Archive of Our Own

2. he kissed too hard / and never laughed i miss / how simple things were. {kevin/joaquin}
   
   

Joaquin is the first person Kevin meets who he feels like he can really be himself around.

It’s not that he doesn’t love Betty and Veronica or the way they fawn over him, and it’s not like he doesn’t appreciate Archie’s hugs and Jughead's small smiles across the table at Pop's, but it's that he recognizes his place in this town and it is exactly what Cheryl had told him that day at the lunch table: Gay Best Friend.

Riverdale likes to think that it’s progressive and inclusive and diverse. Diverse is the new sparkly word everyone is throwing out around town now. Alice Cooper asks if he wants to work as a junior reporter at the Register because they’re looking for “diverse staff” with “fresh perspective.” Midge Klump tells him she should start a GSA club at school so it can offer a “diverse space” for other kids like him. Fuck, he’s pretty sure they put him on the wrestling team freshman year for "diversity’s sake."

Kevin knows that all of these actions carry good intentions, but he also knows that half of the school quietly avoid him because it’s easier to do so than outwardly disagree with the sheriff’s son’s sexuality. He knows what people whisper about him behind his back in class. He knows, most of all, that he can only talk about being gay when it’s convenient for others. He knows that nobody asks what it’s like being one of the only openly gay kids in a small, east coast town that’s filled with a deep-seated, secret kind of homophobia that nobody knows about until they have to experience it themselves, because they don’t really care to think about it. He knows it’s easier to sit at the dinner table with his father and dance around any subject about romance or boys rather than admit, Hey Dad, I am so desperate and so lonely for any human contact, even platonic, that half the time I don’t know what to do with myself, so I just find boys to kiss who I know will never want to look at me again because that’s better than nothing at all.

But then he meets Joaquin, and Joaquin just looks at him and kisses him like it’s not a big deal, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

He doesn’t care what anybody says about Betty and Jughead later on, but he, Kevin Keller, invented having a Serpent for a boyfriend.

They have a routine of sorts: Joaquin texts Kevin late into the night with a simple “here”, and Kevin climbs out his window, wrapping a windbreaker around his torso as he walks down his long, gravel driveway out of the forest and onto the street, where Joaquin’s beat up car is always parked and waiting.

They drive down a few windy roads, listening to music on the radio that’s mostly filled with static, and they won’t talk too much; Joaquin because he doesn’t talk too much anyway, and Kevin because his stomach is alight with butterflies and the only thoughts he can think are, Oh my God, I’m sneaking out with a boy. Oh my God, if people knew I was sneaking out with a boy they would scream. If Betty and Veronica knew they would scream. Oh my God. I’m sneaking out. With a boy . Who is my boyfriend.

He thinks this every time, despite the fact that they do this a few times a week.

Joaquin will then pull over off a shadowy strip of road, and they’ll move to the backseat where Joaquin holds Kevin's jaw so hard he thinks it could bruise, and he kisses with such energy that it makes up for all the moments of his silence. He leaves hickeys along the collarbone of Kevin’s chest where it can be easily concealed by a shirt and some by his hips that last for days. Kevin threads his fingers through Joaquin’s hair and kisses him back just as hard, hoping it will leave his lips bruised, red, and ruined, or at least leave some evidence that he was here, that these things happened, that these elusive car make outs aren’t just some fantasy produced by Kevin’s mind.

Afterward, Joaquin will stop by the bodega that’s on the Southside and Kevin will watch from the car as he roams through the brightly lit aisles of the convenience store. He watches Joaquin pick out various candy and two drinks before walking up to the cashier and pointing out which cigarettes he wants from the cabinet. The cashier here never cards and so Joaquin walks out with a small bag in hand, the cigarette carton already open as he’s placing one between his lips.

He lights the cigarette before he slides into the driver’s side of his car. He rolls the window down to blow the smoke out of, and then he rummages through the plastic bag, tossing half of it’s contents onto Kevin’s lap.

Kevin picks up the Sour Patch Kids bag and before he can say anything, Joaquin looks over and pipes up with, “They were out of the watermelon ones you like so much, but here,” he says pulling out a Cherry Coke, “They finally stocked up on these.”

Kevin doesn’t say anything, he just smiles, too excited about the fact that he has a boyfriend who knows what kind of candy he likes without having to be reminded.

They sit in the parking lot as Joaquin smokes and eats the chocolate he got for himself while Kevin absolutely devours the Sour Patch Kids and his Coke. This is the time they talk to each other. It’s usually mostly Kevin volunteering up information about his life and Joaquin just sitting there, nodding silently, but sometimes he chimes in, too. In fact, tonight he’s talking about one of his friends from the Southside.

“Fangs just always manages to get into some shit,” he’s saying, “And I’m always the one who has to clean it up.” He sighs and out of his mouth comes smoke instead of a breath.

“That must be hard.” Kevin says sympathetically, trying to hold back his excitement about the fact that Joaquin is actually talking to him about personal issues.

Joaquin gives him a look from out of the corner of his eye and Kevin knows the moment’s over. “Yeah. It’s whatever,” he says, breaking off a piece from his chocolate bar, “What about you? How… are you?” He tries tentatively, like the intent is too sappy for comfort.

Kevin smiles and shrugs. “Oh, I’m alright. Nothing interesting ever goes on with me.”

Joaquin frowns. “That’s not true,” he says, “I mean… I’ve hung out with your friends before, and they always seem to be up to something.”

Kevin laughs nervously, suddenly embarrassed for no good reason. “Oh! Well, they just like to poke their noses into everything that goes on in this town because they’re bored. I mean – can you blame them?” He asks, still laughing, trying to make up excuses. “Anyway – yeah, nothing much happened to me this week. Ugh, actually, this kid who goes to our school – Moose – he keeps trying to get me to hook up with him. He sent me a picture of his abs last night, look,” Kevin gets his phone out and pulls up his string of text messages with Moose, and there it is, a low-quality picture of the dude’s six pack. He shows it to Joaquin. “I mean, you would think he –”

“Did you tell him we were together?” Joaquin asks all of a sudden. His voice sounds strange for some reason, and Kevin looks up at him, surprised.

“Um, yeah,” Kevin replies, his eyes roaming Joaquin’s face as he tries to assess what’s wrong, “Yeah, I did after he sent the picture. I was going to say – you think he would get the hint after he saw us making out in the kitchen at Jughead’s party.”

Joaquin just remains silent for a moment, squinting down at the picture. “Hm,” is all he says, and then he sits up straight and throws the butt of his cigarette out the window and onto the parking lot pavement. He turns the key in the ignition until the engine catches and then starts backing up, making sure to hit the radio on in the process. “I should take you back home.”

Kevin buckles in quickly, surprised at the sudden exit they’re making – they usually sit here for thirty minutes at the very least – and trying to figure out what he did wrong.

Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up the fact that another boy was trying to proposition him to his boyfriend, but – Joaquin had asked how his week was going and Kevin wanted to change the subject away from his friends and he didn’t even know it was that big of a deal, anyway. Joaquin never makes it seem like their relationship is that big of a deal to him.

They spend the ride back in silence again, although this time it feels more tense than usual. When Joaquin rolls up to the end of Kevin’s driveway at the edge of the trees, this time the dark silhouette of his home looks much less comforting than usual.

