Author's Note:

From "The Way You Said 'I Love You'" tag, prompt 20: As we huddle together, the storm raging outside.

"I can't believe this was the weekend my parents picked to go visit Polly," Betty moaned. With her eyes closed, she could avoid looking at the rain, but she couldn't stop herself from hearing it accelerate from a march to a jog against the roof.

"So their visit gets extended an extra night, no big deal," Jughead responded nonchalantly. He might not have been such a big fan of storms himself―in his typical state of profound moroseness, they made him feel like Mother Nature was being a tad heavy-handed with the pathetic fallacy―but Betty was already worried enough for the both of them.

"Unless they decide to risk it and drive… in this." She swept her hand towards her window like she was backhanding a fly from the humid air.

"Do you think they would? Your mom?"

"No, she's smarter than that."

"Your dad?"

"No," Betty repeated with a short laugh, "my mom wouldn't let him."

"Then that settles it. Everything is fine. The best thing for you to do is just hunker down and wait this out." Jughead shrugged and began to retreat, figuring he'd leave her to watch a fluffy movie. She looked at him with sometime less than alarm yet more than casual interest.

"You're not leaving, are you?"

"Too much talk about your mother." He smirked. "I'm starting to feel guilty for loitering in her daughter's bedroom after sundown."

"You could hang around… just for a little while. If you wanted?" She tried to keep her look light, inviting, tentative, but as soon as the suggestion left her lips, the power dynamic shifted. Betty couldn't help it. What was she supposed to do? Encourage him out into the storm?

"Well, if you're gonna twist my arm like that…" Jughead shot her a smile.

For a while, they just chatted like normal, sitting on the end of her bed with their legs pressing together every time they adjusted their posture. Jughead didn't know what was making him so shy; whenever Betty's hand began to sneak towards his, his insides sparkled and crackled like cheap holiday fireworks. Then the thunder started, quieting them with its primordial rumble.

"I'm going to turn some more lights on," Betty volunteered, reaching for her lamp though they already sat in the artificial midnight sun of her overhead light. It wasn't that the dimming sky made her nervous (a highly practical mother had ensured she'd never been afraid of the dark), but she felt that there was something coming she was going to have to face, and it was sending her into survival mode.

Before she could click the lamp on, the power went out.

"Ok, ok, this is fine," she said aloud into the darkness. Jughead's hand landed on her back and she jumped like his palm was a defibrillator paddle.

"I know it is," he laughed. "There's no one I feel, um…" Betty had turned her face towards his and he was caught off guard when a lightning strike lit her eyes up the green of key lime pie. "… safer with," he concluded, feeling out of breath for a reason logic couldn't account for.

"Right, safe. I have matches and candles and…"

"I'm actually all set," he assured her, gaze pausing for long seconds on each of the soft features of her face.

Betty still seemed a little skittish to Jughead, so he stretched back to drag her comforter forward, flipping it inside out to cocoon them where they sat. He kicked his sneakers off and pulled his legs up onto the bed. She relented, sagging into him like an electronic doll with a dying battery. Thunder boomed again and Jughead slipped his arm around her back.

"Sounds like the world's flying apart out there," she whispered. In the seconds after the thunder, her room seemed as muffled as the inside of a cotton ball.

"Definitely not a night you'd want to be out in." They could both hear that he was making idle chitchat―not very Jughead of him.

"Well I, I," she stumbled―not very Betty of her―finding that her chin was lifting, drawing her face closer to his, "don't have anywhere to be." She watched his tongue slick his bottom lip. "I have to tell you something," she sighed out, knowing that the time was now.

Thunder made them both jolt this time, and now Jughead found he had both arms around her, his face inches from hers. To hear her better? Probably not, though she was speaking quite softly for a girl he knew to be a bold, demanding force of nature when she needed to be.

"I love you," Betty confessed, squeezing Jughead's hand and getting some of the blanket in her grip too.

"I love you, too," he said, barely getting it out before his mouth was more engaged with kissing her. When lightning flashed, it was like a pure, white sun behind his eyelids. They pulled back from each other, still holding hands. "Boy," Jughead commented, "you must have really been scared. You know, I would've stayed for a Pop-Tart or something."

"How 'bout a hot chocolate?" Betty offered with a smile, pulling her side of the comforter up with her as she stood.

"Downstairs?"

"Think we can manage it?"

"I'll grab the matches."