Definition of Want (Bughead)

BLOW JOB

The train back home for Thanksgiving left at 9 AM, long before Jughead woke up. She lingered in his doorway for a couple of moments, watching him sleep as she tried to decide if she should say goodbye.

In the end, she felt strange watching him for longer and taped a note to his door.

If she had her choice, she wouldn't be coming home for Thanksgiving. Christmas, perhaps, but only for half of the time. She felt Thanksgiving was a useless amount of time anyway and had tried her best to get out of it. She was pretty sure Jughead was hitching a ride with Archie as an honorary Andrews family member. Betty had met Archie's dad this past September on apartment move-in day and found him one of the most lovely and kind parents she'd ever met.

She had found, in her heart, she sort of wished she was his daughter.

Her own parents were...complicated.

There was her father, who she loved, but was sort of a doormat. Or maybe he just didn't want to give the effort anymore, Betty could almost understand that. She'd always gotten along with him best, two peas in a pod as he used to say. Still, it had felt like a long time she'd really had a good conversation with him, their last long talk being over this summer where he seemed distracted and a little out of it.

Her mother was a whole can of crazy. Imagine a very overprotective mother and then multiply it times five hundred, and one may touch the tip of the iceberg of who Alice Cooper was. It was perfection or nothing, and very often, Betty fell closer to the 'nothing' side.

Then there was her sister. She loved her sister, but Polly could be dramatic and a little unhinged even at the best of times. If Betty was like Hal, Polly was Alice but 20 years younger. They used to get along great, until high school. It was like a flip was switched and suddenly Polly became this strange person.

The best part about Polly was her two kids, born when Polly was scarcely out of high school. No one knew who the dad was, which had been the source of many Cooper shouting matches in the house. Dagwood and Juniper, which were possibly the most stupid names for children, were nevertheless little adorable angles.

Betty dotted on them like the favorite Aunt she was, and if she could just go home to see those two around the Holidays, she would. If she weren't in college and living in a dorm room with a roommate she occasionally got down and dirty with, she may have even offered to take the pair of Polly's hands for a bit, and forgo the family reunions altogether.

There was also Betty's cousins; well, 3rd cousins, but they grew up like cousins. The twins, Cheryl and Jason. Jason was alright- the average football star that sort of peaked early, but he was nice enough. Cheryl was a mystery.

Or, she had been. No, scratch that, Cheryl was still Cheryl (and yes, she was best described with an adjective of herself), and maybe Betty had just gotten more used to her, or maybe Cheryl wasn't picking on Betty as much anymore. Betty wasn't sure. She was still strange, but they were friends now. Not best friends, but...well...

She'd gotten far better since their high school years, in which family relations aside, she sort of made Betty's freshman year hell. Then, she met her girlfriend and things started getting Betty. Betty wouldn't go as far to claim she was a decent human being, but her family was even more fucked up than Betty's, and that was saying something. Perhaps that's why they drew a treaty all those years ago; Betty couldn't exactly recall. They held a tenuous friendship now, one that seemed to only get better with distance, as they texted every week or so. One that also was helped by Toni, the unmoving bridge of kindness between the two of them.

She admitted that, in all, it was little to complain about. She knew that there were people like Veronica, that while her parents were rich, were also lowkey maybe criminals who hated each other's guts. Or Archie's parents, who were separated but still living in the same house (weird, but whatever). Or Jughead's family that was...well, something entirely broken in a way different than Betty's.