Work Text:
The flyer arrives at their Greenpoint apartment in April, almost a year after they move in.
Their little mailbox slot is full when Jughead gets home from work, which means Betty hasn’t left the house all day. He sighs. She’s been working especially hard since leaving her private investigation firm and starting her own consultant business. She’s been contracted to do research for several major news outlets and a few law firms, in addition to her work with the NYPD on specialized cases. Jughead just worries it might be too much, though she seems to love it. As long as her eyes retain the same shine they had after their first kiss, when she reminded him about Jason Blossom’s getaway car, he sleeps easy.
“Hey, Betts.” He tosses the mail down on their kitchen table. She’s got her back to him, chopping something on a cutting board. “Smells really good.”
“Anything interesting?” she asks, nodding to the mail.
He begins to flip through the stack and stops. There, at the bottom, is a one-sided cardstock from the Town With Pep.
Riverdale High School Class of 2020
Don’t Miss Your 5-Year Reunion!
Come Show Your Bulldog Pride
June 30th, 2025
“Oh, jeez,” he says. “Riverdale wants,” he flips the card over, “Elizabeth Cooper and Forsythe Jones at their five year high school reunion.”
“That could be fun.”
Jughead largely ignores her. “ Five years? I think everyone still looks about the same, don’t you? Nobody has changed on your Instagram.”
Betty raises her eyebrows and lets go of the wooden spoon she’s been using to stir dinner to tousle his hair, which has been beanieless since graduation. Jughead ducks his head, and she catches his face, cupping his chin.
“You look a little different these days, teach,” she says softly. It’s true that Jughead has had to give up most of his dark, flannely aesthetic for his job teaching seventh grade English, and unlike high school, he’s able to grow some facial hair; these days, he lets his jawline build up a little stubble, which Betty likes to rub her cheek against as they fall asleep. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t mind the changes.
“Still dead on the inside, though,” he remarks, grinning. “But seriously, who even plans these things?”
“Cheryl, I think,” Betty says, turning toward the spice rack to find the cumin. “She was our student body president, remember?”
“Vaguely.”
“Come on, Juggie,” Betty says, using her best unblinking Bambi eyes on him. “We haven’t been to Riverdale in ages.”
That much is true. They’d gone home their first few years of college for Christmas, but generally stayed in the city to work over summer breaks. Since their respective graduations nearly a year ago, they hadn’t been back.
“Betty, really? It’s Cheryl. Do we really want to tangle with Riverdale’s red widow spider if we don’t really have to? She’s probably got something heinous planned, like a massive cake of Jason’s face, or maybe a Vixen dance off. Oh wait, would you partake in a Vixen dance off?”
“She’s technically my cousin,” Betty laughs. “And I had to give that skirt back, and you know it. C’mon, let’s just see who’s going. I’ll put out the bat signal. Archie’s in Riverdale still, maybe Kevin or Veronica will show up. It could be fun — we could go to Pop’s with the gang. Chocolate milkshakes, Jug.”
Jughead thinks about this for a minute. He’s in the middle of edits on his first completed manuscript, and the novel centers on many small town themes they’d encountered as children. He thinks it might be good to go home and revisit those old, albeit painfully tinged, emotions.
“I guess it would be fun to see the old haunts,” he says, thinking particularly of the newspaper office where Betty first offered him his first big break in writing. “Alright,” he says. “Let’s go. It’ll be good to see my dad, too.”
Betty smiles that bright, solid smile he knows so well, and he knows he did the right thing. Most of the people at Riverdale High gave him anxiety. Things got better after he started dating Betty and stopped living under the stairs like a knockoff Harry Potter, but the cloud of his father’s involvement in Jason’s death, plus his general snark and dark soul, made most of the students in the Town with Pep avoid him. He’s not wild about reliving those days. But ultimately, Jughead will go where Betty goes. He’d gone to the Jubilee, he danced at prom, he came to New York, all without hesitation or regret.
Later that night, after Betty’s homemade chickpea curry and two episodes of season three of Stranger Things on their secondhand couch, Jughead pulls Betty into his lap and presses his lips to hers, just as he has for the last nearly eight years.
