Chapter Text
When Lydia had asked the Maitlands if they’d like to share the house with the Deetzes, the couple couldn’t have been happier. They’d danced with Lydia, Charles, and Delia and the world was right. The cleaning hadn’t exactly been as thrilling, but the end result had been worth it. The home undoubtedly belonged to the Deetz-Maitlands, the Beetlejuice-isms completely gone.
“Can you watch Lydia?” Charles asked the ghost couple once he’d failed to reattach the bad modern art Lydia had used to impale Beetlejuice to its display stand.
“Dad, I’m fifteen.” The girl pouted, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, my dear, but we don’t know if a certain demon may resurface.”
Adam’s brows furrowed and he pulled his wife close, giving her a peck on the side of her head. They may be on a bold Maitlands 2.0 kick, and becoming far more comfortable with their ghostly powers, but if he returned Adam knew there wasn’t much they could do. Not to say they wouldn’t try though, they’d do just about anything to protect little Lydia.
Speaking of, she crossed her arms and began glaring at her father.
Charles smiled. “You look just like Emily right now.”
And just like that, Lydia was all smiles. “I’m happy to stay home with Barbara and Adam, dad. I just don’t need to be watched, okay?”
“Okay.” In a swift movement he’d enveloped her in a hug, which he primarily uses as an opportunity to mouth ‘watch her?’ to the Maitlands. Adam couldn’t help but notice how tense Lydia was in her father’s arms.
When Barbara gave Charles a thumbs up, he released his daughter in favour of wrapping a hand around Delia’s waist.
Lydia’s smile dropped for just a moment, and when it did return, it was forced.
“Where are we going, Charles?” Delia asked. “You know what, I don’t care as long as I’m a part of it.”
“We’ll be back in an hour or so.” Charles grabbed the keys and the newly engaged couple headed out, taking the completely terrible art with them.
With a sigh, Lydia flopped down on the couch, turning the tv on to some horror movie. Adam and Barbara exchanged a glance. Something was clearly bothering the gothy teen. It was parental-figure time. Though both, never having had a child of their own, were immediately unsure how to approach it. In addition, Lydia was already engrossed by the movie, so for now they opted to just sit on the couch with her and wait until she was ready to talk.
At some point during the movie, while Adam was struggling not to cover his eyes because the serial killer was murdering victim number 1, Lydia repositioned herself to curl up on their laps. Casual closeness, just like a family. Adam couldn’t help but smile, despite the violent stabbing that was occurring on the television.
However, when Lydia remained silent even after the credits started rolling, Barbara finally took the initiative. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m happy Dad’s saying dead mom’s name again.” Irritable was what Adam detected in Lydia’s voice.
“Is it Delia?” Adam asked. “I could offer you some fatherly advice if you need. I grew up with a step-dad, never really knew my biological dad. It’s a funny story actually, when Beetlejuice first approached me and Barbara he told us he was my father and I was really ready to believe he was my bio parent for a moment… But then he made out with me.” Barbara wrapped her arms around his chest as he paused. “You know what, that story really wasn’t that funny.”
“No, it’s not Delia. I meant it when I said I wanted her here.” She sighed. “I’m happy Dad found someone new now that I know he’s not trying to replace mom.”
“That’s very mature of you, Lydia.” Barbara offered.
“Whatever.” was the response she got.
“Now Lydia, that’s no way to talk to Barbara.” Adam tried to be fatherly, but at Lydia’s raised eyebrow he folded. “Sorry, we had this whole Maitlands 2.0 thing and I’m trying to be assertive but that was too much.”
“It was a good try, Adam.” Barbara patted her husband’s cheek. Still, Lydia didn’t seem too impressed.
Lydia sat up. “Knock knock.”
“Oh?” Adam mumbled. “A joke? How fun.”
Barbara smiled. “Who’s there?”
“You have to open the door.” Lydia’s mouth curled into a predatory grin.
He mimed opening a door only for Lydia to scream at them. The next second was a scramble of the ghost couple crying out in panic, Adam taking a defensive stance as they looked around for a potential Beetlejuice resighting. But then Lydia was giggling. And though he used his ghost powers to check if BJ had possessed her, it was all Lydia.
“Why did you do that?” Barbara asked, placing a hand over her heart—which surely would have been thumping in fright should they have been alive.
