A little later than usual, but the interest for this story seems to have really picked up in between my last updates! I'm pleased to see everyone else is starting to love this story as much as I so love writing it :) Plus, we all need more Sweet Pea specifically in our lives...
Although, on this site, I only had one review. But thank you so much more to that one person who really made my day, Serpent818!
Serpent818: You are just too kind! Your review had me just smiling so much! Thank you! (And, if you like Sweet Pea as a character, I'd suggest to go check out my other Riverdale story where Sweet Pea's POV is actually the main POV!) I'm also glad you decided to take a chance on this, even if it's not your usual cup of tea! And please oh please give me that list of songs! My tastes are actually a little hard-core, so I might just end up loving them! Plus, I'm always looking for new songs to add to Sweet Pea's 'playlist'. In all, thanks for being an awesome-sauce person and reviewing.
Song for this chapter is 'Radioactive' by Imagine Dragons!
July 17th, 2018
They drove out of that town pretty damn fast. Sweet Pea took up his usual passenger seat, though he treated it like it was a throne from the way he splayed so casually on it. It was almost sinful. He was turning the paper map around, the sound of the crinkling paper giving Betty some much needed white noise in the back of her head.
"I'm not an invalid." They hadn't spoken except for Sweet Pea to say 'left' or 'right' in a toneless drone. She couldn't tell he was still upset.
"Huh? No, of course not." She murmured, frowning.
"Coulda fooled me, the way you were just going to leave me there." He was just hardly holding in his rage. Betty could see it smoldering under the surface.
"I've been over this-,"
"I did just fine on my own with more shit to deal with, you think a leg is going to stop me?" He asked, heaving a bit, out of breath although he was sitting and immobile. It clued Betty in how furious he was with her. While Betty would usually blister at his tone, now, she just felt guilty.
"Sweets, I don't think I needed to say it, but I'd be dead without you." Betty knew that she'd made a mistake. Even if she thought it was one that was logical, she understood now that it was wrong of her.
"You coulda been dead again if you left too," Sweet Pea hissed, "Fucking christ, Betts."
"And you would have survived alone again," She said with certainty, but the idea seemed to almost disgust Sweet Pea.
"But I-," He sharply closed his mouth, shaking his head, "Whatever. Can we just agree that this isn't going to happen again? Not without, I dunno, a freaking emergency?"
"Leave each other?" Betty asked.
"Yeah. Leave."
In that one word, she realized the depths of the issue. Mother issues, daddy issues...all the issues everywhere. It was a can of worms she still wasn't quite ready to deal with, so she just nodded.
"I won't."
Something in her voice must have been sincere, because Sweet Pea relaxed, finally allowing the topic to drop. Betty nearly breathed a sigh of relief. It made her on edge to fight with Sweet Pea, at least, about real things. Fighting with him over which flavor of Doritos was better (Cool Ranch, obviously, there was no contest) was almost like, well, flirting. It wouldn't matter tomorrow. It was a way to destress and just argue.
She glanced at the steering wheel making a disgusted noise when she saw the ragged state of her nails; the color nearly all chipped off except two or three places, most of them uneven, and one of them newly sore. She ran her finger of the place where it was jagged, deep in thought. It must have happened in the last couple hours, but Betty only just noticed.
"What?" Sweet Pea snorted, "Break a nail while loading the boxes?"
"Yeah, actually." She realized how silly it sounded, how very trivial to be caring about the state of her nails at the end of the world. She realizes she should have just left it off, or lied to Sweet Pea, before she give him ammunition to tease her with. But, there's not much else to do here- they exhausted the game of I Spy a long time ago- so she just keeps talking. She always hopes the more she talks, the more it encourages him to talk. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
"I mean, it's not the nails I'm sad about." She begins again, taking one hand off the wheel to show Sweet Pea, "It's well, I'd really never had my nails done professionally before. Then Veronica showed up and she took one look at them the first day we were friends and said 'This needs major work' and called a nail person up to her room that same day. And since then, since I've been her friend- was- I'd get my nails done with her every week. It made me feel a little human, it made me feel like even something as insignificant as my nails were a part of me that I deserved to take care of. That I should take care of myself. I think Veronica knew, though."