“Mmm,” Betty hums as they break apart, pecking him once as he draws back. “I called Veronica.”
Jughead coughs out a laugh. “Never one to be distracted by my sheer physical beauty, are you?”
“Nope.”
“What did Veronica say?”
“She’s in, I think. Well, what she said exactly was, if fair Riverdale requests the presence of their fashion icon emeritus, my presence they shall have.”
“Ha. Sounds like V, yeah.” Veronica had lived with Betty for a few years in New York, while she was at Parsons, but had ultimately settled across the ocean in London working at a designer label. Jughead doesn’t make an effort to stay appraised of her life there, because he knows Betty will filter him the important nuggets. He knows she’s got a new boyfriend, someone named Armando, and he knows a fair amount about their sex life, though he could probably do without that info. He and Betty generally tell each other everything, unbidden, and sometimes he admittedly gets into the breakdown on Veronica’s latest beau.
“And I texted Kevin," she continues. "He and Moose were planning on making the trip around then anyway, so I think they’ll be there.”
“Nice,” Jughead nods. “It’s kind of weird that they’re still together after all this time.”
“Why?”
Jughead gives a tiny shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know, just seems like high school was so long ago. Like, mentally. We were all such different — we were all kids. Just seems crazy that they could have stayed connected.”
Betty shifts back in his arms to quirk an eyebrow at him. “Um, high school girlfriend, party of one?”
Jughead rolls his eyes and tucks her back under his arm. “That’s entirely different.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” he breathes, leaning back in to kiss her.
The rest of the night is filled with the things that occupy their adult life; Betty packs Jughead’s lunch for tomorrow as he bounds up and down the stairs of their building switching their laundry. He briefly calls Jellybean, who is now finishing high school and wants to tell him about the pantsuit she got for prom, although he doesn’t understand why she keeps saying fleabag. They play a quick game of Boggle, and then Jughead retreats to the shower to wash the day off him.
The curtains are pulled when he entered their bedroom, and Betty’s in her typical oversized t-shirt pajamas. They read for a while, and then Jughead scrolls mindlessly through Twitter, catching up on author news and reading satirical political takes. He’s vaguely aware of Betty getting up to pick out an outfit for the morning. When he lifts his gaze, Betty’s eyes are fixed on him.
“Earlier,” she starts. “You said something about distracting me with your…what was it?” Betty says, laying her clothes for tomorrow neatly on the chair in their bedroom, the purpose of which Jughead seems to be holding their discarded clothes.
“My sheer physical beauty,” he finishes, getting up and padding over to her. He watches as her knuckles swipe across her chest, making wide loops, and he closes his eyes. Then her hand slips just inside the elastic of his boxers, and he opens one eye.
“I have to work on my grad school submissions,” Jughead tells her in mock protest, biting back a full smile. Sometimes Betty likes to be the one to seduce him, and he can tell this is one of those nights.
“Oh, that can wait,” his girlfriend tells him, walking him backwards, back toward the bed. “The world is a shitshow these days. I think we both need a little distraction.”
***
They end up traveling separately to Riverdale.
Jughead takes the express train from the city, but Betty is out at work and will have to take the bus later. They’d planned to meet at the Coopers for dinner, and then stay with FP, who had recently starting renting a small apartment on the border of the south side.
Jughead watches the shrubbery and small trees blur by, his head on a window he’s sure isn’t clean. He adjusts his AirPods and sighs. He misses her.
They’d both been working a lot in the last few weeks, and Jughead feels like he’s barely seen her. She’d gotten home late last night, working on a case for the NYPD that had her in Staten Island past midnight several nights that week. When he’d woken up to go to work she’d still be sleeping. He’d kissed her on the forehead, secretly hoping she’d wake up and pull him to her, whispering about being late to homeroom, but she hadn’t.
Usually, when she didn’t have to work until the afternoon, she’d get up with him, sometimes cooking breakfast and something persuading him to join her in the shower. Other times, she’d make coffee while he finished grading quizzes. Often she went for runs before he was even awake, slipping out of bed in darkness and returning when he was bleary-eyed to peel off her running clothes and climb on top of him. Jughead liked those mornings best.
