Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The email makes her feel suddenly sick. Betty reads it again in all of it’s succinct one-line glory.

Please come to my office at 9:20.
Garrett Morgan
Editor

She looks at her watch as though time may have suddenly stopped or, who knows, sped up or even ceased to exist altogether. Unfortunately, the delicate hands of the timepiece given to her by her parents on her 21st birthday point to a 9 and a 3 respectively and so she resigns herself to five minutes worth of wondering what it is that she’s done to warrant being called to the editor’s office at such short notice - and so directly too.

Wracking her brain for memories of the Christmas party last Friday night, she tries to recall just how much eggnog she drunk before she made the excuse that she had to be up early in the morning. Had she said something unprofessional? Done something unprofessional?

She times her arrival to the second - her boss likes them all to be on time. Not early. Not late. Just...on time. Only upon knocking at his glass door does she realise her hands are shaking.

“Betty!” he announces, something akin to enthusiasm in his voice. “Come in; take a seat.”

It isn’t a reprimand, she realises, her shoulders sagging with relief. She takes the chair opposite him, crossing her legs so the material of her navy dress stretches over her tights.

“I have a story for you. Or, I suppose, I want you to investigate a story...about a story.”

Betty frowns at his words and then quickly rearranges her face so it’s impassive. She hadn’t meant to be rude. “Okay.”

Garrett sets a book on his desk so that it sits between them, its front cover a deep midnight blue with a picture of a single white feather on it. “Free,” she reads aloud. “By...”

The author’s name dies somewhere in her throat, its three syllables snatched like a hat on a thorn bush during a windy day.

“Jughead Jones,” Garrett finishes for her. “I take it you haven’t read it yet?”

Every single inch of Betty’s skin feels like it’s burning. She’s hot and somehow cold all at once and she’s back outside of her parents’ front door again, watching his truck disappear along the road until it’s out of sight. It was the last time she ever saw him.

“Betty?”

“Um…”

“I said, it’s unlike you not to have picked up something like this already. It was in the latest delivery of upcoming releases.”

“I…”

She doesn’t have to force some excuse about being busy with her articles out of her mouth because her boss has moved on to talking about how ‘Jones’ is on his way to Boston and they’ve managed to score an interview with him because her boss is an old friend of the company’s publicist. It’s only just dawning on her that she’s the one expected to conduct said interview. “He’ll be arriving at 1:30pm.”

She’s nodding, somehow, and then Garrett is handing her the book and telling her to read as much as she can before then.

“Here,” he says, halting her feet as she’s just about stepped out of the glass-walled office. He hands her a sheet of paper with what looks like questions scribbled on it in looping yet messy short hand. “I made a few notes when I was reading it myself but I haven’t read it thoroughly. There’s a story behind this one though for sure - go make some inroads.”

By the time Betty’s reached her desk, there are crescent-shaped indents in her palm and blood underneath her nails.

-

To everyone, she was that first ray of golden light signalling the end of a storm.

She can’t get past the first line. She reads it in his voice - that flat (yet somehow contradictingly lilting) tone he used to read her articles aloud in when they still worked together on the Blue and Gold.

***

“A spate of break-ins has sent shockwaves through the neighboring town of Greendale.”

“Juggie…”

His eyes speak the indignant ‘what?’ that his lips don’t say as he rests his hand against her hip. She can feel his warm breath on her neck and suddenly, she’s not so committed to her protest anymore.

“You know I get self-conscious when you read my work aloud.”

“I’m hearing your words Betts,” he tells her. “I have to read aloud to do that.”

“How about you hear my words tonight,” she challenges with the confidence he’s helped her acquire when he visibly folds beneath her. Pinkens at her public kisses. Scans a room until his eyes fall on hers and he looks like he’s found everything he’s looking for. “When you come over.”

***

Her eyes mist and she blinks quickly, snatching at the piece of paper to the left of her keyboard. Garrett’s first question - or statement, to be correct - is only language. Onto the blank document on her computer, she types ‘How do you select the language you use?’ and then promptly deletes it. She’s not in sixth grade. It’s replaced with ‘You clearly have a love of words. Where has that come from?’

She already knows the answer.

The next thing, scrawled in blue ink and slightly smudged, is Charlotte - should she have fought harder? It’s an easy enough question to type and Betty finds that with no frame of reference, transcribing her editor’s words seems the easiest option, and so that’s what she does.

At the final note, Garrett has simply listed ‘intimate details - inspiration? Betty finds herself wondering whether he means sexually intimate or privately intimate and then quickly decides it doesn’t matter. She types the question with deft fingers and and hits print. She’s the only one in the whole office who doesn’t trust the ubiquitous cloud.

Oliver, the intern, brings her a latte around 10:30 which grows cold without her having taken a single sip. Lunch time passes and she doesn’t eat the kale salad she prepared at home last night. She debates faking a sudden onset of vomiting or period cramps but what with it being Christmas in four days, she’s one of the only main journalists left in the office and Garrett won’t be about to let her duck out of her duties - even if this article is quite far removed from the pieces she usually writes.

Besides, Betty tells herself, it’s been more than five years. She can handle an hour in the same room as Jughead.

-

As it turns out, this optimism is seriously misguided.

He’s already waiting when she arrives to greet him, the deep inhale she’d taken before rounding the corner proving futile in helping her breathe in a normal manner. He disarms her immediately (without even trying, as he always had) first of all by the way in which he’s dressed: his lack of beanie crown, and also by the way in which he’s drumming his fingers against his knee. They’re still as long and nimble as she remembers, the sudden thought of what they used to do to her in their respective childhood bedrooms making her blush red and hot.

“Mr Jones,” she manages somehow to force out of her mouth, extending a shaking hand as his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat and he rises from the chair to meet her. “Thank you for coming.”

It’s a lie. She isn’t thankful at all.

He opens his mouth to say something but his words don’t reach the surface. Instead, he nods and swallows and takes her hand in his. Betty isn’t sure her legs are working.

Jughead’s publicist rises too and she turns her attention gratefully to the woman dressed in a dark grey pant suit who doesn’t smile, but does inform Betty she’s the first journalist to be granted an interview. The fact makes her feel sick but she swallows the bile and pushes the desire to be anywhere else right now to the back of her mind. She’s not entirely sure, but she thinks her left hand might be clenched into a fist again.

“Please,” she says, grateful that the word is only one syllable so evidence of her wavering voice can be kept to a minimum. “Follow me.”

They enter one of the smaller boardrooms and Betty offers both Jughead and his publicist a cup of coffee. They both accept and she sets about pouring the water into the machine, its gurgling a welcome distraction from the pounding of her pulse. As she’s automatically adding two sugar lumps to Jughead’s cup, Betty tells herself to calm down. It’ll be an hour, tops, she figures, and then she can go back to the post-Riverdale, post-Columbia world she lives in now. The world in which her ex-boyfriend plays no part (except, of course, he does).

She stumbles on the first question - the one about his choice of language - and feels the publicist’s eyes on her. She can almost hear her thoughts: Why has Garrett chosen such an incompetent journalist to interview her client? And so, after apologising as only Betty Cooper would, she reads the question again, only daring to look up once Jughead begins speaking about words being the equivalent of paint: there are so many shades and only in choosing the right one will you achieve the painting you want. He’s so eloquent in the way he tells her this that Betty wonders whether it’s rehearsed. But she hears the sincerity in his words and she knows the only scripted part of this is the questions on the sheet of paper in her hand.

When he’s finished answering, he waits politely for her next question and so she reels it off without any frame of reference.

“Should Charlotte have fought harder?”

Something in his eyes changes - his pupils seem to swallow the blue of his irises - but he clears his throat, appears to consider her for a moment (which makes her palms burn for the release of her fingernails, although she denies them this time) and then speaks.

“I don’t think the question is whether she should have. He didn’t want her to.”

He says no more and Betty feels her eyes prick with something she hopes isn’t tears.

“Can you tell me more about the narrator?”

“What do you want to know?”

This throws her because she has no idea what she wants to know. She also has no idea what Garrett wants to know either. “Um…”

“He’s a masochist, obviously,” Jughead says. “Allowing himself to love Charlotte like he does.”

That’s all she gets and so Betty improvises for the first time. “Is Charlotte a bad person?” She realises she hasn’t been clear and adds, “in your opinion - and the narrator’s opinion?”

“No, and no.”

“Okay,” she whispers, looking back to the paper. She asks each remaining question robotically and he answers and the words she scrawls down don’t sink in but they’re on the page for later. So Betty reads out the final question with relief (and yet with an unwelcome sense of disappointment too).

“Why don’t we know the narrator’s name?”

***

“Betts,” he queries suspiciously, but with that grin on his face that lights up his eyes. She’s close enough to feel the hairs on his neck stand up against her lips. She feels triumphant in being able to do this to him. “What’re you doing?”

“Rewarding you,” she whispers into his ear in a timbre that makes him visibly shiver. Her own grin widens.

“I only need to type my name and then I’m done.”

“I can see that,” she says, pressing her lips to his neck and sucking just enough to get him to grunt low in his throat. It vibrates her lips so she feels it all the way down to her toes. His fingers drift from the keyboard to reach blindly for her and she can already tell his eyes have slipped closed. “And you get one kiss per letter.”

She allows herself his temple first: breathing out through her nose so the hot air bounces back off his skin. Sluggishly, Jughead’s finger makes it to the ‘J’.

“Well done,” Betty smiles, heading next for the corner of his mouth so her lips are just out of reach from his.

The ‘U’ is an easy slide upwards from the previous letter. The other corner of his mouth gets the same treatment.

Finding the ‘G’ appears more challenging, but he makes it and Betty rewards him with a kiss at the top of his spine. Goosebumps break out across his skin.

By the time he’s typed the ‘D’, she’s unzipping his jeans and kissing him through his boxers and feeling so high on power that if principal Weatherbee were to burst into the room right now, she knows she wouldn’t be able to form a coherent cover story. Good thing she’d locked the door.

