Author's Note:
From the "Writing Prompts" list, prompt 46: "I just need to be alone right now."
An angsty interpretation was requested.
"I want to say yes," Betty told him again, pacing her carpet with her nails digging into her hairline.
"Then say yes," Jughead urged with a smirk and a nonchalant wave of his hand, like everything was easy. She felt her nostrils widen as she shot him a warning look.
"I'll admit you made it sound simple," she allowed, wondering if she was getting rug-burnt toes, "but you had to know I'd need time to seriously consider becoming Serpent Queen. A 'yes' given while I'm nestled away with you, high on post-coital endorphins can't just be taken at face value."
Jughead's mouth slowly turned down.
"You didn't mean it?"
"That's not what I said!" Betty stopped, bracing her hand against the wall. "I meant it with all my heart, Jug, but now it's time to get my brain involved."
"This is ridiculous. You officially joining the Serpents makes practical sense. I need you near me, I need to be able to prote―"
"To protect me?" she finished, turning her head to give him an incredulous look. "No one can protect me, Jughead. Not when our villains live within the same walls we do."
"Betty, that isn't true." Jughead rose from her window seat, where he'd been perched. "This is the time to close ranks."
He paused and walked towards her. When he reached for her hand, she let him have it, but it was given limply. Betty was tired. Tired and confused.
"I don't know what to do," she told him, moving closer to the wall and letting her forehead loll there while her arm was strained by his hold.
"I'll tell you exactly what to do," Jughead pressed, cupping her cheek, smoothing her hair.
"I don't want to be told what to do." She shook him off, crossing her arms and stepping around him towards the window. "I want to figure this out."
"Alone?" His voice sounded heavy. Hurt. Betty couldn't look back at him.
"Alone."
"But what if we…?"
"I just need to be alone right now," she repeated quietly, welling tears prompting her to keep her face turned away. "I'll call you, Jug."
Betty could feel him standing there, quivering with the desire to fight. He loved to do that for her, step in front and take the bullets she never asked him to take. Make her his queen. But when there was both a king and a queen, who was the one always in charge? Who was the one calling all the shots? History class told Betty it was the king. Their history―hers and Jughead's―was less clear. What she was certain about was not wanting to go in blind. Even being careful, she'd barely survived her father. No more chances, no more surprises for Betty Cooper. A recantation on taking leaps of faith on the back of a motorbike.
She felt him leave, too. The small pressure in the air when he closed her bedroom door and slunk away down the upstairs hall.
Cheeks wet and eyelashes forming messy new patterns as they clumped thickly together, Betty took the last steps to her window and slammed it shut. It wasn't the bang that made her sob, it was knowing that, when Jughead strode across her lawn and looked up at the window, he'd see that it was shut to him, as it had never been before.