to be a real treat to be around for two days," she teased.
Jareth's lips pursed in a pout, his hand on jutting hip. "Either we are leaving immediately, or I am allowed magic for this one task," he whined.
Sarah grinned. "I'm giving you a hard time. I brought you an extra one." She shouldered her backpack and grabbed the bags destined for the bear box. "Come on. We'll want to brush away from camp so the smell doesn't attract beasties."
"Glamorous," Jareth commented sarcastically, though he sounded relieved he wouldn't have to suffer through the indignity of projecting less than favorable breath for a whole weekend. He took the bags from her and followed her back down the hill.
"Have you done this before?" she asked once they had tucked into an alcove of trees at the other end of the pond.
"No," he answered warily, eyeing the shiny new toothbrush she held out to him.
Sarah demonstrated wetting her bristles and squeezed a conservative dab of toothpaste onto the brush. "You only need a little—"
Jareth enthusiastically unleashed a thick squirt of toothpaste along his bristles, and Sarah hid a smirk, opting not to intervene. She'd warned him.
She started brushing, and he mimicked her, hesitantly at first and then more aggressively. His eyes went suddenly wide as his mouth swiftly filled with more foam than he knew what to do with, making him go from looking feral to rabid in a heartbeat.
Sarah laughed and handed him a washcloth, motioning for him to relax and take breaths in through his nose. He did, panicked eyes locked on hers as he dabbed furiously at his bubble machine mouth.
"Ith tho minty," he complained around his toothbrush, "Tharah, I can't…."
She rinsed her mouth and spat into her empty water bottle. "You can," she said assertively, failing at concealing her grin. "Don't forget to brush your tongue at the end. Or it was all for naught."
Jareth's eyes bugged in horror. "My—?!"
"Yup. Breathe through your nose," she coached aloud this time, rubbing his back.
He rolled his eyes and groaned, making no effort to hide his resentment as he drew in a nasally breath and frantically brushed his tongue like finishing was his ticket out of purgatory.
Sarah tried not to laugh as he gagged into his washcloth. For a timeless Goblin King, he could be so damn relatable.
"Here," she said, handing him the water bottles.
Jareth snatched them greedily, turning his back to her in a harumph as he rinsed and spat. "Expect me to be quite put out with you for the next five minutes or so," he advised her sternly when he finished. "That was utterly humiliating."
Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck from behind. "Oh, come on. You know your mouth feels amazing."
He leaned his head away from hers grumpily and huffed, but she could see him running his tongue along his teeth appreciatively inside his closed mouth. He smirked when he caught her looking from the corner of his eye. "And you know you want to find out for yourself."
"I walked right into that one," she acknowledged, ruffling his hair as she slipped away.
They didn't speak as they dumped their trash and food in the bear boxes and trudged back up to their campsite. Jareth's challenge lingered between them, mingling with the tension from their earlier conversations by the pond that drew closer to the surface the nearer they got to the tent. Sarah's stomach somersaulted as it came into view, illuminated with lanterns from within. The only light source at the campsite, a suddenly embarrassing beacon of the promise she'd made him to zip their sleeping bags together. Why had she done that? It was impulsive. It had felt right in the moment, and only part of her regretted it as they entered the clearing.
Deciding not to make a fuss about it, Sarah unzipped the tent flap. She kicked off her boots and motioned for him to do the same. "Hurry up before the bugs fly in," she ordered. "And bring your boots inside, or you'll find things in them in the morning that I imagine you don't want sharing living space with your cute feet."
Jareth slipped his boots off and followed Sarah into what she had sneakily done her best to set up as a cozy sanctuary earlier that afternoon. A lantern hung overhead, and two smaller ones were tucked in the corners. A queen-size self-inflating mattress pad was already unrolled onto the floor, covered with a fluffy duvet. Pillows lined the back walls. Sarah had hidden Jareth's favorite throw blanket—the maroon chenille— in a pillowcase for the journey, and it was now folded in view near the sleeping bags.
She couldn't help but flush when Jareth's sparkly eyes found hers. "I didn't question all the pillows when we packed the car," he said with a warm smile. "But after having camped with you for half a day, I'm starting to suspect you don't ordinarily treat yourself to such extravagance."
"I don't," Sarah confirmed. "I'm a sleeping bag and rolled-up sweatshirt-for-a-pillow girl."
