Yay, another chapter! A big one, even, and quite eventful. Hope you enjoy it, I'm totally diggin' all the responses I'm getting. Thanks for the good vibes, folks!
It was Christmas and Lydia had finally managed to convince Delia that she was not needed at another one of her irritatingly wealthy parties. Okay, so she was coughing, sneezing, and generally spreading germs to everything she touched, too. Delia knew better than to expose any of her uptight friends to illness, but the end result was still the same. Lydia had the house to herself! And the Maitlands, but really, they were good company.
They spent most of the evening chatting and Lydia caught them up on everything that was happening in her life, which mostly had to do with school work, frustrating friends and the fact that college boys were just as disappointingly juvenile as the high school ones. She presented them both with presents; pictures of new things in town for Adam and some expensive looking fabric for Barbara. The evening was starting to wind down, though, and the ghostly couple took their leave for the basement, urging Lydia to get some sleep.
Shuffling up to her room, Lydia put on her pajamas, which consisted of a pair of black satiny bottoms and a ratty old Invader Zim shirt she had swiped from an ex-boyfriend. She stretched out onto her bed and stared up at the canopy top, waiting for sleep.
Sleep didn't come, and after an hour or so of rolling around, trying to get comfortable, sneezing excessively and otherwise feeling miserable she got up for a glass of water and began wandering around the house aimlessly.
Well, she though to herself, this is certainly boring. She sipped the water as she meandered along and stopped at the foot of the attic stairs. Could he still be there? She didn't figure he'd just want to up and chat, but anything was better than staring at the wall, wasn't it?
She left her glass in the sink and climbed up the stairs to the little model. There it was, the little cemetery with its little ragged tree that he seemed pretty fond of. She leaned over the model and whispered.
"Hey Beej, you there?"
Silence. Drat him.
"Betelgeuse you know damn well I'm only going to say your name once tonight!"
The lights flickered and went out, plunging the entire attic into darkness. A cool hand pushed itself against her mouth while its partner curled around to grip her tightly at the waist. Soft lips brushed against her ear and she heard the familiar gravelly whisper, much lower now that its possessor was full sized. "Is that a promise?"
Lydia's heart pounded in her ears as she struggled to free herself. Damn him. She had said his name three times, hadn't she? Over the course of a year and a half she had said it three times. How the hell was she supposed to know it would accumulate like that? Struggling proved to be worthless; it only gave him cause to chuckle.
"Babes, you can keep that up all night, if you want. I'd rather talk, though, and t'do that I need your promise that you won't send me back right away."
Lydia stopped trying to escape and fumed silently. Betelgeuse loosened his grip enough for her to breathe normally, which she thought was uncharacteristically generous of him, especially with how angry he must be at her.
"C'mon, gimmy some credit here, if I was gunna hurt you, you'd be hurting. I'm bein' nice and giving you a chance to talk like a normal person. If I really wanted I coulda just glued your mouth shut."
She nodded tightly and he released his grip, stepping back fairly quickly to avoid any potential vengeance she might bestow him for tricking her. She didn't try to hit him or anything; however, he was surprised to watch her back away with so much fear in her face.
"What? I said I ain't gunna hurt ya." He gave her his best hurt puppy dog face, and was rewarded with a tentative smile.
"You didn't correct yourself."
"Didn't correct myself the first time either, what, do I gotta say it again or somethin'?"
"No… That's okay. I'm sorry. I'm just… why aren't you mad at me?"
"Of course I'm mad at you; you've made my afterlife the closest thing to a living hell you can get without actually bein' alive. Just cuz I'm mad doesn't mean I can't be civil." He cracked his neck and straightened the collar of his favorite black and white striped suit. He wouldn't admit to anyone that he'd dressed up the last couple of times Lydia had visited her parents, even if he couldn't lie his way around it.
Lydia had the sense enough to look a little guilty. "I'm sorry but… It was the only thing I could come up with, and it's not like you didn't try to trick me first!"
Betelgeuse frowned and took a few careful steps forward; he wasn't that much taller than the dark girl sniffling before him, but what he lacked in height he made up for in style. "It wasn't a trick, it was a proposition. A deal."
Lydia frowned and sneezed, cursing her cold for making her look weak she attempted to glare him down anyway. "You told me Adam and Barbara had gone, said they were deader than dead."
He rolled his eyes in frustration, damn her for remembering that. "Yeah, okay, I'm sorry about that, but really, that was the only lie! And it had nothing to do with our deal, which you were the one to bail on me." He punctuated the final word by jabbing his thumb towards his chest.
Lydia bit her lip and thought for a second. "I'm not going to marry you." Her voice was quieter than he expected, and at least it wasn't filled with hate.
"You owe me something."
"What do you want?"
He nearly exploded, "OUT, I want out, I've always wanted out, and I want this damned curse off of me so I can go back to my afterlife. Do you know how boring it has been? How tedious? Nobody wants to hear the truth, not a single person. Not you with your damned dress, not any of the other girls, even my poker buddies got sick of me. I bet Juno wouldn't even want the damned truth, even though she was the most thrilled to dole it out." He stopped when he realized he was pacing and that Lydia had taken a few steps back and was eying him warily. The living were so damned timid.
"Look, you're the only person that can fix this. I just want you to fix it." To his surprise and horror, her lip was trembling and she was sniffling even more than before.
"So… that's the only reason you didn't hurt me, then? You wanted me to fix it."
He was about to rip his hair out. It was everything he could do to keep his head from spinning. "Look, I ain't gunna hurt you whether you fix it or not."
"Why not? You said yourself you're mad at me."
"Because…" Ah shit, he did not like where this was going at all. "Just, because, okay? I don't want you hurt. Even if you are infuriating and ask stupid questions about dresses and don't even believe me when I'm physically incapable of lying."
Lydia smiled a little and wavered, tendrils of black crept into her vision from all sides before she could even formulate a response.
Betelgeuse managed to catch her before she hit the floor.
Please don't kill me for the cliffhanger!