As the train zips along the Hudson, Jughead tries to think of the last time any of those things had happened. They don't see each other much, both of them so busy, so they just haven't had time to talk about it. They never seem to have time to do other things, either. He sighs again. It’s been almost three weeks since he and Betty have had sex, and while they’ve been busy before, they’ve never gone this long.
She’s been swamped with work, he knows, and tired to boot. So has he. But it’s more than that, somehow. She’s forgotten to pack his lunch a few times, and has turned down several invites to come out for after-work drinks with their friends. She even missed their monthly trivia night. Normally, they text throughout the day, silly little thoughts and stupid puns, but there’s been less of that, too. He could chalk it all up to work, but something feels off, and Jughead can’t put his finger on it.
Two days before, Jughead had tried to initiate a little fix-the-vibe intimacy, and she’d been dismissive of his advances. She’d been in the shower that morning, and even though Jughead usually showers at night, he’d slipped in behind her as she was sudsing her hair.
“Trying to conserve water?” Betty had said playfully, and his heart, and dick, had perked up slightly.
“Something like that,” he’d said, sliding his arms around to squeeze her ass. She’d kissed him, then tilted her head up to rinse off the shampoo. He’d taken the opportunity to mouth at her breasts, pretending not to notice that she wasn’t emitting her usual soft hums of approval. Then, when she was finished, she’d pressed a kiss to his cheek, and said, “all yours!”, then hopped out of the shower. He’d been left a little baffled; he knows she’s under no obligation to have sex with him, but as a rule, they don’t turn each other down.
He certainly wasn’t mad at Betty, and they weren’t in a fight, but somehow, something wasn’t right.
He has a brief, fleeting notion — what if he isn’t enough for Betty anymore? — and then rapidly pushes that thought away.
It’s fine, he thinks. We’re just regular adult stressed. But even he doesn’t believe that.
Alice is in a particularly good mood when he arrives. He helps her make a pie, and looks at mountains of photos of Polly’s twins, who live outside Philadelphia with Polly’s new husband Michael. Juniper looks an awful lot like Betty did at age seven, and he swallows down a lump in his throat.
Betty arrives just before dinner, giving Jughead a tired smile. He squeezes her side, but they aren't any more affectionate than that. If Alice notices, she doesn’t say anything.
Conversation flows easily at dinner, directed by Alice and her insistent questions. After they’ve helped clean up, Betty pulls Jughead into her bedroom.
He furrows his brow a little. “Betts, what? Something in my teeth?”
Betty doesn’t laugh. They both know the joke was a diversion. “Jug, I’m going to stay here tonight.”
“Okay,” he says cautiously. “I can call my dad, see if he’ll meet us for breakfast instead.”
“No,” Betty says quietly. “You should sleep at his apartment.”
“Betts…”
“He probably already made up the guest room, and I know how excited he was to see you, and show you the new apartment, and — you should go, Jug.” It’s not a suggestion, not really.
Jughead is too tired for this confrontation, but all the sudden his chest has squeezed to the point of no return. He reaches down for Betty’s hand, and after a second she lets him take it.
“I’ll go crash with my dad tonight. That’s fine. But I…” he gulps "I miss you.”
He knows she can read the subtext in his voice. He misses her, he’s upset, he doesn’t want to go without her.
Betty’s expression flashes briefly to one of hurt, which surprises Jughead, then just as quickly, softens. “I know, I miss you too,” she says. “I just need a little space for the night. I’ll still meet you and FP for breakfast at Pop’s, and then we’ll catch everyone at the reunion.”
“Alright.”
The pit in Jughead’s stomach doesn’t leave — not when Betty kisses him goodbye in the driveway, some kind of consolation, he supposes, not when he squeezes her hand and says, “talk soon?” and she nods, and not when he drives through Riverdale in the dark.
FP is still up when he walks in, waiting for them.
“Where’s Betty?”
“She’s staying with her mom for the night,” Jughead says, reaching his hands up to adjust a beanie that isn’t there.