His arms were around her so fast she would have thought he had used magic to transport himself if she hadn't known better. "Thank you for this," he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "You didn't have to."
"You're welcome," she told him, snaking her arms around him and leaning into his embrace. "It was fun setting it up."
"And for the toothbrush," Jareth mumbled into her hair, giving her an extra squeeze. "Though I am positively loath to admit it, my mouth does taste astonishing."
Sarah laughed against his chest, enjoying the feeling of his arms around her. "That was just as much for me. I'd rather not have a Hotdog-breath King as a roommate for two days."
"Your altruism does have its limits. Noted," Jareth commented, releasing her with a wide smile. "Now, how do zippers work?"
The zipping of the sleeping bags was more of a fiasco than it needed to be, as it wasn't a two-person job, and Jareth insisted on helping—managing to snag the material, Sarah's sweatpants, and the web of his hand in the zipper along the way. Once they'd finally maneuvered them together, they laid the whole thing atop the duvet. While Jareth fluffed and arranged the pillows—paying particular care to hers—she grabbed her flashlight. "Only one thing left to do," she mused as she turned off the lanterns.
"Oh? What's that?" Jareth asked with interest.
She could hear him slipping his legs into the sleeping bag while she fumbled in the dark. "Shadow puppets," she revealed, not bothering to hide the childlike excitement in her voice as she slid in to sit beside him. She switched the flashlight on and handed it to him. "Hold it like this."
Jareth grinned back and took the flashlight, pointing the beam at the wall as she had demonstrated.
Sarah ran through the basics first: Dog, bird, wolf. Then she showed him some of the more complicated ones: Bear cub, elephant, goat.
He oohed and ahhed along, the perfect audience. When she finished, she took the flashlight and motioned for him to try.
Jareth shrugged nonchalantly and flexed his fingers. At first, the shadow on the wall didn't look like much more than a lump. "Rock," he supplied.
She laughed. "Breathtaking."
His hands shifted into something that walked bipedally, its large, horned head shaking back and forth. "Rock-caller," Jareth said with a smile.
"Woah," Sarah exclaimed. "How are you doing that?"
Jareth chuckled, leaning into her shoulder. His hands contracted, lengthening into a squiggly noodle. "Worm," he said as the shadow sprouted three boisterous tufts of hair. "It's always worth sticking around for tea, you know. You might get directions."
"Aw, that little scarf. So cu—" Her words died in her throat, and she shot him a dirty look. "Wait, are you serious? He would have told me how to get to the castle?"
The worm shadow nodded vigorously, and a pleased smile stretched across Jareth's face. "Oh, with utmost immediacy."
Sarah cursed, and he laughed, the shadow on the wall expanding as his hands shifted again. "I forgot to warn you about these before. Is it too late now?" he queried as a slimmer bipedal figure holding its head danced cheerfully.
She bumped her shoulder into his. "Are you cheating?"
"I'm a trickster, dearest one," Jareth reminded her, booping her nose in that infuriatingly condescending way. "It might occur to you that I have used a shadow puppet or two in my time, with and without magic."
Sarah huffed even as her belly flip-flopped at the rare endearment, and Jareth laughed at what she imagined must have been a bewildered expression on her face.
"Of course," she said, trying to keep her tone light, but she could feel the corners of her lips tugging downward as she switched on the lantern beside her and clicked off the flashlight. His emphasis on the word 'trickster' had made it sound like a title, not just a description. She had an uneasy feeling she was missing something.
He gave her a long, hard, calculating look. The way the lantern on the floor threw harsh shadows across his angular features made him appear nearly wicked when he asked, "You do know I am fae, don't you, Sarah?"
The truth of what Jareth was had always been a carefully guarded mystery to Sarah for reasons she didn't understand. She'd assiduously avoided asking, just as she was now desperately attempting to control her reaction. She must not have been doing a thorough job of it because a mischievous grin was stretching across his face.
"That checks out," she said before he could say more. "I mean, I assumed you weren't human. I've met fairies, and you're rather gangly and less bitey." She ignored the salacious just-you-wait expression Jareth sent her at that last observation, and she gave him a mock once-over. "And I'll admit, you're too pretty to be a goblin."
