Chapter Text
Reckless is just an elaborate way of saying you don’t give a fuck, of that, Jughead is certain.
Jughead is reckless in his bones , in the way he turns up at Pop’s in the middle of the night with Veronica who insists that the multiple cups of coffee are simply because that’s her job and it has nothing to do with the silence that they share that carries everything they want to say but never out loud. He’s reckless when he watches her sway in dimming, midnight lights and shakes that they share from the same straw over whispers of Archie and how he couldn’t promise Veronica forever. Because at the end of the day, they were different and even though they had a love that they tried to force to be the same, there were just too many differences.
Jughead is reckless when he wipes away Veronica’s tears when the diner is empty and cold. The space between them is warm and comforting. The words they never spoke were cold when they weren’t spoken out loud. The warmth that would have come out if they spoke words out loud would have been enough to set the world on fire. Jughead’s reckless when he knows that it’s true. And oh, how he wishes his world was up in flames.
Veronica is reckless when she touches his hand a little too long, and Jughead’s whispers in her ear that are so close to her skin when it’s just them two in the whole of Pop’s are reckless when he feels his heart beating at the exact same time as hers. He promises that one day she’ll feel better, and Archie would be fine without her, just as she would be without him. He feels the guilt creep inside his skin, he places a reckless hand on her hip that lingers a little too long.
Too many nights end like this, with the dawn's light filtering through morning clouds. In the same way he reads too much into Veronica’s smile - sometimes she’s the same filtered light through his dark morning feelings.
When they stand face to face amongst the diner’s silence with fingers barely touching and chests rising and falling softly, he’s not just reckless, he simply doesn’t give a fuck. No elaborate way to hide the truth. No comforting, pretty way to hide his feelings.
“I know I’ll be fine without Archie,” she says softly.
“That you will.”
“Because I have you.”
Though magnetism isn’t a real thing in physical bodies, it very much is in soul. When his body begs to be drawn to hers, he lets his soul pull instead, because she can’t see it and he doesn’t show it. His heart aches when instead, he blows her a kiss to the wind that she smiles at, letting it hit her. “To another lost night,” he murmurs.
Her cheeks flush. “May I exchange it for another lost night tonight?”
He doesn’t answer and he doesn’t have to. Each night will be lost with Veronica Lodge. Because pretty words won’t ever hide the fact that at this point in time, he simply doesn’t give a fuck.
She blows him another kiss to the wind. In exchange for his entire soul for another night.
Sun radiates through a winter coated window in the form of a hum from a warm body that belongs to Veronica. The trailer hadn’t known such warmth in a long time. Not since Betty hadn’t been around in more than just her body - he feels her mind left his a long time ago.
Veronica’s heels are mismatched on peeling flooring but yet, he felt like she belonged there. With him. In his home. The trailer was more a home now than it had ever been, but maybe it was bad luck to say so.
He feels a guilt creeping up in him that he could never speak of, almost an entire year had passed, only short of four days since Archie was spilt tears on Veronica’s satin dress. Something that he hadn’t seen for himself, but Veronica had described it in great detail. He could picture it as if he were present - Archie leaving Veronica. The guilt almost eats him alive when he couldn’t manage any words when Veronica had arrived at the trailer, bloodshot eyes. She had cried, but her sighs of relief had almost sounded like freedom to him.
Tonight, they lay on the floor with music that fills the silence.
“Do you miss him?” he asks her through a breath.
“No.”
He places a steadying hand on hers that she accepts with a smile and closed eyes. “That’s good.”
She chuckles with her eyes opening to the peeling roof. “When you feel so different to the one person who’s supposed to be on the same frequency as you, it just goes to show you were never on the same frequency at all.”
“Insightful.”
“Not really,” she murmurs. “It’s merely the truth.”
When he focuses enough, he can feel frequencies buzzing around him. Two hearts in sync, two hands almost touching physically, forever held in metaphorical reality. Two minds tuning into the same frequency. Until he’s pulled back down to earth and they’re simply two people laying on threadbare carpet with one wearing items that are far too beautiful to be in this place, and a girl far too beautiful to be surrounded by him. “Do you think we’re on the same frequency?” he asks her, fearing the answer. Begging for one at the same time.
