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Chapter Seven: I’ve brought you a gift.

Being able to talk to her friends again calmed Sarah down enough that when Christmas arrived, three days later, she was able to withstand the incessant, unwanted attention of distant to unknown relatives and the equally unending and unwelcome harping of her stepmother.

“Hey there, little missy, how about topping off my glass?”

“Tell me, do you know if there are any more of these...are they boiled eggs?”

“Sarah, go bring out the other tray from the kitchen. And do change your shirt; it doesn’t match the rest of your outfit.”

“Yes, stepmother...”

Escaping to her room that night was a relief. It meant that she was finally able to relax and be by herself, or, if she preferred, to call upon her friends again.

Which she did, and they spent a lovely hour talking and exchanging stories—the Labyrinth had been covered in several feet of snow, and the bog was now one large sheet of ice. Impromptu snowball fights kept breaking out, and although dodging the persistent and mischievous goblins was trying, the sudden storm had, at least, taken care of the fairy infestation.

When she finally sighed and bid them goodnight, she turned in her chair and started back.

This time, Jareth was sprawled leisurely across her bed, and not simply an illusion in the mirror.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped defensively.

He grinned in a way that should be outlawed—either for being too disturbing or too alluring; she couldn’t decide which.

“Isn’t it obvious? I came to wish you a merry Christmas,” he teased, stretching his arms up to place under his head. The movement accentuated his chest, largely revealed by the open neck of his white poet’s shirt. Emerald vines twined around the neck of the shirt, and the gaping laces utterly failed to hold the edges of the shirt together.

Sarah’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly. Her friends hadn’t known about Christmas until she’d told them—they had other celebrations in the Underground, they’d said—so she knew that Jareth was only using his Christmas wishes as an excuse to harass her.

“Well, now you have, so you can leave,” she retorted cruelly.

He tutted at her. “Sarah, Sarah... Surely you don’t think that poorly of me, to come without a gift for you?” He freed his right arm and twirled his wrist, a clear, shimmering orb appearing on his fingertips.

Sarah remained unmoved. “I’m not even going to ask what it is,” she warned him.

He grinned in response. “It’s a crystal, nothing more. But if you turn it this way...” And he threw it at her.

Sarah took a deep breath, preparing to chew him out yet again, but reacted instinctively to try to bat the ball away. When it touched her hand, however, it transformed into a silver chain that draped neatly over her fingers.

She jumped in surprise at the sudden change before tilting her wrist back to glare at the simple necklace—just a plain, silver necklace with a large silver pendant, inlaid with gold. It looked almost like a Celtic design, but was too wild for that. Delicate wires in silver and gold crisscrossed over and under each other, creating a matrix that was as confusing and beautiful as what it meant to portray.

“It’s the Labyrinth,” Jareth supplied before she had a chance to ask—or complain. He ignored her sour look and stretched out his legs, encased in snug, dark green breeches that matched the embroidery on his shirt. “And before you ask, no, I won’t take it back. That would be quite against the spirit of Christmas.”

He winked cheekily.

Sarah snorted. “Well, I have nothing for you, nor do I plan on finding anything, so you’ll have to take it back anyway,” she objected lightly. “It simply wouldn’t be fair of me to take your gift without offering anything in return.”

Jareth shrugged, managing to project an air equally easy-going before rolling to his feet and leaning against her bed. “There is something I’d like to know, actually. One of your traditions, I believe.”

Sarah looked at him suspiciously. “Oh?” she inquired, also rising to try to even out their heights.

It was a futile attempt, but she refused to look up at him from the level of his waist.

“Yes,” he continued. Not even an angel could have sounded more innocent than he did in that moment. “What do those little berries on the ceiling mean?”

Sarah felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of dread as she raised  her eyes to gaze at the bright, green and red sprig of mistletoe. Suspended directly over her head.

Jareth’s amused chuckle came suddenly in her ear, his warmth at her back. “Doesn’t it have to do with...kissing?” he purred.

* * *

Sarah stared at the television screen moodily, long after the fact. Much though she resented being where she was, she couldn’t deny the necessity of it, and so she stayed.

Sitting on her stepmother’s couch, surrounded by yet more people, was not really where she wanted to be, but she was hardly going to give him such a golden opportunity. He had already proven himself to be too knowledgeable about certain human traditions, and she was certain that he did it just to irritate her.

Mysterious, magical beings in tight pants could be quite annoying, she mused to herself, particularly when certain phrases had no meaning for them.

“Sexual harassment,” for example, or “restraining order.”

The announcer on TV babbled on insignificantly as Sarah rose and wandered into the kitchen, making herself briefly useful by carrying more snacks into the thronged living room. Someone reached for her bounty and she resigned it willingly, resuming her seat on the couch for lack of any other, better alternative. Her room was still too risky for about another hour.

