Two Years

By; FairDrea

Chapter Three

"Sonufabitch!"

Beetlejuice jerked back, holding his hand to his chest and rubbing it while staring down the offending wires protruding from the mess that was Doomie's engine. The green roadster beeped worriedly.

"S'alright Doom's. Just nicked a wire," Beetlejuice muttered before shoving the sleeves of his obnoxiously maroon shirt up and returning to the task he'd started earlier that morning. Doomie had been making sounds that weren't exactly disgusting, but not exactly fun to listen to either. He needed a tune up. But when a ghost was short on cash, having pissed most of it away at a local bar over the course of several months, he couldn't exactly pay to have the dragster fixed up. So, feeling only slightly optimistic but needing a distraction, Beetlejuice had taken it upon himself to attempt a little under-the-hood repair work. It was obvious after the second hour that he wasn't getting far at all.

But distractions were distractions and this was one he could afford. It was also one that was a lot less damaging. After his stint with Arcynide, he'd come up with much less hazardous and damaging ways of keeping his mind off of how badly he missed Lydia. And he had Prince Vince to thank for that.

"Well…it appears as if you have hit rock bottom."

Beetlejuice glanced up from his spot at the bar and glared at Prince Vince as the pasty slip of a man took up the seat next to him.

"I was advised of your current state and the measures you have gone to in attempts to cope with the loss of the fair Lydia. You can imagine my surprise to believe that the so called 'ghost with the most' had ceased all manner of bothering the public in exchange for constant inebriation."

"Either make your fucking point, or get lost Princey. I don't need the company," Beetlejuice managed in a gravelly, slurred voice.

"Well, you very much need something, Beetlejuice. And as your friend, I feel it necessary to talk you out of your current inauspicious behaviors."The bartender stopped in front of them, ignoring Beetlejuice outright as he had been doing for the past forty minutes and keeping his attention focused on Prince Vince.

"Oh, might I have a gin and tonic please? That would be lovely."

Beetlejuice sneered at the polite, clipped tones the Prince used. He made ordering a drink sound like such a sissy thing. And a gin and tonic made him nowhere near the kind of company Beetlejuice wanted to be keeping at the moment...which was none.

He wanted to throw up. Right there, in the middle of the bar, feeling just fine in his drunken stupor, Beetlejuice wanted to throw up all over the Prince's pointed boots. And not because of the poison's coursing through his system. But because he had wanted to, just to get the obnoxious little twerp to shut the hell up.

"Unless you've got somethin' useful to say, finish your drink and get the hell out of here."

The Prince had the balls to smile. Nothing huge. Just an amused turn of the lips that infuriated Beetlejuice even more. "I do apologize. I thought this was a public venue. Pardon me, barkeep. This establishment is open to the public, is it not?"

The bartender nodded before setting the Prince's drink down in front of him. "Sure is."

"Thank you for clearing that up, my good man."

Vince tilted his head back and took what could only be described as a dainty sip of his drink, making a disgusting noise of approval. The need to wrap his hands around the man's thin neck was becoming harder and harder to ignore.

"So, our dear Lydia has gone to study abroad, has she?" When Beetlejuice offered him nothing more than mutinous silence, Vince continued on, his uncharacteristically chipper voice grating almost painfully on Beetlejuice's nerves.

"What a marvelous opportunity for her. Ah, but alas, I suppose those pesky Neitherworld laws prevented you from following."

"They're your laws," Beetlejuice snarled, shoving his glass forward for a refill. One more shot and everything would stop existing - Lydia, Vince and every revolting emotion tied to them.

Just as the bartender was about to pour, Vince held up his hand. "He'll have a soda water."

Beetlejuice spun, ready to kill. "The fuck I will! Give me a damn shot of-."

Vince stared at him, his dark eyes hard. "He'll have...a soda water," he commanded in an authoritative voice.

The bartender immediately complied.

"I think, Beetlejuice, that it is high time you sobered up."

"Listen here, Vincey. Just because you're some snot nosed, royal shit doesn't mean I won't juice the hell-."

"Do you even remember how to? From what I understand, you have frequented this establishment and drank your rationality away as if Lydia had left you for good instead of a simple two years. Being that this is not the case, I dare say that you are being extremely dramatic and that the lady in question would be quite disgusted with your behavior."

The Prince looked away from Beetlejuice, taking a slow sip of his drink. "However...I can't say that I'm entirely disappointed in your current state. With you like this, getting Lydia to accept a proposal to be my queen should be considerably easy."