“Christ Betts,” he says, snatching at just enough oxygen to fill his lungs before he’s pulling her to him and crushing her lips with his.

***

“Because he doesn’t need to be specific.”

“Even when this is his story?” She’s improvising again.

“It isn’t.” Her face must state her confusion and Jughead says simply, “It’s hers.”

Betty has no more questions. Jughead drains the contents of his coffee cup even though she knows it’ll be cold now, then rubs his hands against the brown-grey of his pants somewhat nervously. “Are we done?”

She stares for a moment before she remembers to answer. “Yes. Thank you.” She manages, somehow, to shake his hand again without looking at his face, then shakes the publicist’s hand too. “Would you like me to show you to Mr Morgan’s office?”

“I know where it is,” she answers. Jughead follows her lead and rises from his chair. He doesn’t make it out of the room however, before he’s reaching into his bag. He hands Betty a copy of the book with the same expression he used to wear when she’d read his finished articles for the Blue and Gold: a cocktail of hesitation and self-doubt and accomplishment.
“In case you want to read it,” he adds.

He follows his publicist towards Garrett’s office and all Betty can do is stand there, face aflame and every single fibre of her being focused on not allowing the tears to fall. She wants to call out his name, offer her congratulations on the book she hasn’t read; tell him she always knew he’d make it; tell him that she’s proud of him.

She says none of those things.

Later, when she unlocks the door to her apartment and flicks on the lamp so the dark space is bathed in a soft light, Betty takes the book from her bag. It sits on the side table while she prepares a stir-fry she doesn’t eat, while she takes possibly the longest shower of her life, while she eyes herself in the bathroom mirror for at least ten minutes until finally, she picks it up and takes it with her into her bedroom.

Curtains closed and pillows propped behind her, she traces the front cover, lingering on Jughead’s name until finally, she manages to conjure enough calm to read past the first line.

To everyone, she was that first ray of golden light signalling the end of a storm.

She’d known that was coming: had the words memorised the very first time she saw them. She takes a breath and continues.

She was imperfect only in that she loved him when she should’ve loved somebody who was better. And that’s where we begin: with that misdirected love.

Chapter Text

Realising she loved him - was in love with him - simultaneously ignited a fire in his veins and chilled him to the bone. He hadn’t been put on this earth to be loved like this by anyone, let alone someone like her.

Jughead reads the words again, reminding himself of that chill; trying hopelessly to forget the warmth of her voice and her hands and her lips. He never usually reads his work once it’s complete (and he hates that he’s allowing himself to be so self-indulgent now - although, he supposes, it is Christmas after all) but she’s in his head; his bloodstream; his damn lungs and he needs to remember why he made the choice to finally publish this story.

A sigh pushes past his lips and blows the tuft of hair flopping across his forehead a little to the left. The hotel doesn’t have any decent movies on offer and so he flips open his laptop to settle on something that doesn’t remind him of Betty and the way she used to lean against him on that couch in his dad’s trailer.

Of course, having seen her merely hours ago looking as Betty Cooper-esque as ever (and yet, somehow, looking different too) every movie has him reliving the times he’d have to nudge her awake as the credits rolled so she could make it home before curfew. Jughead often used to wonder what life would’ve been like for him if he’d had parents who wanted him home by a certain time - you know, just so they knew he was safe. Still, it doesn’t do to dwell and so he hits the cursor when it hovers over ‘The Haunting’. If nothing else, he won’t have to concentrate when he already knows the storyline inside out.

***

“It’s okay,” he whispers, voice low so it doesn’t spook her what with the music playing from the laptop’s tinny speakers and the fact she’s woken up in a place that isn’t her bedroom. Besides, he’s more than happy for her to snuggle sleepily back into his chest. “Go back to sleep.”

He wonders how it’s possible to be comfier with a grown person laying across you than when you’re stretched out across a couch on your own. He supposes though that it doesn’t matter when said person is Betty and she’s got a fistful of his shirt for security purposes.

“Jug?” she asks with heavy eyelids.

“Yeah?”

“Can this always be a thing?”

He grins despite himself. She’s too damn adorable like this. “Can what always be a thing?”

She yawns in such an unladylike manner that a small chuckle escapes his lips. He loves that she’s not embarrassed. “Scary movies. You and me on this couch. I want it forever.”

He wants it forever too. “Sure Betts.”

She’s out again before he’s kissed her.

***

Jughead pulls the sheets a little tighter around himself. The air conditioning is cranked up high despite the freezing December weather but he quite likes the contrast in temperatures. It reminds him that he doesn’t need another body in the bed to feel warm when it’s cold.

He’s just fine on his own.

In the morning, he wakes to grey light signalling fresh snowfall. He lies for a moment without making any attempt to get up: there isn’t any real purpose in rising before noon when his itinerary consists of nothing more than reading and watching any movie that isn’t remotely holiday-themed. There is, of course, breakfast though. Blueberry pancakes and bacon; challah french toast; something along the lines of huevos rancheros dressed up as a fancier-sounding dish (albeit with the same ingredients). It’s enough to make him leave the sheets, and he does with only a brief sigh at the loss of what he thinks must be a feather mattress.

He’s just selected his order when his phone rings.

“Garrett rang,” Liz, his publicist sighs. “Editor at the Herald. Apparently, the journalist who interviewed you yesterday didn’t ask enough questions.” She tuts like a disapproving parent. “He asked whether she might give you a call with some follow-up ones.”

Jughead wonders whether she’s read the book - or, given that he only gave her it yesterday, read some of it. He hopes she has - hopes she gets to see her freedom written down in print - but he’s almost certain that won’t be the case.

“Anyway, I told him you were busy and that anything else she wanted to know could be found in the press release.”

He’s not busy. Liz knows he’s not busy.

“It’s like he assumed I wouldn't have a damn plane to catch.” And there it is. Jughead almost smiles. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know I managed to fend anymore work off for you, so you can enjoy the holidays in peace.”

That’s all well and good, Jughead thinks, and usually he’d be eternally grateful to be afforded the luxury of peace - especially when the sidewalks are covered with snow and there’ll likely be crazed Christmas shoppers everywhere - but he doesn’t want the message of the book to be misinterpreted. He also doesn’t want Betty to be in trouble with her editor (or, at least any more trouble than he suspects she might be in for not having got the information she needed yesterday - he can already see her wide eyes cast down in disappointment and it nips at his chest) and so he closes his eyes, thumb and forefinger pinched to the bridge of his nose.

“Did he leave a direct number to call her back on? Or an email address maybe?”

It’s not like he needs it. He could, if necessary, try the number for her he still has stored on his phone (assuming, that is, that it’s still the one she uses). Or he could get back in touch with Archie and try that way.

Liz sounds surprised. “I have an email for her - no direct line - but….I thought you wanted to be alone for your ‘period of holiday solitude’?”

“It shouldn’t take long. Besides, maybe the paper will buy me dinner for the inconvenience.”

“I can’t be there though,” his publicist continues. “I have to catch this plane.”

“That’s fine,” he tells her honestly. “You go home.”

Liz hangs up after relaying Betty’s work email address; wishing him a merry Christmas and confirming that she’ll be in touch the day after New Year’s Day. His breakfast arrives only five minutes later, after which he takes a longer shower than necessary before selecting his usual preferred clothing: worn jeans, a t-shirt and a dark red and black plaid shirt. His fingers itch for the beanie on top of the set of drawers but he decides to at least wait until his hair has dried first. Damp wool isn’t the nicest of materials to have crowning your head on a cold day.

Jughead types out an email to Betty, then promptly deletes and retypes it two more times before settling on,

I’ll answer any questions you need.
Jug.

He hits send before he can change his mind about the shortened version of his name, then spends the next twenty minutes reading his unopened emails before her response arrives at his inbox.

Thank you. It reads. Garrett suggested I meet you at a restaurant but I can call or email if you’d prefer.

Elizabeth Cooper
Features Writer

His reply of A restaurant is fine. Let me know where and when is answered within five minutes of him hitting ‘send’ and he spends the remainder of the day holed up inside of his room, failing to concentrate on pretty much anything he attempts to do.

A little after seven pm, Jughead exits the hotel and heads towards State subway station, pulling the collar of his jacket up in an attempt to shut out the bite of the wind. His feet crunch into the newly-laid snow and he keeps his head down as more flakes exit the clouds and cover the already deep layer the street’s wearing.

The platform is almost deserted when he gets there, due in part, he suspects, to the weather. Still, it’s nice to be able to sit down when the train arrives before he has to get off again at the next stop so he can change onto the green line. Again, the platform is pretty empty and he gets a seat on the next train too, passing the time with a few games of madlibs on his phone until it reaches Arlington and he‘s out in the freezing air once more.

Betty’s waiting for him when he arrives, sitting at a table she’s reserved under Elizabeth (and not Betty - again) Cooper and cradling a tall tumbler, the contents of which look untouched thus far.

“Hi,” she says a little breathlessly, and stands to greet him. Jughead’s preoccupied with what to do with his hands - a handshake seems unsuitably formal considering where he used to put said hands when they were together, yet she’s booked the table under what is obviously her professional name. So yeah, he’s conflicted.

***

She’s drunk. He can tell instantly - from the way she almost flings her body into his arms (not that he’s complaining of course: he’d never complain about that) and from the hot sweetness of her breath against his lips as she announces, loudly:

“Juggie, you’re here!”

She kisses him with abandon, trailing her eyes down his body once she pulls back - a figurative undressing in public if ever there was one. He wonders if the look she’s wearing is the one he sports when she’s lying beneath him, and then he doesn’t have much time to wonder anything else because her fingers are tugging at his hand non-too gently to pull him out of the living room and into the quieter calm of the hallway.

“Betts…”

She silences him with her lips on his, tongue dipping into his mouth without a moment’s hesitation. It’s easy for his fingers to find the soft, smooth skin of her stomach when she’s wearing her cheerleading uniform and they come to rest there, pressing into her warmth.

