Title: Honeymooners

Author: Opal Lynn (opallynn . deviantart . com )

Rating: M for teh sex0rs and bad, bad language. There is definite potential for squickiness in this fic; so proceed with caution. But if you're a perverted weirdo like me, you aught to have a good time.

Challenge/Contest: MOST SMUTTIEST BEETLEJUICE FANFIC CONTEST hosted by blondrose84 over at deviantART. com

Pairing: movieverse BJ/Lyds. If that makes you ill, what the fuck are you doing here?

Disclaimer: I don't own this movie, or these characters. Should their respected owners stumble upon this fanfic and go "OHGODWHY!" they have every right to do so. I just hope my ass doesn't get sued all because of some bad smut.

Authors Note: To understand this fic, it might be helpful to view this image and read the accompanying "story" first:

opallynn . deviantart . com/art/Art-Trade-Honeymooners-97327886

(ff . net eats links, so just copy/paste and remove the spaces or let google find it for you.)

I'm also taking a slight A/U turn from the end of the movie. Pretty typical diversion: Lydia is older, wedding actually goes through to the end, dealing with the after-effects, yada yada yada. You could even imagine that Beej comes back and just finishes the ceremony years later when he gets out of the waiting room. In any case, Lyds is not underage in this story. She's around 21 or so. I tried to approach it as if Burton had done it; that is with lots of laughs and a genuinely disgusting Beetlejuice (but still lovable, c'mon).

Anyway, without further delay... it's showtime!

Honeymooners

-
"Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue
And a slithering sandworm in her shoe."
- Victorian Wedding Tradition

It had not been a proper wedding at all. Even among her step-mother's circle of "friends" - avant-garde-modernists, artists, designers and professional layabouts - there was still a certain standard of what constituted a "marriage." Usually a legal certificate - signed by BOTH parties, thank you very much - some WILLING witnesses and an officiate or two just to see things through for the bureaucrats. But Lydia hadn't even gotten that much. Not as much as, "sign here, you may kiss the goddamn bride." And for that last bit - at least - she was grateful.

Instead, Lydia had gotten moldy stubble, white PVC loafers, a ring from someone ELSE'S finger, and a "priest" who looked more like a raisin than a clergyman. At least the dress had some potential, which is why she had kept wearing it for as long as possible after the "I do's" were over and her new husband had whisked her away. But really, "whisked" was much too romantic a word for it. In an instant he'd taken her away from her parents, away from her parents' horrendous remodeled house, and away from the poor, brokenhearted Maitlands.

She had no idea where they were now; was it the Other Side or just a sleazy juiced-up hotel? It was impossible to tell. The walls were yellowing, the bed was dirty, and the lights didn't turn on. Her husband (she had to keep calling him 'her husband' or else the idea was never going to sink in, she couldn't stand even thinking...Beetle...ugh) snapped his fingers and shot invisible bullets of whatever-the-hell it was throughout the room. The bed transformed into a gargantuan satin-draped monstrosity with a headboard made of... were those skulls and...Valentine hearts? The bedside lamps suddenly grew striped, slithering bodies and glowing rattle-tipped tails...sandworm lamps?... and as they rattled their tails, the room filled with eerie golden light. He snapped his fingers at a blank spot on the wall and "poof" a wedding picture hung itself: he - smiling and radiant; she - furious and horrified.

With a final snap, he fluffed two pillows out of thin air and laid them at the headboard, patting them gently with all the affection of a doting housewife.

"One for me," he muttered, settling the pillow against the headboard. Yes, there were definitely skulls and valentine hearts on the headboard... and was that a human femur? Lydia shuddered and then suddenly noticed the monogrammed "BJ" on her husband's red satin pillow. She rolled her eyes. This was like the world's longest, most unfunny joke, except there was no punchline. There was another word for this sort of thing: a nightmare.

"And one for my sweet angel dumpling honey muffin sugar pie!" He fluffed her pillow and set it down next to his. Her monogram read "LJ," which sent sickening shivers down her spine.

"Mr. and Mrs. Beetle L. Juice!" He rushed over and crushed his arms around her, jamming layers of lace and net into her face. "I can hardly believe it I mean you know a bachelor like me enjoying the single life and I do mean enjoying..."

Here he ground against her leg; luckily she didn't really feel thanks to the giant hoopskirt under her dress.

"...but one look at you and I mean GODDAMN I knew it was over for me and the boys gettin' beers and watchin' football, my life was all about YOU from that day forward! Mom and pop would be so proud if they could see us kids gettin' hitched like this, just you and me babes, ready to make a new life together."

He paused, noticing her apparent disinterest in his comedic monologue. He crushed his arms even tighter and cuddled his face closer to hers (as close as he could squeeze through layers of lipstick-red tulle) and repeated,

"Mr. and Mrs. Beetle L. Juice! Y'know, the 'L' stands for 'lovemachine'."

