A/N: I guess not many people cared for how this story ended, so probably nobody will be reading this epilogue, but the idea for it pretty much attacked me as I was trying to write a term paper and wouldn't go away until I wrote it down. The rating goes up a bit and there's actually not a whole lot of plot per se, so consider yourself warned. I think I posted this briefly before and then deleted it for some reason.
EPILOGUE: A few months later
"Hey Lyds," a rough voice tickled her ear, making her sleepily swat at it before she rolled over on her other side.
"Five more minutes," she mumbled as she snuggled her pillow, which was a bit lumpy this morning. She hoped Beetlejuice didn't flip over her mattress again, it was barely even light out. He couldn't touch her directly given the edict from the powers that be, but he could still cause a lot of chaos. She shivered, wondering if they'd left the window open again last night. It smelled like Beej'd been smoking again.
"Lyds, guess what today is?" A cool breath swept across her other ear, making her yank the blanket over her head.
"Mmrph, sleepy. Go away." She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore him, but then a hand wandered down her back and attached itself firmly to one ass cheek. Her eyes snapped open. In the cavern of her covers, cadaverous green orbs lit the darkness.
"Happy Halloween." He grinned with too many crooked teeth and used his hold to lever her into place over him as his free hand tangled in the hair at the base of her skull. The blankets slipped away.
Her heart pounded in her throat and her mouth was dry as the Sahara and this was her best friend. He'd never let her forget he wanted her body but somehow it had become unimportant, just a thing he did, making tasteless innuendoes and staring at her at the most inappropriate times. It hadn't mattered. It turned out they could talk about anything with each other – he was impossible to out-gross and she had a legendarily blasé face that nothing could crack. There were no taboos between them. The one thing they'd never talked about was what would actually happen today. He was the only one in the whole world she was herself – all of herself – with. And he couldn't touch her – except for today, when the boundaries between the worlds were thin and all sorts of things became possible.
He kissed her, his chapped lips meeting her mouth soft with sleep and surprise. Staring into those eyes she knew so well now, she thought, This is my best friend. And she let her lips part and the tip of her tongue brush the seam of his mouth. Unholy glee sparkled over his face, chasing away the faint doubt that had overshadowed it and which he would have hotly denied. Lydia's breasts apparently thought they were freezing and her stomach had decided it was on fire. As their tongues dueled it was suddenly very important that he wanted her.
Her hands splayed over his shoulders and slipped down, under the lapels of his favorite suit jacket. Tentatively she caressed his chest. Shocked, she groped his impressively defined pecs and then sat straight up, gasping as this brought her pelvis directly against a hard length she had felt before, albeit unwillingly at that time.
"Hell, Lyds!" he exclaimed as their kiss broke.
"Off!" Lydia said authoritatively as she tugged on his shirt.
He quirked a sharply angled brow and rocked his hips, both hands on her rear now pulling her into him. "Uh," he grunted, "You're the one sitting on me, babes."
She made a completely embarrassing noise, something between an 'mmm' and an 'ah!' before she regained her wits and whipped off his tie. "Your shirt, you idiot! Take it off."
His eyes widened. Never one to miss a chance to gloat, he said, "I dunno if I oughta! Y'see," he continued as he leisurely drew his hands up her body, "I'm afraid for my virtue – I think I've created a monster outta my wife!" His thumbs found her aching nipples.
Arching and panting, she rolled her eyes at him and yanked open his jacket. The magenta shirt proved a little more troublesome, her hands shaking enough to make undoing it impossibly frustrating. "Fuck! How many god damn buttons are there?" she hissed.
He only laughed and tongued her breasts through her thin cotton nightgown. As he unexpectedly sucked on the left one her hands flew to his head and she debated for a long moment, but in the end shoved him away. Sprawled out on his back he aimed a wounded look at her.
Deciding to try out one of his lines on him, she breathlessly declared, "C'mon, let's get naked."
Instead of blinking away their clothes like she had hoped he instead leaned up slightly to rest his weight on his elbows and asked, "But seriously though, are you feelin' okay? Not taken any strange candy, or read one a' your weird books aloud, somethin' like that?"
