Archive of Our Own ^beta

The night after, Archie is so restless he can barely sleep. He gets sent home first, because he’s the odd one out in a room full of girls and it’s not like he can tell Cheryl I get how it feels. He wants to, almost—wants to offer something because he knows how isolating it is, how angry and alone you feel, and how much he’d wanted someone to tell him they understood—but it’s not the same thing, not really. Not to anyone in the room, at least, and he doesn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, so he tells her the most he can—we’re always here for you, if you need it—and leaves.

He only falls asleep for minutes at a time, waking up after seeing the Black Hood and Geraldine and sometimes both of them, a knife held to her throat, a gun to her head. He’s thought about her a lot since she died—it’s only been a little over two months since she left town, and five at most since she first approached him in her car, but it feels like forever ago. Long enough that everyone else seems to have forgotten, anyway, like it never happened at all.

In a last-ditch attempt at getting some rest, he throws his shirt at the other side of the room and pulls the blanket over his shoulders, willing himself to dream about literally anything else.

“Hey,” Jughead says. “You wanna talk about it?” There’s a heavy weight behind the it that only Archie can hear. He’s half-convinced no one will ever understand the way it sounds.

“Not really, no,” he answers, and Jughead nods, looking back out at the stars. They’re in Centerville, not at home—Archie can tell. There’s just something unidentifiable about Riverdale. He hardly leaves town to begin with, but when he does, it just feels different.

“I’m sorry,” Jughead continues. “If I made it seem like you were responsible for what Grundy did.” Geraldine, Archie corrects internally, a force of habit, before remembering that it hadn’t even been her real name—everything about her was a lie. “I wanted you to do the right thing about Jason. I guess I just never thought about… your feelings. About her. And what that meant for you.”

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it,” Archie repeats, more firmly.

“It’s just… I know,” he says. “I know that you’re kind of like Betty, in some ways. That you don’t like how people think you’re perfect. But being taken advantage of isn’t the part that makes you not perfect. It isn’t proof you’re a bad person.”

Archie almost laughs. “You know, Mrs. Cooper said that to me,” he says. “That that was the kind of person I really am. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Obviously it’s crazy,” Jughead agrees, “and it’s not true. And at the end of the day, you were going to come forward about what you knew no matter what, because you’ve never been some horrible, selfish person, Archie.”

“I don’t like you being my conscience. Can we talk about something else?” he asks. “What about how you’re mad at me all the time.”

Now it’s Jughead’s turn to look like he’d rather be somewhere else. “I don’t want to talk about us.”

“It’s my dream,” Archie says, “I should get to choose what we talk about.”

“Fine,” Jughead says, not looking at him. “You knew I was going to say it.”

For a scenario conjured up by his own subconscious, this really keeps backfiring on him. “No I didn’t,” Archie responds, too rushed to sound believable. “What are you talking about?” Jughead glances over at him then—his expression is blank, but there’s a knowing glint in his eyes.

“You knew,” he repeats, more sure of himself. “I bet you think this is when it all went wrong. Jason, the gunshot, Grundy. The missed calls.”

“Geraldine.”

“I’m not calling her that,” Jughead tells him. 

“And it is,” Archie says. “If I had just gone with you, none of this would’ve happened. I mean, it wouldn’t have involved me.”

“But you were scared,” Jughead continues. “You were scared of why I wanted us to revive old traditions, that it was just going to be you and me and not us and our dads like it used to be. We’d been wrong for months already, and you knew it. You didn’t want me to say it. You didn’t want to admit things had changed.”

“That’s not true,” Archie tries, because it’s not, it’s not the only reason he’d ghosted him—maybe if things had been different with Geraldine, maybe if he’d been different… it all circles back to him, Archie thinks, and how every time he fails at being the person everyone else wants him to be.

“Don’t you want things to go back to the way they were?” Jughead asks. “Don’t you wish it could all just be simple again?”

“You loved me,” Archie says, a statement and not a question. Jughead gives him a smile that just looks sort of sad.

“Not the kind of thing you can say inside Riverdale city limits,” he says.

“Jug,” he starts, but he’s not really sure where the sentence ends: an apology, a confession, a rejection. All three, maybe.

“It’s fine,” he says, cutting Archie off. “Forget about it.”

Archie’s Friday morning starts way too early for any normal person who’s had the night he has, with his phone ringing a couple minutes after six. His head hurts already—even before he’d headed to the Pembrooke at Veronica’s late-night call, he’d been sitting at a diner stool, vaguely testing Pop’s threshold for letting totally-not-upset-at-all teenagers stay without buying anything. (Of course Pop hadn’t cared; he’d simply set a cup of water next to him with a pat on the back.) He takes twice the regular dose of Advil, just in case it’ll help.

Betty’s the one who calls him—something about the Black Hood, something about having given him Nick St. Clair’s name. She meets him on Elm, still wearing the same shirt he’d seen her in last night, and Archie can’t help but feel like these are problems they were never supposed to have. She’s done with the Black Hood, she tells him, but he doesn’t really get that. If it was him that was getting the calls, he’d do anything to get to kill the guy himself.

He doesn’t tell Betty this, of course. Betty is good at control in all the ways Archie isn’t, is good at order and discipline and not being impulsive. She’s good at creating an image for herself and acting it out. 

So it’s a wonder, really, that she just blankly stares through the window of Pop’s at Jughead and—she must be the one female Serpent he’d mentioned offhand, Toni, Archie remembers distantly.

Betty gives a pointed look to his hand on her arm. Archie wonders if she thinks it’s about her, because Archie has been there for her a lot recently, and he did break up with Jughead for her just the night before, but Archie isn’t even thinking about that—not right now. He just wants to go back to yesterday and turn her down when she’d asked him to deliver her message, to erase everything he said last night, to explain everything to Veronica and Jughead instead of following a serial killer’s orders as if it’ll make any real difference. But Betty’s told him to let things settle before saying anything, and it’s not like he can take it back all that easily.

His phone rings out, piercing the silence—then Betty’s, a moment later. In the split second before he sees the caller ID, he imagines it’s the Black Hood, ready to collect his revenge, angry that Betty’s told someone about their line of communication. I could do it, he wants to tell her. I could take care of him. I could fix everything.

But it isn’t. “Dad?” He spares a glance over at Betty—it’s just her mom. No serial killers.

“Archie,” his dad starts, “please tell me this isn’t true.”

“Not all Serpents are drug dealers? What were you thinking?” his dad asks, once they’re just around the block from the Coopers’ and safely out of earshot—though at this point, it wouldn’t surprise Archie if Alice Cooper had planted bugs in their house. “In front of Keller and McCoy? You really choose the worst times to change your mind about things, you know that?”

“I haven’t changed my mind,” he says. “I just don’t think every Serpent is that bad. A lot of them are kids, dad.”

“You think it’s not that bad because you haven’t seen what being in a gang does to people. To their families.” He sighs. “I’m not mad at you, Archie, just… disappointed.”

“It’d make sense if you were mad,” Archie says. His dad just looks tired.

“I can’t deal with this right now. It’s too early,” he says. “Just try to not do anything else that could get you in trouble with the law, okay?”

Archie wants to listen to him, but he also knows that if he does, Jughead will probably never forgive him. “Can I take the car?”

“Usually I would say no, and ground you, but I’m exhausted, Archie,” he says. “Whatever. Please just come home straight after school.”

In the Southside High hallway, a couple kids give him looks, whispering about red ski masks and how isn’t that the guy who pulled a gun on… Archie ignores them, taking out his phone: MEET ME OUTSIDE NOW!, he sends off.

Jughead’s mad, but he’d never be too mad to ghost Archie—not like Archie had ghosted him. At least, he hopes. Usually, the thought would make him feel guilty, but right now he needs Jughead’s faith in him to come through or otherwise he is so getting arrested.

Sure enough, Jughead walks out of a classroom ahead on the left, staring down at his phone like he wants to kill Archie through it. “Jug,” he calls. He doesn’t look up. “Jug! We gotta go, right now.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” he shoots back. Then, as if to make up for the fact that he’d come as soon as Archie asked: “Betty ask you to throw some salt in the wound?”

“Mayor McCoy's about to raid Southside High. We gotta get you out of here, right now, come on.” He’s already half-dragging Jughead to the front door by his jacket when McCoy herself and half the sheriff’s office throw open the door at the end of the hall, scattering the students who’d been standing at their lockers.

“Toni!” Jughead calls out, but Toni is much farther down, only ten feet away from Keller and his pack of police dogs—there’s no way she can move fast enough to make it out of their way.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he tries, “Jug, you wanna help her? You can't do that from behind bars. Come on.”

Jughead doesn't listen—waits at the glass until the last minute, until Archie has to drag him away, but once they’re outside, he follows Archie to his truck without protest, ducking into the passenger seat. “Do you even have your license?” he asks, checking the glove compartment instead of waiting for an answer. He pulls out a piece of paper that clearly reads not a license across the top of it, featuring a not-so-flattering photo of Archie. On any other day, he’d laugh at it, but he just gives it an expressionless once-over.

“I have my learner’s permit,” Archie says. “I’m sixteen in 3 weeks. Who’s really going to check it?”

“I guess,” Jughead says, putting the paper back. Then: “How’d you even know Mayor McCoy was planning a drug raid?”

“Jughead, calm down,” he tries, but that just seems to make him angrier. Archie isn’t trying to be patronizing, but he gets how it probably looks.

“Calm down? Archie, Riverdale just became a police state.”

