A/N: I think I should warn in advance: this fanfiction will be flashback and 'background' intensive. There may be a flashback in every other chapter, as this fic is a bit more exploratory(?) than the prequel.

Chapter Three

As Lydia headed back into the kitchen, her mind wandered. Thinking both on what Nat had said (and not said) as well as reservations she'd since discounted about her relationship with Beetlejuice, she quietly pulled up a chair at the dining table and sat down.
Resting her head in her hands, Lydia smiled faintly. She'd already decided that Nat hadn't meant anything by what he'd said, and decided too that there wasn't anything to worry about. After all, she was perfectly happy with Beetlejuice. Even if her relationship with him threw into doubt whatever future she could realistically have in the 'real world', she didn't care; she'd realized that that was a sacrifice she would have to make whenever the time was right. The good thing about having a boyfriend (though maybe 'manfriend' was more appropriate) that was already dead was that she knew she'd never experience the pain of losing him, or, at least, was less likely to. She wouldn't ever see him grow old… see him suffer… see him die. It didn't mean he was invincible, but it was something.
What was more, she could be who she really was with Beetlejuice. She didn't have to hide or try to be 'normal'; the two of them were like peas in a pod. He understood her on a level that no one else had been able to understand her, in a way that she was positive no other boy or man could.

Bea, busily pouring a cookie dough mix into a tray ready to bake them fresh for dessert, began murmuring to herself about the dinner preparations. After putting the baking tray into the oven, she focused her attention back on the soup.
"How many slugs did Junior want, Lydia, dear?" She asked without turning.

Jerked from her thoughts, Lydia glanced up. "Huh?" Then, remembering what it was she'd gone in search of Beetlejuice for, she sat back in her seat. "Oh. He's just gone to check on something, Bea, but in his case I say the more the better,"
Mrs. Juice nodded and began spooning semi-cooked slugs into Beetlejuice's portion of soup, keeping his bowl almost comically separate from the other three.

The silence returned as Lydia began daydreaming once more, and, noticing the quiet, Bea misinterpreted the girl's distance as restless concern. "Don't worry, Lydia, dear. Junior sometimes just gets a little..." She trailed off, struggling to remember the right term.
"... claustrophobic?" Lydia put in helpfully.
"Ah, yes, that was the word I was looking for." Bea stirred the slug-less container of soup. "He doesn't mean anything by it, he's probably just having a walk to clear his head."
Lydia nodded. "I know." She hadn't been worrying about him as such, but now that the subject had come up it prompted a question in her mind that wouldn't allow itself to be squashed down. Beetlejuice hated visiting his parents. Why? It was clear he cared about them, though, granted, he was too stubborn to confess so out loud. It couldn't just be because his parents had a tendency to nag, and it couldn't just be because his mother was a lean, mean, cleaning machine.
Lydia turned her chair to face the oven and kitchen countertop where Bea was working with her back to her, lips pursed.

"Bea..." She began carefully. "Why doesn't he visit you more often?"
If Beetlejuice's mother was surprised by the peculiar question, she didn't show it. She shrugged her shoulders daintily, beginning to spoon soup into the remaining three bowls. "Oh, I suppose it reminds him too much of when we were all in the Outerworld, Lydia. You know. Alive."

The young woman shook her head in disbelief. "And that's a bad thing?"
Bea didn't reply.

Retreating back into her thoughts, Lydia wondered what the Juice family's lives had been like in the Outerworld; whether they'd lived in Connecticut, whether they'd been happy, whether they were as old as they sometimes made themselves out to be. She'd always suspected that Beetlejuice had a tendency to lie about how long he'd been dead, even since she was twelve. He'd changed his story so many times, sometimes claiming he'd been six centuries dead and sometimes four, but for someone who had supposedly come from such a time-period he didn't act the part.
Maybe he'd always been trying to impress her? Or… maybe he'd always been lying to himself.

Though Lydia knew everything about the Beetlejuice she knew and loved, she didn't know anything about who he was 'before'. Sometimes, and increasingly often lately, she'd wonder about the man he used to be. Realising there was a real opportunity here to learn now that she and his mother were alone, Lydia cleared her throat. "Bea... about Beetlejuice…"

"Hmm? What about Junior, dear?" Bea hummed sweetly.
Though Lydia hadn't quite decided what she'd been about to ask her, at the use of 'Junior' and the outright dismissal of using his name, she pounced.
"His name. What's his name, Bea?" She asked with a strong sense of urgency. Lydia had long since figured out that 'Beetlejuice' wasn't the name he'd been born with. She supposed this was as good a starting question as any, and it was one that had bugged her since the SOMFN family event all those months ago.