FP nods like he already knows what’s happening. “Just me and you, kid.”
Jughead feels even worse.
***
Breakfast is tense. Betty’s slides into their booth a few minutes late, which is unlike her. There is polite, friendly conversation about their jobs, and it all seems fine.
That’s the problem.
When he arrives at Riverdale High that night, Betty is waiting for him on the front steps. She’d spent the afternoon with Veronica, reminiscing at the Pembrooke. He’d had lunch with Archie, and then they’d play Xbox in his basement. It had felt eerily similar to the days before he and Betty were together.
He hadn’t said anything to Archie about their freeze out. He was better at listening, anyway. Archie had the same problems he’d always had, just in a more adult form. He’d stayed in town after high school and attended Riverdale Community College — they’d all seen a lot of him on school breaks, particularly Veronica. He’s not sure where those two stand now.
Archie’d managed to get a teaching certificate, and was just hired to teach music theory and introductory band at their old alma mater. Jughead knows he’s got his eye on the football coach position when Coach Clayton retires, too, so their conversations have looked a lot like the music-or-football interludes of years past.
He’d ridden with Archie over to the school, and when they’d spotted Betty on the front steps, Archie had let him off and gone to park. Now, Jughead wishes he’d stayed.
“Hey, Betts. You look nice,” he says, because there’s nothing immediately wrong about this moment. And she does look nice, in a dark floral skirt and cream-colored top. She’s pulled her hair back into its iconic ponytail, and the sixteen year old inside him flutters.
“I didn’t think I should go in without you,” she says.
“Thanks,” he replies, and means it. “Betty…can we talk, please? We’ve never been this out of sync, I’m — I don’t like it.”
Betty’s expression gives nothing away. “Later. For now, let’s just go in. We came all this way.”
Jughead has little choice but to follow.
The gymnasium is decorated in blue and gold streamers, and there’s a gigantic yellow embossed R on the stage behind a microphone. People are trickling in, stopping at several displays of photographs of their classmates during their years at Riverdale. Jughead walks Betty over, and they sift through the pictures. There’s Archie and Betty at a football game, both in their uniforms. Him and Betty in the yearbook shot of the newspaper editors. Cheryl glaring at Chuck by the lockers. All of them in the student lounge, Jughead over by the vending machine but smiling at Betty from across the room.
Betty picks that one up, thumbing it tightly. Jughead tries to catch her attention. “Betty, can we maybe go—“
“Mini Cooper, in the flesh!”
Reggie Mantle pushes through the throng to them, and Jughead internally groans.
“Hi, Reggie,” Betty says politely, then grunts as he swings his arm around to hug her.
“B. Coop and J. Jones,” he says, clapping Jughead on the back. “How’s it hanging?”
“Fine,” Jughead grumbles.
“How are things, Reggie?” Betty, ever his better half, asks.
“Well, you’re looking at the regional car sales king, friends,” Reggie says, pounding once on his chest. Then he lowers his voice. “You two down to do anything a little wild while you’re in town? I’ve got the goods.”
He taps his coat pocket and grins at them.
“Get lost, Reg,” Betty laughs. “Archie might bite, though.”
Reggie perks up at that, and starts to look around. “Oh, is Archie here yet? I owe him a pounding for not telling me he and Josie hooked up.”
“Oh, Christ,” Jughead says as he vanishes, turning back to Betty. “See why I didn’t want to come? I’m having deja vu.”
“Oh, shush,” she says, lightly poking him. “You can get through one night.”
“Will there be a reward of some kind?” he asks, only a little sarcastic.
At that moment, Betty’s eyes light up. “Kevin!” she calls. “Kev, hey!”
Kevin Keller, toting his longtime boyfriend Moose by the wrist, make their way over and give them both warm hugs.
“Hey, guys,” Kevin chirps. “Long time no see.”
“Whose fault is that?” Betty says. “You guys live in Chicago.”
“We’re here a lot, actually,” Moose chimes in. “Kevin’s Dad is getting close to retirement, and we’re thinking about moving back. Kevin can move his business here, and I can do accounting anywhere.”
