Totally meant to update this, like, last Monday but I have just been so unbelievably busy!
Thanks, as always, to my reviewers: Sarai Carrasco, CrackedUpVAMPIRE22, Guest, gottaloveva, Serpent818, and lovesmoonpie18!
Guest: Thank you!
Serpent818: I will for sure look up those songs! They def sound to be right up my alley, and right up SweetBee apocalypse alley ;)
Late Summer
The rest of the summer was spent with hard work to turn this once-corporate retreat into a safe haven.
The first day, they went back and found the sign in the mud and took it. They couldn't have anyone else finding it, not without them wanting to. Sweet Pea was the one to remind Betty that the next time they were in town they should make their 'Jughead/Sweet Pea/Betty' signature and Betty felt a knot in her stomach over the fact she hadn't thought of it.
As it turned out, Betty took over the house while Sweet Pea worked outside. However, the gender roles weren't quite as traditional as they may seem.
First, Betty got the ATVs up and running. That was almost too easy, and took a day at most. But, now they had something smaller and better for taking routes through the woods as compared to the U-Haul. She also re-wired the truck in the spare time, because she could.
Betty told herself fairly quickly that if she could figure out the mechanics of a car, she surely could figure out the mechanics of pipes and wires in a house. She wasn't an engineer or an electrician by any means, but she was smart enough and had all the time in the world to get it right.
Well, not all the time, since her goal was to get the house on its feet by the time fall hit, before winter got bad.
She spent most of her time going between the main house and the cabin where the generator was, attempting to return electricity to the house. Also, since a generator wasn't meant to last forever, to attempt to figure out how to connect some of the solar panels Sweet Pea had found in town.
Sweet Pea became the farmer and gatherer. He'd spent years on the streets and the forests of Riverdale, and so knowing the difference between a poisonous berry and a tasty one became an imperative skill. He also took survey of the farmland near the house and began plotting. They went into town as little as possible, but the first time they did, Sweet Pea picked up a farmer's almanac and enough seeds to open up their own gardening store.
They went to a hunting store and picked up a bow and arrow to hunt around the area closer to fall, since right now they were surviving on semi-perishables.
"Maybe it runs in the family," Betty commented, picking it up and aiming it like she'd seen Cheryl do. A part of her hoped so. She wasn't an awful aim with a gun, but they couldn't be drawing attention to themselves with that anymore, as quiet as the area had been. She aimed at a knot in the side of the barn...and was horrendously off. She fully expected Sweets to tease her endlessly, but he just looked a little lost in thought.
"I sort of wish Cheryl was just here," Sweet Pea sighed, "She's a great shot."
They tried to talk about how much they missed their old friends as much as possible. It was just too painful.
They also loaded up on as much chicken wire as they could and had decided to form a protective and spikey barrier around the main housing areas. Betty took a break from the inside of the house to help Sweet Pea set this up, six feet high. That took nearly a month in itself, but she felt much more safe once it was established. She also nicked her hands more times than she could count, even with expensive gloves, but she figured it was a testament to how dangerous their barrier was. This would be a good thing.
Sweet Pea and Betty also planned on walker-traps together, including bells on branches over pits with spikes, bear traps (which Sweet Pea stayed far away from, and let Betty set), and other diversions to get the walkers before they got to the barrier. The farms were on the outside, since it was impractical to fence in their whole area and the barrier was a last resort, but a much needed safety measure. They discussed how in the future they may better it, such as building an actual wall, and it wasn't until after the conversation ended Betty realized they'd been talking years together here, planning on time down the road that should have hurt a lot more than it did.
At night, Sweet Pea cooked.
Betty wasn't a bad cook, her mother had certainly taught her well. Sweet Pea was just...better. He said it came from his years in which his mom was still alive, since someone had to cook for the both. He said he rarely had money to go to the store and buy things, but he was near enough to a personal garden where he'd sneak in through a hole in the fence and nab a tomato or two and a head of lettuce when it was dark out.
"That's probably the first illegal thing I did," He commented, "But, it made me need to learn how to cook with healthy shit, so…"
He shrugged.
