serpent ♔ juliet

Betty knows exactly what she's getting herself into when she sees Jughead and the Jones trailer in the junkyard. She slams the door open and takes a glance around. There's lab equipment all over the place. The chemical odor is overwhelming when she initially breaths in and sits painfully harsh in her nostrils. Jughead is sunk deep into the couch to her right; his head dropped in his hands.

The deafening quiet, the tragic reality of all this entails, is deafening. Betty is shell-shocked and unsure about what to do next. She wants to run up to him, hug him, and reassure him that everything will be OK; they've been through worse before. But she's not so sure this time.

The content of his comment doesn't surprise her; none of this is indeed fair, and none of it is anything they should be dealing with. The fact that Jughead says anything at all surprised her. No one admits it, no one dares to say it, but Jughead was dealt the worst hand of all. They may both be on shaky ground right now, but he's always been dangerous.

Not when his mother abandoned him, and he was homeless and without regular meals; not when his father was charged with murder, then put away for murder; not when Betty spent all of second through fourth grade lying about the cost of lunch so she could buy too many snacks with her sandwich and claim she wasn't hungry when she offered them to Jughead. not when he was initiated into When he comes dangerously close to dying for the sake of their town's peace.

She moves closer to him, grabbing his trembling hands in her own and pulling them to her waist. Before settling, his fingers flex against the ribbed hem of her sweater and the exposed strip of skin beneath it. His heartbeat resonates through his fingertips, traveling into her flesh till they beat in lockstep. Betty hears his sigh of relief in the same fraction of a second that she feels them fall in rhythm, one of those insignificant details that seem impossible to detect in the grand scheme of things.

It's everything to her. It's a reminder that Jughead is her partner in all of this, to the point that their bodies are even aware of it. She knows he feels it too, albeit to a lesser extent in their day-to-day interactions, but more so now, in the heavier, more perplexing moments when he needs anchoring. She can see the tears in his eyes and knows they're the same as hers. Nowadays, it seems like someone is constantly sobbing. Or they want to weep if they aren't already.

"Juggie?" His gaze is locked on a location behind her head. When she follows his gaze, she notices the area where his "Rebel Without a Cause" poster used to hang. "How did it get here in the first place? When did our lives shift from being concerned about who would sit next to us on the bus to being concerned about drug lord mothers?" Betty winces, "And serial killer fathers.As well as uncontrollable cults,"

She holds his face in her hands and gently guides it to meet hers, wiping away some of the tears with her thumb. Before dipping down to kiss her, Jughead relaxes, even more, pressing his cheek into her hand and shutting his eyes. It's only a few seconds, but she can sense his nervous trembling as his lips slide over hers. More tears flow as he breaks away and reopens his eyes, but his voice remains firm when he speaks. "I'm happy you're the one I chose to be with, Betty Cooper since I'm stuck in this chaotic hellscape."

Betty's heart swells at the words, recalling the gentle look in his eyes when they stood on this similar site so many months ago and put words to the love they'd already felt for so long. She understands his agony over lost memories is for recollections like those, not the ones from his childhood, which he's only ever expressed bitterly. The crick in her neck she woke up with after falling asleep investigating and the sleepy softness of his voice is the first thing she heard in the new day; the moonlight shining through the curtains as she gripped his palms instead of her own and told him about the haunting phone calls; his broken voice asking her to stay, and the crick in her neck Betty woke up with after falling asleep investigating and the sleepy softness of his voice being the first thing she heard in the new day.

A radio plays something sweet and melodious in the depths of the junkyard, unfitting for the realities of their environment. Jughead then takes her hand in his and gently brings her closer to him, sliding his palm down her arm and twisting her in a slow swirl till he's hugging her to him.

Betty moves up close, her lips hovering over his. "Come on, Juggie, Make me feel seventeen."