Somewhere off The Coast of Monaco
She woke up off the coast of Monaco on the S.S. Jones III.
One of Jughead’s father’s yachts. Or boat, as she didn’t know what square-footage qualified as what.
But no matter, she woke up too early to the gentle movements of the Mediterranean Sea and rolled over to find a note folded over on her bedside table.
You’re beautiful when you sleep, it read. Breakfast is on the main deck. Bring a sweater, it’s quite chilly.
JJ.
“He’s so fucking creepy,” Betty said aloud and checked her phone. There were no new messages. No missed calls.
And nothing on her burner either.
Because Jughead had shown up late at night to her dorm, kidnapped her (though she left willingly), brought them to his plane, and took her out of London.
After they had sort of gone over the ridiculous plan that she was still trying to wrap her head around, they landed at Charles de Gaulle and were quickly escorted off of the plane and onto a helicopter that flew the twenty-seven minutes to the S.S. Jones III and landed on the helicopter pad and let them off.
Yes.
Helicopter pad
Betty, once again, tried to ignore the uneasy feeling that came with the ease of slipping back into her pre-Oxford days. She didn’t even wait for Weatherbee to unload her bags, instead following Jughead onto the boat and inside.
She didn’t quite know what to call that part of the boat as it was the same size as her mid-level priced apartment on the Upper East Side.
He led her to the kitchen where there was already food prepared, and he popped two plates into the microwave. When he set them down in front of her, her mouth watered at the smell of real food and not the fried pub stuff that she had been pretending to enjoy for the last six months.
She had forgotten how good it was.
“I take it you had all of this prepared earlier today?” she asked around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “How did you get Robuchon on this boat to cook?”
He sent her a raised eyebrow and stabbed into his own salmon. She looked down, embarrassed, and poked hers too.
Yeah, it had been forever since she’d eaten food this good.
“It wasn’t him,” Jughead said as he cleaned his plate. “It was his new executive chef. I owe them a favor now. Maybe in the form of a thousand dollar bill. But anything for you. I remembered how much you loved the potatoes,” he trailed off and looked at her.
The butterflies felt more like nausea at this point and she took a big sip of the water that he had placed next to her.
They ate the rest of their food in silence and Betty was so comfortably full that her eyes dropped heavily downward and she pushed her plate away to lay on the cool marble counter.
“I should let you sleep,” Jughead said quietly. Betty nodded and stood up. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and she tucked herself into his chest. He brought his other arm up and around her waist and squeezed her tight.
They stood there for what felt like longer than what was appropriate for just partners.
She thought she felt him whisper “I miss you,” against the top of her head but figured it was the exhaustion and let go of his waist and started to walk towards the stairs that led to the room where she always slept but a hand caught her.
“Sleep in my room tonight,” he said in a soft voice. “It’s much more comfortable and much bigger than the beds downstairs and you deserve something better than a twin XL.”
She didn’t even try to protest and let him drag her by the hand up a small flight of stairs at the back of the boat and into the master suite. There was a California king bed pushed up against the west wall and a floor to ceiling window that doubled as a sliding glass door to the main deck.
Betty’s things were already in the room nestled against the foot of the bed. She noticed that one of his oversized sleep shirts was neatly folded on the pillow and she grabbed it, pretending not to notice that Jughead was standing in the doorway and took all of her clothes off. She shrugged the shirt over her head, pulled the covers back and lay facing him.
Her eyes closed instantly and felt the bed dip beneath her as Jughead sat down on the edge. Her hand darted out from the covers so she could squeeze his hand.
“We have a lot to talk about in the morning, BC,” he said quietly. She nodded her head and threw a sleepy smile in his direction before turning on her side.
“Sweet dreams, angel,” he whispered as he backed out.
She was asleep before the door shut behind him.
It was barely seven in the morning as she looked at the card he left her and groaned in frustration.
Three things dawned on Betty.
The first was she had been kidnapped (not really) and was now on a boat off of the coast of one of the most expensive places to exist when yesterday she was in a dorm with a shared bathroom.
The second was she was about to get involved in something she thought she had sworn off. She unconvincingly told herself that she was going in reluctantly, but knew that she had had dreams about a set of forbidden blueprints.
