"Where's that chapter, Jones?" Her voice was clear on the other end of the phone. Not even a greeting before cutting straight to business. He was willing for the reception to cut out as he drove up the winding road through remote forest to his safe haven, but unfortunately today he seemed to have perfect coverage. Typical.

He had instinctively gripped the wheel tighter as soon as he heard her voice. He had managed to keep her at bay so far. Missing the calls, having them drop out due to the remoteness of his location. You know to help his writers mind. But she had called on a blocked number and his damned curiosity had gotten the better of him.

"It's coming, Elizabeth." Wincing as he realised his mistake.

"Betty," she corrected. "I asked you to call me Betty. Elizabeth makes me sound like I am from a period drama."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

"And old."

"Okay Betty. It's almost done." He sighed into the phone, eager to end the call.

"You said that in an email two weeks ago." And he hadn't made any further progress since that email either. "I have the publisher breathing down my neck, waiting for that chapter."

"And it will be ready. Soon." He pleaded. In all honesty he hadn't even started it yet. The first half of his novel had flowed so well, so seamlessly. It had been as though his fingers could not move quickly enough across the keyboard to capture his thoughts.

But then he had hit a wall. Hard.

She had given him time before the emails started. Her words had been gentle at first before becoming more pointed and directive. And when no further progress had been made beyond a brief outline the phone calls had started.

Elizabeth, correction, Betty Cooper was his assigned editor. She had edited his chapters mercilessly. She had a love affair with red ink and was not backward in her criticism. Some of the other writers that he had met at a company mixer had shared their sympathies with him as he told them who his editor was. He knew as soon as he got that first chapter back that she was going to make him work for it. But she was also going to push him to write some of the best writing of his life. He swore with each chapter he submitted that she was trying to set a new personal best on how many 'suggestions' she could make. But she was always right which was infuriating in its own right.

Well, I am sick of waiting for it. We have a deadline approaching and I am not going to be pulling all nighters because you hit some writers block.

He sighed as he pulled the car round the corner making his way up the lone dirt road to his escape. A lone cabin in the middle of nowhere. Just him, his computer and Hotdog. It had worked before to help him get through a slump. He was surprised to see smoke coming from the chimney as he sped up slightly. He was sure that he had snuffed out the fire before he left for to pick up a few essentials from the few shops that constituted the town centre of his remote location.

The bigger surprise however was the bright red convertible parked out the front. No-one knew where he was. Not his friends or family. They were used to him going AWOL for weeks at a time before he emerged with a new completed chapter or novel. In fact the only person he had let know about his whereabouts was…

"Betty!?" He could feel his heart starting to race at the thought of her having tracked him down. "Where are you?"

There was a pause on the other end of the phone as he pulled up outside of the cabin.

As he swung the door to the cabin open he was taken aback. He wasn't sure how exactly he had imagined her to look. Her blonde hair was piled high on top of her head a few loose strands curling their way around her face to frame it. Her lips were pink, a breathtaking shade even though he was pretty sure she wasn't wearing any colour on them. And her eyes, fuck, her eyes. A brilliant shade of blue hiding behind the glass of her glasses perched on her nose.

He knew it was corny as all hell, but she literally took his breath away.

"Thought I could help with some motivation." She said pulling him gently into the room by his arm before shutting the door behind him, pulling her oversized cardigan closer around her body as the cool wind from outside entered the cabin. He hadn't said a word his phone still held in his hand by his side. He looked to Hotdog who was happily following her around the small space of the kitchen. His tail wagging furiously behind him.

"Some kind of guard dog you are." He mumbled under his breath as his dog cocked his head at him before bounding across the room to continue to follow the blonde whirlwind who seemed to have command over his kitchen, of his whole domain. He leaned up against the counter as she pressed the buttons on his coffee machine watching the brew intently, before shooting him a smile over her shoulder as if this was all perfectly normal and he didn't have what was essentially a stranger making coffee in his remote cabin. "What is going on Betty?"