Veronica’s silence rivals that of the cold trailer. “I do, but you have Betty.”
Of that, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know if he had her or ever did. But he can’t dwell on it, the frequency doesn’t allow for jolted thoughts. Instead he rolls to his side with his arm resting under his head. He blows three kisses to the wind that she doesn’t see with her eyes closed in winter coated windows. One for the old world, one for the world they’re in now and another for the next. And god, does he hope the next world is kind to the two kids on the same frequency.
Convalescing aside, there was something therapeutic about matching songs of the heart to one's feelings to the thought of Veronica Lodge. Vinyl was not only an entire aesthetic, but the crisp, sharp sound resonated in Jughead. Made him feel the words in his bones. She was a soundtrack in his heart. There was the love ballad to their love if he listens to the lyrics of every song.
Vinyl aside, it didn’t deter from the fact he was laying on sheets that Mary Andrews insisted should have been washed over a week ago. Archie’s clothes were strewn on the bed, little letters all signed and sealed to Archie with a kiss in the form of an X . Jughead would have recognised the twisted curls of the letters even if he were a blind man. Archie’s ‘I’ was dotted with a little heart. Betty had never written him a love letter, and there were no ‘I’ in his name, though in the moments like these when he relates every bridge to grunge ballads to his heart beat that calls Veronica’s name, he finds there was a lot more ‘I’ in him than there ever was an ‘us’ between him and Betty. Every feeling that swelled in him was a pure selfishness.
In the smallest moment of freedom, when Archie stands with his back to Jughead, the bed shifts and the world seems to stop. Veronica gives a weakened smile that forces his heart to stop as well. The unsettling feeling that sits in him comes from the fact that Archie had insisted that he and Veronica remain friends - the best of friends. And how the air is thick when they all sit in Archie’s room with light talk that doesn’t delve any further than what to eat and how school is going.
Both sets of eyes land on Archie who stands at the open window of his room to gaze at the window across from his, Jughead doesn’t need to see that there’s a blonde standing on her side with a smile that brightens the darkest of places and eyes the glitter even from across the way. A smile he hadn’t seen in the longest time and eyes that didn’t tell the same story to him as they did to Archie. The disconnection between himself and Betty was more evident than ever when she wasn’t sitting amongst them and only Archie’s eyes fell on her in the moment. Though he feels he could fight a little harder and he could ignore the fact that their disconnection was being showcased through her current connecting with Archie through bedroom windows, he feels he has no fight left, or maybe it was all exhausted in years of trying. But the path was laid years ago when New York met Riverdale, if only he had walked that path back then.
Archie’s sigh is heavy and slow but he turns to look at Jughead and Veronica who sit waiting, unknowingly what for, and says; “Come on Ronnie, you’ll be okay, right Jug?”
The love ballads stop, the vinyl switched off and his entire world follows broad shoulders out of the room. Archie’s heavy feet sound on the wooden flooring of the staircase but sugared lips wait by the door. She blows a kiss to the wind that he catches, “I’m sure Betty is waiting for you, Jug.” He waits for her to go before placing it on his lips.
A kiss to the wind that he already misses. If only she knew what she did to him. If only she knew that he had tried to turn back time in the form of nightly prayers so he could walk the path with the thousands of kisses to many different kinds of winds.
He did spill tears after all. After all, he had dedicated so many years to the girl who willingly offered him her heart, and he did give some aspects of his to her as well. He didn’t think he would cry, but he knows he cried for the fact that he had tried. And he had tried so hard with her . Betty brought out the strength in him, and the ability to brave the world, even if it wasn’t what his heart had wanted. She made him follow his head, and in a way, he was grateful for it. His heart was stupid, he didn’t trust it anyways.
It always seemed to rain whenever he appeared at the Pembrooke, almost as if the heavens were mourning him. Maybe they knew that in his heart of hearts, his heart lived there in the Pembrooke too. Maybe the heavens were like everyone else that surrounded him - maybe they felt sorry for him.
