Chapter Text
Mary dubs them “the three musketeers” before they enter kindergarten. Jughead protests that there were actually four musketeers, because even little Jughead is a stickler for accuracy. But when they try to come up with a different name that suits them as well as that one, nothing comes to mind.
The simple fact is this – they are inseparable, spending every day together. They dig up Fred and Mary’s backyard searching for treasure. They spend an entire week being princesses and another being police officers. They capture frogs and feed them crickets.
Polly is too old for such adventures, but she sometimes keeps an eye on the three musketeers as she reads her books or plays with her Barbies.
Alice wishes that Betty had found more “appropriate” companions in play, but she doesn’t complain too much because the three are so engaged with each other, they give her time to cook, to clean the house, and to snoop on the neighbors. When she’s older, Alice wishes she made different life choices, but by then it’s too late, the thing she didn’t want to have happen, already has.
In first grade Archie punches Jason in the gut in order to prevent him from picking on Jughead. He did not expect to injure Jason in any way, Jason is older and bigger than him. Jason cries in the principal's office while Archie looks down at the scuffed toes of his Captain America running shoes.
In second grade, Reggie Mantle ends up with a strange hair cut after picking on Jughead and sitting next to Betty. That same year when Betty gets teased by Chuck Clayton for being a tomboy, Chuck ends up with a black eye, although he never reveals who gave it to him.
These are just a few examples of something that continues through middle school - one of the three musketeers is bullied, and one of the other musketeers often ends up in the principal's office. The time Betty got caught putting a snake in Dilton Doiley’s backpack is the only tarnish on her otherwise perfect academic record.
Defending one another is just one small part of their friendship. They do their homework together every afternoon and that is the only reason Archie passes grades two, three, and four. They spend long days biking together and fighting monsters. Every Saturday night they sleep over on Archie's floor until the day Alice deems Betty too old for such things at age nine. Fred tries to fight her on the issue, but he loses.
The summer between elementary and middle school they build a treehouse, sell lemonade, go to Sweetwater River on their own, and lock themselves in a closet so that Betty can bobby pin them out.
It is this summer, full of long hot hazy days when Archie has his first real crush. All three of them are at Sweetwater. Betty and Jughead are reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to each other on an old wool blanket they stole from the Andrew’s garage.
Archie cannonballs into the river and swims. At first he front crawls, and then when he’s tired from that he flips onto his back and lazily half kicks. He tries to think of how he would describe the river in a song, but the river is sort of a song, in and of itself. Then he nears the shore, he hears an unfamiliar voice.
He flips in the water and stands up on the stony bottom. To his surprise, between Betty and Jughead there is a girl, one with short black hair, long legs, and a black bikini. It’s Midge Klump.
Archie knows her, sort-of. She’s always been in the other class at elementary school. But it feels like he’s seeing her for the first time. He loves the way her face looks. He’s so smitten by the time he walks over to his friends on the blanket, he finds himself unable to reply to her friendly “Hi, Archie.”
Only after Betty kicks him discreetly in the shins does he manage a “Hello Midge.” His voice sounds unnatural, strained. Jughead rolls his eyes mockingly. Betty doesn’t say a thing.
It turns out that Midge is just as smitten with Archie as he was with her, because by the end of the week they’ve kissed. It makes Archie feel grown up. When he tells Betty and Jughead, they act like it’s no big deal. He asks them if they know what it’s like to kiss and Betty says very matter of factly “Yes, we do.”
It takes a couple minutes for Archie to figure out the full implication of that statement. Even then, he has to clarify with Jughead later and Jughead looks at him as if he’s daft - “Who else would I kiss Arch?”.
When Archie tells Fred about his girlfriend, Fred smiles and says, “Oh, I remember that stage, to be young again.” It was funny because young was the opposite of how Archie felt when he held Midge’s hand.
The relationship as it was lasted a whole four months and fell apart at Halloween when Midge wanted Archie to be the prince to her princess, and Archie felt more like dressing up like a firefighter.
It all worked out. Within a month Archie had found another girl, Midge being merely the first link in a long chain of girlfriends, from then until their junior year of high school.
