Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The worst year of his life starts out the same as so many good days, it almost makes him dizzy to think back on. He feels, later, that a start to this much torment, this painful, should have begun completely fucking miserable, but it had been just any other day. It starts the same way so many days before it starts.
His eyes open. He’s in his bedroom, in his bed, like normal. He’s staring up at his black ceiling, wrapped up in his bedspread. His phone buzzes, and he groans, reaches for it, scans messages. A good morning from Barbara, an unread goodnight from Adam, a text from that talent agency that there was something they could use his voice for.
He throws back his blankets, rubs sleep from his eyes, and dresses.

In high school his uniform had been an oversized striped hoodie, but for his birthday a few years ago, Charles had bought him several nice dress pants, suit jackets, and collared shirts, and he’d sort of settled into that as his new everyday. He likes how he looks, because this shit is expensive, custom, made to fit his more generous frame, and both his partners always say he looks handsome in a jacket and tie. (Sometimes Barbara yanks him around by the tie. Sometimes Adam snaps his suspenders.) And besides, his dad had taken his preferences into consideration, because all the pieces he’d been gifted had that pattern he was drawn to, thick black and white stripes that absolutely stand out in a crowd. He dresses quickly, throws on his suit jacket over his pinstriped shirt. He adjusts his tie, and gives a grin. Too many teeth, too sharp, and he waves a hand in front of his mouth, and tries again. Human teeth. There we go, B-Man.
He lifts his legs, not especially in the mood to walk, and begins to make his way downstairs, for breakfast. He passes by Lydia’s room, and considers harassing his sister, but he remembers how bad he needed his Saturday sleep-ins at fifteen, and takes pity on her, floating past her door silently.

His father, always an early riser, is already in the kitchen, making a pot of coffee, and Betelgeuse lets his feet hit the floor, so that his heeled boots clack against the kitchen tile.

Charles knows the sound, doesn’t even turn around. “Morning, BJ. Any plans for today?”

His relaxed, not exactly actively working lifestyle is not his dad’s favorite, but he’s got a long time, a lot longer than any other person, to work a job. He's just enjoying the time he gets with all his favorite breathers, before he doesn’t have it anymore. At least, that’s always been his excuse. It's not that he can't find work, or that he’s unhirable to a normal job, it’s that he’s trying to enjoy life. Obviously.

But there's good news this morning.

“Got a text from th’ agency. Some voice work,” he grunts. His insanely gravely voice is not always in high demand, but it's been getting some attention lately, mostly because the last commercial he did voice over for, he had to sing, and the request for more of that has been promising.
The big goal is some acting gig, on stage, preferably, but he’d take TV, too. He loves the attention, he loves the rush, he loves entertaining. Unfortunately he’s got a demonic aura that makes breathers nervous on principle. He knows if he could just get a break, he’d have a lot to give… but he’s maybe not working on getting that break as hard as he could be.

“Very nice,” Charles finally turns, and smiles, clearly approving. He sets a cup of coffee in front of his son, and BJ glances at it. “Be a pal and wake your mother up?”
“This early? On a Saturday?” He squints. “You tryna take me out via Emily attack?”
“We’ve got that check up to go to,” Charles says. “I don’t want to be late.”

He shrugs, takes the cup, and vanishes from sight, appearing upstairs, next to his mother.
Emily is still wrapped in the bedsheets, snoring lightly, but he knows the trick to rousing her. The coffee cup is waved around her nose, allowing the aroma to hit her senses, and, eyes still closed, she reaches for it. He pulls the cup back.

“Come on, ma,” he scratches gently at her scalp. “Time to get up.”
“Coffeeeee,” she groans, reaching at it blindly again, and he grins, and walks backwards, setting the coffee on the dresser, across the room.
“Coffee’s over here, Deetzy,” he tells her, and she finally cracks an eye open, and groans. “Evil. Evil son.”
“Yup,” he agrees, easily. “Come on. Chuck says you got some appointments to keep.”
His mother groans, and kicks back the sheets, before standing.

He’d been twelve, and herself only about thirty when she’d found him, and now, ten years later, at 40, her age is showing, a little. She’s been growing in gray hair for the past few years, and it hasn’t taken over her natural sunshine yellow, but it’s becoming a bit more noticeable, and the slight lines forming around her mouth and eyes are a new addition to her features. Chuck’s aging in much the same way, but with fewer laugh lines. The hair at his father’s temples is going gray, and if he really looks, he can see the beginnings of salt and pepper in his father’s beard. He doesn’t like looking for it, though, and doesn't like the feeling gnawing in his guts at seeing his parents age. If he had his way, they’d stay frozen in time, the way he probably will. Demons don’t age, past a certain point, and he’s pretty sure he’ll be hitting it, soon enough.

He watches his mother shuffle across the floor, and claim her prize of coffee. She takes a long sip, and then groans. “I don’t want to go to the doctor,” she complains to him, and he pats her shoulder. “I know, ma,” he gives her a very sympathetic smile. “But you gotta. Or Chuckles will throw a fit. It’s just a check up, right? No biggie.”
She rubs at her temple, and winces. “Getting old sucks,” she tells him. “I’ve been having the worst headaches, recently.”

When they make it back downstairs, Chuck's got breakfast going, and Lydia is sipping her own coffee. Black, like her heart, she always says. He passes her by and ruffles that mop of long blonde hair.
“Beetle breath,” she greets him, as he takes a plate from Charles, and sits to eat.

The voice over work isn't as big a deal as he was hoping. He adjusts his tie, fiddles with the collar of his pinstripe dress shirt, and steps out of the booth. “Fuckin’ peanuts,” he complains, and his agent just shrugs. “Gotta start small, BJ. We need someone to do some crooning for this other comercial, some car sale, or something. You feel like playing Sinatra for a bit?”

Not especially, but he does it anyway, and then meets Adam and Barbara for lunch. Adam’s taking classes for business management, and he’s just about done. He wants to take over his grandpa’s hardware store, outside of the city. Way outside, actually, in some little town in Connecticut. They’ve got shared plans, shared dreams, and all of it hinges on this little store in this little town. BJ isn’t too worried. His boyfriend’s hobbies come and go, but Adam really, really enjoys woodworking, and getting to own a place like that sounds like getting to own his own playground.

Barbara, meanwhile, is stuck in clerical work, which she finds mind numbingly dull, but it's a steady paycheck, and it’s afforded her a ticket out of her dad’s place, so that’s something. She and Adam share a tiny studio apartment in Queens, and for all the time Betelgeuse spends there, he might as well live there, too. But three people in a studio isn’t any of their idea of a good time. Speaking of…

“I was on zillow, today,” Adam starts, and he and Barbara lean over with varying degrees of interest, as Adam shows them his phone. It’s a house, predictably, but a nice one. Old fashioned, and a little creeping looking. He likes it.

“She’s a bit of a fixer upper,” he says, admiring the house. “But the price is right, and look at all this character. Classic Queen Anne, with the original crown molding! Tons of space, lots of room for the three of us.”
“Maybe a forth,” Barbara smiles brightly, and he matches her enthusiasm. She’s wanted to be a mom since he’s known her, six pretty amazing years, and while a lot has changed in that time, her maternal desire is as strong as ever.

“Maybe a fifth,” BJ grins, wiggling his eyebrows at her, and she flushes. “One from each of my boys.” She agrees, and she reaches across the table, for his hand, which he gives her. Adam takes her other hand, and they’re lost in that fantasy for a moment.
He’s not actually sure he can give her what she wants, since he’s not exactly human, but Adam can, at least. And he gets to be part of it. Goddamn, he’s lucky.

“So? Tell us about this commercial you just did!” Adam smiles at him.

“S’not a big deal, just some radio ad,” He tells them, but he’s flattered that they’re always overly enthusiastic about his bit parts.
“I heard you on the radio in the office, a few days ago!” Barbara remembers. “My coworkers couldn’t believe that was your real voice! You make such a good villain.”
Of course he does. He keeps the smile on, because he knows Babs, knows that she means it in the sweetest, most lovey dovey way possible, but he’s never going to play the hero, because no hero sounds like a demon. He can’t get in his head about this, not right now. Not when the weather’s so nice, and he’s sitting across from the people he loves the most.

“I am the villain, babes,” he grins at her, and stands, leaning over to kiss and rub his stubble into her neck, until laughing, she pushes him away.

“Maybe you should come to the office with me, tomorrow,” Chuck says, over dinner.
BJ resists the urge to stab himself through the eye with his fork. “M’not that into real estate, pop,” he tells him, and Emily smiles. “You know BJ’s an artist.”
“I just think if he gave it a try,” Charles says, looking to his wife. “That he’d excel at it. I mean, good lord, all real estate is, is making deals and fast talking. He’s built for that sort of thing.”
Betelgeuse grimaces. “But then I’d have to spend any amount of time around your coworkers, an’ those other big money creeps.”
“Those big money creeps write the checks that paid for this house, BJ,” Chuck reminds him.

“I’ll be sure to send Maxie Dean a fruit basket.”

“Skip the fruit, just send that freak ass a basket of snakes,” Lydia says, and he grins.
“Do not do that.”
“Psh. Whatever, dad,” he pitches his voice into a teenage whine, and his father gives a dry smile in return.
“So, that doctor appointment?” Lydia looks to Emily, and their mother smiles. “Got some scans done, no biggie. Checkups just suck. I’ve been having those migraines, recently, but the doctor didn’t seem to think it was a big deal.”

He’s staring down at his mother, in hospice, and those words echo around his mind.
No big deal. The doctor didn’t seem to think it was a big deal. Just a couple migraines. Just some dizziness. Just some nausea. Just a tumor. Just another breather’s life, coming to an end.

Her bedroom is dark. The curtains are drawn. He’s sitting to her left, Lydia dozing to her right, and Emily is sleeping, dozing lightly. Chuck’s talking to the nurse in the hall.
The last twelve months are a blur. He can’t remember individual days, can only remember when those test results came back. He remembers, vaguely, holding her hand during treatments. But there’s nothing any breather alive can do about the tumor, about the placement of it.
At least she’s at home, at least she’s laying in her own bed. At least she’s not stuck in the hospital.
Her sun colored hair is gone. Her smile is gone. That mischievous glint in her eyes is gone. All Emily does is sleep. All they can do is wait.

She opens her eyes, catches sight of him.

“Purple,” she says, softly, and then, “Ohh, Bug.”
“Ma,” he croaks, and he’s never been in so much pain.
Lydia stirs from an uneasy sleep, and looks over, to see Emily take her brother’s hand. “You’re alright, sweet boy,” their mother’s voice is soft. “I’m still here.”
The smell of death is clinging to her. He brings their hands to his forehead, feels his shoulders shake. He wishes, again, that he could cry, that he could actually express how much this hurts, but he can’t. All he can do is tremble, and Emily slips back into sleep, too tired to keep her eyes open for long.

He steps into the hall, needing a moment, and he doesn’t even get it, because his father grabs his shoulder. “You have to do something,” Charles says, his own face twisted by pain. “Something. Beetlejuice, please. Please, anything, just don’t.. Don’t let her go,” he’s got Betelgeuse by the lapels of his suit jacket, and his father’s hands are trembling. “I can’t fix her,” he says again. This is not the first time his dad’s asked. This is not the first time he’s had to break his heart.
“S’not a matter of rules. I’d break every fuckin’ rule there was to save mom. I can’t heal a person. I can’t make life, I can’t extend it.”
He doesn’t need to hear his dad say it to feel the sentiment. What was the point of keeping a demon around who can’t even help, now, when they need it most?

Chuck lets him go, shoulders slumped, and slips into the bedroom, to be at Emily’s side.
He can hear Emily stir, the tired sound of her voice as she speaks to her husband. “I know you just want to fix it,” his mother’s voice is muffled, through the door. “But we just have to hold onto each other, and live through it,” and he has to leave, overwhelmed, again. He can’t stand to hear her sounding like this, worn and tired and reaching the end.
He can’t extend life. But he knows someone who can. It’s the “will” that he’s not sure about.

It takes some digging to find what he needs, a big plastic bin of multicolored sidewalk chalk. They haven’t used this since Lydia was about thirteen, and she started thinking she was too cool for baby things, like sidewalk drawings. He selects the white one, not wanting to possibly fuck up, if it’s dependent on color, somehow, and he draws a door.
And waits. And waits.

He’s sitting there waiting, gnawing on the colored chalk, when Lydia comes into his room, an hour later. She studies the crude door on his wall, three simple lines.
“What are you doing?” she can’t help but ask. She’s sixteen, now, attitude everywhere, but they’re still best friends. They've been clinging to each other even harder than ever before, this past year.
“You should go back to mom,” he says, not glancing back from the drawing, brow furrowed.
“You’re trying to go there. The Netherworld.”

It’s not a question, but she does sound hurt. He turns to look at her. She’s glaring at his bedspread. “You’re trying to leave?” she asks, but he doesn’t let that line of thought go anywhere.
“I’m tryin’ to go ask for more time, for her. There’s rules. Paperwork.”
She calms, takes a shaky breath, wipes at her eyes.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere, Lyds. Not for long, at least. I’m not leavin’ you an’ dad alone.”
She looks back at the door.
“So… how.. Do you get through?”
His shoulders slump. “I can’t remember. I never did it, on my own before, an’ it’s been years since I thought about it.”
“Why a box?” She sits on the floor next to him, and he takes another crunching bite of the chalk, and she smiles, just a little, and leans on his shoulder.
“S’not a box. S’a door. Just can’t remember how to get through.”
“Does it need a knob?”
He doesn’t remember that being part of it, but…
A striped arm sprouts from the wall, grabs the white chalk, and scribbles a circle on the side of his doorway.
Nothing happens.
They sit there, quietly.
“Have you tried knocking? I mean, it is a door. Maybe you need to ask to be let in.”

That sounds more right than the knob, at least, so they stand together. He swallows down the rest of the chalk, and wipes his hands on his suit, before lifting a hand, and knocking.
Nothing happens. He’s getting pretty fucking sick of nothing happening.
“Do it again. Maybe they didn’t hear you.”
He raps at the fake door again. This time, instead of nothing, there’s something, a change in the air, a familiar smell, one he’s missed. One more.

He knocks again.

The wall shifts, the edges of the door becoming more defined, and then that section of wall swings forward, all green otherworldly lights, and swirling mist. It’s impressive. He’s never been on this side of the door when it opens, before.
Lydia frowns.
“It didn’t work,” she says, and he glances back at her.
“Yes, it did. You’re just too livin’ to see it.” She studies the wall. To her, it’s still a wall.
“I’m goin’ through.”
“You’re gonna be back soon, right?” She asks, not even bothering to hide the worry in her voice.
“Course. I’m just gonna pop in, see if there’s anythin’ I can do. I’m comin’ back, Lyds.”
She throws her arms around him, and he returns it, holding his baby sister close, before letting her go. “See you soon, kiddo.”
He steps through the door, and vanishes from her sight.

The waiting room hasn’t changed at all. He didn’t really expect it to, not logically, but upstairs, things are always changing. He’s seen tastes, fads, and styles change so quickly, some things are considered old and outdated in less than six months. But the waiting room is stuck, frozen, in an era he can’t quite name. The room is full of newly-deads, all waiting, browsing their handbooks, crying, whatever, but they turn to look at him as he enters.

The demonic aura he’s got means upstairs breathers are confused and nervous around him, maybe even frightened, at times. Down here, it catches their attentions in a slightly different way, tells them he’s not something to fuck with, makes them understand, intrinsicly, that they need to get out of his way. Living humans can have command over demons, with their names or sigils, but down here, demons rank above them.

He’s still got his glamour on, because at this point, it’s more comfortable to look like a human than himself, so the effect is a bunch of dead people know they should be afraid of him, but can’t figure out why.

He passes them all, and approaches the window, and raps on it. It slides open, to reveal a very familiar, green tinged face.
Miss Argentina, like the waiting room, hasn’t moved, or changed, in all the time he’s been gone. That’s the state of death, he supposes. Arrested development, he thinks might be the term. Nothing can go forward, or advance. It just is, and she’ll be here until her punishment is up, and her soul is allowed to move on to whatever comes after this level of the netherworld. Such a raw fucking deal.
She stares up at him, and does her best to give a smile. It almost looks like it hurts her jaw.
“Can I help you, sir?” She’s being polite, because she can tell he’s a demon, obviously, but she’s got no clue who he is. He leans on the counter in front of the window.
“Fuckin’ hope so, Maria, or I’m up shit fuckin’ creek without a paddle in sight, know what I mean?”
She pauses a moment, takes him in, the green hair, the stripes. He drops the glamour enough to flash amber snake eyes at her.
“Beetlejuice!”
“Heya, Argie.”
“Mijo!”
She leaves her desk fast enough that her rolling chair slams into the desk behind her, and then she bursts out of the side door, to the right of the window, and grabs him. “Look at you!” She marveles. “You grew! You’re so big, now! How long has it been? What..” she looks nervous, suddenly. “What are you doing here?”
“Gotta do a bit of paperwork,” he tells her. “Don’t worry. M’not stickin’ around for long.”
She takes his hand, and leads him through that back door, to her desk.
“What can I do for you, then?”
“Need an extension form.”
She eyes him. “For.. a human?” she clarifies.
“I got a mom upstairs, Maria. She’s.. Not lookin’ so good. M’just tryna’ see if I can get her more time.”

He sees her hesitation, but in the end, she nods. “Wait here. I’ll see about grabbing that form.”
She leaves him at her desk, and wanders further, deeper into the bullpen, her high heels clacking in a muffled way against the paperwork covered floor.
He sits at her desk, studies her things. Personal items are allowed, but not many. She’s got a calendar she must have traded some other demon for, at some point. It’s woefully out of date. She’s been trying to keep track of time, even in a place with no day or night, where time flows up and down and side to side and backwards. Poor thing, she thinks it’s 2009.
He scribbles her a note. “BJ came to visit, 2021.”

Being here, in the atmosphere of the netherworld, makes him a little lightheaded. He remembers how strange the air up top had been, when he’d first arrived, but he’d grown used to it. Being back where he’s meant to be is a shock. He takes a deep breath of whatever passes for air here, and feels some exhaustion he didn’t know he was carrying slip away from him.

This office is full of memories, but not a lot of good ones. He sits in Maria’s chair, and leans back, noting the pencils stuck into the ceiling panels. He remembers being nine, and sitting on her desk and shooting them up there with a rubber band, and grins. And then he remembers the way Juno had dragged him by his ear through the bullpen, screaming at him for bothering her, and the lashing she gave him, even though Maria had said it was alright, that she was still working, that he wasn’t being trouble-
He looks down. Being here is nightmarish. There’s all these things he can’t stand to remember. Any good early childhood memory is outweighed significantly by the bad.
He had a childhood, specifically because Juno had thrown him away. He’d gotten to have a life.

He doesn’t want to imagine what he’d be like, if he’d had to grow up here.

He hears a door slam open, and it takes him a second, because he’s had it so good for so long, he’s forgotten how to be afraid of what a door slamming can mean. But then his ears pick up the sounds of heels on paper covered tile, and the mixed smell of cigarette smoke and liquor, and he goes diving under Maria’s desk, in time for Juno to round the corner.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen his mother, and like everything else, she’s set in stone, no different from the cruel, ill tempered woman she’d been when he was just a child. She comes storming in, a growl on her lips, and peers around the office.
“Miss Argentina!”
He can hear the second set of clacking heels that means Maria is hurrying back to her desk. “Juno! I was grabbing a form-”
“I’m expecting a new arrival, soon. When she comes through, I want you to have this woman-” He hears the crinkling of paper, as Juno hands over some file, “-Come straight to my office. No waiting, no numbers. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.”

And then she’s gone, storming back to her office, seemingly unaware of his presence.
Maria sits, but doesn’t scoot her chair in, and then, knowingly, peers under her desk. “She’s gone, mijo,” and he hadn’t realized he’d turned himself invisible until he feels the effect fading.
“Uh,” he crawls out from under her desk, and looks around, before standing. “I dunno what she’d do if she saw me, but I can’t imagine it’d be a touchin’ reunion.”
Maria smiles, but it’s grim. “No, I don’t think it would be.”
He stands at her desk, and she helps him fill out the form. Initial here, thumbprint here, all the usual netherworld bureaucracy nonsense. It seems to take literal hours, though that doesn’t mean a lot, here. He’s more worried about what it means for time back home.

Finally, finally, he signs his name as B.J. Deetz, at the bottom, and she smiles.

“I’ll put this on her desk, at the top of the pile,” she promises. “She’s been on a real role, lately, she’s working so fast, she might not even realize it’s from you,” which really, would be the best possible outcome. She might reject it outright just on principle of it being him who was asking.

“Get out of here, Beetlejuice. Go back to your living people.”
She stands, throws her arms around him, and he gives her a squeeze back, before doing just that.

Chapter Text

Emily’s recovery isn’t immediate, but it is miraculous. When he arrives home, emotionally exhausted, she’s still asleep, and he sits himself in a chair at her bedside, curls up, and spends a few hours there, watching over her, dozing, and reading texts from his partners. They closed on the house a few months back, that big, beautiful Victorian that Adam had his heart set on. A lot of the money and most of the signatures on the paperwork had been courtesy of his father, as a pre-wedding present for the three of them. It’s the ongoing health crisis in the family that’s stalled all those plans.

Putting the house in order has been an ongoing project, one he’s had to dip out of, for now, to stay with his mother. His partners come into the city often to support him, but now they’re busy with Maitland hardware, Adam behind the counter and restocking and Barbara, with her head for numbers and clerical experience, running the books.
All he wants to do is see them, because this house isn’t feeling like his home, anymore. The air here is always heavy, and sad, and maybe it is a little cowardly, for him to have been planning a life around his mother’s failing one, but he can’t handle all of this, feeling miserable and shaking all the time.

So when Emily sits up, the next morning, with more color in her skin than he’s seen in weeks, he lets out a breath he hadn’t even been aware he was holding.
She looks confused. She gazes around the room, almost having to relearn to focus her eyes. He reaches over and shakes Charles awake. His father has his own chair pulled up next to the bed, and they’d spent the night in quiet misery together, Lydia actually in her own room, for the first time in weeks.
“Em?” Charles asks, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
Emily focuses on him, puts her hands out, and his father stands and hugs onto her, gently, so gently, because she’s fragile. “Charles…”
“What did you do?” his father looks back at him, and BJ stands, cracking his neck at an angle that would not be possible for a living human.
“Had to go downstairs, do some paperwork. Netherworld’s all bureaucracy. Had to fill out pages an’ pages of forms, an’ avoid gettin’ spotted by, ya know, th’ head bitch.”
He steps closer to Emily, pauses, sniffs the air. That linger smell of death has left her, and her cheeks are rosy. “Looks like my request got approved.”

Charles detaches from Emily long enough to pull Betelgeuse in, kissing his son’s forehead. “Son, thank you.”

He ducks down the hall, giving his dad a moment with Emily, and takes it upon himself to rouse Lydia. She’s sitting up in bed, when he peaks into her room, long blonde hair disheveled from the fitful, restless sleep she’s clearly had. She stares up at him, not letting herself dare to be hopeful. She’d been asleep when he’d finally come home last night, his time spent in the Netherworld taking a few hours of real time.

“So?” her voice wavers, and he just motions for her to stand. “It’s lookin’ like she’s gonna be alright.”
There’s a beat, and then she flings herself into his waiting arms, crying, rubbing her face into his suit and fisting at the lapels, that huge feeling of relief too big for her body.
“Don’t waste time on me,” he tells her, picking her up. “Let’s go see mama.”

By the third day, Emily’s eating like she should be, and she’s regaining strength. Lydia keeps herself tucked to her mother’s side, and he and Chuck and that hospice nurse attend to her diligently, to the point of annoyance, apparently. “I can cut my own food!” Emily reminds him, as he takes great pains to portion out what she can eat. BJ just shushes her. “Quiet, Deetzy. Lemme take care of you.”

The doctors can’t explain it, when she’s finally able to go in for a test, because the tumor is just gone. It’s a miracle. They’ve never seen anything like it, before. An act of god.
“Or a demon,” Emily smiles, brightly, and the man examining the x-rays shakes his head. “Call it what you want, praise who you will, Mrs. Deetz. It looks like you’ll be staying on this side for quite a bit longer.”

A month out from her recovery, they’re having a party. Emily’s hair is growing back, slowly, but she seems to like it. “The long hair was getting tired,” she tells Barbara, who is sitting at the kitchen bar, as Charles and Adam prepare dinner. He and Lydia are sneaking bites when the chefs are distracted, and Adam swats at him lovingly with a spatula.
“Maybe I’ll do a shaved mohawk thing, again. Like I had when I met Charles.”
He’s seen the pictures. Her hair was fantastic.
“We’re just so glad, mom,” Barbara says, big blue eyes shining with tears. “There’s so many things left for you to do.”
“Like hold a grandkid,” his mother smiles, and Barbara, ever their sweet, innocent Babs, blushes, but nods. “Someday, when things are ready. Hopefully not that far away.”
Any kid of her’s will be Emily’s grandchild, honestly, because Emily loves the two of them, like he does.
“I’m thinking I should do a mohawk, too,” Lydia grins, and Emily matches her. “It wouldn’t be lame, twinning with your mom?”

“No way. We’d look fucking sick.”

“We won’t be able to tell the two of you apart!” Adam laughs, and Emily rolls her eyes. “Such a charmer, this one. I already love you, Adam, enough!”
It’s the lightest the house has felt in months. It’s like everyone there, even him, is finally breathing right, again. His home is full of life and love and warmth.
Home… his home is back the way it should be.

That night, Emily and Charles tuck themselves into bed, and he and Lydia into their own rooms, and he sleeps soundly.

Until he smells death, which rouses him from his sleep. He sits up, confused, and sees his mother, sitting on the edge of his bed. She looks dazed. “Ma?”
“BJ,” her voice shakes. “Something’s wrong.”
He follows her down the hall, back to her bedroom. Charles is sleeping soundly. Emily is laying in bed, growing cold.
“Am I dreaming?” she looks from her body, to her son, as he stares down at her corpse. This isn’t a dream, it’s a fucking nightmare.
He takes her hand, pulls her from the room, so he can panic without waking Charles. Last thing he needs is his dad’s own panic mixing with his.

“This isn’t supposed to happen,” Betelgeuse rasps, hands fisting at his wild hair, making it more disheveled than normal. “Th’ tumor’s gone! My request was approved, we-”
He stops, stares at her. “.. We gotta go to th’ Netherworld.”
“Is there paper work to fix.. This?” Emily asks, unsure. There certainly is not. Dead is dead is dead.
“We gotta get you permission to haunt,” he says. “So you can stay here. Even if you’re dead,” the word, for the first time, is heavy on his tongue. “At least you won’t be gone. I’ll be able to see an’ talk to you, hell, give em enough time in a haunted house, an’ Chuck an’ Lyds might become sensitive, too. Just gotta… just gotta go down there, an’ ask.. No, demand it.”

She places a hand on his arm, stops his pacing and muttering. “Demand? From.. From her?”
Betelgeuse nods. “We gotta go see Juno.”

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

No one could ever accuse Juno Shoggoth of being a patient demon. Cruel, naturally. Brutal, and efficient, certainly, especially with the pace she’d been setting, lately, flying through her paperwork with renewed vigor, because she knows her long awaited assistant is coming, and coming soon. Any day, now. Any day. Any… day.
She checks and double checks her calendar. Emily Deetz, she thinks bitterly, is late. Very late. And Juno, as mentioned, is not patient.
“Miss Argentina!”
The demoness’s shrill voice carries through the halls of the netherworld, causing those pathetic stiffs lounging around the waiting room to jump, and it only takes a moment for the receptionist to appear. “Juno.”
“I thought I told you,” Juno seethes. “That there was a newly dead coming, and I wanted her in my office the minute she arrived!”
“You did, but-”
“No numbers! No waiting! She was supposed to come directly to me!”
The former beauty queen takes a breath, tries to keep composed. “Juno,” she says, head held high. “She never checked in. She’s not in the waiting room.”
When next she speaks, Juno’s voice is low, and dangerous.
“Bring me her file.”
She leans back in her chair, scowling and puzzling, as Miss Argentina makes her way back down the hall, high heels clacking against the tile. There’s no reason, other than the obvious, why Emily Deetz has not checked in. Her wretched spawn must be holding her ghost back from entering the Netherworld. That shifty little conman. He’s not going to fuck her over, not when she’s finally about to get what she’d been waiting for.

Miss Argentina returns, places the file on Juno’s desk, and makes herself scarce.

Juno flips it open, and squints. There’s a form on top she doesn’t remember, a request for an extension of life. Only demons can request something like this. She notes, with growing irritation, her own signature and stamp at the bottom. She must have signed this in a rush. She studies it, hellfire in her veins boiling, especially when she sees the time approved. “Fifty years!?” she screeches, and attempts to rip the paper, which does not work, and this failure only makes her angrier. That sniveling, conniving little breather loving mistake, she’s going to rip his throat out-
She catches sight of the signature at the bottom. B.J. Deetz. It’s one more slap to her face, that he didn’t sign it properly, didn’t even use his demonic name, the one she’d given him. He used his stupid human name.

And then she smiles, because he didn’t sign it properly.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

The first thing Betelgeuse does is head back to his room, Emily floating behind him, and at this point, he’s too stressed to even care, as he takes a dimebag from under a loose floorboard, and lays his party drug of choice out on his dresser, haphazard, because this is mostly for an extra boost of courage. Emily’s face twists.
“Are you serious?”
It’s not exactly his proudest moment, and not a habit he ever thought he’d be showing his mother, but he shrugs. “Can’t get addicted or OD, so why shouldn’t I enjoy myself? Coke’s practically meant for demons, not humans.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Since senior year of high school.” He watches her do the mental math. “Five years! BJ Deetz!”
“You can snitch to dad an’ get me in trouble when we get back.”

If they get back. Oh, god.

He hoovers up his favorite bad habit, and straightens, rubbing at his nose. “Alright. Alright, okay. A door.”
The door he’d drawn on his wall has been wiped away by now, but he finds the chalk in a dresser drawer, and recreates it, three simple lines, and then snaps his fingers, dressing himself in his familiar striped suit, with his ratty trench coat over it. If he’s going to go make a deal, he needs to look the part. Also, he doesn’t want to go to his possible doom in just his boxers and undershirt. The leftover contents of the dime bag are pocketed, along with the stick of chalk, and Emily gives him a look. “We are so talking about that later, Bug,” she warns him, as he lifts his hand and knocks sharply, three times on the door. “Lookin’ forward to it, ma.”

The door swings open, green light illuminating both of their features, and the smell of the mist that swirls through the air makes him perk up, slightly. Emily looks entranced. “Netherworld…” she says, emotion and life drained from her voice. “Netherworld…”
Oh, right. She’s being affected by that recently deceased pull, the thing that guides new ghosts into the afterlife. He takes her hand, and the physicality of that is grounding, for her, because she’s able to look away, dazed. It takes her a moment to speak.
“Is this.. Really the best idea?”
Betelgeuse bites his bottom lip. “Best one I got, ma. Come on.”
He leads her through the door, and it closes firmly behind them.

The only different thing about the waiting room is the number of ghosts waiting around. No one here he cares about, no dead people worth mentioning, and he keeps Emily’s hand in his, as he pushes past a few ghosts, who know better than to start something with a demon. He leads his mother to the window, and knocks, and Miss Argentina opens it, and tilts her head, confused. “Mijo, what-”
Emily smiles, and waives lightly. “Hello.”
The former beauty queen takes in the sight of his mother, and pauses, glances down at some paperwork he can’t see, then goes back to Emily. “That’s your mama?”
“This is her. I gotta talk to Juno, cause for some reason, she’s more deceased than she should be.”
“Beetlejuice, that’s the woman Juno’s been waiting for-”
“An’ she’s gonna stay waitin’. I’m not givin’ Emily to her.”

Maria’s smart enough not to get in the middle of a demon fight. “You know where to go, then,” is all she says, her frown, a deep, unwelcome line on her pretty features. “Just be careful, alright?”

“Careful as I can be, Maria.”

He tries to direct Emily to go, but she puts a hand over his, and he pauses. “You’re Maria, then,” She smiles at the other woman, and Maria nods, eyeing her. “I wanted to thank you,“ Emily says, “For taking care of my boy until I found him. He told us about you, before. About how kind you were, and how you protected him, when you could. Thank you for looking after my son.”
Maria smiles softly. “Thank you, for being his mother.”
They both look to him, and he grumbles and rubs at his hair, looking away. “Come on, come on. I’m a demon, I don’t do sappy.”
“Since when?” Emily laughs, because they both know he’s a needy ball of affection, and he puts an arm out, which she takes. “Goodbye, Maria!” she says, as Betelgeuse leads her away, and he hears Maria’s very soft reply. “Goodbye. Goodluck.”

They wander down the winding halls of the Netherworld, Emily looking around in fascination, taking in everything. Technically, this is her second time here, he realizes. She astral projected here, before, when he was a kid.
“I still can’t believe it’s all an office building,” she says, as he counts the numbers on the doors. They’re out of order, forty one following one hundred and five, no rhyme or rhythm to them, and they often switch order, which is intentional. Everything about this place is meant specifically to capture and confuse the dead who wander in, like a twisting, never ending web.

“There is an outside,” he tells her. “But it’s nothin’ worth seein’. Black ground, black sky, with th’ only light bein’ these weird… shapes in th’ sky,” he says, vaguely. “An’ then past that, somewhere deep, is th’ next stop.”
“Next stop?”
“Wherever humans go, once they’re done here. Suicides gotta work off their debt, an’ regular dead folks might get assigned to haunt, or put in a request, if they’re not ready to go,” he nods to her. “But th’ others, they get to get in line, and go through to th’ next place.”

“What’s that like?”
“Dunno,” he shrugs. “Demons can’t go there. S’whatever happens to a soul that’s perfectly ready to move on, an’ we don’t die, so, ya know. Not a trip I gotta worry about.”
“So someday I’ll be there, with Charles, and Lydia, and you’ll be.. Where?”
He can’t focus on the sad look on her face, and instead goes back to counting door numbers.
“Probably bummin’ around on earth, lookin’ for somethin’ to give a shit about.”
“That’s not fair. We should all go together. I don’t want to be apart from you, like that.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Betelgeuse says, lamely. “So why should death be?”
“That’s quitter talk.”
“You raised a coked out quitter then, congrats, Deetzy.” It comes out meaner than he wants it to, but she just squeezes his hand.
“It’s alright to be scared,” she tells him, softly, because she can read him easier than anyone else. He stops walking, and sinks into her arms. “Mama,” he says, gruff voice more weighted with emotion than it’s ever been. “I’m not ready for you to go.”

His mother wraps her arms around him, as he feels his shoulders shudder and shake.
“I’m not ready to be gone,” she says, voice determined, as she scratches her long nails at his scalp, until the sad purple fades back to a more manageable green. They stand like that for a long time, there in the hallways of the afterlife, a demon and the human who always treated him like her own.
When he’s able, he straightens up, wipes the spit from the corner of his mouth, and adjusts his dress shirt collar. Emily straightens his tie, the loud one, with swirling spots of different shades of neon and puke green, that she’d bought him for Hanukkah last year.

“Lead the way, my big scary non sappy demon,” she teases him, and he takes her hand again, and they venture down the hall.

An hour of wandering later, and they come across the right door. He doesn’t want to think about how much time has passed, on earth. Charles must have woken up to a cold, lifeless Emily in his bed. He would have shook Lydia awake, and the two of them might have gone to his bedroom, to find it empty, with a door drawn on the wall. He should have left a note… But they’ve never been a note family. Hopefully the context clues help them understand.

Juno’s door looks like every other one, except there’s so much cigarette smoke inside, that it’s coming out the bottom of the door. He wrinkles his nose. The smell of cigarettes always puts him on edge, specifically because of her. He grabs the knob, takes a breath. Emily gives his hand an encouraging squeeze, and he opens the door, and the amount of smoke in the hallway increases as it spills through the now opened doorway.
Juno’s not at her desk. She’s standing right in front of them. “Finally,” she hisses, not even acknowledging him, her eyes focused on Emily. “You’re late, Mrs. Deetz.”

“She’s not late,” Betelgeuse growls. “She’s early. She shoulda had fifty more years. You did somethin’, you cheated!”
“You’re the cheat, you little conman!” her shrill voice reaches a pitch he forgot even existed. “Slipping that forged form in, getting your beloved human undeserved time, trying to make me wait forever to finally get my assistant!”
“Forged? I signed that form correctly! You had to stamp it, an’ give your signature to it! How th’ fuck is it a forgery?”
“Because your name isn’t BJ Deetz, you insufferable little shit. It’s Lawrence Betelgeuse Shoggoth. You signed your human name. God, look at you, even in the Netherworld, you’re wearing that silly human costume of yours! You’re a failure of a demon.”

“He’s not a failure! And his legal name is Deetz,” Emily interjects. Juno laughs in that cruel way she does. “You think that matters? We’re not on earth, Mrs. Deetz.”
“It was official enough to get your stamp, an’ to get rid of th’ tumor,” BJ challenges.
“Yet not official enough to save your beloved human from a blood clot to the brain,” Juno smiles joylessly. “So now here we are. One way or another, I got what was promised to me.”

“I wanna get her a haunting license,” Betelgeuse says, which earns another cruel laugh.
“Why? She’s down here, now. She’s got a hundred years of work to do, and by the time that’s up, the rest of your little breather family will be as dead as she is.”
“But you cheated,” Betelgeuse growls again, feeling helpless, and then snaps his teeth at Juno, as the other demon grabs Emily’s arm roughly.
“You’re going to pay for making me wait,” the demoness leans close to the former mortal, and Emily winces, looks away, terrified.
“Let her go!” He snarls, and Juno, pointedly, yanks Emily around, causing his mother to cry out in pain.
“As for you,” Juno’s smile is absolutely monstrous. “The deal was that you could be on earth for as long as Emily was. But it looks like her time has run out. I think it’s time for you to come home, Lawrence, and actually be useful, for once in your miserable unlife. You want to stay with your precious human mommy so bad? You can sit down here with her and work… Once I'm done teaching you both what happens when you try to cross me!”

The way her sharp claws dig into Emily’s arm, and the way Emily whimpers, leaves nothing to the imagination. This is his worst nightmare, but somehow beyond that, because he’s not just trapped back down here, his mother is, too, and she’s in pain. Juno’s going to hurt Emily, and it’s his fault, because he’s too weak and stupid and scared to know what to do.

“You can’t talk to my son like that!” Emily challenges the demoness, and then gives another cry, as those claws dig further in, but they’re also white hot, this time.
“I will speak to my son however I see fit!” Juno shrieks in her face, but Emily doesn’t turn her head, this time, she meets Juno’s insane, furious glare head on. “You leave my baby boy alone!” she challenges, tears stinging the corner of her eyes. “I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not going to let you hurt my kid!”
Juno smiles, takes that as a challenge, and reels back to strike at Emily, and then finds herself swarmed by clones. BJ throws a dozen at her, all of them popping into existence and dog piling on the danger, and it’s enough to throw Juno off balance, for a moment. She lets go of Emily, and Betelgeuse scoops her up, bridal style, his mother’s still sickly frame easy to carry, and he takes off, running down the hall.

“Where are we going?” Emily asks, breathless, as he kicks open the first door he sees- it leads to another dingy office room, with a sad little mattress in the corner, and black stripes scribbled in sharpie ink by a child’s hand on the dingy, off white wall by the bed. The room is otherwise empty. He didn’t realize this was still here.

