Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Barbara is honest with herself, a part of her knew he’d be back. A part of her even knew he’d be back this soon. No part of her was prepared to be looking past him at the hole in her (well, the Deetz’s technically) wall, courtesy of what Barbara is pretty sure is the same sandworm responsible for chowing down on the Neitherworld’s worst mom. Lydia is, of course, happy to see him.

“Beetle-beverage,” she greets him, sardonically but warmly.

“My favorite murderer,” he calls her, ruffling her hair and causing it to poof up and out as if gravity defying hair is one of the many diseases he carries and can infect others with. Lydia removes a very small and fairly polite snake from her curls and hands it back to him.

“Good to have you back,” she tells him, as he tucks the little snake into an inside pocket of his striped and shabby jacket. “Things were starting to get kinda predictable around here.”

Beetlejuice adjusts his stained cuffs and does some lazy jazz-hands in the direction of the hole he and his preferred form of transportation have created. It repairs itself without a trace that it was ever there, save for the demon now standing in the living room (and the enormous striped snake monster coiled into a less enormous striped ball at the foot of the stairs). And just like that: he’s back in their lives (well, after-lives). The sandworm slithers into, and takes up residence in the basement. This is a fact that Adam learns the hard way.

“Now that,” Beetlejuice says, as Barbara rushes to her husband to make sure all of him is still intact, “was a primal scream.”

Adam stares at him, panting heavily despite his lack of physical lungs.

“A-dawg,” the demon addresses him cheerfully. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Put ‘er there-…”

Beetlejuice holds up an unwashed hand for a high-five.

“…or anywhere you wanna put ‘er,” he continues.

“Thereisagiantsnakeinthebasement!” Adam shrieks.

“Haaaa, yeah, same,” Beetlejuice replies, adjusting the waistband of his tattered trousers meaningfully. Barbara is moments away from rolling up her ghostly sleeves and punching the demon in his grinning, green-tinged face.

“Well does it intend to stay there?” Adam asks, incredulously.

Beetlejuice folds his arms across his chest and frowns.

“First of all, *she* is not an ‘it’, Adam,” he sniffs. “Rude.”

She, as it turns out, is named Sandy (“Big Sandy,” Beetlejuice tells them, in a tone that leaves Barbara with the distinct impression that somewhere there is an even BIGGER Sandy). And after the initial shock wears off, she and Adam end up taking to each other, like a boy to a dog (if the boy were dead and the dog was a snake). Even the adult Deetz’s take Beetlejuice’s presence well.

“Mr. Juice,” Charles says, with only the smallest of long suffering sighs.

“Chuckle-bucket,” Beetlejuice calls him in reply.

Delia’s smile is a little bit frozen around the edges, but she approaches the demon anyway.

“Oh! It’s you. Isn’t this…nice.”

She looks around at the house’s usual inhabitants as if for reassurance that this is actually nice, then runs a hand over the fabric of her skirt.

“I’ll just go change into something less flammable,” she declares. Charles follows her up the stairs.

“She’s smarter than she looks,” Beetlejuice stage whispers to…Barbara isn’t entirely sure who.

It’s not long before the house is humming with the combined energy of a teenage girl and a supernatural creature of even less emotional maturity, even when they are only doing something as mundane as painting each other’s fingernails. But Lydia does have to go to school, and do homework, and sleep, and it is at these times that Barbara finds that she is most often the focus of the demon’s attentions. She can’t call what he does stalking, exactly, because there’s nothing secretive about it. He trails after her in a way that she would call toddler or puppy-like, if she were describing anyone other than him. He’s too large, and scruffy, and foul mouthed for such associations. It's strange to have him in her space. And frustrating, because he does not seem to have any concept of how close one should stand to another person, or how much space he takes up. He isn’t a tall…man, but he is, to put it kindly, husky. Probably the only thing that keeps her from colliding into him is his inability to keep still, and his penchant for using furniture in ways it was not intended.

It is on what Barbara has (since her death, anyway) come to think of as a typical day that Beetlejuice flops onto his back at her feet, on the floor of the attic she and Adam still spend most of their time occupying, and starts unbuttoning his pants. Barbara shrieks and leaps up from the couch she has been sitting on. His actions aren't intended to be a jump scare, and scared is not what Barbara is. It's not out of the ordinary for him to be in the attic: it’s sort of become an unspoken agreement that he is more or less welcome in their space when he isn’t being Lydia’s smirking, scheming shadow. So long as he behaves himself, that is.

He has.

Well. Had. He has, up until this moment, been practically…good. Sure, he’s made snarky comments, said more curse words, and replied “that’s what she said” to more innocuous statements than Barbara would normally like, but he has kept his hands to himself and his gestures PG-13 rated at most. He is, Barbara grudgingly admits to herself: funny. And...lively is the wrong word. His company almost isn't unpleasant, although Barbara has not told him so, and does not intend to. This is disappointing of him.

It shouldn’t be, really. He remains the…man Barbara once referred to as a ‘needy pervert’. It’s her own fault for thinking he wouldn’t pull something like this if given the opportunity. The fact that Adam is downstairs with Lydia, both engrossed in her homework, certainly gives the demon opportunity. She scowls down at him, ready to throw the nearest thing she can get her hands on at any offending parts of his anatomy. To her surprise, he isn’t leering back. He raises an eyebrow at her, then shakes his head as if she’s the one who’s being unreasonable.

“Jeez, Babs,” he says, rolling his eyes and then shutting them. “Unclench your everything; I’m just giving the gut a break.”

Barbara’s eyes travel down his frame almost against her own will, as he folds his hands over his round stomach.

“I’m a big boy,” he continues, “and these pants aren’t.”

He’s not wrong. The fit of the striped trousers is more snug around his thick thighs than it should be, and without his suspenders, his paunch would definitely push them down. Instead, his stomach is propped up and oozes over his waistband in a way that, now Barbara thinks about it, probably isn’t entirely comfortable. With the button undone, his belly has forced the zipper down, and each side is far enough away from the other that she isn’t sure how he intends to ever get his pants zipped again. This is: awkward. Barbara tries to burry the feeling under meaningless conversation and morbid curiosity.

“Then why do you wear them?” she asks. She has seen him conjure a decapitated head out of thin air; surely he can magic up a properly fitted suit.

He’s still for a moment, and with his eyes closed he looks even more corpse-like than usual.

“It’s what she gave me to wear,” he finally mutters, the words coming out rushed, as if he’s embarrassed to admit it.

“You mean: your mother,” Barbara clarifies gently and unnecessarily. She realizes she is still hovering over him, and steps back so she can settle on the couch again. He cracks open an eye to watch her.

“Duh,” he grunts.

“Did she make it for you?” Barbara asks, because it’s hard to imagine that it isn’t bespoke; that it might have once hung on a rack in a department store with others like it. Beetlejuice snorts and opens his other eye.

“How should I know? I always figured she yanked it off a corpse. Out of, you know, necessity.” And then, in case she doesn’t know necessity, he helpfully adds: “Of me not being naked.”

Barbara is very careful not to react to that. It is, she thinks, what he wants.

“And you couldn’t just wear what you were wearing before because…?” She prompts. It’s probably a wholly awful story. Another nacho story. The sooner it is out and over with, the better.