Beetlejuice's mother paused before glancing at Lydia over her shoulder, her face crumpled up with a bemused but amiable smile. "Why, Lydia, what an odd question. You know his name, dear," She turned back to the kitchen countertop, blissfully unaware, believing her answer had brought that line of questioning to an end.
Lydia didn't let the subject drop, leaning forward in her chair, the words tumbling out of her mouth with barely a breath in-between. "But it's not 'Beetlejuice', is it? Not really. What was the name you gave him? When he was born?"

For a moment Bea hesitated. She glanced at Lydia, half-concerned and half-confused. "But… you know that, dear,"
At her insistence that she knew his name, Lydia found herself becoming increasingly frustrated. How did she know it? Was she supposed to? Was Bea assuming that he'd told her?
"I mean when he was alive. Topside." She maintained, but when Bea hesitated for a moment longer, Lydia downright pleaded. "Bea?"

The loveable crone, busy clearing away and mopping down the kitchen surfaces, finally paused thoughtfully and turned. She looked politely puzzled. After deliberating, she finally said: "… B. Junior,"
Lydia stared at her.
Due to gender default, she assumed Bea had meant the initial and letter 'B' and not her own name.

"B… Junior?" Lydia repeatedly dumbly, this revelation having both stunned and reassured her. "B. J.?"
"I thought you knew, dear," Mrs. Juice said simply, going back to her cleaning ritual while she let the piping hot soup cool.

Suddenly Lydia knew why Bea had assumed she'd known; wasn't she always calling him 'B. J.' anyway? Bea hadn't known that Lydia had always used that as a nickname, not in reference to any real name.
Still trying to get her mind around this truth, she decided to probe a little more. "So… what does the 'B' stand for?"

Bea, after having tested the soup, waved her hands over the kitchen counter in a cheesy 'abracadabra' fashion. Lydia was surprised when a hotplate appeared into reality, she'd never seen Beetlejuice's mother use her 'juice' before, except for the occasional head-spin.
Bea placed the bowls of soup on the hotplate before working on the main course, still answering Lydia despite all the distractions. "Oh, nothing exactly, dear. Nat and I couldn't pick which of his grandfathers to name him after, they're both 'B's, you see? Thought that'd be the best option. Keep 'em both happy."

"I see…" Lydia nodded her head slowly in understanding. If he was named after his grandfathers (though, not entirely) then that explained the 'Junior' part. Her curiosity, however, wasn't yet completely sated. "So then… why did he change his name? Why 'Beetlejuice'?"

So engrossed in this conversation, Lydia didn't realize that that was the third time she'd said his name. As Bea began to loudly prepare dinner, neither heard the 'poof' and bewildered – "bwuuh?" – that came from the next room.

Bea let out a chuckle, bending down to check on how the cookies were doing in the oven. "He always was a little eccentric. It's a star, Lydia."

Lydia hummed an affirmative in knowing acknowledgement. She remembered a time when, not too many years ago, she and Beetlejuice had sat out on rickety lawn chairs on her bedroom balcony, staring out at the cloudless midnight sky. He'd 'juiced up a telescope and pointed out the constellations to her in his vague, brash way, before zoning in on Orion's Belt and then up to Betelgeuse – the conveniently apt 'armpit' of the constellation.

Lydia had turned to him, grinning, amused by his enthusiasm. "If you're named after the star then you realise you spell it wrong, Beej?"
"Naw, babes. It's my own spin on it." He'd winked. "Besides… I only spell it the –" Cue 'sophisticated B. J.' – "'scientifically correct' way when I'm bein' professional."
"You mean: when you're conning someone,"
"Bin-go,"

Lydia smiled at the memory, twisting a curled strand of hair around her finger. "So then… where did the liking beetles part come from? I mean – what came first? His sense of taste or the name?"
"AHEM,"
She almost jumped at the sudden interruption. Lydia spun around in her seat, only to then register the sight of Beetlejuice, stood directly behind her with his fists on his hips.
More than a little surprised, Lydia asked coolly: "What are you doing back here?"

Beetlejuice let out a deep breath through his nose. "You said the B-words. It works here too, Lyds."
The young woman blinked. I did? Three times? She tried mentally counting, but it was no good, the words that she'd spoken had all blended together in her mind. She didn't worry so much about it – he was here, that was what mattered, and that was a relief in itself.
"Aheh, right, sorry," She said sheepishly, guilt clear on her face. Beetlejuice accurately interpreted this guilt as being due to the fact that they'd been talking about him, not that she'd accidentally called him from wherever he'd been hiding. His mother was smiling in that warm, giddy way that mother's smile whenever praising their children. His stomach turned, eyes twitching. "Lemme guess- you're about to get out the embarrassing baby photos,"

Lydia batted her eyelashes, her voice laced with mocking sweetness. "No, not yet." She replied brightly, before, more seriously: "Are you going to answer my question?"

