Hey, That Hurt

The following Beetlejuice contract au musings brought to you by @rocketonin because they made me realize that if I want it to at least be possible for this AU to turn into something big I should probably figure out what the plot’s trajectory is before I write myself into a corner

Anyway. What would happen long term? Though the circumstances are very messy I still want this to fundamentally be a redemption story.

To me, that means that things have to eventually end on an optimistic note for Beetlejuice. I don’t want him to give up and decide that he’d rather isolate himself than deal with the contract, but I also don’t want him to be worn down to a shell of his former self, to suppress his anger and blunt his teeth so the family will never have any reason to get rid of him.

I think I’d like him to fluctuate between these two points, resenting his situation so much that he’s tempted to leave and accepting it to the point he’s no longer the same person. Both ways to escape the pain of his situation.

Honestly, the smartest thing for Beetlejuice to do here would probably be to leave. He’s effectively trapped in an abusive dynamic where he’s almost entirely dependent on his abusers to realize how awful their behavior is and choose to change it. And that’s what I plan to happen, but he doesn’t know that.

But, as is often the case with abusive relationships, he doesn’t feel like he has anywhere else to go, and he thinks that the messed up love he’s currently getting is more than anyone else would give him.

He might be able to eventually make some friends in the netherworld, but currently the impression he’s getting is that pretty much everyone down there hates him. He could go back to wandering the surface, but then he’s back in the same hopeless, horribly lonely position he started in.

And based on Juno saying “you were so desperate for somebody to love you that you act like a damn fool”, we can guess that she’s said some pretty terrible things about his chances of ever being loved.

Basically his situation super super sucks, and leaving would be a good idea, but I’m gonna say that his relationship with everyone is very unfortunately still one of the most positive relationships he’s ever been in. Lydia actually enjoys his company and wants to spend time with him, the Maitlands are fairly nice to him, Delia is weird with him and not unkind, and Charles… well, Charles isn’t as bad as his mother was, so there’s that at least.

It’s the closest he’s ever felt to being loved and as long as that almost-love is there he’s not going to be able to tear himself away from it.

It’s the same reason he signed the contract in the first place. He knew it was a terrible idea, but the fact that they presented it to him at all meant that, in a way, they wanted him.

So that’s what stops him from leaving. But what’s stopping him from giving up the other way around?

I think it would take a long time for the circumstances to genuinely start to alter Beetlejuice’s personality, but there are still a lot of coping mechanisms he could develop. Coping mechanisms that he developed to cope with his abusive mother and severe isolation could also start to rear their head again.

The main way Beetlejuice seems to react to feeling hurt is anger and violence… except when his mom comes into the picture. With her… I wouldn’t say he’s obedient, but it’s like he turns into a whiny child in trouble with their parent. Interestingly, that’s the sort of behavior I would except from a kid that frustrated with their parent’s actions, but not a kid who was afraid— and Beetlejuice radiates fear when Juno shows up. When she starts insulting him, his face turns distraught, he frantically looks around like he’s searching for an escape route or someone to help. And then he pleads with her again. I wonder if the embarrassment was bravado, in a way. It’s a situation that would be horribly embarrassing, but I think he may be playing up that emotion in order to hide his terror.

In Say My Name, we see him rapidly switch from showboating to begging and back again. It seems like the less power he has in a situation, the more he resorts to pleading, bargaining.

I think that as his frustration with situation grows, the more he would start to jump between anger and pleading— and the anger would likely result in retaliation depending on who he takes it out on, so the pleading would start to win out. I think the pleading would vary in intensity too. With Lydia, yes, he begged, but it was different to how he was with Juno. With Lydia, he was pleading for help, but with Juno he pleaded for mercy.