It was nice having girlfriends as part of his life, but it wasn’t the same as having best friends.
When his parents split, it wasn’t his girlfriend at the time (Tina or was it Ginger?) he went to, but Betty and Jughead.
Besides eating lunch together every day at school, he would sometimes drag them to football games and open mics at coffee shops. Occasionally they would convince him to help out with what they liked to call “investigations”. Their investigations involved everything from the mystery of the missing lunch money to who was staying in the abandoned house at the end of Elm Street.
When Betty and Jughead first started investigating Jason’s death, Archie was sure it would be another unsolved mystery. He was so sure that when he put the USB key into the laptop, the last thing he could have possibly imagined seeing, was Jason being brutally murdered.
But investigations were mostly Betty and Jughead’s territory. They did the legwork, the paper shuffling, the backdoor snooping, and he was brought in only when they needed more help. They acted like it was their job, while he wouldn’t even call it a hobby of his.
Still, it was one of the few differences between them, that and the fact that they both had home lives they didn’t really talk about. Jughead moved in with Archie permanently during their sophomore year after FP was incarcerated.
Archie was pretty thrilled. It made it easier to see Jughead and he and Fred all got along well. Sometimes in the morning when they all wanted to shower it was a pinch, but mostly it was an easy transition.
Betty’s father leaves town during the summer before their junior year and she starts to use her bedroom window more than the front door to access her house. Archie doesn’t really know what to say - “Sorry your mom is so crazy,” while accurate, seems insufficient (a word Betty taught him in preparation for the SAT’s).
He sometimes sees Betty in the kitchen talking to Fred about it. He wishes she would come to him with her problems, but he is sure his father has better advice for her than he would. Archie has lots of faults, putting the toilet seat back down is one of them, but he’s never been bad at sharing.
Archie starts dating Valerie in the spring of junior year. She is funny and charming. She becomes the person he shares his music with first, in part because she is also a musician.
Valerie wasn’t the biggest fan of Jughead and Betty. She preferred to spend lunch with Archie only. When he asked her about it, all she would say is that it wasn’t normal to be that close to friends, it made her uncomfortable. He tries not to talk about them too much to after that.
Archie still sees Jughead and Betty a lot, just not quite as much as he had before. One night he arrives at their normal booth in Pop’s to discover his two best friends kissing. He can’t help but exclaim loudly. They both look up at him a little shocked. Betty’s lipstick is smudged and Archie can see some of it on Jughead’s upper lip.
“How long has this been going on for?” He asks, sitting down with a thump across from them.
“Since middle school.” Jughead says with a shrug, but Archie doesn’t really hear him because he’s got his fingers stuck in his ears by then. He’d rather not know.
They’re still his best friends, they go to the movies and Pop’s and even sneak into parties together. If Jughead and Betty are still kissing, it’s not that obvious to Archie. They don’t kiss in front of him, and if they do hold hands it seems friendly, the way they used to hold his hand when he was younger.
Archie treats whatever relationship Betty and Jughead are in (or not), the way he treats their investigations, it’s none of his business unless they tell him something specifically. Sensing his reticence, they don’t involve him in either.
Archie and Valerie attend two different music camps that summer but somehow keep their relationship going long distance. Betty and Jughead bring a murderer to justice in Archie’s absence. They land jobs at Pop’s, both taking the late shift. They always seem groggy over facetime. Sometimes Betty is wearing one of Jughead’s S t-shirts. Archie tries not to read too much into that.
Archie and Valerie stay together long enough to go to prom. Betty and Jughead are too busy trying to find someone they call the Sugarman to go. A month later when Valerie and Archie break up because they are going to separate schools, Archie decides not to pack his prom photos.
Betty and Jughead get into Columbia and Archie gets into NYU. When he tells his mom he’s moving in with Betty and Jughead, Mary asks if he’s just going to NYU because of Betty and Jughead. Archie’s really not sure how to answer that question. When he tells his dad what his mom says, Fred just laughs and shakes his head, “Your mom just doesn’t get it son.”
Mary’s reaction has nothing on Alice’s, who writes Betty out of her will for moving in with “Not one, but two boys! What are you thinking Elizabeth?”