Lydia’s giggles stopped and she grimaced. “I just…” She looked between them then lowered her head and scrunched up her eyebrows. “Nevermind.”
Then she was storming to her room.
“Why does she love scaring people so much?” Adam wondered aloud once they’d heard the slamming of a door.
“She’s strange and unusual.” Barbara shrugged. “We know that.”
“And we love her for it.” Adam said, which was true. “But still, there has to be some explanation.”
Barbara kissed him before cradling his head in her arms. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out. But right now, even though I think she’s finally starting to work through the grief from her mother’s death, it’s not like it can just be turned off. She’s still mourning. All we can do is be there for her.”
“You are so right, Barbara.”
“Now, we promised Charles we’d keep an eye on Lydia.” Barbara floated up into the air. “It would be so rude to break that promise.”
Adam couldn’t disagree with that, especially with the unspoken worry that Lydia may try jumping off the roof again… a nugget of information BJ had let slip when she and her father were off in the Netherworld.
Using their ghost powders, the two peeked into Lydia’s room. They found her curled up on her bed, staring at a family picture of her mum, dad, and herself. She wasn’t quite crying per say, but occasionally she’d fail to hold back a muffled sniffle. Just as Lydia hugged the photo tightly against her chest, the front door was slammed open.
“We’re home.” It was Charles, and he sounded almost out of breath.
While Barbara remained watching Lydia, Adam made his way down to greet the Deetzes. It was not just them however, they carried a couch. Their couch—from when they were alive, before the Deetzes moved in. Soon it’s followed by their table, chairs, bed, and the rest of their furniture, even the super well polished and pampered crib. Some of it was a little damaged, but not beyond restoration.
“We found these at the dump while getting rid of the tasteful art.” Charles shook his head. “I’m sad to see it go, but it’s probably for the best considering Lydia did technically murder someone with it.”
Adam couldn’t argue with that, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t happy to see it go. Truly it was horrendous.
“It was like the universe wanted us to throw away the beautiful art for a reason, that being so we could recover your furniture.” Delia said. “Thank you, universe.”
“Barbara, come and see what the Deetzes have brought us!” Adam shouted up the stairs.
Barbara floated down and grinned. “Our old things, how lovely.”
“Think of it as a thanks for being there for Lydia.” Charles shrugged. “I can tell she really loves you. Help me carry your furniture to the attic?”
“Sure thing.” Adam doesn’t hesitate to grab the side of the bed from Delia to begin lugging it up the stairs.
“Lydia didn’t act out while we were away, did she?” Charles asked as they moved the various furniture.
“Well, she did try to scare Barbara and I,” Adam said. “Well, ‘try’ isn’t the right word, she succeeded. I don’t think she was doing it to hurt us though, I think there’s something that’s bothering her.”
Charles sighed. “She gets like that sometimes. When we were in the Netherworld she practically jumped into my arms for a hug, it was nice connecting with her like that after so long. But then, you saw her before, it was like hugging a bag of bricks. Her mother always knew what to do before, so I never had to worry about it. But now I’ve made it clear that talking about Emily is on the table, I think she’ll bring up whatever is bothering her when she’s ready. We should just give her space until then.”
Adam relented, “Yeah, okay.”
Once all the furniture was in their attic room and Charles had returned to his bedroom with a rather unnecessary comment about how he’d promised to make passionate love to Delia, the Maitlands took a moment to look over all their old things. Except it wasn’t just a moment. Time was a funny thing for ghosts, in that it would just go on fast forward sometimes. In just a blink, hours had passed.
Luckily, when they started interacting with said furniture, even just laying a finger on it, everything seemed to slow down to normal again. Though 3 am was well past the strictly 8.30 pm bedtime they’d had while alive, neither felt tired thanks to the time skip, so they’d both decided to say screw it and just stay up. Talk about Maitlands 2.0, this was wild.
Adam was trying to arrange the furniture to maximise space while still appearing aesthetically pleasing within the classic Victorian with original crown moulding home. Barbara lay on their bed, the centrepiece of the room, reading through a book with a scowl. She turned to the last page while he was repositioning the couch for the third time.
The couple both looked up as the attic door was opened. It was Lydia. She almost seemed startled, as if she was surprised that they were there.
Lydia fidgeted with the sleeves of her nightgown. “I had a nightmare.”
