Play the Game

Chapter 6 – The Way to a Goblin’s Heart

Sarah spent the rest of the evening on her sofa, alternately determined to not think about Jareth and worrying about where he might have gone and why he had yet to return. Was he lost? Would he be able to find his way back?

‘Forget about him. He left.’ She punched the arm of the couch and huffed.

Had he gone back Underground?

Sighing in frustration, Sarah jabbed at the remote to raise the volume on the television, trying to focus on the science fiction drama that was playing. She dropped the remote back onto the coffee table and reclaimed her pint of ice cream, digging out a large spoonful and stuffing it into her mouth.

What a miserable end to an otherwise enjoyable Friday night.

She knew that he would love that game, and he’d been so adorable, prancing around in his skinny denim and leather gloves. No one had given his wild hair or eyebrow markings more than a second glance; they’d seen stranger things earlier that day at the grocery store. She’d had more fun goofing off with him, both at the bowling alley and on set, than she’d had in a long, long time. Then Draco’s call had to ruin it all.

‘I want a chance, precious, if you could be so generous.’

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Jareth. For all of his failings, he was quite charming when he put forth the effort, and he knew how to have fun. His sense of humor was sharp, and she was certain that his intellect was just as keen. His kisses were downright addictive. She would not lie to herself and claim that she wasn’t attracted to him, but she just didn’t see how giving him the chance he had requested would do either of them any good.

He was leaving in two weeks.

Sarah had never been fond of the idea of long-distance relationships. They seemed to be a disaster waiting to happen. It was difficult enough to connect emotionally with a man who was constantly underfoot. Though she wasn’t quite sure how far away Labyrinth actually was, she was fairly certain that it would take more than a road trip to get there. Contact would be reduced to chats in her vanity mirror or whenever it pleased Jareth to pop in on her.

And then there was the might-be thing that she had just started with Draco. Granted, she knew little about him, but he seemed to fit into the mortal realm as if he had been there for a while. He was handsome and very pleasant company, though he didn’t stir the excitement in her that Jareth did. Perhaps that was for the best: she wouldn’t get swept off her feet and do something stupid.

Sarah slouched into the couch and pouted around her spoon, pressing her tongue against the cold metal. Being swept off her feet would be so much fun, and she had little doubt that Jareth could do just that.

The problem was that Jareth was the man in her dreams. Not of her dreams; in her dreams. He had been since she’d been a spotty prepubescent with a penchant for melodramatic fantasies. Jareth had simply given the Goblin King, on whom she’d been crushing for a good year prior to her careless wish, a physical manifestation. The drug-induced masquerade had already featured in several of her dreams (though they had usually ended in a kiss instead of her throwing a chair through the wall) by the time she had bitten into Jareth’s peach. It had been his face in the crystal that he offered her just before she won back Toby. She hadn’t really noticed in those moments, as she was all caught up in the grand finale of the story, but it had haunted her in later recollections. She had spent frustrated hours dwelling on his face trapped within the crystal orb, his translucent lips moving silently.

‘What had he been saying?’ she wondered as she savored another large spoonful of ice cream. Would he tell her if she asked? Did he even know that he had become firmly entrenched in her dreams or had the contents of the crystal been for her eyes only?

As she had grown up, not much about her dreams had changed except for the ending of the masquerade. This meant that he had very large…ahem… shoes to fill – those of a preconceived, romanticized figment of her imagination – and she would have to be very, very careful that she was reacting to the man, himself, and not the fantasy. It was all very complicated, made more so by the fact that he was just as hot, if not more so, in real life.

Granting Jareth’s request would most assuredly ruin anything that she and Draco might have had. She wouldn’t date both at the same time, so she would have to put him off while Jareth was in town. If he found out why – and he would, since all three of them worked on the same project – then he would probably go ballistic in true Fae style: loud, glittery, and involving a bodily transformation. She wondered what form Draco might take.

Glass shattered in the kitchen and Sarah jumped, spilling ice cream on her pajama bottoms. The sound of claws skittering across linoleum was closely followed by the banging of cupboard doors as they were slammed shut.

“You’d better clean that up!” Sarah shouted over her shoulder. Frowning as she scraped ice cream off flannel with her spoon, she supposed Jareth would be back eventually, if only to reclaim the Goblins that he was supposed to have sent Underground that morning.

There was a muffled protest from the kitchen, then a round of shushing, then a gruff voice said, “We will, girlie!”

