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The days after Riot Night were a long, bitter wait for FP Jones. He was at his son’s bedside as often as the hospital would allow, only leaving to shower, change, sleep… and, of course, to extract his pound of flesh from the Ghoulies at Pickens Park. He saw clearly, now, the monster that Penny Peabody was, and though he’d come down hard on Jughead for taking her tattoo, told him it was something he wouldn’t come back from, FP thought now that he’d cut it off of her too, if she still had it. After what she’d done, if FP got his hands on her, he’d put her in the ground.
The park had been a war zone, like nothing FP had ever seen. It was a bloodbath: faces bloodied by fists, guts holed on the point of a knife, the crack of bone giving way under the swing of a baseball bat (and FP is more than a little sure that he won’t be going to any ballgames for a long time to come because that isn’t an association he’s prepared to endure.) His hands weren’t clean, either. He got the pound of flesh he came for, with interest; there were probably people in this hospital right now because of him, or stitching themselves up in some bolt hole somewhere, might even be a few dead. There wasn’t any real way to tell when Ghoulies and Serpents alike scattered before the law when the fight broke up. All FP knew for sure was that he’d fought like hell.
Every Serpent who fought on that day had blood on their hands. FP had seen Serpents there who hadn’t turned up for a rumble in years, the kind who only surfaced for the occasional ill-advised karaoke night at the Whyte Wyrm to drunkenly warble some shitty hair-band’s power ballad that had sucked thirty-odd years ago when it was new. Even with the turnout, they were grossly outnumbered, and even with the disadvantage of numbers, they’d fought to the last man, and FP fought harder than most everyone else. Many embraced the chaos and adrenaline, but none could match his rage.
Except one.
That giant of a boy, Sweet Pea, who seemed glued to Jughead since the moment he joined the Serpents. He was a good match for Jughead, packing a hell of a punch, but able to be tempered by Jughead’s will. He seemed like a natural choice for Jughead’s second, should the time come. Sweet Pea was self-assured and content to follow orders, but always ready to step to a fight when challenged. Word was, Sweet Pea had taken on Archie Andrews, and by all accounts landed more hits than he took; privately, FP thought Archie had it coming after acting so far out of line that FP would have kicked his ass himself had it been his place to do so, and he hoped the boy learned something from it. But for all that FP knew Sweet Pea was quick to anger and fearless in a fight, he’d never seen anything from him like he did on that day.
The whole scene was chaos, and FP couldn’t possibly have kept track of any one person the entire time, but a guy that big was hard to miss. He’d seen the kid charge in with rage in his eyes and the flash of brass knuckles on his fist. Throughout the fight, FP caught sight of him again and again, busting more than one face with those brass knuckles without hesitation or mercy, and kicking the living hell out of whatever Ghoulie had the misfortune of being taken down. FP thought he saw him whipping a Ghoulie with a bike chain at one point, and he figured that if Sweet Pea had taken it off the guy first, turnabout was fair play.
FP had not realized that there were younger Serpents with that kind of fight in them, though plenty of them had been dealt a bad hand, but this kid was something else. He had a pretty good idea that when Jughead was skinning the Serpent tattoo off of Penny, Sweet Pea was probably the one holding her down. That kind of loyalty couldn’t be bought with any kind of money, and so, when the law showed up in force, it was Sweet Pea that FP grabbed by the jacket and hauled out of there before they were caught.
FP took him back to his trailer, and cleaned and stitched up an honest-to-god knife wound gouged into his belly. Sweet Pea drank the double of whiskey FP gave him and took the stitches without complaint, biting his lip against the sharp sting of the needle. The stitches were somewhat uneven but good enough to do the job, and FP was thankful that the wound hadn’t gone deep enough to hit anything major, though he shuddered to think of how close the kid had come to being gutted.
And then all hell had broken loose again , and they’d had to flee the trailer park along with everyone else as it burned. When FP came back, his trailer was still standing, but Sweet Pea’s was a smoldering ruin, so FP gathered up some of his own clothes for the boy. It seemed the least he could do.
It was done. The Serpents were left decimated, torn apart, homeless after going to war. For Fangs, who FP came to find out on his return to the hospital wasn’t dead, and for Jughead, who hadn’t wanted them to fight in the first place, and had bled for them for nothing.
The hospital staff told him that it’s a matter of when Jughead will wake, not if; when they brought him in, he was in shock due to blood loss on top of the beating he suffered. While the brain scan showed no bleeding, there was a hairline fracture of the skull which hopefully didn’t indicate anything worse than a concussion, itself a condition to be taken seriously but not enough to keep him unconscious for long. All that was left for FP to do was sit, listening to the beeps of Jughead’s monitors while he waited. A nurse knocked politely at the doorway, and FP looked up from his battered and broken son.
