#is it my fault numb is so scott core. is it MY fault in the end is so bea core actually. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

grell-writes-stuff · 6 years ago

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@fenfaerie I did something ~*~*~*~Fucked Up~*~*~*~

When the bell rings again, I breathe a small sigh. I’ve made it to lunch without losing my lunch (breakfast). Bryson turns to me as I’m shoving my textbook back into my bag, and I try to read his face. I can’t quite decipher if his offer is genuine, or just out of obligation because I’m staring to feel like the pathetic, left-behind friend that they, for some reason, still feel the need to try to include.

“Hey, we’re going to Wendy’s for lunch. You in, Scott?” he asks. Both he and Matt look at me expectantly.

And that’s how I end up in Cole’s car again, sitting in the back with my crutches wedged on a diagonal between me and Bryson. I’m probably not hungry enough to actually eat – that I’m sure of – but they’d end up worrying too much or maybe scrapping the plan all together if I declined. Or they’d just go without me and I’d be stranded at ECR for half an hour with nothing to do and nobody to hang out with. I figured going to Wendy’s was the best option.

When we arrive and it’s my turn at the counter, I order water and a side of fries, and ignore the look of judgment from the cashier. I figure I won’t actually eat the fries and just let my friends pick at them, and my drink of choice is a safe bet and won’t do anything to my unpredictably fragile stomach. I’m doing so well already. I could afford to vomit, but I’d rather not. If I can finish off this day, it’ll be beyond victory. I’ll give myself a goddamn trophy for doing what every teenager in the history of mandatory education has already done. Which sounds fucking pathetic, but I choose to disregard that.

The four of us claim a booth, and the rest of them dig in. I don’t. I’d rather not even think about food because it makes my gut tense up a little. The only food-related thought I allow myself is wondering if a single burger will be enough to satisfy Cole when I’ve seen him devour three in one sitting before (with a side of large fries).

“So, Scott,” Cole starts to ask mid-swallow. His brown eyes meet mine. “When’s the cast come off?”

I hear the sharp breath that Bryson takes in through his teeth. “Really, Cole?”

My response comes out unfiltered.

“I don’t know, Cole. Whenever they fucking tell me it can.”

I regret it. Immediately. But Cole’s never been great at screening his questions before he speaks, so who cares whether or not I censor my answers? Who cares if I’m snarky? I think I’m allowed to be – expected to be – at this point.

“Scott,” Bryson sighs and scolds me in a similar, exhausted manner.

But that goes unheard, and so does Cole’s attempt at an apology because a voice by the entrance to the building carries on air and sends a bullet of ice up my spine. I only catch the tail-end, but that’s all it takes to make my jaw set.

“–and she was so good.”

It’s a flat tone. Sarcastic. Slightly nasally, yet shrill. As shrill and annoying as tinnitus, and it makes me want to shove one of my balled fists through drywall just to be able to feel something physical because my body suddenly goes numb. I don’t know how since I feel so stiff, my muscles locking rigid like the links of a chain pulled taut, but my head turns robotically of its own accord to zero in on her tiny form, and I wish I could shoot missiles from my eyes because she is in my line of fire.

Along with Roxy and a gaggle of her dumb, bratty friends, Selena Walton has entered the restaurant.

“Why the fuck is she here?” It slips out, a hiss seething through my teeth.

There’s a pause. Probably the guys are following my stare as it pierces her body like a battle axe. Their voices resume.

“Cole and I made the lunch plan at his locker after second period,” Matt begins. “Isn’t hers, like–”

“Right across the hall,” Cole finishes.

“She could have overhead,” Bryson pitches.

“Subliminal messaging,” Matt suggests.

Excuses. They’re all excuses. And I don’t care. I realize while they’re speaking that what I said was rhetorical. Instead, it should be: Who allowed her to be here? I got rid of her – why does she still insist upon barging into my life when she’s done enough shit to me already?

And the three of them need to stop trying to figure out her presence here because their voices are carrying and it’s not a big dining space. Suddenly, Roxy spots us – unlike the rest of them, she’s never trapped in her own, self-centered world, and she notices things in her peripheral. She does a short, cheery wave, and then Selena’s malicious, artificial face turns to me, and her makeup-masked, raccoon eyes meet mine, and then I see red for a minute.

“Hey, guys!” Roxy speaks, knocking me back into reality. I’m sitting in our booth and Roxy’s come up to the edge of the table with Selena, and their minions (two fake-blondes who share seven braincells between them named Tiffany Something-or-other and Ashley Something-or-other).

