Blood of My Blood, Flesh of My Flesh (Bughead)

Time Warp

The days flipped by. Sweet Pea did his part. He went to classes and gave an honest to god effort, pulling out solid C's and B's on quizzes and papers. He figured out quickly, three years into his high school career, which sorts of classes he excelled at, which ones he liked and which he didn't. He was good at math- of all the fucking things- and enjoyed English, depending on what they were reading. He loathed his religious study class and he felt like Philosophy went right over his head. Gym was a breeze, science was a pain. He managed.

He went to Football practice after school, playing along with Chuck and Chuck's efforts to 'up his game'. He did what the Claytons expected of him on two very different things. On the field, Sweet Pea ran the plays to perfection. In the locker room, he tried not to grimace but let Chuck set him up with 'easy, low fruit' that were minor points, but would have let Sweet Pea rack 'em up, if he wanted to. He had a feeling that, before Midge, Moose had been politely sexual with them and then told Chuck that he'd done more than he had, and they never said anything.

He had a couple sloppy kisses, had a girl very forcefully shove his hand up her shirt, and then he went on to pretend like it had been so much more. The girls never contradicted him, in fact, openly agreed to what had happened. Maybe they just thought he was gay? Maybe they thought he was shy and figured, if the secret was kept, later they'd get more?

Whatever the reason, Sweet Pea was eternally grateful. He really didn't want to go through the effort of modifying memories, because that just felt super yuck to do to someone.

Chuck kept on Sweet Pea to 'hit the other Cooper' but Sweet Pea always said that Cooper was the 'long game' and that you couldn't rush that. He pointed out how long Jason had spent on Polly, which Chuck accepted. As far as Chuck knew, Sweet Pea was hanging out with Betty to eventually get in her pants, for uber points.

After football, or before, he practiced magic with Betty. They took her grimoire out and Sweet Pea organized it with appropriately colored sticky notes what order they should work on things. How hard spells were. What sort of practice and strength it would take. He managed to find about eighteen different colored sticky notes (who knew so many variations existed?) and he made a scale from there. And, frankly, this gave him a chance to hungrily pour over it, trying to commit it all to memory. Finding the grimoire of a witch bloodline as powerful as Betty's? It was like he'd found the Holy Grail of all magic books. The history in it alone...well, Sweet Pea figured he'd enjoy history a lot more if it was magical based. He often thought about that if Hogwarts was actually real and he went there, he'd be at the top of his classes.

He schooled Betty, encouraging her, sneaking into the portal portrait whenever her parents were gone. He watched her progress and he learned stuff too. She had the natural flair, of course, but more than that...Betty was meant to be a witch. Sometimes, a person just feel so perfectly into their roles, it felt like fate. Sweet Pea felt this and his connection to his werewolf side. Not everyone was meant to be a magical being, even if it was in their blood.

Even then, after that, Sweet Pea split his time between two categories in his free time. One, which wasn't really free time, was his responsibilities to the Pack. Doing runs, doing guard laps, checking in with the young wolves, coordinating between Toni and Joaquin about their three roles, attending Inner Wolf meeting when he was around. It was no more work than he was doing previous to his school change, but now, it was so much...more.

If that wasn't exhausting enough, he also followed the leads on the Jason situation. Whenever Betty's mother came home with a morsel here, a tidbit there, Betty passed it along to him. Although, currently, the entirety of it all was at a standstill. After taking Cheryl away a week and a half ago, coupled with her 'I'm guilty' confession, everyone thought things were going to get settled.