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Beetlejuice sat on the edge of the street, watching the gutter slowly being cleansed of trash by the downpour. He turned his face to the sky, savoring the faint sensation of the raindrops striking his face. Rain was one of the few things he could feel, and one of the few things that could touch his insubstantial body. He could lie flat in the raging gutter with its disgusting debris and not feel a thing or get wet, but rain...
Every raindrop was precious.
He felt— Gods he felt— some of the grime being washed away. It was an odd feeling. A feeling? Yes, a feeling. It made him happy. Oh, that felt amazing! Happy! It had been… a long damn time since he’d felt happy. Even as he savored it, Beetlejuice knew that something was missing, knew that everything was dulled, a pale shadow of what it should be, but he didn’t care. He was feeling.
The rain stopped and his eyes opened. “No. No, not yet! I wasn’t done! Please come back!” He lurched to his feet, crying to the heavens, screaming at the uncaring sky… as if that had ever worked for anyone, much less for a cursed demon.
The worst part was that he didn’t actually feel angry. He didn’t feel anything.
Collapsing to the ground he put his face in his hands and dug his claws into his skin.
Oh.
Oh, there it was!
A little spark. The tiniest of flames in a place that had been cold for too long.
There was one other thing he could feel in this purgatory: He could feel pain. Juno had left him that.
He hated her so much.
With a sob that was half agony and half pleasure, Beetlejuice dragged his claws down his face and savored the warmth of the blood. He could even taste it. The first thing he’d tasted in… who knew how long anymore? Who cared? He was feeling again, and he could remember what emotion felt like, even if he couldn’t experience it right then. As he moved to his left arm, raking claws from elbow to wrist, he remembered.
He was sad. He was lonely. He was angry. He was… hopeful. That's right. He was hopeful.
He couldn’t stop! Couldn’t stop looking for a way to break his curse, or at least a chance to get summoned again and regain a bit of magic before the summoning wore off. With every ounce of his magic that grew, the longer he kept his sense of self during the dry spells between hauntings. He couldn’t stop trying to break the curse! He couldn’t give up!
He couldn’t stop raking his claws through his skin.
He tried, but it was as if his hand was possessed. Beetlejuice watched with growing alarm as his claws all but flayed the skin from his arm. It was horrible… and amazing, and… and… it hurt.
The rain started again, but it was lukewarm and sticky, and it smelled weird. Sharp. Metallic. Wrong.
Confused, he looked up and saw the sky was red. Red as the blood dripping from his face and arm. Red fell from the sky and he was soaked in blood.
Beetlejuice opened his eyes and sucked in a breath, then choked on it as the pain hit him. “Satan’s hairy balls,” he gasped, trying to sit up. His arm was on fire. Where was he again? Oh yeah.
Home.
He was home, with the Deetlands (because calling it them Deetz/Maitlands took way too long), in his own bed, in his own bedroom, in the house he lived (or existed at least) in— all things that had been given to him in exchange for the simple promise to obey the house rules. No demon he knew of had ever gotten a better offer. Here he was, safe and solid and seen , his magic fizzing bright as starlight at his core… but he could still smell blood. Lots of blood.
Fuck. He’d done it again.
Don't look, he told himself firmly. He knew from hard won experience that looking at a bad injury just made the pain worse. Instead he stared at the ceiling and wondered what he should do next.
~*~
“Lyds?”
Lydia blinked, fighting her way up from sleep. Had someone called her? “Huh?”
“Scarecrow? Uh, sorry. I can, um… I can go, if you wanna sleep, but… um…”
Oh, it was Beetlejuice. With a little groan, she sat up, rubbing her eyes, then looked for the creepy glowing eyes she knew so well. “Beej? What’s up?”
“I… I kinda have a problem.”
There was a quivering note of tension in his voice that cut through the last of her sleepiness. Leaning over, she turned on her bedside lamp, then almost screamed. He was covered in blood.
“Oh my god Beetlejuice!” Jumping out of bed, she ran to him, not sure where even to start. She really should’ve gone with her dad and Delia to that stupid emergency preparedness conference! “What happened?!”
“Bad dream,” he mumbled, face averted and eyes cast down.
“I need to call Dad,” she said, starting past him to the door.