“Oh yeah, how’s the coffee shop going?” Betty asks eagerly. “Has Milk Toast been doing well?”
Kevin launches into an explanation that Jughead chooses to partially ignores, letting his eyes roam around the room. He spots Chuck Clayton hitting on all three of the Pussycats, who are warming up for their performance. Of everyone in his Riverdale High grade, Josie, Melody, and Valerie had, unsurprisingly, accumulated the most fame. They’d become pretty well-known, even had a few small hits that he knows Betty has on her running playlist on Spotify. They’re not bad.
Over in the corner, Ethel Muggs is fixing Dilton Doiley’s bow tie, which is incredibly ugly. Both Jughead and Betty had been invited to their wedding, though they hadn’t gone. Secretly Jughead thought they were a good couple.
Kevin and Betty are still talking animately when he looks back over, but Moose has been pulled away into a small crowd of former football players. Jughead feels like the odd man out.
“I’m going to find food,” he says to nobody in particular.
He’s at the snack table, loading up a plate with miniature crab puffs and crostinis. Cheryl has, as usual, gone all out and sprung for a fancy spread. After a moment of hesitation, he adds the stuffed mushrooms he knows Betty likes to his plate.
He smells her before he sees her. The scent of her perfume floats to his nose, and he turns around.
“Veronica Lodge, as I live and breathe,” he says.
“Hi, Jughead,” she says, an edge of bitterness in her tone. “I was wondering when I’d see you.”
“Ronnie,” he sighs. “I don’t know what Betty told you —“
Veronica holds up a hand, silencing him. How she has this much control over everyone around her, he’ll never know. “Spare me, Jughead.”
He’s quiet for a minute, then looks her in the eye. “Did she tell you what’s wrong? Because I’ve been faintly nauseous all day, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what’s happening.”
“Seriously, Jughead?”
“What?”
“You’re a writer. You’re supposed to be observant. Are you seriously telling me you haven’t noticed—“
“Of course I have,” Jughead says. “I know. I just don’t know what I did.”
“It’s more like what you didn’t do,” Veronica says. When he looks at her in total befuddlement, she goes on.
“Oh come on, Jughead. Okay, she thinks you’re not interested in a future with her. That you don’t want to get married or have kids or travel, or do any of the sappy romantic things you’ve done since you were in diapers, practically.”
Jughead feels his jaw unhinge slightly. “What?” he manages. “She thinks I don’t want her anymore?”
“Not..exactly,” Veronica says. “She just said something about wasting her time.”
“Jesus,” Jughead say, running a hand through his hair. Goddammit, he needs the beanie. “I don’t understand. She’s the one that hasn’t wanted to…do anything. I thought…I don’t know, I thought we were just in a rough patch.”
Just then, as Jughead tries to keep the floor from crumbling beneath him, the microphone crackles across the room and Cheryl Blossom herself takes the stage.
“Welcome, friends and natural enemies of the Class of 2020, to our five year reunion,” Cheryl says cooly into the microphone. “I hope everyone is enjoying the festivities, generously funded by Blossom Maple Farms and myself. As a little fun, I’ve prepared a few, shall we say, updated superlatives for our fellow former students.”
Always in the mood for chaos, Jughead thinks.
She starts rattling off the names of his old classmates — it must be going alphabetically, because Archie won Most Likely To Stay In Riverdale Forever — but Jughead isn’t really paying attention, the wheels turning too fast in his brain after his conversation with Betty's best friend.
“Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones,” Cheryl announces, and now he’s listening. In a split second, he catches Betty’s eye and she gives him a little that says, I don’t know where she’s going with this either. Things may be tense between them, but he’ll always be able to find her immediately in a crowd.
“Most Likely To Secretly Elope,” Cheryl says. A few people whoop, and Jughead feels his stomach drop.
And then Betty turns and slips back through the crowd and out of the room.
Jughead has hit his breaking point. Screw high school, screw all their friends who are watching, screw the reunion. He needs to talk to Betty.
He abandones his plates of hor d’evours and follows her.
