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Jughead thought this weekend away was going to end up being a bad idea as soon as Veronica opened the liquor cabinet.
He was sure of it when Betty convinced him to get into the hot tub.
He was ready to hide his head in the fucking sand when Archie declared a game of truth or dare.
Jughead sat in the edge of the hot tub, the water only up to his shins, the same glass of whiskey he’d been nursing all night sitting next to him on the deck. For Betty’s sake, he had tried to not get sullen and judgmental as everyone else got drunk—if anyone deserved to relax and let loose a little, it was Betty. But this was exactly the kind of teenage experience he couldn’t stand. Everyone using alcohol as an excuse to be stupider than they actually were, weird tensions creating weirder moments.
He had agreed to one drink to appease the crowd, he had relented on the hot tub because of Betty’s beautiful pout, but he drew the line at truth or dare. So he sat with his legs dangling in the water, his nose buried in his battered copy of the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe, only vaguely aware of his friends’ ongoing game. At one point Archie had to confess that he lost his virginity in the back of a VW Beetle, which made Jughead smirk, and Betty had to attempt to drink an Irish Car Bomb and failed spectacularly, which even he had to laugh at a little. But just as he fell back into The Masque of the Red Death, he heard the game take a truly unexpected turn.
“Veronica Lodge, I dare you to.... knock the socks off of Forsythe Jones the third,” Betty hiccuped, giggling into the rim of her drink.
Jughead almost dropped his book into the water. “What?”
Veronica arched a single eyebrow, her arms stretched out along the edge of the tub, fingers drumming against the deck. “Could you be more specific?” she asked, her voice a slow, cool purr. The languid pace of her speech was her signature tell of how much she had drank.
“I dare you, to set aside your tension filled but strangely good willed animosity, and kiss him senseless,” Betty replied, one of her hands flying out of the tub at clearly a higher speed than she meant to, sending a wave of water splashing in Archie’s face. “It w—is time for you two to ack—actually connect,” she added with another giggle.
“Umm, excuse me, dear drunken louts who are sometimes my friends, I’m not playing,” Jughead reminded them. He put his book down and looked to Archie for some support, but the ginger was laughing.
“Dude, it’s Ronnie’s dare, you’re just the instrument,” Archie said good naturedly, cracking open another beer.
“What Twilight Zone episode did I just walk into,” Jughead muttered incredulously, standing up on the hot tub steps in order to get a better line of sight on Betty. “Why exactly is my girlfriend daring her best friend to make out with her boyfriend?”
Betty shrugged, grabbing her drink from the deck. She looked up at him through her lashes, something both sweet and incredibly dirty in her expression. “Maybe I think it’ll be hot,” she murmured with false innocence, right before putting her straw in her mouth and sucking on it.
While his attention had been on Betty, Veronica had stood up from her spot, gliding through the hot tub toward Jughead. Suddenly she was directly in front of him, the lights from inside the tub illuminating her with an otherworldly glow. Water rolled down her skin still as she reached out one hand, gently pressing her palm against his bare chest. The heat of it against his skin caused an involuntary shiver to run through him.
“Veronica, I really don’t think—“ he started, his voice low.
“Stop thinking, Jug, and give the lady what she wants,” Veronica murmured. She stepped up onto the step just below him, closing the distance between them, and slid her hand up from his chest to the back of his neck, pulling his mouth down to meet hers.
Jughead was vaguely aware of some catcalling and whistling around him, but the sound was quickly drowned out by his other senses. Veronica’s mouth claimed his, nipping at his lower lip until she was able to slip her tongue past and deepen the kiss. A thrill of heat shot up his spine and cascaded down again, settling low. The smell of her, the taste of her, the feel of her tongue searching and her fingers pressing awoke a dark, heady desire inside him that he had never felt before. For a moment, the rest of the world fell away.
One of Jughead’s hands instinctively came up to Veronica’s neck, her ponytail thwarting his instinct to bury his fingers in her hair. He heard her respond with the softest moan into his mouth, her head tilting to rededicate to a new angle as she drew the kiss out. When she finally did part her lips from his, they were both breathless, and Jughead could see the flush in her face even in the dim light.
He gulped down air in short breaths, his brows knitted in frustration and confusion as he stared at Veronica. To her credit, she looked a little caught off guard herself, her gaze searching his face.
“Now that is how my girl does it!” Archie hooted enthusiastically, snapping the moment. Jughead yanked his hand away from Veronica as if her skin burned, and she did the same, suddenly unable to look him in the eye.
“I was told socks had to be proverbially knocked,” she said airily. “I aim to please.”
Jughead stared over at Betty on the other side of the tub, and for the first time he could remember, he had absolutely no clue what she was thinking. Her eyes were glassy, her cheeks flushed, but there was something dark and shuddered about her expression that completely mystified him. With a frustrated sigh, Jughead stepped out of the tub and made a beeline for the cabin, leaving his drink and his glass behind him. He heard the sounds of Archie’s and Betty’s protests, but he paid them no heed.
