Chapter Text
Six months later…
“We need to play more board or card games,” said Barbara.
“But those are boring!” Beetlejuice whined.
Lydia glanced between them, smirking. This never got old.
“We’ve been looking online and we found a card game you might like,” said Adam. “It’s called Exploding Kittens. No actual exploding kittens, though.”
Beetlejuice’s face briefly lit up upon hearing the name of the game, but he immediately deflated when Adam finished. “That’s false advertising!”
“There was also a board game where you throw burritos at each other,” Adam continued. “Not real burritos. They provide soft toy versions.”
“I’m only interested if it’s the real deal,” said Beetlejuice.
Before the argument could continue, Lydia held up her phone. “Hey! Are we playing this, or what?”
“We’re just waiting for…” Before Barbara could finish, Lydia’s dad returned to the living room with Delia by his side. “Here they are.”
The pair settled on the second couch, opposite the first that was occupied by Adam and Barbara. Lydia was curled up in her usual spot in the armchair, with Beetlejuice in his usual spot: perched above her on the headrest.
Lydia shifted so her best friend couldn’t take a peek at her phone screen. She adjusted her t-shirt, the only white one she owned, on account of it once belonging to her mom. It was her Summer-ween t-shirt, with a picture of a witch on the front, dressed in a black swimsuit and black witch’s hat. The witch lounged on a flamingo pool ring while holding a martini, and the words Just Waiting For Halloween were scrawled above and below the picture in pink.
“Now everyone’s here,” she said, “let’s go.”
“We’re playing the Hide & Seek version, right?” Delia asked.
“Obviously,” drawled Lydia, though not in the mean-spirited way she used to when talking to Delia. “Regular Among Us doesn’t work here, remember?”
“Yeah, on account of Lyds and I always being suspected first and the rest of you sucking at being Imposter,” Beetlejuice clarified, as if the family’s embarrassing attempts had already been forgotten.
Lydia waited for her dad and Delia to set up their phones. Since Adam and Barbara didn’t have phones, they were using laptops; Barbara borrowing Lydia’s, Adam borrowing her dad’s. Lydia created a game and once everyone had joined, they began.
Unsurprisingly, Beetlejuice was the first Imposter.
“Beej…”
“Hey, I’ve been waiting for this all day! I need to do murders!”
The game loaded and they were all gathered around the table. Beetlejuice’s little green crewmember was lying on the floor, already changing into the Imposter. Lydia directed her little black crewmember away from the cafeteria so she could go and complete her tasks. Adam’s red crewmember and Barbara’s yellow crewmember hurried alongside her.
A few seconds later, Beetlejuice cackled. “Ready or not, here I come, bitches!”
Barely ten seconds later, a notification popped up stating that the blue crewmember had been killed.
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Dad, were you even trying?”
“I had a task in Admin,” he admitted hesitantly.
“You mean the room he always visits first on his rampages?” Lydia raised a brow.
Her dad gave no reply. Probably too embarrassed.
After several screeches of laughter from a number of near-misses, Lydia passed Delia’s pink crewmember and said, “Delia, you can’t just hide in a corner the whole time! You’ve gotta complete your tasks!”
“But I don’t want him to find me!” she protested. “Does completing the tasks matter?”
“Yes, because it brings the time down!” said Adam. “Therefore he has less time to kill us all-” He gasped when his proximity alarm went off, followed by the grisly sounds of his character getting brutally murdered. “No!”
“Snooze, ya lose!” Beetlejuice laughed.
Delia hesitated. “But he always sneaks up behind me when I-” She screeched suddenly, her proximity alarm going off at the same time. But instead of the sounds of murder, her phone gave off the sound of her character venting.
“That conniving bitch!” Beetlejuice exclaimed. “She was hiding right next to a vent.”
“Oh yeah, crewmembers can vent in this version!” said Barbara.
Delia’s relief was short-lived. She screeched again and the notification that her crewmember had died popped up on Lydia’s screen. “Someone raise my child,” she said.
“I will,” said Lydia, stumbling upon the scene when she entered the room to do one of her tasks. The mini pink crewmember was sat next to the corpse of its parent. God, she loved this game.
A minute later Barbara’s crewmember was dead, leaving only Lydia as the last one standing just as the countdown entered rampage time.
Beetlejuice whizzed around the map faster than before. “You’re going down! I’m gonna get ya! I’m gonna kill the fuck outta ya- Hey, stop venting!”