A heaviness settled in her belly despite her joking. The news wasn't a shock. Fae was near the top of the list of beings she had suspected him to be. But the fact that she hadn't allowed herself to know for certain until now almost hurt.
Jareth chucked her chin lightly. "What's that look on your face about, then?"
Sarah turned to him in their usual fashion—and he copied her—criss-cross applesauce.
"You're like…." she trailed off, searching for the right words. She winced internally but pressed on anyway. "My diary."
Jareth raised a humorless eyebrow. Whatever he had been expecting her to say, it hadn't been that. "Your diary," he repeated flatly.
"My secret keeper," she clarified.
"Your ghost-writer autobiographer," he drawled. "You'll forgive me for being less than flattered."
"My point is, you know me better than anyone," Sarah confided. "I wish you were as good at sharing secrets as you are at keeping them."
Jareth sobered. He was quiet for a moment while he considered her implied meaning. "You know me better than you think you do, Sarah," he said, his voice low.
"Do I?" Sarah pressed, unsure of herself and not liking the feeling. "Sometimes, I'm positive that's true. I'll know what you will do right before you do it. I'll feel the words in your head before they come out of your mouth. But there are fundamental parts of you that I don't understand."
Jareth's hands slipped beneath the sleeping bag and clasped her sock-covered feet. "You may not have known the words, but it couldn't have passed your notice that I am tricky, Sarah," he pointed out, not unkindly. "It doesn't mean anything more than what you have already seen. I promise you that."
She chewed her lip as he spoke and bit down when he promised. He was right. What he was hadn't come as a surprise, nor had it really presented anything new to process. He was Jareth. It hadn't been more complicated than that for her in a long time, and it didn't need to be now. A modicum of relief chipped away at her unease, but there was more underneath that nagged and needled.
Jareth's hands moved away, and he leaned back on them to peer at her. "What makes you think I have secrets?" he asked, his expression guarded.
"You're evasive," Sarah told him, though it felt somehow unfair even to her own ears. "When I ask you about personal things. Or home."
His eyes grew shadowed as he watched her, and Sarah thought he was going to deny it before he let out a resigned breath. "I know," he said quietly.
Sarah's eyes started to sting unexpectedly at his admission. "Why?" she asked, looking down in an attempt to hide the emotions she knew played across her face.
"I worry," Jareth confessed. He looked like he wanted to say more, but his lips pressed into a firm line, stalling whatever words may have been building behind them.
"Do you have something to hide?" she wondered aloud, hating the anxiety sharpening the edges of her voice.
"No," he assured her. "It's nothing like that."
"Jareth," she pleaded. "You're making me nervous."
He looked at her hands, twisting the material of the sleeping bag so hard it threatened to tear. He leaned forward again, back in her space, and covered her hands with his. "I misspoke," he stated. "I'm not worried. I'm afraid, Sarah. Of being too much. Too real for what you've allowed yourself to imagine me to be."
Sarah's stomach twisted. She opened her mouth to reply, but something in his eyes begged her to wait, to think his words through with care. She searched her heart for any truth to his fears and didn't like what she found. She couldn't deny that she had avoided asking him questions about his life until recently, and she'd never explored her own fears that had kept her from doing so. But how could he worry about being too much when he was everything?
"What do you mean, too real for what I've imagined you to be?" she asked, studying their hands, where his very real fingertip traced figure eights between her knuckles.
Jareth's heavy gaze tugged at her. When her eyes rose to meet his, he said, "Let me ask you something, Sarah."
"I didjust ask you something," she pointed out, wanting to roll her eyes but fighting the instinct when she looked up and saw the deep lines etched between his brows and around the corners of his downturned mouth. "Go ahead."
His large hands wrapped around hers securely. "You do know I am real, don't you?"
Sarah was trying not to let her frustration get the best of her. She'd requested he explain his evasiveness, and it felt like he was just doubling down. She slipped a hand from beneath his and pinched his upper arm, perhaps a little harder than necessary.
"Ow!" Jareth shrieked, snatching his arm away.
"You're real enough," she confirmed, then reached out for his abused limb despite her agitation with him. Her hand smoothed over the cotton of the sweatshirt he had borrowed—her favorite Pixies hoodie.
Jareth watched her fingers soothe the pinch. When her hand moved away, he looked up with wary eyes. "Real enough?"
