A/N: To understand the joke in the beginning of this chapter, it may help if you go and re-read the end of chapter 4 and beginning of chapter 5, especially if it's been a while since you read this story. All I can say is, I'm sorry it took me so long to write another chapter! I can't even tell anymore if I've got the characterizations right or if I'm mucking it up. But I kept at it for everyone who said they wanted another chapter, so if you'd like me to continue this, it certainly helps to review!

PREVIOUSLY:

Angrily, he summoned another cig and stomped outside. The sky was awash in gold and pink, the sun rising in a haze of red and orange clouds. He cursed and debated stomping back inside. He should be in the bathroom with Lydia right now, enjoying her company. It's not like a door could actually stop him. And just because she had noticed he was there that once didn't mean he sucked at being invisible. But she'd probably catch him. And then she'd yell – or worse, not yell. Saint Brigid's britches, he just didn't want to deal with it. He glared at the sun until storm clouds obscured the horizon and rain lashed the beach.

And he was NOT making excuses for himself.

AND NOW, ON WITH THE STORY!

Chapter Eight:

Beetlejuice was startled out of his funk by a slight hand tugging on his sleeve. He then noticed someone was shouting at him, the words being washed away by the pouring rain.

"-pancakes!"

What?

"I made pancakes!"

What? "Without me?" he roared. The rain stopped instantly, thunder rolling as lightning crackled in the pitch black sky.

"Come in for breakfast!" Lydia shouted into the sudden silence. Coughing a bit into her fist she continued in a much quieter voice. "I made pancakes."

He flung down his unlit, soaked-through cigarette. "How could you do that without me?"

In Lydia's opinion, he didn't have to sound so aggrieved about what was apparently a bout of illicit cooking. "I didn't think you'd mind," she said. After all, it's not like he knew that she probably should have taken Home Ec. instead of Shop class….

"Mind? Why would I mind? My wife is only going around making 'pancakes' without even asking if I'd like to watch!" Grabbing her by the arms, he turned her around and gave her a push towards the shack. "March your ass back in there and start over!"

Lydia balked, but he inexorably maneuvered her back inside. Once over the threshold she snapped, "Fine! I'll start over, but you have to help!" and stomped towards the kitchen.

His eyes widening, he said, "In there?" Visions were filling his head, visions of locations and positions, visions that came to a screeching halt as soon as he saw the disaster area that used to be a kitchen. He liked a good mess, but this…! His eyes were drawn to the center of the storm, the kitchen table which was the only flat surface to escape being piled high with various dirty bowls, pans, and utensils. On the table was laid out what could charitably be called breakfast, if you liked your bacon a crispy black, your scrambled eggs studded with bits of shell and somehow gelatinously separated into swirls of half-cooked yolk and browned whites, and your pancakes…the pancakes looked okay, actually. And she'd gone to the effort of setting two place settings, and squeezing some fresh orange juice, which accounted for the splatter marks all over one wall and part of the ceiling. He honestly didn't know what to say.

She glared at him suspiciously through the curtain of her dark hair, standing in the middle of the mess with her arms crossed defiantly. "Where else would I cook, the living room? Make a bonfire out of all that hideous pink and red striped chintz? Barbecue over the flaming remains of your fashion sense?"

He raised a twisted eyebrow and rubbed his stubble mock-thoughtfully. "That's not a bad idea. S'not like ya could've done any worse. Ya really call this cooking?" He poked the pile of bacon. It crumbled into a pile of charcoal with a whoosh.

Splat! Suddenly his vision was obscured by…pancake batter? He licked his lips and tasted the goo that was currently dribbling down through his hair, over his face, and into the collar of his shirt. Yup. Pancake batter. It wasn't half bad, either. He blinked his eyes clear. And there was Lydia, holding a formerly full bowl in a defensive position, looking both angry, amused, and afraid all at once somehow. It was probably the way the fire in her eyes collided with the way her mouth twitched between a gloating smirk and a horrified grimace.

He wiped his hand down his face, flicking the batter off to the side. The glow in his green eyes brightened as his lips parted in a manic smile that just kept going, showing all his teeth and then finding a few more, quite sharp and pointy. "Two can play at that game, my little sugarlump!" A dramatic gesture had two more bowls filled with pancake batter (just how much of the stuff had she mixed up, anyway?) rising into the air and converging on Lydia.

Her eyes got huge and she dove under the table, with a shriek that almost sounded like…laughter. Gaining cover didn't actually help her, though, he just floated the batter-filled bowls underneath the table and dumped them on her. With a yelp that definitely sounded like a yelp (the kind someone makes when they are suddenly covered in something cold and sticky), she shot up on the other side of the table, the bowl that was in her hands stuck on her head like a helmet, leaving her face alone not completely covered in batter. Now she had a white paper sack in her hands.