Kevin’s unbuckled his seat belt and is just about to turn around and give Joaquin a flash of a smile and a nervous goodbye before he gets out when Joaquin catches him on the forearm and the words die in Kevin’s throat.

“Keller,” he says, and there’s a look in his eyes that Kevin can’t figure out, “The next time this jock tries anything with you, call me and I’ll beat his ass for you.”

Kevin is so shocked for a moment that all he can do is burst out into laughter, which is not the right thing to do because Joaquin’s expression turns to that of a scared cat ready to run away. Kevin fixes that quickly by asking, “Are you jealous?” with a laugh still in his voice, and then leaning forward to catch Joaquin’s lips in between his own before he can answer.

Joaquin settles into the kiss, going pliant for a moment before he brings his hands up to cradle Kevin’s jaw. They separate quickly after, but Joaquin still has his eyes lingering on Kevin’s lips when Kevin tells him, “If I wanted to beat his ass, I could on my own. I can handle myself, you know. I’m –”

“On the wrestling team, I know,” Joaquin finishes for him, giving a little smile, “But it’s more fun if I get to scare the hell out of him.”

Kevin hums, unable to keep the satisfaction from creeping into his expression. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

They share soft smiles and one last chaste kiss before Kevin says goodbye and gets out of the car. He wraps his windbreaker around his torso as he walks into the treeline, and he only looks back when he hears Joaquin call out to him, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Kevin just turns and smiles, watching the way Joaquin leans across the passenger seat and toward the window in order to shout to him, and then he turns back around, wrapping his arms around himself and finally letting a full grin break out on his face for only the trees and their leaves to see.

It’s a magical thing: to feel not only like you are finally seen for the whole of who you are for the first time in your life, but that you are loved for it.

...

Being with Moose doesn’t feel the same, but Kevin kisses him as hard as he can anyway, trying to make something beautiful out of something too broken to fix. When Veronica mentions that Joaquin was in juvie when she went to go visit Archie, Kevin goes perfectly still and focuses on breathing, pretending like his heart doesn’t ache in so many quiet ways.

7. some days i remember / what he felt like and other days / i’m puking up his name. {betty/jughead}
   
   

The Blue and Gold classroom is creepy at night, and although this mostly stopped bothering Betty a long time ago, sometimes there are nights during the winter where she stays after school too long and the chill invades every corner of the room, making the darkness seem much scarier than it actually is.

Betty tries not to think about this as she sits in the mostly dark classroom, her face only illuminated by the light of her laptop as she stares at the screen blankly, scrolling and scrolling through a word document while checking for spelling mistakes. She has her feet up on the chair with her, tucked against her chest, and she’s so absorbed in her work that she fails to register how she shivers a bit at the cold.

In fact, she’s so absorbed in her work that she almost doesn’t notice when someone walks by in the hallway and then stops in the door frame of the classroom. It takes her a few seconds before she sees the black silhouette above her computer, and she looks up with a gasp, her hand moving from her mouse pad to clutch at her chest. She’s just about to scream when the person tilts their head just a little bit, and the light from the hallway spills onto the features of their face.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Jughead says apologetically. He leans a shoulder against the door frame and ruffles his hair. It’s a nervous habit of his, Betty remembers. She watches the way the light reflects on his leather jacket and wonders if that thing even keeps him warm on cold days like this.

“It’s okay,” Betty breathes out, looking up to meet his eyes. “What are you doing here?” She asks as politely as she can, as though she's not shaken and surprised. She unfolds herself from her chair so she looks less childlike.

Jughead hovers by the doorway like a ghost who’s unable to stop haunting this room. He nods back behind him, toward the rest of the school. “Archie had a game,” he says, and Betty can’t help the way her heart dips with guilt, “I came to watch. You weren’t there?”

“The next issue comes out on Monday, and I have to make sure we have everything together to send to the printing press.” Betty reminds him.

“Right,” Jughead says, and she wonders if he’s remembering all the late Friday nights they spent in this room together once upon a time, deliriously double and triple checking every article, every page layout, until they almost collapsed.

“Archie said it was okay,” Betty blurts out for some reason, unsure why she feels the need to defend herself, “He said it was okay if I missed the game. He said he didn’t mind.”

Jughead just nods, still leaning against the doorway. “Are you gonna come to the after party at Reggie’s?”

Betty’s eyes widen as she checks the clock on her phone and finds it almost nine. She has several unread messages from Archie asking where she is. She lets out an, “Oh shit,” and then begins to move about the room like a whirlwind, haphazardly stuffing thing into her various folders and then stuffing those into her backpack so she can work on them during the weekend.

Jughead laughs at her, a slow chuckle, like he’s unsure whether he’s allowed to do so. “I’ll take that as a yes, then?”

“Yes, yeah, I have to go meet Archie by his car –”

“Oh, we can walk together. Archie’s taking me, too.”

Betty stills for a moment, one hand frozen in her backpack and the other clutching her laptop. “Great,” she manages to say and then resumes her motions, zipping up her bag and swinging it across her shoulder. “Let’s go then.”

 ...

Betty spends most of the party sitting on Archie’s lap, sipping from a beer that tastes terribly sour. Archie smells a little bit like a sweaty boys’ locker room, and Betty thinks she would be disgusted to even be near him if she wasn’t so used to it by now.

The place is in full swing, inhabited by people Betty would rather get away from than mingle with, but she’s glad to be here for Archie. Betty watches as someone in the backyard throws up on the pavement and she cringes, averting her gaze to the next thing in the room it finds, which happens to be Jughead.

It’s a strange sight to see Jughead across the room, a beer in his hand, laughing at something Josie’s telling him. It’s been months since Betty saw him at a party like this - it’s been months since Betty even saw him, period. His life at Southside High had taken off after their break up and he’d become something of a legend there: FP’s son, the boy king, the golden child. None of this shocks Betty. She supposes she’s happy that he’s found a place where he can thrive, and she makes sure that any sadness she feels about the fact that Riverdale High was not that place for him is pushed away until it’s forgotten.

Archie’s arms suddenly wrap around her waist and his hands settle flat pressing against her stomach. She can feel the warmth of them through her thin t-shirt. “Hey, you good?” He asks, looking up at her.

“Yeah,” Betty mutters, distracted. She turns to gaze down at him. “Why did you end up inviting Jughead?” She asks tentatively. Their car ride here had been short and hadn't revealed all that much about Jughead's unexpected presence.

Archie rubs the back of head. “Oh, yeah. I saw him at Pop’s the other day and we got to talking, and well… I don’t know. It seemed like the right thing to do.” He pauses. “I’m glad he came. Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Betty rushes out, but the anxiety in her chest is crying out something very different.

Archie hums. He presses a few kisses at her jaw that she barely notices as she looks back across the room to find Jughead's figure. When she does, she just catches the slightest movement of his head, like maybe he had been staring at her, too.

...

The next time Betty sees him that night, she bumps into him in the hallway outside of the bathroom accidentally. She’s wringing her hands out, opening the door, and not paying attention to anything as she walks out and immediately comes face to face with someone’s chest. She hears the person go oof as they collide and she steps back with an apology on the tip of her tongue that dissolves almost instantly as she looks up to see it’s Jughead.

“Oh,” is all she says, and she just stares at him.

