Chapter Text
Archie, Jughead and Betty have been best friends all their lives.
That’s their origin story, isn’t it? Every good story needs a compelling background and here it is – the three best friends from Riverdale, the town with pep! Growing up together, ready to face Riverdale High and then enter adulthood together.
But Jughead’s life isn’t a novel. And if he isn’t honest with himself then who will be? The truth is this: Jughead and Betty have been best friends with Archie Andrews all their lives.
When Jughead was young, Betty Cooper was not his friend. No, Betty Cooper was Archie’s friend – Archie’s other best friend. At best, they tolerated each other. They tolerated each other for Archie’s sake.
Betty thought he was quiet, moody, and pretentious. He thought she was stuck up, privileged, too girly.
They spent years locked in a silent battle for Archie’s attention, each trying to stay one foot ahead of the other. Betty had the territorial advantage, of course. Betty got to live next door. She got to be there day and night (but never for sleepovers, Alice Smith aka Cooper would not allow it). But Jughead got to do the “boy stuff.” The stuff that involved setting up trenches in Archie’s backyard and shooting at invisible alien enemies over the fence. Stuff that made Betty blow air through her nose in frustration and stomp back to her house.
As they grew older, the competition between them softened. During summertime, it was almost forgotten. Summer was when they shined. The three of them spent nearly every day outside, biking, playing tag, and running through the sprinkler in Archie’s backyard. Fred Andrews played catch with them in the evenings and taught them how to kick a soccer ball on warm summer afternoons.
So Jughead and Betty tolerated each other, and maybe even came to like each other, but Archie was still the thing they had in common, the glue that brought them together.
And then it all changed.
Jughead can’t put his finger on exactly when it changed. He knows for sure it had to do with hitting puberty and hormones and bodily changes that he had no control over. Because suddenly instead of Archie’s other best friend, he was suddenly noticing things about Betty that he had never noticed before. Like her hair, and the way she smelled like flowers (Archie never smelled like flowers), and the way she started wearing those v-cut shirts where he could just see the swell of the top of her breast…
It was terrifying and exhilarating and embarrassing all at once. What if Archie noticed? What if Betty noticed? Betty was smart – she would definitely notice if he was staring at her all the time and started following her around and, anyway, he definitely could not follow her around or stare at her because that was creepy and wrong and Betty deserved to be respected.
When they started high school, Archie discovered sports. Suddenly, sports became Archie’s other best friend. First it was soccer and then it was baseball and then football, yes, definitely football, football was the one – and both Jughead and Betty were left on the sidelines, staring in.
They stopped going to Archie’s after school every day. They still saw him on the weekends, but now they had to share him with football practice and football matches.
Jughead lost Betty too, in a way. It was not like the two of them were suddenly going to start hanging out on their own if Archie wasn’t there. That wasn’t in the playbook. Betty adapted. She found Kevin – her new, other best friend.
And Jughead? Jughead had his writing and his booth at Pop’s. He didn’t need anything or anyone else.
Frankly, part of him was relieved. Less time with Archie and Betty meant that he could get rid of this - this feeling that kept swelling inside of him that terrified him. It meant that they wouldn’t discover it, his secret, his secret shame. If they didn’t discover it then they could all just keep going like nothing had changed.
But the feeling was exhilarating, too. It kept him going when his mother left and took Jellybean and stopped answering her phone. And his father stopped coming home or, worse, he came home drunk, yelling and swearing before passing out on the floor in front of his bed. It distracted him when he was hungry because his dad lost yet another job and he couldn’t make quite enough at the drive-in theatre to feed himself.
The best days were the days when it rained or it was too cold for football practice. Betty would march the three of them back to the Andrews’ house and make them do their homework. On those days, it was just the three of them again, there was no Reggie, no football friends they had to share Archie with. And Fred always made sure that there was plenty to eat.
But the best part was that he got to indulge in what was quickly becoming his favourite activity: watching Betty. She was very strict, very bossy, very convinced that Archie would fail out of school if she didn’t sit him down and force him to do his homework. Archie complained and hated it and tried to convince her to let them play Mario Kart first, just for a bit, and Betty, hands on hips, insisted the homework came first, Archie Andrews, and just how much would he like to repeat freshman year?
Jughead couldn’t stop himself from staring at her when she got like that, his mouth dry, and his heart pounding so loudly in his ears that he thought for sure Archie and Betty would hear it and find him out.
They never did.
The more she pushed them, the more Archie grumbled, the cuter she became, and the more he started having those thoughts – thoughts he had never had before about anyone. Thoughts that made him feel ashamed because Betty was his friend, and friends shouldn’t be thought of like that.
He tried not to look her in the eyes. When Archie grumbled about her forcing him to do homework, Jughead tried to grumble louder. He was sullen. He barely spoke to her and, when he did, he tried to make obscure literary references that he knew would make her roll her eyes.
Jughead was, he knew, the equivalent of an eight-year-old boy tugging on her pigtails in the schoolyard because he liked her.
But the thing was, Jughead wasn’t blind. He knew what was happening. While he was watching Betty, Betty was watching Archie.
It all made literary sense. Betty Cooper, the girl of his dreams, was not meant to love him back. Of course she would love Archie – who wouldn’t? Archie was kind and handsome and destined to be captain of the football team. More importantly, Archie grew up on the right side of the tracks – he lived in a proper house, not a trailer, and he had actual parents who loved him and looked after him. Fred Andrews never came back from a three day bender to vomit in the kitchen sink and pass out fully clothed facedown on the couch with the TV blaring. Archie Andrews was the type of boy that girls wanted to bring to Prom and introduce to their dads.
So Jughead had to keep it a secret, the crush (and that’s what he told himself it was, just a crush) because if she knew, if she found out… she would reject him. He would lose her, and maybe lose Archie too, and these precious days they still had at the Andrews’ house with lots of food and Fred Andrews looking after them and Betty in her tight sweaters… those days would end.
And Jughead had already lost too much.
****
“Whatcha thinking about?”
Betty’s voice breaks through his haze and he blinks down at her. She’s spooned across his chest, sleepy and relaxed. She’s still wearing his t-shirt and her hair is splayed out messily around her. He loves this look on her. He thinks she should always wear his t-shirts and wear her hair down and, really, she should just stay here with him in this bunker permanently. Why would they ever need to leave?
He thinks back to earlier – “You know you’re the only man for me.”
It had seemed like a good plan at the time. How to convince the rest of the town and the Preppies that he was really dead?
“What if I was caught kissing Archie?” Betty had suggested.
And they had all nodded and sketched out how it would work and how they would be caught and even wrote lines for Veronica to say when she confronted them in a very public way.
It was an act and it was an act that worked – so why can’t he stop the panic gnawing at him from the inside?
Betty is still waiting for him to say something. “Jughead?” she prompts, concern now furrowing across her brow. “Is everything okay?”
He smiles and curls a lock of her hair around his finger. “I was just thinking about what I would do if I lost you,” he says honestly.
Her face softens, eyes shining with love – for him, he reminds himself – and she says. “Good thing you never have to worry about that.”
He presses a kiss to her forehead and breathes her in. “Good thing."