"You'd be dead otherwise," Betty said, which was a fact, "And we've done more illegal things than I can count. But it's the end of the world, so...it's all about perspective, I guess."
Frankly, she was becoming increasingly more and more relieved that Sweet Pea was around.
Late Summer (July, maybe?)- Betty's Estimate
One of the nights, when Sweet Pea was hunched over the farming books they had and Betty was reading a novel in the living room, a thought hit her.
"Do we still have phone chargers?"
"Do we have power yet?" Sweet Pea asked, sparing a quick glance toward her, "I think there might be one in my bag."
It was sort of stupid to have a cell phone in the apocalypse, since there was no power most places and no cell service anywhere, but Betty had kept hers...for old times sake.
She got up abruptly and went rifling through his bag until she found that thin white cord. Then, she went and fetched one of the solar powered batteries she'd set out on the porch three days ago and plugged her phone in. Sweet Pea watched with interest, marking his page and coming up behind Betty.
"Huh," He clicked his tongue. He vanished and reappeared with his own phone.
"Couldn't get rid of it?" She asked, tilting her head toward the sleek black case. It was an iPhone, an older model. She bet that, if anything, he was keeping it to keep his music around. They'd just forgotten really about it, with all of the other stuff going on. About the creature comforts a favorite song gave. Plus, Sweet Pea wasn't afraid to sing to himself during the day, good tone or bad. Luckily, he wasn't an awful singer, almost enjoyable. Whenever Betty goaded him to sing louder, he always made it sound awful.
She weighed her phone in her hand. Why had she kept hers? Music, in general, wasn't a big deal. She couldn't text anyone anymore. She wasn't usually so nostalgic. So, why?
Hers was the newest on the market, or had been, but to most people they would just be useless piles of metal and electronics. Neither had kept them charged after leaving Riverdale. Until now, Betty hadn't dared to look. A part of her was terrified that she'd charge it, and she would have service magically and there would be messages from Jughead, and then she'd feel guilty for thinking he was dead. A part of her was terrified that there wouldn't be and there never would be again and she'd be forced to deal with the reality of it. Jughead was Schrodinger's cat. Betty, on one hand, wasn't sure she wanted to open that box.
In this moment, those fears weren't quite as forward. It wasn't until the home screen opened and it was empty that she had those thoughts, and they were a passing ache at most.
"Who's that?" Sweet Pea leaned over her shoulder.
"My niece and nephew; Juniper and Dagwood." Betty said, as the lockscreen was her with two babies on her lap. This hurt; seeing that. She was glad to have it, however.
"What sort of fucked up names is that? I can't even tell which one is the boy name and which is the girl. God, why do rich people have to give their kids such strange names?" Sweet Pea winced. Betty took little offence to the comment; she'd loved her sister's babies, but it was names she would have never in a million years named her own.
"The sort of names someone who had kids with her cousin gives her kids. Although, my sister didn't know Jason was our cousin at the time." She rushed to add.
"Still creepy," Sweet Pea shuddered. Sweet Pea hadn't been in Betty's radar during that whole debacle, so she wondered how much he knew on the subject. She almost asked, since he was a Serpent and he had to have known a little, but choose not to. Maybe some stories were better buried. Like Jason.
Not for the first time, she wondered if the babies were alive. How could they be? How could a kid survive walkers? The thought depressed her greatly, so she tried to shove the question from her thoughts as swiftly as she could. She'd come to the acceptance a long time ago that Dagwood and Juniper probably hadn't made it.
Her mind wasn't made up about her mom and sister, however, since Cooper girls were feisty.
Betty opened her notes, "Here it is! You know those Tasty or Goodful videos that were on Facebook like, everywhere?" She asked.
"Uh-huh. I wouldn't cook half the stuff they did, but it was fun to waste time watching," Sweet Pea said. "But we have no internet, Cooper."
"I know that. I wonder if I could...never mind," She had the briefest thought of maybe trying to re-connect a signal, and added that to a to-do list later, "Anyway, I was the sort of nerd who copied instructions onto my notes. I wanted to print out a cookbook of stuff one day, like for college, you know?"