"If you like sugar so much, why don't you have some!" she said and hurled the sack at him with pinpoint accuracy. It struck him square in the chest and burst into a cloud of flour which filled the room.

He stumbled to the side in the white haze, finally completing his attempt to dodge, and yelled through a coughing fit, "That wasn't sugar! No wonder you're a terrible cook!" Squinting, he could barely make out Lydia's lithe form lunging for another, nearly identical, white paper sack on the counter.

"So sue me!" she retorted wittily as she actually clambered up onto the counter to drop the sugar on his head, sending pans and spatulas and an egg carton clattering to the floor.

This time he caught the sack with one hand and pulled Lydia's ankle with the other, tripping her off the counter. He dropped the sack of sugar and caught Lydia as she fell, before slinging her down on the floor and proceeding to pour the sugar down her dress. He cackled.

She squirmed and tried to pry his fingers off her dress or roll out of the line of fire. She even tried kicking him but he sat on her legs. So finally, panting, she gasped, "Stop! Stop! Uncle! I give up!" and got a mouthful of sugar for her trouble before he put it down.

Waggling his eyebrows, he said, "Ya give up…what? 'Cause I got a few ideas if you don't!" And he leaned down and licked a glittery trail of sugar that that traced her collarbone. His tongue was wet and cool and she told herself it was not that much different than getting splattered with pancake batter, then he did this sort of swirly thing and gently sucked which made it completely different and she had to reach out to grab onto something as her spine arched and her head dropped back giving him more room to work, completely without her consent. Her hand hit the egg carton, and as she finally finished swallowing the sugar filling her mouth, she smiled deviously.

Beetlejuice seemed to have finally reached the heaven bit of "died and gone to" etc. Lydia, rather than making some ridiculous maidenly protest denying what he knew that she totally wanted, was in fact tugging at his tie and undoing his shirt buttons! Balanced impossibly leaning over Lydia, he dragged his hands up from her waist until his thumbs rested just under her breasts…Crack! He sat up on her legs and stared at his own chest for once. She'd smashed two eggs on his sternum that were now oozing down inside his unbuttoned shirt. Completely deadpan, he said, "That is not how you make scrambled eggs."

"Really? Nobody ever showed me how." She innocently fluttered her eyelashes before her mask cracked and she started giggling.

For a moment more his face remained frozen, before he started laughing so hard one of his eyeballs accidentally came out and he had to pop it back in, cursing. Lydia stopped and stared at him for a second, making him feel slightly self-conscious, something he had forgotten he could feel. It wasn't like he could help it – rotting corpse here! Sometimes things just fell apart!

Then she snorted, and had to clap her hands over her mouth to stifle her laughter, and he was laughing again too. She got out from under him and stood up, and he let her, and even let her offer him a hand, as if she could actually lift him up off the floor. He floated to his feet.

She glanced at their hands, still casually wrapped together, then she looked away. "So…" she began, then looked back at him out of the corner of her eye. "Will you teach me how to make scrambled eggs? Since you're obviously an expert, and all."

He stared off into the distance, in a region that happened to be nearby her hips where the wet lace was clinging like a second skin. Finally, just as she was losing her patience, he shrugged and said, "Sure, Lyds."

So they re-made breakfast together. He, of course, took every opportunity to accidentally brush against inappropriate parts of her anatomy and hold her in his arms to ostensibly guide her hands, but he didn't do anything too obvious. She, of course, swatted him away and accidentally-on-purpose elbowed him in the gut, but she didn't really hit him that hard.

The eggs, as they sat together at the table and ate them, were delicious. And surprisingly, so were the pancakes which she had made. The orange juice was pulpy, but passable. There was no bacon, because Lydia has burned it all.

"Y'know, the original plan was that I'd be bringing ya breakfast in bed right about now. When ya got too tired to keep goin'," Beetlejuice leeringly mused as he finished off the last pancake.

Frustrated, she stared at his mouth. She had wanted that pancake! Sighing and wiping syrup off her mouth with her hand, she pushed her chair back and stood up. "Instead, why don't you clean up the kitchen? I'm too tired to do it. 'Kay-thanks-bye!" And with that, she dashed out of the kitchen, stopping only momentarily at the door, holding back the beaded curtain and smiling saucily, to say, "I'm going for a swim." She thought it would take him a while and she could get cleaned up in peace. She really ought to have known better by then.

However, flabbergasted by the notion that he would clean anything, it took him a second to leap through the table and chase after her. Turning on his back for a moment as he swam through the air, he held up his thumb, pointed his fore finger at the kitchen, and said, "Pow!"

The kitchen sparkled, the sun was shining again, and Lydia might even be naked (she wouldn't) in the waterfall pool by the time he got there. Today was a good day to be a poltergeist.