Surely that will be enough time, she thought to herself. He can’t try anything now; he’s not that much of an idiot.

Just thinking of him made her burn with rage at the last time she had seen him. It had been a very good thing that her father had knocked on her door when he had, or else the oh-so-mighty Goblin King might be sporting a broken nose by now.

Not that explaining why I looked so pissed—and was holding a strange necklace he’d never seen—was any more fun, she considered. But at least mentioning Mom still gets him off my case.

After all, who better to blame a strange, seemingly otherworldly necklace on than her flighty, actress mother? It was certainly intricate enough to be a movie prop.

She was once again distracted from her ruminations by the television, in which several thousand people began counting down en masse. She tried to ignore both of them and the glittering crystal ball in the background, the sight of which made her slightly nauseous.

“Glitter” and “crystal balls” were two things that she could live without at the moment, and hopefully forever.

Unfortunately, her stepmother’s guests did not share her lack of enthusiasm, and she had to put up with being rudely jostled as the mildly inebriated couples began shamelessly snogging each other around her.

“Happy New Year!” someone crowed behind her as the opening bars of “Auld Lang Syne” began floating from the infernal television.

“Maybe for you...” she muttered darkly.

* * *

It was almost a quarter to one when she finally gave up hiding downstairs, making excuses to stay where people still moved sluggishly about her house, and went up to her room.

Surely, she thought, surely by now he’ll have given it up as hopeless and decided not to harass me tonight. Surely.

But then, when did annoying, arrogant, and vain Goblin Kings ever listen to reason?

* * *

Jareth chuckled as he eavesdropped on her mental venting. It was just like her to make everything he did into an unforgivable crime while ignoring the entire point.

He stretched as he meandered into his closet, debating what to wear tonight. Some of her stepmother’s guests had had interesting ideas, though not as good as the ones on that strange little box they’d all been staring so raptly at.

He tried on a pair of brown leather pants with a slight flair at the bottom with a cream silk shirt.  He stared into the mirror, debating, and then decided that it was too bland for his pale complexion. The shirt was promptly stripped off and left abandoned on the floor as he returned to his closet, still thinking.

A vivid red shirt replaced the cream one, but he didn’t like red on brown. Too little visual interest.

He returned to his closet, scratching his chest between the open edges of the shirt. Several other outfits were tried on and just as promptly discarded before he found one he could live with.

Black pants—still leather; he wasn’t about to forsake it completely—fit snugly over his hips and thighs, though they were less obvious from the front. It wasn’t quite what he wanted, but perhaps it would soothe Sarah if he weren’t quite so blatant about his assets.

He was mollified by the rear view, however, when he turned around to peer over his shoulder into the mirror. It hugged his ass quite flatteringly.

His shirt was grey silk, and flowed like water over his lithe form. It was styled as an Aboveground dress shirt, though the fabric’s shine made it less professional and more seductive.

Leaving the top few buttons open also helped.

His hair, though pale, was still rather yellow for the cool tones of his ensemble, so he combed his fingers through his long mane, leaving glistening silver highlights in their wake.

Better.

He gave himself one last, critical examination in the mirror before stepping out of his bedroom and into his intended’s.

* * *

Sarah was rooting in her closet for her nightclothes when she felt a puff of air on the back of her neck, as though someone had opened the door, or—

—as though he had done his magical appearing act right behind her.

“Damn it, I thought I told you to stop stalking me!” she snarled quietly, straightening and whirling to face his too-condescending smirk.

He shrugged, hands outstretched to show that they were empty, and smiled. “Really, Sarah,” he purred, leaning back against her small vanity-desk, “how could you expect me to stay away from such a ravishing young thing as yourself?”

She folded her arms and glared at him, her pajamas looped over one forearm. “And you actually expect me to believe that.” Her statement wasn’t a question, her tone too bitingly sarcastic. “That you’re actually attracted to me.” She sneered, but Jareth refused to be put off.

“Well, if you won’t believe that,” he said, hiding his rejection in half-lidded, burning eyes and a subtle smirk, “then why not try this—an old enemy has come to bury the hatchet, just like your song.”

Sarah snorted, remembering which song he referred to—it was the only one that anyone was playing tonight.

“Figuratively speaking, of course,” he continued, his smirk growing slightly as he eyed her antagonistic stance. “I’m not sure that I’d trust you with a real one.”

“You—!” she began, flying forward—to do what, she wasn’t sure, but sense didn’t exactly figure into attacking the Goblin King anyway.

Jareth caught her and laughed, wrapping her in his strong arms and rocking her gently as she pushed against him, now fighting just as hard to escape.