***
He finds her in the first place he looks — the Blue and Gold office. It’s open, though he suspects she picked the lock.
“Betty,” Jughead says, breathlessly pushing through the door. The last time he ran this fast through the halls of Riverdale High, his father had just been arrested.
She’s tearful, though not crying. “Sorry, sorry,” she says. “I didn’t want to have this conversation here.”
“More deja vu,” Jughead tells her. He nods to their surroundings — the wall where they had their murder board, the desks they sat at when he showed obviously jealousy toward Trev Brown. This place was theirs.
“I saw you talking to Veronica,” Betty says then. “She shouldn’t have said anything.”
“We haven’t been communicating that well these last few weeks, have we?” Jughead says.
“I guess not,” Betty says, shoulders dropping. “I’ve been so—“
“Busy. I know, baby,” Jughead is already feeling sentimental toward her, just agreeing to talk about this. He wants to move this forward, so badly. He really has no idea what he did, but if Betty were truly mad, she’d tell him.
“I think maybe I haven’t been the best boyfriend,” he starts, without really knowing where he’s going.
Betty’s head jerks up. “No, Jug. You’ve been great. It’s fine, really. I’m being stupid about this.”
He sighs audibly. He is the king of sighing this weekend, apparently. “Betts, no you’re not. You’ve been inches away from full on ignoring me. What is this about?”
“You really have no idea?” she asks.
“No, I—about what?”
“The email,” Betty says reluctantly. “I know I’m being a baby, I didn’t even mean to forward it to you. It was an accident, I swear. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Scare me?”
She goes on. “I didn’t mean to send it to you. But then, you didn’t reply. You didn’t say anything about it. And look, I get it. Your parents didn’t model the greatest situation. But if you changed your mind, you just have just told me.”
“Betty, what are you talking about?”
She just looks at him, and her fingers start to curl towards her palm. He hasn’t seen her do this since, well, high school, and his stomach cramps.
“Betty, your hands…”
She ignores him. “We don’t have to get married if you don’t want to, Jughead. I…I can live with that.”
Now he remembers. He’d been on the G train home, and New York had been having subway issues, so they were stopped between stations. He’d gotten an email from Betty, which was rare.
It was a forward of an email she’s sent Veronica. A reply to an earlier email, in which Veronica’s sent her a list, with photos, of wedding venue spaces in London. Betty’s typed back. Destination wedding is risky, V. Jug would never go for it.
Jughead had quickly forgotten his annoyance at the malfunction of the train, the people around him vanishing. He could feel his breath quickening. He and Betty had talked about getting married, many times. Dating back to high school, even. They both knew it was in the cards for them, probably soon, and every so often one of them would throw little references out. Recently, Jughead had made a joke about bringing Archie in their honeymoon suitcases, and Betty had once sorted through the ties he wore to school and told him that no, he could not wear the burger tie, not even at their wedding.
But neither of them ever talked about it like this, like it was already happening. It was always hypothetical.
He knew he should bring it up with her, that they should talk about it. But he was afraid that engaging with Betty on it would lead to a premature...well, engagement.
So he decided he wasn’t responding to the email.
Jughead looks at her like she’s an alien. “You thought because I never said anything about that email, that I don’t want to marry you?”
“I thought I’d freaked you out. You didn’t even acknowledge it, Jug.”
“Wait,” Jughead says. “Is that why you won’t have sex with me?”
Betty blushes. “I wanted to, Jug. But every time we’d start something, all I could think about was whether you wanted…what you wanted for the future. We’ve only been living together for a year, Jug—“
“We’ve been together for eight—“
“And I thought maybe you thought things weren’t, I don’t know, fun anymore.”
“Christ, Betts,” Jughead says. Now he feels like a jackass for not noticing her insecurities earlier.
“All we do is laundry, and work, and cooking and cleaning. It’s not as exciting as when we were younger. I thought maybe you were getting bored of me, and you weren’t sure if you wanted this anymore.”
“You got all that from a nonexistent email?” he asks, dumbfounded.
Betty just looks down.