He can hear Juno, down the hall, screaming and snarling, and the slight pain he’s feeling tells him his clones are being viciously torn apart. They don’t have long.
“Was this your room?” Emily asks, and he doesn’t respond, just nods at the window on the far wall, the only source of light in the sad little space. It flies open, and he wraps an extra set of arms around his mother, before taking a running leap, and jumping through it.
“Beetlejuice!” she gasps, as they fall, and fall, and fall, through the black nothing that makes up the afterlife, the only thing illuminating their descent the strange, glowing geometry in the sky, and his own amber eyes, shining like lanterns in the gloom.

He hits what passes for ground, hard, knees bent to absorb the shock, and he can hear, through that open window, stories and stories up, the frustrated, screaming voice of Juno. He shakes the pain off, and runs as fast as his chubby form will allow. “What are we going to do? BJ? Please, talk to me!” Emily’s voice is verging on panic, now.
“Gotta get you someplace safe,” is all he can manage. “Somewhere she can’t touch you.”
There’s only one place like that.

Emily seems to understand.

“I’m not going back home, am I?” she asks, clinging to his suit lapel, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell his mother that no. She’s not.

He tires of running, eventually, and he doesn’t sense or smell Juno, though he knows she must be tearing the building apart, looking for him. It might take her a little to figure out where he’s headed. That’s a cold comfort.
He sets Emily down, and she takes his hand, and follows after him, staring up at the shapes and the nothing. “It really is bleak,” she says, after a while, and he nods. “Maybe th’ next place will be better. Ya know. Flowers an’ meadows an’ clouds. All that kinda stuff.”
She leans on him, as they walk. “That would be nice. And, maybe it will feel like an instant, there, maybe time will go so fast, I won’t have the chance to miss anyone, before they show up. Lydia, all gray haired, and wrinkled. You make sure she reaches gray and wrinkled, BJ, please?”
“Course, ma.”

“I don’t.. Want to go alone,” she says, softly, but there’s not a goddamn thing he can do, about that. “M’sorry,” he tells her, and she looks to him. “For what, sweetheart?”
“For… All of it. Everything.”
Every stupid tantrum he ever threw, every pointless act of teenage rebellion, every time they ever fought, this entire situation, which is his fault, by proxy. If Emily wasn’t his mother, she’d be just another human, presumably moving on, or haunting, or whatever she was meant to do, without the threat of demonic torture hanging over her head, like a sword suspended by a single, thin thread.
“M’sorry you ever got involved, in any of this. Ever had to deal with me.”

She stops walking, and he turns to look at her. “I wouldn’t do a thing different,” she says, simply. Her expression is hard, but her eyes are soft. “I got to have a great life, with my two awesome children, and my amazing husband. I don’t regret anything, except that I have to leave it behind. My life was beautiful because I got to be your mother.” She pulls him into a hug, one he savors, for as long as he can, because this is going to be the last one he gets from her. He needs to remember it.

The rest of their walk is silent. Eventually, stretching out before them, they can make out a line, slowly shuffling forward, a million souls waiting to reach their next destination, all in an orderly fashion. They walk alongside it, for a long time.
“So we’re basically cutting in front of all these people?” Emily asks, and he has to smile, at that. “Like skippin’ th’ line at Coney Island, yeah,” and she grins. “Badass.”
They walk forever. Maybe days, maybe hours, maybe both. The Netherworld defies the logics of time, and space, because at one point, he swears he can see himself and Emily, in front of them, way off in the distance, trudging towards their goal, and when he looks back, he can see himself and Emily, barely cresting the horizon line, however that works. He supposes it works however it wants, and no one has any say in the matter.

And then they suddenly reach the end of the line. One moment it’s stretching for forever in front of them, and the next, in a blink, they’re watching as a bored looking demon directs the next dead person to step forward. The entrance to what’s next is a hole in the ground, and the next man in line pauses, before simply taking a step, and slipping down into the swirling void, and he’s gone, off to whatever that ultimate destination is.

“I changed my mind,” Emily says, her grip on his hand tightening. “I don’t want to go. BJ, please, we can think of something else-”

He hears a shrill screech, and it makes all the ghosts in line turn, to look behind them. In the distance, he can see Juno, monstrous, enormous, eight legs and dripping fangs, as she skitters across the nothing, charging them.
“Tell me what you want em to know,” he turns to her. Emily wipes at her eyes. “Tell your father he can’t avoid something, just because it hurts,” she says, tears streaking down her face, despite her best efforts. “Tell Lydia I’m always with her. Tell them both I’m waiting somewhere safe for them.”
She throws her arms around him. “Tell my son he’s a better person than he thinks he is,” she manages, somehow, as he carries her sad form to the edge, and holds her over. “Tell them I love them, remember I love you, tell them to take their time in joining me, tell them..” She’s out of words, and they’re out of time.
“I love you, mama.”
He gives her an extra squeeze, kisses his mother’s head, and drops her.

Emily falls, is swallowed by the void in the pit, and she’s gone. His mother is gone.

He hardly has a moment, before he’s slammed into by something behind him, and sent sprawling onto his back. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what it could be. One of Juno’s enormous, spider-like legs is pinning his form to the floor of the Netherworld, and her eyes are more wild than he’s ever seen.

“You ruin everything,” venom drips, literally and figuratively, from her mouth. “Every fucking thing. I should have found a way to kill you, the second I bore you. Should have eaten you alive, ripped into you and kept ripping, until your infernal wailing stopped, until I finally had some peace back.”

“Yeah, probably shoulda,” is all he can manage, and her needle sharp appendage presses further into his gut, spearing him, and then she lifts him up, so that gravity forces his fat body to slide lower down the widening appendage, and he grits his teeth, and grabs at her leg, to stop himself from being torn totally apart. “So now what,” he pants out, too tired to be scared. “You can’t stand me, an’ we’re not family. So you keep me down here, miserable, an’ listen to my infernal wailin’ for th’ rest of forever?”

“I have a better idea. Lawrence Betelgeuse Shoggoth,” she speaks his name slowly, her eyes glowing red. “I curse you.”
“Bein’ cursed feels a lot like bein’ suspended by a spike through th’ stomach,” he grunts, but she ignores him.

“I curse you to invisibility. I curse you to loneliness. I curse you to be at the beck and call and fickle whim of the living. I curse you to be forgotten, by those who you love. I curse you to misery, wallowing in your loneliness, until it consumes your mind. I curse your name to be your burden. I curse you, in all these ways. May the suffering you endure be unparalleled.”

She sticks a clawed hand through his chest, and he can only wince, already on the verge of passing out. One claw hooks under his ribs, and breaks, leaving a splinter there, and she withdraws her hand.
“What-”

“Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse.”

His world goes dark.

Chapter Text

His world stays dark, even though he knows he’s opened his eyes.
He tries to understand that, brain feeling foggy. He must be somewhere dark. He’s laying on his back. He can hear muffled voices, maybe, over him? He’s under something. He lays there, listening, but he’s too tired to even try to understand, and the voices are too muffled to be anything recognizable. Maybe, if he really strains, he can hear a familiar voice, or someone who sounds like his baby sister, but the only word he manages to understand is “invisible.”

He falls back into a restless sleep.

The next time he’s able to shake exhaustion from his mind, he tries to sit up. It’s easier than he thought it might be. This time, more aware of himself, his body feeling less destroyed, he actually tries to understand where he is. It feels like he’s laying in dirt, or under dirt, in a mountain of it, the usual soft scent of freshly turned earth overpowering. It still hurts to move, but he forces himself to, clawing upwards, through the dirt, until he reaches a wooden plank, which he goes through, like he’s not even there.

It’s a box, containing something foul smelling. A coffin… he’s inside a coffin. Juno buried him below a pine box, in someone else’s grave. The inside of it stinks, like decay and chemicals, and he doesn’t stop to take in whoever this used to be, just pushes up, and out, until he emerges from the ground like a zombie, like Night of the Living Dead. The ground around him is grown over with grass, and he grabs at it, using it as much as he can, as he crawls from someone’s grave, until finally, he pulls himself free from the earth, and lays there, taking breaths he doesn’t need, to clear the smell of the body from his nose. His suit and trench coat are filthy, but that barely registers, at this point. There are more important things to worry about, like getting home- He sits up, catches sight of the gravestone.

Emily Deetz
Devoted Wife, Beloved Mother
“Whom Most We Love Reach First the Golden Gate, Leaving Us Desolate”

He stares at the etching on the stone, and feels something in his mind snap, like a rubber band stretched too tight. He’s seeing the world through a fisheye lens, his vision distorted, blurry, as he tries to understand exactly what just happened. Juno made him crawl out of his own mother’s grave. The body he still reeks of was Emily’s. He sits there, a long time, not feeling much of anything, only able to stare, replaying that memory, over and over, and the only thing that makes him move is the sudden realization of what grass over a grave could mean. Emily’s been buried long enough for it to grow. How long has it been since he’s been home? He does his best to push this fun new trauma down, as far as it will go. He’s got to get back to his family. What’s left of it, he thinks, humorlessly.

He stands, off balance, and wipes some of the dust and dirt from his face, and finds that, annoyingly, his glamour has slipped, and it refuses to reapply. Maybe he’s too drained, though he’s not sure how he’s going to get back home, clearly looking as deranged as he must. He’s too exhausted to teleport, and he wanders around the cemetery, avoiding the few people there as much as he can, as the sun dips low, and vanishes. At least by that point he can force his teeth and ears to resemble normal human’s. The moss and eyes, well, he’s too worn down to care. So he’ll look like an extra grubby hobo, he thinks. That’ll have to be his new look, for now.

He reaches a gate, and leans on it, and then falls through it, and blinks, confused. He’s never been intangible by accident, before. Usually it takes concentration to make his solid form incorporeal. He stands, straightens out his suit collar, adjusts his sleeves, fiddles with his tie, as he thinks. There’s got to be someone around here who can call his family for him, or at the very least, a cab. The cemetery is growing darker, and his attention is drawn to the far off flicker of candles.
He feels a pull, and he approaches, taking in what he sees.

It’s a group of five teenagers with an Ouija board. Predictable. He snorts, and expects that sound to alert the kids to his presence, but they don’t even turn to see what the noise could be. He steps closer, until he’s fully illuminated by the glowing ring of candles around them, and he tries to be friendly.
“Hey, just a normal livin’ adult human man, in a cemetery, at night, approachin’ a group of children. You kids wanna be helpful an’ call me a cab?” BJ tries, but he’s ignored. The kids don’t even look in his direction. He remembers being a snot nosed teen, but this is a bit much. His blood boils, and he leans down, claps his hands in one of the teen’s faces, and she responds to that, but not in the way he wants. “I think I just felt a cold spot!” she tells her friends. “In front of my face, just now!”
“Calm down with that,” a red haired girl shoots her a look. “We haven’t even started yet, and you’re already having a spiritual experience. Yeah, right.”
“No you guys, really!”

“Lookit me,” he interrupts them. The children continue to squabble. His gut clenches. “Look at me!” he demands, storming to the center of the circle, and kicking at their stupid board game. His boot goes through it. They don’t react. Why would they, he realizes, sinking to sit on top of the board.

He’s invisible.

He tries to recall everything Juno had said, as he’d struggled to keep conscious, while impaled. Loneliness. Invisibility, being at the command of the living. Being… forgotten. No, no, NO-
His impending freak out is stymied when he feels hands go through him, and he shoots up, hovering over the board game, as the teens below him react.
“Oh my god, total cold spot! Should we like, make a note of that?”
“Come on, come on, let’s start, while there’s still someone or something here!”

The five teens lean forward, each placing fingers on the planchette.
“Is there anyone here?” one of them asks.

Betelgeuse stares, and feels a tug, again, clearly coming from the board. He knows some demons use these things to play with their food, before they eat, so he gives it a go, and floats over the game, head down, feet in the air, like he’s diving underwater. Maybe these kids can actually help him. He pushes the planchette with one finger, to land on “Yes.”

“Did you do that?” one boy asks, and the group devolves into the kids blaming each other, and he rakes his hands down his face, and tries to move the planchette, again, but they’re too busy squabbling, they’re not touching it anymore. Fuck, this is frustrating. He’s never wanted a group of teenagers to drop dead as badly as he does right now.
Finally, they put their hands back on the pointer, and ask another question. “Are you friendly?”

This time, he pushes the planchette to spell, instead. “S-U-R-E.”
“That doesn’t instill a lot of confidence,” the redhead from before mutters.
“What do you want?”
He nudges the pointer along, painstakingly slow. “H-O-M-E.”
“You want to go home?”
“YES.”

“For fuck sake, yes,” he groans, and then perks as one asks, “How can we help you?”
Well… he’s not actually sure. He squints, trying and failing to recall everything Juno had said. How is he supposed to work with this curse thing, when he doesn’t know the rules? He digs his hands in his pockets, frustrated, and then blinks, because there’s what feels like a business card there, one that he doesn’t remember. He pulls the paper from his pocket, studies it.

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

He remembers the way Juno had chanted his name, before he’d lost consciousness. That must be it, then. His name is his burden.

“M-Y-N-A-M-E-T-H-R-E-E-T-I-M-E-S”

“Oh, wait, wait, guys, I’ve heard of this,” one of the girls gasps. “Demonic entities, they have you do things in threes, to mock the trinity, you know, father, son, and holy ghost. It’s a demon thing! We might be talking to a non-human spirit!”
“That means we can’t trust it, right?” A boy asks, and they all look uneasy.
He steers the planchette around the board, desperate.
“W-A-N-N-A-H-O-M-E-P-L-Z.”
The redhead wrinkles her nose. “Do demons use chat speak?” she asks, glancing around the group.

“O-H-M-Y-G-O-D-U-K-I-D-S-A-R-E-K-I-L-L-I-N-M-E.”

“I’m not afraid. Tell us your name, spirit!” a boy calls, and he gives the planchette a push, intent on spelling it. The pointer doesn’t move.
“Come the fuck on!” he growls, but it doesn’t matter how much strength he puts into the action, he can’t move the dinky plastic piece to spell out his name.

“Spirit? You there?”

“F-U-C-K,” he spells out, in a rage, because this is pointless, he’s too exhausted and sore to think of how to make this work, and he just wants to go home, and see what’s left of his family. He growls again, and then snuffs all the candles in the circle, all at once, causing the kids to scream, and scramble, and that, at least, forces a rictus grin from him. He’s always enjoyed the sounds of terror. He leaves the children tripping over themselves in the dark, and decides he’s going to have to make his way home the old fashioned way- floating. At least he doesn’t have to walk, he supposes, tucking his legs under himself, and he floats invisibly out of the cemetery, and down the sidewalk, trying to focus on how good it will be to see Lydia and Charles, and not on how they won’t see him, and especially not on how every part of him, physically, emotionally, mentally, is hurting.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

In the six months since her mother has passed, Lydia Deetz has changed a lot. Her long hair, once the same pretty sunshine color as Emily’s, is black, cut short, and her peppy goth wardrobe has been replaced by a more punk/elegant goth twist. She adds safety pins to everything, wears her makeup dramatic and dark, and plays her music loud, and she spends hours upon hours going through pictures, as much as she can stand to. Pictures of birthdays, family trips, tons of Halloween, both summer and autumn, and she takes care of these captured, sacred moments with all the fervor of a religious devotee. These are her last snippets, the only things left she has to cling to, of her mother. She sits up, late at night, and studies the happier moments of a life that feels completely disconnected to the one she lives now, and she takes a shard of glass she’s hidden away, and bleeds the pain, deep in her arms and the back of her legs, places the lace of her gloves and tights will hide, in the morning.

God knows it’s not like she can express any of the pain she’s feeling to her dad. Charles shuts himself in his study, most days after work, and from the way he’s going through scotch, it seems he’s developing a bad habit of his own. Their home is just a house, now. She never realized the only thing keeping them together was her mother.

She had laid in bed for two weeks after it happened, barely conscious for the funeral. She could only lay on her side, staring out the window, as the world, cruelly, dared to keep spinning, even though the only person who mattered was gone from it. Nothing makes sense, anymore. Like how sometimes her photos make her dizzy, and she can’t concentrate on them, has to put them down. There are some where this effect is worse than others, but she can’t explain why. Like the one of his birthday. Who? Someone’s, someone’s, and the thought makes her dizzy, again, until she has to stop thinking about it all together. The picture contains a black and white striped cake with the number candles displaying “17” on it, herself, aged ten, her mother, healthy and beautiful and smiling, Adam, Barbara, and her dad, and someone else. Someone she can’t focus on. It goes in a pile of other photos she can’t think too much about, all tucked safely into a little photo album of dizziness, and the whole thing is shoved under her bed. Someday, when whatever this stage of grief is has passed, she might be able to look at them again, but for now, she doesn’t need to add nausea on top of her other problems, of which there are many.

Like her failing grades, which her father chides her over, that night, at dinner. They’re sitting in the kitchen, two empty chairs at the kitchen table, even though it’s only ever been the three of them. Now it’s just the two of them, she supposes. Just herself and Charles Deetz, the human clam, never speaking about anything real, always clenching himself so emotionally tight she thinks it must physically hurt.
“Getting a D in English is unacceptable,” he tells her, tone hard, as she picks at her meal. Her left forearm is burning from a particularly deep cut. She’s wearing a long sleeved band hoodie of her mother’s, to hide it.
“For god sake Lydia, you speak English. You’re not stupid. You need to apply yourself,” Charles raises his voice, when she doesn’t react. She looks up at her father, through her bangs, two sets of tired eyes meeting each other.
“Okay,” is all she says, and then they finish eating in silence, neither able to reach out in the way the other needs.

The house that isn’t her home feels colder than ever, tonight.

She trudges up the stairs, following her father, as Charles makes his way to his study, down the hall, the two of them readying themselves for another night of misery, their new normal.

And then something draws her eye.

She pauses, and it feels like, for the first time, notices a room, a little down the hall from her own. She must have seen it a million times, and never noticed. The door is cracked, for some reason, and she stops, her hand on her bedroom door knob, before deciding that sure, she can muster the energy to care about this, and she opens the door to the room she can’t remember.

The ceiling is painted black. The walls are covered in black and white striped wallpaper, and on the far wall, she notes a box, scribbled in… she draws closer to it, gently smudges the lines with a finger, and it comes away, white on the pad of her pointer. Chalk. She sits on the corner of the bed, fingers playing with the soft black and green bedspread, as she looks around the room. A TV, various knick knacks, a sad, wilted daisy in a bone dry cup, and a black and white striped ukulele in the corner, which she finds odd. Neither of her parents know how to play, that she’s aware of. She stands, picks up the instrument, strums it, but it’s horribly out of tune, and she doesn’t know enough to be able to fix it, so she leaves the dusty instrument where it had been, and goes across the hall, to knock on her father’s study door. It opens a moment later, Charles not yet drunk enough to be passed out at his desk. Not that she blames him for never wanting to sleep in the room where Dead Mom passed.

“Yes, Lydia?” he tries not to sound tired of her, but she can feel he is, anyway. She juts a thumb behind herself. “What’s with this empty room?” she asks, and his eyes follow the motion of her thumb, and it's like he, too, has just noticed a space in their house that feels both strangely occupied and altogether abandoned.
“I don’t know,” he scratches at his beard. “Guest room, I suppose.”
“It looks more like someone’s bedroom.”
“Maybe it was used as an office.”
“Who’s?” she tries, and she sees him wince.
Just say her name, dad, she begs. Acknowledge where we are, right now. Give me something, anything, please-
“Lydia, if you don’t need anything else, I have work to get back to.”
She glances around him, at the open bottle, and the half empty glass, sitting shamelessly on his desk, like she’s a child, like she’s an idiot, like she’s blind. “Work,” she says, dryly. “Right. Wouldn’t want to keep you from your all important business.”
She steps back, and he closes the door.

Lydia turns, reenters the room she can’t remember, and flops on the bed, staring up at the black ceiling. She’s hit with a wave of nostalgia so hard, that if she’d been standing, it might have knocked her down. She’s been in this room before, laying on this bed, looking at this ceiling. That’s a dumb thing to think, it’s a room in her house, of course she’s been in it, but it still feels strange to her, like there’s a memory she’s right on the verge of recalling, but she can’t pull it to the forefront of her mind. It flits away from her, a willow wisp on a dark path, but she’s too tired and sad to chase it.
Behind her, the door clicks closed, softly, and she feels a chill in the air, something almost like the sensation of a hand, pressed to the top of her head, but not that solid, not that real. It might just be her imagination, spinning her something she’d desperate for, but she closes her eyes, and rubs at them, so hard she sees spots.
“Dead Mom, is that you?” she whispers, into the gloom of this strange chamber, and she tries to speak again, but it hurts too much, gets caught in her throat, and she gives up, and lays there in silence, tears spilling from her, until sleep overtakes her.

Chapter Text

His home is broken.
When he’d arrived at the Tudor, floating up the steps, he’d almost felt a sense of relief. No matter how bad everything is, at least he can see his dad and sister now. Even if they can’t see him, he can find a way to make them say his name, and maybe his presence will only be a band aid on a mortal wound, but they’ll at least all be bleeding out together.

But he doesn’t recognize the people in this house. They call themselves Lydia and Charles, and their voices sound the same, and they mostly look the same, but these can’t be his breathers, his family, because they hardly seem to count as one. Lydia’s only sixteen, but she looks older, sadder, the dark makeup and short dark hair a shock, when he’s only known her as fresh faced and long haired and blonde. And his Lydia used to smile, she used to tell jokes, she used to have life behind her eyes. This Lydia is functionally dead. She walks around, eyes half hidden behind hair and eyeliner, and sits quietly, hardly eats, picks at her food like she’s already accepted starvation as a viable escape method.
Charles is just as bad. His father reeks of alcohol, a scent BJ can’t stand, and the gray at his temples is more pronounced than he remembers.

But worst of all, is how neither of them talk about anything that matters. He sits in his chair, at dinner, listens to Charles berate Lydia over some stupid school thing.
“Mom always said high school was temporary. Ya know, unimportant,” he grates out, like he’s a part of the conversation, but no one turns to look at him. Lydia pushes her food around her plate, hardly reacts to the scolding, and that’s dinner. Two dead people, playing at being alive, neither doing an especially good job.

He goes before them, up the stairs, leaving a cold air behind himself, and he finds that he’s able to manipulate his bedroom door, though not by much, and it’s exhausting to do so. It opens only a fraction, but that must be enough to get Lydia’s attention, because she enters, pokes around, and even asks Charles about it. But he can see from the look in both their eyes, that this evidence of his existence isn’t enough.
Lydia lays on his bed, in the dark, and cries for their mother, and he would give anything to cry with her. As it is, he hugs his knees to his chest, in the dark, and sits there, shaking and overwhelmed, as he listens to his baby sister softly sob herself to sleep.

He becomes well acquainted with their new bad habits fairly quickly. Charles is drinking himself into a stupor, every night, falling asleep at his desk, barely making it to work in the mornings, sometimes not changing out of his suit for a number of days, only applying cologne as needed, too busy in the bottle to take care of himself properly.
That’s bad enough, but the first time he sees what Lydia does, now, it scares him so badly it’s hard to even think. She digs a shard of glass into her forearm, and it at least seems she’s not cutting to kill, but both siblings watch the red prick along the new wound in silence, until he speaks.
“Mom wouldn’t like that,” he tells her, not that it matters. “You shouldn’t be doin’ that, Lyds. What if it gets infected? What if you get seriously hurt? Th’ blood’s supposed to be on th’ inside, kiddo,” he babbles, pointlessly, as she cuts deeper, sinks that glass further into her skin, and sits there, watching it, passively. Like it’s not happening to her. Like she’s watching something on a screen. Like she couldn’t care less that she’s hurting herself.
“Dead Mom,” she addresses her empty room, as she often does. “If you can see this, you’re probably freaking out. This is coping. I’m coping.” She lies to the air in front of her.
“You’re not,” he croaks out. “This isn’t healthy, Lyds, please..”

It’s a nightly ritual for her, at this point. She listens to music, looks through photos, and maims herself, and all he can do is watch her, trying to make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid, or stupider.
A week into silently stalking his own family, and he’s still not any closer to being seen, or figuring out how to make them say his name. It’s torture. He follows the two of them around the house, plays at being their shadows, and trails them places, work, school, the grocery store, wherever. It doesn’t matter. He might as well not exist.

Actually, not existing is already starting to sound pretty good.

Lydia stands up from her bed, still bleeding, and the motion of that breaks his thoughts. She crouches low, retrieves a photo album from under her bed that he didn’t know had been there. She flips through it, and has to sit down, after only a second.

“That th’ blood loss catchin’ up to you?” he snarks, before glancing over at her, and his eyes widen. She’s staring at a photo of him. Several photos of him, actually, and she flips through the album, pages and pages of him. He studies her expression, as she lands on a picture that he recognizes. The two of them, coming back from that disastrous visit to the Smallpox Hospital, on the lift, over the water. She’s nine, and adorable, and he’s sixteen and grubby, but infatuated with the two who had been sitting across from them. Adam had taken Lydia’s instamatic, and snapped the picture of the siblings, making faces, the skyline behind them.

“You remember that day, Lyds?” he tries, as he watches her brow furrow. She sighs, like she’s disappointed in herself, and closes the album, and it’s deposited back under her bed.
“Mama, some of these pictures, they make my head hurt, more than my heart,” she says, softly, which he understands. She can’t remember him, all the memories she has of him are locked behind whatever mental wall this curse has created, and trying does nothing but confuse her. Maybe she can’t even see his face, in the pictures. Maybe it’s a blur, out of focus, like the moment you wake up, and have yet to rub the sleep from your eyes.
That’s all he is, now, just a dream she can’t remember upon her return to the waking world.

He can open and close doors, but only barely, and it takes the energy out of him. He finds that any fire he lights still affects the world of the living, but when he tries to spell his name out in flames on the walls, all he manages to do is scare Charles into calling an electrician, about a possible electrical issue causing fires. He hadn’t even been able to spell out a “B” because somehow, this stupid curse can tell his intentions, and he hadn’t been able to physically move his arm, to form the letters he needed.

A month into living in hell, he’s finding himself feeling more and more like he’s losing his mind. He knows humans can be driven mad by isolation, but he’d never thought of what the effects on himself would be, especially since it’s not true isolation. He can go into a crowd, surround himself with people. It just doesn't matter, which is what’s making him feel so unhinged, and more than once, he throws himself into a crowd of people, and screams and kicks and thrashes, begging them to see him. All he succeeds in doing is giving a group of New Yorkers a slight chill.

But the thing that makes him the angriest is the day he finds a red headed stranger in their house. He and Lydia come in together, her just returning from a day at school, and him returning from a day of tagging along behind her, and the siblings both stop, and cock their heads at the same time, the same direction, at the sight of the strange woman standing in the foyer. Her red hair is piled in sort of a silly looking bun on top of her head, and she’s got some very intense bangs, hiding her forehead. She’s also wearing almost exclusively purple. She's scrunching her nose, examining one of Emily’s framed prints, the one of Saturn Devouring His Son, looking a bit disgusted.

“Who th’ hell is that?” he asks Lydia, and Lydia addresses the woman. “Who the hell are you?”

The woman turns to face them, and then smiles. “Oh, hello there!” she says, like they're strangers, and she’s welcoming them into her home. She lifts her hands, and rings a triangle Betelgeuse hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“You’re bringing a very interesting energy into this house, Lydia,” the stranger smiles, like that’s the only facial expression she’s got.
“You don’t say. I’m about to bring the energy of a bunch of cops here, too,” the teen threatens, staring at the woman, who places a hand over her chest. “My name is Delia,” she says, finally. “Your dad has hired me to be your life coach! He says you’ve been feeling down in the dumps, lately,” she gives an over exaggerated sad face. “But I know with a little positive thinking, me and you can turn that sad aura into a bubbling rainbow one!”

“Oh my god, you should bite her,” Betelgeuse says, instantly.
“You up to date on your rabies shot?” Lydia asks. “Positivity makes me foam at the mouth. I wouldn’t get too close.”

Delia cocks an eyebrow, but does move, and allows the teen to move past her, up the stairs. “I’m just here to help you gain a new perspective, Lydia~!” she calls from behind her, as Lydia storms up to her room, and she slams the door behind herself.
“Unbelievable,” she growls, throwing her bag on her bed, and he echoes her. “Un-fuckin'-believable!” he agrees, pacing around her room. “What th’ hell is a life coach, even?”

Lydia kicks at her wall, her big black combat boot leaving a mark on the red paint. “I’m the one who needs help? He can’t even say her name, and I’m the one who needs the hippie to come in, and try and change my perspective? A change of perspective doesn’t bring MOM BACK!” She ends her sentence in a scream, her face going red, and then she picks up her bag, and throws it at her bedroom door. The bang it makes isn’t satisfying enough, and she whirls around her room, looking for anything else she can throw around, and destroy. He settles on her bed, and watches, forced to be passive by the curse, as Lydia storms around her room, until finally, Charles throws open her bedroom door.

“You are being ridiculous,” he hisses at her, his grip on her door knob white knuckled.

“Get out! Get the hell out and leave me alone, and take that bitch downstairs with you!” Lydia screams, a hair’s breadth away from throwing a potted plant at him.
“Scream and throw fits all you want, little girl. You can’t temper tantrum your way out of Delia being here. She’s going to help you.”
She lobs the plant at him, and it barely goes sailing by their father’s head. Betelgeuse watches go over the railing, and then there’s the sound of it shattering on the entrance floor, followed by Delia’s surprised, “Oh!”
Charles’ expression is deadly. “You can stay in here until you’ve calmed down,” is all he says, before slamming her door, and Lydia stands there, breathing heavily.
“You learned how to throw those epic tantrums from me,” Betelgeuse tells her, as she flops on her bed, and screams into a pillow.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Delia’s presence in their house is very strange, and not in the way she likes. The peppy weirdo is there from the minute Lydia wakes up, and arrives back at the house seemingly the moment she herself does, from school. Interacting with the life coach is a chore, one she’s suddenly expected to complete every day. It’s like she’s under positive thinking house arrest.

Delia eats breakfast with her, now. The first time she’d sat down, and made herself comfortable, Lydia had outright snarled at her. “That’s Dead Mom’s chair,” she’d stabbed her fork into the wood of the table, causing the redhead to jump, and Delia had at least looked apologetic, and had stood to move, to the second empty seat, but Lydia shook her head. “That’s his..” A wave of dizziness overtook her, as she tried to remember why a three person household had a fourth chair in the informal kitchen table. Symmetry, maybe. Aesthetics. That must be it. Dead Mom had a very strong sense for aesthetics.

“Is this someone else’s chair?” Delia had asked, trying to be sensitive, and Lydia’s body had nodded, even though she couldn’t put a face to the presence she knew should be there.
“So, where can I sit?” Delia asked, and Lydia had broken out of her confusing thoughts, and pointed with her fork to the barstools at the island in the middle of the kitchen. “Eat over there. Be quiet.”

Dad used to do all the cooking, and she never realized how much she’d miss a nice, homemade breakfast, until her father was too hungover to make one. She eats freezer meals a lot now, or eats what she can of them, at least. Frozen waffles are the new norm around here. Delia, her second week of being there, tries to make breakfast, and it’s just a disaster. She’s a vegan, and Lydia’s had good vegan food before, but the older woman doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with her own ingredients.
“Did your mother usually cook for you?” Delia frowns, as Lydia picks around the replacement egg mush she’s served.
“Dad did.”
“Maybe it would be good for you to learn to cook!” Delia enthuses, and Lydia sets her fork down, and stands. “Funny. I was just about to say the same to you.”
She catches the way the life coach’s face falls, but she finds a mean spirited satisfaction in it, more than anything else, as she leaves for school that morning.

School hasn’t changed much. Nothing to report, there, except that some kids have been talking more about ghosts, lately. A group of five in her homeroom swears that just last month, they contacted a demon at a cemetery, and they barely escaped with their lives. Sounds overly dramatic. She’s sure they just worked themselves up into a frenzy, over nothing.
But there has been a persistent cold spot in all her classes, like something is hanging over her shoulder, and she does get the vague feeling of being watched, but not in a way she finds threatening. Mostly, it just makes her sad.
She stops in front of their house, that day, staring up at the place that used to be comfortable and familiar, and now feels like a prison. “Dead Mom?” she asks the empty air. “Are you following me? Is it you, that I keep feeling?” Her voice catches, and she rubs at a recent cut on her arm through the fabric of her hoodie, causing the pain to flare up, and it grounds her enough that she can keep speaking.

“Things are really bad, mama. I don’t know what to do,” she admits. “If you’re there, and you’re listening… Give me a sign? Anything, anything at all, just… tell me I’m not alone. Please.” She squeezes her arms around herself.
There’s nothing but cold air around her, and she can’t even let herself believe it could be her mother, because it’s autumn, in New York. It’s always cold.

Feeling stupid, she trudges up the front steps, towards the house.
And then, for a reason she can’t explain, she pauses, and turns.

A ball of fire is sitting in the air, floating there like it’s being held, her own personal willow wisp. That’s a sign, that’s more than a sign, that’s a fucking airhorn in her ear. “Mama?” she gasps, hands shaking, as the fire extinguishes itself, and then her heart does flips, as a thin line of flame crudely spells out something on the pavement in front of her.

NO

“W-what? Then who..?” she stomps it out, quickly, as another burning word springs to existence next to her boot.

FRIEND

She stomps that one out, too, and looks around, desperately. “A friend? Do you know my mom? Is she there? Who are you?” But there’s nothing more written. Maybe the spirit got tired. Maybe it had to leave.
Maybe she’s crazy.
She lifts her boot, smells the heat of the rubber sole in the air, sees the black ashen marks left on the pavement by the words, and even if she is crazy, that’s enough evidence that she doesn’t mind diving head first into a delusion. She races upstairs, and rush orders an ouija board.

The board arrives the next day, and she runs home, after school, and doesn’t acknowledge Delia more than to simply grab her awaited package from those purple manicured hands, and she locks herself in that strange other bedroom, with the black ceiling and pinstripe walls.
She lights candles, gets comfortable on the bed, and places her fingers on the planchette. Lydia takes a deep breath, steadies herself. It’s showtime.
“Is someone there?”
She hasn’t felt the cold at her side since the fire words, but she feels it now, like it’s settling on the bed next to her.
The planchette moves.
YES
“Are you the flame thing, from before?”
YES
“And you’re a friend?”
“B-E-S-T-F-R-E-I-N-D”

This is amazing. This is unreal, this is… incorrect.
“You spelled “friend” wrong,” she notes.

“F-U-C-K-I-N-E-X-C-U-S-E-M-E”

She stares at that, and then feels something she hasn’t felt in over half a year, bubbling up from inside of her. She laughs. It’s not the laugh she used to be capable of, it’s rusty, out of practice, but it feels good, all the same.
She has to wipe at her eyes, as tears prick the corners, not because it’s that funny, but because her body’s reaction to her own laughter is a sad confusion, and she takes a moment to calm herself.
“Okay, friend,” she says softly. “What do you want?”
The planchet flies across the board, only landing on two letters
“B-J”
“Oh, wait, if you’re gross, this conversation is done,” she says, flatly, and then she’s jerked around, her body having to follow the insane movement of the plastic piece, as the spirit defends itself.

“I-T-S-M-Y-N-A-M-E-U-P-E-R-V”
“BJ? That’s your name? And you’re a ghost?”
The answer takes longer, like the spirit is thinking, before it replies.
“D-E-M-O-N-B-U-T-F-R-I-E-N-D-L-Y”

She also takes her time, considering that. If this is the thing that has been following her around, then she’s felt it for a while, and it’s never felt threatening, or made her uneasy. So, maybe she has a demon latching onto her, sucking at her soul, or whatever. She honestly can’t see how things could get worse than they already are, even with a paranormal parasite at her side.

“Okay. So you’re a friendly demon named BJ. Got it. Do you know my mom?”
“E-M-I-L-Y”

“You do!” She all but screams, and then babbles to the air. “Is she there? Can she talk too? Are you hogging the line? Let her have a turn, please, I need to talk with her-”
“T-I-R-E-D”
“No, please, come on, we just got started,” she begs, feeling the cold spot in front of her fading. “Don’t go, I have so many questions, I..” She tries not to sound like a baby, as she says, “I don’t want to be alone, please. BJ, don’t leave me by myself.”
“N-O-T-A-L-O-N-E,” and then, lastly “W-I-L-L-B-B-A-C-K”

And then the candles around her snuff themselves out. Even though the room is empty, for the first time in months, she doesn’t feel like she’s sitting there alone.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

BJ can never talk for long, but she feels him by her side all the time. She assumes the demon is a “him”, and now that she’s thinking about it, she probably ought to ask, the next time he’s feeling strong enough to use the Ouija board. Now when she talks to the air, she knows she’s not just talking to herself. It’s not Dead Mom, but it’s something, her own private delusion that helps her get through the days. She doesn’t share him with dad, or Delia, just in case they decide that talking to invisible demons is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and try to ship her off to a small padded cell.
“Do you get bored, following me to school, all day?” she asks the air, as she sits by herself in the cafeteria, at a table in the corner.
She feels cold air on her left hand, their worked out symbol for “no.” Right is yes, and anything more complex than a yes or no answer has to wait for their spirit board sessions.
“Maybe you’re actually learning something. Demons probably don’t have high school,” she thinks, out loud, and then feels the answer for “yes.”
“Wait, you went to high school?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my god, I want to go to demon school so bad.”

After school, at home, she settles herself into the spare room, and tries to get more out of her new friend. This is her new nightly ritual, and it’s mostly replaced her previous one. Her shard of glass has not been used in a week, or so.

There are things that when she asks about, he seems unwilling or incapable of answering, but he’s always willing to talk about Emily. Finally, finally, someone will talk about Emily.

“How did you know my mom?”
“L-O-V-E-D-H-E-R”

That throws her for a loop. She frowns, considering that. “Did you and her.. I mean.. She was faithful to my dad.. Right?”
“L-O-V-E-D-L-I-K-E-A-M-O-M”

That’s a relief, though to be honest, it makes sense that somehow, someway, her mother had made friends with a demon, and had shown it love. If anyone could do something insane like that, it would be Emily.

“Why can’t I talk to her?”
“G-O-N-E”
“But you’re gone, too, right? I mean, you’re not alive, but I can talk to you. Why?”
“D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T”
His answers are so vague, sometimes, it leaves her frustrated and wanting to pull at her hair.
“BJ, why are you following me around?”
“L-O-N-E-L-Y”

“Me, too,” she tells the demon she can’t see. “I get it. I’m lonely, too. I wish we could actually talk.”
“S-U-M-M-O-N-M-E-”

Her stomach twists. She’s seen horror movies, hell, horror was practically required viewing, growing up. Sure, he’s nice to talk to, and he makes her laugh, helps her feel less alone, but a demon is a demon, right? She can’t trust her new friend not to hurt her, even though he feels harmless. Despite what people around here seem to think, she’s not a stupid little girl.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. You are a demon, after all.”
“S-M-A-R-T,” he spells out, and then, to comfort her, “W-O-N-T-H-U-R-T-U-L-Y-D-S”
“I’m sorry,” she says, feeling him weaken again, the air around her growing warmer as he tires. “I think we should stay like this. At least this way, I don’t have to worry about anything happening.”