Lydia didn't speak; her grinding teeth and popping eyes said it all. She was tired of the antics but much more tired of his mossy lips smacking against her neck, so she focused her attention on slapping at his wandering hands and craning her neck away from his mouth. The reality of the situation was slowly hitting her; the most unpleasant aspects had been sitting somewhere in the back of her mind amidst an imperturbable fog which was just now beginning to clear. Her parents: gone. The Maitlands: gone. Her surroundings: dank, molding and unappealing, just like her lovely new husband. And of course the most important problem of all: being alone with a randy poltergeist, having no conceivable means of self-defense or escape. Why had she agreed to marriage? People who were married had sex - at least for the first few years. Suddenly saving the Maitland's afterlives hardly seemed worth the price.

Lydia was snapped out of her self-pitying reverie by the abrupt feeling of a clammy hand on her ass. She jerked and looked around for something to slap, but it was too late; his whole body had already disappeared under the skirt. The disturbing sound of his nasally giggles filtered through the fabric and gave her chills, especially when he started skirting both hands along the waistband of her panties and breathing puffs of cold, clammy air onto the seam between her panties and her thighs.

For a moment, Lydia was too stupefied to do anything except clutch at the layers of her dress and contort her face in confusion. It wasn't until Beetlejuice muttered a sleazy "ooooh, yeah babes," that she finally came to her senses and attacked.

He too had left himself vulnerable, and Lydia used the hoopskirt as a cage, smacking at his head with her knees and hips until they were both stumbling around trying to get away from one another. After a few moments of pointless scuffling, he somehow managed to lodge his shoulders underneath her thighs and lift her up over his head.

The room was so dingy and small that Lydia practically hit her head on the ceiling when he stood up. Deciding to use what fate had given her, she held her palms against the ceiling and pushed all her weight back down against his shoulders, hoping his knees would buckle. But of course she had no such luck. Instead, his collarbone dug sharply into the bottoms of her thighs, his hands gripped and scratched her knees and the back his head jutted firmly against her crotch in protest. It was then that Lydia realized she had to keep him from turning around. At any cost.

She squeezed her thighs together as hard as she could until his shouts of frustration became muffled grunts of suffocation. Could he even suffocate? Was he still dead? What exactly were the terms of this marriage anyway? She kept squeezing just in case he was alive and she could kill him all over again. Her mind raced happily around this delightfully ironic idea, and she clenched even harder, cackling. He fought back with his only weapon; he opened his filthy mouth and ran his tongue across her inner thighs; slobbering over every inch he could reach.

"EUGH! GROSS!" she shrieked, refusing to release her grip despite the sickening feeling of his rough tongue drooling all over her legs.

He laughed and muttered something incomprehensible against the spittle and skin as she beat against his head with her fists.

And that was how Juno found them.

Juno's first reaction was to scream loudly for about ten continuous minutes. She wasn't screaming at Beetlejuice in particular, nor even at Lydia. Instead, she seemed to be vocally expressing her dissatisfaction with the very fiber of the Universe itself. During this time period, the newlyweds remained frozen (Lydia was frozen in shock, Beetlejuice was frozen because Lydia had forgotten his head was in her crotch)

Once Juno had finished her solitary screaming match, she went into a long, irritated diatribe about the unfortunate validity of Beetlejuice and Lydia's marriage BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN JUST HAVE YOUR WAY WITH HER BEETLEJUICE PUT HER DOWN now get me another cigarette Lydia, how did you get yourself into this mess you silly girl didn't you know what you were agreeing to?

After which she puffed and grumbled intermittently for about five minutes, every once in a while raising her head as if to speak but always waving it off as if the newlyweds were too thick to possibly comprehend any advice she might have had to give.

Despite her defense of what she deemed to be a LEGITIMATE AND LEGALLY BINDING UNION GODDAMMIT BEETLEJUICE YOU BASTARD, Juno nevertheless proceeded to bind her former co-worker to his wedding bed with a pair of enchanted golden handcuffs: NO JUICING YOUR WAY OUT OF THESE, YOU TWO-BIT SMART ASS!

Juno locked both sets of cuffs to the headboard with a tiny golden key, which she then handed to Lydia for safekeeping.

And then amidst a puff of smoke and repeated mutterings of "stupid stupid stupid", Juno was gone, practically as quickly as she'd arrived. She was a very busy woman, after all.

But in the end, the handcuffs made all the difference.

Roughly an hour after Juno's quick exit, Lydia was settled (semi) comfortably against her husband on the skeleton bed, rifling through a pile of porn magazines and trashy pulp novels. Unfortunately, Juno's handcuffs (miraculous as they were) hadn't prevented Beetlejuice from Juicing objects out of thin air in order to amuse himself.

So far he'd conjured a neck brace for his battered spine (when Lydia finally had come down from his shoulders, she hadn't done so gently), a purple velour robe to replace his maroon velour wedding suit, a red lacy negligee to replace Lydia's red lacy wedding dress, and a diverse assortment of questionable reading materials. He'd even conjured a six-pack of fairly decent beer before realizing he couldn't use his hands to drink it; as a punishment he'd been forced to watch Lydia enjoying them one by one.