“Get a room,” he hears someone announce, and difficult as it is, he manages to prize his lips away from his girlfriend’s. He’s become the ultimate house party cliche: the boy from the South Side with his motorcycle and leather jacket, pressed up against a wall and kissing the innocent, blonde cheerleader at a party he hasn’t been invited to.

“Jug,” she whines, grabbing his fingers and placing them on her thigh. God, she’ll undo him right here if she’s not careful.

“We’re in a hallway,” he tries to reason, although it seems she’s several solo cups past being reasonable when she grinds her centre against his. “Fuck, Betty,” he hisses, voice thick and betraying his rapidly waning self-control.

“I’ve missed you,” she mumbles into his neck, right before sucking on the skin and then biting down deliciously. He’s missed her too - God he misses not being able to see her through the day like they did when he still attended Riverdale High - and he’s wishing more than anything he’d gotten here earlier. “I need you,” she breathes taking his fingers once more and swiping them against the cotton of her underwear beneath her skirt.

She’s soaked.

“Upstairs,” he instructs quickly, tugging on her hand and then steadying her when she trips a little against him. She giggles all the way up the stairs and Jughead can practically hear her internal monologue: good girl Betty Cooper is about to get off in the bathroom at a party.

They find said bathroom and once the door is closed and locked behind them, he hoists her onto the counter, tugging her underwear down her legs and then sinking a finger inside of her as her head falls back - eyes closed - against the mirror.

The sight of Betty Cooper in her cheerleading outfit coming undone with his hand between her legs is never going to leave him. He’s sure of it.

***

Thoughts of her panting and breathless against him in what now feels like a previous existence cloud his better judgement, and in leaving his hand in some sort of limbo, it manages to knock her glass over - spilling most of the contents across the table and onto the floor.

“Shit!” he mutters, standing the tumbler back up despite the loss of pretty much her entire drink. “Sorry, I-”

“It’s okay,” she says in that soft, reassuring tone he hasn’t heard in so long. Her fingers swipe the napkin deftly and she does a good job in mopping up what she can of the spillage before the waitress comes over to offer him a drink, sees the mess and tells them both she’ll grab a cloth and set Betty up with a fresh gin and tonic.

“Are you okay?” he asks, meaning the spilled drink and had it splashed her, but her response comes with the same tight smile she’d given him the previous day at the Herald office and Jughead assumes she’s not really referring to the lack of liquid in her glass.

“Sorry you had to come out tonight,” Betty tells him. “I should’ve… the questions were -”

“- Here you go,” the waitress interrupts, setting down a new glass full of clear liquid on the only patch of clean table. She wipes at the rest with her cloth, and seemingly satisfied, turns to him. “Can I get you something to drink?”

He orders a craft beer - one of the ones suggested to him - and then manages to compose himself enough to mentally will his thoughts (and limbs) to comply with his purpose for being here. Betty begins her apology again and this time, he’s the one to interrupt her. “It’s fine,” he says. “Really.”

He watches as she takes a sip of her drink, goes to set it down, but then brings it back to her lips and takes another - notably larger - sip before producing an expensive-looking piece of paper from her bag. “Garrett’s questions,” she tells him by way of explanation.

“Garrett’s,” he repeats and then sees the pink rise in her cheeks.

“Yeah...I...well, I haven’t gotten chance to read the book yet.” Her cheeks turn a darker shade of pink and he mentally kicks himself. He hadn’t meant to make her feel bad. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says honestly. “I’ll know whose perspective they’re from.”

“Does it matter?” Betty raises her glass to her lips again, just as the waitress delivers his beer and asks whether they’re ready to order, saving him from answering. They haven’t so much as opened their menus but Betty either knows this restaurant so well that she doesn’t have to look at what’s written down in order to make an informed decision, or, it’s simply a given that a steakhouse like this will serve a spinach salad.

The waitress looks to him, and rather than opening the menu he tries for a burger. The face she makes indicates that he’s picked something not written down on the paper inside of the leather holder, but she does then follow it up with, “We’ll be able to get that for you sir.”

She asks whether he might like some rosemary potatoes or some onion rings, and Jughead’s answer of “yes,” seems to confuse her.

“Which would you like?”

“Both.”

The waitress collects the menus back in and makes off towards the stand at the front of the restaurant. Much like the subway and streets had been, the place is far from busy. It means they can talk without being overheard, although he hopes the frequent visits to the table by their server will now cease until the food arrives.

“How do you like Boston?” Betty asks.

“It’s...surprisingly quiet,” he says, which earns him one of her small, gentle smiles.

“I like that,” she says. “The quiet. Even on a busy day, everything seems so much more relaxed than in New York.”

If there was ever a city that embodied Betty’s spirit, he decides, it would be Boston: charming, neat, safe. Or, at least, what he’s seen of it so far.

“Do you still live there?”

He’s halfway through taking a gulp of his beer and her question surprises him enough that he raises his eyebrows. He had no idea she knew he’d left Riverdale but he supposes she might have procured the services of Wikipedia after finding out she was going to be writing the article about his book. And then, Jughead realises he must be wearing his surprise because she gabbles a quick apology for being intrusive and takes another sip of her drink. If she continues at this rate, she’ll need another before the food arrives, he thinks.

“I didn’t mean to pry, I just….Veronica said she thought...maybe Archie had mentioned…”

“I still live there,” he says. “Brooklyn. Jellybean’s there and...uh,” he rubs the back of his neck and only then does he realise he’s still wearing his beanie. He pulls it off and sets it on the seat beside him. “Archie.”

He doesn’t see the guy with whom he used to spend every day throughout most of his life in Riverdale (up until junior year at least) very often, but they do meet up occasionally and Jughead figures that in the absence of any other real companions besides JB, his childhood partner-in-crime is still his best friend. Things are just a little more...awkward since the whole Archie-Betty thing finally happened.

Jughead isn’t aware of the details - and he doesn’t want to be, either - but he knows that at some point during their freshman year at Columbia, Archie and Veronica broke up and it inevitably wove the two of them together in the way they probably should’ve always been. When he’d first found out, he’d felt a strange sense of satisfaction - like it was his reward for letting her go: knowing she’d be happy; that she’d gotten what she’d always wanted.

And then, a year or so later at the most, news had come of their breakup. That, he had to admit, he wasn’t expecting. But he’d pushed that news bulletin out of his mind as best he could: just because he’d cut ties with the Serpents, it didn’t mean he’d get to waltz back into Betty’s life like he’d never not been there. He knew that even before Alice echoed his own sentiment back, “So help me Jug Head (those two separate syllables again) you Riverdale boys don’t get to destroy her again.”

Destroy. Again. Two words - the first enough to make him hate himself all over again, but the second? Well, he doesn’t think he’ll forget the way it sounded. It had made him think of those awful crescent indents on her palms and he remembers silently willing her not to break the skin again. He still wonders, even now, whether despite the two hundred-plus miles, she’d somehow gotten the message.

And then this happened, this chance meeting. He’d known she worked at the Herald but he also knew she was a features writer - not likely to be the one asking him questions about the book she obviously hadn’t read. He is though, a Jones, and when do things ever go smoothly?

“Do you see him often?” Betty asks.

She says it so casually, as if there’s no hurt there at all. Jughead regards her expression for a moment but she legitimately seems interested and he answers honestly. “Not really.” He wants to ask her the same question but he can’t quite seem to get the words out of his mouth. “Do you still see Veronica?”

“Not really.”

“I always thought California was a strange choice for college.”

“I think,” Betty says, taking a sip of her drink - there’s only about a third of it left now, he notes. “She just needed to be far enough away from her parents that she could start over.”

It’s similar logic to what he managed to apply to his own situation, although New York City isn’t quite the same as the west coast. Still, he figures, same motive.

“I miss her,” she seems to sigh, and he’s a little surprised by her honesty. “I guess it’s my fault: Archie and I...well.” She folds her hands neatly but seems to be fighting the urge to curl her fingers inward and Jughead feels a surge of worry for her - that her life isn’t maybe quite enough sunshine and rainbows to curb that darkness just yet. “I guess we were both just lonely and maybe there’s something in that adage about reverting back to what you know.” A long draw of her drink. Enough to leave only a finger of liquid left in the glass. “Not the best reason to start a relationship.”

Jughead thinks there might have been a burst of air from her mouth intending to be a laugh of some sort, but he’s stuck on the fact she was lonely and the fact that his best friend was too, and maybe their union hadn’t been the destiny he’d assumed it was.

He watches Betty finish the remainder of what’s in her glass and takes a long drag from his own drink, contemplating what to say. And then the Christmas tree in the corner of the restaurant catches his eye and he realises it’s close to ‘the big day’ as she always used to call it, and she’s still here writing articles rather than drinking eggnog with her family.

“Won’t Riverdale be graced with your presence this Christmas period?”

“I have a flight back on Christmas Eve,” she replies. “There aren’t many people left in the office and they needed someone to oversee things until we shut down for the holiday.”

“And they chose you.”

She smiles, somewhat shyly. Or even, guiltily? “I might not have protested too much.”

“The holiday cheer still sending Alice more crazy than usual?”

A real laugh bubbles out of her lips, smile creeping all the way up to her eyes and the initial apprehension he’d felt upon joking about her mom dissipates. “You could say that. Plus Polly isn’t coming home this year so it would be just me and my parents and...well, you know how intense they get.”

He does know. He hasn’t forgotten and something inside of his chest feels like it’s tearing a little at the reminder that he still knows her - at least in some part. The freedom he’d assumed her leaving him and Riverdale behind that night before she left for college perhaps hasn’t manifested quite right. She is, from what he can tell for the most part, the same person and he suddenly feels stupid for thinking she wouldn’t be.

“What about you?” she asks. “Are you in New York for Christmas?”

“No,” Jughead replies. “Jellybean’s spending it at her boyfriend’s parents’ house in Colorado so I’m staying here.”

“In a hotel?” she asks, looking (and sounding, he notes) vaguely horrified.

“It has room service, a huge, ridiculously comfortable bed - and I brought my laptop so I can watch enough Netflix to make my eyes turn into rectangles. Perfect.”

