Chapter Text
For reasons that can only be related to the bizarre twist of fate that’s landed Veronica in this whole murder town nonsense in the first place, Veronica finds herself having to give Jughead and Betty the sex talk.
More precisely, she has to talk to both of them about what they’re doing (or not doing) with each other when really all she’d like to do is bash both their heads together and scream until they sort themselves out.
It starts with Betty (doesn’t it always?) grabbing Veronica’s arm on the way out of cheer practice and bodily dragging her to a coffee shop.
“I didn’t even know we had one of these,” Veronica says, staring around the hole-in-the-wall place Betty’s dragged her into, with three lumpy looking sofas and a handful of tables. She flicks stale looking crumbs off a dark-coloured sofa with one perfectly manicured hand.
Betty shrugs, awkwardly. “Sorry, couldn’t run the risk of running into Jughead at Pop’s. And I can’t exactly take you back to mine…”
“Or mine,” Veronica says, sighing. “Very well. Let’s see if this place can manage basic decaf.”
Her butt has barely hit the (confirmed) lumpy sofa before Betty starts talking, leaning forward with a sort of desperation that makes Veronica both want to hug her and run from this conversation at once.
“Something weird happened with Jughead,” Betty says.
Veronica just barely manages to keep the snarky remark about things always being weird when it came to Jughead off her lips.
“We were kissing last night and it was, well –” Betty breaks off to look sheepish and Veronica can’t tell if Betty is going to plow on and talk about sex in the absolute vaguest metaphors humanly possible or whether she really does get that flustered over making out.
“Well…?” she prompts after a minute.
Betty sighs into her coffee. “I need your advice.”
Veronica smiles at her. “Yeah, I’ve got that much. I just need you to tell me what you need advice on. Or have you finally come for tutelage on the art of kissing from a true master?”
Betty makes a sort of strangled sound that could have been Veronica’s name. “No,” she says, grinning. “No, it’s just… when we were kissing, it was starting to get a little bit more… intense, you know? So I kinda slipped my hands under his shirt and he just freaked.”
Veronica frowns, putting down her coffee. “Freaked how?”
“Like he’d been electrocuted. I swear, Ronnie, he jumped out of my arms and had this sort of panicked look. I honestly thought I’d hurt him somehow.”
“Did you?”
Betty sighs deeply. “No, I asked. He kept just saying it was fine. And I was trying to get him to say what I’d done and he just wouldn’t talk about it. Actually he just started kissing me really intensely like he was trying to prove something? But it just felt… off. So I stopped.”
Veronica lets out a low whistle. “Wow.”
Betty’s curled herself up in her chair so tightly she looks like a child. “So what do I do?” she says, after a beat.
“Well, what you’ve already done: you’ve gotta ask him about it.”
“But that didn’t work!”
“Well, no, not this time,” Veronica says, soothingly. “But maybe just try telling him you feel like something isn’t right and you just want it confirmed for you, or something…”
Betty flashes Veronica what can only be described as ‘puppy dog eyes’. And she looks so small and desperate and worried (and at least it’s over kissing and not murder, although Jughead obviously wasn’t paying attention to the shovel talk and he’s about to learn).
“I am not talking to Jughead for you,” Veronica says flatly.
Betty’s face crumples a bit and Veronica has to down her coffee to keep from throwing it at the wall.
---
The next day, Veronica finds herself doing exactly what she should not be doing and lurking in Pop’s, waiting for Jughead.
This is, by all accounts, a terrible plan. She’s already involved enough in this relationship that she still can’t quite wrap her head around, between housing Jughead and being Betty’s confidante she feels like a third wheel, and certainly an unwanted one on Jughead’s part. The very tenuous push-pull friendship they’ve built up could crumble at this, and she doesn’t really want him to move out.
Both, of course, because he’d very probably be homeless (although she’s still not entirely sure), but also because the hole in her life once filled by her parents still gapes, and every interaction with her mother rips the scab back off. They can’t fight when Jughead is there – which, she suspects, is why her mother’s allowed it. Instead they simmer silently, harbouring a child from a broken home like a good deed when really Veronica feels her home is in as many pieces as Jughead’s. She fakes self-assurance with long practice, but really she wonders if looking at Jughead is like looking at her own future and she’s afraid to see him leave.
He walks through the door looking unkempt and tired, and she stands, flagging him and Pop down in one go. His brows shoot up almost under his beanie but he acquiesces, less begrudgingly when Veronica orders him some coffee and dinner.
He carefully places his laptop down on the table and slides it to the side.
“To what do I owe the honour?” he asks, sarcastically.
She uncharacteristically nervous, suddenly overcome with the thought that this is unwise, invasive and probably not helping – but she barrels on with it anyway, because, well, it’s better than doing nothing.
