Work Text:
“Are you sure?” Betty checks. “I don’t mind walking.”
“Baby, that rain’s torrential and you could do without the extra few yards.”
She’s not going to dispute that one - it always seems to be raining when they’re back in Riverdale.
“I’ll wait for you inside,” she says. “There’s an umbrella in the trunk.”
“Always prepared,” he grins with a wry shake of his head. “Always prepared.”
“Betty!” Veronica Lodge-Mantle shrieks as she makes it inside to the foyer. “Look at you!”
She’s most used to that phrase meaning look how big you are but she smiles anyway because her one-time best friend means well and is, quite clearly, pregnant herself. Veronica has married Reggie Mantle, of all people, and lives in a rather ostentatious apartment on the Upper West Side. Betty has learned this through social media rather than word-of-mouth, and is still surprised that Veronica hadn’t married Archie Andrews.
They were too different in the end, she’d told her the night they broke up, the two of them drinking too-expensive wine out of Veronica’s father’s collection. It had tasted bitter, Betty recalls, and she’d been disappointed. At the time, she’d imagined they’d looked like those girls in movies, curled up on a leather couch in front of the fire analysing where things had gone wrong. Of course, in reality, they had been two teenagers in pajamas and thick bed socks, lamenting something they thought was repairable.
Being different - too different - never worked.
She knows that now too.
Joining them a few minutes later, his shoes now splashed with brown from the puddles in the parking lot and apologising for shaking water off of his umbrella, Betty smiles as she watches him.
“This is my husband,” she tells Veronica. “Christopher.”
They all weave around the gymnasium introducing each other’s spouses; asking polite questions about work and family and where they live. Not once does anybody bring up that time Jughead Jones bet he could take her virginity and Betty is surprised at her relief.
They’re all older and wiser now after all.
It’s a little after nine when she sees him across the room. His hands are still dark with ink and she thinks there might be the hint of a tattoo rising above the collar of his button-down shirt. He looks less threatening than he used to, she thinks. Less dangerous.
And yet, she finds herself slightly nervous when he crosses the polished floor towards her. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How are you?”
“I’m good,” she replies, the conversation stilted and a little awkward. Predictable. “You?”
His lips quirk like it’s a habit. “I’m good.”
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she admits. “Dances and things like this - they were never really your scene.”
He grins and his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Still aren’t.”
“So what are you doing now?” Betty asks, noting that although he still looks good (has never looked anything but) his face has more lines than she’d expected; darker bags than she’d expected, almost as though he’s older than his twenty-eight years.
Jughead’s smile turns wry and he pushes his hair back from his face despite the fact it hasn’t yet fallen. Maybe he can sense it. “Trying to decide whether or not coming here was a bad idea.”
She raises her eyebrows at him and he chuckles. “That’s not -”
“- what you meant. I know.”
Betty finds she’s smiling too.
“I work at the garage mostly,” he says. “Body shop work. And I still have the Wyrm Hole with Sweet Pea.”
There’s the beginnings of a lump in her throat: she finds that she’s a little sad for him - that he never made it out.
“But hey,” his tone is jovial, but Betty can tell it’s covering something. “At least I didn’t become my dad.” She’s not entirely sure what he means, but then he elaborates. “Laid up
in a hospital bed waiting for a new liver.”
A sigh she doesn’t mean to give escapes her mouth. “I’m sorry, Jughead.”
He shrugs. “Not entirely unexpected.”
“Still.”
“What about you?” he asks, taking a sip from his drink. It doesn’t seem to contain any alcohol. “What do you do?”
“I run a business - specialty cakes.”
“Wow Betty, that’s…” his smile is wide and he looks genuinely happy for her. “That’s really great.”
“Thank you.”
“In Boston?”
She nods. “In Boston.”
“And you’re obviously…” he trails off, gesturing in the general direction of her burgeoning bump. “Congratulations.”
Her hands automatically go to rest on her protruding stomach and she can’t help but smile. “Thanks. It’s our second.”
“Second? Wow!”
“Yeah, Ella’s just turned two, and this one’s due in May.”
His eyes very obviously note the rings on her left hand and she suddenly feels rather conspicuous. “What about you?” she chances. “Do you have -”
“- A son,” he says with a smile. “Luca.” He proceeds to take out his phone and show her the series of pictures he has of a dark-haired, dark-eyed mini-him. “He’s three.”