He isn’t really sure what that means. Historically, the Riverdale sheriff’s department haven’t been as good at their jobs as they should be. Wouldn't it be better if they just did what they were supposed to do? “McCoy's convinced the Serpents are dealing jingle-jangle,” he tells him.

“Serpents don't deal that stuff. The Ghoulies do,” he says.

Archie isn’t even sure who the Ghoulies are. “So tell Mayor McCoy that,” he says.

“Oh, Mayor McCoy,” Jughead repeats, taking a seat. “Do you mean the McCoy that just arrested all my friends for no reason?” All my friends. Archie tries and fails to not take it personally—he isn’t used to him saying that, much less not even being included in the statement. As selfish as it feels to say it, and especially in this context, it stings. “Why do you care, anyway, man? I thought you and Betty wanted nothing to do with me, right?” He smiles as he says it; a challenge. Archie probably deserves it after what he’d told him the night before. 

He doesn’t take the bait. “I'm sorry about what happened, and how it happened,” he says instead. “And as for Betty, you should maybe talk to her.”

Jughead looks like he wants to say something, but he’s distracted by a notification on his phone. “I gotta go,” he says. “Tall Boy wants to parley.”

For a second, Archie wants to stop him—wants to tell him everything about Betty and the phone calls and the blackmail, just to get it off his chest. And also to ask what parley means. But Jughead brushes past him without another word, stalking off to whatever meeting he seems to have scheduled.

“Thought you two were done fighting,” Pop says, stopping to refill Archie’s cup of coffee. He doesn’t even like coffee very much—he’s only been drinking it recently because it’s one of the only ways he knows how to stay awake.

“We’re just… disagreeing about some stuff,” Archie says, which is definitely downplaying it, but he still doesn’t quite understand what the Serpents do and who they’re fighting and what it is, exactly, that makes them good (according to Jughead) or bad (according to literally everyone else he knows). He just wants his friends to be safe. That’s all, really.

“I’ve known you two since you were babies,” Pop reminds him, gazing out the window like he’s recalling the sight as he speaks, “and I knew your fathers, too. And you know, they stayed friends, even after their little group stopped coming in.”

“They still are—kinda,” Archie says, because whatever his dad’s history with FP is, it’s still as complicated and messy in the present as it probably was in high school. Pop nods.

“You know, Jug still spends a lot of time in here with me these days. I know him.” He shrugs. “Not sure how I feel about that jacket, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still the same kid who carved his name into that old countertop we got replaced. He cares about this town more than anything. Except for maybe my burgers.”

Of course Archie remembers the countertop—Pop had let the two of them write their names on it because they were renovating the diner, anyway, and when Fred first saw it he had said you two can’t just do that to Pop’s counter, and Pop had said I let them, Fred, with a laugh. Curse Pop’s good memory. “Nothing beats your burgers, Pop, that’s not fair,” Archie says, and Pop laughs, a full-belly chuckle. It reminds Archie of why he loves the diner so much in the first place: it feels safe and full of warmth. It feels like family. The shooting had made him forget that—had made him associate family with violence and homeliness with panic—but he remembers it now.

“You’re a good kid, Archie,” Pop tells him, a sparkle in his eye. “That video of yours that went around town had me a little worried, though. You stay on the right path, alright? And get all of that fixed up. Jug drives away customers when he’s moping around here.”

“I’ll try, Pop,” Archie tells him, and he means it. Pop smiles, making a shooing motion at him.

“Now get back to class before a truancy officer comes for me,” he says.

Archie sighs, looking out the window. Being arrested by a truancy officer still somehow sounds better than whatever’s in store for him at dinner tonight.

“Where were you all morning?” Reggie asks, hushed under his breath in fifth-period World History. Archie can’t help but notice that Cheryl’s desk two seats ahead of him is empty.

“Pop’s,” Archie says. “I only skipped second and third period. I have empty first.”

“My plug said he saw you at Southside High,” he says. “Is that true?”

“Your plug?” Archie asks. “Oh, your drug dealer.”

“Andrews,” he hisses, “you can’t just say that at school.”

“Oh, sorry,” Archie says, but Reggie’s already shaking his head, turning back to his paper, so at least there’s no more questions for him to answer.

He turns in the most pitiful worksheet of all time at the bell. “Archie,” Mr. Adams says, “we’re writing about World War I. This is an entire page about France in the 1940s.”

“Oh,” Archie says. “Sorry. Didn’t read the instructions carefully, I guess.”

“I’ll put the template online, if you want to do it for homework over the weekend,” he adds. Archie already knows he won’t get around to it. “You used to put a lot more effort into this class, at least, Archie. I’m worried about you.”

“Yeah,” he says. “See you on Monday.”

“Community service? Can't you just ground me, Dad?”

“Community service was Mayor McCoy's idea, and it's a damn good one if you ask me. You wanna put that trash in your body, you can spend the day picking up trash at Pickens Park.” Archie sighs, and Fred pointedly looks away from him. He’s never wanted to play bad cop, even when he needs to. “Y’know, I know Jug wasn't at your little Lollapalooza the other night, but he does go to Southside High. It's ground zero for that crap. You talking to him, checking in? How's he doing?”

“Trying to.”

Fred makes a noise of acknowledgement. “Yeah. It was kind of like that when I was trying to help FP. I don't know what it is… never-ending battle with those two. I just hope with Jug it's not a losing one.”

Archie’s known FP his whole life—he knows why his dad feels the way he does. But he’s also known Jughead his whole life, and sometimes it feels like his dad only ever judges Jughead based on the bad blood that hasn’t quite dissipated between him and FP, and not the fact that there’s never really been anything wrong with Jughead. Archie had said what he said at the trailer last night out of anger, but when his dad says the same sort of things, it’s like he really believes it.

“Me too, trust me,” Archie says, leaning his head on his hand.

The rest of dinner is quiet; twenty minutes of Fred and Archie eating in silence. After his dad rinses his plate and sets it in the sink, he shakes a couple pills out of the bottle he’d gotten from the hospital. Archie watches him without comment. It doesn’t feel like his place to say anything, and even if it was, there’s a million things he could turn right back on Archie.

Vegas whines when his dad leaves, resting his head on Archie’s leg—his little face flattening out in a way that kind of makes him look like those deep-sea fish with both eyes on the same side of their heads. “He’s okay, buddy,” Archie murmurs to him, petting behind his ears.

His phone chimes with a text: Can you come over? It’s about Tall Boy. Archie glances between the stairs, where his dad’s probably already half-asleep up in his bedroom, and the car keys on the kitchen counter. A month and a half ago, his dad told him not to try and save people who were just going to drag you down too.

He ignored him then, and it’s not like he’s going to change his mind now. Archie’s never been good at listening to instructions. “Be good, okay?” he tells Vegas, picking up the keys.

Jughead looks surprised when he answers the door, as if he wasn’t the one to storm out of Pop’s that morning and Archie hasn’t been trying his best to apologize.

“You came,” he says. He looks too surprised by it; Archie wonders if he’s been losing confidence in him lately. Which he doesn’t blame him for, because honestly, Archie’s lost a lot of confidence in himself, too, but it’s Jughead. They've always bounced back. It was basically a given.

“Of course I came,” Archie responds. It’s quiet for a second; a beat. Jughead blinks. “Uh, it’s getting kind of cold out, so…”

“Oh. Obviously. Sorry,” he says, stepping aside to let Archie in. “I was just finishing washing dishes.”

“What’d you make?” Jughead only half-glances over at him before returning to his cleaning.

“Just like, macaroni. Easy boxed stuff that just requires hot water.”

“Can I make the…” Archie nudges his shoulder. “You know.”

“What,” Jughead says, not looking up from the sink.

“That’s what good—”

“Shut up,” Jughead says, lightly elbowing him back, but Archie’s method had worked, just like he knew it would—just like his teasing always works on him. The tension’s dissipated a little bit, and Jughead’s no longer death-glaring the pan, so.

“Let me help,” Archie says, taking a wooden spoon from the sink, and Jughead nods distractedly. There’s not much there, seeing as Jughead’s living alone and he’s always been good at keeping track of his own things. It’s really very neat, but all it does is make Archie sad, because thinking about Jughead living alone just reminds him that he’d moved out: that he’d heard his dad talking about him being trouble. Archie had meant what he said about being the long term solution—he still does, if Jughead would just show that he wants it too.

He glances over at Jughead, who’s just finishing up with drying a pot and putting it away. Despite everything, he still considers them sort of similar, in his mind. He thinks through it all the time and he’s sure Jughead would disagree, would point out football versus gangs and the Northside and the Southside, because Jughead looks at everything like that, all logical and reasonable and detached. But they’re similar where it matters, Archie reasons, in the quiet sense of optimism Jughead never really admits to, in his hope, in his willingness to give second chances. Archie believes in people, too—he just hasn’t gotten the chance to show it as of recent. Jughead’s built his life around his ability to care about others and he doesn’t even know it, and Archie admires that; wishes he’d mess up less in his own life, anyway.

But Jughead thinks they’re irreconcilable polar opposites and that it’s a miracle they even talk, so he’d never really get it. “I’m sorry about earlier,” Archie says. “I’m not going to pretend I totally understand, because I don’t. But I’d want to hear you out.”

“You don’t want my honest opinion,” Jughead tells him, setting a plate in the drying rack and drying his hands.

“No, I do,” Archie responds, following him to the living room, even though Jughead’s probably right. When it comes to this kind of thing, he usually is.