“Before what?” He asks instead. She thinks he might be playing some kind of game until she looks down at him, and he looks back at her with genuine confusion on his face.

“Before,” Barbara says, gesturing to all of him, “this. Whatever you wore then.”

“There was no ‘before’,” he tells her, both physically executing and verbally pronouncing his air quotes.

“Oh, okay,” she sasses back. “Your mother dressed you like this when you were a kid? When you were a baby?”

He sucks in a long and useless breath through his nose, then hauls himself into a sitting position. He steeples his fingers.

“Barbara,” he begins. “Sweet, beautiful, surprisingly strong and occasionally violent Barbara. I. Am. A demon.”

He pauses, as if checking to make sure she is keeping up. Now it is her turn to roll her eyes.

“And?” She says, more than asks.

“And as a demon,” he continues, “I just: was.” He makes a hand motion like a birthday party magician. The implication is of something appearing from out of nowhere. Possibly with a poof.

“Wait what?” She finds herself asking. “You…” She can’t quite bring herself to finish the thought, but he does it for her.

“Just suddenly existed one day, fully formed, entirely grown, and with a knowledge of all swear words and no social skills? Yes, Babs: I was just here, and queer, and trust me: nobody was used to it.” He says it like a punchline; like he’s expecting her to laugh. All she can do is stare at him.

“That’s so-…” she murmurs.

“Freaky?” He suggests. “Gross?”

“Sad,” she says, softly. He eyes her suspiciously, then leans back against the seat of the couch, folding his arms over his chest.

“Pfft,” he snorts, “what’s so great about babies anyway? So what if they’re little and conveniently hug sized and people feel compelled to comfort and protect them no matter what they smell like, or what comes out of them, and no one expects them to know anything or gets annoyed at them for getting something wrong or acts like it’s their fault when it’s not like they’ve ever seen a clipboard before because they just started existing yesterday!”

His words increase in pace and pitch and Barbara reaches out almost desperately and places a hand flat on top of his now purple haired head, to keep him from...well, she isn't sure. Exploding, maybe. Launching into orbit. He freezes, still breathing rapidly and pointlessly through his nose. He swipes a wrist across his mouth because he has drooled, like an overexcited dog.

“That run-on sentence got unexpectedly personal,” he admits, stiffly.

“A little,” she agrees.

“Anyway, point is: I’m not a person. And if you guys keep that in mind, it’ll make all of your lives slash afterlives just a little less frustrating because you can expect me to be a monster to begin with,” he continues, brightly. He seems almost proud of himself.

“I don’t…think that was your point,” Barbara points out. He glances at her over his shoulder.

“Wasn’t it?” He asks.

She shakes her head and removes her hand from his hair. She doesn’t miss the way his shoulders sag slightly in disappointment.

“No,” she says, firmly. She hopes she isn't going to regret saying what she's about to say, but it deserves to be said. “And: I think you're wrong. You are a person. A different person, but that’s okay.”

He watches her out of the corner of his eye. He is, she suspects, waiting for the other shoe to drop; for the insult to come, or for her to declare it a joke and take it all back. When she doesn't (because she wouldn't. What kind of person would? Other than...oh.) he raises the eyebrow she can see.

“Are you sure you were afraid of being a bad mom, or did you just not want to squeeze the egg out of your ass and sit on it for however many months it-… human reproduction: unclear,” he admits, waving a hand. He has grown awkward suddenly, and not just because of the mental image of a human laying an egg. For all Barbara knows, he likes that sort of thing.

“How did you know about that?” She asks.

“Welp, look at the time!” He quips, looking at his pale, bare wrist. Despite his extra bulk, he’s surprisingly quick and graceful, and he’s almost to his feet, when she grasps his shoulders and forces him back down onto his backside. Barbara is quick herself.

“Beetlejuice,” she asks, seriously. “Were you watching us?”

He winces under her hands. “Mumble,” he mumbles.

“Beetlejuice,” she warns.

“Yes, okay?” He admits, wriggling free from her grasp and springing to his feet. He spins around to face her. “And yes: it was very creepy.” He says that last bit defiantly, as if trying to goad her into a fight. It’s so very obvious. He’s also standing in front of her with his pants undone and his pale round belly trying to escape from the confines of his shirt. It’s an image that makes him hard to take seriously. She also isn’t angry. She might have been, she thinks, before she died. Before she met him. Before this conversation.

“For a while?” She asks.

“Mumble,” he mumbles again.

“Why?” She wants to know. “Why…us?”

They are, he has long insisted, boring.

“Iunno,” he answers, sullenly. He drags the toe of one of his worn out boots across the ground and looks like nothing more than an overgrown teenager in corpse cosplay. Finally, he admits (as if it pains him to, naturally):

“You were…nice.” He shudders at the word, but continues. “You were a n-nice couple, and I figured after you bit it, you might be nice to me.” He shoves his hands in the pockets of his still undone pants and grimaces. “Wow,” he mutters to himself. “Mom seriously had my number.”

Barbara can recall the woman's words and they're no less enraging in retrospect. No mother should call their child foolish for wishing someone would love them. No mother should tell their child they wish it had never been born.

“No!” Barbara insists. And after a moment of thought. “I mean…not the right number?” She pats the space on the couch next to her. Beetlejuice slinks over, but plops himself on the floor again. Barbara finds herself wondering if furniture isn’t a somewhat foreign concept to him. She’ll have to ask later; this conversation is too important to derail.

“It was a good idea,” she tells him, “to find people like that. It was smart.”

His eyes widen comically at the compliment. This is so very definitely the first time anyone has called him ‘smart’, and it makes something in Barbara’s chest ache, because he isn’t stupid, not really. It’s a strange way to think about a millennia old creature who has probably done things in positions she doesn’t even know exist, but what he is is: naive.

“We…kinda weren’t, though, were we,” she realizes, out loud. “Nice, I mean.”

“Well I can admittedly come on a little strong,” he says, emphasizing only the word ‘little’. She remembers. The sudden realization of being…dead; of all the things she would never get to do or be. And then a hideous grinning creature appearing from behind the sofa. It had been terrifying. Anyone would have reacted the way they did. But she remembers too, the slow careful way he had tried to explain things. And he had tried to shake their hands. It had been very unnatural, but:

“You tried,” Barbara says. “I’m sorry we screamed at you.”

He waves her off. “Totally used to it,” he tells her with a grin. “Kind of a turn on re-…”

He’s cut off because she has pressed a hand over his mouth. His lips move against it for a second but he doesn’t lick her palm, which she considers progress.

“Okay,” she says. “The way your mom treated you: it wasn’t right. You know that, don’t you?” The way he refuses to meet her eyes, she knows that deep down: he doesn’t. “It wasn’t,” she repeats, firmly. “And I know it’s not polite to speak ill of the dead, but she was a real-…”

“Oh, she’s not dead,” Beetlejuice interrupts. “I mean: she’s always been dead, but she’s not permanently dead. She’s almost definitely re-manifested by now, although I’m not sure because we’re obviously not on speaking terms. Not that we were really on speaking terms before, after she cursed me and banished me to the wander the world of the living unseen and alone, but-… Are you gonna punch me?”

“What?” Barbara asks, through teeth she hadn’t realized she was clenching. “No!”