“He looks just like you,” Betty says.
“I know,” he laughs. “Poor kid. You have any pictures of...”
“Ella,” she reminds him. “Yeah, I… hang on.” She fishes for her phone in her purse and pulls it out, showing him the shoot they had for their last holiday card.
“She’s beautiful,” Jughead tells her. “She looks just like you.”
A pause passes between them, and Betty guesses he’s thinking the same as her in that moment - that they could’ve had this together. Except, of course, they couldn’t - not really - and everything as it is now is for the better.
“Betty, there you are!” she hears Christopher’s voice smiling, and she turns right as he plants a kiss on her cheek. Jughead is still looking at her and she sees something in his eyes that she really hopes isn’t regret, but it leaves as quickly as it came and she doesn’t try to figure it out.
“Christopher Jones,” her husband says, extending his hand.
Betty watches as Jughead takes it in his own, eyebrows raising in that way he always did when he found something ironic.
“We share the same last name,” he smiles.
“You must be Jughead then,” Christopher replies.
He nods. “For my sins,” and then appears to frown after saying so, the air around the three of them suddenly feeling less comfortable.
“I’ve heard a lot about you. It’s good to meet you,” her husband returns in that warm, quiet way of his, and Betty squeezes his arm fondly, because he knows it all - that stupid teenage infatuation she still thinks was probably love - messed up as it was.
Jughead pushes that same wave of hair that still hasn’t moved back over his forehead. “I should leave you guys to it. It was nice to meet you.” He nods at Christopher. “And it was great to see you Betts.”
They part with her now-rarely-used nickname hanging in the air, and she takes slow sips of her sparkling grape juice until all that’s left is ice.
They catch each other’s eye at various points throughout the night, each time resulting in those awkward smiles people give when they don’t know what else to do, and it continues in this way until, a little after ten-forty, Betty watches him leave through the gymnasium’s double doors.
-
The car starts on the second attempt, which is good-going, Jughead figures, for a cold, wet night.
It’s her tattoo he thinks about on the drive home. He wonders whether she still has it (figures probably not) and isn’t particularly surprised when his brain manages to recall exactly where on her ribcage it sits. If he tried, he could probably draw it from memory; get each scattered petal in the right place.
He can draw it from memory, he supposes. He has his own dandelion clock after all, a slightly larger one clinging to his back; hidden, whilst he’s clothed at least, from view.
The rain lets up a little just after he passes the turning for Sunnyside, and by the time he pulls onto the driveway, only the mist is left to dampen the air.
“Hi Taylor,” he says, tossing his keys into the dish on the kitchen counter. “All okay here?”
“He was out like a light,” Sweet Pea’s younger sister smiles, flicking off the tv. “Although that might’ve been something to do with the sugar crash.”
Jughead chuckles and pulls his wallet from his back pocket, fishing out a twenty. “Here you go. You need a ride?”
“No it’s fine,” she replies. “It’s only ten minutes. And thanks, by the way.” She holds up the bill. “Nearly got enough for that field trip to D.C.”
He knows she doesn’t say it for anything other than something to say, but he finds himself pulling the ten dollar bill he didn’t spend on soft drinks tonight out of his wallet too.
“Good luck with the rest,” he says, after Taylor slides it into her pocket, and stands with the front door open so he can watch her safely down the street until she’s out of view.
The cold air tempers the living room, but he’s headed for bed anyway.
Luca is fast asleep and clutching his stuffed dog when Jughead peers in, the crack of light spilling over his little cheeks.
“Night bud,” he whispers, smoothing back the dark waves so he can kiss his son’s forehead before flicking on the nightlight - just in case he wakes. They’ve been living here as opposed to the trailer for close to six months now, but he still doesn’t want to take the chance that Luca will wake in the night and be frightened about where he is. The house, though small by usual standards, is still bigger than Ginger’s place, and there are stairs too.
The last thing he wants is a late-night trip to the hospital.
Jughead takes off his jacket once all of the lights are turned out - barring the little night light by his son’s bed and his own bedside lamp. He hadn’t quite been sure what to wear tonight: his faithful sherpa hadn’t seemed quite proper enough (meaning his old Serpents jacket would definitely be out too) and he’s never been the kind of guy to own a suit. His only other choice had been the relatively new dark blue one he’d gotten for Luca’s naming day.
