Chapter Text
“Betty.” She knows you’re aware of her name, dumbass. Jughead Jones shoots himself what he hopes is a winsome smile in the mirror—but his rictus overshoots winsome and lands somewhere around manic—and then reconsiders, his internal monologue raging.
“Betty, my dearest friend.” She’ll know something’s up the minute she walks in the door.
“Betty, how’s it hanging?” You sound like you walked out of a bad ‘80s movie. Try harder.
“Betty, I have something to tell you. Sit down, please.” Nope, sounds like you have a terminal illness. Don’t make her cry right off.
“Betts, guess what!” Don’t use her nickname against her, you numbskull. And don’t try to trick her into thinking you have good news.
Because he doesn’t have good news. He’s an imbecile, which isn’t news at all, certainty not to Betty, who knows him better than anyone, and none of this mess can be characterized as good.
“Fuck,” Jughead groans, trudging back into the kitchen, and sinking into a charmingly mismatched kitchen chair. “They look so cute like this!” Betty had squealed at their thrift store find. “Like they’re meant to be together!” And he’d heard meant to be together and before he knew it, he’d been loading them into his truck bed just to bask in the adoring shine of Betty’s eyes for another few minutes.
He pulls at his inky black curls, casts a resentful glare at his phone, as if this impending disaster is the phone’s fault and not his, for picking up when he saw his father’s name flashing on the screen, and then blathering like the simpleton he is. Betty isn’t due home for at least half an hour, affording him plenty of time to relive the events that had led to the pathetic roleplay that would almost certainly end up with his roommate mad at him—and rightfully so. Maybe she’ll storm out of the apartment and out of my life, he frets, and he yanks more on his protesting scalp, increasing the odds he’ll be bald before Christmas.
Alone, friendless, and bald. Sounds about right.
Still, he has to try to staunch her anger. He needs to keep her in his life, and he prefers not to think about why that desperation is so acute. Over the past three years, he’s built up a careful Betty Cooper shield, and he will not have it so much as nicked by his latest—and rather stunning—round of foolishness.
You know, taunts his overwrought mind, if you’d just told her the truth years ago, then this wouldn’t even be a problem.
He snaps back at the needling, if I’d have just told her the truth years ago, she would’ve donned a jetpack to get away from me.
He tugs his hair more viciously, molding it into lopsided spikes that stick out aimlessly in various directions, and tells his mind to shut the fuck up. It doesn’t listen. His mind is an asshole.
Jughead gives up on his pitiful attempts to form sentences that won’t make his roommate and best friend—and something else he will not name, nope—kill him in his sleep and sets about cleaning the kitchen and prepping dinner. Maybe she’ll be in the mood for leniency if she comes home and doesn’t walk into an apartment that should be condemned by the city.
Betty has left him a helpful set of instructions, and he follows it to the letter. He murmurs to himself, “chop tomatoes, mince garlic, wash lettuce, cut cucumbers and radishes, slice bread, warm oven, tell Betty you love her…” He cuts himself off, glancing anxiously at the door. That last instruction is not on Betty’s list.
It’s not on Jughead’s either, no matter how miserably he yearns for courage, opting instead for less-satisfying pining from afar—or as far away as he can get in an 800-square foot apartment.
Betty arrives just as Jughead is mentally cataloging everything he’s ever done wrong in his life—starting with everything Betty Cooper-related and then going backwards chronologically. He’s just finished flogging himself for the time he stuck a green crayon up his nose in first grade—he’d wanted to know if he could push it in one nostril and out the other—when Betty swans through the door in a blur of golden hair and a pink wool coat that perfectly matches the cold spot on her nose.
Her nose is so cute, pipes up his bastard mind, as if isn’t admiring Betty Cooper’s cute...everything during his every waking moment—and most of his sleeping ones. Do as you’re told, he growls silently (he hopes he hasn’t said that out loud, dear god).
“Are you telling those vegetables to do as they’re told, Juggie?” Betty grins at him as she hangs her (cute) hat and scarf on a hook by the door. “You can’t will them into submission, you know.”
Before he can stutter out some sad, halting explanation for why he’s gone insane in the roughly nine hours they’ve been apart, Betty (bless her for being her) throws her arms around him, squeezing him around the waist, and starts thanking him lavishly for getting dinner started.