“Well you look like you wanna punch something,” he points out. Literally. He finger guns at both of her balled up fists. She looks down at them, and then does something she never in all of her life or afterlife thought she would do. She flings her arms around him. He flinches back, but once again she’s faster. She envelopes him in a hug: firm, but not too tight. His chin rests on one of her shoulders, and she lifts a hand to gently stroke the hair on the back of his head. It’s a stiff, tangled mess, and she regrets touching it immediately, but she doesn’t stop. Beetlejuice is rigid in her arms, his own arms limp at his sides. Gradually though, she can feel the tension start to leave his neck and shoulders. She draws back eventually, but gives his hair a few more strokes up and off of his forehead. His eyes are squeezed shut.

“That feels good,” he says softly, although his voice remains just as raspy, even in a whisper. “Not sexy,” he assures her, quickly, “just: good.”

She lets her hand fall back into her own lap.

“We were supposed to call you Lawrence, weren’t we?” She asks. It’s a hypothetical question. He opens his eyes reluctantly.

“Gee, I don't know” he mutters, bitterly. “It is my name. And it’s not like you tell somebody your name if you don’t want them to call you it, but hey: I get it. I’m not a Lawrence. It was stupid.”

She looks him over. He doesn’t really look like a Lawrence. A Lawrence is someone with brown hair (maybe a little bit floppy), and a healthy glow, and an easy smile (not a rictus grimace, which is all Beetlejuice seems to be capable of; something in his jaw seems to be off). A Lawrence wears t-shirts and jeans; maybe sweat pants. It’s what his mother had called him too, when lulling him into a false sense of security and familial bonding. Barbara gets the feeling he might have gone off being called it since then, at least for the time being.

“If you do ever want us...me to call you that, just let me know,” she still offers, even though it sounds weak to her own ears. The look he gives her in response is patronizing.

“Babbles,” he says, which is not her name, “they’d have to change the whole marquee and like half of the merch.”

She has no idea what he means by that, but she has a sneaking suspicion he’s intentionally trying to confuse her into changing the subject. She has another one in mind anyway.

“You never tried to get Adam or I to see you,” she says, because it’s not a question. Even knowing what she knows now, she still can’t say she ever once felt haunted before the floor gave way. She has felt haunted since, but mostly only by herself. He shrugs and rolls back into his back at her feet.

“You wouldn’t have,” he reminds her.

It’s true. She and Adam aren’t like Lydia. They would have gone on with their hum-drum lives, completely oblivious, and he would have gone on: alone and invisible. It isn’t her fault, but Barbara still can’t help but feel a little guilty. She sees him now; really sees him.

She’ll find a way to make sure he knows.

Chapter Text

“You’re sure that you’re, well, sure about this?” Adam asks.

He isn’t looking at her like she’s crazy; like some lesser man might, but he does look like he has concerns. Barbara can’t entirely blame him.

“Positive,” she tells him, and it come out with more confidence than she actually has. Not that Barbara is unsure about whether or not it is the right thing to do: she’s just not sure it will work. By work she means: make any difference. But that, she has to remind herself, isn’t the goal.

“I just think,” she continues, “…and I know it seems weird with all of the stuff he’s done…and said…and looks like, but: I think he might need us just as much as Lydia does.”

Adam frowns thoughtfully down at Big Sandy, who has just finished letting him floss her teeth, because dental hygiene is important.

“I did say I thought he needed a dead therapist,” Adam says.

“But?” Barbara prompts, because it feels like there’s a but coming.

“But nothing,” Adam insists. “If you’re sure, then: I support you."

Barbara wraps her arms around her husband and thinks that (even if she did die of a horrible floor-related accident) she might be the luckiest woman in the world. And then she hits the internet.

Charles Deetz really is a very clever man when it comes to money. After they’d all cleaned up the mess Beetlejuice had left, and discussed how they all intended to live (and be dead) together in a way that would be comfortable for everyone, Charles had offered them financial security. It had only taken a few documents, and then Charles making a visit to the bank, and then seven to ten business days, and then their savings account and the remains of their checking account was once again available to them. It’s not in their names, of course, but it’s not as though Barbara will ever have to show the card or any matching identification to a living, breathing person. It’s also not as though she and Adam actually need anything. But sometimes a dead woman wants to order a new vacuum off of Amazon. Barbara is grateful to have the option.

The next time Beetlejuice shows his face in the attic (Lydia is at school; Charles and Adam are discussing crown molding), Barbara hands him a carefully folded pile of fabrics.

Beetlejuice glances down at his unexpectedly full hands, then yeets the pile over his shoulder with a: “Yeah, I don’t help put laundry away. I: remove clothing, and possess those furry scarves with the heads still on them that stereotypical rich old ladies wear and that’s it.”

“No, that’s…!” Barbara starts to explain, while chasing down the pile. When she shoves it in his hands a second time, it’s much less carefully folded. “This is for you.”

He blinks at her. He blinks at the clothes he is holding.

“…whyyyyyyyy?” Beetlejuice asks, like a man entirely out of his depth. Barbara shrugs, feigning nonchalance.

“I just thought you might like something more comfortable sometimes,” she explains. “Nobody should be in business-wear 24-7.”

He straightens his tie in a movement that’s almost subconscious.

“Also!” Barbara hastens to add. “These are new. No one died in them or anything, so…”

She trails off lamely because his face is very blank.

“I just thought you might like that, that’s all,” she concludes. He looks at her for what seems like forever.

“…’kaaaaaay,” he rasps slowly and flatly. Still looking suspicious, he starts to shuck off his jacket. Barbara spins on her heel, facing away from him to give him some privacy. Once the sound of rustling fabric has stopped, she peers back around slowly, hoping she isn’t about to get an eyeful of him.

She had estimated his size, and is pleased to see she has done so correctly. The dark grey sweatpants are a little long, but neither they, nor the black t-shirt strain over him or pinch against him anywhere. The purple hoodie couldn’t be more perfect. She had considered a green one, but all put together as he is now, he looks like a life-sized, man-shaped bruise, and that’s something he seems like he’d appreciate. Barbara also has a sneaking suspicion that if he wears that hoodie long enough, it will begin to shift colors like his suit does. Beetlejuice looks down and fingers the hem of the t-shirt.

“Soft,” he grunts.

Barbara tries not to grin too hard. She glances at the floor, looking for-…

“Um. Where are your other clothes?” She asks. He looks up at her and jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

“Wardrobe department,” he says, simply.

“…right,” she replies, deciding to go along with his strange sense of humor. “Okay, but: I was going to try to wash them for you.”

“Barbara,” he says, almost condescendingly, “we both know that’s a fruitless endeavor.”

He has a point. That suit is beyond washing.

“Then: can I try one more thing?” She asks. She’s really trying her luck now, she knows, but she can’t help it. No turning back. Maitlands 2.0. He shrugs bonelessly.

“Why not? It’s not like it could kill me. Again.”

She giggles uncomfortably. He has no idea what he’s in for.

“Great!” She tells him, a little too cheerily. “Sit here.”

She has him plunk down on one of the wooden, shaker style chairs that flank a small wooden table next to where Adam’s unused aluminum siding once lived. He lowers himself into it like a sack of potatoes. She pulls up another chair, facing him. She takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” she says. “I promise this won’t hurt.” She quickly slides the bowl in the middle of the table towards them. It’s full of water. Soapy water. Soapy water and a wash cloth. Barbara braces herself.