“Okay,” he says. Archie sits down on the couch. The Serpents' dog is already acting like he owns the place; Archie runs a hand over his fur. He seems friendly, at least. “Whoever gave you the idea for your group, and that stupid video—you don't actually want to do that. You've just felt unsafe you’ve felt since your dad got shot. And I’m sure it’s like, 90% of the reason you’ve been acting so insane lately.”

“Wow,” Archie says. “You tell all that to your friends?”

“No,” Jughead answers. “Look, I never thought I needed to, like, set you straight, or whatever. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be fixed. I just trust that you’ll turn this around and make the right choices.”

“You sure about that?” Archie asks. “I don’t know if all that’s true.”

“It is to me,” he says.

“You don’t even know most of the guys involved.”

“I don’t,” Jughead says. “I just know you.” He does, but he also thinks more of Archie than Archie thinks of himself—sometimes, that makes him just like everybody else.

“Well, this isn’t about the Red Circle,” Archie responds. “I won’t even bring it up. Just tell me how I can help you. You said Tall Boy is a what now?”

Jughead sighs. “I thought he meant well, when I first asked him to question people after your dad got shot, but. I’m pretty sure he’s trying to take full control of the Serpents, which, you know, not a good right-hand-man move.”

“Obviously,” Archie says, mostly just to agree with him. He doesn’t really get gang politics. Or what it is that gangs do at all. Jughead had been adamant that the Serpents don’t deal drugs—like, what else is there to do when you’re a gang? Completely legal activities while wearing matching jackets?

“Anyway,” Jughead continues, and Archie snaps back to the present, realizing he’d only been half-tuned in. “I met with him at the Ghoulie headquarters earlier, and they started giving me some shit about how I need to change with them or we’ll die. I mean, this isn't an alliance with the Ghoulies. This is a hostile takeover.”

Jughead’s always had a bit of a flair for the dramatic—not that Archie doesn’t take him seriously, because he does: he knows how much this matters to Jughead, even if he can’t quite understand why, and, like, what is there to not be serious about in a gang? But he always talks about his life like it’s a distant fantasy story that Archie’s not a part of. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t really get it. “God, who knows how long Tall Boy has been planning on betraying us. Maybe I stall, just until Sweet Pea and Toni get out. I just hope they'd rather go to war with the Ghoulies than start…” He shakes his head, looking away; clearly, he’s distracted by the reminder of the raid’s consequences. “Dealing jingle-jangle,” he finishes half-heartedly.

“Jughead,” Archie tries, but he’s not totally sure he’s even listening. “You joined the Serpents to keep the peace.”

“My dad would never sit back and let this happen, so neither will I,” Jughead shoots back. Archie doesn’t have it in him to remind Jughead that FP sat back and let a lot happen—maybe not to the Serpents, but. Family starts at home, after all. “So, unless you have any better ideas…”

Oh. “Not me,” Archie says, struck by realization. He leans forward in his seat. “But, dude, what you just said…”

It takes Jughead a second, but he catches on. “He’ll definitely know what to do,” he says. Archie thinks that may be a bit of a stretch, since it’s not like FP has a good track record of being good at his jobs, but it’s the best option they’ve got. “I’ll go visit him tomorrow.”

“I’ll take you,” Archie says, and Jughead nods distractedly, taking a seat on the couch next to him. The dog jumps off and heads into the bedroom. “That aside, I… owe you an apology.” Jughead leans back against one of the cushions.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah, honestly, you kind of do.”

“I’m sorry about everything I said last night,” he starts. “I know I already said that, but I don’t think it’ll ever be enough. I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting about you joining the Serpents. It’s just…” he struggles to phrase the sentiment. “It scares me. They’re not good guys, Jug, and if the cops won’t do anything, someone needs to step up in terms of protection. We need to step up to protect ourselves.”

“That’s just it,” Jughead says, shaking his head. “You do this thing where it’s us or them and good guys or bad guys and you don’t get that not everyone’s your enemy. Archie, we don’t need a Northside versus Southside war, so stop trying to instigate one.”

“I wasn’t trying to—”

“You posted a video of yourself delivering a death threat,” Jughead says dryly. “You visited the Southside and pulled a gun on some Serpents—on my friends. On our own territory.” Archie almost objects to his use of our, but Jughead waves it off before he can even say anything. “Yes, our. I’m a Serpent, officially, as of last night, and we’re not the bad guys. And we’re not all your enemies, Archie. Unless you keep… antagonizing the rest of them.” He shakes his head. “You can't just care about the people you like, Archie, you have to care about all of them. And if you keep going at this the way you are, there’s not gonna be anything I can do for you.”

“Sorry,” Archie says out of instinct, even though he’s not sure yet if he should be—truth be told, he’d do it all over again if he had to. He knows Jughead’s trying to reason with him, but it’s hard to shake the memories of the night they faced down the Serpents in the rain. They really don’t seem to be the great friendly law-abiding citizens Jughead thinks they are, but then again, it’s not like Archie had been all that friendly during their first interaction, either. Maybe they’d gotten off on the wrong foot. “It might be kind of late for that. They probably all hate me already.”

“Try to keep a low profile and they’ll hopefully forget about it,” Jughead tells him. “Seriously, no more vigilante groups. Plus…” He pauses for a second. “I could never hate you. Even when you pull some insane shit. That I really don’t agree with, for the record, but I’m trying to be nice because I can tell you’re,” he waves a hand, “you know. Things are messed up right now.”

“I already knew I was kind of messed up, but thanks,” Archie says, only half-jokingly. Jughead gives him a small smile in return.

“Always. Look, I get that a gang is meant to be your whole family, like…” Jughead hesitates. “How you can lose everyone else. Betty, and you, and I don’t know. But I want us to still be friends. Really.”

“Listen,” Archie says. “You have to talk to Betty if you want to hear her side, because it’s complicated and messy and not really my place, but… what I said last night was mostly bullshit. I’m here. I wouldn’t have answered your text if I didn’t want to be here.”

“Not out of guilt because of the raid on Southside High this morning?” Jughead asks, almost-casual about it, but they can both tell he means it.

“No,” Archie says. “I mean, I do feel guilty about that. But I’m here because I care about you. And I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, so… don’t try to push me away.”

“Yeah, you’ve never been the best at listening to directions,” he says, because it’s not like he can admit that they don’t really have any other options. Archie knows it just as well as he does—that this summer was so crushingly solitary for the first time ever, and Jughead may be figuring things out and fitting in at Southside High but he still doesn't have anyone familiar right now.

Jughead’s eyes flicker over his face—like he wants to say something, like there’s something else, but then it just disappears. “It’s late,” he tells him. “You can stay if you want. I don’t know if you want to drive home at this time of night.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Archie agrees, “sure.” Jughead nods, standing up.

“Um, I’ll take the couch, you take the bed?”

“That’s stupid,” Archie says. “We used to share the bed all the time.”

“Well, yeah,” he responds, “but that’s when we were…” When we were kids. When we never had to worry about whether or not we’d fall apart because of a gang war. When we were easier.

Archie doesn’t say any of those things, even though he knows they’re all true. “We still are,” he says instead, because every week feels like something new is weighing down on him and he just wants to be normal again, to worry about correctly playing barre chords and whether or not Veronica like-likes him and placing bets with Betty on what Jughead will order Friday night at Pop’s, not continued conversations with a serial killer and gangs and whatever Mr. Lodge’s deal is.

“Yeah,” Jughead says. “I hope so.”

When Archie gets home, he drops his keys in their designated miscellaneous-items bowl on the kitchen counter as soon as the front door swings shut. The sound of the lock clicking into place and the clatter of his keys always feel satisfying, like he’s keeping track of things.

Jughead’s on the phone, looking out the window as he talks. Archie rounds the couch just as he says something indecipherable about Wednesday not working.

“No, that’s fine, that works. Tuesday’s great. No problem,” Jughead says as Archie comes up behind him, hooking his chin over Jughead’s shoulder. “See you then. Bye.”

“Professor?” Archie asks, and Jughead shakes his head, slipping his phone into his pocket.

“The other student I’m a discussion section instructor with,” he explains. “The one for the big survey class. Schedule got pushed back, so we’re just figuring stuff out before the next session.”

“Couldn’t have done it earlier?”

“Hey, I mean, we’re friends outside of it, and it was just like a two minute question,” he responds, half-frowning, and Archie loves him.

“I’m just teasing. You’re too good,” he tells him, and Jughead turns so they’re face-to-face.

“Arch,” he murmurs, holding his phone close to his chest, resting his other arm over Archie’s shoulder, and Archie loves how it sounds in his voice. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed hearing it before now.

“I missed you,” Archie says, even though he’s not exactly sure why, or how long it’s been, or what he’s feeling, exactly.

“I saw you this morning,” Jughead says, clearly amused, and kisses him. It’s easy, natural like he’s done it a million times, but Archie can’t remember any of them; can’t remember ever getting to have this. He leans their foreheads together, obviously trying to hide a smile. Archie missed that. It feels like it’s been forever since he saw him smile like that—and maybe that’s because there aren’t that many things to smile about, anymore, or maybe it’s because Archie hasn’t been looking. “You know, in my head I always think of you as shorter than me.”

“I’ve been taller than you since we were like, fifteen,” Archie tells him.

“Yeah, but it was close enough that I could forget and mix it up. In my head you’re still ‘little Archie’ and all that.”

“You never called me that,” Archie says. It really had just been Betty and his dad, for the most part.

