A/N: This takes place about 5 years after the movie. I don't know if you remember the scene where Adam and Barbara drive to the hardware store and Barbara leans her head out the window to say hi to Ernie at the funeral home? And then the two firefighters washing their truck next to the hardware store wave at the Maitlands? One of those firefighters is named Mark, and he's Ernie's grandson.
This was originally posted on AO3 for the 30+ Fanfic server's 2nd anniversary challenge. The prompts were "grave injury" and "emotional hurt/comfort." Should be a great recipe for angst, right? Challenge accepted! Now, here comes some fluff...
The Mortician
"It's just a cemetery," a disembodied voice said to Lydia, disturbing her as she snapped some pictures of the changed landscape.
Lydia whipped around, eyes wide as Mark stuck his shovel into the dirt next to him. She rolled her eyes, "Great observation."
"It's a cemetery. You know, for dead people." He walked backwards away from the wrought iron archway where Lydia was standing to demonstrate its harmlessness.
"Nothing to be afraid of," he said as he tripped over a gravestone and fell behind it.
Lydia covered her mouth and tried not to laugh at Mark as he put his hand to the worry line on his forehead, which had deepened considerably in the four years since she'd seen him, to block the sun. She stepped into the cemetery and leaned forward so her hat could shade him from the sun.
She pointed her camera at him and asked sarcastically, "Haven't you ever seen 'Night of the Living Dead'?" before snapping a quick photo of him.
Upset for a split second, his frown quickly turned to a cocky smile. "You know, if you wanted to take my picture, you could have just asked."
Lydia played with the settings on her camera, unphased, and put the lens to her eye again. She squinted into the viewer as she answered, "I just needed to check the lighting, and your shadow helps. Stay there for a moment?"
She moved around stealthily to capture the graves on the edge of the cemetery at the best angles. The lighting was all wrong, and his 'shadow' had nothing to do with it, but she kept shooting anyway.
"Sure," his face frowned in false disappointment, "I've got nothing better to do than to sit here in the dirt and nurse my injured pride."
Lydia dropped the camera to hang on her neck, and was pleasantly surprised when she noticed that Mark's face had dropped. She hadn't given him an ounce of sympathy, and his disappointment tickled her.
She hid her smile from him by moving past him and holding up her camera to shoot a couple of older graves closer to the interior that looked interesting. Adam actually requested photos of the gravestones from the new part of the cemetery that used to be pastureland so he could update his model, but Mark didn't need to know that.
"So you're just going to barge into my cemetery like that?"
Lydia lowered her camera and shifted her squinted but quickly acclimating eyes in his direction.
"Excuse me, your cemetery?"
Mark chuckled awkwardly, and she blinked and refocused her eyes when he said, "Sorry, um, I don't know if you heard, but I'm the mortician now. My grandfather retired last year. Well, semi-retired."
His black button front shirt, untucked with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, and his unripped black jeans, suggested he was telling the truth, though a wallet chain draped the side of his leg, several silver rings on his fingers, and a crystal-shaped hematite pendant hung from a thick black cord wrapped tightly twice around his neck were the same accessories he wore on their first and only date.
His straight but greasy dark brown hair, parted far to the side and just barely pulled into a low and flattering ponytail at the base of his neck, as though he wasn't planning to get a haircut ever again, was a huge improvement on the crew cut he used to have when he was working for the Winter River Fire Department. He had gained some weight since then, and his eyes were a little sunken, but it only made him more attractive.
He rolled his eyes shyly when she didn't respond, and said, "I'm the new cryptkeeper, if you will." Then he rolled his hand in florid circles and bowed his head slightly, as though waiting for Lydia's approval.
Lydia didn't respond so he nervously continued, "So if you want a crypt, you gotta go through me!"
She smiled charmingly and reconsidered him. Maybe being so close to death every day he would finally believe in ghosts. She might have been prepared for this moment if she hadn't escaped the house just as Jane Butterfield arrived that morning, thus missing all the important town gossip she'd missed since she last visited. Her dad and step-mother didn't keep up with anyone other than themselves and their New York friends, and Barbara and Adam didn't talk to anyone.