Beetlejuice pulled up the chair at the table beside her. "Mind repeatin' it?"

"What came first? Your taste for beetles, or your name?"

The ghost snorted. "Name, o'course,"
"Well...?" Lydia prompted.
"Well what?"
Cupping her chin in her hands, she eagerly scooted forwards. "Aren't you going to tell me the story?"
Her face then was almost as it had been all those years ago, so innocent but so smart, craving to hear his fanciful tales, eyes shining with the promise of what was to come.

Beetlejuice smirked. "Heh. You've always eaten up my stories, babes," Nevertheless, the real story wasn't one he was sure he wanted to tell. Steeling himself, deciding where to begin, he tilted back in his chair and gestured with his hand vaguely. "Well… it went like this…"

Beetlejuice had just started kindergarten, and after a week had already developed a bad reputation. He was loud, disobedient, tardy and didn't fit in well with the other kids. What was worse, he was picked on, all because he had the Neitherworld version of 'magic'. He had been pegged as a 'gifted and talented' child on account of it, but he wasn't fulfilling his potential at all.

This particular morning, he'd joined a game of chase with the other kids, but somehow they'd tricked him and caught him.
He was sat in 'jail', which for this particular recess was beneath the decayed, semi-rotten picnic benches on the playground. A guard was sat on the tabletop, legs dangling in Beetlejuice's line of vision, and two more were posted at either end of the bench, effectively locking him in.

Beetlejuice glowered, hands on his scratched, bare knees. "I counted. My time's up now,"
The bully in front of him let out a rude snort. "You can get out when we say you can,"

Whilst Beetlejuice didn't mind the dirt and the dark in this prison, he didn't like the being shut-in part. Stomach rumbling, he squirmed uncomfortably.
"I haven't eaten my lunch yet. Recess is almost over,"
"Here," The bully sat on top of the bench said. He pulled a fistful of... things out of his coat pocket before dropping them between the slats of the picnic table.
Almost immediately, Beetlejuice felt something crawling in his hair. He glanced up casually. The thing travelled down to his forehead, and, curious, he plucked it from his brow. It was a beetle, and he was now covered in them.

Whilst Beetlejuice watched them in quiet wonder, the boy blocking his exit sneered. "They're your lunch, 'Beetlejuice',"
The young blond ghoul stuck out his tongue in revulsion. "Yucghh!"
"What? Are you too chicken?" The guard behind him said in vicious challenge.
Beetlejuice shook his head from side to side fervently, his hands balled up into fists atop his knees. "I'm not chicken! Lemme outta here,"

"Eat a beetle first,"
"You eat one!"
"Don't talk back," The boy behind him growled, slapping him on the back of his head.

Y'ouch! Beetlejuice vented internally, too stubborn to cry out loud. Then, glancing down at the insects, he wrinkled up his nose and reluctantly picked up a beetle. It squirmed between his fingers sadly. Ugh, it was moving. He wasn't afraid of bugs though - he liked bugs, that was the whole problem. The idea of eating one instead of playing with one was inconceivable.

"Come on, chicken." The bully before him sneered. "Aren't ya called 'Beetlejuice' for a reason?"
"It's a star," Beetlejuice mumbled beneath his breath obstinately, but the other boys weren't listening.

"Go on, eat it,"
"Yeah, eat it!"
"EAT IT!"

Something inside of the juvenile Beetlejuice snapped. The peer pressure proving too much for him, he jerked his head up, practically snarling in his rage. "Look, why don't you guys just take off?" He cried. Not a split-second after the words had left his mouth, rockets appeared on the heels of the three boys' feet. All four of the kindergarteners had time to look shocked before the bullies blasted off and zoomed high into the air, the force of their ascension causing the picnic bench to keel over onto one side, wooden surface blistering from the heat of the rockets.

Watching as the three bullies become mere specks on the horizon, Beetlejuice gulped.
Uh oh...
He would be in detention for the rest of the year, if not for the rest of his afterlife for this.

Scrambling out from between the legs of the capsized table, Beetlejuice was surprised to find the beetle was still in his hand. In his panic at having unwittingly unleashed his 'juice' he'd half-squished the poor thing to death.
Watching the beetle writhe, doomed, in his grasp, he strived to make a decision on its behalf. Should he let it go, and let it suffer, or put it out of its misery?
As he bent down to put it on the ground, he recalled his sneering 'prison guards' and what was left of his dissipating blood boiled.