He smiles down at her, somewhat amused. “‘Oh’ to you, too. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I need to scoot by and use the bathroom.” He says, still smiling, and it’s all Betty can do to silently step away and watch him shut the door.

She doesn’t know why she waits for him in the hallway, leaning on the wall, and she doesn’t know what to tell him when he comes back out and asks her what she’s doing, so all she says is, “I… just don’t want to go back to the party yet."

A strange expression flashes across Jughead’s face, but he recovers quickly, and then the two of them are awkwardly standing in this hallway with everything silent except for the music from downstairs that sounds so much farther away than it is, like it’s coming from another world.

They don’t say anything at first. It’s the weirdest sensation in the world to be in such close contact with someone who used to mean the world to you as you both pretend like you’ve never met before, and Betty doesn’t know how to settle into it.

She looks at him for a moment, but then has to look away. She repeats this process a couple times in the span of a few moments before she finds the courage to ask, “Why were you there?” Betty meets his eyes and tries to sound confident, assured. "Why did you come by the Blue and Gold classroom?”

Jughead blinks, seemingly caught off guard. He puts his hands in his pockets and leans back against the wall “I didn’t think you would be there.” He says honestly. “I just wanted to… remember it.”

Betty’s not sure what to do with that answer, so all she says is, “Oh,” again, this time even more uselessly.

After a tense beat of silence Jughead goes, “You look happy,” and he gestures his head down the stairs, like he’s referring to the party, her friends, her life, Archie. But his voice quiet and his eyes search her face the whole time, almost like he’s waiting for some crack in her expression to prove him wrong.

He’s looking at her with this look, one that reminds her of the night they came home after the town hall meeting and he told her that he loved her in the dark of the trailer, the only thing illuminating the space between them being the moonlight.

She gets hit by so many memories at once. The moments shared between them in Pop’s or the way he used to curl his arm around her and whisper something into her ear, something that would always send shivers down her spine and make her laugh. They way his chest pressed against her back warmly when they slept in the same bed together or the way he smelled, cottony laundry detergent that reminded her of sunny days at a park. She thinks of how they managed to get it so right back then and have only made mistakes since.

He looks at her expectantly, still awaiting a reply, and so she smiles like she’s not about to cry and says, “You too,” thinking of the way he carries himself now with unadulterated confidence and all the friends and popularity he's gained since she knew him.

He smiles back at her for a moment, but it seems tight-lipped. He offers her no reply or consolation. Instead he just moves away from the wall and nods his head toward downstairs. “You ready to go back yet?” He asks, but something about his voice sounds hollow.

Even though she’d rather just stay here with him for the rest of the night - even if they didn’t talk, even if they spent the hours saying thinly veiled things and trying to understand what happened to who they used to be - she swallows it all down and says, “Yeah.”

When Archie takes her home that night, he kisses her goodbye on the sidewalk between their two houses, and when he tells her he loves her, for a moment Betty hesitates. She thinks about what would happen if she told him, if she finally admitted to the world that she’s been lying to herself for months about being happy with this life she's living. But Archie’s looking at her expectantly with sleepy eyes and what’s the point, anyway? They have only a couple months until graduation and Jughead isn’t even here for her to run to, so what’s the point?

“I love you too, Arch,” she tells him and thinks about how happy she would be if that were actually true.

While sleeping that night, she dreams about sophomore year and the quiet, terrifying bubble all of their lives seemed to exist in. When she wakes up the next morning, she is so nauseated by sadness and nostalgia that she skips school for the day. She lays in bed until the afternoon, watching the sun paint shadows on her walls and thinking about how much she would change if she could just go back in time a year or a couple months, even. How much harder she would fight to keep the things she loved by her side.

1. [she] didn’t love me / but some days i pretended / that [she] did forever. {cheryl/veronica}

The fresh grief of losing a brother imprints onto Cheryl Blossom like a birthmark. She walks around like she has never lived without it, almost as though something was truly born inside her the moment Jason died. It’s a terrible thought, one that’s obvious to everyone around Cheryl as they watch her make a fool out of herself, doing grand gestures in the name of “JJ” and treating her brother’s death like a character arc rather than an event of trauma.

Cheryl is looked down upon, ridiculed, and mocked by everyone she knows - except for Veronica Lodge.

Veronica comes over for sleepovers and Cheryl finds that Thornhill lights up with her in it. The candles seem to burn brighter and the plush carpet softens under her steps. Even Penelope tones it down when Veronica is there, only throwing out the occasional abusive remark at dinner and never, ever laying a hand on her daughter when Veronica is around. And when Cheryl mentions something about Jason or they pass his room in the hallway, Veronica always listens to what Cheryl has to say and never shrugs it off, no matter how ridiculous it might sound.

Veronica smiles at her in support and puts her arms around Cheryl’s shoulder, and Cheryl wonders what she ever did to deserve a friend like this.

And yet it seems sometimes that Veronica belongs to everyone except Cheryl – that Veronica is just one step too far away, that every time Cheryl tries to grasp onto her, she ends up with a fistful of empty air and a girl just out of reach.

“Vee Vee,” she sings, walking into the student lounge one day, her high heels clicking behind her. “Do you want to come over tonight?” She asks before fully surveying the scene around her.

Veronica blinks up at her in surprise, and Cheryl notices Archie sitting on the couch next to her and how Veronica is almost flush against him. Cheryl can’t help but deflate a little bit at the sight, and her mind comes up with several scathing things she has prepared to say if Archie opens his little, dumb mouth.

“Oh, Cheryl,” Veronica says, idly tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “Uh, well –”

“There’s a place on main street that just opened that I’ve been dying to shop at. It has these cute little sherpa jackets, and I’ve decided that I must have a red one for winter. I was thinking we could go there, get dinner at Pop’s afterward, and maybe see a movie at the drive-in?” She asks, smiling and looking toward Veronica excitedly, a hopeful sparkle in her eyes.

Veronica just blinks. “Oh” she says, “Well, Archie actually just asked me to go with him to Pop’s after school and –”

“Aren’t you supposed to be dating Valerie?” Cheryl asks, turning her head toward Archie, a wonderfully polite smile on her face.

“Uh…” is all Archie says.

“It’s for a – school project! It’s for a school project,” Veronica assures Cheryl exuberantly, “And he has some music he wants to show me.”

Cheryl, realizing this is a battle she won’t win, huffs. She rolls her eyes and flips her hair over her shoulder as she turns. “Whatever. I guess I’ll just buy matching jackets with Ginger. Text me when you’ve dumped this loser and remember who your real friends are.” Cheryl calls back to her as she walks away, heading into the school hallway as though she has anywhere to be and anyone to be with.

A few days later, she comes upon Veronica bickering with Betty at their lockers. It’s not an uncommon sight to see these days, and it happens to be one that always makes a sick satisfaction light up in Cheryl’s stomach.

“Trouble in paradise?” Cheryl offers while passing by. The two both give her nasty looks and Cheryl frowns, affronted. “I was just asking.”

“Cheryl, get over yourself,” Betty snaps, turning back around to her locker.

“B,” Veronica says, completely ignoring Cheryl in favor of placing a hand on Betty’s shoulder, “Just listen to me.”

