If the world was the way I wanted it, not only would the idea for Beetlejuice be mine, but so would Beetlejuice himself. That is, alas, not the case. I don't own any of it, not Lyds, not Beej, not the Neitherworld... Basically not anything in these pages that can otherwise be accredited to Tim Burton, and/or the Geffen Film Company. Now, there is some stuff in here that is mine... But you? You're reading this for Beetlejuice... And Lydia. And them together. Am I right?

-----------------

The mood in the room was still, silent… boring. Laying on his wife's bed for the past two hours, staring up at the new design she'd started scrawling across their shared living space, was starting to grate on his nerves. And he was starting to notice patterns within patterns among the spider webs that stretched across one corner. He was not a patient man, never had been, and marriage wasn't changing that for shit.

Propping himself up, he regarded the girl sitting at her perfect wooden desk, the only thing in the whole damn room she went to any lengths to keep looking nice, and frowned. "You're serious, Lyds?" He demanded, further annoyed when the girl didn't so much as lift her head to acknowledge him, pretending for the moment at least, that she had better things to do. "I mean, are you fucking with me? Homework? When we could be doing anything we goddamn want?"

"We've been doing 'anything we goddamn want.'" Lydia pointed out, still not so much as raising her head from the paper she was working on. "This would have been done days ago… I'm not the one who wanted to head out to Mardi Gras, and spend three days dragging his new wife through all the weirdest New Orleans has to offer. But since I couldn't get back on my own, and you're a stubborn asshole, you're going to have to deal with me catching up on my work now."

Beetlejuice frowned, draping one arm across his knee, and weighing whether or not the girl was still actually pissed at him. It wasn't like the chick hadn't had fun… He knew damn well she'd loved every minute of- Well, most of it, anyway. He grinned, latching on an idea, and pulled a long string of bright purple beads out of his pocket, noting with a leer, "Hell babes, it's not like we came back empty handed!"

His wife turned to him, to see what he was talking about, and her face sort of twisted up… He chose to believe she was trying not to laugh, personally. "Those." She agreed, with just a touch of dry humor. "Again, Beej, I'm as open-minded as the next… Well, whatever I am now… But my husband turning into a college girl, and flashing a guy on a float to get some beads, is something I could have gone the rest of my afterlife without seeing."

The poltergeist chuckled to himself, balling them up in his fist, and throwing them to her. "Well hell, babes… I wasn't going to let him get a look at your goods!"

"Because that was even an option." But she was smiling now, as she caught the shiny things, and twisted them between her fingers… Homework, for the moment, ignored. "And all things considered, that's probably the least of the sights I wish I could wipe from my memory about that whole thing… You are a perverted, immoral sociopath at times, Beej… And I swear, you were still the most normal one there."

He cackled, dropping back against her pillows- well, their pillows- and lidded his eyes, reflecting that maybe Lyds was getting too used to him, if she figured him for somehow being more normal than…

Well hell, it had gotten pretty crazy at that one party, hadn't it?

"You're just jealous," He noted, a little smugly, as he traced the lines of black once again with his eyes, "Cause that one chick with the gi-nor-mous melons kept trying to put her hands all over me. Hell, I'd be fucking jealous. She had this rack like-!" And he was busy gesturing with his hands, about a foot away from his chest, when he realized that he had, in fact, caught the girl's attention. "What?"

"Her gi-nor-mous melons." She repeated, a little flatly, as he now indeed had her undivided attention. "As opposed to what? My itty-bitty melons?" Beetlejuice's blank look was priceless… The guy never thought about shit before he opened his mouth, and current situation notwithstanding, it was one of the things she loved about him… Watching him try to carefully extract his foot from his mouth, while pretending it was never there in the first place, was one of her favorite pastimes.

This time though, he didn't even bother trying to backpedal. "Well shit, babes… I'll just stand here and keep digging, you let me know when I'm done." He muttered, clearly knocked off his game.

Lydia however, was not. "I'm not jealous, Beej." She assured him, finally rising from her desk, and stretching, well aware as he grinned, and took in the sight of her hungrily. "I don't have to be jealous." Relaxing again, she gave the poltergeist a careless grin, and noted easily, "I know Latin." Like that was the end all and be all of threats…

For about a second, he just stared, then started laughing so hard he almost fell out of the bed. "Babes," He sneered at last, yanking to a sitting position as she sat beside him, if only long enough to pull her down with him, "If knowing Latin is the best you have you offer, you ain't been paying attention to shit!"