And she was enjoying herself. Now that Beetlejuice was thoroughly restrained, Lydia found herself in a surprisingly chipper mood. After all, the poltergeist was getting his just desserts and she loved that he would be spending his oh-so-important wedding night locked up tight against a headboard. She flipped through a twenty year old copy of Hustler (she was barely older than the magazine) and skipped through to the (photograph-free) articles, raising her eyebrows every so often and nursing her third beer.

"C'mon babes! I can't turn the pages like this!" He rustled his chains for emphasis.

"For the last time, I am NOT reading to you from HUSTLER!"

"But you don't even have to read! It's a goddamn picture book!"

"NO!"

"Could you at least give a poor fella a drink? Have a heart, babes."

She turned her face towards him and slowly gave him her best impersonation of Delia's shit-eating grin.

"Don't think so."

He "harrumphed" and slumped against the headboard, dejected.

"You know darlin', if Hustler's not your thing I got Playboy and Barely Legal too..."

"EUGH! Shut UP! That's it!" Lydia slammed her beer down on the nightstand and then scooped up the large pile of porn and tossed them violently to the floor like so much lewd confetti.

"AW C'MON Babe! I was just trying to get you in the mood!"

Lydia's face contorted painfully and she couldn't decide whether to vomit or to laugh.

"For WHAT? Our first romantic night together as husband and wife?"

"You don't know what you're missin'! You've got the ghost with most just sittin' here going to waste! You don't know how many babes would kill their own mothers to have me in this position-" With that he chuckled through his nose and thrust his hips out as far as the handcuffs would allow.

Although Lydia's urge to vomit was still alarming, the need to laugh hysterically took over at the sight of Beetlejuice straining against the handcuffs, his stomach jutting out desperately into empty space. Juno's gift had granted Lydia a very comforting sense of security; especially since now the most threatening thing her "husband" seemed capable of doing was conjuring porn and telling dirty jokes.

She could handle porn and jokes. 20-foot snakes, carousel hats and threats of martial rape were something else entirely. But porn and jokes, that was do-able. When Beetlejuice added a tooth-grinding straining noise to his desperate thrust, Lydia laughed so hard that tears ran down her face.

He was still thrusting pointlessly into thin air when she had collected her breath, and she couldn't help but smirk as she grabbed the nearest thing she could reach. It turned out to be a pulp bodice-ripper about maidens and the black plague; and she smacked him with it, hard. She landed the first blow squarely on his stomach and he crumpled onto the mattress with a shriek of rusty bed springs, before spluttering, "WHAAAAAT?" She proceeded to bombard him with a flurry of blows from the shitty paperback, and his angry grunts soon turned to half-hearted exclamations of pain, and finally dissolved into amused snorts and chuckles. Lydia found herself giggling uncontrollably as she beat him upside the head with "Black Love in the Dark Ages" by "Lorainne Deweybottom".

"I HATE YOU!" she shrieked between giggles, "you. fucking. weirdo. perverted. maniacal. corpse!"

"You. bitchy. cocktease. curvaceous. man-hating. fox!" he spat back, trying to trip her up with his moss-covered feet while still straining against his golden shackles. More than anything he wanted to grab that worthless book out of her hands and flip this whole situation around, but all he could do was struggle against Juno's handcuffs and make his wrists sore with envy.

In lieu of being able to grab her in his arms, he growled and snapped at her with his teeth and clapped his knees around her shins, pinning her legs to the bed. But every time he would nearly gain the upper hand, she would deal him a particularly nasty blow to the skull and he would see stars. Not that he minded; he was having a grand old time. Lydia's lacy shoulder straps were sliding down her little shoulders oh so invitingly, and her lacy little negligee was riding up oh so flirtatiously around her ass. The best part was, she was still hitting him with that crazy book he'd juiced and that was making her chest do the most amazing things right in front of his face. Apparently his literature had gotten her in the mood for something, even if it WAS an ass-whooping. It was certainly getting him where HE wanted to go.

Eventually, Lydia got tired of hitting him; apparently bored with his inability to counter-react (he would have to remember that for later). Winded, she relaxed onto her haunches, straddling his knees. He motioned toward his lap with his chin and tried shooting her his best "sit on Santa's lap" expression, but she just rolled her eyes and looked at the book instead.

She settled down more comfortably - his knees were surprisingly bony - and just for kicks, she opened Miss Deweybottom's erotic masterwork to a random page and cleared her throat.

"'Geraldo grasped the maiden's bodice and wrenched it apart, releasing her ample' (snort)...geez this is juvenile! 'He clutched at her'...okay I'm skipping that...'panting he lowered his mouth to her womanly mound'...(gigglefit) what the hell were they thinking? You can't call it that! Can't they come up with any other words?" Beetlejuice shuffled his knees underneath her and whined.

"You're skippin' all the good parts, babes! Where's the... juice?" As he spoke, he slowly massaged her inner thigh with his kneecap. She squirmed. How was he doing that without lifting his leg?

Lydia glanced up at him and the look on his face made the room feel suddenly hot. Then she remembered that this was Beetlejuice and Beetlejuice was not only dead and deranged and perverted and beerbellied but he was also a murdering psychopath to boot.

But then... he hadn't actually killed her father... and he had saved the Maitlands from a fate worse than death... and hadn't she always kind of liked that whole "Night of the Living Dead" aesthetic anyway?