“I had a chat with Betty,” she says, then regrets it as he blanches and sits back, his expression growing even colder than usual.
“And?” he asks, flatly.
She swallows around her erratic fluttering heartbeat and says, “look, she’s freaked. And I get freaked when she gets freaked. She’s just really worried she’s done something wrong.”
Jughead’s expression falls into a carefully curated nothing that worries Veronica to no end.
“That’s between Betty and I,” he says, and then abruptly reaches for his laptop and goes to stand.
Veronica starts babbling, her words tripping over themselves in an effort to explain (even though she still has no idea how she’s wound up involved in the first place), “wait, Jughead. I just mean that Betty doesn’t know how to talk about these things, and, well, since we’re friends, I thought you might want to talk to someone –”
Jughead stops abruptly halfway upright staring at her like a startled animal, and it would be comical if Veronica’s heart wasn’t racing so fast she feels like she might throw up.
Pop drops a pair of burgers on the table between them, pointedly ignoring the teenage nonsense going on in his restaurant.
“Friends?” Jughead echoes.
Irrationally, and hysterically, Veronica finds this really annoying. “Yes, friends, you hopeless Kurt Cobain wannabe. Why else would I want you in my house all the time?”
“I assumed it was pity,” Jughead says, so quietly that she almost doesn’t catch it.
Veronica dismisses him with a wave of her hand. “We’ve discussed this: you’re doing me a favour. But you’ve turned out to be surprisingly acceptable company.”
Jughead swallows, then with shaking hands sits down and begins to systematically shove fries into his mouth. She can only assume he’s attempting to avoid conversation since she’s not really sure he’s actually chewing them.
Veronica sighs, resting her chin in her hand. “Look, Juggie –” he blanches at the use of the nickname, and she almost winces, as it sounds natural and sweet on Betty’s lips, but artificial on hers “– I really am here as a friend.”
Talking to Jughead, she’s realised, is like walking through a field of brambles to get to the other side. It’s miserable, painful, you have to spend ages untangling yourself on barbs, and really it’s easier to go around if at all possible. But, madly, she presses on, unsure why she feels a need to talk to Jughead about this, other than the fact that despite the fact that he buries it in at least four layers of flannel he’s got all the tense anxiety of a cornered and desperate dog, starving for someone’s attention.
“Shouldn’t you be talking to Betty?” he says, finally, staring steadfastly at his plate.
“I already have. Now I’m talking to you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, flatly.
“Well, fine, but if you won’t talk to me, you should talk to Betty. Who will probably eventually talk to me about it, so, really, why not just cut out the middle-man and run it by me and I’ll help you sort Betty out and everyone wins?”
“That sounds awful,” he says, earnestly.
“I think it sounds brilliant,” Veronica says, with the sort of conviction that’s got her through her father’s arrest and her mother’s infidelity because Veronica knows best and that fact is immutable.
Jughead swallows thickly again. “It’s stupid,” he says, and Veronica mentally knows she’s already won.
“Then it should be fairly easy to sort out,” she says.
“No,” Jughead replies, hollowly.
She gives him a look that says clearly ‘go on’, and when he doesn’t she snags two of his fries and pops them in her mouth, chewing defiantly. He squawks like an angry bird and says, “fine.”
“I don’t like being touched. Sexually.”
He looks immediately like he regrets saying anything at all, and Veronica has to force herself to swallow. This, of course, was an entirely foreseeable development given the pieces of information she already had, but realising she was now actually having this conversation with Jughead and that the brittle fragility she sees him wear like armour could be so easily shattered in her hands if she closes too tightly makes her feel in far over her head.
“Okay,” she says, nodding. “But kissing?”
“Kissing is fine,” he mumbles, looking firmly at the table. “It’s just –” he breaks off, making a helpless sort of gesture with his hand.
Veronica dips a fry in ketchup slowly and then says, “well, that’s fine. Just tell Betty that.”
Jughead looks at her like she’s an absolute idiot. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not? It’ll explain what’s going on, and you two can talk about boundaries.”
Jughead lets out a laugh that’s too near hysteria for comfort. “Oh, sure, and then she can tell me she isn’t interested and leave me. No, I’m just going to figure it out.”
“You know,” Veronica says, “if it were me: I’d want to be told and make up my mind by myself. You don’t know that it’ll be a dealbreaker.”
But she can tell by his expression he’s not convinced.
Veronica sighs. “Have you thought about boundaries?”
He gives her a look that says plainly that he thinks about boundaries all the damn time, thank you very much.
“Right, well, what are they?”
“Kissing is fine, except when it’s leading to more. Touching only hands and face and over clothes. No sex.” He rattles it off like a list.
“Okay,” Veronica says slowly. “And what do you want out of this relationship?”