Me? Chicken? He scoffed. Ha! I'll show 'em!
Then he did the unthinkable: he slammed his eyes shut, popped the insect into his mouth and began to chew.

Beetlejuice's scrunched up face at first tightened before, swallowing the beetle down, his expression released, one eye opening. Hey. It… doesn't taste so bad.

He glanced down at his leg, where he spotted another one was crawling. Straightening, he caught that one and ate it too, this time without any hesitation.
Feeling a tickle on his elbow, he caught the bug he knew was there and raised it to his mouth. Now a crowd had formed around him - horrified, morbidly curious fellow kindergarteners that were watching this spectacle with a mixture of awe and disgust. Before he could place this third bug on his tongue, the playground teacher acting as chaperone blew on the whistle around her neck and stormed over. "BEETLEJUICE!" She bellowed, dispersing the crowd. "DETENTION!"

Beetlejuice pocketed the uneaten beetle quickly. "Save that guy for later," He had time to say, before the teacher was dragging him backwards towards the pre-school building by the collar of his t-shirt.

From that recess on, Beetlejuice became both the class clown and a playground spectacle to behold. Dared to eat beetles during each and every recess, it wasn't long before it stopped being an act to impress the other kids and became second-nature.

"… And so I singlehandedly taught the class my version of bug-o-nomit-ryy and beetles were soon given out every recess." Beetlejuice finished, grinning arrogantly.
Lydia, cheek cupped in her palm, could only stare at him critically with lidded, suspicious eyes. "Really?"

Beetlejuice, still precariously leaning back in his chair so that it balanced on two legs, nodded fervently. "I'm tellin' ya, babes. I started a trend,"

Lydia wanted to set the record straight. "So you're telling me that you weren't the only kid who ate beetles? That you first ate one because you 'didn't want the school to get in trouble with the inspectors for being 'unhygienic' when you saw one? Is that what you're telling me?" She threw back at him, picking out the highlights of the version of the story he'd told her.
Beetlejuice desperately tried to recall if those were the details of the tale he'd just spun her and, when satisfied that they were, he nodded. "Uh... Right!"

A corner of Lydia's lip quirked upwards into a cynical smile. "Doesn't sound like you, though, does it?"
The ghost chuckled nervously, blundering his way out of her accusations. "I was a cute lil tyke," He bluffed.
Lydia gave up, rolling her eyes. "Right. Of course you were,"

Bea, no longer patiently half-listening and half-working, whipped around. "Dinner's ready!" She announced cheerfully, before gesturing to her son. "Junior, call your father in,"
"'Your father in'!" Beetlejuice yelled in the direction of the door.
Lydia, who'd been sipping at a glass of water she'd retrieved midway through Beetlejuice's storytelling, nearly spat it out in her sudden laughter. "Beetlejuice!"
With the joke cracked, he corrected himself. "PA! Food's on!" He called instead, sitting properly in his chair at last.

After heavy footsteps travelled their way down the stairs, Nat, towering in height as per usual, appeared in the archway. He ducked into the kitchen-diner before pulling up a chair opposite Beetlejuice and Lydia.
When everyone was seated, Bea retrieved the soup bowls from the hotplate and placed them down at the four table sittings before taking her own seat.

"So what are you two doing with yourselves lately?" She asked as everyone began tucking into their starters, smiling brightly at the two on the opposite side of the table.
Slurping loudly, shoulders hunched over his bowl, Beetlejuice answered with his mouth full of both slug and soup. "We're goin' on vacation in the morning, Ma,"
Bea, wanting to scold him for his manners but deciding he was too old for her to do so, simply said: "How wonderful,"

Nat frowned. "Son, how are you paying for this vacation? How many times do I have to tell you to–"
"–'get a job'?" Beetlejuice finished for him. "I've got the money, Pops, that's all that matters,"
"What he means is, my parents are paying," Lydia put in dryly.

Bea clasped her hands together, smiling wistfully. "Oh, Lydia, dear, we'd love to meet your parents," She said with feeling.
Beetlejuice and Lydia both raised their heads simultaneously, expressions of intermingled horror and surprise.
"Uh…" B. J. began, but Lydia got there first. "I- I'm not sure that's a good idea. Um, yet anyway." She said as carefully as she could.
"Bein' breathers an' all," Beetlejuice said.
"Right. They don't really know the whole story."
B. J. snorted, slurping down another spoonful of his starter. "What she means is, they don't know I'm a dead guy,"

Lydia flinched. She hated keeping secrets from her parents, and she hated that this was a secret even Beetlejuice thought she should no longer keep.
"You don't have to put it so bluntly," She said, hurt.
She didn't mention to Nat or Bea that her parents also didn't know that she was with someone so much older than her. As far as her parents were concerned, she was with a young B. J. Beetleman, and not Nat and Bea's son at all. She didn't want the Juices to think that she was ashamed of Beetlejuice, because that wasn't the truth at all. It was just that this way… this way was easier.

