The mirror's surface rippled; swirled and solidified into a room of elegant grandeur, and as Sarah craned her neck to look, Jareth set her down on her feet so she could view her surroundings, wrapping his arms around her middle, and pressing an eager kiss to the slope of her neck.
A low fire burned in the grate, casting the room into soft orange hues, picking up the warm earthy tones of the walls, and sparkling in an extravagant chandelier of hundreds of crystals. They refracted the light into dappled rainbows, sliding gently over every surface.
A modest desk stacked with books was pushed over to one wall, and on another what looked like an enormous wardrobe. She didn't need to guess that his collection of clothing was probably vast.
The bed itself was a four-poster, but the canopy was unusual; not fabric but curtained by trailing ivy, string-of-hearts, and string-of-pearls, flowering vines that gave the room a breathtaking mix of regal and wild.
"So this is a fairy bedroom," Sarah remarked, leaning back into Jareth's kiss as he nipped her jugular.
"Fae," he corrected as she turned in his arms to face him. "I'm not a fluttering little bloodsucker that Hogwart gasses and grinds out under his heel."
"My mistake," she answered, a smirk pulling at her mouth. "What if I ground you out under my heel?" she teased.
He chuckled darkly. "In those boots, I'd welcome it," he answered and caught her lips with his. After a long kiss that threatened to steal the strength from Sarah's legs, her fingers darted to the buttons of his shirt, undoing them until she could slip the shirt off his shoulders. He bunched the skirt of her dress in his fists, pulling it up and over her head.
They stepped out of boots, trousers/leggings, underwear; tripping back towards the bed, barely a moment where their lips weren't pressed against the other's. Clawing and caressing in turn as they crossed the room—unable and unwilling to break apart even for a moment—they finally tumbled onto the mattress, already half entwined around each other.
Sarah shifted up the bed, and as Jareth climbed up next to her, she tugged him down to the mattress.
She straddled his lap and caught in the dim firelight the moment his pupils dilated as her curtain of hair shrouded him, a look of love-struck drowsiness softening his sharp features. His hands gently clasped her waist as she leaned in to kiss him, so sweet and so slow it made her dizzy to give it as well as receive it as she cupped his face in her hands.
"Sarah," he purred against her skin, his hips bowing up into hers, restrained but barely so, wanting but cautiously anticipating that stilling word of 'wait'. In answer she trailed her fingers down his neck, collarbone, over the bump of a nipple causing a hiss of air in through his nose as he bit down on her lip. The muscles of his stomach rippled as she stroked the backs of her fingers down, down to reach between them.
She wrapped her fingers around his cock lightly, grazing his head with her palm, watching the bob of his throat as he held back a groan and bowed into her touch.
It was fascinating to watch him; every flutter of his eyelashes, every hitched breath. He'd told her he was no angel, had repeatedly intimated he was no innocent, but watching him strain into her touch he seemed positively touch-starved.
"Thank you for today," she whispered as she grasped him fully.
He chuckled breathlessly, his tongue briefly darting to wet his lip as though his desire for her had parched him. "You really shouldn't thank the likes of me, precious," he murmured back, grunting as her thumb swirled beneath his tip and over to collect the moisture beading there. "It might be taken as a sign of debt."
Sarah kissed him, and he gripped the back of her head to hold her in the kiss longer than she'd intended.
"Perhaps I feel a little indebted," she said when he finally released her lips, working him in slow, purposefully delicate strokes until he looked positively strained.
A dark growl escaped his throat when she squeezed the base of him only to release him again to torturously gentle strokes.
"If you would do me a kindness and stop toying with me-," he grunted lowly as her fingers brushed his thighs, "-we could call the matter settled."
Sarah chuckled, tucking a length of her hair behind her ear as she positioned him at her core, and dipped slowly down onto him. His hands flew to her hips, fingers digging in as she rose nearly off him again, her hand still holding him by the base. She repeated the motion—again and again and again until his neck strained, back arched, and then sank down onto him fully.
He cursed, rose into a half-sit, and gripped her hips to move her into a deeper roll against him. As she kept the rhythm unaided, his hand slid to the back of her head, curled his fingers to fist a length of her hair, and tugged her head to the side to release her neck.
She tensed for his teeth since his kisses always came with an edge of teeth, but instead, his tongue lapped up to her ear, hot breath prickling her sensitive skin into gooseflesh.