“Sarah, do calm down,” he chided gently, still holding her patiently and waiting out her struggles. “I’m not actually here to fight you.”

“Yeah right!” she snapped, ignoring her change of clothes as they began to slip off her arm.

Jareth caught them smoothly and tossed them onto her bed quickly, uncharacteristically making no comment. “What? I just came to wish you a happy new year,” he said in tones of injured dignity.

“Midnight was almost an hour ago, you mullet-haired poof,” she pointed out, still hostile. They had come to a stand-still, her hands on his chest pushing him away as his arms around her waist prevented her escape.

She didn’t notice that he’d stopped trying to force her against his chest, and was now simply holding her.

“I know that,” he declared patiently. “But not in the Underground. There, the clock is about to strike thirteen. And there is a lovely tradition you mortals have...” He let his voice trail off suggestively.

“Not. On. Your. Life,” she hissed, digging her nails into the thin, silken fabric of his shirt.

Jareth shrugged slightly and rolled his eyes at her reaction. She insisted on being so dramatic.

“Besides,” she snapped, “the math doesn’t work out, you lying cheat.”

He raised one flyaway eyebrow at this wonderingly. “Oh?”

“You use a thirteen hour clock,” she pointed out. “So if that’s anything like our clocks, you have a twenty-six hour day—so your midnight would be two hours away from ours, not one. And since there are exactly two hours difference, an even number, you can’t line up your midnight with ours and still expect to get just one hour off! It’s impossible! Besides, the differing lengths of days would mean that earth and Underground would eventually get so far off from each other that it’d be useless trying to compare them. You just want to kiss me!” she finished scornfully.

Jareth had kept a politely interested—if slightly amused—expression on his face throughout her entire harangue. “You’ve been thinking about this for quite some time, haven’t you?” he asked mildly.

Sarah snorted. “It wasn’t hard to figure out,” she scoffed. “Any child could do it. Besides, Hoggle told me that you don’t celebrate things like New Year’s anyway.”

He gave that insufferably arrogant nod, as though he were digesting what she had said. “It’s quite a nice bit of logic,” he allowed, giving her one brief moment of success, “but still complete bullshit.”

Her eyes blazed again as she tried to fight her way back to freedom, but he held her fast and continued before she could interrupt, as he saw she meant to.

“First, you assume that because I have a thirteen hour clock, I use it to measure time the same way that you use a twelve hour one—that thirteen hours is half of one day.” He smiled regretfully and shook his head. “Poor thing—haven’t you ever heard of props? And thirteen is such a dramatic number in your world; you’d have thought that I’d take advantage of that motif—it was lying right there, begging to be used!”

Sarah did not like having her clever assumptions debunked, Jareth noted with amusement.

“Secondly, just because you can pass between the realms doesn’t mean that their hours should start and stop at the same time. It’s a totally different world, with different divisions of days and hours and—oh, all sorts of things. Astronomy, you know,” he said, giving her a knowing look.

“Though you are quite right about Above- and Underground being on different years,” he congratulated her, though it sounded more like patting the runt of the litter’s head after it had managed something perfectly obvious. “I used the same hours as earth for your convenience, not mine, love,” he purred.

Sarah finally managed to rip herself out of his arms and stumbled several steps back, not realizing how much she had depended on his arms for support as she pushed against him. “You arrogant bastard!” she spat.

Jareth laughed delightedly and caught her again easily, this time pulling her immediately to his chest and nuzzling her dark hair. “Though you were right about one other thing,” he murmured seductively into her silky locks.

“And what would that be?” she growled, squirming unhappily in his arms.

He tilted her head up and smiled beautifully. “I really did just want to kiss you,” he purred, and captured her lips with his.

His lips were unexpected soft and warm, pressing against hers gently in a way that made her want to curl her toes and melt into him—but this was Jareth! King of tricksters, lord over a Labyrinth that could change in the blink of an eye and was never what it seemed! He’d stolen her brother, set the cleaners on her, sent her that damn peach and its crazy—beautiful, something in her mind whispered—dream! She couldn’t trust him—he was probably only planning some new devilry to throw at her next.

But oh, just think of how handsome he is, how wonderful this feels, when you aren’t fighting him, that same voice whispered, noting how his hand on the small of her back pulled her gently against him, arching her body to fit more perfectly—more cozily—against his own, how he seemed to purr in contentment at finally, finally, being able to kiss her...

She stomped on the voice aggressively and pushed him back, and this time he let her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, trying to kiss me again?” she demanded roughly, refusing to admit that she was slightly dizzy from the feeling of his velvet lips moving against hers.

It was going to be a long night, he decided.