Lydia giggled as she fell half over him, and he began applying kisses fiercely, and with single minded determination, to her throat. "I've been paying attention," She denied, half heartedly throwing off his demanding touch, and then just sort of letting him do whatever he wanted when he stubbornly reached for her again, like she didn't have the heart to say 'no' twice, "But I was just thinking about locking you in a closet, not sending you to sandworm land…"

Her protests trailed off as his mouth found hers, and for a few minutes they let thoughts of homework and arguments and sandworms slip away, the girl unable to suppress a shiver when his fingers found a little place near the center of her back where a little tingle of energy went a long way… Flushing across her skin with heat and cold as she giggled against his mouth, cursing him softly under her breath.

"How can you still be so cold?" She demanded a moment later, when he finally let her up for air. She was perched above him now, one arm cradled across his chest, the other supporting her, black silk spilling down both arms, and across his fanned touch where he held her. "I mean, I thought once we were married, you'd be alive, right?" She dropped a little lower to his body, so that she was cradled against him. "But you're cold."

Beetlejuice gave her a skeptical look. "You complaining, babes? 'Cause I know damn well that you like it when I-"

"Stay on track." She murmured affectionately, nuzzling his fingertips as he reached to stroke her skin. "You're cold, and yeah, I like it, but why? You're married to a breather now…" He chuckled softly at her calling herself that, and she paused, smiling, before asking quietly, "So you're alive, right? I mean…" Her hand crept up, sliding between the worn buttons of his shirt, and touched the spot where she could feel his living heart pulsing away. "You're alive."

"Yeah…" He agreed in a drawl, "And if I'd married just any breather, I might be even more alive. But me? Oh no, I gotta go and marry someone more interesting than that… I gotta marry a breather who's a frickin' neitherworld citizen, like myself… sorta, anyway. I mean, once we said I do, and all that, you and me were pretty much as dead and alive as each other, right?"

Lydia considered this, and came to one inevitable conclusion. "But I'm warm." She noted, not really in protest. "So if I'm as dead as you are, and you're as alive as I am…"

"Hell, babes…" Beetlejuice sighed, amused at her persistence. "I gotta tell you, I don't make the rules. Hell, half the time, I don't even understand why there are rules." A small pause, then, "Actually, probably more than half. Probably more like all the frigging time…" Another pause, then with a glance at the girl currently curled up on his chest. "Where was I going with this again?"

"You were avoiding a question you don't know how to answer." Lydia smirked, finally drawing away from him again, much to the poltergeist's protest. "Beej, I told you, I have to get this stuff done, or I'm going to lose a bunch of points on my grade!" She squirmed from his grasp, managed to stand, and gave the man an exasperated glance. "Look, I'm probably going to be at this for a couple more hours still. Why don't you go have fun? There's no reason both of us should be locked up, being bored to undeath."

And Beetlejuice of course, all he could do was grin at this… He loved how she called it her 'afterlife' now, and made jokes about being bored to 'undeath,' and called herself a 'breather' from time to time… It meant he was having an influence on her. And hell, he supposed the kid did have to do her schoolwork… Not that he'd ever bothered with that shit, but then he'd had to make it up years later, to stay ahead of the competition… Might as well get it out of the way now.

"Yeah, yeah…" He muttered, shoving himself off the bed, and already turning over in his mind how he could kill a couple hours, without indulging in one of his normal favorite pastimes… Trying to get up in someone's skirt. Lyds was understanding and all, but he was pretty sure she had her limits. "Maybe I'll head off to Vegas, catch that show you're always on about…"

"That's 'Phantom of the Opera,' She informed him dryly, already flipping through her papers again, to figure out where she'd left off, "And it's on Broadway, not Vegas." A pause, then, "The good one, anyway." She cast a half hearted glance over her shoulder, and added, "Don't suppose you wanna do that sometime…?"

"Pfft!" Beetlejuice dismissed this with a flick of his hand. "The guy was a damn charlatan, babes…!"

"And you're opposed to that, how exactly?" Lydia pointed out, shaking her head, and giving it up as a lost cause… Pointedly not pointing out that Vincent would have taken her if she asked, because she was pretty sure that was a sore point that neither one of them were quite over yet. "You're the biggest conman around, Beej… Look, just go screw with some people's head at a magic show, you know you'll get a kick out of messing up the act."

Beetlejuice considered this with a frown. The girl was right of course, it would be damn fun… But only if she was with him to truly appreciate his genius. "Yeah, well-" He began, only to be cut off by a knock at the door, interrupting them both.