I don’t greet her back. I’m just focused on how hungry my balled-up knuckles feel, how the sensation has drained from my face, and how the humming molecules of my body are ready to snap and explode like a firecracker and cause the kind of destruction that is only capable of a nuclear bomb. My throat feels like it’s been scooped out piece-by-piece by a melon baller. I’m ready to unleash an airstrike just so everybody can feel how I suddenly feel – smitten to smoldering ash.

And that feeling is so smothering that I can’t find that logical part inside of me that I know is screaming out, trying to tell me that I’m scaring myself. It’s too far away to listen to.

I hear Matt, Cole, and Bryson respond politely to Roxy, but my teeth are fused together, and my eyes are trying to burn holes into the skin that once burned me as toothpick arms wrapped around my neck, so I don’t participate. By now, everyone must be used to that.

Roxy continues, “Bryson, I, uh, think I left something at your place the other day.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he responds. “Just text me when you want to come pick it up.”

My hearing starts to seem muffled and distorted as my blood races through every vein like it’s trying to qualify as an Olympic sprinter. I don’t have the time to dissect the fragments of conversation I’m able to pick up because she stops trying to distance herself from our table, and suddenly seems to register my presence. Her brown eyes flick to me and it sends an electric zap jumping through my body as if I’d jammed a fork in an outlet.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

It just slips out. Unfiltered. I don’t regret it. Not even when the whole earth goes silent, or when her angled brows raise, her pupils beginning to burn. Not when the stunned pause shatters and Bryson says, “Scott, what the fuck?”

It goes unheard.

“You think you have the right to stalk me after what you did to him?!”

Him.

Okay, I wasn’t expecting that. Me. I meant to say me. After all she’s done to me. But that came bursting out instead like a dam finally giving way from the fissures and cracks that went ignored, letting a tidal wave loose to drown an innocent valley. I feel something else apart from the anger festering at my core. At my center, the shadowy mass that has been living inside of me knits itself into a tight, heavy ball. As it begins to run out of threads of itself, it slowly merges with the rage. They are one, yet they wrestle each other in a tangle of metaphysical limbs. The realization has just left my tongue and kicked me in the chest, stomach, skull.

“Excuse me?” Her obnoxious lips say. It’s quiet and I think it’s supposed to be, but that doesn’t matter. Even as a whisper, there’s still a punch to her tone.

I want to punch something – her, or just something hard enough to shatter every bone in my hand. I’m breathing with such intensity that my shoulders are heaving along with my chest, and I can’t suppress it. In, out, in out. Kelley’s suggestion to breathe slow and deep doesn’t work. My lungs are ablaze like her glare. My eyes are stinging, but it’s not tears rubbing salt into my wounds. This time, it’s a memory casting over my vision invasively.

Stupid, bubbly handwriting.

She’s not speaking. She’s waiting, suspended in the silence like a predator devising her next move carefully. Yet her heckling voice batters at my ears and no number of middle fingers will make it stop. I can’t hold it inside of me any longer because the venomous darkness has expanded to fill the furthest crevices of my being. I lose my sanity and I throw it at her with all I have. I’m operating on autopilot.

“It was your idea! It was all your fault! We wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for you!”

“Morgan?!” Bryson sounds shocked and distant, but it doesn’t stop the tragic truth as it comes screaming out of me.

“He’d still be here if it wasn’t for you!”

And, just like that, it’s out there in the universe, and the air feels weighted with my words and ready to crush us all. The atmospheric pressure rivals the mass of four thousand mountains, and the heat boils my blood until it turns to lava. I’m a volcano, and I have just erupted.

Everyone is frozen like they can’t find words, but I’m not focused on that. I’m not focused on the things around me – like the other restaurant patrons who are surely gawking at what’s about to be a verbal fistfight at Wendy’s. The rest of the world goes dark and it’s only me and her.

Her nostrils flare, and somehow, even with a set jaw, her mouth parts. Her eyes are raging forest fires, now infected by surprise, but also by challenge. Her voice has the power to wound, but also has a hollow quality that tells me how deeply my own blow landed. The two words I’ve heard from her a million times are more hostile and poisonous than ever before.

“Fuck you.”

Everyone is surely staring because making a scene isn’t that hard. We’ve been the negative center of attention before.

“Fuck me? Fuck you! You just had to go to that cliff, didn’t you?! You just had to find the ‘perfect’ cliff and hog the spotlight and the praise and just be an attention whore! And it’s not like any of this matters to you because you never cared about any of us – no, you only care about yourself, you conceited bitch!”

