Work Text:
Being alone in the dark is only scary if you’re not alone in the dark.
Lydia took two steps off the porch and paused. It really was almost pitch black out here the moment she moved away from the porch lights, the town too far away to illuminate her surroundings. And yet there were voices. Admittedly, voices were better than gunshots or breaking glass, and these weren’t apparently threatening or panicked voices. But Lydia’s tolerance for any mysterious conversations was at an all-time low.
“So were you an engineer or something?” Astrid. Lydia could see the quietly judgmental look in her voice.
“Yeah, sure. What’s an engine?”
A pause, in which Lydia questioned her own ears three times and possibly so did Astrid. And then, a far-too-familiar laugh.
“I’m just kiddin’, kid. Pass me the… thing with the whatsit.”
Lydia edged around the corner, fully expecting to see the actual pits of hell in her back yard. What she saw instead, once her eyes adjusted to the flashlight from Astrid’s phone, was what looked like a mime in a navy blue mechanic’s coverall.
“What are you doing here?” Lydia demanded. She waved an arm in his direction while giving Astrid her best Mom-is-really-mad-this-time look. “What is he doing here? How did he get here?”
Astrid seemed mainly concerned about where to aim the flashlight while looking nervously askance at the man-person-thing who was now on his feet and wiping grimy fingers on his chest next to an embroidered “BJ” nametag.
“I, uh… I walked,” Betelgeuse said.
Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “Walked from where? The afterlife?”
“From the… the cemetery. Yeah. The cemetery.” He nodded.
There was a sound like a match being struck, that sudden inrush of air. Lydia sniffed the air. “Is something…” Her eyes narrowed. “Are your pants literally on fire?”
Betelgeuse was demonstrating just how impossible it was to nonchalantly put out a fire on your own backside.
“Astrid. How did he get here?” Lydia knew kids covering for each other when she heard it. Even if one kid was a 600-year-old poltergeist demon ghost creature now dusting blackened fabric scraps from his hands.
Heroically persevering through the anguishes of parental concern, Astrid sighed. “Look, I just wanted to see if he was still alive. Or dead. Undead? Unalive?” Betelgeuse shrugged and waved his hands in a way that spoke of endless office debates. “He basically saved my life and I didn’t have the chance to say thanks.”
“Because of the possessed choreography and Rory being eaten by a sandworm. You didn’t seem worried whether he’s still alive!”
“Are you? Anyway he’s here and he’s okay and I thanked him and… then it got kind of weird.”
Lydia rounded on Betelgeuse so fast he backed up three paces. “Babe, babe, you know I only have eyes for you.”
She almost believed it, if only because this wasn’t accompanied by him lobbing eyeballs at her or all of them being swept away in an alphabetical avalanche. “Weird how?”
“Well, he’s… He’s fixing my bike.”
All three of them silently regarded the bike, now illuminated by Astrid’s phone. Unquestionably, it was in need of some kind of fixing. Possibly the kind involving melting it down and starting again. Lydia considered asking whether Astrid had maybe been run over by an 18-wheeler lately, or even if the bike had been damaged at all before Betelgeuse started to fix it, but that really, truly was not the point.
“Okay, well, it’s late. You should be inside and you should be… Don’t you have a job or something?”
“Family is always my first priority,” Betelgeuse said haughtily.
“Uh huh.” Usually in these kinds of situations, Lydia could call kids’ moms to come haul them off for dinner.
“Mom, he was just trying to help.” (“I was just trying to help,” Betelgeuse muttered.)
“You didn’t sign anything, did you?”
“Of course not! Although honestly I’m a minor and I don’t even see why the Netherworld wants to uphold anything I sign. I can’t even get a credit card.”
Lydia had some ideas about that, but none she really wanted to go into right now.
Astrid fiddled with her phone and the light went out. “I think he actually… means well.” (“I mean well.”)
