Chapter Text
Time moves differently when you’re dead.
The weeks of languishing that Beetlejuice had endured while waiting for Barbara and Adam to finally get around to their gruesome deaths had dragged on just forever, and only partially due to his impatience. The other part was that the minutes that made up the hours that made up the days that made up those weeks had literally passed just as gruesomely as the Maitlands themselves. The heartbeat of the hideous antique clock in their living room tick-tocked at a rate that on an EKG would suggest that someone was actively in the process of shuffling off their mortal coil.
On the other hand, the three days he spent with Lydia? Giddily terrorizing everyone who dared step foot onto their property (and also quite a few who had been tricked into doing it)? Those three days might as well have been merely a ten minute stretch of theater. The thrill of one person after another ringing the doorbell even as the decrescendo of the previous breather’s scream faded down the driveway.
All of that to say that in his unwilling time on the mortal realm of Earth, Beetlejuice had seen plenty of human folly come and go. The Ancient Greek Empire he accidentally napped through in a single afternoon, much to his chagrin since he never again found a civilization that did casual public nudity quite like the ancient Greeks, while World War I kept him equally busy and bummed out (people who died en masse in war were no fun) for at least two decades.
The only sure thing was that time, however inconvenient in its passing, always passed onward.
Beetlejuice was currently relishing an unusual sense of domesticity that would have rankled his demonic sensibilities not too long ago. But, he mused, once you find and attempt to murder and are successfully murdered by the right people, you learn to live with a lot of things you once found distasteful, like moderate hygiene and no more murdering. These kinds of relationships were all about compromise, he was discovering.
“BJ, do you happen to know how my zircon crystal got moved from the bookshelf to the window ledge? That’s a fire hazard. I only needed to be in two house fires before I learned that.”
This, for instance, was a fine example of compromise in action. Delia would not automatically jump to any conclusions about who may or may not have moved her crystal to a location in which it would be a fire hazard, and in return, Beetlejuice would not lie about it definitely having been him.
“Big D!” The ghost in question cranked his head around 180 degrees to grin with too many teeth down at the woman from his vantage point along the ceiling. The translucent crystal in her hand, clearly brought along as evidence, gleamed as if to illustrate its many fine refractive properties. “Two house fires is not that many.”
“Fine, it was three.”
“Damn, girl.”
Delia – tall, wispy, sweet as her incense and twice as spicy when she wanted to be – was willing to be distracted but only for so long, he found. “Beej,” she said with a hint of admonishment, the kind that Beetlejuice could never resist. (Mortifying, honestly – like, he knew he had mommy issues, okay? Did he need to be quite so susceptible to the “I’m not mad, just disappointed” gambit as well?)
With a put-upon sigh, he used all eight of his limbs to skitter to the floor and popped up like he was sticking the landing of an Olympic floor routine. His two customary arms stayed aloft as he deftly waved away the others away to leave base level Beetlejuice behind.
Two arms? Check.
Two legs? Check.
A ratty old black and white striped suit that he refused to part with on principle? Check.
A wild mane of hair that was growing greener now than he could ever remember? Embarrassing if the Deetzes or Maitlands ever figured out what it meant, but check.
A plan to strike an alliance with the spiders in the rafters to take a cut of their insect haul in exchange for his protection? On hiatus for now, but hopefully soon coming to fruition.
An explanation for moving Delia’s zircon to a location where it would be a fire hazard? Ah…
“Well,” he began, very reasonably, “I thought it would be funny.”
Delia’s eyes narrowed, deepening crow’s feet that she would deny the existence of if given the scantest opportunity. She raised the zircon above her head in silent threat.
Beetlejuice was mentally weighing the costs (bonk on the noggin, Delia being too mad at him to share the good coffee for a while) and benefits (entertaining scramble around the house until he eventually conceded to be caught by the breather) of sticking around to experience consequences for his actions when a convenient distraction came hurtling around the corner in a flurry of black lace.
“Whoa, Lyds, where’s the fire?” Beetlejuice snagged her by the collar to stave off imminent collision with gothic teenage projectile. He lifted the girl to eye level, conveniently blocking his view of Delia with a grumpy face that seemed to be getting experimental with the eyeliner today. “I wouldn’t know anything about fires myself, you understand.”