I don’t think he’d start out afraid of anyone, except maybe Lydia a bit. As time goes on though, the urge to be clever, annoying, or otherwise rebellious might have to fight against the knowledge that any member of the household can force him to stop those behaviors. Pain would rarely be guaranteed, but I imagine that there would be something nauseating about having to suppress yourself to such a degree. He’d constantly have to choose between making himself behave acceptably or being forced to under threat of pain.

… oh god, it would be like wearing a bark collar. Even if he can eventually find people to retract unfair orders, for the duration that the order is active he’d still be effectively getting trained to behave in whatever manner the order demanded.

I decided not to have the contact enforced via mind control/compulsion, but I honestly wonder now if the long-term psychological damage of this method would be worse.

Losing control of yourself due to mind control would certainly be traumatic, but I feel like once the magic was gone so would any urges to behave as you had been ordered to.

But Beetlejuice… he has to learn to adjust his behavior himself. He has to learn to comply almost instinctually, because if he forgets and behaves as he always does it’s going to hurt.

And that means the behavior is going to linger.

… I think that early on, Beetlejuice would be angry a lot, but maybe he’d hold himself back. He chose to sign the contract, he knew what he was doing, and he wants to make a good impression so maybe they’ll actually want to keep him around. This might be when he would be willing to actively annoy Charles— apparently not letting him come back without a contract was his idea anyway. Thus, this would also probably be around the time that the closet incident would happen. He’d probably be pretty whiny during this period too, complaining about the rules being annoying and asking for them to be changed. He’d hang out with Lydia as much as possible, and they’d have a pretty good time.

Before long though, Beetlejuice wouldn’t be able to keep a lid on his temper anymore. Towards the end of this period is probably about where his fallout with the Maitlands would happen. I think he’d also have at least one fight with Lydia, maybe multiple, and she’d order him around more in retaliation. He’d start pushing the limits of his rules as much as he could, trying to upset people, see if he can destroy anything in ways that the contract doesn’t count as destructive, maybe even taking advantage of people being nice and revoking rules, which would cause conflict between other household members. This would result in him being given a lot of very restrictive orders. He’d probably consider leaving at this point, but would ultimately decide he can’t bring himself to.

The aftermath of his angry period would be where his actions would start to reflect fear. Maybe at some point someone actually taught him some grounding exercises for his anger, and he starts to use them to calm himself down so he doesn’t try to break any rules and get hurt in the midst of an outburst. He starts pleading again, but it’s more like how he was with Juno. He starts hiding, reducing the amount of time he spends in places where people can easily see and interact with him (and thus order him around). Orders he’s had for a long time that he used to have to concentrate on obeying become natural to him. He still hangs out with Lydia, plays the part of her friend. Does his job. Makes sure he’ll still be wanted. Lydia notices the downturn in his mood and starts trying to be nicer to him.

The Maitlands, seeing what’s happening, finally decide they need to put a stop to this. Tense discussions are had. I don’t think they’d remove the contract fully, but they’d dismiss pretty much every rule.

Things start to improve. People stop intentionally giving Beetlejuice orders, and accidental orders are quickly revoked. Relationships are improving, and anyone who didn’t fully think of Beetlejuice as a person is starting to now. However, the psychological effects the ordeal has had on Beetlejuice are apparent.

I’m not entirely sure how Beetlejuice would react at this turning point. I think that at some point there would be anger, but it would take a while because of how good at suppressing it he’d be at this point. By this point his mindset of ‘they want me here to be useful, not because they care, but that’s good enough’ would be super internalized. Having the rules be taken away might even be anxiety-inducing, because what if he messes up and they don’t want him anymore and he went through all of this for nothing? He’d keep obeying a lot of rules by himself, which Charles and Delia might see as good while the Maitlands and Lydia might be concerned.

Eventually, there would start to be some mutual trust. Beetlejuce would stop expecting to be ordered around every time he does something that bothers someone. Some behaviors from the orders would remain, but he’d gradually learn where the lines were and his reason for keeping those behaviors would gradually transition from fear and habit to genuinely not wanting to upset people. And one day, the contract would be dismissed, or maybe altered such that Beetlejuice wouldn’t have to live in fear of being forced to leave.