“He doesn’t know what well means!” Sometimes the Mom Mindset, forged in the flames of trying to spare Astrid from death and disfigurement over the years, helped her see the strangest circumstances in an icy-clear light. “Okay, it’s late. Astrid, you should be in bed reading something about the climate apocalypse, and Betelgeuse-”
He just looked at her, without even the usual pained screech, as she said his name twice more and he disappeared.
Astrid nudged her wrecked bike with her foot and sighed a teenage sigh that spoke a thousand angst-ridden words before heading inside. Lydia had so much to say to her, mostly along the lines of ”what were you thinking?, but… the Mom Mindset was exhausted by conflict and mainly interested in pushing all of this off until tomorrow.
***
Saying his name three times still felt illicit, like she was inviting a boy in after dark and her parents had their ears pressed to the wall. In reality she could probably scream at the top of her lungs in this old house and Astrid would put it down to creaking beams.
Uncharacteristically, he appeared without drama, as though she’d just burst into his bedroom without warning. The mechanic’s coverall was partly unzipped, revealing exactly the kind of sickly pale chest she’d prefer not to even think about.
“Babe, if you wanted me this badly you should’ve said something. Although I get it, you prefer a good old traditional bed than being ravished in the great outdoors.” He threw himself onto the mattress, testing the bounce and humming with approval.
No matter how prepared she thought she was for him, he always pulled the rug out from underneath her. “Hey. This isn’t a social call. We’ve got some outstanding business.”
“More than the business could be outstanding, if you know what I mean.” He smoothed a hand down his thigh, pulling the coverall tight over the bulge at his crotch. “But hey, our contract went up in flames, so what gives, babydoll?”
“First of all, what the fuck were you thinking?”
A pause. “Thought you knew how this works, babe. Say my name and I’m here. If your dear devoted daughter wants to chat, I don’t get to block her number.”
“Well you’d better figure out a way, because this is just not appropriate on any level.” Lydia took a breath and collected herself, pushing away the maternal concerns. “But anyway… I want to know what happened to Rory.”
“Who?”
“Rory. My fiancé. You know, you shot him full of truth serum and had him eaten by a giant sandworm.”
Betelgeuse squirmed uncomfortably on the bed. “Sandworms ain’t ever my department. Don’t know what you’re worried about. He’s not here, is he? Problem solved.”
“But is he dead? Because sure, I’m happy never to see him again, but I didn’t want him killed. He must have someone somewhere who’s actually worried about him. Also if the police ever come knocking-”
“Call me, I’ll deal with ‘em.”
“Just find out what happened to him, okay? You were eaten by a sandworm and you’re still here.” Not alive, but then he hadn’t been alive to begin with.
Betelgeuse had the same look Astrid tended to get when told to actually phone someone instead of texting. “Like I said, not my department.”
Lydia folded her arms. “Are you worried about running into Dolores again?”
“Wolf said they dealt with her. I figure someone in that division knows what they’re doing. Didn’t mention Mr. Manscaping though.”
“So please ask. It’s a two minute conversation for you and a death-defying trip to another plane of existence for me.”
Betelgeuse stretched out, mouth twisted as though he was weighing up all the possibilities. Internally, he seemed to finally come to some sort of resolution. “Figured you might need a guy around.”
“Excuse me?”
“Since your dad’s gone and Rory’s off getting in touch with his inner child somewhere…”
“I think Astrid and I can tackle all non-supernatural crises by ourselves.”
“Yeah?” He reached inside his waistband, scratching, and flipped something onto the bed. “Old house like this, must be tons of creepy crawlies.”
Lydia watched as a beetle made its slightly dazed way onto her pillow. “I’m not scared of some insects.”
“Snakes?”
“Not a huge fan but I’d figure it out.”
Betelgeuse scooped up the beetle and stashed it in a pocket. “Uh, alligators?”
“If there’s an alligator in this house, I will one hundred percent call you, okay? And I know I’m not the tallest, but if we need anything off a high shelf I’m really confident in our ability to use a stepladder.”
Unfazed, he let his eyes drop lower. “Of course, I’m always available to assist with other kinds of needs.”