Lydia’s resulting petulant kicks and punches and disparaging remarks about Beetlejuice’s character felt fairly rote at this point. They were worn soft with the repeated wearing of them, and only softened further by the distinct lack of gravity with which she was working at the moment, heavy black combat boots dangling below her.
“And it’s not like you haven’t said a thousand worse things about the house,” the girl continued to gripe, poking Beetlejuice squarely in the chest and getting mildew on her finger for her trouble, “so I don’t know why I’m getting the poltergeist treatment all of a sudden today. Now you gotta let me go before he”—
“Lydia?” Adam’s voice carried through the wall surprisingly well. The man himself lurched out of it shortly after, arms stuck straight out like it was going to do him any good to feel for obstacles. He stood there for a moment in all of his dorky splendor, squinting behind his glasses as his eyes adjusted to the focal depth of the living room.
Beetlejuice took the opportunity to try to not be hopelessly attracted to everything from his receding hairline and gingham button-up all the way down to his pressed khaki pants and practical brown sneakers. (He failed, but then there’s no accounting for taste, even one’s own.)
“Oh hi, Delia, Beej! And I’m glad I found you, Lydia!” For a ghost who, according to Lydia’s own report, had been relentlessly pursuing the girl for the past fifteen minutes, Adam appeared just as pleasant and adorably awkward as he always did to Beetlejuice. “I just wanted to explain that when you said the crown molding was underwhelming, you clearly weren’t taking into account the original context of the architecture. I have some books in the attic about various Victorian stylings...”
Never mind, Adam was the worst. Beetlejuice allowed Lydia to muffle a delightful scream into the lapel of his suit jacket but in the process accidentally made eye contact with Delia, who had clearly not forgotten her grievance if the way she continued to brandish the crystal was any indication.
Then the horrible antique clock in the living room began to chime 5 o’clock in the evening, and the floorboards of the study at the top of the stairs started to creak with the activity of a person walking around, turning off a laptop and collecting papers. Daddy Deetz was done with his work day and would inevitably emerge from his office to see what all the hubbub was about before too long.
And Beetlejuice, who largely believed that these breathers meant him no harm and perhaps even harbored an unsightly affection for them, experienced a flash of terror as he saw the future.
Charles would lumber into view, a brick shithouse of a man in an invariably black two-piece suit paired with a loud tie or handkerchief because Delia adored a pop of color. When he descended the stairs and wrapped an arm around his fiancée’s shoulder, she would lean into him and caress the bright accessory with a poorly hidden smugness that suited her quite well.
Charles would ask about the commotion and the zircon controversy would come to light, pun intended. He’d inquire after his precious daughter, of course, still hanging in Beetlejuice’s grip like the catch of the day. He’d certainly check in with Adam and would probably love to chat with him about various Victorian stylings.
Worst of all, he’d ask about how Beetlejuice’s day had gone and actually expect an answer. Small talk! Wherein the other person was genuinely interested in your response because he was trying to be a more present and thoughtful person in the lives of his weird little family!
It was time for an impulsive decision (Beetlejuice’s favorite kind of decision to make). The moment called for a skedaddle, and Lydia could tag along because for some unfathomable reason he still had a soft spot for the kid. All he needed was a suave parting remark.
“Cool talking with ya!” was what he came up with. Suave was debatable but no one could deny it was a parting remark, so Beetlejuice felt free to rocket toward the ceiling with abandon.
“Running away from conflict won’t help anything!”
Any other day, Beetlejuice would stick around to treasure how Delia’s pronunciation grew more off-kilter the more worked up she was. Today, however, he was listening to his neglected self-preservation instincts. His head and shoulders were already well into the second floor when, for good measure, he conjured a shackle between Adam’s ankle and the radiator.
The ghost could always just phase through it, of course, but the thought would literally never occur to him. It would at least buy them some time until Barbara arrived to help her poor husband.
For her part, Lydia just cackled as she was spirited away and made a few choice rude downward gestures from within Beetlejuice’s grasp before she, too, vanished into the ceiling.
Yeah, he knew there was a reason he liked that little breather so much.
“I love running from conflict,” she exulted as soon as her heels hit the floor of the attic with a solid thump. “It solves so many problems.”