Betty looks sceptical and he wishes the last word hadn’t sounded a little tainted. He really has been looking forward to a few days with no commitments. There are still remnants of his past life he doesn’t not miss: when things like the smell of roast beef and the sight of cheap paper chains make him think of Christmas in Riverdale as more of a fond memory than he’d admit to anyone out loud. But he’s content with his plans this year, even if she doesn’t appear to be.

Their food arrives at that moment, and Jughead finds himself grateful for the presence of the waitress, not least because she’s setting down a very juicy-looking burger in front of him. He eyes Betty’s salad with distaste.

“I had a large lunch,” she tells him, setting the clean napkin across her lap in the way that only people who’ve been raised in middle class households do. “I’m still kind of full.”

Jughead doesn’t believe that - not for a second - but he says nothing more about it, instead, tilting the dish of onion rings so the contents slide onto his plate. “Help yourself to the potatoes if you want some.”

A half hour later, he’s sticking his fork into a slice of caramel apple cheesecake while Betty sips on her second gin and tonic, reading her questions off the paper she’d produced earlier. They are - he reflects - articulated very well, and the fact that her eyes don’t really betray any emotion as she scribbles his answers down in shorthand tell him she still hasn’t read the book. He won’t mention it, but he wishes she’d see her journey - see what leaving Riverdale has made her into.

But then, he considers, she might already know. She’s still Betty Cooper - all wide green eyes and blonde hair - but also, she’s not. She’s Elizabeth: wearer of fitted pencil dresses and point-toed shoes; no pony tail, but delicate waves of soft silk that bounce against her shoulders when she walks. He’s intrigued and impressed and somehow unsurprised all at once.

Sinking his fork into the final piece, he sighs. There’s no particular reason for it but Betty takes notice, concern forming in her eyes quickly. “Are you tired? We can stop. Really Jug, you’ve been kind enough to come out tonight and I should’ve -”

Her lips stop moving when he places a hand on her arm so he can get her attention. It’s almost certainly a bad move: the hairs on her skin stand up and she looks pretty much exactly how he feels, but she was about make him out as some kind of martyr when really, he’s here because there was food involved. And - of course - he wanted to see her. “I’m sighing because I’m out of dessert and it’s good.” He hopes there’s a smile accompanying his words. They’re not exactly a lie, but they’re not the whole truth either. Still, his response seems to appease her because her own lips are lifting a little at the corners.

“You want another piece?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“You’ve hardly gotten fatter since the last time I saw you.”

He’s not sure if she means yesterday or the years that have passed since he drove away from her parents’ house the night before she left for college, but he quickly makes a decision before either of them can dwell on it too. “What the hell - it’s Christmas.”

Betty signals for the waitress, orders a second piece of cheesecake for him and a coffee for herself and continues with her questions.

It’s later than he expects it to be by the time they’re done, and when he learns that she’ll be taking the train back to her apartment, he has to bite back the warning to be careful. She’s managed for the last six years without it, he figures. They head in the direction of Arlington station together and just before Betty’s train approaches, Jughead offers the information that he’s staying at the Marriott Long Wharf without even realising the words had bubbled up in his throat until they’re tripping out of his mouth. “If you need to ask any more questions,” he adds. “About the book.”

“Thanks,” she stutters. “But uh...I think I’ve got what I need.”

Jughead nods, the whistling sound of her approaching train filling his ears as the breeze blows the tuft of hair poking out of his beanie across his forehead. “It was good to see you,” she adds.

“You too Betts.”

There’s a moment in which he wants to pull her close to him and bury his nose in her hair, but he musters enough self-control to maintain the distance between them. The train squeaks to a stop and the doors open, and for a moment he thinks she hesitates. But then she’s wishing him a Merry Christmas and stepping forward into the car and the moment passes.

Chapter Text

The office is quiet and it all feels strangely eerie to Betty, who’s hunched over her desk, eyes sore and heavy. Garrett wants the article about Jughead’s book finished before she leaves so he can proof-read it and have her make any necessary amendments while she’s still in Boston. Her flight to New York departs a little after 2pm tomorrow, but she hasn’t quite finished packing yet and there’s a few remaining gifts to wrap too. All in all, she figures she’s in for a long night.

There’s the (not so) small matter of having not yet read the book, and so she’s pretty much writing the article blind - the worst type of journalism, she knows, and yet somehow it feels better this way.

She thinks, if she’s honest with herself, she’s afraid of what she might find.

Upon looking up from the computer screen, the lights of the building opposite catch her eye. There are fat, heavy flakes tumbling out of the sky in such a way that it makes the lights look as though they’re blinking, and briefly, Betty’s thoughts flit to the weather forecast she heard earlier that morning while she was getting dressed. There’s a wave of heavy snow headed their way which is due to hit tomorrow morning so she needs to leave enough time to make it to the airport incase it blocks the train line.

Better to get the article perfect now. Or, not perfect , because she’s trying hard to believe that isn’t a state that exists really - nothing’s perfect . So, better to get the article right .

Sighing to herself, she types out Jughead’s responses to the final few questions: Should the narrator have given Charlotte her own choice to make? Should he have told her the truth? Had he been selfish?

The last question, Betty recalls, had brought a wry smile to Jughead’s lips as he’d sunk his fork into the cheesecake. But then - as quickly as it had appeared - it had left again and he’d answered somewhat solemnly, “Definitely.”

He hadn’t elaborated and she hadn’t pushed.  

She proof-reads and edits based on what she can given Jughead’s responses, and then reads it through one final time before hitting print. She retrieves the pages from the copier and sets them on Garrett’s desk, shuts down her computer and then finally turns out the lamp angled towards the screen.

The air outside is freezing and seems to claw at her face as she makes her way to the subway station, and yet it’s strangely cleansing. It’s enough to wake her up at least, and Betty continues along the block with her gloved hands stuffed deep into her coat pockets. The snow makes it more difficult to walk and she nearly loses her footing a couple times, but eventually she makes the right at Broadway and heads into the warmth of the station.

By the time she gets back to her apartment, she’s cold and hungry, and completely ready to call it a night. As is always the case when her body seems about to shut down though, her brain won’t turn off and she finds herself still awake past 1am.

Jughead’s book is sitting surreptitiously on her nightstand, but she clocks it anyway in the pale light filtering through her curtains, and switches on the lamp. She begins where she left off last time, tracing the front cover with her fingers first, then focusing on the words on the open page.

The letter arrived just like he knew it would, dancing into the mailbox at the end of her driveway with all of the upcoming promise it held. It wasn’t the square typeface that made up his mind - not really (although it was further confirmation that her life would become exactly what it was supposed to be once she left the town behind) but the sheer glee in her voice when she announced that evening,

“This is where my life is really going to start.”

Betty swallows and reads the line again. And again.

They are, she concludes, the exact words she spoke to Jughead in her bedroom the day her acceptance letter from Columbia had arrived. And suddenly, she’s back there again, jumping into his arms with a squeal and a grin spread right across her face. She hadn’t even hugged him properly for fear of crumpling the letter, but he’d slipped his hands under her t-shirt, splaying his fingers across her skin and she’d breathed him in, selfish and ignorant - like he was always going to be there.

The book couldn’t be….she shakes her head. He wouldn’t write their story.

And yet -

She reads on, scanning the words with a thumping heart but before she’s reached the end of the paragraph, tears blur her vision and she’s forced to blink them back until she can’t anymore.

She’s not even really sure what it is she’s crying about - it’s been more than half a decade since that night he drove away from her parents’ house, and she’s moved on ( several times, or at least, she’s tried to). But there’s a previously tiny (and now rapidly growing) part of her heart that she’s kept stowed away and Betty strongly suspects Jughead’s presence in Boston has a lot to do with the current splintering feeling inside her chest.

Maybe it’s because they never said goodbye - or at least, she didn’t.

Or maybe it’s something else.

Either way, she sets the book back on her nightstand, turns out the lamp and yanks the duvet up over her head. Perhaps it will seem better in the morning.

Inevitably, when morning does arrive, Betty’s gotten barely any sleep, those words about her life really starting - those words she’d so excitedly announced to him in her bedroom when she’d beamed at him and he’d held her close, nose buried into her hair -   are taunting her until her nails are zeroing in on her palms.

She turns them over and over in her head, examining the syllables until her fingers grab her phone of their own accord, typing the message she so badly wants to send. She promptly deletes it and tries to focus instead on packing her case.

It’s only after she’s done folding her final sweater that she pulls open the drapes to reveal the whole world (or at least, that’s how it seems) covered in white. The snow is thick on the road and still falling rapidly - the kind of fake-looking flakes they have in every holiday movie. There are no cars making tracks, the ones parked next to the curb disguised as nothing more than fat, shapeless blobs. The snowstorm has arrived early.

No sooner than she’s realised this does her phone ring, abruptly pulling her away from the peace of the world outside of her apartment. Her mom’s on the end of the line, scolding Betty for not having left Boston the previous day.

“They said the snow was coming Elizabeth; now they’re cancelling all the flights. It’s so deep -”

“ - Mom,” she cuts in, holding back the sigh. “I’ll get home. There’s the train and -”

“- Make sure you do. Where are you now?”

It’s not even eight yet, so she knows Alice knows fine well she’s in her apartment, but there’s the fact that Garrett won’t get into the office until at least nine, which means she won’t get confirmation that the article for Jughead’s book is ready to go until half past at the earliest. Out of everyone working in journalism, he seems to be the only one who shares her preference for doing almost everything on paper as opposed to online. And - if the storm does take out the powerlines like her mom is insisting it easily could - he’ll at least be able to tell her that she’s done a good job and she can forget about the article. (Although, Betty knows that isn’t going to happen any time soon - or ever).   

“Make sure you get to the station soon. I can’t have Christmas without either of my daughters.”

The reminder that Polly won’t be there for moral support when the inevitable holiday bickering between her parents ensues makes her wish she’d taken her sister up on the offer to join her and her husband and the twins in Vermont. The fact that Cheryl would be there too now doesn’t seem quite so off-putting as it once had.