Jughead shrugs. “Why would I? You’re the only Archie in my life, anyway.”

“You’re the only one for me too,” Archie tells him, and kisses him again—his move this time. It is easy, he thinks again, familiar in the way only a long-term relationship can be—it’s nothing like what he felt with Cheryl, that night in the Thornhill garden, when he already knew she didn’t really like him and couldn’t quite tell what he was doing, sabotaging a relationship he actually liked for her: like he was only doing something someone else wanted—living a life already written down, something out of his control. Jughead lightly touches his face with the hand that’s not still holding his phone.

“I didn’t even mean for that to sound romantic, it’s just an objectively true statement,” he mumbles, but he sounds pleased with the outcome. He looks at Archie for a second, easily reading him. “You’re thinking too much.”

“Says you.”

Jughead shakes his head. “Not really,” he says. “You’re like, the one thing I don’t get too in my head about.”

“Really? Never?”

“Maybe at first,” Jughead admits. “Or when we were younger. But when it comes down to it, I like you. And you like me. It never has to be any more complicated than that.”

“It sounds so simple when you say it like that,” Archie tells him. Jughead shrugs.

“Yeah,” he says, “because it is,” and Archie—

—blinks awake.

It’s still dark outside. Archie rolls over to check his phone on the bedside table, and yeah: it’s seven-fifteen in the morning. There’s a second where he’s not quite sure where he is, but when he glances to the side at Jughead, covered in two blankets that are just slightly too small and facing away from him, it all comes rushing back.

For a second, Archie considers lying down again and going back to sleep, but the dream’s kind of been shattered by reality and they do have places to be in a bit. He goes about his morning routine in silence, taking just a second too long to stare at the toothbrush that he’d left there near the beginning of freshman year; picks through the old clothes stashed in the bottom shelf of the dresser in the closet to find a shirt that had been too big on him in eighth grade when he’d put it there, but just about fits him now. It’s weird to remember just how much of a presence he’d had in Jughead’s life.

Jughead doesn’t talk to him when he gets up—probably for the best. Archie can’t think of a single thing he wants to talk about. He waits in the kitchen while Jughead gets ready, feigning interest in some of FP’s snake paraphernalia. In hindsight, he probably should’ve made the connection between him and the Serpents a long time ago. As a kid, he’d just thought that Jughead’s parents were really into snakes.

Jughead takes his jacket from the hook—distantly, Archie wonders if Jason Blossom’s ever hung in that same spot—and motions towards the door. “Let’s go?” he asks, and Archie nods, taking his keys from the kitchen table.

He’s parked on the far side of the trailer. In the car, he throws on his letterman jacket that’s been strewn haphazardly across the back seat. Jughead gives it a disdainful once-over when he gets in on the passenger side.

“Go bulldogs,” he says dryly, and turns to look out the window.

Archie glances over. It’s quiet moments like these where he feels like he just doesn’t know what to do anymore—how to react, what to say that won’t make Jughead point out just how little they have in common and question why they’re even friends in the first place.

He ends up starting with: “When your dad hit the glass with the phone…”

“Don’t,” Jughead warns.

“You flinched,” he continues anyway.

“It was a sudden movement,” Jughead responds, staring resolutely out at the only road that leads out of Shankshaw. “Don’t make this into something it’s not.”

“I’m not—I’m worried about you, okay?”

“Really? ‘Cause you were just so worried about me when you humiliated me in front of a literal gang the other day,” Jughead snaps.

They really can’t make it through one conversation without fighting, these days, but Archie doesn’t feel like this one’s deserved. “Jug,” he tries, but he doesn’t look at him.

“Just forget it. My dad’s never done anything like that, okay?” he says. “Not on purpose. Nothing unprovoked.”

Unprovoked. Archie feels sick. “Jug, whatever you think you did to provoke him… you’re his kid. A kid. That’s not an excuse. It still doesn’t make it okay.”

“Oh, so now you’re going to preach to me about whether or not I deserved it?” Jughead says. “You can barely admit anything even happened to you.” It’s meant to be a jab, and Archie feels anxiety rise in his throat just thinking about it, but his tone doesn’t quite manage to come off as hostile—just sounds as worried as Archie feels. Jughead sighs. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he adds almost immediately.

“I know,” Archie says, keeping his eyes trained on the road. “We’re all under a lot of stress.”

“I’m sorry. You’re just… you’re scaring me lately, Archie,” he says. “First you’re about to bash my head in when I use the back door, like I always do, then you’re asking me to join the Red Circle, or whatever it is you call your teenage terrorist group, then… whatever happened Thursday night. You called it bullshit, but it’s just… not like you. Something’s wrong.” It’s Archie’s turn to be silent, now, but this time it’s because he just doesn’t have anything to say. Something is wrong, but that’s just… how it is. How he is. He doesn’t know how else he could’ve responded.

He can feel Jughead’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t speak up. “I want to be there for you too,” Jughead continues. “Even if I can’t always be at Riverdale High, like, physically. But I can’t do that if you don’t tell me what’s up.”

“I don’t… I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Archie answers honestly, because he’d love to say it’s his dad or the Black Hood or Mr. Lodge or the Serpents, but it’s none of those things and it’s all of them at the same time. It’s him. How can you solve a problem when the problem is you?

It’s an acceptable answer to Jughead, apparently. “Okay,” he says. “But you’d tell me if you did, right?”

“Yeah,” Archie says. He doesn’t think it’s a lie. There’s another minute of silence before he speaks up again. “Why do you want your dad out so badly?” he asks. “I know he’s your dad, but. He helped cover up Jason’s murder. ”

“He’s not winning father of the year for sure, but if he’s in there he can’t even try,” Jughead says. “At least out here he can fail at being a parent on his own terms. And… I don’t really have anyone else.”

“You could move back in with us,” Archie suggests, trying to sound objective. The Serpents aren’t Archie’s biggest fans right now, and Jughead had stood right in between them. The thought of something happening to him because of that—because of Archie—is terrifying, and it’d be so much safer back home. And Archie misses him, too: at school, when he’s in fourth-period English and there’s no one to roll his eyes at bad literary interpretations and get Archie in trouble for laughing; when he’s trying to fall asleep at night and there’s no one to talk to about his day—he’d gotten used to that. Maybe he shouldn’t have, but he did.

“It’s my place, you know? I belong there,” Jughead answers, and Archie wants to tell him that he’s always had a place with Archie, even when his dad may have been considering sending Jughead away. He hates that there was some point at which Jughead must’ve decided that the Andrews’ house didn’t feel like home anymore—like he didn’t deserve it. “And it makes me feel closer to my dad. I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Archie says, adjusting his hands on the wheel. “I guess.”

“What?”

“Just…” he hesitates. “I mean, what do you even really know about running a gang, Jughead?”

“More than you, apparently,” Jughead says. He looks irritated, like it’s a question with the most obvious answer in the world. “My dad was a Serpent. Why is it so hard to believe?”

“Because you’re not him,” Archie answers. “You don’t have to be.”

“What’s wrong with being like him?” Jughead asks. Archie wants to remind him again that FP’s the reason Jughead felt so unsafe he was homeless, that when he hit the divider earlier today Jughead flinched backwards, that the reason he’s not around right now is because he helped cover up a teenager’s murder—but that would probably just make things worse.

“You’re just not,” he says. “You’re better.”

“You can be better, too.” Archie scoffs, turning to the driver’s side window. “I mean, I had to defend you to the Serpents the other day because of your stupid video. I don’t want to have to do that. You could get killed for pulling shit like that, Archie.”

“Then why’d you defend me?”

Jughead looks away. “You know why.”

The last ten minutes of the drive are silent. Archie pulls up outside the back of Sunnyside and shifts into park. “I have to go do community service. Pick you up after and then we can head over to the Ghoulies’ hideout?”

“I could just go alone,” Jughead says, but Archie looks at him, and he throws his hands up in surrender. “Fine. You know where to find me.”

“Yeah,” Archie agrees, but he can’t help but feel like it isn’t all that true anymore.

Picking up trash isn’t really that bad—especially since Archie can’t help but think that if Kevin and Josie hadn’t been at that party, the punishment would’ve been a lot more severe—but he spends the whole time worried: about the Ghoulies, about Hiram Lodge. The Serpents, Cheryl, Betty. 

“Betty, you have to talk to Jughead,” he pleads with her. She tilts her head to the side, looking sympathetic: she’s always been a better liar than Archie, has always found it easier than he had. Whenever they’d gotten into trouble as kids, she’d be the one to explain things to their parents, giving them puppy-dog eyes and swearing that they didn’t really mean it.

“Soon, I promise,” she says. “I just need to take care of a few things.” He watches the back of her head as she turns away. Betty has much bigger problems than Jughead right now.

“Archiekins,” Veronica calls, stepping over bags of trash in shoes that definitely weren’t designed with community service in mind, leaving Reggie to get back to loudly and obnoxiously flirting with Josie. “Come here.” He meets her in the middle. “Where were you this morning?”

“Home,” he says. “Why?”

“You just look really tired,” she says, frowning. Her make-up is all put together, even for cleaning up Pickens Park on a Saturday afternoon. She’s a bit like Betty that way, Archie thinks, looks in-control. “Have you been sleeping okay?”

“No,” he answers honestly. “Lot of things keeping me up.”

“I know the feeling,” she tells him. Veronica brushes a hand over his arm, glancing away like she’s checking to see if anyone’s watching. “Call me if you need anything, okay? Or if you just want to talk. Whatever.”