"I just got back from art school."
"Yeah, I know." He said as he rested an arm on the tree branch above him. "I mean, I heard you were coming back. You know, small town. People talk."
Lydia's mouth popped open slightly. Her words came out more glibly than she intended, and she hurt his feelings. She didn't know if it was even worth repairing since she didn't even know if he had changed his mind about ghosts. Maybe he'd seen one in the funeral home, a lost soul that hadn't made it to its destination. Or maybe he'd become even slightly more open-minded since she turned him down for a second date.
"Anyway, you're welcome any time, Lydia Deetz. Take as many photos as you want," he said while coolly walking away. Then from over his shoulder, he said facetiously, "Oh, um, let me know if you see any ghosts walking around the cemetery!"
Dark Room
"Barbara?" Lydia shouted when she got home. She flung her bag down in the hallway and danced around on the black and white tiles of the foyer.
"Oh, hi, Lydia! Did you get some good lighting?" Adam naively asked.
"Where's Barbara?"
Adam dropped his head but looked over the tops of his glasses at her with a stern, pouty look, so Lydia took a deep breath and tried again. "Sorry. It was great. But," her voice dipped into a near whine, "I really need to talk to Barbara right now!"
"Right here!" Barbara said as she entered the foyer. "What's going on?"
Lydia began up the stairs but Barbara stayed put, tapping her toe impatiently.
"Bag?" she said with stern eyes and nodded towards the floor.
"Oh, right!" Lydia ran back down to grab her bag and playfully rolled her eyes at Barbara, who finally followed her to her room.
Barbara entered the room and sat on the bed and Lydia dramatically slammed the door shut with her hip and flattened herself against it. Then she relaxed and clasped her hands behind her back, twizzling into the coy smile that took over her face.
"I saw Mark at the cemetery."
Barbara pursed her lips and said, "Mark, as in Ernie's grandson? The non-believer ?"
Lydia nodded her head in the affirmative.
"And that's a… good thing?" Barbara said, struggling with the words.
"I don't know!" Lydia said, taking a seat on the bed next to Barbara. "I'm just so confused. On the one hand, he's so sweet and funny and-"
"I'm waiting for the 'but'," she said with unsurprising patience.
"But he still doesn't believe in ghosts. What's more, he still thinks it's ridiculous, and therefore I'm ridiculous." She put her hands over her eyes and flopped backwards onto her bed.
"I'm gonna have to go back to the cemetery tomorrow to get more photos for Adam, and I'll probably see him again. And if not there, the grocery store or the hardware store. And if anyone croaks-"
"Lydia!" Barbara exclaimed.
Lydia sat up and rolled her eyes, then said, "What? Doesn't matter what we call it. Everyone does it."
Barbara pursed her lips more deeply than before and gave the finger wagging look Lydia hated. "You know, I was kind of looking forward to setting up my studio above the hardware store-"
"So you could see Mark take off his shirt while he washes the firetruck?" Barbara teased with a nudge at Lydia's hip. "It was nice of Jane to let you lease the place."
"What? Ew, no! Anyway, he's not a firefighter anymore, he's a mortician. And I'm probably going to see him every day. Ughhhh," she growled and stood, facing away from Barbara. "My life is over!"
"Now, Lydia, you're being dramatic."
Lydia lifted her hands briefly and turned her head towards Barbara. "Easy for you to say. Your husband believes in ghosts!" She covered her eyes again and groaned.
"Adam didn't believe in ghosts before he became a ghost."
Lydia held her hand to her chin and looked at the corner of the ceiling in deep contemplation.
Then Barbara teased her, though she sounded serious. "Hey, wait a second, are you saying you want to marry Mark? Because-?"
"What? Ew, no!" Lydia shot daggers at Barbara.
"I don't know, Lydia…" Barbara paused to examine her nails, then asked unnecessarily, "Is he still cute? Like, 'firefighter' cute?"
Lydia lightly hit Barbara, who allowed herself to sink into the fibers of the bedding, bringing a small smile to Lydia's face.