Yet more contract au

Charles and Delia are both threatening to Beetlejuice in different ways. Beetlejuice eventually learns that Charles isn’t too much of a threat as long as he leaves him alone, even though not bothering the guy he doesn’t like goes against his nature. Charles doesn’t want Beetlejuice to be there, and he doesn’t want him to be a threat. Most of his orders are just things like ‘go away’ or ‘be quiet’ or ‘stay out of this room’ or ‘don’t touch that’. Charles mostly just wants Beetlejuice out of sight and out of mind.

Delia is the one who spent the whole musical trying to get Lydia to be normal. On Charles’ behest, yes, but she’s not nearly as avoidant of problems as he is.

Delia gives orders like ‘say please and thank you!’ and ‘turn that frown upside down— no, not like that, smile.’ and ‘go clean that suit of yours’ and ‘chew with your mouth closed’. Little expectations of normality that would be minor annoyances if he weren’t forced to comply with them. Charles poses the biggest threat to his freedoms, but Delia poses the biggest threat to his identity.

Another contract au thing

At first when Beetlejuice is allowed back into the house, the Maitlands avoid Beetlejuice. Charles backs them up and orders Beetlejuice to stay out of the attic. Eventually they start willingly spending time around him, communicating that they won’t order him around, but they expect him to respect their boundaries. After a bit they even revoke Charles’ order and let him come into the attic, though they expect him to ask permission.

The Maitlands are the safest people in the house for Beetlejuice to be around. They don’t give him orders, and will revoke orders upon request if they don’t think they’re going to step on anyone’s toes by doing so.

Beetlejuice does his best to comply for a while, but eventually the stress of his whole situation starts to wear on him and he starts to feel irritated about the Maitlands, too.

The Maitlands, he thinks, want to avoid the guilt of ordering him around directly while still reaping the benefits. What’s the difference between their requests and everyone else’s orders if he has to obey them all the same?

Angry about their hypocrisy (and maybe they really are being hypocritical, I’m not really sure yet. At the very least they’re complicit), he reverts to his behavior from the musical and then some. He goes out of his way to harass them and make them uncomfortable, giving them as little peace as he possibly can. When they ask him to stop, he tells them to make him.

Eventually Barbara has had enough and does, finally, order him to stop harassing them, and tells him to stay out of the attic for a while so they can have some space.

Finally, Beetlejuice is satisfied. Once again, he got the perfect Maitlands to snap.

He goes to the roof and feels sick, gnashes his teeth and curls into a ball and wants to claw at his skin, but he doesn’t cry. He hasn’t felt capable of crying for a long, long time.

Lydia thoughts for the Contract AU

I want to preface by saying I don’t think Lydia is a bad person. She is, however, what, fifteen? She’s definitely been asking some big questions about death, but pondering the morality of restricting the free will of another person might not have crossed her mind much. She’d certainly have learned about slavery in school, but probably a rather narrow, historical perspective on it. She’s also still young enough that a lot of what she is allowed to to is limited by her guardians.

The idea that Beetlejuice should need to follow rules to stick around makes sense. She has to follow rules she’s not happy about too. She can’t go places by herself because she can’t drive, she doesn’t prepare her own meals, without a job any money she spends must be asked for, and the rules at school would likely be much more strict. To be a child is to need permission to do every. Damn. Thing. It sucks, but that’s life. And yeah, maybe the way his rules are enforced is a lot more strict, but he probably wouldn’t listen to anything else.

Of course, the consequences Beetlejuice will face if he breaks or tries to break a rule (typically feeling like forces are holding him back from doing whatever thing, escalating to debilitating pain if he actually manages to break the rule, varying in intensity according to the importance of the rule and how much he broke it), are very different from the sort of consequences Lydia will face. They do share the fact that both likely deal with a mixture of reasonable and unreasonable rules. Lydia can’t destroy school property, Beetlejuice can’t break things around the house. Lydia has to ask permission to use the bathroom during class and Beetlejuice constantly has to find people to lift lingering orders that should have been temporary.