"Oh, I see," Bea hummed in understanding, causing Lydia to feel another stab of guilt. She smiled at them both over the table. "Well, it would be nice to see them at some point. You have to let the truth come out some time, dear. These things have to be done properly. In-laws meeting the in-laws and all that, dear, before there's those wedding bells,"

"PFFTTTTT-" Beetlejuice spat out his soup just as Lydia dropped her spoon with a sudden clatter.
"Ma!" He shrieked, his face turning scarlet.
Nat, who'd been quietly sipping away until now, turned to his wife and shook his head disappointedly. "Now, now, Bea, don't embarrass 'em..."

"Can't blame an old lady for trying," Bea simply said, upbeat as ever.

Lydia began to laugh nervously, her cheeks hot. Fidgeting and stealing glances at Beetlejuice, she waited for the uncomfortable tension in the room to dissipate. It didn't. Beetlejuice was too much of an idiot to let the subject drop without getting the last word.
"Don't ya think that's a little soon, Ma?" He squeaked, voice hoarse.

Bea shrugged, finishing her starter. "Well, I don't know, you've known each other for years,"

And for most of those years I was a minor… Lydia thought with some degree of unease.

Insensitive as ever, Beetlejuice slurped up the remainders of his soup and belched loudly. "Yeah, and we've only got all eternity," He objected before glancing at Lydia, silently both asking for her support in the matter and confirming that he was speaking for both of them. Lydia, however, felt more than a little contrary; she didn't exactly want to wait all of eternity before she got married.

Bea sighed, defeated. "Don't listen to an old fuddy-duddy like me, dear." Beginning to collect up the empty bowls, she shook her head softly, reverting to her wistful-mother mode. "I just can't help wanting to see my two boys find nice girls and get settled. And - just think! - to hear the pitter-patter of little, tiny f—" Bea remembered too late that the majority of the room was occupied by the deceased. She closed her mouth abruptly, and, feeling wretched, let out a deep breath while excusing herself from the table.

If the atmosphere had been tense before it had solidified now.

"Oh, now, Bea–" Nat began, worriedly.
"No, no- excuse me, I said the wrong thing. Let me just get the dinner plated,"

Beetlejuice and Lydia remained so quiet that Nat chanced a look at them.
Beetlejuice had gone into some short of shock at the idea because his eyes were bugged and his expression was frozen rather comically. Lydia, however, was staring down at her table setting intensely. She felt like she'd just been struck around the face.
The first sign of 'life' from Beetlejuice was a bewildered blink. He hadn't heard his mother use the 'when am I going to be a grandmother?' line since he was alive.

He rested his chin in his hand, face unsympathetic but his tone cautiously soft. "Ain't gonna happen, Ma. Once yer dead it's kind of a done deal,"

Lydia winced, as though this fact had only just truly hit home. That's right... I wouldn't be able to have kids with Beetlejuice.

She wasn't sure how she felt about this. She had never wanted kids, but then she had never not wanted kids either. In fact, she quite liked children, but the thought of having a family one day had just... never come to her.
Hadn't she already disregarded any 'normal' future she could have? What happened to willingly making that sacrifice in order for the two of them to be together? Just when she thought she could accept the prospect of never being a mother, something inside really hurt.

Bea, composed, returned with four plates full of dinner. "Now, Junior, you can never say never," She tried to say bravely. "They were running this article in Afterlife magazine about what happens to women who pass over when they're expecting..."
For some reason his mother's continued thoughts on this subject were making Beetlejuice cross. It made him feel... inferior, not to mention that he was pretty sure this was an uncomfortable conversation to be having in front of Lydia, especially so early in their relationship. "Look, even if I wanted to – some time way, way, way in the eternal future – it ain't physically possible, Ma!" He snapped.

Without his realising it, his outcry had hurt more than anything Bea had said thus far.
'Even if I wanted to?' Implying he doesn't want to? Lydia thought, the voice of her conscience becoming increasingly shrill.
She bowed her head.

"Excuse me," Lydia mumbled quietly. After pushing her seat back, she headed out of the room, concealing a crumpled expression as she went.