I'm Darkness || Archie Andrews and Jughead Jones [2]

Likable

When any trouble comes home, the family takes it as its own and that is what family love is about, supporting each other when bad things knock on the door. Especially if that involves a brother asking for recue, for help. How do you turn your back and say no then?

Eleanor liked to thing that Chic is a good person to who bad things happened to. She wasn't proud of her mother abandoning him, but she understood. Eleanor also liked to thing that family always comes first, but that was harder to believe.

Wrong is wrong, it didn't matter if it is family or not. Wrong is wrong. So Ellie could only hope that Chic was indeed a good person, and not another monster to darken her soul.

"For how long do you plan on staying with us, Chic?" Hal asked.

Alice intervened immediately, "For as long as he wants."

"I'm just trying to plan my life, Alice." He explained, "And since we aren't getting any answers about anything..."

"What would you like to know, Hal?" Chic turned to look at him.

"For starters, Betty brought you here all bloody. Why? What happened?"

"Dad," Betty warned.

"You don't have to answer that, Chic." Ellie assured him, adding a truthful and yet sarcastic comment, "This family as a thing for asking too many question and answering very few of them..."

The blondish boy chuckled slightly, "His name is Marcel. He runs the hostel, sometimes he books clients for us." He turned to face Betty now, "The night you showed up, I wasn't in the mood to work. Marcel was trying to convince me otherwise."

"What type of clients?"

"Hal," Alice called his attention.

"Um," Betty faced her Mom, "I want to know too."

"Betty," Ellie's eyes widened slightly, "no."

"It's ok." Chic smiled at girl sitting across from him, "All kinds. Varying from nice to even nastier than Marcel. I can be more specific if you would like. Also have a great collection of scars I can show you."

Eleanor was pretty sure that was what warmed her up to Chic. Lamentation usually connects people, makes them likable. Chic was likable to Ellie because she felt sorry for him. It's a human thing. And it doesn't matter how much darkness you have inside, if you can still love than you can't run away from caring for someone who has been through hell.

"I have scars too." Betty blurted out, "Crescents moons on my palms."

"From digging your nails in?" He wondered.

"Yeah,"

"I used to do that too."

Alice interrupted them with a huge unconfortable smile, "Supper?"

That was the moment that it started getting dangerous, when Chic found a way to get to Betty. Eleanor had been the easiest – he had just spent the entire previous night talking with her, knowing her – because it didn't matter how much dark Ellie was, deep down, underneath all that armour of darkness there was still that little girl who, like Jughead likes to put it, grew up mending and fixing broken things. And Chic was the perfect broken boy.

Archie called Eleanor before leaving his house, asking her if he could walk her to school. She quickly agreed, wanting to tell him all about Chic and how it had gone the previous night, and she did but Archie's head was somewhere else.

"What's wrong, Arch?"

"Adam came to my house this morning."

"Again?" Ellie frowned, looking up at her boyfriend, "This is getting too dangerous. If Hiram Lodge even dreams about this, we are both done."