"Knew what?" Sweet Pea frowned, realizing her tone had taken a more somber note.
"It wasn't about my nails, not really. She used to insist every week, and sometimes I'd wriggle my way out of it. It was easier to…" She couldn't form the words, she couldn't admit it out loud, "To do that." She held her palm fully up, trying to gauge his reaction, "I haven't done it since the start of this. Who would knew a walker apocalypse would make me less anxious than real life?"
She should have expected Sweet Pea reaching out for her hand, but his touch surprised her all the same. Maybe what was so surprising was the absolute reverence in which he touched her hand, as though she'd offered him the chalice of immortality. She got away with not looking at him by reminding herself she had to watch the road, she was still driving.
The pads of his thumbs laved over the row of crescent-shaped scars, tracing them carefully.
"She was a good friend like that," Betty couldn't help but get choked up. She hadn't ever admitted out loud what Veronica had done for her. If Veronica had asked her outright, or asked if maybe Betty would have wanted to see a therapist, Betty may have denied it or gotten defensive. Although, after her dad, seeing a therapist had been one of the first things Betty had considered...that was useless now, huh, since there probably weren't many of those around anymore.
Anyway, it had been a small gesture that Betty wished she'd thanked Veronica for, truly. Not just thanked her for bringing in Tecia every week to buff her nails and let her pick a pretty top coat, but for being Veronica and finding another way around the problem.
She let out a half-sob, sucking it back, "God, I just really miss her. Before Veronica, I never really had good friends, well...friends that were girls." She admitted, thinking of Archie and Kevin. Heck, even technically Jughead, although until she'd started dating him, he was more of Archie's friend than hers.
"I miss my friends too," Sweet Pea still hadn't let go of her hand. He looked down, realizing he'd held onto far longer than either of them had thought it would go on, and dropped it. He put his own hands in his lap, like for a second he didn't know what to do with them.
"Tell me about them," Betty asked, using the hand he let go of to wipe her cheeks, finding stability to her tone once again, "Your friends. Serpents. Because, well...I don't know a ton about the ones your age." She was a bit ashamed to admit that, however, it was true. She had always assumed once she was more 'one of them' it would happen.
"Like what?"
"Like…" Betty had a thousand questions, "Do you get a nickname when you all join? Does everyone have one?" She asked, "I mean, between you...Jughead, Toni, Fangs, FP, Tallboy...they're all nicknames." She pointed out.
Sweet Pea gave a short bark of laughter, "Ah, no. Most of us come prepackaged with a totally awesome and marketable nickname."
Betty couldn't help but chuckle, "You have to admit, a lot of you have them."
"We're the kind of people that would." He said in a more serious voice, "Think about it. A nickname is like a...a second layer of protection. Like our jackets. For me, you don't know my real name until I want you to. Others are like that."
"How did you get your nickname, then, if it's not given to you in some weird cultish ritual? Or, is that a level I haven't unlocked?" She asked. Sweet Pea didn't answer and she feared she'd hit a button or two she wasn't supposed to. When she looked up, however, Sweet Pea was bright red.
"No, I mean, if you know my real name-,"
"Jordan," Betty said it again, like Sweet Pea wouldn't have recalled telling her. If possible, his face got redder.
"Yeah, right, that one, you can know. It's just…" He winced, "When I was really tiny, before mom went crazy and stuff, my grandpa would come around- my dad's dad- and he would watch me. He called me Sweet Pea firstly 'cuz of my last name, but from the stories, I was apparently just this cute little kid that always helped him around and I had 'the cutest and roudest face out there'...that's what my grandpa said. He died not long before my mom, so," Sweet Pea threw up his hands, "It stuck. Whatever. I'm not really cute anymore, but I liked my grandpa."