She opened her notes app on her phone, meticulously organized, and scrolled through the 'Tasty' folder until she found it.
"There had been a video about how to start growing your own plants from plants you own, instead of from seeds. Might not be super useful, since we'd have to find onions and lettuce that was still good and laying around, but I dunno...I just thought of it." It was strange this was the thought that had gotten her phone out of its storage space. Not the thoughts of Jughead, Veronica, Kevin, or Archie...but a stupid list from a weird Youtube channel. Okay, so the point of it wasn't stupid, admittedly, and maybe it just showed how truly different her life was now.
She let Sweet Pea read through it, and he hummed in thought. "Well, it's nice to have. Plus, now we also have a recipe on how to make pizza in a mug and a gigantic burger filled with cheese." He said, half-sarcastic as he began reading through her phone.
"We might use some of the stuff. We should probably start an herb garden too...eventually pharmacutiles will run out." Betty added, trying not to be embarrassed that, out of it all, this list wasn't the most useful. She reached back for her phone, but Sweet Pea held it above his head. He towered over her. Jughead had been only a little taller than her, but Sweet Pea was like a giant.
"What, and give up this opportunity that I have to creep through Betty Cooper's phone? No way!"
Betty pouted, knowing that Sweet Pea could win in a fight if she tried to wrestle it from him. It's not like she had anything on that phone that she could currently think of that she wouldn't want someone seeing, but she'd wanted to go through her own phone first, after all this time.
"Only if you let me look through yours." She threw it back at him, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, whatever," Sweet Pea shrugged, throwing his phone towards her.
"So, to make it fair, how about we let mine charge and then while yours is charging, we look through the phones."
"Why does it have to be fair?" Sweet Pea asked, still scrolling, hardly looking up.
"Because…" Betty trailed off, "Why shouldn't it?"
Sweet Pea gave an elaborate sigh, "Pinky promise you'll let me go through it?"
"Yes." Betty agreed. She was just as curious about what Sweet Pea's phone held. He made a bit motion of setting it on the counter and Betty set his down too. He went back to his book and Betty to hers, but the anticipation crackled between them.
As soon as Betty's was fully charged, they switched them out and the fun began.
There was something fairly intimate about both of them going through each other's phone. It was something you didn't let an aquantice do or even a casual friend. Betty had maybe handed her phone over to a handful of people; she could actually count on her fingers the number of people she'd willingly let into her phone to explore- Jughead and Veronica. She knew most others were like her in that sense, so to be doing this with Sweet Pea's phone marked a second change; one in which she acknowledged that he'd managed to become the most important person in her life at the moment, a person she trusted implicitly, a person who she had only a momentary doubt about handing over her phone to. That said a lot to Betty. Also, she was curious to see what he had to say about her phone's contents. She wanted to let him see this. To give Sweet Pea her phone was akin to handing him her diary.
Sweet Pea's lock screen was a picture of what she thought might be the Southside. It was sort of blurry and taken in the middle of the night, but the train tracks were a familiar tug. She wondered if he maybe took it when they were fleeing to the North Side all those weeks ago, as a final reminder. His background was him, Toni, Fangs, and another Serpent that Betty didn't know the name of off the top of her head. It was one of the twins, though, either Jedi or were all wearing really outdated clothing and each looking pensively in a totally different direction. She gleaned they were in a fitting room of somewhere, maybe a Goodwill? The picture was at least a year old, possibly two, if she had to guess because Sweet Pea had a more boyish look to his face and Toni looked more child-like than adult.
"What's this?" Betty asked, "The background? I don't get it."
"80's rock album, Betty," Sweet Pea said, "Duh?"
She had to admit, it was pretty funny, once the words registered. It also told her that he cared a great deal about his friends, to have them on his background. Betty's own background was just a simple pink pattern. She didn't like too much distraction behind her apps.
She wondered if Sweet Pea found it odd Jughead wasn't her background. He'd been her lockscreen, until she'd changed it to the twins. There was other traces of Jughead on her phone, of course, and Sweet Pea hadn't said anything yet. So, Betty focused back on Sweet Pea's phone.