“N-O-T-M-A-D-J-U-S-T-D-I-S-S-A-P-O-I-N-T-E-D”
She laughs lightly, again, as the candles snuff, his signal to her that he’s too exhausted to continue.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Talking with her like this is barely a step above being completely ignored. Moving the planchette around takes energy, makes him tired. He can hardly get up the energy to move it, after a few questions, and he knows it leaves his sister frustrated, but not nearly as frustrated as he is, at himself.
Her refusal to summon him is both practical and aggravating. On one hand, he’s proud that she’s too smart to let some random dipshit demon take her for a ride, but on the other, he needs her to say his name, so that she can see him, remember him, be his family, again. And on a third hand, which he sprouts to pat his own back, it’s just another rejection from a human, but this hurts worse, because it’s from his little sister. Lyds is supposed to be his best friend. She’s not supposed to be suspicious, or scared of him. It leaves him wallowing in self pity, the rest of the day, purple from the tips of his wild hair, all the way down his body, every follicle betraying his vulnerable emotional state.
He floats downstairs, to give Lydia some peace, and himself a break from this overwhelming sadness, and he finds Delia and his dad, in the kitchen, talking in low voices. They’re sitting at the kitchen table, the lights dim. It feels… intimate.
“Charles,” Delia’s voice is breathy in a way that he immediately dislikes. “You’re going through so much. If there’s anything I can do to lift your spirits, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

So the peppy life coach has a thing for salt and pepper widowers, huh? Fucking barf.

The thing that makes his blood boil is how receptive his father seems to be.
“You’ve done so much, already,” he tells her. “Just having another adult here to talk to, it… it’s helping.”
He gives her hand a gentle squeeze, and BJ sees red.
“Mom is hardly even COLD,” he snarls, climbing onto the table to get in his father’s face, and it would be terrifying, if he could be fucking seen. But he’s just a cold spot in the kitchen, and his presence makes the two living people draw closer together, for warmth, the exact thing he doesn’t want to see happen.

“This old house can be so drafty,” Charles says, staring his son in the face, and not seeing him.
Betelgeuse feels it again. That rubber band like snap, like something in his brain is tensing, coiling, like he’s on the cusp of a breakdown, worse than any he’s had before.

“Juno?” He dismounts the table and calls out to nothing, the way Lydia calls to their real mother. “Juno, I'm sorry, I.. Please, please, you made your point,” he babbles, getting no reaction from the empty air, as he pulls and tugs at the tufts of his hair, shifting red and purple, in turn. “Please, I’ll do anything, I can’t- Thi- Juno, please!”

There’s no reaction. If she can hear him, she doesn’t give him any indication.

“We should get dinner,” Delia says, from behind him. This adulterous scene is still playing out, in their kitchen, where they ate with Emily, not even eight months ago. “Just the two of us, some time. To talk, more.”
“I think I’d like that, Delia,” Charles smiles, and they share a quiet moment, completely unaware that he’s even there, and that they’re hurting him, and maybe they wouldn’t care, even if he wasn’t invisible.

He spends the rest of the night on his bed, purple and shaking, getting as close to crying as he’s able, and as always, finding no relief.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

He’s got to get out of this house, he decides, sitting in his chair at breakfast the next morning. Being here is too painful, leaves him feeling too raw, and he’s no closer to any kind of progress. Rather, it feels like things are getting worse. He’s not sure he can handle much more of being invisible, especially around the people who are supposed to be his family. The pain of it makes his thinking twisted, confused.
Lydia is picking at her food. Delia is babbling about, he can’t even keep up, something about crystals. Emily collected rocks, because they were pretty, and kind of witchy and mysterious, but Delia seems to actually believe sediment has an inherent power to it. Neither sibling can muster the energy to care.
Lydia gives him the side eye, trying to have a moment of solidarity with her new scary demon friend, but she’s looking too far to the left of him. Still. It’s nearly a nice moment. It’s almost like he’s sitting there, having breakfast with his sister, like he’s done a million times before. “Can you believe the way she just talks?” she mutters, to him, and he squeezes her hand, “No.”
“She’s tryin’ to get into dad’s bed,” he tells her, not that she hears him. The bed Charles doesn’t sleep in. The bed Emily died in. He follows Lydia, robotically, as she stands, scrapes most of her breakfast into the trash, and leaves the kitchen without a word, ignoring Delia’s calls to her.

He follows his sister along, floating over her shoulder, as she walks herself to the bus stop.
She puts earbuds in, the kind with a microphone, so she doesn’t look like a total lunatic, wandering around, talking to herself. He can appreciate the effort.
“Are you ancient?” she asks, settling down at the bench, and he squeezes her hand. “No.”
“My age?” she perks up, a little, at the idea that they could be two lonely teens, keeping each other from the crushing misery of being completely ignored. “No,” he tells her, and she frowns.
“Are you old? Like, dad age, old?”
“No.”
“So you’re older than me, and younger than dad. Twenty something? Like Adam?”

His undead heart twists. He’s been so busy, so obsessed with his family, that the idea of his partners had never entered his mind. Maybe, maybe he’d have better luck with them! Maybe he just needs to haunt them a little, get them to understand he’s there, and maybe they can swoop in, play hero, and save him.

“BJ? You still there?” Lydia asks, sounding worried.
He squeezes her hand, yes, twice, to both questions.
“Yes, you’re here. Yes, you’re Adam’s age.” Lydia seems to be considering that, for a moment.
“I bet you’d really scare Adam and Barbara. They’re nice, but such wimps when it comes to horror. Like we went to this escape room once, the four of us-” and then her expression shifts, and she looks confused.
“Actually… How do I know Adam? He and Barbara, they’re…” she pushes her short black hair out of her face, and huffs, thinking. “They’re family friends. Dead Mom knew them, I think. But she didn’t go to the escape room with us, that day. There was… someone.. else.”

He sees her wince, and rub her temples.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Lyds,” Betelgeuse worries, because she might think too hard, and the curse might just outright pop her brain, like a cockroach under someone’s heel.
“I don’t know,” she says, finally, sounding more tired than she has in weeks. “I know them, somehow. I guess.”

He follows her onto the bus, and around school, to all her classes. He doesn’t miss how her high school career is a sad echo of his own. She’s lonely, and weird. No one talks to her. She doesn’t talk to anyone. She eats lunch alone, the way he did, at sixteen.
The tree he’d accidentally killed, years ago, has been removed by now, and that patch of dirt where it had been is now another slab of concrete, over which they’ve placed more lunch tables, and his sister sits alone at one, until the bell rings.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Their Ouija session that night makes him nervous, because he realizes he’s going to have to explain to her that he’s leaving. She’s terrified of being alone, and he’s leaving her. Some brother he is.

“Do you have a family?” Lydia asks him, the candles around his room the only thing illuminating her pale features. They only use the spirit board in his room. He thinks maybe it’s subconscious on Lydia’s behalf. It’s like part of her knows she’s talking to her big brother, and where did they talk the most, but here, comfortable on his bed, watching movies, painting each other’s nails, just spending those soft, normal moments as siblings together.
“YES,” he directs the planchette.

“Are they nice?”
“T-H-E-B-E-S-T”

“But you’re still lonely?”
“T-H-E-Y-C-A-N-T-S-E-E-M-E”

“No one sees me, either,” she tells him, her voice soft.
“I-S-E-E-U-L-Y-D-S”

“I see you too, BJ,” she says, and then smiles. “In a sense.”

“B-E-T-T-E-R-T-H-A-N-N-O-T-H-I-N-G”

“Barely,” she rubs her eyes. He can’t help but agree, with that.

“Could my mother see you?”
“YES.” No one made them feel seen, the way their mother did.

“I can’t believe she never told me about you. Way to keep the coolest secret ever all to yourself, Dead Mom.”
He struggles to think of anything he can add that might slip past that mental barrier. Something to clue her in, to make her understand.

“W-E-M-E-T-B-E-F-O-R-E”

“We have?” Lydia’s face scrunches up in thought. She shakes her head, after a moment. “No way. I’d remember meeting someone weird like you, BJ.” She can’t put two and two together, can’t connect her own memory gaps with what he’s told her. He’s running out of patience, and energy.

And now he has to rip the band aid off.
“I-G-O-T-T-A-G-O”

“Now? This really wears you out, huh?” she frowns, and he pushes it to “No.”
“L-E-A-V-I-N-F-O-R-A-B-I-T”

“Wait, what? Why? I don’t want you to go,” Lydia’s eyes dart around the room, and then actually settle on him. He’s floating upside down in front of her, one finger on the planchette, staring at her, the soles of his boots nearly touching the ceiling.
“Don’t go, BJ, please?” She’s never looked so small, before, so vulnerable, and with the way she’s staring in his eyes, it’s almost like she can actually see him. She can’t, of course, which makes it hurt all the more.
“B-E-B-A-C-K-S-O-O-N,” he promises, but it’s not enough. “Everyone goes away,” she says, her voice shaking, and she’s the one who snuffs the candles, this time, on her way out, and she leaves him there in the dark.

Chapter Text

The house in Winter River is a dream come true. Barbara loves her city, of course, loves the vibrant personality of New York, and especially loves the food, but loving it, and wanting to be there forever, are two very different things. Winter River is quiet. Sleepy. Quaint. Every morning, she wakes up next to her husband, and she and Adam brew coffee together, and they start their day. Maitland Hardware is the county’s only hardware shop, so business is not bad, not at all, but to supplement their income, she works from home, or the library, or the coffee shop, if she feels like sitting and listening to small down chatter, and uses her laptop to do some accounting for the company she left, back in New York.
She and Adam always eat lunch together, her bringing him something, either from home or one of the few places around town, and everyone who meets the Maitlands tells them they’re such a lovely couple, so kind, so cheerful, such a wonderful addition to the community.

But something’s missing.

Sometimes, late at night, as she and Adam lay down to sleep, Barbara will get a feeling, one that makes her afraid. It’s not the fear that someone has come into the house, it’s the fear that someone has left it, only she can’t remember who. On those nights, after Adam has drifted off to dreamland, she rises, and goes from room to room, searching, trying to understand what exactly her brain is telling her is missing. She passes by unfinished rooms, a million unchecked boxes on their list of restoration for their beautiful historic home, and each time, her mind only settles and calms once she reaches the basement. There’s a striped hoodie down there, black and white and garish, one she and Adam had found in the house, after their return from Emily’s funeral.

They had put it down here, unsure of who it belonged to, but not wanting to throw it out. The garment is well loved, with a multitude of stains that don’t wash out, and sloppy stitches in black embroidery thread on either arm, like the person doing the mending was a very small child, or otherwise inexperienced with a needle and thread. She gathers it up in her arms, inhales the smell of it, which is like freshly turned earth and creeping moss, and tries to recall who it could belong to, but she’s never able to pull a name, or even a face, from any corner of her mind, and each time, she has to give up, and retreat back upstairs, back to bed, and she’s more exhausted the next morning than makes sense.

When she tries to express this to Adam, he can only frown, and cock his head. “It’s just nerves, from the move. The house is still new to you,” her husband assures her. “There’s no one missing, Barb. You’re alright. We’re together,” and he says it so softly, so sincerely, she tries to force herself to forget it.
“What you’re missing is a baby,” their elderly neighbor tells her, over coffee and pie. Their house on the hill is lacking in neighbors, and Mrs. Cheatham doesn’t exactly live close, but the elderly woman had been the first person to welcome them into the community, and she’s clearly lonely, so Barbara makes time to talk to her, to invite her in, and to share the sweets she’s always bringing, the ones that Mrs. Cheatham is always happy to tell her are “from the store.”

“Nothing will fix your restlessness like filling this house full of children,” the old woman says, knowingly, and Barbara can only smile. “I’m not sure we’re ready for that. There’s still so much to do, around here. We don’t want to go jumping into things.”
“You won’t be young forever, sweet thing!”

Maybe not, but isn’t twenty three young to start a family? They’ve got time, don’t they? Why do they need to rush into parenthood, like it’s a race? Maybe they’ll be ready next year, and maybe they’ll be ready in ten years, but either way, they want to be certain things are in order before they start trying to bring a bundle into the world.
She lays awake, next to Adam, that night. He’s reading quietly, the antique, refurbished tiffany lamps on either of their bedside tables dimmed, and she studies the ceiling above them. Their bedroom had been the first thing the three of them-

She blinks.

Their bedroom had been the first thing the two of them had worked to restore, when they’d first bought the house, a year and seven or so months ago. It had been slow going, because they were interrupted often, usually by each other, and she remembers fondly the kisses, the playful pinches, the teasing, all of them so in love, so excited to have a place for the three of them-

She squints up at the ceiling, studying the wood grain, her train of thought running out of tracks, for a moment, before she’s able to resume it.

So excited to have a place for the two of them. Maybe three, eventually. That must be what she’d meant. Maybe a baby is what’s missing, maybe this is normal, for a person who wants to be a mother, to think about things in threes, to feel like there’s a third person they’re forgetting, because that person doesn’t exist yet. That must be it.
But should she be feeling this sad?

Her phone buzzes, as does Adam’s, and they both reach for their devices, checking them at the same time, to see the message from Lydia, which the teenager had sent to their group chat.
“I miss you,” it reads, simply, and then as they watch, a second one loads. “Can I come visit, please? It’s lonely here.”

Her heart aches, as she sits up, running a hand through her long blonde hair. She adores Lydia like a little sister, and she feels a stab of guilt, at how absent they’ve been from the teen’s life, lately. She’s going through so much. Emily’s recovery had been a miracle, and her death a cruel joke, like the universe had decided the only thing funnier than making a child watch her mother wither to nothing could be giving that mother back, in full health, before yanking her away, with a random unpreventable blood clot to the brain.

“Poor Lydia,” Adam says, softly, and she looks back at him. He’s put his book down, to focus on the texts, and he adjusts his glasses, before looking back up at her.
“We should have her come stay. Maybe Charles, too. The guest room is almost finished, and she might like sleeping in the living room. That couch is comfortable.”
They’ve got the space for multiple guest rooms, but only one is finished enough to actually accommodate someone staying. There’s also a space set aside for what will eventually be a nursery, a bright, sunny room that they’d very enthusiastically painted first, the actual week the house had become officially theirs. It’s where they’d found that strange jacket that now lives down in the basement.

She texts the teen back.
“We love you. We miss you. You’re always welcome to come stay with us. Let’s talk details tomorrow.”

She puts out her light, and settles down next to Adam, curled into his side, and shivers, involuntarily, because the room feels colder than it ever has before.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

The house in Winter River does nothing but hurt him, reminding him that everyone he’s ever loved has moved on without him.
Emily, in the most spiritual sense of the word, but Lydia and Charles, too, and even Barbara and Adam. He studies the picture of their wedding in the foyer. Barbara is in the perfect long white dress, Adam so handsome in his suit, both of them smiling at the camera, not a care in the world, not missing anything. Not missing him.

It’s not their fault, he tells himself, over and over, as he drifts through the house that was supposed to be their home. If they knew he was missing, they would go looking for him. They wouldn’t have settled into disgusting domestic bliss without him. They wouldn’t have been married without him. He floats up the stairs, and pauses, terrified, by the room they’d designated as the nursery, but when he peaks in, it’s still unfurnished, no crib, no toys. At least he hasn’t missed that, which he finds the barest measure of comfort in.

He drifts into the bedroom, and watches his partners sleep, and he curls up, between them, no doubt a chilly irritation, but for a while, he’s able to pretend things haven’t gone to shit.

When morning comes, the two of them rise early, and he hardly has a chance to even pull some ghostly bullshit before they’re out of the house. He follows Adam to the hardware store. His boyfriend dons a plain, tan apron, with deep pockets, and his name embroidered across the front. BJ sits behind his love, on the back counter, as Adam tends to the shop. He rings people up, puts items out for display, and takes inventory. It’s very involved. Clearly, Adam knows what he’s doing, knows what to recommend to people, knows how to help them with their projects. Everyone who gets to interact with Adam seems to love him. Obviously. Adam’s practically a god damn boy scout.

He grows bored of watching from the counter, and comes up behind Adam, wraps his arms around his boyfriend from behind. He feels Adam shiver. “Come on, Sexy,” he presses a kiss at the base of Adam’s neck, which causes the skin there to raise into goosebumps at the sudden chill, and Adam responds by sticking his hand through Betelgeuse’s head, to rub at the skin that’s been suddenly irritated.
BJ breaks away from him, hating the feeling of humans going through him, and spies something on a far wall, something he hadn’t noticed, before. There’s an apron hung up, a green one, with white flowers on it, and when he draws closer, he can see Barbara’s name embroidered across it. On the hook next to that, is a black and white striped apron, with extra long strings, to be tied around a person with a bigger midsection. The letters BJ are hand stitched there, in white thread, and he feels his heart clench. A gift he’d never gotten to receive, clearly. An apron to be worn for all the assumed times that he’d be in here, helping around the shop. He reaches for it, forgetting, for a moment, and then his hand slips through it, and he flinches.

Adam doesn’t even seem to be aware of it, hanging there. He’s probably seen it, looked past it, a million times, like Lydia with his bedroom door. Maybe focusing on it makes him dizzy, or confused, or maybe it’s been there so long in Adam’s mind, that he doesn’t even notice it, wouldn’t even recognize it as being out of place. That’s BJ’s apron. Who is BJ? No clue, but here his apron is.

He looks back at Adam, who is whittling, behind the counter, a soft smile on his face as he concentrates on his latest little project.
“Everything hurts, Adam,” he says, like he expects his boyfriend to put down his tools, and turn to him, and try to make it better. “Let me help,” Adam would say, all sweet, syrupy hazel eyes, soft touches, smelling of fresh wood and aftershave, and BJ would melt into his arms, and Adam would find a way to puzzle through it, with him, exasperated, but patient. Adam would, if Adam could. But Adam doesn’t. He stays staring at his carving, and only looks up when another living person enters.

BJ feels the urge to throw himself from the top of the Empire State Building.

He leaves the store, no doubt purple, but not caring to try and check. He’s got no reflection now, obviously, doesn’t even know how he looks. Maybe it’s a small blessing that they can’t see him. With the gaps in their memory, if they got a look at him now, their first reaction would probably be to scream. He doesn’t think he could handle that.

He finds Barbara at the coffee shop, hardly three stores over, working on her laptop, and listening to the soft chatter around her passively. He sits at the chair across from her, and reaches a hand out, places it over one of her’s. Her typing slows, as she pauses, feeling the sudden cold air.
“Babs, please,” he’s not sure he’s ever sounded worse. “Angel, I need you. You gotta come through for me, you gotta try,” he begs, and Barbara responds by pulling her hand away from the cold spot on the table, and rubbing it with her other hand.
“Emily?” She mouths, silently, seemingly more willing to assign a reason to this sudden unexplained chill, but then an older woman brings her a coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and that moment is broken, done with. She eats, and refocuses on her work.

If Barbara could, he knows she’d wrap her arms around him, pull him into a hug and hold him there, playing with his hair, as he laid against her, like they’ve done too many times to count. She’d be whispering into his ear, sweet little promises, of all the things they’re all going to do together, all the experiences, all the traveling, plans for the life they’re all going to share.
“Cheer up, Bedbug,” Barbara might say, looking at him with those big, clear blue eyes, and he’d feel all his stupid, petty problems melt away.

Barbara closes her laptop.

He glances at the clock, confused to find hours have passed. He’d really gotten lost, there, had let himself drift away into a fantasy, and it’s jarring to come back to reality, after something like that. He wishes, pathetically, that his daydream could have lasted longer.
Barbara’s breakfast has been eaten, and she’s stretching, and packing up to go. It’s lunchtime, and he follows her back to the house, their dream house, where she meets Adam at the front door. They exchange a sweet kiss, like they’re delighted to see each other, despite only having been out of each other’s sight for a matter of hours, and only being a few doors down that entire time. He watches, passive, as they live the life they meant to live together, without him.

They go into the kitchen, the floorboards in the living room creaking slightly underfoot, and he pauses there, in the middle of the living room, vaguely smelling death, or the possibility of it.
“I was texting Lydia,” he hears Barbara say. “She wants to come stay as soon as possible. Maybe we could have her for a weekend?”

“Maybe the weekend could become a long one,” Adam smiles. “She needs it, I think. It must be exhausting, being in that house, where Emily..”
He trails off, not wanting to finish the thought. Barbara nods. “I don’t think it’s good for her. Emily has... Had.” She corrects, and then moves past it. “She had such dreary tastes. The whole house is dark. I can’t imagine it’s helping Lydia's mental health. She needs fresh air, and sunshine.”
“Agreed. Alright, I can talk to Charles, then, see what he thinks about her staying with us.”
“Our first guest, in this big house,” Barbara seems thrilled. “And it’s going to be our little in-law. How fun!”
There’s a pause, as both of them stop, and think over what Barbara has just said.
“In law?” Adam looks to her, and Barbara blinks, and looks back at him.
“That’s what she is, isn’t she?” Her big eyes are questioning.

“Yes,” BJ floats to them, the strange smell of death forgotten, for a moment. “Think it through. Come on, come on! I know you can do this!”

“She’s not my relative,” Barbara says.
“Or mine,” Adam looks puzzled.

“YES! Yes, come on, Sexy an’ Babs, th’ dream team!” BJ cheers, floating around them, swirling cold air around the kitchens.
Barbara rubs at her temples. “How the heck do we know a highschooler? Is she related to someone we went to school with?”
“She’s got an older.. Brother, doesn’t she?” Adam asks, and then winces, and presses a fist to his forehead, looking pained.
“That sounds… right,” Barbara manages, and he feels like she’s right on the edge of remembering, and they’re about to come through for him, they’re going to save him-
“Please, please, PLEASE-!!”

The phone rings.

“I’ll get it!” Barbara says, and she turns, and grabs the wall phone off the dock, and Betelgeuse watches both of them slip back into ignorance, sees the exact moment they both go falling back down the mental wall they’d been scaling.

“No fair,” he wails, distraught. “No faaaaaair!”

Adam busies himself with whipping them up some lunch, as Barbara chats on the phone.
“Hi, Charles! I was just about to call you!” she says, brightly. “We’ve been texting Lydia. Well.. Oh. We can make room.. Um, the guest room is finished, but I’m not sure where a third person would even sleep. So, a life coach, is that sort of like a therapist?”

Betelgeuse follows Adam into the living room, and his boyfriend steps over those creaking floorboards again. He straightens an already perfectly straight painting on the wall, as he waits for Barbara to finish. A minute later, she pokes her head out of the kitchen. “So, how do you feel about Lydia, Charles, and a third person staying?” she asks, in a hushed tone. The phone must still be off the hook, Charles waiting on the line.
“Oh, a stranger,” Adam seems hesitant.
“Don’t you deal with strangers at your store all th’ time?” BJ asks, rubbing at his wild hair.
Barbara echoes that sentiment. “You’re getting better at dealing with strangers, thanks to work. It will only be for the weekend, anyway. Lydia needs this.”
“... For Lydia,” Adam relents, and Barbara claps her hands. “Well done, Adam! For Lydia!”
She ducks back into the kitchen, as Adam sighs, and rubs at his neck again, in the spot where BJ had kissed it, before.
Barbara fully emerges, once the call is finished, the phone replaced in the cradle. “Lydia sounded really excited.”
“You talked to her?”
“For a moment. But I could hear her in the background. I guess Charles has gotten someone to.. Help her out. A lady named Delia. She’s coming along, too.”
“Full house,” Adam comments, and then smiles. “So. Lunch?”

He’s a cold spot in their house the rest of the week, following them the way he’d followed his dad and Lydia. Adam responds to his cold touches with confusion, but Barbara seems to be cluing in, a little slower than he’d like, but by the end of the week, she’s talking to Adam about it. They’re sitting at the kitchen table, for dinner.
“I just have this persistent chill, lately,” she says, rubbing her arms. He’s not even touching her right now, but maybe being haunted leaves her feeling cold, even when he’s not actively bothering her.
“I’ve been feeling that way, too,” Adam confesses. “I felt in at the hardware store, and you know, I thought for a moment if felt..” He pauses, looks a bit bashful, before continuing. “Intimate.”
“You think a ghost was flirting with you?” Barbara smiles. Adam’s face goes BJ’s favorite shade of red. “I don’t know! It just felt like… like arms, but not that solid, wrapped around me. And then a chill at the back of my neck. Like a little kiss. A peck.”
“Do I need to fight off a ghost from hitting on my husband?” Barbara laughs, and BJ, who has been sitting in the air next to her, drops to his feet, and wraps his arms around Barbara, and kisses at her neck, too, shoving his stumble against her skin, tickling her with it in the way that always makes her squirm. “Sorry I left you out, Babs,” he says, softly, and she tenses.
“I’m feeling it,” she manages, sounding shocked, looking to Adam, who glances up from his dinner. “Feeling…?”
“It feels almost like someone is touching me. I just felt it at my neck, too,” Barbara tells him, and Adam stands, comes up behind her, puts his arms around her, which has the side effect of his arms going through BJ’s. The demon reels back, hating that strange sensation of his intangible body being met with real solid living breathing mass.
“Back off, Mister Ghost,” Adam says, chest puffed, and Barbara giggles. “I had half hoped it was Emily,” she tells her husband. “But I think it’s just stress, from the move.”
“Or maybe the house came with a spirit who has wandering hands,” Adam says, and plants a kiss to the top of her head.
“Hush, you. No ghost stories. Especially not when Lydia’s around. More morbidity is the last thing she needs.”

He’s hit a brick wall, again. He’s thought about summoning fire, showing them how real the “ghost” in their house is, but he can’t risk scaring them. What if they panic, and try to get someone in here to exorcise him? He’s not trying to scare them, just show them that he’s here. Well.. it sounds like Lydia is coming to stay. Maybe he’ll have better luck latching back onto her. If she’s not too angry at him for literally ghosting her, and leaving to try his hand at being seen somewhere else.
He doesn’t want to think about what she’s gotten up to, without her seance buddy to keep her occupied. More cuts, probably. Neither adult in that house is keeping a close enough eye on her. Even the one being paid to do so.

“By the way, I had coffee with Mrs. Cheatham, today,” Barbara starts, rubbing at Adam’s arms, which are still around her shoulders. Adam is pressing kisses into her hair, and pauses to reply. “The busy body. Goody.”
“She’s not a busy body,” Barbara says. “She’s lonely.”
“She’s both.”
Barbara apparently doesn’t disagree enough to argue. “She keeps saying we ought to get a move on, get to filling this house up with kids.”
“Well, she doesn’t know this place is still a construction zone, apparently,” Adam rolls his eyes. “She’s awfully invested in what we’re doing. Dirty old bird.”
“I think she’s just excited at the idea of playing with a baby, Adam,” Barbara laughs. “I doubt her interests are that perverse.”
“So, what are you thinking?”

BJ watches Barbara pause. “I know I’ve said it before, but it does feel like someone.. Like something is missing,” she says, staring right through him. It’s a unique kind of pain, to be talked about and looked at, while the person you love doesn’t even know you’re there. “Like there’s a third person, meant to be here. Maybe a baby is what’s missing. But then I think about adding an infant to the mix, and.. I feel my heart seize up,” she admits.
BJ blinks. It’s the first time he’s heard Barbara express anything close to that. Their plans together have always included children, except for his own wildest fantasies, which were mostly focused on the two of them, somehow becoming demons like him, so they could be together literally forever. That was more a personal daydream, though. Or sometimes, something for the spank bank, depending on his mood.
“There’s no need to rush into things,” Adam says, soothingly, letting his wife go, only to gently pull her to stand, and he wraps her up in his arms, again, a proper hug. BJ wishes he was the one Adam was holding. “We’ve got lots of time to start on a family. Fixing the house up comes first. Let the noisy neighbors chat. We set our own pace, regardless of what folks say.”
“Are people saying things to you?” Barbara asks. Adam gives a little nod. “I was working on restoring that antique crib, the one the O’Briens were wanting, in the shop today, and I got asked nearly a dozen times if we were expecting. “Why are you polishing a crib, when you don’t have a kid!” Apparently little towns are full of bored people looking to gossip. Who could have known?”

“They should put that on th’ brochure,” BJ sighs, sitting cross legged atop the dining table.
“Locals will be unnaturally invested in how deeply you rawdog your wife.”

“So how do we know when we’re ready?” Barbara frets.
“When we both reach it at the same time, I think we’ll know,” Adam says, patting her hair. The two of them share a kiss, and between that, and a few more topics he can’t be bothered to listen to, his partners shuffle through the living room, the floorboards creaking under them as they go.
They make it to the stairs, and head to bed.
BJ sits in the living room, staring at nothing, and considers, very hard, what exactly his next move is going to be.

His family is arriving that day, and Adam and Barbara are all in a tizzy, cleaning, rearranging, reorganizing, cleaning some more when the rearranging reveals a speck of dust that had been missed the first time. He floats after them, watches them wear themselves out, just for company. It’s endearing, another reminder of why he loves them. They flop on the couch, to rest, and he flops with them, and curls up at Adam’s side, playing pretend, for another long moment.
Barbara, however, sees something out of place, something that has to be arranged, adjusted, and she jumps from her spot on the couch, and strides over to the staircase balustrades, feather duster in hand. “Oh, my gosh, this place is such a mess,” she laments, dusting off the wood, as Adam stands, barely having caught his breath. “It’s a lot of work having company come, and they’re not even here yet.”

The two of them pause, right on that spot in the floor where it creaks and groans the loudest, and BJ’s pupils dilate, because the smell of death that had been very mild before is now practically filling the room. He floats up from the couch, and watches as Adam gives that spot another intentional bit of weight. “Do you hear that, Barbara? Wow, these old floors need to be replaced. Weren’t we just saying this place is a construction zone? We can’t start a family in a house with creaky floorboards!” he sings, and Barbara smiles, joining in, some tune the both of them know becoming a duet. “You are absolutely right, let’s add it to the list!”

Adam puts on music from the radio, and they go twirling and dancing around the living room, cleaning momentarily forgotten, as they enjoy each other, laughing and kissing and squeezing each other close-
Adam dips her, right on that creaking, groaning spot, and Barbara stares up at her husband, so in love, not missing their boyfriend in the least, and BJ feels his heart breaking again, the way it’s been breaking every day since he got here, when the moment stops, because they all hear a familiar voice on the radio. His voice.

It’s one of the ads he’d done, a year and some months ago at this point, apparently still playing. They hear him crooning and singing about some car sale that’s happening, and it’s almost like Adam and Barbara are reacting to his voice.

“Is that…?” She asks.
“BJ?” He finishes.
Something close to realization creeps across their faces.

And then the floor gives out.

One minute they’re standing there, and the next minute they plummet down, out of sight, and he panics, and rushes to the edge of the hole, and peers down at them.
The two of them are lying there. “Adam! Barbara!” he calls, pointlessly, and he’s about to go down, to check on them, and watch more people he loves die, maybe, when he hears the sound of something solid hitting the floor, and turns. There, sitting in the living room, is the handbook.
But no guide.
He takes a look around, doesn’t see or sense anyone else, and it takes a moment to realize what’s happening. No guide is coming, because he’s here. He’s been sent a book to give them by the guide department, and he’s apparently expected to show them the rulebook and then help them through the door.
Two things. One, that’s pretty presumptuous of the stiffs in that section of the Netherworld offices, because he’s not about to go around being helpful, and two, no way in hell is he letting them leave this house.

He raises his arm and gives a shout, and a flame flickers to life in the fireplace. He scoops up the book, studies it over for a minute, and then, with a grin more wicked than he’s ever given before, he throws it in, and watches it immolate.

Adam and Barbara being dead is not exactly ideal. Obviously. But if they’re on this side, with him, then at least he’s not alone, right? And with them being dead, maybe they’ll be able to remember him. He doesn’t recall Juno specifying, but he can hold out hope that maybe, just maybe, this will work out in his favor.
That his partners dying will work out in his favor.
He tries to use that to comfort himself, as he watches the book burn. He can smell their blood, the scent of it seeping up from the basement. They’re bleeding out. He pulls at his hair, and bites his bottom lip hard, hard enough to bleed, to force his own blood to be the only thing he smells, so that he can try and move past them dying, and focus on them joining him. It’s not the life they all wanted, but now they’ll be together. They’ll be happy, won’t they? It’s not like there’s a thing he can do to help them, anyways, he’s fucking invisible, intangable, unremembered. It’s not his fault! It’s not his fault the people around him keep dying, while he sits there, unable to do anything but think of himself. He’s a miserable excuse for a demon. Miserable excuse for a boyfriend, brother, son. He can’t help the people he loves in any way that matters.

His vision feels distorted, as he watches the book burn, and then he hears a knock at the door. It hardly registers, but then the sound of the doorbell follows it, and he sits up, and wipes the drool from the corners of his mouth, realizing who it must be. His family has come. They’re standing on the porch. He looks to the hole. No Adam, no Barbara. They’re down there, clinging to life, while he’s up here trying to convince himself their deaths are a boon. He hates himself so much, it’s hard to even think straight.
But he puts all his energy into opening the door. It just barely creaks open, the cliche of a haunted house come true.

“Okay, spooky. Adam! Babs!” Lydia calls, stepping in. “We’re here!”
“My goodness, these two do love their floral wallpaper,” Delia says.
“It is a bit like a nursing home for sad cats,” Charles agrees.
“Stop it. The place looks great,” Lydia gives them both a look.

The three living people glance around the room, looking from the lit fireplace, to the big obvious hole in the floor.
“What in the hell?” Charles starts, and Lydia rushes forward, and peers down, before either adult can stop her. “Call 911!” she turns to them, and shrieks. “Adam and Barbara are down there!”

He watches, exhausted, as his partners are loaded up on gurneys, taken to the hospital, the Deetz family following along in their car behind the ambulance.
He’s not sure it’s going to make a difference, but at least Lydia will have a cool new trauma to cut herself over. God damn. This family can’t catch a fucking break.
He only turns his attention from the empty doorway when he hears the sound of grunting, and the voices of his partners.
“Barbara, are you alright?”
Betelgeuse jumps nearly out of his stripes, and then does a not very coordinated duck, to hide behind the couch.
“Holy smokes, that was some fall!”
“I guess the floor gave out?”
“I didn't think it was that weak! Are you alright, hun?”

Why is he back here? Why is he hiding?! They can finally see him, and he’s stuck cowering behind the furniture, terrified-
Oh. He’s terrified. They’re going to see him, they’re going to recognize him and know who he is, and they’re going to realize that when they held hands with him, kissed him, went to bed with him, these past years, they’ve been lied to by a demon. He’s worked very hard to keep this part of himself hidden from them. And now they’re going to know.
Come on, B-Man. Don’t leave them alone, and scared, and confused. Come on. It’s showtime.
“Maybe nothing has to change,” he hears Adam say softly, taking Barbara’s hand.

Betelgeuse pops up from behind the couch, and gives his most charming smile, accompanied by an audible “ting” echoing from somewhere. “Hello.”
They stare at him. He winces.
“Do not be afraid. You are dead,” he starts. “I am also dead. It’s okay, we’re goin’ to be dead together. Hey, guys-”
And he takes a step towards the two of them. Barbara flails, and screams, and runs around the couch, Adam following suit, as he stammers through the interaction, trying not to focus on how much that hurts. At least he’s handling it better than he thought he might.
“Guys, guys, come on, it’s me, it’s-”
“What is happening?” Barbara practically wails.
This is so not the time for this, but he realizes at that moment he’s going to be able to touch them, and he’s missed them more than he can express.
“Babs!” he grins, and he grabs Barbara, and dips her, giving her about the deepest kiss he’s ever given either of them.
“Excuse me!” Adam barks out, and grabs her out of BJ’s arms. Barbara goes stumbling away, gagging, and wiping at her mouth, and that’s the moment BJ realizes-

“Adam? Adam, you don’t recognize me?” he asks, softly, and then channels that pain into comedy, because Adam steps closer, and BJ smiles. “You’re still so adorable,” And he grabs Adam, dips him just as deep, kisses him just as hard.
In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposes. Self control has never been his forte. Especially when it’s something he’s been denied.
Barbara goes racing at him, probably fully intent on hitting him, bless her, and he lets Adam go, without a fuss.
“M’sorry, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself!” is his only defense. “I’ve just been waitin’ for th’ two of you to see me, an’ now you’re both here, under, I will admit, less than ideal circumstances, but you’re here, an’ I’m not alone anymore,” he babbles like a lunatic. It’s the most he’s talked in literal months. Them not knowing who he is is a pebble on the track, compared to the previous giant hurdle of being completely invisible to them.
“You’re here, an’ we’re together,” he grins, and Barbara shies away from him. “No offense, mister, but you give me the creeps.”
A stranger just kissed both her and her husband, and she still prefaces her statement towards him with “no offense.” She’s so cute. God, he loves her, loves him, loves them so much.

“No worries, babes,” he tells her. “You don’t even wanna know what you’re givin’ me, right now,” and she grimaces.
Okay, okay, admittedly, he is coming off as a bit too strong, but he’s feeling giddy, happier than he’s maybe ever felt before. The relief flooding him is helping bring a laugh back to his voice, a spring back to his step, and the tinge at his scalp tells him his hair is a happier green than it’s been since this whole horrible ordeal started.

And, master manipulator and conman that he is, at least according to Juno, he’s beginning to form a plan. His curse makes interacting with the living world almost impossible, or at the very least, so exhausting he can hardly make any progress. But ghosts, well. Ghosts can practice at it, gain more skill the more they try, and interact with the living, to an extent. And here he has two ghosts.
“Who are you?” Adam askes, exasperated, and that’s too perfect, because he grins, rictus and unhinged, showing off those sharp, inhuman teeth. He catches the way both of their now pointless breaths hitch, the way they stare at his mouth, very intently. He chalks it up to fear.

“Nice to meet you. I’m th’ B to th’ double E - T - L - E to th’ J - U - I - C - E,” he spells out, and he’s pleased to find that way of saying his name seems to circumvent the curse. “But you can call me BJ. Th’ three of us are gonna make such a great team.”

Chapter Text

Of course something like this would happen, Lydia thinks, staring down at the linoleum of the hospital hallway. She’s sitting alone. Barbara and Adam are lying in hospital beds, in critical condition, and to see them, all she would have to do is stand, and enter the door to her left.
She sits there.
You’re being stupid. You’re being childish. Dead Mom didn’t even waste away in a hospital. Adam and Barbara need you. All you’re doing is sitting there, thinking about yourself, and two people are barely clinging to life, you miserable stupid freak LOSER.
She uses the heel of her right boot to dig into a cut on the back of her left leg.
She hears a noise, to her left, the door opening and closing, and her dad steps into the hallway. She can tell it’s him from the tired sigh, but her eyes never lift from the floor.
“So?” she asks, voice raw.
“They’re stable,” Charles says, not sounding nearly as hurt as he should. They’re family friends, and her dad sounds like he’s describing something of no consequence. The weather, maybe. Sports news. Not something serious, and important.
He’s already pushed this down, in the same place in his chest where his pain over Dead Mom must live. She almost envies that skill. It’s like he can choose not to feel the hurt. All she can do is carry her broken heart around with her, and it cuts her hands and arms and leaves her raw and bleeding.
Lydia picks at the hem of her dress.

“They said it was a stroke of luck we found them when we did,” Charles says, and then glances down at his phone. “I’ve got to make some calls. See about getting that floor replaced.”
“Why?”
“Because the house is in my name, Lydia. If someone goes in, takes a tumble through the floorboards, who do you think they’re suing, the comatose couple, or the New York real estate mogul?”
“Oh,” she says, and then, “Adam would want the floorboards to be original. They spent all that time, sanding and polishing and shining the floors. We-” her voice breaks in a way she hates. “We were supposed to spend next summer there.”

A plan left over from before her life had gone to hell.

She turns to look at her dad, and blinks. He’s halfway down the hall, already on his phone. She can’t guarantee he even heard her.
A nurse wheels someone in a wheelchair by her, and she winces, and turns her attention back to the floor.
“Lydia?” she hears Delia call to her, and she focuses her pain into anger. “What?” she snaps, not looking up, not risking having to see someone else pass by her in the hall, on their way to death.
“Do you want to come in, and see them?” Delia’s voice is very soft. “There’s no blood. It’s not scary.”
“I’m not afraid of blood,” she says, the cuts in her skin aching. “I just.. Don’t want to see them laying there. Still.” As death, she thinks, but doesn’t finish.