“Yeah. Like finding out where Rory is.” She grabbed him by the wrist and tried to haul him off the bed in a way that might not be successful but would at least give him the general idea. “So get on with it, because now I have to change my sheets as well.”
He scrambled to his feet, looking wounded. “I’m clean.”
“You’re a lot of things. One of them is a corpse covered in mold and God knows what else.”
“No, babe. I’m dead. You’re the one full of microbes and I don’t hold it against you. Although I’ll be happy to-”
She held her fingers to his mouth without even thinking what that might feel like. “What you can do for me, as a favor, because friends do each other favors, is be a brave boy and find out about Rory.”
His skin felt oddly cool under her hand, without being the rotting flesh she’d once imagined. When he spoke, she felt his breath just as though he was like Rory or… well, no. Not like Rory at all.
“Friends do each other favors,” he echoed, as though trying to work something out in his head.
“Yeah. No contracts written in blood. We do nice things for each other because we care about each other. Because we’re friends. Right?” She dropped her hand and held it out to shake.
Betelgeuse took it with a general air of mystification. “Right.” He was frowning with what seemed like confusion rather than suspicion as they shook hands. As long as she didn’t actually look at it, his hand felt normal, just cool flesh and bone.
In the morning, the bicycle was gone and there was a shiny new Harley Davidson propped against the fence. The note stuck to the handlebars with chewing gum said, in very much not the Gothic handwriting she expected: NOW THIS IS AN ENGINE.
***
Lydia gave him three days. She was still unclear about how time worked in the afterlife, or wherever Betelgeuse’s offices were located, and in any case she didn’t want to seem pushy. Or desperate.
Three days was also enough time for Astrid to have several arguments with herself about whether the Harley’s coolness outweighed its detrimental environmental effects, and then more arguments with Lydia about road safety and learner’s permits and insurance. All of which, plus their sneaking suspicion Betelgeuse might have just swiped it from a legal owner, meant that the Harley was still standing there unused.
That evening, Lydia went into her bedroom, closed the door, and said his name three times.
“Geez, give a guy some warning won’t ya? What if you caught me in flagrante?” He whipped out a comb and ran it through his hair, which made no apparent difference.
“Have you ever been… uh, flagrante? Out of flagrante?” How did Latin work?
“All the time, baby. So yeah, your boy the Juice has been a busy little Bee. Word from the top is, your exceptionally extra ex isn’t on our side. So he’s on yours. A-k-a, alive. Maybe a bit worse for wear, but nothin’ a trip to the spa won’t smooth out.”
“I’m ecstatic,” Lydia said.
“Yeah, me too. Just fizzin’ with joy right here.”
Lydia eyed him. “Was it hard?”
“Always.”
“I hope you appreciate it when I set them up for you.”
His grin was infectious. Or at least moldy. “You’re a kindred spirit, sweet cheeks. But no, nothing’s too difficult when you’re the ghost with the most… and you’re doing it for a friend.”
There was a pause. A pause that swiftly became noticeable as a pause, mainly because she was nervous and Betelgeuse was, for perhaps the first time in his entire existence, not filling every gap in the conversation with insane babble.
Lydia flexed her fingers. This was ridiculous. Astrid would ask a boy to prom with less anxiety. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
“Huh?” Whatever he’d expected her to say, it obviously wasn’t that.
“We’re having a movie night,” she added quickly. “I think the Maitlands said you liked movies… I mean, if you’re not busy. I don’t know if you even eat, but there’s popcorn. Actually some kind of organic free trade popcorn because Astrid insisted.”
Betelgeuse frowned, looking for a hidden trap. “I don’t know. This is kind of off-brand for me.”
“If you smother it in butter and salt you won’t even notice the difference.”
“I meant-”
“I know what you meant. You want to be the guy in our lives, or just hang out creepily lip-syncing ballads in the attic?”