"Aww!" Betty cooed, which just made Sweet Pea look more uncomfortable as he hid behind a hand, "Well, I still think you're cute." She said, without really meaning to at all. As soon as the words left her mouth, she coughed. If she'd said it with a smirk, she could have played it off as just being a nice friend, or something, but it was the way she'd said it that made her feel really stupid. It was that she'd said it as someone that saw 'cute' as a synonym for 'good looking'. Sweet Pea looked up, his face turning a normal shade again.
"Cute? That all? Not handsome? Sexy? Undeniable?" He said, leaning over the median.
"Gettout." Betty shoved him back, "I give you a compliment, you take a mile," She rolled her eyes, "What about Fangs? He's like the nicest guy I've ever met."
"True." Sweet Pea bobbed his head, "When we were like freshman, he'd just joined up and also wanted a badass nickname. Someone deadpanned suggested Fangs- and lemme tell you, if you think he's nice now, you should have seen him two years ago- and Fangs just took to it. Toni tried to convince him out of it for weeks. Then, it was sort of a joke. The Horrifying Fangs who volunteered at the animal shelter nursing bunnies or who walks old ladies to their cars in winter."
Betty let Sweet pea talk about Fangs for a second. Fangs who was nearly killed over something stupid. Not that cheating was stupid, but that the whole situation of their town was stupid and someone shouldn't have shot a seventeen for that anyway.
"Fangs was always too soft for this world," Sweet Pea crunched his body between the dashboard and the seat, curling into himself. He said his words like it was a eulogy. Betty didn't say anything, but to Sweets, it was one. It was admitting out loud that Fangs was most likely dead and probably had been this whole time.
"Who else?" Betty asked after a moment, "Who are the other Serpents that are our age?"
She half expected Sweet Pea to have walled himself up, however, Sweet Pea blinked at her.
"Well," He said, "I guess I'll start with Lann…"
That's how they spent the whole rest of that day driving. It was the most Betty had ever heard Sweet Pea talk. Talk about things that mattered, anyway, since Sweet Pea usually blabbered just to bug the hell out of Betty. He was genuine and excited to talk about his chosen family, Betty realized.
She had also expected that Sweet Pea would give a one sentence summary about each person, but no. He was giving Betty full biographies on the fellow 'baby Serpents' as Betty thought they were, in her own mind.
There were, in total, about twelve young serpents, discounting Jughead, Toni, Sweets, and Fangs. Four of them girls, which surprised Betty. Sweet Pea pointed out later on in the day that the children of Serpents were always welcome, if they wanted to pass the tests, and it wasn't like Serpents only produced boys.
"We do usually give 'em a nickname, even unintentionally. Something always sticks." He said. He admitted by this point, he'd forgotten most of the real names of people. The nicknames replayed in her mind like song lyrics; Darkon, Lann, Boggs, BB, Dip, Lipton, Buzz, Vade, Jedi, Stiff, Kaida, Deni, Ave, Sanders. She was surprised she remembered them all. She was surprised as she recognized who Sweets was talking about from just being around the Serpents, casually.
"What was my moms?" Betty asked after all was said and done and her mind was whirling of names of Serpents that were either confirmed dead or missing. Dead; Boggs, Buzz, Jedi, Deni, Sanders. Sanders had only been fourteen. She was so young. Missing; the rest. She felt a longing for a group of kids she didn't even know, still.
If Sweet Pea could have draped himself to look even more sexy over those seats, he would have, Betty thought (to her own dismay), his face just oozing with mischief. His lips curled and he bit his lip, raising an eyebrow.
"From what I hear, they called your old lady 'Vegas'."
Betty stiffened, "Oh sweet Jesus," She muttered under her breath, shaking her head. If someone had told her a year ago her mother- in her youth- had held a nickname related to the city of sin and bacchanalia, she may have laughed. Now...well, Betty wished she couldn't see it, but she did.
"Uh-huh," Sweet Pea looked feral, a wild glint in his eyes, "And I wondered how the hell a woman like Alice Cooper could get that nickname, when all I knew of her for awhile was you in your prissy little button ups and pastel sweaters until you did your serpent dance." He leaned close, close enough so that his breath was hot on her ear, "What can I say Cooper, you got it from your momma."
