Work Text:
I get lost all the time
In my thoughts; in my mind
You come through like a light
In the dark, give me sight
Jughead is discharged from the hospital four days after being admitted. The bandages which begin halfway down his rib cage are wrapped tightly around his abdomen and reach a stop at his bellybutton. His left eye is swollen so much that he can barely lift the lid, and his fractured cheekbone is now held together with screws.
His right arm is bandaged too - hiding the place he knows no longer displays the serpent tattoo - but it’s all nothing compared to the pain he’d felt in his chest when the ghoulies had sneered at what they would do to Betty. His Betty.
The steps leading up to the Coopers’ front door seem steeper than usual; higher too, but he’ll climb as many as he needs to until he can be alone with his girl. She’s by his side, letting his injured right arm rest over her shoulder as she urges him to lean on her.
Of course, the entirety of his weight is resting on his father, who is half-hauling him up the steps, so he doesn’t hurt her.
Jughead still isn’t quite sure how they’ve arrived at this set-up: him recovering in his girlfriend’s bedroom while her mother (who, he suspects, has never liked him very much) offers his father the guest room. He thinks it must have been decided while he’d still been unconscious, but he’s not about to argue with the reasoning behind it all.
“You’ll be safe there,” Alice had told him in the most gentle voice he’s ever heard her use. Betty had sniffed and squeezed his hand tighter, and his dad had nodded - just once - in Alice’s direction.
He’s exhausted all over again by the time he reaches Betty’s bedroom. His father had brought clean clothes for him to leave hospital in (which he thinks might have been either Alice or Betty’s idea) so he feels less guilty for spoiling the pastel bed linen as he leans back against the wall of pillows Betty builds for him.
FP is trying to hide the fact that he’s out of breath, but gives it away regardless when he wipes his brow on the sleeve of his leather jacket.
“You good?” he asks, and Jughead nods.
“Yeah, thanks dad.”
There’s been an expression permanently etched into his face since Jughead woke up. He thinks it might be guilt, and every so often, Betty’s mom will place her manicured hand on his arm and say gently,
“He’s okay FP,” and then his features will relax, if only for a few minutes.
He leaves to join Alice downstairs where she’s brewing fresh coffee like her husband hasn’t just been discovered as the Black Hood, and then it’s just Jughead and Betty.
She’s hovering by the edge of the bed, gnawing on her fingernails like she’s stuck for the right words to say, and so he murmurs quietly,
“C’m here Betts.”
He lifts his good arm as best he can in a gesture that means I want you as close as possible, and it must work because she crawls onto the mattress beside him and buries her face into the crook of his neck.
She smells like sunlight and goodness and he never wants to let her go.
He wraps his fingers around her ponytail so that he has enough leverage to tilt her face enough that he can kiss her. It’s a little limp - the ponytail - reminding him that she’s spent all of her time at the hospital and therefore she probably hasn’t had the chance to wash her hair. Still, it smells as good as it always does and her lips close gently around his.
For four days, he hasn’t been able to do this with her - even if it is a much more tentative version of what he really wants but his body won’t yet allow - and suddenly, he realises how parched he’s been; how desperately he needs her lips on his. Of course, she’s pressed numerous kisses to his cheek (the one which isn’t shattered and marred with reds and greens and purples) but their parents have been there, seated in the two chairs at the edge of the room and so Jughead has been unable to sink his fingers into her skin.
Now though, he is able to do those things.
Betty’s mouth moves carefully - like it’s afraid she’ll be too rough - but when he manages to bring his right arm across his body so he can cup her cheek and chin, she stretches so that she can lift up and seat herself gently in his lap.
Jughead can’t help but grin: this is one of his fantasies come true after all (minus the injuries and the missing chunk of his arm of course) and he finds his girlfriend smiling against his lips too.
Eventually they run out of air - him first because he can only take shallow breaths thanks to the ribs that punctured his lung - but with Betty close behind. She stays where she is though, the comforting weight of her body pressing down on his thighs.
Her fingers begin a slow exploration of his face from his forehead, tracing first the eyebrow that isn’t stitched with paper before they move to the one that is. He winces at first despite trying not to, and she looks like she might cry.
“It’s okay,” he grits out because he wants her to keep going; wants to feel her hands on his skin even if it does burn.