Betty whips around like a whirlwind. “Why? So you can lie to me again and betray my trust? I’m done with you, Veronica.” She shrugs Veronica’s hand off her shoulder. “Let’s stop kidding ourselves like we’re really best friends, like we can relate to each other about anything at all.”

Betty slams her locker door and stalks off as the bell rings, heading presumably to her next class. Veronica just stands there in the hallway, her arm still outstretched from where she had been touching Betty’s shoulder. The look of shock on her face quickly collapses into a terrifying sadness, like she might just cry right there in the hallway.

Cheryl huddles closer to her. “Oh, Veronica,” she sighs, lifting a hand to brush back the hair that falls into Veronica’s face, “Forget that witch, she’s never been known to easily sympathize –”

“Cheryl, stop.” Veronica says, her voice choked up as she steps away from Cheryl’s touch. “I’ve – I’ve got to go find her.” She says, and then runs off in the direction of the blonde ponytail, leaving Cheryl in the dust, standing shocked with her arm outstretched, much like Veronica had looked moments before.

She watches as Veronica catches up to Betty’s retreating form, and she thinks what a shame it is that a girl like Veronica feels she must loyal to someone like Betty Cooper.

But when Cheryl gets Veronica alone, away from the heartache of her emotionally distressing friends, it feels like a completely different story. It feels like a fairy tale.

Cheryl preens under Veronica’s attention, watches intently as Veronica paints her nails for her with a sparkly, red gloss, and loves it when Veronica giggles at something she says. They sit on Cheryl’s bed in satin bathrobes, curled up together under the sheets as they share a bowl of popcorn and watch a movie.

“It’s not the drive-in, but…” Veronica comments, turning her head to look at Cheryl next to her, “This way we don’t have to fight anyone for seats because we’ve already got the best ones in the house.”

Cheryl can’t help but smile at the way Veronica’s grinning at her, feeling a warm glow burn in her chest. “Any seat next to you is a good one to me.”

Cheryl is pleasantly surprised about the blush that graces Veronica’s face, the way she just tucks her head against her chest and gives a little laugh. Cheryl intertwines their arms and places her head against Veronica’s shoulder, settling into her side as the movie starts to get into the interesting part.

She doesn’t have Veronica, she knows, but she has her for the night at least, and maybe that’s worth something.

6. i forgot how / to love him at one point and i / ended up ruining everything. {archie/jughead}

“Hey.” 

“Hey! What’s up?”

The phone line crackles between them, only letting through a few quick puffs of breath. “I don’t…” a swallow and then the sound of someone clearing their throat, “I don’t think I’m going to be able to go on the road trip this weekend.”

“Dude. It’s – we’re literally supposed to leave in two days.”

“Yeah, I know I just – something came up –”

“Right, just like something comes up every weekend.”

Silence.

“God. How could I have been so dumb to actually think that this was the one time you weren’t going to cancel on me?” A hollow laugh.

“I just – hey, I’ll make it up to you, next week we can –”

“Archie, I don’t care about next week. I –” and then a frustrated sigh that twists and breaks whatever words were supposed to come next.

“I promise I’ll –”

“Whatever.” And then the click of the line going dead.

Archie holds the phone against his cheek for a few moments after, just breathing and looking out at the skyline as the sun dips below the trees.

“Archie,” someone calls from behind him, an Archie turns around to find Miss Grundy wrapped tightly in a bathrobe, leaning against the door frame. “Was that your dad?”

“Yeah,” Archie says, but his voice comes out a little choked. He clears his throat. “He just wanted to know when I’d be home for dinner.”

Grundy smiles and tilts her head at him in the way she does when she wants him to come kiss her. “And what did you tell him?” She asks patronizingly, like it’s a trick question.

“I said I’d be home later,” he says weakly. Grundy rewards him with a pleased smile.

She reaches for him when he walks back inside from the backyard and he doesn’t object, although his mind is somewhere else completely.

 ...

Archie’s window has the perfect view into Betty’s room through her window. This is a fact of Riverdale, a simple understanding between them. They had made a list of rules about it when they were kids: One, always keep a tin can full of pebbles by the window sill that you can throw if you need to get the other person’s attention. Two, neither one of them should have their ceiling lights on after midnight, only lamps. Turning any light source off before midnight is even more preferable. Three, neither of them should ever shut their curtains. If they do then that means something is wrong, that one of them is angry at the other or that there's an emergency.

They hadn’t modified these rules since they were kids, but they also hadn’t really thought of them since. They mostly enacted these things out of habit now; Archie was so used to keeping his curtains open all the time that having them closed threw off the entire room, and it was a certain kind of comfort to be able to looking over at Betty in moments of loneliness or difficulty and find her sitting there, chewing on a pencil as she looks at her homework with uncertain eyes.

Archie happens to be having one of these moments now. It’s one of those days that just weighs him down and complicates the thoughts in his mind. All he’s done since he got home from school is lay in bed with the lights off, staring up and the ceiling and thinking of nothing. When he finally sits up to shake himself out of his stupor, he walks over to his window without really thinking about it. He expects to see Betty there, sitting at her vanity and putting her hair into a ponytail or tidying up her room, and he expects the warm comfort of her presence to calm him down.

He finds something else. He finds Betty in a soft, baby blue shirt, tucked into Jughead’s side as they lay together on her bed. Jughead’s toed his shoes off and they lay fallen haphazardly on the ground below the bed, his jean jacket on the floor next to them. He’s got an arm under Betty’s head and she’s got her eyes closed as one of his fingers trail along the edges of her eyelashes, almost like he’s counting them.

Archie watches as Jughead whispers something in her ear and she laughs, turning toward him until their noses bump from proximity and their lips are only inches away from kissing.

It’s a ridiculously intimate moment, one Archie immediately knows he should not be privy to. They had never made any rules about what would happen to the curtains when they grew up and started kissing people. Maybe because they had thought they would be kissing each other and it wouldn’t even be a problem.

He only manages to tear his gaze away when Betty shuts her eyes again and leans in to close the gap between them. Archie whips his head around so fast it has his heart beating a mile a minute, and the only thing he can think of is the way Jughead had smiled before she’d done so, the way his lips had curled and his eyelids had lowered in a way that made something twist in Archie’s gut.

The image burns into Archie’s mind for some reason, this portrait of Jughead. The soft brush of freckles on his cheeks that were prominent when he smiled, how red his lips were, like he and Betty had already been kissing, how his hair was ruffled so that it fell in front of his face and made him look even younger than he was.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Betty sit up on the bed and straddle Jughead. She lifts her arms up and with it her shirt, and Archie jolts forward, grabbing his guitar by the neck and swiftly exiting his room, trotting down the steps of his house without thinking about where he’s going, a terrible knot of nausea settling in his stomach.

For the next hour he sits on the front porch with the intention to practice guitar, but most of his time is spent looking blankly at the lyrics he’d scratched down in his notebook, distracted by the image of Jughead right before Betty had kissed him replaying over and over in his head and, consequently, the motion of her moving on top of him like it was nothing. Like they’ve done this before.

They probably have, which is a truth Archie knew somewhere deep inside the repressed motions of his brain, but not one he’d ever actively thought about. Now that he is, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He thinks starkly of the Jughead he knew in freshman year who rolled his eyes every time Betty tried to sit with them at lunch and insert herself into their conversation; Archie wonders how so much can change in a year.