She’d never seen him be silent for so long. Eventually, finally, his lips began to form a word, but she was already impatient. “Join us or don’t,” she said, giving his tie a yank before unlocking the door. “I’m sure you can walk back to the underworld, right?”
If it was a longer way to the living room, she might have described it as some sort of Orpheus & Eurydice trial, walking down the stairs while insisting to herself she wouldn’t look back. But then Betelgeuse could appear anywhere he wanted, no walking required, and she still wasn’t sure how to say Eurydice.
“Is it Yuri-dice or Yuri-di-chi?” Lydia asked, plopping down on the central cushion of the couch, where Astrid was arranging popcorn bowls on the coffee table.
Astrid looked at her in incomprehension. “Just… no. It is not. Why would you even think it was… whatever the second one was.”
“Yur-id-i-see,” said Betelgeuse, counting off the syllables on his fingers as he sat down.
Lydia immediately and instinctively knocked his booted feet off the table.
“Were you alive in Ancient Greece?” Astrid asked, unfazed.
“Nah, I saw the Netflix show. What are we watching?”
He was right, Lydia realized about half an hour into the Astrid Deetz screening of Lady Bird, which was surely a semi-veiled commentary on their own relationship. Betelgeuse might’ve been dead for centuries, but he wasn’t a corpse. He didn’t smell, for starters. At least, not like a dead squirrel in the yard. Maybe – after she started thinking more about it and ignoring Greta Gerwig’s onscreen angst – a certain smoky, caramelly scent of ozone and nitroglycerin. Or maybe that was the popcorn.
Even though it was a blessedly short movie, Betelgeuse wasn’t even in her bottom 10% of guys to sit next to. Sure, some kind of many-legged insect crawled on her thigh momentarily, but he muttered an “excuse me, sorry” before scooping it up and not (so far as she was aware) actually eating it. And okay there was a rat at one point but Astrid thought it was cute and Betelgeuse said it definitely didn’t have rabies (“Bubonic plague, if anything, but he’s as dead as I am, honey.”) so that, too, was leagues better than the teens in the theater who’d spent all of Hereditary making TikToks.
At one point – only one point – the thought entered her head that she could hold his hand again. That was why you went to see movies with boys, wasn’t it? To hold hands in the dark, and maybe other stuff, with a little plausible deniability. But you definitely didn’t do it with your teenage daughter sitting next to you. Or if the boy was a trickster demon who’d twice tried to marry you under duress.
“Well,” said Astrid when the credits rolled. “This was nice but man I am so tired.”
It was the kind of not-even-trying-to-sound-genuine kind of lie that teens used when they were about to leap out a window and go to a rave. (Did kids go to raves now? Not that they ever had in Winter River, but probably these days they all just stood around gazing at their phones and trying to look ironic.)
Astrid passed Betelgeuse back his rat, which was either dozing or taking being dead very seriously, and gave Lydia an abrupt kiss on the forehead. “Okay. Thanks for movie night. Love you. Night, Bee.”
Once she closed the door, it was dark in there with the TV off and the curtains closed.
“How does this work?” Lydia asked. She’d been trying to figure it out in her head for days. “You’re not a corpse. You’re not a ghost, because I can touch you. I don’t really know what demons are, but I thought they were something religious and ethereal, and you used to be a human being. So I’d guess you’re some kind of physical representation of your own sense of self, but…”
Her phone buzzed. She slipped it out of her pocket and checked the message.
Astrid
PLZ use protection
She tossed it face-down onto the now-vacated cushion.
“How does that work?” Betelgeuse said, jerking a thumb at the phone.
“Oh, it’s a phone.” Surely he already knew that. “You press buttons and send messages. Kind of like a mini computer.”
“Mm. That’s how I work too.”
She laughed. “Do I press your buttons?”
“All of ‘em, babe. Like a lightning strike.”
“That would explain the hair.”
If she was truly honest with herself, this was something she’d imagined many times before. At first it was like poking a bruise, testing herself, checking to see if that one summer had left layers of trauma that would soon rise to the surface, fucking up her sleep and life and relationships forever after. And then, because two ghosts had become her closest friends, it was thinking about the six-inch boy in a model village who’d been the first person to ever really listen to her.
