Chapter Text
Jughead pulls the door towards him so that only a thin shard of light filters out onto the hallway carpet from the moon-shaped night-light plugged in bedside his little sister’s bed. He heads back to the living room to tidy away the hot chocolate mugs and wipe the inevitable spillages off of the table, then checks the blanket slung over the couch too, because as much as his kid sister was adamant she only spilled on the wood, there’s a high chance he’s going to have to throw it into the laundry bin.
He tidies and cleans, making sure to keep the noise to a minimum so JB doesn’t wake and demand another three stories about cars or trucks or magic animals. It had, initially at least, greatly pleased him that the last thing she wants to hear is the story of a prince rescuing his damsel in distress. (But now, sometimes he wonders if that’s solely because she was the princess in her own fairytale, and it took a jail sentence and an official court order before she was the one to be rescued)
The thought does, however, remind him to take a trip to the bookstore when shopping for her Christmas presents because surely someone out there will have written a heroic big brother story she’ll like.
Once he’s finished, he showers for longer than he needs to, taking the time to enjoy the water pressure they get here which is significantly better than in Greendale. The thought has him drifting off for a few minutes, imagining - as he so often does - how different things might have been if his mom hadn’t left and his dad hadn’t gone to jail for the foreseeable future.
After Jughead dries off and pulls on a clean pair of sweats and a t-shirt, he hits the button on the coffee machine and sets the prison documentary series he’s been watching after JB goes to bed to play. There’s one thing to be said about being a single pseudo-parent home on a Friday night: he might have to sit through the same favoured episode of Bill Nye Saves the World a million times, but at least he doesn’t have to negotiate with someone else about which drama series to commit to.
“Jughead!” he hears, less than half-way through the first of his episodes. He gets up - no sigh for the disturbance when the only reason his sister calls for him like this is that she’s checking he’s still there. He remembers enough times when he’d wandered from his room to the trailer’s living room in bare feet, clutching Hot Dog the stuffed animal as he went in search for either one of his parents, revving engines and fist fights having woken him.
“What’s up Jelly?” Jughead asks, peeking through her doorway.
“Can we get a tree tomorrow?”
So it isn’t just to check that he’s still there. Maybe, he hopes, he’s proven it enough. “Jellybean Jones, we won’t be getting a tree at all if you don’t go to sleep!” he tries to chide, but there’s no real strength in his voice.
“But Jug,” she whispers. “Where will Santa put the presents? He’ll think we forgot!”
“It’s too early to get one this weekend,” he reasons. Last year - their first Christmas as just the two of them - all the needles dropped before Christmas Day and the apartment was like some sort of trap set up to maim both their feet. “Maybe next weekend. If you promise to go to sleep though, tomorrow we’ll go visit Santa with your list.”
Sometimes, he can’t quite believe that he now both uses and accepts bribes just so his sister will go to sleep.
“Okay,” Jellybean agrees, settling her head back on the pillow. And then, “I love you.”
It gets him each time, and his throat feels thick. “I love you too.” She grins. “Now go to sleep.”
Jughead closes the door again, leaving just enough room that he’ll hear her if she shouts in an actual emergency, and heads back to the couch to see whether the guy on death row has made his final meal choice.
Perhaps it’s stupid, watching this kind of a documentary series when his dad is inside, but it provides some strange sort of comfort he doesn’t quite understand. It’s probably for the best, he decides. A psychologist would have a damn field day.
Jughead makes it to episode six - the third of the night - when, outside, he hears a banging...or maybe not quite a banging, but more of a scrabbling against the door. He pauses the episode and makes his way across the room to the peephole, then frowns when he sees a woman leaning against the wall, seemingly trying to jam her keys in the lock.
He pulls off the chain and she pretty much falls into him, tripping over either her own feet or his - he’s not sure. He steadies her with a hand around her waist, which he snatches away quickly, and that’s when he notices her outfit: a short green dress and a somewhat lopsided hat. He thinks (and then has his thoughts confirmed when he glances down at her shoes and sees elf-like points with bells on the end) that she’s been to some sort of Christmas costume party. And she’s drunk.
“What are you doing in my apartment?” she mumbles, looking up with suspicious green eyes.
“This is my apartment,” Jughead corrects, pointing at the number on the door. “Which number do you live at?”
“This one.”