Sarah was surprised to see genuine hurt sinking into the lines of his face, and she hated seeing it there. She scooted towards him, sliding her hands under the sleeping bag. They met long, bare feet, and she wrapped her fingers around them in what she hoped was a reassuring hold. He was so good at this part—the comforting touches—the holds. She wondered absently when it had started to feel so natural for her to return them.
"What's this about, J?" she implored, softening her voice. Her thumbs rubbed along the arches of his feet encouragingly. "Please. Spell it out for me."
To her dismay, he instead asked her another question. "Do you think I would trap you Underground?"
Sarah's hands stilled in shock at the turn of conversation. "What?!"
"Do you think I would steal you away and hold you prisoner in my castle beyond the Goblin City?" he clarified.
She couldn't help but snort at the absurdity of it. "No." She squeezed his pinky toes for emphasis.
"I thought not," he said. "You trust me." It was a question as much as a statement, and it hung there, indicating he waited for confirmation.
Sarah sent him an impatient look. "I'm currently feeling a bit messed with, but yes, I trust you."
Jareth searched her face for a long moment, and Sarah's heart gave a sudden squeeze at the enormity of his impending words before he spoke them. "Then why won't you visit me?"
Anxiety clawed back up her throat, and she felt almost ill from the pressure of the question that always sat heavily between them but had never been asked so directly. She could hardly remember what it had felt like to question his intentions; it had been so long. She wasn't afraid of being spirited away. She was afraid of seeing him. All of him, in his element, and all the things that could mean.
"I think I see what you're getting at," she admitted, though still unsure how to answer his question. It was only fair, she thought, since he'd avoided all of hers.
"Do you?" His voice was quieter than she had ever heard it.
Sarah took a deep breath and clasped his heels—as much to steady herself as to reassure him. "You're more real to me than anyone ever has been," she promised, meaning it. "I want to know you. You deserve to be known, Jareth."
He slithered into her lap, wrapping his arms and legs around her in an anaconda squeeze so tight it nearly relieved her lungs of breath. His nose burrowed into her neck as he clung to her, and his voice was thick with emotion when he spoke. "Know me, then, Sarah. As more than mere fantasy. More than an imaginary friend."
Her arms slipped around him and pulled him close. "Imaginary best friend, you mean," she corrected helpfully, smoothing his frantic hair out of his face so she could look at him.
Jareth chuckled against her shoulder, catching her eye. "Shut up."
Sarah sent him a guilty smile. Jareth felt so vulnerable like this, so spread open to her, and her heart pounded wildly at the feeling of all the places he pressed against her—and all the places he almost did. He smiled back at her, and they stayed like that, suspended, for a long moment.
Overwhelmed with affection for him, she lifted her hand and cupped his cheek, stroking the shadowed hollow. "Hey," she said, breaking the silence. "I'm not going anywhere, Jareth."
She felt him melt at those words, and she regretted not giving him the relief of having heard them sooner.
"Sarah." Her name was a whisper against her throat as he held her impossibly closer.
The hairs at her nape prickled as a shiver she couldn't hide coursed down her spine. "I'm sorry I made you worry that the reality of you would be too much for me," she told him.
His lips ghosted along her jaw as he rumbled a low, appreciative purr. Sarah fought another shudder and continued. "I'm sorry I made you fear I'd run if you became more tangible."
Jareth squeezed her tightly as if to emphasize how extraordinarily corporeal he was. "You have nothing to be sorry for," he assured her. "Thank you for talking to me about it."
"I'm glad you told me," she said, finding that it was the truth.
He pulled back to look down at her, hands laced behind her neck. "So," he hedged, eyes sparkling. "Tell me. What would you like to know?"
Sarah took a deep breath and broached what had bothered her since their conversation in the hammock. "I want to know about your childhood. Was it really so long ago that you don't remember?"
Jareth sighed. "I have lived a long time, Sarah," he declared, that strange expression she hadn't liked from the day before back on his face. "I have few anchors to early memories."
"Anchors?" she coaxed. "What do you mean?"
He looked pensive as he idly played with the fine hairs at the back of her neck. When he didn't reply right away, Sarah reached for him again in an impulsive endeavor at comfort she wasn't sure he needed. Her heart gave an extra thuh-thump when his eyes changed. They were the same blue, dark in the dim light. His pupils were still offset. But new crinkles appeared in the corners as her fingertips smoothed away his happy-sad smile.