And the third was she was hungry. Really fucking hungry.
Realizing that she could kill two birds with one stone, she threw on a pair of leggings and an oversized hoodie and opened the glass door. She stood in awe of the view and the glittering sea below her.
It may have been a bit chilly, but it was insanely beautiful. She stepped out onto the deck and looked to her left where she could feel Jughead’s presence.
She saw that he was wearing a very similar outfit to hers, black sweatpants with a black sweater. He had a pair of Dior sunglasses perched on top of his beautiful, thick, curly hair.
He was holding a book in one hand but his eyes weren’t moving and Betty could tell that he was waiting to see if she’d come over or turn around and go back inside.
She was waiting for that too.
She felt her feet moving beneath her and walked right over to where he was sitting, a tray of pastries and fruit waiting for her. He was sitting on one of the wider lounge chairs and Betty hesitated slightly before deciding to slide into the chair with him, keeping a solid foot distance between them.
He was reading a book with a worn cover that had yellowing pages. Betty couldn’t make out the title but she could tell from the slight crease between his eyebrows that it was something slightly difficult to grasp.
“You’re awake,” Jughead said without looking up and turning a page. He grabbed the already made plate and handed it to her. She ducked her head and smiled, taking the plate and placing it on her lap. She grabbed one of the strawberries and placed it between her lips, biting as close to the base as possible and moaning.
She hadn’t had fruit that good in months.
“Control yourself, BC,” Jughead said in an indecipherable tone.
Betty knew there wasn’t a single ounce of hilarity behind his words.
She slid further down the chair and leaned her head against the armrest closest to her. She let her body relax a bit and turned so she was facing Jughead.
And openly staring, actually.
He was wearing a tan cashmere sweater (much like hers), and black sweatpants that Betty knew cost more a night out with friends. He had no socks or shoes on his feet and Betty tried not to admire his toes.
She wasn’t that weird.
“When do we leave to go see Cheryl?” Betty asked, impatient to see her cousin.
If you looked at Betty and Cheryl next to each other, you’d never assume that they were related. Cheryl was tiny with bright red hair, a perfect hourglass figure, and beautiful big eyes. She was never wearing any real clothes, meaning her Chanel skirts were too short and her blouses were always a bit too low cut.
Betty, in contrast, was built more like a two-by-four and had dull dirty blonde hair. Her only redeeming features were her bright green eyes that were known to captivate marks while her partner picked their pocket, letting them leave with a small wallet and a big paycheck.
She had spent almost every day with Cheryl from the day she was born up until she left for school.
She missed her more than she missed anyone from her crew.
Well, almost.
“Wheels up around five today,” he said without looking up.
“Where are we going?” she asked, ignoring the fact that he didn’t say when or where she was going to see Cheryl, and sitting up a bit straighter.
“Chicago. We have to go pick up Pea,” he said simply.
Pea, she thought. Her best friend since the day she had tried to pick-pocket him at her mother’s birthday party and he threw her over his shoulder, running around the halls of their DC house with wild abandon.
“He’s in Chicago? He’s on board? What is he even doing?” She asked again. Questions flooded her brain as she sat up quickly, clutching her head at the rapid movement.
“Whose brainchild do you think this stupid heist was?”
Betty said nothing and sunk even further into the chair so her head was on the cushion and her knees were pulled into her chest. She fiddled with the hem of Jughead’s sweater without thinking. Her fingers brushed the exposed skin and she felt goosebumps break out across his stomach.
Sweet Pea was the first love of her life. Not in a romantic way, but in such a way that they couldn’t not be around each other. They didn’t go to school as kids with their parents carting them around to world to pull elaborate heists. Sweet Pea’s parents died before he could even talk, and much like Jughead, would never disclose his last name.
Sweet Pea was bounced around the family, sometimes staying with Cheryl’s parents or Joaquin’s dad, but he stayed with the Cooper’s the most.
He was her fiercest protector before Jughead, and they would even go toe-to-toe with each other over Betty’s safety from time to time.
He was actually her first kiss too.
No one knew that but them.
The fact that later in the day she’d be sitting in the cushy seats of the G-5, champagne in hand and legs thrown across her best friend made her giddier than the thought of the heist itself.
