Chapter Text
The expressions are identical but stem from vastly different mindsets. The cause, though, is clear, the one-hundred and sixty pounds of gamy hare standing on their welcome mat, electric blue eyes and lopsided grin. To her mother, a grungy nightmare at odds with her color scheme. To her father, a potential prison sentence.
“Jughead Jones,” he says, introducing an open hand into the threshold.
She thinks her mother flinches, but Alice covers it up with a hand on her father’s shoulder and a vapid, blinking smile, her mind faulting for a harmless pleasantry. Her fingers dig into her husband’s shoulder, and Hal takes that as his cue, beaming in turn, snatching Jughead’s hand with his own. “Hal Cooper,” he returns with practiced courtesy, concealing his earlier apprehension. He knows who his daughter brought home to them.
“My wife, Alice,” he adds, releasing Jughead’s hand. On her mark, Alice manages a stiff ‘hello’.
“Thanks for having me,” he says, retracting his hand and placing it at the base of Betty’s back, his crooked smile remaining fixed on her parents.
Her father tracks the movement, but his expression doesn’t change, green eyes bright and intent and welcoming, unassuming family man, no shotgun in sight. No, it’s hidden on top of the door jamb to her father’s office.
“We’re happy to have you,” her father replies, stepping aside to let them into the foyer.
Jughead strokes her spine as he lets her enter first, wiping his feet on the welcome mat before stepping into the entranceway. “Lovely home,” he notes, helping Betty out of her light spring jacket and hanging it on the hall tree by the front door.
Alice wrings her hands, standing guard at the lip of the sitting room. “Could you remove your – hat?” she asks, tacking on an insincere please. When Jughead doesn’t immediately obey, she insists less than politely. “It’s rude.”
Eyebrows raised more in amusement than insult, her prince of bunnies sweeps his crown off his head, revealing the healing fissure running from his hairline to the top of his brow. “I thought this might be ruder,” he says, stuffing his beanie into his back pocket. “Not that I’m ashamed of it or anything,” he clarifies, sending a fond glance her way.
Alice squares her shoulders, smile tightening as she deliberates on whether to tell him to put the beanie back on or double down. The scar only magnifies the sloppy image he painted against the flawless backdrop of her Home and Garden apropos household. Her mother decides not to yield, that manners are more important. She tosses a phony thanks his way and leaves for the kitchen.
To grab refreshments, Betty hopes, not the shotgun.
“That must be some story,” Hal says, gesturing at the scar arcing up her jackrabbit’s forehead.
Jughead smirks, scratching the ridged skin around the sealed crack. “It’s not that exciting,” he confesses. “Just bad luck. A friend of mine got mixed up with some bad people. I was caught in the crossfire.”
After a few arrests, that was the conclusion of the authorities. Though there were no guilty pleas, Jughead’s father closed the case and left it there. Betty doesn’t know the man and woman officially charged with Jughead’s assault, but by reports in the papers, they were easy to blame.
Hal nods, taking a seat in the armchair by the fireplace. “Right, I read about that in the papers.”
Jughead slips Betty an snide look. Less than five minutes in the door and her father is already fishing. Jughead plops onto the loveseat opposite him, mirroring Hal’s crossed legs, ankle settled over knee.
“That’s about all there is to it,” he tells her father. “I don’t remember much.” He shrugs. How could he with his skull opened on the forest floor.
She hears her mother clattering about in the kitchen, obnoxiously dropping something on the counter. Unbuttoning her cardigan, Betty resists rolling her eyes. It is a ploy. Alice expects Betty to help like a good co-host, but what she really hopes for is the opportunity to interrogate her daughter about the plebeian interloper in the sitting room.
Not taking the bait, Betty seats herself next to Jughead, close enough their thighs touch. With no hesitation, Jughead lays his hand on her thigh, fingers curling around her bare knee. She wants to cup the back of his head and play with the hair curling against his nape, usually hidden beneath his beanie. He needs a trim.
Her father clears his throat and asks, “How did you two meet?” His foot rocking unhurriedly over knee with unfailing Cooper composure, he keeps his eyes above their shoulders, ignoring Jughead’s brazen affection.
Betty rests her hand atop her jackrabbit’s, an attestation. Index finger weaving infinity signs around Jughead’s knuckles, Betty hopes it sends the right message to her father. Jughead can touch her whenever he wants, whenever it pleases her. She isn’t the victim.
She doesn’t think Jughead notices, but her father’s jaw moves a fraction of an inch, top incisor clicking against the bottom, the same thing she saw him do during a dinner party after he’d found out his business partner was embezzling from the paper.
“Creative writing,” Betty says, tapping her own incisors together in retaliation.
Alice reenters with a full tea service. Setting the tray on the coffee table, she asks how Jughead takes his tea.
Her jackrabbit wrinkles his nose at the pot. “Ah, I don’t,” he confesses.
Alice freezes, glancing his way. “You don’t what?”
“Drink tea,” he elucidates. “Sorry.”
Her mother purses her lips. “We don’t keep soda in the house.”
Jughead chuckles. “While that’s a shame,” he says, squeezing Betty’s knee. “I do drink coffee.”