He hides his own pink face—from blushing, not from the cold—in a dish towel. “I do this every night,” he reminds her. Except when she has a date, snipes his mind, apparently annoyed by Jughead’s earlier dismissal.
Betty bustles about the kitchen, gathering pots and pans to finish off what he’s started. “I know, Juggie, but I always appreciate it. It’s so nice to come home to you—um, my best friend—and not to an empty apartment.”
“It wouldn’t be empty without me, Betts,” he protests, wishing Betty was still hugging him. He jerks a thumb towards Betty’s cat, Caramel, who’s lounging, half-asleep, on the couch, doing a very convincing impression of a stuffed animal.
Betty looks up from her careful cheese slicing. “But Caramel doesn’t have your conversation skills, Jug.”
“Or my appetite,” Jughead admits, leaning around her to swipe a piece of Mozzarella. Betty smacks at his hand, but he’s too quick—he’s practically a ninja when it comes to eating.
“Jughead Jones,” she scolds, turning to regard him with a stern face that immediately turns fond when her mouth curls at the sides and her eyes sparkle with mirth. “Go sit in the living room while I finish up. At the rate you’re snarfing down my raw materials, there’s not going to be a dinner to speak of.”
“Fine,” Jughead whines dramatically, “I’ll go. You’ll miss me when I’m gone.” I hope, he thinks pathetically.
“You’ll be about eight feet away. Somehow I’ll carry on.” Betty hums a merry Christmas tune as she fills a pot with water and sprinkles in salt. She bends over to check on her garlic bread, filling the apartment with a mouth-watering scent and drawing Jughead’s gaze—always fixed on Betty regardless of circumstance, even when he’s eating, which used to be an activity worthy of his undivided attention—to the tempting curve of her ass.
His mouth waters at the sight. Down, boy, he flays himself.
Once Betty has plated the food, adding a cheery sprig of parsley to his plate (to sneak some vegetables in there, she says with a resigned sigh), and makes sure that she’s filled his water glass only halfway, since his long legs jostle the table and he’s prone to spilling, Betty assesses him with a shrewd eye from across the table, and says, “Okay, what’s up, Jug?”
“Up?” Jughead protests feebly with an unattractive choke, pretty sure a clove of garlic has lodged itself in his lung. “What makes you think something is up?” he asks, his voice squeaky, in an attempt to prolong the inevitable.
“Well, you spent most of the day texting me about your shitty day–”
“It was!”
“–and telling me you wanted nothing more than, how did you put it, to throw yourself on the couch and swoon like a woman in a Victorian painting–”
“I did!”
“–and yet I came home to find you puttering about, getting dinner ready–”
“I always get dinner ready!”
Betty lowers her chin and stares him down with the expression of a woman compiling evidence of his guilt.
Damn, she’s fucking smart, he thinks, both turned on and annoyed.
“–instead of playing emo music and typing furiously on your typewriter about your shitty day! And,” she stabs an asparagus spear for emphasis, “the apartment is clean! You are not a stress cleaner! That’s my job!”
“I just felt like tidying the place,” he lies, and she doesn’t buy it for a second. He has never, not once in his life, felt like tidying. He’s never once used the word tidying.
She passes the basket of garlic bread across the table as a bribe. “What’s up, Juggie?” she asks, half-sweet, half-menacing (her usual combo).
“What makes you think–”
Betty points her fork accusingly, an amused smile tugging at her lips. “What did you do?”
“Do?” he asks, his face the picture of innocence. “How could you accuse me of such–”
“Jughead Jones.” Betty narrows her gorgeous eyes and stares him down. “Tell me right now or so help me god, you aren’t getting any dessert tonight.”
“You wouldn’t!” Jughead gasps, clutching at his heart.
“I would!” she growls. “And I made crème brulee.”
Crème brulee is one of Jughead’s favorites—along with almost every other dessert on Earth. He swallows hard. “I was wondering if you’d like to go home for Christmas this year. With me. To FP’s. He called today.”
Betty blinks at him, momentarily depriving him of the pleasure of contemplating the specific shade of green beneath her eyelids, a color he’s never been able to capture in his writing—and he’s tried.
