Chapter Text
I Blow a Kiss to the Wind (and hope that you catch it)
Sitting in front of Jughead Jones the Third was a silence that Veronica Lodge thought she’d never be able to get used to. The absence of Archie Andrews walking her now dearest and brand new bestie, Betty, home, made the new town feels shake in her.
Riverdale was small, but it was deep rooted and finding footing with Betty holding her hand made her feel safe. But the safety net created by Betty was stripped away when she left the booth. Instead, she’s stuck in front of the boy who was all dark and brooding, hidden and soulful. Bright, new and shiny in their very first encounter.
“You’ll fall in love with him, you know,” Jughead states while pulling out a laptop from a bag, running long fingers along the top before setting it on the table in front of him, never meeting her eyes. “Archie.”
He was already two cups of strong coffee in and even when she prompted him with small talk, he had generic answers to every one of her mundane questions. “And what makes you say that?”
His lowly chuckle irritates her, as if it was just the way of the world - everyone is expected to fall in love with the red head. It just was. “He’s Archie, who doesn’t love him?”
“Anyone would think you were the one in love with him,” she states, stirring her straw in thick chocolate.
“I promise you, you will.” He tears his eyes away from his laptop if only for a second, placing them on her half filled milkshake with longing. “You don’t really seem to be the sort of person to live in a place like this, Veronica.”
“You don’t really seem like the type yourself.”
“I’m not the type,” he concludes, running his tongue over his teeth. His smile is small but present, and the flexing of his fingers seems to be more of a nervous tick.
“And what is your type, if I may ask?”
He pauses, eyes back on his laptop and a smug smirk creeping on him. “Someone who doesn’t fit in.”
She tries to read him, the way his sighs feel heavy and the everlasting look of concern etched on his face. She skips a beat when he speaks because she doesn’t feel like a perfect fit in this new world of hers either. “Maybe we need to stick together, then.”
His smile holds a thousand words and Veronica thinks that she can finally read them. His head drops to the keys of his laptop. “A woman after my own heart, it seems.”
When Pop’s calls her name, she slides out of the booth. “Nice to meet you, Jughead Jones the Third.”
“In this world and the next, Veronica Lodge.”
She blows him a kiss to the wind when she walks out with a bag of fries, “Until we meet again!” she calls.
He laughs, shaking his head. “Monday, 9AM, Riverdale High.”
He promises she’ll fall in love with the broad shouldered boy, but why does she cling on to the fact that maybe she’s already met Jughead Jones in the old world, and he’s already waiting for her in the next?
He held his entire life’s belongings in a bag over his shoulder and he kicked empty popcorn cups along the gravel of the Drive-In. Veronica’s heart is full of remorse, it’s shallow in its beating out of her chest. Feeling like it sits right on the surface of her skin. Even the beanie that she’s sick of trying to talk him out of wearing constantly sits lopsided on his head. Her heart hurts. It hurts for him. “I’m sorry you have to leave… I’m sorry, I know how much you love this place,” she mumbled as she kicks empty popcorn cups behind him.
“I thought Betty and Arch might’ve hung around, but I guess it’s just the two misfits of Riverdale after all.” He laughs like it’s a joke, Veronica feels like it’s not. “It’s been the closest thing to a home I’ve had in awhile.”
He stops in front of her and she stops too when he spins on the spot to look at her. “I haven’t had a real home in a while either,” she replies quietly. “Things are strange between my parents… but you don’t want to hear about it.”
When she looked up into his eyes, all darkened and deep with tears welling and fists clenched, she wishes she could take him into her arms. She never did well with emotions, she doesn’t have the strength. “If you want to talk about it, I’m happy to listen,” he says slowly. “It might even distract me from my own problems at hand.”
She appreciates the gesture, and she appreciates that someone actually asked. But his almost-tears match her ones and she doesn’t know where to turn. “I think we both need a distraction.”
He sniggers. “Agreed.”
“Come back to mine, I'd love the company and I think we would both appreciate a movie and a sugar high.” She fakes a tough smile and blows a kiss to the wind to entice him with promises of slasher films.
He reaches into the air to catch it and places it in his pocket. “To food and great distractions.”
She wonders if he’ll go home tonight to his dad. And if it feels more like a home than hers does.
After three movies in a row and too many scoops of ice cream, the Pembrooke feels a little like home when it’s got someone who cares in its walls.
When he leaves, she blows another kiss to the wind for friendship. And one more to the hopes he’s going to rest easy tonight.
It’s midnight when he watches her wipe tables. It’s almost 2AM when he asks for another coffee, two sugars because; “you’re extra sweet, V.”
He touches on Archie briefly but she doesn’t really want to talk about him and Jughead’s incessant pushing of the topic makes his voice a little higher and his flexed-fingers-tick a little more prominent. “You love him, right?” He stumbles on his words when he doesn’t look at her.
Her heart cracks a little. She loves Archie because he’s sweet and kind and just her kind of change she was searching for in the new town. But there’s something in the way Jughead sits with her in the middle of the night and offloads his demons in exchange for her angels. She keeps them locked in the deepest part of her heart where she holds onto his understanding that he offers her. “I do,” she says, a little shallow, a little less meaning than she cares to admit. “Just like you promised I would.”
