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He turns eighteen in October, just before election time. It’s the first time he’s ever been glad to see the passing of another year—at least this birthday comes with some perks. Jughead may be a conscientious objector, but even he understands voting.
It rains on Election Day. Jughead sighs as he looks out the window of the Blue & Gold office—it’s coming down too hard for him to ride his bike, and Riverdale’s polling place is the public library, which is all the way across town. And it’s not like he can ask Archie for a ride; Archie’s not eighteen yet, and he’s at football practice fo two more hours. Though Jughead’s not sure he’d be much help, anyway; the school election is one thing, but Jughead isn’t sure Archie’s up to researching candidates he doesn’t know personally.
He’s going to have to walk.
He abandons the article he’s been editing and sets off down the hallway toward the exit. He’s pulling up the hood of his sherpa when he feels something tug his arm back, and a second later he sees the blonde ponytail.
“Jug, are you leaving?” she says, panting slightly. “I thought we were going to finish proofing Ethel’s piece on the auditorium renovations?”
Betty. Jughead’s own personal strawberry-scented Kryptonite. He’s not sure what he feels for her is love, not exactly, but it’s bigger than a regular crush, for sure. It’s more of a faith. She’s been his religion since they were kids. He believes in Betty, and in turn she never fails to provide him daily comfort. That’s just who Betty is. She’s the girl who helped him repair his broken bicycle when they were eight and FP wasn’t around to do it. The girl who stayed behind on the bus with him during the middle school trip to the waterpark, because he hadn’t wanted to take his hat off to swim. The girl who brings him Pop’s takeout when he works doubles at the Bijou, because she knows he won’t get a dinner break, and stays to watch with him even though they’re showing yet another Hitchcock.
Sure, he has tucked-away hopes of her loving him back someday, but he doesn’t usually dwell on it—he knows he’ll never really be enough for her. So he tries to hold onto the moments he does get, and usually, that’s enough.
Usually.
“Betty, whoa,” he says, stabilizing her. “I’m just going to vote. Election Day, and all that.”
Immediately she begin to pout. “I know,” she grumbles. “I can’t vote yet.” Betty doesn’t turn eighteen until the spring.
“Ah, but I can,” he says, smirking. “And Jughead Jones is nothing if not a responsible citizen.”
Betty laughs, and the sound is glorious. “Oh, is that why ‘Jughead Jones wuz here’ is spray-painted on the old projection booth at the Drive-In?” She smacks him playfully. “You vandal.”
Jughead raises his hands in mock surrender. “Caught me,” he says, not even pretending to deny it. “Can I go vote now?”
Betty frowns. “How are you going to get there?”
“I’ll walk.”
“Jug, it’s pouring. Come on, I’ll drive you. Just let me run back to the office and get my coat.”
He hesitates. “Betts, it’s okay. It’s not that important.”
She fixes him with a look that could quiet whole stadiums. “Yes, it is. I can’t let you walk; you’ll catch a cold, and die, and it’ll be entirely my fault,” she says. “C’mon, we can go to Pop’s after to finish the editing. My treat.”
Well, he can’t say no to that. Jughead swallows (he hopes not audibly) and waits for her to grab her things from the Blue & Gold.
Betty’s in good spirits on the drive over, bopping alone to the music on the radio, and he can’t help but match her mood. It’s like Betty Cooper is his own personal antidepressant. At the next stoplight he leans over the center console and turns down the radio, just enough so he can be heard.
“So, I turned in some college applications today.”
Betty’s whole faces lights up, and Jughead feels his chest tighten at how happy she is for him. “Jug,” she breathes, “that’s great.”
“Yeah,” he says tentatively. “I probably won’t get in. But, NYU’s got a great writing program, and I know you and Archie both want to be in the city…” He doesn’t know why he feels the need to justify wanting to be near his friends, but he suddenly feels nervous.
“Stop, Jug. You’ll get in. I’ve never seen anyone write like you do.”
“Thanks, Betts,” he says softly, looking over at her meaningfully. Then he grins. “I’ve never seen anybody edit like you do. Do you buy those red pens in bulk?”
“Yes,” she says. “Just for you.”
They pull into the parking lot of the library. Betty accompanies him inside, practically jumping up and down with excitement. She squeezes his arm as Ms. Paroo checks him in, and then waits by the door as he goes into the ballot box. Voting is nice, he decides. He’s spent a lot of his life feeling lonely, somewhat estranged from his family and different from his friends. And now that they’re seniors, and he’ll probably have to stay in Riverdale while Betty and Archie go on to bigger and better things—voting just makes him feel like he has choices.