She might have thought he'd lost interest, if it wasn't for the pressing evidence to the contrary between her thighs, which the slight rolling of his hips rubbed against her center in a highly distracting way. Un-amused, she heaved a sigh – the motion of her slight chest drawing his eyes down like a magnet. Deliberately moving her own hips in an untutored grind, she decided she must have done something right when he cursed a blue streak. One thing spending so much time with him had done was definitely to expand her vocabulary.
She leaned down until her forehead met his with a quiet thunk and very clearly said, "I just want you to lose the shirt."
And then she ground against him again.
He gasped, "You first!"
Never one to back down from such a blatant challenge, she rose up on her knees to untangle her shapeless black nightgown and toss it over her head. His hips strained off the bed to follow hers but she scrambled to her feet, swallowed her uncertain modesty, and propped her hands on her hips. "Now it's your turn."
His jaw hanging open, gaping at the mostly naked vision staring down at him, Beetlejuice simply grabbed either side of his shirt and ripped it open, two or three buttons snapping off to ping into the distance. Taking off their clothes the old fashioned way seemed to be going suspiciously well for him. He was halfway through shrugging off his shirt and suit jacket when Lydia abruptly sat back down, her knees landing on his elbows with his clothes tangled around them, trapping his arms. He yelped.
She had known he was sort of barrel-shaped. She'd even found his pot belly kind of cute, in a silly way. The physique now revealed to her eager hands was in fact a barrel made out of sheer muscles. Yes, there was some fat around his middle. Her palms on his cold, dirty skin reported sinewy strength underneath. He was powerful as a ghost, but his body had been built for hard labor, and plenty of it. The sort of muscle a man accumulated working for a living, not that of a pretty boy hitting the gym. The mold growing in odd crevices hardly registered, she was so used to seeing it on his face. "Why didn't you ever tell me you were stacked, Beej? You're always wearing so many layers, even your stupid swimsuit covers everything up!"
"Stacked, huh?" he leered. "I gotta ward off all the chicks throwin' themselves at me somehow." He flexed arms as thick as her neck and suddenly she found herself flat on her back with her legs thrown over his shoulders, only her underwear between them. "Following me around, shoving their," he said waggling his eyebrows, "phone numbers at me." Of course now he had decided to vanish his clothes.
And then, of course, her alarm rang. Unacknowledged by the involved pair the sun had climbed well over the horizon and soon Barbara would be coming to make sure Lydia, a perpetual late riser, actually woke up. The clock met an untimely death by sandworm as Beetlejuice sent it to Saturn, but he had a feeling Lydia wouldn't approve of him taking care of Barb the same way. The finale as it were would have to wait, but never let it be said that he (being the gentleman he was not) had ever left a lady unsatisfied.
The underwear was gone with less than a thought and then his hands were everywhere, teasing and stroking with his clever, long-nailed fingers. More than two hands, in fact. She lost count after five or six, when he bent his mouth to the task of making her scream.
He succeeded admirably.
When Barbara burst in Lydia was laying dazed and alone under the covers, once more respectably in her nightgown. She barely managed to answer her panicked god-parent's inquiries, stammering out that she'd had a dream. That earned her a sympathetic look and a hug that Lydia did her best to endure. "Worried about – him?" Barbara awkwardly asked, assuming it was a nightmare. "You shouldn't let him spoil your favorite holiday! We'll protect you…somehow."
The Maitlands had adjusted to Beetlejuice hanging around and getting Lydia into trouble (they didn't realize that half the time it was the other way around, with Lydia getting him into trouble), mostly because they had no choice. They would probably never trust him. Eventually she would have to break the news that, well, she was good and truly married to him for real and everything, but it didn't have to be today. Her real father and step-mother wouldn't ever believe her, and if they hadn't always been oblivious and self-absorbed before, Lydia would have assumed the mind wipe the Neitherworld authorities had performed had permanently damaged their brains.
"I'll keep that in mind," Lydia finally said, planning her revenge. Delia, in one of her misguided crusades, had gotten Lydia a pink, fuzzy rabbit suit costume that Beej had laughed and laughed about. Lydia was sure there was time enough today to go exchange it for something a little more suitable for trick-or-treating a certain poltergeist…