“Lady!” another hissed, which was followed by a sharp crash, and someone squawked in pain.

The first voice repeated in a slightly more strangled tone, “We will, lady!”

Rolling her eyes, Sarah gave up on the ice cream on her pants and scooped another spoonful from the carton. She really hadn’t been that worried. For all of their glassware-breaking, coffee-bean-eating antics, they seem to have been instructed to “make themselves useful.” At least, that was what she’d understood through the babbling when she’d found them defoliating her houseplant for dinner. At the very least, they knew how to tidy up after themselves and their king. She now knew who had cleaned up Jareth’s bedding last night.

An idea struck Sarah so hard that she almost dropped her spoon. “Hey you guys!” she shouted at the kitchen. All sounds of scurrying and clanking stopped, and she took that as acknowledgement. “Why don’t you join me in the living room?”

“Did she just say—?” a Goblin whispered timidly; one from which she hadn’t heard much.

The Goblin who had corrected his fellow on his form of address squeaked in outrage, “She didn’t!”

“She did—!” the third Goblin’s gruff voice was cut off by an aggrieved yowl.

“I have ice cream…” Sarah sang cajolingly. Goblins could eat ice cream, couldn’t they?

There was silence again in her kitchen. Not sure if the sudden quiet was a good thing or a bad thing, she twisted her body and peered over the edge of the couch. Three pairs of glowing yellow eyes stared at her from around the base of the peninsula. They blinked in unison.

Grinning, Sarah held up the carton in her hand and gave it a suggestive wiggle.

The Goblins exploded into action, clawing over each other as they raced toward the couch. Yelping and grunting as knobby elbows connected with long pointed ears and sharp teeth dug into unprotected forearms, they tumbled into the living room until the writhing ball of Goblin flesh hit the edge of the coffee table with a sound much like the ringing of a gong. One of them had donned her pasta drainer as a helmet.

They lay where they had fallen and stared up at her expectantly. Suddenly realizing that she only had the one spoon between the four of them, Sarah began to drag her spoon through the confection to form curled balls. She figured that they wouldn’t stay in the Goblins’ hands long enough to melt. When she had three good-sized balls collected at the bottom of the cartoon, she turned her attention back to the Goblins, who were still staring up at her like accessorized Gollums.

“Before I give these to you, I want you to tell me something,” she said, meeting the lamp-like gaze of the Goblin in the middle. It nodded its head vigorously, green ears flapping in its enthusiasm. “Why is Jareth here?”

“King!” the one in the middle corrected her shrilly.

“Um, yes. Why is the king here?”

The Goblin with the gruff voice volunteered, “He flew here!”

“He flew?” Sarah repeated, momentarily sidetracked. She hadn’t expected that. “Then how did you get here?”

Gruff, as he became named in her head, grinned at her, showing her two rows of crooked yellow teeth. “Through the closet!”

“What? Never mind,” she said quickly, deciding that she might not want to know after all. She kept a tidy closet, and the last time she had reorganized, she had not seen any passages to the Underground. Getting back to the topic at hand, she tried again. “Not how did he get here; why did he come here?”

“King!” the middle Goblin shrieked again.

“Yes, yes,” Sarah said, then forced herself to take a deep breath to regain her patience. “Why did the king come here?”

Gruff and Title, the Goblin so concerned about them, exchanged an indecipherable glance. ‘I really should learn their proper names,’ Sarah thought to herself.

“Wanted a bit of sport,” the quiet one whispered. Gruff erupted into raucous, hysterical laughter, and Title kicked him in the shin.

“Ow!” Clutching his leg, Gruff hopped up and down on his good one, careened into the coffee table, and barked his other shin. “Ow-ow-ow!”

“Sport?” Sarah asked incredulously of the only Goblin who was not cowering in fear or howling in pain.

“King likes games,” Title said as he nodded sagely.

“Then what kind of game is h— the king playing?” Sarah wasn’t even sure that they were still talking about the same subject. His fondness for games wasn’t any big secret. While she was positive that Jareth was playing at something, he had seemed too serious, too in earnest, for it to be a mere game. Then again, this was a man who forced people run a maze to win back children, so who could tell?

Title blinked at her, his little green face pinched as he thought about that. “A very important game!” Throwing out his arms expansively, Title whacked the quiet one in the head with a spiked arm cuff, putting a dent in her lovely pasta drainer. Quiet toppled over without a protest.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” she grumbled, admitting defeat with a resigned sigh. ‘So much for that idea.’ She supposed that she would simply have to wrest Jareth’s true purpose for his visit out of the king, himself.