“That’s what all this was about, Juggie? You were nervous to ask me to spend Christmas with FP?” She rushes immediately to reassure him, misinterpreting the ashen look on his face. “I know I haven’t met your parents yet, Jug, which is kind of weird if you think about it, but I promise not to embarrass you or anything.” She bites her lip, and Jughead realizes in a rush why she’s anxious.
“No, no!” he blurts, nearly upending his water glass and flooding his dinner plate. “I’m not worried about you embarrassing me! I know Gladys and FP will love you! And Jellybean, especially Jellybean! They’ll love you!” In a different way than I do.
“Hmm,” Betty ponders, twisting her napkin, “are you feeling anxious because you want to bring a roommate home to hang out with your family? Or–or–oh, I know! You’re nervous about seeing Gladys and FP together again, and maybe you want a friend there for support! I totally get that! When my mom started dating again, I felt the same way! But you can fill me in on anything I don’t know before we go, so I don’t bring up any sensitive topics, and I’ll make sure to bake while I’m there! Oh, and we can grab a few nice gifts to ease any tension!”
God, I love you. The feeling washes over him, and he wonders if he’ll drown right here, with Betty working tirelessly to make him okay, to make him feel better, to make him loved and secure.
“Or…” her voice trails off again, and he curses himself for his sudden inability to speak. He’d spent an entire hour yesterday—60 minutes!—lecturing his high school film class, the uncultured swine, on Quentin Tarantino, and he cannot string together one sentence to reassure Betty Cooper that she would be the perfect houseguest, that she is the perfect friend, that she is perfect for him in a way he’d really never believed existed until she’d greeted him with an captivating smile in their very first college class, ensuring that she’d forever hold the softest parts of him in the palm of her hand.
“Maybe your parents aren’t thrilled about having an extra person for the holidays?” She wrinkles her brow, forming perfect crinkles around her eyes. “How did this idea come up, anyway? You didn’t invite me without their permission, did you?”
He’s on solid ground here, and he seizes the opportunity to stop gaping like a dying fish. “No, not at all! FP specifically invited you! He can’t wait to meet you! Gladys is planning a special meal and Jellybean is cleaning the whole house for you!”
“Well, then what’s the problem, Jug? They don’t mind having me and I’m happy to go. Why the shaking hands and the twitching lips?”
“They think you’re coming as my, not my roommate or my friend—I mean, not just those things. They think you’re my girlfriend. That they’re going to meet my girlfriend.”
Jughead has to give Betty the credit she deserves—like always. At his rather startling admission, she does not flip the table, sending a shower of garlic bread and cold pasta into his lap—even though he deserves to be wearing his food. She does not start shrieking and bellowing at his idiocy and thoughtlessness—although he has earned both descriptors. She does not laugh at the foolhardy notion that she could ever be the girlfriend to someone as unworthy as Jughead Jones—although, as Jughead knows, she would be right to find the insinuation funny.
Instead, she does the one thing Jughead wants most—and deserves least.
She leans across the table, carefully avoiding the butter dish and a pot of marina sauce that would surely ruin her pale pink work blouse, grasps his hand tenderly in hers, and says, “I can tell there’s a story here, Juggie. I can also tell you’re really upset at the idea of telling it. Why don’t we clean up a bit, get the dessert out of the fridge, and then we can relax under a blanket, and you can explain?”
Jughead knows it then, with a bone-chilling certainty that almost drops him to his knees in distress. I do not deserve this woman. Not in any capacity.
He tries to make up for his shortcomings anyway, scrubbing and soaping the dishes the way Betty likes, his arms elbows-deep in hot water, while the two of them pile the fridge with leftovers that Jughead will eat at 1am when his late-night writing binge makes him feel peckish, and at no point does Betty—compassionate goddess that she is—ask him why on Earth FP Jones thinks Betty is his girlfriend.
She retrieves the crème brulee, directs him to the couch, tucks her feet under his thigh, spreads her favorite blanket over their laps, and looks at him expectantly.
“Spill, Juggie,” she says, smiling at him, her eyes soft.