Jughead and Betty find him there, later. Jughead has an arm slung around Betty’s shoulders and he looks down at Archie with a crooked smile fixed on his face. “Who are you playing to, Archie? The flowers?”

Jughead and Betty sit on the steps of his porch, intertwined with each other and swaying to the strum of his guitar, but Archie’s fingers are weak against the strings.

It occurs to him that he should feel happy for them, that he should rejoice in the fact that these two people he loves so much love each other. Yet, all he has is these shaky hands, fingers calloused from guitar strings over the past couple months, and an empty feeling in his stomach that only eats away at him more each time Jughead looks down at Betty and they share a private smile with each other, one that feels so far away from Archie, so out of reach.

Jughead barely looks at him the whole time, his eyes completely fixed on Betty. Archie suddenly has the overwhelming desire to go back all those weeks ago and steal the phone out of his old self’s grasp just to say to Jughead on the other line, Yes, yes of course we can still go on the road trip, I don’t know what I was thinking, I’d leave everyone behind for you, I’d leave everyone behind for you as long as you promise to just look at me again.

8. i didn’t want him / but he promised to love me / and that’s all we want. {jughead/veronica}

They sit at the top row of the bleachers, the cold metal cutting into Veronica’s thighs so hard she knows it will leave a nasty red mark when she stands up. Archie looks like an ant from up here, running around on the field in his blue jersey and shoulder pads, and Betty looks a similar size, doing high kicks off to the sidelines with all the other Vixens, Cheryl’s hair flowing in the wind, leading them all.

Jughead must follow her line of sight, or maybe he was watching Betty all along, because he asks, “Do you regret quitting?”

Veronica watches the group of girls jump up and down, pom poms in the air, and realizes she’s been tensing her fists the whole game. She releases her grip with a sigh, relaxing her entire body until she’s hunched over into herself. “Sometimes.” She tells him, but she thinks what she really means to say is that sometimes she regrets ever moving to this town in the first place.

They leave well before the game ends, during the start of half time. They clamber down the bleachers hoping no one notices them and Jughead holds his hand out for her, making sure she doesn’t fall. Wearing heels to a high school football game probably wasn’t best idea, but if she doesn’t wear her kitten heels out on a semi-regular basis then is she really Veronica Lodge?

It's in the moment before they turn out of the chain link fence surrounding the field to go find Jughead’s parked motorbike that they watch out of the corner of their eyes as Archie comes in from the field and picks Betty up, twirling her around for a moment until they kiss. Betty puts a pom pom in front of their faces in an attempt to still hold Archie’s face while having her hands full, and it successfully blocks both Jughead and Veronica from seeing their lips touch, but Veronica somehow finds that worse.

The two of them turn away without a word, and although they continue to walk in silence, the image seems to lay between them as an unspoken, terrible thing.

...

Hours later, late, late into the night, somehow finds Veronica bent over Jughead’s bloody and bruised body, sewing together a wound on his side and watching face screw up in pain as she does so.

“Where did you learn to do this?” Jughead asks almost like he's trying to distract himself, his voice choked with obvious pain.

“Youtube.” Veronica replies shortly, carefully watching as she weaves the needle through one side of the wound and out the other, giving him a crooked but hearty stitch. He hisses. “I’ve seen you way too bloody in the past year, thought I might finally do something about it.”

It’s true. Jughead currently has blood dripping all down his chest from a nosebleed he’d had, his knuckles seem bloody from punching, and this wound on his side had given his shirt quite a sizable red stain before she’d forced it off of him and started disinfecting it. This, however, is not nearly the worst it has been since he and Veronica became.... friends or whatever.

Jughead says nothing to this at first, and Veronica continues on dutifully, slowly stitching together his wound. She tries not to focus on the way her hands shake as she does so or the panic slowly rising up in her chest as she watches how he squirms in pain more and more as the process goes on.

She finishes the wound with a relieved sigh and moves to wipe away the blood from his face with a towel, but he grabs the it from her immediately. “I can do it myself,” he says, pressing the towel to his face and narrowing his eyes at her.

Veronica huffs and leaves him, going to wash her hands in the bathroom. She watches as the water stains like rust, and she wonders how many times the sink in this house has been used to wash away blood.

She tries not to dwell on the thought and instead goes back into the kitchen of the trailer to find Jughead sat at the table, looking both apprehensive and crestfallen. He clears his throat at her presence. “Thanks, by the way,” he tells her, his tone flat and reserved.

“Whatever,” Veronica says, moving to find her bag and coat. This whole day has been surprisingly awful, and even though the thought of going home to find her father waiting for her in his study, ready to ask where she’s been and why there is a drop of red on her white blouse, makes her skin crawl, she thinks that must be better than being here with a boy who just reminds her of all the ways her life has gone wrong.

“What are you doing?” Jughead asks her, watching as she shimmies into her coat and searches for her heels.

Veronica looks at him like he’s stupid. “I’m leaving, obviously. What does it look like to you?”

“You could stay,” he suggests, and she can’t read what his expression entails, all she can see is the dried blood on his cupid’s bow that he's forgotten to wipe away.

“Oh? Just so we could go back to the Wyrm and I could watch you get beat up by Ghoulies again? So we could come back here and I could clean up your wounds just to have you be ungrateful again?” Her voice raises by the minute and she can’t help but clench her bag in her fists until it hurts. She gestures roughly to the area on his body where his wound is. “I bet Betty wouldn’t have done that for you –”

“And I bet Archie wouldn’t have asked you to stay.” Jughead argues, his voice just as loud, rising to meet hers.

For a moment, Veronica just wants to scream at him, fueled by a hot, blinding rage. She wants to remind him that she is only stitching up his wounds and going with him to football games to watch what their lives could have been like because neither of them have anyone else. She is only here, standing in his trailer with an angry, red face, because she has nowhere else to go.

The anger dissipates almost as fast as it had come, instead replaced by a devastating wave of sadness, and Veronica is left standing there, breathing heavily and feeling like she’s about to cry.

“Hey,” Jughead says softly, and Veronica looks over to see him watching her with a frown and an apologetic gaze. “Just stay. I’ll make mac and cheese and we can watch a movie.”

Veronica laughs without meaning to. She sniffles, trying to make sure that no tears are threatening to fall, and she tells him, “Wow, what an ideal date.”

The word ‘date’ lingers between them like a rotten word, something Veronica should have never said, even as a joke, but she’s tired of dancing around everything in her life all of the time and they might as well just call it what it feels like these days.

Jughead just stares at her, still waiting for an answer. He looks softer now, less worried about putting up his walls just so Veronica won't get near him.

Veronica sighs, “Okay, I guess,” and takes off her coat, drops her bag on the table again, sitting down as she watches Jughead jump up and rummage through the cabinets, looking for a box of instant mac and cheese and a pot to cook it in. It does feel a little bit like relief, knowing she can take shelter here and not have to go home or face the world outside.

He impatiently puts the noodles in before the water’s fully come to a boil and the cheese sauce is so orange it reminds Veronica of a sun dress she had as a little girl, but she and Jughead sit shoulder to shoulder on his ratty couch as they look for something to watch on cable, and for a moment, Veronica lulls herself into the belief that everything is fine and normal.