He had a handful of apps, mostly games like Words with Friends or Candy Crush. The usual media sites- twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Reddit- along with the generic ones that all iPhones came with. Apart from that was Uber and a couple apps Betty didn't instantly recognize, but could guess. Those didn't interest her as much.
The first thing Betty did was go to his iTunes.
The eye being the window to someone's soul was all good and dandy if you were from the medieval period, but in modern days, there was nothing more telling about what someone listened to in regards to music.
He had more songs than she did on hers, near 2,000. Betty would rotate her songs out on her phone to what she was listening to at the moment, keeping the full library on her computer. She wishes she hadn't done that now, since she didn't have her laptop anymore.
"I never knew you were into metal," Sweet Pea snickered, the first comment about her phone. He'd clearly had the same idea she did.
"Ah, well, that's new…" Betty said. She'd become more accustomed to heavy rock and metal because of what was always playing at the White Wyrm. A part of it reminded her of Jughead, to be honest, since she associated those songs with him. Her personal tastes landed somewhere a little bit like folk, a little bit like alternative. Mumford and Sons, Of Monsters and Men, Hozier...she'd had tickets to go see a Lana Del Rey concert around the upcoming August, something she just recalled and was very upset about.
Sweet Pea's music had everything she sort of guess; some grunge and 'emo' music, along with a couple tunes she would have never expected- like Miley Cyrus or the Backstreet Boys.
They spent the better part of a couple hours making subtle jabs about each other's tunes, scrolling meticulously through each other's libraries.
After, Betty's next stop was his Kindle app. Since she'd never taken Sweet Pea for a reader to begin with, the idea that he read anything sort of shocked her. Then again, he had picked up novels to read while he was on watch, but Betty just assumed it was lack of other activities.
It wasn't the modern classics Betty read, such as Toni Morrison, nor was it Jughead's almost pretentious love of literature (as Reggie had called it once), but there was more than just a random book or two on there. He had the Harry Potter series, and lots of other sci-fi titles Betty had never heard of, but wondered if he would allow her to read, in the future. Betty glanced up at him over the edge of the phone. She wondered if he was a secret Star Wars or Star Trek nerd? The thought that Sweet Pea might show up to comic cons or know Klingon beneath this gruff exterior made her lips curl into a small, happy grin.
Next, she went to his photos. Lots of group pictures with the Serpents. A lot with Toni, a lot with Fangs...some new ones with Cheryl, much to Betty's surprise. Five or so with Jughead, although none with just the two of them. It was clear to Betty that this had been his family and he cared deeply about all of them. She had never asked him about how he felt about Jughead taking over, a kid that swooped in and claimed a throne due to his father after never growing up with them. She wondered if it was even worth asking now, since the Serpents made up a group of two, at this moment, that they knew were alive. And, he was the 'leader' of the Serpents between them anyway, but it probably still stung a little.
She opened her mouth to ask him something about a picture, but she noticed the dark look on Sweet Pea's face. She tried to guess what he was looking at. She went back to his phone, but stole glances here and there, trying to gauge his reaction.
And his expression just grew more and more somber.
In fact, it took away from Betty fully enjoying her chance to stalk his Instagram or his Twitter feed as her mind whirled with questions, mostly, what was causing him to look so upset?
As far as she knew, she hadn't texted anything mean or catty about him to anyone. Frankly, he hadn't been on her radar singularly enough to be texting about. And, if she did, could he blame her? She was pretty sure that before this, Sweet Pea had tolerated her, if he gave a thought to her at all. So it's not like she was a lone in that respect.
So what was it?
He seemed to focus on one thing for a long time, his expression pulled together and his hands over his mouth, frowning at it. He'd then swipe, and stare some more.
"It's past midnight," Betty broke the silence after a long while. She didn't have the courage to ask what he was looking at, specifically, "I'm going to bed." She set his phone back down in front of him cautiously.
"I'll be up a bit longer," He murmured, but he seemed a thousand miles away. She tried to glance at the screen as she walked past him, but couldn't see anything specific. He looked at her as she passed him and the look he gave her was anguished, if she had to identify an emotion. It just made no sense at all to her.