Barbara emerged from the bedding and hedged with a raised eyebrow. "Must still be pretty cute to ruffle your feathers like that."
Lydia sighed because she couldn't deny it. And he was only more interesting since he had become a mortician. He had always shared her interest in the macabre, but him being around death every day made Lydia really regret that he didn't believe.
"Well, anyway, thanks for listening," Lydia said sarcastically. "I'm gonna go develop this film so I can show Adam."
She paused at the door frame and lifted her elbow above her head to lean into it. "I don't want to marry Mark. I don't even want to see him ever again."
Barbara smiled in that patient way she always did. "Well, maybe you'll at least show me the pictures of him after you've printed them."
"What pictures?" Lydia gave a playful smile and a wink, as she walked out of her room. Then she ran down the stairs to the darkroom she and Adam set up in the basement.
Lydia took longer squeezing into her rubber gloves than usual, despite rushing to do so, and nearly dropped her safety goggles before balancing them on her ears and nose.
First, she mixed the developer but added too much photo flo. It bubbled over so she had to scrap the batch and start over.
She couldn't get the color of Mark's eyes, something between brown and amber, out of her head, and it was so distracting. They hadn't changed at all, but seeing them up close after not seeing them for so long, Lydia couldn't look away.
She flung her rubber gloves across the room and dropped her canister and the opener into the developing bag, then shut the light and made sure the curtain was drawn closed so no light got in. It was overkill, but she liked the dark anyway.
It took her twice as long to open the canister because she couldn't help thinking about what she'd wear the next day when she went back to the cemetery. She always liked looking put together, but she never really thought about it this much, this far ahead of time. Obviously, something black. Probably with lace.
She leaned against the table in the center of the room, unconcerned about the stain from the chemicals she spilled growing on the elbow of her black button front. She hadn't been patient enough for her smock, and she'd probably regret it later.
Lydia shot to attention when the timer dinged to let her know it was time to clean and hang the straps of film.
She squeezed one strip at a time between her rubber-tipped tongs and clipped them at the top and bottom to hang them on the string above the developing trays.
She admired the shadows she captured of the tombstones she shot after Mark fell over, but there was no Mark there. She was sure she took his picture… The shots she did get weren't great, and they weren't even the ones she was supposed to take, and she only used half of the canister. What a waste for no good reason!
Then she reluctantly developed that first picture she took at the cemetery, the one Mark was in. She turned on the light and sat over the table with a magnifying glass. There was just a slight difference in the shadow, just a very minor shade darker in the middle of it.
Lydia dropped the magnifying glass and leaned back in her stool, the wheels moving her a couple of feet backwards. "No way…" she said to herself.
Then she developed the last photo, also of Mark. She stepped back, slack-jawed, then she giggled while she developed the rest of the film.
Lydia threw her bike on the grass as soon as she got to the funeral parlor, and clasped her hands tightly around her Polaroid camera, thumb over the button. She cautiously walked around the cemetery, peering behind tall tombstones, and once she climbed the top of the hill she spotted Mark removing some dead flowers from a grave in the new section. His back was to her so she snapped a photo then quickly hid behind a tree. She peered her head around and studied him for a few minutes before daring herself to look at the image.
Her stomach flipped when she lifted her head to meet his surprised eyes, intelligent though they were ignorant. But he smiled at her as she caught her breath.
"Hey, Lydia," he said with a gallant nod of his head and slight bow. "Couldn't stay away?"
Lydia bit her lip, wondering how she should tell him.
Then he bent down to pluck a dead leaf from a grave. He spun it in his hand and blew on it so it floated away in a small gust of wind but it landed just a few feet away.
"So, you needed more pictures of 'shadows'?" The crinkle in his eyes made it hard for Lydia to say anything. It wasn't her place to tell him anyway. He needed to discover it on his own.
"Yeah. Something like that," she said blankly.
"Well, let's see then!"
He reached around her back playfully until he ended up with a hand on the tombstone behind her where she was nearly perched and completely conscious of how close his thumb was to her hip. Mark leaned into her as though he was going to kiss her, and Lydia let down her guard.
