Chapter Text
“I know it’ll be hard, honey, but try to get some sleep if you can,” Barbara said gently, pulling Lydia into one last hug.
“What about him?” she asked, her voice weary. The thought of Beetlejuice being in the house at all made her chest tighten.
“Barbara and I will deal with anything he may try tonight,” Adam reassured her, his tone steady as he opened the bedroom door. “Just rest as much as you can, you have a really big day tomorrow.”
“I appreciate you both. If I’m not up by eight come and find me please,” Lydia sighed, managing a small smile as they said a final goodnight. When the door finally closed, she waited for a moment, listening in case she heard anyone shout again. Thankfully, it was quiet, though perhaps a little too quiet.
With another sigh, she looked towards the pile of clothes she had kicked over earlier. She knelt and began shoving the clothes haphazardly back into the box, tugging out a set of pajamas in the process to change into. Once she was ready, Lydia slipped into bed, taking a moment to feel the soft material of her comforter. The familiar feel of the blanket – a black and violet quilt Barbara had made for her 17th birthday – brought a bittersweet sense of nostalgia. The handmade gift and matching pillowcases from Charles and Delia were definitely not the liveliest of gifts, but she was more than grateful for them now.
“How am I going to do this?” she said quietly to no one, staring at the ceiling as if the answers would appear. She had hoped for a much smoother start to the move, especially with a five-hour drive ahead of her. With the addition of her unwelcome guest, she had no idea what would go on the next morning. She lay awake another hour or so, trying to work out some kind of logistics for tomorrow, but she felt more hopeless than she had let on to Adam and Barbara. With each toss and turn, her mind seemed to race more. Her friend from undergrad, Claudia, and her partner, Nadine, had promised to serve as her welcome wagon to the city. And Lydia had already figured out subway routes, grocery stores, even a place to park her car near her apartment. But having him as a roommate? That was never part of the plan. Eventually, exhaustion caught up to her thoughts, and she felt her eyes grow heavier.
“Roommate agreement,” she whispered one last time before sleep finally claimed her.
The next morning, another shout jolted Lydia awake.
“Get your crap out of here this instant!” Barbara’s voice echoed from downstairs.
“Ooh I didn’t know you had it in you to swear, Babs,” Beetlejuice mocked, a smirk in his voice.
Lydia groaned as she fought the urge to pull the covers over her head. “I am almost thirty years old, I do not have TIME for this,” she muttered, grabbing a sweater as she slammed open her bedroom door and marched down the stairs. She stopped in her tracks as she entered the living room and saw the damage.
It wasn’t quite as bad as she had imagined, but it was terrible enough. Though the large bed was gone, in its place was a black and white striped armchair. Surrounding it was a junkyard of candy wrappers, chip bags, and crushed soda and beer cans. The fireplace had a new television mounted above it, currently playing a gruesome horror movie Lydia recognized.
Her eyes finally found Beetlejuice in his own version of a striped robe, sitting in the middle of the pile of wrappers and cans. His eyes caught Lydia’s, but before he could address her, she cut him off.
“Positive living environment clause,” she said sharply, her voice laced with warning.
His grin immediately fell into a scowl, his hands clenching around a soda can. “So, you found that, huh?” he said, rolling his eyes. “What now? Gonna make me wear an apron?”
“No, worse,” she replied, crossing her arms. One of the things she had considered before she drifted off to sleep was some kind of roommate agreement, and she finally figured out the details as she ran downstairs. “Here’s the deal: you don’t mess with my living space, you don’t touch my personal belongings, you don’t damage anything – accidental or otherwise – and you maintain basic hygiene. Period.”
With every word she spoke, she could see his fist getting tighter over the can until it finally broke in a spray of liquid. “Now YOU are out of your fucking mind if you think I’m going to agree to any of that shi-"
“Oh, I forgot to mention the last part,” Lydia said cooly, stepping closer. She kept her eyes on him as she kept her voice even. “You get a job. If you’re going to crash my apartment, you’re going to help pay for every bit of it.”
Beetlejuice’s eyes widened before narrowing dangerously. “Not a chance in hell,” he growled.
“Fine. I hope you enjoy the Netherworld, because if you even think about making my life miserable, I’ll make yours ten time worse.” Lydia felt Adam and Barbara’s eyes on her as she took another step closer. “Fucking try me.”
For a moment, Beetlejuice just stared at her, his eyes tense. She glared straight back at him, almost daring him to do something. Almost. Barbara and Adam watched from their spot near the counter, their lips curling into a proud smile.
