Playlist for the Apocalypse (Sweet Pea/Betty)

Track Six: Radioactive

Song for this chapter is 'Radioactive' by Imagine Dragons!

July 17th, 2018

They drove out of that town pretty damn fast. Sweet Pea took up his usual passenger seat, though he treated it like it was a throne from the way he splayed so casually on it. It was almost sinful. He was turning the paper map around, the sound of the crinkling paper giving Betty some much needed white noise in the back of her head.

"I'm not an invalid." They hadn't spoken except for Sweet Pea to say 'left' or 'right' in a toneless drone. She couldn't tell he was still upset.

"Huh? No, of course not." She murmured, frowning.

"Coulda fooled me, the way you were just going to leave me there." He was just hardly holding in his rage. Betty could see it smoldering under the surface.

"I've been over this-,"

"I did just fine on my own with more shit to deal with, you think a leg is going to stop me?" He asked, heaving a bit, out of breath although he was sitting and immobile. It clued Betty in how furious he was with her. While Betty would usually blister at his tone, now, she just felt guilty.

"Sweets, I don't think I needed to say it, but I'd be dead without you." Betty knew that she'd made a mistake. Even if she thought it was one that was logical, she understood now that it was wrong of her.

"You coulda been dead again if you left too," Sweet Pea hissed, "Fucking christ, Betts."

"And you would have survived alone again," She said with certainty, but the idea seemed to almost disgust Sweet Pea.

"But I-," He sharply closed his mouth, shaking his head, "Whatever. Can we just agree that this isn't going to happen again? Not without, I dunno, a freaking emergency?"

"Leave each other?" Betty asked.

"Yeah. Leave."

In that one word, she realized the depths of the issue. Mother issues, daddy issues...all the issues everywhere. It was a can of worms she still wasn't quite ready to deal with, so she just nodded.

"I won't."

Something in her voice must have been sincere, because Sweet Pea relaxed, finally allowing the topic to drop. Betty nearly breathed a sigh of relief. It made her on edge to fight with Sweet Pea, at least, about real things. Fighting with him over which flavor of Doritos was better (Cool Ranch, obviously, there was no contest) was almost like, well, flirting. It wouldn't matter tomorrow. It was a way to destress and just argue.

She glanced at the steering wheel making a disgusted noise when she saw the ragged state of her nails; the color nearly all chipped off except two or three places, most of them uneven, and one of them newly sore. She ran her finger of the place where it was jagged, deep in thought. It must have happened in the last couple hours, but Betty only just noticed.

"What?" Sweet Pea snorted, "Break a nail while loading the boxes?"

"Yeah, actually." She realized how silly it sounded, how very trivial to be caring about the state of her nails at the end of the world. She realizes she should have just left it off, or lied to Sweet Pea, before she give him ammunition to tease her with. But, there's not much else to do here- they exhausted the game of I Spy a long time ago- so she just keeps talking. She always hopes the more she talks, the more it encourages him to talk. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

"I mean, it's not the nails I'm sad about." She begins again, taking one hand off the wheel to show Sweet Pea, "It's well, I'd really never had my nails done professionally before. Then Veronica showed up and she took one look at them the first day we were friends and said 'This needs major work' and called a nail person up to her room that same day. And since then, since I've been her friend- was- I'd get my nails done with her every week. It made me feel a little human, it made me feel like even something as insignificant as my nails were a part of me that I deserved to take care of. That I should take care of myself. I think Veronica knew, though."