“No!” One blood slicked hand wrapped around her wrist. “No… I can’t… I don’t want… Lyds, I can’t. ”
Lydia met his eyes and saw the fear and frustration there. She also saw that he’d lost his glamor. Her heart sank. If she got her dad, then it wouldn’t be long before the whole house would be awake, and he knew that. “Oh, Beej.” She wanted to say more, to tell him that the rest of the family would accept his real face as quickly as Charles had, that they wouldn’t be scared of his fangs or unearthly eyes, that they wouldn’t pity him for his scars, or mock him for being young… but there were more important things right now.
Since he was already holding her wrist, she put her other hand over his and pulled him to her ensuite bathroom. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He went willingly, and she had him sit in the tub to contain the blood. There was a lot of blood already, and it was still dripping from his fingers in a steady trickle. She wiped up the puddle in her bedroom first, just to keep from stepping in it. Next, a quick trip to the kitchen provided her with the huge first-aid kit her dad had stocked, and a pitcher.
As gently as she could, she rinsed his arm with warm water, trying her best to ignore how he tensed and shivered. The blood and wounds were bad, but she could handle those now. Hearing her best friend trying not to whimper? That made her want to throw up.
“What happened?” she asked him.
“Bad dream,” he repeated.
Her eyes fell on his other hand, to his sharp black claws, and her chest hurt. “Beej… did you hurt yourself?”
His slumped shoulders and bowed head were all the answers she needed. Swallowing, she very carefully and slowly stroked his wild indigo hair. “It’s okay. I’m not mad. You’re not in trouble.”
He sniffled, not very subtly rubbing at his eyes. “I didn’t mean to,” he croaked finally. “It was an accident.”
“I believe you,” she said, making her voice as gentle as she could. At that, he finally looked at her, big golden eyes swimming with tears. “Hey,” she murmured, “hey, it’ll be okay, Beej, I promise.”
He nodded, then watched dully as she finished rinsing his arm. Lydia, meanwhile, was doing her best to keep her expression neutral. She didn’t know what to do for cuts this deep. How did she stop the bleeding? Wouldn’t he need stitches for that? This wasn’t like any of his silly play-acting where he stabbed himself or popped off his head, and he’d made a habit of hiding in his room the few times he’d gotten hurt on their adventures. She’d only ever managed to get him to accept help once with the broken arm, and her dad had taken over that time.
“Beej,” she said, forcing herself to sound calm and doing only a moderate job at it, “I know you’re not feeling good, but you’ve taken care of more cuts than I have. I know jack shit beyond ‘rinse it clean with water and apply pressure’. Can you tell me what you need?”
It took a second, but he finally nodded. “Usually use vodka on cuts,” he said, voice a little slurry. “But that red stuff’ll work.”
Red stuff? Her eyes fell on the kit, searching. Did he mean iodine? Okay, that made sense. “It’s going to sting.”
“`s okay. I’m used to it.”
Deciding the arm was as clean as it was going to get with water, she got out the iodine and decided to just pour it on the cuts and get it over with. “On the count of five, alright? One, two—” She poured it over his arm. He tensed up and bit back a yell, literally. Shit, now he’d bitten his lip. Grabbing a washcloth from under the sink, she gave it to him for his lip, then grabbed a towel and wrapped it tightly around his arm. It started to feel soggy far too quickly for her comfort.
“I knew you were gonna do that,” he said, still a little breathless. “Meanie.”
“Sorry.”
He smiled at her for the first time that night. It wavered, but it was there. “I forgive you. Probably.”
“Don’t get mushy on me, BJ.” Even as she pretended to scold, she gave him a smile back.
It took two more towels before the bleeding stopped enough that she could think about bandages. By that point, Beetlejuice had slumped back in the tub, eyes closed. He looked exhausted. The dark circles around his eyes, the hollows beneath his cheekbones, the deep lines of sorrow framing a mouth meant for smiling… seeing him now reminded her of their first night after a day of scaring. They’d settled in for a scary movie marathon, and he’d fallen asleep on the couch.
God, he’d looked so tired back then.
That had been the first time she’d realized that her goofy demon really might be as old as he said he was.
She’d thought about pranking him, but decided to be merciful and just covered him with a blanket instead. He’d slept like the dead until she woke him up for breakfast, and claimed it’d been the first solid sleep he’d had in two centuries.
“Poor guy,” she murmured, smoothing back his hair the way Dead Mom had when she'd been sick, before sitting on the edge of the tub and opening the first aid manual to the page about bandaging a wound. (In her initial panic, she’d forgotten about the book. Luckily, she hadn’t missed any steps besides ‘calling 911.’)