"I mean," he said as he watched her with crinkly-corner eyes. "That no matter how far I drift or who I grow into, they tow me back to who I have been."
"Flit?" Sarah inquired hesitantly, recalling his puzzling dynamic with the motherly goblin. Her thumb swept his jaw, still soothing, even though the smile that wasn't a smile was gone. "Have you known her since you were a child?"
Jareth nuzzled into her tender touches and chuckled. "Flit would tell you, and anyone who would listen, that she raised me single-handedly."
Sarah's eyes widened. "Did she?"
He considered the question, his head tilting. "She must have. I don't remember a time without her," Jareth acknowledged after a long moment. "And Teacake," he added fondly.
"Teacake?" Sarah asked, surprised. "You've known Teacake since you were a child?"
A real smile stretched beneath her palm. "My mother was Teacake's guardian," Jareth elaborated before reconsidering. "Or, Teacake was my mother's guardian. I'll never know. No one remembers."
Sarah wasn't sure if she wanted to frown or laugh at this news. "Has she always been so…."
"Ancient? Decrepit? Perfect?" he supplied, grinning wider with each word. "As long as my memory serves, yes."
"That's….wow." Sarah's expression must have been something to behold because Jareth laughed. "And your mother?" she asked. "Do you remember her?"
"No," Jareth replied with a surprising matter-of-factness. "She was the Goblin Queen. My father was her consort. They faded soon after my birth."
Sarah felt her brows pull together. "Faded?"
"They gave up their immortality," Jareth rephrased.
Sarah studied him as she turned over this new knowledge.
"I know what you're thinking," he advised playfully.
Her finger pressed firmly to where his third eye would be. "Finally ready to fess up that you can read my mind?"
Jareth's grin was impossibly wide now, lamplight glinting off pointed teeth. "I don't have to. It's written all over your face."
Sarah arched a brow. "What am I thinking then?"
"You're thinking"-—his voice raised an octave in a purposely inaccurate Sarah impression—"poor maybe-baby-Jareth, raised by a goblin and a cat alone in an upside-down castle. How drab."
"No, actually," Sarah said, deciding not to brawl with him over that impersonation, considering the seriousness of the subject matter. "I don't know enough to know if I should feel sorry for you. And you wouldn't want me to, anyway."
"What's going on in here, then?" Jareth asked, cradling her head in his hands and rocking it gently back and forth.
"I was thinking," she mused, stroking his cheek again. "You're such a good friend. It's hard for me to understand how you became so…."
Jareth turned his face and gave her palm a quick kiss. "How I became so what?" he questioned with a hint of a smirk.
"Thoughtful, kind," Sarah answered, ignoring the blush she knew warmed her cheeks at the feeling of his lips back on her skin. She waited for him to gloat, but his face remained neutral as he waited for her to continue. "Patient," she added with a secret smile.
His lips curled upwards, and they shared the secret-smile for a moment, the meaning of it no real secret at all. Then Jareth said, "I've been witness to how poorly people can treat each other for centuries. I know what being a bad friend looks like."
Her gaze floated away as her hand fell from his cheek. She wasn't sure why, but his answer didn't satisfy her. It didn't explain why he bothered, why he took such care with her.
Jareth caught her wrist. "Sarah," he demanded in that look-at-me way.
Sarah's eyes met his again, finding an odd expression on his face that she couldn't quite place. His hand slipped into hers, and she let him thread their fingers.
He busied his other hand in her hair for a moment, neatening it while he considered his words. "You're something too, something important," he told her.
"I'm your Champion," she reminded him, feeling the slyness in her smile.
"Always," Jareth swore, digging his fingers in her hair and mussing up what he had carefully tidied. "But you're more than that."
Sarah chuckled and shook her hair out of her eyes. "An anchor?"
"No," he insisted solemnly, tucking the strands behind her ears like he wasn't responsible for their disarray. "You don't remind me of who I've been. Time didn't matter before, the now-and-the-then of it all." He held her gaze and brushed a kiss over their joined knuckles. "In knowing you, I am learning who I am. Who I want to be."