Nothing happens.

Beetlejuice doesn’t scream. He doesn’t try to escape. He slumps in his chair, arms hanging at his sides, like a propped up Halloween mannequin.

“What.” He says, more than asks, flatly.

“You don’t…?” She asks.

“I don’t what,” he replies in the same tone.

“I’m going to use this on you, mister!” She insists, brandishing the washcloth at his face in a way that even she can see comes off slightly threatening. She shoves the cloth back in the water. “I mean nothing. Never mind.”

She wrings the cloth out over the bowl and starts to reach towards him with it, more slowly this time.

“I have concerns now,” he says, eyeing her more than the cloth.

“Too late,” she tells him, firmly.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He wrinkles his nose. She wipes at his cheek. And then his other cheek. And then his chin. And his face gets…only slightly less grey. A little something comes out of his stubble, and from behind his ears. That’s promising. But the green stain beside his nose refuses to budge. She scrubs at it. She uses enough elbow grease to make him grunt and sway in his chair. She looks at the cloth. None of the green has even transferred onto it. She grits her teeth and goes in again.

“Stop it; stop!” He finally sputters, jerking his head away.

“That green stuff won’t come off!” She huffs.

“Obviously, that’s because it’s my face, Barbara!” He growls back.

She looks down at her unblemished cloth, and then back at his face. He’s glowering at her; the tips of his hair rapidly fading to purple. The splotches on his forehead and the one next to his nose fade to purple as well.

“Oh,” she says. The word feels small in her mouth. She drops her gaze down again and it falls on his feet. She realizes with a start that they are bare. She had thought he was wearing a pair of dingy grey socks. She had thought this because he has no toenails. He has toes, and his feet are feet shaped, but they are otherwise featureless. Like feet made by something that only has a general idea of feet, but has never gotten a good, close-up look at them before. Or like a doll, made to wear shoes but never actually intended to take them off. The inhuman-ness of it hits her like a slap in the face.

“Oh,” she breathes again. And: “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean-…!”

She tries to stand up, but it’s too quick, and the bowl teeters in her hands the water sloshing dangerously and knocking the whole bowl off balance. She yelps as it starts to slip out of her fingers.

But it doesn’t fall. It hovers in mid-air. Beetlejuice is pointing at it lazily. He waves his other hand, gesturing for her to step aside. She does. Now the bowl is just floating there, the water still sloshing over one side, but pausing and puddling mid-splash. He looks at her expectantly.

“Are you gonna make it go back in the bowl, or do I have to do all the practical effects myself?” He asks, one eyebrow raised cockily.

“Uh,” she says, haltingly. “I’m not sure...”

“Barbara, you made shrimp attack,” he reminds her, smirking a little. “You made a pig sing.”

“You saw that?” She asks, narrowing her eyes and concentrating at the water. She flicks her wrists at it.

“Oh yeah,” he brags. “I was under the table that whole time. One of those lawyers had leggggggs.”

Barbara is pretty sure all of those lawyers had legs, but she doesn’t reply, lest it break her concentration. The water is neither shrimp nor a pig but it is slowly flowing in the direction she wants it to. Pointing at it helps.

“Use your middle finger,” Beetlejuice snickers, his top teeth sliding over his bottom lip in rascally glee. It breaks her concentration. It is a ridiculous expression. She rolls her eyes at him.

And then she flips the water the bird, pumping her hands at it like pistons. It slides quickly and almost apologetically back into the bowl, which she places on the table.

“Fuck yeah, Babs!” Beetlejuice crows, holding up the sign for either rock and roll, or Satan (Barbara can never remember which is which).

“And in case you were wondering,” he continues. “Yes: I did eat that pig. And the shrimp. And then we got Girl Scout cookies. And the pizza. One of my own arms that I yanked off… I mean, not one of my arms, but: …”

She decides she should interrupt before his list gets worse.

“But you’re not saying anything about the salad, I notice,” she says lightly.

“I’ll eat anything,” he says, working a fingernail between two of his teeth.

“Do you even need to eat?” She asks, curiously, watching him and trying to look only mildly disgusted.

“Nope,” he tells her, standing and stretching. He pats his round belly almost defiantly. “I’ll still eat anything.”

“Hmmm,” she hums thoughtfully. “I have been looking for a reason to bake cookies.”

His eyes widen, then narrow.

“Chocolate chip, or oatmeal raisin?” He asks, like it’s a question of life or death.

“I don’t know,” she replies, feigning indecision.

“Barbara don’t you dare be a choc-tease,” he warns. She can’t help herself: she laughs.

“Chocolate chip,” she confirms. “I’ll even let you lick the bowl. After I’m done with it.”

She starts to head toward the stairs, down to the kitchen. She doesn’t have to tell him to follow her. She knows he will.

“Or: now hear me out,” he says. “I could eat the bowl.”

“You are not eating the bowl,” Barbara tells him, as he groans and drags his feet on the floor. They pass by Delia on their way through the house. The red headed woman looks curiously at Beetlejuice’s new clothes, but doesn’t say anything. Barbara pauses by the other woman, wondering if she should invite her to bake as well. It is her kitchen. But as Beetlejuice slinks by, Delia sniffs the air. And then sniffs again. She mouths the words: no smell, and then gives a thumbs up.

Barbara had not noticed any change in his odor. Barbara has not been able to smell a thing since she died. (Once she realized this, she had been gripped with a fear that maybe she smelled like death as well, and just didn’t know, but Lydia had been quick to assure her that, no, the only stinky one in the house was Beetlejuice.)

Only: it was his clothes. His clothes were what smelled.

She decides against inviting Delia to join their activity (chocolate, after all, is not vegan), and just shrugs nonchalantly at the living woman. But on the inside, she notices an unexpected feeling of pride.

Chapter Text

Barbara moves around the attic halfheartedly. To her right, Adam does the same. He catches her eye every now and then, and gives her a wan smile, as if trying to pretend nothing is wrong. Her own smile in return is even less convincing.

They’ve been talking to Lydia.

“It was just: nothing,” the girl had said. “This never-ending expanse of black, and…nothing. It wasn’t dark; you could see fine, like, there was light, there was just nothing there. And…no one.”

It had been Adam who had asked her about the Netherworld. Lydia has nightmares about it sometimes; they both know she does, but Barbara had always thought the upsetting part had been Juno, and not finding her mother. She isn’t sure now what she had thought the Netherworld itself was supposed to be, but she definitely hadn’t thought it was…that. And that’s where she and Adam are meant to be; will have to go eventually. All ghosts should proceed directly to the Netherworld. Is that really what’s waiting for them?

Adam sits on their couch with a sigh, finally dropping the pretense of normality (dead normality).

“Maybe she didn’t see…all of it?” He suggests, lamely. Barbara collapses numbly beside him.

“She said it went on forever,” she reminds him.

“Right,” he acquiesces glumly.

They both stare at the air in front of them. After a moment, Adam takes her hand in his and squeezes it lightly. As small a gesture as it is, it helps.

And then the air in front of them is suddenly full.

“Okay: new plan!” Beetlejuice crows, tugging on the lapels of his striped suit. “We’re gonna need a chain saw, and forty-eight pounds of-…what’s with the faces?”

He looks from Barbara to Adam, and back again. His shoulders slump.

“What’d I do this time?” He moans. “I don’t even have the chain saw yet!”