Betty tried to repress the shiver that started low in her stomach, but it was inevitable. Sweet Pea looked pleased with himself.
"Me, my nickname," Betty panted out, trying to change the subject, "What's my awesome Serpent nickname?"
"Ah, well," At least Sweet Pea knew when to step back, "I mean, I already call you Cooper," He pointed out.
"My last name? That's no fun. Plus, I don't like my last name. It reminds me of my dad." She'd told Sweet Pea all about her murderous family early on, since it wasn't like it was a secret or anything.
"What was you mom's maiden name?"
"Smith."
"Mhh," Sweet Pea waved a hand, "Boring. Ach, don't worry, I'll figure it out." He said, "Since you're so into it."
A part of Betty wanted to dive back into that very interesting tidbit about how closely he must have been watching her the night he did the snake dance, the other part of her wanted to run far away from it. Her body betrayed her just a bit, and she shifted uncomfortably in the seat. Sweet Pea offered to switch places, but Betty denied it, since she knew her problem wasn't the uncomfortable leather, it was the dampness on her thighs. Luckily, as far as Sweet Pea seemed to notice, he did not.
Damn it all.
July 22nd, 2018
There was an unspoken agreement between the pair to get to their location as quick as possible. No more popping through small towns to gather materials. They had enough, Betty assessed the next time they stopped. Plus, the walker incident rattled them both enough to remind them what a dangerous world they were living in now, and why they'd gone out on this trip in the first place. To not live out of a van forever.
So, for the next week or so, there was a pattern. Sweet Pea would sleep during the day, only waking when Betty nudged him awake to give a direction left or right, but otherwise would curl up with a blanket and pillow and just let the daylight flash by.
On the flipside, Betty would sleep at night. They also did away with sleeping on the ground. As of that first night out of Ohio, they had cleared and re-arranged the van's back so that Betty would sleep on the floor of the U-Haul while Sweet Pea would sit next to her, wide awake, ready to quiet her or to wake her for a speedy get-away.
She thought it would be strange, just laying down and falling asleep with Sweet Pea sitting there, but she was so exhausted usually that wasn't a problem. Plus, it's not like he just sat there all night- he'd found a tiny reading light and was going through some novels he'd plucked himself. Tonight, he was about halfway-through 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.
One of the nights, Betty woke up and felt a shiver down her spine. When she looked up, Sweet Pea was staring at her sleeping form. She wordlessly met his gaze, and he turned pink with the realization he'd been caught.
"I just, ah," Sweet Pea was usually suave with his words, but he flubbed this, before going back to his book, "You just looked really at peace," He finally muttered from the safe cover of the paperback.
"Oh." Betty rolled over, staring at the ceiling, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood.
She was attracted to him, okay?
It was bound to happen...last man, last woman, well, basically.
She wasn't in love with him, she was just really horny and he was a dude, so yeah. It had been months since she gotten off. She would just take care of it herself, except for the fact that they hadn't been far enough apart for Betty to do it discreetly. She'd thought about it when they were in the clinic, but if he'd woken up and needed something, she'd feel awful and selfish.
So, she attributed the way she was feeling around Sweets of late just to stupid teenage hormones.
She wondered if Sweet Pea was the same. He was a guy, so maybe it was worse. However, he didn't seem as bothered by it as Betty. Wherein his tone toward her was always teasing, Betty imagined he might be horrified to learn that Betty was actually getting riled up by it, after all this time.
Or, maybe he'd just feel proud and it would never end.
Either way, Betty was not going to tell him. As soon as she got a second alone, she'd deal with it, and that would be the firm end of it.
July 24th, 2018
Betty whacked Sweet Pea awake as soon as they entered the border of Wisconsin.
"Shouldn't be long now," Sweet Pea yawned, "We might have found a place by nightfall."