Betty nods and strokes the pad of her thumb beneath his eyes. She avoids the gash on his cheekbone but picks up again at his lips where she strokes over and over and over until her own lips are trembling and she has to kiss him just so he can get them to stop.
She draws in a shaky breath when she pulls away and then drags her fingertips lightly from the tops of both ears down his jaw until they meet at his chin.
“You’re still here,” she whispers into the air, and Jughead gets the distinct impression she’s reminding not him, but herself.
He cups her elbows and then runs his hands along the underside of her forearms until their fingers entwine. The scent of fresh coffee travels through the open door and Jughead sniffs appreciatively. He’d managed a couple cups of the vending machine stuff while in the hospital, but he knows Alice buys the expensive kind that you have to grind yourself.
“You want some?” Betty asks and yeah, he does, but he wants her here more.
“I’m okay,” he replies, and silently wills his dad to bring some up so he can have the best of both worlds.
There is no discussion revolving around where Betty will sleep. Well, Jughead supposes, that’s technically not true: there is a discussion, but not one that actually involves him and Betty. It takes place between Alice and his father - not too far away from the bedroom he’s lying in if the level of their voices is anything of an indicator - and involves the mention of the facts that a) Betty is finally asleep and it would be cruel to wake her, and b) she’s likely to wait until later and creep down the hall to where he is anyway.
“Pretty futile, wouldn’t you say?” he hears FP’s gruff voice state, and Jughead smiles to himself.
Betty is no longer in his lap - she’d reluctantly climbed off when he’d suggested she take a shower and get something to eat at an actual table - but had returned later with a large bowl of homemade chicken soup and enough bread to rival a bakery.
“I know you probably just want a burger and a milkshake from Pop’s,” she’d said as she’d carried in the tray. “But this is good for you.”
He’d eaten it gratefully, and after she’d taken the tray down to the kitchen and then snuggled back in against his side, she’d promised in a whisper,
“I’ll bring you a burger tomorrow.”
The lights in the Cooper house go off a little after ten thirty. Pretty early, Jughead decides to himself, but comforting nonetheless. He hears the fan whir in the bathroom (his dad brushing his teeth) and the awkward apologies from both him and Alice as they obviously bump into each other on the landing; he hears the shutting of one bedroom door, the heavy nature of his dad’s footsteps as he makes his way to Betty’s room to say,
“Night son, Betty.”
“Night dad,” he replies, and nods gratefully as he closes the door on them both.
The bedside lamp is still on and spilling a golden light across a sleepy Betty, who lifts her head and belatedly bids FP a goodnight.
There is little room for her on the mattress and so Jughead attempts to shift over so she won’t be uncomfortable.
“Stop,” she admonishes gently. “I’m okay like this.”
“You need more room,” he reminds her, and carves out another inch of pink sheets.
“I just need you, Jug,” she replies, and snuggles in closer still.
After she turns out the light, her head and arm don’t rest across his chest like they normally do, but she finds somewhere else for them to lay so they’re still touching. It means he can drop a kiss to her forehead without stretching, and she hums almost contentedly when his lips meet her skin.
“I meant it,” he whispers. “I’ll never stop loving you.”
At some point during the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning (Jughead can’t be sure which but the moon outside is big and round and silver so he figures it’s a while yet before dawn) he wakes to find Betty shuffling against him.
“You okay?” he asks, combing through her hair.
She stops wriggling and lifts her head, blinking in the weak light. “Sorry,” she apologises. “I just wanted to get closer. I can’t…” a tear slips from her left eye, and then another from her right.
“You can’t what?”
It sounds as though she’s stifling a sob. “Get close enough.”
He sighs and it’s louder than he’d intended. “Betts,”
“They wouldn’t let me touch you,” she chokes. “I just wanted to hold your hand and they wouldn’t let me.”
He exhales and pulls her closer, ignoring the screaming protest from his ribs. This is more important. “You’ve got me now.”
She lifts herself up, much like she had earlier, and this time, the sheets fall from where they’re covering her chest to make a pool of cotton at her hips. His hands instinctively guide her, planted steadily at her shoulder blades as she rises to her knees so she can straddle him again.