Betty moves to stand up. “I can make a pot, mom. I feel like having coffee anyway.”
Alice waves her off, clearly irritated, but then she spots her chance. “Yes, sweetheart, will you help me in the kitchen?”
Shit. Betty hesitates, her bottom two inches off the cushion. Her mother gives her that daring, cold smile. If Betty wants coffee, she must play for it. Betty’s throat starts to swell up just thinking about the flood of questions her mother plans to stuff in her mouth.
Jughead pats her thigh. “I can help you, Mrs. Cooper,” he offers, standing in her stead. “Betty will tell you, when it comes to making coffee, I’ve got the shine.”
Without waiting for confirmation, he gathers the tray and heads for the kitchen. Her mother’s gaze pokes at her, this isn’t over, but she follows Jughead out of the room. Grilling her rabbit alone is the next best thing.
Betty settles back into the loveseat, knees knocking as she realizes she must contend with another interrogator, the one with the better lie-detector.
“Sorry for the short notice,” she apologizes, which is to say there was none.
Her parents expected her but not the wiry hare affixed to her side. They were under the impression Betty would be giving up her apartment in Riverdale and returning home for the summer until she must report to Brown. With no explanation, Betty decided to extend her lease by a few months. Now, her father knows why.
“For the record, he does make great coffee,” she grants, knowing it won’t soften the blow, feeling the compliment settle impotently between them.
When she meets her father’s eyes, she sees what she expects. Not anger. Disappointment. “You didn’t take care of it,” he concludes, his tone low in case Alice and Jughead wander back too soon.
Betty presses her thighs together. The space Jughead vacated is still warm, but her knee and thigh are cooling. Without his proximity, she immediately loses heat.
“I can explain,” she tries, but he does it again, the incisor click, shutting her down. She forges ahead, knowing if she just breaks it down for him, her father will understand. “Daddy, it’s not what you think.”
Hal uncrosses his legs and stands, shuffling around the coffee table and assuming Jughead’s spot. He captures her hand between his own, angling his body towards her and blocking the view of the kitchen door. “Sweetheart, you can tell me,” he assures her, pulling her focus away from the distant sounds in the other room. “Does he have something on you?”
Betty recoils, trying to withdraw her hand. “What? Dad, no.”
“Betty, it’s okay,” he insists. “You can tell me. Whatever he has, we can fix this. What does he want? Money?” He glances furtively at the entryway to the dining room, ears peeled for any noise from the kitchen.
Betty surrenders her hand. Her father won’t release it until she explains. There is no point in lying about Jughead’s scar, how it happened. Hal would take it as an insult.
“He doesn’t want anything.” Just me. “He’s not blackmailing me. We’re,” she pauses, searching for the right word, what they are, what her father would find admissible.
“Partners,” she decides, flashing a small, reassuring smile. “It’s not what you think, I swear.”
The creases of disappointment in her father’s face deepen, his hold on her hand slipping away. “No, sweetheart,” he says, relinquishing her hand. “It’s not what you think.”
The tinkling of sterling silver against stainless steel jolts them apart. Jughead reenters with the serving tray, balancing a French press of sloshing hot coffee. “Round two,” he announces, setting the tray on the coffee table.
Betty wonders if he overheard their conversation, searching his face for a tell. There is none. The only thing that seems to register is that Hal has commandeered his spot, but her jackrabbit doesn’t stumble, politely asking her father how he takes his coffee.
“None for me, thank you,” her father says, relaxing into his seat. He rests his forearm on the loveseat arm and drapes his foot over his knee, unwilling to give the place back to Jughead. “I’ve had too much caffeine today,” he excuses.
Betty can see Jughead tamp his derisive chuckle. “Betts, how about you?” he asks, knowing full well how Betty takes her coffee, a small splash of cream.
She feels her father’s gaze scrape her cheek at the nickname, Betts. “Please,” she tells him, saying nothing when Jughead tips the tiny pitcher of cream into her cup.
Alice’s face pinches when she sees him pour the cream into Betty’s cup, her jaw tightening as her daughter accepts the saucer. “Honey, what about your lactose intolerance?” she mentions, less-than-innocently taking a seat on the couch, maintaining a full cushion and a half between her and Jughead.
Jughead’s blue blue eyes flash up at Betty in question, but she shakes her head. “It’s just a little, mom,” she excuses, taking a delicate sip. It was another of those fabricated ailments her mother bestowed upon her, up there with her attention deficit disorder and anxiety, along with a gluten allergy and sugar sensitivity, all make-believe.
Her mother narrows her eyes at her, but Jughead offers Alice a cup of coffee black, pulling her attention away. “Jughead,” she says, louder than necessary and scorn-filled. “You didn’t say where you were staying.”
Betty sets her cup on the saucer with a definitive clink. “He’s staying with us,” she declares, returning her mother’s cutting glare. This is getting old, walking on her eggshells, and Jughead has been nothing but polite and gracious. No one is ever good enough. “If that’s a problem, we’ll stay somewhere else.”