And for a moment, as she falls asleep that night with her head against Jughead's shoulder, she really lets herself believe it. When she wakes up the next morning, she tries to go back to sleep, just to chase the dream a little longer.

14. somebody said i was in / your suicide note that my name / was splashed against you. {jughead/jason}

Just breathe through your nose, slow and steady breaths. Just breathe. 

Jughead curls his hands at his sides, trying to think these thoughts and follow them. He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, and repeats, repeats, repeats. It doesn’t calm him from the scene going on around him, though, the bustle and chatter and the shine of the casket at the front of the room.

Archie sits in front of him at the memorial, and when he sees Archie carrying Jason’s jersey in his lap, his stomach lurches all of sudden, like he might throw up on the nice carpet of Thornhill.

Betty touches him lightly on the forearm. “What’s wrong?” She asks, eyes all concerned and lips down turned.

Jughead closes his eyes for a moment and takes in a shuddering breath. “This place just gives me the creeps,” he tells her, cracking a small, fake smile in hopes to tide her over.

It does; he watches her shoulders immediately relax as she huffs a laugh and rolls her eyes. “Tell me about it.” She eyes the portrait of Jason with a nasty gaze and turns back to Jughead to spit out, “I don’t know how my sister could love somebody like that .”

Jughead finds he wants to cry a little bit more than he wants to laugh.

...

Later, after he and Betty have successfully infiltrated the mansion and found through out Nana Rose that Jason had been engaged to Polly, Jughead wanders around the reception of Jason’s memorial a little dazed, feeling like there's lead weighing down his stomach. Every time he thinks about Polly with a little, glittering ring on her finger, it hurts. He had known about her and Jason, of course, and when Jason had told him he was leaving to reunite with her it had hurt, but something about this stings. Something about potential marriages knocks the wind out of him, and it's only with hindsight that he chides himself for not expecting it.

Drowning in his thoughts, he finds Cheryl sitting atop the large staircase in the middle of Thornhill, watching the crowd of people who gather in the foyer with glossy and absent eyes. Jughead pads up to her and sits down on the velvet covering next to her, giving her a moment to wipe the tears from her cheeks before he asks, “Hey. How are you doing?”

She doesn’t say anything immediately, just looks down at the satin ascot in her hand that is now wet with tears and smudged with mascara. She sniffles and then looks up at him with a sad set to her eyes. “He told me about you, you know,” she says, and Jughead feels his entire body still. He feels the rush of blood in his ears and his heartbeat thrumming throughout his entire body, and if he’d thought he was going to throw up on the nice carpet of Thornhill an hour ago, he was sure he was going to throw up on the stairs of Thornhill now. Cheryl just gives him a watery smile. “You were his favorite secret, I think – and he had a lot of secrets.”

Jughead’s mouth feels dry; he swallows only for it to feel worse. Just breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Just breathe. “Why… why are you telling me this?” Jughead asks, his voice betraying him with its quietness.

Cheryl sniffles. She just looks at him for a moment, as though she’s not really sure herself. “It just felt important.” She pauses like she’s remembering a private memory that supports this claim, one that she regretfully does not let Jughead in on. “I just think you were important to him.” Her smile starts to wobble and her eyes turn that particular kind of shiny that only happens when tears are about to fall.

Jughead’s not really sure what to do with that information, and so he simply puts his arm around her for comfort and is quietly pleased when she leans her head on his shoulder in solace. She and Jughead sit there together, huddled in silence, for quite some time, until Jughead suddenly whispers into her hair, “I think he was important to me, too,” and is surprised by the honesty of it. He blinks back tears and clears his throat softly, tucking the top of Cheryl’s head under his chin.

The people we love turn into such flat caricatures of themselves after the whole affair is over, especially when they are not there to speak for themselves, and so Jughead will always remember Jason as two dimensional, as a paper-thin figment he can hold between his fingers. It’s not his fault; it’s just how these things go.

What Jughead will grow up to remember of Jason Blossom will be very little about who he actually was and much more about the investigation that followed his death and the way Jughead’s life changed so drastically afterward. But he does and will always remember one night between them in stark detail:

It happened a month before Jason tried to leave town, a month before his unexpected death, when he had shown up at Twilight Drive-In late into the night and annoyingly banged on the door until Jughead swung it open, obviously ruffled and in his pajamas, ready to sleep.

“What? ” Jughead asked, a hand on his hip and a frown etched into his face. “What could you possibly want at this time of night?”

And Jason had just smiled at him for a moment, cheeks dimpling, and let out a laugh. He looked at Jughead with such a fond gaze then, his eyes crinkled at the corners with laughter. It made Jughead feel a little magical, like he was a part of something. Like he meant something.

Jason had slid past him and Jughead made little effort to stop him. “Come on, Jones. Don’t be like that,” he’d said, looking at Jughead with that same magical smile as he made his way inside. He shed his varsity jacket and left it on the back of a chair in the room easily, as though he’d been here more than just a few times to see Jughead.

Then, after Jughead had closed to door behind him, Jason had closed the distance between them easily and grabbed Jughead’s face between his hands, kissing him hard enough that Jughead felt it a little difficult to breathe. Mostly, though, Jughead had felt wanted in a way he’d never felt before, not by his family or his father, not by his friends, and surely not by anyone in any other way.

Later into the night, as the temperature dropped, Jason suggested they get into bed and under the covers for warmth. Even though Jughead’s bed was just a cot and, honestly, felt like it could barely hold the length of his own lanky teenage body most nights, he and Jason crammed together in it side-by side.

Jason falls asleep like that without complaint, his back flush against the wall, his face buried slightly into the crook of Jughead’s neck, breathing over the exact place where he’d left hickeys only half an hour earlier, and his fingers under Jughead’s shirt and splayed across the boy’s stomach.

While Jason slept soundly that night, his chest pushing against Jughead’s body with the movement of his breathing, Jughead had laid awake for hours and hours and hours, his eyes wide and staring at the ceiling above him. All he could really think about was how cold Jason’s fingers felt against his stomach, how rugged the pads of his fingertips were against the soft skin there.

11. we got too drunk together / and you said you can’t be in love / and i didn’t say anything. {betty/veronica}

Betty sits disheveled on the floor of Veronica’s room with an almost empty bottle of rosé in between her legs. Her face is hot from the alcohol and red from the crying, and she’s let her hair down so that it lays in waves, hitting her shoulders. Veronica can see the obvious indent from where it had been tightly wound up in her ponytail the whole day.

Veronica sits close to her, watching her. There is some Spotify playlist on in the background, but the room seems uncomfortably silent as the two sit on the ground, drunk and unmoving. Veronica watches the line of Betty’s throat move as she swallows thickly.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Betty says, staring up at the ceiling with a far-off gaze, like she’s not really there. Her eyes then slide over to Veronica. “I think I… I think I wanted some great high school romance so bad that the idea wormed into my head until it got out of control.”

She’s been crying for hours, sobbing with her head in Veronica’s lap, occasionally letting out strings of sentences about Jughead and things like regret. Veronica had let her do so, secretly loving the feeling of being needed so much by someone. She carded her fingers through the soft strands of Betty’s hair and kissed her on the crown of her head and listened to the crying.