He strips to his boxers, washing his face and then brushing his teeth in the bathroom adjoining his bedroom. It’s a luxury that he still appreciates each day - this tiny space solely for him - and he dries himself off with the little towel hanging by the sink. He thinks suddenly of the bathroom in the motel he stayed at outside of Buffalo; remembers the knock on the door which continued until he finally dared open it; remembers too, Betty’s face at the other side, red and wet in the driving rain.
And then they’d shared that bed and she let him hold her and he told her he loved her once she’d fallen to sleep.
Jughead recalls the day he’d finally come home - that little white sundress she was wearing which showed off her legs and chest and shoulders - and Betty had told him, unashamedly, that she’d waited long enough. He gets it now, why the movies make such a big deal out of reunion love scenes.
Inside of his boxers, his dick stirs at the memory of what the two of them had done after that: the bathroom of that motel off I90 and the front seat of his truck and the river in that town he still doesn’t know the name of during those glorious few weeks in the summer before junior year.
He strokes himself until he comes in his hand over the toilet, then puts the images of Betty Cooper naked on top of him to bed. Briefly, he wonders what she’d make of her high school boyfriend fantasizing about her all of these years later.
(No doubt she’d find it rather depressing, he concludes)
-
Betty isn’t expecting to see him the following day, and from the look on his face, Jughead isn’t expecting to see her either. Still, the town has only one park with a swingset, slide and climbing frame, so it’s not entirely implausible that they’d run into each other at Elm Street Park.
“Hi,” he says with a kind of amused grin, offering a disregarded “be careful!” to his son who’s already clambering up the steps to the slide.
Betty is pushing Ella on the swing - one of her little girl’s favourite treats - and she watches as the dark haired little boy makes it to the top and then hurls himself down.
“Oh gosh,” she gasps, and Jughead chuckles.
“No sense of danger.”
“Boys, huh?”
“Ah, come on Betts,” he says, like using her nickname is nothing. “We were all like that once.”
Not me, she thinks, but then reconsiders. She says nothing.
“Mama,” her daughter says, pointing towards Luca who begins his ascent again.
“You want the slide?”
“Yes,” she replies. “Slide.”
She stops the swing and hoists Ella out of the seat, holding her by the hand so she can walk to the slide. It’s higher than she might usually let her go, but Luca turns round expectantly when he reaches the top.
“Watch, daddy,” he instructs, and Ella follows his lead.
Betty watches her old boyfriend kneel so he’s at his son’s level; listens as he explains that Ella is smaller than him and therefore he must be careful.
“Thank you,” she says. “I’m trying not to be a helicopter parent but...”
“Nothing wrong with making sure they’re safe,” Jughead says. “Never thought I’d be the kind of guy who debated buying a stair gate.”
It doesn’t surprise Betty though. “Did you?”
He looks confused, so she elaborates. “Did you buy the stair gate?”
“Oh,” he pauses as he watches Luca crawl into the tunnel, Ella following close behind. “No. I bought a dog-shaped night light instead.” He half-laughs. “I think he was pretty much past the stair gate by the time we moved.”
“I spent a fortune on baby-proofing the house,” Betty says. “Christopher hadn’t even heard of half the stuff I bought.”
Jughead raises his eyes with a wry smile. “He and I both.”
“Your…” she trails off, having noted no ring on his left hand. “Partner do the same?”
He shuffles his feet, eyes fixed on the two children running for a second go in the tunnel. Ella’s hat slides over one eye but still she continues running, unsteady on her feet and likely to trip at any given moment.
“It’s just me,” he says quietly. “His mom, she’s not really…. It’s just me.”
“Oh.” She’s unsure of how to reply. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “Wasn’t looking for sympathy. We’ve got a good thing going - I think.”
Betty hopes there’s a smile on her face. “You’re at the park and it’s freezing,” she decides aloud. “I’d say that’s better than good.”
“We come every day. Kid’s already better than I ever was at gym class.”
He’s joking, she knows, but there’s a tone to his voice that makes her feel a little sad. She wants to ask who Luca’s mom is but of course she doesn’t. She wants to ask what happened to her (to them), but again she keeps quiet.
-
He’d expected that their goodbye at the park was the final one. Other than a possible chance meeting in the future when she comes to visit her parents, Jughead had assumed he wouldn’t see her again.
And yet -
“Well look who it is,” Jughead hears Pop smile, “And with your own beautiful young lady no less.”