“Just because I don’t want to –”
“I’m not asking you about what you don’t want,” Veronica snaps in annoyance. “I’m asking you about what you do. In an ideal world, what would being with Betty look like?”
Jughead sits back. “I just… I love her,” he says, and his voice breaks earnestly on the word ‘love’ in a way that reminds Veronica how painfully devoid of love the rest of his life seems to be, “I want to be close to her, to hold her?” It trails off a bit like a question at the end.
“Okay,” Veronica says. “Okay.”
They’ve grown closer, she thinks, in the last few minutes. And this is by far the most open conversation they’ve ever had. Once again she realises she has much more in common with Jughead than she thinks; but she represses the flash of envy she feels at the thought of Jughead wrapped in Betty’s arms, loved and loving alike.
“I’ll help you,” she says, instead. “It’ll be OK.”
Veronica shivers.
---
---
Betty’s diary has dissolved into a mess that she can’t untangle but if she had to turn it into some kind of diagram (which, honestly, she’s sort of considering if it will help), it would look something like this: two lists, one titled Jughead and one titled Veronica and then a series of repeated writings of the word kiss, question marks, and incoherent noises of fury.
Because, of course, why can none of this be simple?
There’s something unspoken and heavy in the air between the three of them, and she feels it every time she steps into Veronica’s house. And, worse, she knows that Jughead and Veronica have reached some kind of understanding, by the way Veronica’s eyes meet Jughead’s across the dinner table, the way her brow arches when he speaks, the way she laughs easier at his sarcasm than Betty can bring herself to.
She feels like she’s been shut out of both her close relationships, and yet they both gravitate towards her – both kiss her – and then pull away with no explanation. She finds herself in front of her vanity, staring at her own face and willing herself to see what other’s see in her. Wondering what’s written there that draws people in and then repels them in equal measure.
She hears the gentle click of the door being opened, and stiffens, her hand closing over the cover of her diary protectively. Her mother crosses the room behind her, meeting her eyes in the mirror, before dropping a glass of warm milk on Betty’s bedside table.
“To help you sleep,” she says, pointedly, then steps behind Betty, tangling her hands in Betty’s hair and pulling out her ponytail. She brushes it through, and Betty remembers similar scenes from her childhood when it had been comforting instead of suffocating, when the touch of her mother’s hands had made her feel safe.
But even then she remembered how tight the ponytail had pulled, and that her mother had always finished with a reminder that looking her best was important for making a good impression, and slovenly girls never amounted to anything.
“I want you home tomorrow night for dinner,” her mother says. “Family dinner.”
“Without Polly,” Betty says, flatly.
Her mother’s hands pull sharply in her hair. “Polly has forfeited her place at our table.”
Betty thinks first of the hollow emptiness in her father’s eyes, and the stack of home videos he keeps in a box in the basement – all of Polly – then of her own muddy boots and jeans after an afternoon spent looking for Polly. Polly who lived adrift, cast out of the tight circle of her mother’s expectations in a single mistake.
She feels an irrational desire to do the same, but lets it go almost as quickly. She’s not brave, or foolish, or perhaps in love enough.
She makes eye contact with her mother in the mirror. “Does dad know that?”
Her hairbrush clatters to the vanity with enough force she jumps. “Go to bed,” her mother says, sharply. But there are tears in her eyes, almost as if she too and thought back to the time when touches between them weren’t tinged with hatred.
---
When he comes in, late at night and tiptoeing in his stocking feet along the hall as quietly as possible, Veronica is lying in his bed on her stomach, her face lit by the pale glow of her phone screen.
“Hey,” she says, casually, as if this is a perfectly normal occurrence.
“Hey yourself,” he replies, plugging his computer in and folding himself carefully into the desk chair across from the bed.
Veronica rolls her eyes and sits up, her oversized sleeping shirt wrinkled and her long legs bare beneath shorts. They contrast sharply with the bedspread that makes it hard for Jughead to avoid tracking their passage.
“You’re back late,” she says, conversationally.
“I was writing,” he says. “You’re up late.”
“I was waiting for my roomie. Got stuck with my mother all evening.”
He plucks up the courage to ask the question that’s been living on the tip of his tongue since he moved in. “What happened between you and your mother?”
Veronica sighs. “Oh, nothing much,” she says, with the blasé air of a bored socialite. “She’s just cheating on my father with Fred Andrews.”
Jughead laughs, then cuts it short at the sight of Veronica’s face. “Jesus,” he says, running a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, Veronica. That’s… complex.”
“Not really,” she says, flatly, “my mother is married. It should be simple.”
“It rarely is,” Jughead says quietly.
He’s surprised when she smiles. “No, I guess not. But waving you under her nose has been a real treat – she’s hardly got any ground to stand on when it comes to reprimanding me for hanging around with the ‘wrong sort’ of boys.”