“Maybe you got the wrong floor?” He suggests, catching her just as she stumbles forward again, a raspy “oops” tumbling out of her mouth with a hint of a giggle - which displays a rosy blush either side of her face.
“Or you did.”
“Pretty sure I’m right,” Jughead returns, keeping his hands on her forearms so she doesn’t land on her face. “What number are you looking for?”
She raises her eyes at him. “This one.”
He can’t quite help the grimace that he knows he’s just made. “414 - are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” A pout settles on her lips and she sighs. “I just want some coffee.”
If he doesn’t know where she lives, he figures he can’t really offer her much else. “I guess I can help you there.”
He sets a fresh pot to brew while the woman settles herself on the couch, and then has a silent panic over just what the hell he’s doing.
“What’re you watching?” she asks, unpausing the episode before he can answer.
“A View From Inside,” Jughead tells her anyway, very much sticking to the kitchen area. He can still smell the faint scent of vanilla from her hair when she’d fallen into him, and he’s aware that it’s not, in any way, unpleasant.
“I like murder mysteries,” she says as she sinks against the cushions. “They remind me of Nancy Drew.” A yawn escapes her mouth. “I wanted to be her when I was younger.”
He can’t really see that, given these circumstances, he thinks, taking in the back of her head now that her hat is resting on her lap. He remains quiet.
The coffee starts to drip through into the clean jug and he wonders if maybe he should offer her something to eat to soak up the alcohol.
“Hey -” he stops abruptly, realising that he has no idea what her name is. “I’m Jughead, by the way.”
She turns at that, wrinkling her nose in a way that almost makes him smile. She kind of does look like an elf. “That’s a funny name.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
“I’m Betty,” she tells him, followed by a yawn. “Do you have coffee yet?”
Jughead smiles despite himself. “Almost.”
When the drips have finally stopped, he pours two mugs full. “Milk?” he asks, but there’s no reply. “Betty?”
She still doesn’t answer and so he heads over to the front of the couch, which is where he finds her passed out on the cushions. “Betty?” he asks again, shaking her gently, but still she doesn’t wake.
There is, he considers, now a woman in his apartment who won’t wake; who lives somewhere in his building but appears unsure as to exactly where. Oh, and he has a sleeping six-year-old in the next room.
He contemplates the situation and shakes her a little more roughly. Still, she doesn’t wake and the last thing he wants to do is shout and end up waking Jellybean. On a sigh, decides he can’t really do much other than stay up watch her without actually watching her. There’s a blanket in his room (the very one he’s had since he was Jellybean’s age; the only thing of any sentiment other than his grey beanie that he’d brought to the city from Greendale) and Jughead collects it from the end of his bed. It’s a little (okay, maybe a lot) threadbare, but there’s something about the knitted blue-grey rectangle that’s comforting.
Gently, he drapes the blanket over Betty, her elf shoes poking out of the end, and then takes one of the mugs of coffee in his hands. Netflix is still playing his documentary, and he leaves it on but with the volume turned down so no sudden noises will wake either JB or the woman on his couch. He watches it anyway, sipping at the coffee as the inmate on screen is handed his meal - a burrito supreme and cinnamon twists, which he has a lot of thoughts about - and Betty snores softly.
Jughead stays at the little table he uses to help his sister do her homework, and pours himself a second mug of coffee immediately after he’s finished the first.
It’ll likely, he figures, be a long night.
He’s startled awake in the morning by a squealing Jellybean, and instantly assumes something is wrong. He forgets the events of last night for a moment until his sister claps excitedly,
“There’s an elf on our couch!”
He’s mad at himself for falling asleep with a stranger in the apartment and a six-year-old in the next room, but on quick inspection nothing untoward appears to have happened. Jughead breathes out a sigh of relief and is about to state the obvious fact about the existence of elves when Betty herself jolts awake.
The action must hurt though, because she then lifts a palm to her forehead. “This isn’t my apartment,” she mumbles, blinking between him and JB.
“No,” he replies.
“Then why… oh,” she seems to recall the events from the early hours of the morning. “You let me stay here.”
“Jellybean, go read in your room,” he instructs.
“But -”
“- Go!” he half-shouts, and then winces because he hadn’t intended it to come out like that. His sister obeys though, head cast downwards so that the ponytail she’s slept in is jutting out at an alarming angle.
“I didn’t realise you had a daughter,” Betty says, her face flaming. “I feel terrible.”
