Disclaimer: Beetlejuice and all related characters belong to Warner Bros. I wouldn't take responsibility for BJ if you paid me. No way, baby.

AN: A long chapter! Yay! Blame mywickedlyweirdnature, who demanded that I finish this tonight. Sheesh ;). Lydia gets her heart broken, and Beetlejuice realizes that he might actually still know where his is.

Chapter 14: All Yours

Lydia spun around, her annoyance overcoming her nervousness for the moment. He never failed to see her first, to catch her by surprise. He was leaning against the wall at the foot of her bed, the vest discarded and the linen shirt untucked. And unbuttoned more than halfway down, she noticed, her eyes widening. His skin glowed a very pale opalescent blue where the shirt flared open at his throat. Completely flustered, and ambushed by emotions that she had never had to deal with before, she shook her head helplessly. "That can wait—I have to show you this!" But he crossed his arms over his chest.

"I pay my debts. You owe me a kiss." His expression was fixed between a sulky frown and resigned frustration. She looked down at her toes, completely at a loss. Deep breath, Lydia. He was right. She swallowed, and then approached him timidly. But he snorted gracelessly and turned away from her. "Or you can trade, Lydia."

What was that in his voice? "Trade what?" She was determined not to be on the losing side of this.

He made a show of thinking for a moment. "Howabout this? I'll let you off the hook 'til we settle this mom thing." His expressive mouth twisted in mild disdain. "And then you still owe me the same kiss, but as a bonus, I get to kiss you. Wherever I want." He was grinning darkly at her now, so much so that she might have imagined his frustration of a moment before. He was playing her. He had to be.

"I get to say no if you pick somewhere to kiss me that I… that I don't want to be kissed." Did that come out right?

"Deal!" He held out his hand to her and she grasped it in self defense, still thinking about what had been negotiated. But it seemed above board. She would kiss him, likely on the cheek or somewhere equally innocent, and then she could refuse to let him kiss her anywhere less innocent than that. She just had to be alert.

"Deal," she nodded. "Now, will you help me?"

He grinned a feral grin and stretched out on her bed. "I'm all yours, Lyds."

For some reason, the growl in his voice forced a small bloom of heat open behind her stomach. He was good at this. Too good. Good enough that she had to keep reminding herself that he was dead, and that the shirt that had fallen open exposed the luminous, delicately shadowed flesh of a ghost. The deep sapphire-colored hollow at his throat and the neat indentations of his ribs… ghost. He was a ghost. A remnant of a dead man. Deep breath. She scowled at the amused half-smile on his lips and settled cross-legged a deliberate distance from him, her back turned to him. In her hands was the tape recorder she had used to record him. He peered at it curiously but subsided as she began to speak.

"When my mom died, it was just before my eleventh birthday, and she made me promise to have a party no matter what." Lydia's voice was steady, and she slowly eased the confusing thoughts of the poltergeist on her bed out of her mind. "So we did, but it was awful, if you can imagine." He raised a eyebrow at her, but she couldn't see him. "We buried her, and two days later had cake and ice cream. And dad didn't know how to cut the cake so he made a big mess of it, and the ice cream was the fat free kind because neither of us had really been paying attention in the store. My cousins were all there, still from the funeral, and Jenny was playing the Entertainer on the piano and at some point, my dad suggested that she record it. For posterity, or something." Lydia grimaced delicately, feeling tears gathering at the back of her throat. She shifted uncomfortably and felt her back press Beetlejuice's thigh. His presence was oddly comforting.

She held up the recorder and pressed play. The tinny, scratchy sounds of a poor recording jumped into the silence of the room, and the halting first notes of the Entertainer began to play. Some laughter, and a false start. Lydia smiled. Jenny had been so proud of her abilities. And then, she finished to enthused clapping that died off shortly. A whining buzz cut in, and then, unmistakably, a woman's voice. "Forty three penny." Beetlejuice started from his lazy sprawl. Lydia rewound the tape. And again, "Forty three penny." Chills prickled down her back, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

"So I was really surprised when you said that, B. All of it. The haunting, the pennies, and those words. I never connected any of it, until you." She still wouldn't look at him, but she pressed more firmly against him, as if she didn't want to forget he was there. He reached up to stroke her hair, and then paused, thinking the better of it. He told himself that he didn't care nearly as much about the story as he cared about getting the girl child in his lap to trust him. Trust was only a step away from dramatic betrayal, and blessed privacy again. Which was what he wanted, all along. Funny, but that thought didn't make him feel all giddy like he expected. He scowled, and Lydia picked that moment to turn and look at him.

He must have looked passably disgruntled, because she twitched her lip in sympathy. "But now you tell me that she talked to you? So could you take me to her?" Her teary eyes were brimming with hopefulness. And he felt more than passably disgruntled about that. He rolled onto his back, causing her to tumble back against his hip, and she flushed bright pink and scrambled up and away from him again. "Beetlejuice!… please. This is serious."

He sighed. "Lyds… let me tell ya somethin'. Not all people who die are lucky enough to make it to ghost-status. Still fewer like me, supremely powerful and handsome and such… anyway." She was looking at him with a pained expression, and he realized with a clutching sensation at his breast that what he was about to say was going to break her dark little heart. He fumbled for the words, and cleared his throat a few times. Oh well; the quicker, the better. "So, um, anyway, your mom ain't a ghost."

"What?" Lydia looked as if she had been struck. "But the message! The pennies! All my life, I've known that she was there!"

He straightened up and took her by her frail, thin shoulders. "Lyds! It's just a tape loop!. Her last message to you, and such. And her… her, gods! her love—" He spat out the word. "…like a wall around you. Protection spell, and all. She's not there." But Lydia was shaking, and tore herself away.

"You're lying!" She raised her voice at him now. He scowled and slammed his hand against the wall, denting the plaster. Frustration welled up like blood from a deep wound.

"You're just too fixated to see the truth! You think she wouldn't have sent you a letter by now, if she could? What the fuck does 'forty three penny' mean. Lydia? It's cryptic because she didn't have the energy to finish!" He was shouting too. The whole house was going to come down around them, and neither of them cared. She actually swung a fist at him, and he let it land harmlessly against his shoulder, and then she was pounding her fists against him in frustrated grief. He just let it wash over him, until she was clutching at his collar, weeping in great, choking sobs. He sighed and held her, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. This was not how things were supposed to go. Chasing her screaming out of the house, with her irritating parents at her heels; yes. Horrifying her delicate, underage sensibilities with lewd and inappropriate behavior; definitely. Cradling her while she cried her heart out on his best linen shirt; no. Emphatically no.

Eventually she fell quiet. Beetlejuice, completely at a loss, found himself stroking her hair, just like he had decided not to do a few short minutes before. Her mouth was pressed like a firebrand against his neck, and the awareness of her radiated mercilessly through him. He could feel the delicate puffs of breath from her nose against his throat, and her hands slipping down his abdomen, and her hipbone against his thigh. And then she stiffened, and he started, certain she was going to shout at him for touching her, and uncertain how he felt about that.

"Forty three… forty three, Beetlejuice." Her voice was just a ragged whisper. "Not a number. A year! 1943. 1943 penny. Oh my God."