Maybe the wine hadn’t been the best idea, but it’d been the only thing that made Betty’s eyes light up with a bit of joy. It was good at first; they’d danced around the kitchen in their underwear, shirts grazing their stomachs as they lifted their arms above their heads and twirled and twirled and twirled, socks slipping around on the kitchen tile and giving them easy momentum to slide around.

Veronica had grabbed Betty’s hands experimentally during the start of a jazz song and it had ended with the two of them dancing together, one of Betty’s hands on her hip and their bare thighs pressed against one another, slipping in the gap between each other’s legs occasionally. At one point, Betty even picked her up shakily by the waist and their foreheads pressed together as they laughed, their faces so close that Veronica could smell the alcohol on Betty’s breath. Then Betty placed her back on the ground again, her feet hitting the tile, and the illusion of intimacy was over as Betty stepped away to change the song.

Tear tracks had still shone on the curve of Betty’s cheeks under the kitchens lights as they'd danced, but it felt like they had been cancelled out by her giggling. Veronica thinks that by this point maybe Betty’s gotten used to this emotional whiplash from her relationship with Jughead. Maybe this is just how these things go now.

She realized she’d made such a false assumption when not only a half an hour later found them sitting in that uncomfortable silence, the bottle of wine in Betty’s lap and Betty’s head tilted back, hitting against the shelves of Veronica’s dresser.

“Shouldn’t you be crying, too?” Betty asks after wiping a few stray tears away, followed by a short huff of sad laughter. “Didn’t you and Archie just break up?”

And Veronica wants to laugh, staring at this beautiful girl across the room, and she does want to cry, but not over Archie. Instead, over this terrible thing of wanting in her chest that rises to her throat occasionally, just to play with her head and whisper in her ear about cradling Betty’s cheek with her palm or kissing her there, right on her lips. Just a moment of soft touch on the cupid’s bow or a quick press of lips on the curve of Betty’s collarbone. Betty has snot running from her nose and her eyes are swollen from crying, and this terrible wanting still hums in Veronica’s throat, ready to strike.

I never really loved him, Veronica wants to admit, but that would be saying too much. She just gives a gentle laugh and says, “I’m the one who broke up with him, remember?” She leans over and swipes the rosé away from Betty and downs the last bit of the wine, appreciating the warm burn it sets off in her throat.

Betty frowns at her, sniffling. “That’s still sad.”

“Maybe,” Veronica replies softly, lost in thought at the way Betty’s looking at her with such rapt attention.

They hold each other's gazes and it’s moments like these that fuel the acute longing in Veronica. It’s this and it’s dancing with mingling breaths and it’s small touches on the wrist in the student lounge to ask if she’s okay and it’s Betty’s arms around her shoulders all of the time that makes Veronica think that maybe, maybe there’s something more between them than just impossibility.

But then Betty turns away, tilting her head up to the ceiling and closing her eyes. She says as soft as a whisper, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love someone like I’m supposed to. I didn’t even love Jughead, I think I just liked the idea of loving him. And look where that got me.” She gives a sour laugh and opens her eyes. They contain nothing as she stares up at a dark corner of Veronica’s room and says, “I can’t imagine a person on this earth that I could ever fall in love with. Like real love. Real, full love.”

The hand of Veronica’s that had been inching closer and closer toward Betty all night now slowly retracts, her palm dragging along the carpet until it finds its place back at her side. The thrumming in her throat goes silent and the moment turns so sour that it seems like the silence could pierce Veronica’s eardrums. Something inside of her, stupidly, feels empty all of a sudden.

Betty keeps staring up at the ceiling, like maybe she’s waiting for some deity to come down and tell her she’s wrong, that not only is she capable of love, but that someday she will get it and it will make all of her dreams come true. Veronica watches the line of Betty's throat as she swallows thickly. The empty bottle of wine settles too heavy in her hands.

Veronica doesn’t know what to say, so she doesn’t say anything, and the silence between them continues on for years and years and years. Forever unbroken, forever about to pierce Veronica’s eardrum until it bursts.

10. we didn’t love each other / you took me to the hospital / one too many fucking times. {jughead/toni}

Riverdale is small enough that the only hospital is in the Northside, and while they say that Southsiders are always welcome there, they never go. It’s just rhetoric that’s spread around to make Riverdale seem like a more unified place than it is. 

So that’s why Jughead and Toni sit on a couch in Dr. Bellum’s shitty excuse for Sunnyside’s infamous trailer-turned-infirmary, awaiting examination for Jughead’s face that’s bruised, cut up, and swollen in too many nasty places.

It’s not a hospital but it smells like one with that awful, sterile stench that Toni associates with the white linoleum tile and too bright light of hospital hallways. The lights inside the trailer emit a constant buzz, like they could explode at any moment, and in the other room, Toni hears the distant, clinical sound of metal tools clinking together. She can also hear the faint sounds of whoever Dr. Bellum is treating in there sniffling, like maybe they’ve just finished crying after a long night.

Jughead sits on the cracked leather couch next to her, icing his face with a pack of frozen peas they found from the fridge here, and the air between them is static in a way that Toni doesn’t know how to deal with. She’d never tell Jughead this, but he’s the first boy she’s done anything with, and even though she’s had past relationships with girls, no girl she’d ever dated had been as complicated as Jughead has been for her – and they aren’t even anything.

Yet, he’d come into her life with a girlfriend who looks at Toni like a threat and a legacy from his father that weighs on his shoulders so constantly that even Toni feels for him, and he keeps looking at her with that toothy smile of his when she makes him laugh, and she just doesn’t know what to make of all of it. The only reason they’re friends is because of the Serpents, because FP had asked her to look out for his son, but even Toni can recognize that there’s something about each other that they understand. Something sad, buried deep inside the other that’s been sitting there for years, desperately rotting away.

She sighs as she takes out her phone and texts Sweet Pea and Fangs, the jones men are a certain type of troublemakers, aren’t they, just to have something to take her mind off of it all.

All of a sudden, she feels fingers touch the top of her hand where it’s sitting in between the two of them on the couch. “Thanks for coming with me.” Jughead says.

Toni moves her hand away immediately. “I’m not your girlfriend, Jones.” She feels the need to remind him, holding her hand cautiously, almost like it’s been burned.

“I know.” He says. He still has his face tipped back and is icing the center part of it, but she can see one of his eyes flick over toward her.

“I shouldn’t have to be the one to be here.” That’s Betty’s job, she almost says.

“I know.”

They just sit there in silence for a moment, the sounds of desperate sniffling still leaking in from the room over.

Toni takes a chance and looks over at Jughead. Even she can see that he looks rough, and she’s seen a lot of guys go through the Serpent Gauntlet to try and prove their worth. The gang had been extra hard on Jughead, despite Toni’s pleas, because of the fact that he’s FP’s son, and it shows in his wounds. He doesn’t seem all that deflated about having a beat up face though, but Toni guesses he’s still running off of the high from the adrenaline.

“How are you feeling?” She asks him in a moment of sympathy, although she’s still cradling her hand against her chest.

Jughead gives her a half smile and a half shrug. “Alright. It doesn’t hurt too bad.”

Toni can’t help but laugh. “If you can still deliver me that line with the same confidence in the morning, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

“Only a hundred?” Jughead teases, “Jeez, Toni. I thought you believed in me more than that.”

