Work Text:
time used to fly
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inspired by this fanart fran sent me
Archie unlocks his phone. He checks the messaging app, reloads Instagram, scrolls down a few posts, opens his directs, reopens the messaging app, but there’s nothing new since he last checked, five minutes ago.
Okay. Three minutes ago.
He takes a sip from the chocolate milkshake he ordered, but it tastes dull. He wishes Ronnie were here to share it with him. Sighing, he looks down at his phone again, just to see her face in the picture that he uses as a background screen. It was taken a couple of weeks ago — his last moment of happiness when he comes to think about it.
The two of them were in this same booth. She’s kissing his cheek in the picture. Archie still remembers the red print her lipstick left on his skin after the selfie was taken.
Sighing, he unlocks his phone one more time to rotate through the same apps. He wants to write her, but she hasn’t answered any of the messages he’s sent before. The advice Jughead gave him was to wait until she reached out because he needed to give her time to miss him. Jughead saw on an internet discussion thread thing that the No Contact Rule was the most important one to make someone miss you.
Veronica probably knew about that since she hasn’t spoken a word to him after since the fight, and Archie sure as hell is missing her.
Frustrated, he gets up to pay for the milkshake he won’t drink. He sees Betty and Reggie sitting together on a booth, drinking their own milkshakes, and Betty is giggling.
They don’t seem to notice him standing there.
“Anything wrong with your milkshake, son?” Pop’s asks when Archie shoves a five-dollar bill in his hand.
“They broke up, I’m telling you,” Archie freezes when he overhears Betty telling Reggie that. “Veronica hasn’t been in his house for two weeks and yesterday when I asked her if Archie was going to buy a tie to match her prom dress, she said no.”
Reggie is visibly shocked. “Are you saying that—”
“Yes. My plan is that you ask her first. When she says yes, I’ll comfort Archie.”
Archie clenches his jaw. Treacherous little— he can’t believe he ever called these two his friends.
“Archie?” Pop’s voice brings him back.
Ignoring the diner owner, Archie turns to walk straight where Betty and Reggie are still laughing at his demise. Their faces turn scarlet when they realize Archie heard their plans.
“Veronica and I didn’t break up,” he says, loud enough to catch the attention of other people at Pop’s. “We are just on a break to figure things out.”
Reggie makes a face. “Is she trying to figure out why she’d even date someone like you?”
“I’m sorry, Arch,” Betty says, placing a hand on Reggie’s wrist. “I just thought that since she never stopped by your place again… And since she was making eyes at the Water Polo captain during the last match…”
Archie feels the anger heating up his face. He turns around to leave the diner. In the background, he can hear Betty say something like she doesn’t understand you, Archie! but he ignores it.
“I don’t know why you come to me with relationship trouble,” Jughead says, shoving some chips in his mouth. “My best advice is always get a burger, let it go.”
“You don’t understand, Jughead. I can’t let it go! I can’t eat, I can’t— this life doesn’t make sense without Veronica.”
“That’s a lot.”
Archie sighs, hiding his face in his hands. He feels helpless. He’s tried calling her again, breaking his No Contact Rule, but she didn’t answer. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if Veronica is really moving on before even breaking up with him for real. He’s been waiting for her signs but what if they never come?
“Jesus, okay. You’re really hurt,” Jughead says, giving a pat on his back. “What even happened with the two of you?”
“We had a fight about the future.”
Jughead frowns. “About the future?”
“I said that I’d go to Pop’s forever,” Archie answers, flashbacks from the fight coming back and weighing down his shoulders. “I said that I’d be there eating burgers when I’m thirty. And Ronnie thought I disregarded the twenty-year plan she made for us… According to it, when we’re thirty we’re supposed to be in New York and expecting our first baby. She wants it to be called Luke if it’s a boy and—”
Jughead snorts. “Oh boy. You two fought because you couldn’t remember what she had planned for the hypothetical next twenty-years of your lives?”
Archie runs a hand over his face. “I shouldn’t have excluded her from my future,” he admits. It was what Veronica told him. I love you, but I can’t be with someone who won’t include me in his future. “Now prom is in two weeks and the sharks are all swimming around her like she’s chum! As if Reggie Mantle or the Water Polo captain could treat her right!”