Of course he wasn’t really a boy then. Wasn’t even the kind of eternally beautiful undead love interest that Astrid’s generation (or the one before?) had pinned up on every wall in sight. He had grotty chipped teeth and a broken nose and green mold in his hair and… could strike a flame on his thumb.
Lydia looked into the flame he was holding between them now, then looked at him, the fire dancing in his eyes. “Did you like the movie?”
His breath made the flame flicker, and it was only now that she realized he was breathing at all. “Three times and I’ll be gone.”
“Betelgeuse,” she said in a gently teasing tone. “Are you scared?”
She saw his grin right before she blew out the light.
***
They could’ve been anywhere in the universe. A Siberian cave. Winding catacombs beneath the Vatican. Mars. The fact that he’d actually transported them maybe fifteen feet from the couch was completely irrelevant, because Lydia Deetz was giggling under the covers with her sometime-fiancé, and that state of being might as well have been on the moons of Saturn compared to where she’d been just weeks ago.
“You have a pulse,” she said softly, her lips to his throat.
“You’d better hope I have a pulse, or this night ain’t going the direction I think.”
“But you…” She rolled over onto her back and let him undo the buttons of her blouse. “All our feelings, emotions… desires… It’s all just hormones, isn’t it? Brain juices. For a while I was on some pills that made me about as horny as a hammer. And then it’s a lot of blood in the right places, and I don’t get why you have any of that.”
Betelgeuse pinged her bra’s shoulder strap. “I just live here, babe. Don’t ask me about the plumbing.”
Lydia took his head in both hands, very much not thinking about all the horrors he could change into at any moment, and kissed him again. It had been so completely normal the first time – other than the heart beating at 110 mph in her chest – that part of her was still searching out the weirdness of him.
“But,” he said, in some kind of concession to her need for answers, “being around you does help me remember what it’s like. Breathing and, you know. Other stuff.”
“How old were you when you…” She stopped herself. “Sorry, not the right time.”
He finished with the buttons. “Dunno.”
“Oh, come on. You have to know.”
“It was six hundred years ago and I couldn’t count at the time. Or spell. Or read. Been on what you might call a self-improvement program ever since.”
“Really.” She wanted him out of his shirt, but in a way that guaranteed she’d uncover absolutely zero arcane horrors on the way.
“Sure. Kicked into high gear after I met you. Was kinda on parole for a while, did a lot of reflection. Learned how to escape my victim mentality, set healthy boundaries, and get on the path to self-actualization.”
“Uh huh. How much daytime TV did you watch?”
“All of it. Learned guitar too. Bob told me the chicks always dig a guitar.” She could hear the gleeful smile in his voice, just before he licked a messy stripe over her lips and slid his tongue into her mouth in a way she didn’t mind at all.
His body pressed to hers, she wished they didn’t have to go through all the awkwardness of pulling off clothes… Except part of that awkwardness was the thrill of discovery that she’d lose if he just magicked them both nude with a snap of his fingers. If you could still have the thrill of discovery after 50, when you’d already had one child and around 1.75 weddings. Men might continue to be a mystery but their dicks certainly didn’t.
Lydia pushed the jacket back from his shoulders as they kissed, and didn’t think too hard about whether he should really be able to flex in exactly those ways… What mattered was it was off and his lips were at her throat and God she wanted to feel his cock. Wanted to feel him hard for her, even if that meant him rutting at her hip.
“You’re the most beautiful girl in the world,” he said by her ear, his hand drifting down, splaying out over her abs. Okay, if she’d ever had visible abs it was back in the day when dramatically low body fat didn’t mean likes on social media so much as Delia archly suggesting she deign to eat a square meal now and again. But she was fine. Her body was fine… Although admittedly it was nice to have Betelgeuse murmuring his approval once he got her bra off (she fully suspected he’d cheated with that one).