“I’m sure he loves you too, who wouldn’t?” He laughs nervously. “Your heart is so big, the sun has nothing on it, Princess. Your mind is so vast, people get lost in it.” He says it like a statement, an offhand comment. Nothing too important, nothing no one else wouldn’t say.
His words run off his honey coated tongue, his words stick to her like sugar on her fingers that she wants to lick - a little bit of him in her.
She shrugs them off but turns to him at the counter at Pop’s and blows him a kiss. “A kiss for you understanding my mind more than I do.”
He blushes. “I’ll take it,V.”
They meet in the hallway with books hanging from their shoulders. But he’s not in class and she really should be. Her reason being she overslept, his was probably to do with that Southside Serpents jacket he wore.
When she asks where Betty is, he doesn’t have a true answer. Veronica knows that’s half the reason he wasn’t in class either. “They’re the only family I have at the moment,” he sighs with a weight on his shoulders and his heart as well.
“You’ve got Betty as well…” she tries to remind him. She doesn’t think he heard her, or if he did, the noisy static in his mind is clouding him.
“Let’s skip class,” he says when a brand new spring in his step and a grin on his face.
“And what would Betty say to that?” Veronica asks, rolling her eyes.
Jughead pauses, his smile dropping. “I just want to have a conversation where I don’t feel guilty about every small aspect of my life, and every overwhelming one.”
Veronica doesn’t answer, but the moment she exhales, he sucks up air through his teeth. Forever in sync. “I better get to class, Jug. Archie is waiting for me.”
He nods, watching her walk away. “V?”
She turns to look with her hand on the door handle. “Jug.”
He blows a kiss to the wind. “A kiss for always being there just at the right moment. And talking me off the edge.”
She doesn’t say it, but she keeps the kiss for later. For when she’s all alone.
“I don’t regret it,” he says quietly. “Kissing you.”
“Well I don’t either,” Veronica laughs. “To even the playing field, it was the most natural progression in this lull of our relationships,” she says, straightening her shoulders.
They stand out on the balcony of Lodge Lodge, her with a coffee, him with a cigarette.
“It definitely made a difference in the lull.”
Veronica snickers. “Oh, I know.”
“We’re not so different, you and I,” he says quietly. “Like coffee and cigarettes. A perfect match.”
She doesn’t press the conversation, the kiss already sparked too much in her. Maybe they were a perfect match, like coffee and cigarettes - a jittery mess, a calming moment in time.
They both stand and he watches her blow a kiss to the wind that she doesn’t speak into existence. This time, it was a kiss to the match made in heaven.
The Serpent's protection came with a price. Jughead was around a lot more and it tore her very being into a million pieces that she wouldn’t ever be able to put back together.
Watching him under the dim lights of the Speakeasy wasn’t easy. Just as his eyes followed her behind the bar with a look that told her he felt the same.
But maybe, she reads too much into it.
Late nights at the Speakeasy held secrets that no one would ever want to know, they were hidden in spilt whiskey and Serpents fists.
They were hiding in the way Jughead flutters around her when it was just them two in the room.
Tears spill from her eyes, one for every battle she faces. And the pain that she held for Archie while he was locked away.
Jughead pulls her close, he inhales deeply in her hair and she clings on like she never wants to let go. Her tears feel like a hurricane when she finally unleashes and spills everything on her mind onto Jughead’s chest - and he, the eye of her storm.
When he leaves, he blows a kiss to the wind. “A kiss to never being alone.”
But she feels so alone when he’s gone.
It’s pure poetry that they should be standing outside the Pembrooke in the pouring rain. She wears silk and heels in a puddle that clings to every part of her body in the middle of a downpour. He takes off his Serpents jacket and places it over her shoulders. It doesn’t make a difference to the drop in temperature, but it makes a difference of sentimental value. Priceless.
When there should be words spoken, there are none. He didn’t ride all the way to the Pembrooke in the rain just to have her stand outside and wait for him so he could give her his jacket. “I just… I haven’t seen you in a while, V.”
There were always words unspoken. I haven’t seen you in a while because you’re avoiding me. But I’ve been avoiding you too. And we know there’s something happening. “Do you ever wonder what would have happened if things had worked out different at Pop’s that day?”
“When you arrived?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He lowers his head, runs fingers through his hair. “I shouldn’t have ever said you’d fall in love with Archie. I spoke it into existence.”
“He wasn’t the one I was looking for.”
“I know now.”
Things can’t change, and they never will. “In the next world, Jughead Jones.”
She blows a kiss into the wind. For what could have been’s.
“I just… needed to hear your voice.”
He’s unsteady on the phone, heavy sighs crackle over the line and she lays in her bed, eyes closed, heart tearing at the sound of him. As much as she should rush him off the other end, she finds it hard not to keep him there all night when he’s all black and blues that match with her whites and grays - and he deciphers the code of her heart with his snarky comebacks, understanding of her very being.
He just is and she just knows.
She doesn’t say anything when he murmurs; “I wanted to make sure everything is okay… I appreciate the payment, but he’s your father and I…” he sighs. “I don’t want things to be weird between us, Veronica.”