Barbara got up off the bed. “Oh sweetheart, come here.”
Lydia didn’t hesitate to rush into Barbara’s arms, curling into her like putty. Adam soon joined them, wrapping his arms around both of his special girls, his wife and his daughter-figure.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Adam asked, hopeful she’d finally open up.
Lydia pulled away from them both, mumbling a sad no.
“How about we make you a nice cup of tea then?” Barbara asked.
Lydia shook her head, instead making her way over to the couch and lying down so she could just stare at the ceiling.
“Well then, I know of something fun we can do.” Barbara picked up the book she’d been reading. “Adam and I have been going through and destroying all the old stuff that was holding us back when we were alive. I just finished reading through this book we were pressured into buying from one of our adult recreational classes. What a shit book.”
“Barbara!” Adam couldn’t help but exclaim. Sure, his wife had sworn quite a few times since they’d died, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t still surprised every time she did it.
“Well, it is.” Barbara smirked.
“All about knitting stitches?” Adam read the book’s title aloud. “I remember those classes. The instructor asked us if we had a good time at the end, and when we said yes out of politeness she signed us up for 9 more classes. But honestly, even by the end of the first class I was…” Adam hesitated for just a moment, still getting used to being more bold, before squeaking out, “so bored.”
“Yes.” Barbara drew out the word dramatically. “I agree, so boring!”
She took his hand into hers. Adam’s cheeks flushed warm; he could tell how proud she was of him for speaking his mind.
“So what were you saying about destruction?” Lydia asked in a deadpan voice.
Barbara grinned as she grabbed a handful of pages and yanked, tearing them straight out. Adam couldn’t help but let out a squeak of surprise. Even Lydia raised an eyebrow, though she was quick to join Barbara and begin tearing out pages herself. Giggles filled the air until the book’s corpse found its way into the bin, joining the likes of the snapped metal detector and beaten up painting.
“Now let’s set it on fire.” Lydia suggested with a gleam in her eyes.
Adam and Barbara exchanged a glance. Though they didn’t want Lydia to be upset again, it’s not like they could condone accidentally burning the house down.
Lydia seemed to take note of their expressions. “I mean, not inside. We can go out in the yard and set it alight. It’ll be like the time Dad needed to get rid of all the leaf litter from one of his investment properties, so mom decided we should burn it. We created this whole bonfire and pretended we were vampire slayers fresh off a successful hunt who had undead bodies to burn. Though importantly we’d only killed the sparkle-in-the-sun vampires, not the cool ones like Carmilla or Dracula.”
The Maitlands couldn’t help but grin as Lydia’s face increasingly lit up.
“So?” She looked up at them expectantly.
“We’d love to, Lydia,” Barbara sighed. “But we can’t go out into the yard, remember?”
Lydia’s face dropped and she began sheepishly rubbing the back of her neck. “I forgot, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Adam was quick to stay. “Just because we can’t do any burning, doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun. What else do you want to do?”
Lydia bit her lip. “I should be getting back to bed.”
“If that’s what you want,” Barbara said. “But you’re welcome to stay.”
“I’m tired.” Lydia yawned. “And I should let you sleep, goodnight.”
The moment Lydia had pressed the door shut, Adam asked. “Do you think we did a good job at being parental figures for her?”
“It’s hard to say.” Barbara murmured. “All we can do is our best. She is right though, we should get some sleep.”
With a nod, Adam changed into his nightwear and got into bed, smiling as Barbara snuggled into his chest. After a kiss goodnight, Adam pressed his eyes shut and waited for sleep to overcome him. Only it never did.
“Barbara?” he whispered after about two hours, not wanting to wake her if she was indeed asleep.
“Yes?” she whispered back.
“Can ghosts sleep?”
There’s a pause. “I’m starting to think no.”
The next few days confirmed Adam’s theory. At first they’d thought maybe they just needed less sleep, as Beetlejuice had mentioned that time moved differently for ghosts. But now a human week had gone by and not once had either ghost felt tired, let alone slept.
Lydia, on the other hand, looked increasingly exhausted as time passed. More nightmares. Every day she’d skulk into the attic in the early hours of the morning, and throw herself into their arms. The three would destroy the Maitlands’ unwanted stuff until Lydia felt better, then she’d head off back into her room.