“Hold out your hands.” Immediately, all three Goblins were on their feet with their hands extended, palms up. Scooping up the balls of ice cream with her spoon, she plopped one into a hand of each Goblin. The ice cream vanished before she could blink.

“Aieee!” Gruff suddenly wailed and clutched at his head, falling over into a miserable pile of brain-frozen Goblin. Title was teetering from one stubby leg to the other, moaning, and Quiet was curled up in a ball against the base of the couch.

Sarah watched them without really seeing them; she had turned her vision inward and was once again worrying at the Jareth Problem like a puppy with an expensive Italian pump. Assuming that he came back and didn’t leave right away with his Goblins, would she give him his chance? He asked for so little and yet so much in that one request.

A hush had settled on the room, and Sarah shook her head free of her thoughts to see that all three Goblins had recovered and were looking at her expectantly with raised hands. Shrugging, Sarah began to scoop up more ice cream.

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With a relieved hoot, Jareth finally spotted Sarah’s apartment complex and tilted his wings, letting his body glide through the air toward it. He had been flying in what felt like circles for hours. At first, he had relished the cleansing feel of the wind in his feathers blowing away the heat of his anger. She had wounded him, and she hadn’t even realized it. He had spoken the truth when he had said she was cruel.

To top it off, he had made that ridiculous plea. He shouldn’t have said that. Did he never get tired of begging her, of laying himself bare and vulnerable to her claws? Had he no dignity whatsoever? Apparently not when it came to Sarah.

It hadn’t been long before he had spotted Draconus perched on the rain gutter of one of the countless apartment complexes that riddled this part of the city. Tall magnolias spread their branches in a thick canopy over the manicured complex lawns, and it was on one of these that he alighted, his feathers fluffed in agitation as he eyed the raven.


“Forfeiting, are we, Jareth?” Draconus the raven croaked and nonchalantly worried his impeccable feathers with his beak. “I’ve already picked out my mortal.”

Moving deliberately, Jareth turned his snowy back to the raven, then twisted his head around to glare at him. “What a pity that your efforts will have been in vain,” he hooted snidely. “Go back to your Mountain; I don’t like being spied upon.”

Draconus cawed in laughter. “I wouldn’t either if I had just thrown such a tantrum at the woman whom I was supposed to be wooing. ‘I want a chance, precious!’ Ha!”

Shifting his weight agitatedly from claw to claw, Jareth opened his wings slightly and gave them an irritated flick. “Mock me again, and I’ll peck out your eyes!” He ruffled his feathers as he settled once again on his perch. “She is a vexing creature, I’ll give her that.”

“And stubborn,” Draconus agreed slyly. “Perhaps you aren’t as irresistible as you believe? Or perhaps someone else has caught her eye? You might give up now while you still have your pride. She cannot be worth this humiliation.”

Holding his head still, Jareth readjusted his feet until he was fully facing Draconus. He spread his wings wide and advanced, his hooked beak open aggressively. “Don’t be an idiot,” he hissed. “My victory is assured!”

“Really, Jareth? So sure of yourself?” The raven eyed him, his black head cocked calculatingly. “What was it that you did to the girl in the tunnel? Ah, yes. Let’s make it ten days instead of thirteen.” Rising from his perch in a flurry of white feathers, Jareth screeched indignantly. “That would give you eight days left.”


Jareth had dive-bombed him with claws extended, but Draconus had launched off his perch and into the night, cackling as he flew. Though sorely tempted to give chase, Jareth had wheeled around and flown in the direction of Sarah’s apartment, the shortened deadline propelling him forward with renewed urgency.

Several hours (and fat mice) later, he had yet to find Sarah’s apartment. Oh, he had spotted many buildings that could have been hers – they were the same size, shape, even the same color – but as he had swooped down to what he had assumed was her living room window, he could see that it was not her dwelling. He would have transformed and transported himself magically long before now had he not been distracted by the fabulous hunting. His owl instincts were insistent in that regard, and he was feeling the drag on his wings from his bloated belly. He supposed it was probably a good thing that the Goblins helped manage the rodent population in Labyrinth.