Lydia laughed. She kept an eye on the countdown at the top and squealed when she almost ran into Beetlejuice. He came after her, chasing her down, and just when she thought it was game over, Messenger pinged on his phone and he just… stopped chasing her. Huh?
The victory screen lit up her phone, but she turned away from it to look up at Beetlejuice. “What happened? What was more important than murdering me?”
He stared at his phone, a small smile on his face. It was like he hadn’t even heard her. Lydia poked his side, bringing him back to the present. “Yeah?”
She smirked, quickly putting together what had distracted him. “Ooh, is that your girlfriend? Beetlejuice and Elodie, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-”
“Shut up!” Beetlejuice’s hair flushed pink. “She’s not my girlfriend!”
“First comes love, second comes marriage-”
“Have you asked out Isabella yet?”
Lydia immediately shut up. Her cheeks flushed as pink as Beetlejuice’s hair.
“Children, please,” said Barbara with a smile. “Beetlejuice, what did she say?”
“She sent me a picture of a beetle she saw,” said the demon, hair still pink. The family were seeing much more of the colour, ever since Beetlejuice had met the self-proclaimed weirdo during a game of Among Us, where they’d teamed up as joint Imposters and massacred everyone in under a minute. “Said it reminded her of me.”
“How sweet. Lydia?”
“Um…” Lydia bit her lip. “Isabella and I hung out at lunch yesterday. She heard me humming Jump in the Line and we talked about Harry Belafonte for a while. Her dad was Puerto Rican but her mom was Jamaican so she grew up with calypso music. She hasn’t really listened to it since her parents died and she moved in with her aunt and uncle, so I… I said she could come round and listen to some here. But I haven’t, like, actually asked her out or anything. I don’t even know if she’s gay or pan or bi like me.”
Beetlejuice scoffed. “That chick might as well be walking around with flashing neon lights screaming ‘gay as fuck’. You’re just chicken.”
Lydia kicked out at him, missing by miles. In response, Beetlejuice manifested a third arm, stuck a finger in his mouth and extended said arm towards her, finger outstretched. Lydia covered her ears and squealed as she tried to get away from him.
“Children…” her dad said with a sigh, but he was hiding his smile.
Adam used his ghost powers to telekinetically separate them, accidentally sending Beetlejuice over the top of the armchair as he did. Lydia burst out laughing while the ghost winched. “Sorry.”
Beetlejuice picked himself up and held out his phone. “You’re so dying first next round.”
“Tough shit.” Lydia held out her own phone, revealing that she’d been picked as the next Imposter. “It’s my turn now, bitches.”
Several rounds and murders later, the family headed up to bed. Lydia gave Beetlejuice a hug goodnight before he disappeared into his own room. It had taken months, but both of them were finally comfortable with sleeping separately. Though they still had their off nights every now and again.
As Lydia got ready for bed in her own room, she spotted her Coraline calendar hanging above her desk and realised that she hadn’t turned the page to the next month. She pulled the page upwards and repined it…
And deflated.
She was about to have an off night.
---
Beetlejuice’s chest fluttered with anticipation when his phone lit up, the Messenger logo hovering at the bottom of his screen. He smiled as he picked the phone up.
His smile vanished when he read the message.
In an instant he teleported into Lydia’s room. The teen was sat on her bed, staring blankly at her calendar. She didn’t look like she was having a panic attack or was close to having one, so Beetlejuice decided to investigate the source of the problem first.
His hair changed to purple when he saw what was written on the calendar.
“A year,” said Lydia. “It’ll be a year next week since we… since we lost her.”
Beetlejuice settled on the bed and wrapped an arm around her. She leaned into him instantly. Even though she’d been doing so well these past few months, Barbara had warned the demon that the teen could still get relapses like this. It was perfectly normal; all part of the healing process. “What do you need, Lyds? Do you want me to get your dad? Babs?”
Lydia shook her head. “I’ll talk to them tomorrow. Right now, could you… could you stay with me tonight? You, uh, might be sleeping in here a lot for the next week or two.”
“Fine by me. Ooh!” He clicked his fingers, his clothes changing into a pair of striped pyjamas, complete with bunny slippers and a hilariously long sleeping hat. Two bowls of ice cream appeared in his hands and he held one out to Lydia. “How about that slumber party I promised?”
She took the bowl from him with a smile. “Yeah. Thanks, Beej. You’re the best brother I’ve ever had.”
“I’m the only brother you’ve ever had.”
Lydia dipped her finger in the ice cream and rubbed it on his nose. “Still the best.”