"I'll never grow tired of the way you tighten around me when I pull on your hair, Sarah," he whispered, his voice rasped with an edge of desperation. "The way you moan when I leave bites over your beautiful skin, the scratches you leave on mine…" He let out an almost disbelieving laugh that sent a shiver straight down her spine. "It's more than I could've ever wished for."
Sarah grinned as a moan tumbled out from the bottom of her lungs, heady and drunk on him. "Villain," she retorted, an accusation and a call of his pet name for more. He answered it with a nip on her earlobe that caused an echoing twitch around his cock.
"And your only villain, Sarah?" he asked as his free hand left her hip to slip between them, his thumb circling her clit delicately, eliciting another groan as the friction made her thighs clamp against his hips. "Say you belong to me as I belong to you."
She nodded as well as she could with his hand still in her hair, but words had left her. A hot ache was building in the pit of her stomach, spreading down into a muscle-relaxing burn as she ground against him, as his thumb pressed into her, edging her towards a white-hot summit. She gripped him with her hands, nails scoring lines over his shoulders in blind overstimulation as she tried to draw in enough breath to see her through it.
"Ride me," he implored as she gasped in his arms. "Tell me 'yes' with the way you come apart."
In no more than a handful of thrusts she clenched around him, her walls and her thighs and her arms tightening around everything she could hold onto as release rattled through her and she screamed his name.
"My Sarah," he groaned, removing his hand from between them and rolling them both, settling Sarah on her back.
"Yes," she agreed, her voice coarse and tight, before his mouth crashed over hers.
He rutted into her, close and insistent, his chest pressed against hers, and though her legs felt weak and rubbery she managed to hook her feet around his calves to drag him in.
But he shook her off, and with an arm around her lower back dragged her down until her feet were forced to plant into the mattress and her back bowed.
"Again, Champion," he growled. "Show me more. Say it louder."
His groin hit her clit with each thrust and Sarah wearily found herself building back up.
"Yours—" She gasped as his thrusts hit a point inside her that forced stars across her vision. "Yes, yours—God, Jareth—"
His name was choked out with a second release, burningly shallow for being on the heels of the first that made her squeeze his cock tight and not let go for what seemed like minutes.
After several beats he let her slump down onto the mattress, leisurely pumping into her until the tension in her muscles subsided.
Light fingers traced her lips briefly—as though wanting to feel the promise just spilled from them—before he cupped her face, resting his forehead against hers.
"Mine," he purred and Sarah felt the weight of the word wrap around her heart like the swaying vines above. A promise and a spell, a hex on her very soul that she'd stepped into willingly. And yet somehow that felt like a comfort. Felt like coming home; enough that the burn she'd thought must surely have dwindled reignited.
It couldn't be possible—had never been for her before, and she'd assumed her body simply wasn't built for it—but there it was; that mounting tension that had an iron grip on the pit of her stomach and everything beneath was starting to burn once more, causing a tightness in her muscles.
In her heart too.
With a sickening lurch of shock, she realized it for a depth of emotion she'd never felt for anyone else. A dire desperation and addiction that threatened to drown her eyes in overwhelmed tears as he rucked the sheets beneath her with his thrusts.
"Oh, fuck," she gasped, and wound her arms tighter around him, hoping he wouldn't hear the terrified quiver in her voice. "Fuck, oh fuck."
But he did hear it and pulled his head back sharply to see the emotion straining her face. He nodded, sympathetically. No—empathetically; the same emotion dazzling his eyes as it did hers, and as he caught one of her hands and forced it over his heart it flared with brighter intensity.
"Yours too, Sarah," he promised as he did the same; laying his hand beneath the medallion still seated between her breasts to hear the thundering pulse beneath.
He dragged in deep breaths as she gasped, emotion and sensation making her lightheaded as her thighs tightened in sudden constriction around him. She fell into another sudden abyss and dragged him with her, panting and growling as he buried himself in her and wrapped her in his arms in a suffocating hold.
His breath came back in ragged shudders that fluttered against her shoulder. After a while, he sighed and relaxed around her, rolling to the side so she could pillow her head in his shoulder. He brushed the hair out of her eyes tenderly—lovingly—and as she turned into him, hungry for a kiss against her lips, he breathed a "thank you," against her cheek.
Boxing day was a slow lazy affair of avoiding goblins and stealing time for themselves on the Overground-side of the mirror. The warmth of their affection a beautiful contradiction to the weather outside, and soft kisses and softer words breathed from one to the other as they burrowed into each other and let the minutes bleed into hours beneath rumpled sheets.