Basically, there are a lot of reasons why Lydia might be able to see that what the contract does to Beetlejuice is bad, but she might not necessarily understand how bad.

Beetlejuice, similarly, would be very unhappy with the circumstances, but he might not fully comprehend that effectively allowing himself to be enslaved in exchange for companionship is a horrific deal.

Beetlejuice would understand that his situation is annoying and painful and degrading and all-around upsetting, but I don’t know that he’d be able to properly articulate that the word for the situation they have him in is fucking slavery. He also might not even want to think about the situation that way. He wasn’t tricked into the contract, and leaving was sort of on the table (I don’t want leaving to be something he could do easily, but I want it to be possible in some way). It might be less embarrassing for him to think of his situation as something he’s choosing.

So when Lydia also occasionally orders him around a bit, he’s not going to have the right words to make her fully understand how messed up that is. He’ll get mad, sure, but Lydia has already learned that Beetlejuice’s anger can be irrational and disproportionate.

I think it’s also fair to say that Lydia doesn’t see Beetlejuice as a person. As soon as she learns he’s a demon she seems to realize that she can get away with doing things to him that she wouldn’t be able to do to anyone else. She doesn’t hesitate to push him off of a roof, knowing he’ll survive the fall because he’s dead, and at the end of the play she stabs him in the back right after he comes to life. My point being, I doubt she would have done those things so easily if she fully considered him to be a human.

In this story, I think Lydia would see Beetlejuice as a friend first, but in the back of her mind he’s still a demon. An inhuman creature, volatile. Something cool and fun, but something that needs to be kept in check. Like keeping a venomous snake as a pet.

She usually wouldn’t order him around, but her reason not to is because it would upset him, not because she sees doing so as inherently wrong. Thus, in moments where she doesn’t care about his feelings as much, she’d be perfectly willing to tell him what to do, knowing he has no choice but to comply.

I think the key to Beetlejuice’s situation in this story would be the Maitlands, not Lydia. I think his relationship with them would get worse before it gets better, as I mentioned in an earlier post, but eventually it would get better, and that would motivate their morals to override their anxieties and finally properly speak out about the immorality of the situation. I think that once Lydia has the depth of what she’s been doing explained to her, she’d change up her act very quickly.

more beetlejuice contract au thoughts

I wonder how long he could be stuck in the closet? A while, potentially. I can’t remember if I established otherwise but I feel like Beetlejuice would be allowed to void the contract and leave— this would just cause him to be unsummoned, and Charles made it clear that he planned to ward the house if he couldn’t be sure BJ was there on his terms.

If Beetlejuice seemingly disappeared, Lydia might not buy that he would do so of his own volition— especially without saying goodbye— but everyone else might.

It might actually be the salt that saves Beetlejuice in the end. Maybe Lydia manages to convince her dad not to put up a salt barrier around the house for a week or so, but eventually enough is enough, he isn’t planning to wait around for Beetlejuice to find someone else to summon him and then come back for revenge. So he goes down to the closet to retrieve the salt… and there’s Beetlejuice.

Maybe Beetlejuice, hearing someone entering the basement, accepts some pain and intentionally makes some noise in some way, maybe knocking something over. Or maybe he plans on doing so, but upon hearing Charles’s voice he’s reluctant to reveal his precarious situation to the person who is the reason he couldn’t call for help.

Regardless, Charles finds him. Charles, having a very negative opinion of Beetlejuice that isn’t going to be fixed by finding him in a pitiable situation, would probably blame Beetlejuice for making a mess and rooting around in other people’s things, and ultimately getting himself caught in the situation. I doubt Charles would immediately catch on to why BJ was being silent, either, but eventually Beetlejuice’s pleading and hand-talking and pointing at his throat would get the point across and Charles would grant him permission to speak again.