“Thanks, Ronnie,” he says. She pats his hand with a smile and walks away, and he tries his best not to think about lying to her.

The Ghoulies’ hideout is filled with dead things. This is, obviously, the first thing Archie notices about it, because there’s a big deer skull hung up on the entryway and even the Serpents aren’t this weird about their whole aesthetic. The guys hanging out in the room downstairs have skulls painted in shades of white and grey on the backs of their jackets, too, and spikes all over their clothing, sharp to the touch. Archie fidgets with his sleeve, feeling a little more self-conscious about his bright blue letterman.

Jughead walks in front of him like he knows what he’s doing, even though he’d told Archie on the drive over that he’d only ever been down here once. He wonders when Jughead got so comfortable with new things—he’d always known him to be someone who loved familiarity. “Me and my boy… we wanna challenge you to a race,” Jughead says, and the part of Archie that had felt stung by the words all my friends the day before feels a little more secure, again. He and Malachai are negotiating details but Archie isn’t really listening, keeping his eyes trained on the guys on either side. He may not be a member of any gang or have a Serpent emblazoned on his jacket, for that matter, but for some reason it feels like if push comes to shove he could take them anyway. He fought elementary-school bullies for Jughead and high-school ones, too, so it’s the next logical step.

He’s wondering why exactly there’s a flag of England on the wall—is it England? He still can’t tell the difference between England and Britain and all that other stuff—when Betty and Veronica are ushered in, looking just as confused to see them. Veronica in particular gives him a look that clearly says we need to talk about this, and Archie would feel worse about omitting the truth to her this morning if she hadn’t also clearly been busy with something else entirely.

For some reason, the Ghoulies’ taunting only seems to make Jughead even more ready to risk it all. As much as Jughead is his best friend, Archie thinks that whoever put him in charge of a gang was seriously misguided. “We’ll take the Wyrm and Sunnyside Trailer Park,” Malachai pushes back at him—a lot of lives are at stake, there. Archie wishes that someone would remind Jughead that he’s really not that good of a driver to be wagering that kind of bet.

Outside, Veronica pulls him aside for a moment as Betty and Jughead strategically pretend to not notice each other. “Archiekins,” she says, “you’re in way over your head.”

“Trust me,” he says, “I’ve realized.”

They don’t talk about Betty and Veronica on the drive back—they don’t talk about anything. Jughead takes the steps up to his trailer two at a time, only turning to look at Archie once he’s got one hand on the doorknob already, like a mode of escape. He looks small, Archie thinks, and it’s not that he is—he’d probably be around Archie’s height if he stood up straight more, and he may not be a football player by any means but he could probably throw a punch if he had to. But he still feels small to Archie. Archie feels small, himself. He won’t even be sixteen for another couple of weeks. This isn’t really fair, he thinks. They’re kids. They shouldn’t have to deal with all of this.

“I wish you could come home,” Archie tells him, and Jughead exhales.

“I am home, Archie,” he says, quieter. Archie doesn’t feel like crying, but he does feel a sort of aching emptiness tugging at him from deep in his chest. He wonders if the trailer feels more like home without FP in it—his own dad is a big part of what makes Archie feel safe in their house on Elm. Or he did, before Archie started getting paranoid about the Black Hood showing up on their doorstep to finish the job. He wonders if Jughead’s ideal home is one where no one is even around to hurt him.

Jughead ducks away first, looking pointedly down at the porch and clearing his throat. “You’re gonna be there, right?” he asks. “For the race, I mean.” He looks up from the floor into Archie’s eyes and Archie is hit with a faint recollection of his dream from the night before. Maybe if Jughead understood that he’s always been a part of Archie’s future. He does belong. Archie’s not sure why he ever thought he didn’t.

He doesn’t want Jughead to be a Serpent; Archie can admit that now. All those things he’d said about Betty the other night weren’t really Betty’s words—and Jughead knows it, probably saw right through him the moment the sentiment came out of his mouth. Archie really likes Veronica, and it feels like something that could become love, and he knows that when all this blows over Jughead and Betty will get back together. It’s inevitable. But in his head, in his subconscious, it still wasn’t either of them he was sharing an apartment with in New York.

“Yeah,” Archie says. “Of course. Whatever you need.”

“Okay,” Jughead agrees. “Good. Because I do. I need you there.”

There’s an odd tension between them right about always nowadays, because Archie’s never known how to be a second choice, and he knows it’s selfish as soon as he thinks it but it’s so overwhelmingly true. Betty, or the Serpents, or whatever it is—Archie doesn’t know how to take a backseat in Jughead’s life. It feels like he’s taken their entire friendship for granted, or maybe their dynamic is just bad and one-sided. Or maybe Archie is just overthinking everything because of stress, but it’s not like acknowledging the possibility makes him any less worried.

“Then I’ll be there,” he answers.

After dropping Jughead back at his trailer, Archie kind of just wants to go home and fall into bed and not think about any of this ever again, but he still has a couple more things to do before the race—he pulls up outside Reggie’s fifteen minutes later, a nice house on the better side of town. It’s just a couple streets down from his own house, but totally the opposite of Sunnyside.

Reggie’s waiting in the driveway when he pulls up, glued to his phone—he doesn’t even look up at Archie when he slams the drivers’ side door shut and rounds the front of the car over to him. 

“Who’re you texting?” Archie asks, and then, just to be a bit of a dick about it: “A girl?”

Reggie doesn’t even look up. “Yeah, actually,” he says. “Josie and I are supposed to go out tonight, so. Let’s make this quick.”

“Josie?” Archie asks, half-incredulous, because everyone in their grade knows way too much about their history, and it’s definitely not good. He vaguely remembers them being somewhere near each other at Nick’s party, and he’d seen them doing more talking than picking up trash this morning, but still. Going out doesn’t seem to be Josie’s style, and definitely not with Reggie Mantle, of all people.

“Don’t tell anyone I told you. And don’t question my game, bro.” He gives Archie a sympathetic once-over. “You look tired,” he says. “Don’t let it affect your game. Basketball season starts real soon.”

“I… don’t know if I’m signing up,” Archie says. He’s come to like football, but it was always supposed to be a means to an end: a way of getting a college scholarship, like his dad wants him to, so he can come back and live the rest of his life on Elm. Basketball is a whole other story. “And I’m fine. Just been having trouble sleeping.”

“Have you tried switching up your schedule?” Reggie asks. “I started running in the mornings, and it helps keep everything on track.”

“I’ve been having nightmares a lot,” Archie starts, “and dreams that just keep waking me up,” before rethinking it and realizing he actually doesn’t want to explain all that to… Reggie. “I don’t know. Just been feeling strange.”

“Dude, is it like…” Reggie leans in, lowering his voice to a whisper. “...Sex dreams? Don’t tell me it’s about one of the guys.”

In what world is that the go-to assumption? “Not really, Reg,” he ends up answering, “I think that’s just you.”

“Just a general example,” Reggie says, but he looks at least a little flushed. He changes the subject almost immediately: “What exactly was it that you wanted from me, anyway?”

“I need to borrow your car tomorrow,” he says.

“Her name’s Bella,” Reggie says pointedly.

“I need to borrow Bella tomorrow,” Archie corrects.

“Fine,” Reggie says. Then, “for what?”

“A race.”

“Can I come?”

“I mean… I guess,” Archie says. He may never truly understand Reggie. “I’ll have Betty tune it up for free. Is that enough of a fair trade?”

“Cooper?” Reggie asks. “She’s good. Probably the only person I wouldn’t mind getting under Bella’s hood.”

“Well, Jughead doesn’t know anything about cars, so it’ll just be her.”

“Jughead’s gonna be there? What exactly is this?” A gang-related turf war? A ploy to get rid of the Ghoulies? A bet that Jughead still stands a high chance of losing? “A race,” Archie says again.

“Cool,” Reggie says. “Can I invite people?”

“I’m not sure who you think wants to come to a territory dispute between gangs on a Sunday afternoon, but I guess,” Archie says.

Reggie waves him off with a hand. “Plenty of people,” he says, “it’s Riverdale,” and Archie can’t really argue with that.

He puts a hand on Archie’s shoulder, suddenly serious. “You piss me off sometimes, Andrews, but I got your back, you know? We all do.”

“Thanks, Reg,” Archie tells him, “you too.”

“Archiekins,” Veronica greets him at the door, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. She studies his face, scrutinizing his expression. “It’s late. Is there something you want to talk about?”

“I don’t really want to talk at all right now,” he says, and he’s gotten to know Veronica by now, so he can see how her face falls slightly before she schools herself into a more neutral expression.

“Whatever you want,” she tells him. He can’t help but feel their disconnect, the way he’s still learning to be in a normal relationship and she’s still learning to talk things out. Sometimes they don’t fit together perfectly, but they make it work anyway. “But listen, about earlier—”

“Veronica,” he interrupts, “really, I’m not mad about what you and Betty did. Though I wish you had said something. It was really dangerous.”

“And it turned out fine,” she says. “Seriously, don’t get too worried about me. Focus on yourself.”

“I’m your boyfriend,” Archie says. “It’s kind of my job to worry about you.” Veronica smiles, a real one this time.

“Okay,” she says. “Why’d you text, Archie?” He doesn’t answer with words, this time; taking her hand and leading her up the staircase to his room.

“Archie?” Jughead asks. “Hello?”

Veronica’s also looking at him expectantly. On Archie’s other side, Betty’s showing Kevin something on her phone.

“Sorry,” he says. “Zoned out for a second.”