Realizing that her face was turning the color of her lingerie, she looked back down at the book, desperately searching for a distraction. She skimmed ahead to a rather choice passage and started to laugh uncontrollably, the awkward moment briefly forgotten.

She read, "'His throbbing member pressed insistingly against his britches'... God I don't know what's worse, the 'throbbing', or the 'member', or the 'britches'."

"It's all pretty uncomfortable babes," he paused and waggled an eyebrow. "Unless you're willing to help a guy out here..."

Lydia scoffed and hit him half-heartedly in the crotch with the "novel". Although, to be fair, she really only hit his stomach.

Wait, why the hell was she being fair? Why wasn't she hitting his crotch with a half-ton bag of bricks? And repeatedly at that? She frowned at the book and brought it back for another go, but Beetlejuice sensed her intention and threw her off his knees, sending her flying with a startled "oof".

Before she had a chance to collect herself, he locked his legs around her waist and started dragging her up the bed, laughing with self-satisfaction. He watched in amusement as she moved to grab at his feet in retaliation. She seemed to suddenly think better of it when she saw the patina of moss and fungus growing near his toes. Her arms curled up in disgust and she offered little resistance as he pulled her the rest of the way across the mattress to his chest. It was a good thing he was so flexible; sometimes it was great to be dead.

"Hey how are ya." He pulled her in as close as he could, until his knees were practically up to his chin. Then he bent his head low and gave her neck a slow once over, drawing in her scent and darting out his tongue for a quick taste. In the sleaziest voice he could manage, he drawled, "you smell nice," against her ear.

Her whole body tensed. Her fists balled into little mallets of frustration and he could feel her pushing against his legs with her arms while squirming against his grip. Man, that squirming felt good... just a little higher... Hell yeah.

She sniffed haughtily before spitting, "I can't say the same."

Still millimeters from her ear - close enough to feel all her downy peach fuzz against his lips - he whispered, "hey, funk like this takes centuries to cultivate. Not every corpse can smell this rank."

It must have been the beers that were keeping her from breaking away. She could have escaped if she really wanted to, his grip wasn't all that secure; he'd never held a woman captive with his legs before so he was a bit out of practice. Or maybe it wasn't the beer... maybe it was those handcuffs keeping him at bay. They both knew he had been utterly neutered. Lydia shifted against him again and he grinned. Well, maybe not utterly neutered.

Lydia held her breath and tried to avoid looking at Beetlejuice's bare legs and feet, but it was hard not to, considering her position. The wiry hair on his legs was rubbing against her chest and shoulders and she'd never been this close to a man's naked shin before. She was forced to discover that his skin was even paler and clammier at this end of his body and the hair on his legs was the same sickly blondish green as the mess on his head. His feet were so close... and so morbidly disgusting. Long, yellow nails, hairy toes and of course that horrific green moss growing everywhere.

It was after a minute or so of captivity (she could only hold her breath for so long) that Lydia realized that as disgusting as his feet looked, they didn't actually smell like anything at all. Her own dirty socks were much worse. It suddenly occurred to her that his whole body seemed remarkably odorless; she supposed this was a side effect of being dead for so long. If anything, he smelled faintly of cheap cigarettes, old library books, and dirt. Stupefied by this realization, Lydia relaxed against his chest and pursed her lips in confusion.

"Babe? You feelin' alright? You haven't tried to hit me with anything for a while." He chortled and loosened his knees so that he could settle more comfortably against her back; much more comfortably. He let his head loll back and smack the headboard as he calculated how slowly he would have to move his hips to keep her from noticing.

Lydia could feel the beers hitting her. She wasn't drunk - not nearly - but she suddenly felt tired and more than a little contemplative.

"This is so bizarre." she mused dumbly, resting her elbows over his knees. His leg hair tickled the delicate underside of her forearms and she flicked away a gob of moss that was creeping over one of his kneecaps. She was more than startled when she discovered the green filth growing all over his body was the texture of soft fur. Would wonders never cease?

"Nothing bizarre about true love, sugarlips. Unless you're only after me for my money."

"Actually I think it what won me over was..." she stopped herself, hardly believing the words about to come out of her mouth. "your deadly good looks."

God, now who was telling awful jokes? She was definitely feeling the beer.

He guffawed and snapped a finger, handcuff jingling. "I knew it."

There was a moment of silence before Lydia asked the question she had been pondering for the better part of the night.

"What are we supposed to do next?" she said, continuing to poke at his mossy knee.

"Just let me out of these handcuffs and I'll show ya."

She rolled her eyes and ignored the hipbones grinding against her back.

"No, I mean, We. US. You wanted to marry me, what the hell does that really mean?"

"Aw hell babes, I don't think that far ahead. Seemed right at the time. I mean, I saw you, you saw me, cupid threw some shit, bells on a hill, birds in the sky, the Beatles started playing..."

"Do I have to live here... forever?" The idea had suddenly come crashing down on her; having to spend eternity in this cramped, mildewed little room.