Her father pats Betty’s shoulder. “Sweetheart, of course you’re both staying with us,” he says, ignoring his wife’s scowl. “It’s no problem.” He shoots a meaningful, acquiescent look at Jughead, and Betty wants to yell at both her parents for misreading the entire situation.
“You can stay in the carriage house,” Alice says, compromising, daring Betty to argue. “It’s all made up.”
The guest house on the other end of the property, abutting the woods behind her house. Her mother might as well dig Jughead’s grave. She can already see the plan forming behind her father’s eyes.
“Fine,” Betty consents. “But I’m staying in the carriage house, too. That frees up a bedroom for someone else.” Half a dozen Coopers will be here tomorrow. The rest are staying with her grandfather across the lake, a larger and more stately property, but the family barbeque will take place here.
Her mother opens her mouth to argue, and her father appears in agreement, but Betty throws her parents a defiant glower. If they say no, then she will leave, even if it was Jughead that insisted they come here together. He wants her parents to like him, but she doesn’t know why, if it’s as simple and mundane or there is a play. With him, there is always a play.
Jughead intervenes, gently setting his cup on the saucer, no clink. “I know it’s not exactly conventional, so I understand if you feel more comfortable if Betty and I stay in separate rooms.”
He directs this statement at Hal, ignoring her mother’s building rage, the outburst on the horizon. It doesn’t sound like him at all, and Betty senses her own anger rising, his dissent, that he would circumvent her. Establishing boundaries and independence from her parents has never been easy, and he knows this. She expected some damned solidarity.
But then, her father waves him off. “Despite appearances, we’re not that conventional,” he admits, a glimmer of understanding in his green eyes.
“Besides, the view is better from the guest house, for the fireworks. It leads to our private dock on the lake, too. Do you fish, Jughead?” Unlike Alice, the nickname comes easier to her father. Unlike Alice, Hal is a better chameleon. Almost as good as her prince of bunnies.
Jughead sits back in his seat, taking his coffee with him. When he slings his arm across the top of the sofa, Alice instinctively shifts away. It is an involuntary movement, and Jughead appears to know it, not batting an eye.
“Not in a very long time,” he says, his gaze drifting to Betty, and she senses the pull, the desire for nearness.
She feels it, too, cinching her shoulder blades to her spine to combat the itchiness wriggling beneath her skin. She wonders if it will wane in time, this honeymoon phase. She wonders if she will get bored, her tendency, but so far, it seems impossible.
“They keep the lake well-stocked,” Hal continues, dropping a knife on the tether between Betty and her black jackrabbit. “Good-sized browns and rainbows. If we get up early, we can beat the heat.”
With the loss of eye contact, her jackrabbit’s knee jumps, but he swallows and recenters himself, tamping the agitated tremors vibrating through his thighs. He mulls his coffee black, cooling too quickly in the over air-conditioned Cooper house. “Sorry to say I’m not an early riser, Mr. Cooper,” he admits. “My body won’t allow it.”
This is true, and while Betty finds it mildly bothersome, mostly because of logistics, Hal doesn’t respect apathy. Right on cue, her father’s genial affect flattens into antipathy. He is making an effort, and from Hal’s perspective, her black jackrabbit is hopping circles around him.
He is, a little, but Betty doesn’t think he means to, trying to find the balance between honesty and receptiveness.
“We should still take advantage of the good weather,” her father reasons, hastily replacing the veneer of civility. “The best thing for the heat is going out on the water. Do you swim? Betty loves to swim.”
A good tactic, but Jughead won’t jump for the bait. Since his reveal, his former nervousness and timidity melted away, leaving behind a tough, inner core of confidence and conviction that Betty was the one for him. The only way I’m leaving you is in a body bag. He never wavered from this central dogma. He constantly reaffirmed it.
Despite his steadfastness, Betty is the weaker link in their partnership. She loves him without question. She doesn’t think she has ever loved anyone more than Jughead Jones, but her ideas about love and lust are a tangled mess. There are too many associations with violence and sadism, and while Jughead is sturdier than he looks, while he adores and derives pleasure from her baser urgers, she worries she will break him by accident, by her needs getting the better of her. The only way he can leave her is in a body bag, but it shouldn’t be too soon. Sometimes she hopes it will be never.
Betty stares at the empty spot between her jackrabbit and her mother. She would fit there. It takes everything in her not to suddenly get up and occupy the spot, decorum be damned. She is so cold; she might start shivering.
“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” Jughead admits, but her father quickly assures him he has a spare pair of trunks.
Jughead makes a show of thinking on it before smiling and tipping his cup at Hal. “Then, I’m in.”
It was a good tactic, but her father is lucky Jughead is a good sport.
Jughead finishes his coffee and moves to pour himself another. Before he does, he turns to Alice and asks if she would like a second cup, extending the offer to Betty as well. So polite. So generous. So considerate. When he needed to be. When it served him.
Betty wonders if he will manage to break her parents down by the end of this long weekend. So far, he is playing his cards right, but then that’s never been his problem, patience, playing the long game. However, her parents are stubborn quarry.
“I shouldn’t,” Alice excuses, covering her cup. “Not on an empty stomach.” She pauses here, considering the pot, the coffee still fresh. Folding, she gives her cup back to Jughead. “Why not? Lunch will be soon.” Her mother prefers tea, but she cannot resist a good cup of coffee.