Jughead cut through the kitchen towards the hall that led to the bedrooms, dripping water as he walked. He stopped short of actually entering the room he and Betty were supposed to be sharing and instead leaned his back against the wall right next to the door. He closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing and willing his heart to stop hammering in his chest.
Veronica may have been the one to kiss him, but he kissed back. And he had liked it.
More than liked it, Jughead had gotten lost in it. Kissing Betty was an emotional testimony, putting his heart out for her each time. Kissing Veronica was a deep, rich ache; a sexual connection that he never would have anticipated, and definitely did not know how to handle. Christ, he had only lost his virginity a few weeks ago, what did he know about sexual chemistry?
And yet, as he stood in hall, trying to make his mind focus on anything else, he knew if was true. It was lust, pure and simple. And not at all the kind he felt for Betty.
“Hey—you okay?”
Jughead’s eyes snapped open, his body tensing at the sound of Veronica’s voice. She had a silk robe thrown on over her swimsuit, which only clung to her wet skin, and her face wore a clear expression of concern. Her voice no longer had the slow, drunk quality of just moments ago. Either she soberly up remarkably quickly, or she had been playing more drunk than she was.
“I—I really don’t understand why that just happened,” Jughead admitted, finding it to be the safest confession he could make.
Veronica shrugged, chewing on her lower lip for a moment. “Honestly, if I had to guess, Betty’s drunk brain saw it as a way to even the cosmic scoreboard,” she said. “Assuage her guilt about her kiss with Archie by letting you kiss me.”
It felt like all the air had been sucked from the room. “The... the what?” he asked hoarsely.
Veronica’s brows knitted in confusion. “The kiss over Christmas, the day of the Black Hood insanity—she... she didn’t tell you?”
Jughead slid down the wall until he fell into a sitting position, staring off to points unknown as he struggled to breathe normally. His whole body suddenly felt clammy, and he recognized the telltale signs of a panic attack even as he was powerless to stop them.
Betty and Archie kissed. Archie and Betty—what else did they do? Oh god what could they have done what didn’t they do Archie does goddamn everything and Betty wanted wants Betty wants Archie oh godohgodnononono
“Jughead—Jug, please.” Veronica knelt beside him in the floor, having grabbed one of his limp hands. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I just assumed you knew—don’t worry about it, we were all broken up, it didn’t mean anything...”
“I asked her,” Jughead croaked out, unconsciously tightening his grip on her hand. “I asked her point blank if there’d been anyone while we were broken up. She said no. She lied.”
Veronica opened her mouth but then clapped if shut again, instead pursing her lips in thought. “Don’t jump to any conclusions, Jug,” she sighed. “Betty loves you.”
Jughead squeezed his eyes shut tight and banged his head back against the wall. There was no way to explain to Veronica the acute fear that literally ran through him every day that Archie would wake up and randomly decide he did like Betty that way, and that she would run to him without a second thought. There was no way to invoke the dread he felt whenever he saw Archie’s gaze linger a little too long, or Betty’s hug with Archie look a little too warm. And even he struggled to understand how his best friend, his brother, could also be his biggest source of pain and insecurity in his life.
Instead of trying to explain those things, Jughead just looked at Veronica, soaking in the sensation of her rubbing her thumb against his wrist. It was meant as a soothing gesture, but it also stoked something darker, an impulse to reclaim her lips again and drown in the warmth of her.
Jughead swallowed, and using every ounce of will power he had left, gently pulled his hand away from hers. “Yeah. I know,” he said, but his voice sounded strangely hollow, even to him.
Veronica looked as if she might say more, but then her gaze drifted down, lingering on his lips too long to be mistaken for something else. Jughead tilted his head, bringing it just a fraction closer to hers, and he thought he saw her do the same, when the moment was shattered by the sound of Archie’s drunken, good natured bellow.
“Jughead! I do believe your G F is past the point of no return!”
They both started, backing off of one another and looking in opposite directions. Jughead stood hastily, and offered a hand to help Veronica to her feet.
“Duty calls,” he muttered.
“Hey, if—if you ever wanna talk, Y’know... I’m here,” Veronica offered.
He stared at her a moment longer, her dark eyes with darker lashes, her dusky skin still gleaming with water drops, her full lips still slightly flushed from their impromptu make out, and Jughead knew right then he couldn’t trust himself to be alone with Veronica Lodge anytime soon. But all he said was, “Sure, thanks.”
That night, with Betty sleeping it off beside him, Jughead dreamed of a velvet curtain of dark as night hair, of sharp, manicured nails scratching his skin, and he didn’t wish for sunshine. He wished thunder and rain.