::AN:: Party over here, woot-woot. Edit: 9/16/2011

Title: The Name Game

Chapter Three: In Distress

A hand clamped down on Lydia's shoulder and she screamed. Her body reacted violently and she thrust out her arms in attempt to ward off her would-be attacker. But she couldn't break the grip. ...And the hand didn't feel right. It didn't make her skin burn and crawl. It didn't make her stomach turn. It was cool. It was gentle. Lydia began to calm down, her rapid, shallow breaths began to even out.

"Babes."

That rasp was familiar...

"Hey, Babes!"

Lydia's eyes jolted open. The hand was no dream, nor was the raspy voice that accompanied it. Her mind was still foggy with sleep and the sharp, vivid remnants of what had been a very... unpleasant dream, so she thought nothing of clenching her eyes shut and latching on to the poltergeist in her bed. The images, either memories or the fiction of her subconscious she could no longer distinguish, played out on the insides of her eyelids. She squeezed harder around Betelgeuse's midsection, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

Betelgeuse stiffened. "Uh.. Babes?" He tapped at her shoulder, trying vainly to snap her out of it.

"Lydia," she muttered into his cool skin.

"Wha-?"

"My name is Ly-di-a," she reiterated, careful to enunciate. "If you're going to stick around, you should start using it." She sighed and repositioned herself, practically climbing into Betelgeuse's lap in the process. He made her feel safe, and at that moment, that meant absolutely everything. He was her ghost in shining armor, after all. They'd made a deal. It was a shame he couldn't actually protect her in her dreams, though. -But then again, using him as an ex-human security blanket was the next best thing.

She felt his chest expand and fall in a deep sigh, which she figured was more for show than anything. Ghosts didn't need to breathe, did they? Not like they were capable of suffocating... Then she felt one of his arms lazily fall across her shoulders, while the other snaked around to the small of her back. This time, she stiffened, but the hands remained in their platonic positions, nary a twitch to indicate any intention of wandering. It was strangely nice and it prompted all the pent up tension to melt from her body.

"You... you do know you're holding on to me, right?" he asked, slightly bemused.

"So?" She retorted sleepily. "It's your job to keep me safe. And besides," she yawned widely, "you feel... nice."

Snuggling into him a little more, getting comfortable, Lydia promptly fell back asleep.

Betelgeuse could honestly say this was a first for him. Well, not the whole being in bed, practically spooning with a woman part - he'd been in that position before, plenty of times too, and with plenty of women. But this? This was a whole new context with a whole new set of parameters. For instance, he was pretty sure that if the hand on the small of her back drifted any lower, he'd be back in the Netherworld faster than you could say "go fuck yourself". That would kind of defeated the purpose of those other... encounters. This was new territory, and that was really disconcerting for a ghost who'd been lurking for over six-hundred years.

And that's without taking into account that this particular moment was essentially the antithesis of what he stood for! He was a bio-exorcist for crying out loud! Not a teddy bear! And yet, here he was with this girl... woman... human, and instead of her being terrified, disgusted, or at the very least repulsed, she was curled up against him like a cat. Him. A poltergeist. The self-proclaimed 'Ghost With the Most'. And to top it all off, she told him he felt nice. To be sure, she only admitted it because she was half-asleep, but she still said it, and he'd bet his boots she meant it too.

He grunted. While that was excellent fodder to torture her with later (which he fully intended to capitalize on), he'd come to the conclusion that this plan had better work because his reputation as a bio-exorcist was officially shot.

Betelgeuse expected her grip to loosen once she was out for the count. But it didn't. And for some reason, despite it being perfectly within his abilities to remove himself from her without waking her up, he didn't feel like it. Instead, he merely shifted a little, leaning against the wall and redistributing Lydia's weight a bit, and thought.