“So you’re calling me a fucking narcissist?” she demands, her teeth bared. “Maybe get off your own fucking high horse because you don’t know shit!”

“I know all the shit I need to know! I know you could have picked literally anywhere else and he would still fucking be here!”

I’m even hitting my own nerves like each one is a piece in my drum kit and I’m in the middle of an angry solo. But even though I’m shaking, and she’s just a teary blob in the center of my obscured vision, and I’m fighting just as hard to keep my voice even as I am fighting her, that doesn’t stop me from saying it.

“You led him to his death! He died because of you!”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you! It’s all your fucking fault! Just stay out of my fucking life before you take that away from me too!”

Whoever invented the idea of storming off clearly was not bound to crutches, but I’m too riled up to care about the awkward, intricate ritual of pulling myself to my good leg, and hobbling away from her. I think she continues to scream at me, but all I can hear is the rushing in my ears as all the blood must have seeped to my head because none of it is in my bone-white hands where they’re gripping my supports so goddamn tight so I don’t just turn around and slug her in her smug, angry fucking face. And I know I just have to get out of this place before I finally fucking snap and cross that line as well.

California heat hits me once I leave the air-conditioned building and it doesn’t do much to dull the hot rage. It feeds it. I don’t have the stability to consider tearing myself from the hoodie that was such a stupid choice to confine myself to, and I’m half afraid I’ll end up punching the hood of Cole’s disaster of a Cherokee and shattering my knuckles like glass because my entire fucking broken body is about to burst like an over-filled water balloon – except the water is acid.

“What the fuck, Scott?!”

I turn at the voice behind me to see that Bryson’s stormed out after me – and probably with better success considering the drama of it all would have been better on two working legs (though he still would’ve had to ask Cole to move to actually leave the booth, which is also not ideal for stomping away enraged).

This time, the careful façade he’s been putting on for me has just…gone. It’s disappeared. Behind it – and it’s probably been brewing for a while – is the look he gives me now. Frustration, shock, horror, vexation. And his tone, loud and indignant, makes me feel like a wall has been suddenly, hastily erected around me like a defensive barrier, except I’m just as ready to tear it down with my bare hands. I am a stronghold and a war machine. A new verbal fistfight is approaching the vicinity of the Wendy’s parking lot.

“What do you mean ‘what the fuck’?! She stalked us! She’s not leaving me the fuck alone!”

“Will you get the fuck over yourself?!”

That’s the first blow in this brawl, and it hits me like he’s thrown a hammer at my forehead. After over a month of being wary, Bryson’s finally decided to stop pulling his punches. And I don’t know if it makes me angrier or just…shocked. I feel numb all of a sudden. Then I’m grappling for something to scream back at him, but my brain still feels like it’s on fire and there are alarm bells blaring, but I’m stuck.

“So you’re dating Roxy now?! You just weren’t going to tell any of us?!”

Maybe that’s not something that should sound so mad coming from my mouth, but I really can’t find much else to yell at him for.

“This isn’t about me, Morgan!”

He never uses my first name – or very rarely at that. But this isn’t like the way he’d said it on the worst day of my life, or the stunned exclamations just a moment ago in our booth. This switch between Scott and Morgan is serious. It’s serious in the way that a Shakespearean tragedy is serious where one minute two minor roles are making dick jokes, and the next someone’s been stabbed with a rapier through their kidney.

“Can you just give her a fucking break?!”

“She’s not giving me a fucking break!”

“Oh, my God! She’s not out to get you, Morgan! It’s not her mission to destroy your fucking life!”

“That’s literally always been her fucking deal!”

“Yeah? Then why the hell would she save it?!”

Save it? His eyes are hard, and something must come to my face while I’m staring at him because I watch as his steeliness can’t suppress a tiny shudder because he lets himself remember that day – parts of it that my mind couldn’t close around. His voice softens, and it’s painful, and he’s trying to fight back the emotions just so he can get it out as trembling words.

“You think I know what to fucking do when two of my friends fall off a goddamn cliff? Because I don’t. And neither does Matt. Or Cole. Scott, I…I froze.”

I know how that feels. I’m rooted to the spot and my body feels like it’s full of rocks and one heart that’s beating as fast as a jogger on a morning run. I don’t speak. I can’t make myself, and I’m waiting to hear what he’s going to say because I’m still trying to piece it together, and I’m terrified that I’ve finished the wrong puzzle since the picture no longer looks anything like the artwork on the box that I feel like I’ve been staring at for the past thirty-eight days.