"Hell no! That's the point of this whole damn ordeal! After tonight I'm outta here and you can live wherever the hell you want as long as its not on the Other Side! Or France. No fucking living in France."

"So you get to terrorize the living... that's just great. But what do I get out of this fantastical deal, anyway? And don't say "the Maitlands" because in this position I could crush your nuts in about two seconds."

She heard him gulp and that brought a big grin to her face.

"Would I cheat you babe? The woman I love? My reason for unliving? The flower on my grave? The-"

"The point, please."

"I get something you get something, everybody wins! I get to spend the rest of eternity on your side and so do you! How does immortality sound to those perky little ears?"

She did a sudden double-take, her head jerking to the side to look at his face.

"...immortality?"

He put on his "Julliard" face and sucked in his breath.

"Immortality: The condition of being exempt from death or destruction, of living for ever. Endless life or existence. Shufflin' off Shakespeare and his stupid 'mortal coil'. Pickin' daisies instead of pushin' 'em up. Givin' a big'fuck you' to Mr. Grim. Do you need a fucking dictionary?"

Just like that, a copy of Websters (and this copy had real spider webs) fell into her lap and opened itself to the entry on "immortality." There was a picture of Lydia and the caption: Immortal: you, after marrying Beetlejuice.

"I know what it means, smart ass. I just don't quite... you didn't mention that before!"

"Well TA-freaking-DA."

A moment of silence passed as the notion of immortal life soaked into Lydia's bones. Did she really want to live forever? She had never been particularly happy with the short amount of time she had already been forced to live through. Lydia needed a few moments (or years) to think it over, but of course Beetlejuice never could keep his mouth shut for very long.

"There's only this one teeny-weenie itsy-bity microscopic little condition."

It didn't take Lydia long to figure out what that would be.

"Nothing is worth that. I'd have to live for all eternity remembering that. No thank you. And not everyone wants to live forever you know." She looked at her nails pointedly.

"Oh yeah, that's right, 'you want in'," he recalled mockingly, rolling his eyes. "Sure, sure, no problem... think it over. After all, you want to be stuck in this room...FOREVER. You want to be all alone with me... FOREVER. And you don't want to live free and happy and eternally youthful... FOREEVEER-"

"Wait, wait, wait a minute." She threw up her hands and blinked rapidly for a few minutes, trying to process this new development. "So, my choices are to have sex with you and live forever, or to stay celibate and still live forever in this disgusting little room?"

"You mean you didn't read the chapter on trans-spectral marital rights and visitation privileges? I'm shocked. Paragraph 12: section B is the best part of the whole fucking book! I'll summarize the plot for you: neither of us leaves this limbo hut until this marriage has been thoroughly Con-Sum-Mated."

He made sure to put a lusty emphasis on all three syllables of consummated.

The light suddenly went on in Lydia's head.

"Hold on, what am I thinking? Why don't I just sit down with Juno and get a damn annulment? Why didn't I think of that before? Hell, why don't I just KILL MYSELF?"

"Uh uh uh sweetheart. You can't get an annulment from your soulmate."

"You are not my fucking soulmate."

"Hey, I'm dead. Got no body. AKA: a SOUL. And here we are all hitched up. One plus one genius. Equals no annulments, no divorce. And there 'aint no 'till death do us part' sort of arrangement here. After, all, where am I goin'? I win."

"OKAY okay I get it, goddammit. Why does the Afterlife have to have so many fucking rules, anyway?"

"Keeps us busy."

She sighed audibly and crossed her arms.

"This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of... how did I get myself into this?" she could hear him sucking in a breath to answer and she held up a finger in warning. "Don't answer that; it was a rhetorical question."

Now that all of her questions had been answered and the real terms of the "marriage" had been laid bare, Lydia found herself at a loss for words. She spent the next few minutes (or hours, it was hard to tell) staring at a fascinating splotch on the wall, trying to rationalize sewing her legs shut and finding some way to amuse herself in this room for the next several centuries. Sex with Beelejuice was out of the question; it was beyond out of the question, such a thought was completely barred from existence.

And yet every time it occurred to her to dislodge herself from the bony confines of his legs, she found it difficult to think of why she should bother with moving. Neither of them was going anywhere, there was no where else to sit except on the bed, and she might have been getting fond of that earthy parchment smell.

Okay, maybe not fond, but merely accustomed to. Definitely not fond.

Beetlejuice had fallen surprisingly quiet and still against her back. When he wasn't being a jackass it was actually rather disturbing how silent and immobile he was... he really was dead. She cautiously looked over her shoulder at him and was startled to see he was asleep, with his head rolling softly to one side and his arms hanging limp from the enchanted handcuffs. The thought briefly flitted across Lydia's mind that he was probably faking - what sort of ghost needed to sleep, anyway? - but she couldn't seem to concentrate on that one logical idea.