“FP called this afternoon,” he starts hesitantly. “He wanted to talk about Christmas. You know I haven’t been home since Thanksgiving last year.”
“Not since your parents got back together,” Betty remembers, squeezing his fingers beneath the blanket. “I’m surprised you even chatted on the phone,” Betty comments. “I know how much you hate, how did you put it, idle chit-chat.”
A ghost of a smile flits across Jughead’s face. He does hate idle chit-chat. He thinks now that he should’ve ignored the phone, like he usually does. But in Jughead’s defense, he’d just walked in the door, one of his more, let’s say, difficult students had spent an entire class period arguing with him about Stephen Spielberg, of all people; and he’d expected the phone call to be from Betty, having to do with dinner, so he’d picked it up without even looking, and said eagerly, “Betts, please say there’s garlic bread with dinner. I’ll beg if I have to.”
*
The person on the other end of the phone isn’t Betty. He knows that right away because Betty’s chuckle isn’t raspy and protracted.
“I’m not Betty, boy, sorry to say.”
Jughead doesn’t mind being called “boy” now. When he’d been growing up, “boy” had been growled as a warning before a bottle shattered over his head. Now FP said it affectionately, as a reminder that he had a son he loved.
Jughead loves his dad, but he’s sorry, too. Always sorry to be talking to anyone who isn’t Betty. “Oh, hey, Dad. Glad to hear from you,” he says, trying not to sound disappointed.
FP Jones is not fooled. “Sure you are. Don’t worry, this won’t take long. You can get back to Betty in a few.” Were Jughead thinking clearly—and not contemplating the delicacy of Betty’s collarbone—he would’ve noticed the way his father had said Betty’s name, like he knew something.
“She’ll be home soon. What’s up, Dad?”
“I’m calling about Christmas.”
“I’m still planning to head home a few days before, and then maybe stay until New Year’s Eve, if that’s okay?”
FP’s voice takes on a thick, hoarse tone, suddenly moved by the realization that his son actually wants to spend time with him. “More than okay. We can’t wait to see you.” Jughead is so busy calculating how many days we’ll have to be without Betty’s cooking—okay, without Betty—that he almost misses the end of his father’s litany about the preparations the Joneses have undertaken to get the house ready: a deep clean including professional carpet cleaners, a reorganization of the garage, grocery shopping, the whole nine yards.
“And your mother is getting the guest room ready for you and Betty.”
“Great, Dad,” Jughead murmurs, lost in a daydream about the curve of Betty’s neck when she’s bent over a book, and how he’d like to lean over and run his tongue upwards to her ear and… “Wait, what? What was that about the guest room?”
“Be sure to tell your mom how great it looks, okay?”
“Yes, of course, but–”
“I’m sure we don’t need to ask Betty to be polite to your mom. She sounds like a real sweetheart.”
Something horrifying and uncontrollable is taking shape in Jughead’s mind. But he can’t speak, can’t do much more than open his mouth and emit a sort of strangled groan, which his father, lost in his rhapsody about Betty, doesn’t hear.
“I want you to know, son, how happy we are to know that you’re bringing your girlfriend home to meet us. I can tell she means a lot to you. She must, the way you’ve been going on and on about her for years!”
“Well, Dad I–” Jughead has no idea what he’ll say, how to fix this, if it even is fixable.
“Jug, I have to say. I know we haven’t always had the kind of home you’d have felt proud bringing someone home to. I hope we’ve got that now. We’re really trying.”
Whatever words Jughead was about to form, whatever excuses he was about to make, whatever illness he was about to fake, he loses his will as soon his dad lowers his voice and admits that he he’s always known that Jughead had been ashamed of their family growing up, and that he’d had every right to be.
“I think you’ll really love, Betty, Dad,” he says, admitting defeat.
“You sure do,” FP chuckles, and Jughead is sure in that moment that he has utterly failed to conceal his true self, that everyone knows. Everyone except Betty.
“Is that Jug on the phone?” Jughead recognizes his mother’s gravelly voice, even though she’s across the room from his dad. FP surrenders the phone without complaint.
“What’s this I hear about finally getting to meet the famous Betty?” Gladys sounds good, great even. Bubbly and upbeat—and elated to meet the girlfriend Jughead decidedly does not have.