Jughead slides a triumphant look Betty’s way, happily pouring her mother another cup. Betty finishes her own and slides it across the coffee table.
Jughead does make very good coffee. It is never burnt, never steeped too long. When he made it the first time at her apartment, heating the water on the stove and measuring the beans in the grinder, it was as if he had an innate sense of the water’s temperature, the exact timing for the correct grind. From then on, Betty couldn’t drink her own swill.
The remainder of teatime meanders along with small talk, softball inquiries about Jughead’s course load, plans after graduation. Her parents aren’t thrilled he plans to be a writer, and he has no connections, no prospects, but he tells them he plans to apply to a renowned program this fall and transfer out his last year.
It is a small program that only admits a handful of students and rarely accepts transfers, but Jughead is confident he can make his case to the program’s coordinator and main instructor, Dr. Rupert Chipping. He tells them every one of Dr. Chipping’s students either secure a contract by graduation or gain acceptance into one of the best MFA programs in the country.
“I’m building and finetuning my portfolio, and Dr. Chipping and I are already in communication. He liked the first set of samples I sent him and asked for more, so that’s a good sign,” he explains, finishing his last cup of coffee, the pot cashed.
Her father remains unconvinced, but surprisingly, her mother is warm to the idea. Did her jackrabbit spike the coffee with something? Betty doesn’t feel any different, but then, she is always warm to Jughead.
“I know it’s a hard industry to get your foot in the door, but writing is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do,” he says, clasping his hands between his knees.
Hal uncrosses and recrosses his legs. “Passion will only get you so far.”
Jughead smiles and nods, ceding that yes, there is an element of chance to it, riding on passion. “It hasn’t failed me yet,” he contends, gaze finding Betty’s.
Betty sets her empty cup on the serving tray and stands, rounding the coffee table to snatch Jughead’s wrist and pull him toward the stairs.
“I want to show Jughead my room,” she excuses in a rush. “I need to get some clothes and things anyway, if I’m staying in the guest house,” she reasons, tugging her bunny along.
Her mother calls her name, her full name, but quickly realizing Betty will just ignore her, she shouts that lunch will be in half an hour. “Thirty minutes, young lady!” Otherwise, she will march upstairs and throw open the bedroom door, no knock, no notice, the usual.
This unsaid threat is followed by a sharp, “Shoes!”
Betty sighs and kicks off her shoes at the bottom step. Jughead follows suit, but it takes longer, stopping to unlace his bulky boots. The moment his last foot clears the shoe, Betty grabs his hand and pulls.
“What’s so special about your bedroom has got you in a hurry?” Jughead teases, two steps beneath her.
He says this, but she can tell he is intrigued, craves a glimpse inside the space where Betty grew up. She was the same in his childhood bedroom, dissecting every detail form the fossilized disarray of his desk to the smell of his navy sheets on his twin bed. She stole a couple photos off his corkboard, too, right before he bent her over said messy desk and hiked up her skirt.
Her bedroom is the last one at the end of the hall, past the three guest rooms. Jughead asks who needs so many bedrooms, and Betty tells him her mother hosts at least twenty parties a year, not to mention the gaggle of Coopers driving in tomorrow. “I have a lot of cousins and family friends,” she tells him. “The Coopers run the length of New England.”
Also, she thinks her parents planned on having another child, but her father decided against it after Betty was born, perhaps knowing what she was, what she would be capable of, what she would do in time. The thought of having another child with similar inclinations would have been exhausting. Her mother, for her part, didn’t complain.
“But, there’s a carriage house,” Jughead points out, but Betty waves him off, telling him it is a historic property. There used to be a groundskeeper, decades ago.
Betty pushes the door open and lets him pass through first, hastily sliding inside and closing the door. Jughead shuffles to the middle of the room, taking it all in, the built-in bookshelves and cabinets, the tasteful watercolors, her orderly desk with more built-in organizers underneath. He always looks so discordant against the backdrop of her life, but she can no longer imagine him gone. The thought hurts.
“Neat,” he says, wandering to her bed. His palm grazes the coverlet, elegant, pink linen sheets peeking out from beneath a mountain of pillows. Her entire room is ecru and shell pink and muted florals, a doll house vision complete with a frilly bed skirt and lace doilies on her bedstands.
“Clean.” He swipes a finger across her desktop, and it comes away spotless.
Her mother regularly sends the cleaning service in here. She cannot abide a speck of dust in any part of her house. Even the places that don’t see a living soul for months, years at a time, should always sparkle.
Jughead smirks in response. “Too clean.”
At first glance. A capsule of alarm explodes in her gut when she suddenly remembers the photos lining her vanity mirror. She meant to take them down last time she was here. Should she show him, get ahead of it? He would enjoy seeing the dozens of images of her previous life, fleshing her out, and showing that no, Betty Cooper was not always that neat, that for one year she let the shiny surface crack, let someone crack her open.
The thought isn’t as comforting as she hoped, eliciting the wrong connotations, nullifying her expectations. Jughead wouldn’t find it naïve and charming. He would only see the blatant stupidity of it. Her father thought the same.