“Did you know she knows first aid and CPR? Because I had no fucking clue. She was halfway down to the ledge before I…even really knew what happened.”

By this point, his voice is slow and careful so he can keep it together, but his face is still soul-crushing. I don’t want to imagine how I must look. My throat has closed, and the only thing keeping my hands from shaking are my crutches because I’m gripping them to avoid falling into Hell as punishment for the things that I screamed at her.

“She made sure you were okay… Breathing… I don’t think I would have had the sense to call nine-one-one if she hadn’t yelled at me to.

“And then she went to him when Cole got him out of the water, and…and she tried, Morgan. She tried to save him too. A paramedic literally had to pull her away from him because she wanted him to be okay…”

I’m hollow and my eyes are blurry and punctured by a hundred needles. My words are tainted with leftover hostility, but they’re only as loud as the whispers of a mouse. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“Yeah, that’s what you wanted,” he says with a sarcastic edge to it. “When we tell you the worst thing you’re ever going to hear, you want her there? You want to be thinking about Selena? We all thought you’d just…be better off not knowing that she was the only one with her shit together when it happened. She insisted. You know she didn’t leave the hospital until she knew you were going to be all right? She only left after we knew that, and we couldn’t have made her stay for…literally anything in the world. ‘He’s not going to want me here.’”

My legs are going to give way, even with my crutches. I lean against Cole’s Cherokee that’s been baking in the sun, and my burning, protective layer becomes hotter, but I don’t care. I’m still fuming, and her image enters my brain, and those flames don’t stop because of all the shit I’ve had to put up with since I bumped into her that day in a middle school hallway. Her constant torment, and psychological warfare, and pranking, and verbal fistfights both in public and private places.

So why do I feel like the ultimate asshole right now?

Years have passed before I hear Bryson speak again in that tone that he used on me yesterday when he dropped me off at home after I’d failed. “Are you coming back in?”

My lips part to answer, but I don’t have anything to say. I’m too afraid that I’ll still lose it when I see her again because my fists still itch with a ravenous craving. And, even if she’s left, I don’t feel stable enough to go back inside to where I erupted, not when every single person witnessed it, their eyes turned on the scene. It’s the opposite of healing, but I refuse to let myself feel so I can answer him.

I shake my head. “I’ll wait out here.”

He goes back to the booth.

#yay screaming in public #book: interlude #wip: interlude #interlude excerpt #selena walton #morgan scott #writing #my writing

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lilibug--xx · 8 years ago

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something good will come

This is a missing moments bughead fic for 2x06, Chapter Nineteen: Deathproof.

Read it on ao3 here! :)

Thanks to @strix for being my beta, much much love. And to @a92vm for reading over my stuff, like always, and providing me with so much feedback and encouragement.

Betty felt the world turning below her feet, but it was like she was moving in slow motion. The anxiety, the guilt, the anguish; it was weighing her down, grinding her into the dirt. Black Hood was catching up to her, and she needed to turn the tables. She was going to take back her power, her friends, and her sanity.

“We’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

A sense of impending doom washed over her like a tidal wave.

It assaulted her with such fervor that she dropped the wrench from her hand with limp fingers. Betty heard the crack of it against the pavement, but it was lost on her. Her lungs were burning with the breath she couldn’t quite catch, and she grasped her hand around her throat. Green eyes were clouded with the steady stream of her anguish, her chest constricting and stuttering as the world started to quiet. Everything was muted, the only thing Betty could hear was the blood pulsing in her veins like the beat of a drum, volume steadily intensifying.

Betty slid down the brick wall of the building, the chill of the stone and air doing little to bring her to her senses. Her legs had carried her outside, away from the auto shop, away from Jughead.

The look on his face had broken her heart, splintering it into even more pieces.

Betty, you did the one thing that could actually hurt me...

His words were burned into her brain; the tense lock of his jaw, the dark bruises on his face, his split lip, and hunched shoulders. The bite of his words were stronger than she had anticipated. The shake of his head as he turned away from her, crossing his arms, had her lips parting to form words that wouldn’t come.

She wanted, needed, to get him through this race. Had to keep up this façade for the Black Hood a little longer. But Jughead was making it so very hard.

It would have been slightly easier if they didn’t have to see each other, but Betty was the only one who could help. Reggie had offered his car for the race against the Ghoulies, and sure, it was a gem on the outside, but it wasn’t sparkling under the hood. Archie had volunteered her services immediately after getting the okay from Reggie, blurting it out as they had all left the jingle jangle den the day before.