The unsaid words crackled between them; they might find a place they would live in either until the end of this walker crisis or possibly forever, depending. It was a thought that made Betty's stomach churn, but at the same time, she was also relieved. She was tired of being on the road. She wanted to settle her bones in a place.
"Once we reach the midpoint, about these towns here," Sweet Pea tapped his finger on the map, "That's when we'll just start searching, I guess. Maybe we should talk about what we're looking for."
"Uh-huh," Betty swallowed thickly.
"Like on House Hunters," Sweet Pea continued. This ripped a snort from Betty's throat, without meaning to.
"You watched HGTV?" She asked.
"Toni did. I sometimes happened to be around." Sweet pea was quick to clarify, "It was always unrealistic, though. You'd get this couple and one would be all like 'Hi, I'm Norman and I play spoons on pieces of cardboard with a band for a living' and 'Hiya, I'm Laken and I make puppet shows for deaf pygmy marmosets' and then they'd have a budget of like a nickel and a plastic plate and want a Malibu beachside house with a hot tub."
"It was not like that," Betty rolled her eyes.
"It was. That's besides the point. We should sorta know which houses we can eliminate right away." He did have a point, Betty conceded. Not about House Hunters, and she loved that show so she took minor offence, but about saying what they were looking for.
"Something far away from people," Sweet Pea started, "A forest house would be good for protection wise, but I think farm would be a better bet, so we can plant shit."
"But it should be newly renovated," Betty cut in, "The world's gunna fall apart from here. I don't want a house that already has one foot in the ground. There has to be modernized houses that happen to exist on farm land, right?"
"Oh, I'm sure." Sweet Pea's fingers tapped the dash, "Something near a well or a river. We'll need water. Maybe something within a half-hour to a town, because, you'll never know when we need to get stuff."
"Couple bedrooms. In case people ever find us." Betty threw out too, "Maybe a farmhouse that has a couple properties on the space."
"Selfishly speaking, I'd love a hot tub." Sweet Pea laughed, "Or a sauna."
"What about finding solar panels? How would we run the hot tub and other stuff?" Betty pointed out. Sweet Pea clicked his tongue.
"What's something just totally non-logical you want Cooper?" Sweet Pea questioned, "Like, imagine that it's not the apocalypse and you're getting your first house and you have a little extra dough. What do you ask for?"
Betty frowned, tonguing the insides of her cheek. Ever since her and Sweet Pea had decided to find a place, she'd only thought of it in the sense of their survival. In fact, little else had been on her mind while they were driving. They weren't living in a world where she got a picket fence and a artisan kitchen or a large writing room with window that let the light in, even in hypothetical situations.
"I don't…" She began, shaking her head.
"C'mon, you have to had thought about it. What about when you thought about what kind of house you'd want before this all happened?"
Betty flinched hard. The only time she'd ever thought of a future house outside her mother's was when she imagined her and Jughead down the line.
"Oh," Sweet Pea said quietly, understanding instantly. She should have been maybe more upset she was so transparent, but on the other, she was grateful she didn't have to spell it out. Sweet Pea looked almost ill, "I didn't...dammit." They'd done so well, not talking about Jughead and her together, specifically.
"No, no. It's uh, what it is." Betty shook her head, "I guess, if I had to pick…" She pretend like she was trying to think really hard, but instead, she was trying not to think of Jughead, "A reading window. One of those bay windows surrounded by bookcases with really soft pillows and a really nice view."
"That sounds nice," Sweet Pea murmured, "I hope we find that for you."
He sounded completely sincere. Betty's heart went back to normal faster than it often did when she thought about Jughead. She wasn't sure if she missed the aching or not.
July 24th, 2018 (mid-afternoon)
They batted around the idea of breaking into a realtor's office and trying their luck that Wisconsinites still did some stuff on paper instead of all online, but the idea of fighting off even a walker or two more than they had to turned them both off to it. So, about four hours later, they just began taking back roads and stopping at farm houses along the way.
"I think we'll just feel it, ya know. Like fate." Sweet Pea said. Betty had never pegged him for a person that believed in superstitions or magic or all that mumbo-jumbo, but he was surprisingly relaxed about it.