Betty sits on the edge of the vanity, partially obscuring the photos, but Jughead keys on the subversion, his ear always to the ground of her thoughts. He chuckles and approaches her, doesn’t bother moving her out of the way as he boldly plucks the first image catching his fancy.
Betty scrutinizes his reaction, searching for the first sign of revulsion. Predictably, it is a photo of Betty with Veronica posed at a Nick St. Claire party. At first glance, it doesn’t look like a rager, but the lighting and the shadows on the wall suggest as much.
Jughead studies their faces with intense interest, devouring every detail – the flushed cheeks and blown pupils, a wobbly, smug smirk on Betty’s face, a gaping, derisive grin on Veronica’s. They are wrapped around each other, grasping coltish teenaged-girl limbs, a plum lipstick smudge on Betty’s chin because Veronica was too short and drunk and missed her cheek.
Jughead flashes the photo her way. “Was this your first?”
Betty glances at the image, meets his electric blue eyes taking a peeler to her mask. “My first what?” Veronica wasn’t her first. She wasn’t a virgin when she met Veronica.
“Your first me,” he clarifies, turning the photo back his way, reanalyzing it.
“She isn’t one of us,” he concludes easily, but she doesn’t detect disappointment or contempt, like Veronica was a decent facsimile for what Betty was searching for at the time.
Betty laughs at herself. Back then, she didn’t know what the fuck she wanted.
Jughead replaces the image with the others, thoughtfully tucking it back into the rosewood frame. He casually peruses its neighbors over her shoulder, processing, cataloguing, summarizing, filling her out in his mind. What is his assessment? Is he surprised? Does this change his opinion, the ever-changing puzzle of her?
He doesn’t say anything, eyes moving unhurriedly from one image to the next. Betty with Nick St. Claire at the same party, his arm around her waist, his hand on her ass. Betty with Archie Andrews and Veronica after a football game, still in their cheerleading uniforms. He leans forward to piece apart the way Veronica looks at the honest puppy-eyed boy-next-door, the shock of sweaty red hair on his head.
He seems to linger on one in particular, and Betty glances over to see which one arrests his attention. A photo taken by Veronica, of Betty wearing nothing but a white t-shirt and pink, lacy underwear, her hair loose and cascading around her shoulders, smiling deviously at the camera, taken after – Betty shreds her thoughts, watching them flutter away like paper.
“You’re right,” she tells him, sliding her hands up his stomach and nudging him forward. “She wasn’t like us.”
His eyes brighten with understanding, catching the tense. A grin threatens to carve up his pretty mouth, but she gets a fistful of his shirt in either hand and guides him away from the vanity, the photos. Talking about Veronica always feels like a fruitless effort, and they’re walking too far down memory lane.
“Another time,” she promises him. “I don’t want to spoil the moment.”
His gaze remains on the photos over her shoulder, and she wonders which one holds his interest the most, if it is that one, the insolent affection on Betty’s face when. Stop.
“Do you want story time, or do you want me to go down on you, Jughead?” she wonders, backing him up toward the bed.
There is the small, enticed smile, her words tugging his attention back, but his curiosity hovers on the mirror.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” she reminds him.
To her, the array of photos looks like those memorials people set up at the location of a person’s death, vibrant and well-tended at first but quickly abandoned, forgotten, the photos yellowing, becoming soggy in the rain, the penned captions on the back bleeding away. There are the dried violets Veronica pressed for her crumbling in the small plastic baggy. One of the pearl studs she gave Betty for Christmas missing its backing.
It is a neglected shrine to Betty’s first failure. She wishes she could chalk it up to run-of-the-mill teenaged mishaps, dreadful first loves that linger like a bad smell she thought she’d cleaned a million times, so many times now that she wonders if the smell has been gone all along but now melded to her memory. Removing the photographs wouldn’t get rid of it.
“You don’t want to?’ she asks, allowing her want to wash out the ghosts at her back.
“Conceptual symmetry,” he muses in response, letting her push him, forcing him to sit on the edge of her childhood bed, a full-size queen.
Betty drops to her knees on the high-pile ivory carpet, chosen by her mother after months of deliberation, regularly deep-cleaned.
She remembers the stain Jughead left on her comforter, the rest of the stains they left on one of her favorite blouses, the scraps of which now live inside another memory box beneath her bed back in her apartment.
She decided to stay through the summer, wanting as much time with him as possible before she had to leave for Providence. The logistics of long-distance irritate her, the thought that she won’t see him everyday anymore. She wants to leave their mark on more places, on things she can return to while they are separated. She needs memories to fall back on, little tastes to get her through the inevitable drought.
Could she leave an irremovable stain on this her mother’s cherished carpet?
Betty laughs at herself. Alice would replace the entire swath. Her mother tolerated the photos and decaying chotchkes, because she didn’t see the same thing Betty did. To her, it was evidence her daughter wasn’t always a social alien. The carpet, however, is still Alice’s domain.
Her black jackrabbit cards his fingers through her hair. She feels him studying her, more preoccupied now than he’d been when he couldn’t tear his eyes away from those photos.
“This is new,” he points out.