His hand was cool but not glacial on her breast, feeling the full weighty curve of it, thumb drifting over the nipple. “Hubba hubba.”
It was ridiculous, but that single touch seemed to suffuse her entire body with warmth, and she knew all too well how wet she was for him already.
Lydia gave his shoulder a shove. “Take this off.”
“Take it off me.”
She rolled her eyes, knowing she didn’t have anything like Hulk Hogan shirt-ripping strength. But of course it came apart in her hands like a thousand-year-old shroud and who knew where his tie had gone. Really, she didn’t care about any of it, so long as she wasn’t going to be finding buttons in awkward places in the morning.
When he turned over onto his side and she ran a hand over his chest, he felt like… a guy. No goop. No slime. No exposed intestines. Also nowhere near as toned as Rory, and probably had absolutely no clue what a juice cleanse was. But she could cope with a soft belly far better than the detached attitude of someone who didn’t even want her.
Betelgeuse wanted her. She knew it before her hand closed around the bulge in his pants, but it was nice to have it confirmed. And also to feel something she was pretty sure wasn’t a snake or tentacle or anything that needed the word “eldritch” in front of it.
“Just out of interest… You have been laid since you died, right?”
“Sure.” He unslotted the top button of her chinos.
Lydia considered this. “Not counting possessions?”
“Now you’re getting picky.” His fingernails scraped her a little as he thrust his hand inside her panties, but it was so good just to be touched.
Lydia parted her legs a little wider, her breaths becoming shallow as all her questions and concerns started to ebb away, replaced by the feel of him so hard in her hand, his fingers slicking her wetness over her clit. “I want to see you.”
“No you don’t.”
“I already know what you look like.” She undid his fly, making sure he didn’t think she was having second thoughts.
“There’s knowing and there’s seeing. Only one of ‘em’s believing.” There was a pause as he extricated his hand from her panties and struck another light on his thumb.
“Jesus. You’re going to set us both on fire.”
“C’mon babe. Lemme eat you out and we’ll both feel better.”
Lydia gave his bare shoulder a hard poke. “You think I’m going to freak out. I’ve been seeing ghosts and monsters my entire life and you think I’m going to freak out when the guy I want to fuck me actually fucks me?”
“I’m just saying. I bet I’m a lot prettier in your imagination.”
She sighed, grabbed a fistful of the comforter above their heads, and pulled.
Her bedroom was much, much colder now that she wasn’t fully under the covers, even if Betelgeuse was contributing negligible body heat to the whole affair. It was also surprisingly dark, so much that Lydia regretted making this move at all – what was she going to do, point a flashlight in his face?
Betelgeuse snapped his fingers.
The room was filled with candles like this was a cathedral for pyromaniacs, or perhaps a John Woo movie. “Are those real?” Lydia reached out her palm towards them, feeling for heat.
She was already getting the impression that this was exactly the kind of question Betelgeuse found genuinely incomprehensible. Of course they were real. Or of course they weren’t. And in any case who cared?
He was sitting cross-legged at the end of her bed, rubbing what she decided was 100% definitely just regular dirt from his toes (nope, she was not considering any other options). Out of his shirt and jacket he looked… bony and deathly pale and… cold, more than anything. “Satisfied?”
“Not until you come here and finish what you started.”
There was a whoosh of air going out of her lungs when he moved, or teleported, or did whatever he did to get her on her back under him. In those kinds of moments, Lydia had already learned to spare her brain the struggles of trying to interpret what had just happened.
“This is very romantic,” she said.
Betelgeuse glanced at the candles. “Really? Usually I feel like I’m screwing it up somehow.”
“Keep your heart in your chest this time.” Lydia cupped his face and kissed him. “You know, you have nice eyes. I guess they get that wrong in the movies, huh? Not glowing red. Not kind of weird cat eyes. And no, please don’t give them to me. You keep overestimating my interest in random body parts.”