“I will, mom,” she replies as she watches a lone woman struggle through the snow banked up on the sidewalk outside. She hangs up and shuts the case, heading for the sanctity of the shower.

-

The email from her editor confirming the article is exactly what he wanted arrives while Betty’s pulling just enough strength from her cup of coffee to face carrying her case to the subway - sure enough, her flight has been cancelled along with every other flight leaving Logan; the roads are blocked so there’s no hope of a cab and there isn’t a chance she’s going to manage to drag the the case through all the snow. Carrying her small collection of fair-isle sweaters and jeans and the few Christmas presents she’s bought is the only option, it appears.

She’s exhausted and sweating by the time she reaches the station, but at least from this point onwards, she can wheel her case along instead. When Betty finally gets to South Station however, things get worse again. The snow in New York is just as bad - if not worse - than it is in Boston and the line is blocked in several places. There are no trains until after Christmas.

And just like that, Betty’s resigned to spending the holiday period alone in her apartment. It’s not like she was excited to go home to spend a few days fending off her mom’s endless questions about her job and her eating habits but equally, she doesn’t want to be alone, and the familiar prick of tears stings her eyes. She will not cry in the station however, and if it takes her nails sinking into the tender skin of her palms to ensure that her tears don’t fall, then so be it.

She gathers herself after a minute or so, taking a deep breath that feels a little shaky before pulling her suitcase towards the exit. The phone call she’s going to have to make to her mom can wait for now, she decides, because having not eaten breakfast, she’s starving and there’s a 24-hour diner that serves a rather decadent ‘chocolate fantasy french toast’ that she deserves God damnit. It’s Christmas Eve after all.

She’s sweating and breathless again when she makes it to the silver-clad building. It hits her, once she’s struggled inside, how akin to Pop’s it is.

And then, “Betty?”

She whirls around in the direction of the voice and sees Jughead looking at her, curious and (she thinks) a little concerned. “I thought you were going home?”

“The snow’s grounded all the flights,” she tells him, noting the rise in her voice but she can’t seem to control it. Of all the places in the city he could be, it seems absurd that this would be the place he’d choose. By the time she’s told him that all of the trains are cancelled until after Christmas Day too, there are tears in her eyes again and when her fingernails make to sink into her palm to quell them, Jughead reaches a hand out to her wrist and it halts their descent inwards.

(It does other things too - things to her insides and her skin that she doesn’t want to acknowledge)

“Sit down,” he instructs softly. “Here, let me get that.”

He stands to tuck the suitcase close to the booth and she’s struck by the familiarness of it all - his knit beanie and the worry written into his face; the dark jeans and plaid shirt; the tuft of dark hair falling across his eyes. She wants to sweep it back.

She doesn’t.

Instead, a waitress arrives at their table with a clean cup and a full pot of coffee, and proceeds to pour enough out for Betty that just the sight of it already makes her feel a little better. She orders her French toast and Jughead orders pancakes despite the empty plate in front of him indicating he’s already eaten. The waitress pours him fresh coffee too, and he sips it quietly for a while before asking the obvious question,

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she says. No , she thinks.

The look in his eyes tells her that he knows she’s lying, but he doesn’t say anything, just pushes the sugar pot towards her. Her fingers linger on the sweetener, but then move to pick up the Domino packet and she swears she sees the corners of Jughead’s mouth quirk into something like a smile.

They sit quietly for a while, sipping at their respective drinks until it grows too uncomfortable, and Betty forces the words out of her mouth.

“I finished your article. Thanks for answering those extra questions.”

He smiles a little stiffly. “It was no trouble.”

“Still,” she says, “You didn’t have to.”

This time, she gets a shrug. They don’t say much more until the food arrives, by which time Betty’s of the mind that her stomach might be eating itself she’s so hungry. She suddenly understands where Jughead was coming from all of those times he’d moaned that he’d die if he didn’t eat “like, right now Betts.”

***

“I mean it Betty: I think my stomach is caving in on itself.”

“You ate an hour ago Juggie,” she tuts, rolling her eye good-naturedly. “Besides, there’s a really nice spot we’ll reach soon. You can have the snack I packed you when we get there.”

“How soon is soon?” he asks. “Five minutes?”

She doesn’t answer and so he presses her further.

“Ten minutes? Oh God, don’t tell me it’s longer than that.”

“You were the one who said you wanted to see the pool,” she reminds him, slowing her fast pace so he can walk beside her again. It’s not like he’s complaining with the view of her ass he’s currently got, but if she’s going to cave to his food demands, it’ll only be when he gives her that puppy dog expression she’s powerless to.

“That was when you promised me the picnic of my dreams.”

“Yeah, and if I remember correctly, I also promised you a little extra.” She blushes when she reminds him of their conversation a few nights prior, but he dusts her arm with his fingertips and she turns to look at him. It’s crazy, Betty thinks, how he can alter her heartbeat just by looking at her like that. She takes a breath. “But only if we make it to the pool.”

Jughead’s eyes darken and his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. “Lead the way.”

***

“Hungry?” he grins, shoving a forkful of pancake drenched in syrup into his mouth.

“Starving,” Betty tells him, cutting another small piece off of her food. Small bites, Betty her mom had always said.

They finish their food and sink several more cups of coffee each before Jughead pays the check despite Betty’s protests.

“So what are your plans?” he asks her.

“I have to face the wrath of my mom first,” she sighs. “And then I guess it’s Christmas movies on the couch. How about you?”

“Same I guess,” he says. “Except for the wrath of Alice Cooper part. And my hotel room doesn’t have a couch. And I hate Christmas movies.”

“Oh yeah,” she almost-laughs. The sound is more a burst of air than anything else. “I forgot you’re anti-holidays.”

“Not anti-holidays Betts,” he says, the use of her shortened name pulling at something inside of her chest. “Just not of fan of it being rammed down my throat.”

They both know it’s the same difference, but she stays quiet on the matter, choosing instead to wring her hands together as the waitress clears their empty coffee cups. It’s time to face the phone call home.

“If you want…” she starts, then promptly stops. He’s just said how he feels about this time of year.

“What?”

“Just…” now she feels stupid for having started the sentence in the first place. “If you’re tired of room service or...I don’t know... not having the holidays rammed down your throat, you’re welcome to come over.”

Jughead looks somewhat shell-shocked and Betty instantly regrets her offer. It’s not like she wants him to come round.

But it’s not like she doesn’t want him to either.

“Oh,” he mumbles. “Yeah that...that might be nice. If you’re making those sugar cookies.” There’s a boyish grin tugging at his lips and she melts. She’s always been powerless to that smile. “You still make them, right?”

“Yeah,” she smiles tentatively. “I still make them.”

“Okay then. I’m sold.”

A real smile breaks out across her lips and suddenly, being stranded in the city doesn’t seem so bad. “Okay.” She’s about to write down her address for him but then he notices her suitcase and frowns.

“Did you get a cab to the station?”

“They’re not running,” she replies. “I walked to the subway and then switched.”

“Carrying your case?”

“Hence the dishevelled appearance,” she says, indicating her messy waves of hair. “Who knew sweaters were so heavy?”

Jughead purses his lips, chewing contemplatively on the bottom one for a while. “Let me carry it back for you.”

“I can manage.”

“I know.” He seems genuinely believing in that statement, she concludes. “But indulge me in playing the chivalrous gentleman,” he says. “Seeing as it’s Christmas.”

“Okay.” Betty can’t help but smile again. “Seeing as it’s Christmas.”

-

They stop by the grocery store on the way back from Back of the Hill station so she can pick up the ingredients she needs for the sugar cookies - plus a few other items it wouldn’t hurt to have in the cupboards for a few days of being holed up in the apartment. She still hasn’t made the call home, but she figures she can do that once they’re inside and her hands have thawed.

Jughead carries her case the entire way, and it doesn’t appear that he’s struggling. Idly, Betty wonders whether he’s been working out in the past few years - and then silently scolds herself for allowing her train of thought to drift so easily.

The snow is still scurrying down from the sky above and Betty’s glad to reach her building. Her boots are soaked through, which means her socks are wet and consequently, her toes are at that stage where they’re both numb and cramping. She suspects Jughead’s are the same based on what he’s wearing, and she feels bad that he’s come so far in the opposite direction to where he needs to be - especially when there’s nothing in her apartment he can change into.

Or...come to think of it, there might be a couple pairs of socks and a t-shirt left over by someone she’d once thought she might grow to like enough to call her boyfriend. Inevitably, it hadn’t worked out quite like that.

“Betty?”

She turns to the boy (or - man , she supposes now. He’s not the boy who drove away from her all of those years ago - far from it) next to her who’s regarding her with a furrowed brow. “Yes?”

“I said, have you always lived here?”

“Oh.” She hadn’t realised he’d been talking. She wonders whether she’s missed anything else. “Sorry. Uh, yeah I’ve always lived here - since I’ve been in Boston obviously.”

He nods. “It’s nice.” The tone of his voice is neutral and she’s not sure whether he genuinely has an opinion on the communal areas he’s seen so far. She supposes most places are nice in comparison to the trailer park he grew up in but she also knows which hotel he’s staying at. That’s a whole other level of nice . Either way, she figures it doesn’t matter, and unlocks the apartment door with the key between her gloved fingers and thumb.

Jughead sets down the case he’s been carrying and closes the door behind him. Betty watches his eyes scan the room before a soft smile creeps across his lips. “What?”

He looks at her then, something fleeting flickering within his eyes before they go back to taking in the surroundings of her apartment. “It’s somehow exactly where I’d imagined you living, and also the complete opposite.” He seems amused with his own thoughts but she’s caught on the fact that he’s imagined her here - he’s thought about her while they’ve been in different cities. She hadn’t been reduced to just a memory.

Betty takes off her coat and scarf while she toes off her boots, the wet socks she’s wearing thumping her feet against the floor. “Would you like something to drink?”