He knows it’s her even before he turns in his booth to look. Her daughter really is the image of her, he thinks. Blonde-haired; blue-eyed; pristine in a pink coat that buttons up at the front and has bows at each pocket. She looks so much like Betty that absently, Jughead wonders why they didn’t just name her Elizabeth.
“They should’ve done this reunion earlier.”
Betty catches his eye and smiles, hoisting Ella onto her hip so she can see over the counter.
“Now you be careful there,” Pop warns kindly. Jughead is inclined to agree, and it’s only then that he realises he’s staring. Turning back to his burger, he takes a large bite and watches his son dunk a fry in an unholy amount of ketchup.
“Hi.” Betty takes a seat at the table beside Jughead’s.
”You can join us,” he finds himself saying. “If you’d like.”
“Pop gave me two straws,” Luca announces, directing his information at Ella. “You can share.”
The little girl is unsure and looks to her mom for a reaction. “Say thank you,” she prompts, and Betty’s tiny clone does as she’s told.
Jughead watches as she’s helped out of her coat and hat, her cheeks rosy with the cold outside.
The children sit together, kneeling on the faux-leather of the booth so they have enough leverage to drink Luca’s strawberry milkshake through each of their straws. An unwelcome thought creeps into his mind: something about an alternative reality where these two children share the same last name for a different reason, but he shakes it out quickly before it can establish any roots.
Ironic, he thinks, that Betty has his surname, and yet it’s not he who has given it to her. He wonders whether she ever reflects on that.
(He doubts it)
Pop brings her burger and fries alongside a glass of water and a small orange juice for Ella and Jughead watches as Betty slices the bun into quarters. She smoothes out a napkin so that the creases are only marginal, and then sets one of the quarters down for her daughter.
“I promised her a burger here,” she tells Jughead by way of explanation. “She saw the lights the night we arrived and I told her we’d come before we went home.”
He ignores the strange sensation in his stomach and makes a joke about portion control instead.
“The salt,” she tells him, and yet eats one of the quarters herself anyway. He smiles.
“Your husband didn’t want to try too?”
“He’s packing the car.”
Jughead nods, and then, with something of a proud smile she adds, “He’s training for a triathlon so this kind of food is off-limits.”
A triathlon, he thinks. Of course.
He watches his son and Betty’s daughter share the milkshake, feeling more wistful than he’d care to admit. He thinks of leather jackets and short sundresses; thinks of Betty’s long, lithe legs and decides that’s inappropriate too.
I thought you’d have visited more, he wants to say.
“More fries please mama,” Ella requests.
Luca, not to be outdone tells her, “I can eat a whole burger by myself.”
“He started young,” Jughead says. “My cooking skills are… uh… limited.” He recalls in his mind the one time he tried to cook them both dinner - chicken pasta - and the horrific state of the trailer’s kitchen when Betty had arrived, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the charred frying pan. “But you know that.”
He figures she must be remembering the same memory because she smiles ruefully. He expects her to say something but she doesn’t.
A few minutes later, the bell of the door chimes and Ella looks up from the second quarter of burger Betty has allowed her to have. “Daddy!”
Jughead turns and sees Christopher heading towards them, the markings of an expensive wool coat visible at the cuffs.
He joins them, sliding a chair from the table Betty had originally decided to sit at, and steals a fry from Ella’s smoothed napkin.
“Daddy!” she shrieks and Jughead watches as he raises an eyebrow at Betty - one won’t hurt style - and she smiles, a different kind to the one she’d just given him.
“Do you want one of mine, dad?” Luca asks, and Jughead feels instantly guilty for wishing, just momentarily, that he hadn’t been so cold when she’d come home for the summer after her first year at Harvard. For wishing he hadn’t forced their inevitable breakup.
It’s worked out in the end though, he has to admit: Betty in her big house in Boston; her daughter and her husband and the life she was always supposed to have.
And he’s made it out too - kind of - or at least, just far enough.
The Joneses - Christopher and Betty and Ella and the unborn child in Betty’s womb - leave Pop’s and Riverdale in the comfort of a silver Mercedes which Jughead watches until he can no longer see the taillights in the fast-approaching dusk.
The other Joneses - him and Luca - head back to their house on the other side of town and he smiles at the burst of warmth that hits them both when they enter through the front door. A small luxury, but a luxury all the same.
It is, he concludes, how their story closes.