(and it's enough) to be young and in love
by Raptorlily❤
"You're joining the Southside Serpents now?" Betty says when he shuts the door. He's still wearing the jacket and a flash of electric cold punches her shoulder, makes the muscle in her jaw twitch. She has no idea what she's feeling anymore. She's frozen in place.
Something skitters across Jughead's face. Uncertainty. Shame. Like he didn't realize he was making a decision until it was made for him. The jacket a kind of symbiote, melding to his frame and it fits—a maturation. The final flourish at the end of a signature line.
Then his brow hardens and his lip twists.
"Would it change things between us if I did?"
"Jug—"
"Would it?"
She falters, falls back a step at the serrated edge to his tone. Her heart is pounding. Where is the sweet Jughead Jones with shimmering eyes and 'I love you's' on his lips? The Jughead Jones that not all of five minutes ago was roughly pinning her to the kitchen cupboards, ravishing her lips and neck and collarbone with lips, teeth and tongue?
The Jughead Jones tearing into her in Archie Andrews' garage, snapping at her like a cornered animal.
They are one and the same.
The realization is like the jarring burst of an incandescent bulb.
She narrows her eyes and her nails scrape against her palm; she bares her teeth at him, every word a leaden cudgel. "Why do I always feel like you're testing me?"
"Why do I always get the feeling that you're going to run?"
"Is that what you've gotten from all this?" She takes a menacing step closer. "After everything?" She's shaking her head and looking around the trailer, looking for some sort of god damn sign that this is a joke, some 5 am anxiety-induced nightmare. "You just told me that you loved me because I don't give up. Now you're going to take it back?" She cants her chin in challenge. "You're going to doubt me?"
Her hands are slick. There's blood squeezing out from between her fingers, running over her knuckles in bright, crimson rivulets and she doesn't care if he sees.
Jughead's expression mangles into abject horror.
"Stop that," he whispers. "Betty—stop that, please."
She's shaking her head at him, her whole body vibrating with icy fury.
"I can do everything to the very limit of my being and it will always be too much or too little for someone. I'm so sick of it. I'm sick of it!"
Jughead's eyes are red-rimmed and lunges for her, wrestling her against him. She resists, squirming away violently at first, but she knows now that he's stronger than he looks and he holds her fast, his grip on her wrist almost bruising as he brings up her hands and forces them open. There's blood everywhere and it shines slick on the leather sleeve of his jacket, smears against both their palms and it absurdly looks like they'd been finger-painting.
It's reddest under her fingernails.
She meets his eyes defiantly and his face snarls.
"Stupid," he snaps at her and cursing her further under his breath, he drags her bodily into the kitchen where he pushes her hands into the sink. She's not used to him handling her like this and a reminder of earlier has a lick of heat lashing between her legs even as the water pinks under the tap and the fresh gouges on her palms sting so acutely they force a fresh crop of tears into the corner of her eyes.
His body is a line of solid heat and sinew at her back. She can feel his heart thundering in his chest; his breath in her ear.
"I'm sorry," Jughead says and his voice shakes with his hands still holding her wrists. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking."
"It's just a jacket," she whispers, because she's not thinking about what it implies, what it means for him to wear it now that FP sits in prison because he won't name names and the whole damn town is poised to tear in two. She's spent all week exposing the lies, imploding secrets, tearing to pieces the things left omitted and editorialized. She's tired of hunting for truths when the most important truth of all is staring her straight in the face and she isn't meeting it with open arms.
She hates that he's going to Southside High and they won't see each other every day; that he won't be there at the Blue & Gold or next door at Archie's, just a quick text and a ladder-carry away. The physical distance is painful enough. She's tired of people knocking on doors and pulling them aside and wondering if this is what she—they—really want. She knows what she wants. If anyone else shows up tonight, they're getting a heel to the chest, she doesn't give a god damn who it is—her mother, Veronica, sheriff Keller, a B-movie mob with torches and pitchforks.