“Betty,” he chokes out. “I love you. I’ve loved you since we were, oh, about nine? There’s nobody else for me, ever. You will always be enough.” She’s looking at him the same way she did in the trailer when they were fifteen, and he can’t help but pour everything his feeling out. He can't believe he ever has to say it, although he figures not communicating is what got them here. “Okay, I can’t stand that you thought I didn’t want to be with you anymore, and I didn’t even know. Because, Betty, I can’t do any of this without you.” He sweeps a hand around the room. “I need you, forever.”
She lunges at him then, capturing his mouth with hers in the kind of kiss they haven’t shared in a long time. Not just a peck, not a standard smooch, but a kiss full or love and promise and hope, missing for so long. His tongue slips into her mouth, and she groans. He keeps her as tight to him as possible until they run out of air.
“I love you,” Betty says. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I jumped to conclusions without even talking to you. I’m sorry I ignored you. I’m sorry. I want you too. Forever. We don’t need to get married for me to know that.”
At that grabs both her hands, which are, thankfully, free of fresh blood. He wraps them together and kisses her knuckles, like he did at Pop’s all those years ago. Then he drops her hands and reaches into his back pocket.
“This is, for lack of a better word, kind of perfect anyway.”
“Huh?”
“Well, this was the original plan,” he says, pulling the little box out of his pocket. “I’ve had this since January, actually. I was waiting for the right time. And then, when the flyer for reunion came, and we were going back here…I thought this would be a good way do it.”
Betty is silent, her face shining. “Juggie…”
“I brought it tonight because I was holding out a little hope, I guess,” he continues. “I’m not going to get down on one knee, that’s stupid. But, um…here,” he holds the box out. “I was thinking we should get married.”
Betty’s eyes fill with tears, and he sees her bite the inside of her lip.
“It’s for you,” he says dumbly.
He opens the box and hands it to her. He picked this ring out months ago, taking a sick day from work so he could go to a jeweler. He hadn’t wanted anyone else to know — hadn’t told Archie or asked Veronica for help. It’s a simple gold band, classic, and in lieu of a central diamond, he’d opted for a large sapphire stone, flanked on each side by a small diamond.
“It’s uh, because of the Blue and Gold,” he explains, feeling a little silly that Betty hasn’t said anything. “We’ve always known each other, but working for the newspaper was really when we started being, you know, us. I thought it…fit, I guess.”
Betty steps a little closer. “Jug, oh my god,” she breathes. “You want to marry me?”
“I really do.”
“Well, okay,” she says, smiling now. “Okay.”
“You want to marry me?” he says, echoing her.
She looks him right in the eye, down to his soul. “I do,” she says, the weight of the words not lost on either of them.
They’re both laughing then, both tearful. Betty takes the ring and slides it on her finger, a perfect fit. They’re all tangled up in each other, squeezing tight, and Jughead is rocking her back and forth as he hugs her.
“You know, this is a good engagement story,” she says when they’ve finished their moment.
“All because of a stupid email,” Jughead says lightly. “Which, for the record, I only ignored because I was planning on doing this, and I knew if we talked about it, we’d just end up engaged. I wanted to surprise you at least a little bit.”
Betty hums in understanding. “I get that. I didn’t mean to forward it to you, and then I just panicked. It wasn’t even about us.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Not really. It was just V being V. I never told her anything about a wedding, but you know how she gets. She thought it would be cute if we eloped in London.”
Jughead makes a face at that.
“So, no destination wedding in London then?” Betty jokes.
“Hell no.”
“City Hall?”
“Hell yes.”
Jughead can’t shake the wide grin on his face, and neither can Betty. In one fell swoop, he scoops her up and she follows his lead, hitching her legs around his hips, and then they’re kissing like drowning people gasping for air. Jughead feels the mood shift as their embrace intensifies. He starts to lift her toward the door, and Betty pulls back.
“We’ve got to be better, though,” she says. “For real. Less work, more quality time. No more missed conversations.”
“Done,” he says, stamping another kiss on her mouth. “Let’s get out of here. I want to fuck my fiancé.”
Betty giggles. “Juggie, this is a school event.”
“All the more reason,” he declares.