“I won’t push you,” Delia says, clutching at the amethyst necklace around her neck. “But I think you might regret not coming in, and seeing them. I can step into the hall, give you a moment, if it’s.. Me, that’s keeping you away.” Lydia looks up, sees the hurt on the older woman’s features, and then sees her try and smile past it, as their eyes meet. “I bet they’d love to hear your voice, Lydia.”

Come on, come on, she chants to herself. Don’t leave them lying there, alone. Come on. It’s showtime.
She steals herself, and stands. Delia steps aside, lets the teen move past her into the room, and Lydia takes in her two friends, laid out in blue hospital sheets, heads wrapped. Tubes are shoved everywhere, down noses and throats, hooked into arms. It’s a nightmare. She studies the heart monitors, listens to the steady sound of one heartbeat. At that, she nearly panics, until she realizes that she can only hear one noise, one blip, because the machines are sounding off together. Their hearts are beating in time with one another’s.
That’s so them.

She stands between the two beds, looking from Barbara, to Adam, back and forth, studying their faces. Even though the Maitlands are still alive, it’s still like seeing Dead Mom, laying there, in her parent’s bed, stiff and cold. It makes her wince, makes bile rise up in the back of her throat. She powers through it.
Both are twitching, mouths almost looking as though they’re struggling to form words, from within the depths of their unexpected, unwelcome slumber. Delia speaks, from outside the doorway. “The doctor says their brains are very active,” she says. “That’s good news. They’re both still in there. They just need to wake up.”
“You’re not really in the hall,” Lydia points out, and Delia makes a little “oh!” noise, and ducks back out, but Lydia can tell she hasn’t gone far. Fine, whatever. The illusion of respect over her privacy is apparently as close as she can get.
She reaches her hands out, takes Barbara’s, takes Adam’s, and holds them, for a long time, serving as a connection point for the two of them.
“Please, please,” she begs, softly. “Please wake up, you guys. Please don’t go. How many times do I have to watch people leave?” she asks. Maybe this is what life is. You love people, love them so hard it makes you dizzy, leaves you breathless, and then they’re taken away, pointlessly, and you’re just expected to pretend that you’re alright, even when every part of you feels like it’s coming apart at the seams.

Barbara’s hand twitches in her’s, and she rubs her thumb over the top of it.

They stay in a hotel in town, that night, both adults too exhausted to drive back to the city. The very next day, the floor of the Maitland house is replaced. She remembers how long finishing the first floor had taken Adam, and Barbara, and…someone. All the work that had gone into it.

Apparently money makes people move. Go figure. When the crew finally leaves, that evening, she notes that the floorboards are finished in the same stain Adam had spent a week deliberating on. It makes her smile, the smallest amount. Guess dad heard enough to take that into consideration. Or there was enough stain left over that he cut costs and just had them use what was on hand. Hm.
There’s a look in her father’s eye that she doesn’t like, as he peers around the room. “It really is a beautiful old house,” Delia smiles, and rings her triangle. “There’s very good energy in here!”
“Two people fell through the floor less than twenty four hours ago,” Lydia says, pushing past her life coach to lay out on the couch.
“This house is perfect, isn’t it?” Charles asks. Both she and Delia peer at him, Lydia from over the arm of the Maitland’s sofa. “I’ve been looking for a house like this. Old world charm, luxurious floorplan.. Hell, the only reason this place came so cheap was the location and the shape it was in. Now imagine a big, classic house like this, with a modern twist. Updated decor, amenities, but following this floorplan. Well, maybe take out the wall between the kitchen and the formal dining, make it open concept-”
“Barbara hates open concept dining kitchens,” Lydia speaks up.
“I’m not talking about literally knocking down a wall in this house, Lydia.” He pauses. “Well, maybe just for staging.”
“Dad! You can’t tear their house apart! They’re not dead!”
“I’ll put it back. This is a good opportunity. I’ve been looking for a place with space and the right kind of energy.”

Delia, unhelpfully, dings her stupid triangle again.

“Yes,” Charles decides, brightening. “I can pitch this place to Maxie, no problem. With how cheap property is around here, it would be an unbelievable turn around. It wouldn’t be too hard to relocate-”
“What?!”
“It’s about time we left that house behind, anyways. After everything we’ve been through-” In the unnatural cheer in his voice, Lydia can almost feel her father’s pain. He can’t sleep in his own bedroom. He can’t rest in the house where Emily left them.
“Dad, you can’t do that!” She cries, standing, and follows him as he paces the living room, taking pictures, making mental notes. “Dead Mom loved our house!”
He stops, turns to her, brow furrowed. “Dead mom? Lydia-”
“You never want to talk about her,” she tries, as hard as she can, to pry his shell open, even though it’s easier not to. This is too important.
“That’s because I’m trying to.. Delia, do your job, please, lifecoach her.” He turns away from her.

“Knock knock! Who’s there? Happiness!”
“No!” She growls out, putting her hand in the older woman's face, and then moves past her. Delia’s feeble attempt is shut down before it can begin.

“Dad, please, our whole life is in that house. Don’t you remember when we moved in, and it was all run down, and horrible, and we didn’t know how we were going to get through it? And mom said, “Let's clean up,” and she made us sing that song she loved?” She takes her father’s hands, and tries to pull him into the familiar moves. His face is contorting in pain. “Shake, shake, shake, Senora-”
“Lydia,” he pulls away from her. “You’ve moped around for months, dressed in black, obsessing about death.”
“I’m in mourning,” she says, and he won’t look at her. She’s mourning more than the loss of her mother, she’s mourning the person her father used to be.
“Yes, but we have to move forward! All of us. I’ve got things to do, and not much time to do it in. Maxie’s taking a trip overseas, we barely have enough time to plan and pitch this to him. We need this to be the perfect model home, with a model family inside. Lydia, I know you won’t let me down.”
“Yeah,” she crosses her arms, scowls at him, but his back to her. “It would be a shame if we all let each other down.”

Delia watches the interaction silently, and seems ready to say something, but Lydia watches her decide against it. “Be careful, wandering around,” her life coach says, instead. “I’m going to go make sure we don’t wind up with any more holes in the floor.” The redhead bites her bottom lip, considers something. “I know if anything happened to you, your dad would be crushed.”
“You don’t know anything,” Lydia says bitterly, looking down, because even what she used to know as truth feels like a lie told to a child, now. When she glances back up, Delia is gone. Good. Who needs her, anyway.

She takes a moment, breaths deep, and wipes angrily at her eyes, flaring up the stinging across her arm. “Dead Mom?” she whispers to the air, and then, even softer, “BJ?”
Her friendly demon had left, taken off somewhere, and despite his promise to return, he’s not come back yet. She’s back to being alone, feeling crazy, talking to the air, and getting no response. It’s pathetic. She’s pathetic.
She stands there, quietly, listening to the house settle. There’s almost the faintest hint of a whisper, from somewhere above her, maybe, floors and floors up, but she can’t be sure if it's real, or if her grief is playing tricks on her, again. She’s heard her mother’s voice, in her ear, in that twilight boundary between waking and consciousness, too many times to be fooled. Each time, terrifyingly, her voice sounds just a bit more different, just a bit more off. The human memory is fragile, it can change and twist things around, like a VHS being rewound, over and over, the tape becoming frayed and imperfect. Slowly, she’s going to forget her mother. She’s going to forget how Emily really sounded, how she smelled, the sound of her laugh, the feel of her fingertips, brushing through Lydia’s hair, the exact tightness of the hugs her mother would wrap her in. All these things will become distorted, and fake.

“Mama,” Lydia sobs, quietly, on the couch. “I’m alone,” she barely manages. “Dad’s lost his mind, and you’re not here, and I.. I can’t… Please, please, if you can hear me, if you’re really there, if you love me, do something. Anything,” she lifts her head, knows her makeup is smudged and running down her face, knows she’s a mess. “I just need a little help, here. I need.. I need a friend.”
There’s no response. There never is. There never will be again.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Being appropriate with them is proving impossible. All he wants to do is kiss and touch them and sink into their arms, and all they want to do is keep him no less than six feet from them, at all times. They’re up in the attic, because he told them to go, and they did, the adorable pushovers.
He’s in the middle of describing a three way sex act to them, enjoying the shade of red they’re going, but he’s taking a particular perverse pleasure in the expression on Barbara’s face, because all he’s doing is recounting one of many nights the three of them have shared. She’s practically clutching her pearls, as he describes to her the things she did. It’s funny enough that it takes his mind off the more pressing matters, at least for the moment.

“An’ that’s why they call it an eiffel tower,” he finishes, with a flourish, and his paramores both stare, for a beat, before turning to each other, looking both parts scandalized and vaguely depressed.
“I can give you two a visual demonstration,” he wiggles his eyebrows, and Barbara raises her hand, like she’s in school.
“Yes, Babs?”
“Why are we in the attic?” she asks.
“Oh, right! M’gonna teach you two how to be ghosts!” He grins, and Barbara and Adam suddenly match his enthusiasm. “Oh, that sounds fun! We just started taking hobby classes, a few towns over!” Adam smiles.
“I’m getting good at pottery!” Barbara says, brightly, and gestures to a few lumpy vases scattered around the attic. She’s clearly a new student, though he’s not about to say anything. It’s not like he’s got any skill at making things with his hands. He smiles, patiently.
“Plus, one of the teachers there is wiccan! So, kinda like this!” Adam says, gesturing to him. BJ blinks.
“I’m not wiccan,” he says, a little less patiently than he means to sound. “An’ that is nothing like this.”
“Okay, really quick, I have to ask…” Barbara trails off, looking him up and down. “What… are you? Uh, not, not religiously, but like..” That also seems to be meaner than she intends, because she raises her hands. “Sorry, I just, you said you were dead, but you um, you kind of, you know..” She flounders, awkwardly, and BJ lets her off the hook. “I’m a demon.”
Both of them take a step back.
“Oh… cool,” Adam says, softly, clutching Barbara’s hand.
“From hell?” Barbara clarifies.
“Close. Manhattan.”
Both of them crack a smile, at that.
“M’not gonna hurt th’ two of you, okay? Sure, I look-” He has no idea how he looks. It’s been months since he’s seen himself in a mirror- “probably really wild an’ cool an’ sexy, but I’m really nice. Th’ nicest demon you’re ever gonna meet, honestly.” Hopefully the only demon they ever meet.
“You kind of look like you need a shower,” Adam says.
“And a really long nap,” Barbara agrees.
“No offense.” They say together. He can’t even be mad. They’re probably right. “Kinda hard to shower when I can’t interact with th’ world of th’ livin’. That’s where you two sexy little snacks come in,” he grins, and appears suddenly between them, to throw an arm over each of their shoulders. “You guys are gonna scare th’ humans downstairs for me!”
“What? Why would we do that?” Barbara looks baffled.
“Wait, who exactly is downstairs?” Adam blinks.
“Humans! Livin’ people, wanderin’ around your house!” BJ tells them. “Lydster, Chuck, an’ th’ other one. You know them, right?” he prods.
“Well, sure, but.. How.. how do you know that?” Adam squints at him. BJ grins. “I know a lotta things,” he bluffs. “Like how you’re all missin’ Emily,” he winces through saying his mother’s name, but if the ghosts notice, they don’t comment, “- an’ sweet little Lyds, she needs th’ two of you, right now.”
His partners look from him, to each other. “Poor Lydia. I mean.. First Emily, now us.. Oh, she’s going to need a therapist so bad,” Barbara looks ready to cry. Betelgeuse does his best to cut that off. “She won’t need to feel so bad, if you two just go scare her!”
“That’s completely counterintuitive,” Adam frowns at him. “Why would we want to scare Lydia?”

“Because,” he growls out. “You want her to see you, don’t cha? You think you can make her see you by what, floating around, doin’ nothin’? Ghosts are only visible to sensitive people. An’ sensitive, she ain’t. So if you want Lyds to know you’re there, you gotta do ghost stuff. Force her to acknowledge you’re hangin’ around. Th’ kid’ll forgive you when she gets that it was th’ only way to make her see you.”
They still look unsure. He rakes his claws down his face. “Listen, listen, it’s easy, okay? You just pull a few tricks, she sees you, th’ two of you give her a big cold ghost hug, an’ then, you do your pal BJ a favor, an’ get her to say… This.”

He digs into his pocket, and hands his curse card over to Adam, who reads it aloud.

“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice?” Adam squints. “What in the heck does that mean?”
“That’s what you spelled earlier. Is that your name?” Barbara glances from the card, to him. He snaps his fingers, and points to her. “Bingo.”
“Why do you want her to say it? I mean, I just said it a bunch of times,” Adam frowns. “This seems.. I don’t know. Suspicious? Dangerous? I mean, if you’re a demon-”
“Adam,” BJ growls, and grips the collar of his boyfriend’s shirt, his volatile temper flaring in a way it’s never done, before, not at Adam, who he loves. He’s getting very tired of the humans who used to know and trust him, acting like he’s going to do something to hurt them. First Lydia, now the two of them. As if he’s ever done anything to shake their trust, as if he’s ever actually acted like a demon. After years and years of struggling to be as human as possible, they’re twisting the knife into his heart, without even fucking knowing.
“It doesn’t matter if you say it, they have to BE ALIVE!” he absolutely shouts, in Adam’s face, and Barbara grabs his hands, and dislodges him from Adam’s lapel, glaring at him. BJ takes a breath. Tries to calm down, tries not to get overwhelmed. “Sorry, sorry,” he slips back into his calm, friendly facade, despite feeling anything but. “I didn’t mean to yell. You just.. Make daddy so angry,” he grins, and the Maitlands both grimace. “Just.. please, for fuck sake, work with me, here? You realize I’m tryin’ to help th’ two of you?” he prods, and they exchange another little glance, between themselves.
“Alright,” Barbara nods, hands on her hips. Adam gives a weak smile. “Teach us, BJ.”

It’s not until hours later that BJ remembers how terrible the two of them did, every time they tried to help out at Emily’s summer haunted house. In the span of three hours he’s gone from hopeful about his chances, to exhausted, and miserable. The two of them are hardly focusing, mostly more interested in goofing off, amusing each other, and he suddenly feels a pang of guilt, for all the teachers he was a pain in the ass to, in his school years. He rolls up his striped sleeves, and gently directs Adam to spin around, looking away from Barbara, because these two are each other’s biggest distraction.
“Try it again, Babs, come on. Pretend you actually mean it, this time,” He tells her, and Barbara pouts, cutely, and then balls up her fists, and lets out her most primal scream. It’s more a haunting moan, this time, which is closer, at least, but what he needs is a good, shrill, death shriek, something to break through the boundaries between the planes, something to grab the attention of the living and make their hearts beat wildly with fear in their chests. This isn’t it. His shoulders slump, and he fists at his wild green hair. “Not quiet,” he grates. “Again, come on, try again.”
“What? That was brilliant!” Adam turns around, to look at them both. “It was so scary!”
“Really?” Barbara looks to Adam, and grins, then turns to face BJ, and she notes his expression, and her smile falls. “... That bad, huh?” she frowns, looking, at least, genuinely apologetic at her failure.
“No, no, it just.. It needs some work,” he says, and rubs his eyes. “A lot of work. Years an’ years worth of work.”
“Well, honey, what do you expect?” Barbara crosses her arms. “We’re not like you.”
He looks at her, drops his hands from his face. “I know that, Barbara.” He says, barely holding it together. He feels anger bubbling back up again, and he’s got no outlet for it. “No one is LIKE ME, BARBARA.” He seethes, turning from her, and he pulls at his hair harder. “That’s th’ fuckin’ PROBLEM, BARBARA!”
The two of them are looking at him, smiles gone. He turns back to face them.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Barbara says, eyes hard, both sorry for upsetting him, and angry over his yelling. “You don’t get to talk to us like that, just because you’re frustrated,” she says. “We’re both doing our best. I just meant, we’re not used to this-”
“I know what you meant,” BJ cuts her off. “It’s fine. It’s fine! Let’s take a breather, okay, let’s all cool off-” he’s the only one here on the verge of a complete mental collapse, but they’re smart enough not to say anything about that, “- an’ let’s come back to this, in a bit. I’m gonna.. Fuck. I’m gonna go jump off th’ roof. You two stay inside, unless you wanna be eaten by sandworms.”
“What are-”
He blinks from the attic, leaving them alone, though he can still hear them, sensitive ears picking up the sounds of them, from his perch on the roof.
“So what now?”
“Maybe we should go practice? That needy pervert was right, if we want to be seen, we can’t just do nothing. Come on, Adam.”
He misses any further context, as he plummets to the ground.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

It’s her mandated Delia time, and Lydia, face cleaned, makeup reapplied, is watching the madwoman in purple arrange and mess with some of Barbara and Adam’s things, moving them around to be more, model homey, whatever that means. They’re in the finished guest room, Lydia sitting on the edge of the bed, Delia bustling around, touching things that don’t belong to her.

“You’re making yourself comfortable,” she bites.

Delia glances over her shoulder. “I’m just trying to help your father. Come on, Lydia, it’s not like you’re doing anything but grouching, right now. Why don’t you help me clean up, around here, make the place pretty? This seems like a big deal, to your dad.”
“The place is plenty clean and pretty.”
Delia purses her lips. “Adam and Barbara’s tastes are a bit… dated,” she says.
“They’re allowed to be. It’s their house.”
“Some workers putting up temporary peel and stick wallpaper in a few places is not going to ruin the Maitland’s home,” Delia hums. “It will all be removed, and then your friends will wake up, and everything will be fine!”
“You don’t know that.”
Delia sighes, and then turns, to face her. “I do.”
“You can’t.”
“And still, I do.”
“You don’t,” Lydia spits, glaring out at Delia, from under her bangs. “You’re just saying that. You’re not a doctor, you’re not even a therapist. You’re just the weirdo my dad hired. And you don’t know jack shit.”
Delia’s smile is very patient. It only makes her angrier. “Okay,” the older woman concedes. “Maybe I don’t know, for sure, 100%. But sitting around, thinking dark thoughts, that doesn’t help me. Does it help you? Does thinking like that serve you, in any way?”
“It’s realistic.”
“It’s depressing. Lydia,” Delia says, softly. “I don’t want our relationship to be contentious. I’d like us to get along, and I’d love for us to be friends.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re paid to care about me.”
“I’m not paid to care about you. I’m paid to listen to you, and try to cheer you up,” Delia tells her. Lydia blinks. It’s surprisingly honest.
“No one can pay you to be someone’s friend. But honey, I’ve been hurt. Not in the way you have, but I’ve been through a lot more life than you have. I mean, not too much more,” she adds, self consciously patting at the smile lines by her mouth, and Lydia, despite herself, feels the hint of a smile tugging at her own lips. Delia catches it, smiles back. “But I’ve been through things. It gets easier, if you let someone stand by your side.”
Lydia pauses, at that. Looks down, fiddles with the camera that's around her neck. “I…” Her loneliness is stinging more cruelly than those self-inflicted cuts she’s hiding. Not even hiding well, hiding just barely, and both adults are refusing to look or give a shit. She swallows, raises her head, and glares again. “I don’t need you. I wish you’d piss off, back to whatever hippie commune you came from.”
Delia’s smile falters, briefly, before perking back up. “Well, I need to go out, and grab you a dress, I think. Your dad says Maxie’s coming over tomorrow night, you need something formal to wear. We could go out shopping, together,” she suggests. “You never know.. You might actually enjoy yourself.”
“Get lost,” Lydia says, eloquently, and Delia’s fake smile grows faker, but she refuses to let it fall. “I’ll be back in a bit, then. Okay.”
She pauses, at the door, and then makes a choice. “Lydia,” she says, over her shoulder. “I’m sorry about your mother, and your friends. I’m sorry any of it ever happened.”
Lydia focuses very intently on a knot in the natural wood grain of the guestroom floor.
“No one can replace the people you’re missing. But maybe someday, when it stops hurting, maybe you’ll be able to.. To breathe easier. To focus on something other than how bad it hurts. That day is coming.”
And she slips from the room, before the teen can form her rebuttal.
Lydia’s gaze drifts around the room, as it’s settled into quiet. From somewhere in the house, below her, now, she can hear the workers her dad hired rearranging and messing up Adam and Barbara’s house.

She flops on the guest room bed, earphones in, and doesn’t move, when a few men come in to temporary wallpaper over all of Adam and Barbara’s old fashioned choices. She sleeps, lightly, curled on the bed, until late into the evening, when she wakes up hungry. She sits up, rubs at her eyes. The room is empty. It’s jarring, to go to sleep with it looking one way and wake up with it looking another.
She slips from the bed, boots touching the hardwood floor. Her eyes flit to the window, and then past it, in time for a blur to go falling, seemingly from nowhere, or maybe the roof? She stands, goes to the window, and looks out, but there’s nothing, no one there. Great. She’s experiencing visual hallucinations, now. Maybe that’s all BJ ever was, just a loneliness induced imaginary friend. She tries not to dwell on how pathetic it makes her feel, that something dreamed up by her own lonely, grief stricken imagination would ditch her.
From down the hall, she hears another hallucination, teasing her. “What the heck.. What are they doing to our house?” It’s almost Adam’s voice. She follows it, out into the hallway, where.. Two sheets, are floating in mid air. She stares. She pinches her arm. The sheets are still there.
“You can’t make every wall an accent wall!” Barbara’s voice wails, sounding frustrated enough to cry.
“Adam?” Lydia asks, softly, stepping towards them. “Barbara?”
The figures in the sheets jump, and turn to stare at her. Familiar voices say her name in unison. “Lydia!”
She’s engulfed in a freezing cold hug, feeling phantom limbs from under the floating sheets, not solid enough to be real, not fake enough to be a dream. “You guys,” she tears up, and instantly two sets of sheets are patting at her damp cheeks. “You guys are here, oh my god, you’re really here-” fear grips her. “Does that mean you’re dead?”
“Honey,” Barbara’s voice breaks, and the sheet lifts, but there’s nothing there. Lydia cries harder. “I can’t see you,” she wails. “Am I crazy? Are you here, or not? Did you die in the hospital? They said, they said you guys just needed to wake up, but if you’re here, as ghosts-”
“Hospital?” Barbara asks, lowering the sheet, not wanting to upset her further, clearly. “We’re in the hospital?”
“I held your hands, earlier,” Lydia manages. “You were alive, you were breathing, but you’re asleep. Maybe, maybe you’re asleep there, because you’re here? Or I was here, taking a nap like a baby, and you died, and I wasn’t there-”
Adam’s strong woodworker’s hands take hold of her shoulders. He’s gentle, with his grip, and with the way he turns her to look at him. “Whatever is happening, we’ll figure it out, together,” he tells her, as Barbara’s hand through the sheet musses her hair. “But no matter what, we’re okay. All three of us are okay.” She can’t see the smile she knows is there, that soft dad smile Adam’s got, and then both of them lean in, at the same time, to plant a ghostly kiss to the top of her head.
She struggles to take regular breaths, panic subdued, for now.
“I.. I can go ask my dad,” she says. Two ghostly hands, through sheets, pinch at her cheeks. “Good idea, honey.”

The three of them wander around the house, and Adam and Barbara remove the sheets, for the time being, seeing as how they’re getting caught on things, and aren’t exactly easy to keep around their forms, apparently. But she can feel that both of them are holding her hands, from the cold rising chills on her skin. It’s strange, and entirely welcomed, because it means she’s not alone. “Dad!” she calls, wandering past the master suite, where she hears her father’s voice, muffled. Maybe he’s on a call. She pauses at the door, and knocks. “Dad?”
“Oh, uh, come in, Lydia!” His voice calls, and she pokes her head in, and looks at him. He’s standing there, awkwardly, in the middle of the room, in his slacks, and work shirt, but his suit jacket is thrown on a chair across the room. “Hello, pumpkin.”
“... Hello, Charles,” she frowns. “Have you heard anything about the Maitlands?” He seems to let out a breath, like he’s relieved. “Yes, I got a call twenty minutes or so ago, but you were asleep. They’re still fine, still stable. Not much to say, unfortunately. But they are, at least, still breathing.”
“We need to go to the hospital,” Lydia tells him. Charles blinks, looks her over, nervously. “Why? Are you alright? Something happen?”
“No, not for me. Adam and Barbara.. They’re here!”
Charles is silent. She can feel the ghosts squeezing her hand, and shoulder, respectively.
“Like, here, here?” her dad asks, confused.
“Like, here in this room! You can’t see them, but they’re right here, and they need to get back to their bodies, so they can wake up!” she tells him. His frown deepens. “Lydia..”
“Dad, just, listen!” She tries, crossing the room, and taking his hands. “They’re here, and we have to help them. Forget this model home stuff, it’s bullshit anyways. We have to make sure they get back to their bodies-”
Her eyes drift to his bed, where a shape under his blankets has moved. She stops. Let her father’s hands go. Storms to the bed, and grabs the sheet, pulling it off. Delia looks up at her, mercifully wrapped in a robe, but Lydia’s not a child. She knows what’s been going on, around here.
“Delia,” she says, staring down at her. Delia opens her mouth, a puff of vape escaping. “Hey.”
She whirls, to look at her father, wild eyed. “What are you doing?” she seeths, at him, as Charles rubs at the gray around his temples. “Is this how much mom meant to you? It’s not even been a year, and you’re just shacking up with whatever frooty guru you can find?”
“I’m not a guru, I’m the student of one,” Delia corrects, from the bed, but she’s ignored.
“Lydia, I don’t expect you to understand this, but I’m exhausted.” Oh, that’s fucking laughable. “I can’t sleep in my own bed, Lydia. I can’t focus on things at work. Delia, she… She’s been a lot of help, standing next to me, guiding me through this, and.. We’re seeing each other. There.” He says with a nod of finality, like he’s confessed, and now the topic is closed.
No way. Not even close.

“You’re replacing mom!” She yells, tired eyes somehow able to form another round of tears. God, she’s sick of crying, sick of feeling like this, all the time. Sick of everything, all of it.
“I’m not replacing anyone. We both need help. Delia’s helping. We.. We’re just trying to find some happiness.”
Without you, she hears, though he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to.
“I wish I was dead!” she throws that in his face, and storms away, past the silent cold spots that might be Adam and Barbara, and might be nothing, and she storms up the stairs, only stopping to collect a paper and pen on her way to the roof.

Chapter Text

By the time he’s had his fill of his suicidal fantasy, the house has changed quite a bit. He’d drifted through it, passively, bored, watching strangers change the house that was meant to belong to him and his partners, and their kids, someday. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. He teleports himself back onto the roof, and he’s sitting there, lamenting, when familiar footfalls catch his attention. Lydia.
She looks bad, but that isn’t new. They’ve all looked rough, since mom left. She settles herself, legs tucked under her body, as she scribbles something out on a paper, rubbing at her eyes as she does. Oh, cool, she’s journaling. The big brother in him wants to hover over her shoulder, read her thoughts, use it to embarrass her, later. Instead he watches her, tired, numb, entirely purple, as she writes, scratches something out, muttering to herself. “Utterly alone,” he hears.

Yeah, well. That makes two of us. And now they can’t even be alone, together.

Lydia gathers her paper up, grips it in her hand, and approaches the edge of the roof, looking over. That grabs his attention, and he stands, from where he’d been, pushing through his mental exhaustion at the panicked understanding of what his kid sister is about to do.
He promised Emily she’d reach old and gray, and now she’s going to just plummet, and he’s got no way to stop her.
She reads her suicide note, because that’s what it is, you dunce, you absolute fucking moron, she reads it aloud, to an audience of no one. “By the time you read this, I, Lydia Deetz will be gone. There’s nothing for me, here. I am utterly alone.. Forsaken.. Invisible,” her grief bubbles up in her throat with the last word, and she moves, to take her last step.
“No!” He appears, in the air in front of her, pointlessly.. Or so he thinks. But she shrieks, and steps back, and he doesn’t know for a moment if it’s over second thoughts, or because-
“Who the hell are you!?” she cries, her eyes wild.

The Deetz siblings stare at each other, silent as the grave.

“You can see me?” BJ asks, finally, eyes as wide as her’s are. “Y-yeah?” She manages, heart clearly still working it’s back down her throat, after that scare.
“You can really, seriously see me?” He has to ask, again, and she loses her patience. “Yeah, man! You’re a floating purple haired weirdo in the ugliest, nastiest suit I’ve ever seen! Wh- wait, wait,” she pauses, and sticks a hand through him, which usually he hates, but right now, he couldn’t care less. “You’re a ghost.”
“I’m a demon, but-” he corrects, automatically, and her eyes widen. “BJ?”
“Lyds!” he cheers, and goes to wrap his arms around her. He goes through her, of course, but he’s able to pretend, for a moment. Lydia shivers, as he lets her go.
“I’ve got my best friend back!” He cheers, giddy, delighted, laughing like he’s mad. “Back? Wait, what’s happening? Why can I see you?” She asks, turning to watch him, as he twirls around her, dancing across the rooftop. “Cause you just survived a near death experience!” He says, way, way too cheerfully.
“Wait, doesn’t that mean like, car crashes and elevators falling and nearly drowning? I don’t think not stepping off a roof counts.”
“You,” he says, turning to her, excited. “Were supposed to die, just now. You were gettin’ ready to end your life, you ran outta minutes, your clock wound down, your goose was cooked-”
“Finish the though, BJ, for the love of god.”
“You didn’t die. You’re a beautiful, depressed little outlier!” He sees her wrinkle her nose, at that. “Well, great. Probably shouldn’t keep the afterlife waiting,” she says, and goes to step closer to the edge, again.
“NO! Hold on, hold on, where are you goin’?” He stretches his arm across the roof, cartoonishly, and she pauses, her brain taking a second to catch up to the fact that she could walk though his limb, if she wanted. “No, Lyds, come on, how about instead of,” he floats over, glances over the side, “impalin’ yourself on that birdbath, you say my name, three times?”
“This, again. I told you no already, didn’t I?”
“Come on, we’re pals,” he whines, dropping to his knees. “I’m beggin’ here, Lyds, you say my name, I can make all your problems disappear, I promise!”
“Big talker,” she folds her arms, and he jumps up, grabs her suicide note, and sets it on fire. She’s not going to need that, not with her big brother back.
“Hey! Jackass!” she growls. “You can’t fix anything. No one can. That’s why I’m doing this. Once I’m gone, my dad’ll be sorry-”
“No, kiddo,” he says, appearing in front of her, again, but she doesn’t flinch, this time. He’s running out of time to convince her. “You’ll just be dead. An’ stuck workin’ in an office, for th’ rest of forever, cause suicides don’t do too well, where you’re tryin’ to go.”
“I don’t see an alternative,” she says, sounding exhausted. He gets it. He really, really does.

“I’m your alternative! Come on, kid. You could use a buddy,” he tells her, floating around her, trying to give her the big sell. “You need someone awesome on your side, makin’ things better. I’m just th’ demon for th’ job! You let me out, you say my name, an’ I’ll have all my powers. I can make anyone you want miserable, I can kill anyone you want killed, we can have so much fun, really fuck with th’ old man, if that’s what you want!”
“And what do you get out of this deal?” She crosses her arms, and glares.
“Smart, smart, I love that about you, Lyds, you’re a smart kid,” BJ praises. “You say my name, my curse should be broken.”
“What curse?”
“I told you about it, already. My family-”
“They can’t see you,” she remembers, and then realizes another piece of the puzzle. “Wait, so, you have a human family?” He opens his mouth to speak, and he feels the curse close it. Instead he nods, frantically. “And you need your curse broken, so they can see you,” she says, and he nods again. If he could cry, he’d be on the verge of tears. She looks very sympathetic to his plight. “I.. Ugh, even if I was going to summon you, which I’m not saying I will,” she pinches her nose, glares up at him. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Well, I can’t say it. I’d have literally spelled it out for you, if I was allowed.”
“So that’s a no for writing it, too. Probably couldn’t even hold the pen. Maybe..” She pauses. “Charades?”
“Yes! Okay, yes-”

Despite not really being a game night kind of family, she guesses his name fairly quickly. “Juice Beetle,” and he motions for her to flip the words, which she does with the smallest hint of a laugh, at his over excited face.
“Beetlejuice?”
Something painful catches under his ribs, and tugs at him. He grits his teeth, because it hurts, but he can feel something he hasn’t felt in a long time- hope. “Yes,” he tells her, grin maniacal.
“Beetlejuice,” she says again, crossing her arms, and smiling.
Hearing his name hurts worse than anything he’s ever felt, before. The burning from Juno’s nail, lodged inside of him, it’s insane, it’s intense, it’s almost too much to handle, but now, swirling through the air, he can feel it. His powers. He’s lived his life, up to this point, totally non restricted, having access to the whole host of his demonic abilities. To suddenly have them taken away was exhausting. To be on the verge of having them back is intoxicating. “Yessss!” he hisses at her, snake slit eyes intense on her face.
Lydia smirks. “Beeeee-”
“Come on, kiddo, come on!” One more and she’s going to remember him, his curse will be broken, this entire miserable nightmare will end and they’ll be a family again-
“-eeecause you’ve been so trustworthy so far, ditching me when I need you, I’m going to take some time to think this over.”

He hadn’t realized he’d been floating until he falls.

From his position on the roof, sprawled on his ass, he stares up at his kid sister, confused, angry- hurt.
“You don’t get to jerk me around like that!” He jumps to his feet, and her smile is mean spirited. It doesn’t fit the face of the Lydia he remembers, but it’s almost the only kind of smile this new Lydia can make. “Seems I get to do whatever I want. You’re the one who needs me, BJ.”
“You need me just as bad, you little brat!”
“Funny, then, how I’m not the one begging.”
“Lyds, come on, I’m offerin’ you a full time ghost pal, how does that not sound awesome?”
“It does sound awesome. It sounds too good to be true,” She says, eyeing him. “So maybe you’re missing your family, or maybe you don’t even have one, and that’s a lie to tug my heartstrings. I don’t know if you’re sincere, and I don’t know if you can actually do any of the things you’re promising. I don’t know you from Adam.”
“You’ve seen Adam?”
They stare at each other, squinting and tilting their heads in opposite directions, a habit she picked up from him, a habit he picked up from the swaying head motion of his aspect animal.
“Wait, back up, I think we’re gettin’ confused, here,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, in time for Adam, Barbara in tow, to come through the attic window, and step out onto the roof.
“Didn’t I tell th’ two of you to stay inside?” he grouses, but it seems the roof is a safe space, thankfully. They ignore him. Betelgeuse hates being ignored.

“Lydia, thank goodness, after you just stormed away-”
“Oh, I can see you guys, now,” she marveles, and then sticks her hand through Adam’s gut. He blanches, and steps away. “Yuck, that feels bad. Maybe don’t do that.”
“Honey, come inside, away from the stranger, and we can discuss this,” Barbara tries, gently. “It’s not safe out here.. For a lot of reasons.” Her eyes land on BJ, and she studies him over. Presumably she’s curious about the sudden color change, but he’s not about to explain anything if he doesn’t have to.
“That’s right. Mr. Beetlejuice is, uh, he’s working through some volatile emotions, currently, he’s..” Adam’s voice drops, to a stage whisper. “A dangerously unstable individual, Lydia. Come inside, where it’s safe, and we can talk about this-”
BJ snorts, at the attempted sparing of his feelings. Sweet, sweet Adam. And then he balls up a fist, and pitches his mind at his two partners. Possession, while an easy trick, is going to be the last thing he’s able to do today, he can feel it. That’s why giving Lydia the hard sell is so important, right now. She wants to see him do something impressive? Fine, he’ll impress the hell outta her.
It only makes him feel marginally rotten that he’s puppeting his partners along without them having any say in how he moves their bodies. It’s okay, he tells himself. It’s all for the end goal of being together, again. They’ll forgive him. They have to.
“Beetlejuice is sexy!” Barbara chirps out, the smile plastered on her face a mix between overly happy and absolutely panicked, at the loss of control.
“Beetlejuice is smart!” Adam adds, his own smile a mirror of his wife’s.
They extole his virtues, and he even makes them do a silly little dance, moving along with them as their bodies, or what counts for bodies on ghosts, at least, throw themselves around at his behest. Lydia looks from them, to him, watching the way his movements direct theirs, and with a flourish of his hands, he lets them go, posing them with Barbara’s hips to Adam’s ass, because while he loves them, Adam did call him “unstable” a moment ago. True as that is, he doesn’t especially like hearing it.

Lydia’s watching, her head tilted, arms crossed, looking interested. He gives her a little showman’s bow. “Possession,” he tells her, straightening up. “One of th’ easier tricks. Any second rate ghost can do it, an’ luckily for you, I’m not a second rate ghost,” he grins. “I’m a demon. You let me out, I can do that, an’ anythin’ else you’ve got in mind. You get it now, Lyds? I’m more powerful than anythin’ you’re ever gonna encounter. An’ I’m your buddy,” he stresses. “I’m on your side. What do you say, kid?”
Lydia’s black eyes are thoughtful. “That was pretty cool,” she concedes. “So, okay, you’re not just bullshitting. But, you said… any ghost can do that possession stuff?”
His salesman’s smile falters, confused. “Well, yeah-”
“So then, Beetlejuice-” the nail under his ribs burns like fire- “what do I need you for?” She smiles, still mean, and she goes to stand by Adam and Barbara, instead.

Huh?
All he can do is stare at her blankly, because… huh?
“Wait, come on, hold on!” he tries, following her, sticking by her side. Adam and Barbara shy away from him as he approaches, clearly now wary of him. No, no, no no no no-
“They’re sweet, but I’m a demon! As in, way more powerful, way more fun, way more willin’ to do whatever dumb bullshit your teenage heart desires! I’ll eat anythin’ you want me to eat, I’ll swallow anythin’ you want me to swallow!” he tries. She rolls her eyes, and scoffs. “Come on, Lydia, we’re best friends!”
“I barely know you,” she says, and he wilts, sadder and more pathetic than ever.
And then, for whatever reason, she pushes him. Her hands go through him, of course, because he’s not solid, but he hates the feeling, and moves back instinctively, only to find there’s no more roof under his feet. He’s too tired to float, and he falls, and she watches, and she smiles.

He falls, three stories, almost in slow motion. The sensation of it reminds him, vaguely, of jumping through the window with Emily in his arms. He lands hard on his back, staring up at the sky, a fence post going through his chest. He can’t feel it, obviously. He’s just phased through it, harmlessly, but still. He’s getting pretty tired of being impaled. And that possession, while relatively easy, has drained him of everything he’d had left in him. All he can think about, as his eyelids flutter, barely keeping them open, is the mean look on Lydia’s face, the way she’d pushed him, the way she barely cared. This isn’t his kid sister. This is some bitter young woman, only looking out for herself. What would Emily say? He ponders, quietly, as his eyelids droop shut. She’d be angry with him, wouldn’t she, angry that he’s failing at being a big brother, at keeping Lydia safe and happy. Emily would be so disappointed. Emily would, Emily, Emily-

He’s standing in a field. The sun’s shining, bright and happy, and the smell of wildflowers hits his sensitive nose. Specifically daisies, his favorite.
There’s a figure in black, seated a ways away, in the shade of an old oak, long blonde hair moving in the breeze that he realizes, with a start, that he can feel. It’s been a long time since he’s felt physical sensations. He approaches.
His mother turns, and smiles at him, and she pats the gingham blanket she’s resting on. “Hi, honey,” Emily says.
He comes to a stop next to her, and flops down at her side, on his gut, and kicks his legs, and rests his head on her lap. “Hi, mama,” he says, voice a higher pitch than he can recall it being in a long, long time.
He’s little.. This is a memory.
Emily’s fingers run through his hair, and she smiles down at him. “How’s my boy?”
“Tired,” he hears himself say.
“Rough day, getting into trouble?”
“Real rough,” he agrees.