"Hey!" Lydia said as he snatched the photo from behind her back.
He turned away from her and studied the photo. Then he stopped and put his hand to the back of his neck. "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you took a picture of me."
Instead of taking the photo back from him, she took another, and they waited an agonizing ten seconds before the image appeared: Just a tombstone with no one standing in front of it.
Mark absentmindedly twisted one of his rings over and over. Lydia could see his wheels spinning, and she wasn't going to prevent him from figuring this out for himself.
"Can I see your camera?" he asked.
Lydia handed it over to him, her heart pounding not knowing how he was going to react.
"Smile," he said half-heartedly and shot a picture of Lydia. He shook it a few times, and Lydia had to stop herself from criticizing him for it. It wouldn't have distorted the image enough to make it look like she wasn't in the frame.
"Well, that's pretty cute, don't you think?" Lydia smiled at the blurred version of herself he nonchalantly slid into his breast pocket. Then he wrinkled his forehead and asked, less sure of himself, "Do you mind if we take one together?"
"Sure," she said meekly, a small blip of anxiety prickling her skin.
Mark wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she couldn't pretend not to like the shock of how cold he was coupled with the feeling of being hugged all over. She felt comfortable like this with Mark, despite the moths fluttering inside. They stayed like that while they waited for the picture to develop. Lydia pressed her hands together with her index fingers resting in front of her nose and mouth. Her heart broke knowing the amount of pain he was about to be in.
"But-" Mark sputtered as Lydia's image appeared in the photo. He moved his arm from Lydia, and held on to the Polaroid with both hands. "We were both- Is this… is this some kind of trick camera?"
Lydia shook her head sympathetically. She could feel his misunderstanding, his confusion, his denial flow through her. A single tear trickled out of the corner of her eye and she wiped it as she smiled. "It's not a trick."
"Well, it's the middle of the day, so I guess I'm not a vampire," he joked.
Lydia smiled again, and gave a slight laugh, "No, you're not a vampire."
"Then, ah," he wiped his hand over his tense face, "What the hell is going on?"
"Mark," Lydia asked as nonchalantly as she could, "What's the last thing you remember?"
Mark's eyebrows knitted together as he thought. "I remember seeing you this morning. And-"
His wheels turned and he paced, turned in circles.
"Before that," Lydia asked with the most amount of patience she could muster.
"I was digging a grave… I'd just finished digging. I went inside, took a shower, got dressed, talked to Grandpa Ernie for a bit, and came back to the cemetery to get ready for the funeral…"
Mark froze. Then he ran to the other side of the cemetery. He tripped on a tree root in his haste and fell onto a freshly filled grave. Mark grasped at handfuls of dirt and stood on his knees as the dirt passed through his hands like a sieve.
Once she finally caught up with Mark, Lydia leaned over to catch her breath, and she braced herself for Mark to hammer the proverbial nail in his coffin.
"No. No, no, no, no, no, no. No!" He grabbed new handfuls of dirt and threw them towards the tombstone, but they came back to coat his now otherwise invisible body.
He held his hands in front of him and twisted his wrists so he could see his hands from different angles.
Finally he slumped down to the ground and became solid again.
He bent his knees and rested his forearms there, and recounted, his breath slow but ragged. "I was digging a grave… and I fell… I fell into the grave." He turned his hands over in front of his face while Lydia watched helplessly. "But there's no way. It's just six feet… there's just no way."
He grew silent as his wheels turned, and Lydia had never felt so helpless in her life.
"Lydia, I think I might be… dead." His voice rose at the end, cracking in uncertainty.
The panic in his voice echoed in Lydia's body. She rolled onto her knees in front of him and took his cold hand in hers, rubbing the back of it to help him calm down.
"Mark, I… I think you're a ghost?" She twisted her lips to the side to put him at ease. If it wasn't a big deal to her, maybe he'd take it better.
He snatched his hand from her, and put both of his hands behind his neck and pulled his elbows together. Then he turned away and crouched on the ground. He picked at some fallen leaves to keep his hands occupied and sat with his legs crossed, back hunched.