They go to Pop’s afterward—to celebrate, Betty says. She slides in next to him, her ponytail a little askew from the rain, and Jughead resists the impulse to tuck a loose curl behind her ear. They both get milkshakes but share a basket a fries, dipping them in their milkshakes they way they both like but Archie hates, and arguing over his overuse of the em dash.
If this is all he gets, Jughead thinks, he will probably die happy.
***
By some miracle, Jughead does get into college. In fact, he gets into every one he applied to, somehow managing to leverage ‘slightly regretful teen gang member’ into a semi-strong admissions essay.
His scholarship is enough for tuition at NYU, but not room and board. That’s fine with him; he gets a job at the Strand bookstore, where he can spend hours shelving books while listening to crime podcasts. Betty comes in sometimes, when she’s not uptown at Columbia, and pretends to ask where things are just to bother him.
New York seems made especially for him. Nearly everything is open 24/7, catering to nighthawks like him, and there’s a general gloom about city life that Jughead just loves. He likes his classes, and he likes being close to Betty, even when she drags him to poetry slams and art gallery openings. Anything is fun with Betty, he finds.
In fall of their Sophomore year, Betty goes abroad for a semester. He misses her terribly, but she seems happy in London—whenever they talk, she beams like a lighthouse telling him about getting dizzy on the London Eye or taking the train to Paris. He’s so happy for her, seeing the world, because this is what she has always deserved.
Unfortunately, Betty’s time in London perfectly coincides with the midterms, and she spends weeks griping to him via FaceTime about missing her first real election. She sends away for an absentee ballot, but claims that it’s not the same.
Weeks later, on the actual Election Day, Jughead goes to the polls, this time dragging Archie, finally old enough, by the leather of his letterman jacket. As they’re leaving, Jughead stops short and then doubles back to the front desk.
“Is it possible…could I have an extra sticker?” The lady manning the desk doesn’t even look up, just hands him another “I Voted!” sticker without preamble.
“Why do you need that?” Archie asks.
“Betty didn’t get one,” he explains.
He expects Archie to groan and make some comment, but he doesn’t Instead, his best friend’s eyes go soft, and he smiles. “That’s really sweet, Jug. Does Betty know you like her?”
“I don’t…shut up, Arch.”
Later, he pays $12.95 at the post office for international shipping. He slips the sticker into a padded envelope with a short note and a photograph he took of Archie in their favorite diner after they’d been to the polls, looking disgusted as Jughead dangled a milkshake-covered French fry under his nose. On the back of the photo he writes “not the same without you” and hopes she knows he means life in general, too.
She calls him three days later. The sight of her face on the screen nearly makes his heart burst. Absence, he is discovering, really does make the heart grow fonder.
“Jug,” she starts. “Thank you for the sticker.”
“It was nothing, Betts.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was so…you. You always think of me.”
He ignores the part of his brain that feels his hands going a little clammy, and attempts a breezy laugh. “Hey, I’m just trying to make up for all the cookies you’ve baked me over the years. It’s an impossible debt.”
She doesn’t laugh. “Things aren’t the same without you either, Jug. I…” He hears her take a deep breathe in. “I just really wish you were here. Nothing seems like as much fun when I can’t share it with you.”
“Betts,” he says, slightly unable to breathe. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
He eyes are so soft, even pixelated on his iPhone screen, and he’s sure that his own are embarrassingly vulnerable. “I miss you, Betty,” he whispers. “Kind of a lot.”
“I’ll be home soon,” she promises. “Just three more weeks.”
“Christmas in Riverdale,” he laughs. “Always holly jolly.”
The next three weeks go all too slowly, especially with finals consuming his every waking moment. Somehow, he makes it onto the bus home, and then he’s back on the Southside again. He doesn’t quite know what to do—he hasn’t heard from Betty on exactly when she’s getting back, and he knows she’ll be jet lagged like crazy. He hangs out in Archie’s basement, expelling the exhaustion of finals with video games and Vegas snuggles, but then Mary shows up a few days before Christmas and Jughead feels like he’s in the way.
There’s a knock at the trailer door at midnight on Christmas Eve. When he opens the door, he thinks she’s an angel.
And then Betty is there, really there, flying into him, every bit as exuberant as when they were kids. His arms go around her without thinking, palms flat against the wool of her sweater. Just the smell of her, so familiar, is enough to knock him over.