When they eventually resurfaced Sarah insisted on movies; a lit fire crackling in the fireplace and cocoa in mugs, leaning into each other in cozy bliss as snow heaped against the windows.
Halfway through A Christmas Carol the phone rang, and Sarah answered it to Jenn's giddy greetings.
"Hey!" Sarah cried, struggling up out of Jareth's arms. "Did you have a good Christmas?! I miss you!"
Jenn laughed, clearly delighted at her friend's newfound cheer.
"Well, you sound merry!" she observed, with high-browed smugness that indicated she knew just the cause of Sarah's change in temperament. "I guess I don't need to ask you how your Christmas went. Get everything you wished for?"
Sarah's heart skipped at the turn of phrase. Her gaze flicked to Jareth, and judging by the twinkle at the corners of his eyes he could hear Jenn's voice perfectly well.
"I did," she mumbled, dumping her mug on the coffee table as Jareth's fingers slid over her knee, his eyes still trained on the TV.
"And how are things with…what were your words… the gorgeous, unpredictable asshole?" asked Jenn, causing a flush to Sarah's cheeks.
"Uh—"
Jareth's head turned, catching the wince on her face before she could drag it off. His lips tightened in an amused scowl.
"Am I to assume that disgraceful description is of me?" he huffed as Sarah's wince deepened. "Unforgivable."
Sorry, mouthed Sarah at the same time as Jenn screeched "Is he there?!" through the phone, having caught Jareth's melodic timbre.
"Yes," confirmed Sarah as Jareth leaned closer and nuzzled into her neck, his nose brushing over the shell of her ear, obviously intent on sabotaging the conversation as punishment for her graceless characterization.
"Put him on the phone!" Jenn demanded.
"No!" Sarah laughed back and swallowed hard as Jareth caught her ear between his teeth, his hand grazing her thigh meaningfully.
"Sarah!" Jenn protested.
"Not a cha-ahh-ance!" Sarah gasped as Jareth's fingers slipped higher, and Jenn laughed raucously at the clear hitch in her breathing.
"Does that happy little noise mean this one knows what he's doing?" Jenn asked, and Sarah swallowed a groan as Jareth's fingers reached the crux of her legs, squeezing firmly as he kissed his way down onto her neck.
"It means I've got to go," she blurted out as Jareth sank to his knees, his eyes glittering with wicked intentions.
Jenn chuckled knowingly; a dirty snicker that intimated she'd drag every detail out of her later. "No more radishes, then?" she prompted, and Sarah laughed back.
"No, I'm off them," she answered, raising her hips as Jareth tugged her leggings down her thighs. "Permanently," she added and hit the 'end call' button.
Author Note:
If you didn't guess the theme, each goblin is named for a type of radish. Again, this was unplanned when I started, and a quick detour onto the Radish Wiki page *deletes search history* provided just absolute goblin-ese abundance, how could I not?
"It is a truth universally acknowledged," quoted Jenn in chapter 11, brazenly plagarising Jane Austen, but we'll forgive her for it since I'm referencing Pride and Prejudice here on her behalf. One day I'll put her in the same room as Jareth, but I'm honestly concerned their combined and unabased magnetism and sarcastic attitudes could cause a blackhole.
Night of the Radishes is a Christmas festival in Oaxaca, Mexico on 23rd December and let me tell you when I found that out my jaw hit the floor and kept going. Seriously the amount of serendipity within this fic is staggering and I planned exactly none of it. I have such goblin appreciation for the holiday, and I really really encourage you all to do a google image search at the very least because holy cow.
The traditional goblin Yuletide greeting of Glammar Yol is a badly spelt translation of Gleyma (Old Norse for "merry") and Jól (Nordic for "Yule"). Just because I'm a smarty pants *swirls chocolate milk in a wine glass as she reclines in a leather wingback*. Their sticky "Sneakin'" buns are a goblin variant of German spiced "Schnecken". Har Har.
As always; an absolutely enormous heartfelt thank you to my soul-beta's RavenLove12 and foxfaceinthewindow. The amount of encouragement and constructive critiquing you two bestow on me never fails to be less than awe-inspiring.
And to all the wonderful commenters, kudosers, favouritees and followers, thank you so much for reading, it's been a blast! See you all next year!
Glammar yol one and all~
Geliot99