Betty was not. This was going to be her house and she had a right to be anxious, she argued.
She was beginning to feel like Goldilocks. One house was too old, another house was too close to another property, one house was great but tiny...Betty was beginning to feel not only disheartened, but frustrated.
She also wanted to find a house by nightfall. Sweet Pea was of the mind that whenever they found a house it would be the right time. Betty also thought if they waited until Sweet Pea felt the 'rightness' of a house, they could be searching forever.
They found a beaten sign for an open house that boasted to have over 300 acres. It was half-ripped and mostly in the mud, but claimed that this farm house of someone's dreams lay just at the end of a road. Betty and Sweet Pea gave each other a shrug; because, why not.
Perhaps it was the fact that when they road up to the house that looked very much unlike a farmhouse that Betty realized what their mistake might have been before this. They'd been searching all day for a farmhouse. Maybe they needed a house that was on a farm.
"Well, shall we?" Sweet Pea asked, kicking the door open with his foot. Betty jumped down too.
"Wait," Sweet Pea threw an arm out to stop her, "Hear that?"
Betty paused, "No. What? I don't hear anything." In fact, all there was currently, was silence and the wind in the trees.
Sweet Pea's grin was almost infectious, "Exactly. Has to be a good sign, right?"
Betty couldn't deny this; any walkers that may be around would make noise. There was nothing to indicate there was a walking anywhere...but that didn't mean Betty was going to let down her guard.
Walking up to the front door, Betty held her breath as she carefully picked the lock. The door swung open. Before Betty could really get a good look inside, as she was pulling out her knife, she was thrown off her balance. There was a moment of panic before she realized it was just Sweet Pea, who had picked her up bridal style and had carried her across the threshold.
"What the hell?" Betty whispered angrily, scrambling to get down.
"Isn't that what you're supposed to do at a new house?" Sweet Pea shrugged.
"Well...it's not...I…" Betty felt her face flush, "What if we walked right into a walker! And this might not even be the house." She put emphasis on 'the'. Plus, she didn't even want to bring up that's what married people do, not just two roomates (which, is what they were, sorta) entering their new pad for the first time.
"I feel like it is." Sweet Pea was absolutely serious, "I mean, look, it's set up to look like people are here for tours, but in reality, it's probably been empty since the start of this bullshit."
That was true; as her eyes adjusted and the light of the last couple hours of the day filtered into the rooms, Betty saw it was furnished, but un-lived, at least, nothing out of place. A small hope began to fill her.
She turned and let out a small scream. Sweet Pea slapped his hand over her mouth out of practice, and then they both froze in their place, waiting for an army of the undead to descend upon them, or a noise to indicate someone else was here. It never came.
Betty's heart still thumped wildly as she removed Sweet Pea's hand, staring up at the multiple heads of animals on the walls.
"If we stay here, those are going." She said dryly, brushing past Sweet Pea, "Coming?"
The house seemed pretty perfect, if Betty had to say so. It was six bedrooms with a generous sized kitchen and a wide, roomy central area for everyone to meet. From the posters on the wall, Betty gleaned this place had once been a training camp for businesses to take their co-workers on to meetings, from the awards and reviews proudly pinned up. A career retreat, or something. There was a wood-burning stove in all the big rooms and the master suite, which checked off one of their needs on the list.
As Betty was flipping through the realter's binder on the table, combing through what this place had to offer, Sweet Pea wandered off.
"Betty!" She snapped her head up, throwing her knife up and running toward him.
"What?" She asked, breathless, worried.
"There's a hot tub."
Betty let out a sigh of aggravation, "God, sweets, I thought it was a walker or something! Don't scare me like that!" She hit him on the arm as hard as she could.
"A hot tub!" Sweet Pea repeated, as though she hadn't heard.
"Yeah, I got that." She said, looking out onto the porch, the area in which he was referring to.