They can only afford a two bedroom. Archie doesn’t mind. He and Jughead have shared a room for years now. It’s not exactly a problem. Except it becomes one, sort of.
Archie meets Sabrina at orientation. She’s a tiny, beautiful blond with a sharp tongue. It takes him two months to convince her to date him, but eventually she capitulates after he gives her one of Betty’s special homemade cupcakes.
He doesn’t tell her Betty made the cupcake. Because of what both Mary and Valerie have said, he tries to keep the fact that he is linked at the hip to his childhood besties on the downlow. It seems easier to omit them, then to explain them.
Archie brings Sabrina home for the first time on a cold November afternoon. They have the apartment to themselves, and Archie puts a sock on the door when they go to sleep that night, thinking that Jughead will just sleep on the sofa.
When Archie wakes up in the morning, Sabrina is already gone, and he’s surprised to find that the living room is empty. Jughead for once in his life must have gotten up early.
Archie brews coffee and takes his first sip just as Jughead exits Betty’s bedroom in boxers, a hickey on his chest. Archie can’t stop himself from spitting his coffee out onto the counter in shock.
Jughead just shakes his head and goes to the bathroom. Betty makes them pancakes and Archie chooses to focus on that.
The upside is that Jughead seems to have permanently moved into Betty’s bedroom after the incident. Archie only thinks of it as an upside because Sabrina has more roommates than he does and her cat hates him, so his place works better. But from this point on it seems indisputable that Betty and Jughead are at the very least hooking up.
One afternoon, a few weeks before Christmas, Archie and Sabrina are basking in a post-coital glow when Sabrina sits up and points at the twin bed in Archie’s room as if she’s only just noticed it, “Who sleeps there?” she asks.
“Jughead.” Archie says. He’s only mentioned Jughead and Betty in the context of roommates to her.
“Where does he stay when I’m here?” Sabrina asks.
“With our other roommate Betty.” Archie decides not to mention that Jughead also stays with Betty when Sabrina is not there.
“So he and Betty are dating?” Sabrina asks. Archie’s never been bold enough to broach this subject with Betty and Jughead. It just feels too awkward. After all, if he knows they’re dating it’s like acknowledging that he is the third wheel, and not one of the three musketeers.
“No.”
“So they’re hooking up?”
Archie's pretty sure he’s blushing. He’s not sure that is the right term for it either, but it seems safer to say “Maybe.”
“Oh. For how long?”
Archie starts doing the mental math and then gives up and says “Since middle school.”
“On and off?”
“I don’t actually know.” Archie says, pressing his lips against her neck. He wants this conversation to be over now, and he chooses the right strategy to end it.
Jughead ends up selling the twin bed on Craigslist that week.
“Am I living with a couple now?” Archie sighs while they watch Parks and Rec that night.
“That depends on if your still in denial about that fact that we’re a couple?” Jughead says, Betty’s legs resting on his lap.
Archie doesn’t answer. Instead he asks “Are you going to start kissing in front of me?” over April Ludgate’s lines.
“Only if you start noticing.” Betty says, kicking him lightly.
Over Christmas break they all return to Riverdale, but they all stay at the Andrews house. Alice has sold her house next door, and that makes the visit less awkward.
Fred had cleared out Mary’s old office for Jughead and Betty, and he makes a big deal about how they are always welcome to stay in that room.
On the first night back Fred and Archie sit on the back porch, each drinking a beer, and Archie asks his dad how long he’s known about Betty and Jughead.
“For a long time.” Fred says with a shrug.
“How did you find out?”
Fred grimaces slightly and then asks “Do you really want to know?”. Archie shrugs but nods a yes.
“Well, I heard strange noises coming from the treehouse.”
“No, no, no!”
Fred laughs at Archie’s reaction and pats him lightly on the shoulder. The holiday goes well, it feels like an actual celebration. All of them exchanging gifts and Betty cooking way too much food. Archie enjoys the feel of it, the fact that Fred is so comfortably a part of it all.
