A/N: I LIIIIIIIIIIIVE! Despite the universe tryina get me down. Changed my mind, will update SERIOUSLY censored other chapters here. For the other version of the story, check out AO3. Same name, same bat-time, same bat-channel.

PREVIOUSLY:

Her nerveless fingers seized his lapels. "Swear that I'm the only one. Tell me that there will never be anyone else."

He hesitated, staring at her vulnerable face, at her mouth softly open and her fawn brown eyes. "I always said if I was gonna get hitched, I was only gonna do it once," he muttered. Her taste lingered like dark, sweet licorice. He smacked his lips, hungry for more.

Lydia tangled her legs with his and pulled him down nose to nose. "Swear or we're done!"

His twisted eyebrows flew up. "…I think I love you," he finally said.

"That works too," she breathed, and finally kissed him.

[following scene redacted due to very adult content]

AND NOW, ON WITH THE STORY!
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Chapter Twelve: The Perils of Over- and Under-Thinking
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Lydia felt like a ridiculous teenage cliché as she just sat there afterwards and stared at him. Namely the 'my first time was not what I was expecting at all' regret, which comes in many flavors.

Right in the middle of her second…anyway, he'd bent all his considerable will to freeing Juice from her leash. It had been like holding onto Tam Lin. In her mindscape the dog grew and mutated and shrunk and transformed, from snake to mouse to hydra and countless creatures she couldn't even name – none of which could slip the similarly protean collar. Connected by the chain, she had been yanked this way and that and upside down, but she'd already decided to just lay back, hang on, and enjoy the ride. It was a roller coaster. It was straddling a tiger bareback while holding it by the tail. You were safe – as long as you never let go.

At the end, though, he'd choked himself out when at last the collar couldn't keep up with the transformation from ant to behemoth leviathan.

Lying there unconscious he didn't look tamed in any way, shape, or form. Nudity stripped him of even the flimsy pretense of civility that his clothes had afforded him. His white skin reflected the moonlight spilling through the window like a smudged mirror, shadows robbing his mildew of color. He could have been a cave creature that had just clawed its way out of long confinement in murky darkness, and he had the muscles to prove it. He had a paunch, but it was mostly because he was built like a barrel. A really built barrel. And…the way he'd touched her…the things his strong hands could do….

Blushing, she shook her head violently. If she could believe that he actually meant what he'd said, that would be one thing. She'd realized too late that he only said it because she wanted him to. If she could force him to do things with her words, how much did her subconscious desires influence his physical actions? After all, he'd injured himself trying to get away from her mental control.

What the hell was this tiger going to do to her when she lost her grip on his tail? His little temper tantrum about lying had been bad enough. She was so screwed! Literally!

She covered her face with her hands and flopped onto her back, hissing as the half-melted, mostly-charred remnants of carpet dug into tender places.

The thump to the floor dislodged a precarious pile of slag that might have once been a stack of bridal magazines, which revealed a flash of yellow-grey visible out of the corner of her eye, through her fingers.

With no solution to her problem forthcoming, she had nothing better to do than go unearth what turned out to be a miraculously unburned book with a title she could just make out in the dark: "Basic Necromancy for Dummies."

"Grandma, you're the best!" she breathed, and settled down to study up by the door, which she cracked open to let in the light of the hallway.

The introduction read as follows: Can you see dead people? Do spirits talk to you, give you news from the other side, tell you where you left your socks, foretell the future, etc.? Ever accidentally go around animating dead tissue? Have you ever breached the gates of death and/or drawn a soul away from the underworld? If so, congratulations! You may be a natural necromancer. Here are five tests to confirm your potential that can be performed in the comfort of your own home with some simple ingredients….

Unfortunately for Lydia, "Advanced Necromancy for Dummies" would have been much more applicable to her situation. The basic book only dealt with poltergeists level one through three (harmless to alarming), and the Administration had run out of numbers trying to categorize a certain ghost with the most.

-SCENE BREAK-

Beetlejuice woke up with the worst hangover he'd ever had. It felt like he'd tried to cleave open his head with a battle axe so he could pour the liquor straight into his brain again. That had been a shit-stupid idea the first time, why would he…?