It’s him who kisses her this time, and maybe it’s not as gentle as before, but gentle doesn’t seem to be enough now. Betty is wearing a t-shirt of his - the same one she’d worn the very first time she’d slept over at the trailer - and when his fingers toy with the hem, she crosses her arms in front of her and tugs the material over her head.
Jughead’s mouth goes dry at the sight of her bare skin and he slides his hands from her sides to where the swell of her breasts begins. She presses herself higher up his thighs so that she’s seated almost over his groin. There are bruises there too, but not enough that he wants her to go anywhere else.
A soft sigh tumbles from her lips and into the air when he brushes the pads of his thumbs over each of her nipples, and then she frames his face carefully in her hands so she can kiss him.
They kiss until they run out of air - and again, it’s him who’s the first to need a new intake of oxygen - and after snatching as much as they can get, he goes right back to kissing her.
He knows what she means now: it’s not enough.
(He wonders if it’ll ever be enough)
Betty begins to rock as her tongue slides into his mouth and his fingers pinch gently at her nipples. Her groan is censored by his mouth but the sound makes its way to his dick anyway, serving to make him even harder.
“Jug,” she gasps, and he feels her fingers at the waistband of his boxers. She rises to her knees, lifting off of him so he can raise his hips and she can tug the material down to his knees.
She muffles her cry against his neck as she sinks down onto him, and every single punch and slice of the knife into his skin was worth it, he thinks, to have this. To protect this. Her.
For a moment, she doesn’t move; just stays there with her breasts pressed against his chest and her hot breaths burning in waves across his neck. And then she lifts her hips and circles him but she never pulls away. Her stomach grazes his bandages and her forehead is resting against the bruising on the left side of his face, but he doesn’t care.
“I love you,” she stutters against his skin. His hands are flat against her back and he can feel her muscles flex as she moves. “I love you I love you I love you.”
The next day, Betty is gone for nearly three hours in the early evening. He counts down the time until she returns, and then, when he finally hears the front door open and close in quick succession followed by the light clack of her shoes on the hardwood floor, he relaxes back against the pillows.
His chest feels tight and he wonders if it’s from her not being there, the darkening sky as evening draws in, or a combination of both. He hears her climb the stairs and then the door opens wider so he can see her properly. Her nose is pink from the cold air and she tucks herself in at his side before sealing her lips over his.
“How’re you feeling?” she asks, but doesn’t pause long enough for him to answer. “You were sleeping when I left.”
“Where did you go?” ( Why did you go?)
“I needed a few things from Main Street,” she replies. “I got you something too.”
“Oh?”
“It might start with ‘b’,” she smiles, “And end in ‘urger’.”
His smile is wide and hurts his cheekbone but he doesn’t care.
“Want me to bring it up?” Betty asks.
He shakes his head. “I can eat it later while you’re in the shower.” He doesn’t tell her that it’ll be something to take his mind off of missing her while she’s only in the adjoining room.
“Okay,” she mumbles against his neck, and snuggles in closer.
Later, she helps him shower. Jughead winces under the sting of the hot water but it feels good in a way. Her gentle hands massaging shampoo into his hair definitely help too.
Jughead manages to redress himself in a t-shirt that belongs to his dad - the larger ones are easier to maneuver over his bandages - and a clean pair of boxers. Betty is in her dressing gown when he re-enters her bedroom, but from the ‘v’ the lapels make he can tell there is no t-shirt for her tonight.
Even the pain of his cheekbone can’t stifle his grin.
She helps him into bed, propped back against the wall of pillows, and then climbs in to join him at the other side. All of the lights in the Cooper house are turned out by ten thirty again - all except the little lamp on Betty’s bedside table.
“Juggie,” she starts, clearing her throat and then rising to her knees on the mattress beside him.
He watches as she loosens the belt of her dressing gown and then peels away the pink towelling.
“So you didn’t lose yours in vain,” she whispers, and Jughead’s throat aches so much at the sight of the tiny little crown inked into her skin that he can’t form a single syllable, let alone a string of words to form a sentence.
It sits at her hip: a thin dark grey outline of perfection.
He kisses her so hard that he’s close to puncturing his other lung, but it doesn’t matter.
She’s the only thing that does.
If you let my soul out
It’ll come right back to you.