“Okay, buddy, let’s take a deep breath,” Jughead says with a hint of amusement in his voice. “If you really want Veronica back and No Contact isn’t working—”
“It’s not working because she’s really not contacting me, Jug!” Archie says, exasperated.
“Okay, okay. I’m going to help you out. If No Contact isn’t working, we have to come out with the big guns…”
He reaches out for his laptop. Archie watches curiously as he types something in Google, “10 most romantic movie scenes of all time”. Archie frowns, not really understanding what Jughead is trying to do as he scrolls down a list that consists of many romcoms from the 90s and 80s.
“Okay,” Jughead says, apparently finding something interesting in the list. “Any songs that make you think about Veronica?”
The plan is probably dumb. He doesn’t look like John Cusack and he doesn’t have a boombox — there was one in his father’s garage, but finding batteries for it proved itself impossible in such short notice, and he didn’t really know how to record a cassette tape — but, at this point, Archie is desperate.
Jughead somehow synchronizes two JBL Bluetooth speakers to his phone and says he’ll stay hidden and press play at the right time. Evening falls around them as Archie stands in front of the Pembrooke, gathering the courage to do what he’s supposed to. If Veronica won’t answer his texts, maybe she’ll listen to what he has to say.
He takes a deep breath and holds up both speakers as high as he can. Jughead probably sees it as a sign to press play, and the speakers vibrate in his hands as they start playing My Whole World Stopped Without You in their highest volume.
They danced to that song last year, during junior prom. Archie hopes, with his heart tight, that she remembers it.
The song is halfway done when anything happens.
At this point, Archie’s heart is beating so fast and his arms are starting to hurt. He doesn’t know if she’s home. Maybe she isn’t. Maybe she’s out on a date with the Water Polo captain. Maybe he’s lost her forever because he couldn’t explain that she was — and is — his forever.
His eyes start welling up at the possibility of never holding Veronica again.
But then, the door at the Pembrooke opens and he sees her.
Archie feels like dropping the speakers and running to her, but Veronica has her arms crossed in front of her chest, somewhat uninviting. He perseveres, holding the speakers even higher, hoping that she can see it in his eyes how much he misses her and loves her.
The song says, no matter the way that I go, or how hard that I try, no difference who is to my side if that who is not you, and Archie silently begs and pleads for her to come back to him.
Veronica looks mildly annoyed when she exhales deeply, letting her arms fall to the side of her body. Archie thinks it’s a sign that she might be giving him an opening. She takes a step out of the building and then another one, quickly looking at both sides before crossing the empty street towards him.
The song ends and Archie is fairly sure that he’s got cramps on his arms when he lets them down, but it doesn’t matter when she gets closer to him than she’s been the past week. She tilts her chin up, sharp eyebrows knitted together.
“I’m only here because Daddy told me to stop you from embarrassing us in front of the whole neighborhood,” she says. Archie can’t help but feel a smile come to his lips. He knows her. He knows his girl, and that’s not why she’s there. His plan worked.
She’s trying hard not to smile back at him.
“Will you listen to me this time?” He asks, hopeful.
Veronica tilts her head even higher. “Well, I could’ve listened from the moon with how loud those things were.”
“Veronica, I’m sorry,” Archie says. “I’m so, so sorry, angel. I love you. When I said that I’d still be at Pop’s when I’m thirty I was imagining you and me sharing a milkshake, your baby bump under my hands, wedding rings on our fingers. I am so in love with you. Please, forgive me for—”
Her bottom lip sticks out in a soft pout. Archie stops talking when he notices that her eyes are welling up too. “I forgive you, Archiekins. I was just waiting for you to come to me.”
Archie smiles, feeling a wave of relief taking over his body. “So you’re not going to prom with Reggie, and you weren’t hitting on the Water Polo captain?”
Veronica seems confused. “What?”
That’s enough of an answer for Archie.
His smile widens and he comes closer to her, tentatively leaning in to kiss her. Veronica smiles and meets him halfway, tiptoeing to reach his lips. When they kiss, all the time he’s spent without her seems to disappear, and oh, how much he loves her. She’s the love of his love. She’s it. She’s the one.
Veronica wraps her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss. Archie holds her waist and lets go of the speakers in his hands—
“Fucking hell, Archie!” Jughead comes out from where he was hiding, running towards the speakers that just fell to Veronica’s feet. “You’re going to pay for those!”
.