This is the summer trip they took when he was thirteen, he realizes. Emily wanted to take them to Sleepy Hollow, and even though it was off season for scares, they’d had a great time, enjoying the summer and the graveyards and each other. This should be… right after he’d had that long talk with Washington Irving’s ghost, where it had basically been Emily asking questions, and himself parroting back the answers the old spirit whispered to him.
Except.. Lydia and Charles should be here. In reality, this is where they’d stopped for their picnic lunch, after.
“Where’s Chuck, an’ Lyds?” He asks, looking up at his mother. Her expression is soft. “It felt like you needed some one on one mom time, baby.”
“I do, but..” he struggles with that. “This isn’t how this went.”
“No,” she agrees. “It’s not.”
He lays there, head resting on her, her fingers gently massaging his scalp.
“You’re not actually here,” he manages, voice rough.
“I’m always here, sweetheart. Just not in the way you’re used to.”
“So what good is it, then?” he asks, feeling bitter.
“You needed me,” she says. “I came.” Like it’s simple, like it’s obvious, like it’s real.

He can tell it’s a dream, because there’s tears rolling down his cheeks. “Let it out,” Emily says, rubbing at his back. “Let it all out.”
“Mama,” he knows he sounds pathetic, not like a demon at all, a constant failure at everything he does. “Mama, I’m so tired, an’ I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh, honey,” Emily whispers. “You cry. You cry, and then you get up, and you try again.”
She pulls him into her lap, like he weighs nothing, and he clings to the front of her black lace blouse, and cries as hard as he can, while he can, while he’s got her here to hold him. He squeezes his eyes shut and feels her arms wrap around him, the way he remembers, that comfortable and familiar pressure of being small and fully engulfed in the arms of an adult.

His eyes open.

He’s still staring up at the house, still impaled on the fence, but he’s got enough energy to move, at least. The position of the sun tells him… Jesus. He slept hard, apparently, because it had been evening when he fell, and now it looks to be midafternoon. He sits up, with a groan, and holds his head in his hands, for a moment, and imagines he can still feel Emily’s fingers playing with his hair.
There’s no way for him to tell how real that was. It felt… very real. More real than things have been in a long time. It makes something in his chest seize and clench and ache, to think that somehow, someway, his mother had come to him, for a moment. It sounds impossible. It might just be his brain, conjuring a nonsense fantasy, trying to sort and compile his feelings. How pathetic is it that in his wildest dreams, his mom is there and he’s crying?
But for a moment there’s still something wrapped around him, like a sudden warm breeze making its way across a cold ocean, real and fragile and gone too soon, and then he’s left truly alone again.
He hauls himself to his feet, standing unsteady.
He has to get up. He has to try again.

Chapter Text

She spends most of that day in her room, or what passes for her room here, in a house that’s not her’s.
Barbara and Adam, fully visible, at least to her, spend the day with her, practicing. Both Delia and Charles come to her door, many times, but her only response to their knocking is to turn the calipso up louder. She catches one line from her father, as he retreats from the door- “I suppose I should be thankful her teenage rebellion tunes are smooth island music instead of screamo.”
Oh, just you wait, Charles Deetz. This house will be full of screams soon enough.

Barbara and Adam are, of course, their overly sweet selves, but their frustration at the current situation is wonderful fuel to the, admittedly, tame fire they’re feeling. The three of them practice and plot, and something tickles at the back of Lydia’s brain in a confusing way. This is sort of like planning for their annual summer haunted house, except.. There’s someone missing. Not Emily. Obviously, Emily is missing. That’s the reason everything is miserable and ruined. She can’t attribute the strange feeling to her mother’s absence, because it feels like there’s one more person left out.
One more loud, bouncy, downright devious person, who always had juuuust the right trick up his sleeve, for making their plans work out perfectly-
Frustrated, Lydia takes a moment, rubbing the heel of her palm into her forehead.
“Headache?” Adam asks, coming to her side to gently touch her shoulder. His incorporeal hand hovers just over her, worried about sending a chill through her at his touch.
“I’ve been getting them bad, lately,” she says, eyes closed. “This sounds dumb, but sometimes, it’s like I’m thinking too hard about.. Something. I know I’m just about to remember something really, really important, something stupid obvious. Like the second I get it, I’ll be blown away I could have forgotten it to begin with. Does that.. Make any sense?” She opens her eyes to focus on her two friends.
“It makes perfect sense,” Barbara says, her own eyes wide. “I’ve been feeling that way, too. Like there’s something wrong. Someone missing.”
“Someone other than the obvious,” Adam says, and the two women nod.
“I feel like we were right about to remember,” he continues. “But then the floor gave out under us, and it knocked the thought back out of my mind.”

“Well.. Maybe later, we can all sit down, and puzzle through it,” Barbara suggests. “For now, I think we need to focus. It’s almost dinnertime.”
“Dinnertime?” Lydia snorts. “No way. It’s showtime.”

When she deigns to come downstairs, in the blindingly yellow dress Delia bought her, she surveys the party, briefly. She hears some celebratory comment from Delia under her breath, but ignores it, for the moment. She’s not going to be happy for long. That devious thought helps bring a real, sincere smile to her face, but she has to work to keep it gentle and nice, and not wide eyed, too many teeth and too mean looking.

“Lydia,” her father sounds downright relieved, as she comes down the stairs, and stands besides the dining table. “So glad you joined us for dinner, sweetheart,” he takes her hand, and gives it a squeeze. She sees something in his eyes that throws her, for the briefest of moments. Happiness, and pride.
Because she’s playing along, and pretending things are fine. In his mind, she’s finally decided to put her pain behind her, and be a team player, like him. As if what he’s been doing to himself emotionally is any better than how she’s been expressing her pain.
She feels… sorry for him, at that moment.
And then it passes, and she comes back to reality, in time to hear Maxie Dean make some quip about marrying her, and Charles gently maneuvers her away from the older man, before she can drop the act and stab him through the hand with one of the shrimp forks on the table. This is the man he’s been throwing Adam and Barbara’s house into disarray to impress, and he’s just as slimy as Lydia remembers.

There’s hardly any time to focus on that, though, before Delia is clinking her glass, and the life coach stands, and clears her throat, beginning a little impromptu speech.
“On behalf of Charles, Lydia, and myself,” she says, as bright and chipper as always. Lydia waits, laser focused on the redhead, rubbing at the sore places on her arms, through the long, yellow sleeves of her dress. “I just want to express how happy we are to welcome you all here. Of course, as you real estate people know, a home is more than a building. A home takes work, and love, and warmth. I think, given the chance, this house, and any more built in it’s likeness, could very easily become homes.”
It’s surprisingly thoughtful. The adults around the table don’t look especially impressed, most of them fidgeting with their napkins or, in Maxie Dean’s case, staring down his wife’s dress. But her dad.. His eyes are lighting up in a way that makes her feel small. He’s hanging on Delia’s every word, his smile soft, and there, at the corners of his eyes, so faint it might be a trick of the light- are those tears?
She studies that, and then her father turns his head, and catches her looking at him, and he reaches down, and gives her hand another little squeeze, his smile so painfully sad, it almost seems like he’s barely holding it together… because that’s exactly what’s been happening. He’s been pushing things down so he can keep going, and if at any point he stops, and lets himself think about it, and feel it, it's all going to come bursting out of him, seems split, like an overstuffed doll.
She doesn’t forgive him, not even close, not even a little… but right there, at the dinner table, she understands. Of course she understands. They’re grieving in unison, but in dramatically different ways.
“Dad-” she starts, and he leans over, and kisses the top of her head.
“I love you, Lydia,” his voice is soft as fleece, hardly above a whisper, quiet and just for her.

Delia begins to sing Day-O.

From there, everything falls apart so fast it’s almost difficult to perceive. Adam and Barbara do wonderful work, possessing the entire party, herself excluded, and she’s laughing and having fun and watching the chaos unfold around her. It’s a conga line of humiliation, with an actual conga line, and she’s standing on top of the table, taking it all in, absolutely gleeful.
And then the adults ruin it all, the way adults always do. They want to turn Adam and Barbara’s house into a freak show, they want to monetize it and use the Maitlands like zoo animals. Never mind that they’re still in the hospital, and this whole thing was about getting these people out, and proving to her dad that the Maitlands need help. That was what this was about, right? Or was it about digging the knife as far as she could push it into her father’s back, in an attempt to be seen? Maybe it was both. Maybe it was selfish and childish for it to be a combination of the two.

Still, as she stands there, listening to them make plans, talk over her, ignore her- something in her snaps.
“I can’t keep living like this!” she tugs at her hair, too overwhelmed, the party too loud, the voices too cloying. The scars up and down her arms are aching, she’s aching, she needs to be seen, she needs- She needs someone on her side.
“Beetlejuice!”
Something in the air changes, imperceptible to the guests still dancing around, but Lydia can feel it. “Beetlejuice!”
The air has gone rancid, like a centuries old crypt is being opened, exposing all of the decay and rot inside. It leaves her dizzy.
“Lydia?” She hears her father call.
The demon’s at her side, whispering encouragement to her, and she bites back angry tears.
Lydia grits her teeth, clenches her fists, raises her head, and screams.
“BEETLEJUICE!”
“It’s showtime.”

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

“This is gonna be some party, pop,” BJ says, pointlessly, floating behind Charles. Chuck’s his last, last, last hope, and honestly, his very last choice. He’s still irritated with his father, not especially in the mood to spend time with him, even if Charles has no idea that’s what’s happening.
“You really tore up my house to make it happen. Real cutthroat capitalist shit,” he snarks, coming to rest on the kitchen counter, as Charles arranges things, pointlessly, worried over every minute detail. Details someone dense like Maxie Dean isn’t likely to even notice.

“You know, Lydia almost jumped off the roof, yesterday,” he says, and his father turns from the cabinet where he’d been fiddling with dishes, and pulls a flask from the breast pocket of his suit.
“I was there to stop her, though. You’re welcome,” he says, as he watches his father deliberate. Like it’s a hard choice. He’ll have his nip of brandy or whatever he’s got there, and this evening, when the whole party is over, he’ll chase it with an entire bottle of scotch, and be passed out in bed, snoring like a log.
But then Delia enters the kitchen. There’s a beat, as both adults exchange a look, Delia’s sympathetic, Charles looking guilty, and then his father hands her the flask.
“I should probably be stone cold sober,” he says, and Delia nods. “I think that’s a very smart choice for tonight, Charles.”
And then she flicks the lid off and takes a swig. Charles laughs at that. “What?” Delia smiles, wiping at the corner of her mouth. “I’m not giving a big presentation. I don’t have to be sober.”
They share a little kiss, which is absolutely disgusting. BJ makes gagging noises and shoves a finger down his throat. “God, you two are insufferable,” he growls, as Delia tucks the silver flask into her bra.
At least she’s a positive influence on one Deetz family member, even if she’s drastically failing Lydia.
Still, the mere thought of his dad with anyone, anyone at all, so soon after Emily’s death.. It just leaves him angry. He follows Charles around the house, temper flaring.
“She moved into your life awful fast, Chuck,” he accuses. “You have her waitin’ in th’ wings, or somethin’? Had that spicy little redhead on layaway, bidin’ your time til ma croaked?” The accusations are bitter. He knows they’re not true, and that they’re unfair, but he’s too angry to be kind. Besides, it’s not like his father’s even aware he’s here.

When six o’clock rolls around, the party finally starts. He watches, amused, at the little air five that his dad and Delia almost share, and feels a unique kind of sickness at his father’s bold statement that later he’ll make, quote, “Screaming, passionate love,” end quote, to the life coach.
Fuck, the thought of that is enough to make his entire everything cringe. Best not to dwell.

The doorbell rings, and Chuck answers it. Maxie Dean, that fat little cockroach, that purple suited buffoon, swaggers in, walking like his balls were just reinflated with an air pump, like he owns the place, and BJ follows behind Charles, and scowls, as his dad plays nice with the creep. Charles leads Maxie all around, showing the amenities, babbling about the various changes that could be made to the floor plan, to modernize it. Why buy a spooky old Victorian if you just want to live in a white minimalist modern house? It leaves him baffled, as do some of the uglier choices in the interior Delia and Charles have made together. Adam was always so focused on staying true to the heritage of the house.
Once BJ’s back in business, he’s tearing this shit down and fixing the place back to the way it should be, as an “I’m sorry” present to his paramores. Hopefully that will be enough to start on the road to forgiveness. His yelling and short temper and possession of them, while less than kind, was all because he’s doing his best to get them back together, and he’s doing it all on his own. Of course he’s stressed and ready to snap. They’ll understand.
Won’t they?

“Say, Chuck,” Maxie starts, rousing Betelgeuse out of his thoughts, for the moment. “Didn’t you used to have a son?”
BJ and Charles wear matching looks of surprise. He floats by his father’s side, expression turning giddy. Maxie Dean, you wonderful, thoughtful, absolute treasure, you-
“A son? Wh.. no, no, you must be thinking of my daughter, Lydia.”
Maxie’s eyes light up in a way BJ recognizes, and hates. “Oh, that must be what I was thinking of, yeah. How old is she, now?” From anyone else that’s an innocent question.
Maxie Dean, you scum, you waste of space and oxygen, you are the most murderable man alive and you don’t even realize it, yet.
BJ imagines popping Maxie’s rotten little head like an overfilled balloon, as he settles unceremoniously under the dining table, scratching at the flooring with his nails, leaving no trace.

The absolute fuss that kicks off barely a few minutes later is beyond anything he’d ever thought Babs and Sexy to be capable of. They’re downright devious, and he feels a surge of pride, as he watches the entire party collapse into possession based hysteria and panic, culminating in a conga line of sobbing, frightened lawyers, and screaming investors.
It’s such a romp, he wants to join in, and he’s about to, even if he’s not visible. And then he hears his name, spoken clearly, and he jerks in that direction, eyes wide, the feeling electric and painful. He comes crawling out from under the table. Lydia’s standing on top of it, shaking and near tears, but holding it back with all her might. She calls his name again, and he steps up onto the table next to her, grinning ear to ear. “Yes, yes, come on,” he encourages her. “I’m so glad you changed your mind, Lyds, you’re never gonna regret this.”

She looks him in the eye, and the siblings share a look, before she lets out one last, dramatic, wonderful, “BEETLEJUICE!”
He feels a swell of power so sudden it almost knocks him on his ass. He stumbles, takes a shaky breath, and then takes a giddy leap from the table. His boots hit the floor, solid. It makes a noise, the familiar and missed sound of his heeled boots making real physical contact with something solid. BJ straightens up, and marvels, for a second, at the feeling of being real again, of being visible, and seen, and remembered!
“Welcome, welcome, welcome! Can everybody see me?” he grins, and the resounding screams he receives tell him that yes, yes they can. Finally, finally, finally, things are fixed, and he’s got his family back, and they’re going to be alright. BJ groans, delighted, and then throws his arms open, and faces Charles. “Pop!” he grins, and Charles lets out a strangled little noise of fear, and stumbles back.
….. What?
He stares blankly, as Charles shuffles Delia behind himself, and stands there, staring at him, looking tense and afraid.
What?
“You never listen, dad! This is what you get!” Lydia bites, and BJ turns, and looks at her. She’s waiting expectantly for him to fulfill his half of this deal. She summons him, he makes dad miserable. That’s what he promised. Her eyes don’t show any more recognition than Charles’ do. Death doesn’t undo this curse, and neither does being summoned?
His stomach sinks. Juno has built him an eternal prison.
Betelgeuse’s horrible temper flares, and he channels it all into giving Lyds exactly what he promised.
“Yeah, dad,” he whips around to look at Charles. “This is what you get!”

He proceeds to tear the fucking place apart.

He throws fire and party guests around, uncaring. Any idiot unlucky enough to be here tonight is only getting what they must deserve. Barbara gets caught up in the collateral, what with a reanimated pig chasing her around, but Babs is tough, she’ll be fine. He’s not exactly in a caring mood at the moment, anyways. Just jot down another point against him on that big cosmic scoreboard, right above that time he got her drunk at a school party and right below every lie of omission he ever told either of his partners.

He summons an enormous illusion, his own face and hands, and he forcibly removes the guests, cackling like mad. Maybe he is actually going mad. After all, how many more times can his brain feel like it’s breaking before the damn thing just stays broke?

“Lydia!” Charles calls, terrified, reaching a hand out across the living room, from the front door, like he expects the kid to run to his side. Betelgeuse rubs his hands together, and then swats the enormous illusions at his father and Delia, startling them back, and they fall on their asses on the front porch. He floats there, staring down at them, a wicked smile playing on his features.
“Lydia doesn’t need you. She’s got me,” he sneers, and then, just to hurt his father as much as possible, he says the cruelest thing he can think of. “Look at you. Can’t keep Lyds safe. You’re lettin’ Emily down,” he taunts. “Guess you’ve got a new hole to keep you warm at night, huh, Chucky?” and he sees the confusion, and then the pain that the statement causes, before Betelgeuse slams the door, right as his father scrambles to stand, and tries to come back in. He hears the door rattle and shake, but no breather’s coming in that isn’t invited. And Chuck’s currently on his shit list.
His illusions melt away into nothing, their work finished, and BJ comes to stand in the middle of the living room. He adjusts his suit, straightens his tie, tugs at his sleeves, takes a moment to consider his next move, and Lydia comes to stand next to him, eyes wide.
“Whoa.”
“Oh, yeah,” he grins. “It’s our house now, kid.”
With a motion, he lets out a flurry of power, and the entire house shifts and morphs, his signature stripes covering the walls, the banister of the stairs snake skinned and alive, the writhing, crawling bodies of otherworldly serpents slithering across the walls.
“I’m gonna make sure,” he says, grabbing his kid sister’s shoulder, “that we’re never invisible again.”
No matter what.

Chapter Text

The next three days are a nonstop party.

It’s like old times, he tells himself, trying to just enjoy the rush of scaring random breathers so bad they lose control of their bladders. Just like when they used to do this together, Emily and Lyds and Chuck, all getting into the spirit and having fun, being the weird family on the block, with the weird kids and the weird traditions and the weird house.
But it’s not exactly right. There are things missing, like an old puzzle with too many blank spaces. He can’t see the picture the way it should be, for all the parts that have been lost. Something behind his eyes feels tired.
Their first day playing ghost, it’s a blast. He and Lydia haunt the halls of the Victorian like they’re playing make believe, again.
She gets hungry, he calls for pizza, and then skips paying by scaring the delivery guy so badly the dude develops a streak of white in his hair, right then and there. Lydia, helpfully, snaps a photo. That’s one for the scrapbook.
So the days are fun, because they’re playing. She’s got dumb teenage whims, and he’s got limitless power and a need to make his little sister happy, so he gives in, like he always did growing up, and gives Lydia what she wants.

It’s just that, come evening, she wants to talk about mom, and it hurts in a way he didn’t expect. He’s been grieving alone until now, and suddenly he has to talk to her about Emily, like it doesn’t gut him and flay him alive to do so.
But someone has to talk about Emily. Someone has to. She deserves that much, deserves much more, but it’s all he can give, right now.

“How did you meet my mom?” Lydia asks.

They’re sitting on the newly transformed couch, twisted and weird and striped, but oh so comfortable, and they’re watching one of Emily’s favorite horror movies, the original Texas Chainsaw. Mom always did appreciate the classics.
“She found me,” Betelgeuse says, eyes flicking from the screen to the sixteen year old on the couch next to him. Between them is an ocean of junk food, collected from the cabinets and the fridge. Ice cream and chips and red vines, enough food to eat themselves sick.
“I was wanderin’ around on my own, an’ Emily found me. I was little.”
“How little?”
“Twelve, or so. She was so… she was good. Patient. God,” he leans back, rests his head against the back of the couch, and stares up at the slithering ceiling. “She would do this thing, where she just looked at you, an’ you felt all calm an’ comfortable an’ loved. It was her superpower. Never had to guess or worry with Emily. I always knew she loved me.”
Lydia’s breath hitches. “You really did know her.”
“Yeah.”

They watch Bubba drag a screaming woman back into his den of horror.

“She was really sick, for a long time,” Lydia says softly. “And then all of a sudden, she started getting better. It was a miracle, you know? It was.. It was like the universe changed its mind, and gave me my mom back.”
He waits, as she struggles to form the next sentence.
“Dad found her. She just.. Died, in the middle of the night, in their bed. They said it was a blood clot. Just a random, unpreventable hiccup of the body, and all of a sudden, my mom’s gone, and everything’s changed.”
She rubs at her cheek, catching the tears running there, leaving streaks of gray from her mascara. This might be the first time she’s been able to just plainly say what happened.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because he is. Sorry he couldn’t offer a permanent fix, sorry he couldn’t save Emily from Juno, sorry she’s hurting as bad as she is. “I miss her too.”
“What about your family?” she says, after a long moment. They’re watching a man struggle through being hung by a hook through the torso. “You said they couldn’t see you, right? So I said your name, and you did what I asked. I mean, we didn’t really have a formal demon contract like in the movies, but I figure that’s probably a deal completed, right? So why are you still here?”
“You want me gone?” he worries, a little, and masks it by being annoying, and pinching her nose. Lydia blinks, and then laughs, and swats at him. “No, you’re cool, I just.. If you’ve got a family that misses you, I.. I don’t want to keep you from them.”
“I wanna go back,” he says, softly, rubbing at the fraying edge of his suit jacket. A gift from Chuck from what seems like a lifetime ago. A memory from when they were a family.
“I kinda.. I let em down, Lyds. Things got all screwed up, an’ I couldn’t fix it. I just figure… maybe in th’ end, they’re better off without me there, fuckin’ things up. An’ even though I want to go home, it doesn’t really exist anymore.”
“Fucking. Same.” The teen says, and then she shoves a glob of peanut butter in her mouth, right from the jar.
He laughs at that. “Adam would be so pissed to see you doin’ that.”
“Yeah, well, he can’t eat peanut butter right now, so it’s his loss,” Lydia manages, somehow, to speak semi clearly. She takes an enormous drink of water, to wash it down, and then reaches over and wipes her peanut butter fingers on his filthy suit jacket.
“Hey, brat. Do I look like I need help bein’ a slob, over here?”
“I just figured you’d appreciate more grime,” she replies, settling back into a more comfortable position. “Speaking of Adam, tomorrow we have to go to the hospital, all four of us.”
“What? Why?” he squints, confused.
“So Adam and Barbara can go back to their bodies.”
“Oh, honey,” BJ’s tone is condescending. “Did no one explain to you that dead is dead, or what?”
“Shuttup, you goon, they’re not dead.”
“They’re pretty see-through for two people still breathin’, Lydia.”
“And yet, their bodies are alive in the hospital, right now,” Lydia cocks an eyebrow. “So I guess I know more about ghost bullshit than the literal demon.”
Whatever retort he had ready for her dies on his lips, because he’s sitting there, mind swimming. Adam and Barbara aren’t dead, they’re comatose. He’s not sure if souls knocked out of a still living body are even capable of climbing back in- it’s not like driving a car, they can’t just open the door and settle back into their metaphorical seats. There’s probably paperwork they’d need to do, because knowing the Netherworld, of course there is. Even if they tried to get back into their bodies, he’s not sure it would work without clearance, and it’s not like the powers that be go around handing that kind of thing out.

But the singular fact that his mind keeps coming back to is that Adam and Barbara aren’t dead. They aren’t real ghosts. It tugs at his mind, because up until now, he’d been working under the assumption that being dead doesn’t free someone’s mind from the curse. But they’re not dead. His mind wanders down a rabbit hole he’s not proud of, because he can’t help thinking…if they were really dead, hearts no longer beating, would they remember him?

The siblings are silent after that, because he’s absorbed in his thoughts, and because her eyelids are starting to droop.
Lydia passes out on the couch with only ten minutes of chainsawing massacres left, and he rides out the rest of the flick, before shutting the TV off. He gathers his sister in his arms, and carries her up the stairs- she never did like the feeling of being teleported around.
An extra arm sprouts from the wall to open her bedroom door for him, since his usual two hands are full, and Lydia stirs at the sound of the slightly creaking hinge. Adam had tried to fix that, and BJ remembers the argument they got into. “What’s a creepy old house without a creepy, rusty old door?” he’d argued, and Adam had been persuaded to put down the oil, but only in exchange for an obscene number of kisses, the dork.

“What’re you doing?” Lydia’s little voice is slurred by sleep, and he nudges the door open with his shoulder, extra hands peeling back the covers, and he deposits her in bed.
“Just makin’ sure you get to bed, kiddo.”
The extra hands pull the covers over her, snug and safe, and he turns to go, but her hand reaches out, and grabs the back of his suit jacket. He pauses, and looks at her.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “About before, on the roof. I thought… You left me, when I needed you, and I was so tired of people leaving. First mom, then dad, then you.” She sounds so small and miserable. Charles never physically went anywhere, but he understands what she means, all the same.
“Don’t be mad?”
“M’not mad,” he says, instantly.
“Just… Don’t leave again, okay?” she asks, and he melts, and nods. “I promise,” he says. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
There’s a silent moment between them, and then she speaks. “You can leave the room, though. So I can sleep.”
“Right, right, right. Night, Lydia.”
Her sleepy grip on him weakens, and he slips away from her, and pauses at the door frame, sensitive ears catching the whispered, sleep addled reply of, “Night, BJ. Love you.” It sounds like it’s on instinct. She doesn’t even seem to be aware she’s said it.
“Love you too-”
The word “sis” catches in his throat, the curse and it’s ill defined borders keeping him from speaking too much.
“Love you too, Lyds.”
He slips from the room, and leaves her to sleep.

BJ stands outside Lydia’s bedroom door, until his sensitive ears pick up the light sounds of her snoring. Satisfied, he pushes off the wall, and decides now is as good a time as any.
He takes a left down the hall, then a right, and comes to a stop at the door to the bathroom. Nerves bubble up inside of him, and he feels stupid, and childish, but he has to see for himself. He has to know. He opens the door, steps inside, and, eyes closed, turns his head to face the mirror. He cracks one eye open, and then the other, and takes in what he sees.

The demon he’s always pretended not to be is staring back at him through the looking glass.

It’s the first time he’s seen his reflection since all of this began- since a little before that, actually. He’d last caught sight of himself in his bedroom mirror, bent over, snorting coke in front of an exasperated Emily.
He grips the sink with one hand, and leans in close to the cabinet mirror, the other hand exploring his features. His eyes look sunken and exhausted, the purple spots under them deeper and more bruised looking than he remembers. His stubble is out of control, all messy and unkempt, and his more demonic features, his eyes, ears, and teeth, it’s all on display. The moss at his hairline and the side of his nose, too.
He looks like he stinks like shit. He lifts an arm, and smells himself. Can confirm.

A hot shower scrubs away most of the dirt and grime, but it doesn’t fix everything, and at the end, he still has to redress in his filthy suit. There’s no clothes here his size, nothing else he can change into-
The door opens, and Barbara blinks, and stares at him. BJ’s mostly dressed, undershirt and boxers on, one leg shoved into his striped suit pants, the other raised to follow. They exchange a long, silent moment.
“I.. I didn’t.. Realize there was someone in here,” Barbara says weakly, looking.. Afraid.
He tugs his pants back on the rest of the way, and then pulls his suspenders over his shoulders, with a satisfying snap.
“S’alright. No harm done.”
He turns from her to the mirror, gives her the chance to scurry away from him, down the hall, and he takes a moment to will away the worst of his demonic features, specifically the slight glow to the eyes, the sharpness of the teeth, the length of his ears. She doesn’t run away like he expects. Instead she watches, fascinated. “What are you… doing?”
“What’s it look like, Babs?” he asks, exhausted.
“It looks like you’re changing yourself.”
“God damn, sleuth of the century, right here,” he praises, mussing his still wet hair into vaguely the shape he likes it, fully knowing it will do whatever it pleases.
“Well.. Why are you doing that?” she presses, and he glances at her, in the mirror. “So I don’t look like such a sexy little demon snack. Got a feelin’ you an’ Adam are one smoldering, glowing glance away from faintin’ into my arms, an’ I got shit to do, currently, don’t have time to satisfy th’ two of you. Maybe later,” he winks. She wrinkles her nose, and he can feel the disappointment coming off of her in waives. “You’re deflecting.”
“So what?” He turns to look at her, and he’s sixteen all over again, pinned with his back to the bookshelf, as Barbara glares down at him. “Don’t you have somethin’ better to do than nag me? Maybe you should go find your husband,” the bitterness seeps into his voice without his permission. “An’ th’ two of you can just hang out in th’ attic, in your cozy little bubble I left for you. Wasn’t that nice of me? Gave th’ two of you a little space where you can sit an’ worry an’ fuss. I know how much you love to fuss.”
“You don’t know us.” The glare she fixes on him is hard. God, he loves when she gets all bossy. Now’s not really the time, though.
“Don’t I, Barbara Baker? You’ve got a dad an’ an estranged sister an’ a little nephew. How old is Mason, now, twelve? One of these days you gotta actually fly out to see that kid, he’s never met you in person.”
“How..?”
Her glare is replaced with confusion.
“Forget it. I can’t tell you,” he growls, turning back to the mirror, where his stupid glamour has slipped, and he fixes it, pointlessly. How the hell did he go so long keeping it on, all the time? It’s the sort of magic he has to be continually aware of, but that was never hard, before. Maybe because there’s nothing left to hide? Everyone who matters has already seen the real him. They’re not about to go forgetting that he’s a demon, so why even bother pretending anymore?

Barbara’s still standing there, wringing her hands, and then it seems like something in her mind clicks. “You’re still wearing your dirty suit, even after a shower?”
“Not a lot of options currently, Babs. Th’ wardrobe department’s on a budget,” he snarks, and she presses a finger to his lips. He stares at her.
“Hush. And wait right here.”
She does go hurrying down the hall, away from him, and he takes the time of her absence to rub his temples, feeling tense and bitter. She returns a moment later, looking to be concentrating heavily, because she’s carrying a physical object. It’s a familiar striped hoodie. The one he wore all the time in high school. It still fits, just barely, doesn’t really zip right anymore, but it’s clean, and folded.
“Someone left this here,” she says, and at the same time, he perks up. “My hoodie!”
“Your… Your’s?” she asks, confused, as he takes it from her, and he pulls it on, over his filthy undershirt. The artificial chemical scent of cleaning products hits his nose, but it’s familiar and comforting.
“Guess I left it here,” he muses, picking at the black thread sewn to close the gash in the right arm. Baby Lydia’s handiwork.
“Why would you have left it here? When were you actually here? You said you couldn’t interact with the world of the living, so how..?”
He’s too tired to have this conversation, honestly, and it’s not like it’ll get either of them anywhere. He shrugs instead of answers, and passes by Barbara. “Thanks, angel.” And he puts a hand on her shoulder, leans in, and gives her cheek a soft kiss. She doesn’t push him away, or yell. Her eyes are wide, and she stares at him, as he goes, one hand pressed to the spot where his lips had touched her.
“BJ?” she asks, and he turns, and stares at her, him standing in the hall, her back pressed to the doorframe of the bathroom.
“... I.. Sorry.” Her eyes drop. “Nothing, never mind.”

He leaves her standing there, heads downstairs, and flops on the couch, hard, and is still for a few blessed, quiet hours.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Barbara’s mind is aching. Everything feels confusing, and unsure, like reality is unraveling around her. She’s not sure she can even trust the ground, right now, both because it’s already given way under her, and because she feels like this time, when she falls she’ll slip sideways through it, and be somewhere else completely. Floating is her only option, but the feeling of being in the air doesn’t help her sense of unreality. It’s a miracle she’s able to make it up the stairs and back to the attic.
Adam’s pacing, looking nervous, and when she comes in, she falls into his arms. He feels solid around her, as he envelops her in a tight embrace, and helps her to sit on one of the antique steamer trunks full of various goods.
“Barbara, honey?” he tries, though her head swimming, too full of liquid for her to respond. He soothes her, kisses at her temples, rubs her back and hums, and she grounds herself in him, in the sensation of being touched and the slight vibration in his chest.
Finally, finally, she’s able to speak.
“We know him,” she says, and Adam nods, looking confused, but eager to agree with her, if it helps.
“Beetlejuice,” she presses. “We know him.”
“I.. yes,” he tilts his head. “Yes, we met him, right after we fell. Barb-”
“No, from..” Nausea builds back up in her, but there’s no outlet for it, being that she’s got no physical body to expel from. “From before!”
“Before we died?”
“It was his voice on the radio,” Barbara says, feeling frantic. “We heard it right before we dropped, remember?”
Adam’s silent. Adam remembers.
“The apron,” he mutters, and she forces herself to focus on him, and now it’s her turn to support him, because he’s looking just as sick as she’s been feeling. “The apron in the shop. The black and white striped one, with “BJ” on it.”
“And it was his striped hoodie we found after Emily’s funeral!”
Husband and wife share a look. “What is happening!” Barbara cries, feeling confused and horrified. “Why can’t I remember.. What’s he done to us?”
There’s that intense feeling again. Not the fear of a violent stranger breaking in, but the fear of a loved one gone missing.
That kiss on her cheek had been so soft, so tender, so familiar. She doesn’t know how to feel about that. The kiss he’d dipped her in before hadn’t dislodged any memories, but her mind had already been overwhelmed at the sudden realization that she was dead. Or, according to Lydia, not dead, but not currently in her body.
“You think he would have done something like this? Made us forget him?” Adam sounds unsure. “What could possibly be the motive, there?”
“He’s a demon, maybe it doesn’t have to make sense,” Barbara whimpers. “Maybe it just has to be cruel.”
But even as she says it, she’s not sure she believes it. The demon downstairs has certainly been destructive and frightening, but they both had noted, after, that all living parties left the house still living. That can’t possibly be a demon’s normal M.O. All he’d wanted was to be summoned, but now that he has been, the worst he’s done is swindle a pizza guy, and entertain Lydia. Why? Shouldn’t he be out there, destroying and unleashing hell, or whatever it is demons do for fun? What’s his motive? What’s going on?
No matter how hard the Maitlands puzzle, that night, the answer does not come to them.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

When the bright, happy sunlight of morning pours in through the living room windows and hits him square in the face like a prize fighter, all BJ’s able to do is roll over and bury his face into the back of the couch. Sure, he could draw the curtains closed, or hell, even make the sky stormy and overcast, but he likes sleeping in a sun patch. It’s his version of sunning himself on a rock. Snaky habits, ect.
He has a few more happy hours of sleep, before he’s roused by the weight of a sixteen year old landing hard on his back, and he lets out a grunt, and peels his eyes open. Lydia’s sitting on top of him, with a grin that’s so shit eating, he can practically smell it from where he is.
“Evil,” he accuses. “Evil teenager.”
“Yup,” she says easily. “You sleep down here? There’s an empty master bed upstairs, you stank hobo.”
“Yeah, no, pretty sure Chuck an’ Desdemona didn’t have a chance to change th’ sheets before we gave em th’ boot. M’not sleepin’ in th’ leftover goo a beast with two backs makes.”
Lydia’s nose wrinkles. “Fair. Wouldn’t have thought that would bother you, since you look..” she stops, and studies him, a little confused. “Actually, wait, did you take a shower? And change your clothes?”
“This house is just fulla super sleuths,” he grunts, as she slides off of him, and stands at the side of the couch. He pushes himself up, and and rubs his hands across his face, puts his glamour back on, for the day. It’s a habit that feels familiar to slip back into, and right now familiar things are comforting. Lydia seems to disagree.
“Wait, what the heck!” she stares down at him. “Dude, undo that!”
“What? No. What?” he stares up at her, equally confused.
“You looked way cooler before,” she crosses her arms. “With the weird teeth and eyes and stuff. Why’d you get rid of it?”
“Because.. Because,” he says, less eloquently than he’d like, but he did just wake up. Besides, he’s not about to get into his whole complicated and weirdly broken perception of his own appearance with her. Like she’d even care to hear it.
“Are you trying to look human? Why?” she presses. “You’re pretty obviously not.”
Ouch.
He runs a hand through his wild hair, and stands, with a shrug. “Old habits. Didn’t you wanna go someplace today?”
“Oh, right!” Lydia perks up. “Do you know how to drive?”
Neither of his parents ever made the mistake of letting his chaotic ass behind the wheel of a car, so no. “Sure,” he says. How hard could it be to drive a car? Teenagers do it all the time.
“I doubt we’ll get that far, though,” he tells her, as he follows her up the stairs, presumably to collect Barbara and Adam from the attic. “Why’s that?”
“Just call it a hunch.”

The Maitlands are pacing the attic when he and Lydia arrive. BJ leans heavily on the door frame, and watches them for a silent moment. They’re both looking intensely stressed.. Not that he can really blame them, he supposes.
Lydia clears her throat. “Guys?”
Both Adam and Barbara snap to attention, and both of them get a very confusing look on their faces when they spot him. BJ nods to them both. “Sup, Babs, Sexy, have a fruitful night of pacin’? You guys are already gettin’ better at bein’ ghosts. Pickin’ up some hauntin’ habits. Nice.”
“Lydia says we’re not ghosts,” Adam blurts, looking agitated.
“Lydia’s been collectin’ human teeth in an altoids tin since she was eight,” BJ deadpans. “She’s not th’ paragon of rational thought you wanna hang your hat on there, Adam.”
“How do you know about my altoid tin?” Lydia whispers.
BJ shrugs, and pushes off the doorframe. “Meanwhile, she also thinks th’ two of you are headed to the hospital today. M’not so sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” Barbara asks, coming to tuck herself in at Adam’s side. Anyone who didn’t know them would think she was seeking her husband’s support, but he knows it’s more like she’s holding a nervous Adam up.
“Cause th’ two of you can’t leave th’ house,” BJ says, bluntly. Barbara glares. “Is that a threat, or something?”
“It’s a warning, babes,” BJ says. “There’s a reason ghosts aren’t known to travel from place to place. You step a foot outside th’ threshold, that’s a one way ticket to Saturn.”
“Saturn?”
“Where Sandworms live.”
“This again,” Adam huffs. “You never actually told us what a Sandworm was.”
“They sound cool,” Lydia’s looking fascinated.
“They’re like giant snakes,” Betelgeuse says, simply. “And they eat ghosts.” He cuts all of them off, before they can say it. “An’ I doubt they’re gonna make th’ distinction between actual ghost, an’ soul knocked outta th’ body.”
“So if they can’t leave to get back in their bodies.. What do we do?” Lydia looks to him. BJ squints. “Nothin’, I guess. They can’t leave. I doubt th’ hospital’s gonna let em come home. So I guess that’s that.”
“We can’t leave them like this!” Lydia tugs at his hoodie sleeve, and he sighs, and rubs his face. Even if he’s in a shit mood, and tired and disappointed, he knows she’s right. Besides, Adam and Barbara haven’t done anything to deserve him being cold. No one here but him is responsible for the current mess they’re all in. “I’ll figure somethin’ out,” he promises Lydia, and nods to the Maitlands. “Like I said, don’t go outside, alright? Th’ roof seems safe, but don’t try th’ front door.”
“How do we know you’re not just trying to keep us here so you can.. I don’t know, harass us some more?” Adam asks, and Betelgeuse laughs at that. “Because fuckin’ a livin’ person feels way better than stickin’ your dick in a ghost,” he counters. “An’ givin’ th’ option I’d prefer warm human flesh to cold ectoplasm.”
The Maitlands turn his favorite shade of red.
Lydia pinches his arm, hard, though it hardly registers. “Feeble little breather,” he pokes her in the forehead, and she looks ready to argue with him, when the front doorbell rings. The siblings share a look.
“Wanna go play ghost, again?” he grins, and then she shoves him, and races down the stairs, trying to be first to the door. BJ sprints after her, pauses at the attic door, turns back and blows kisses to Adam and Barbara, before continuing on down.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

For the second night in a row, they settle on the couch after a long day of haunting and bullshit. Lydia chooses the movie this time, It Follows.
“They should call this thing th’ It Catches you monster,” he says, leaning on his arm, watching the tension build. “But I guess that’s a spoiler, huh?”
“Yeah. Plus the thing people remember most is the tension of being stalked,” Lydia shoves a handful of popcorn in her face, and then, confusingly, she lowers the volume on the TV, and turns to look at him. “How’d you know about my human teeth collection?”
BJ stares at her. “Cause I’ve seen you roll those suckers like dice, you little freak,” he says, reaching into her popcorn bowl and taking an obscene amount.
“But..” Lydia struggles with that. “I never used my teeth when you were following me. So you saw them.. Before?”
“You used to tell fortunes for me, sometimes,” BJ says.
“So we really have met before.” She stares hard into her bowl of popcorn. There’s a moment of tension, because a question she needs to know the answer to is hanging in the air. She gathers up the courage to come right out and ask it. “Why did you leave?”
He sees the way she shrinks in on herself, a little, worried it had something to do with her. Was she too needy, too annoying, too weird? Was he tired of her?
“It was so I could come harass Adam an’ Babs, see if they’d summon me. Obviously, that didn’t work out. I was desperate. Wouldn’t have left, otherwise,” he tells her, but talk is cheap, and he’s already proven to her that he’ll take off.
“Obviously. But how did you know them? Know where to find them, and stuff?”
BJ sighs, and imitates Lydia, shoving popcorn into his mouth. It’s a moment before he’s able to speak. “I can’t tell you,” he says. “Not cause I wanna keep secrets. It’s cause I can’t figure out a way to make it make sense to you, without my mouth gettin’ zipped closed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m cursed, Lydia. That’s why I was invisible, that’s why I was lookin’ for someone to say my name, an’ let me out. I can’t say th’ stuff I wanna say, an’ you probably wouldn’t understand if I could, because-”
“It’s affecting me?”
“Yeah.”
She bites her bottom lip, and stares at the screen, lost in her thoughts. “I’ve been getting these headaches, recently. There’s always something in the back of my mind, something I can’t remember. Is that.. You?”
He nods.
“How do we fix it?”
“I dunno,” BJ admits, tired. “It’s startin’ to look like we don’t.”
“That’s quitter talk,” Lydia says, and it stabs through his heart. “You sound just like her. Emily.”
Her expression is halfway between sorrow and pride. He knows his matches.