“What kinds of weird cats are you hanging out with?” He was grappling to get her out of those chinos and, awkward as it was, it was also a thrill to feel his urgency. Lydia pushed his pants back over his hips and butt. He wasn’t wearing underwear.
“Please just…” She bit at her lip before convincing herself they were long past talking around the issue. “I need you in me. Now.”
“Sure,” he said, and buried himself inside her.
The slide of him was easy, she was just so fucking wet and wanting him, but it was still a lot. Felt like a lot. Maybe because she hadn’t really been fucked good and proper in so long. Maybe he had a sandworm in his pants. Then he moved, shifted her hips a little, and Jesus that was deep.
“Oh my God.” Her breathing had turned shallow and she was flushed with heat, her breasts so full and sensitive, her body throbbing around him.
“Lydia? Is this-?”
“Yes. Come on, move. You’re killing me here.” Of course it was now that her obsessive demonic lover was all concern and hesitation. Astrid’s text message flitted through her mind, although there was absolutely no chance she was going to call time out and go scrambling for condoms. She was over 50 and he was dead. Anything potentially unwanted passing between them probably wasn’t going to be worried about Durex.
Besides, he was moving now, slow motions becoming a harder rhythm as he kissed her with even greater need. It just felt too good to stop (and if Astrid ever used that same excuse once she went to college, Lydia was going to ground her until she hit menopause).
She badly wanted to say his name. Gasp it over and over again, because it was him she wanted, only him. But she grabbed him tightly and pressed her lips to his hair and neck, his heartbeat echoing hers: loud and fast and relentless.
“Going to come for me?” He sounded more like himself now, like the dark voice of a few too many sexual fantasies. “Come on, babe. Show me.”
The way he was rocking inside her was so good, and she was so tight around him, but she needed just… She slid a hand down between them, feeling the wet mess between her thighs and the irresistible thrust of him, and fingered her clit, closing her eyes for the focus she needed to find and guide the pleasure that had been building in and around her.
The sudden moment of climax still took her by surprise, the way it flared at her core, surged up her spine as she arched her back and clenched him inside of her. She didn’t have enough breath to say anything at all, but her whole body was screaming for him. Then the rhythm of his thrusts stuttered and he was coming, gasping her name as his hips jerked against her like neither of them were in control anymore.
When he collapsed on top of her, she could still feel him there, inside, while he shivered with the last waves of his orgasm. And then he shifted just a little, to drag his fingertips through her pubic hair and stroke her clit, slick with his come.
It felt like a little too much, that her body was already spent and she was only going to disappoint him. Except it only took seconds for her to find some secret, deep reserve of pleasure that made her feel so warm and safe, her breaths becoming deep and steady, breathing him in.
“Mm,” she moaned against his throat when the pleasure finally rolled over into something more intense. “That was so good. So good. Mindblowing,” she added, before he could push for more compliments.
He said nothing, and although he had to be softening he was still inside her. He just gathered her up in his arms and kissed her temple, and Lydia let it all fall away.
***
It was still morning when she woke up, sunlight streaming across the bed. That is, it was technically morning, and if their positions were reversed, she would have been banging on Astrid’s door hours ago. At least she’d managed to raise her daughter with a decent amount of discretion.
The candles were gone, if they’d ever really been there. But he was still there, sprawled on her bed with her sheets tangled around his legs. In sunlight he looked even paler, more unnatural. At least he wasn’t crumbling to dust.
She stayed where she was, trailing her hand down her body in fond remembrance of how he’d touched her, how they’d made each other feel. Maybe it was something to do with being off her pills for the first time in years, but everything felt so much more real and vivid, brimming with potential and, yes, okay, desire as well.
You’re in love, said one particularly blunt part of her brain, and she snuggled down in the blankets to make sure this feeling – whatever it was – lasted for as long as it possibly could.
She watched him sleep. Studied the purplish dark circles around his eyes, the trails of greenish mold that decorated his skin, the wild hair that might be blond, might be white if anyone ever pinned him down with shampoo and a shower hose.