“I can’t wait for you to meet Betty,” Jughead says evasively. “She’s wonderful.” That much is true, at least.
“What’s that?” Gladys yells behind her. “Can’t you wait a minute, JB? I haven’t even begun teasing your brother yet!” Despite his hopeless situation—the hopeless situation he’s blindly walked into—Jughead grins. His family sounds so healthy, so domestic, and it’s what he’s always wanted for him, for them.
JB—don’t call her Jellybean—grabs the phone out of Gladys’s hand with a flourish. “Bro!” she almost yells. “You actually got a girl to go out with you!”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bean. I mean, JB,” he adds hastily, and JB lets it slide.
“And not just any girl. Betty sounds like an absolute angel.”
“She is,” Jughead says with a sigh.
“And she really wants to date you?” JB presses, a grin in her voice. “Has she seen your hair first thing in the morning? And that stupid-ass scowl you get when you’re lecturing someone on the fine art of moviemaking?”
“I assure you, Betty has seen me at my worst and still likes me.”
“Man, I’m going to have to grill her something fierce. Does she know she’s settling?”
“JB,” he says warningly. “You must be nice to Betty.”
“I’ll be plenty nice to Betty. Just not to you.”
Jughead groans. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“But seriously,” JB continues, a rare note of seriousness sneaking into her voice, “I’m so excited to see you. So much has changed around here. In a good way. You’re going to be amazed, Jug. We have the family we’ve always wanted.”
That means so much to Jughead that he feels a ball of emotion in his throat, and he’s barely able to manage a stifled goodbye to the sister he adores.
He allows himself a minute or two to ponder his amazement at the knowledge that his father is sober, his mother is content instead of forever restless, and his sister is thriving and fucking cool as Hell—and then he realizes the mess he’s made. He mutters a sharp series of expletives and trudges into the kitchen to try to make his colossal fuckup up to Betty as best he can.
*
Betty is still holding his hand, her fingers impossibly warm wrapped around his own. He gulps a drink of wine he doesn’t want and finds he can’t look her in the eye.
“I’ll repeat what I said earlier just in case you’re worrying about your sanity.” Or mine. “FP—all of them, really—are so enthusiastic about seeing me for Christmas. And they think I’m bringing you home with me. As my girlfriend.”
“Okay, so I did hear you correctly. Why would they think that?” Betty wrinkles her (adorable) brow in confusion.
Jughead can’t stall any longer. Betty is gazing up at him with a mixture of bewilderment and heartbreaking fondness, and he can’t stand the thought of losing the vulnerable look on her face—the one she shows she trusts him completely.
A look utterly incompressible shadows her face, and his mind races frantically trying to decipher it. There’s no anger there, or even irritation, for which he’s grateful, considering how moronic he’s been.
She doesn’t say a word about this folly, which is more than he’s earned—just like she is, friend or otherwise—but rather squeezes his hand, like she still loves him (cares for him, Jughead corrects himself sternly), and asks again, “Can I ask how they got that impression?”
Because I’m fucking in love with you, and everyone can tell! Even my father, who never noticed anything about me until about a year ago, when sobriety gave him some kind of creepy psychic powers!
He will not lie, Jughead resolves then and there. Not to Betty. He does, however, choose his words carefully. “We’ve been living together, and we’ve been hanging out for so long, and I tell them how great you are all the time, so they just assumed we were…something more.” All of this is true. There is no exaggeration in his explanation, or even evasion.
Betty cocks her head thoughtfully, sipping her wine and straightening the blanket with her free hand. Jughead misses her touch with an overwhelming sense of longing. “I really can see that,” she says slowly. “We’re always together—not just because we live together—and we’re so close.” Then she adds, dangerously, “I talk to my parents about you all the time,” and steps back from the precipice, adding too quickly, “because you’re my friend. I talk about my friends.”
“Of course,” he agrees, cursing himself for that spark of hope that flickered, dim but strong, in his abdomen, and then died.
“What do you want me to do, Jug?”
He starts with the easy part. “I’d love to have you come home with me for Christmas.” His face is smooth and unlined, heartbreakingly open.
“I would love to meet your family. I’ve wanted to meet them for years.”