Sweet Pea didn't come back to the room at all that night. She knew because she was tossing and turning until about four AM, waiting.
In the morning, a noise brought her out of her slumber. She snapped her hand out, grabbing the knife she always kept on the bedside table. She might have grown comfortable enough to wear pajamas to bed, but a weapon was never out of her reach while sleeping.
She looked over and saw Sweet Pea's side of the bed had not been touched. A rock plummeted to the bottom of her stomach, causing her anxiety. Was he so put off by her phone that he hadn't been able to bring himself to sleep in the room? What could he have been looking at? Betty had gone through her phone, or what she recalled having, all night and came up with nothing.
The noise echoed through the house. It didn't sound like walkers, it sounded like...music.
Betty threw on a robe and raised her knife, stalking through the house, carefully still.
Lock him in a uniform, book burning, blood letting...Every motion escalate, automotive incinerate...light a candle…
A song Betty vaguely recognized, though she couldn't place the name.
She came into the main dining area to see Sweet Pea standing at the counter, his iPhone blaring music as he cooked breakfast. She hung back a second, watching him dance a little to the song and sing every word to a very difficult song.
It's the end of the world as we know it, it's the end of the world as we know it-
Betty couldn't help but snort as the title sang itself.
Sweet Pea spun on his heels.
"Morning, Coop." He greeted, his expression completely turned from last night, "Ya hungry? I cooked omelettes on the fireplace outside." He said.
"Yeah, starved." Betty said, "Nice song?"
"I decided to make an 'It's the Apocalypse' playlist. Figured it was duly appropriate. Or, update the one I jokingly had. Had to edit it alot, I personally thought the end of the world would come in fire or a comet or some shit." He said, humming the melody, "I really missed music. I say on our next outing, we raid a record store. There's gotta be CD players still around somewhere. I mean, how did I survive this long without music?"
True; the only music they'd found in this house was either country (which, neither were a fan of at most times) and gospel music. They'd worn through the interest of both of those pretty fast.
"The omelette turned out good I think. Once we have some fresh tomatoes and onions and stuff it will be better. But this is good. I like it. I'll have to get used to no cheese, that will suck, but I guess we gotta make sacrifices."
Sweet Pea was blabbering. Betty was almost sure this was the most she'd ever heard him talk, unprompted. It made her wonder if his sunny disposition was true or if it was all a facade that he was desperately trying to keep up. From the way his smile didn't quite meet his eyes, she had a feeling it was the latter.
She decided not to press it, not right now.
"Today's bath day," Betty reminded him.
"Yeah. Any idea when we'll have running water again?" He asked, motioning to the sink.
"I can only focus on one thing at a time. Water or electricity/gas." She reminded him.
"Will you be done soon?" She knew why he seemed concerned. It was already August and in Wisconsin, as she'd learned, the weather could change within a blink of an eye. It could choose to snow the first week of September, or it could stay in the 80s until Halloween. There was no way to tell. It seemed like a cruddy way to live, and she wondered who would choose to be here (besides them, of course). Then again, it was probably the smaller population that led them to being here alone and uncontested, so maybe she couldn't complain too much.
"Of course," Betty blinked. She was inches away from getting one or the other to work, she could just feel it. Her goal was gas and electricity first; they had the wood-burning fireplaces, but she wanted a back up. Then, water next, hopefully by mid-september, when it would start to become too cold to go jump in the stream anyway.
There were still a lot of kinks to work out on both accounts.
"Will the harvest be ready?" She shot back in the same tone, tilting her head.
"Soon, uh-huh. But we should start hunting soonish too. If I have time, I might try to make a smoke house. There's deer fucking everywhere." Sweet Pea seemed okay, the more she scrutinized him, but all his words were carefully chosen. She wondered if she could get him to spill.
She finished eating and put the dishes in the sink, which was filled right now with soapy water from the well.
"Where's my phone?" She asked.