“We were just talking about the Pussycats’ tour,” Betty says. “It’s so amazing what they’ve been doing since Mel and Val graduated and joined Josie, like, to get the opportunity to tour worldwide…”

“Yeah, Josie’s coming to stay with the family for a bit over her break,” Kevin adds. “She likes to write when she’s home, and it’s always so…”

Archie barely hears the rest of their conversation—something about Josie and Kevin’s seemingly now-joint family, then Jughead mentions Toni’s work trip to somewhere in Europe, then Veronica starts talking about her new business venture. Dinner’s long since been over, so after Kevin excuses himself for the night, Jughead says something about how they should get going, too.

“See you later, Archiekins,” Veronica says into his shoulder when she gives him a hug in her entryway, Betty smiling at them from behind her like they do this all the time. They probably do. It’s a nice thought.

It’s been raining; the pavement shines with a reflection of the city. Jughead steps out onto the sidewalk and sighs. “Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing everyone, but if Kevin starts talking about hyperspecific off-Broadway drama one more time, I think I’m going to kill myself and name everyone at the table in my suicide note.”

Archie tries and fails not to laugh, and ends up almost choking. “That’s fucking horrible,” he says. “Why would you say that?”

“Why’d you laugh, then?” Jughead returns. He walks just ahead of Archie, the slightest bit faster. Archie follows him.

“You look… lighter,” he observes. “Happier. I don’t know.”

“As opposed to…”

“In high school. In Riverdale,” he says. “It was always like… you were being weighed down, or something.”

“I like my life,” Jughead says. “I never thought I’d say that, but I do. And you know, I may not be the richest man alive, or whatever—”

“You wouldn’t want to be,” Archie interjects.

“I wouldn’t,” Jughead agrees. “But yeah. I’m happy with where I am. And who I am.”

“I never would’ve thought you wanted to be normal,” Archie says.

He scoffs at that. “With the kind of things we’ve been through?” Jughead asks. “You think we’re normal?”

“Aren’t we?” 

“Not really, but…” he shrugs. “I like how we are.” A car passes by. He looks away.

“What?”

Jughead shakes his head. “Isn’t it kind of crazy?” he asks. “I’m invested in my writing, and you’re still doing music, helping people…” he shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s kind of perfect, if you think about it. In its own little way.”

“Yeah,” Archie says. “Hard to imagine anything else, really.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “It feels like there were so many things that had to happen for us to get here. You know what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“I never would’ve imagined this,” Jughead says. “If you’d asked me back then, I would have assumed someday I’d marry Betty and you’d marry Veronica, and we’d live in Riverdale forever, and we’d be happy, I guess. I didn’t consider anything else. I don’t know everything, Archie.”

“Sometimes it feels like you do,” Archie tells him.

“I don’t. I thought you were crazy when you first talked about moving to the city instead of going to college,” Jughead says. “And I know it just ended up being a gap year—for me—but I never thought about having time to figure out what I wanted. It’s because of you that I got to decide that college was something I wanted for myself, and not just something I was only doing to… spite my dad and make him proud at the same time, you know?”

“I’m glad you’re happy. I want you to be happy,” Archie says, truthfully, and Jughead looks at him like he usually does when he knows there’s something Archie isn’t telling him. “Sometimes I think,” he continues, “maybe I only like music because of… maybe I just convinced myself I did. Like I convinced myself I liked her.”

“Arch,” he says. “You’re so passionate about your job, and the kids you teach… you know I would support you in whatever you want to do, but. Don’t give up on something you love because of her. She hasn’t been around for a long time.”

“Yeah,” Archie says, even if he knows he isn’t quite ready to let go yet. Maybe this many years forward, he will be.

“Think about it this way,” he says, stepping over a shiny puddle on the sidewalk. “Everything we’ve been through, all our experiences, they all led us here. And it’s good. Like, imagine a million possible universes out there—a million choices we never made—and we’re the only ones who got it right.”

“I want to get it right every time,” Archie says.

“You can’t,” Jughead says, “not always. And isn’t that the point of it all?”

Archie doesn’t answer. Jughead takes his hand, intertwining their fingers.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go home.”

It’s already past three when Archie actually wakes up on Sunday, after drifting in and out of sleep the whole morning. Veronica’s half-awake and scrolling through something on her phone, from the looks of it.

“Ronnie,” he says. She glances over, breaking into a smile when she sees him awake.

“Morning, lover,” she says, setting her phone on the nightstand and giving him a quick peck. “Or should I say afternoon?”

“Good morning,” he returns. “And I don’t know. What time is it?”

“Late,” she answers. “Late enough that I made myself food downstairs and came back. Twice. You woke up the first time and then fell back asleep. Have you been getting any rest at all?”

“No,” Archie says. “Look, I’ve got to get ready for this afternoon…”

Veronica sighs. “What can I say… or do… to get you to stay here with me? Instead of going to that dangerous, dumb—possibly deadly—street race?”

As much as he’d like to take her up on her offer, he doesn’t want her to be any more involved than she has to be. If someone gets targeted for this, he wants it to be him—not Veronica, or Betty, or anyone else. “Don't worry, Ronnie, I have a plan,” he assures her. “You know, kind of like the plan you and Betty had when you snuck in the Ghoulie headquarters.”

Veronica laughs and kisses him. “Touché,” she says.

“One that hopefully keeps everyone alive,” Archie adds. Veronica nods absently, reaching across him to pick up a call from Cheryl that he only half-hears, but sounds heated.

“My parents,” she says when she hangs up, “I have to go sort this out,” lifting his t-shirt over her head while reaching for her own clothes at the end of the mattress, and he looks away automatically before remembering it’s not actually a crime for him to see Veronica without a shirt on.

He wants to ask her about Betty, wants to ask how and why Veronica forgives so easily, where she learned it if not at home, but he doesn’t. “What does it mean when you have, like, recurring dreams?” he asks instead. Veronica squints at him, confused.

“Is this… nightmares, you mean? About the shooting?” She touches his hand in a gesture of assurance.

“No, not those ones. Just, like, weird dreams,” he tells her. “I don’t really remember details, but I’ve been having a lot of similar ones lately. I don’t know.” She ponders it for a second, tapping her fingers on his hand.

“Well, dreams are usually subconscious stuff,” she says. “Things you’re worried about, or scared of. The things you try really hard not to think about. The ideas you can’t stop your brain from having.”

“Weird,” Archie responds, and she smiles.

“Very apt, Archiekins,” she says, “it is weird.” When she stands up to go about her morning routine, Archie watches her zip up her skirt and wonders if she’s ever thought about a shared apartment in the city—one with a faceless girl, or one she knows, even, Betty or Cheryl or Josie. He wonders if Veronica ever dreams like he does, if in another life, her happy ending has to be anywhere other than here, like the town of Riverdale itself is standing on her chest and holding her down.

Probably not, he figures, and looks around for his phone.

Archie parks on the Southside twenty minutes before their agreed-upon start time. He’d given Sheriff Keller explicit directions that’ll allow him to safely arrest the Ghoulies and go, and even if he isn’t going to listen, Archie figures his tip was vague enough that they can still manage a head start, anyway.

Betty’s in the midst of tying her hair up when he walks up to her, muttering something to herself about grease smudges. “Betty,” he says, and she turns, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Arch,” she says. “I’ve been waiting.” Then, quieter: “He barely talked to me when we were working on the car this morning.”

“Oh.”

“Really nice car, though,” she adds, “I’ll give Reggie that.”

“I’ll let him know.” Betty studies him for a second, looking sad, almost sympathetic—but then again, he hasn’t seen her be happy about anything recently.

“Promise to keep him safe for me, okay?” she says, and Archie nods, doesn’t say isn’t that what I’ve been trying to do my whole life? Betty had been around when they were kids, was there back when Archie would get sent to the principal’s office and they’d call his dad after he got into a fight. Watched him get a black eye from Reggie just a couple months ago, even when Jughead hadn’t really been his friend at all.

Before he heads over to the car, Veronica kisses him; makes him promise to not do anything reckless. He might’ve already blown that, but it’s not worth mentioning now, of all moments. Malachai, that Ghoulie they’d met briefly the other day—probably in his twenties or something, Archie guesses, and again, wearing some of the ugliest skull-themed clothing he’s ever seen in his life (not that there’s much competition to speak of)—walks up, adjusting his leather cuffs.

“Hey,” he grins, running a hand through his hair, and if he didn’t already hate him, Archie dislikes him even more now. The skull thing is tacky, too, but then he remembers that FP used to have that snake-shaped tea kettle, so. Maybe it’s just a Riverdale gang thing. “Ready to roll?”

“You know exactly who my father is and what he’s capable of, Malachai,” Jughead responds, “so don’t start that shit with me. It’s not going to lead anywhere nice.” Malachai laughs, adjusting his sleeves.

“Your daddy’s locked up, so you don’t really get to play that card, Serpent Prince,” he says, and Archie is really reconsidering his life choices and everything that’s led him here when Malachai gives him a once-over that feels incredibly uncomfortable. “What, you asked a Northsider to come down here and get in the middle of this? Couldn’t do it yourself?”

Archie grits his teeth and holds back the threat that rises in his throat because he knows it’ll only make things worse. He’s honestly probably the worst choice Jughead could’ve brought, considering that that Red Circle video’s still circulating. “I’ll start the car, Jug,” he says instead, and Jughead nods without glancing over at him.