Of course, he did not think, not even a little, about how nice (he never used the word "nice" either) it felt to have that warm body pressed against him, and he paid absolutely no attention to her breathing, and how each little puff fell hypnotically from her slightly parted lips. Nor did he feel a pulse of anger shoot through his limbs at the bastard who'd split that otherwise perfect lower lip. And even if those thoughts did cross his mind, which of course was not at all the case, whose business was it but his own?

But suddenly he found the room clouded with an angry aura and the heavy scent of cigarette smoke, an unfortunately familiar combination. Betelgeuse cursed under his breath. Of course Juno would arrive at this moment, while Lydia was still stuck on him like a leech (he conveniently ignored the fact that he'd had more than an hour to remove himself from her).

"Well, well, well," she crooned. The slit across her neck seemed to leer at Betelgeuse. Juno leaned on her left hip and rested her respective hand upon it. Her conservative gray pumps did not need to tap the floor to exude impatience and a sense of urgency. "If it isn't the one and only bane of my existence out and about and making my afterlife as difficult as possible." She took a long drag from her cigarette, then flicked ash from the tip which dissolved gracefully before hit hit the ground.

He was a bit surprise she hadn't commented on his... situation yet, though he had no doubt it would come up sooner than later. Still, Betelgeuse decided to hold his ground and stay right where he was, Lydia and all. He would not be turned into the kid with his hand caught inside the cookie jar; not this time. Besides, it was mostly her fault anyway. So, in attempt to disarm the moment, Betelgeuse sent her his most charming smile (which sat unnaturally on his features and came off technically more "creepy" than "charming"). "Feeling's mutual, Babe."

"Hmm." Her lip curled. "Looks like I'm doing my job, then. And while this is a thoroughly entertaining topic of conversation, I, unfortunately, am here on business."

"Big surprise," Betelgeuse muttered, vaguely wondering if all this chatter would wake the girl up.

Juno ignored him, taking another elegant drag. "It has come to my attention that you've made a bit of a deal with our Miss Lydia Deetz." She regarded the girl with a quick, appraising glance. Then her gaze met Betelgeuse's eyes, and informed him that she was well aware of his position and she was not, in the least, pleased by it.

He too, spared Lydia a glance, and then looked back to the wholly less appealing, older, and not to mention, dead, Juno. "What's it to you?" he asked.

Juno sighed and began methodically rubbing the bridge of her nose. "You have absolutely no idea what you've just gotten yourself into, you stupid, stupid idiot." Her eyes flashed back to him, "Do you?"

"What?" he exclaimed. "All I know is, I've got free time in the real world while I'm protecting her and there's nothing you can do about it!" Betelgeuse, feeling rather in the mood to be petty and childish, still fought back the impulse to stick out his tongue at her... and turn it into a two-headed snake.

"I reiterate my point," she snapped. "You are a stupid, stupid idiot. Lydia was supposed to die tonight, did you know that?" She sighed again, rubbing her forehead. "All that paperwork… But that's not why I am here. Truth be told, I'm glad she didn't die- nice kid and all that. But back to the point, Lydia's enemy? The man you've sworn to protect her from? He just happens to be obscenely powerful, evil, and above all, vengeful. You are familiar with a Mr. Vladimir Drake, I presume?"

Betelgeuse blanched at the mention of that particular name, which he hadn't heard uttered in at least a few centuries.

"Well it just so happens that, by some stroke of fate, a mister Van Durman was possessed by Drake, and remains so now. And so you see, you raging fool, it is not mere mortal Van Durman who wants Miss Deetz dead, but one of the most powerful entities the afterlife has ever known." Juno paused for a moment to let that little tid-bit sink in. "Thus, if Miss Deetz dies, you, my friend, get exorcized for breaking your bargain. Did you know that? Exorcism is the latest restriction the Bosses have placed upon you thanks to your less that sparkling track record." She appraised Betelgeuse who seemed frozen in silence. "Do you see the dilemma you unwittingly wedged and forced yourself into?"