She’s already filling the kettle before he answers, but it’s a yes and she finds herself wishing she’d tidied up a little more thoroughly. She knows the place could resemble a thrift store and Jughead wouldn’t really care, but equally, she hadn’t expected a visitor. “I’m just going to change,” she tells him. “I uh...I have some socks you can wear if your feet are wet. They’re...well, they’re not women’s ones.”

His eyes widen a fraction and his lips twitch, but he takes off the soaked beanie he’s wearing, sets it on the counter and runs a hand through his damp hair. “Dry socks would be good.”

Betty grabs the socks from the back of her drawer, handing them to him with cheeks that feel hot - embarrassed maybe, although he says nothing - and then heads back to her room to change out of her jeans and soaked footwear. It takes her longer than it should to choose a pair of dark grey leggings and thick cream socks, and she knows it’s stupid because Jughead’s seen her in almost every possible outfit she owned back in high school (including the old, faded pajamas she just couldn’t seem to part with - still can’t, if she’s honest) and she shouldn’t even be considering what he’ll think when she emerges from her room. But he’s here, looking like he does in those clothes he wears so well, and she just...well, she’s not entirely sure what effect she’s trying to achieve.

But - maybe - she doesn’t want him to not find her attractive.  

He’s leaning against the counter when she returns from her bedroom, and she notices that his jeans are soaked up to his calves. “You’ll catch a cold,” she says, eyeing the material.

“You have any other guys’ clothes in there?” he asks, and although Betty assumes it’s a joke, it falls flat somehow. Her face must fall too because a look of realisation spreads across his, and quickly he’s muttering an apology of sorts. “I didn’t mean...I wasn’t trying to insinuate -”

“- I know,” she says softly. And she does. “There’s a dryer downstairs. You can take a shower if you want; I can get these sorted for you.”

He hesitates but ultimately accepts her offer. “That would be good. Thank you.”

She nods and wordlessly fetches him a couple of clean towels. “Bathroom’s that door over there. Take your time - I’ll reboil the kettle once you’re done.”

-

Later, they’re seated on Betty’s couch, dry and warm with a fresh plate of sugar cookies on the coffee table in front of them and mugs of steaming hot chocolate in their hands. She’d flicked on the tree lights after Jughead had gone for his shower, and then called her mom while in the laundry room. Needless to say, she’s “ruined Christmas,” and she feels guilty for not making it back to Riverdale, yes, but when she really considers things, she’s not entirely disappointed to be here as opposed to on her flight home.  

Jughead’s selected the movie that’s currently playing - The Wolf of Wall Street, because everyone can use a reminder about greed at this time of year . It’s sound logic probably, but she’d have preferred something a little lighter. The Holiday maybe, or Love Actually. Still, she’s pretty comfortable beneath the blanket covering her legs, that delicious combination of sweet cookie dough and rich hot chocolate hanging in the air.

“The cookies are really good Betty,” Jughead tells her, spraying crumbs down the front of his shirt.

“Thanks,” she replies, reaching for another herself. The action makes her knees - now bent so her legs are tucked under her - brush against his thigh. When she returns to her seated position, she feels a brief whisper of cold as their touching legs separate again, but then he shifts slightly so his thigh is pressed lightly against her knee. They remain like that for the remainder of the movie.

She makes chicken tortilla soup for lunch, although by the time it’s ready, it’s late afternoon.

“I bet you’ve never eaten Mexican food on Christmas Eve before,” Jughead muses, finishing off what’s in his bowl before looking longingly at the pan on the stove. She can’t help but chuckle at him and his insatiable appetite.

“Jug, you can have as much as you want.”

His fingers seem to reach out towards her, stilling halfway across the counter and she’s suddenly very aware of her wrist - their intended destination, she knows. It had always been a habit of his when they’d been together - he’d thank her both with words and the graze of his fingertips across her pulse point, and suddenly her skin’s aching for them to continue.

Instead, he draws his hand back and picks up his empty bowl. “You uh… you want any more?”

“No thanks.” The words seem tinged with sadness and she quickly rights herself. “I’m good.”

He eats his second helping and then helps her wash and dry the bowls and both hot chocolate mugs from earlier despite her protests that she can do it herself. They settle back down onto the couch and this time, Jughead insists she pick the movie

“And don’t worry, after that soup I can cope with some yuletide comedy if that’s what you want to watch.”

She selects Home Alone because it isn’t really Christmas without it, presses pause when he mentions popcorn and she remembers there’s a lone packet languishing at the back of her cupboard somewhere. She pops it into the microwave, pours them both a glass of water and leans against the counter while the kernels jump into life and the sweet smell fills the apartment.

Jughead’s beanie, well-worn and fraying at the hem, has dried and is seated back on his head. If she closes her eyes, Betty thinks they could be back in Riverdale in his dad’s trailer, him waiting while she makes the snacks, arm cast over the back of the couch and ready to settle round her shoulders when she sits back down. But she doesn’t close her eyes because the present reality is far from what it was six years ago, and she needs to remember that.

The microwave pings and she tips the popcorn into a large bowl which she carries across to the coffee table. Immediately, Jughead’s fingers dive for a handful and she smiles as she resettles herself against the soft cushions before hitting play.

Kevin McCallister is running across the frozen lake with his stolen toothbrush when Betty notices Jughead has fallen asleep, head tilted back against the edge of the couch and his mouth slightly open. His chest is rising and falling rhythmically and she finds herself itching to scoot a little closer to claim some of his body heat. Perhaps she should’ve opted for sweatpants over leggings.

She stays where she is though, tugging the blanket a little tighter around her as she watches the rest of the chase unfold. By the time the movie reaches the whole slapstick stage, her eyelids are heavy too, and she turns the volume down before letting them close. Sitting bolt-upright isn’t particularly comfortable however, and she looks towards Jughead, still sleeping soundly with the occasional light half-snore filtering out of his mouth.

Shuffling a little closer to him, Betty waits to see if he rouses, but his breathing pattern doesn’t even change. Legs tucked beneath her, she leans to her right, resting lightly against him. Still, he doesn’t stir, and she allows her eyes to close as she tells herself just a few minutes .

It’s dark when she wakes. The lights on the tree are casting a gentle glow across the room but the tv screen is no longer playing Home Alone and Betty wonders how long she’s been out. Through hazy vision, she can see that the snow is still falling outside and she’s about to close her eyes again when she hears a quiet voice.

“Betts?”

It startles her - not least because she realises the main source of her comfort is the shoulder of the man beside her. She understands then, that his arm is resting against her side, respectfully atop of the sweater she’s wearing. There’s a twang of disappointment that his palm isn’t flat against her skin, and then as quickly as she feels it, Betty silently scolds it into submission.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

“It’s okay.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “But I should get going.”

She pulls her body into a seated position so he can straighten up too.

“Thanks for the cookies. And the soup,” he glances down at his feet. “And for the dry clothes.”

Betty nods. “I could cook something tomorrow,” she offers. “Maybe not turkey with all the trimmings but...I could sort something.”

Jughead seems hesitant, like he’s not sure of the correct response. Eventually though, he seems to decide that eating at her apartment is marginally better than spending Christmas Day alone in a hotel room and they agree that he’ll come over around midday.

She walks him to the door, waiting while he pulls his boots back on and wraps his coat and scarf around his body. He lingers at the threshold between her place and the hallway, hands stuffed into his pockets as his lips offer a melancholy smile. She wonders what he’s thinking.

“Goodnight Betts,” he says softly.

Forcing her own lips into a smile, she echoes the sentiment. “Night Jug. Be careful out there.”

He nods and turns, and she finds herself standing with the apartment door open long after he’s gone.

Chapter Text

He’s lying in bed with sore eyes when an alarming knock makes him jump. His eyes flit to the clock on the bedside table and he sees it’s barely 5am. There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach and he scrambles out from under the sheets, almost knocking the laptop off of the bed.

He hasn’t slept since leaving Betty’s apartment.

The knock sounds again and Jughead just manages to get an eye against the circular hole in the door before the soreness blurs his vision. There’s blonde hair and he already knows who’s at the other side.

“Betty?”

She’s silent for a moment upon the door opening, eyes sweeping over his face as he heaves out a breath. And then there are tears clouding that deep jade colour he’s already gotten used to seeing again and her lip is quivering and all he wants to do is still it with his thumb. He balls his hands into tight fists instead. “It’s just a book?” she chokes.

Jughead hears in her words the unvoiced statement: Those characters are us . He swallows, hard, and steps to the side. “Come in.”

Betty edges into the room in a way that makes him wonder whether she’s about to run back in the opposite direction. For a while, she doesn’t say or do anything, and he realises they’re about to have this conversation while he’s wearing nothing but pajama pants.

“Let me just…” he trails off, grabbing the first available t-shirt he can find. “Betty-”

“- How could you?” she whispers. “How could you write that?”

“I…”

“It broke me,” she chokes, tears slipping down her cheeks and all he wants is to never have sent the manuscript to the publishing house. Writing their story should’ve been good enough to put it behind him. And instead - yet again, when it comes to her - he’s been selfish. “Watching you drive away and knowing I… and you wrote it like you were doing me a favour .”

“I thought…” Christ, now his own voice is cracking. “I thought I was.”

***

“Hey,” he murmurs, pushing her bedroom door open just enough to squeeze his body through the gap left by the cardboard boxes all packed and ready to be loaded into the car come morning. She’s lying on her bed dressed in clothes he’s not expecting and Jughead forces himself not to get distracted. It’s hard though, when she’s wearing such tiny shorts and her Columbia t-shirt. She’s knotted it just above her left hip and there’s just so much of her skin on show that his fingers itch and burn to touch it.

He sinks his hands into his jean pockets instead.

“Hey.” Betty rises from the bed and her shirt rides up and God, he just wants to hold her and never let her go. “Jug?” she questions, crossing to him, fingers finding the lapels of his jacket. The air is thick and heavy outside - ominous, he’d thought, when he’d first stepped out of the trailer - but it’s no excuse not to wear this uniform of his. “Are you okay?”