The first words out of Beetlejuice’s mouth would probably be expletives, but when Charles doesn’t hesitate to threaten to order him to be quiet again he forces himself to calm down a bit and ask that the salt— which he is offended that they still had— be brushed aside.

With the salt removed he can finally exit the closet, and he gets away from Charles as soon as he can.

Everyone is actually rather relieved that he didn’t leave after all, particularly Lydia. When they learn that he spent a week shut inside a cluttered, dark closet, there’s definitely some concern, particularly from the maitlands, but he assures them that he’s totally fine and unbothered and definitely not at least a little claustrophobic now and what’s a week of complete and total isolation compared to hundreds of years anyway.

After the incident, he avoids being in dark rooms by himself, and catches himself a few times forcing himself to stay quiet.

“Be quiet, demon, I’m working. Stop interrupting me and go do something else.”

Beetlejuice would have loved to tell Chuckles where he could shove his stupid order, but he could feel said stupid order getting ready to send him into a coughing fit if he tried (and given that coughing wasn’t exactly quiet, he wasn’t eager to learn how the contract would handle that). He would have loved to shove Charles’ laptop onto the floor like a bored cat, or at least infect it with at minimum twelve different genuine netherworld porn viruses, but the second Charles returned his attention to his work any and all direct retaliation fell under “interrupting”.

Even his attempts to grumble, stomp his feet, and slam the door on his way out were stifled.

Lydia was off at school and Daisy was out with a client or something, so that just left the Maitlands to tell him he was oh-so-graciously permitted to speak again.

Ugh, the Maitlands. If he went to them with yet another order to lift they’d shake their pretty heads all disapprovingly, hmm’ing and haww’ing about the moral dilemma of it all like their names weren’t on the contract too, pretending like they gave a single shit about him. At least he knew where he stood with everyone else. He knew Adam and Barbara would realize they didn’t have any neighbors to perform for eventually and start ordering him around like the rest, but while he wished they’d keep things simple he still wasn’t eager to get to that point earlier than needed.

He’d wait for Lydia to be home from school, make some pointed gestures, and he’d be as noisy as ever. No problem. In the meantime, he’d look for revenge fodder.

The rarely-visited basement was full of miscellaneous crap from the Deetzes and Maitlands alike. He’d have to get creative to think of some sort of prank that the rules wouldn’t object to, but this was a great place to look for inspiration.

Shoving aside some of Adam’s lovingly crafted wood furniture, he pushed open the door to a walk-in closet, seeing some promising cans of old paint. He flipped a switch on the wall to try and light the single bare bulb on the ceiling, but nothing happened. Burnt out. Whatever, his appreciation for light was more of a want than a need. The light from the basement was more than enough for his eyes— though he’d need to get hands-on to truly appreciate the contents of these shelves. Stepping over the debris on the closet floor, he grabbed one of the back shelves for stabilization.

Apparently the shelf had been one of Adam’s earlier projects or something, because the weight of about a dozen cans of paint plus one demon was too much for it to bear. Beetlejuice winced in literal pain as the cans clattered to the floor (the noise being accidental apparently didn’t make that much of a difference to the rules). He tripped over the clutter as he tried to scramble backwards away from the very noisy and thus painful paint cans, falling against the door which slammed shut and knocking over the contents of some sort of bag.

Beetlejuice grit his teeth against the searing pain shooting down his arms and legs, curling forward both to brace himself and to minimize the chance of colliding with anything else. At least the contract was blaming his limbs rather than his throat or head. The coughing and splitting headaches tended to make him react in the most embarrassing ways.

Once the pain subsided he slowly rose to his feet and turned around, this time careful not to grab anything for support. He’d rather prank Charles after he got permission to be noisy again, he’d decided. And yet, as he reached for the door handle, he felt as though the idea of so much as touching the door was repulsive.