"There's also a reading nook, like you described. Didn't you see it?" He asked. Betty hadn't. She'd been busy trying to figure out what this place could offer. Sweet Pea was hopping he looked so thrilled, "Betty, c'mon, this has to be it. It not only has what we're looking for- realistically- but it has what we wanted as dream items. It's fate!"
Betty highly disliked the use of the word 'fate', but she couldn't deny how strangely perfect this place seemed.
"We don't know if it has all our wants, but it does seem promising," Betty tried to keep her voice level, "Let's keep looking before we decide."
They spent another hour scouring the house and making sure there were absolutely no walkers in the house. After, they checked out the surrounding structures; there were six, according to the binder that Betty now cradled her her arms. In the garage, there was a tool area with two ATVs covered in a tarp, along with a small cart machine. There was a cash of guns and weapons, along with a generator.
"God I love people in Wisconsin," Sweet Pea sighed, patting the generator, "Sane enough to have nice houses, but live in one of the coldest states so they are smart enough to have a plan B and C and D...if we can get this going…"
"Yeah," Betty agreed, nodding sharply, "Power. Plus, I bet we can vulture some solar panels…" She didn't want to admit her mind was already whirling with ideas, but it was. The Lodge Lodge had been nice, but it didn't have a generator or guns or off-road vehicles. It was all together impractical for real-world problems.
There was a smaller cabin with a deep freeze and a basement area for food storage. There was a barn, half-way renovated to at least have a sturdy structure, and an old grain storage. There was a secondary garage that had a normal car and more supplies. Farthest away was a tree blind, which Sweet Pea pointed out would be ideal for watching.
"Betty, you can't say that this isn't everything we've been looking for and more." Sweet Pea said, grabbing her shoulders, "This is it."
Betty gnawed on her lips. To say yes would mean that their search was over, which was equally refreshing and terrifying. She could just imagine, in some part of her mind, that if they stayed on the road it wasn't forsaking Jughead yet. They could still turn around, go look for him, prove he was dead or alive. To settle down would to be doing just that; to give it up, to settle. However, she was still firmly sure that Jughead was dead, due only to her own pain she felt somewhere deep, and the idea of sleeping on a real bed and not having to change locations every night was tempting. Plus, this house really was a beauty. She waffled for a long moment before smiling. They might not find a better option.
"Yeah, it is it."
July 25th, 2018 (early morning)
Betty took the master's space and Sweet Pea took another room. By the time they'd un-loaded some of their stuff, night was falling. They didn't have any safeties up yet, so they decided it would be better to lock the door and try to sleep.
But Betty couldn't sleep. This time, she wasn't going to go looking for Sweet Pea, despite how she tossed and turned. The bed was the most comfortable thing she'd had in ages, yet her mind wouldn't let her rest.
To her great surprise, around 1 am, there was a shadow across her door.
"Sweet Pea?" She asked, sitting up, "You can't sleep?" The 'either' hung in the air, unsaid, but from the way she'd trailed off, she was sure he knew.
"It's just, this house is uh, big. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's not the U-Haul anymore." Sweet Pea shuffled his feet, "I just wanted to make sure you were okay." He fibbed at the end.
"It is big," Betty didn't deny or confirm. She knew he was trying to say something without really saying it, but Betty wasn't going to dig herself deeper with this growing feeling she had for him by admitting she wished he was in here too.
"Betts," Sweet Pea gave a long sigh, "You're not really going to make me ask, are you?" Betty weighed her options, wondering how much she did want him to say it. Before she could invite him, he continued, "Fine, it gives me the heebies to be out here in a room by myself. I said it." His face was as red as a tomato.
Betty patted her side of the bed.
"I mean, I can sleep on the floor, or that chair." Sweet Pea said, pointedly not looking at her, "We don't need to share the bed."
"It's like a California king size. You don't have to sleep on the ground. Plenty of space and we don't have to touch each other. I can even put up a pillow barrier."
Sweet Pea stood, arms folded, jaw locked.
"We've been sleeping this close for a month," Betty pointed out, not understanding his resistance.
"But this is a bed. It's different."