The soft sound of – yes – someone sorting through burnt out wreckage reached his ears. He'd heard it often enough before. He peeled open one eye and was treated to the delightful sight of Lydia puttering around wearing only his striped jacket in the scanty light of dawn.

Oh, yeah. The memories started drifting back in through the splitting headache and a toothy grin cracked open his face. Oh fuck yeah. He did not regret his little white lie at all; one four letter L-word is a lot like another, right? It had saved him from making a freaking goddamned permanent oath, and – this was his favorite part – was apparently the mystical key to Lydia's ironclad chastity belt. Who knew?

Hell, maybe he DID lo…like her, since he was fairly certain she had ruined him for anybody else. Orders of any kind tended to stroke him the wrong way, but when Lydia told him, "More," with that damned Binding voice of hers…let's just say it made him feel things. Naughty things. After a while he hadn't even minded not having control of his own powers, although when he got them back he was definitely going to turn on the juice and return the favor (not that she'd had any complaints about his performance this go round, he was sure). It probably also helped that she hadn't told him to do anything he didn't want to do already. Except putting on his pants, but since she took them off him herself with her teeth not five minutes later he was willing to let that one pass.

He'd been dead so long he barely even remembered being alive, but an exchange of spiritual essences just wasn't the same as swapping spit, among other things. The empty dances of the dead were a vainglorious shadow play that he had often and repeatedly reveled in whenever he got the chance, but it was like bitter ashes in comparison to the taste of the real thing she'd given him. He licked his lips.

Or maybe that was real ash, from him setting everything on fire yesterday. Normally an ashy coating wouldn't bother him, but today he was more embodied than he'd been in a long time, short of possessing a breather. His old flesh suit was occupying the same space he was instead of shunted just to the left of reality where he normally kept it (it had been him, so it could be used to control him like a meat puppet voodoo doll, therefore he'd stolen it). A certain little necromancer was probably responsible, since he also had a sluggish pulse and a slight interest in breathing for its own sake. Thankfully he still looked like his normal gorgeous self and not a leathery mummy. Whatever. If that's what Lydia was into, it was fine with him.

Now if only his head would stop hurting, he was definitely up for round two: the morning after. Souls could certainly be injured and feel pain, but it was a lot more annoying in a semi-physical body that he couldn't just snap his fingers and fix.

He certainly wouldn't repeat the mistake he'd made last night. He'd thought it would be easy to retake control of their bond while she was 'otherwise occupied.' Lydia picked things up quick, though, which was a hell of a lot of fun in bed but a nuisance in this case. Whatever hold she had on him had been too strong to break her control without breaking the bond, which he didn't want to do. It tied Lydia to Beetlejuice as tightly as the other way around, among other delightful things…

"Damn it!" Lydia's exclamation broke into his thoughts.

"Whatsit now?" He levered himself up.

She held up a black dress, which momentarily blocked his excellent view of her long legs before it fell apart along the scorch marks. "Did you have to ruin all my clothes?" As he smirked and opened his mouth to reply, she dropped the ragged straps with a sigh and said, "No, don't answer that. The one time it would be nice if you could pull one of your quick changes, and you're..." She made an incomprehensible gesture.

"I'm what?" he ground out. His biceps flexed and his eyebrow twitched as she continued to stare at him. His head was even aching too much to joke about her liking what she saw (he knew she did, most eligible bachelor since Valentino crossed over, here).

Lydia had to steel herself against flinching. "…Tired?" she deadpanned. "I'd let you do it, even. You formally have my permission to change what I'm wearing." She smiled wryly and struck a pose, one hand belatedly keeping the oversized suit jacket from gaping at the bottom.

Even through his annoyance and headache Beetlejuice had a brief vision of exactly the black dress he wanted her to wear if she insisted on being clothed. He held up his thumbs and forefingers to frame her and pictured it. He even had permission, how was it fair that – it worked. He blinked and the vision didn't change. He got up on his knees to better appreciate it, close enough to reach out and touch, although he refrained for now to savor the moment. There were loopholes, and then there were glaringly obvious, exploitable, practically gift-wrapped loopholes.

