Love's Mercy

14.5 Awake and Unafraid

an: if this doesnt make sense visually, then.... oops!

"You are pretty..." Giovanni whispered as their fingers pushed through his hair. "How am I to wait so long each day for merely the chance to say so?"

"I hate it," Jareth said, and Giovanni kissed his face, and he held them firmly to the tree at their back.

"Hate is so strong of an emotion," they replied. "Were it ever that you hated me?"

"You say dreadful things," he said fore kissed them at length, and Giovanni held him against themselves. "I hate your friends. I loved you greater than I wanted to, Giovanni, you know that..."

They laughed genuinely; "I know, only I like when you say it." Their hand fell down the trail of his neck and through the center of his chest. He is beautiful, they thought, and their fingers came to the laces of his shirt tied loosely there. Am I the fool to wonder why it is he loves me? Surely, in another life, he must have been an artist's eternal muse. Would that I were that artist...

They pulled absently at the laces as their mind wandered, and Jareth had leant nearer to them almost without their notice at all.

"I will say how I love you, so long as there is no other to draw your attention away."

Giovanni looked to him then. "No, it is yourself of whom I wonder."

"What is there to wonder?" he said. "I am not so hard to know."

"It must be my own disquiet," Giovanni decided. My own self I doubt. I love him, but it is for that I fear so greatly to ever lose him. As Maria did, as Alfred did. Those were their other lives; what is mine? Have I any more than this one, here?

"I never truly disliked you," Giovanni began, "even when it were we first met. Only, I thought it impossible to ever be of the opposite mind, for it was easier to simply... imagine that I needn't concern myself with you. I know not what I mean to say." Giovanni's fingers curled to the fabric of his shirt. "I must seem a rambling fool."

"Only slightly," Jareth said, his regret immediate. "No," he added. "You are not. I did not mean to say such a thing."

"One should hope you did not."

"Oh, I- Giovanni..." he breathed, his eyes searched theirs for a moment Giovanni hoped should have no end. "I must have pleased a god sometime in my life if it were that they brought you to me."

"Interesting."

"What is-?"

"Not a thing." Giovanni smiled. "I love you."

"...I love you as well," he mumbled at last. "All your ramblings and whatever it is you will not tell me."

"That is all," Giovanni replied, "all I wished to say. I love you, I do."

I love his words, callous though they are, they sound precious to me. I love further that he means not a single one he speaks until he has pondered them one hundred different times. He still says what he believes is wrong. What goes on in your head, my love? Oh, darling, I don't care... If you think of me, then, do not say a thing. Show to me how it is elsewise that you love me.

Their hand came to the hair that curled so slightly at the base of his neck, pulling him closely to kiss him once more. A warmth were at his skin that they easily recognized as the way he flustered, for he could never keep it hidden.

"Sweet boy," they whispered against his kiss, and Jareth's hand came to the closures of their coat.

My heart cannot handle gentility now, sir. Make me do as you said; say your name in the manner it is to be breathless.