Well that was just ridiculous. The hinges had seemed to be well-greased, the door had opened at a perfectly normal volume earlier. He had nothing to fear from it. And yet, as he reached for the handle, he just… couldn’t. Couldn’t touch the door. Was this a prank, somehow? Did Lydia whisper in his ear some ultra-specific order about touching the inside of the closet door downstairs?

He glanced to the ground and saw what he’d spilled as he’d tripped.

The salt.

One of the bags of what he could now be sure was pure, naturally gathered, exorcism-grade salt, had spilled and formed a wide line in front of the door.

Clenching his fist in irritation, he gathered his power and teleported to the living room.

He teleported— he teleported to— he was still in the closet.

Right. Salt barrier. Enclosed space. If demons could just teleport out of salt barriers, they wouldn’t make very effective traps.

He knew he was tangible when summoned— a drawback of being part of the physical plane is that you were in fact part of the physical plane— but he pressed a hand to one of the side walls anyway, willing himself to go through it.

Nope. Still physical. Well, it was nice to know he hadn’t been somehow randomly unsummoned without his knowledge within the last minute.

Even breaking down the walls was out of the question, since ‘don’t destroy the house!’ was one of the first established rules. That one had a bit of leeway, but he had a feeling that the contract wouldn’t take kindly to him detonating the drywall.

Haha. Shit.

He was trapped.

He had just barely enough space to stretch his arms out lengthwise, but he couldn’t stretch too much without risking knocking something else over.

He opened his mouth as he briefly considered screaming to the Maitlands for help— a demon voice could really carry when it needed to— but his throat tingled and he snapped his mouth shut before he started to cough.

He sat down on the floor, pulled his legs to his chest, and settled his chin atop his knees.

He hoped someone had heard the paint.

Someone (probably Charles) tells Beetlejuice to “be quiet.” Normally he’d just find someone else to reverse the order, but before he can he gets hurt or ends up in some sort of perilous situation and is unable to call for help.

More contract au musings

(Beetlejuice signed a contract binding him to do whatever the household orders him to do in exchange for him getting to stay)

I think the whole situation would be an absolute moral mess.

The Maitlands would probably have the best moral compass out of the entire household, even after the end of the musical. But they’d still run into issues, more on that later.

Charles would have plenty of reason to hate Beetlejuice, and has proven that he tends to lean towards avoidance and putting up a mask when it comes to things that upset him. He also doesn’t seem to be very sympathetic, seemingly failing to understand the depth of what Lydia was going through or being unwilling to think about it.

Yes, he and his daughter made up at the end, but people don’t change overnight and that’s his daughter. I doubt he’s going to give Beetlejuice anything close to the same grace.

I think being around Charles would be hazardous for Beetlejuice, because I don’t think Charles would be above using the contract at every opportunity to make Beetlejuice less of an annoyance.

I don’t know if Delia would be less of a threat, but I still think she would be one. She also has reason to change as a person after the end of the musical, but she’s still shown that she’s someone who tends to be bothered by things she sees as weird, and she tends towards toxic positivity. Again, I doubt these traits are going to change overnight.

Beetlejuice is far from a normal, peppy person. He’s going to rub Delia the wrong way. I don’t know if Delia would be as willing to abuse the contract as Charles might, but I don’t think it’s out of the question that she’d try to make Beetlejuice tone down his weirdness and upsetting emotional displays.

The Maitlands might be the safest people for Beetlejuice to be around— the issue is that they probably wouldn’t want to be around Beetlejuice much. The Maitlands are clearly anxiety-riddled and almost painfully polite. I think they’d manage to catch on to the fact that being able to force Beetlejuice to do things is actually super messed up, and would probably avoid doing so.