"Lydia?" Barbara's voice, as the ghost woman deliberately didn't open the door first… A lesson she'd never actually had to learn the hard way, fortunately, after the two of them were married. "Mind if I come in?"

The poltergeist grinned, never truly tired of the game of screwing with the in-laws. "Screw off!" He growled, in mock outrage, "We're fucking!"

His wife shot him a strained look, shook her head, and assured Barbara, in a calm voice, "Ignore my wise-ass husband. I'm just doing my homework." And then, in a sort of afterthought, "You can come in, Barb. What's up?"

She swung open the door, and came in a little slowly, casting a withering glance at the half-dead man on the bed. "At least he didn't say it with your voice this time." She noted under her breath, clearly more strained than she was trying to let on, as she turned her attention back to her reason for coming up. "Dinner's ready, Lydia. Why don't you take a break, and come down to get something to eat?"

This caught Beetlejuice's interest. "Grub?" He grunted, looking intrigued. "Well hell, Babs… You don't gotta invite me twice!"

"I don't recall inviting you once." Barbara noted, still clearly resigned to her goddaughter's husband joining them for their meal. It had been a tough adjustment for all of them… Well, all of them except Beetlejuice and Lydia themselves, ironically, who seemed to be taking everything in stride… But Barbara was pretty much the only one still trying to pretend that things could ever go back to normal, and her forced optimism was clearly beginning to wear on her. "Anyway, it's just noodles…"

Beetlejuice grunted, clearly not seeing a problem with this, already on his feet, and bodily dragging Lydia away from her desk, despite her protests. "Come on Lyds, yer still alive enough you gotta eat… Hell, I'm alive enough I gotta eat now!" When she tried to pull from his grasp, muttering something about 'one more problem,' he physically lifted her, threw her tiny frame over his shoulder, and turned to face the ghost woman with a grin. "All set, Babs! Lead on!"

Barbara gave him a dirty look, strained with impatience, and turned without another word, leaving the two of them behind. "What's chapping her drawers?" Beetlejuice muttered, shifting Lydia's weight on his shoulder, and patting her ass in satisfaction, once he got her balanced right. "She's the one who fucking invited us to dinner!"

"I let you get away with too much…" Lydia reflected, as he carried her, still grumbling under his breath, directly through the floor, and with his usual sort of fanfare, into the kitchen with the in-laws. "On the other hand, that's assuming I have more power over you than I do…" She broke off, as she realized they were the center of pretty much everyone's attention now, as her family didn't seem to know what to make of this newest development. "Put me down, you idiot."

Chuckling under his breath, Beetlejuice spun her easily on his arm, dropped her roughly the last two inches to her seat, and scooted it in by magic, while he looked for his own chair. The only available one seemed to be across the table… Some breathers really never learned, did they? He lifted a currently occupied chair, spun it away to the far side of the room, and juiced up an empty one, more comfortable than those wooden backed things her family was sitting in anyway.

"All right!" He grinned, paying no notice to the air of hostility that hung in the room, "Let's eat!"

Adam got up, and dragged his seat back over next to his wife's, while Lydia cast a glance around the room, and noted that yet again, there was no sign of her father. She was probably the only one of them though, that didn't blame her husband for this… Edmond had his own reasons to stay away, these days. But she supposed that it was easier just to blame Beetlejuice for everything. She usually did.

A careful application of Barbara's ghostly energy, and five heavily laden plates swooped in to settle in front of them… In this case, noodles, egg noodles specifically, with piles of steamed vegetables on top, smelling of ginger and oranges. Lydia leaned forward, sucking the smell in through her nose greedily… She still couldn't cook as well as Barb, even if most of her efforts were limited to concocting something sweet. Sometime soon, she was going to have to figure out how she-

Any further thought died, as her gaze fell on her husband, currently staring at his plate like it was something that had fallen out of a sandworm's rear end. "You gotta be fucking me." He muttered under his breath, poking at the pile of hot food with one wary finger. "What the hell is this? You breathers actually eat this crap?"

Lydia stomped on the poltergeist's foot under the table, but he didn't even give her the satisfaction of protesting loudly, just sort of twisting his mouth in a smirk, and pretending he hadn't noticed. "I mean, seriously, you trying to kill me here, Babs?"

"You know what?" Barbara decided out of nowhere, reaching out bodily across the table, and snagging his plate, "You don't like it, you don't have to eat it!"