"Oh, over there. I charged it again." He said, but she noticed he couldn't even look directly at it. She cautiously unplugged it, double clicking on the home screen to see if the last things he was looking at were still open in the app.
They were, but that didn't mean she suddenly understood what was going on in Sweet Pea's mind. If anything, it only left her with more questions.
The last couple things open were all things about her...and Jughead. The photo album of their photos together (along with some tasteful nudes Betty had completely forgotten were there too), their messages leading up to the day they were separated, and other things on her phone that showed their love. Their relationship. It felt like Betty was reading someone else's diary, though, looking through these. Like a epic love story, as it was, but of someone's life that was not hers. When Betty looked up again, Sweet Pea was gone. She was a little greatful. All she really had the strength to do was to drag herself back into the room, close the door, and cry a little. Seeing the pictures, the messages, the places in which Jughead Jones had put himself into her phone broke down the barriers she'd been keeping up for months.
She felt like she was crying for the man she'd lost long ago, for a relationship that somewhere, she always knew was doomed to end in tragedy.
She loved Jughead. She had loved him more passionately than she'd love anyone else in her life; more than her mother, her father, or her sister. Her family wasn't really 'touchy-feely', so that made sense. Jughead had been the first time she'd been with someone who loved her back just as much and made an effort to show here that.
He'd always be her first love. You couldn't take that away. A part of your first love always stayed buried within you, a ember nearly out, no longer burning.
But she loved him, as in a past tense. It had now been four months without Jughead, nearing five. Soon, the time without Jughead would eclipse the amount of time with him.
And she was still here.
This morning, when she'd been in the threshold of the kitchen, when music had been playing and the smell of eggs had wafted through the house, when the morning light lit up the area...she'd been happy. It had felt normal. It had felt almost unreal, a glimpse into a world maybe without the walkers. And, even when she reminded herself there was walkers, it had still felt complete.
She'd been so busy trying to survive she hadn't realized somewhere in there, she'd begun to thrive with Sweet Pea. She'd become accustomed to this place. She'd called it home the other day and she didn't even think of that until now.
This was her home and she loved this, in the present. She cared for Sweet Pea a great ton.
And she could see herself really falling for him, or falling into this life with him.
Betty tinkered around with some wires for an hour or two, but was ultimately very distracted by her revelation. When she aquised she was unable to get anything of value done, she went looking for Sweet Pea.
He was out in the southern fields, as he'd written on his schedule (so Betty could always find him in case of trouble) tending to the corn rows there. She came carting the bath bucket, running through different things in her head to ask him before she arrived, mostly that she was curious about hs reaction last night. And, Betty had never been one to just let a matter lie.
Sweet Pea paused when she approached. He had to know eventually she would fetch him to go to the stream. The thermostat outside the house said it was nearing 88 degrees today, so unsurprisingly, he was shirtless.
Betty had seen Sweet Pea shirtless. Around week three and a half, he'd stopped worrying about that. Likewise, he'd seen Betty in her bra. Modesty isn't always completely available after the world went to shit.
However, today, Betty felt that familiar heat creeping through her to see him like this. The one she'd shoved down in the van a while back, the one she'd done very well to keep under wraps.
"I figured we'd go before it gets dark," She rattled the bucket, "Can you stop?"
"I was going to finish soon anyway." He shrugged. His voice was toneless, almost distant.
She bit the inside of her cheek, however, said little else. All of her questions that she'd so carefully pre-worded vanished at the lack of light in his eyes. Was he suddenly tiring of her as a partner? Was he planning on leaving in the dead of night? Was it her?
They were silent on their way to the stream. Betty went first, per usual, stripping down to her underwear and scrubbing her skin until it was pink, before bracing herself in the cold water to wash it away. She shampooed and conditioned her hair, looking back up to the ridge were Sweet Pea very patiently sat watch.
She wondered if he'd ever been tempted to turn around, steal a quick peak? Betty only momentarily had these thoughts, and then the idea that she had to be vigilant overrode that, however, she still wondered.
She did her work quickly, since a freezing cold brooke wasn't anything she wanted to languish in. She squeezed the excess water of her hair onto the bank, throwing on a pair of cleanish clothes and coming up to Sweet Pea.