The grit of Jughead’s teeth was audible as he brushed past her, leaving them all behind. The clench of his fists as he rasped out for her to meet him at the Riverdale Auto shop tomorrow — today.

Betty had put on a brave face and had started out resilient. Her resolve started to break at Jughead’s tone, his words pushing her to a point she wasn’t going to be able to hold. He was right, he was vehemently right, and there was no denying it.

She had choked out an, I’m sorry, Jughead, before trying to tell him that she would explain eventually, but of course, he didn’t quite understand what she meant by that. Betty didn’t blame him — it was her fault, or rather, the Black Hood’s fault. She was just trying her best to keep everyone safe.

It was exactly like Archie had said; the Black Hood was torturing her. They were playing this game of check-and-mate and Betty wasn’t sure which piece she was playing anymore. She hadn’t slept, at least not without nightmares since Fred was shot, little more than two weeks ago. Everything kept her up at night, particularly naming Nick St. Clair to the Black Hood.

Once that phone call had ended, Betty had felt this tremendous guilt well up inside, threatening to spill out of her in an anguished howl. It had ebbed a miniscule amount when she recalled Cheryl’s situation,what Nick had done to her, and what he deserved because of it, but it was still there. It didn’t leave when she had ran to his hotel room to find him alive and well; and it certainly didn’t leave after talking to the Black Hood again.

She was nothing like that psycho, Betty knew that. Still, his words had haunted her. She was deeply unsettled, right down to her very core, when he had called her true colors beautiful.

It was eating her alive, twisting and thriving in her gut — all these feelings and no outlet. Betty had explained some things to Archie, but not everything, not every fine grain detail. She was lucky to have him; lucky that the Black Hood hadn’t made her step away from Archie first. He would be able to comfort Veronica, at least. Betty felt incredibly guilty over the way she had spoken to her.

She had only gone to Nick’s party for an opportunity to cut Veronica out in a public setting; one where her friend would be less likely to question her motives, and instead feel humiliated with their friends watching. The sadness reflected in those brown eyes when she told Betty to leave if she was such a monster, was overwhelming.

Broken and feeling like she was falling down a hole she would not be able to climb out of, she succumbed to the pressure and confessed everything to Veronica when the other girl pushed in the right direction, prodding Betty with decidedly a no-bullshit-permitted type of question. There was no way she was going to survive this if she didn’t have another force behind her. She felt a little better, at least, with Veronica knowing the truth of her torment.

Betty cried every night, and suffered from seemingly a permanent headache. Her hair hurt to wear up in a ponytail — it was suffocating and she swore she could feel someone tugging on the strands when no one was around.

Blindly, her hand reached up and yanked the elastic out of her hair roughly, the bun she had tied her hair into falling out and around her like a golden curtain. Tossing the tie to the ground, Betty brought her hands to her face, covering her eyes. Her fingernails digging into her forehead as she heaved a sob into her palms.

Betty could feel the grime on her hands mixing with the wet tracks on her face,feel the deep indentations on her palm from where she had been channeling her anguish, transferring it into physical pain.

“Betty?”

Her ears were ringing. The name like whispered caress through her muffled senses. It took her a while to realize it was her name, that someone had called.

Hands were pulling hers away from her face. Betty’s lips trembling, fingers shaking as she looked up to Jughead.

“ Betty…”

There was a soft echo in her ear, like he had been saying her name a little while, more than the twice she had caught it.

Through her blurry vision, his lips were turned down into an uneasy frown, eyes boring into her with a look of apprehension caught in their stormy mists.

Betty’s lungs were still burning, and she had realized now that she wasn’t even breathing her quick, shallow breaths anymore. Her lips parted in a rush and she sucked a gulp of air in, eyes going wide as she scrambled away and out from where Jughead had stooped down to her.

Shuffling on her knees away from him, Betty reached the edge of the sidewalk, leaning over it and staring into the loose gravel littering the road. She gripped fistfulls of the rocks, grinding them into her hands as she counted the little divots in the road, one by one.

By focusing on something else, Betty was able to better control her breathing as the dread eased back from its tight grip on her shoulders. She felt Jughead’s hand rest on her lower back gently, the bottom of his palm pressing against the skin of her back where her shirt had ridden up. The touch grounded her, the warmth of his skin a light in her blindness.

“Betty, breathe. Slowly, baby; in and out.”

His voice was raspy and despite everything, she could hear how distressed his tone was. She tried to do as he said; taking a breath and holding it longer, letting it out in a shaky exhale. She repeated it several times, all the while aware of the pad of Jughead’s thumb rubbing small circles into her back just above the waistband of her overalls.