Slowly, Beetlejuice’s lips twisted into a crooked grin as well. His expression seemed to be caught somewhere between irritation and reluctant admiration “Aren’t you full of surprises,” he drawled, tossing the can onto the floor.
“Pick up your mess before I call Juno myself,” Lydia threatened, before starting back up the stairs to finish up packing. She heard Adam follow behind her, Barbara returning to the kitchen to continue breakfast.
“Don’t think for a second I’m going to make this easy for you,” Beetlejuice called after her.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Lydia muttered, shutting the bedroom door behind her and Adam. She leaned against her bedroom door, her eyes closed in exasperation, mulling over the way she had just threatened her new “roommate”.
“You handled him really well, honey,” he spoke encouragingly. She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, cursing how the day had started.
“I don’t even know if he’ll take me seriously, but at least I know that whatever my worst is, it wouldn’t be enough to violate whatever the clause says.” She rubbed her temples and closed her eyes again, feeling Adam’s hand on her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, there were a few boxes floating in front of her.
“I can give you a hand with these while Barb finishes breakfast,” he smiled. She gave him a grateful look as she opened the door for him. “I’ll get dressed and start putting them in the car if you don’t mind putting them in the living room.”
Adam nodded and floated a few more boxes downstairs, trailing after them. “I’ll see you downstairs soon.”
After Lydia shut the door behind him, she could have sworn she heard a muffled “Ouch, what the fuck Adam?” followed by a “Oops, didn’t see you there or I would have made the box heavier”. A faint smile tugged at her lips as she dug through her a box of clothes.
After changing into a pair of leggings and an oversized black t-shirt, Lydia surveyed the rest of her room as she tied back her hair. After deciding to take the quilt but leave the pillowcases, she headed downstairs with a box of dresses. She could hear noise from the kitchen, Barbara and Adams’ voices from the dining room. Lydia did her best to keep her eyes in front of her as she practically marched towards the front door, only glancing into the living room to thankfully find it back in its original state, pre-Beetlejuice. She briefly noticed that the television had stayed over the fireplace.
Beetlejuice caught her eye as he stood by the doorway, his grin as frustrating as ever; he pretended to look at his nails as she walked by. She was able to ignore him until she picked up a third, very heavy box, making her way to the front door again. After the fourth heavy box, she finally stopped near him and jerked her head towards a box of books by the staircase, a different one of dishes currently in her arms.
“Want to make yourself useful and carry that to the car?” Lydia finally addressed him, fixing her dark eyes on his. He looked offended for a moment, before shrugging his shoulders. Without answering her, he snapped his fingers and the box floated up, moving weightlessly to her car. Lydia quickly dropped the box she had in her arms and grabbed the one in the air before he could float it out the door and into public view.
“The neighbors can’t see you doing ghost magic!” Lydia set the box down before glaring at him. “Do you want help or not?” he grumbled, unmoving from the doorway.
“Help would be great if you did it the not obvious way,” she replied, picking up the once-floating box before heading back to the door. Before she knew it, she felt herself falling as the box suddenly felt five times lighter. As she braced herself to fall, Lydia felt an invisible force push her upright, books spilling in front of her.
“Dammit Beetlejuice she could have gotten hurt!” Barbara shouted as she stormed out of the kitchen, one hand stretched towards Lydia to steady her.
“Hey all I did was lighten the load for her, I was trying to make it easier,” Beetlejuice replied, a halo suddenly appearing over his head. Lydia felt her hands turn into claws as she took a step closer to him before she gathered herself.
“Ignore him, ignore him,” she repeated to herself quietly. Shoving the books back into the box quickly, she carried on to the car as if nothing had happened. She missed the glare Barbara shot in Beetlejuice’s direction on Lydia’s behalf.
Ten boxes, five bags of clothes and bedding, and one very awkward breakfast where Beetlejuice ate his chocolate-covered roaches later, Lydia’s car was finally packed. She stood at the front door with Adam and Barbara, knowing this was the farthest they could go for over another century.
“I promise I’ll be back soon,” Lydia managed a small smile as Babara and Adam wrapped their arms around her. She thought she could feel the ghost of a tear on her cheek.
“Don’t let him get to you, honey. Hopefully when you come back we’ll have some answers for you” Adam murmured into her hair, his arms tightening.
“We’re so proud of you, sweetheart,” Barbara smiled as she pulled back, though her next words were drowned out by a loud belch from outside. Her eyes fixed themselves behind Lydia as she took in the sight of Beetlejuice leaning against the black SUV, something resembling a turkey leg in his hand. Lydia followed Barbara’s gaze to glare at him too.