"Your turn." She said, nodding backwards.
Sweet Pea started taking his shirt off in front of her, and cussed as something tinkled to the ground. He leaned down, picking up the dog tags that Betty had seen him literally never take off, not for anything. He wore it more than he wore his serpent jacket.
She knew what dog tags were, who they were from. She'd never asked, for reasons she was drawing a blank for, in that moment. Maybe it was because she hoped he'd offer it up himself. Maybe it was a topic she had decided was off limits. Maybe nothing.
Sweet Pea stared at them, dejected, for a second before turning to Betty.
"Can you…?" He held them out. The chain had broken, rusted away. Betty clasp them in her palms. He could have just as easily brought them to the river with him, but hadn't. He'd still trusted her with this.
"Whose are these?" She found herself asking, not looking at the name yet. She wanted to hear from him.
"Is this really the place?" He almost smiled, but it was a watery one at that.
"No, you're right," Betty agreed, "Nevermind." They were in the middle of a forest with a few knives between them, but not much else, miles away from their home. Sweet Pea turned to go wash, but turned back.
"It was my cousin's." Sweet Pea said, "Penny's brother. He was never a serpent...no, he got out of Riverdale first chance he got. He's the most honorable person I know. Complete opposite of Penny. He was about fifteen years older than me. Always said he'd take me away somewhere else when my ma would undoubtably die of some overdose. Then he went overseas and that's all I have left. I stole it from Penny and she gave me this," He pointed to a faint wound on his ribs that Betty had never asked about, figuring it was a story that would horrify her, "When I was 12. But she didn't take it back. I think she wanted to hurt me more than she ever wanted to recover this."
"I'll keep it safe." Betty promised. Sweet Pea gave a second smile, but this one was a little more true.
"I know you will, Coop." He shook his head from the thoughts, "Anyway, I'll be back in a sec." He said, waving down to the stream. Betty obediently turned around, one fist around the dogtags, another with a knife.
Slowly, she opened her fingers to examine the dog tags, curiosity getting the better of her.
The name on it was worn, and she could recall how Sweet Pea's fingers would drag over the metal square whenever he was thinking about something hard, or upset, or sad. It brought him a comfort in a way that Betty knew he had needed. Despite the way the letters were fading, she could still read it.
PEABODY, PAXTON L
XXX-XX-XXXX
A NEG
CHRISTIAN
Betty wondered if Paxton knew how much Sweet Pea needed him, but how he had still managed to comfort him after all these years.
She saw Sweet Pea heading back and blinked, wondering how long she'd been preoccupied with this. Getting lost in her thoughts was happening a lot today.
The walk back was equally silent, but Betty was even more confused. A guy that was planning on ditching her wouldn't have told her what he just did, nor trusted her with those dog tags.
Once they were inside the perimeter, Betty decided she couldn't wait a moment more to say something. She may lose her courage otherwise.
"Jordan?"
"Yeah?" Sweet Pea looked at her cautiously. She only used his name on rare occasions.
"I just want to say…" She sighed. She's decided somewhere on the hike back to turn it toward her instead of bombarding him with questions, "That I like it here."
"I'm glad?"
"No," Betty frowned, "I like it here with you. I don't regret not looking for Jughead. I stopped thinking about him all the time weeks ago. I stopped ruminating on the fact he's dead and I'm not. In all, I only think of him in passing." The admittance of that outlook stung a bit, but only because she didn't feel as guilty about the whole thing as a really devoted girlfriend should have, "Are you unhappy here?" She finished.
"Christ, Betty, no of course not." Sweet Pea frowned, "I'm alive, I have a house that's not bad and life actually hasn't turned completely shitty. You're not an idiot, so being together is easy, okay? Why would you ask that?"
"Well, you...last night…" Betty trailed off, "Ah, nevermind." She decided after a moment, deciding the topic wasn't worth pursuing, since Sweet Pea seemed to be looking at her with such confusion. She wondered if she'd merely made it up, his moodiness and his such, "Anyway, see you back at the house?"