Instead, she was transfixed. His face was so utterly transformed by 'sleep' (fake or no) that she couldn't take her bulging eyes off of him. While he was by no means handsome (that would have required several hundred years of backwards-moving time travel and a few dozen plastic surgeries) he was nonetheless entirely different. The angry creases on his forehead had vanished, his insane-looking eyebrows had relaxed and looked almost normal, the rings around his eyes seemed softened, and his wildly twisted lips were finally still (and thankfully mute). Lydia almost would have felt more comfortable if his mouth had been slack and stupid with a loud snore pouring fourth; that would have seemed more in character. But as he was, he did not even do so much as breath. She leaned her head against his chest and listened for a heartbeat, but of course there wasn't one. It was eerie. Something about it made her the tiniest bit sad; she couldn't explain why. The lines of moss on his chest felt disturbingly soft against her cheek, and there was that pleasant not-quite-smell again.

Slowly, she shifted out from between his legs and found a more comfortable position at his side. Feeling as if she was signing some sort of death certificate, she slid underneath the sheets with no small amount of trepidation. Even so, she was still careful not to slide under the last sheet, keeping one measly layer of satin between herself and the corpse. She rested her head on her monogrammed pillow but was disappointed to find that it smelled a lot like her grandmother's moth-infested closet.

She chewed her lip and looked at Beelejuice once more. It was positively otherworldly to be in this position, nestled under his dangling arm and so... intimate. When he had been sitting behind her it had been easy to dismiss him merely as a backrest (an awkwardly thrusting backrest no doubt); but now - laying at his side - she felt so much more awkward.

She suddenly noticed a milieu of unsettling details, like the bronze-colored stitching on his robe and the patterns in the purple velour where the grain had been disturbed. The curve of his goofy-looking stomach and a patch of sick-looking chest peeking out from his robe. The surprisingly long and slender bend of his throat and the sharp outline of his sternum. The blotchy patterns of moss winding down his neck and pooling at his collar, stretching down further... she lifted her head. Yes, it really did grow everywhere.

She rested her head back on the unpleasant smelling pillow and sighed. Her hands were close to his sides, and without really thinking about it, she reached out a fingernail to trace a pattern in the nap of his robe. She couldn't think of anything specific and ended up drawing a beetle before she realized what she was doing. What was she doing? This was beyond strange. This was like something from another planet strange; so strange she couldn't bother rationalizing it anymore. Somewhere in the back of her mind she acknowledged that there was no way out of this room until the deed was done.

Despite that grim realization, she reminded herself that her only reason for raising her head and resting it on his chest was because that pillow smelled too much like an old woman.

Really, that was the only reason. It had nothing to do with his faint autumnal smell. Nothing to do with the peaceful silence of his body.

And it had no relation whatsoever to the wonderfully soft sensation of cool, dry moss against her cheek.

Her eyes drifted shut and quite suddenly she was asleep.

All it took was one Juiced wire hangar, a few hours worth of patience and a determined mind. In relative terms, for a ghost that had been scheming for centuries about various ways to escape from various curses, he had freed himself in a comparative heartbeat. It had been simple. Too simple. Had she really fallen for that old sleeping trick? For whatever reason, he had assumed it would never work on her; that she was too cynical and too dreary to fall for the "he's so sweet when he sleeps" cliche. But she had been suckered in almost right away; Hell, for a few minutes she had actually sat there and STARED at him, and that was really an unexpected bonus. And then, as if to put a glorious cherry atop a mound of decadent cream, she had actually fallen asleep with her head... on his chest. He gleefully thanked whatever stars had decided to spontaneously align in his favor.

Poor Lydia had thought she was being so clever, hiding the key in her underwear. Of course this saved Beetlejuice a lot of time because it was the very first place he looked. He reflected that some people might even think she was asking for it, what with her head all lovey-dovey on his chest and the key to her chastity all hot and bothered in her underwear. And he happened to be some people. Once the key had been turned and he was free of Juno's fun little "wedding gift," he wasted no time in Juicing Lydia into his enviable former position: locked up tight against the headboard. And he picked a very good spot to hide the key.

Giddily, he floated above the bed, face-down with his head in one hand, considering his plethora of delectable options. Eventually, Lydia's arms would go numb and she would wake up, and then she would be pissed. Stupid mortals and their stupid circulatory systems. He would have to try and have a little fun with her before she woke up and the adrenaline doused the alcohol.

Did he dare to take advantage of a sleeping, half-drunk woman roughly thirty times his junior?

The grin that spread across his face was positively maniacal.

"Showtime."

He decided that the best way to begin was to become entirely non-corporeal. That way, not only would Lydia have nothing to attack when she 'came to,' but it would also prevent her from realizing that she wasn't dreaming. And he had a sneaking suspicion that sleeping Lydia was a going to be more a helluva lot more fun than waking Lydia.

Languidly, he grabbed the top-sheet between his now non-existent fingers and slowly dragged it down, appreciating every ripple and wave of fabric as it passed over Lydia's body. There really was something to be said for living flesh; so flushed and dewy and aromatic that he had to sit there for a while and just take it in. The rise and fall of her surprisingly ample chest, the bloody stain of her slightly-drunken cheeks, the little patches of gooseflesh that appeared when the sheet tickled her skin.

Even an entire whorehouse full of long-dead, ghostly women was no comparison to this single hateful creature; practically throbbing and surging with that juice of life. And he had shagged his way through his share of ghostly whorehouses, Juno's most recent creation included. He licked his lips; his lovely, living Lydia was downright delicious, she even smelled alive; she was a feast.