Once the numbness went away from her limbs and her ears were processing normal sounds, did she realize she was leaning far into the road. He tugged her back and Betty released the rocks in her hands, sitting with a huff as her back collided with Jughead’s chest.

They were sitting on the sidewalk, Betty half in his lap with Jughead’s arms wrapped tightly around her middle. She had placed her hands on his thighs, gripping for purchase. Her head had fallen back onto Jughead’s firm shoulder, eyes sliding shut as she fought the sudden exhaustion she had been hit with.

The sound of his voice was soothing in her ear. Jughead was speaking softly, his lips hovering at her temple. The tips of his fingers pressing into her sides securely.

“On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars — Something good will come out of all things yet —”

Betty recognized the words; he had said them to her before. She had a similar episode when Polly had gone missing from the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, only they hadn’t been together then. Jughead had spoken them to her when she was cuddled into him in the backseat of her mother’s car, on the long and uncomfortably quiet ride back.

Betty had been on verge of a panic attack, but he had grabbed her hand gently within his own and slung his other around her shoulders. Jughead whispered the words into her ear, his breath tickling the skin of her neck. It had stopped her, made her think, to focus on something else other than her fears and her worry.

“—And it will be golden and eternal just like that—”

Jughead sighed against her, she could feel the gentle swipe of his fingers on her skin, sneaking under the edges of her shirt.

“There’s no need to say another word.”

He repeated the quote from “Big Sur” by Jack Kerouac again, the softness of his voice soothing the ache in her heart.

With her breathing back to normal, Betty turned in Jughead’s lap, her head nuzzled into his neck; she needed the physical comfort his arms brought. Betty breathed him in; the scent of pine, old books, a hint of aftershave — combined with the new addition of leather, eased her into a calmer state. Her hands tightly gripped the sides of the shirt he had borrowed from the auto shop.

“Juggie…”

He squeezed her tighter, hauling her against him. “It’s okay, Betty. We don’t have to talk if you’re not ready. I’ll wait.”

Betty’s eyes fluttered closed, her lips pressing softly against the hollow under Jughead’s jaw. She heard his audible swallow, felt his fingers twitch against her before he was clearing his throat and tugging her to stand.

“Let’s go inside, I’ll get you a water and we can take a break from the car for a while.”

She nodded, pulling herself, reluctantly, away from the warmth of Jughead’s body. Betty held onto Jughead’s arm as they walked back into the shop. The rest the day was a little bit different, but a little bit better.

It was still awkward, there was still tension; but Betty could see a light at the end of the tunnel. She wasn’t shrouded in complete darkness, there was a redemption at the end of this painful arc.

Andwhen Betty lay down that night, the tears didn’t come. The nightmares continued — she was getting closer to the Black Hood every night. This latest one was a crowd of people wearing black hoods and taunting her with the mistakes of her past; dangling her friends in front of her, just out of reach.

But each day when she woke, she was a little bit stronger. No matter the assault that the Black Hood was forcing on her, she was going to grow.

Betty took a cold shower to bring her senses out of their sharpened state before Veronica came over. They had searched her all too pink bedroom for something worthy of the unusually warm day. They decided on a pair of highwaisted denim jeans and white ruffled crop top. Veronica curled her ponytail for her and suggested a red bandana.

"Very Rosie the Riveter, I like it,” she ran a finger along the edge of the bandanna, smile lighting her face.

Veronica had clasped her hands behind her and smiled at her, their eyes meeting in the mirror. “It’s a look, but you own it my little grease monkey.”

Betty shooed the raven-haired girl away, eyes rolling.

They rode with Reggie, Archie, and Kevin to the agreed meeting spot. Of course it wasn’t exactly as low-key as FP would have liked. Considering it looked like a street party gathered around a group of cars and motorcycles.

Jughead was there, leaning against Reggie’s car, arms crossed over his chest. As they pulled up beside the car, Betty was able to admire the stretch of the leather across his broad shoulders. She got out of the car slowly, trailing behind everyone.

Once their peace was said and Tall Boy had announced it was time to get this show on the road, Betty grabbed Jughead’s elbow.

“Wait,” she called, and thankfully he turned back to her. They were standing further apart than she would like, but there were people looking at them. Betty eyed the group of Southside Serpents staring at them as they crowded around their bikes. She couldn’t quite decipher the look on Toni’s face.

Looking back up to Jughead, she began the words she had rehearsed.

“Before you get in the car, I need you to know…” she looked down at the gravel, toeing it with the edge of her converse. The intensity of his blue eyes on her was startling in this heat. Betty looked back up, wiping her sweaty palms on the backs of her thighs.