“She’s my sister,” he says quickly. And then, “She was asleep - luckily.”
“Right.”
There’s a long pause, during which Jughead watches her wring her hands.
“I know this is going to sound unlikely,” she tells him. “But I never get drunk.”
“It’s pretty dangerous - forgetting where you live. I could be anybody .” He raises his eyebrows to illustrate that he’s half-joking. But still - he dreads to think about the apartment she could have ended up in.
“Yeah,” she considers. “It was stupid. Think I’ll cut all ties with eggnog from now on.”
He grimaces. “Surely mixing raw egg, cream and alcohol is a terrible idea.”
Betty waves her hand. “I don’t want to relive it.”
He finds himself smiling fractionally. “That’s probably for the best.”
“What floor are we on?”
“Fourth,” Jughead replies. This is 414.”
Betty nods. “I was so close. I’m 415.” There’s another pause and she pulls herself up from the couch. “Really, I’m truly sorry for… crashing here, like I did.”
He nods.
“Please apologise to your sister for me.”
On cue, Jellybean pokes her head around the doorway - having very obviously been eavesdropping. “Are you going back to the North Pole?”
“Jelly -” Jughead starts, but is interrupted by Betty.
“- Not all of us live with Santa,” she says conspiratorially. “Some of us live right here in New York so we can check up on all the girls and boys.”
His sister’s eyes widen and he wonders how the hell he’s managed to get into a situation where elves aren’t just fictional characters. He has enough of a job with the tooth fairy. “Are you checking up on me ?” she asks.
Betty pretends to think, lifting her forefinger to her bottom lip where she taps it gently. He realises then that the flesh is plump and soft-looking, and he wonders, absently, if she coats it in flavoured balm. “Have you been good?”
Jellybean nods. “I always do my homework.”
Betty smiles. “That is good.”
“And I go to bed when Jughead tells me to.”
She smiles again, “Santa will be pleased. You know, it’s important that you sleep well so you can learn in school.”
Jellybean stares between them both for a moment and then takes some steps towards Betty to stroke her dress. Jughead watches as she tugs gently on the little pocket and asks, “Will you stay for breakfast? It’s bacon day.”
“Oh,” she replies, somewhat surprised. “I don’t think -”
“- Do elves like bacon?” Jellybean interrupts. “We always have bacon on Saturdays.”
“You know what?” Betty asks. “Elves love bacon, but I need to get back to my apartment and then check up on the other boys and girls in the building.”
“You can stay,” Jughead offers quietly. “If you want. There’s plenty.”
“I think I’ve imposed on you enough,” she smiles. “But thank you.”
He nods and walks her to the door, and as she opens it, she turns, a frown creasing her forehead. “Jughead and Jellybean huh?”
“Nicknames,” he says. “The real things are worse.”
Her smile is wide and if he’s not mistaken, it makes the corners of her eyes crinkle a little. She could pass for an elf, he finds himself thinking.
“Wait!” Jellybean calls. “What’s your name?”
“Betty,” she answers. “And you’re Jellybean, right?”
His sister nods vehemently. “Jellybean Jones.”
“Well then,” Betty says, crouching so she’s at eye-level. “I’ll make sure to tell Santa to put you on the nice list.”
She closes the door quietly behind her and Jughead rubs at the back of his neck, blinking tiredly. “Okay JB, pancakes or waffles?”
Early in the evening, there’s a knock on the door. Jughead tosses the towel he’s using to dry the dishes from dinner onto the counter and Jellybean pauses in her colouring to look up.
“It’s okay,” he tells her - like he always does when she hears that sound. It physically hurts him that she associates the noise with being taken away, and he wonders how many more times he’ll have to reassure her that the piece of paper from the courts means she’ll stay here now - always.
She nods and repeats his last word. “Okay.”
When he looks through the peephole, he sees Betty on the other side clutching a tupperware box.
“Hey!” she says brightly when he opens the door.
“Hi.”
“I made you some cookies. To, uh…. apologise. I really do feel terrible about last night.”
Jughead takes the tub from her outstretched hands. “You really didn’t have to…” he trails off, having lifted the lid to reveal a collection of perfectly-iced candy cane shaped cookies. “But uh… these do look pretty good.”
“My signature gingerbread recipe,” she tells him, her voice a little louder. Loud enough, it seems, to register with his sister.