***
Weeks later, at home in Greenpoint, Betty bakes a cake.
It’s three tiered, like a traditional wedding cake, and it looks amazing. It’s all Jughead can do not to eat it right then and there.
Unfortunately, Betty is on to him. She swats at his hand as he goes in for a little frosting. “Oh, no, Juggie. This is for after. No cake until you make an honest woman out of me.”
He straightens up and salutes her with a small dip of his head. “Roger that.”
They’re going to the courthouse today, just the two of them. Jughead’s so excited he could burst, yet calm at the same time.
After they’d gotten engaged, they’d ditched the reunion briefly to make love in the back of their car, then cleaned themselves up and gone back inside to tell their friends. Veronica had been over the moon for Betty, and found her part in the whole email fiasco hilarious. Archie had been thrilled, as had Kevin and Moose, and even Cheryl had cracked a smile and made a comment about her superlative inspiring great things.
Since then, things have been considerably better at home. Betty has reduced her hours to a more manageable schedule, and Jughead makes a point to answer every email and text he gets from her. They’re back to texting sporadically throughout the day, back to little jokes and Boggle at night after dinner. And they’re having a lot of sex, maybe more than when they were teenagers.
In fact, Jughead had slipped into Betty’s shower just last night (she’d abandoned her normal shower routine for the sake of today’s updo), and dropped to his knees, grabbing the back of hers and bringing her to him. When she was a boneless, sated mess, he’d stood up, shook the water from his eyes, and carried her to bed. In the morning, Betty had watched from bed as he’d picked out his wedding tie.
“Time to go, Jug,” Betty calls from the bedroom. He’s already dressed for the wedding, in a pair of chinos and a dark blue button down shirt. Betty had done his hair that morning, swooping it like she liked, and he didn’t miss the beanie one bit.
“Leaving!” he calls from the hallway. “Love you!”
“See you later,” she calls, sing-songy. “I’ll be the one in white.”
He’s grinning already at the thought as he bounds down the stairs. His job today is to pick up their wedding bands, then meet her at the courthouse. Of all the small wedding traditions, the only one she’d wanted to preserve was the reveal of her wedding look.
He sits, knee bouncing, at the courthouse for eleven minutes before Betty arrives. They stand before each other briefly, Jughead barely breathing.
This is real life, he reminds himself as they walk to the small room for the ceremony. To Betty he whispers, “There are no words for how beautiful you are right now.”
“Jughead Jones, speechless?” she laughs. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Hmm,” he says, carefully looping an arm around her waste. “I knew we’d get here.”
Later, they eat Betty’s cake in their kitchen, still in their wedding clothes. They post a single photo of the event to Betty’s instagram. Their friends are going to be furious, of course. Archie, because he didn’t get to be there, and Veronica for missing a prime styling opportunity.
“Let’s play Someday,” Betty suggests. It’s a game of theirs recently.
Jughead thinks briefly. “Someday you’ll let me call in sick to work and stay home to play video games.”
“Keep dreaming,” Betty says, smiling. “Hmm. Someday, I’ll cook a meal and we’ll actually have leftovers.”
Jughead shakes his head. “Sorry, babe.” He thinks for a second. “Someday, Veronica will move back to the states and won’t be so far away.” He knows this is something Betty worries about, and she gives me a hopeful smile.
“My turn,” she says. “Somebody your book’ll be published, and then you’ll be a famous author.”
He blushes. “I don’t know, Betts. Don’t jinx it.”
“It’s your turn.”
“Okay,” he says. “Someday we’ll have kids, and if we’re lucky they’ll look mostly like you.”
Betty bites her lip at him. “Oh yeah?
“Yeah,” Jughead says, full of assurance. “Don’t count on them getting your weak appetite, though.”
“Oh, I won’t,” Betty tells him. “Don’t worry.”
And then, from the coffee table, one of their phones starts ringing. It’s obvious someone has seen their instagram post by now. Betty starts to get up, but Jughead catches her eyes.
“I never worry about us,” he says softly, full of meaning.
Her eyes are on their wedding bands as she says, “Me neither.”