The only issue with that being that they were starting to run out of stuff to destroy. Sure, the Maitlands had tried many hobbies that had never seemed to fill the hole in their lives, but it wasn’t like the house had had infinite space. Nor did they feel they could ask Charles or Delia to go out of their way to buy more junk just for the sake of Lydia breaking it. That would be wasteful and unsustainable.
“There’s got to be something else we can do for her?” Barbara paced around the attic as Adam worked on restoring the leg of one of their chairs that had been damaged at the dump.
“If only she would talk to us about what her nightmares are about.” he sighed, glancing at the clock, which read 4.23 am. Lydia would surely be here soon.
“Probably about him. Or his murder, I know he was trying to kill us, but taking his life, even in self defence, even though that was her plan, may be haunting her. Or perhaps her trip to the Netherworld, who knows what that was like.” Barbara sighed. “She was so adamant about trying to get her dad to speak about her mom though, about how that was what she needed. She mustn’t think that talking about the nightmares will help her, otherwise she surely would.”
The door creaked open and Lydia tiptoed through. Adam barely had time to put down his sandpaper before she’s in his arms. He caught sight of her bottom lip quivering before she buried her head into his shoulder. The nightmares were clearly getting worse. Though quiet and muffled, she even let out a few sniffles.
When she finally pulled away it’s only to make her way into Barbara’s arms.
“What are we going to break today?” she eventually whispered.
“About that…” Adam trailed off, unable to let Lydia down.
“We’re out of things to break.” Barbara finished.
Lydia visibly tensed.
“Tell us what we can do instead.” Adam all but begged.
Lydia shrugged, squirming out of Barbara’s arms in the process.
“Please, Lydia.” Barbara begged. “It’s hard for us to see you like this.”
Adam was quick to agree with his wife once he got a good look at the teen. She had dark bags under her eyes, and her face was so pale and thin. Had she been eating enough?
“Do you want to talk about your nightmares?” Adam asked, quickly adding, “Please.”
“No.” Lydia crossed her arms.
“We could keep hugging it out?” Barbara offered. But as she tried to wrap her arm around Lydia again the teen stepped back.
“No.” Lydia huffed out again.
“Then what?” Adam asked. “Tell us what you need?”
“I don’t know what I need.” Lydia spat, her cheeks flushing slightly red. “But I know what I don’t need. And that’s you pitying me.”
“That’s not what we’re trying to do.” Barbara insisted.
“We’re just trying to comfort you.” Adam tried. “No pity involved.”
“Comfort me?” Lydia huffed. “I’m fifteen, not some scared little baby that needs comforting.”
Adam couldn’t understand why she was suddenly insisting on taking everything the wrong way. Plus, minutes before this conversation she’d literally run into his arms, and he was definitely going for ‘very comforting’ with his hug. Why’d she been okay with that then, only to snap at the idea now?
“Lydia, comfort is not just for babies, it’s for everyone.” Barbara whispered. “Whoever made you feel otherwise?”
“I mean, they didn’t use those exact words.” Lydia mumbled. “But Dad and Delia, every day since my mom died.”
The Maitlands fell quiet before exchanging a glance. They knew Charles and Delia had been trying to quash any talk of Emily before the whole Beetlejuice situation went down, but they hadn’t realised it was that bad.
Lydia sighed. “I’m going to go back to bed.”
“Please stay with us.” Barbara begged.
“Sorry.” Lydia yawned, and it didn’t seem like it was fake to get them off her back. “But I really am tired.”
Then she was gone.
Adam couldn’t help but lower his head. “We’re really terrible at this, aren’t we?”
Barbara stayed silent. For a moment she just raised her hand to rest it on his cheek. When Adam nuzzled against it she wrapped an arm around his back and led him onto the bed so she could spoon him.
Adam loved being the little spoon. The way Barbara would wrap an arm around his chest. The way her breathing would tickle the back of his neck. The way she’d run a hand through his hair just the way he liked. It was all so nice, so safe, so supportive… so comforting. He was already starting to feel a little better.
He couldn’t imagine going months without this. And if he was ever forced to, the moment it was available to him he’d drop everything to be back in Barbara’s comforting arms.
“We have to figure out a way to help her feel better.” Adam finally whispered.
“We will.” she reassured him, following it up with their unofficial battlecry, “Maitlands 2.0!"
“Maitlands 2.0.” He echoed.