There’s not much more to say on that subject. They watch the movie in silence, until the end, and the credits are rolling when he speaks again. “M’sorry, by th’ way. For leavin’ you. I thought… I was just tryin’ to fix things. I shoulda been there when you needed me. Don’t be mad?”
“I’m not mad,” his sister promises, leaning on his shoulder, a familiar and comforting gesture. They stay like that, in the dark for a while, in a quiet room absorbed in their thoughts, some much darker than others.

Chapter Text

By day three, that familiar feeling of hopelessness has set back in. Lydia might be aware that she can’t remember him, but her being aware doesn’t change the fact that he’s still practically a stranger to her. A fun stranger, who she can kid and pal around with, but it’s a far cry from being a family again. The Maitlands confine themselves to their attic space, seeming to refuse to interact with him at all, and Charles… Where the fuck is Charles?
That’s the question burning him inside out with irritation, because it’s been three solid days, and his father hasn’t reappeared. He’d have thought Chuck would be back the next day with a spray bottle of holy water, or something, but here they are, haunting the house and playing games, and dear old dad’s just fucked off, and left Lydia alone with a demon. Probably shacked up in a love nest with that fruity guru, he thinks, bitterly, as he watches Lydia scare the pants off of a mormon unlucky enough to choose this house to prothletise at. He doesn’t want to think their dad’s abandoned Lydia, but.. What other conclusion is he supposed to draw from his father’s absence?
The goofing off and not getting anything done is starting to get to him, too, because it was fun at first, and it felt good to make Lydia smile and laugh, but it’s not solving anything. No progress is being made, and as much as he’s the fun, irresponsible big brother, even he knows Lydia can’t keep living like this.
So he does something he’s never done before. He summons a handbook.
It falls into his lap as he sits on the top of the kitchen table, and he thumbs it, desperate for any information on curses, or demons, or anything related to himself and Juno. There has to be something… anything.
It’s been literal years since he tried to read through this thing, and he’s a little surprised to realize his kid self wasn’t a total dumbass, and that this book is just a difficult, unhelpful read. He kind of gets the vibe that that’s intentional.
Lydia comes bouncing up, carrying the severed head he manifested for her. “Can I keep this?”
“Uh huh, sure Lyds,” he grunts, not looking up, and she moves closer, grinning. “BJ. Yo, BJ, pucker up!” She pushes it in his face, and he lets out an annoyed little growl. “Who even is this, anyways?”
He glances up, and smiles grimly. “My mother.”
It’s a fake head, obviously, but Lydia still drops it. “Wait, what?”
“Relax,” he waives a hand, and the head starts bouncing like a dribbled basketball. “It’s not really her head. Even if it was, she’d be fine. Unfortunately.”
Lydia grabs the head mid bounce. “Mommy issues much?”
“You only ever had an angel for a mother,” BJ snorts. “You’d be singin’ a different tune if you were stuck with Juno for twelve fuckin’ years.”
She hums, at that, and then hops up on the table, to lean over his shoulder, the head placed behind her, forgotten. “What is that?”
“Th’ Handbook,” he shows her the cover, and Lydia’s eyes light up, and she brushes her fingers along the letters. “So.. what’s it do?”
“Apparently th’ only function it serves is makin’ me want to throw it through a window,” BJ pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m tryin’ to find information on curses, but of course, this dumb book can’t actually be helpful. Why would it be?”
“Is there an index?” Lydia takes it from him, and flips to the front. Her eyes skim down the list of chapters. “Hauntings, emergencee casework visits, curses, okay-” and then she pauses, and her breath hitches. “Summonings and seances?”
“What about em?” He asks, as she stares ahead. He knows that look. It’s the look she gets when she’s got an idea forming.
“Summonings. Could we summon my mom?”
Ah. BJ looks away from her. “That’s.. Not such a good idea, kiddo.”
“Why not?” Lydia challenges. “You said you missed her, right? Imagine how it feels for me! That’s my mother we’re talking about. Why would you not want to summon her for me?”
The implication that she cares more about Emily than he does hurts. Not that she notices, or understands. He tries to breathe through it.
“Because Emily’s gone, Lydia. Like, gone, gone.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I took her there myself!” he raises his voice, irritated. “If I could just read some stupid incantation an’ bring her back, you think I wouldn’t have done that? It’s not that simple, an’ you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
Lydia’s silent, staring at him, something behind her eyes smoldering. He tries to understand what it could be. “You’re the reason mom’s not a ghost, like Adam and Barbara?” She seethes. “You made her leave?”

Oh.

“That’s not what happened-” he starts, but it sort of is. He’s the one who took Emily down to the Netherworld, got them caught in Juno’s web, and he’s the one who made the choice to move his mother on. He can’t guarantee what would have happened if Emily had stayed in the house... Eventually, someone would have come looking for her, and there would have been a different mess to deal with, but Emily might still be with them.
So he can’t really defend against his sister’s anger. “I.. I helped her move on,” he says lamely, and Lydia stands up, furious. “She should have stayed. She had unfinished business. She had a family!” his sister yells. “And you made her leave us!”
“Lydia,” he tries, but she turns away from him, gripping the handbook, and goes pounding up the stairs. “Lydia!”
She turns on the landing and glares down at him. “You made her leave, and now you won’t even try to get her back for me?” There’s angry tears forming at the corner of her eyes. “Don’t you get how bad I’m hurting? Is it funny to you, or something?”
“It’s not funny,” he stands, goes to the base of the stairs, and looks up at her, feeling the weight of both their pain, in that moment. “I feel it too-”
“Liar! All you do is lie to me! You say you’re my friend, but you won’t help me, you say you’ll fix things, but nothing’s changed! You say you’re hurting,” her dark eyes are swimming with tears. “But I bet you don’t even mean that. You’re a demon, after all. Why should you care about real people?”

He stares up at her, stunned, because that was such a direct shot through the heart, he’s actually impressed. She takes his silence for shame, and turns, hurrying up the stairs.
He settles on the bottom step and sits there, quietly, feeling numb.
How do things keep getting worse? How is that even possible?

Time passes around him as he sits, emotionally exhausted. As overwhelmed as he is, it’s hard to think, even harder to move, so he lets himself slump there, ass on the bottom step, side pressed into the wall, probably purple again, not that it matters.
A demon. That’s all he is. Emily always saw him as more, and because of her, his family loved him, and tried to help him fit in, but without her here.. Who is he? Just a demon, bumbling around, making things worse the harder he tries to fix things. It’s in his nature, he realizes. He’s always known he was playing human, even called it that, but there’s suddenly a lightbulb moment. Things are going to keep getting worse because all he can do is make things worse. That’s what a demon does, right? Makes mortals miserable?
So maybe it’s time he stopped trying to make things better. Maybe he should follow his instincts, and be cruel, and make things worse for all his little breathers.
“Tell my son he’s a better person than he thinks he is,” Emily’s last words echo in his mind, but no, mama, he’s really not.

He stands, finally. The living room’s gone dark around him, the upstairs is quiet. He soothes a hand through his hair, tugs at the sleeves of his hoodie, and rubs a finger over the sloppy stitching there. Black embroidery thread, sewn back together by Lydia, age nine.. And a half, he smiles, thinking back to the way she used to insist. Calm down, BJ, before you do something stupid.

And then the front door opens, and in walks Chuck and Delia, with Kevin Fucking Loh behind them. He watches from the darkness, listens to them discuss exercising him, and something in his brain snaps. Maybe it’s audible, because one second he’s hidden, and the next, the three humans are staring at him where he’s standing, at the base of the stairs, fire engine red.

From there things spiral out of control so fast, it leaves even him dizzy.

He’s floating over the humans, lost in anger. He registers the sound of Lydia coming down stairs, a frazzled Adam and Barbara in tow, but he ignores them in favor of his old enemy.
“Well well well well well well well,” Betelgeuse sneers, feet touching the living room floor, so he can circle around Kevin. His glamour has dropped, and he lets his long striped tongue flick out of his mouth, to taste the human fear that’s thick in the air. It tastes good. He wants more.
“Look what th’ stupid bitch with th’ dead dad dragged in,” he finishes, coming to stand in front of Kevin, who flinches.
“So it is you,” Kevin glares. “You miserable ass. You ruined my life.”
“You know each other?” Delia squeaks out, confused.
“We went to highschool together,” BJ says, simply. There’s a beat, and then all humans present give a confused, “What?!”
“Betelgeuse Shoggoth, leave this house!” Kevin growls out, and BJ gives a much more impressive, animal growl in response. “M’not a weak little kid, Kev. That true name shit doesn’t work on me anymore,” and a bead of sweat rolls down Kevin’s forehead.
“Got any more summonin’ circles you wanna try?” BJ taunts, and Kevin snaps his fingers. “Charles! The Soulbox!”
Chuck stumbles forward, carrying something heavy. It looks like junk garbage… but there is a slight pull coming from it. Kevin hasn’t just been sitting on his ass, apparently. Like he’d said a long time ago, he found out about a whole other world when he realized that the supernatural was real. It had bitten him pretty hard in the ass, costing him his father. He must have been boning up on his techniques since then.

But right at that moment, all BJ can focus on is that it’s his dad, carrying around this little device, trying to get rid of him.

He pounces, and Kevin braces, terrified, but he bypasses his old ex, and slams into Charles instead. The box is knocked from his father’s hands, and it clatters noisily to the hardwood floor. BJ wraps his hands around his father’s throat, and throttles.
“I’m done!” he growls out. “M’done with all of this! You’re stayin’ here with me,” He bares his sharp teeth. “Maybe bein’ dead will fix things, maybe it won’t… But you won’t be able to leave me. No one’s goin’ to leave me!”
Charles can’t speak, because Charles' windpipe is currently being crushed. He grips BJ’s arms, tries fruitlessly to yank him off. Chuck may be bigger than him, but in the end he’s still so fragile, so human.
That will be fixed soon.
“BJ!”
“Betelgeuse!”
“BEETLEJUICE!”
Every variation of his name is screamed at him, but he only stops when he’s forced to- slammed into a wall by something, his grip slipping from Charles as he goes flying away from his father. It takes him a second to understand that it’s the Maitlands. They figured out enough to be able to push him around, the way he’s always been able to push humans. Two ghosts vs. one demon isn’t much of a fair fight, though. No one here stands a chance.
His eyes are snake slit as he crouches, circling around the group, watching for an opening. Lydia darts down the stairs, to Charles’ side, and helps their father stand. “BJ, stop it!”
“You wanna treat me like a demon, Lyds?” he hisses, voice echoing over itself nightmarishly. “Then I’ll be a demon. You had fun playin’ little dead girl, didn’t you? So let’s keep playin’, an’ this time, let’s be realistic about it.”
Lydia’s clutching onto Charles, who is on shaky feet, trying to get her behind himself, be a human shield.
“Come on, I thought you wanted to die?” BJ taunts. “You didn’t seem so scared out on th’ roof, th’ other day. Where’s that mean little bitch who pushed me off? Where’s th’ mean little bitch who spend th’ last three days terrozin’ people?”
“We never hurt anyone!” Lydia argues. “You’re angry because we fought, and I.. I shouldn’t have said what I said. BJ, I’m sorry,” she cries. “Don’t be mad.”
“M’not mad,” he says, easily. “I’m ten steps past mad, Lyds.”
He’s ready to pounce again, when he hears it.
His ears flick behind him, to a familiar sound, chalk on a hard surface, and then there’s the knocking- three quick, panicked raps. He turns, catches sight of Barbara, chalk in hand, and Adam, fist poised over the wall, as the segment swings open. In the hours he was comatose, they must have figured out enough from the handbook to at least know how to open a door. And now they’re trying to leave?
“Where th’ fuck do you two think you’re goin’!” he seethes. “What about stay in th’ house is so goddamn hard to grasp!?”
Then he feels a push, from behind him, and he goes stumbling, off balance, towards the open door. He turns, twists, and catches himself, claws digging into the doorframe, and stares at Charles, also off balance, breathing heavily. His father comes at him again, shoulder down, to push him all the way through. Betelgeuse is dangling, half in the after life, half out, his feet still planted on the solid oak floor, and Chuck slams into his torso.

His dad hits him, hard, but it’s not enough. BJ sprouts more arms to grasp the frame, resisting Chuck’s attempt to push him in, and then he sprouts even more, to grasp and claw at his father’s arms. “No, no! I don’t want to go, you can’t.. You can’t throw me away!” he rages, completely lost in fury. There’s the added pressure of the Maitlands again, trying to help Charles push him through the door. Of course they’re not trying to leave. They all want him gone. He snarls and gnashes his teeth, drooling like a feral, wild dog, and it leaves Chuck or anyone else unable to get too close to him.
His many claws have ripped through Chuck’s suit, and he’s bleeding, deep, ugly gashes cut into his flesh by demonic claws-
And then BJ feels a ripping, tearing pain.
Lydia’s there, holding onto one of those weird art pieces that Delia insisted on displaying in the living room, and she’s wielding it like a lance. She’s stabbed it into him, not all the way, but hooked under his ribs, and it’s enough to shake him from his fury, because he stares, many hands vanishing, leaving Charles free, and himself held from falling backwards through the door by only his own two hands.
Charles grabs the base of the statue, and he and Lydia, in unison, reel back, and stab it forward into BJ’s torso again. He’s got just enough time to think how nice it is to see them working together like a family again, before he’s impaled.
He’s really, really sick of being impaled.
But that aside… he feels burnt out and weary in a way he can’t remember ever feeling. There’s the vague sensation of something leaving him, something lodged inside coming loose, and he struggles to understand… Whatever it is, it’s knocked out of him by the thrust of the metal through his body. He can hear the whistling sound it makes as it drops, what sounds like stories and stories below, into the abyss of the afterlife.
“Dad,” he says, and watches something in Charles’ eyes change. “Lydia.” The same look comes across her face. It’s like horror and understanding. He’s too tired to process it. “I didn’t.. I.. I’m sorry.”
Exhausted, his grip on the doorframe loosens, and he falls back, down, down, down, into the inky nothing, and is still.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````
She’s just murdered her big brother.
There’s blood on her hands, but if it’s BJ’s or Charles’, she can’t tell. It’s red, and real, and she steps closer to the portal, and watches him fall down. The sensation is familiar. It’s like standing at the top of the stairs on a moonless night, no lights, no power, nothing but a dying little flashlight that barely cuts through the gloom and leaves you feeling more afraid of what half visible horror you might catch in the beam.

She remembers, suddenly, being eleven, and that being the exact scenario. She’s standing at the top of the steps, in their old house, and Dead Mom isn’t that, yet, she’s just mom, and her and dad are sleeping soundly. BJ, seventeen, is standing at her side, as she takes a shaky breath.
“It’s just a power outage, Lyds.”
“Easy for you to say,” she tries to keep the fear from her voice. “You can see in the dark!”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m tellin you, it’s fine,” and he goes down the stairs ahead of her. Her flashlight flickers, and she loses sight of him in the gloom. “BJ?” she whispers harshly, and when there’s no response, she takes a timid step forward, down the staircase. Every creek underfoot is a monster maneuvering through the pitch, coming to get her.
“Beetlejuice,” she whimpers, feeling tense enough to throw up. “Please, please don’t scare me, just say something.. BJ?”
There’s the sudden horrible feeling of her gut dropping, because she miscounted stairs, expecting there to be one more where there is not. She’s off balance, and she’s about to fall, and she braces for the pain of smacking into the tile at the bottom of the stairs-
And then her big brother grabs her, as her heart pounds, and she looks up, to see his amber eyes cutting through the black, casting light on both their features. “You’re okay,” he says. “I got you.”
She tries not to cry, because she’d been so afraid, and she couldn’t see him, and she babbles this to him, and he presses a kiss into her hair. “It’s alright, Lyds, sheesh. Come here.” He gathers her back up in his arms, and carries her to his room. The whole venture had been to obtain their prize- leftover cake dad had stuck in the fridge, downstairs, and he shares it with her, on his bed, their own mini slumber party in the dark.

That’s the person she just murdered. Not the demon, snarling and drooling and feral, but her big brother, the one who stayed up late with her when she was afraid, and painted her nails and talked about girls with her, and played all the silly games she wanted to play, even though he was way too old and cool to want to in the first place.
She takes a step forward, to follow him, and is grabbed just in time by her father, gripping her wrist. “Lydia, no!”
“Dad,” she feels the tears rolling down her cheeks, it all suddenly catching up with her. “That was BJ! We have to go, to see if he’s okay, that’s, he’s.. He’s family!”
“I know,” Charles soothes her, running hands down her arms, and gripping at her shoulders, something firm to ground her, to ground himself. “I know who he is. But you can’t just step through a hell portal, Lydia, that’s tantamount to suicide!”
“But we forgot him!” Lydia sobs, miserable. “He needed us and we forgot him, and then we pushed him in-”
“He was a demon!” Kevin tries, and she rubs hard at her eyes with her forearm, hitching up her long black sleeve as she does so.
“You ass!” Lydia starts forward, furious. “You knew he was family, and you came here to get rid of him!?”
“Delia called me!” Kevin puts his hands up. “I had no idea I’d be showing up to deal with your little pet demon. Looks like he finally snapped, lost control.. Gave into his baser instincts. As all demons eventually do.”
“You don’t know anything!” Lydia sobs. “He wouldn’t have done it if.. If he wasn’t desperate!”
“But in the end, he still snapped,” Kevin says, eyes hard. “Because it’s in his nature. And you want to go to the trouble of bringing him back? He’s where he belongs, with his own kind.”
Lydia’s about to respond, but she feels Charles very gently take her arm, the one she’d wiped her tears with, the sleeve still hitched up, and he turns it over, slightly, and takes in the marks he sees, littering her skin. Flustered, she pulls herself away from her father, shoves her long lace sleeve back down, and tries not to focus on the tired, heartbroken expression on his face.

“I think,” Delia says, coming to stand close to the both of them, and Adam and Barbara join the little huddle, on either side of Lydia. “We all need to have a long, long talk.”

Chapter Text

He falls for a long, long time. Maybe days. Maybe forever. Time doesn’t really hold much sway here, after all. A minute in the land of the dead is a month, an hour, a year passed from the real world, or sometimes, if you’re really unlucky, the entire thing will flow backwards, and you’ll end up coming out of the Netherworld and back to your house ten years before you even died. He heard of a case like that, once, a girl who died and haunted herself by accident, becoming the ghost that had tormented her for years-
He lands, hard, and it knocks the thought out of him. Knocks every thought out of him, actually, because he lays there for who knows how long, just groaning and disoriented.

He takes his time sitting up, because it’s not like he’s got anything better to do. Everything hurts, and he cradles his head in his hands for a long moment, drained and dead tired. Finally, he looks up.
He hadn’t expected to see the door still open, not really. Still, it not being there anymore.. It hurts, and carries a note of finality. They pushed him through, and then probably slammed it, and smudged the chalk off the wall, for good measure. He can’t even be angry over it. He would have done the same thing.

He sits there, staring up at the nothing, and he realizes he’s blown his last chance.

They’ll never remember him. All he is to them is a demon, and he can’t even pretend to be anything else, anymore. Not after that stunt. There’s a deep, burning feeling in his gut… He recognizes it as shame. He attacked his family. He tried to kill Charles, and he would have tried to kill Lydia, given the chance. His final, most damaging tantrum, and he turned it on the only people who matter.
He stays there, folded in a ball, sitting by himself in the gloom, for hours, going over it again and again in his mind, every detail memorized. The way they cowered, the way they begged, the way he snarled and gnashed his teeth and pounced.
The guilt he feels gnawing at him fades away into nothing. Nothing matters, anymore. He’s got no goal, nothing to get back up and try again for, because it’s all gone.
Robotically, he stands, and turns. In the distance he can see that building he’d run from with Emily, before. Juno’s office is there, and maybe she’ll be in a good mood, after seeing the state of him, bloody and beaten down.
He starts the long walk back to where he belongs.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

The air in the room is tense, and awkward. Lydia takes a deep, shaking breath, and tries to calm herself, squeezes at her arm, hard, aggravating the cuts. The pain is grounding. Charles’ eyes are boring into her as she does so, though, and she sees when something behind them clicks- the way she’s been carrying herself, lately. Her quiet, withdrawn behavior. What BJ had said about the roof. Suddenly he looks ten years older. She sees the way his shoulders slump. “Lydia,” his voice is soft, but she can’t bring herself to maintain eye contact with him. It hurts too much. She tries to focus on the floor, instead, but she catches sight of the blood on her hands again, and bile rises in her throat. There’s no safe place to look-
Cold hands wrap her in a hug that makes her shiver. Adam’s got his arms around her. “You’re alright,” he says softly, and she’s able to accept the comfort from him, but not the platitude. “No, I’m not,” she rubs at her eyes again, smearing makeup, trying not to cry. Her tears are pointless right now, anyway. “Adam, you remember him now, don’t you?”
Adam sighs, removes his glasses, and pinches at the bridge of his nose. “I.. I do. But I don’t remember him being like.. This.”
BJ’s biggest secret has been spilled, and he’s not here to try and clean up the mess of it. So it falls on her. That’s alright. She can fix this. She’s going to fix this.
“Has he always been,” Barbara searches for the kindest possible descriptor. “Different?” she tries. “The entire time we’ve known him?”
There’s a very real fear in her tone. Lydia can almost picture the panicked face of her brother. He never wanted either of them to know.
“He’s always been a monster,” Kevin says, unhelpfully, and both Lydia and Charles react to that. “Why don’t you shut up, jackass?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Otho, Kevin.. Whatever your name is!”
Things are on the cusp of devolving into argument, and it’s Delia that breaks through the bickering. Specifically, the frantic ringing of her triangle, as she holds it over her head. The entire group stops, and stares at her, and she huffs a long tuft of red hair out of her face.
“This is not the time to argue! Now. Why don’t we lay things out, as plainly as possible?” She suggests, and looks to Charles. “Please, for all of us confused, who exactly was that stranger, and how do you know him, and what is he?”
“His name is BJ,” Charles straightens up, address Delia. “He’s my son. He’s a demon.”
“His name is Betelgeuse,” Kevin says, looking now vaguely bored. “He’s been in the care of the Deetz family for many years. He’s the reason my father was murdered.”
“I recognize you!” Adam snaps his fingers, and Kevin looks pleased. “You’ve seen me on TV, no doubt,” he says, in time for Barbara to point at him. “You and BJ used to date! Back in high school!”

The guru’s expression darkens. “We did not.”

“You’re the reason your father was murdered,” Lydia jabs an accusatory finger at Kevin, unbothered by the sputtering noise he makes, or the glare he shoots her. “You tried to trap him and use him. What happened after wasn’t his fault.”
“Oh lord, I thought that whole fiasco was tied to BJ,” Charles puts his head in his hands. “We were too nervous to ever ask him, though…”
“Please,” Delia wrings her hands. “Back to the central point? What do you mean, he’s your son? You told me Lydia was an only child. Where’s he been, all this time? Why did you never mention him?”
“He was cursed,” Lydia says, running out of patience. This is taking too long, it isn’t getting them anywhere, and BJ’s back in the Netherworld, alone and hurting and needing his family. It’s not the time for this confusing, circular talk.
“BJ’s a demon, but he’s my big brother!” she tells them. “He’s always been one, he’s just been hiding it from everyone outside the family because he didn’t want to be treated differently. He’s not a bad person, and he’s not evil and he’s not a monster- He was alone, and scared, and no one could remember him, no one could save him, and then I let him down, I stabbed him when he needed me, and fought with him, and called him a monster, and now I’m done talking about this!”
She reaches forward, grabs at Barbara’s arm, and drags her to the wall, where the chalk door to the otherside is closed. “Knock! Open it!”
Barbara’s brow is knit together with worry. “Lydia, we should talk this through-”
“Stop! Enough talking!” Lydia feels her temper flare, out of control, and the fat, angry tears that finally spill down her cheeks are a sign of failure. “Enough standing still, doing nothing! Enough leaving each other behind! You open that door, or I’m jumping off the roof, coming back, and opening it myself!”

Barbara looks ready to cry herself, over that. “You think I don’t want him back?” she sniffles. “I’m confused, and scared, but that doesn’t change that I love him, Lydia. But if you go in there alone, you might never come out. We shouldn’t just rush in, we need a plan, we need to know what we’re doing, not throw ourselves into danger just because we’re upset with ourselves! If you go and get hurt, or god forbid, die, who does that help? What does that solve?”
“If I die, I’ll be with mom and BJ,” Lydia says. “It’s not like there’s anything else here worth hanging around for!”
“Lydia.”
Delia’s hand is heavy on her shoulder, and focusing past the tears, past the life coach, she can see her father, watching her, mouth slightly parted in a wordless expression of pain.
Adam’s at his side, a hand to Charles’ back, softly speaking to him, though the words he’s saying seem lost on both Deetzes. There’s a long, unbroken moment where her father is staring at her, from across the living room. Two pairs of dark eyes, watching the other, considering, deciding.
“Barbara,” her father says. “Please open the door.”

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

By the time he arrives at the office, another few hours have passed. Maybe he could have teleported, but he’s a bit too tired to go pulling any tricks, honestly. He pushes through the rotating doors, and finds himself in the waiting room.
The dead around him react, moving out of his way, or cowering in their seats, but he ignores them, moves past them, and to the door to the left of Maria’s window, to wander the back offices until he can find Juno’s door.
He doesn’t register someone calling him until he feels a hand on his arm, and he’s spun around. Maria is grasping at his face. “What happened to you?” she frets, gentle hands touching at his hair and at the big, ugly bloodstain on his front. He’s not sure if the hole Lydia and Charles stabbed into him has even healed yet. Not like it matters.
“I dunno,” he tells her, emotionless, not really processing her question. Maria says something else, but it’s hard to focus on her, so he just doesn’t. He pulls himself out of her arms, turns, and goes through the door.
Juno’s door appears for him faster than he would have thought. Usually it would be hours of wandering.. Maybe it has been. He’s so out of it, he’s not really sure how long he’s been walking. The smell of cigarettes hits his nose, and he follows it to her door, and pushes it open. Juno’s sitting at her desk, and she looks up at him when he comes in, her amber eyes showing the barest hint of confusion.
“Lawrence.”
“Mom.”
It’s the first time he’s called her that since Emily became his mother. She seems to notice, and tilts her head, if only slightly, eyes taking in his disheveled appearance.
He moves to stand in front of her desk.
“I’m ready to work,” he says.
She blinks.
“I know how to file, so. Give me somethin’ to do, an’ I’ll do it,” he tells her. “I’ll sit here quietly, an’ I’ll be good. I’ll work really hard, an’ I won’t screw it up. Gimme a job to do, mom, an’ I’ll make you proud of me.”
She rises, looking, for the first time in his memory, amused. “You look like shit.”
“I know. Sorry.”
It’s not the response she expects, but she seems to enjoy it. Juno comes around to the front of her desk, and peers up at him. At some point he grew enough to be taller than her.. It doesn’t make her less terrifying.
“Things didn’t work out with your breathers?” she cooes, voice dripping honey and deceit. He knows that tone. Of course he does. It’s just that there’s not anything she can do to him, anymore. He’s numb.
And he doesn’t even try to lie to her. “Yeah. I didn’t really belong with them, anyway.”
“No,” she agrees, patting his face. “Your hair looks like it’s finally behaving itself. Though the white ages you, a bit.”
He’s never had white hair before, but he can’t muster the energy to care.
“I can shave it, if it bothers you.”
Juno grabs him by the hair, suddenly, yanks him down, and he moves with the motion, offering her no resistance. She used to grab him like this when he was little- it used to hurt, and scare him purple, and he’d cry and beg for her to let go. Now he just stares up at her. She scowls down at him.
“A calm, complacent Lawrence. Never thought I’d see the day.” She releases her grip on him, and he straightens, slowly, as she moves back to her desk. The room elongates, suddenly, to accommodate for a second desk and chair. A stack of boxes, bursting with paperwork, appear, and fall heavily onto the surface of it.
“Sit down. Be quiet. Get to work,” her tone is a warning.
“Yes, mom.”
He sits down. He’s quiet. He gets to work.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Barbara, against her better judgement, knocks.
This entire situation has her perception of the world flipped on its head, because a few fundamental truths of her life have been completely thrown out the window. The existence of some sort of afterlife, of ghosts, of demons, of any supernatural anything being real was a shock in and of itself… To suddenly realize someone you know has been an inhuman creature the entire time is it’s own level of brain breaking insanity. So she opens the door, despite wanting to smudge the lines off the wall and flush the stick of chalk that almost feels like it’s burning a hole in her dress pocket.
Instead she turns her attention to Lydia. Her little in law has always been like a baby sister, or, well, even a daughter, at times. She loves and adores the girl, she doesn’t feel right about any of this. But Charles, sturdy and determined, is standing at Lydia’s side, looking stoic, as the door opens. She and Adam both turn from it, look away, and the last thing her husband does is give the Handbook to their father in law. “Be careful,” he frets. “Don’t do anything dangerous. Come back safely… Bring him home,” the last sentence is a half whispered, frantic plea.
And then Charles and Lydia step into the mist, through the door, and they’ve vanished from the world of the living. The door closes behind them and becomes a wall again, with little ceremony. One second they’re there, the next gone, with no guarantee they’ll come back safely, or come back at all.
That leaves the two ghosts that aren’t ghosts, the Guru who doesn’t seem especially spiritual, and the nervous, in over her head life coach, all staring at the spot in the living room.
“Well,” Kevin says, mussing with his hair. “I suppose I’ll be off, then. Whether they come back or don’t, I’m not especially interested in the outcome, either way. Delia, be a darling and lug the Soulbox back to the prius, won’t you?”
Delia looks more than a little lost.
“That thing looks heavy,” Adam frowns. “Why don’t you carry it?”
“Because I have a disciple here to help me, of course,” Kevin says, as though it’s obvious. He pauses, and studies the two of them. “Look at you both, though. Did BJ kill you, or..?”
“We fell through the floor,” Adam crosses his arms, and gives his absolute best glare. It’s kitten levels of fearsome, but Barbara matches it. “BJ would never hurt us. He loves us.”
“Loves.. The two of you?” Kevin takes a moment, and then rolls his eyes. “Makes sense that he’d need more than one partner. A demon’s sexual appetite is voracious-”
“You’re talking out of your, excuse my language, rear end!” Adam uncrosses his arms to put his fists on his hips. “I don’t know where you get your information, mister, but you keep making sweeping generalizations, and I’m not convinced they apply!”
That’s about the roughest, most accusatory language Barbara has ever heard from her husband. Her eyes brighten. “That’s right!” She backs him up. “You just take that slander out of our house!”
“Gladly,” Kevin makes a face at them, and the ghost duo returns it, childishly. “You’re all cracked. Delia, honestly,” he turns to face the redhead. “If you had a lick of sense, darling, you’d come along with me and leave these people to their mess.”
Delia bites at the purple manicured nail of her thumb, and glances between the strangers, and her guru. “I.. I don’t know, Charles-”
“Don’t be stupid now, Delia.”

Delia blinks.

“I’m not stupid,” is her immediate, hurt reply. To Barbara, this seems to be an old wound. “I need to stay. Charles and Lydia, when they come back, they’ll need me.”
“Is that a no I’m hearing?”
In a moment, she seems to gather her resolve. “I’m not going. Carry your own stupid box thing. When Charles and Lydia and.. And BJ come back, I’m going to be here to help them. That’s what a life coach does.”
Barbara’s not sure that’s actually true, but she can appreciate the sentiment. Kevin’s expression hardly moves. “Good luck with this disaster, then,” he says, sashaying to the all but forgotten box on the floor, and he hoists it, after a moment of struggle, which the three of them politely pretend to not see.
He’s out the door a moment later, and Adam reaches a hand out, pulls it closed behind the man with a little bit of ghostly magic. Barbara holds out her hand, and Adam, wordlessly, gives her a low five.
“So,” Delia turns to look at the two of them, a smile forced on her worried face. “Do the two of you mind telling me.. Everything?”

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````

The Netherworld is exactly as BJ had described it to be. He’d asked his son, once, what the afterlife would be like. They’d been sitting on a park bench, enjoying a day together. Just a little man time, as he’d called it, and that had seemed to tickle the thirteen year old demon. He’d taken BJ roller skating, and when they both inevitably fell and bruised their bums, their consolation prize had been ice cream, and a walk in the park, and that was how they’d ended up on that bench, in the shade, enjoying the frozen treats, and the hot weather, and each other.
“You plannin’ a trip or somethin’, Chuckles?” BJ had grinned, taking a solid bite out of his soft serve, a move that always made the human members of the family wince. Chuckles was a term of endearment used often, before Beetlejuice was comfortable enough to call him “dad.” Or, “pop,” as he sometimes said, seemingly for variety. Charles had licked the side of his cone and smiled at his son.
“Hopefully not anytime soon. Consider it natural human curiosity. Of course, we don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”
“Nah, it’s cool. Just makin’ sure you’re not thinkin’ of skippin’ out on me early,” BJ had said, which was a casually morbid thought to come out of someone so young, but.. The child had spent his formative years around death and the dead, and especially around people who had, for lack of a better word, self terminated. His perception of death and life were skewed, both because of his early upbringing, and his inhuman nature.
“Th’ afterlife is all bleak,” BJ said, after a moment. “No life, obviously, like no livin’ people, but more than that. No animals. No real plants. No sunshine or cool breezes or music or nice days at th’ park. It’s just dark, with lights hangin’ over head, an’ a whole world fulla dead people, all miserable an’ lost an’ confused an’ waitin’ for whatever they’ve got next.” BJ had focused on the water fountain a few feet in front of them, on the way living, breathing people sat around it, kissed in front of it, threw wishes into it, the way parents lifted smaller children to splash in the water. The way it glistened in the sunlight overhead.
“I never wanna go back.”
“You never will,” Charles had promised, because at the time, it had been such an easy promise to make. There would be no reason for the boy to ever return to that place. He’d stay with them, as family, and be safe and happy and have the sort of childhood every kid should get the chance to have.

So now, looking out over the gloom that’s exactly as his boy had described it, he’s hit with a shame so deep it could submerge him. He’s failed both his children. Lydia’s a suicidal anti-social wreck, and BJ was so lost and panicked he’d seemingly given his mind over to violence and grief. That moment of watching his son apologize and fall back into the void, it had hurt like few things before had ever. And then suddenly seeing and understanding Lydia’s scars, and her insistence there was nothing left for her in her life, well.
Could he really blame her? When his baby girl was hurting, where had he been? Too consumed with trying to manage his own pain to acknowledge her’s. How many times had she tried to share, had tried to speak to him, and he’d shut down the discussion, because of his own emotional turmoil? She’d needed him to be her father, to be strong, and to push through it, even though it hurt, and instead he’d swallowed his feelings deep, and chased them down with a bottle of bourbon.

Lydia starts forward, breaking him of his thoughts, and he moves to keep pace with her, terrified of the idea of the two of them separated here. He doubts he’d ever find her, again. This place seems impossibly large, a whole planet in and of itself.
“It’s so dark,” Lydia says, black eyes staring up at the strange, shining geometry of the sky, as they move across the flat expanse of nothing. The lights suspended in the air almost remind him of neon, in a way. The light they cast is harsh, and indifferent. It doesn’t seem to reach most corners of this place.
“Let’s stick together, find your brother, and get the hell out of here,” Charles says, and for the first time in ages, father and daughter seem to be on the same page. They venture further into the unknown.

Chapter Text

The Netherworld is dark, and deep. They walk a long time before reaching anything at all. The air between her father and herself is tense, and awkward. Both of them have seemingly decided that the goal here is to find BJ, leave this place, and deal with the mess of what’s left of their family only when the missing part of it is present. That last, horrible fight she had with her brother is burned into her brain. The accusations she’d slung, because she was hurt, and it made sense at the time to hurt him, too. It felt good to throw her pain in someone’s face and see it amplified in their heartbroken expression.
She’s not proud of the person she’s becoming. She’s just not sure how to stop it.
In the distance there’s a building, towering tall, lording over the vast expanse of nothing, and she and Charles decide silently that it must be their best bet, because they both course correct at the same time, their long trek now having a goal.
The building looks further, then closer, for seemingly no reason. Time and space is a little broken here, because at one point, they reach the door of the building, only for it to blip further away from them, and, with a groan in unison, they continue on.
When they close in on the building a second time, her father grabs her hand, and they dash through the rotating door together, before the structure can change its mind.

They find themselves in a waiting room. Both still living people avert their eyes, trying not to take in the gruesome ghosts seated before them. There’s a man with his guts spilling out of his body, quietly reading his handbook, and Charles grips her hand a little tighter, as they approach the counter. There’s a sliding window there, and Lydia reaches up, and knocks.
It slams open, to reveal a beautiful but impatient looking woman, sickly green, with bright red hair. She looks like a Christmas ornament, almost.
“New arrivals,” she says, disinterested. “You need to take a number and wait. It’ll be a while. Read your handbook while you’re here, it’ll help you understand.”
Charles glances at the handbook, still in hand. “Well, ah, actually,” he starts, unsure, and Lydia cuts him off. “We’re not dead. We’re looking for someone.”
“Not dead. Uh huh,” she rolls her eyes, like she’s heard it before. Maybe she has, maybe those who suddenly die have a hard time believing they’ve reached their own end, but still. That doesn’t apply to the two of them.
“We’re looking for my son,” Charles says. “His name is Beetlejuice-”
And the receptionist’s head snaps up, and she stares, wide eyed. “You’re his family?” she stands, leans out the window, and begins checking their pulses, looking horrified. “He came through here a while ago, looking terrible. All beat up and confused. He headed for Juno’s office, and-”
She stops, and then points to the door to the left of her window. “Get in here, quickly!” she hisses.
“What-”
“Now!”
The two living people scramble into the back room, and the receptionist has barely enough time to shove Lydia under her desk, and direct Charles to crouch to the side, before a door in the waiting room slams open, and in comes a demon.
Lydia can tell she’s a demon because of the bad way her brain buzzes. Even if she can’t see this being, knowing she’s there, and being barely hidden from her.. It feels terrible. BJ’s own demonic aura she’s used to, having grown up around it, but this is a whole other level.
The receptionist leaves them there, to enter the waiting room proper, and to speak with that she-demon, who seems to be addressing the cowering group of ghosts sitting around the room.