He kisses her. It’s probably a bad move when he knows what’s coming next, but she sinks into him, sighing that delicious involuntary sound she makes when he presses his lips with the perfect amount of force against hers. Her fingers move to dance in circles at the nape of his neck, her hips pressing against his in exactly the right way to make him want to press back. Harder.

He pulls away and holds in the ‘I love you’ his mouth seems intent on spilling out into the room. Her eyes narrow just a fraction and her nose scrunches and tears burn the fuck out of his eyes. It’s not like he didn’t know he’d have to give her up eventually, but Christ, it hurts more than he could’ve ever imagined it would.

“Betts,” he chokes out. There’s a split-second just then, where he thinks maybe this doesn’t have to be the way things go. Maybe he can leave Riverdale behind too, and follow her to New York; write his stories; use what little money he has saved to rent an apartment; attempt to cook something for dinner so she won’t have to when she gets in from a full day of classes.

And then Betty curls her fingers around the cuffs of his jacket to urge him on, and he knows that’s never the way it would go. He’s in too deep with the serpents to leave now - they’d never let him anyway - and she deserves to live out this fantasy she’s always had: the one where she and Archie go off to college in New York and he puts a giant ring on her left hand and they live happily ever after. Jughead knows he was never a part of that plan (the best man at the wedding, maybe) and even though Veronica is the one his best friend says he loves, she’ll be in California and he knows better than anybody what distance does.

Betty deserves that fantasy. And he’ll take comfort in knowing she’s doing what she was always supposed to.

“You’re going to be amazing,” he tells her. “You are amazing. And you’re going to be a force to be reckoned with when you get to New York.”

She strokes the undersides of his wrists but he continues now that he’s gotten a start.

“You’re Elizabeth Cooper. You’re not just Riverdale. And that’s why -”

“- Juggie,” she says, panicked, but he powers on because if anything, this is harder for him to say than it is for her to hear.

“- That’s why you have to make your life there.”

“I will,” she whispers, nodding. Misinterpreting.

“Without me.”

The minutes that follow those words are a blur of him crushing his eyelids closed so tightly that the tears there can’t escape. She pulls at his jacket. She grabs and claws at the leather so there are marks left on the breast and the sleeves. He thinks he hears her beg at one point, and it destroys him because Betty Cooper should never have to beg anyone for anything - least of all him.

He descends the stairs somehow and she’s following him, repeating his name in such a way that he can barely breathe. Alice rounds the edge of the hallway as he’s pulling open the front door, and she’s saying something but all Jughead can hear is Betty’s sobs between her I love yous and her please don’t goes.

It’s agony but he knows it’ll be worth it when she gets to live the life in New York that she’s always deserved. He starts the truck and drives away and he doesn’t have to look in his rearview to know she’s standing at the end of her driveway.

For the first time in his life, he drinks brandy. How much, he’s not sure, but it’s enough to make him throw up into the toilet bowl at a little after 2am. He doesn’t regret it: it reminds him how he’ll become his father, whether he does his best to avoid it or not.

It confirms that letting Betty go is exactly the right thing to do.

***

“You can’t possibly believe that,” she snaps, suddenly angry. Suddenly straight-backed and lifted-chested. But then he notices her fingernails sinking into her palms and he feels a pain so sharp twist in his gut that it steals his breath.

“Please don’t,” he whispers, hand reaching out to pull her nails away from her palm but she snatches her hand to her chest like she’s been burned. Jughead’s face flames in shame. Her eyes narrow and he swallows with difficulty.

“Why did you write it?” she demands.

He’s about to say something about it being stupid; about how his fingers just hit the keys on autopilot and he had no real idea about what they were doing until he read the pages back at four in the morning. But then Betty follows up her question with her next instruction. “Please don’t lie.”

And so he doesn’t. “I thought it would help.”

“Help what?”

He sinks down onto the edge of the bed and scrubs a hand over his face. “To stop being in love with you.”

She looks at him like he’s punched her in the face. Her lips open and close again, then repeat the action at least three more times until finally, her words leave her mouth in shaky succession. “Did it work?”

“It reaffirmed why I made my decision.”

“That’s not an answer,” she replies.

Jughead wonders then, whether she’s actually made it to the end of the book. She’d know the answer to her question if she had - that, or she doesn’t understand just what he’d felt for her (still does, in some compartment of his chest that’s no longer hidden as deep as it had been before he’d arrived in Boston)

“Did you fall out of love with me?” she whispers, almost inaudibly. He daren’t look at her eyes as he’s getting ready to lie but she steps closer and he notes the soaked state of her boots and realises - if it’s 5am on Christmas Day - that she must’ve walked here. In the dark. For at least an hour.

“Jesus Betty, you must be freezing.” He looks up then, and she’s staring at him with her eyes full of tears. He hates himself all over again.

“Did you stop loving me?” she asks for the final time, ignoring his reference to her saturated clothing.

It seems almost comical - thinking about the possibility of a life where he wouldn’t be in love with her. Where he wouldn’t see a milkshake and not think of her swiping the whipped cream off of the top with her forefinger. Where the smell of strawberries and warm cookies wouldn’t make him think of her hair fanned out across his face.

But it isn’t comical. Betty genuinely doesn’t seem to know the answer and - whether the motive is selfish or whether it’s because he needs her to know she’s loved beyond comprehension - he tells her.

“There hasn’t been a single second where I haven’t loved you.”

A solo sob breaks out of her mouth, startling in the quiet of the hotel room. And this is why he should never have published the book. Because she’s crying over him - again. Her hands curl into fists and at this point, he’s ready to pull her fingers out straight again but then they unclench and swipe at her tears determinedly.

“I want you to tell me everything,” she says. “And don’t you dare leave anything out.”

So he does. He tells her about the drive back to the trailer after leaving her house all of those years ago - about the brandy once he got there too. He tells her about Alice slamming her hands against the door, late at night the following day after dropping Betty off at college, and how she’d told him she’d been right all along and that he should never be anywhere near her daughter again.

There’s the other stuff he tells her too - about the serpents and the forced drug runs; the attempts he’d made to go clean and the failures each one had brought until FP issued an instruction from his prison cell. He tells Betty honestly of his relief that she was in New York and unable to see what he was doing; his relief too, that none of what was happening on Riverdale’s south side could affect her in any way: he couldn’t taint her. She was still golden and perfect and as far as he knew at that point, in the relationship with Archie that he’d hoped would happen - her fairytale happy ending.

She doesn’t interrupt him. She doesn’t even sit down. Just stands as he recounts everything that happened in the town they’d grown up in until the day came where FP announced from his cell (although how, he’s still not sure) that Jughead was no longer part of the serpents. That same day, he adds, he packed a few items of clothing, his laptop and headphones and locked up the trailer before heading to the bus station.

He tells her that he called Jellybean, bought a one-way ticket to New York and hasn’t visited their hometown since.

“Why did you let me go?” Her voice is shaky. “We loved each other Jug,” she whispers. “So much.”

He’s stuck on loved. Past tense . And then he silently scolds himself for being disappointed because it’s what he’d wanted for her - to stop loving him while he wasn’t there to watch it happen; to love someone so much better than him.

It’s too selfish to say aloud. And so, blunt and flat, he says, “It was better for me too.”

He couldn’t stand the thought of watching her fall out of love with him; the feeling of knowing that if she were to begin slipping away, he wouldn’t be able to fight for her and win.

Betty nods, seems to tighten her body but then she shivers and Jughead’s attention is back on her soaked clothes. He crosses to the set of drawers and pulls out the spare pair of pajama pants he has with him. “Here.” He offers them to her. “You’ll catch a cold.”

Her fingers are hesitant in taking them - almost like she’s fighting something inside of herself - but she shivers again and he’s insistent. “Please Betts. You must be freezing.”

Eventually, her hands close around the material and Jughead attempts a grateful smile when she says softly, “Bathroom?”

“The door on the left. Can I make you a coffee?”

“Yeah,” she replies with a gentle nod. “I’ll just be a minute.”

In fact, the minute turns into five and Jughead can hear the tap running. He wonders whether she’s washing her face or brushing her teeth, yet when two more minutes pass and the door finally opens again, he knows she’s been crying. Her eyes are bloodshot and her nose is red and her bottom lip is still trembling slightly. This time though, he doesn’t force his hands to stay by his sides and he wraps her in an embrace that’s so much more than a hug that he doesn’t even know what to call it.

“I hate you,” she sobs against his shoulder, her fingers clutching at the hem of his t-shirt. There’s a lump so large sitting in his throat that he can’t swallow, his own tears burning behind his closed eyelids. “You should’ve let me choose.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into her hair. He’s sorry for how it all panned out. But not for letting her go. “But you deserved better than a criminal for a boyfriend.”

“Don’t you think that was for me to decide?”

Jughead pulls back reluctantly and finds her watching him with defeated eyes. “You’re too selfless to decide something like that.”

The coffee machine beeps, signalling that the first of the capsules has been used up. He takes the mug from under the dispenser, inspects its contents and then hands it to Betty before placing the second capsule into the top of the machine. She perches on the edge of the bed and there’s something about her wearing his pajama pants while doing so that stirs an inappropriate anticipation in him. He swallows it down and remembers once again that it’s Christmas morning.

“I guess you can write this down as your worst ever Christmas,” He says, not really sure what he’s aiming for with the comment.

Betty only shrugs. “It’s not the best.”

The tone she uses indicates that it’s not the worst either.

-

When he wakes, Jughead has a momentary panic about where he is. When he catches the unmistakable scent of sweetness though, he remembers. Reluctantly, he lifts an eyelid - only to confirm that Betty is, in fact, sleeping next to him and it’s not all a dream - and he doesn’t even try and fight the smile that creeps across his lips when her nose twitches and she shuffles a little closer.

He closes his eyes to sleep again.

The next time both of them open, there is no scent that he’d smelled previously. There’s no warm body pressed against his either, and he stretches his arms across the sheets to feel the temperature. They’re cold, signalling that she’s been gone for some time.