Betelgeuse woke with a start, jumping up into a crouch as though there were bigger threats in the room than Lydia Deetz, TV personality. “Was I asleep?” he asked once his eyes focused on her, although he seemed to be asking himself the question. He frowned. “I haven’t slept in… a very long time.”
Lydia silently contemplated the chances that she had a magical vagina capable of resurrecting the dead. “You’re not… alive, are you?”
“Do I look alive?”
“Not unless you’re in a nude kabuki production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“Okay.” He tapped one of the watches on his wrist. “I should probably check in at the office.”
“How is the bio-exorcism business?”
“Buzzing.”
Lydia waited a moment, just in case a swarm of insects arrived. “What would happen if I never said your name? Sent you back?”
He slid his fingers back through his hair, rubbing his scalp and yawning. “Wanna keep me as your house ghost?”
“Just wondering. You’re not tethered to this place like the Maitlands were, right?”
“But I do have other calls on my time. And name. Don’t worry, babydoll, you’re my priority numero uno. Especially after last night. Hoo boy. You got the Juice’s juices pumping, lemme tell you.”
“So if I go back to the city and call you-”
“I’ll come a-running, babe.” He flopped into a lying position next to her and kissed her nose. “But I gotta put in the hours for my adoring public. And for the pencil pushers.”
“Pencil pushers?”
“The most terrifying of all things: bureaucracy. Just making sure no one stamps my passport for the Great Beyond.” He stared wistfully off into the distance for all of two seconds.
“I thought that was where people wanted to be. The recently deceased, I mean.”
“The Maitlands, sure. Maybe my in-laws too. But me? I got a lot of afterlife to live right here.”
Lydia considered this. Finally, she’d considered it enough to stick a hand out from her cozy blanket cocoon and take his. “Betelgeuse,” she said in what was barely above a whisper, “are you sticking around for me?”
“No,” he whispered back. “I’m really invested in General Hospital and I think it’ll wrap up in a few more decades.”
“We’re not actually married, you know.” Even if it did make her smile to think about them hosting Thanksgiving dinner for her dad and Delia.
“We had two weddings and one hell of a consummation. But for you, babe, and only for you, I’m willing to keep consummating until we get it right. By the way, how’s the kiddo doing at school? Need any tutoring? Homework help? Baking soda volcanoes?”
Some day she would have to ask him if his perception of human ages was really all that hazy. “I think she’s got it covered right now.”
“That’s my lil bookworm.” When he stepped off the bed, he was already dressed. At least, dressed in the kind of disarrayed manner that emphasized he’d spent the night with a ladyfriend and had to pick up his crumpled suit from the bedroom floor. “Okay babe, you had two. Wanna do the honors?”
She didn’t. She wanted to drag him back into bed and have both of them play hooky from any kind of responsibilities, whether they involved possessing innocent-yet-irritating new apartment owners or packing up several decades of her parents’ belongings. But she wasn’t fifteen anymore. So she just tugged on his necktie to make him bend down so she could kiss him.
“Thank you for a lovely night, Betelgeuse.”
He winked and disappeared.
Lydia laid back in bed and closed her eyes, trying to summon up whatever her original plans had been for the day. She couldn’t even remember what day it was, and who knew where her phone might be. Probably still face-down on the couch, buzzing away to itself.
She should get up. She should have a shower and wash away the feel of him all over her. Even if she had an undead lover, she needed to persevere with all the routine things the living just had to do, like laundry and checking the expiration dates on pancake mix. She definitely should not just lie here and close her eyes and dwell on the lovely warm ache he’d left inside her.
And she absolutely should not say his name three more times.
“Sorry,” she said, eyes closed but knowing he was there. “I just…”
“Don’t worry about it, babe.” He was naked and hard and on top of her before she could draw another breath. “Friends do each other favors, yeah?”
And sometimes they just do each other. She didn’t say it.
That was the good thing about Betelgeuse. He really understood the value of everything she didn’t say, as well as everything she did.