“Your other son is here to visit,” she said, and FP paused. That didn’t seem right, since he didn’t have any other sons as far as he knew, though who ever knew what was coming down the pike next in Riverdale?
“He says he’s Jughead’s brother?” she added, growing confused by his hesitation.
“Right. Of course,” he said, catching on as he realized it must be one of Jughead’s friends trying to get around the family-only visiting policy, though if it was Archie it was going to be a tough sell with the red hair. Not that it would stop that boy from trying; the kid was uniquely incapable of being able to tell when one of his ideas was a bad one. Something FP might need to have a word with him about, since some of those decisions had directly contributed to the conflict with the Ghoulies.
But FP soon discovered, as he stepped out of the hospital room, it wasn’t Archie after all but Sweet Pea who stood waiting for him. He looked strangely innocuous in his borrowed flannel shirt and blue jeans, hands tucked in his pockets to hide bruised knuckles, his Serpent leathers presumably left behind at the Whyte Wyrm to avoid being spotted and taken into custody. FP also didn’t miss the large, strategically placed band-aid on his neck. A Serpent never shed its skin, but getting into a hospital that had just seen a flood of gang violence necessitated some amount of subtlety.
“Hey, Sweet Pea,” FP said, stepping forward and catching the boy in a light hug to sell it, the nurse cooing softly as she apparently interpreted the name as a term of endearment for FP’s oversized ‘son’. He was only three inches taller than FP, and was trying to slouch a little so as to avoid standing out as much, but the difference still made an impression. There weren’t many people who could make FP feel short.
“Hey,” the boy responded hesitantly, placing an unsure hand on FP’s shoulder as though he wasn’t used to such displays of affection. And of course, FP realized,he wasn’t. FP hadn’t ever gotten the full story, but he was pretty sure Sweet Pea joined with the Serpents in a half-baked attempt to go off the grid and avoid foster care that had nevertheless somehow worked, and he’d joined at a younger age than most. (They had, in fact, assumed he was older at the time than he really had been, due to his stature.)
FP guided him into Jughead’s room with a hand on his upper back. It felt strangely like he wasn’t actually faking anything. The Serpents, what was left of them, were a family, after all, and in the past few years Sweet Pea had become a fixture around the Wyrm, at the pool table or leaned against a wall observing the room, often quiet but sometimes rowdy with the other teen Serpents, and spoiling for a fight he was apparently more than capable of delivering when someone decided to fuck around and find out.
It made for a shocking contrast to the boy that stood at Jughead’s bedside now. That youthful face FP had seen twisted up with rage and promising violence in Pickens Park was softened now, anger fled and leaving something hollow in its wake. FP had not expected visits from the Serpents, especially not with everyone trying to lay low. He seemed less sure of himself now, out of his element in a hospital crawling with police and injured Ghoulies alike, looking down on the still, battered body of his wounded friend.
“He’s going to be okay,” FP said, feeling more reassured now that he was reassuring someone else. “He just isn’t ready to wake up yet, is all, but they said he will soon.”
Sweet Pea nodded, letting out a shaky breath. He reached out, stopped, and pulled back, uncertain.
“... Can I?” he asked.
“Yeah, just watch his IV and his bandages and such,” FP said. Seeing the boy still hesitating, he added, “Well, go ahead, boy. I’ll just be over there.”
FP stepped over to the door, watching from the corner of his eye as Sweet Pea’s hand hovered over Jughead’s before coming to rest there, his gaze floating from one injury to another, lingering the longest on the bloodied patch of gauze bandage where Jughead’s Serpent tattoo had once been. His other hand he cupped lightly along Jughead’s jaw, his thumb stroking carefully over a bruised cheekbone.
“Christ, Jughead,” he whispered a little brokenly, bringing his forehead down to rest against Jughead’s own. “I would have protected you.”
His shoulders hitched with a soft gasp of breath, and FP suddenly realized the larger boy was crying, though making hardly a sound beyond his ragged breathing. He had both hands cupping Jughead’s face now, wiping away a few tears that fell from his eyes to Jughead’s skin. At last, he pressed his nose into Jughead’s cheek almost as though he was going to kiss him, but didn’t. Pulling back to look at his face, and said, tear-stained and fond,
“You better wake up soon, you pissy little shit, you hear me?”
Sweet Pea sank heavily into a chair at Jughead’s bedside, wiping his eyes, and FP came to join him, saying nothing about any of it. His visit had FP wondering if this big, ornery bruiser of a boy, with hands that made FP think of nothing so much as a large puppy not quite fully grown into itself even though he had seen the punches the boy could throw, might not soon become something a lot more like a real son.
And if Sweet Pea made it a habit to stick around, well, that was fine with him.