“Betty?” Jellybean questions, almost tripping over in her bid to get to the door quickly. She gasps when she sees her. “Where are your elf clothes?”
“In my closet,” she replies without missing a beat. “I save them for when I’m visiting children.”
Jughead glances down at his sister whose eyes are wide as saucers. “Betty made us some cookies.”
“Really?” she squeals. “Are they like the ones at the North Pole?”
He shows her the iced treats and a giant grin spreads across her face. “They’re like the ones Santa has in my book!”
“Shall I tell you a secret?” Betty asks. “It’s a secret recipe - they’re Santa’s favourite.”
“Can we have one now?” Jellybean pleads. “Please?”
“I’ll tell you what,” he decides, seizing his opportunity. “You have your bath first, and then we’ll have hot chocolate with one of Betty’s cookies.”
“Will you stay?” she asks Betty. “And tell me all about the North Pole?”
Jughead looks at the woman standing at the entrance to their apartment apologetically. “JB, I think Betty’s probably very busy and -”
“- I can stay,” she offers. “For a little while.”
“Yeah?” Jellybean asks hopefully, and he echoes her in a tone that he hopes she understands as meaning you really don’t have to.
“If I’m not interrupting your evening?” she checks, and then adds, “Again.”
He opens the door wider and gestures for her to come in. “I should warn you that Saturday nights are movie nights, and it’s always her choice.” He raises an eyebrow as he tells her, “She has an eclectic taste.”
Betty laughs and clasps her hands. “I look forward to your choice, Jellybean.”
Jughead offers her the couch as he hurries his sister towards their tiny bathroom, and he manages to wash her hair in record time without any of the usual squirming and complaints of shampoo in her eyes. He towels her off and helps her into her pajamas - bought after a heated debate in Target centered around the fact that pajama bottoms with an attached tutu wouldn’t be comfortable sleepwear. He’s been his sister’s legal guardian for over a year now (and her unofficial one for two years prior to that) and he’s still unsure as to how she likes so many overtly girly things. He has, thankfully, narrowly avoided Frozen, but there are still pink sparkly shoes next to his boots and bows in a little box on her set of drawers that he has to sort-of jam into her hair and hope for the best. He’ll be damned though if she doesn’t get to make her own choices after everything.
“Jug,” Jellybean whispers. “Do you think Betty will make sure daddy gets a gift on Christmas?”
He swallows with difficulty. “I don’t think we should ask her that JB,” he says gently. “Maybe she’ll tell you the secret recipe for the candy cane cookies though.”
Jellybean considers this for a moment, then nods. “Okay.”
In the living room, Betty is seated on their couch flicking through Netflix. She looks up as they enter and gushes over Jellybean’s tutu pajamas, asking her to twirl on the spot which delights her immensely.
“Would you like something to drink?” Jughead asks.
“Coffee would be great,” she smiles. “Thank you.”
“I’d like coffee too,” his sister announces, pausing in her twirling.
Jughead runs his hand through his hair, pushing back the wave that always insists on flopping forwards. Maybe he should get it cut. “We’ve talked about this Jelly,” he says. “When you’re sixteen you can try it.”
“But Jug-head,” she protests, separating his name into two very crisp syllables before forming her lips into the pout she’s perfected over the last six years of her life. “I want to be like the elves!”
Betty shoots him a wink as she bends closer. “You know Jellybean, at the North Pole, all of the elves drink hot chocolate. It helps them build the toys faster. They only have coffee when they’re really really tired.”
“Oh.”
He watches as the little girl thinks for a moment, then nods. “I’d like hot chocolate,” she decides, and he raises his eyebrow. “Please.”
“One hot chocolate it is,” he says, shooting Betty a grateful smile. She returns it and then begins questioning his sister about the pictures stacked into a relatively neat pile on the coffee table.
The end credits of The Santa Clause roll up the screen and Jellybean begins a hopeful campaign to watch The Santa Clause 2. Because of course.
“It’s already past eight,” Jughead says by way of response. “You should be in bed.”
The pout makes its reappearance but she clambers off of Betty’s lap where she’s spent the past two hours, and turns to rest her hand on her knee. “Will you visit again?”
“I’m sure we’ll see each other,” Betty replies.
“Will you bring more cookies?”
“ Jelly, ” Jughead warns, and then watches his sister hang her head.