But a cold thought dissipated throughout her body and she choked out, “isn’t he mad at me?”
Jughead sighed and nonchalantly wrapped his pointer finger around a strand of her hair that had escaped.
“You’ll have to ask him yourself.”
Betty looked up at him. “Does he know I’m coming?”
Jughead smirked and said, “if he knows, it’s because Cheryl told him. But since I didn’t tell Cheryl that I was able to sneak you out of that hell hole you call university...” he trailed off. “I’d say that no, he does not know you’re coming.”
Betty wanted to sit up and glare down at him, but the feeling of his skin on her hand and her hair in his was too intoxicating to let her move.
“So Cherry doesn’t even know I’m here. Even though you told me that she said she needed me,” Betty whispered.
“Well, yes. She did say she needed you. But I lied about the rest of it,” Jughead said.
“Then why am I even here, Jug?” she asked softly.
“Because she needs you,” he said matter of factly. “We all need you. We can’t do it without you,” he continued.
“You all seem to have gotten along just fine without me,” she grumbled and turned so her face was now pressed into the rough cover. “There were two bank heists and a short con run on a woman with a particular set of plates with the royal seal if I’m not mistaken. I might have left, or, tried to leave,” she trailed off, “but I always kept track of my crew.”
Kept tabs on you, she wanted to say.
Jughead moved his body down as well but kept his hand in her hair and shifted even closer.
It pushed her hand even further up the hem of his sweater.
“We can’t do it without you, BC,” he said quietly. “We’ve thought about it a million different ways, but we always get busted. But each time we come up with a scenario with you in it...”
“It works,” she whispers.
“It works.”
Betty watched as Jughead flashed a keycard at the concierge at Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo and walked straight to the elevator. He was wearing black dress pants and a black button down shirt with the top three buttons undone. He wore a very thin gold chain that Betty knew was his great-grandmother’s that she gave to him before she died. He was also wearing the peacoat from the night before when he picked Betty up from school. The coat was open and Betty wondered if he had somehow gotten hotter since she had left, or if she only started to appreciate it now that she was back.
“So you’re saying that she doesn’t know that I am about to walk into the room?” Betty asked as she tried to cover up the shiver going up her spine when he play ed his hand on her lower back and led her into the elevator. He pressed the “PH” button once and the “close door” button twice before turning to her.
“Pent house,” he said simply.
“What?”
“Pent house. Cherry doesn’t just do rooms BC,” he replied and leaned into her a bit. They went soaring up to the top floors and Betty held her breath as she waiting for the doors to open.
“This was a bad idea, Jug,” she whispered, butterflies erupting in her stomach as she braced herself for what was to come.
The doors started to open and Betty could hear her cousin before they finished.
“Jughead! What took you so long? I told Pea we’d get–” but she stopped, looking Betty dead in the face.
Jughead grabbed her hand and pulled her off of the elevator railing. He placed his hand on her low back again and the numb scared feeling evaporated as she became hyperaware of the situation around her.
“Betty,” Cheryl said breathlessly. She looked like she wanted to run to her in happiness, but also to slap her.
Betty decided that it was up to her to make the first move.
So she did.
She crossed the few steps across the room to get to where her cousin was standing in a short dressing robe and a lace bralette and probably nothing else and wrapped her arms around her so tight that she thought she could have killed her.
At first, Cheryl didn’t move, letting her arms hang limply by her sides, but then she pushed Betty off of her slowly and Betty had to bite back the tears pricking at her eyes.
Cheryl gave Betty a once over. She was wearing a pair of black high-waist straight-leg pants and a black blazer gently wrapped on her shoulders, her sleeves not pushed through.
She was also wearing a strapless lace bustier bodysuit that Cheryl and Veronica made her buy this time last year for their Christmas party.
It was actually a Christmas job, but that was besides the point.
Betty fir seamlessly back into the mold of her old life and didn’t even mind as she looked around Cheryl’s penthouse. She felt… comfortable there. Like it was home.
Until, that is, Cheryl slapped her.
“ELIZABETH,” she yelled, stomping away and sitting on the chaise lounge by the window. “YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST CALLED. WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?” she continued to scream.