His eyes slitted open, then closed again. “`m okay, Lyds,” he mumbled.
She took his arm and began to wrap it. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really. I just… I didn’t want to be alone.”
They were quiet as she finished, then she helped him up, putting his good arm over her shoulder. “Can you dry yourself off?” she asked. If he could, that would be helpful, but she didn’t want him to waste magic he could otherwise use to help heal himself.
He nodded, and a second later he was dry. There were still bloodstains all over his pajamas though. For some reason, that hurt her almost as much as seeing his poor bandaged arm. He’d made those pajamas for her sake, for the nights when she went to him for help with nightmares or insomnia. “It’s a slumber party requirement!” he’d said with a laugh.
Lydia made sure he leaned on her. It was less about actually supporting him, and more about making sure he knew she was there. He was heavy, and she vowed yet again to start working out more. A friend in the Neitherworld, Lilith Bits, had offered her fighting lessons. She really should take the chimera up on that.
Rather than take him back to his bed, which was sure to be covered in blood, she sat him down on hers. “Get tucked in,” she told him briskly. “I’m going to go mop up the puddles.” Before he could protest, she grabbed a waiting towel and headed for the hall.
Employing the tried and proven method of dropping the towel on the mess, then using her foot to scoot the towel along the hardwood, she soon had the blood trail mopped up. A sticky note on the wall between her room and Beetlejuice’s informed the reader (probably Adam or Barbara) what had happened, and not to freak out, or wake them up.
That done, she started to feel the stress of the night sneak up on her. Each bare foot felt glued to the ground, and her eyelids weighed a hundred pounds. Fighting back a yawn, she went back into her room and, to her displeasure, found the demon curled up on the covers.
“Lawrence Beetlejuice Shoggoth,” she yawned, full naming him to let him know she was serious, “you enormous dork, get under the blanket.”
“I, um… probably shouldn’t…”
“Why are you being weird?” She squinted at him. “Are you being old fashioned at me?”
He wouldn’t look at her, fiddling with the edges of his bandages. “Um, probably?”
“Well, quit it. Your room, the couch, Neitherworld camping, it’s not like we haven’t slept under the same cover before. Unless you’re worried about your arm getting rolled on?” The very thought of how much that would hurt made her shudder.
“No, it’ll be fine.”
Going over to him, she touched his shoulder gently. “Do you want to sleep by yourself then? Because if that’s the case, I’ll take the couch, no problem.” No problem wasn’t exactly the truth. She would do it, but not happily. Lydia didn’t want him to be by himself. What if he had another nightmare and hurt himself again? What if he woke up alone and had a panic attack? She did not want him to be alone tonight.
Beetlejuice still wouldn’t look at her, but which was all the answer she needed. Of course he didn’t want to be by himself. When he still didn’t say anything, she tapped him pointedly. “Alright, then scoot. We both need some sleep, or I’m going to get more grumpy.”
This time, he didn’t argue.
Grumbling a little about the delay, she turned off the light and climbed in next to him. Once he’d settled on his back, his bandaged arm lying across his chest, she pressed close against his uninjured side and put an arm around him, careful of his hurt arm. He hadn’t told her how important being touched was to him, but he hadn’t needed to. Knowing Beetlejuice for any amount of time meant knowing that he needed physical contact like the living needed air.
She heard him swallow, then felt him wrap his other arm around her. “Thank you, Lydia.” His voice cracked on her name, and she gave him a little squeeze.
“Any time, Beej. I mean it.” She pressed her face against his shoulder to hide her face. Being emotional like this was not her strong suit. “If I could poof to you like you do for me, then I would. You’re my BFFFF forever. Anytime you need me, I’ll be there. Now, go to sleep.”
“Okay,” he sighed, sounding peaceful for the first time that night, and within moments his body relaxed into sleep.
Beetlejuice didn’t need to breathe, but he was doing so tonight, probably for her sake. Maybe his own too. Lydia appreciated it either way. She could feel his chest moving under her arm and head, hear him breathing slow and even, and beneath her cheek, she could feel his magic. It had taken her a while to realize what that soft pulse, almost a heartbeat, was. The thrum was steady, and nearly as soothing as a cat’s purr, and she fell asleep not long after he did.