Bughead Oneshots

||Take some deep breaths for me||

• Dunno Jughead getting tortured cause we need that at the moment
• torture, blood and injuries, obv
• FBI!Bughead (because people were asking for more — also, comment some more scenarios the two can do. I have one more in mind but that's about it)

Betty pushed through the glass doors of the Bureau field office so hard they rattled against their hinges. The fluorescent lights were too bright, humming with an edge that matched the static buzzing in her skull. She barely registered the security agent calling after her — her badge was already in her hand, flashing once before she was halfway down the hall.

He should have been back.

He always came back.

The operations room was a flurry of noise — phones ringing, chairs scraping back, agents talking too loudly and too quickly. But everything went quiet the moment Betty appeared in the doorway.

"Where is he?" She demanded immediately. There was no time for greetings. Not at a time like this.

Agent Morales, their handler on the New York operation, stood up from the conference table. He looked exhausted, like he hadn't slept all night as well. That terrified her more than anything.

"Betty-" He started but she interrupted, her flat palms landing on the table.

"Don't 'Betty' me. Jughead was supposed to check in at 01:45 and be back by 3am. He doesn't miss check-ins. Ever. What the hell happened?" Morales exhaled, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"We were reviewing satellite feeds from the East Side safehouse. There was... activity, Betty."

"What kind of activity?" She asked, moving closer to him. With another sigh, he clicked a remote and a grainy night-vision footage started playing. It showed some back alley to a restaurant — the Italian syndicate's façade. A black SUV with tinted windows parked in front of the door. Someone from inside the building was shoved outside, hands tied behind the back. The video quality was too poor to recognize faces but the jacket was undeniably Jughead's.

Betty's breath got stuck in her throat.

"We believe... his cover's been blown," Charles said and Betty sucked in a deep breath, shaking her head.

"No- No, he wasn't even supposed to be near the restaurant tonight — he was supposed to be waiting at the docks with Castellano's courier. Why- Why would he be at the restaurant?" Morales nodded grimly.

"We don't know, for sure. He hadn't said anything beforehand about a change of plans. We don't know what he was doing there." Betty tore her gaze from the screen to look at him directly.

"Why wouldn't he tell you beforehand? And how- How would his cover even be blown? He was completely clear. We've been working on this op for almost a year. There was nothing suspicions going on. He was in the clear. He was in deep enough, they even called him part of their family."

"We don't know yet... The Mancini family pulled out every asset tonight. They were hunting for a mole. And they found one," Morales said, sighing softly again. Blinking hard, Betty forced her lungs to work again.

She couldn't fall apart.

Not now.

Not when he needed her.

"Do we have a location? A route? Any chatter on comms?"

"We're pulling feeds but whatever they're doing, they're keeping Jughead off-grid. We haven't gotten a hit on his face or the plate of the SUV. They used a fake one. We're looking for a needle in the haystack here. Even if we have hidden camera feeds on all of their known locations, it still doesn't mean we know about all their properties."