He laid down on his back and stretched his arms out over the loose pile of fresh dirt. He let out a supernatural belly laugh and Lydia smiled. She sat down in front of the tombstone next to his and pulled her legs to her chest. "You're taking this much better than I thought you would."
Mark groaned and covered his eyes. "Don't you see how ironic it would be if I'm a ghost?"
Lydia thought about how different things could have been if he had believed her. She still would have left Winter River, and whatever would have been between them would have ended before they could even begin. But they would have known each other better, not that that would have made things any easier.
"If I'm really a ghost, how come you can see me?" he asked.
She wanted to hold Mark so he felt as real as he was to her. Instead, she knocked her head back to the tombstone and lifted her eyes to the darkening sky. Then she took a deep breath to remind him, "I-"
"Can see ghosts," they said together.
"That's right," he said. He took a deep breath and hung his head. "You can see ghosts. You told me you could and I didn't believe you."
"You know, Adam and Barbara Maitland still live in our house. They're sort of like my parents. I mean I have a living dad and… his wife. Or whatever Delia is. But Adam and Barbara are actually more like parents to me."
The silence that sank between them felt like a weighted blanket, comfort mixed with truth, that replaced Mark's denial. Lydia felt his relief in the silence, because he already knew. He just hadn't been ready to accept it.
"It's not a bad thing, Mark. You get to hang around for another 125 years or so. You just have to figure out what you're here for. The purpose of your afterlife. I'm sure there's a copy of The Handbook for the Recently Deceased somewhere nearby. Probably in the funeral home somewhere? Your office?"
Mark turned his head towards her, incredulous, the worry line across his forehead deepening into something less attractive by its meaning. "Recently deceased ?"
Lydia pursed her lips and raised her brows in defeat. Then she hid her head between her knees and drew deep breaths as she waited for Mark to come around. He wasn't taking this as well as she thought.
He shot up and ran inhumanly faster towards the funeral home, and Lydia struggled to keep up.
"Grandpa!" he shouted as he approached the funeral home. "Grandpa! Grandpa!"
Once she finally caught up, Lydia loitered in the lobby to give Mark some space. She hung around just outside the prep room door, which Mark passed through without opening. Lydia peered through the glass window and watched Mark fruitlessly attempt to get his grandfather's attention.
Mark yelled at his grandfather over and over, each time a little louder, each time falling on deaf ears. Lydia cringed at his desperation, calling his grandfather by his first name, then first and last together. Finally, he knocked the powder out of his hand, spilling it all over the floor and cracking the compact.
"Damn it!" Ernie exclaimed. "God damned arthritis!"
Then he bent his face down and sobbed. "He was so young! Why him? Why not me?" he asked no one in particular. Lydia barely made out, "It's not fair," through his sobs.
Mark reached his hands around his grandfather's shoulders and Ernie's only reaction was to hold on to his elbows and mention how cold it was.
Lydia left Mark to his private moment with his grandfather, found his office, and rummaged through the papers on his desk until she found the book. Ernie hadn't even touched Mark's things. The calendar on the wall was a couple of months behind and his desk phone still blinked with messages.
Lydia found Mark leaning against his tombstone. "I died. I'm dead. Like, dead dead."
Then he looked at Lydia, and said, "And I'm a ghost! Which also means I'm sort of not dead. Not completely, anyway."
He held his hands up in front of him and turned his whole body, including clothes, invisible. The hair at Lydia's neck ruffled with a cool breeze.
"Mark?" she asked affectionately. Then she giggled as she wriggled away from the dead leaf brushing against her cheek.
"Hey, cut it out!" she said with a giggle and gently swatted at the invisible hand disarming him. Feeling lighter, Lydia asked, "Better?"
He reappeared in front of her, then smiled. He let out a deep sigh then fell back to lean on the tombstone. He laughed some more then buried his head in his hands. "It's just, this can't be real, Lydia. Are you even real? Or are you also a ghost, too?"