Reggie’s car is nice, the kind of car Archie knows people are into. It’s not his thing, not really—he just drives his dad’s truck when he needs to. Cars have always been more of Betty’s passion. He’s already taken the passenger seat by the time Jughead swings open the driver’s side.

“Sorry,” he starts, but what part is it that he’s supposed to be sorry about? “...about all that.”

“Not your fault,” Jughead says, checking some switch that Archie isn’t exactly sure of the name of (in his defense, he only really gets the truck, and he still hasn’t taken his actual driver’s test yet, so). Jughead’s even worse at driving than Archie is, so Betty must’ve given him instructions. “Fucking idiots.”

“Probably should have asked this earlier, but do you know how to drive?” he asks. Jughead tugs at his sleeves like he’s fixing them, but it doesn’t do much.

“Not particularly,” he admits. “I can drive a motorcycle, but since this doesn’t really involve traffic lights or rules of the road, I assume it’ll be pretty straightforward.” He looks over and Archie knows the question he’s asking, one he doesn’t need to speak out loud. Archie has different plans for how this race is going to go, but it’s not like Jughead knows anything about that—there’s only one thing Archie can say to him, one thing he needs to hear.

“I trust you,” he says, and Jughead turns back to the road.

“Hey,” Jughead greets him when Archie enters the kitchen. “I missed you,” he says, pressing a kiss to the side of Archie’s mouth.

“I was in the bathroom for two minutes,” Archie tells him, “hardly a lifetime,” but turns his head so he can respond properly. Jughead laughs when Archie walks him backwards until his legs hit the counter, pulling Archie closer against him.

“Hey,” he whispers, a hand trailing over Archie’s shoulder, and Archie kisses him again, lifting him the last few inches onto the countertop.

No one’s ever gotten Archie like Jughead always has. He and Betty are best friends, sure, and he likes to think he knows her well, her favorite authors to her childhood fears to her personal pancake recipe. But it’s nothing like how it is with Jughead—who he’s known since before he knew how to talk, whose sarcastic comments provide a voice in Archie’s head even when he’s not around. It’s like he never had a choice. Archie can’t imagine a life without him, even if it wasn’t quite this.

“You’re not that light anymore,” Archie says. “It feels like I do all the heavy lifting in this relationship. Literally.” Jughead laughs again, reaching up to smooth out Archie’s shirt over his shoulders.

“Aw. You can get back to your construction roots for today, alright?” he says. “I just don’t feel like picking you up this early in the morning. But not too far into your construction roots. I’m still your fiancé, not your work buddy.”

Archie pauses. “Fiancé?” The word feels slightly off in his mouth. Jughead squints at him.

“It’s been a month, you should be a little used to it by now,” he teases. “Besides, you proposed, remember?” He lifts his hand and surely enough, there’s a plain silver band on it. “Not like it’s going to be anytime soon. It’s just a promise. For the future. Veronica helped you out? Ring a bell?”

It doesn’t ring a bell, actually, but Archie tries a little harder and can roughly conjure a faint voice in the back of his mind, a light you both know it’s not the extravagance that counts in Veronica’s lilting tone.

“Ronnie,” he says. Jughead hums.

“Yeah, I don’t know why we take relationship advice from her. If anything, I wish she’d ask us for help once in a while.” Who would Veronica need relationship help with? Archie asks himself, before vaguely manifesting that shifting memory, too: long nights in their living room, ones that would feel almost like their high-school outings to Pop’s, except with Betty and Veronica slowly growing closer on the opposite side of the coffee table. “You think they’re ever going to realize that breaking up with people in favor of your long-term roommate every time your relationship gets too serious means something?” Jughead continues.

“Eventually,” Archie says. Jughead smiles, and there it is again: that wrongness feeling. That same unidentifiable discomfort—and it must be obvious, because Jughead tilts his head to the side, studying him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing. I know you.” He does, unfortunately. Archie’s never doubted that. If anything, Jughead knows him too well.

“Am I a good person?” he asks instead. Jughead frowns.

“Well,” he says. “I don’t know if I’m the reigning judge of morality, but. I mean, you’re not perfect. You’ve made mistakes. You mess up sometimes. But it’s more about what you do, who you try to be. I mean, you have your music, and your kids. You— create goodness, every day.” He shrugs. “It’s why I love you.”

“You love me,” Archie says.

“Yeah,” Jughead tells him, amused. “I spent the formative years of my adolescence writing a book that you’re the center of, Arch. I don’t know if love is a big enough word.”

“Okay. Sorry,” Archie apologizes. “I don’t know. I have this weird feeling, and I just… yeah. It’s weird.”

“It’s not weird,” Jughead reassures him. “Archie, believe me, I get it. I used to worry about it too.”

“You did?”

“To be fair, you do change your mind about everything, Arch,” he says. “Comic books, hobbies, girls. Gangs, your morals.”

“Not about you,” he says. “What, you think I’m just going to—to wake up one day and drive off and never speak to you again?”

“Yeah,” Jughead says. “Sometimes I did. And you’d probably come back half a decade later and act like not a single thing had changed.”

“I’d never abandon you,” Archie says, feeling the weight of what exactly that would mean to Jughead. “I promise. I wouldn’t want to.”

“The world doesn’t really care what you want, Archie,” he says. “Things happen. So we just have to focus on what we have. I used to be so obsessed with the future, and legacies, and things we leave behind, and I guess I still am, but… I also love what I have now.” He gently traces the side of Archie’s face, from his hair down to his jawline.

“Yeah,” Archie says, feeling less control over his life than ever.

“Look, Archie,” he says, “I love you. I get to wake up next to you every morning and that’s what I care about. That’s enough for me.” Archie wants to tell him he sees them in the future, like he always has, in whatever way he wants—but he kisses him again instead because he’s right there and he can. It’s easier than stringing together sentences and Jughead can probably tell, probably sees right through him, but he doesn’t push any further.

“As much as I’d like for this to go somewhere, I do have a lecture to get to,” he says. “We’ll pick it up later?”

“As long as that’s a promise,” Archie tells him.

“Of course it’s a promise,” Jughead says. “When have I ever lied to you?”

He used to, but only by omission. “Never,” Archie says, and he kisses him again, like it’ll somehow keep him there for longer. Jughead smiles into it for a moment, brushing a thumb over his cheek, before hopping off the counter.

“Gonna go get my laptop,” he says. “See you at six.”

“See you at six,” Archie echoes.

“You hear about that drag race yesterday?” his dad asks from the kitchen. Archie’s halfway through shoving one of the textbooks he’d left downstairs in his bag and he freezes, unsure if this is meant to be a confrontation or something else entirely. “One on the Southside.”

“No,” he responds, and zips his backpack closed. When he enters the room, Vegas runs up to greet him, but his dad doesn’t turn from the stove.

“Ran into Tom Keller and he told me about it,” he says. “Some gang stuff. He said they’ve mostly rounded up one of the gangs involved, though.” Archie looks up from where he’s scratching behind Vegas’ floppy ears. Hopefully, Sheriff Keller chose not to tell his dad about Archie being the one who called him there. “Do you know if Jughead might’ve been involved?”

“No,” Archie lies again. And in an attempt at sounding detached but somewhat interested: “Damn, that’s crazy.”

“Serpent business is no joke. I mean, FP used to…” he trails off into silence. Archie can’t tell whether it’s because he’s been reminded that FP is locked up, or of Jughead’s home situation, or something else entirely. There’s a bottle of prescription painkillers on the counter next to him, but Archie doesn’t ask. He’d said he was fine, but Archie knows he’s doing what he can to keep going after the shooting. He understands that, even.

“Have a good day at school,” he finally finishes, and Archie gives him a quick “thanks, dad” before he heads out the door.

“I’m telling him tonight,” Betty tells him, sliding into the seat next to him during study hall. “Jughead, I mean. About the Black Hood.”

“Great,” Archie says, not looking up from his math homework. He probably won’t end up completing it anyway, so hopefully it doesn’t get checked. He hasn’t really completed much of anything lately. 

“I’m sorry,” she ends up continuing, without waiting for a legitimate response. “I know you and him…”

“We’re fine, Betty, okay?” Archie interrupts, giving her a smile that probably looks just as fake as it feels. “It’s all good. We’ll be back to normal soon.” The real question is what that normal is, but Archie doesn’t really want to think too deeply about that, and he’s sure Betty doesn’t, either. She frowns, looking down at her desk and then back up again.

“I’m sorry you guys kind of… broke up, you know. Over what I asked you to do.” Which is, like, half-true, even though Archie’s not sure about her phrasing.

“It’s… I did it. With the thing with the cops at the race. We were still fine after I delivered him your message, so don’t blame yourself too hard or anything,” he says, but his attempt at a joking tone falls flat and Betty just looks disappointed.

“He called it…” she starts. “Well.”

“What?”

“The one thing that could actually hurt him,” she finishes. “I should’ve gone myself. I’m sorry for dragging you into my mess.”

Betty carries entirely too much on her shoulders. He wishes there was something he could do about it—that he could shoot the Black Hood himself and have this all be over in a minute—but there isn’t. And even Betty doesn’t seem to be any closer to figuring out who he is. “Don’t apologize,” he says. “The Black Hood made you cut off Ronnie and Jug. I’m glad you told me. So you weren’t totally alone.”

“Thank you, Arch,” she says. “I just hope it didn’t… wreck your friendship beyond repair.”

“I think we’ll be okay,” he tells her, “we usually are.” Truthfully, he’s not sure—their fights recently have felt more final than they used to be, the rift between them growing with every conversation. But Betty doesn’t need to know about that—she has enough to deal with already.