“What is?”
“You. Like this.”
Distracted. Flustered. Upset. Not by him, though. By ghosts. By the things she believed couldn’t reach her anymore, not now because she had her prince of bunnies. She thought she would guide him to her bedroom, and it would lead them here, on her knees, thrilled to fulfill another one of their fantasies. She hoped her youthful foibles and indiscretions would be something to laugh about, not ruminate, not rue.
“What are you thinking?” she finally asks, reluctantly tapping at the black box of his mind.
Betty smooths her hands up his thighs. She considers reaching her arms around him, holding him, burying her head in his lap, and not in the way she intended only a few moments ago. Sometimes she hates the comfort she seeks in him, hates craving that warmth, and afterwards she feels like a sedated kitten, pliable and unrestrained but still her.
Betty does it anyway, curling herself between his knees and draping one arm over his thigh, sighing when he continues stroking her head. He reaches all the good spots at the base of her skull and behind her ears, and she relaxes into the contentment of having his hands on her. This easy intimacy between them, it still baffles her, that she can wrap herself up in him and not feel weak.
He doesn’t laugh at her, not even an amused chuckle, and it makes her feel okay to be like this, that it is okay to ask him anything, trusting he will be honest with her. Those photos and the Betty in them shouldn’t be a source of shame but a sign of growth.
Since that night after the graduate, Jughead doesn’t screen his thoughts. Sometimes she is stunned but intrigued by what comes out of his mouth, wholly unfiltered, equally sharing his ugliest thoughts with his most tenderhearted. With her, everything appears to be on the surface, and she wonders if that’s her influence, if like her, he also feels permitted because she returns his affection and accepts him. To be honest, when he tells her his darkest thoughts, she never feels more seen. Or loved.
“I want to be a little envious,” he admits, glancing at the photos of her and Veronica. “But – and don’t take this the wrong way – I find it adorable.”
She balks. “Adorable?”
“You feel more than you give yourself credit for, and every time you try to cover it up with me, you fail,” he explains. “That comforts me. You can’t pretend with me.”
Betty presses her cheek into his knee, picking at the fraying ends of his jeans. “You don’t make it easy.” She would never do this with anyone else, nestle, burrow herself inside them, let them see her like this and live.
On cue and without knocking, Alice Cooper barrels into her bedroom. Sighting Betty between Jughead’s legs, she opens her mouth to screech, but then the rest of the details filter in. Both are fully clothed. Betty’s lipstick is untouched. Jughead’s jeans are buttoned and zipped. And her daughter is – cuddling. Cuddling.
Shrinking away from Jughead, Betty straightens her blouse and smooths her hair. She hides her eyes from her mother, but Jughead – Jughead keeps his hand on Betty’s shoulder. He levels a cold stare at her mother, accusatory, like she is the intruder, the rude one, but also, unabashed about being seen in this position, daring her mother to say something.
He knew her mother was on her way up here, and he didn’t care if she saw. He has a private algorithm for determining when it was important to hide themselves and when it wasn’t, but Betty thinks he also just doesn’t care. What they have is something her mother will never understand, will never experience, and by the look on her face, Alice knows it.
Bit by bit, Betty begins to understand this long game. He explained some on the drive up, that he wanted her parents to like him. Incredulous, she asked him why that was important and that he might be hoping for too much. Her parents rarely approved of anyone she brought home. No, Alice was the only one allowed to introduce Betty to anybody.
‘It’s okay,’ he assured her, slouched in the passenger seat, and watching her with heavy eyes, on the verge of a nap. He got sleepy on long car rides, like a little kid. ‘I’ll make it happen.’
Her gaze flitting back and forth from the road and his relaxed face, she wondered what he meant by that, and then he asked her if she wanted her parents to like him. Asking her like that, his beanie sliding up the side of his head, black rabbit fur spilling out, he looked so hopeful.
‘I do,’ she admitted quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. Despite so many years of attempting to crawl out from beneath her parents’ expectations, on some level, she still cared about their opinion of her, especially her father. It didn’t mean she liked it, caring.
‘I think my dad will like you,’ she predicted, injecting more hope than precedent would allow. ‘It might take some time.’
If Betty loved Jughead, she hoped her father would recognize that as a stamp of approval, see Jughead as a peer and not a threat. By her father’s attitude during mid-morning tea, she guesses it will take longer than she anticipated, which was fair. Betty’s track record isn’t great. She was wrong about the first one, but, though she hates to admit it, she was young and naïve.
Yet, the more time she spends with Jughead, the more certain she becomes that he is her perfect counterpart. The inescapable need to be near him is terrifying but demonstrative of the depth of her affection. Betty never wants to be near anybody, can barely stand to be touched by anyone who is not a victim, but that intense need transcended her jackrabbit’s near-death and hasn’t lessened in the months following.
And he digs, digs so much, but she lets him because he never shies away from any newly uncovered aspect of her, even the ones she thought made her weak and fallible. Especially now, when he cradles Betty, disquieted, and in her own way, grieving, and he doesn’t look down on her.