“Do you fucking mind?” she snapped. Not only did she have to endure him as her passenger, she couldn’t even say goodbye in peace.
“Uh, yeah, actually, I kinda do mind,” he shot back, his expression bored. “You’re taking forever with your goodbyes to the most boring ghosts in existence,” he yawned in exasperation before taking an abnormally large bite of the turkey-thing.
Before Lydia could reply, Barbara reassured her. “It’s fine, honey, we’ll see you at Christmas.” She pulled her in for one last hug, followed by Adam, before Lydia sighed and made her way to the driver’s seat.
She pointedly ignored her passenger as he climbed into the seat next to her. With the slam of the car door and a final wave at her surrogate parents, Lydia started the long drive towards New York.
Not fifteen minutes had gone by before Beetlejuice began complaining about the radio, just having thrown the last of his invented snack out the window.
“This is the shit you listen to?” he sneered, flipping through stations for the tenth time. Lydia actually hadn’t minded the noise until she heard his voice; that was when her grip on the steering wheel tightened.
“You skipped the only rock station in a 50-mile range the third time you changed the station,” she muttered.
“Who said I wanted to listen to rock?”
“Frankly I don’t care what music you like or don’t.” As she turned onto the interstate, she noticed he still hadn’t settled on any one station. A few bars of Rock the Casbah went by before she recognized Chopin, then an EDM song Adam had politely asked her to turn down once. Lydia knew she could handle so much before she’d want to launch the car into the Connecticut river.
“So what did you do for the last ten years?” Lydia half-shouted over what she thought was Alice Deejay. She had to repeat herself when he kept singing “Do you think you’re better off alooooooooone” for a second verse. Finally, he lowered the volume to address her as the song ended.
“Well,” he began, tapping his chin in mock contemplation. “The bitch in the wings told me no one would be able to see me until my head got back to normal size, and that took about a year and a half. The next three were some kind of bullshit forms about my physical health, which, as you may be aware of, I’ve been fucking dead for the last 600 years, so it was actually half the usual time for that one. After that was the union strike – four years – so that was a great time. Give or take another year and a half for Juno to run through every fucking word of the ten-page contract, and, voilà, here I am.” Lydia sat absorbing his words for a minute, during which he reached for the tuning button again before she slapped his hand away.
“I actually like this song,” she snapped, though it wasn’t entirely true; she just wanted him to stop touching the radio.
“I’m surprised you even know who this is,” he replied, mock-rubbing his hand where she hit him.
“Adam and Barbara have great taste in music,” she answered as she went back to the original question. “So after Juno, you decided to come find me?”
“I didn’t have a choices, babes-" “Lydia,” she interrupted. “I don’t care what the contract says, you call me Lydia or I don’t answer.”
“Fine, fuck, Lydia,” he rolled his eyes. “She sent me directly to you. No pit stops, no piss break, directly to jail, do not pass go, as soon as my cigarette burned out, I was back in your haunted house.”
She considered his response before coming up with another question to keep him occupied. It didn’t seem like he was as happy to be in his position as much as he had led on initially.
“Don’t think I’m a fucking idiot though, I know she kept me in there as long as possible per your request,” he grumbled, crossing his arms.
“And what would you have done if she hadn’t kept you in the waiting room?” Lydia kept her eyes forward, a mild curiosity in her voice.
“I would have hightailed my ass to Dante’s, what do you think? Just because you were supposed to be my ticket out of the Netherworld doesn’t mean I wanted to stick around.”
“Well that makes two of us then,” she muttered.
“I don’t know what you’re bitching about, I’m an absolute delight,” he smirked, lifting his head higher.
“Delightful pain in the ass,” she retorted automatically. His smile disappeared as he looked over at Lydia, uncrossing his arms to address her.
“You’d be a lot easier on the eyes if you got that stick out of your ass.”
“And you’d be easier to digest if I shoved the stick through yours.”
At that, Beetlejuice finally shut up for the next hour.
Halfway through the road trip, during which Beetlejuice only criticized her driving twelve times before he almost made her lost control of the car, she noticed the fuel gauge had dipped uncomfortably low. At the next “Gas Station” sign, she pulled off the interstate to fuel up. Pulling into the lot, she looked over at her impromptu passenger after turning the car off.
“Do ghosts need snack breaks?” she asked, pulling a few bills from her wallet.