Lydia furrows her brow, takes a breath, and crawls out from under the desk. She didn’t jump into hell to spend her time hiding in an office. She’s here to find her brother and get the hell back home. Charles grabs at her, frantic. “Lydia, we need to hide-” and she wretches her arm from his grasp. “You hide,” she whispers harshly. “I’m finding BJ. If you’re scared, go home.”
There’s a door a few feet from the desk, and she crawls to it, and stands, slowly, to open it. The door lets out the barest creaking noise, but it’s an office, people come and go all the time. It must not register as significant to the demon, who she can still hear berating those terrified ghosts. She steps through the door, into a long hallway. The hall floors are uneven and checkered, which makes them both hard to look at and easy to stumble on, but she pushes forward anyway. From behind her, she hears the door close softly, and then her father is at her side, holding her hand, like she’s a child.
“I don’t need you holding onto me,” she snaps, and then regrets it, because he’s staring down at her, looking ashamed. “Then it’s not for you,” he says. “It’s for me.”
Even if she’s still mad, and hurt, she can give him that. She squeezes her father’s hand, and he returns it softly, as they hurry down the seemingly endless hall.

Sitting down, being quiet, and getting to work is so dull that the numb feeling in his brain seems to have extended to the rest of his body, too. He’s been sitting here for… minutes? Months? Even without the Netherworld’s screwed up sense of time, it’s hard to keep track. He signs and stamps and files things, working at an even, steady pace, and it doesn’t matter how much paperwork he gets through, the box in front of him is both overflowing, and bottomless, all at once.
Juno regards him from her desk. “You could stand to work quicker,” she scowls, and he doesn’t look up. “Yes, mom,” he answers, complacent, and he does his best to meet that suggestion, sprouting extra arms to move things more quickly. She watches him for another silent moment.
“Keep that pace up. I want that box emptied by the time I get back,” she says, standing. An impossible task. He’s being set up to fail. So what else is new, he thinks, bitterly. She’s bored of him already, and already looking for an excuse to punish him, for a reason to be cruel, when he can’t meet her impossible demands. Fine. Whatever. He’ll take the beating and go right back to work, after. And this will be the entire rest of his stupid, miserable life.
She crosses the room, intent for the door, but pauses besides him for a moment. One hand reaches out, plays gently with his shock white hair. “Do your best to make me proud,” she says, sweetly, a facsimile of a mother’s love. He’s had the real thing, and so he knows how to spot the fake, now. Still. Her soft touch is a pale imitation of Emily’s, but he closes his eyes, just for a moment, and leans into it.
“I will, mom,” he says, and her hand withdraws, and when he opens his eyes, she’s gone. The door clicks closed behind her.
He turns back to his work, and he takes the opportunity of Juno being gone to hum softly to himself. He misses his ukelele. He misses his childhood home, and the house he and Adam and Barbara spent all that time setting up. He misses the people inside that house even more.
The door creaks open, and his humming stops, instantly. Gentle hands go to play with his hair from behind him. “Don’t stop,” Emily’s tone has a faint smile hidden in it. “I like it when you make music. You’re so talented.”
He clenches his eyes closed, takes a shaky breath. She’s not really there. Obviously, his brain is too busted to work right, anymore.
“My son, the artist,” Emily’s voice is soothing. “I never did think a desk job was your style. Sing a little bit of that song I love?”
He turns in his chair to confirm what he knows- there’s no one there. But the door Juno had closed is open, just a crack, and he sings to himself as he works. Harry Belafonte, one of mom’s favorites.
And somehow, through the long and twisted hallway of the Netherworld, his rough voice carries right to the ears of the humans searching for him.

They’re wandering down the hall, checking doors at random. It would be helpful if they had a hint, any kind of clue as to what to look for, which door he could possibly be behind. Lydia’s vaguely starting to regret not getting to ask that receptionist for help. Charles is stoic, silent, opening doors and closing them, usually before she even gets a chance to see what’s behind them. Sometimes the contents make him flinch, and he slams the door closed, quickly.
“You don’t need to do that,” she says, sullen. “I’m not a little kid. I can handle whatever’s here.”
He glances down at her. They’re still holding hands. “You’ll always be my little kid,” he says, softly. “No matter how big you get.”
He means it to be sweet. She barely suppresses a scowl.
“We just need to find your brother, and get home-”
And that’s a step too far. She pulls her hand from his, and snaps.
“I don’t have a home!”
“Lydia, please, don’t say that,” her father’s now empty hand goes over his heart, like he’s in pain. Everything he’s shoved down til now is right there, below the surface, and it must hurt like crazy, hurt so bad it steals his breath, because he has to take a moment, eyes closed, chest heaving. She presses, just a little more. She has to hurt him to make him understand.
“If there was some magic curse that could make us forget mom, you’d have used it,” she accuses, tone bitter. “You never want to talk about her. You never want to talk to me! You never say anything-”

“Because it hurts too much!”

There. Finally, finally.
“I can’t talk about her, Lydia,” he says, voice full of sorrow. It echoes in the empty hallway around them. “She was my world, and now she’s gone, and there’s no bringing her back, no recovering. I just.. Wanted you to be able to..” he looks frustrated with himself. “To move past it. To not be stuck, wrapped up in grief. You’re still so young. You’ve got an entire lifetime of hurting left ahead of you.”
“If I make it that far,” she says, softly, eyes downcast
“I want you to make it that far. Your mother.. Emily,” he winces like he’s been hit. “Emily would want you to make it that far. Look at me, sweetheart.”
She lifts her head, looks up at her father.
“I never wanted any of this to happen. For your mother to leave us, for BJ to be lost, for me to.. To leave you behind. And I am so, so sorry I haven’t been there while you’ve been hurting.”
His hands gently grip her arms, below the shoulders, high enough to not hit at any of her cuts. “It breaks my heart to know that you’ve been feeling so alone, when I was right down the hall. And it shatters me completely to realize I wasn’t there when you needed me. I’m sorry. Lydia, I can’t say it enough.”
Talk is cheap. She knows it is. Still, his voice, his expression, the real tears, running down his cheeks- it’s what she’s been waiting for.
“You have to promise me,” her voice waivers. “Promise you won’t leave us behind again. Promise we can talk about her. I need to talk about her, dad. I’m scared. I’m so scared of forgetting her,” and her father’s hand gently wipes her tears. “Whenever you want, pumpkin.”
She launches herself at him, hugging her father so tightly it might physically hurt him, but he returns it, and they stand there together, for a long moment. They’ve gone from bleeding out, alone, to bleeding together. It still hurts, but she’d take this over the nothing any day.

And then, from down the hall, a song hits both their ears. It’s sung like a dirge, but both of them react at the same time to the familiar lyrics.

Charles and Lydia exchange a look. Her father scoops her up, for ease of movement, and his expensive shoes pound down the hallway, following the most morbid rendition of Day-O either of them have ever heard. They run down the hallway, and it flips, suddenly, and they’re running on the ceiling, like a rollercoaster on a spiral track. Still, her father is undeterred. Lydia clings to him and does her best not to get sick as the spiral ends. They pass doors, mismatched and confusingly labeled, a lifetime of doors, as the singing continues on, and becomes louder, until it echoes around them, coming from everywhere and nowhere, and they stop. Charles is breathing hard, and Lydia strains to hear the next line.
“Day, me say day-o, daylight come and-”
“We wan go home!” Lydia and Charles belt out, together, and the singing stops. They pause in the hallway, heads swiveling frantically, until a slightly open door to their right creaks open just a bit more, and a tired man with white hair stares out at them, wide eyed.
It takes the both of them a minute to realize it’s BJ. He looks.. Terrible. There’s a dark red bloodstain on his front, a result of that brutal stabbing, and he’s staring at them, but his eyes seem unfocused.
“Oh,” he says, impassively, and rubs his eyes, before ducking back into the room. His singing resumes.
The human Deetz's share a look, and Charles sets her on the ground. This… was not what they were expecting. Cautiously, Lydia pushes the door open, and stares at her brother. He’s sitting with his back to the door, singing softly as he works. He’s scribbling and stamping and stacking papers, a multitude of arms moving as he continues the song.
“BJ,” she says, gently touching his shoulder. His frantic pace doesn’t stop.
“Son, we’ve come to take you home,” Charles tries, his hand on BJ’s back, and then he withdraws it, because it’s come away wet with blood. BJ stiffens, and turns to look at them. “You’re not real,” he says. “An’ you’re gonna get me in trouble. I’m tryin’ to work.”
Frustrated, Lydia snatches one of the papers out of his many hands, and crumples it.
He finally stops, and stares at her, unsure. “Lydia?” He looks to Charles. “Dad?”
His shoulders begin to shake. If he could cry, Lydia knows he’d be sobbing.
She wraps her arms around him, and Charles does the same, despite the deep, painful scratches BJ had dug into his arms, only hours ago.
“You guys shouldn’t be here,” he says, but he doesn't push them away. “When Juno gets back, an’ sees you, she’s gonna be furious.”
“You shouldn’t be here, either,” Charles' strong voice waivers. “We need to get you out of here, we need to go home.”
“Home,” BJ says, sounding confused. “You want me to come home?”
“Of course we do,” she rubs at her eyes, knowing her makeup is smeared down her face. It couldn’t matter less. “We’re taking you home, to Adam and Barbara. Don’t you want to go back?”
“But,” his voice breaks. “But I messed everything up.” He needs sleep, a long rest to help his exhausted mind. He looks ashamed. “I tried to hurt you both. I was a demon.”
“You’ve always been-”
“Not like that,” he cuts her off, quickly. “Never like that. An’ now Adam an’ Barbara know, an’ I hurt you,” he looks to Charles. “An I woulda hurt you too, Lyds. Why would you want me to come back home?”
“Because it’s where you belong,” she says, and their father nods. “You’re a Deetz. We’re not leaving you here to rot. We love you, and we’ve been missing you. BJ, please.. Come home.” And he offers his son his hand. There’s not a moment of hesitation, as BJ grabs it, and stands.

“Sickeningly touching,” a shrill voice says, from behind them, and the three of them all jump, and turn. There’s an old woman standing there, regarding them, and BJ moves, putting himself between the other demon and the humans. “Juno-”
“Oh, back to first names, hmm?” she scowls. “Well, wasn’t that fast? I barely got to be “mom” again. And here I thought you’d actually learned your lesson, but it seems you’re just incapable of that. Stupid and gullible as ever.”
“You can’t speak to my son that way,” Charles snaps, and it seems to amuse the demoness. “How funny. I seem to recall your wife saying nearly the same thing. She would have been my assistant, if Lawrence hadn’t ruined everything, just the way he always does.”
Lydia watches her brother wince. She’s heard about Juno, before. She was a story whispered in the dark, late at night, after their parents had gone to sleep. He would tell her horror stories of the monster he used to call mother, and how she was feared, and how Emily had made sure she wasn’t allowed to steal him away. The older he got, the less he talked about her, the effects of that learned fear fading the longer he was away from her, and safe. Now he’s shaking, hair still shock white, but he’s standing between his childhood tormentor and them.
“Seems like you managed to break the curse I set,” Juno regards them all. “You stabbed him deep enough to dislodge my nail. That’s fine,” she cranes her neck, as her eyes begin to glow. “I can cast it again, and keep you two chained down here, for good measure. I’ll leave him wandering and confused, and the two of you can stay with me and work, until your frail human bodies give out.”
She lunges, and BJ moves at that same moment, and she’s suddenly a mess of sharp pointed legs, as her form shifts to something grotesque and arachnid. Juno jabs at him, and Betelgeuse grabs it with many hands, barely keeping the sharp leg from stabbing into him.
“Please tell me one of you has chalk!”
Lydia digs it from her pocket, and runs to the back wall, shaking hands frantically drawing those three lines, and she knocks rapidly. The wall remains a wall. “BJ!” she turns to look at him, panicked. “It’s not opening!”
He’s not able to break away, too busy wrestling with Juno, but an arm in a familiar striped sleeve sprouts from the wall, and knocks, once, twice- and then it’s covered with venom that acts like an acid, and it sizzles and withers away, as BJ cries out in pain. “Son of a fuck, come on!” he groans, as the enormous, furious mass of sharp limbs that is Juno continues to try and stab him. He grows another limb on the wall, to try again, and another spit shot of venom withers that one as well.
He’s sprouted a multitude of arms to stop her, but she’s steadily growing bigger and bigger, looking intent on crushing him, and he’s struggling under the weight of her, the floor below them creaking and groaning under the mass of the enormous demonic spider.
And he looks so, so tired.
“I’m sorry,” he manages. “Dad, Lyds… I’m really, really sorry.”
The floor gives out.

One moment they’re there, and the next, they’re gone. Both humans bolt, running to the edge, and her father’s hands go to her shoulders, just to make sure she doesn’t fall in. “BJ! Beetlejuice!”
Despite them never meeting a staircase and entering on the first floor, they’re peering down, through levels and levels of this impossible office building. It’s dark, and quiet.

And then there’s a flicker of green light, a willow wisp, just for them, and in the pale light cast they can see he’s there, hanging on to a ledge, struggling to pull himself up. He’s three floors below them, and they both call to him, together. “Come on, come on! You can do it, climb up!” Lydia yells, as Charles echoes her.
From the dark below him, they can hear a roar, and a skittering sound, and it spurs BJ to move, sprouting arms again. He pulls himself up as quickly as he can, extra limbs stretching up unnaturally long to grab at the next ledge, like an octopus unfurling tentacles, and when he finally, finally reaches their floor, both of their hands go to his arms, and they pull him up, and over the edge. He falls against them, exhausted, heavy, and the three Deetz's take a moment to catch their breaths. From across the room, one last weary hand sprouts, and knocks three times on the door, before sagging, and withering away. The door swings open.
The three of them stand, and make for it, with BJ limping badly, and leaning hard on Charles. His leg seems to be twisted in an unnatural way, but it’s fine, he’ll be fine. He’s done worse to himself for a laugh.
They pause in front of the door, and their demon sighs, looking drained, but there’s the barest hint of a smile on his face.
“That coulda gone way, way worse.”
And then suddenly an enormous force slams into the three of them, and they’re thrown through the door, right back into the Maitland living room. Lydia groans, and rolls to her side, just able to sit up before enormous spider legs come through the still open door, stabbing wildly at anything and everything. They barely miss herself and Charles, but BJ is stabbed, right through the gut, and he groans, and lays there, pinned, as the rest of Juno’s horrible form fits through the door.
“Stabbed twice in one day,” he manages, eyelids heavy. “New personal record.”
“I’m sure we can make that number much, much higher,” Juno hisses, rearing back to strike again, but she’s thrown off balance by a wave of force. It’s coming from Adam and Barbara, pulling one of the only ghost tricks they know. They’re huddled together by the front door, each with an arm around the other, their free hands outstretched.
Betelgeuse can see the terror in their eyes. There’s no plan, beyond protecting their family. It’s risky, and stupid, and so, so brave. He’s never been more proud of them.
The front door behind them swings open, suddenly, and with a push more forceful than anything they were able to do together, the two ghosts are shoved out. Out of the house, out onto the porch, and further, into the yard. The moment their feet leave the last wooden plank, they vanish from sight.
“Adam!” Lydia cries, running to the door, staring out at an empty front yard. “Barbara!” She has to move, quickly, as an enormous spider leg strikes at her, and she only just manages to avoid being hit, and she goes scrambling across the floor, to Charles' side.
BJ struggles against the spike pinning his body in place, but he’s too worn down. There’s no con to pull, no last ditch plan to hatch. Just a long eternity of pain, stretching out in front of him. This is it, he realizes glumly. He never even got to tell Lydia and Chuck what Emily’s last words were.

There’s the sound of smashing, suddenly, and his tired eyes open, the barest amount, to see Delia at the top of the stairs. Her arms are full of glass knick knacks, vases and anything heavy she could find in a rush, and she’s lobbing them at Juno’s enormous form. “I have no idea what’s going on!” she professes, heroically. “But I’m a part of it, and I know you’re not welcome here!”
It’s precious. He holds in a chuckle at her expense. Last thing she needs is to hear him laughing at her while she’s torn apart. But it’s enough of a distraction to Juno that her attention is divided, and in that moment, Charles and Lydia charge her, the business end of that bad art coming for her thorax, and they puncture it, together. The demoness howls in pain, and swipes at them as they scramble away. Her furious gaze follows them, which is why she doesn’t see the sandworm bursting through the front door, or the terrified but gleeful look on Barbara’s face, as she and Adam ride it. She’s in front, holding on for dear life, her husband clinging to her waist, and the multi-mouthed worm peels back it’s false face, real mouth open. There’s a sickening, satisfying crunch, as the spectral snake unhinges its jaw, and devours the demoness in one bite. As she’s swallowed, her spear-like leg is pulled from his gut, and the last thing Betelgeuse hears from Juno is her frantic and furious screaming.

The living room is quiet. The sandworm, sated, retreats the way it came, slithering from the Maitland living room out the door, back to Saturn, and Barbara and Adam disembark, looking equal parts frazzled, and proud.
He’s laying in the middle of the floor, and he can hear the worried chatter of the ghosts and the living over him, but their words are hard to understand.
“BJ? Honey?” Adam’s gentle voice breaks through the noise. He’s leaning down closer to him. “Are you alright?”
“Peachy,” comes the reply, because he really can’t help it. “Why, do I look more “dangerously unstable” than I did earlier?” He tries to sit up, but the arms he sprouts from his back aren’t strong enough to lift himself, and he flops right back down, wincing hard. “I’m just gonna… take a rest,” he manages, softly. “In th’ middle of th’ floor. That cool?”
“We’ll help you to bed,” Charles says, one arm going under him, and Delia comes to his other side, and lifts him.
“Now’s not a great time, but it’s so nice to meet you,” she smiles, and he snorts, and shakes his head. “Likewise, Debby.”
It’s the last thing he manages to say before he’s out cold.

Chapter Text

The new day starts the same way so many days before it started.
His eyes open. He’s in his bedroom, in his bed, like normal. He’s staring up at the ceiling, not black, but wood grained, and he’s wrapped up in his bedspread. A phone buzzes, and he groans, and tries to reach for it, but there’s weight pinning his arms to the bed. Confused, groggy, he tries again, and this time, he hears the familiar grumbling of a sleepy little sister.

“BJ,” Lydia huffs, half asleep. “Stop moving.”

Her head is resting on his right arm, and he strains to look to his left. His father is on that side, using his other arm in much the same way, and he’s snoring, slightly. It’s a Deetz family sandwich with himself in the middle, and he melts into it, closes his eyes, and is still for a few more hours.
When his eyes open next, the bedroom is empty. He’s got no sense of time, but the light coming in through the window makes it seem like mid morning. He touches gently at the stab wounds that had been left in his chest, and stomach. They’re closed, of course. Perks of being a demon. Still, he’s sore and unsteady when he stands, and when he pauses in front of the bedroom mirror, he takes in what he sees. Someone at some point changed him out of his bloody clothes, and the sweatpants he’s in must be his father’s, because they’re both too tight and too long. He lifts the white undershirt that smells like Adam, and looks at the two scars left behind. They’re pale marks on his already deathly pale skin, and maybe in a few weeks his body hair will grow back over it, and he can pretend it never happened. Maybe. And speaking of hair, his has gone back to its natural green state, no more messy than it usually is. He lowers his shirt, focuses on his face. The sharp eyes, pointed ears, moss and glowing eyes are all on display, and he begins to waive it all away. He adjusts his undershirt, and gives a grin. Too many teeth, too sharp, and he waves a hand in front of his mouth, and tries again. Human teeth. There we go, B-Man.

The door opens.

Delia is standing there, looking nervous. “I.. I thought I heard a noise,” she smiles, unsure. “You’re up?”
“I’m up,” he confirms. They stand there awkwardly, for a long beat. “Charles is down in the kitchen, if you want to talk to him. I’m.. I’m Delia,” she says, like he’s got no clue... Though last time they spoke, he'd said her name wrong.
“I’m BJ,” he says, coming over to the door. The only time he’s spoken audibly about her, it was to accuse Charles of “finding a new hole to keep him warm.” Not the best opener for the beginning of a relationship, he realizes, belatedly. It’s also not exactly fair- it’s not her fault the old man was lonely enough to start romancing someone new. Still, it’s hard to be emotionally charitable to your dad’s new girlfriend when it feels like he’s moving on too fast, and Betelgeuse isn’t really in the habit of being emotionally charitable in the first place. She’s still standing in the doorway, and he picks her up with ease- she makes a soft noise of surprise- and sets her out of his way, and continues down the hall. He’ll deal with all of that... Later.

Betelgeuse finds his father in the kitchen. He comes down the stairs, through the living room and then through the arch way of the still transformed house. Charles is standing there, doing dishes, placing the delicate china patterned wedding plates on the drying rack by the sink. BJ, who had been floating, lets his boots connect with solid ground. The familiar clacking of his heels gives his father pause, and Charles closes the tap, and turns to look at his son. There’s a tense moment between the two of them.
“Pop-”
Charles crosses the kitchen quickly, throws his arms around his son, and Betelgeuse wilts against him, and is still, and quiet.
He stands there, wrapped up in his father’s arms, gripping Charles back, eyes closed. He feels his shoulders shaking, feels that unsatisfying dry wailing cry working out of his throat, and his father’s hands massage circles into his back, that old familiar comforting gesture he’s so used to, that he’d missed so desperately.
“I know, I know,” Charles’ voice is soothing. “You’re alright, son. We’re back together.”
Betelgeuse allows himself to be weak for a moment longer, before he has to break away, has to speak.
“About what I said,” he manages, pulling away slightly, but not enough to break the embrace. Just enough to look up at his father. “When I threw you outta th’ house, I didn’t.. I was just tryin’ to hurt you, an’ I didn’t mean it, an’ I’m so sorry-”

He feels Charles’ arms stiffen, just slightly. Remembering the comments, and the way BJ had terrorized them, and with a sickening lurch in his gut, he looks down and sees his father’s arms are wrapped in bandages, from where he’d desperately clawed at Charles as he was being pushed through the door.
“I forgive you,” his father says, impossibly.
“Pop,” he starts again, but he’s cut off as Charles pulls him close again. There’s a rift here, now. Something that didn’t used to be here. It’s cutting into him, and it must be cutting into his dad too, because his expression is tired. “It’s going to be alright. I’m going to fix it, BJ, I’m going to fix all of it.”
And he knows he has a responsibility to try, too. It can’t all fall on Charles. Still, as exhausted as he is, it feels good to pretend to be a little kid again. Dad said he’s gonna fix it, and because he’s as gullible and naive as Juno always told him he was, he believes his father, one hundred percent.
“Are you hungry?” Charles asks. “I’ll make you breakfast. Here,” and he turns to the counter, pours a cup of coffee, and hands it to the demon. “Go wake your sister up, will you?”
“Where’s th’ kid at?”
“I think she ended up on the couch.”

She did indeed. He makes his way back into the living room, and there’s a previously unspotted little sister shaped lump under a blanket on that weird twisted couch he made. Oof, he’s gonna have to figure out how to un-juice this whole place… maybe in a few days. For now, an extra hand sprouts to lift the blanket away from her face, and he waves the coffee under her nose. Eyes still closed, she reaches for it. He pulls the cup back.

“Come on, Lyds,” he scratches gently at her scalp. “Time to get up.”
“Coffeeeee,” she groans, reaching at it blindly again, and he grins, and walks backwards, setting the coffee on the fireplace mantle, across the room.
“Coffee’s over here, Lydia,” he tells her, and she finally cracks an eye open, and groans. “Evil. Evil brother.”
“Yup,” he agrees, easily. And then it hits him, hard enough to steal the breath he doesn’t have. ”You’re just like mom, you know?”
His sister is standing, and she fusses with her hair, and looks up at him with big dark eyes. “I am?”
“Oh yeah. Both total nutjobs.”
“You’re the nutty one.” She pads across the floor, retrieves the coffee from the fireplace mantle, only juuust needing to go up on her tiptoes to reach it. She turns her back to it, leans against the brick work, and they stand there together, in silence.
“I missed you,” she says, voice tense, and he leans heavily on her, so heavy she almost spills her coffee. “I missed you, too.”
“So.. So what happened.. What happened to mom?” Her voice is shaking softly, and as much as he wants to crawl back into bed, and never have to tell either of them this.. He does. Charles comes in from the kitchen, and the two humans sit on the couch, as he recounts what had happened that night. Emily waking up dead, their trip to the Netherworld, and all about Juno, promising she would hurt mom. Emily’s final words are spoken, to a quiet and reverent room, and for the thousandth time he wishes he could cry along with his human family. “And then I woke up, invisible.” He cuts out the part about mom’s grave. It’s mostly too miserable to admit. 

“I started followin’ you guys around, tryin’ to pull any trick I could, but I was so weak, an’ I couldn’t get your attention, an’ you didn’t even know who I was.”
There’s no helping the misery that sinks into his voice. “It was horrible. Like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. I just had to watch you guy fall apart, an’ I,” his voice breaks like it hasn’t since highschool. “It was my fault.”
Of course there are hugs, and soft touches, and words of love spoken, but that doesn’t change the guilt he feels, not just over Emily’s departure but over all of it, everything. His mind still feels flimsy, like it could collapse in on itself at any moment, and he’ll find this is just another prolonged daydream, and he’s still invisible, he’s still alone, his family is still shattered.
“Nothing is beyond repair,” his father insists, and Lydia nods almost frantically at that. “None of us are going anywhere,” she says. “I’m not letting you out of my sight, Beej. I’ll be your new shadow.”
“Should I consider that an honorary dead girl haunting?” He manages a soft smile, and she returns it- not the smile he’s been seeing, not that mean cold uncaring one, but a real Lydia smile, like when she was seven, all gap toothed and bratty and his best friend.

Their broken little family sits together for a while, long enough for him to eat his first home cooked meal since the night Emily died. In a while Delia comes downstairs, and throws her coat over her shoulders.
“Alright, Deetz family unit!” she calls. “Let’s head out.”
“Where are we going?” he asks, and Charles hands him his frayed and tattered suit jacket, helps him put it on.
“We need to go see Adam and Barbara.”

The hospital room is quiet. Adam and Barbara are laying there, mostly still, but the rising and falling of their chests in their sleep at least assures him that their bodies are living. Lydia looks uncomfortable, and fuck, he gets it. His hand goes out to her, and she takes it, as the two of them look over the sleeping couple.
“Your friend, Miss Maria? She stopped by while you were asleep,” Delia tells him as she fusses over their blankets, seemingly just for something to do with her hands. “She was nice enough to get a head start on some, um, paperwork? That I guess needed to be done? Seems without that big spider woman around, she’s gotten a promotion.”
“Miss A is in charge now?” he asks, dumbfounded. Juno must be deader than he thought she’d be.. Suppose getting eaten by a sandworm will do that to a demon. It’s not like she’s really “dead” dead, and to be honest he has no way of knowing how long she’ll stay gone, or what he’ll do when she comes back. With any luck, his various humans will be dead by then.
He and Lydia take seats between the two beds, and all there is to do now is wait. He looks them over, considers the scope of their injuries, and hates himself for ever considering that their deaths could be a positive, back when they’d first fallen.
Their heads are wrapped, and he can see bruises along both of their collarbones. Adam’s right arm is broken, and there’s an ugly cut under his right eye. He assumes that's where his glasses shattered on impact with the cellar floor and the broken glass was shoved into his skin. Barbara’s long hair has been brushed and braided, with purple hair bands keeping those twin plaits tight, he’ll have to remember to thank Delia later for taking care of her. Barb’s right leg is broken, and her left arm in a sling, presumably broken trying to brace her fall. At least they don’t smell like death.. But to be honest, they don’t smell especially living, either.

The Maitlands don’t wake up that day, or the next, and by their third hospital visit he’s considering drawing a door and marching down to hell himself to see what the hold up is. He’s got the chalk touching the wall when there’s a soft noise behind him. Delia and Lydia went in search of a coffee machine, and Charles is working from his laptop out in the waiting room, so when he turns, he’s expecting to see one of his humans standing there, about to chew him out for even thinking of going back there, but the room is empty.
The only change is the two pairs of eyes, watching him. Or, well, trying to. Their eyes are unfocused- they look confused.
“Beetlejuice?” Adam manages, softly, and his voice sounds so rough- his throat must be dry. He drops the chalk, goes to their bedsides quickly, stands between the two them, not sure where to look first.
“I’m right here,” he promises.
Barbara’s voice is just as weak. “Don’t go anywhere,” she says simply, and he swears to any god that will listen to things like him that he won’t.
They’re not awake for long- they come in and out of sleep for the rest of the day, but they’re back in their bodies, back from the brink of death. He owes Miss A a fuckin’ fruit basket, or something.
The next day they’re awake, really awake this time, already sitting up in bed when the Deetz’s arrive, having been propped up with pillows by the nurses, but Delia has brought their pillows from home, and replaces them, opens the curtains, and deposits a vase of flowers on the window ledge. He can appreciate the care, but he herds his family out of the room the first minute he’s able- there are a few private things he needs to say to his partners.
He closes the door behind a complaining Lydia, and takes a breath. Adam and Barbara are watching him from their beds.
“So,” he begins. “I uh. I missed you guys.”
Barbara raises a tired hand, waves him over to her bedside, and when he’s close enough, she grabs him by the tie with what little strength she has.
“You are such a jerk.”
And she tugs him down, and kisses him. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t that. He wraps her in his arms the best he can, as gently as he can, and pulls back after a moment.
“I know,” he says. “M’real sorry, angel. You mad?”
“Furious,” and she leans in, and kisses him again, before struggling to sit up a bit more. “Adam?” she looks at her husband, and she lets BJ’s tie go so he can turn to Adam, who is rubbing at his teary eyes. “You’re the worst,” he sniffles, clearly overwhelmed. “You slept for days, I thought you weren’t going to get back up, and all the blood-”
“Wait, that’s what you’re mad over?” Betelgeuse has to clarify.
“That’s what Adam’s mad over,” Barbara mimes crossing her arms as best she can with one in a sling. “I’m more put out by the sneaking around, the lying, and the possessing. Care to comment on any of that?”
Ah, yeah. That makes more sense.
“It was bad,” he says, lamely. “I just didn’t wanna.. Lose you guys. Yeah. It sounds stupid, out loud, but I lied.. Outta love?” He glances up at her. Barbara doesn’t look impressed.
“You’re still lying,” she says, and it makes him feel frantic, and confused. “Babes, I swear I’m not, seriously-”
“What she means is, take off that human disguise,” Adam prods at him softly, and he balks. “No, come on, you don’t wanna see me like that.” They’ve been seeing him like that, but that’s not the point. The point is.. Well. He’s not sure what it is, anymore. But still. His appearance is the last thing he’s got control over, right now. His secret is out, spilled all over, messy and disgusting. Does he really need to add “being hard to look at” to that?
But Barbara takes one of his hands, and Adam takes the other, as he stands there between the two of them.
“Eyes first,” Barbara says softly, and it takes him a long moment. She nudges his side gently, and he blinks, revealing that wild, otherworldly amber.
“Now ears,” Adam whispers, and the demon closes his eyes, and does as he’s told. Each subtle undoing of his glamour is accompanied by a kiss on either side, their lips to the palm of his hands, until finally, he’s standing there, revealed. Looking like his real self.
“There’s our man,” Barbara coos, giving his hand a squeeze.
“I like the moss,” Adam smiles, copying the movement. “What is that, l eucobryum glaucum?”
“I dunno,” he mumbles, closing his eyes. Everything is a lot, right now, but at least they’re not foaming at the mouth and furious with him.
“You guys,” he tries again. “M’sorry-”
“We’re sorry for screaming at you,” Barbara says, her eyes also closed. “When we first saw you, in the living room. You were trying to be friendly.”
“I’m sorry about what I said on the roof,” Adam adds. “And we’re sorry we couldn’t save you. We forgot you, and-”
“Guys, no, I’m sorry,” he cuts Adam off. “For th’ possession an’ th’ kisses an’ th’ dirty jokes an’ th’ yellin’. When you first saw me, I thought you knew me, an’ I’d been followin’ you around, tryin’ to get your attention.”
“So that was you,” Adam breathes a sigh of relief. “I was worried there really was another ghost around here.”
“I knew it felt like something was missing,” Barbara says softly, rubbing her thumb over the top of his hand. “I kept circling around it, dazed and confused. Of course it was you.”
“It’s alright, BJ,” Adam assures him. “We’re together now, that’s what matters. We’re alright.”

They have an hour of peace between the three of them. He brings a chair between their beds, and they chat, and watch some sitcom playing on the hospital tv, and he tries to pretend that their relationship will ever be able to go back to the way it was, when all of his complicated, messy secrets weren’t right in plain view. At least they don’t seem to mind, something that confuses him, but maybe all this time he’d been hiding something that didn’t really need to be hid. Maybe he should have had more trust in them from the start. Maybe he’s always been his own worst enemy.
After a while there’s a knock on the door, and Lydia’s voice calling from the other side. “I wanna come in and see them!” she says. “And everyone’s clothes had better be on!”
“Don’t count on it!” he calls back, and Adam laughs, and tells her to come in.
In a moment the hospital room is overly full of noise, and people, and love, as the two Deetz’s swarm his partners, fuss over them, gentle with their sore and healing bodies. And then his dad wraps him up on a hug, and Lydia follows suit, and he doesn’t even feign embarrassment as he hugs onto them back.
He hears a soft, “oh,” from the door, and glances up, sees Delia standing in the door frame, unsure, hesitant, hanging back. Lydia seems to notice her at the same moment, and both siblings raise a hand, and wave her over.
She looks ready to cry as she situates herself in with them, hesitantly hugging onto Lydia, and she returns it, one arm around the older woman.
He’s home. He’s finally, finally home. His family’s a little bent, a little bruised, but not broken, not completely. Things can be fixed, and there’s a lot of fixing to do, but for the first time in what feels like forever, he’s not worried.
They've got all the time in the world to make it right, together.

Some days are good, and some days are bad, but most days are just… days. They seem to spiral on forever in comforting familiarity, and even when the bad days are bad, really bad, he knows that another, better day is swiftly approaching. The routine of their home remains largely unchanged, with work and play and meals and fights and forgiveness, and before he knows it, a year has passed, and it’s Barbara and Adam’s one year wedding anniversary. The entire house is decorated, done up in white and black, and everyone who matters is there. 

Well. Not everyone.

Emily might be missing, but she’s there in a way, because as he adjusts the tallit sitting over his shoulders in the mirror, he swears he feels something in the room with him. A presence, like arms wrapped around him, and he closes his eyes, and focuses on it. It’s barely there, a whispered hint of nothing, but feeling it calms his nerves all the same.
“Oh, my,” Delia, who has been trying in vain to slick down his hair, takes a sharp breath. “There’s very good energy in here.”
“Right?” he opens his eyes, and grins at her.
“Total mom energy,” Lydia agrees, coming to stand next to him in the mirror. She’s wearing a little suit, looking dapper as hell, and her short black hair is teased up, and her bangs styled into points. It’s a wild look, perfect for today.
“How’re we doing?” Charles calls, poking his head in, and Delia turns to her fiancé, and frowns. “I can’t get this hair to behave itself.”
“Ah,” Chuck enters, rolls up his sleeves. “There’s a trick to that.”
The trick is a healthy mixture of spit and pomade, and BJ sits through his father’s meticulous grooming, only wincing slightly as his hair is pulled. It takes a lot to tame his wild locks, but eventually, he ends up with them slicked down, against his head. “I look like I’m going to senior prom, circa 1956,” he grimaces, and his father pats his head. “I think you look handsome.”
“It’s a formal day!” Delia says brightly. “It calls for a formal hairstyle.”
“You look like an insurance salesman whose only clients are sad clowns,” Lydia says, helpfully.
“You look like a Dickensian orphan who just discovered hair gel,” he shoots back.
“You look like a nerd tripped and fell into a Hot Topic.”
“You look like Emo Philips going through an emo phase!”
“You look like an undertaker for perverts!”
“You look like one of th’ perverts!”
“Children,” Charles claps his hands, bringing the siblings out of their contest. “Isn’t it time we get going?”
“Wouldn’t want to be late!” Delia smiles. “I’ll just go check on the other two.” And she flits from the room.

Chuck fusses over the white Kittel he’s wearing, dusts it off, and frowns. “Honestly, BJ, I don’t know how you manage to get all your clothes so dirty.”
“It’s a talent,” he says, putting up with it, and when it’s decided that he’s sufficiently facy’d, only then is he allowed to leave the room, and descend the stairs. The banisters are wrapped in tule, with flowers decorating, and he meets Adam, similarly attired, on the stairs. His casts have come off by now, obviously, and the scar under his eye is sort of sexy and rouge like, a funny addition to his features.
“Looking sharp, Shoggoth,” Adam shoots him finger guns, and BJ grins. “Not so bad yourself, Maitland. Ready to do this shit?”
They descend together, and head out to the backyard. The crowd there is small, his family, Adam’s parents, Barb’s sister and nephew, and the two men stand in front of the crowd nervously, waiting for their third.
Lydia goes walking down the makeshift isle, throwing flower petals around, and then a wad of them in his face, because she’s going to be his bratty baby sister until the day she dies. He spits flower petals back at her, but the second Barbara comes into view, in that big white dress, both men are unable to focus on anything else. She’s steady on her feet now, or steadier than she’s been in months, and when she reaches them, her two grooms lift her veil, and she sticks her tongue out at them both, and smiles.
Their vows are simple, sweet and soft words of devotion, but the moment the words “I do,” escape three sets of lips, he feels a sudden pang in his chest, and he clutches at the spot, and grabs at Adam’s shoulder with his other hand, teeth gritting, head spinning.
It hurts worse than Juno’s nail under his ribs, burns like fire, and then suddenly he realizes he can’t see, the world unfocused as for the first time in his life tears well up in his eyes and slip down his cheeks. His face is flushed and he takes a gasping breath of suddenly needed air, and feels an overwhelming pounding in his chest, as a lifetime of grief is suddenly able to escape his body.
He feels all of it, everything, all the things he’d ever buried now welling to the surface, every moment of trauma, all the heartache and the joy he’d never been able to feel completely, and he’s held by his family as his newly human body sobs it all out.
He wipes his eyes on his sleeve, stamps the glass, and kisses his partners so hard it leaves him dizzy, already forgetting his body now needs air, and he laughs and cries as the three of them dance, that feeling of relief too big for his suddenly mortal frame, needing a way to be expressed.
He’ll miss his mother for a lifetime, but he knows he’ll see her again someday, at the end of everything.

For now, he has a life to live.

Chapter Text

Her new stepson has a fascinating energy.

