Chapter Text
Lydia managed to get to the bathroom without stumbling, but when she got inside and reached the row of sinks she was grateful to have something to lean on in order to stay upright.
She considered her limited options. She didn’t know if she’d be able to navigate her phone apps to order a ride, never mind what state she’d be in when the car got to her. And there was no one she could call or text that could get here quicker than a rideshare driver— at least no one who wasn’t already here , but if asking any of them for help was an option she wouldn’t be hiding from them in the furthest bathroom she could get to without collapsing. Was that sad? That she was thirty-five and couldn’t think of one person she could rely on?
Well, she could think of one person she could rely on… if she played her cards right.
She steadied herself and attempted to make eye contact with herself in the mirror, though even focusing her eyes was starting to feel difficult.
“Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse,” she wanted to wretch in the sink, or maybe nap on the cold tile floor, but some deep part of her brain reminded her: three times in a row, spoken unbroken, “Betelgeuse.”
He appeared behind her without so much as a cloud of smoke, hands on his hips as he surveyed their surroundings. “Public restroom, huh? Fuuuun. Let’s see if I can guess the problem in three. One: kind of boring, but also most likely, you dropped your phone in the bowl.”
It was frustrating to see him bouncing on his feet as he began to pace the room while her own body suddenly felt like an old duvet cover full of rocks and sand.
“Beej.”
“Two: someone piddled on the seat and you want to teach them a lesson about helicopter pissing.” A little black and white striped helicopter circled his head once before disappearing. “Or three: the classic. A certain someone left home without the proper supplies and is having an elevator from ‘The Shining’ moment in her—“
“ Beej !” She practically growled, whipping around to face him head on… though this exertion cost her and she felt her legs fold beneath her, sending her into a slumped heap in the corner created by the bathroom counter and the wall.
“You’re… sick.”
Through her blurry vision she could see he was standing still– and he was quiet– neither of which was a good sign when it came to him. She knew he had hang ups about illness. As much as he liked to make jokes about living through the black plague, he got weirdly serious whenever she had so much as a cold. The time she had mono in high school, he barely left her bedside and— she needed to focus. She didn’t have time to comfort him if he got all weepy.
“Not sick,” she managed. “Drugged.”
“By who? I’m going to kill them.” All Lydia could make out through her spinning vision was red. Red and big . She heard cracking and ripping as the ghost’s standard five foot five frame morphed into something that would have without a doubt looked impressively terrifying if she could make her eyes work well enough to see it. His voice rumbled, deeper and even raspier than usual, “Did they hurt you? I’m going to kill them twice .”
“I’m okay. Don’t know who.” Focus. Focus. She needed to focus. She needed to make him focus. She reached out until her hand touched something. Cold. Him. “Need to… go home. Discreetly. This is work. Party. Don’t want… lose job.”
She watched him turn back to a more human shaped blob. “Okay, Captain Caveman.” She felt the familiar rush of his power as it pulled her up onto her feet. Even though his powers were more than enough to keep her vertical, she felt steadier, safer, when he placed his arm around her back and let her drape her own across his shoulders. “You still live in the place on Webb Street?”
She nodded.
He had only actually manifested to her current place once before, when he had helped her move in, but he vaguely remembered where the bathroom was relative to the rest of the apartment– and by pure luck he didn’t teleport them into the bathtub.
He felt her relax, though he couldn’t be sure if it was from seeing the harsh industrial black and white and bronze of the fluorescent-lit public restroom melt into the soft 1950s green tile of her own bathroom… or if it was just the drugs. It seemed, in his expert opinion, like someone had slipped her an awful lot of drugs.
As gently as he could– puppeting breathers didn’t always feel like an exact science for him, especially when they were this zonked– he maneuvered her so she was kneeling in front of the toilet. He snapped her hair into an updo.
“Puke.”
She started to protest.
“Lyds. Make yourself ralph or I’ll figure out a way to make you do it.”
He wasn’t sure why she was giving him a hard time because once she got going it seemed like throwing up was exactly what her body had wanted to do. It took a lot more than a little vomit to gross him out, but it wasn’t a pretty sight watching her lose the entire contents of her stomach, and he instinctively reached out to rub her back.
