The Dark

Skin on skin.

Smooth skin and rough hands. I pull.

I can't pull any closer. I can still taste tobacco on my lips and taste her hair on the tip of my tongue, her nails dig into my skin. Breaking of skin.

I can taste sweat in the air and the sourness of her perfume from her neck. My nose burns from the strong smell of vanilla. Her back arches just to get a little closer.

Tonight I sleep in a warm bed, satin between me and the rest of the world. No amount of math was going to separate me from the warmth of the sheets.

My nails dragged over the rough gap filled lacy bra. My teeth get caught too as I bite down.

The aftermath is filled with her laughter. I hate to admit it but I was enchanted by her, by her voice, by her laughter.

She talks about things that feel like the clashing of thunder. For such a small body her laughter booms like lightening, her hands feel like steady rain on my arms. Her kisses, well, how does one describe something so other worldly?

"How did we end up here?" I ask her.

"We left Archie and Veronica and came up here, don't you remember?" she answers me literally.

I shake my head against her, her hands smoothing over my hair, her cheer skirt tucked under my head like a pillow. "No, I mean, how did we get here? You and I, the only people on the earth."

She chuckles – she thinks I'm funny. I would tell a million ill thought out jokes just to get her to laugh at me, to think I was the funny one in her world. "If the earth was this room, then that would make sense."

Doesn't she see that this room was my world? My earth, her bed, my new home. The distance between her room and the floor of Archie's room which has been my home for a long time is so small, a twenty second walk but in this moment, the distance was great, there would be an ocean that could fit between here and there now, that's how I felt. "The earth is this room," I correct her.

"Oh yeah, and why is that?"

"Because you're in it."

Betty inhales deeply, causing me to shiver but my rough fingers still play against her skin, making her move closer to me. "You say so many things, sometimes I don't understand you."

"You don't like them?" I ask her, my lips against hers.

"I love them," she sighs. "You make everything better."

"You make everything better to me too," I tell her honestly.

"They say I need fixing – my mom and dad – I don't know if I do, but maybe I did. Who knows?"

I laugh quietly. "Everyone needs fixing, Betty, I'm sure you can think of a million things that they need fixing."

"I don't think I want to be fixed. Sometimes there's a lot of dark..." she trails off.

There was no dark in her, there were varying shades of colour pulsing through her, some deeper in tone, "You're not dark." I couldn't tell her about the dark that laced my own mind or how sometimes, in the spur of the moment, I try to salvage my own glue within in and feebly try and put things back together in my mind erratically. She wasn't the glue but she made me feel like I didn't need to keep erratically piecing myself together. "I love you," I whisper. "I love you," I try again with more depth.

"I love you too, Jughead."

I smile to myself. "I know I'm a little..." A little different. A little strange. A little off-rail. "A little weird..."

"A little?" she laughs.

"Well, yeah, a whole lot. But that's not what you're supposed to say," I say amusedly. "You're supposed to tell me how normal I am."

"I don't lie to you, Jug. You know that."

I was barely in the room. I felt like I had drifted into some sort of alternate world. Just me, Betty and the satin sheets. "Thanks for not humouring me."

She turns in the bed to look at me in the eye. "You know I mean it when I tell you I love you right?"

I nod against her forehead. "You're different," I say quietly. "I don't even know how to describe it. You're amazing."

She shakes her head. "Don't, I'm just me."

No, she doesn't understand. "You're like... I can't get enough air in my lungs or," I sigh, starting to feel stupid. "You make my mind spin, Betty. You make me want to ask you a million questions just to hear your voice."

"Jug," she says warily. "I'm not that great."

I couldn't stop talking about her. I needed her to know what I saw, to see what I see, to listen to what I hear when it was just us two in the universe. "Your like I will never get enough water or maybe I don't feel enough until I'm with you. And," I stutter. "And I know I'm more of a shell of an engineless car," she laughs at my comment.

"You are not!" she argues, beating at my chest. "You have to be the truest person I know."

I sigh and inhale, vanilla. "I just want you to know I might not have much to offer, but you feel like home."

She pulls herself closer to me. Never close enough. Her lips in the crook of my neck. "You're my home too, Jughead."

Author's Note: Just a little place for me to put a couple of one-shots in. I won't be investing much time to this as I am currently spending every waking moment on my other Bughead Fic, Vanilla Lips and Cigarette Tips so if you're interested, go and read that one. That story will be a full sized fic and has a lot of Betty and Juggie!