Arche’s relationship with Sabrina survives the holiday break, and while he spends more and more time with Sabrina and her friends, she doesn’t seem particularly keen on spending time with Betty and Jughead. They’ve met by now but only briefly.
Betty and Jughead are busy too, although Archie isn’t exactly certain what kind of degrees they are getting. He’s sure Columbia doesn’t have a degree in criminal investigations, but both of them get their PI license and spend a lot of time out of the apartment tailing people.
Archie runs into Jughead at a nice Italian restaurant and Jughead refused to acknowledge him at all. Only later did Jughead inform him it was a job.
It’s hard on Archie, spending less time than usual with them, but Betty institutes a weekly family dinner, and they spend lazy Sunday mornings together. Besides, for the first time in his life Archie feels like he might have actually figured out how to sustain a relationship.
Then one morning right before summer break, Archie comes out of his bedroom to Sabrina confronting Betty about taking the last of the coffee, but before Archie can properly understand what is going on, Betty is apologizing with an Alice Cooper approved smile. She leaves right after that.
“What happened?” Archie asks Sabrina, who now has her own cup of coffee, although it is only half full.
“Betty doesn’t like me.” The look on Sabrina’s face unsettles Archie in a way he can’t explain.
Archie laughs, in his whole life of knowing Betty she’s never really not liked anyone, and even if she doesn’t like someone, she certainly isn’t mean to them. Reggie once stole all her chemistry notes and she still fixed his car a month later.
Archie asks Betty about Sabrina that very day, and all Betty says is “She’s your girlfriend. I wouldn’t be mean to her.”
Although it isn’t the same thing as liking someone, it’s a start. Betty refuses to give Archie any details about the situation though.
The next time he sees Betty and Sabrina interact they’re all watching TV together late one night, both Betty and Sabrina appear polite and reserved. Jughead on the other hand refuses to answer any of Sabrina’s questions and instead pouts like a little kid.
The next day when he and Jughead are playing video games, Jughead turns to him and says, “Why do you have to date such a massive bitch?”
“What has she done to you?” Archie asks slightly shocked, pausing the game.
“It’s not about me, it’s about Betty.”
“What has she done to Betty?”
“Stole her expensive cherry blossom shampoo, moved her meds, dumped her coffee down the sink once, accused her of liking you.” Jughead pauses. “I could go on, but Betty would be mad at me. She didn’t want me to tell you even this much.”
“Why not?” Archie asks. After all it’s not like he would be taking this any less seriously if Betty herself was telling him this.
“That Alice Cooper instilled sense of decorum of hers.”
“Fuck that.” Archie says. Betty’s not home, but Sabrina’s coming over any minute. “I’m going to talk to Sabrina about this.”
“Now?” Jughead raises both eyebrows. Archie nods. Jughead clears out.
Sabrina comes over all smiles, but her face falls as soon as she sees Archie’s expression. The fight is loud and terrible and involves a whole lot of denial on Sabrina’s part. It’s only in the last two minutes of the fight that they really get to the meat of the argument.
“I just feel like your choosing them over me.” Sabrina complains. Mascara is streaking her face and Archie finds it distracting.
“That’s because I am.”
He expected the break up to hurt more than it does. That night while he’s eating dinner with Betty, he asks her over ramen why she didn’t tell him about Sabrina herself. “I just didn’t want to seem rude or petty, Arch.”
“Betty, you are neither of those things.”
“Besides I get it, she was the new person coming into an established situation, it can be nerve wracking, intimidating.”
“Still not an excuse.” Archie says slurping up a noodle.
“I want you to have what Jug and I have.”
“I’m not ready for what you and Jughead have, whatever that is.”
Betty laughs and sets her soup spoon down gently. “Fair enough.”
The rest of college passes more or less without incident. Archie doesn’t involve himself seriously with anyone, instead he discovers Tinder and has lots of fun.
Jughead and Betty marry right after college. Only Fred, Polly, and Archie attend, but it’s a good day ending in burgers and milkshakes. Betty and Jughead move to Westchester county, buy a house and start their own business.
Archie feels like they’re fast tracking towards a future that has nothing to do with him. Still they come into the city for fun weekends, and drag him up to Westchester for hikes and video game marathons.