Betelgeuse's attention, however, had dropped sharply at the word "exorcized." He was now focused solely on another word: fuck. Because that was what he was; royally and indisputably fucked. And that was without the added threat of adopting Drake as his very own newest enemy. Of course, that said, Drake was everybody's enemy…, which was why he had been sealed in that talisman five hundred years before… Eventually, Betelgeuse dragged himself out of his revery and looked helplessly at Juno. "How?"

She arched a grayed eyebrow. "Excellent question. And I do hope this means you are taking everything seriously. But it's like this; Van Durman used to be an acclaimed archeologist." She embellished this with a slight wave of the hand. Smoke trailed from her cigarette as her hand moved, making a winding, milky tendril in the air. "He found Vladimir's little necklace. Unbeknownst to us, Vladdy managed to install an inscription onto it as he was sealed. Well, a curse, actually, because that's really all he's good for. -And Van Durman, being the diligent archeologist that he was, deciphered and read allowed the inscription, thus cursing himself to be possessed by Vladimir's spirit for a period of no less than one hundred years, or until death. Upon the body's death, Vladimir will just return to the Netherworld, where he will surely resume his old reign of terror from five hundred years ago."

"He's gone and concocted some half-baked scheme for world domination," she continued, exasperation and annoyance saturating her tone. "They all do. Doesn't help that he has full access to the real Van Durman's mind, memories and all that. I mean, he wouldn't stand a chance in the world today without that advantage. Pity, really. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that he is, essentially, a big, breathing bag of flesh. With the proper handling he can be adequately resealed, hopefully this time sans the curse inscriptions."

"I've got a feeling that you guys want me to do more than just protect Lyd- I mean, her," Betelgeuse surmised. Given the gravity of the situation, he finally found it necessary to extricate himself from Lydia's grip. It was easy enough, just a quick phase through and he was free. She looked a little perturbed in her sleep at the sudden lack of contact, but upon fondling the bed a bit, she was able to replace her Betelgeuse pillow with a real one; all, remarkably, without waking.

"So perceptive," Juno drawled. "You brought this on yourself, you know, always wanting things you can't have, or at the very least shouldn't have. There are some people really looking forward to your failure." She punctuated this by jabbing her cigarette.

"You one of them?" he asked with a guarded tone.

Her lips pulled into a tight frown. "I'm not one of those people who takes pleasure in other's plights, especially not when it involves the life of an innocent child."

Betelgeuse snorted and had a half a mind to point out that Lydia was most decidedly not a child.

"And don't even get me started on how much paper work will be involved if they do have to exorcize you; your file is a mess." She took a quick glance at her watch, and then returned her gaze to the other ghost, calculating. "Look, just keep her out of harm's way for now. We are doing everything we can to get this crisis under control. Just… try not to do anything stupid should you somehow cross Vladimir's path. Like I said, we are working on the problem and when we find a suitable solution or loophole, we'll let you know… or actually, we'll follow the best course of action to solve the problem, regardless of whether or not we tell you. Oh, and one more quick thing," she stepped towards him, somehow managing to loom over him in an intimidating fashion, despite her being several inches shorter. "You so much as look at her the wrong way and so help me, I'll make Saturn look like a tropical paradise."

Betelgeuse got the message and nodded dumbly, shocked and a little ashamed for being so easily cowed.

She stepped back, and nodded derisively. "Good. And don't worry about explaining the situation to her. I'll take care of it tomorrow, after she's had a chance to rest up." Taking one more drag from the cigarette, Juno was gone before she could exhale.

Betelgeuse blinked. What in all holy hell had he gotten himself into?

::AN:: Looks like I've added another four-hundred words to this edit... so not as drastic as the last one. Still - it's a nice chunk of change. That, and its already quite the information dump. Don't want to make you process too much information in one go. Most of the changes were stylistic in nature, meant to improve the flow and all that, plus a little added (and cleaner) detail. No real game-changers.

TTFN,

-ER-