“It wasn’t you,” Barbara assures him, quickly, as beside her Adam mouths: “Chainsaw?”

“Maybe we should ask him about it,” Barbara says, quietly, turning towards her husband. “He’d know…best.”

Adam looks like he’s considering it. Beetlejuice, meanwhile, has perked up at the notion of knowing anything.

“Hey, you got questions? The B-man is at your service,” he tells them, sticking out a foot to push them apart. They scramble away from his rotting footwear, and he inserts his bulk daintily between them. It’s not as tight a squeeze as he makes it out to be. There’s definitely some unnecessary butt wiggling; his broad hips bouncing off of each of their narrow ones. And Barbara could swear she hears a comedic squeaking noise, like a dog toy being squeezed.

“Okay, shoot,” he says, once he’s done jostling them. He points a finger-gun in each of their directions.

“What’s it like, in the Netherworld?” The question bursts out of Barbara almost desperately, and she allows it, before she looses her nerve. Beetlejuice’s fingers practically wilt.

“Ugh. Why would you want to know about that?” He huffs. But Barbara can also feel his thigh tense against hers.

“We were talking to Lydia,” Adam explains. “And we…well, we just want to know what’s really, well, real.”

Barbara nods.

“The truth. Please,” she begs, softly.

“Hrrgnnh,” Beetlejuice rumbles, sinking back into the couch with a grimace. “Fine. Okay. What’d she say?”

“She said there was just: nothing!” Adam says, obviously distraught.

“Yeah, got it in one,” the demon confirms.

“Wh-…bu-…how can there be nothing?” Adam sputters. Beetlejuice shrugs.

“Don’t ask me, I just worked there,” he says.

“And lived there,” Barbara points out.

“Eh,” Beetlejuice says, wiggling a hand, as if that is a statement up for debate.

“But if there’s nothing,” Adam tries again, “then what’s the point.”

“That, my dear Adam,” Beetlejuice tells him, slinging an arm around the man’s shoulders, “is the point. Exactly. It’s, you know, nothing. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to bother you. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing there matters, so eventually everybody just stops clinging to everything they used to be and fades away. Every formerly human body, anyway.”

“Fades away,” Barbara finds her repeating, morbidly.

“Where do they go?” Adam asks, sounding small and child-like.

Beetlejuice twirls a finger around in the air. “Everywhere. Nowhere. I dunno. Demons don’t get to go on that ride. We just keep on keeping on.”

“If we had gone to the Netherworld that would have happened to us,” Barbara says. She knows Adam is thinking it too. “Who knows if we would…even be together like…like that.”

Beetlejuice has slid even further down on the couch. He looks like he’s trying to make himself physically comfortable in an effort to battle speaking about a topic that clearly makes him emotionally uncomfortable. He also looks like he’s failing. His hair is a muddled mess of greys; a color Barbara can only describe as: vomit.

“I said I didn’t know, so don’t ask me,” he mutters. “Look. It’s like that because that’s how it’s supposed to be. Sure, some of you stick around for longer than others there. You make cute little human houses with your cute little human minds in there, even though there’s no point, because there’s no weather. But sooner or later: you all just go, because you’re supposed to go. It’s bliss, or whatever. Although, if you ask me, whoever thinks that has never had a really thorough-… Point is, when they say: you go to the Netherworld, you don’t come back-“ He does a startlingly good impression of his mother. “…it’s because there’s not supposed to be a you to come back.”

“What if you’re not ready to not be you?” Barbara asks. “I’m not ready to not be me.”

“Me either,” Adam agrees.

Beetlejuice sits up a bit.

“Yeah, start thinking that’s so special or anything," he huffs. "Plenty of newly deads aren’t. All that nothing eases you into it faster than you’d think."

He sits up just a little bit straighter suddenly.

"But see: I thought that was bullshit. People with unfinished business should get a chance to try and finish it, right?” He says, looking at each of them hopefully. “Who’s it hurt if they stick around a little bit longer if they want? That’s why I did what I did, anyway.”

“What did you do?” Barbara asks, even as she’s afraid to ask it.

“Same thing I did with you,” Beetlejuice explains. “More or less. ‘All ghosts should proceed directly to the Netherworld’, yeah, sure, but 'should' isn't exactly the same as 'must', and I didn't keep that a secret from former breathers who seemed like they deserved the reminder.”

“That was…” Barbara begins.

“…nice of you,” Adam finishes, surprise evident in his voice. Beetlejuice looks at them in surprise in return.

“Yeah, well,” he mumbles, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “Turns out nobody here is here to help people so much as process them as quickly as possible, so: problem. Big, big problem.”

It clicks suddenly, in Barbara’s head.

“Is that why…is that why your mother banished you?” She asks, aghast. “Because you wanted to help people?”

“Me? No way,” Beetlejuice insists. “I just wanted them to stick around so I would have somebody to talk to. I mean! Uh. Do the horizontal mambo with. Yeah. Sexually. And maybe sexually talk to.”

“She absolutely did,” Barbara insists, anger bubbling up from within her.

“She said it wasn’t ‘a real job’,” Beetlejuice mutters. “That it was ‘pointless’. That I was ‘messing with the very natural order of the universe!’. Pfft. Whatever mom.”

Barbara ignores him.

“That horrible woman,” she spits.

“Demon,” Beetlejuice reminds her.

“That BITCH.” Barbara says.

“Woah!” Beetlejuice and Adam say in unison. And oddly, Adam sounds more impressed than Beetlejuice does. Adam coughs into a fist.

“Not…exactly how I would have put it, but I agree,” he says.

“Okay, my mom’s a bitch, we all agree,” Beetlejuice says, flatly.

“And,” Adam continues. “I don’t know if anyone else ever did, or got the chance to, but: I want to thank you.”

He has placed a hand on Beetlejuice’s shoulder, and Beetlejuice looks strangely nearly afraid of it.

“Barbara is right: if it wasn’t for you, that is what would have happened to us. We would have done what we were supposed to do, because…that’s what we always did. We wouldn’t have what we have now. We wouldn’t have each other.”

He reaches across Beetlejuice for Barbara’s hand, which she gives him gladly. The demon sucks in his gut beneath them. Barbara gives Adam’s hand a squeeze, then releases him, and pats Beetlejuice on the belly. He lets out a breath. Barbara takes Adam's hand again and smiles at her husband across the striped expanse of demon between them.

But Adam is not smiling back.

“You…did also try to make us go to the Netherworld,” Adam recalls with a frown. “And you tricked Lydia into almost exorcising Barbara!”

Beetlejuice’s head drops back against the couch with a groan.

“Goddamnit, Adam,” he grumbles. “Why do you have to be so frickin’ brainy.”

The demon sits up, dislodging both of their hands.

“Okay, first of all: my bad,” he admits, as if he thinks no more need be said.

“You almost killed her! Kind of,” Adam yelps.

“Oh?” Beetlejuice says, raising an eyebrow with a smirk. “Kind of did I? And what exactly, Barbara, does exorcism feel like?”

She can’t believe he’d ask her that, but she also can’t believe he’d ask her that without having a good reason to. She tries to remember. It’s surprisingly hard to describe.

“It…it felt like I couldn’t move. Except when I had to scream. It...it didn’t hurt. It just…I had to scream. Like something was making me. Like it was…”

She looks at Beetlejuice in shock.