Getting angry now, for absolutely no reason at all, Betty yelled back. “Blame Jughead! He showed up in my dorm room late at night saying that you needed me and were summoning me to do some crazy fucking job and that you knew I was coming! I didn’t know you didn’t know until maybe an hour before we got here!”
“Why are you yelling?” Cheryl yelled.
“Because you’re yelling!” Betty yelled back.
“Ladies,” Jughead said in a low and amused voice.
“What, Jones?” they snapped at the exact same time. Jughead’s eyes went wide and his eyebrows shot above his hairline and Betty had to fight the urge to laugh at his expression.
“No one will ever get used to that,” he muttered. “Look, I might be responsible for the 'great Elizabeth Cooper’ heist in the 21st century, but we need to get going if we’re going to make it to Chicago and then back to DC tonight. I’m tired of sleeping in hotels and on a fucking double bed on my boat,” he said with a glare in Betty’s direction.
“Jug, it was one night,” Betty groaned. “And you’re the one who demanded that I sleep there.”
“Yeah but you could have offered to let me sleep with you,” he said with a sly smile. Betty chose to ignore that for now and file it into the “things Jughead says and does and lets me do that I am very confused about,” folder of her brain.
She turned to Cheryl and said, “what is it going to take for you to come over here and hug me. Because I want you to know that when Jug told me you needed me, I packed right away. At first I was very hesitant to even talking to him, but he called me every morning for like, a month and finally he just showed up at my dorm and told me that you needed me and–” but this time she didn’t finish because Cheryl had run at her and jumped into her arms.
Literally jumped.
Betty was glad that she was very steady in heels because had she not been, she would have been on her ass.
But she caught Cheryl and they hugged and most likely cried and talked over each other and no one knew what was being said. At one point Betty turned her head to see Jughead leaning against the wall with a glass of whiskey and two ice cubes. He raised his glass to her, winked and took a sip.
Betty completely ignored this and let Cheryl down. She let Cheryl grab her by the hand as she led her to the private room and told Jughead that they would be out in a half hour so they could head to Chicago.
When they finally got to her room, Betty collapsed on the bed, the non-existent jet leg hitting her like a truck. She threw her arm over her face and groaned.
“So he really called you every day at the exact same time for a month?” Cheryl asked and she threw a pair of shoes into a bright red suitcase.
Betty nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I mean I guess that makes sense,” Cheryl mused, “it is when he came up with the idea.”
At this Betty sat up quickly.
“He said it was Pea’s idea,” she said sharply.
Cheryl snorted. “Please. Pea has gotten way better in your absence. But this plan couldn’t have been come up by anyone other than him. If it had been, don’t you think he would have left you in at Oxford in your little art program?” Cheryl asked and shot her a pointed look.
Betty didn’t say anything. She thought about it a bit more and realized that Cheryl was right. If anyone else had come up with a job, Betty wouldn’t have been needed like she was now. This was Jughead’s brainchild, not Sweet Pea’s.
She should have known. No one else could have come up with something like this. Something this… big.
Other than her, that it.
“So this was Jughead’s idea,” Betty repeated, clarifying what she already knew.
“One-hundred percent. He probably started calling you before he told anyone else. We’re all supposed to be in DC tomorrow to start planning.”
“All?” Betty asked.
Betty gave her a sly smile and nodded. “Oh yes, Betty Boop. The whole crew.”
Betty wanted to pretend that it made her uneasy, but the idea of having everyone in the big yellow house in Georgetown for Christmas made her smile.
“Do you think Uncle Hiram has decorated the tree yet? I mean, it is the twenty-first.”
“You think he would dare decorate it without Veronica?”
“She’s not there?” Betty asked.
“She’s in Chicago…” Cheryl said. “With Pea.”
Betty’s jaw dropped as she thought about her friends finally getting together. Veronica and Pea had been dancing around each other since they were like thirteen. Flirting shamelessly and constantly making everyone uncomfortable over coms when they were in the middle of doing a job.
“I take it they don’t know I’m coming either?” Betty asked and Cheryl shook her head.
“If I didn’t know, and I can hack into anything, then I doubt they know anything anything.”