“Sorry,” she says into his neck, “I know it’s late, but I just got in and I had to see you.”
He wants to laugh. Does she seriously think he’d mind? Instead he blows a warm breath on her neck. “You’re freezing, Betts,” he frowns. “You didn’t want to wear a coat?”
It’s then he notices the sticker on her sweater. I Voted.
“I saved it," she whispers, and then she’s rising up on her tiptoes and bringing her lips to his. He’s dumbfounded for a second, and then he responds to forcefully he knocks her backward a little.
Her lips are still cold from the brisk winter air, but Jughead is more than happy to warm them up.
***
“Jug!”
Jughead is standing outside PS 631 in Brooklyn, kicking at the wet leaves that blanket the ground. He turns when he hears her voice to find his girlfriend right behind him, holding out her arm to pull him under her umbrella.
“I’m sorry,” she says, a little breathless. “I tried to leave early, I really did, but there was a shooting in the Bronx and I had to write up last-minute web copy. And then the 4 train stopped after Bergen Street, and it’s raining—”
“It’s fine, baby,” he says, leaning over to kiss her. “You’re here now.”
He takes the umbrella from her with one hand and laces his fingers into hers with the other, tugging her toward the doors of the elementary school that is their designated polling place. They’re directed to a table with large perforated ballots, and then move to the back of what seems to be a very long line for the actual voting scanners.
Jughead looks over at his girlfriend, bouncing up and down next to him in line. It’s been nearly two years since they’d started dating, and he still can’t believe she wants him this way. Wants him enough that she’d even suggested they move in together after graduation, into a little apartment in Crown Heights above a wood-fire pizza place she’d found. He’d assured her that he didn’t need that--he was pretty sure he was never going to love another human being the way he loved Betty Cooper, so he was in no rush. But she’d insisted that it made the most sense, financially, and “besides, Jug, we love each other, and we hate taking the subway.”
They’d moved in June, just before they’d both started work, and now he can’t believe he’d ever protested the idea.
“Betts, try not to explode,” Jughead laughs, placing a hand on her shoulder to stop her twitching.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m just excited. I’ve actually met most of the people on the ballot this year, you know.”
“My little Lois Lane,” he says fondly. Betty had started working for the New York Post a few months before, on the Metro desk, and spent a lot of her time at political press conferences.
Betty raises her eyebrows at him. “Are you Spiderman, in this scenario?”
“What?” he asks, shuffling forward as the line inches along. “You don’t think I could fight crime?”
She giggles. “You can barely fight hunger, Juggie.”
He puts his chin atop her blonde head. “I’d fight for you,” he says.
“Sap.”
“And proud,” he grins. “Look, we’re up.”
They part ways for that actual voting, and reconverge at the exit. Jughead peels his sticker off the wax paper and sticks it to her nose. She giggles and sticks hers on his beanie in retaliation, and they begin to walk home. Their polling place is just around the corner from the new apartment, so it’s only a few minutes.
“Remember when I took you to vote in Riverdale?” she asks as they round the corner toward their apartment.
“Of course,” he says easily. “I was so in love with you, even then.”
She tucks herself under his arm. “You just liked me because I fed you Pop’s.”
“That helped.” He fiddles with the keys, and unlocks the door. Their apartment is warm and feels like home.
“Should we order diner takeout?” Betty asks. “Keep up the tradition?” She shrugs off her coat and lays it on the bed, revealing her professional blouse and pencil skirt.
“Mmm,” Jughead says, looking at her with a very different kind of hunger. “We absolutely should. But first…” He backs her up against the wall of their bedroom and nuzzles his nose into her ear. “I think my spidey senses are tingling. Is that a thing?”
“Definitely not,” she giggles, and then pushes him onto the bed.
***
If someone had told Jughead Jones in high school that one day he’d be asking Betty Cooper to marry him, and that there was a decent chance she’d actually say yes, he would have told that person to get their head checked.
And yet, here he was. He’d left work a little early after a pretty successful meeting with his editor and stopped at the grocery store. Betty did most of the cooking in their household—she could have a second career as a chef, in his book—but he’d picked up a thing or two over the years. He’d decided on homemade pizza, because it was the easiest. He’s even going to put pineapple on half like Betty likes.
He puts on some soft music to cook to (he’d never admit this to anyone but Betty, but he actually like her Dave Matthews) and sets about chopping up veggies for a salad while the dough rises. He’s not doing anything fancy—no candles, nothing heart-shaped. Just the pizza, him, and Betty, and hopefully the ring he’d procured with the help of Veronica and her fancy jeweler.
