Le challenge rules:
I shall put my music library on shuffle and pair her top 10 ships with the first 10 songs. Each ship gets a story related to the song with decreasing times: ship #1 gets 10 min., ship #2 gets 9 min., ship #3 gets 8 min., etc. So ship #10 is a hot mess 1 min. panic attack.
And you don't HAVE to listen to the song first...but you might want to. And author's notes are bolded.
1. LydiaxBeetlejuice (Beetlejuice) – "Dustin Hoffman's Children Don't Enter the Bathroom" by of Montreal - 10 min. timer
I was laughing so hard at just the song title. What. What the literal actual what. But then I listened to it, and it starts with the line, "How can we get married when we already are?" and, OH, SNAP, this thing is gonna write itself. Also, this is somehow my FIRST EVER LydiaxBeetlejuice fic, despite having shipped them since I was six. I'm excited.
"BEETLEJUICE!" Her scream echoed in the small bathroom, bouncing off the slick tiles and steamy mirror where she could just see the striped suit hiding.
"Heh, two more times, Babes."
"Nope, nope, and...nope!" She clutched her towel tighter around herself and pouted. "No fair appearing in my bathroom mirror."
He very intentionally ignored her comment and instead attempted futilely to wipe steam away from the inside of the mirror.
"What are you doing anyway?" he asked, a hitch in his voice giving away his suspicion as he surveyed the makeup strewn next to the sink. "You got somewhere to be?"
"Nope."
"'Nope'?"
Lydia resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his strange, unnecessary jealousy and instead proceeded, arguably unwisely, to edge it on.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. I've got a hot date tonight at the soda fountain with the Prom King quarterback."
The low growl from the recesses of the mirror sent a little, not-unpleasant shiver down her wet back.
"He'll be dead before he ever reaches his door."
Now she did roll her eyes.
"Great, well, he doesn't exist, so good luck with that."
It wasn't quite spoken between them. Their...arrangement. Agreement. Inevitable and impending.
She was his bride, but she had been too young. And he, as crude and vulgar as he was, had taken an absolute fascination with her and would let her wait and mature at her own pace, allowing her to decide for herself when the time was right. He had consequently matured along with her - if unintentionally - learning gentleness and compassion for her sake. Content with being her "best friend".
So it couldn't be mentioned, not really, because it had to come from her.
That they were married.
Still married, completely married, had been for years, always would be.
They celebrated their anniversaries as if it was a joke, a small reminder of what they couldn't say.
"You're mine, you know."
Until today, when the image of her dripping hair falling on her bare shoulders was too much for him.
"Hmm." She paused, contemplating. "We could almost be twins, you know. You're always feeling what I'm feeling."
This time a laugh morphed with his growl, and she jumped.
"If you're really feeling what I'm feeling right now, you'll say my name two more times."
I don't care what else I end up writing, this one is my favorite, holy smokes, if ever any ship deserved a full-fledged story, it's these two. Ugh, I love this. (I don't even know if you've seen the cartoon? Okay, quick backstory, there was this cartoon that came after the movie where they're best friends, and he's like in her mirror (question mark?), and she has to say his name three times to get him to come out. I'm not sure why he's in her mirror, now that I'm thinking about it, lol, that's not in the movie at all. Also, I didn't mean to ride so hard on the bathroom theme, but then that's just what happened, I couldn't get the hilarity of the song title out of my head. Anyway, they would unironically celebrate their "anniversaries" in the cartoon, so my headcanon is...basically what I described here, they're totally absolutely married, that's permanent, they can't get around that, but he grows so fond/obsessed with her that he's willing to wait around for her before they consummate said marriage. In the meantime, they'll just be best friends. I'm sure the movie sequel will be a big stinky pile of poo (I read somewhere that Tim Burton's current girlfriend play's "Beetlejuice's wife") that destroys this, but, screw you, sequel movie, I'll see you just to hate you, don't mess with my headcanon, my headcanon is beautiful) Also, Jason and Noel were like doing ballet in my peripheral vision trying to distract me as this song was playing on repeat, so it's a wonder I wrote anything at all.