"It doesn't have to be. Nothing is going to happen." Betty said firmly. In the back of her mind, she did question whether or not she'd like something to happen, but from Sweet Pea's face, she doubted it would even get that far, "C'mon Jordan."
If she'd learned one thing, it was that using his name undoubtedly always got through to him.
"Okay." He agreed. He lay on the side Betty wasn't on, clothes still on. She wondered if it was one of the holdovers from their months on the road. Betty had found a pair of pj pants in the closet and was wearing her own tank. Maybe Betty was overly optimistic they wouldn't be attacked here in the middle of the night.
Sweet Pea fell asleep before Betty. They stayed on their own sides, nothing happened.
They woke up the next morning and the house was still standing.
If Betty traced it back, that was change number one in their relationship. Sweet Pea just continued to sleep on the other side of the very large bed from that night on.
So, they've reached a home...things are different now...things will just start to get more different from here ;)
Some notes!
- #dealwithbetty'smentalissues. Like, gosh I was so excited in s3 when I thought she'd actually been seeing someone, but alas...but she's a teen, so I get why sometimes she hasn't dealt with it and I dunno, I thought that V was the type of friend that would do something sneaky like that, for Betty's health, because sometimes that's what friends have to do
-Originally, I was going to tack on a like 'info' or something about all the baby serpents, like 2/3 sentences about them. Since then, I've started another fic (shameless plug) that's a supernatural!AU for Riverdale and usually when I make OCs I use them in all my stories of the same fandom. SO if you want to get to know the wolves better and how they got their nicknames, head over there, because it's mostly Sweet Pea's POV meaning the wolves have quite a big part in it :) Serpents are werewolves, Betty is a witch, and there's lots of other paranormal goodness floating around...
-Vegas. Lol. So when I was writing this, I wanted Alice to have a nickname that was innoculous enough to sound cool, without being obviously sexy like 'stripper' or something haha. Maybe I should have waited because in the episode next week it's parendale so we might find out her cool Serpent nickname. But it is what it is. I totally had forgotten that the Andrew's have a dog named Vegas, so my headcannon is that Fred heard Alice being called it once and Alice made some fib that she was called that because of something much more innocent and Fred was just like Archie is now and was like 'that's a cool name' and named his future dog that XD
-HGTV. That's totally how it is. I love it, no shade, but that's all I could think as I was writing out what I would have our team look for.
-The house they find is an actual house that was being sold like 6 months ago! I just looked up 'farmland for sale in Wisconsin' and found ones with houses. When I was scrolling, I had like six tabs open of houses I thought might work and this one just...well, it was perfect. I had written the thing about Sweet Pea wanting a hot tub and Betty wanting a nook before I started looking and honest to god, this one had those two things. Felt like fate XD I took screen shots of the interior. I don't think I'll share them, just because that feels sorta weird, but I will probably make a floor plan and drawings of their house. I mixed in a couple elements from other houses I liked just so it wasn't really stalkerish and all.
-So I've lived in Wisconsin pretty much all my life and I can totally attest that people here are sorta seriously prepared for the Apocalypse, while also being sane most of the time. I mean, you get 10 mins outside the three major cities and it's literally farmland and forests for miles. And, we're used to relying on other things to survive or not being within a good distance of a supermarket and stuff. My best friend's family, no joke, are doomsday preppers... and are totally normal people otherwise. Her dad's also an ex sniper, ya know they might be a good thing if zombies do break-out. More than that, to some extent, my family has a apocalypse plan. And, my parents are in the medical field. Smart af people. My dad went to Stanford. We're not crazy, I swear, and while we all agree a zombie outbreak is unlikely, we can't disagree that there might be some awful plague that doesn't have a fix that comes about. In that case, we have a cottage in the middle of the woods that was once an island. We'd just make it an island again and wait it all out. I almost used my family's cottage for Sweet Pea/Betty, since it's also in Wisconsin, but I had some different plans for them...
Anyway, none of that is important, just thought it was interesting!
I would really really love it if you love this if you would be so kind to leave a review :)