Betty nodded and looked out the window. She was lost in thought until there was a sharp knock on the door and Jughead walked in.
“Everyone decent?” he asked, eyes never leaving Betty’s.
“Are we ever?” they answered together again.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “I hate myself for doing this.”
“No you don’t,” they said together at the same time. Jughead dropped his head.
“We need to go now. The car is downstairs.”
“Well I need to change,” Cheryl said. “It’s what, a seven hour flight we’re about to be on and I am dressed far too indecently for Weatherbee to see,” she smirked. Betty took that as an invitation to walk out the door and go stand by the elevator with Jughead. She pulled out her phone and thought about firing off a text to Sweet Pea when it was suddenly taken from her hand.
“Hey!” she exclaimed. But she couldn’t bring herself to be too mad for too long because Jughead was looking at her in a way that she had only seen once before, and she wasn’t trying to think about that incident any more than she already did.
“Leave it,” Jughead said quietly. “You don’t need to talk to him about this, okay? It’s just going to make you anxious throughout the rest of the trip.”
Betty knew he was right which is why she didn’t protest when he slipped her phone into his inside jacket pocket. She closed her eyes and leaned her head on his shoulder. She thought that she felt his lips graze the top of her head but figured she was just imagining it.
Cheryl came out of her room and motioned for Jughead to grab her bags, which he did. Betty untangled herself from him as he walked across the room and then the three of them headed towards the elevator, down to the lobby and out the front door. Cheryl waived good-bye to the concierges and Jughead nodded in their direction. Betty took the large black sunglasses that were perched on top of her head and placed them over her eyes as they walked out the front door.
Weatherbee was waiting at the black town car and took Cheryl’s bags from Jughead as he saw them approach. Jughead opened the door for them and Cheryl slid in first. He grabbed Betty’s hand and helped her into the car and when she was situated she saw Cheryl give her a pointed look and turned away, blushing at the blatant displays of affection that Jughead was showing her.
Rich asshole boy.
“Are we ready to go?” Weatherbee asked from the drivers seat. The three of them muttered their yeses and they were off, headed to the private airstrip where the jet was waiting for them.
“You mean to tell me I got on a helicopter at night when we could have just flown into here?” Betty yelled over the roar.
“Live a little, BC. You’d been out of the game for so long that I thought you’d enjoy the adventure,” he replied. He placed his arm around Cheryl’s shoulder and led them to the plane.
He grabbed a seat towards the back of the plane and Betty and Cheryl joined him, sitting down across from him much like how Betty was seated the night before. Weatherbee came by with a bottle of champagne and three glasses. Before he headed back to the front of the plane he checked in with Jughead, asking if they needed anything. Jughead just raised his empty glass as an answer and he turned on his heel and walked away.
“Oh, Mr. Jones,” Weatherbee called. “Sweet Pea said that he didn’t want to fly to D.C. tonight and that you and Cheryl should spend the night at the Chicago house and fly out in the morning.”
Betty glared at Jughead.
“What! I told you I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t think I was going to be able steal you away from the dorms.”
“Whatever,” Betty mumbled.
“Jughead you can literally steal anything,” Cheryl added.
She closed her eyes and leaned against the window, ignoring the whispers from her cousin and partner next to her.
When she woke up she was in the sky, tens of thousands of miles above sea level. A soft blanket had been placed over her. She sat up slowly and looked around the darkened cabin. Cheryl had moved a few rows forward and Jughead still across from her. He had kicked his feet up onto the seat next to him, the yellowing book in his lap.
“What time is it?” she asked him groggily.
He once again didn’t look up from the page he was on and said, “somewhere over the Pacific.”
Betty nodded like it made sense.
It didn’t.
“Why didn’t you tell me this was your plan?” she finally said.
It was his turn to nod. He closed the book slowly and set it down on the table.
“Would you have said yes?”
“I said yes before I knew who started it, remember?”
“But would you have stayed?”
Betty took a moment before answering as honestly as she could. “I didn’t stay for the plan alone, Jughead.”
He stood up and moved to where she was sitting. He slouched down and placed his head on her shoulder. It was hard to forget that he was one of the most wealthy men in the world when he did things like this. Hard to forget that he was a twenty-six year old with a butler and a habit of locking blondes in the bathroom to shake them down for their thieving practices.