Even when she ushered him upstairs, with disapproving eyes on his dirty boots and heavy scowls at his damp clothing, he already felt at ease. There were no static lapses in their frequency. Only him and her on a smooth line.
The sheets are crisp and straight, smooth and silky even though his heart races to the point of suffocation. His head drops to the floor and for the first time in forever, delicate fingers tilt his chin to look into her eyes.
The cotton on her body seems foreign, it’s sweet and gentle on her skin. Different to what he’s used to, not as perfect, not as tight. Her face is soft and worried, her brows knit and her lips purse. She stands before him with nothing but her heart, which is just as well, because that’s all he has too. “She left me,” seems to echo through the room, even in the noise of a storm. Even in noise of of his nervous steps and her feet digging into plush carpet. It’s loud and true.
Her fingers lace with his and her deep sighs seem to ground him. For the first time, they touch with more meaning than he’d ever be able to try and piece together from a million touches from others. “Maybe she was never on your frequency.”
That night, he crashes on the floor that feels better than the ancient bed that his parents had acquired second hand back when they had nothing. It had nothing to do with comfort; it had everything to do with the girl resting next to him on the bed with a face that told him that maybe for the first time in a long time, she was at peace.
And when he’s half asleep with his fingers still with hers, she blows a kiss to the wind. “For frequencies.”
He wants to blow one back, to the winds that finally blow with him and not against - for the winds blowing them together, but for now, he’ll save that kiss for a kinder day.
There’s a demon that takes residence in his mind. It rears its head mostly when Veronica hushes loving words in his direction. Because, of course, he’s not good enough for her.
“I just don’t think it will work out, Veronica,” he mumbles over a 2AM shake.
The way she stamps her foot with her hands on her hips and a trembling lower lip hurts him.
“We didn’t go through all of this for nothing, Jughead.”
“We didn’t go through anything.”
A way of distraction is for him to sip obnoxiously through a straw as if it were just another conversation. But it’s not and it definitely isn’t when tears pool in eye corners. “Nothing?”
Always words, never touches. Always light words, never too deep. Always begging, never actions. Always promises, never spoken. It wasn’t nothing , it was a curse .
Jughead knows she knows he’s lying. And he hopes she knows that it’s for the best, because the boy from Southside could never really be with her. Romeo and Juliet isn’t a love story. His mom told him that. It’s a treacherous tale of two people who do not think. Jughead thinks too much. And he thinks about her.
Oh how the thoughts howl in his mind.
“You know I don’t mean it like that… we just - we could never be together.”
“If things had gone different when we met for the first time, here, in this diner, would you have said to me that we could never have been together?”
If things had gone differently, he would have been the happiest man alive. “We would have run away - I would have done anything to make this work.”
“Then why don’t you do that now?! Why don’t we run away?!”
His mind ticks with how she deserves someone better, someone easier and carefree and who can offer her the whole world. “Because love is supposed to be easier than breathing.”
Her heart beats rapidly. “For once, fight for something. Don’t just wait around for the next life. This is the one we live in, this isn’t one of your stories, Jughead.”
It hits him like a whip, but he can’t control the downward spiral from here.
When he doesn’t answer, she hisses; “Sometimes I hate you.”
In a way, it’s a beautiful statement. He takes it as a kiss to the wind, he wears it as he walks out. He hates himself too.
He tries to keep away, but he can’t. That magnetism he insists isn’t physical, he isn’t so sure of anymore. There had to be a reason why his entire body was drawn to the Pembrooke.
Even with the words of her hate still ringing in his ears, she opens crisp, white sheets to him. Maybe it was to comfort him, because they’re both aware of the public engagement of Archie and Betty. And their love is so seamless and easy when they’re putting their lips together in Pop’s every few days while Jughead types and Veronica serves their matching shakes with sprinkles. Nineteen seems too young to be married, but if it was measured in time, they’d been in love since they were kids, so he shouldn’t be so surprised.
Jughead slides into sheets that he’s never felt before. His cold legs covered in denim feel cheap against the thread that is of course, egyptian, and of a count that is higher than what the trailer is worth.