"Hey!" Beetlejuice howled, snatching it back from her fingertips with an offended look. "Relax you uptight little dame!" In a lower tone, adding, "Just needs a few neitherworld goodies to spice it up…" As he proceeded digging in his pockets, and, to her family's consternation, pulling some truly disturbing paraphernalia out of them in the process. A decomposing mouse, a long fat millipede, which promptly went towards her mother, a book singed with ash and rimmed in green mold…

And Lydia just sort of avoided everyone's horrified gaze, until he found what he was looking for, and with a satisfied sound, stuffed everything right back where it had been a moment before… Except the millipede. That he shoved in his mouth, as he twisted the pepper grinder in his hand, and offered it towards Lydia with a little twist of his eyebrows. "Go on, babes… Mire crickets, best kind… All sorts of spicy…"

"Uh huh." Lydia agreed, not reaching out to accept his offering. "And how long have they been in your pocket for, Beej?"

The poltergeist frowned, still chewing, and squinted his eyes at the aged wooden shaker, like it might have an expiration date. "Hell babes, I don't know… Neitherworld food don't go bad anyway! Just gets better with age…" He proceeded to grind some black and red powder all over his meal, complete with the occasional serrated leg, and Lydia grimaced. Not because he was actually going to eat it, as much as the fact that she was pretty sure he was still making up for lost time, as far as goading her family was concerned.

But she wouldn't talk to him about that here, now. She'd wait until they were alone. Again. And it would probably have just as much impact as it had the dozen other times she'd asked him, as pointedly as possible, to stop torturing her parents. The problem was, he knew he could get away with anything… That she wouldn't stay mad at him for more than a couple hours, and he wasn't ashamed to take advantage of it.

Half the problem anyway. The other half being he was really making her life harder every time he pulled this crap, not theirs. They already hated him. She was the one trying to hold the two halves of her family together… The two halves of which would gladly make her choose one or the other.

The meal after this though, oddly went a little more smoothly, as if even Beetlejuice knew when he was pushing her to her limits, and was willing to back down a little. So for a while, she enjoyed her meal, which was actually delicious, despite the poltergeist's complaints, and it almost seemed like that would be the worst of it…

And then Adam had to start in. "You realize, Beetlejuice," He noted, almost pointedly stressing the name, in an attempt to get to the other ghost, "Part of being married is providing for your wife." The ghost with the most flicked his eyes up, utterly disinterested in anything the Maitland had to offer by way of marital advice. "I suppose what I'm saying is… Since you are alive now, when are you going to get a job?"

Beetlejuice choked, and for a moment, seemed honestly unable to breathe… Lydia rising from her seat in alarm to try to help him, before she realized that her best friend was actually just laughing so hard that he couldn't swallow. A brief moment of exasperation swelled over her, and she fell back into her seat, figuring silently to herself that she really wouldn't have expected any other reaction from the guy, asked a question like that.

"Good one, chump!" He managed at last, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand, and digging back into his food, still cackling away. "Shit, you actually sounded halfway serious there…"

"I was serious." Adam frowned, clearly trying to remain calm in the face of a man who clearly just did not take him seriously. "Being part of a family means helping provide for it, and…" Beetlejuice of course, was just cackling away again, this time not letting it get in the way of enjoying his meal… Which offered, more or less, just a really unappetizing result, bits of noodles spewing back on his plate every few seconds, only to be scooped up, and eaten again. "You can't expect to simply mooch off your in-laws…"

Finally seeming to run out of laughter as the other man continued his speech, Beetlejuice just sort of chewed, and watched him, gradually going from amused to annoyed. "Don't see you helping out much, Poindexter." He noted in a low growl, as if something in particular the man she said, she couldn't be sure what, had struck a little deeper than expected.

"Well, Barbara and I can't leave the house," Adam pointed out, the two men now utterly ignoring their meals, as they continued their face off. "You wanted to be alive so badly… Well, this is part of being alive. Part of being married! It's not as if you just get what you want, and aren't expected to do anything in return! Especially with Edmond off now, god only knows where, and no telling when he'll-"

It was about at this point that her foster father realized that, in his vehemence, he'd crossed a line, and his mouth jerked closed, his eyes darting to Lydia. Beetlejuice it seemed, wasn't the only one capable of opening mouth and inserting foot. "Lydia," He attempted softly, not even bothering to offer two words to her mother, only her, "I didn't mean that the way it-"

"Here!" Beetlejuice now just looked angry, his eyes flashing as the single word left him in a growl, as to pretty much everyone's surprise, the poltergeist easily pulled a large pile of worse for the wear bills out of his pocket, and dropped them on the table, shoving them in the other man's direction. "I got no problem taking care of my babes, ass-wad. Take it." And he turned back to his meal, clearly with a loss of appetite, muttering about how he had more anyway.