His former status as a demon aside, his aura is unlike anything else Delia’s ever felt before. Maybe it’s spiritual leftovers from spending his life, up until that point, as an inhuman creature. Maybe it’s just uniquely BJ.
Their relationship is… strained. She’s managed to endear herself to Lydia, no small feat, but BJ isn’t a lonely teenager. He’s a young man, still grieving his mother, and she knows she’s not his favorite person. He might have accepted that she’s here, in his father’s life, but he hasn’t really accepted her as family.
It hurts. Of course it does. She’s not here to replace Emily. She’s just another person, trying to find happiness. Her cardinal sin was finding it with his father, while BJ is clearly not ready for the idea of Charles moving on.
“He hates me,” she tells her husband, glumly, one evening. They’re wrapped up in their dressing gowns, laying next to one another in bed, the lights dim. Charles lowers his book, and looks over his cheaters at her.
“He doesn’t hate you,” her husband soothes her. But the fact that he didn’t have to ask “Who?” does sort of illustrate that he’s noticed BJ’s hostility.
“BJ’s always been an emotional person,” he says. “He’s getting used to a lot. I know he hasn’t been as.. As kind, as maybe he could be. Has he said something to you?”
No. It’s more like he refuses to interact with her at all.
“He avoids me,” Delia tells him, sulking. It feels childish, but of course she wants her husband’s children to like her. She’s not the wicked stepmother in this story, she’s just an older woman who found love with a widower. Is that so horrible?
“I’ll talk to him,” Charles promises, which also sort of feels bad. The very last thing she wants is to come between their relationship, which has seemed… fragile, ever since all the pain, last year. It’s getting better, but both men had to get through a lot of baggage. Even if he knew that no one had forgotten him and left him behind on purpose.. It still did something to BJ’s mind, left him agitated and sensitive. And going from demon to human has been an adjustment she can’t even begin to comprehend.

So when BJ shows up on their porch, the next week, with a mewling cardboard box, she’s not sure she has any choice but to let him in.
She gestures for him to step inside, and he grunts, and pushes past her. “Where’s th’ half pint?”
Lydia. Of course he’s here, looking for his little sister. The two are practically glued together, most days.
“She’s out,” Delia tells him, and BJ turns, and scowls, which on him is practically a neutral expression. “Out? But school’s over for th’ day.”
“She went out with friends. Texted me and Charles that she was going for coffee and to the bookstore with some girls she met.”
As a single child, it’s hard to understand the look that flickers across his face. It might be hurt, at the idea of her having friends aside from him, it might be anger.. Anger on him is frightening, and hurt is just one rung on the ladder up to anger. He’s such a horribly jealous creature, it seems. Maybe the idea of Lydia going out, without him, feels too similar to being left behind? Or maybe he’s irritated that now he’s here, and stuck talking to her? She grasps for anything to talk about, and lands on the box in his hands. “What do you have there?”
“Oh. Uh. Kittens.”
“Where did you get a box of kittens?”
“Th’ fuckin’ box of kittens store, Deb, obviously.” He rolls his eyes at her, and then starts up the stairs.
She frowns, takes a breath, and follows him.
She reaches the top of the stairs in time to watch him stop in front of Lydia’s room, and he stands staring at the door, for a long beat. He makes a confused expression, and then snorts, and shakes his head, and looks back at her. “Here I am, waitin’ to just appear inside,” he admits, and then, surprisingly limber for a man his size- she supposes he’d have to be, to keep two partners satisfied- he uses his shoe to tug down Lydia’s doorknob, and then he kicks her door open.

The kitten box is upended on Lydia’s bed. There are three kittens, adorable and small, and they’re big enough to wibble and wander around, and he settles on his knees by the bed, and watches them intently.
“Um, so..” she leans on the doorframe. “Do you.. Like… cats?” she tries.
His big brown eyes flick towards her, and he studies her for a second. “I mean, I like pussy,” he says, just to make her uncomfortable, it feels like. She’s careful not to react to that. “But pussycats?” she presses. He scowls, a little, and turns his attention back to them. “I dunno. We never had one. Animals didn’t used to like me so much.”

Must be a demon thing. That sort of makes her sad. A family pet can be such a wonderful.. Bonding… experience. Delia’s eyes light up.

“Maybe we should keep one,” she says, before she can think of if Charles even likes cats. BJ pokes one in the side, gently, and it topples, in that clumsy way new life does.
“I was gonna eat one,” he says, but he’s not looking at her, which leads her to believe this isn’t a fake story just to agitate her and see her face twist. “But then I had to really like, stop an’ think, cause I couldn’t remember ever seein’ anyone eat a kitten whole an’ alive.”
“People don’t generally eat any animals alive,” she says, helpfully.
“Yeah. I used to eat bugs live, but.. Ugh,” he lifts from his position on the floor, to rub his generous gut. “Had to stop doin’ that. Started hurtin’ my stomach. An’ Babs says bugs off th’ ground aren’t sanitary. Never had to worry about that before, but.. Normal human man, here,” he sits on the side of Lydia’s bed. “Gotta not poison myself before I even reach a year as a human. That’d be a pretty lame way to go. I miss eatin’ tin cans.” His tone turns mournful.

“Was there anything you didn’t eat?” she asks, sitting on the other side of Lydia’s bed. The kittens take to using them both as climbing surfaces, scaling them. BJ picks one up, sets it back on the bed. “Rubber. Cause it’s hard to pass,” he says, which is a more genuine answer than she was expecting. Also, disgusting. But that’s just sort of Beetlejuice, she supposes.
“You like cats?” he says, after a long moment of semi awkward silence.
“I love them. I had a cat all growing up. She was so sweet-tempered. I talked to her and carried her around like a ragdoll, and she just let me,” Delia remembers, fondly.
“Sounds nice. Lyds wanted a kitten, when we were little.”
“But animals didn’t like you.”
“Yeah. Ma said it wouldn’t be fair to th’ cat, to be all stressed out all th’ time, cause it would have to live with me. Lyds was six, an’ I was thirteen. She said it wasn’t fair. She wanted a pet, an’ got a big brother, instead.” He shakes his head, a smile playing there. “Such a fuckin’ brat. Love that kid.”
“You two have a wonderful relationship. I’m a little jealous,” she admits, and he looks up at her, squinting.
“I never had siblings, growing up.”
“Oh.” BJ looks thoughtful, briefly. “You should try it, next time around.”
“Next time.. As in, next life? Is that how it works?”
“Who knoooows,” he sing songs, teasingly, and then picks up one of the kittens by the scruff. “I mean, I do. I knows.”
“So.. is it?” she presses.
“You’ll find out when you die, Donna, jesus. Don’t wanna ruin th’ surprise, do you?”
She very much does, but he doesn’t seem inclined to share. Instead he’s very intently studying the kitten he’s holding by the scruff. It’s a handsome little orange cat, with big green eyes, and he looks like he’s trying to memorize everything about the little creature. “Never got so close to a cat, before,” he says. “They’re cute. I get th’ draw.”
“Maybe you should take one home, too?”
“Mmmm.” The noise seems more thoughtful than dismissive, which is a first.

She hears the front door open, and the footfall and slight grunt of a bag being set down tells her it’s Charles, not Lydia. She goes to the door, and calls to him. “Charles, BJ and I are upstairs!”
“What?” his voice echoes back, sounding confused. She settles back on the bed, and Charles appears in the doorframe, a moment later.
“Hello, son.”
“Hiya, pop.”

That slight awkwardness settles back over the three of them. The father son relationship here is still a bit unsure. Delia motions to the bed. “BJ brought over a box of kittens.”
“Where did you get a box of kittens from?” Charles asks, loosening his tie, and Delia answers, before BJ can. “The box of kittens store, Charles, naturally,” and she smiles to her stepson, who blinks, and..  He gives her a smile back. In her mind, she pictures a scoreboard, and she marks one point, in her favor.
“I was thinkin’ of keepin’ one, an’ I thought Lydia would like one,” BJ says, and Charles frowns, and runs his hand through his handsome head of hair. It’s one of the physical features about him that she adores.
“A kitten is a big responsibility, I’m not sure-” he starts, and BJ gives the most exaggerated eye roll she’s ever seen.
“Lyds is seventeen, not seven, Chuck.”
“I was talking about you, BJ,” Charles cocks an eyebrow, and BJ gives a big, overblown horror movie laugh at that. She would have thought that maybe his laugh would sound different, now that he’s human, but it’s as wild and wicked sounding as ever. “Lucky for me, I don’t gotta ask you, old man. Just gotta clear it with Sexy an’ Babs.”
BJ pauses and makes a face and looks down, seeming unsure. He lifts his left hand, and the orange kitten goes with it, dangling in the air, because it’s lodged it’s little needle teeth into his hand, seemingly pretty deep.
“Ouch, I think,” he says, looking confused, and Charles comes over, and dislodges the little animal from his son’s hand. BJ’s got little pinpricks left in his skin, which begin to bleed. He sticks his hand in his mouth, and then makes a face, and removes it, flicking his tongue out of his mouth, like he’s tasted soap. “Oh, god, human blood tastes bad, now.”
The horrifying thought that it tasted good before is left alone, for the moment, as Charles steers BJ down the hall, to disinfect his hand.
“Honestly, you’re not a child,” Charles' voice, from down the hall, is tired, but adoring.
“But I’ll always be your little hellspawn, won’t I, Chucky?” BJ returns, teasing his father. At least that relationship is on the mend.

When Lydia comes home a half hour later, she’s shocked to find the three adults, lounging around her room, each cradling a kitten.

Chapter Text

BJ has this habit of throwing things over his shoulder.

She notices it first on their family trip to the Grand Canyon. All original Deetz family members have been, already, but Barbara, Adam, and Delia herself have never gone, before, and she’s always wanted to watch the sunrise over the canyon rim.
It’s a natural wonder, and so beautiful it moves her to tears, that first morning. Lydia’s in the car, sipping her coffee, unwilling to interact with other human beings before being caffeinated, and Charles is standing at her side, one arm around her.
“Just as majestic as I remember,” he says, softly, sounding reverent. The sky is painted in pastels of early morning, and the air here feels fresh, and full of life. She inhales, clutching her amethyst necklace in one hand, and tries to take it all in, memorize it all. The sound of birds, the feeling of her husband at her side, the sight of BJ, shoving a camera in her face. “Hey, Demogorgon, help a guy out?”
“BJ,” Charle’s tone is testy, and BJ grins up at him, fully aware that he’s bothering his father.
“It’s fine,” she says, taking the camera. “BRB, as the kids say,” and she stretches up, kissing Charles on the chin, and follows her stepson. Adam and Barbara are looking sleepy, but happy, and they open their arms, for BJ to squeeze between them, in the middle, where he seems to prefer to be. She tries not to dwell on the implications of that, since she is technically his step mother, now. It seems inappropriate to be curious about their personal lives… although she is terribly, blindingly curious. BJ seems to get fits of jealousy so easily, how do they make a three way thing work? Is it always a three way production, in the bedroom, or do they pair off? How does Barbara handle the libidos of two men?

Six am at the rim of the Grand Canyon is not exactly the time and place to be pondering their relationship, though.

She lifts the camera BJ gave her, and snaps a photo, snaps a couple, actually, capturing the three of them, with the sunrise behind them.
“Group one?” Barbara suggests, and she waives over a blur of black, as Lydia joins, having ingested enough coffee that she’s decided she can be a person, now. The entire family gathers around, all of them squeezed into the frame, and Delia’s gut drops.
And then BJ opens his mouth.
“Darla, we’re losin’ sunrise, get that ass over here!” he calls to her.
Her heart swells, and she hurries over, and then pauses. “Wait, who’s going to take the picture, then?”
“Hold on,” BJ grunts, and he winds up, and pitches nothing at the air in front of them. Nothing happens.
They’re all watching him, and she sees his pale complexion go red. “Ah. Right. No uh, no clones. Uhhh, hold on,” and he takes the camera from her. She settles next to Charles, and watches her step son harass the first stranger to pass by. The woman takes the camera, and BJ half jogs back over, and reinserts himself. The stranger, very kindly, takes their photo, and then passes the camera back to him.
“Nice, these look so good,” BJ bends down to show Lydia. “Oh yeah,” she says. “Not my usual like, artsy piece, but it’s a pretty good portrait.”
“Sweet. I wanna go back to th’ hotel room an’ pass out,” BJ says, and then tosses the camera over his shoulder, where it clatters to the ground, noisily. “BJ!” Lydia scolds, bending down to grab the poor abused piece of technology, and Delia stares at him, confused, as BJ blinks, and rubs his hands down his bright green t-shirt.
“I.. I uh,” he’s gone red again, poor thing. “That didn’t.. Used to happen.”
“What used to happen?” she has to ask. BJ twists his shirt in his hands. “It went to my pocket dimension. I’ve broken more shit that way, lately.”
“It’s a learning curve,” Adam says softly, putting a hand on his husband’s shoulder.
“Like everything else, honey,” Barbara smiles, copying the gesture.
“At least you didn’t break it, Beetle Breath,” Lydia says, holding the camera protectively. “I’ll just keep this from now on, I think.”

That’s the pattern for the next two days. The group seems to be becoming agitated with this habit he can’t manage to break, but no one more than BJ himself, who seems to grow more and more irritable each time he forgets. A lifetime of muscle memory is a hard thing to eschew, after all.
Delia’s solution is simple.
She spends an hour at a gift shop, and finds just about the deepest bag she can, one of those sling ones, meant to rest at your side. It’s not his pattern, instead a mix of earthy neutrals and turquoise colors, but it’s going to have to work, for now. She presents it to him at dinner.
“Here,” she smiles, and he wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and looks at it. “... I don’t want that,” he’s blunt as ever.  Delia tuts. “Nonsense, of course you do. I got it to help you,” and she stands from the table, and drapes it over his neck, and fits it at his side, before he can complain.
“Think of it as your pocket dimension, the sequel!”
Lydia lets out a laugh.
BJ’s gone red again.
“Delia, that’s so thoughtful!” Adam praises her, and Barbara and Charles are both smiling, and maybe hiding their giggles behind their hands.
Embarrassing him certainly wasn’t her intention, and she waits for the meltdown… But BJ picks his fork back up, with a sigh, and continues eating. At least he leaves the bag where she’s  draped it.

It becomes clear he’s doing his best to be a good sport, because the bag comes along on their donkey trip down into the canyon the next day, though she can’t tell if he wore it on his own, or if Adam and Barbara talked him into it. Same difference, she supposes. As long as he’s trying it, she’s happy.

The trip down into the canyon is scenic, but hot. They all have canteens of water that Charles passes out among the family at the start, and then they mount their mules, and are led down. Charles is at the front, right behind their guide, and Delia is behind Charles, and then Lydia, BJ, Barbara, and Adam, bringing up the rear.
Lydia’s snapping photos like a madwoman, and Delia’s just doing her best not to get saddle sore, and also maybe she’s doing her best to listen in on what the thrupple at the back talk about- it’s surprisingly normal.
“I think it would make an incredible project,” Adam’s voice carries along. “After the town model, I mean.”
“There’s room in the attic for more than one model,” Barbara agrees.
“M’not much of a sculptor, but I can paint bushes,” BJ pipes up, and then, like he can’t help it, he adds, “I’ll paint your bush right now, Babs.”
“Gross, shut up, I hate your guts, ect,” Lydia doesn’t even move her camera from in front of her face. BJ’s laugh definitely carries. As does the sound of Barbara leaning forward to smack BJ’s arm. “Creep.” It all sounds good natured, though. They wouldn’t have married the man if they minded off color jokes, after all, right?

BJ finishes laughing, takes a swig from his canteen, and then makes to throw it over his shoulder- and then stops, the item gripped in his hand, next to his head. “Pocket Dimension, the sequel,” she hears him mutter, amused, and when she turns, she sees him slip the canteen into his bag. He looks up, catches her looking back at him, and they share silent eye contact for a moment, before he gives her a sollum thumbs up, and then twists back to continue talking to his partners.
In her mind, Delia sees that scoreboard again, and she marks one more point in her favor.

Chapter Text

She knows some things aren’t her business, and it’s not like she means to eavesdrop… It’s just that there’s so many people in the house, on any given day, that it becomes hard not to. BJ and Barbara and Adam are always dropping in, or she finds herself at their house, and after all this family’s been through, there’s lots to talk about, a lot of feelings being worked through. None more so than Lydia. She’s doing better, now, she laughs and smiles and hints of color are creeping back into her wardrobe- mostly shades of reds and dramatic, deep purples- but she’s still a teenager, missing her mother, and some days are harder than others.
Like the day Lydia refuses to move from her bed. No, not refuses, Delia reminds both herself and Charles. It’s more like she isn’t able. She’s roused by Charles, and then Delia, and still, she lays there, seeming too exhausted to do much more than pull the covers back over her head. Emotional fatigue is as real as physical, and Delia simply calls the school, tells them Lydia’s taking a sick day, and that’s that. The woman in the office tries to give her lip, and Delia’s answer is short, maybe overly so, but she’s not having it. “My stepdaughter is mourning her mother,” she says, in a more forceful tone than she generally likes to take with other people. “She’ll come back to school when she’s able.” Charles’ eyes are shining, and they share a moment, a little hug, before he leaves for work.
Delia leaves Lydia’s door cracked, in case she needs her, but Lydia values her privacy, and Delia’s not about to stick her nose in there and harass the poor girl, not on a day where she’s feeling so low.

A few hours later, BJ lets himself in.

If she hadn’t been sitting in the kitchen, Delia might not have heard him at all. He can have a light footfall, when he wants to. But she notices a striped shape making it’s way upstairs, and she leans back in her chair, to watch him climb up. Heading for Lydia’s room, no doubt. She rises, and follows him to warn him that she’s not especially in the mood to see people, but when she reaches Lydia’s room, BJ’s already settled himself onto the bed, next to his kid sister. She turns to go.. And then pauses. She knows she shouldn’t, but..
“Heard you felt like ass today,” BJ starts, laying out over the comforter, with Lydia nestled below it. Charles must have called him. She doesn’t hear a response.
“Sometime we gotta try an’ sync these ass days up,” BJ continues. “I felt like shit like this last week. Now all of a sudden you’re copyin’ me?”
The response this time is muffled, Delia can’t make it out, but there’s the sound of sheets shifting.
“I miss mom,” comes the rough, tired little voice of a seventeen year old in pain.
“Fuck, I do too,” comes the reply of an adult man, hurting just as bad.
“Tell me again, where she went?”
“She went where everyone goes, eventually, when they’re all done. Th’ next place. I dunno what it’s like.. No one does. It’s just where people go.”
“Is it nice?”
“Maybe. I hope so.”
“Couldn’t you just lie to me, tell me she’s in heaven, or something?”
“Wouldn’t make it hurt less,” he says, soft and low. “Heaven’s still a long ways away.”
“I want to be where she is,” Lydia’s voice trembles.
“Me too,” BJ says, somehow keeping his voice from wavering as well, a monumental feat. “But she wouldn’t like that. She told me I had to make sure you reach old an’ gray, so that’s what you’re gonna do.”
“I don’t have a say in that?”
“Nope,” Delia hears the smile in his voice. “No say at all. You’re gonna get old, an’ marry some hot babe, an’ adopt a little rainbow of kids together. An’ Imma be right next to you,” he adds.
“Promise?”
“I promise,” BJ says, and there's the noise of the sheets moving again, and when she peaks in, unable to help herself, she can see the siblings have tucked themselves into each other, Lydia’s head in the crook of his shoulder, both their eyes closed.

She steps softly, gives them back their privacy, and she’s in the living room, meditating, when BJ comes downstairs, an hour later.
“Hey, Dells,” he calls to her, and she opens her eyes, and looks at him. “Th’ kid wants lunch. You hungry?”
She tries not to read too much into the simple act of him grabbing her food. But after all, he could have just left, and come back. He didn’t have to stop and ask.
“Well,” she hesitates. “I’m vegan, so..”
“They’ve got this pressed veggie panini thing at th’ coffee shop. That work?”
“I.. yes, that sounds wonderful. Thank you, BJ,” she smiles, and he turns to go, but pauses at the front door, and turns back to her. “Chuck said you called th’ school, gave Lyds a break, today. She really needed it. Good lookin’ out.”
One more point on the scoreboard. He steps out the door, before she can say much more.

Chapter Text

BJ’s lost his powers, and getting used to life without them seems to be a struggle. There’s the now mostly resolved issue he had with simply throwing things over his shoulder- her bag method has helped ease that habit down. The bag she’d bought him doesn’t go with anything he owns, but he seems to like that, since he often dresses in intentionally clashing colors and patterns. The things he’s missing the most are the powers he seemed to use daily.
Sometimes he lifts both his legs at once, like he expects to float, only to land hard on his knees. She only sees him do that twice before he stops.
No more possession, no more clones, no more throwing fire or spawning horrifying illusions- no more fun stuff, as he and Lydia put it.
And then one day, specifically Thanksgiving, Delia and Barbara are bustling around each other in the Maitland kitchen, finishing the last of their holiday prep. Charles’ turkey is in the oven, smelling delicious, and Delia’s tofurky is about to go in, along side it, while Barbara finishes cutting the crust off a pie.
BJ’s humming along at the kitchen island, peeling potatoes. He’s not exactly a master chef, and also doesn’t exactly seem to have much regard for what constitutes normal food. Lydia is sat next to him, supervising that he doesn’t bite into the potatoes like they’re apples… again. Still, no one objects to him eating the peels, and he’s got a mouthful of them.
Barbara pauses, wipes her brow, and smiles down at the beautiful lattice work on her apple pie. “I think I’m getting good at that!” she says, dusting her flour covered hands off on her apron. “Those baking classes are really paying off!”
“Been eatin’ so many sweets my teeth are fallin’ out,” BJ chuckles.
“I bet it’s going to taste amazing, Barbara,” Delia smiles brightly, and Barbara picks it up, and turns to put it in the oven.
Her foot catches on the kitchen rug, and suddenly Barbara and her pie nearly go flying, except for the sudden nightmarish disembodied hands that grab both her, and the pie. The limbs are sprouting from the wall, from the floor, even one from the ceiling, holding the pie, and the kitchen is silent. BJ stands, takes the pie calmly, sets it on the kitchen island, and then retrieves Barbara from the tanglement, where the hands were starting to gently caress her face and play with her hair. She looks frazzled.
“You good, Babs?” he asks her, as the extra limbs shrink until they’re simply no more, and Barbara takes a breath, and nods. “I’m.. I’m okay. Uh. Did you know you could do that?”
“Kinda figured I might be able to, yeah,” BJ admits, sitting back down, and he resumes his potato peeling like nothing happened. Lydia doesn’t allow that.
“Why the hell can you still sprout arms?” she looks baffled, and Delia can’t help but feel the same. “I thought all of your powers.. Went away when you got married?” Delia asks, slightly on edge at the way there had just suddenly been an impossible menagerie of hands, reaching from everywhere.
“Yeah, they did,” BJ agrees. “Th’ demon powers, at least.” He says that like it’s an explanation. “What was that, if not demon powers?” Barbara presses, leaning with her arms crossed on the kitchen island, staring down at her husband. BJ hesitates.
“Oh my god,” Lydia blinks. “Your mom was the demon. But your dad.. Shoggoth. Oh my god. Oh my god!”
“Wait, who is Shoggoth?” Delia’s feeling rapidly left behind.
“Not really a who,” BJ says, which doesn’t help very much. He can see how on edge she is though, and chuckles. “Okay, so my bio mom, J-you-know-who,” he starts. He avoids saying her name out of, it seems, paranoia. “She was a demon, right? But my bio dad, he was somethin’ else. A Shoggoth,” he stresses the “a.”
“They’re like, tentacled incomprehensible deep sea old ones,” Lydia says. “That shitty old racist H.P. Lovecraft wrote about them.”
“More like H.P.V. Shitcraft,” BJ says.
“Fucking gottem,” Lydia responds.
“So when you got married, and came to life, it knocked all the demon out of you, more or less, but if left you with.. The Shoggoth parts?” Babs clarifies, looking very, very out of her depth.
“Seems like it. Shoggoths are always growin’ limbs an’ their forms don’t really make sense to human brains,” BJ says. “Looks like I kept th’ growin’ limbs thing, so that’s pretty cool.”
“And you’re… you’re okay with this?” Barbara asks softly, and BJ looks up at her. 

“Yeah, I.. Yeah. It’s okay, Babs. Th’ tantrums an’ stuff was all demon. It was hard to regulate emotions when I kinda wasn’t really made to feel em. I’m human now. Or, mostly, I guess. It’s better, now.”
Barbara cups her husband’s face, leans down, and kisses him. BJ closes his eyes, looking more tender and reverent than Delia had thought he’d be able to. His face is usually fixed in the goofy expression of someone planning mischief. Seeing lovey dovey gentle on him is funny.
Barbara pulls away, and then ruffles BJ’s hair.
“Thanks for saving my pie, bedbug,” she says, and then turns, opens the oven, and slips the confection inside.

Chapter Text

Barbara almost seems determined to fit Delia into the puzzle piece of their family. It’s something about the younger woman she can appreciate, one of the many things, actually. Barbara likes to paint and sculpt and cook and sing, and she’s young, and pretty, and got all the time in the world to be a mother, and the very petty jealousy Delia knows she could be feeling towards her step daughter in law is replaced by fondness, though it can be a struggle, at times. It's not that she’s bitter.. It’s that comparing herself to others is a hard habit to kick, especially when it feels like she comes up short. But it’s not hard to love Barbara.
They’re sat in the Deetz household kitchen, one morning, sipping coffee, when she has to ask.
“What’s it like, being in a relationship like yours? Especially since BJ…” she struggles to find appropriate words to describe him. “Especially with him being.. Him.”
“I know, right?” Barbara smiles. “I guess it might seem weird, but.. We’ve just loved him for so long, and we know what kind of person he is, even if other people have a hard time seeing it.”
“The three of you seem so.. In sync. It’s romantic,” Delia smiles, biting down the questions she really wants to know, which don’t seem appropriate. There’s a moment of silence, as they sip their coffees.
“You want to know who’s better in bed?” the blonde asks, and Delia throws her hands up. “It’s killing me! How do you not compare the two of them, all the time!”

“They excel in different areas,” Barbara says vaguely, but her smile is wide. She’s clearly been wanting to brag and gossip a little bit, and Delia’s been wanting to know, so she leans forward. “Is that so?”
“Before we got married,” Barbara’s voice drops low. “BJ would summon all these clones. Things would go from the three of us to suddenly the seven of us.”
“You did that.. often?” Delia asks, stunned.
“Not an every night thing, naturally, but as a fun little “sometimes” treat.”
“So where does Adam excel, then?” Delia has to ask, and Barbara giggles, and snorts, and gives her mother in law a very gentle push. “Adam’s very good at doing what he’s told,” she manages. “BJ breaks character too much. And anyways, Adam’s…”
“Adam’s…?”
Barbara doesn’t answer, but holds two hands a healthy width apart, like she’s bragging about a fish, or a- OH.
“My god, Barbara, how do you manage?”
“It helps that they’ve got each other,” Barbara grins. “If it was two men on me, I probably couldn’t. But they give each other lots of attention, too.”
Delia sips her coffee, and does her best to turn her imagination off.

That evening herself, Charles, and Lydia are invited over to the Maitland house for dinner, and when they step inside, Lydia instantly perks up at the delicious smell rolling through the house.
“Is that…?”
“Hey, Lydster!” Adam calls from the kitchen. “I know you like salmon. Your dad gave me the recipe.. Want to come taste the bolognese for me, sweetheart?”
Lydia darts into the kitchen so fast, she nearly knocks down BJ, who’s coming out to welcome the rest of the family in.
“Hey, old man, red,” he nods to the two of them.
“Smells fantastic in here, BJ,” Charles smiles brightly.
“Doesn’t have anythin’ to do with me,” BJ snorts. “Adam’s th’ cook. He’s pretty good at doin’ what he’s told-”
Delia sputters and coughs into her hand.
“An’ followin’.. A recipe.. You good, Daryle?”
“Fine, fine!” Delia says, flustered.
“You did make something for Delia to eat, didn’t you, BJ?” Charles asks, as they follow the former demon back into the kitchen, where Lydia and Adam are discussing the sauce. She wants to throw more spice in. Adam seems hesitant.
“Sure, sure, we got her a big ol’ thing of fake fish, like, way too fuckin’ much,” BJ says, dismissively, and then turns, and holds his hands a healthy width apart. Just about the same width Barbara had.. Oh, christ.
“You gotta take th’ rest of this crap home, okay? We’re not gonna eat it.” He pauses. “Well, I might,” he admits. “But I won't enjoy it. Again, you good, Domino?”
Delia’s gone as red as her hair. 

Chapter Text

The Maitland-Deetz family group chat is becoming overrun with cat pictures. It’s a plague that Delia can find no fault with, both because she’s an active contributor, and because, well.. The person spamming the most pictures, aside from herself, is BJ.
He’s not much of a text person, and prefers to just send pictures, or better yet, just call. He calls Lydia often on days when they’re apart, mostly to tell her some random thing he’s thinking, get a laugh from her, and hang up. She would have thought the teen would be annoyed, but she’s caught Lydia doing the exact same thing. Her big brother’s habits really are her own, at this point. That’s both adorable and worrying.

But right, the cat pictures. BJ had very easily talked his spouses into keeping that handsome little orange cat with the big green eyes. His name, for some reason, is Tuna Melt. The other two kittens, well, she and Charles had planned to keep one, and give the other to a shelter, but Lydia’s heart had melted. “You can’t separate them,” she’d said, tone mournful. “They’re siblings. They need each other,” and Charles had no defense against that. It was neither cat, or both, and in the end, they chose both.
There’s a calico, which Lydia, sporting a rare smile, had asked Delia to name, and she settled on “Bootsy,” on account of the animal’s little spotted feet. Lydia named the other, a nervous little dark gray male, “Percy.” Percy came with a bent tail, and a fear of people that broke Delia’s heart, and the past months of care and gentle touches and kitty trust exercises had mostly done wonders for his disposition, but nothing calms the poor nervous thing like settling next to Bootsy in a sunspot, their sides pressed together, purring adoringly.
Those are often the pictures Delia finds herself sending the group chat, and BJ gets into the habit of responding in kind, with pictures of Tuna Melt lounging in the catio Adam built, or sleeping with his little paws curled up, or snuggling into their laps. More than just getting to fawn over each other’s pets, though, this has given her an in- something to talk to BJ about, in those down moments when they’re together. They’re bonding. Even if he doesn’t seem to realize it.

And then one day he calls her.

It’s so sudden, she almost assumes the worst. Maybe he’s hurt, maybe something happened to Adam or Barbara, maybe he needs help-
“Should I get Tuna Melt a friend?” he asks, the second she picks up.
“BJ?” she asks, and she hears him snort. She can picture the eye roll he’s giving her. “No, th’ Pope. Do you not have my number saved, or somethin’? That’s a low blow, step mom.”
“I have your number saved,” she manages, and leaves out that she’s confused because this is the first time he’s ever called her. “What’s wrong with Tuna Melt?”
“Nothin’, he’s a happy cat, accordin’ to all th’ websites an’ stuff. I just.. Bootsy an’ Percy look so happy together,” BJ says. “An’ Tuna’s by himself. Do you think he needs a friend?”
“Oh,” Delia says, and deliberates over that, for a second. “Cats can be kind of lonely creatures. Sometimes they like to be by themselves.”
“Not Tuna,” BJ says. “He’s always up my ass. I just don’t wanna get another cat if it’s gonna stress him out.”
Hearing him worry and fret over this is really too sweet.
“Maybe you could try fostering?” Delia muses. “Bring a cat home, see how they do together, and decide after a few weeks if they seem to like each other.”
She hears her step son hem and haw over that. “That might work, I just… gotta see if th’ spouses are into it.”
“Where’s Tuna now?” she asks.
“Inside my shirt, kneadin’ at my tits an’ purrin’ away,” BJ replies, easily. “He cries until I pull up my top an’ let him climb inside, th’ freak.”
She can’t help but giggle at that absurd mental image, as she raises her mug to her lips. “How do you manage, BJ?”
“S’not so different from what Adam does, honestly,” he says, and the sip of herbal tea she’d been in the middle of taking squirts out her nose.

Chapter Text

Part of entering this family is getting to understand the vastly different personalities in it. Charles is quiet, reserved, spends a lot of time in contemplation, though he’s not as stoic as he might seem. He loves to sing, his deep booming voice carries around the house, and at dinners together he’s the one adept at carrying a conversation, the natural businessman in him skilled at the art of making everyone feel seen and welcome. Contrariwise Lydia is dour, but passionate, the kind of girl Delia wishes she could have been, the kind of girl who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, to shout and scream and fight when she feels like something isn't right.
Beetlejuice is different. He’s a manic person by nature, hyper and frantic and always just baaarely teetering on the edge of being too much, and yes, sometimes he does go over the edge head first, but on his good days he’s no more annoying than your average theater kid, which, stripped of his powers, is basically all he is. But all days aren’t good days, obviously. They can’t be, as pointlessly as she wishes they could be, because one day she comes downstairs and her step son is in her kitchen, hands shaking, muttering frantically under his breath as he snaps his fingers at a wall, seeming to grow more and more panicked as nothing happens. This is how she learns how badly his isolation truly was. BJ has moments of unreality, sometimes. She doesn’t know that’s what this is, at first, but it becomes clear when she touches him. He jumps, startled, and whips to face her, eyes wide.
“BJ?” she asks, unsure.
“Delia.”
It’s the first time he’s said her name, but that in itself proves that he’s not feeling well- his wild nicknames for her have become a fun running joke, at this point. In the past it would have hurt her, but she’s been here long enough to understand there’s nothing the former demon loves more than a good running bit. For the bit to be abandoned..
“Juicer, are you okay?”
He doesn’t look okay. He looks confused, and she puts a gentle hand on him, and leads him to the kitchen table, to sit. He does, slowly, lowers himself down like he’s unsure the chair he’s sinking into will even be solid.
“Why are you here?” she keeps her voice even, not wanting to startle him. He’s running his hands along.. His striped suit. It’s been a while since she’s seen him wear this outfit, despite it apparently being his former favorite. He straightens his tie, fiddles with the frayed cuffs of his once pristine suit jacket, runs a shaky hand down his dress shirt front. “I dunno, I.. I needed to come talk to Chuck an’ Lyds,” he says. He has a far away expression on his face. “Tell them about mom.”
“About.. Emily?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a moment of silence between them where she understands, suddenly, that he’s not really here right now. He’s reliving his isolation, maybe. It’s hard to really understand what’s going on in his head, and even though he’s no longer a demon.. He’s still not quite as human as the rest of them. “I can tell them for you,” she says, not willing to put her husband and step daughter through the heartbreak of seeing him so dazed and shaken and stuck in such a bad place. “What do you want them to know?”
“I was tryin’ to write it on th’ wall,” he tells her. “But I can’t.. I’m too weak, th’ curse-”
His eyes are swimming with tears, suddenly. “I keep leaking,” he mutters, rubbing hard at his own face, hard enough that he’ll probably be seeing spots. Gently, she takes his hands in her’s. For the first time, from his lips to her ears, she hears about her step son’s trauma. Of course there are lasting consequences to spending months in isolation. Just because he’s been his normally abnormal self didn’t mean there wasn’t still a mental scar, there.
But just sitting there and talking seems to do something, seems to help ground him. His hands feel at the table, slowly understanding that he’s solid, that his hands won’t go through it, and his boots tap at the linoleum, the sound of his body physically interacting with the real world helping to sooth him.
His eyes are able to focus, after a while, and he sits and sips the tea she’s made for him, and tries to regain a little bit of pride when he realizes what’s just happened.
“Sorry-” he tries, but she won’t hear it.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s alright, BJ,” she gently places a hand over his, and he takes a deep, shuddering breath.
“Thanks, stepmom.”
When he leaves, his arms go around her. “You’re not so bad, you know?” he mumbles, and she pats his head. “Back at you, buddy.”
She smiles to herself as she watches him go, no more scoreboard needed.

Chapter Text

After what feels like both an eternity and an instant, Juno feels herself reform.

She opens her eyes, finds herself in the waiting room, like some god damn pathetic newly dead, and she snarls, and surges forward, on instinct, ready to find Lawrence, rip him apart, decorate this entire building with the entrails of his stupid human family-
And then she stops, because she realizes where she is. There are confused, frightened ghosts cowering away from her, and a new face at the window at the back, a teen aged boy with burn marks covering his face, and presumably more of him. He doesn’t look especially interested in the sudden appearance of the demon.
“You’re Juno?” he calls, and she approaches, white hot and angry. “Where’s Miss Argentina?” her tone is dangerous. The teen doesn’t blink. “Miss Maria’s in her office. I’ll buzz you in.”
He’s the regular type of jaded for a ghost in his position, but it still infuriates her to be spoken to like she’s not a threat. “Argentina doesn’t have an office.”
“You’ve been gone a hundred years,” the teen says, pressing a button at his desk. “Miss M runs the place. She said the old boss would be coming back soon…” he studies her, and snorts. “Good luck, grandma.”
She ought to tear his throat out, but she’s stuck in place, at his words. She’s been gone for one hundred years...
Lawrence is going to suffer for this.
She storms down the hall to her former office, but when she throws it open, it’s different. Painted, for one, warmer and more inviting, with photos on the wall. The boxes and boxes of files are gone, replaced with one large, orderly file cabinet. The room is organized. Clean. Her liquor cabinet has been repurposed- the inside is full of children’s toys. She struggles to understand that.
“Ah, Juno. I was starting to worry you’d never come back,” Maria is sat there, at her desk, though the nameplate there now declares it belongs to the former beauty queen.
Just what has been happening around here, without her?
“You’ve done some redecorating,” she says, because she’s not sure what else to say. Maria smiles. “Isn’t it nice? So much more cheerful. Feel free to look around.” She gestures to the gallery wall of photos behind Juno.
“Why would I care to see pictures of breathers?”
“These might interest you.”

Juno growls, but turns to study the photos on the wall. There they are, staring at her- the Deetz family. That insufferable little girl, Emily the scammer, the father, whose name she’s not sure she ever learned, and her little hellspawn, in the middle, smiling brightly. He’s fourteen, maybe. She moves from that, to the next. A similar shot, a person missing, but more added. There’s the father, those two ghosts Lawrence seemed fond of, a redhead, the girl-
She blinks, confused, and studies the photo. It looks like Lawrence, but it clearly can’t be. The man in the photo is boring, normal, human.
She moves quickly, studying the others. The human man who looks like Lawrence, smiling, holding an infant, and a second in another photo. Birthdays and anniversaries and a lifetime of pictures of her son and his family. He ages in them. No longer stuck in time, aside from the normal capturing and preserving of a moment that a photo provides.
The last one is the biggest.
It’s the group of them- the father and the redhead are missing. Lawrence and that little girl, not so little anymore, but old, gray, surrounded by spouses and children and children’s children.
She turns from the wall, stares at Maria.
“He got married,” she says, like she knows what Juno’s going to ask. “And it turned him human. He lived to ninety two. I was shocked, honestly. Who would have thought my little reckless mijo could manage to keep himself alive that long?” Her voice is tender, full of fondness. “He used to bring the kiddos to see me, sometimes,” she gestures to the case of children’s toys, and then stands. “It was a good hundred years. Now, I have to go.. I stuck around just long enough to see you, but I should have been out of here awhile ago,” And she stands, and fusses with her hair.
“How do I look?”
“Fine,” Juno says, feeling lost, and then, “Where are you going?”
“I’m moving on. BJ and the family are waiting for me, so I have to get going.”
“So he’s…”
“Dead, yeah. He was so sweet, stuck around a couple years to help me with some paperwork. Such a good kid.”
And Maria leaves her there, stunned.
The nameplate changes, back to Juno Shoggoth, and she stands there, staring at the wall of pictures, and doesn’t feel anything, because she’s a demon. She sits at the desk, in a room surrounded by objects whose meanings are beyond her level of comprehension.

She's quiet. She picks up her pen. She gets back to work.