“I never stopped loving you, Jug. I’m not sure I can…” her voice was starting to crack and she gave a little shake of her head.

Jughead’s gaze softened then, his lip twitching as his eyes darted over to Archie a ways away. He brought his gaze back to her, not quite so dark as it had been before. The frown lines around his mouth eased up and she could see him hunch his shoulders into his slouched posture that was so familiar rather than the rigid stance he had been holding himself in.

“Also, remember…” Betty trailed off, she wanted to tell him everything. About the Black Hood, about her, about Archie, Veronica, Cheryl and Nick, and the Sugarman. But this wasn’t the time nor the place.

She wanted to tell Jughead to kiss her, to take her away for real, like they imagined at Pop’s.

With a tilt of her head, eyes squinting slightly in the light of the sun, Betty changed direction.

“Don’t ride the clutch and don’t let it slip between gearshifts, okay?”

Jughead shook his head at her, eyebrows raising slightly, “You’re an enigma, Cooper.”

He shuffled, taking a step towards her. His arm reached out as if to grab her waist and his head started to dip towards her. Betty’s stomach started fluttering in time with the fast beat of her heart. But, Jughead must have realized he couldn’t kiss her because he pushed off to her right before anything else happened, barely clearing her shoulder as he walked away. Her eyes caught the clench of his jaw before he passed.

Betty let out the the breath she had been holding. She had wanted nothing more for him to grab her and kiss her breathless, senseless. With a shake of her head, she turned around and moved to Veronica’s side. She tucked one hand into the pocket of her jeans and rested the other against Reggie’s truck.

She watched the cars rev their engines and she hoped she had done enough to give the car more of an edge that it had before. Betty was chewing her lip as Cheryl raised the flag with a flourish. They had all been cheering, running after the cars as they sped off. Her heart was in her throat as she stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a sharp whistle.

Betty shielded her eyes from the sun, standing with a hand on her hip as she watched Archie and Jughead, and the Ghoulies, disappear into the distance. Everyone had gone back to their spots, sipping on their cups of Trash Can punch that someone had brought in a big red cooler. She continued to stand there, in the middle of the road until she felt Veronica dragging her back towards their group of friends.

It didn’t last long, because Reggie’s car was coming back down the road — no Ghoulies in sight, but also entirely too soon. Something was wrong.

It turns out the police — Sheriff Keller — had been on the other side of the bridge. Archie had called the police prior to the race. Betty had winced, shaking her head. Of course, he hadn’t discussed that with anyone.

There was tension all around. Jughead and Tall Boy arguing, Sweet Pea getting in Archie’s face, Jughead and Archie standing chest to chest. The testosterone was a bit overwhelming.

They had to leave. Everyone was scattering and she saw Jughead heading for Reggie’s car. Betty turned to Archie with a look that she hoped he understood. Simultaneously saying this isn’t over, and why would you do that, Archie?, with her eyebrows as she pulled the passenger door open on impulse and got into the car with Jughead.

He glanced at her, but had opted against saying anything. Just peeled down the road and, yep, the car has some kick now, she thought as she pressed her back into the seat.

Jughead’s hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, ever so proper at ten and two. Green eyes traced the tight line of his arms up to his face. “Slow down, Jug.”

He relaxed at her voice, the tightness in his shoulders lifting as his lips parted in a quiet sigh.

“Let’s go home,” Betty offered softly, her hand reaching out and gently resting on his elbow. It was time for them to talk.

When they got to the trailer, they had settled in on Jughead’s couch and Betty took a deep breath. She welled up all the courage she had been saving during the car ride, her shoulders set strongly as she spun her tangled web of encounters with the Black Hood.

“...So, then the Black Hood told me to figure out who the Sugarman was. That if I could, he would stop, whatever this is, that he’s doing.”

Betty reached a hand up to wipe the tears that had started to fall from her eyes when Jughead’s hand grabbed her wrist.

She looked up to him, his eyes holding that soft look that made her insides melt. That look of vulnerability that always crossed his features when they talked about really serious things. Betty looked away, down to their hands.

Jughead had let her tell the whole story, her motivations and actions, her dealings with the Black Hood without interruption. He held her hand the whole time, thumb brushing her palm, over the scabs there.

Betty had started her story by turning her hands over for him. Jughead had kissed each one of her fingers and both her palms. Curling his hands around hers protectively, drawing her closer to where they were facing each other on the couch. She felt the tickle of Hotdog’s shaggy hair on her back where he was curled up behind her.