“Always happy to oblige,” he says, mildly. “But surely your mother doesn’t think that we…” he trails off, awkwardly.
Veronica’s brow arches, and she smiles flirtatiously. With catlike grace she rises to her feet, crossing the room and leaning over him. “Oh, that’s exactly what my mother thinks.”
Then she smiles fondly, kissing him on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re home safe.”
He can still smell her in the room by the time he’s climbed under the covers, and he spends the night restlessly staring at the ceiling wondering why the thought of Veronica’s mother assuming they’re together doesn’t repulse him.
---
“Why did you kiss me?” Betty asks, lying on the foot of Veronica’s bed in her cheerleading shorts with her arms thrown above her head high enough to cause the hem of her shirt to ride up.
Veronica looks up from her phone and says, “that’s a bit of an odd question.”
“Not really,” says Betty, rolling over onto her side and propping her head up on her arm. “I should’ve asked before.”
“I did it to get us on the cheerleading team,” Veronica says, picking up her phone and pretending to scroll through instagram, wondering why her heart is thudding so wildly in her chest.
“Yeah, but it didn’t, and you must have known it wouldn’t,” says Betty. “Plus, –”
“Why are you asking?” Veronica says sharply, cutting her off.
Betty looks hurt for a minute. “I just don’t understand kissing lately.”
Veronica tips her head back and stares at the ceiling. Jughead. That plaid-shirted, beanie-wearing menace has wormed his way into every corner of her life.
“It’s not that complicated. People kiss because they want to.”
“Did you?” Betty asks.
Her eyelashes seem impossibly long, and Veronica surprises herself when she says, “yes.”
Betty looks at her for a long moment, then nods, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling.
“When did everything become so messy?”
---
Jughead kisses like a man who’s still slightly surprised it’s happening at all. At least, that’s how Betty feels, and his hands still tremble faintly against her face. She’s slow and gentle and just focuses on telegraphing reassurance and affection but she feels like there are too many pieces missing for that sort of non-verbal communication to really fly.
She pulls back, and he chases her mouth, pulling her back towards him with a shaking and uncomfortable desperation. Instead she just cups his hands in hers and presses her forehead against his until they’re breathing in sync.
“What’s going on?” she says, running her hands through the bits of his hair which have escaped his beanie. “Talk to me, Jughead.”
But he’s already pulled away.
“We should probably go,” he says, without looking at her.
She doesn’t have much choice but to follow, shutting the door of the Blue & Gold behind her.
I don’t know what to do, she texts Veronica later that evening. Nothing I say seems to help.
im sorry carino xx, Veronica replies. i can try talking to him
Betty’s hands shake as she types. You know what’s going on, don’t you?
Veronica’s reply only says, im sorry betty, he has to tell you. i cant
She turns her phone off after that.
---
They’re in the woods together, all three of them, back at the scene at the crime as Jughead keeps saying with barely repressed glee. Veronica’s arms haven’t uncrossed since they arrived, and Betty’s pretty sure her wellies are Burberry, but she follows Jughead around with thinly veiled amusement. Betty, however, feels raw like the past week has rubbed at her skin so much that she can barely stand the sensation of the fall breeze.
There’s police tape stretched between the trees around the hollowed-out husk of a car. There’s not much else, and she’s not sure now why they’ve come. There’s still no sign of Polly, despite the fact that she and her parents have spent the last week combing the woods for her.
Betty hopes she’s made it to wherever she and Jason were meant to be going, and not that Polly’s body isn’t going to wash up in the river like Jason’s.
“Betty?” Jughead’s voice is soft and beside her, though she hasn’t heard him approach. She leans into the warmth of his body instinctively, and he throws an arm around her shoulder.
“There’s not much here,” Betty says.
Veronica is toeing the dirt with her boot. “Not unless you count slugs. Ugh.”
Betty gives Jughead a nudge with her elbow, “right then, Ned Nickerson, what are we looking for?”
She can hear Veronica giggling under her breath, but Jughead blithely ignores her. “Dunno,” he says, “I was hoping coming back here would lead to some inspiration.”
“That the police haven’t already come up with?” Veronica says, critically. Then, immediately, “no, stupid point. Sorry.”
Jughead does an odd little bow at that which makes them both laugh, and wanders off to walk around the perimeter of the crime scene tape.
“Do you ever think about how fragile life is?” Betty asks quietly, looking in through the broken windshield of the car.
Veronica gives her a probing look. “Sure,” she says. “Especially now.”
Betty’s cold hand reaches down and entwines her fingers with Veronica’s gloved ones, squeezing tightly. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Both of you,” she amends, catching Jughead’s questioning eye, and then, dragging Veronica along, catching his hand in her free one.
“I’m glad you’re both here,” she says, looking up at the sky and blinking back tears.