Lydia smiled patronizingly. "Mark. I can see ghosts!" She broke off and twisted a blade of grass in her fingers, and coyly smiled. "It's not so bad being a ghost, you know. Just think about all those annoying things you won't ever have to deal with. Taxes. Car registration renewal. Elections..." she said, then paused. It felt too harsh reminding him that he'd be stuck at the cemetery forever while everything around him would move away.
Mark's lips turned devilish as he rolled his eyes. "Diarrhea…"
Lydia snorted and nearly fell over from laughing so hard.
"Right?" he asked. "Come on, you can't expect me to have to deal with bodily functions like that even though I'm dead, right? That's just not fair!"
Still laughing, Lydia shook her head, and said, "I don't think you have to worry about diarrhea, though. You can't eat-"
"Oh," he said, disappointedly. "No more cheeseburgers. Or Red Bull."
"Red Bull? Really?" she asked judgmentally.
"Well, it's not like I need it anymore, do I?" He took a deep squat and pushed himself up to float above Lydia. Then he flapped his arms until a pair of tiny bat wings popped out of his shoulder blades. "I already have wings, see?"
"I guess it's not that much of a loss then, is it?" Lydia asked through squinted eyes and overly rounded cheeks.
"No!" Mark relented with a silly, exaggerated face.
"Go like this." Lydia pulled her ears and stuck out her tongue, so Mark followed suit.
Lydia snorted and adjusted her legs so they bent to the side and she leaned closer to him.
"What?" he asked, completely unaware of his new talents.
"You're such a dork!"
Mark put his hand on her knee, and she pretended to ignore it. "Seriously, what did I do?"
Lydia settled and took a deep breath. "Ghosts can change how they look, if they want to be seen. It's good when they're trying to scare people. But it only works if the people they're trying to scare believe in them enough to be scared."
"Oh, so now I just have big monkey ears and a KISS tongue?"
What would it be like to kiss a ghost? Lydia wondered.
"What? Is my tongue still chameleon-like?"
Lydia looked into his eyes, and that wasn't much better, so she blinked, holding her eyes closed just a second. "Do you want to tell your grandfather?"
Mark exhaled a puff of smoke and put his hands behind his head to protect it from the tombstone.
"Look," Lydia said, "It's up to you, but if he knows you're here, it may bring him some comfort. And you can still live together. You can even keep working. No one even needs to know. And if they did…" She held her chin close to her neck and raised her eyebrows, then rolled her eyes. "Well, it would probably be good for business. You could help people in mourning…"
Lydia got on her knees so she was square in front of Mark. "You could really make a difference in people's lives. Not least of which, Ernie's."
Mark stared at Lydia helplessly. She looked away, tucking a strand behind her ear before looking up again with slightly reddened cheeks.
Mark rolled his eyes and slapped his hands against his thighs and the wrinkle across his forehead deepened. "You've sort of put me in a tough spot here, Lydia."
She smiled demurely, then rolled her eyes. "Whatever."
"The cute girl that I've had a crush on for, like, years ," he started, "who is, for all practical purposes, literally the only girl, only person , in the world, is practically begging me to be a better person even though I'm already dead and there's literally only one incentive…"
Lydia looked at him sideways. "Well, I guess you don't really have a choice then, do you?"
Mark twisted his lips more than he meant to and Lydia held in her smile.
He ran his hand over his mouth and gave Lydia a hard time when she pulled him to his feet. He weighed himself down unfairly, but she didn't give up.
She tightened her grip on his hand and he finally relented, and molded his hand to fit hers like a pillow filling in all the gaps. She dropped her eyes to his crooked smile and licked her lips unintentionally. Then she smiled at him innocently when he noticed.
"You're very persuasive, you know," he whispered into her hair.
"Oh, Mark, you have no idea."
Moonlight
Mark turned invisible and whispered a shiver against the sliver of skin visible between the collar of Lydia's blouse and her wide brimmed hat. Lydia spun around, startled at first, then her face relaxed into a coy smile.
Mark knocked Lydia's hat off and circled around her, invisible.