Archie stares at the movie poster pinned to the wall across from him—some sci-fi action film. He doesn’t remember it much, now that he tries to recall it. He’s not sure why he has posters all around his bedroom of movies he can’t remember watching. These days more than ever, it feels like he doesn’t quite own his own life.

His dad’s sitting on the edge of the bed, scrolling through an article published online about Riverdale PD arresting a Southside High English teacher on drug charges, and somewhere else that’s not here, Betty is telling Jughead the truth. Archie would love to follow her lead—like when they were kids, when she helped teach him how to read and to ride a bike and to use the stove—but he isn’t totally sure what the truth is anymore.

“Did you hear about that, uh, teacher at Southside High who got arrested?” his dad asks. Archie shrugs.

“Think Jughead was in one of his classes,” he says, feeling sick again, like he’s doing something wrong. It’s irrational and he knows it, but he cares too much to let it go. It’s Jughead. He can’t just give up now—not after everything they’ve been through in the past couple of months. They were almost good again.

“How’s he dealing?” his dad asks, and Archie thinks about Jughead’s look of surprise when he’d opened the front door; of how he’d avoided meeting his eyes on the car ride home. He barely has any idea of how he’s feeling, let alone how Jughead is—he’d been genuinely angry earlier, but then again: You know what they’ll want? Your head, Archie, he’d shouted, accusatory, but part of Archie had still taken it as you’re worried about me.

“Honestly, Dad, I’m not sure,” he answers. “I tried helping Jughead with something, and it backfired. I think he’s pretty pissed off.” His dad opens one of his prescription bottles, takes a pill.

“Well, it's not the first fight you guys had. Pretty sure it won't be the last. You'll patch it up.” He takes a sip of water. It’s basically what he’d said himself to Betty earlier—but it won’t be the last, Archie thinks. That’s kind of the whole problem.

“Are you okay, dad?” he asks.

“Yeah,” he says, “feeling better every day.” It doesn’t look like it, but he accepts the answer anyway: there’s not much more to be said.

When his dad heads to bed, he picks up his phone and opens his messages: Hey, he types out, and deletes it. Then, I’m sorry, finger hovering over the send button, before he deletes that, too.

“I didn’t get it,” Archie says, shrugging his jacket off of his shoulders and hanging it over a chair. “I mean, I always think I’m kind of getting it, but then I never do. Like, what’s the point of a horror movie where they know they’re in a horror movie?”

“It’s meta, Archie,” Jughead says, like he’s resisting the urge to roll his eyes, “it’s supposed to be self-referential.”

“But if they know all the rules of survival, why don’t they just, like… follow them?”

“I don’t know,” Jughead says. “If you ask me, it has something to do with how… even if you know the type of story you’re in, and you know what to do and the ways it can end… it still doesn’t mean it goes the way you want it to.”

“Okay, I don’t feel like thinking about it that hard,” Archie says. “But I like that you like to. And at least we agree on Star Wars.” Jughead smiles.

“A classic. At least,” he agrees, and kisses Archie like he likes him and not like he wants something from him—Archie’s not great at telling the difference, still second-guesses it half the time. Some days it feels like there’s a part of him that went missing over that one summer and there’s no one capable of patching it back up but himself, but he doesn’t even know where to start. Maybe someday—this many years into the future, this many years into working to heal—it’ll start to feel normal again. But he’s never sure.

“You know,” he starts, pulling away, “do you remember when we were in, like, fourth grade, and—”

“Archie,” Jughead interrupts, looking like he’s trying not to laugh, “please don’t talk extensively about our childhood right now.”

Archie puts his hands up in surrender. “Wasn’t going to, I promise. That was it.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I love nostalgia as much as the next person, but I’m normal, so too much detail about you age ten is not a turn-on for me, personally.”

“I get it, I’ll shut up,” he says, and it comes out so earnestly that Jughead does actually laugh.

“Never said you had to do that,” he says. He rests a hand on Archie’s cheek, gently, like you would touch something you’re scared of accidentally breaking. Archie reaches to the side for the doorknob with his other hand.

He thinks—he’s not sure, but he really does think—that he would be happy if they were best friends forever, if that’s all Jughead ever wanted. But he wants more than that, and deep down, he thinks that Jughead does, too; that he’ll never say it out of fear of being rejected or left behind or relegated to second choice, but he does. Or at the very least he did, at some point. Probably before Archie even thought of the idea.

“I love you,” Jughead murmurs, and nothing else. Archie doesn’t answer him—in words, anyway. Jughead had always been good at choosing his words carefully, and Archie’s not like him that way, has never been known to keep things to himself. It’s honestly a wonder how little his friends seem to see him, sometimes, because it feels like he can’t help but lay it all out there. He wonders how he and Jughead got together here—if the reason he hasn’t imagined it yet is because he still doesn’t know how to say it out loud. But he’ll forget about most of this all over again tomorrow morning.

Archie sets one knee on the bed before Jughead stops him with a hand to his chest. “Shoes,” he reminds him, and Archie sits next to him, reaching down to untie his laces.

“Every time,” he says, and Jughead smiles, looking away.

“You know,” he starts, “I used to hate being around you.”

Archie pauses, halfway through undoing a knot he’d accidentally tangled up. “What?”

“No, okay, no. Not like that,” he corrects, setting one of his shoes on the ground. “I mean, I, like… dreaded being around you because I liked you way more than I was supposed to. And it felt like you could tell.”

Archie doesn’t think he was ever able to tell. And he hadn’t ever really thought about Jughead in those kinds of terms—wrong, not supposed to. “Trust me, I couldn’t.”

“Okay,” he says, “I do,” one of his hands curling around Archie’s wrist to pull him in again, and Archie loves him in a way he hadn’t ever really thought about, in a way that feels right, and he wants to write about it, or talk about it, or just put it into something tangible that people can understand, but he can’t think of any that work.

“Arch,” he breathes. “No witty comments?” Archie thinks that if Jughead imagined him—if he ever has—he’d be completely different. He likes to think that his version of Jughead is true to reality, but. Artistic license.

“No,” he says, “none. Zero.”

“I’m flattered,” he murmurs, “seriously, I am,” and Archie runs a hand through his hair, grateful more than ever that he doesn’t wear the beanie anymore. Distantly, he wonders if Betty makes him take it off, which is a funny thought at first, but then he remembers that Jughead and Betty are dating, so there’s the end of that.

Archie is happy—maybe not, but he’ll get there, eventually, at least—and, well, straight, for one, and he would be fine staying in Riverdale, wouldn’t he? Archie is fine with this. Archie is way too fine with this. Archie has absolutely no problems thinking about this, and he probably should, he figures. “Do you think we’ll ever be okay again?”

Jughead looks confused for a moment. “I mean, I’m still in school, and you’re just getting started at your job… it’s not like we’re in that bad of a place right now.” Archie’s starting to see the holes in his plan—when did Betty and Jughead break up? Speaking of Betty, why hasn’t she fled the state by now? And how much does a one-bedroom apartment even cost?

“In real life, I mean,” he corrects. “Us. Do you think we could ever figure it out?” he asks. Jughead gives him a small smile at that, obviously trying to hold something back.

“It’s a fantasy, Archie,” he says, “it doesn’t have to be realistic.”

“But I want to be real,” Archie tells him. “You think?”

“Maybe,” he says, but it sounds like a no. “Maybe if the mysteries ever stopped and we had the time for it. Or in another life,” he adds, “where we’re better than we are here.”

“You don’t think we’re good?” Archie asks.

Jughead shrugs. “Didn’t say that. I mean, you only think of things in black and white, Arch,” he says. “You love things too much to see what’s wrong with them sometimes.”

“Jug,” he starts, but finds he doesn’t really know what he has to say. It’s starting to become a pattern, he thinks.

“It’s just… I don’t know,” he says. “I’d probably be better off with something less intense, and up-and-down, and… whatever. I’m sure you would too. But I always want you to be a part of my life.”

“Me too,” Archie tells him, because it’s true. He loves most of his friends that way: when he thinks years into the future, he hopes that even if they move away, Betty and Veronica and Jughead all come to Pop’s just to meet up, so he can see their faces every now and then. But mostly he hopes that they won’t have to do that—that they’ll always be twisted up in one another, ingrained in each other’s everyday lives. “I always want to see you.”

Jughead pauses; looks at him. “Yeah,” he says, something unidentifiable in his voice, and leans up to kiss him again. Distantly, Archie wonders if they’ll ever get the chance to be normal—or if he even wants to be. If he wants every bad thing that’s ever happened to just go away, or if he wants to get through everything and still make it out alive, or if the rest of Archie’s life doesn’t care what he wants in the slightest. Honestly, my whole life feels like a story I have no control over, but saying that makes me sound crazy, right?

“Archie,” Jughead asks, soft and quiet, “do you want this?”

It’s not what he’s asking, but Archie does. He wants it too much, if he’s being honest. “Yes,” he says, knowing he’ll never get to have it.

The highway running from Riverdale to Greendale is shrouded in darkness, nothing beyond the sides of the road but the outlines of trees and past that, emptiness. Archie glances over, but Jughead doesn’t say anything. Usually he wouldn’t be able to stop talking—Archie’s not used to this kind of quiet.

A beat of silence; they pass a streetlight. Archie’s grip on the steering wheel tightens involuntarily at the momentary flash of warm orange light.

“You know,” he starts, “I had this stupid idea.”