She leaned against his chest and breathed him in, letting her emotions roll through her freely. Her throat felt suddenly very tight, and she vowed if she started to cry, she would let it happen this time. His heart drummed a near-frantic beat against her forehead. She scooped him closer and left her arms there, low and cradling.
"There's more you need to hear from me." Jareth's voice was muffled in her hair as he nuzzled the top of her head. "Things that have been true for some time. Things that must be said, though I suspect you already know."
The near thunderous beat of his heart matched hers, and her breath caught with anticipation. She swallowed. "Hmm?"
"I've known you in a morning-through-evening microcosm. I want you in the spaces between," Jareth confided, voice dropping low. His lips were warm at her temple when he said, "I want to know what makes you feel good." Sharp teeth grazed her earlobe. "What doesn't." A kiss there.
When Sarah hummed again—her head tipping to give him access—it was involuntary and accompanied by a rush of arousal. Her hands tightened around his hips as she heard the sound, vibrating with her own lust. The small, agonized noise Jareth made told her he had heard it too. Felt it.
Jareth pulled away, pushing her shoulders back gently as he went. When her eyes lifted to his, she saw that they were deep pools of flickering blue. "I've wondered for years if you would seek me out in your sleep if I were to lay next to you."
Sarah's heart lurched. "I reach for you in my dreams every night," she confessed. "You're always there. It can be hard to know what's real when I wake up to you waiting for me."
"Are dreams enough?" His hands squeezed her shoulders and held. "Wanting, reaching for someone equally wanting, willing, and right here?"
She sucked in a ragged breath, and Jareth loosened his grip when she stiffened beneath his fingers. Her heart was beating impossibly hard. Her mouth moved soundlessly as she worked through a million variations of 'of course dreams aren't enough but-'
When she didn't respond immediately, Jareth disentangled his limbs from hers and slinked into the sleeping bag. He casually grabbed a pillow, buried his face into it, and groaned.
Sarah winced and slipped in after him. Spying the maroon chenille, she pulled that in, too, and tucked it around them both.
Jareth sighed and hooked his ankle around hers. He turned his head enough to tell her, "By the Gods, Sarah. You are not forbidden fruit."
She rolled to her side to see him better, raising up on her elbow. "Jareth—"
"You are not fruit!" he insisted, matching her posture.
"I know I'm not fruit!" Sarah said indignantly, with more fierceness than she had intended.
For a moment, She thought he would climb with her, speak just a little louder and with a bit more bite. Instead, he cleared his throat. The apple there bobbed with emotion she didn't often see. Sarah's last declaration seemed to echo improbably between the thin tent walls as he stared at her.
I'm not fruit! I'm not fruit!
"Sarah," Jareth ventured, his voice thick. He cleared it again. "I fear you worry I am some swashbuckling rogue who will vanish into a glittery cloud of maniacal laughter once I've, as you've so delicately described it, fucked you in a giant sleeping bag."
His words turned over in her mind, finding holds in soft spots she had done her best to ignore. "Feathers, then, maybe."
"Feathers," Jareth repeated tonelessly, his brow a question, his head on a tilt.
"Could be feathers, not glitter." Sarah was trying for levity, but she could see by his unimpressed expression that he was having none of it. Before he could say anything else, she said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't make light of it. But you've got me all wrong. I hate being misunderstood, especially by you."
"You deserve to be understood, Sarah," Jareth told her. "I want to understand you. And not for some sexual long-con."
"I know that," she said quickly. "I promise, I know that."
Jareth let out a relieved breath. He studied her for a long moment and said, "You do not owe me anything. But if you want me to understand you—his knuckles grazed her cheek—"start by telling me how you feel."
Sarah reached for him, letting her hand press against his chest. His heart beat hard and encouraging beneath her palm. "I'm afraid," she admitted—the single-word confession confirming what they both knew to be true. Her fingers tensed, a tangle in his sweatshirt. "But not of you. You're not my villain, Jareth. You're my home. You're my anchor."
A hand covered hers and pressed it closer over his thrumming heartbeat. Sarah watched the hard lines around his mouth and eyes soften. "Tell me more about that," he urged.
She chewed her lip and tried to think how to communicate a deep-rooted anxiety she hadn't allowed herself to put words to until now. Finally, she said, "Time works differently for me, Jareth. The now-and-the-then of it. That's all I have."
