Beloved in the river

Understand

(Not mine I got it from tumblr from an anonymous person)

Betty leaned back against the cool red leather, her finger absent-mindedly tracing patterns in the condensation forming on her empty milkshake glass. Tilting her head to the side she observed the boy sitting across from her. He was totally engrossed in his writing; brow furrowed, eyes flitting across the glowing screen in front of him, and fingers moving at lightening-speed across the keyboard. He didn't seem to have noticed the curl of black hair that had escaped his beanie and was bouncing slightly on his forehead. His mouth suddenly curled into a smile, and without allowing his eyes to move away from the screen he murmured; "I can feel you watching me, Betts."
Betty blushed, having been caught out and shifted in her seat. Jughead came to the end of his typed sentence, completing it with an unnecessarily grand flourish as his finger hit the full-stop key, and he gently closed his laptop. Crossing his arms over his beloved laptop, he leant forward and took his girlfriend's dainty hand in his strong one. Betty exhaled slowly, feeling the warmth flow from his touch through her body.
Stroking the back of her hand, Jughead quietly asked; "is everything okay?"
Betty was taken aback by the question. She was always so put-together that no one normally asked if she was alright; they just assumed that she was. Jughead was different. His eyes pierced through her façade and saw the real her. It scared her. No one had seen the real her in years, and that included Betty herself.
"I'm fine", Betty responded with a smile plastered on her lips. But the smile didn't reach her lips. On some level, Betty desperately wanted someone to knock down her walls and explore with her who she might be without them. She was terrified of doing this on her own, and where would she even start? On another level, she did not want anyone to ever see behind her walls. What if what she or they found was too big? What if it was too dark, too scary, and couldn't be hidden again?
Her boyfriend tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes, studying her smile and deciding that it was not genuine. He wasn't offended by this. He knew that she couldn't help it. But he hoped that one day she would be comfortable enough not to plaster that particular smile on for him. He nodded slowly, understandingly, empathically. He wouldn't push her too far, scared of making her shut down further. He stroked the palm of her hand with his thumb, noticing the rough surface of her skin there and the scabbed crescent-shapes along her hand, and knowing with an overwhelming sense of sadness that she had put them there.
Looking up at her eyes, he could see that she knew what he had felt and she looked... apologetic. Guilty. He didn't want her to feel like that. Yes, he hated that she did this to herself. Yes, he wished she wouldn't do it. But he also knew that she didn't know any other way of coping with her emotions. She had been raised in a family that valued perfection over mental health, and valued external image over emotional understanding.
Jughead moved around the table and sat next to Betty in the booth. She curled into him immediately, feeling his strength cocooning her, feeling safe and protected. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and held her hand with his free one. Betty pulled both of her legs over one of his so that she was as close to sitting on his lap as she could get in such a public place.