Sure, they wear rings now and occasionally talk about their mortgage. But most of the time they’re the same people they were a decade ago, obsessed with what the neighbor’s might actually be up to and ready to stay up all night and watch movies. Committed to supporting him when he actually needs it, and teasing the hell out of him when he gets too cocky.
Archie makes it a year in the city on his own, before he decides it’s not worth it anymore. Hook ups seem more shallow when they aren’t balanced out by weightier relationships.
So he gets a job teaching music at a high school in Yonkers and moves into the Mother-in-law suite above Betty and Jughead’s garage. The one he’s pretty sure they had built for him.
The years pass and Archie continues teaching and dating “casually”. Betty and Jughead have two children, Thea and Elliot. They now work full time doing whatever the hell they were doing in undergrad. They call themselves “consultants”.
Sometimes life feels like it hasn’t changed at all, even though instead of being the third wheel to a couple, Archie’s now the fifth wheel to a family - or as Thea once put it at age four, he’s the “above garage uncle”.
Still he’s grown used to it. It’s handy to be the above garage uncle. He helps with the fun parts of childcare (lots of park excursions and video games, no forced vegetable eating or baths). He and Betty run together in the morning, and he and Jughead play video games late at night. Fred visits once a month and Betty and Jughead’s kids call him Grandpa. No one ever corrects them.
Archie cooks his own food occasionally, he’s an adult after all, but mostly he just eats whatever Betty’s made with the rest of the family.
Girls sometimes call him on this, but that’s always a sign that they want to get more serious, and frankly he can’t see the point.
It’s the eve of Archie’s 39th Birthday, Thea and Elliot went to bed a long time ago. They’re out on the back lawn. Jughead’s smoking, an occasional vice, and they’re all staring up at the sky, exchanging occasional words about their week. It’s slightly cool out, but in a pleasant way after a long hot day.
“How does it feel to turn 39, Archie?” Betty asks.
“I won’t find out till tomorrow.” Archie says with a shrug. But it’s not entirely true. His life the last decade or so has mostly involved a string of beautiful available women, and a lot of whatever the hell he wants to do, be it video games or staying up to 3 in the morning writing songs, but lately the freedom of it all, has felt less like freedom and more like monotony.
He hates to say it, but he finds himself wanting a challenge. When he overheard Betty and Jughead talking about Elliot being bullied in school the other day, he had thought, I wonder what I would do in their shoes, when just a few months ago he would just be grateful that he had no responsibility in terms of the situation.
“Besides Jughead will know what it feels like in a month.” Archie says, leaning even further back in his chair.
“Don’t remind me.” Jughead says, but his tone is lighthearted.
When Archie sees the first shooting star, it’s so bright and fast at first he thinks he’s imagined it, but then there is another one and another one.
“Holy….” Archie says. He glances over at Betty and Jug, but they are positioned just like he is in their deck chairs, necks stretched back. He focuses again on the sky. Minutes pass, still more stars fall. Archie feels both immersed and transported. Like he never wants to be in a moment better than this, and also that this moment is beyond him.
The meteor shower slows, and then stops. “What did you wish for?” Betty’s voice says, catching Archie by surprise and grounding him to here and now. Archie re-focuses on his two best friends. Betty is covered in blankets, feet curled up on her seat, and Jughead’s legs are uncovered and sticking straight out. In the dim light they both look like they did two decades ago.
“Nothing.” Jughead answers, his hand reaching out for Betty’s.
Archie doesn’t answer out loud, but his thoughts supply him with plenty of wishes he isn’t ready to put into words. He looks at Betty’s hand in Jugheads.
It took him a while to adjust to the fact that his two best friends were more than that to each other, but now he sees them for what they really are, what they always were, partners and lovers, people who knew each other as well as they knew themselves. Motherfucking soulmates.
They didn’t need to wish for anything more than what they already had. Because what they have almost everyone else wants. Now for the first time, Archie can admit that he wants it to.
Archie wakes up on the morning he turns 39 and realizes one way or another he has to drastically change his life before he turns 40. Even if it involves moving out.