They can all go to hell. Everyone. The whole town.
Jughead doesn't say anything. He roots around in a drawer for the first aid kit and shuts off the taps as he treats her hands with polysporin and a few weaves of gauze.
She tilts her head back to look at him.
"Jug."
His face is open, vulnerable. "What is it?"
"Don't shut me out. I'm terrified you're going to shut me out."
He steps back from her and for a moment she goes cold with fear, and she thinks this is it, this is her heart shattering into sixteen glittering pieces again, just as they're falling back together but instead, he's peeling off the leather and tossing it aside.
"It's just a jacket," he tells her. "I meant what I said, earlier. I would've passed on Toledo." His voice cracks. "I will pass on anything and everything if it means—"
And then she's on him, helping him out of his shirt again, then the buckle of slacks, fighting with it and following him as he walks them backward in the living room to finish what they've started. Her palms stretch and sting and she lets out a hiss and he stops to check the bandages. Satisfied to see them clean, his kiss feathers the inside of her wrist and he doesn't even try to hide the slight curve to his mouth when he says, "okay, you're not using these." He reaches for his belt and whips it free out of its loops and all Betty can feel is the flare of white heat between her legs.
Her shirt and bra are off when he lays her out half-naked and open to him on the couch. He raises her arms over her head and ties the belt at her wrists—loose enough that she could wriggle free if she wanted to, but securely enough that says, 'trust me.'
(And rough enough that she remembers who his father is, where they are, the leather jacket on the floor, and that this isn't what good girls do).
It's not their first time. Nervous and sweet, the early grey morning light pouring through her bedroom window, soft whines soaking into the feathery down of her duvet and pink wallpaper on the walls, Jughead hovering over her, trembling, gentle, concerned. Slow. Slow. Slowly. Quietly. Oh! Right there, right there. Are you ok? Did I hurt you?
This is different. There's a different charge in the air. Everything is laid to bare between them like a gun on a table and there's no armor. It's raw, visceral, something with teeth.
He sucks kisses down her neck, her collarbone, nips and suckles and licks over her ribs, breasts and sternum. One hand splays at her throat, large and warm, while the other works beneath her skirt, over cotton panties at first. Until she keens for him, gasping, lifting her hips off the couch and sighs, 'yes, Juggie, please,' and he swoops down to bunch up her skirt at her waist, replacing his fingers with his mouth, lipping her through the fabric before laying the flat of his tongue against her and inhaling loud and sharp.
She isn't sure when she knotted her fingers into his hair, but it turns out he likes it pulled. Loves it when she tugs, lets her guide him this way and that. 'Like that, yes, there, oh god yes.' He groans against her, the sound coming with a blast of heat from his mouth, and he wrangles her underwear to the side and splits her like a ripe peach.
The rest is a blur. A white blank of pleasure.
The pants and boxers come off and the belt strains against her wrists and she somehow ends up straddling him, his neck caught in the loop of her arms. She controls the whole frenzied game of inches, moving so hot and so fast and breathing and gasping and panting until fuck they need to interrupt because they realize they forgot something. It's a wild scramble for Jughead's wallet next—a race to get back inside and safe and oh.
They lay face to face after, just breathing together and skin against skin. She can hear their heart beats slowing down. Jughead traces paisleys on her skin from rib to hipbone and the way he looks at her almost makes her want to cry.
"I love you," he says, as if it were at all necessary, as if she weren't able to see it or feel it or taste it in the air for herself. She knows. She felt it settle in the center of chest, a premonition, that this—him, them together—was meant for her.
"I really do," he adds, taking a bandaged hand into his and kissing it reverently. "So much I can't—I can't even express it."
Betty kisses him softly and touches his cheek. She understands. She knows. She feels the same.
"We'll be okay, Juggie," she whispers.
He tells her he believes her.
Outside, it continues to rain.
Thoughts and comments always appreciated ❤