"Mark! Stop it!" She turned her head and spun round and round in a fruitless effort to keep up with the ghost she could feel but not see.
Still invisible, Mark tugged on Lydia's arm and led her to the far end of the graveyard, where she couldn't be seen from the road. He became apparent again and brushed her hair behind her shoulder, resting his hand at her clavicle, and caressed her neck with his thumb.
Lydia raises her brows slightly so her forehead wrinkled in the middle and focuses her attention on his eyes. She could see herself reflected in them so she looked at his shoulder instead.
"Hey, you know what else I miss?" Mark bent his neck and moved his face in front of hers, his lower lip turned down in a melodramatic pout.
An impish smile spread across Lydia's face as she took his bait. "I bet you're going to tell me anyway…"
Mark stood up straight and widened his eyes like a puppy that had been punished unfairly.
"Fine," Lydia said with a smile to indicate she was just pretending. "Blockbuster late fees? Brain freeze?"
"Haha, very funny!" He moved his other hand to her cheek and Lydia leaned into it. She closed her eyes longer than a blink, and was taken aback by Mark's intense look when she opened her eyes again. He was close enough that she could see his ectoplasmic sparkle illuminated by the moonlight.
He squeezed his eyes shut, then said, "Oh… Jesus. God, I was going to ask you out. Something else I can't do."
Lydia smiles giddily. "You were?"
"Yeah, it's not everyday you find a girl that believes in ghosts. Especially a cute one."
"Well," she said. "You could still ask me out, you know." She was never going to end up with a live boy anyway. "I actually came this close," she said with pinched fingers, "to marrying a ghost once."
"Wait, you're joking, right?"
Lydia stayed silent and lifted her eyebrows just slightly.
"Wait, you mean you'd actually go out with a ghost?"
"Well, you'll never know unless you ask, will you?"
Mark backed up and held Lydia's hands, swinging them side to side. "Lydia Deetz," he asked, looking at their hands. Then he looked at her, just enough so their eyes met. "Will you go out with me?"
Lydia squealed inside. She memorized every detail of this moment so she could dream about it later. Then she took a deep breath, "I don't know, Mark. Where would you even take me?"
Mark smiled and cradled Lydia in his arms. He floated up into the sky and zoomed around the cemetery until they landed on the roof of the funeral home.
Mark held his arm out and stretched it into a black blanket for her to sit on. "How's this?"
Lydia leaned into Mark's space and touched her index finger to his cheek and her thumb to his chin. Then she moved her thumb across his lips.
She planted her lips on Mark's and his body expanded so his blanket wrapped all over her body. Even though she could see him and his wrinkled worry line clearly, and he felt as solid, though much colder, as any living person, his kiss was something special. His lips were softer than anything she ever expected, but his mouth expanded, and his tongue lengthened, and it wasn't clear which of them devoured the other.
Lydia needed to stop for air, and to massage her abused jaw, though Mark could probably have gone on like that for hours.
"So," Mark said, brushing a light finger along Lydia's cheek. He wrapped his arms around her to keep her close, then he whisked her to his grave and landed unceremoniously on the ground.
"Ooouuchh!" Lydia said.
"Sorry!" Mark held his hand to the bump on Lydia's head and he soothed her ache. "Do you think you'll live?" he teased.
"You know, if you weren't already dead, I'd probably kill you," she said as she climbed on top of him.
"Ooh, that would have been a much better way to die!"
"Mark," Lydia said, mildly chastising him as she kissed his neck.
"Show me. How would you kill me?"
Lydia pinned his hands to the ground to bury him in his grave.
"Lame," Mark said and floated their bodies above.
Lydia pulled his hair and kissed him until she sank into his body and burned with cold.
"That's better," he said as their bodies twisted together in the moonlight.
A part of her died that night, but she'd never felt so alive.
Just then a little black and white striped beetle scurried unseen and unheard across the top of Mark's tombstone.
Soundtrack:
"Graveyard" by Halsey
"Little Ghost" by The White Stripes
"Can't Fight the Moonlight" by LeAnn Rimes