As time passes, she is finding out, too, how little she cares who sees them, sees her like this. She feels cloaked by his conviction that every iteration of her is perfectly acceptable, adored. But also, what they have, what they share, overshadows the petty and ignorant opinions of others, including her mother.
Betty lets herself lean into Jughead’s touch, reaching up and folding her hand over his own, sealing it to her.
Her mother’s only response is, “Lunch is ready.”
Watching her undress, Jughead obsessively strokes the pair of silk pajama bottoms Betty brought from her bedroom. She unzips her skirt and shimmies it down her hips. Jughead tracks its descent, staring at the pool of liquid fabric around her feet. He barely registers her grasping hand bidding for the pajama shorts. Reluctantly, he surrenders them.
Wiggling the shorts up her thighs, she feels the heat of his gaze on her legs, eyeing his fidgeting fingers, needing something to work over. During lunch, he couldn’t stop looking at her like that, like he wanted to strip her of everything, skin included.
Betty lets the elastic of the shorts snap against her hipbones. His fingers twitch in response, and it elicits a small twinge of excitement in her thighs. She feels much more eager now. The distance between the Cooper home and the guest house lessens some of the pressure on her thoughts, the phantoms in her bedroom, her father’s unmoving scrutiny, and the edges her mother loves to impose on her. Speaking of her mother –
“Did my mom say anything to you?” she asks, unbuttoning her blouse. “When you were in the kitchen alone.”
Jughead leans back on his hands, legs splayed open in invitation. He watches her dress for bed like he doesn’t understand why she bothers. As soon as her back touches the mattress, he plans to divest her of the silk pajamas in record time.
Earlier in her bedroom, he didn’t pester her for that blowjob, but now, it looks like he wants to crawl inside her. She wants to see if she can beat him to it, and by the smile carving up the side of his face, he senses the challenge. Sometimes he was too receptive to her headspace. She can’t hide from him.
“How long I expected to live,” he says, resting his head on his shoulder, contemplating the valley of skin between her ribs.
Betty gapes at him. “Really?”
He chuckles. “No, but your dad might as well have. He looked at me like I should be stuck on the spit and roasted for the barbeque tomorrow.”
As he says this, he rubs himself through his jeans, and now she wants to laugh. “Does the idea of being roasted and served to fifty Coopers get you hard, Jug?”
He hums, continuing to massage himself, fingering the button of his jeans. “The idea of being roasted and eaten by you, yes,” he corrects, finally finagling the stubborn button from its slit and unzipping his pants. Making a show of it, he licks his palm and slides his hand beneath his jockeys.
Betty snorts, even though she finds the prospect alluring. She always enjoyed a roasted bunny.
She lets her blouse slide off her shoulders, watching him pull out his cock, heavy in the spit-slicked palm of his hand. “If I said I wasn’t in the mood for sex,” she says, letting the open-ended suggestion dangle.
His knowing smile elicits a tiny lick of pleasure low in her belly. “Doesn’t make a difference to me,” he tells her with a shrug, stroking himself at a leisurely pace. “Keep getting ready for bed.”
She smirks and reaches behind her, unhooking her bra, catching the little hitch in his breath, gaze glued below her chin and eagerly waiting. When she removes her bra, he laughs short, breathlessly, leaning forward like it will give him a better view. She is only five feet away, and the lights are on, but he narrows his gaze like it will sharpen his focus. Or it is the effort to control his pace.
Betty’s eyes fall on the pajama top lying on the bed next to him. She knows if she asked him to toss it to her, he’d scoff, grin like she should know better.
“Is your dad going to kill me?” he wonders aloud, continuing to work himself over, a strange thing to say with his hand on is dick.
He traces her gaze to the pajamas beside him and plants his free hand on the silk, thumb working at the soft fabric as his other thumb slips over the head of his cock. Betty hums quietly to herself, smoothing her palm across her belly, nursing the little pulsing glow slowly building there.
“No,” she declares firmly, licking her lips. Her father doesn’t get to touch him. Not if she has a say in it. “No one else gets to do that.”
He groans in agreement, a lazy smile wavering on his face. “Good.”
He closes his eyes momentarily, and she uses the opportunity to make a grab for the silk top, but his hand immediately constricts into a fist. Before she can sidestep him, he releases his cock and hooks his arm around her waist, yanking her forward. As soon as his lips close around her nipple, she is gone.
Running her fingers through his hair, she cradles him against her, gathering the shoulder of his shirt in her other hand and pulling it upwards. “You’re my rabbit,” she reminds him, and he moans against her skin, popping off her breast long enough to let her remove his shirt.
You’re my prey, she asserts to herself, possessively carding her fingers along his scalp, sighing into his mouth on her skin.
Until asked, her father should know to respect this boundary. She never questioned his quarry, never interfered.
He suddenly ropes her onto the bed, pressing her back against the mattress. Giggling, Betty tries to wrangle him into a kiss, but he slinks away, tucking his fingers beneath the elastic of her pajama shorts and peeling them down her legs. His lips follow their path, teeth knocking over the nob of her knee. Impatiently, he untangles them from her ankles, frustrated that she bothered putting them on in the first place.