"Uh-huh. Just got some stuff to finish." He stuck his hands in his pockets. As she was leaving, she heard, "You know, I was looking at the dates on the phones and yesterday would have been the first day of school for the new year. I would have been a senior."
Back at the house, Betty realized that Sweet pea's admittance had given her a whole slew of information she did not previously have.
The dates on both of their phones were totally wrong (still citing it was somewhere in June) which means that Sweet Pea must have looked on her calendar app and counted back or forward to the current date. Betty couldn't have even said it was a Monday with any certainty, but she wasn't going to think he was lying
Sweet Pea was a year older than her. Somewhere, in the recesses of her mind, she thought this might be knowledge she had. Riverdale was a small enough school that oftentimes, classes got mixed in. It's not like she paid close attention to Sweet Pea all too much before this, so the fact that he'd only popped up in two or three of her classes had never flagged her attention. It was something she think Jughead said offhandedly, but never took to heart. Cheryl was a year older, and Betty forgot this often enough as it was.
Sweet Pea was turning 18 this year. An adult. He was a year away from getting away and finishing high school and then this happened. How sucky. She made a note to ask him what his plans had been originally, had walkers not taken over.
She didn't know his birthday.
She didn't think Sweet Pea knew her birthday, and birthdays seemed like basic info people should know about each other.
If his dates were correct- and it was late in August, so she figured it was- that meant that her own birthday had come and gone completely without notice. She was seventeen now. She'd had a feeling it was approaching, but her birthday had been a whole week and a half ago. She was seventeen and she didn't feel a lick different from sixteen. She would have been getting a car this year, had she been alive. It would have been crappy and used and probably in a boring color like gray, but her dad was supposed to get her a car, since Polly had gotten one at seventeen.
In all, it was a lot to process, a lot to come out of a comment made off-hand and that had almost gone unsaid.
There were certain things she could react to, could remedy. She knew that this date put them at late August, which meant there was much less time before the coming fall than she thought. A part of her reminded herself it would have been smart to be working on getting heat into the house, but she let talked herself into just a couple hours to herself. To bake a cake to celebrate a day she hadn't known had passed, but a date she should be marking all the same.
If it were a normal day, she'd be making cake for it. As it was, they didn't have enough eggs or the things to make it, and an oven wasn't set up. She looked through the meager gathering of food- also reminding herself that perhaps they needed to go out once again before the sun fell- and decided to make something as vaguely sweet as she could. She had a deep longing for the Dairy Queen Ice Cream cakes her mother and father would get her as a child, despite the fact she hasn't had one of those since she turned 14. It's weird what one misses when there's nothing to have. If it was a normal birthday and her mother had made her white cake with icing and her friends had been there, Betty might not have missed that ice cream cake at all.
She could also ask Sweet Pea when his birthday was. She figured it was something she should know.
So, notes!
*Legit, like I watched a tasty vid once and I was like 'huh, that would be useful to know for the apocalypse' and that sorta jumpstarted this whole fic if you'd believe it?
*I love going through other people's music. It's so interesting to see what someone else listens to! I think you can tell a lot about a person
*My brother has his phone background as an 80s album cover, and it's hilarious. I also feel like, at one point, the group filmed/edited a cheesy 90s sitcom theme song with like a really 90s song and everyone dramatically looking up at the camera and smiling
*I know, I know that the 'End of the World As We Know It' song is so cliched and and on every playlist, but I LOVE that song. My dad knows all the words by heart and it's hilarious because if we play it around the house, he'll just start off by humming it and slowly get more into it. Way back before I published this, I wasn't happy with its working title, and then I wrote this chapter and I was like 'what if Sweet Pea had a playlist for the end of the world?' and since then I've gone back to make him more into music
*On the dogtags the XX-XXX-XXX is where a social security number would be, but I didn't want to make one up.
*I'm not sure when Betty's bday is. BUT since both times we skip over summer and Betty's bday isn't mentioned during the series, I'm assuming it's July-August
*My headcanon is that Sweet Pea is a year old. Dunno why, but it is
So, I hope you all enjoyed this new chapter! Remember to review ;)