Honestly, he’s surprised he’s managed to go this long without marrying her.
Betty usually comes breezing in around 7, so he aims to have dinner done around then. Their cat winds around his ankles as he cooks, humming around their apartment in preparation. They’re lived here just over two years now, and he loves their house. There are framed photographs he’d taken on his film camera in the hallway, and every kind of spice in the kitchen, and the softest sheets Jughead has ever encountered in his life on their bed. As long as she’s here too, he never wants to wake up anywhere else.
By 7:15, Jughead is a little worried; Betty is normally obsessively punctual. He doesn’t want to text her, though, because that might blow his cover. When 7:30 hits and she hasn’t texted, he’s downright anxious. He tries calling her, and it goes to voicemail. His mind immediately jumps to the worst—reporting sometimes takes her to the seedier corners of New York, and he knows his girlfriend is tough, but still—and he wonders if he should call Veronica, or one of Betty’s coworkers.
Just then, the door opens, and her blonde hair, down and tucked under a hat, fills his vision.
“Hi,” she says, “Ooh, something smells good.”
“Betty,” Jughead says in mild disbelief. “Where have you been?”
“Um, voting,” she says. “Election Day? I told you I was going after work.”
Jughead pulls his beanie off and runs a hand through his hair. “Oh my god,” he says. “Betty, I forgot. I forgot to vote.”
“Wait, do I smell pizza?” Betty says, wrinkling her nose. “Jug, what—“
“I can’t believe I forgot to vote! Why didn’t you text me to meet you?”
“You said you had something important in the afternoon, I guess I thought you were going this morning,” Betty says. “It’s okay, Jug, the polls don’t close for another hour. Go get your coat.”
He gets halfway down the hallway, then remembers the food in the oven and double backs, but Betty’s already there.
“You made dinner?” she asks, eyeing the pizza.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, feeling caught. But Betty is smiling at him, and he feels a little bolstered by that, so he decides to come clean. “I was going to ask you to marry me.”
Betty freezes. “Oh, Jug…” she whispers. “Really?”
“Yes,” he says. “Do you…ugh, I’m doing this all wrong. I had like, a whole speech. There was a plan, dammit.”
Betty comes up to him and puts a hand on his chest, tilting her chin up and kissing him hard. “Go get your coat,” she says, reaching over to turn off the oven. “The pizza will be perfectly cool by the time we get back.”
Betty waits outside while Jughead votes, and then all but drags him home, pulling him into the kitchen by the hand, the smell of pizza still lingering.
“Okay, Jug,” she says, eyes twinkling. “Ask me.”
***
The next time an election rolls around, life interferes with their civil rights slightly. Betty is due on November 8th—Election Day itself. He knows babies tend to come when they want to, but it feels too risky. They both send away for absentee ballots, just in case.
“Jug, relax,” Betty says one night, late in her ninth month, as they lie in bed. “I can practically hear you thinking over there.”
He sighs. “Sorry, babe. It’s just, it’s so close now. Any day. I don’t think I’m going to like watching you go through this. I don’t want it to hurt you.”
Betty tries to roll over, onto her side, but gives up halfway with an oof and simply reaches over to touch his cheek, “Jug,” she says quietly. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll be fine.”
He worries anyway.
And sure enough, Betty goes into labor on Election Day, in the afternoon. When she’s wheeled into the emergency room, with an absolutely frantic Jughead trailing behind her, most of the nursing staff are sporting stickers. Election coverage plays on the television by the waiting room as she breathes through contraction after painful contraction. Jughead is certain his heart is going to burst from his chest in sheer anxiety, but ultimately, Betty makes it look easy. When their daughter is born, all three of them cry.
“Hi, baby,” Jughead breathes in wonder as Betty holds her. “Hey, little bug. Welcome to the big show.”
Betty tugs at his shirt; she had read something about skin-to-skin contact with newborns. Jughead peels off his shirt and hoists his daughter, wriggly and wrinkly and pink with newness, onto his chest. He can feel her little heart beating against his own as he sinks into the armchair beside Betty’s hospital bed.
Somewhere in the back of his brain he knows Alice and Hal are due to arrive in an hour or so, and Jughead still has to call FP with the news. But for now he wants this time, their first (and likely last, at least for a while) quiet moment as a family, for just them. He kisses the top of his daughter’s head, still sticky, and then leans down to kiss Betty’s temple. “The universe gave me you,” he says to his wife, “and now you’ve given me her. Best things I’ve got, baby, by far.”
