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“The closet scene, Jareth.”

“I’d thought we already settled this issue.”

Damn him for having such a smooth, silky-soft, compelling voice...though that infuriating smugness, his never-ending assurance that he is always right, is starting to get on my nerves.

Well...more than just starting...

“It doesn’t do anything for the plot. You know that. I know that. I want to get the plot out, not your own personal closet fantasies.”

“You say that as though there is something wrong with my closet.”

Did I mention that I still haven’t enlightened him as to the meaning of the phrase “coming out of the closet”? I haven’t enlightened him.

He wouldn’t be so patiently still amused if I had.

“Jareth...it’s a blatantly self-serving scene, and you know it,” I remind him, frustration starting to show.

He stretches leisurely—showing off, I’m sure. “And?”

“It has no point!” I snap back. “No point at all, except blatant fanservice.”

His eyebrows lift at this. I’ve learned a new word, apparently.

“Fanservice,” he echoes in a flat voice.

“Acting out the hormone-fueled fantasies of rabid, Jareth-stalking fangirls everywhere,” I clarify succinctly through gritted teeth.

He snorts. “They won’t catch me.” His voice is, yet again, all cool assurance. “You needn’t worry your pretty little...tangled-hair head over me.”

Joy. I’ve always wanted for some arrogant, nonexistent male to sound like he’s patting me condescendingly on the head like I’m some tiny puppy, still too young to walk without tripping.

“No...of course they won’t,” I fling back cattily, sharp sarcasm laced through my tone. “After all, you’re over here, harassing me to write out your little story for you, aren’t you?”

He smiles again suddenly, his dazzlingly white teeth catching in the faded light of my lamp. “Exactly. And about that writing...”

I steal his lead-in. “The closet scene. Seriously, you can’t be that attached to it. I’d just stick it in ‘Playful Oneshots’ anyway, so it’s not like it wouldn’t get published.”

“But,” he interrupts, “more people read your Patience story—I approve of the title, by the way, it isn’t—than that oneshot thing. And since it was originally written for that story, shouldn’t it stay in there? Hm?”

Oh, now he’s condescending again. He’s so pleasant like this, it reminds me of getting my cavities drilled.

“Have you never heard of a process called editing?” I hiss at him, trying not to yell.

He snorts. “All right. Fine. Have you asked that new beta of yours what she thinks? Do tell.”

I snort and roll my eyes. “She says leave it. Apparently it’ll give insight into your character when you’re not getting chewed out and beaten up by Sarah.”

He raises an aristocratic eyebrow. “Does she, now... Except for the dig about my dear, sweet Sarah—”

Sarah’s voice comes from outside my bedroom. “I heard that, you overweening prig! And I’m not your ‘dear, sweet’ ANYTHING!”

And now it’s my turn to raise a questioning eyebrow at him. He shrugs it off.

“As I was saying, except for that bit—which I’m sure is simply your famous sarcasm once again—I quite like her already. What else has she said?” He sounds positively chipper by now.

“About your closet, you, Sarah, the story, or what?” comes my sullen response. Pushy, inquisitive bastard.

I can understand why Sarah gets tired of him.

“All of the above, of course,” he purrs, now combing his fingers through his hair and examining himself in a mirror—where did he get a mirror?

Never mind. It’s better not to ask.

I sigh again. “She says keep the closet scene, because it shows you being yourself, rather than just reacting to Sarah.”

He twirls his fingers at me, the universal sign for I’ve heard this before, hurry up.

“Sarah, she thinks should cool it—at least some—because her constantly fighting you is getting old.”

He snaps the compact closed with a wolfish grin. “Excellent. Do send her my regards, won’t you?” he asks.

“—and she says that you come off as—hang on, let me look up her exact words—”

I disappear briefly to do just this, and reappear with the correct quotation.

“—as ‘a cheeky, arrogant, handsome, immature prat w/ nothing better to do than to bother a cute girl’ and that it ‘is the ONLY thing he’—you—‘comes off as’.”

I sit back to watch the fireworks, which are singularly depressing.

One eyebrow climbs disbelievingly up his forehead as he snaps his mirror open once more and disappears behind it. “Hmph. I may have to have a talk with her, then,” he declares in a miffed tone.

(Alex, I hope you’re listening. He doesn’t exactly make a pleasant houseguest.)

“Have fun, then,” I reply airily. “But you may not have to wait that long to meet her—she recently declared herself one of my muses, and I told her that she could be your new playmate.”

This gets me a slightly disbelieving look, and I can’t help but add, “like Sarah.”

That gets a reaction.

“Sarah,” he replies loftily, “is not a mere playmate. She is, in fact, my—”

“I am ‘your’ nothing, Goblin King, and you would do well to remember that!”

Oh yes. Did I mention that Sarah doesn’t react well to a certain possessive Goblin King?

I bury my head in my laptop and let their argument slide over me. Jareth will lose anyway; he keeps trying to be insufferably arrogant at Sarah, and he has yet to realize that it doesn’t work.

Ten minutes later...

When did Jareth start reading over my shoulder?

“Insufferably arrogant, am I? Well, if that doesn’t work, then what will? Since you seem to know so much...” His voice is silky-smooth once more, and I know there’s going to be hell to pay.

“You do realize that Sarah actually talks to me, don’t you?” I ask, somewhat short-temperedly, turning the laptop away from him. “So if you’re still intent on wooing her, you might want to actually COOPERATE WITH THE AUTHOR rather than simply bull your way through, like you have been doing.”

Another snort.

“I do believe that I just asked your opinion on that very matter,” he replies, dangerously pleasant, “so you might want to reconsider antagonizing me. Again.”

A glare, half-shielded by my laptop, doesn’t do any good.

“She did give you some criteria to work from, all the way back in Chapter five,” I remind him. “You might consider working on those first.”

He waves a hand, as though such is beneath his notice. “All in good time,” he airily assures me. “But about that new advice...”

I sigh in defeat. At least it might help him get the right idea this time. They really were supposed to be farther along by now.

“First of all, stop cornering her—especially in her bedroom. It’s her own, private domain, one of the few places that’s actually hers, and that she can go to so she can get away from the rest of the world. Including you,” I point out. “Stop hitting on her so blatantly, too. It hasn’t worked up until now, so it probably won’t work any better next time. You should have figured this out for yourself already, by the way.”

He looks distinctly unamused by my attempt at a reproof.

“Give her a chance to come to you—give her something that interests her, and in a way that she doesn’t feel threatened by taking it. Being somewhere public, with other people around, might help.”

“Absolutely not,” he replies staunchly. “I detest people as a natural course, and I refuse to degrade my time with her by sharing it with the company of others.”

“Your funeral, mate,” I toss out flippantly. Will it make any impression...?

He snorts and looks like he’s going to continue arguing.

“You know what, why don’t you go have that talk with my beta?” I interrupt quickly, before he can get started again. “I think she’s been wanting to meet you anyway.”

How I manage to hurry him off and package him into an email, I will never know, but at least he’s out of my hair for a bit.

Now for Sarah.

“You don’t really think that that’ll have any effect, do you?” She can be almost as sarcastic and condescending as Jareth, in her own way, and I’m in for a long night.

I just know it.