When the sheet was completely removed, she shifted and groaned something in her sleep. It was so quiet that he didn't quite catch it, but he moved to hover over her just in case she decided to share something else. He got a good long look at her face but ignored most everything except her plump, ruddy lips. His tongue darted out, eager to sample, but he drew back; she would feel that and wake up for sure. Instead, he shifted closer, so close that he could feel the warmth of her skin practically licking at his flesh, and the downy fuzz near her mouth tickled at his lips.

He certainly had no practical use for breathing, but in this case he found it useful. He exhaled a cold, lifeless breath over her mouth and watched her skin tighten; so like a kiss but not quite. And though he wanted to close that infinitesimal gap and open her lips to take the living breath from her teeth and gums and tongue he couldn't do that just yet. So he moved to her throat instead; that long, soft road of flesh that prickled under his breath.

He pulled back from the heat of her skin; it was almost too much to take all at once. In the absence of his frigid exhalations, Lydia's neck arched towards his mouth; so close but not quite there, and then she moaned. And not only did she moan, she sighed his name; so quiet and so soft that it was hardly a sound at all. But what a sound; it shuddered through his whole body like a shockwave.

"Beetlejuice," she had sighed.

"Beetlejuice," she had barely breathed, while her skin had sprung out with gooseflesh.

"Beetlejuice," she had called, while her neck had searched greedily for his mouth.

He complied, sinking his lips down to that sweet hollow between her collar and her neck; barely touching her at all but both of them feeling it as sure as the sun. A wordless breath fell from her lips, he caught it with his mouth and for a moment he felt so hot that he swore he was alive again. It was really getting difficult to stay all aloof and invisible like this; something seemed to have fallen through with his plan to tease and torment her; he wasn't sure who was in control anymore and she wasn't even fucking conscious.

Regaining a bit of his dignity, he moved away from her neck and turned to her shoulder, pulling down the loose strap of her negligee and ghosting her skin with his fingers. Not a touch; not quite, but his fingers left a trail of tingling nerves all the same. Because of the handcuffs he couldn't slide that strap as far as he wanted so he abandoned her shoulder and swept his nails down her sides, light as a whisper. A little nudge and the lace hem of the negligee started riding up of its own accord, and he gorged his eyes on the sight of her perfect little thighs squeezed together so nervous and tight. He had already divested her panties in his search for the key (it had been a fight for survival, after all), and soon there was absolutely nothing separating him and the glossy black shade of her pubis; the most gorgeously erotic thing he had seen in roughly six hundred years.

She made him itch, made his mouth dry, made him want clench that delicate flesh in his mouth and mumble all sorts of incoherently filthy things into her skin; he wanted to say shit like, "fuck me baby but you've got the most gorgeous pubes in the universe," and "holy fucking hell your crotch feels hotter than the surface of the sun," but he didn't want to wake her up, after all.

With a slow wave of his hand, he spread her soft pale thighs and he had to bite his tongue to keep from shouting "HOT DAMN" because the heat coming off of her was all but melting his bones and just looking at that slick pink slice of heaven was enough to make him go shooting through the ceiling. God how he wanted to run his palms over her perfect little thighs and squeeze her perfect little ass and bend his face over her perfect little center and just breathe that heat right into his dusty old lungs, but he knew she'd feel his hands on her and he couldn't wake her up. Not yet.

So he slowly leaned his face down beside her stomach and blew a wintry breath into the warm cradle between her hips. Her skin prickled and some secret muscle deep within her twitched and her pelvis angled just so and he really wanted to bite that soft belly of hers and leave marks and scars and bruises on that fleshy mortal skin but instead he just exhaled; soft and cold and slow.

She moaned again - all throaty and hoarse - and the sound went right to his crotch and fuck him if even this robe was too fucking tight, and then her thighs shivered and parted just enough to make him damn near go insane. And then she said it again, only this time it was more than a breath on her lips; it was something raw and needy and shivering.

"Beetlejuice," she had gasped, and how could she really still be asleep because that sound was so alive.

"Beetlejuice," had rolled off her pink wet tongue and smashed into him and made him want to swear out loud.

"Beelejuice," she had whispered like it was some sort of fucking poetry; the most beautiful sound in the world.

It took every ounce of willpower he had amassed over the long lonely centuries to keep from moaning right back at her and waking her up and saying fuck all to playing around lets just do it already. But he restrained himself and loosened the belt on his robe; I mean God how could a robe be so fucking tight?

He moved his mouth next to her hot, pink center and practically melted right then and there into a puddle of ectoplasmic goo because fuck all if she wasn't totally steaming and wet and practically begging for it down there and holy shit that smelled like sex and heaven. He could feel her wild pulse drumming as if it were his own heart resurrected and he wanted to latch onto that hot beating clit with his lips and teeth and tongue and never let go again but fuck wouldn't that be a rude awakening for Lydia.

Instead, he released a shuddering, icy breath; his mouth so close he could practically taste her blood.