“Hell yeah, scarecrow!” Beetlejuice’s celebratory and perhaps overzealous hip-check knocked Lydia head over platform boots onto the tidy bed that Adam and Barbara insisted on maintaining in the attic because they enjoyed their little rituals of rest and privacy. Weirdos. “They can make us sit through as many self-help YouTube videos as they want, but we won’t internalize any of it!”
There was only a moment of warning, a chill creeping its fingers up Beetlejuice’s spine in a way that really did it for him, before the house’s second resident ghost flickered into view near the attic window. She materialized in the space of one blink like a classic spooky specter, albeit one with well-coiffed hair and a tasteful green sundress. “And what character-building opportunities are you two rapscallions fleeing today, then?” She actually said rapscallions! Precious. “Also, there’s a door.”
Beetlejuice did not even try to not be hopelessly attracted to her; it was a waste of time. “Babs!” he crowed instead, barreling across the room with more enthusiasm than thought. Barbara didn’t give a ghostly inch, arms crossed and an unconvincing frown on her lovely face. “That was great, hot stuff! I didn’t even know you were there until you started to show yourself!”
Barbara abandoned her forced glower immediately, beaming at positive feedback on her amateur efforts from an expert in the field. Once an adult recreational student, always an adult recreational student, Beetlejuice supposed – no matter if the subject was pottery or haunting.
She did shove his face out of her way and cross the attic to talk to Lydia instead when he started to intimate that there were other ways in which she could show herself to him, but that was to be expected. Baby steps.
“We were fleeing pedantry and persecution for – well, for me it was for having incorrect options about architecture, I guess.” Lydia bounced in place on the edge of the mattress as Barbara joined her, ending up with their shoulders comfortably pressed together. “He was already in trouble when I got there, though. What was your crime today, BJ?”
“Well,” he began, very reasonably, “I thought it would be funny.”
Another chill snaked up Beetlejuice’s spine and he cut himself off with a shiver. That one didn’t feel like Barbara, who was in fact still sitting in plain sight on the ugly grandma-quality quilt covering her bedsheets.
The demon shook himself full-bodied like a dog, rubbing his sternum absently. “You guys feel something?” He scanned the room with a practiced eye, but the only supernatural threat in here was himself.
“Beej, you can’t distract me from detailing your many transgressions,” Lydia teased, but Beetlejuice couldn’t bring himself to focus on her. Something wasn’t right.
A flash of green in the corner of his vision.
Sudden white noise rising to a crescendo in his mind.
A worried furrow to Barbara’s brow, a question on Lydia’s lips that never quite reached his ears.
A rhythm in his chest that felt like the heartbeat he had cradled for just a few moments in this very house. But at the same time, no – not quite a heartbeat, not so lurching. More measured. A ticking.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Time moves differently when you’re dead.
But it always moves forward.
It always…
It…
Something was wrong.
Something deep inside him throbbed and snarled with a pain, a hunger he hadn’t experienced in months. He felt splintered in a familiar way.
Beetlejuice faintly registered someone saying “I’ve gotta find my mom” and the sound of heavy boots ascending antique stairs. He reached out almost instinctively into the splintered feeling in his bones and yanked.
Time moves differently when you’re dead.
But it always moves forward.
Beetlejuice opened his eyes, not really recalling the point at which he had squeezed them shut.
He was in a dark room. Stripes. The tick tocking of a clock on the wall. Kickass furniture, though it was more his style than his current housemates’.
He was holding something in his hands, stubby fingers clenched so tightly around a thin strap that his joints throbbed. He lifted the item and squinted; it wasn’t that his demonic eyes couldn’t see perfectly well in dim lighting, he was just hoping that squinting would somehow make sense of what he saw.
An NPR tote bag, containing a bath bomb and a Toblerone, but no Handbook for the Recently Deceased because Lydia… Well, she just took it upstairs, didn’t she?
With a single offhanded gesture, Beetlejuice obliterated the hideous antique clock that kept time in Adam and Barbara’s living room. It was just to make himself feel better, really, anything to soothe the agony in his chest and the gnawing ache in his gut.
Because time only moves forward.
Once you reach the curtain call, there may be a sequel down the line or another show on another night, but that run is over! You have to live with your gaffes, your flubbed lines, and your missed cues. No going back and changing the way things were. That’s the nature of the living and the reality of the dead.
Time only moves forward.
Right?