She squeezes her eyes tighter, not wanting tears to spill. She wonders if he can feel them, even from all the way on Southside. Her mind tells her that’s stupid, her heart sings loudly for him.
For the fact that he cares. For the fact that he understands.
“It’s fine, Jughead. Like I said, it’s Riverdale. This is the way it is.”
“No, V.” He falls static. “I wanted to protect you. I wanted to be straight with you. Hell,” he laughs without humour. “I just didn’t want you to go through any more of these spider webs and traps.”
She smiles to the ceiling, appreciating every single one of his scattered words. “At least you care, Jug.”
“Of course I do!” He says a little too stiffly to convince Veronica there were no undertones. “Veronica, I always care about you… I…” he trails off. “I care so much, it almost kills me.”
“Jug…” she says, tears edging on faster than she cares to admit, heart racing so hard she knows he can hear it.
“Veronica.”
“Bye, Jughead.”
Her smile on one end connects to his heart, a paper cup and string phone call of his heart telling her he loves her.
One spoken phone call of nothing in particular.
She looks to the window and blows a kiss, for words unspoken, for empty phone calls.
Veronica has smears of chocolate syrup on her apron, and pancake batter on her hands. Eyes kept on her, burning and questioning, but no questions escaped him and she couldn’t bare to ask for answers. Instead she let the glare set her alight, she let his sighs wash over her and let his eyes ask her a million things that she’d never reply to.
They shared a sadness, and that was enough.
She cleaned tables, she cleaned the booth that he sat at for four hours straight probably twenty times. That that was nineteen times more than she had to, and eighteen times more than she had mentally allowed herself. Every brush of her hand on his made her weak in the knees, hurt in the heart, burn in the soul. But still, they don’t speak. Words unspoken are better than truth-be-told’s. She doesn’t allow herself the luxury of spilling her entire world upon his ears. She doesn’t give him the luxury of telling her about the ballad of their love. Paper cup and string phone call directly from his heart to hers, it already tells her how much he loves her.
She wipes her forehead with her wrist as she hurried down the steps of Pop’s, rushing her way home, desperate to wash today’s grease and his heart broken stare off her.
She doesn’t even make it to the car park when his hurried steps follow her. “V!” he calls. “Wait!”
If only he knew how long she’d already waited. And how much longer she’d have to wait. He’d understand why she laughs at his words.
But she stops, and she waits. Just like usual. Just like she waits for his paper cup phone call every day.
Usually his words are so pretty on her, and they’re full of promises and now that she thinks of them, pretty fictional fairy tales. Most of his words are about how her mind fits with his and did she ever wonder what would have happened if they took that chance at pop’s that day? Chances were not taken and this is the hand dealt. Two souls meeting in the middle. Lost in the midst. Unsure of where to go.
Two souls, never one.
He stares at her with his jacket on and the collar pulled up, his hands in his jeans pockets and his heart on his sleeve. He doesn’t speak, and neither does she. She stares at him with a thousand words on the tip of her tongue and her heart making that phone call to his that she hopes remains unanswered.
No words are spoken, but she knows they don’t have to be. Millions float in the air, none of them voiced.
He reads them like a book on her body.
He sheds a tear. From the corner of his right eye. He kicks rocks that echo in the car park and when she finally turns away from him, she blows him a kiss to the wind that he catches and puts to his lips.
A kiss for goodbyes and yes, I do really love you but our worlds have collided and they never really rebuilt after that.
A kiss for love lost, or maybe it was never found.
He comes back to Pop’s every day. One coffee, quick and hurried before leaving. Sometimes with a burger, inhaled in a minute. Conversation is shallow and it hurts and it’s about Betty and Archie.
His laptop is always tilted in a way that she can’t see and he doesn’t disclose. They speak of light matters and small things.
Sometimes she’ll blow a kiss into the wind. For friendship to come back. For love. Because she misses it. But did love ever exist like she thinks it does? She doesn’t know, it was never spoken. She misses something, of that she’s certain.
Sometimes when she looks outside as he walks away with the Serpents on his back, she thinks she sees him blow a kiss to the wind too. Maybe it’s for love as well. Or for the rest of forever. Or the next life.
She misses something. She misses the kisses. Even if they were never on her skin.
Mornings are always hard and tiring. They pull her away from her life and strip her of her wants. She wants to stay home. To be surrounded by warmth and happiness. But, life moves on and being an adult comes with its burdens. Being a functioning member of society means getting up, getting ready. Starting a new day.
She hates when she leaves, but the days are so fast, she doesn’t even get a minute to breathe.
Archie demands more of her and the boys work hard enough without having Archie be in charge of their hard earned cash so she leaves, heart sinking, for another day at work. Another day of crunching those numbers Archie seems to drown in.
The air is still and warm and so is her heart when she hears Jughead say; “Blow a kiss for mommy, baby!” and so their daughter blows a kiss to the wind.
Their son doesn’t leave the house to say goodbye anymore, he’s eight years old and brooding like his father. But Veronica’s little girl clings on to her dad with eyes exactly like his, darkened hair and blows a kiss to the wind for love and family.