“I wouldn’t say no to cool ranch dorritos,” he replied, eyeing the money. She looked at him carefully before deciding he could be trusted with this simple task.
“Tell the attendant twenty on four, get me two peanut butter cup packs and a ginger ale, and use the rest for whatever you want.” She handed him a twenty and a ten before uncapping the gas cap. She missed the mischievous glint in his eyes as he walked into the store. She waited for a few minutes for the amount to display on the gas pump before she closed the gas cap quickly, grabbed her keys, and walked quickly into the store. She had barely opened the door when she heard a loud tinkling laugh.
“Well aren’t you sweet,” the attendant, a blonde about 50 years old flashed a large smile at Beetlejuice. She was leaning forward in a slightly too-tight tank top, and Lydia could see her name tag read “Jill”.
“Yep, and let me tell you, if you’re looking for a really good time, I could-"
“Hi!” Lydia interrupted behind Beetlejuice, very much not wanting to know what disgusting pick-up like he had for the blonde. His eyes flashed irritatingly to Lydia before smiling again at Jill, who eyed her warily.
“This your girlfriend?” Jill looked between them as she stood up straighter.
Before Lydia could quickly deny it, Beetlejuice interjected. “Nah she’s just my ride to my next stop, there’s no way she could handle all of this,” he smirked, gesturing to himself.
Relief crossed over Jill’s face as she relaxed again, her eyes fixing themselves on him again. Lydia was about to step in front of him when he spoke again, handing Jill the two bills.
“Well if you decide you need a ride back up, give me a call,” she looked up at him as she took only the twenty, coyly brushing her finger against before sliding the snacks close to him. Lydia noticed there were another three sodas and an extra bag of chips in the pile. She raised her eyebrows at Beetlejuice, who was still ignoring her.
“Thanks a ton, doll, I’ll be seeing you very soon.” With a wink and the slightest touch to Jill’s hands, he picked up the snacks, Lydia trailing behind him. Jill looked past her as if she didn’t exist.
Once they were outside, she wanted to say something, but didn’t know what.
“You’re welcome,” Beetlejuice smirked, hopping back into the car and opening one of the sodas. Lydia stood by the pump for another moment before rolling her eyes and hitting the “regular” gas button.
“I want my change back,” she replied. She held out her hand and he eventually gave her the remaining bills back. She shoved them into her purse while she waited for the tank to fill, not wanting to know what he said to get the clerk to even consider looking at him.
“So, you finally got sick of living at home or what?” Beetlejuice asked, an hour left into their drive as they crossed the state line. She looked at him for a moment before answering.
“No, I wasn’t sick of anything, I got a job in the city after I graduated,” she replied, shifting to lean against the driver’s door. Though she had done the drive countless times, it felt longer with him around.
“Figures you’d be the college type,” he said with a snort, stretching a leg onto the dashboard. She almost told him off when he barreled on.
“Let me guess, you had to ‘find yourself’ for a year before deciding on an art degree that was useless so you got stuck in your hometown until you got bored out of your mind and decided it was time for a change,” he continued, moving to untie his boots.
“It was two years, the English degree is what got me this job in the first place, and if you even think about taking off your disgusting boots I will throw them out the window,” she answered, not taking her eyes off the steering wheel. His hands froze mid-lace. He mulled over her tone, then leaned back, one leg still on the dashboard. She held her tongue this time; better the boots than his bare feet.
“Whatever happened to Chip and his lady?” he asked, a pair of shrill voices in his distant memory.
“Charles and Delia,” she corrected, “moved to Albany after I graduated high school. Delia finally got her way about leaving, and my dad felt guilty enough to let me stay in the house as long as I got some kind of degree.” She offered slightly more information than she had intended, but she couldn’t ignore the sore spot. Two days after she crossed the stage, her father and stepmother were gone. The photo she had of them at her graduation had stayed on her desk collecting dust.
Before Beetlejuice could comment, he sat up straighter, turning his head to peer out the window. She vaguely remembered him mentioning something about having been there before. As much as she wanted to ask, she’d much rather he stay quiet. Her wish was short-lived.
“I wonder if Joe’s is still a thing here,” he muttered, pressing his nose against the window.
“It is,” Lydia replied. She remembered her last visit to the city weeks back when she was negotiating taking over Claudia’s apartment, the conversation happening immediately after Nadine asked her girlfriend to move in with her. The three of them had gone to get pizza in celebration of Lydia’s last step in her move. The passing thought of how she would explain her new “roommate” came and went before she tried to focus on getting through moving in first.