This time, he was positive it was Sarah’s apartment. He had even spotted her little yellow vehicle parked on the street below the window. Reaching out with his clawed feet and breaking the air with great beats of his wings, he alighted on the flower box beneath the living room window and peered through the glass. His feathers ruffled in agitation as he viewed the scene within.

Sarah had dozed off on the couch in front of the television, her feet curled on the cushion next to her and her head lolling against a pillow propped against the armrest, with three Goblins cuddled closely to her side. The Goblins were sleeping with his Sarah! Screeching indignantly, he rapped his beak against the window, demanding entrance. Immediately, two pairs of large yellow eyes popped open and spotted him through the glass. The third snored and rolled over, still sleeping.

The smallest and quietest of the three, Rem, paled and dove under the coffee table, a poor hiding place since only his head actually fit underneath it, and his quivering rump was still in plain view. Butr, who Jareth was convinced would have been an official if he hadn’t been wished away as a toddler, hopped off the couch and trotted toward the window, but not before he have Sagonm a jab in the ribs to wake him. Snorting in his sleep, the Goblin twitched and curled closer to Sarah. Through all of it, his prize was still fast asleep, her head tilted at what had to be an uncomfortable angle.

On knobby tiptoes, Butr undid the latch and raised the window just high enough for his king to fly through. Hooting in irritation, Jareth made short work of the screen still covering his entrance to Sarah’s apartment and squeezed through the hole in the mesh, changing into his humanoid shape as soon as his feet touched the floor. Towering over the Goblin, who had finally noticed that Jareth was not in the best of moods, Jareth glowered at him, his mouth set in displeased lines.

“What do you think you were you doing with my mortal?” he asked the terrified little creature.

Butr wrung his green fingers and hunched his head into his shoulders. “W-we were keeping her w-w-warm for you, Majesty!”

Jareth considered that. The night wasn’t particularly cold, but mortals, even magical ones, were fragile creatures. Though clothed in sleeping pants and a tee shirt, she might be susceptible to cold. In fact, two telltale points poking out of her shirt did, indeed, betray her chill.

No punishment required, then.

Nodding sharply, he strode to the couch, booting Rem’s bottom to get him out of the way. Sagonm was still sacked out and snoring against Sarah’s side, so Jareth grabbed him by the collar and dumped him unceremoniously over the back of the couch. The Goblin landed with a bump and a squawk, and Butr frowned, trotting out of sight, presumably to chastise him. Sure enough, Jareth heard a series of uncomfortable grunts, followed by near incomprehensible grumbling.

Gazing down at the sleeping woman, Jareth caressed the lines of her face with his eyes. She was such a tractable creature when she slept. Quiet and peaceful, she wasn’t contradicting or defying him. Of course, he enjoyed her just as much when she was awake and being obstinate, even if she sometimes frustrated the piss out of him. She was vibrant and interesting, a sunny day in his perpetually cloudy existence.

He had to win her. He was so very bored, and he had missed her terribly. But he hadn’t exactly been wooing her, as Draconus had put it. Somehow, he had to inspire in her the craving for him that he felt for her. She should miss him when he wasn’t in the room and yearn to touch him when he was close.

First things first, he had to eliminate the competition… discreetly. Striding silently across the carpet to the little table by the front door, he gingerly lifted her purse, pausing a moment to see if anything tried to hurt him. Sighing in relief, for one never knew what a ladies purse could hide, he fished around in it until he found the nasty little black device.

“Butr!” he snapped quietly, and the Goblin abandoned his torment of Sagonm to trot up to his king. Jareth handed Sarah’s cell phone to him. Eye widening in wonder and shining with moist adoration, Butr glanced from the phone to his king. “Dispose of that.”

“Majesty!” Butr whispered reverently, then popped it into his mouth, swallowing noisily. The other two Goblins stared at him mournfully from the shadow of the couch.

“Now let us never speak of this again,” Jareth proclaimed, and all three Goblins nodded solemnly. Feeling immensely pleased with himself, he padded over to the couch and once again gazed upon his lovely prize. ‘Let’s see her would-be beau intrude on us now!’

With a thought, he replaced the human garb he had conjured that morning with Sarah’s luxuriously soft robe and draped himself over the couch and the mortal woman. He rested his head against her shoulder and stretched out along the rest of the couch. She stirred, shifting her position to better accommodate him, and he smiled contentedly.

“You may sleep at our feet,” he magnanimously instructed the Goblins who were now squabbling behind the couch.