“But your family…” he says hesitantly.
“Will have to get used to not always getting what they want,” Betty insists, firmer and more assertive than she truly feels.
Jughead remembers a teary-eyed Betty, her face wet and her eyes rimmed red, emerging from her room a few days earlier, browbeaten and defeated after another of Alice Cooper’s nitpicking sessions, a meticulous cataloging of Betty’s flaws and foibles.
Betty had attacked the evening’s dinner with a ferocity normally reserved for an execution, chopping vegetables and sprinkling cheese and muttering under her breath about how she’d gotten away but wasn’t free. Finally, once they’d sat down, glasses of alcohol at the ready—white wine for her and ale for him—she had shared the latest in Alice-drama.
*
“She just expects me to come home, Juggie! For every holiday! Remember when she made a huge deal out of Veteran’s Day?”
He’d remembered all right. Alice’s elaborate flag ceremony had been the talk of Elm Street—and of the Jones/Cooper 32nd Street apartment—for weeks afterwards.
He had also remembered the mandatory flag-planting for Arbor Day, but he’d thought it best not to bring that up, given the scary glint in Betty’s eye.
Swallowing a chuckle, Jughead had motioned for Betty to continue her rant. “And I know Christmas is a major holiday, I do, but I hate Christmas in that house! Nothing is fun! Everything is planned and perfect!” She’d spit out her least-favorite word with uncharacteristic fury.
“You don’t have to go,” Jughead offered, so softly she’d had to strain to hear him over the clinking of wine glasses against the table and silverware against the dishes. “I know it feels like you do, but you don’t.”
She’d considered his words thoughtfully, not saying anything else, but she had wondered what it might feel like to get to choose, to give herself permission to choose.
*
Now she seizes the opportunity for freedom.
“I’d love to go,” she says again. “I will go.” And then she adds, “as your…” and lets the unspoken question linger.
Jughead huffs out a breath. He’s not sure how to say this, how to say anything.
“They—shit, Betts—they really think you’re my girlfriend. They really want you to be my girlfriend.” I also want that.
“I guess you could tell them the truth,” she says hesitantly, hating the truth. “Tell them they misunderstood.”
“Or…” he stutters. “I hate asking this—and believe me, I know it sounds crazy—I do, but…”
She smiles softly. “You’re going to have to say it, Jug.”
Jughead groans. “Maybe you could–I know this is so weird, and I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t—if they didn’t—and I’m not sure how, exactly, we would pull this off, but—shit—maybe you could–would you consider, um, er, pretending to be my girlfriend? For a few days?” When she doesn’t answer instantly, but instead gazes at him inscrutably, he adds frantically, “You know what? What a thing to ask. I shouldn’t have made a suggestion like that. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to–”
Before he can babble more—and embarrass himself any further—she extends gentle lenience. “I’ll do it,” she says simply.
“You will?” He bobbles his beer glass, grabbing it at the last second to keep from soaking the couch.
“Sure,” she says blithely, aping a nonchalance she does not feel. “We know each other well, so they’ll probably buy it. And besides,” she works mightily to keep a tinge of bitterness out of her voice, “this is the closest I’ve gotten to a date in,” she groans, “years.”
Don’t feel like you need to change that, he thinks, and says, “Thank you. Thank you so much. There is no way I can possibly thank you.”
“You don’t need to, Juggie.” She pats him on the arm, allowing one moment to enjoy his firm bicep, warm beneath her palm.
“I’ve got to get a few things done,” she says, rising from the couch and averting her eyes nervously. “But we’ll talk more tomorrow, and we’ll make a plan about how we’re going to do this, okay?”
“Yes,” he agrees, nodding frantically. Anything you want. And I do mean anything.
She turns back on her way to the kitchen, smiling slowly. “We’ll figure this out. I love you, Juggie,” she says, her eyes soft and big.
I so wish you meant that in every possible way, Jughead thinks, both miserable and grateful.
I wish you knew how I really meant that, Betty thinks.
And then he heads to make his obligatory phone call to Veronica—groaning all the way. Betty returns to her messy kitchen and her sense of a moment lost. She’ll call Veronica later, after she’s staunched the overwhelming feelings of cowardice and of faint possibility.