“Possession!” He confirms, smugly. “The kid has a leg up on most breathers when it comes to the whole, you know, being dead thing, but even she can’t perform an exorcism without knowing it and trying and the right equipment.”

“But the box,” Adam says.

“That piece of crap?” Beetlejuice snorts. “It was like three LED’s and a wah wah pedal.”

“You did try, though,” Barbara says, “to send us to the Netherworld.”

And that does hurt. More now than it did then. Beetlejuice’s smirk melts away. He rests his elbows on his knees.

“My actual bad,” he murmurs. His jaw tightens and he glowers at the floor. “But none of you wanted me around, none of you! And I couldn’t go back to not being around. To being…invisible.”

The air seems to go out of him at that word.

“We didn’t know you like we know you now,” Barbara begins, guilt tugging at her. “And Lydia certainly wanted you around.”

“Oh, suuuuuure,” Beetlejuice snorts, rolling his eyes.

“How can you say that?” Barbara gasps. Her hands ball into fists, as her stomach sinks. Maybe they were right about him to begin with. Maybe this…all of this has been one long demonic trick.

“How could you do what you did to her?” She demands to know.

Adam has risen to his feet and is standing in front of the demon, as if to keep him from escaping the question. But the demon doesn’t try.

“She said we…she said I wasn’t her friend,” Beetlejuice rasps. His own fists are balled against his thighs, and his hair takes on a red hue that quickly fades to purple.

“What? When?” Adam asks, sounding genuinely confuse.

“Lydia would never!” Barbara insists.

“Oh yeah? Well she did,” Beetlejuice says, swiping at his mouth with his sleeve. “I was just some…thing to her. And if she was gonna use me, then I was gonna use her right back. It’s only fair.”

There’s an unpleasant, cruel tone to his voice, but underneath it there’s hurt. Deep, still raw hurt. Barbara doesn’t doubt for a moment that he believes what he’s saying. But she knows Lydia. Whatever this is: it’s a mistake.

“Beetlejuice: what did Lydia say? Exactly?” She asks.

"Seriously, Babs?" Beetlejuice asks, but she can see the curiosity gleam in the corner of his glaring eyes.

“Fine. She said: …” Beetlejuice hold up a hand, like a sock puppet that’s missing its sock, and then the other. If they had been puppets, their mouths would be wide open. Lydia’s voice comes out first, then his own. His actual mouth never moves. And it is, Barbara realizes, their actual conversation. They talk about The Handbook For The Recently Deceased. Lydia wanting to find her mom. Lydia getting them to help open the book. And then:

“I thought we were pals?”

“What are you talking about? I’m going-”

“Stop!” Barbara says, placing a hand on one of his forearms.

“Beetlejuice,” she says, softly, as Adam moves to sit next to them once more. Beetlejuice continues staring into the space in front of him.

“You thought she meant…what are you talking about, about the two of you being friends,” Adam murmurs.

“What else could she mean?” Beetlejuice says. It starts out as a hypothetical question that turns into an actual question, and Beetlejuice regards the air in front of him with growing apprehension.

“I think,” Barbara says, as gently as she can, “she meant: why would you even question that.”

A dog-like whine escapes from the demon, and then a groan, his head falling into his hands. A puddle of drool drips onto the floor between his feet.

“I…” His voice is barely a creak.

“…m not good. With people,” he warbles.

Barbara looks to Adam for help. All she wants to do is throw her arms the demon, but she’s not sure how that might be received right now. Adam places a hand on Beetlejuice’s shoulder. Nothing happens, which is better than being shrugged off or lashed out at.

“You should talk to her about it,” Adam says. “Really talk. She’s obviously already forgiven you, but I think it’s important.”

“Can’t,” Beetlejuice moans. “I just wanted…I just. Wanted. Everyone. Everyone else gets… Why not…? Why can’t…? Why?”

It’s almost a plaintive mewl. His hair is the deepest purple Barbara has ever seen.

“When she came upstairs,” Adam recounts, “she said: he may be a monster, but he’s my monster.”

“Ha. Monster,” Beetlejuice repeats, chuckling bitterly. Adam winces. Barbara slides off the couch, onto her knees, and pries the demon’s hands off of his face. It isn’t wet, or tear streaked. His eyes look flat. Dead. He is foaming a little at the mouth. She wonders if, maybe, he can’t physically cry; can only mimic the human sounds and motions of it, despite feeling genuine emotional turmoil. Demons, she thinks, probably aren’t made to cry. Why would they have been?

“You’re her…our…you’re our Lawrence. All of us. Everyone in this house. You’re our Lawrence,” she tells him, firmly.

He stares at her.

“Even Chuck?” He finally asks.

“Even Chuck,” Adam tells him.

Beetlejuice blinks at both of them for a good long time, then carefully extracts his hands from Barbara's. He stands.

“This was…a lot,” he says. “I think I need a little ‘me time’.”

Adam nods sympathetically. Barbara stands as well, and moves forward, but stops herself from wrapping her arms around the demon and holding him there. There’s a time when you have to let people go, no matter how afraid you are that they might not come back.

“If..,” Barbara begins, and then: “when you need us: we’re here.”

Beetlejuice grins at her, then moves to the attic door. He swings it open, then pauses, turning back toward them.

“Hey, you guys?” He says.

“Yeah?” Adam replies.

“The opposite of fuck you guys,” Beetlejuice says, softly.

And on that, the worst possible of all exit lines, he’s gone.

For now.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t stay away for long (she hadn’t expected him to). A few days later she calls for Adam down the basement stairs, and Beetlejuice’s distinctive voice replies:

“Hey Babs! Adam and I are doing bondage.”

She doesn’t have time to even start to question that, because Adam has sprinted up the stairs.

“Bonding!” He insists, panting. “We were bondING. With Sandy.”

“O...kay,” Barbara replies, not at all doubting him. “Well. That’s nice. I was just wondering if you had seen the rake.”

“Surprisingly historical insult, B-town,” quips Beetlejuice, who has appeared behind Adam, causing the other man to jump.

“She...uh...she means,” Adam says, a hand over his non-beating heart, before retreating to the basement, grabbing the lawn equipment in question, and then squeezing past the demon to hand it over to his wife. Beetlejuice frowns.

“I didn’t know we had a fork that big,” he pouts. “And you know I have a Never Ending Pasta Pass.”

Barbara ignores him. There’s almost no way he thinks it’s an actual fork.

“Right,” she says. “Time to tackle those gutters.”

“She has the superior upper body strength,” Adam explains.

Beetlejuice looks at both of them like they’re trying to tell him about a glass blowing class again. The expression only fades once he has followed her to the roof, and she has begun to tackle the gutters in question.

“So. You’re what my mind has been in all these years,” Beetlejuice says, addressing the gutters and not helping at all.

“Seems fake, but okay,” he concludes.

“Mmm, sounds pretty accurate to me,” she says, smirking.

“Barbara I-Don’t-Know-Your-Middle-Name Maitland,” he huffs, arms folded across his chest, and an extra pair of hands on his hips for good measure. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have a completely healthy sex drive for a demon.”

“Ew,” Barbara says, wrinkling her nose. Then: “do you?”

He shrugs both sets of arms.

“I dunno,” he declares, nonchalantly. “We’re not exactly social.”