Toni laughs a little, maybe just to humor him, and for the hundredth time this week, a little part of her wants to ask him, Are you sure this is the right choice? as she looks at the bruise taking shape on his jaw, a nasty sallow yellow intertwining with dark purple.

She knows this means that the Serpents will protect him while his father’s in jail and she knows the rest of the guys will warm up to him, even if he is a little pretentious and commanding, but sometimes Toni looks at Jughead’s life from afar - his Northside life with his Northside friends - and she wonders if that’s really worth giving up. She’s not sure, if she were in Jughead’s place, if she would.

Sometimes she watches the kids from the Northside and she wonders what it would have been like if she was born into it. If she had lived only a couple miles north from the tracks in a nice, suburban home, with a dad who comes home every night and a mom who cooks dinner. She wonders if she would have spent her years prancing around in plaid skirts and entering every room with an unwavering presence like Veronica does, or if she would have blinked up at Archie sweetly at thirteen like Betty had. She wonders if she would have been better there, happier, as a girl who didn’t know what it was like to stitch up wounds or watch blood splatter on pavements growing up.

It’s a thought that never gets her anywhere, but is one that so commonly pops up in her head just to torment her. Maybe that’s why she likes Jughead; to her, he’s some sort of living proof of concept for that idea. He lives it so she doesn’t have to.

And yet, she’s still sitting on this couch with him, watching him bleed on his clothes. As Dr. Bellum calls him into the other room, Toni helps him get up and supports him on the few steps it takes to walk there. She watches his examination like a doting mother on a sick child, and she wants to tell him, This doesn’t mean anything, wants to scream it out, wants to understand who this boy is and her quick attachment to him and the things in between them that they understand about each other that both of them will be too afraid to ever speak about out loud.

She’s not sure why she kisses him hours later, after she’s given him the Serpent tattoo and as he’s still icing his face. Most of all, she’s not sure why he kisses back.

12. people found us invincible / but you found her prettier / than me. {betty/archie}

It’s only one of Betty’s first real high school parties, but she thinks she’ll never get tired of them. She thinks she’ll never get tired of the way cigarette smoke smells when mixed with the forest, the way the mindless chatter creates a hum with the low playing music in the background, the way her bra digs tightly into the skin under her armpits, cutting of her circulation and making it hard to breathe, but making her boobs look great in her top. All of it makes her feel a little high off something like adrenaline. All of it makes her chest gather with the emotion of, This it it, oh my God, this is it. She’s not sure what “it” is, but she knows it’s what she’s been waiting for her entire life.

It’s one of those nights where it’s like Archie remember she exists as a member of the opposite sex and not just a paper cutout of the girl next door, and so the way Archie is towering over Betty makes her feel invincible. They’re leaning against a wall, her back against it and his arm above her head, supporting his weight as he looks down at her and says something she doesn’t register. She’s too busy tipping her head up at him, making sure to part her lips slightly, look up from under her eyelashes, positioning her body just so. She is the physical embodiment of coy.

For a moment, Betty gets carried away by the thought of what they must look like to other people. She can imagine it perfectly, like it’s something out of a movie: the cinematography of it all, the establishing shot of their silhouettes from the side and then the close ups of their face, the movement of Archie’s lips as he talks to her, the admiration in her eyes as she looks up at him. Her pink camisole top will stand out with color against the pasty wall and his blue shirt will compliment her jeans when they stand next to each other. It’s perfect. They’re perfect.

“So, what about it?” Archie asks, a little teasing smile on his face. He raises his red solo cup his lips and looks over the brim at her. It’s one of those nights where he looks at her, directly at her, unlike all the other times he just looks past her with eyes caught on something else. Tonight it seems he’s deemed all the other people at the party boring and, in turn, has made her worthy.

“Uh… what?” Betty blanks, suddenly realizing she hadn’t been listening to a word he’s said. She feels her face start to heat up with embarrassment.

But Archie just smiles at her. He nods down toward the red solo cup in her hands that she’d forgotten she’d been holding. “Maybe someone’s had a bit too much fun drinking, huh? Who knew sweet little Betty Cooper gets tipsy. ”

Betty blushes even further. She can’t find it in her voice to admit to Archie that the contents of her cup are just plain orange juice. She slugs him playfully in the shoulder instead and laughs out, “Oh, stop it, would you? I’m just… having fun,” she pauses to look up at him from under her eyelashes, “I’m having fun with you.”

Archie settles into this remarkable kind of smile. One that lights up all of her nerves. One that makes her feel like a real girl. In that moment, they smile up at each other so hard that it makes Betty’s cheeks hurt.

Kevin pulls her aside later, while Archie’s across the room talking to a couple upperclassman who are on varsity football and Betty and Kevin have isolated themselves on the couch. Kevin looks at her like his eyes are about to bug out of his skull. He’s got these colorful suspenders on that he’d gotten at Hot Topic last week when they’d gone to the mall, and they’re paired with bright white jeans. In a few years, they will look back at a photo of them from this night and Kevin will choke so hard from laughing after looking at his outfit and then consequently ask Betty to delete all copies of it. For now, he wears it like he’s never felt more fashionable.

“Did I see what I thought I saw earlier?” Kevin asks her, raising his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “Were you and Archie Andrews flirting?” His voice cracks a little and Betty can’t help but laugh.

“Kev, stop,” Betty says, smiling down at her feet, “It’s nothing.”

“It’s inevitable, is what it is.” He says, giving her a very dangerous kind of hope.

When she looks up the next time, she meets Archie’s eyes across the room. He smiles and then rolls his eyes, gesturing toward where Reggie is trying to shotgun a beer and instead getting alcohol all over the wooden floors. She laughs, even though he can’t hear her, and then watches as he does the same, his shoulders shaking with the action.

She feels a possession over him then, with the way he looks at her and only her. Betty’s not stupid; she knows half the girls in this room want to kiss that smile off Archie’s face, but she also knows that they don’t know how he looks after he’s just woken up in the morning when they walk to school together, the way he yawns like a cat. They don’t know that he regularly wears superhero underwear or that, up until seventh grade, his bed sheets were white with little painted boats on them and he had a deep blue duvet to match. They don’t know that there’s this one picture of Archie as a baby at one of his birthday parties where he has chocolate ice cream cake smeared all over his face and that it’s Betty’s favorite picture of him ever. Fred had shown it to her once and Archie’s face had gone beet red.

Betty feels the soft formation of power and wanting form in her chest as Archie dips his eyes away from her for a moment to say hello to someone, just for them to flick back at her a second later, like he wants to make sure she’s still there.

They walk home together and Betty wears Archie’s jacket perched over her shoulders. The cold air nips at her cheeks, making them seem neon red under the streetlights they pass by. Their hands brush against each other as they walk and neither of them say anything, but they tuck small smiles into their cheeks each time, and it feels inevitable, it does.

...

With the way Archie looks at Veronica the first moment she walks into Pop’s, it’s as though he sees her for who she is right then and there. He doesn’t look through her and he certainly doesn’t look past her. Veronica stops by their table, seeming like something out of a storybook with her little red riding hood cape on, and Archie's eyes sparkle like he's never seen someone so radiant.

A sudden and terrible thing worms its way low into Betty's gut, and it feels a lot like failure.