Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to these characters.

AN: Written at 3am during a serious case of story-induced insomnia, to Disintigration by The Cure, a band i know Lydia would love.

all this in an instant
before i can kiss you
a woman now standing where once
there was only a girl…

--"Last Dance"

Age 18: Break Everything

"So you live here? This is cool."

Lydia nodded nervously at the thin, dark haired boy standing just inside her doorway. His eyebrow ring glinted in the dim light of her bedside table. "Sometimes it gets really cold up her," she said, and then blushed. "I mean, in the winter."

"Ah, the infamous Connecticut winter." He smiled at her, and she waved him into the room.

"Come on in. Nothing's going to bite. On fear of death!" she added under her breath, peering around her, and Sam, the boy, looked at her oddly.

"Lydia, I never thought I would find someone who was as strange as me. But I'm glad I did! You know, find you. I mean, it can get kind of lonely here." He sat down on her bed, which gave her a curious flutter. She had only known Sam for a few months. He went to the public school that bussed in from several small towns, and they had met at a local dinner and art fair and had taken an immediate liking to each other. He was a painter, and was working with textiles that Lydia wanted to use in her costumes. They had continued to speak on the phone, and then one night Lydia had invited him over. So he had come, and she had never had anyone else in her room before. Well, anyone that breathed. Anyone that counted.

She sat next to him on the bed, and smiled nervously again. He gazed back at her, his deeply shadowed eyes flickering. Lydia thought he looked very handsome in the dim light. He took her hand and bent toward her, and he was very close, and she could smell coffee and incense and hair gel, and then he was kissing her, his lips soft and hesitant. It was a delicious feeling. She felt her vision dimming out, and opened her eyes.

The lamp was flickering.

Oh shit. It wasn't the lamp. It was what was passing in front of the lamp.

"Don't look!" she managed to get out, but it was too late. Sam was staring at her in confusion, and then he lifted his gaze to the room, and uttered a strangled squeak. They were in the center of a room sized whirlwind of books, papers, and her clothing, shoes, paints, and for Pete's sake, underwear, all wheeling rapidly around the room in complete silence. Lydia gritted her teeth and stood up, and the books swerved neatly to accommodate her.

"Beetlejuice! For God's sake, what are you doing?"

Sam was struck completely mute with terror, switching between the angry girl and the spinning room. He tried to get up, but the books and papers and panties converged on him, and he fell back in fear. "Stop it, Lydia!"

"Beetlejuice! Let him go!"

She felt a cold angry growl in her ear that gave her goosebumps. "With pleasure." She snarled at the voice and reached down to grab Sam's hand.

"You better go," she told him, but he stared at her wildly. "I have to have a talk with the resident poltergeist about privacy issues."

Her angry calm seemed to make him even more frantic. In a panic, he rushed the door, being pelted on all sides with erasers and pencils and CD cases. Lydia ran after him, but she was curtained off by her own spinning belongings, and could just hear Sam's terrified scream as the door opened and slammed shut.

"Dammit, Beetlejuice!" she screamed in a fury. And then she heard his dark chuckle, and turned to see him sitting on the floor, sprawled insolently against the wall with a sneer on his face. He stood up abruptly, and everything crashed to the floor. She just gaped at him for a moment. He was dressed… she swallowed hard. He was dressed in a clean black t-shirt and pants, his tall boots free of dust. His arms and shoulders carried the dense musculature of a powerful man, and he was scowling at her with something indescribable in his dark, sunken eyes. The butterflies that had spawned from Sam's careful kiss increased tenfold.

"I thought we agreed that you were going to forget about the boys, Lyds." His voice was dripping with quiet ferocity, but the chill it gave her brought her back from the oddly hypnotic hold he had over her. She scowled at him.

"We agreed to nothing. There was no agreement, Beetlejuice!" She paused. "In fact, we've never agreed on anything!" She flung her arms downward and let out a sharp cry of frustration. He clenched his fingers. And every single piece of glass in the room shattered in a brilliant, shimmering explosion.

They both stood in the silent darkness for a moment, equally stunned. She could still see him, because he glowed with a delicate radiant iridescence, and he had stepped back, uncertain. A red fury, laced with hurt and frustration, rose in her like an animal she could not control.

"That's IT! Go ahead and break everything, Poltergeist! Get mad, have a tantrum! Destroy the house like you destroy my LIFE!" She advanced on him, and he stumbled slightly backwards, and he could feel her anger radiate like heat. "And when you're finished, kindly get the hell out of BOTH!" Her voice rang in the little attic room, and his forehead creased in dismay. Then he sneered at her.

"Good luck getting that little faker back. He doesn't have the backbone for you, Lydia." He tossed something on the bed in disgust. "Happy frickin' whatever, like you care." His voice was constricted, like he had to force himself to speak. And he walked right through a wall and was gone, leaving destruction in his wake like a terrible storm.

Lydia collapsed on the bed and sighed heartily. That had gone well, she thought with heavy sarcasm. Her first boyfriend ever was going to take out a restraining order on her first thing in the morning, and the most powerful poltergeist known to man was her personal one-ghost wrecking crew. She glanced around her, and her eye fell on the gold box that he had thrown on the bed. Feeling that things could not possibly get any worse, she sat up and tucked her legs crisscross, and reached for it.

The box was of heavy paper, covered with gold foil. There had been a note tied to the top, but it had been singed, and all she could read were the letters: PPY … ERSARY… DIA. Happy Anniversary, Lydia. Her throat closed up a bit. Oh. Her shaking fingers fumbled a bit with the ribbon, and then tugged the box lid off. Inside was a magnificent opal set in silver on a braided leather cord. She stared, her heart heavy. "Oh, Beetlejuice…" she whispered. It's beautiful."

But she was greeted with empty silence. He had gone, as she had insisted. An immense and pervasive feeling of loss settled over her, and she wept bitterly.

Sleep was a long time in coming, that night, and for many nights after.

Hey hey! just one more and i'll walk away
All the everything you win turns to nothing today
And i forget when to move when my mouth is this dry
and my eyes are bursting hearts in a blood-stained sky

Oh it was sweet it was wild and oh how we...
I trembled stuck in honey

"Homesick"