His heart skipped a beat beneath their joined hands, and his fingers tightened over hers. He stayed silent, watching her, but something darkened his expression.
Sarah took a shaky breath and let it out, pulling her hand away to run it over her face. "I'm not good at this."
Jareth tugged her wrist away and kept it clasped firmly between them. "I'm not asking you to be," he reminded her. "Please don't stop now."
She slid down on her back and tucked her elbow under her head. The wrist Jareth held crossed awkwardly over her torso. When he scooted closer to slacken her arm, she pulled him flush to her side, their hands falling over her ribs.
His hair fanned her cheek as Sarah turned to look up at him. "I've known you longer than I haven't. You're who I've been, who I am, and who I want to be. You're everything to me."
"Oh, Sarah," Jareth murmured. His head dipped low, and she felt him feather kisses along her hairline. He lingered there, breathing her name with each kiss.
"How can I risk that changing?" She asked. Her throat was closing again. She swallowed hard before revealing what kept her heart in an iron cage. "Just for the-now-of-it, but what about the-then? I'll get old. I'll die, and you'll have to watch."
She heard Jareth's breath hitch and was suddenly overwhelmed with grief. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she told him, hearing the pleading in her voice and doing nothing to hide it. Tears spilled freely, and his mouth chased them down her cheeks.
"No," he insisted, lips reassuring her with each whisked-away tear. "No, no, no."
"I know it's unfair," Sarah said, not caring that she'd used the word she usually avoided around him at all costs.
Jareth pulled back to look down at her. His gaze was full of affection and concern as he smoothed tears and rogue strands of hair from her face. "It isn't fair," he agreed, without any hint of mockery. "To either of us."
"I'm sorry," she said again, compelled to somehow take responsibility for denying them both what they wanted.
"No." Jareth's voice was firmer this time. Their hands over her ribs were heavy and grounding. "I'm sorry for my question. We have more than dreams. We have each other. As we are now. As we have always been. As we will be. And it is enough, Sarah."
A small sob escaped her as she unbent the arm from behind her head and slipped her hand into his hair. "I need you to hold me," she told him. "Put your weight on me."
He searched her face for a moment, for what, Sarah couldn't say. Her fingers tightened at the back of his head, and she tugged him toward her. "Please."
Jareth crawled over her hesitantly until he was holding himself up with an elbow on either side of her head in a plank, his legs bracing awkwardly on the outsides of hers.
"Don't be weird," Sarah said, maneuvering her legs to the outside instead and wrapping her arms and legs around him."Crush me."
He let her pull his full weight down on top of her. His arms rested on the pillow framing her head in a halo. His fingertips massaged her scalp as he nestled his nose into her neck. "Like this?"
She rubbed her hands along the lean muscles of his back. "Like this," she agreed, feeling tension melt away under the pressure of his body. "Thank you." She kissed his shoulder.
Jareth hummed and gave her head a tight squeeze.
They lay like that for some time until Sarah's tears had stopped, and her breathing had lulled into a slow, lazy rhythm. When she yawned, Jareth lifted his head to peer down at her. "Can you sleep?"
Bleary eyes cracked open. "I think so," Sarah mumbled before letting them drift closed again.
Warm lips caressed her forehead. "I'll get off you now, so you can breathe while you do that," Jareth suggested.
Sarah nodded sleepily, and he chuckled as he unhitched her limbs from around himself and arranged them into optimal slumber position. There was a vague awareness of him clicking off the remaining lantern and fluffing a pillow. She was only half conscious when he settled in beside her, and his feet slipped in between hers when she instinctively turned her body towards him. Time cradled them strangely as the forest and the pond beyond it bathed them in sound. Sarah hung in liminal space, sure she was dreaming, when she heard him whisper that name from long ago. "Precious, I hope you still reach for me."
A/N:
Infinite thanks to Geliot99 for beta reading and for letting me blah blah blah at you about this chapter for what has amounted to hours. You are the best.
Hi, reader. ❤️ Thank you so much for still being here. I know this burn is slow. I promise it won't be all talking and ceaseless touching-that-is-not-smut (though I do love ceaseless touching-that-is-not-smut).
Your reviews and support mean the world to me. It fills my heart with pure thrill. I cannot thank you enough.