Jughead brought a hand up to cup her cheek, his fingers swiping at the wetness. Betty leaned her cheek into his palm, the comfort and warmth radiating all down her spine.

“I love you, Betty,” his voice flooded her ears, all soft and gentle, a tone reserved only for her. She opened her eyes, not realizing she had closed them. Jughead’s eyes had that look of vulnerability so reminiscent of the precious times they had proclaimed their love for one another. Her heart felt like it was bursting from her ribcage.

“I love you too, Jughead, I told you, I don’t think I—”

His lips were crashing into hers, the words she had been trying to say swallowed between them in the sizzle of heat. Betty’s eyes fluttered closed, as she leant forward, pressing her lips more firmly to his. Jughead dropped his hand from her face to slid around her waist, tugging her forward and into his lap.

They shifted together, Betty straddling Jughead as he stretched his legs out in the space she had made. She leaned him back against the armrest, pushing their chests together.

The steady beat of their hearts were in sync, and the warmth from their closeness was so uplifting; Betty felt the weight of the whole Black Hood situation leave her and she felt breathless. She wasn’t sure if it was their kisses that had grown so heated or her racing thoughts and fluttering heart that was making her so dizzy.

She did know that Jughead’s hands were sliding from her waist down and over the curve of her bottom, pulling her toward him with unrestrained fervor as he grazed her lower lip with with his teeth. Betty moaned quietly against his lips, Jughead’s hands squeezed her in response.

They lay on the couch, just kissing for what seemed like forever. Eventually they had settled down, with Betty laying on the edge of the couch, Jughead’s arm curled around her as they napped.

She had woken to the sound of her phone buzzing. It was laying on the floor, Hotdog snoring softly beside it. Betty wiped the sleep from her eyes with one hand and reached for the phone with the other. It had only been a couple hours since the race, but she felt the most well rested she had in awhile.

Phone in hand she settled back against Jughead’s chest. Glancing back at him she marveled at his relaxed state when he was asleep. No frown, no tension in his eyebrows, his eyebags looked better. Her heart was swimming with a wash of delight at seeing him like this.

Betty smiled as she looked to her phone. There was a couple messages, but notably one from Veronica asking to meet her at Pop’s.

Chewing on her lip, she turned a little in Jughead’s hold. She nudged him with her nose, nuzzling his neck.

“Juggie, I’m going to meet V for a quick milkshake and then I’m going home alright?”

He mumbled sleepily and she nudged him in the belly with her elbow. Jughead cracked an eye open at that, lips twitching.

“Yeah, heard you. Milkshake, home. Just call me okay?” his sleepy and slightly confused voice was almost her favorite.

Betty smiled at him, pecking his nose and lips several times with short kisses. “Yes, of course. I love you.”

“I love you too, Betty.”

And so she wiggled out of his embrace and dropped a blanket overtop of him as he stretched out in the space made available. Hotdog gave a yawn, blinking at her. Betty patted his head, running her fingers through his shaggy hair down his back.

“Don’t forget to make him feed you.”

“Hey, I heard that…” Jughead mumbled sleepily, swatting at her thigh.

Betty smiled, hand grabbing his and tucking it back to his chest.

“Bye, Juggie."

Later that night, her phone started to ring, as expected. Betty couldn’t help the smirk threatening to take over her face. The ring tone she had assigned to the unknown number making making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in response.

Their conversation went about how it normally did and then he asked for the name of the Sugarman. Betty’s hand clenched into a fist at her side. She held her resolve, kept her voice steady as she spoke about turning the name over to the police for real justice instead of facing the Black Hood’s execution.

“You’re playing a risky game.”

Betty shook her head, despite the fact he couldn’t see it. She walked to her window, looking out through the blinds to the empty street.

“Yeah, but it’s my game now,” her eyes scanned the dark points that the streetlights weren’t touching. Wondering if he was watching her. Her fingers twitched against the blinds.

“Which is what, Betty?” she could hear the indignation in his voice.

“A game that ends with me catching you.” Betty was confident, especially with her friends at her side. He wasn’t going to tear them or her, apart again.

“I found out who killed Jason Blossom. I found out who the Sugarman was,” Betty paused, letting her words sink in.

“You’re next, Black Hood. I’m breathing down your neck,” The inflection in her voice was unperturbed, chilling. She felt powerful; in charge of the situation.

“Can you feel it? ...Can you feel me?”

The phone clicked off and Betty let the smirk bloom on her lips.

Game on.

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyse you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” — Bernice Johnson Reagon.

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