a paperlesscrown fic

darknessaroundus:

flwrpotts:

thinking of a place

Betty can feel her breath high and tight in her chest, pulse thrumming quick in her wrist with a dizzying sort of anticipation. She watches from backstage as the band tunes up their instruments- Fangs and Sweet Pea tossing guitar picks at one another and talking shit, Toni swigging from a bottle of whiskey. There’s something building in the anxious stirring of the audience, like thunder from a distant storm, and Betty has her pencil pressed to her notepad hard enough to leave an indent, ready to scribble frantic notes.

The music starts like the first crack of lightning, like a giant turning in its sleep, and the blistering throb of it knocks the air clean out of Betty’s lungs, shock running through her fingers.

Slow nights so long howls Sweet Pea into the microphone, his teeth flashing sharp and white under the sticky pink neon and smoke, microphone curled in one hand in drink in the other, close up to his face. But it’s the drummer Betty watches, tapping the pedal constantly like an unerring heartbeat.

“I told you they were something else,” says a cool, amused voice in her ear, and Betty startles out of her reverie, glances over to where Veronica has appeared next to her. She exhales a lungful of smoke, smiles her Cheshire Cat grin, the one that promises something illicit.

“That’s one way to put it,” she agrees absently, gaze still fixed on the boy, the one with the dark hair and the white t-shirt, body curled over the drum kit like the audience isn’t even there. He glances suddenly up and catches her stare, meets her eyes like tipping the barrel of a gun.

Betty swallows hard and he winks at her, dark eyed and sly, never missing a beat as the band slashes through the final, brutal chords of the song. She can taste ozone between her teeth. Something wicked this way comes she thinks to herself, and it’s a promise.

coming soon to an ao3 near you!

This has me impossibly excited

thetaoofbetty:

wait for you

“You’re pathetic, man,” Archie tells him with a laugh.

Jughead shrugs as he looks at his phone for the tenth time since they sat down to play some video games. “You saw her, Arch. Don’t act like you wouldn’t trip over your own feet to get a date with her.”

“She’s hot, yeah, but you’re moping around, waiting-”

“Not moping. Decidedly un-moping. Pining, if you will. Wandering the moors waiting for my love to come back to me like-”

“Jug,” Archie interrupts, “no more references you know I don’t understand or I’ll kick you out of the room again.”

Big thanks to @indiebughead and @jandjsalmon for helping me along with this whole thing that took way too long

darknessaroundus:

I just read Strange Love, chapter two, by the wonderful @honestlyhappymoon and I’m very smitten with it! I just had to make this mood board to tide me over to chapter three.

darknessaroundus:

Thank you so much @kittileepdx for the amazing graphic and the beta-ing! 

An excerpt from part III

It’s warm in the house when she wakes. She can see the dust motes illuminated beautifully by the light. Usually they wake before dawn to make the most out of the growing season. Still it seems wrong to rush outdoors today.

Jughead’s arm is wrapped around her, one hand is gently resting on her breast. She feels close to him, as if they are somehow sharing the same body, even the slow rhythm of their breathing matches. She suspects he is still asleep.

Into her thoughts drifts Emily’s lines on sleep, Sleep is the station grand/ Down which, on either hand/ The hosts of witness stand!/ Morn is supposed to be/ By people of degree/ The breaking of the Day.

Betty could wake Jughead easily, just by shifting slightly he would rouse, but she wants to enjoy this moment between them. They waited so long on the precipice that it seems strange to have been with each other fully.

Betty thinks to herself of the many euphemisms for what they did last night and most of them seem unfitting.

Making love is an ongoing process not an end result. Fucking just sounds angry. Being together biblically is too grandiose. Just calling it sex is reductive.

Her sleepy mind finally settles on the phrase, becoming one, a euphemism she understands with every breath, every cell and atom. She feels for the first time in her life, wholly satisfied, even as she aches.

Jughead shifts slightly and she feels his warm breath against the back of her neck. This is home.

A worry stirs suddenly in her stomach, that already they have managed to create a child, growing in her like a seed in early spring, unfelt and unseen.

Instead of letting that worry wake her fully Betty takes a deep breath, and peace comes dropping slow, dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.

Continue Reading Part III

Start from the beginning