She pulled the cup from the machine and held up the creamer and he shook his head. She walked over to him and handed him the cup. "I got sick of waiting." She said shrugging her shoulders.

"So you came here to?"

"Motivate you." She said simply as she returned to the machine to make her own drink.

"Right." He said as he sipped the coffee letting the perfect combination of sweet and bitter wash over him. Another thing she did right.

He wasn't exactly sure what she had meant by motivating him to write. He had never really needed to be motivated to write before. He got suck sure but he usually just needed the space and quiet to return to his writing.

Betty's form of getting rid of writing block was the complete opposite. She dragged him out of that cabin every opportunity that she got. They went on walks with Hotdog. He went into town more than he ever had in the years that he had come up to the cabin. He would watch as she would talk to the townspeople. Her smile was always so wide, so gentle yet inquisitive. He envied the way she could blend into this town as if she had been there her whole life.

At night she would bring him the laptop and a coffee. Sometimes a home baked cookie if she decided to spoil him. She in turn would sit at the other end of the couch with her work which she had had forwarded to his address.

He just stared at the empty screen as he had been doing for months. The blinking cursor amongst the stark white of his screen mocking him. He would glance over to watch her. She would wear her glasses sitting on the tip of her nose, a pen in the other hand. He had asked her why she didn't use a computer, that it would be easier and she had explained to him that she liked to feel the paper underneath her fingertips, the weight of the pen in her hand. She said that she needed to feel the words underneath her touch so that she could truly absorb them. He had continued to stare at her with a raised eyebrow, and she had smiled sheepishly before returning to her pages. Correcting someone else's work just like she had his own.

Jughead wasn't sure how he felt about her reading other author's works. He knew it was silly. Of course she was editing other novels but since their time at the cabin and even before then he had always thought of her as his editor. He wasn't so sure he wanted to share her with anyone else.

That was how they were now him at one end of the couch staring at the screen in a daze. While she scribbled on the pile of papers in front of her. Hotdog, the traitor, was at her feet sleeping soundly, laying across her toes to keep them warm. He found himself watching her again. Watching the way her hair fell across her face as it escaped from the messy bun she had tied it in as she started her work. The way her bottom lip was tugged between her teeth in concentration. Her intense stare at the work in front of her. Even the way she held her pen had him mesmerised.

"Betty?" He broke the silence of the nearly empty cabin and she looked up at him. Her bottom lip still between her teeth. He felt exposed under her gaze. "Can I borrow some paper?" Betty nodded reaching behind her into her bag rifling through until she pulled out a few blank pages. "And a pen." He added. She smiled at this pulling out a pen out of her bag as well. She reached over and handed him the items. Shifting Hotdog a little in the process earning her a groan of displeasure. "Thanks." He said as he shut his laptop, resting the small pile of blank paper in front of him, before tapping the pen against his chin.

Betty leant back against the couch and continued with her own work. As Jughead put pen to paper. He allowed himself a stream of consciousness. He wrote what he could, anything that came to him went onto the paper. A few words at first. Then more. Then whole sentences. A page. Two. He watched the way the ink flowed as he wrote the way his t's were always a little crooked, some letters linked, others separate from one another. He stopped when he ran out of paper. Shuffling the pages together as he looked over to Betty, to realise that she had been watching him and that she had moved a little closer on the couch they shared. Hotdog had returned to his own bed close by the fire.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." She responded. "Can I?" She asked nodding towards the papers he was still clutching in his hand. "Soon. There's just something I need to do first."

He closed the space between them. Taking her face delicately in his hands before he pressed his lips to hers. He felt her breath hitch at the contact and wondered if he had overstepped. It was meant to be a professional relationship, but then again that had changed a while ago as they had seemingly slipped into domesticity.

He felt her lips move against his own as she kissed him back. Gentle, exploring kisses that left him wanting only more. But he pulled away, afraid to get lost too quickly. She reached up to push the glasses back on her face as she looked into his eyes.

Jughead knew then that he had found his muse.