Betty smiles, with so much love he could faint. “Technically, you did half.”
“Not nearly,” he replies. “You were a champion, Betts. Thank you.”
“Hey,” she says suddenly. “Who’s the president?”
He looks at her for a second, momentarily befuddled, and then laughs deliriously. “I have no idea,” he says.
“Go check, I’m curious,” Betty says. “I’ll take her. She probably needs to feed, anyway.”
“Okay.” He shifts their baby back over to Betty, who cradles her tenderly.
“Go see what kind of world we’re bringing this little one into, Jug,” she says softly.
He scoots down the hall to find a television or a nurse. He’s never paid less attention to an election, but he thinks this might be the best voting day he’ll ever have.
***
“I think we’re going to have to bring them, Betts,” Jughead calls down the hallway. “I don’t see any way around it.”
His wife sighs. “We could call my mother?” she offers.
“Hard pass.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she says, moving into the kitchen doorway so he can see her. She’s got their son on one hip; their daughter plays on the carpet by her feet. “Okay, tag team?”
He nods, and goes over to their eldest. Molly has Betty’s hair and his eyes; his appetite and her determination. He loves her so much, it’s a little crazy.
“Hey, little bug,” he says. “Where are you shoes these days?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know, Dad. I think Cooper took them.”
Jughead has to fight the urge to laugh. “Molls, the baby isn’t hiding your shoes. He can’t pick anything up yet.” He nuzzles his chin on the top of her head, making her giggle and squirm. “You know, I heard you’re a detective. That could can find anything,” he whispers. “I bet your sneakers are in your room. Here, I’ll time you. Ready?”
Molly nods eagerly, and he starts counting. She takes off down the hall, blonde curls flying—Betty has tried to get her to brush them, but four years old is a bit young for managing personal care like that—and he grins in triumph.
“Nice one,” Betty says. “We’re in trouble when this one starts negotiating,” she adds, nodding to their littlest.
“Big time,” Jughead groans. Just then Molly comes flying back. "How fast was I, Dad?" she asks.
"World record," he says.
Jughead sets about lacing her up while Betty hunts around for Cooper’s fuzzy onesie—it’s particularly chilly this November. Although this year, they can drive to the polling place. That’s because this year, they live in Riverdale. They’d talked about it a lot when Molly was first born, and decided that ultimately, Jughead could write from anywhere, and they’d wanted their kids to grow up with Pop’s and Sweetwater River and Friday night football games—all the things about small town life they’d loved. “Plus,” Betty had pointed out, “we can get a house triple the size of our apartment here, and the mortgage will still be less than city rent.”
It was funny, really, how adult they were now.
Voting still takes places at the public library, and as they pull in Molly presses her face against the window. “Story hour?” she asks.
“Not today,” Betty tells their daughter, moving to unbuckle Cooper from the car seat. “Today we’re voting. Do you know what that means?”
Jughead is only half listening as Betty gives their kid a long-winded explanation of civic duty and democracy. He figures Molly’s too young to really understand, but he loves that Betty tries to teach her things like this. He holds Cooper a little tighter as they walk into the library. His son looks alarmingly like him, he knows, with his dark waves of hair and bright blue eyes.
There are only a few people in line, given that Riverdale’s pretty small. He holds Cooper while Betty goes to vote, taking Molly with her, and then they trade. Ms Paroo, somehow still alive, gives both his kids stickers to wear, though Cooper immediately starts gnawing on his.
“Nice to see your family come out to vote,” she says, smiling.
Jughead looks over at Betty, and then at their kids. Most days he is caught up in the buzz of life as it blurs by, with paperwork and editing and diapers and buying more Goldfish crackers. Most days things go by fast. But sometimes, when he finds time to stop and look at things, he just feels baffled. Baffled that the kid he’d once been, who thought he’d never be good enough for Betty Cooper, had made it here.
“You good, Jug?” Betty asks, squeezing his hand.
“Yeah. Just thinking about voting,” he says. “It’s been an important day for us.”
“It has,” she agrees. “Hey, want to take the kids to Pop’s? My treat.”
He nods. "You're on, big spender," he says jokingly. They share finances, anyway.
They strap the kids into the car, and as they set off down the road he turns toward her again. “Hey Betts?” he says. “Do you think you picked right?”
“You mean, in the voting booth?” she asks.
He shrugs. “In all of it.”
“Yes,” she says without hesitation. “Absolutely yes.”
Me, too, he thinks as they drive to get milkshakes. Me too.