For a moment they all just stared at the wad of cash… Except Lydia of course, who'd already known he'd had it, and that in fact, that wasn't half of what he'd managed to scrounge up over the past few days. For now though, no one touched it. As much as anything, most likely, because it had just come out of the poltergeist's pocket. "Where… Did you get that?" Barbara asked at last, weakly.

Beetlejuice grunted, no longer looking up. "What? You thought I spent three days in the den of sin just to impress the little woman?" He glanced at Lydia across the table, clearly still angry over his implied 'shortcomings,' and only relaxing a little on meeting her patient gaze. "Huh." He turned back to his food, marginally appeased. "No place better to do a little grifting…"

"You conned people out of this money?" Olivia demanded, finally the one to reach out, and pick through the filthy bills. A moment later, she had a total, and turned with it, on her daughter. "Lydia! There's more than two thousand dollars here! Did you know about this?"

A glittering defensiveness fell across the girl's eyes, and she smiled, just a little, bitter look. "Did I know?" She echoed, like the question was some kind of insult. "Who do you think egged the guy on? He loves showing off! If I hadn't been there to brag to, he probably would have stopped after two hundred bucks!"

"Lydia…" Adam groaned, dropping his head into his hands.

"What?" She was standing now, any remains of an appetite lost, as she glowered venom down at them all. "You think I'm going to feel bad because he fixed a few games of cards, and ripped off people who knew damn well from the start they shouldn't be gambling if they couldn't afford to lose it? You wanted him to take care of me… I don't remember you saying any particular way he had to do it!"

"You can't think this is right, Lydia…" Barbara denied, gesturing helplessly at the wad of cash her mother was counting, again, despite its filthy state. "Taking people's hard earned money like that, like it doesn't mean anything!"

Growling under her breath, Lydia shook her head, and pushed her plate away, a final sign that she just wanted nothing more to do with the meal. "You know what? Stupid people deserve to lose their money." She muttered, shoving her chair to the side as she left them there. "I'm not going to feel bad. I don't see you giving it back to him, or anything…"

Beetlejuice stared at her as she stormed from the kitchen, angry because she was angry, and not sure what to do about it, without pissing her off worse. Finally he just grunted, rising from the table himself, and yelled after her, "Hey, Lyds! Wait up!" As he moved to catch up.

And the three of them sat at the table, silently, staring at the money he'd left behind without a second glance, like it was so much worthless paper. "We could give it back to him." Adam noted at length, clearly wanting nothing to do with Beetlejuice's odd twisting of 'charity.' "We can't let Lydia think we approve of the way he does business…" He paused as the two women didn't immediately speak up to agree with him. Olivia?" He prompted softly. "Barb? You agree with me, don't you?"

Olivia swallowed, with a look on her face that said something bitter was sitting there, just on the back of her tongue. "Edmond might not come back this time." She admitted, softly. "We've always had two working people to support this family… If that's suddenly gone?" She leveled a helpless look at the ghost man. "Two thousand dollars could end up helping us go a long way."

Adam pressed his lips together in distaste. "Olivia…"

The woman didn't give him a chance to finish. "They're thinking of letting me go, down at the Portrait Center." She denied quietly, no longer looking at either of her long time friends. No one answered, not immediately. "It's not a certain thing yet, and we've got some money put away, but…" A small pause, before quietly, "We might need this, Adam. I can't get by on freelance work alone."

For a long moment, he just stared, then closed his eyes, and just sort of hung his head, suddenly feeling helpless and useless, and angrier with himself, than he'd been at either Beetlejuice or Lydia. There was a time when he'd been the provider, able to take care of his wife, able to do good things for her, with enough left over to raise a family… But those days were long gone now. And the last of the money he'd earned in life, had long since been used up. And he was dead. And stuck in this house.

"All right." He agreed quietly, starting to push his own plate away, and then thinking better of it, and putting his fork back to it, determined to finish eating. If things were that bad, they shouldn't be wasting food. Even if being dead, meant he didn't really need it… But he pointedly didn't argue anymore, about taking the poltergeist's money.

Olivia got slowly to her feet, taking the money over to the sink, and counting it again, while she turned the water on hot. She might have to keep it, but she was at least washing it first…

And just like that, it seemed that dinner was over.

----------------