Betty looks sympathetic, and says gently, “I’ll see what I can do.”
That cheers her up, and she offers a wave on her way to bed. Betty rises from the couch too and takes the empty mugs over to the kitchen, running the tap to rinse out the remnants of dark liquid.
“You can leave them,” he tells her. “I’ll do them later.”
Her voice is soft when she replies. “Okay… I guess I’ll see you.”
Jughead finds that he doesn’t particularly want her to go back across the hall - not really - and so he offers, “There’s still more coffee in the pot? I’ll be five minutes if you want to… uh….” he stumbles over his words, not really knowing what to say, but Betty smiles.
“Yeah? That sounds good.”
As he disappears into Jellybean’s room, he hears the running water in the sink and figures she’s cleaning the mugs anyway. He manages bedtime without having to read too long of a story - tonight it seems his sister is content with The Christmas Star - and the little night light plugged in beside her bed casts a warm glow as he closes the door behind him.
As he’d suspected, Betty has cleaned the plates and mugs from earlier and is busy pouring coffee back into them when he rejoins her at the counter.
“Sorry she insisted on sitting in your lap,” Jughead says, opening the cupboard to get the sugar.
“No need to apologise - she’s pretty amazing.”
He smiles involuntarily. “She’s something.”
They each take their respective mugs back to the couch, and this time she pulls her legs up and underneath her. “She’s your sister,” Betty begins. “But she lives with you?”
He swallows his mouthful of coffee. “Yeah.”
“Are your parents… I mean, did they -”
“- Die? No.” His tone is more bitter than he’d intended it and he tugs at the edge of his flannel shirt.
“Sorry,” she apologises. “I was being nosy - I shouldn’t have asked.”
“My mom left,” he tells her. “Jelly was two. “My dad drinks and now he’s in jail.”
Her mouth forms an ‘o’ but no sound escapes until, eventually, she says, “It’s a brave thing that you’re doing.”
He scoffs because it was the only thing he could do.
“It is,” she insists. “It can’t be easy.”
He doesn’t say anything to that because it isn’t easy. If anything, it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done. “So,” he says, changing the subject. “You’re new to the building?”
Betty wraps her fingers around her mug, cradling it as she blows over the top to cool the coffee. “Yeah, I only moved here last week from Boston.”
“That’s where you’re from?”
“No,” she shakes her head. “That’s where I went to college. I’m from upstate - this tiny town called Riverdale and -”
“- Riverdale?” Jughead cuts in. “I’m from Greendale!”
“Over-the-river Greendale?” she clarifies, eyes wide in surprise. “That’s crazy!”
He lets a burst of air leave his mouth - something like a chuckle - before he takes a sip of coffee. “Small world.”
It’s quiet for a moment with only the sound of intermittent sipping until Betty asks, “So what do you do?”
“I’m an editor,” he replies. “Just a small publishing company in the city.”
“That’s great!” Betty says, and seems to genuinely mean it. “I write for NYCLife Magazine.”
“What department?”
“Features,” she answers. “We’re relatively small but growing - mainly online.”
“Do you enjoy it?” he asks her. “Writing, I mean.”
“I love it.”
“It’s what I always wanted to do,” Jughead admits, in a rare moment of unprompted honestly. “Before I…. well, before. ”
The woman next to him appears to contemplate something, gnawing on her bottom lip so that when she releases it from between her teeth, there are tiny little indents in the skin. “A lot of writers submit articles freelance. We publish lots from people who don’t actually work specifically for the company.”
He nods, and decides not to say that that’s not the kind of writing he meant.
“Your coffee’s good by the way,” she smiles. “Strong, but not the kind of strong that gives you a headache.”
He smiles and takes the compliment. “Thanks - at least you’re awake tonight. You fell asleep before you got chance to taste it last time.”
She flushes and shakes her head. “I’m embarrassed. And I was dressed in that stupid costume my friend at work made me wear. Definitely not the most flattering thing I’ve ever worn,” she laughs, and before he can stop himself, Jughead hears himself saying,
“I thought you looked pretty cute.”
He’s horrified at the sound, but then a wide smile stretches Betty’s mouth across her face as a blush creeps further into her cheeks. He thinks there might be one on his too. She dips her head as she says, “Thanks,” and he finds himself stealing glances at her while she sips the remaining coffee.