“Yes, Majesty! Thank you, Majesty!” Butr piped cheerfully, and the threesome puttered out from behind the couch to fall into a heap of sleepy Goblins.

Sarah shifted again, mumbling something unintelligible, and then rolled her head against the pillow until she was gazing unfocusedly into his eyes. “You came back,” she said, her voice hoarse with sleep and a groggy, sweet smile on her lips.

Remembering his earlier decision to romance the woman, he squelched a smart remark and instead smiled back, saying, “Of course. You doubted?”

She scrubbed a fist into her eyes and yawned. “Well, the last time you got pissed off and flew away, I didn’t see you for fifteen years.”

Jareth rubbed the side of his face against her shoulder, delighted that she would worry whether or not he would come back, even if she had woefully understated that particular event. It was then that she seemed to realize how closely they were entangled, and began to wriggle out from under him. Frowning, Jareth wrapped his arms around her middle. “Where do you think you are going?”

“Off the couch.” She tugged ineffectually at his clasped arms and then gave him a long-suffering look. “Jareth, let go.”

“You let the Goblins sleep next to you,” he protested as he tightened his grip.

“Well, that’s different!” She tugged again, grimacing at his strength. “I don’t like the Goblins… I mean, I like them, but…” She paused to glance at his face and then rolled her eyes, apparently exasperated with his wide, predatory grin. “Damn it, Jareth, get off. I have to pee.”

“Oh, then by all means,” he said and generously released her. She sprang off the couch and disappeared into the hallway, slamming shut the bathroom door a moment later. Despite the cold, empty spot now occupying Sarah’s place on the couch, he was immensely satisfied. She had implied quite a lot in that little speech. He had been going about winning this game incorrectly. Tricking her into kissing him during the filming of the movie was the wrong strategy; he simply had to play on feelings that already existed! Once again confident of an easy victory, he stretched like a cat and threw a bare foot over the armrest. He almost hoped that Draconus would be watching when Sarah gave him the first heartfelt kiss: almost, but not quite.

“Jareth, why are you wearing my robe— Gah!” Sarah slapped a hand over her eyes when she rounded the entrance of the living room. “Could you at least wear something under it?”

“Why?” he asked. “I like the feel of the fabric against my skin.” It was very soft; he would bring this with back with him when he went home. He slid a hand down his side to his thigh, petting the plush material and smiling in bliss, and Sarah whimpered in the back of her throat. It also wasn’t covering much, convincing him that Sarah had more than a little owl in her if she were so affected by seeing his chest and stomach. Shifting a little so that the edges of the robe parted further, he stroked his hand down the fabric again.

She was going to get a little owl in her if she kept making those noises.

“Are you hungry?” Sarah asked in a strangled rush, now looking longingly at the kitchen. “For food?” she elaborated quickly.

“No, I had a bite or two on the way,” he drawled lazily and tucked a hand behind his head. Her eyes tracked the movement of his hand. It was odd, but refreshingly novel, to be lusted after by a woman for his bare skin as opposed to his keen sense of fashion. As Fae aged, they tended to be less and less excited about the naked form; after all, they had seen it many, many times before. It was with what one dressed the body that made it new and exciting. Jareth had yet to reach the age that a nude female failed to arouse him, but he had dallied with several Fae women who had been more fascinated by the ties of his codpiece than the actual contents.

A breeze wafted through the window, ruffling his hair, and Sarah glanced at the hole in the screen, her mouth pursing as she eyed the tattered edges. She glanced at him askance, and he belatedly sucked in his gut in case his overindulgence still showed. If it did, she didn’t seem to mind it as much as the damage to the screen. “For some reason, I don’t think you mean fast food.”

“No, it was fairly quick,” he assured her. “I, however, was faster.”

Paling slightly, Sarah grimaced. “Good for you. Um, you aren’t going to…” she gestured vaguely at his abdomen, “pass any pellets or anything, are you?”

“Sarah, that’s disgusting.” As if his body was even capable of that in his humanoid form!

“Right. I’m going to bed,” she said with finality, heading back into the hallway. Just as she rounded the corner, she grabbed the wall and shot him a stern look, pointing at the screen. “And you’d better fix that.”

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A/N: Thanks to my beta, leanansidhe, whose name I manage to spell incorrectly half the time. *sigh* Also, thanks to you who are reading and reviewing! I love to hear from you.

The Goblins’ names were thanks to a random Goblin name generator over at Seventh Sanctum. It’s pretty awesome.