He plops down on a corner of roof near the chimney and studies the fingernails of all four of his hands.

“Really?” Barbara asks, raising an eyebrow. “Because I’d call you pretty social. Occasionally too social.”

He looks like he isn’t sure whether to be insulted or flattered by that. He settles on his default, which is smarmy.

“What else would you call me?” He asks wriggling his eyebrows and smirking.

“Well I wouldn’t call you helpful,” Barbara says, pointedly, even a snicker lurks behind her own voice. She gestures at the gutters with the rake, but as she does so it slips through her fingers. She grabs for it to no avail.

“Oh! Oh! Oh, shoot!” She exclaims.

“I’m on it!” Beetlejuice sing-songs.

And then he throws himself off the roof. There’s a terrifying thud, and, for some reason, a cat yowls. Barbara’s unbeating heart stops, and she rushes to peer over the edge. There’s nothing there. Not even a dent in the grass on the ground below.

“What’s up, what are we looking at?” A familiar voice rasps at her shoulder.

She whirls around. He stands there, completely intact, rake in hand. She smacks him in the shoulder as hard as she can.

“What was that for?” He complains.

She smacks him again. And again. And again.

“You! Complete! Jerkwad!” She shrieks.

“Hey!” He whines. “Quit it! Barbara! Stop asserting your dominance over me!”

“Never do that again,” she demands, with a final smack. “You scared the daylights out of me!”

“Duh, Babs,” he says, straightening the shoulder of his suit. “It’s what I do.”

“Well I was worried about you,” she sniffs, folding her arms. He doesn’t say anything. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?” She asks in disbelief, because he almost always has something to say. He is a man who does not know how to shut up.

“Why were you worried? I’m dead,” he asks and reminds her, very simply. His expression is confused, but his eyes are strangely earnest.

“I...know that,” she insists, even if it had probably momentarily slipped her mind. He seems so real; so alive. “It’s just: something could have happened to you. I don’t know what, but: something! And I don’t want something to happen to you.”

She’s surprised by how quickly the fear had overtaken her. And by how easily the explanation comes out. She doesn’t want anything to happen to him. She does not know what she would do if something did. It’s oddly similar to how she feels about Lydia.

Beetlejuice, meanwhile, glances to his left. He glances to his right. He glances at his feet.

“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me,” he mumbles.

Barbara’s undead heartbeat has slowed back down to nonexistent. She frowns, lightly.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve said nicer things than that to you before,” she insists.

Beetlejuice sighs, melodramatically; his entire body bending backwards as he throws up his hands.

“I was having a moment, Barbara!” He moans.

“Oh yeah?” She counters. “Well so was I. You just keep in mind, buster, that people here care about you, and, and do say nice things about you. ...And intend to keep saying nice things about you whether you like it or not.”

He stares at her, wide eyed, shoulders hunched, fingers drumming against the handle of the rake.

“But I do like it,” he mutters, almost unintelligibly.

“Well, good!” She says, still argumentatively.

His eyes widen further. She is not sure they can take much more without falling out of their sockets.

“...I’m going to clean the gutters now, aren’t I?” He rasps, his throat sounding drier and more ruined than usual.

“Yes you are!” Barbara exclaims triumphantly.

He does, only occasionally pausing to pout and grumble things like: ‘positive reinforcement sucks’.

“Hey, did you ever have that talk with Lydia?” Barbara asks, as he pushes the last of the leaves to the ground below them.

“Sure,” he grunts. “But at least two people have already written a really good version of that fic, so...”

“Oh. Okay. Good,” she says. As usual, she isn’t really sure what he’s saying, but she does agree that that’s between him and Lydia, if that’s what he means. She assumes it went well. Or at least okay. He wouldn’t be here, she suspects, if it hadn’t.

Dusk is starting to approach. Barbara glances at the lengthening shadows and the balding trees.

“It’s going to be Halloween soon, isn’t it?” She wonders aloud. Time still sometimes runs together now. She has to keep a calendar and cross off the days if she doesn’t want to find herself out of sync.

“How should I know?” Asks Beetlejuice, who is beside her and squinting off in the same direction as if trying and failing to see whatever she is looking at.

“I...just thought...”

She gestures at him in all of his...demonic-ness.

“Wow Babs, that’s racist,” he says, flatly.

She’s instantly tripping over herself to apologize.

“I..I’m sorry. I didn’t-...”

He places a hand gently on her shoulder.

“I’m screwing with you,” he admits. “Yeah, Halloween. Lyds is pumped.”

She shakes her head, although she isn’t really annoyed, not that much, and makes her way back towards the attic window. He trails after her, as usual, expounding on Halloweens past and Lydia’s plans for this year.

“It’s not a High Holy day,” he explains, “but I do observe the candy.”

They duck through the window and into the house, like they’re just two regular people; not a dead woman and a demon she has grown inexplicably fond of.

Chapter Text

It is the day before Halloween, and Barbara is on the way to the kitchen when it happens.

“Hey Babs.”

Barbara turns on her heel, surprised to see Beetlejuice sitting on the dining room table. It’s not his choice of seat that is surprising (at least he isn’t sitting on the refrigerator this time); it’s just that Barbara was almost sure the demon was down in the basement with Lydia and Adam, putting the finishing touches on The Project. (The Tomorrow is Halloween project.) But, Barbara supposes, time and space may not mean the same things to him as they do to the rest of the house’s inhabitants. She has already felt time move differently herself, after all, and she’s still only newly dead.

Beetlejuice grins at her. There’s something... strange about it. About him in general, actually. No, not strange. Off? No, not off: different. Barbara brushes that thought away. This is Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice is, by his own admission, different.

“Hey yourself,” she replies. “I thought you were downstairs still, ‘helping’.”

(He was not helping.)

“Oh, I was,” he assures her, in a voice that is less grating than usual. That is: he does not sound as though he has swallowed a cheese grater today.

“Uh huh,” she says, dubiously.

(He was definitely not helping. What he was doing was eating Halloween candy.)

He bounces off of the table, and Barbara is surprised as always by the grace he has when he wants to. His movements seem even more graceful than usual today; his joints less like rusty hinges and broken shutters.

He seems to be in a particularly reasonable frame of mind, though she isn’t sure what about him makes her think that is the case. He might even be (dare she say it?): happier. No, happier isn’t right. Less emotionally...fragile? No, not that either. His eyes remain sad.

High. That’s it. He seems as though he has not done as much coke today. That’s good. Great even. Barbara internally debates telling him she’s proud of him. She is, but sometimes saying that kind of thing can still scare him off.

And, well, if there’s still something just slightly, undefinably different about him, in a way that she can’t quite put her finger on, so what? It isn’t off-putting. She doesn’t distrust him. He feels like Beetlejuice. She feels the same way about him as always. And yet...

“Are you okay?” She finds herself asking.

“Me? Sure,” he tells her. “I mean no, obviously, my understudy is on, but yes.”

He grins back at her again as if he has been remotely helpful.

(He has not been helpful.)

“I...I’m sorry, what?” She asks, face screwing up as if that could fend off the headache she can feel threatening to take up residence in her skull. Which is completely unfair of it, considering she’s dead.

“I’m feeling a little under the...what’s the expression? Oh, right, vomit.” Beetlejuice tells her.