When he looks to her ceiling and finally allows himself to breathe, he speaks; “I’m just so scared, V.”
“Of what?” she asks stiffly, shoulders tensing next to his.
“You, me. Us.”
“I am too.”
He lets several beats escape them, lets them mull over before speaking again. “If the stars had aligned, and I wasn’t so scared of shooting my shot all those years ago at Pop’s, I would have told you I thought you were made for me - I wouldn’t have been able to tell you why I thought that or how, but it’s what I thought when I first met you.”
When he feels his whole heart sitting on his tongue, her hand finds his under her sheets. “Stars have aligned now,” she whispers. “If only you could see them.”
“I can.”
“As can I.”
“We’ll be okay, right?” he asks.
“If we’ve survived off kisses to the wind, we can survive anything.”
“I love you, Veronica.”
“As I love you, Jughead.” She blows a kiss to the wind, “For allowing us the luxury to actually live.”
He blows one in return. “For love in this world, and for the next world to bring us together sooner.”
With eyes all on them from every direction and every booth, the attention is almost suffocating. But Veronica’s hand is in his as they walk through Pop’s at knock off time, her smile holds no shame. Even the sway of her hips seems to put people off.
When she opens the door to Pop’s on the way out, she stops at the top step. “We must kiss.”
“We must?” he asks, a laugh ringing through the air.
“This is where it all started, it would be bad luck if we didn’t end it here.”
“End?!” Jughead almost chokes, pulling her hand tighter towards him as if not to let her go. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Veronica rolls her eyes, slowly pulling herself from Jughead’s grip before draping her arms around his neck on tiptoes, craning her own neck to reach his lips. “The ending of our old life, the beginning of forever, Holden Caulfield.”
For the first time in forever, her lips meet his. Soft and tender, fast and desperate. He tastes her, feeling her inside his very being. The start to his end.
When she finally lets go, his fingers dance on the dips of her hips, “I love you,” he says for the umpteenth time.
She laughs with one hand linked with his and her other on her lips. She blows a kiss to the wind, “A kiss merely for the fact that I love you.”
He catches it, puts it in his pocket. “For when I really, really need it.”
Veronica’s eyes a deep and shallow at the same time. Darkened so much, he can’t see the other side. Shallow in the way he doesn’t think she’s listening.
Betty and Archie crowd around bonny, pink cheeks and hushed baby’s cries. Their smiles brighten the room to the point that it’s blinding. Oh, how their love stings.
Veronica’s smile is weak, her lips can hardly turn up and the way her nails dig into his skin hurts, but not enough. Not enough for him to truly feel something.
Jughead fears that when he leaves the house on Elm Street that Betty and Archie bought to raise their new family in the footsteps of their own upbringings, that the world will crumble and he won’t know how to piece it back together. Even as Betty and Archie coo over their pretty bundle of joy who’s wrapped up in white linen, all he can see in front of him is Veronica clutching herself, covered in red. Soaking in her tears.
The sound of her mourning was like shattering glass. Archie and Betty’s sound of happiness haunts him.
They wanted a baby so desperately, but all that they were given were stained sheets.
Jughead puts his lips to Veronica’s temple, hoping she can feel the kiss in the wind he’s trying to give her in silence. For strength. Because this is the time when he really, really needs that kiss.
Tears are on the seventies green bench of their apartment in New York, no proper heating, peeling flooring that reminds him of home and ripped wallpaper. Her tears spill, her smile is both frightening and the best thing he’s ever laid eyes on. The last eighteen months drained them, he felt he had no more strength to give her.
They had so many repairs to make on the apartment - they left in a hurry from Riverdale and they never did save all the money they needed for the perfect apartment, but any apartment is perfect when Veronica Lodge is in its walls.
She stands in his shirt, his favourite one that has too many holes in it. Shaky hands grip onto the stick with the plus mark and tears still splattering on the countertop he’s constantly promising he’d fix. She blows a kiss to the wind across that same counter. “To the stars aligning, to better luck this time around, dad.”