“As soon as you stop the car I’m gonna get a slice,” he declared.
“Do ghosts even need to eat?” she asked dryly, mentally adding a grocery clause to her invented roommate agreement.
“No, but that isn’t going to stop me from fucking up an entire pizza.” He rubbed his stomach as he spoke, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes.
“Help me unload the car first, then food,” she grumbled.
She was able to tune out most of his city commentary - something about a guy named Henry and “pulling something out of somewhere” stood out - but she really didn’t want to know.
As Lydia finally pulled into the neighborhood, she started the hunt for parking. With a happy shriek, she saw a sedan pull out a block away from the front of her building. As she was about to pull in, however, a white Mercedes zipped into the spot, missing Lydia’s car by an inch.
Lydia slammed on the brakes and had raised her hand to honk when she saw Beetlejuice tug on his sleeves out of the corner of her eye.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” she warned. The last thing she needed was to explain to everyone in the block whatever ghost magic he was about to pull. However, nothing happened; nothing she noticed, anyway. When she looked at the driver leaving his car, pointedly not looking at Lydia, she heard Beetlejuice swear in frustration.
“That should have sent his ass across the street and all it did was untie his shoelaces,” he spit out, looking at his hands in shock.
“Are your powers weaker here?” Lydia asked, smirking.
“What do you fucking think?” He pointed his fingers at a fire hydrant next. If she had blinked she would have sworn it was her imagination, but she saw the vibrant red slip into a dark orange before going back to red.
“Leave it then.” She smiled as she drove another lap around the building. She wasn’t even really annoyed when she double-parked her car in front of the building, giving Beetlejuice specific instructions to beep the horn twice if the car she was blocking tried to leave. She left him pouting in the passenger seat as she juggled two small boxes in one hand. After punching in her building code, she paced herself up the three flights of stairs to number six and left the boxes in the half furnished living room.
Each time she came back for more boxes, Beetlejuice was growing more and more agitated at his limited powers. So far he’d only managed to knock over a flowerpot on a second floor balcony, earning a sharp “knock it off” from Lydia.
“Do you know how degrading this is for me?” he shouted as she fixed her gaze on him. She could feel the sweat stains under her arms as the tail-end of a heatwave wrapped up for the afternoon.
“Don’t do anything that makes it obvious,” she ordered as the slammed the door, carrying the last two boxes up the stairs. She had just set them down when she heard a new set of shouting from outside. She locked the door quickly before rushing down the stairs, running out to the site of Beetlejuice in a full-blown argument with a parking attendant.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass!” she heard him shout as the attendant glared at the weirdo dressed like a costume store window display.
“Move your vehicle before it’s towed,” the attendant answered, already pulling a pen from his pocket.
“I’m moving it right now! Right,” Lydia jumped into the front seat. “Now!” she shouted, shoving Beetlejuice back into the passenger seat. Before he could protest, she smiled apologetically at the attendant and sped off towards the nearby garage. Well, as nearby as three blocks could be.
“What the hell did you do,” she snapped as she scanned her parking permit.
“I didn’t do jack shit, all I did was make his stupid tricycle fall, he looks at me like I fucking did it-"
“You just said you did!”
“Yeah but he didn’t know that! I was trying to get the engine to rev, he falls off, starts walking over to me saying some shit about being double-parked-"
“And I’m lucky I took off before he could give me a ticket, no thanks to you.” Using one hand to rub between her eyes, she pulled into her assigned parking spot. As she turned off the engine, she looked at him. Behind his frustration, she could see something that resembled fear in his eyes. She vaguely realized it was one of the few times he wasn’t in control.
Lydia took a breath before answering him.
“Look, in this world, at this time, please keep whatever you want to try with your powers to the inside of the apartment. Nothing that will keep me from getting my deposit back,” she gave him a sharp look when he opened his mouth. “I can’t have the neighbors asking why I have a performance artist living with me when my lease is only for one person.”
“Pfft, I’m way better than some mime pretending to be stuck in a box,” he snorted, and she caught his boots beginning to shift to slippers.
“Not out of the apartment,” she repeated, pointing to his shoes.
“Force of habit,” he grumbled as his boots stayed in place.
“Let’s just get back before anything else happens.” As they got out of the car and started the semi-short walk to her building. She watched him walk ahead of her; his wild blonde hair seemed to vibrate with him, his striped suit looking dustier inside the darkness of the garage. She sighed as she stayed behind him, wondering if she'd call the first half of the day a success or a failure.