Once she had it all out of her system, he hoisted her to her feet– manually this time.
“Alright. Stay with me, Babes.” He threw open her medicine cabinet. “I know I’m not the poster boy for dental hygiene, but I think a little swish swish is in order.” He located her mouthwash and popped out an extra arm so he could pour out a capful. “Now, this is a phrase I don’t say often: don’t swallow.”
She wasn’t giving him any indication that she was actually processing his words, but she did weakly rinse her mouth and spit when he tilted her forward over the sink. Even if she wasn’t listening, talking made him feel better. “ Alriiight . Not the best loogie you’ve ever hocked, but you still deserve a prize. And what’s behind door number one?” He reached behind his back with his extra arm and dramatically revealed a reusable bottle he’d summoned from her kitchen. “That’s right! A big bottle of the finest tap water money can buy!”
He led her to her bed and lowered them both down so they were sitting side by side before raising the bottle to her lips. She was so out of it. He could feel his bravado fading fast as he looked at her paler than usual face. He kept rambling, even though his voice had slipped out of game show host mode and into a more earnest register. “Come on, Babes. I know what you’re thinking….” he mimicked her voice like it was second nature, but didn’t manage to add a mock flirting lilt he’d intended to, “Beej, why do I need a tall drink of water when I already have my very own short king?” He slipped back into his own voice, “But trust me, you’ll feel better once you flush out your system.”
She drank the whole thing in one go and he looked her over when she finally stopped gulping to take a breath, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. Her eyes were glazed and her skin was waxy and she looked the least alive he’d ever seen her. “You should go to the hospital.”
“No.”
“Babes, I know you like to be the boss, but I kind of think–”
“Betelgeuse, no.”
“Okay, okay,” as per usual, her wish was his command. “But, if you won’t go to the hospital, I’m going to play doctor.” He changed himself into a pair of scrubs, complete with ID card and prescription pad. “First things first,” he scribbled as he spoke before turning the pad toward her and reading what he’d written out loud, “Drink. More. Water.”
The discarded bottle refilled and levitated in front of her face until she snatched it out of the air. She sluggishly crawled back on the bed so she could lean against the headboard before taking another drink, slower this time. He saw her eyelids drooping as she settled into her new, comfier position.
“And no sleeping! Doctor’s orders! Not until you show some signs of improvement.”
“... ‘feel better.”
“Well, you’re slurring and you look like shit.”
She pouted and he groaned. For her own good, he couldn’t let her get her way. It was bad enough he wasn’t making her go to the hospital like his gut was telling him to.
“We can have a sleepover!” He tried to spin it into something fun, juicing them both into pajamas and floating the blanket from the end on her bed over her legs. “You can snack on some more tasty, tasty water and I’ll put something on the telly.”
He grabbed her laptop off of her desk and flipped it open. He didn’t blink an eye when the login screen popped up, quickly tying ‘Percy123’ into the password bar. The screen jiggled angrily, letting him know he was wrong. For as long as she’d had electronics that needed passwords, she’d always used her stupid cat’s name– well… Percy was sort of his stupid cat now, ever since it showed up on his doorstep in the Netherworld looking even mangier dead than it had while alive. That gave him an idea. He typed ‘PercyRIP’ and the computer rewarded him with Lydia’s desktop, an black and white photo of a spiderweb with files and folders scattered messily across it like caught flies.
Betelgeuse wasn’t a big fan of computers, he rarely used them and when he did it usually ended in frustration, but he managed to open a browser and find a ghost hunting show that was free to watch– with commercials, but he’d take what he could get.
When he placed the computer facing her, Lydia smiled lightly, the first positive expression he’d seen on her face since she summoned him. That made him feel marginally better and he settled on to the other side of her queen bed, ostensibly so he could watch the show, though he barely took his eyes off of her– trying to make sure she was staying awake and not getting any worse.
Halfway through the third episode, and another whole bottle of water later, the hapless ghost hunters on screen were using some doodad to ‘scan radio waves’ for ‘ghost chatter’ and picked up some jumbled sounds they were all convinced was a spirit from the revolutionary war trying to describe himself with the word ‘broody.’