But would they tell the rest of the family not to? They’re a LOT more assertive by the end of the musical, but considering that they’d probably struggle to want to stand up for Beetlejuice, I can imagine that their anxious tendencies might prevent them from saying much until circumstances force them to.

I also don’t think they’d be entirely above giving Beetlejuice any orders, specifically when it comes to harassing them. Obviously they wouldn’t want Beetlejuice to continue his inappropriate behavior towards them, and ordering him to stop might literally be the only thing that could truly get him to do so. The threat of an order might stop him for a while, but I think he’d eventually cross the line. And then there’s the moral issue of well, it’s super messed up to exert power over what he can physically do to such an extent, but it’s also super messed up for him to keep groping them.

And then there’s Lydia. Part of me wants to believe that she’ll be super nice and protective of him, but realistically I doubt that would be the case. Lydia would be in a much better place mentally than she was during the musical, but this is still the girl that pushed Beetlejuice off a roof when she realized he wasn’t useful to her.

Honestly, I don’t think Beetlejuice was entirely wrong when he assumed she thought of him like a tool to discard. I don’t interpret the “what are you talking about?” line as favorably as the rest of the fandom does. I don’t think Lydia didn’t see Beetlejuice as a friend at all, but I think she also thought of him as a demon she summoned to do her bidding, and that’s what he was there for.

In this au, I think Lydia wants their relationship to move in a friendlier direction, but I think there might still be 5% of her that sees him as a tool rather than a person. She’s a teenager that we can see is very capable of cruelty and manipulation. My point being, I don’t think Beetlejuice is entirely safe around her either. I think she’ll mostly be in his corner, and stand up for him when she thinks he’s being treated unfairly, but if something he does upsets her I don’t think she’s going to be above leveraging her power over him.

Basically, the Maitlands are the safest people for Beetlejuice to be around, but even they’re not 100% safe. Being in the house, under this contract, places Beetlejuice perpetually in harm’s way (though the harm is mostly psychological). He can’t be around any member of the household without the risk of another order settling around him like a net.

But he’d rather be unsafe than be alone.

He reminds himself that, if it came down to it, he could probably break the contract. It would hurt, and voiding the agreement would instantly unsummon him, leaving him back where he started, unwanted in the Netherworld and unseen on the surface, but…

Well, it’s not like he needed to anyway. Sure, the binding left him extremely vulnerable, but the Deetzes and Maitlands probably wouldn’t take too much advantage. Sure, they did all band together to lie to him that they loved him so that they could kill him that one time, which still stung, but he did recognize that he went a bit overboard there. And yeah, Lydia used him and then left him, which also sucked, but the moments before that had probably the best time he’d ever had in his life. And, as it turned out, he’d do anything to keep chasing that high.

Would do anything, now, literally. It wasn’t really his choice anymore.

There was something almost reassuring about that, though. Now he could be sure he’d never get left behind again. He could hardly be blamed for his mistakes when they held all the power to stop him.

Plus, they’d already said no murder, torture, or destruction. They were really cramping his style, but even Chuckles didn’t seem nearly so bothered about keeping him around now.

Yeah. There was something reassuring about it being literally impossible for him to fuck up enough to get kicked out, now.

Mom did always say he couldn’t be trusted to handle himself.

Beetlejuice (from the musical) coming back to the house and everyone setting ground rules and making up and being a nice family is great and all but so neat and tidy.

What if Lydia wanted to bring him back but her father wouldn’t agree unless they could completely guarantee he wouldn’t be a danger? What if the only way everyone was okay with bringing him back is if they could bind him to their will?

…and what if Beetlejuice, still lonely and missing the brief period of time where someone actually cared about him, agreed to it?

Sure, he’d be losing his freedom, but… getting to stick around could be worth it.

I think the Avatar fandom is the only other place where I’ve seen redemption-through-imprisonment but boy do I love the concept.

It opens up so much opportunity for the “good guys” to do some morally questionable stuff, by accident or intentionally.