Lydia was incredulously picking at the extremely daring neckline. "How did…? How is this even staying on? Is this glue? !" Her eyes lifted to glare at him heatedly. "And more importantly, do I look like Elvira, freaking Mistress of the Dark to you?"

He tilted his head and squinted. "Yeah, pretty much." Her aura pulsed dangerously against his through the bond, sending sensation crawling down his spine. Combined with the way she was looking at him it was just too much. "But you're way hotter," he added absently, investing his attention in memorizing the shapely outlines of her bared leg with his hands. He was already rock hard and he wanted her, but it was the throbbing in his other head that was really putting a damper on things. As his strokes got higher her breath caught, and he wheedled, "Dark mistress, why don't you tell me I can heal?"

Slightly slack jawed, she was still sharp enough to ask, "Why?"

"Because my head's hurtin' trying to comprehend the way your breasts defy gravity," he said, but it was a bad job and he knew it. Damn. He could see her putting the pieces together, just like he had.

She could have smacked herself on the forehead. Words had power: oaths, promises, permissions, spells, and names. There were warnings to watch what you said nearly every other page in "Basic Necromancy."

Lifting her hand, she thought better of smoothing her thumb over the furrows between his eyebrows caused by tension and pain. They were her fault. She let her hand fall.

Looks aside, Lydia didn't think she was cut out to be a dark mistress of anything, and she didn't much feel like enforcing her will on an unwilling captive. In what universe would Beetlejuice be kneeling at her feet of his own free will and asking for permission? But releasing him so that he could tie her up and terrorize her didn't sound like a good option either (despite a little whisper in the back of her mind saying letting him have his wicked way with her sounded fantastic, actually).

There was really only one thing she could do. "Heal away," she said. How he could possibly use that particular power against her, she had no clue. Then again she wasn't a centuries-old, deceitful, manipulative poltergeist, either. She was so going to regret this.

She sighed, the rise and fall of twin perfection a benediction from his own personal sex goddess. A thought later all the negative effects of his ill-conceived attempted coup were mended, he was feeling better than ever, and...her stranglehold on their bond was loosened by just that much.

He'd finally reached the place that he wanted to stroke most, when her hands caught at his and she leaned down to look him directly in the eyes. She was looking pinched and even more sleep-deprived than she usually did, with purple liberally smudged under her eyes. She said, very clearly, "You don't have to do this."

He rocked back on his heels and blinked, nonplussed. "…This?"

"Kneeling at my feet and calling me mistress and…stuff." She bit her lip, making his eyes zero in. So he had the perfect opportunity to read her lips as she said, "I'm sorry for…using you last night. I don't want you to do anything sexual that you don't want to."

His fingers on her thigh tightened. Was he really hearing this? ! He nearly cackled with glee. How the hell did he stumble over a hot as fuck, totally untrained necromancer with a serious yen for his yang? Yesterday she'd wrapped him up tighter than a black widow, then proceeded to ride him like her personal bronco. Today she was apparently under the impression that it was all her idea. Ha!

He would certainly disabuse her of the notion that she could make him do anything he didn't want to, unless he let her make him. Who did she think he was?

But first he could use this to weasel more concessions from her; every little bit helped. He didn't know how it would stand up to her actually ordering him to do something, but there was a chance even that wouldn't work. He dragged back up the resentment he still felt about her lying to him about being a ghost, and said, "But if you can make me want to do something…"

She looked stricken. Seriously, he thought she might fall down. He helpfully pulled one of her legs over his shoulder to make it easier to steady her with his hands on her ass.

If she had waited and thought this through when she hadn't been up all night worrying and studying that book (which at that very moment was not very carefully hidden under more crispy-fried bridal magazines), she might have worked out a way to express the freedom she wanted to give him that couldn't be taken the wrong way. "You can feel anything you want about me," she said, to forestall whatever she was unintentionally compelling him to do at the moment.

"Gee, thanks! That's sweet of you," he practically chirped. "Why don't you let me show you," he continued in his full throated, gravelly timbre while pulling her in towards his face, finally mumbling, "how sweet you are?" against her skin.

On the other hand, then she would have missed out on his extremely creative interpretations of feeling anything he wanted about her and changing what she was wearing.