He rids himself of his jeans and jockeys and quickly retakes his spot between her legs, blocking her attempt to manipulate him into another positions. Without preamble, he slides home, groaning into her collarbone. Betty grabs his ass, holding him in place for a moment just to enjoy the completed, glowy feeling in her stomach.
He nuzzles her breasts, teethes one nipple, savoring this brief, satisfying moment right before the climb. Betty strokes the back of his thigh with her foot, bidding him to move, and the first thrust sends her thoughts dissolving into tiny buzzing atoms of sensation, snowy and bright like late-night static. She barely notices his attentions never make it above her neck, too engrossed with her breasts and painting her in a palette of purples and reds with brushstrokes of his teeth and feral enthusiasm.
“You’ve got a problem,” she teases, panting, squeezing his ass.
He chuckles, trailing light pecks along her chest, teeth bumping over her clavicle. “I didn’t get this nickname for nothing,” he quips, bracing one hand beneath her jaw to hold her in place and sealing his mouth over her own. He swallows her giggle, knowing full well he didn’t get that moniker because he was obsessed with tits.
Heat. His mouth tastes like the word, liquid heat. It drives her insane, that she can’t help herself, her whole body orienting itself to him, craving that heat and light, needing it to fill her up, wash out the cold spaces. When he tries to pull away, her mouth follows him, undernourished, requiring more, all of it.
Betty never thought she could feel anything outside of killing someone, nothing but small tastes and blips of faded emotion. The only time she ever felt something that didn’t involve killing was with her father, but even then, it was never intense, neve as raw and electrifying as squeezing the life out of something.
Now, with her prince of bunnies, she feels more in one day than she ever felt in one month. It makes her heady, high on him. The only thing that would make it more perfect was –
“Jug,” she gasps, clutching at him, her knees tight against his flanks. “Will you?” A harsh thrust hits just right, making her tongue feel too full for her mouth.
She struggles to gather her wits, whining as he builds her up. “Can we?”
He picks up the pace, taunting her, punishing her for being incapable of forming one clear, cogent thought while he fucks her. When they are like this, when he is the one doing the swallowing, she can’t think in a straight line. The line must wiggle and weave around the waves and clutches of her pleasure, laboring along a circuitous route until it makes the connection with her mouth.
“What do you want, Betts?” he whispers, burying his hand in her hair and fixing her head to the bed.
“I want to,” she tries again, grabbing his waist in an attempt to slow the pace, but he laughs and grabs one of her hands, pinning it above her head.
“You can do it,” he encourages, his lips next to her ear, roughly, meanly rocking his hips into her. “Tell me what you want.”
With her free hand, she grabs a fistful of his hair, tugging at it to provoke a retaliatory groan, distracting him long enough to assemble her thought. “I want to kill someone with you,” she finally gets out.
Recovering easily, he resumes his previous pace, rocking harder. He lets her pull his hair, grunting breathlessly with each tug, annoyed but aroused by it. One hand slithers between them, two fingers finding her clit and ruining her, her brain stalling on this thought like a skipping record.
“Together?” he muses, panting against her lips, studying ever tic and reaction on her face.
“I want to kill someone together,” she repeats like a mantra, closing her eyes, yanking on his hair without thought as she loses herself. “Together.”
He moans long and low at the word, releasing her hand to grab her thigh, his thrusts growing more urgent, and she covets this feeling, like he’s trying to shove himself up inside her stomach. “Together,” he repeats, voice trailing off as he loses himself, too.
There will be blood. It is the first image that leaks into her mind, washing it out with rich red. She wants so much blood. Like Sweet Pea. Hot and pulsing and everywhere, the intensity of the color, the visceral aesthetic, the potent symbolism of it.
Betty tips her face upwards, imagining the rush of it down her neck and breasts, pooling in her navel, Jughead licking it out.
Her thighs contract, knees digging into his hips. “Together,” she mewls, visualizing his manic blue eyes on her as she swipes the blade across their prey’s throat, watching the skin and connective tissue and muscle give way to a pulsing, thriving flood of blood.
That final thought unravels her, the admiration on his face, the directness in his gaze. He wouldn’t look away. He’d be mesmerized by it, by her. Partner. She almost screams, but she opens it silent to the ceiling, feeling the full force of it inside her body anyway.
Jughead gives a few more thrusts and then lets go, too, bottoming out inside her. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, embedding her nails and anchoring herself to him. He curses in her ear, letting the last few phantom spasms of pleasure work through him.
In a moment, he wraps a fistful of her hair in his hand and wrenches her head back, crushing his mouth to hers. His tongue dives inside her mouth, pressing against the points of her incisors, wanting her to bite him, and she does, hard, groaning when she gets the first hit of iron.
“Betty,” he breathes against her mouth, gaze heavy-lidded, sedate and satisfied. “Okay,” he decides, sweeping his thumb along her spit-slick bottom lip.
“Okay?” she wonders.
“I want to,” he continues, tipping his forehead against hers. “Kill someone.”
Betty massages the back of his neck, fingers sifting through sweaty but soft black rabbit fur. “Together?”
He smiles with lethal fondness. “Together.”
She smiles back, moving to give him a small, thankful kiss. But, then she ventures, "How about this weekend?"