It was hard to forget that she left him.
“Wake me up when we hit O’Hare, okay?” he asked and tugged the blanket around him. Betty nodded against his head and waited until his breathing evened out before grabbing the book he had been fascinated by.
It was Void Moon, by Michael Connelly, a book about a girl whose casino heist went wrong, landed her in prison, and while she was there came to terms with her mistakes.
Only to try again when she got out.
Betty smiled and opened to the first page. She knew why Jughead was reading it, and she figured if she was going to dive back in as his partner, as the other person leading this heist, that she should probably catch up.
She inhaled all three-hundred pages before they landed.
“Are you sure he’s not going to be mad?” Betty asked nervously as they rode the elevator to the twentieth floor of a Chicago apartment building.
“He’s going to love it,” Jughead said.
“He might slam the door in your face,” Cheryl said at the same time.
Betty bit her thumbnail and tapped her heel against the marble floor.
The elevator opened and they stepped out. Jughead placed his hand on its new permanent place at her lower back and led her to the apartment at the end of the hall. He pushed Betty behind him as he knocked, shielding her from view.
“Coming!” a familiar voice yelled and Betty’s stomach did a summersault.
Pea, she thought.
The door flung open and Cheryl jumped the tall boy who opened the door.
What was it with Cher and jumping on people?
Sweet Pea had somehow gotten bigger since she had last seen him and Betty bit back the tears threatening to spill from her eyes and down her cheeks.
“Hey, Red,” Sweet Pea said and kissed her on the cheek. “Hey Boss Man,” he said to Jughead. Jughead reached forward to hug him, and as Sweet Pea’s arm wrapped around Jughead’s back, he made eye contact with Betty.
He froze and before he could say anything Jughead chimed in. “I brought her here. Straight up kidnapped her. Even surprised Cheryl. Pea,” he said, slapping him lightly on the chest, “she’s in. I told her the plan. She’s in.”
Jughead was speaking in short, choppy sentences, hoping that the quick words and tone would make the words he was saying easier to handle.
But Sweet Pea just pushed him aside and stood in front of Betty. She looked up at him, not even trying to keep her tears at bay. She knew him well enough that he needed to work through all of the facts before reacting. That’s what made him such a good thief. There wasn’t a single detail that slipped past him.
Except for her arrival.
She stayed silent as he asked, “are you in?”
Whispering, she replied with, “only if you want me here.”
After thirty-seconds of complete stillness and silence amongst the four thieves Sweet Pea said, “you fucking bitch.”
And picked her up into the most bone-crushing hug she had ever received.
“We get killed or imprisoned every time we run it without you,” he said into her shoulder. She nodded, knowing this from what Jughead had said earlier that day.
“Well we can’t have that now can we?” she asked through her tears as he put her down.
He kept his arm wrapped around her and led them into the apartment. Betty hugged him around the middle and kicked off her heels the second the door shut behind them. She wasn’t even looking up as they walked into the living room, but her head snapped towards the sound of her name coming from multiple people.
“Betty?” they all yelled.
Her whole crew was sitting across the room on tables, a large white couch, and even laying on the floor. A to-scale model of the Smithsonian was on the long dining room table.
“What?” Betty asked, totally surprised. Letting go of Sweet Pea she went to go stand by Jughead’s side. “Did you know they were all going to be here?”
“Clearly.”
“But we didn’t know you were coming,” someone said from the floor. She would know that voice from a million miles away.
“I didn’t know I was coming either, Veronica,” she said with a wet laugh. She was so happy to see her people that she didn’t know how to react.
Her whole crew, Toni Topaz, Fangs Fogarty, Joaquin DeSantos, Kevin Keller, Veronica Lodge, Cheryl Blossom and Sweet Pea were all looking to her and Jughead.
“Well?” Jughead asked her. He placed his arm around her shoulder. “What do you think?”
Surveying the happy eyes of her family she smiled. She wasn’t optimistic when she woke up in Monaco that morning, but seeing them?
She felt the unstoppable high that all good heists gave her.
“I think,” she said slowly, looking at him and only him. “I think it’s time to get to work.”