Work Text:
Pink.
The only color Betty Cooper’s lips have ever been.
When she was thirteen, she came to school with glossy lips that were painted a bubblegum pink.
That was the first time Jughead realized he wanted to kiss them, to see if they tasted as sweet as the sugary scent they were giving off as they ate lunch with Archie.
She smiled at him as she sat down, and asked Jughead if he would be at the book club meeting.
“You look pretty, Betty,” Archie had told her.
The way Betty’s cheeks turned as pink as her lips, told Jughead she had worn it for him.
By age fifteen, Betty and Archie were holding hands.
Her pink lips touched his for the first time.
When Jughead asked Archie how it was he answered with, “fine”.
That was when Jughead realized that one day Archie would break Betty’s heart, because he was pretty sure when you loved a person, their kisses would be more than “fine”.
But Jughead had never kissed a girl, so what would he know?
Betty and him started the Blue and Gold, and they spent their afternoons exchanging sarcastic comments and investigating while Archie worked for his dad.
At age sixteen, Betty was clad in a vixens uniform, with Archie’s jacket around her shoulders.
Her golden blonde hair in the same ponytail it had been in since she was six.
Her lips were still pink, but gone was the glitter and stickiness of lipgloss.
Betty Cooper now wore lipstick, but Archie still called her “pretty”.
When Jughead asked Archie how things were going between him and Betty, he answered with the usual — “fine”.
And Jughead wondered how much longer it would be until either he or Betty realized things weren’t fine.
Betty and Jughead still ran the Blue and Gold, and after football games on Fridays, they shared milkshakes at Pop’s while Archie celebrated with “his guys”.
At age seventeen, Betty and Archie were fighting. Archie told her she was boring and predictable. He wanted something more.
That was the day that Jughead saw Archie break Betty’s heart.
He saw her green eyes glisten and her pink lips tremble, but all she did was tighten her ponytail and leave.
The next day, her lips were red. Her hair was down, and her eyelashes heavily coated with mascara.
Jughead heard Archie whisper to her that she looked “sexy” and the small smile that crept on her cherry lips told Jughead she had done all of this for him.
That was the first day Jughead felt the urge to punch his best friend, because he thought Betty was beautiful with or without red lipstick.
Things went back to normal for a few weeks, but then Jughead found Betty crying.
Of course, he gave her his shoulder to cry on.
When he asked Archie what happened, Archie tells Jughead that they were always doing “fine”, but shouldn’t it be more than that?
When they turned eighteen, Archie got a new girlfriend.
It had been a year of awkward silences, and Jughead splitting his time between the two.
Mainly Betty, because Archie was always “busy”.
It’s Betty who goes with him to the Bijou on his birthday.
It’s Betty who hugs him after he gets his acceptance letter to Columbia, and it’s Jughead Betty calls first when she gets hers.
Her lips are back to pink, and Jughead still wonders what they taste like.
Betty woke him up one night with tear stained cheeks and chapped lips, blood in the corner from biting so hard due to the wrath of her mother yelling again.
That was the night he found out what her lips taste like.
He kisses her to comfort her, and he doesn’t kiss bubblegum lip gloss, or matte pink lipstick, or crimson colored paint.
He kisses dry skin that leaves a copper taste in his mouth.
He kisses chapped lips.
He kisses her.
The girl he’s been in love with since he was thirteen.
And she kisses him back.