And she sees it. The differences are both subtle and monumental, and she isn’t sure how she ever missed it. His face is the same, and yet: it isn’t. His proportions are just slightly different. His weight is distributed more around his middle, and less around his hips and backside.

“Are you...are you one of the...doubles that he makes?” She asks.

He isn’t. She knows it, even as he laughs and corrects her. (They’re clones, apparently. And: “Honey, no, that’s the ensemble.”) He is absolutely, one hundred percent Beetlejuice, but also the fabric of the universe might be shredding around her and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“...I mean there is also the Abe option,” Beetlejuice says, because he hasn’t stopped talking, “and we would stan a seven foot tall me, but my point is: we need to go to the attic. So-o...”

He bounces on the balls of his feet expectantly.

“O-oh,” she finds herself saying, brain struggling to grasp at the universe’s fraying threads. “O...kay?”

“Great!” He crows.

He grabs her hand, and they’re there before she has time to blink. The attic is soothingly familiar, full of all of her old junk, and Adam’s old junk, and the new junk the Deetz’s have gotten them that is in the style of their previous junk, and for a moment everything is right, except that Beetlejuice is standing, clutching his stomach and resting his forehead against the back of the couch. And Beetlejuice is also standing next to her, wincing like he’s glad he isn’t him.

Beetlejuice glances up at the two of them without lifting his forehead off of the couch.

“Hey,” he croaks. “Give it...give it up for this guy. Ugh. He’s the champ. He’s a...oh man...he’s a fucking star.”

The Beetlejuice beside her bows, gives her a tiny finger wave and declares: “Aaaaand I’m out!”

Except he actually is. He walks to the left, through where a wall should be, and is just: gone. Barbara feels like she should applaud, for some reason.

“What the heck?!?” She exclaims, instead.

“Never mind about that,” Beetlejuice groans into the couch, “this is about meeeeeeee.”

He steps away from the couch, drops to his knees, and face-plants onto the floor, where he begins moaning and whimpering like a puppy that has been locked out of the bedroom because its owners are trying to have some private time.

The universe snaps back into focus as Barbara stares down at him, one eyebrow raised.

Why?” Beetlejuice moans, lifting his head.

“Why?” Beetlejuice groans, screwing up his face.

“Why did I eat all of the Halloween candy?” Beetlejuice sobs. “Barbara why did you let me?”

The demon resumes laying face down on the floor of the attic, whimpering and writhing (melodramatically, in Barbara’s opinion).

“Let you?” Barbara repeats. “This is exactly what I said was going to happen if you didn’t stop.”

Technically she had not warned him that he would end up in a pathetic pile on the floor, but close enough. She sighs. Downstairs, Adam is still preparing for trick-or-treaters. Beetlejuice has not, despite his insistence, eaten all of the candy. Just: a lot of candy. Delia had thoughtfully bought enough for him to do so, and not disappoint any children brave enough to ring the bell of their creepy looking house.

“Exactly,” Beetlejuice groans, accusingly, “you didn’t physically stop me.”

“I shouldn’t have to. You are a grown man,” Barbara tells him, with mild exasperation.

“Howwwwww can we be sure, Barbara???” He whines, rolling from side to side. She freezes up and stares at him.

“You...you are though, right?” She asks, fear making her own stomach clench. He stops writhing and lifts his head off the floor.

“Barbara I’ve been around for over a thousand years,” he says, matter of factly. “I have hair EVERYWHERE.”

Barbara tries to wave that knowledge off with her hands before it can bloom into a mental image.

“Got it!” She yelps. “Got it.”

He lowers his head back down slowly; mumbles into the carpet:

“I really over did it, though.”

He sounds genuinely remorseful, and her heart can’t help but to go out to him.

“You did,” she agrees, softly. “Especially the part where you ate the wrappers.”

“They crinkle all the way down,” he murmurs. She crouches beside him.

“Where are the sweatpants I got you?” She asks. He holds up a hand and snaps his fingers, face still firmly planted in the floor. His suit is replaced by the sweatpants she bought for him, and the t-shirt. He does not summon the hoodie.

“Better?” She asks. He nods into the floor. “Good. Now, let’s get you on the couch,” she continues.

“Why? Noooooo. Whyyyyyy?” He says, the whine creeping back into his voice. Barbara straightens and folds her arms.

“Or, if you don’t want me to make it stop hurting, you can just stay where you are,” she says, feigning nonchalance.

His head shoots up.

“You can make it stop???” He gasps, histrionics back in full force. Barbara winces a little.

“Well, I can try,” she tells him, offering him a hand.

He doesn’t take it, but he maneuvers himself awkwardly to his feet (mostly butt first) on his own, and drags himself the few steps to the couch, which he lowers himself onto with an ‘oof’.

“Here. Lie down,” she says, handing him a throw pillow. He hugs it to his chest at first, and she has to move it behind his head, but eventually he is settled, stretched out on the couch.

She perches by his hip. His belly is bloated, rounder than usual and straining the previously well fitting t-shirt. Barbara lays a hand gently on it. He watches her like a hawk. She begins to rub, slowly and softly in circles, around where she thinks his bellybutton is (if he even has one). His eyes follow her hand at first, then slip closed. His features smooth out a little, and his belly relaxes under her hand.

“My mom used to do this when I had a stomach ache,” Barbara tells him.

“My mom...,” he begins (and Barbara steels herself for something unpleasant). “...didn’t.”

“I figured,” Barbara replies, softly. She lets her circle broaden, rubbing back and forth across the top of his belly, the part where it starts to curve out from under his chest.

“Can you get sick?” She asks him. “Like, the flu?”

“Nah,” he mumbles. “But things still hurt. You know. Sometimes.”

Her mind conjures up the image of a chubby, green haired, pale faced toddler crying for a mother who never comes, until she reminds herself that that is something he never was.

She pictures him instead as he is now: less scruffy, suit less shabby, approaching Juno with eyes full of pain (‘Mom, it hurts.’). The Juno in her mind ignores him. Or mocks him. Pushes him away. It’s just as bad.

She moves her hand to one of his thick sides; works into the tense muscles there tenderly with her thumb. He makes a pleased noise and wriggles deeper into the couch cushions. Something makes a sound like a dog’s squeak toy. She has heard it before.

“What *is* that?” She asks, rubbing over the crest of his belly, before working on his other side.

“Comedy,” he stage whispers to her.

“Not everything has to be a joke, you know,” she stage whispers back. A frown tugs at his lips. He fights against it and sniffs. His eyes are still closed.

“Lemme be me, Babs,” he grumbles.

She doesn’t argue with that; just moves back to rubbing his belly in slow, gentle circles. She understands, she thinks, a little bit more everyday where he came from. A place where you never learn what it’s like to have a mother comfort you. She understands, and she doesn’t like it.

She lays her hand on the middle of his belly and gives it a fond pat. He’s still for a moment, before one of his eyes slips open.

“Is that it?” He asks, warily. His face has tensed again.

“Hmm?” Barbara says. “Oh. No.”

She keeps her voice as light as she can as she begins to rub again.

“Unless you have someplace else you’d rather be,” she continues.

“I guess not,” he grumbles, as if she’s putting him out; demanding his company. But his eyes slip shut and his face smoothes back into something that almost looks innocent.

His stomach probably doesn’t hurt anymore. She doesn’t mind.