Lydia laughed, “If that metallic screeching was a word at all, which for the record: it wasn’t, it sounded like ‘groovy’ to me.”
“Ya see… I heard ‘booby.’”
This made Lydia laugh again and he laughed too.
“Of course you did.”
“It makes more sense than ‘ groovy .’ Think about it, he’s fighting a war, freezing to death in a random barn in the middle of winter… he probably croaked wishing to see boobies one more time.”
“Then why would he say ‘booby’? Singular. ”
“Maybe his best girl back home only had one.”
Lydia reached across the bed and slapped him on the stomach.
“I have to pee,” she mumbled and started shifting toward the edge of the bed. He was prepared to help her, but to his surprise she lurched up and staggered to the mint green glow of the en suite all on her own.
When the door shut, he took a deep breath that he didn’t technically need– though it felt good. Lydia was moving around, talking in full sentences, and even inflicting mild violence. He knew the drug wasn’t out of her system by a long shot, but maybe she’d puked early enough that she only got a mild dose.
The bathroom door swung open and hit the wall with a bang and Lydia stumbled back to the bed with all the grace of a one-minute-old giraffe. She landed on her stomach, legs still hanging off the side of the bed.
“We like… never do this anymore,” she said, slurring slightly. Maybe the bathroom trip was too much, too soon. She clarified, not that he needed it, “Television”
“Well, you’re a busy lady,” he made the excuse, not really wanting to get into a discussion about the many reasons why they don’t do sleepovers anymore with her while she was under the influence of a mysterious poison.
“Yeaaaaah,” she sighed, pulling her legs back up onto the bed with great effort. “But it’s fun. You’re funny.” She paused and then laughed at her own joke before she even said it. “Funny looking! ”
Betelgeuse sighed, a mix of exasperation and relief. He felt pretty sure she wasn’t going to die tonight. He hauled her over so she was more centered on the bed and then got up and fussed over her, fluffing her pillow and pulling up the blankets to her chin. She let him do so without a sarcastic comment… definitely an effect of the drug.
He pressed play on the next episode, before settling into the vintage armchair beside her bed, right on top of the presumably dirty clothes tossed all over the seat, arms and backrest.
Lydia yawned and this time he didn’t scold her or shake her awake like he had been doing. It was probably safe for her to sleep… if he kept an eye on her. She looked peaceful in the blue tint of the laptop light, eyes twitching under her closed eyelids.
She was right. They didn’t do this anymore. Television. Sleepovers. He had to think for a moment to remember the last time he’d even seen her. He’d visited for her birthday, popping up in her mirror as she was getting ready for work to wish her a happy one and show off that he still remembered– and first thing in the morning, too! He wasn’t great at keeping time when he was in the Netherworld– but he never forgot her birthday. That had been about six months ago. It had been cordial but brief– like most of their visits now.
They had never actually discussed it, but there were rules to their interactions now. He could still appear in her mirror. But only her mirror, not in any random reflection when she was out and about trying to get things done. He didn’t need a reason to appear– but it helped legitimize things. With that in mind, he didn’t really appear very often… in recent years, he mostly stuck to holidays. He occasionally spied on her without letting her know, but he’d been doing that a lot less lately too.
She could still summon him– just like anyone who knew the name trick, but she hadn’t summoned him in a while, which usually meant things were going well for her. While they had returned to calling each other ‘friends’, a fact he was proud of all things considered, they didn’t hangout… not anymore. She typically only called him when she needed something– tonight being a perfect example.
He could feel the tips of his hair turning red just thinking about it. ‘Beej, do you know how to tie a necktie? Beej, I can’t get this sofa I thrifted to my third floor walk up. Help me, Beej! I’ve been roofied at a work event!’ It was fucking typical.
She made a sniffing sound that was threatening to become a snore. It was hard to stay mad at her when she was sleeping right there. Even harder when he remembered the way she looked so small and pale, crumbled on the bathroom floor a few hours ago. He had thought… Well, it doesn’t matter what he thought, because she was fine. She was safe in bed and she was fast asleep. Her head lolled toward him and she snored for real.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he mumbled to himself, crossing his arms and sinking deeper into the chair. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”