And then a second breath, and a third, and another and another and again and again until he had forgotten what he was doing and why he was doing it and how he had wanted to win this whole seduction thing and leave her all chained up and helpless and all of a sudden not caring that he had failed miserably because all he wanted to do was make her tremble again and his mouth was finally kissing her in the sweetest, softest, hottest place and her juices were smearing on his chin and he was saying all that dirty shit he'd wanted to say before and then her hips were shaking and her pelvis was rotating in that hypnotizing rhythm of pleasure and her back was arching and her eyes were opening and shit she was awake but her lips were screaming "BEELEJUICE" and third time is a fucking charm because he couldn't just leave her locked up and screaming his name like that and then she was free and her hands were flying at him but she wasn't hitting him and then their mouths were together and she was breathing heat into him like a furnace and she tasted like things he had forgotten how to taste.

His lips were dry and rough and almost dusty, and it hurt a little bit to kiss him but he was really wonderfully good at it, sucking on her lips and dipping into her mouth with his tongue. And his teeth were not so bad, he mouth tasted like something old and aged and warm, like beer or dry wine or sourdough bread. And Lydia liked all of those things. She kissed the moss on his lips and even though it was disgusting and some of it flaked into her mouth it was still soft and tasted like summer grass and sand and dirt, and Lydia liked all of those things too.

His hair wasn't clean or silky but it was wild and easy to clench in her fingers and that moss growing around his face really was heaven to touch even if it was supposed to be dirty and vile and indisputable proof that he was dead and ripe and absolutely insane. And his voice was so gravelly and rough and it echoed in her skull as he grunted the dirtiest, craziest shit Lydia had ever heard and it made her sweat all over because no one in the world was supposed to talk like that and live. But he wasn't living and that was the point, he was a sick dead bastard and yet when he grabbed her ass and ran his long-nailed fingers over her thighs and breasts and throat she moaned and moved closer and whispered dirty shit right back at him.

Lydia laughed as she threw off his robe; what, no bloody veins and puss? Even so, he really was all Night of the Living Dead under there, but he wasn't wearing Delia's bedsheets and he wasn't trying to scare her away anymore and she was hardly afraid anyway. He was just more moss, and more dirt and some nauseating but actually quite endearing pudge and bony knees and of course a naked man only so much dirtier and for some reason that was just really fucking exciting.

They were fighting one another and he was pushing her against the mattress and she was pushing right back and they were both laughing like maniacs and rolling around and the handcuffs were on the floor utterly forgotten and Juno would die all over again if she knew. And then he snapped his fingers and she was finally naked and she could feel all that green fuzz against her breasts and a chilly, hard length against her stomach and are you serious you actually have mold growing there? and laughing and feeling him and being felt by him and really really liking it.

And then there was all that filthy shit he kept groaning into her neck and against her lips and she never thought she would hear someone tell her that they wanted to fuck her from behind while floating in midair or wanted to fuck her up against a gravestone or in a coffin or on a fucking coroner's table while the good doctor took notes and suddenly all of those things sounded like such disgustingly wonderful ideas because anything sounded good when he had his fingers inside her and his thumb on her clit and his mouth on her mouth and she was shaking again and calling his name and even his name was filthy and ridiculous and she loved saying it so she screamed it three times as she came.

And all of a sudden things sort of melted together and he was inside of her and he was cold and so hard and she was hot so tight and she was panting and he wasn't breathing at all and they were both still fighting to be on top and neither one of them was winning but all the wresting made things feel fucking good down there and he was finally saying HER name over and over again and she was saying dirty shit she never thought she'd say to anyone like HARDER and DEEPER and SAY MY NAME and 'TSTOP and not being afraid to make him move exactly how she wanted and not being afraid of anything because it felt so fucking good and they had found some sort of perfect inhuman rhythm that made no sense because wasn't she supposed to hate him for this but she was giving back everything she got and then some and then asking for more and yesyesyesyesYESFUCKYES I'M SO CLOSE HOLY SHIT and then just grunting like an animal and sucking on his mouth as he yells like a madman and spasms inside her and collapses into a heap of dry, dirty bones and she says wow I didn't know ghosts could come, and he says well what the fuck was that? and then his fingers are on her and she's coming again and third times a charm because she screams something that sounds a lot like I love you but also like aahfuckyou.

Many hours later it occurs to Lydia that she is now technically free to leave this dingy, disgusting room any time she pleases and to go about her business for the rest of eternity.

At approximately the same time it occurs to Beetlejuice that he is now technically free to go wreak havoc on the human race because he's got his green card now.

But Lydia is too busy eying her husband and twirling those rascally handcuffs in her hand to give two licks about the outside world.

And Beetlejuice is so busy sucking on a post-coital cigarette that he cannot do anything except imagine how he is about to wreak havoc on his wife three times a day every day for the rest of eternity.

FIN

Some notes for those who care:

1) BJ's line "hi, how are ya, you smell nice" comes from this amazing guy over at Universal Studios Orlando:
http: / www . youtube . com/watch?vlKCSSgK72bw (listen to him at 0:24; killer!)

2) I have never, ever written smut before. I feel so fucking dirty! How did I do?