_{♡ reg .} 

 _{❝   you do realise I don’t exclusively wear designer labels, right?   ❞   reggie had to shake his head at her choice of words, but he couldn’t stop his smile; there was something terribly endearing about betty cooper, though when he’d started to notice that, he couldn’t say. maybe it had been around the same time they’d stopped trading barbed words and pointed insults, had started to acknowledge more than the surface-level of the other…} 

_{reggie shook the thought off with a slow roll of his shoulders and reached around betty to snag a pair of neatly-pressed blues jean and a wash-worn white t-shirt.   ❝   can’t beat the classics, right? gimme five minutes.   ❞}

_{extremely mindful of the puddles his sodden sneakers were probably leaving, reggie slipped them off before he crossed the threshold of betty’s room. ( he had to take a moment to marvel at how little it had changed over the years. ) it felt… odd, being naked in betty’s bathroom, but the warm spray of the shower chased away any lingering unease. he let the water beat down on him for far longer than the five minutes he’d promised her, only stepping out of the shower almost twenty minutes later.   ❝   shhhhit!   ❞   he hissed, clad only in the borrowed jeans and bare feet as he stumbled out of the bathroom in his haste.   ❝   fuck, sorry, I—lost track of time?   ❞}

                _Betty’s soft _{laughter followed Reggie all the way into the bathroom she shared with her sister. She smiled to herself after he was gone, leaning back against the now-closed closet doors for a second, just to get her mind in order. But before she knew it, she’d been standing there for longer than a handful of minutes lost in thought.} PINKENED_{, she pushed herself out of her haze and went off to take her own shower.} 

_{The warm water was a} GIFT _{from God, a thing she took for granted until the colder months rolled around and she was left wanting to} SMOOCH _{the plumber} senseless _{for blessing them with running water. Knowing her dad would go on about the water bill if she didn’t, she may as well have jumped in then out. By the time she left though, her parent’s bathroom smelled of apple blossoms.} 

_{After dressing, she waited on her side of the shared bathroom, seated on her bed and toweling off her hair half-heartedly. For} INEXPLICABLE _{reasons, her post-shower flush had only increased. There was just something so…} intimate _{about having Reggie use her shower. She hadn’t thought it through until now… but if she thought that was bad, it was even} worse _{when he came through half-dresses, rivulets of water still running down his chest like some kind of steamy ad for a gym membership.} GOSH_. “ JEESH_{, Reg, put a shirt on!} ” _{Betty laughed nervously and averted her eyes.} “ _{Don’t worry about it ––} ” _{leave that to her dad and the vein in his temple,} “ _{––  just… are you dressed yet? Mom says dinner’s almost ready and there’s no way she’s letting you leave without eating.} ” 

_{Her still-damp hair hung down in wet strands, out of its signature peppy ponytail. It soaked into the soft over-sized sweater she wore,} COOPER PRIDE _{printed boldly on the front in baseball-cursive. Embarrassing.} “ _{Can I look now?} ” Gosh_{. She’d seen him shirtless before at the beach; why was this so different?}