Metal scraped over the concrete floor as Beetlejuice jumped to his feet, grabbing the Prince's collar and yanking him up by it. "You even think about touchin' Lyds and there's gonna have to be a new word made for what I'll do to you," he hissed. His vision blurred and for a moment, he thought he would fall over.

The Prince watched him, the pleasant smile vanishing. "You will not be able to manage much, being as fall-down-drunk as you are. Might I suggest that you clean yourself up and find less destructive ways to deal with Lydia's absence? I'm certain it would not please her in the slightest to know that this is what you have been up to. And you wouldn't want to disappoint Lydia, now would you?"

Beetlejuice shoved the Prince back, simultaneously releasing him. He might have hated the guy, but he couldn't deny that the Prince had been right.

"Might I also suggest that when she does return, you pull your head out of your back-side and tell her that you love her...before someone else does."

The threat had caused the Prince's drink to end up over his head, but his words were true and they had stuck. Lydia would be furious if she knew how poorly he was handling her leaving. And she wasn't dead. He hadn't lost her.

That you know of...

And right there had been the reason for his poor coping methods. She was an ocean away, where he couldn't mock her dates, where he couldn't whisk her away on countless adventures. She could have the life that humans should have and not the life of a woman that a ghost was selfishly in love with.

So, he'd done what the Prince had told him to do. He'd gone home, he'd sobered up and he'd found as many mundane tasks as he could to keep his mind off of Lydia and those things that had driven him to downing insane amounts of mixed poisons.

Those tasks...hell, he'd had to keep busy with them so that he wouldn't dwell on just how...productive and nauseating they were. Taking his parents to their weekly social events, yard work, grossery shopping, cleaning out the skeletons in his closet (which had involved sitting in front of it and listing off truths. It was impressive to see just how many cleared out after he'd admitted his feelings for Lydia.) He'd spent nearly half of a day convincing himself to clean, a week and a half suffering through the act and then had devoted just as much time to constructing a large worm farm for Lydia that had become the focal point of the living room.

Sure, he could have spent his time driving people crazy and getting in more trouble than he probably had a right to, but without Lydia there...it just didn't seem all that entertaining.

Leaning over the engine and bracing his hands on Doomy's grill, Beetlejuice sighed. "Probably just makin' it worse," he muttered.

The double entendre of his words wasn't lost on him and his scowl deepened. He needed another distraction, something that would make him feel like he was actually doing something.

The doorbell rang, interrupting his thoughts and he pushed away from the car, glancing back over his shoulder. Probably Jaque or Ginger checking in on him. They'd done their part to pull him back to the land of the un-living and continued to make sure their efforts hadn't gone to the wayside. This included check-in's every other day that were growing tedious and annoying. No, make that more tedious and annoying, even on the days that they didn't stop by. Because he knew that they would be coming the next and...well, it irritated the hell out of him.

"Back in a bit, Dooms," he muttered, pulling a rag from his pocket and putting a half-hearted effort into wiping the grease from his hands. As much as he hated it, he couldn't deny that living in a house not overtaken by filth was a lot easier, so keeping it that way was something he'd gotten in the habit of doing without even thinking about doing so.

The doorbell rang again and he snorted in disgust. "Jeezus, Jaque, keep your fucking skull on. I'm gettin' there!"

He yanked the door open and went completely still, an unsettling numbness taking over his body. One that went beyond the chill of death and settled into every bit of him.

Standing on the other side of the door wasn't a do-gooder skeleton or a tap-dancing spider. It was a woman. Dark eyes peered up at him through a fringe of black bangs, the longest part of the short and tousled hairstyle. Her blood red lips parted slightly, then quirked up as a smile lit up her face.

He reached for the door, grabbing it for balance. "Lyds?"

"Hey, BJ," she murmured in a throaty voice that had seduced him countless times in his dreams.

She was nothing like the Lydia that had left him. She was slightly taller, more filled out and stood like a woman who was very much aware of the power she could hold over a man. The poncho that had hung from a girlish frame two years ago now clung to every curve. The black leggings stopped just below her knees and looked as if they had been painted on.

Two Years...

They were the only two words he needed to think to shatter any grasp on restraint that he had left. His Lyds was back. He was done wasting time. He reached forward, hauled her into his arms and silenced her startled shriek with a kiss.

Okay, so I lied. Four chapters. Because I do recall promising some readers some smut and when it comes to that, I do like to keep my promises. :)