And then he hears the sound of running water, realises there’s a fan whirring softly somewhere in the vicinity, and concludes she’s taking a (probably) much-needed ‘monsoon’ shower in his bathroom.

Sure enough, no more than ten minutes later as he’s set a new capsule in the Keurig, the bathroom door opens and Betty - wearing nothing more than a towel - walks into the room with her bottom lip trapped between her teeth and water droplets running down her skin.  

“Sorry, I uh…” her eyes flit around the room until they land on her jeans and she heads to pick them up, “left these out here.”

He wants to ask if she’s okay but she seems not to hate him in this very moment and she also doesn’t appear upset, and Jughead wants more than anything to keep things that way. So he says nothing other than,

“Was the shower okay?”

“I think it just ruined my own shower forever,” she laughs lightly, and God, her eyes when she does. He wonders how he ever had the self-disciple to drive away that night when they were last in Riverdale together. “I’m just going to…” she indicates her clothes and the bathroom, and Jughead nods.

“Sure. Can I make you a coffee?”

“Yeah,” she smiles. It’s wider than the last time he asked. “Thanks.”

Betty slips back inside the bathroom but doesn’t close the door all the way, leaving a little gap for the artificial light and steam to escape into his room. It takes a huge amount of effort not to stare at said gap while she’s pulling on her clothes, but he succeeds (albeit somewhat reluctantly). He’s stretching out his limbs when the door opens fully and she appears with towelled hair and an expression which seems to suggest something he hasn’t seen on her face...well, for a long time.

Her eyes are fixed on the area of skin exposed on his abdomen thanks to the t-shirt that’s ridden up during his stretches and there’s a tell-tale pinkness on her cheeks that makes him bite down on the inside of his cheeks.

Jughead puts his arms back down by his side and hands her the cup of coffee.

“Thanks,” she says, her fingertips catching against his as she curls them around the handle. “And uh...sorry for falling asleep... here . And for what I said last night. I don’t…” She sighs and her voice softens further. “I don’t hate you.”

“Betts,” he says pointedly, because he doesn’t want to hear an apology from her mouth again. “If there’s anyone that should be sorry in all of this...really, it’s me. And I am,” he says gently. “I’m so sorry.”

She nods. “I am too.”

There’s a passage of time - Jughead isn’t really sure how long it lasts - where the only sound in the room is the bathroom fan still trying to rid the space of steam.

“Well isn’t this the kind of holiday spirit that everyone moons over,” he says, raising his own coffee cup to nothing in particular, but it draws a laugh - a real one - from her lungs and he can’t help but let out a small chuckle too.

“We should do something. It’s still thick with snow - we should go have a snowball fight.” Betty suggests.

“A snowball fight?” He clarifies, practically shuddering at the thought of going out into the cold, white world when he’s got her here, all warm and safe and (dare he even believe it) not hating him.

“Yeah, you know - you pack snow together in your hands, make a ball as best you can and then throw it at someone. Ever heard of it? It’s supposed to be fun .”

He’s not entirely sure how they’ve arrived at this place considering her appearance at 5am (and the reasons behind it) but there’s a hopeful look in her eyes and he’s always been powerless to that. He lets himself consider how much he’s missed this light teasing; how she always feels a little guilty afterwards - so much so that he’d always get a kiss (although he can’t expect that now).

“I could make us some food after?” she offers. “A Christmas dinner of sorts.”

He thinks she might be trying to sell him whatever vision she’s got planned for the rest of their day but really, it’s not like she even has to try. He was happy to acquiesce as soon as he saw her eyes shining.

“Will there be pie?” he mumbles, attempting to keep up the pretence but already Betty’s grin is widening and he’s no longer biting the insides of his cheeks.

“I’m sure I can rustle up something.”

-

They’re soaked and freezing and Betty’s teeth are chattering alarmingly violently, but her face is flushed from happiness as they climb the stairs of her building and Jughead’s finding it increasingly hard to stop that cavity he’d built inside of his chest to hide his heart from bursting open. He’s not entirely aware of how long their snowball fight had lasted, but he’s definitely aware of when it ended: he’d stuffed handfuls of snow down her jacket and she’d shrieked indignantly, eyes wide with surprise but then they’d narrowed as she’d chased him in an attempt at revenge. Unable to reach up to stuff the snow down the back of his sweater, she’d had to settle for going underneath instead, and somehow her hands hadn’t made it back out again.

And so they’d stood there, Betty’s body resting against his as the flakes slowed enough that they could make out the buildings in the distance, and all Jughead could think was how much he wanted to kiss her and how much he wanted to continue kissing her until they got back to her apartment and he could do more with his mouth than simply seal it against hers.

But he doesn’t get to do what he wants now; doesn’t get to be selfish with her, and so he’d taken note of her shivering, whispered a Betts, we should go get warm , and reluctantly pulled away.

He’s now waiting in the hallway as she jams her key into the lock, finally opening the door after two unsuccessful attempts. He waits for her to invite him in, which she does with a roll of her eyes and a, “You were here yesterday.”

He shrugs, “That was...before.”

A soft sigh leaves Betty’s lips but she doesn’t seem upset. “Well it’s Christmas. The season of goodwill, right?”

He swallows heavily. “Is that what this is? Goodwill?”

For a moment, she doesn’t say anything and he feels terrible for having even asked; for making her feel like there should be another reason for his being here - for her allowing him back into her life. And then, gently, “You know it’s not that Jug.”

She turns and heads towards where he assumes her bedroom must be. “You know where the bathroom is; if you leave your clothes outside the door, I’ll take them down to the dryer.” She doesn’t wait for his response and so Jughead walks blindly to the bathroom, removes the soaked clothes from his skin, pushes them outside of the door (and feels bad for doing so) and then steps into the stinging rain of her hot shower.

***

“What’re you doing?” he asks, feeling the cool blast of air as she draws the curtain back and the wet material brushes his ankle.

He can hear the cunning smile in her reply, “Showering.”

He’s about to turn around when he feels Betty butterfly a kiss between his shoulderblades, her hands reaching around him for the bottle of shower gel he’s clutching, and he stays where he is as he listens to the cap flip open, her hands circling each other as she creates a lather that he never bothers with usually: slapping the gel on and rinsing it off again is about as much effort as he usually puts in.

Her fingers sink into his muscles and Jughead hums out a low sound of approval as he feels the knots there loosen. She continues her ministrations down his back until she reaches the top of his ass, at which point she presses her body up against his and he can feel her hardened nipples against his skin. Somehow, she snakes her hands around his sides so she can pour more gel onto her palm before lathering them up again so she can wash his stomach.

He swallows, feeling his cock twitch. He thinks he can feel her grinning against his spine. (He wonders if she knows he’s grinning too)

***

Jughead curtails his train of thought before it gets out of hand, quickly washes himself with the only available shower gel which seems to be some sort of clementine-cranberry scented product, and then shuts off the water and steps out onto the tiles.

He notices the Betty elements in the small room: a perfectly-folded washcloth that appears to be only for decoration; a few postcards which have been framed in white wood; a collection of soaps formed in the shape of seashells; a little vase with some pink flowers inside. He fingers a petal which promptly drops to the floor, at which Jughead mutters a curse and flushes it down the toilet to hide the evidence.

He towels off and realises that he’s left the bag housing the spare clothes he brought with him in the livingroom. Figuring Betty will be in the laundry room downstairs, he wraps the towel around his waist and opens the bathroom door, a chilly blast of air making the hairs on his arms stand on end.

He’s bending to grab the bag when the apartment door opens and she all but tumbles through it, tripping over seemingly nothing while carrying a plastic wash basket and looking decidedly ruffled. “Oh!” she squeaks, her eyes widening. “You’re….you…”

“I forgot to take my bag with me,” he says, hand gripping the towel for dear life. It’s not like she hasn’t seen what’s under it - but that was before . The last thing they need to upset this precarious balance they’ve got going on is his naked lower half.

“I should’ve put it outside the door,” she stutters. “I didn’t see. I...”

He can’t help but notice the way her eyes trail down his stomach and fix for a moment on the knot he’s tied at his hip before raking upwards again to the ink on his chest. He wonders whether she still has hers.

(He wouldn’t blame her if she’d had it removed)

She steps forward towards him, bottom lip caught between her teeth and Christ, it takes everything in him to step back and swallow the words he really wants to say (I’ve missed you; I love you; Please forgive me ) Jughead does, however, manage to force out a worryingly breathless, “I should get dressed,” and Betty drops her gaze to her hands.

Later, they’re settled on her couch having eaten roasted carrots and parsnips, a glazed ham they’d found in the grocery store the previous day and some mashed potatoes. There’s a slice each of apple pie sitting on the coffee table in front of them - his portion much bigger than hers - but he can’t eat because he’s been watching her wring her hands together out of the corner of his eye for the past ten minutes. He figures that maybe, because her nails aren’t sinking into her palms, that he shouldn’t read too much into it, but then her leg begins to bounce a little and Jughead can’t ignore it any more.

“What is it?”

“What?” she asks.

“Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

Betty opens her mouth to say something but then seems to think better of it. Just when he’s about to turn back to the movie playing on the tv, she sighs out, “I should ring my parents. Wish them a Merry Christmas.”

He almost laughs. “And that makes you nervous?”

“Are you forgetting how completely unreasonable my mom is? Especially during the holidays.”

Jughead does let out a small chuckle at this point. “Fair point. Want me to hold your hand for moral support?”

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, spilling into the air like rapid gunfire and all he wants to do is gather them back in quickly; stuff them down his throat and into his lungs; lock them away so they can forget. But then,

“I’ll manage,” she says, a soft smile tugging at her lips as she squeezes her hand over his. It’s gone in an instant, pulled back to its place by her side as she rises from the couch to grab her phone.

“Want me to give you some privacy?” He makes to get off the couch but she shakes her head, pointing to the apartment door.

“I’ll just be a minute. I can grab your clothes while I’m out.” Betty closes the door behind her and he blows out a breath.

She returns no more than fifteen minutes later with his warm, dry clothes draped over her arm, her phone in the same hand and an expression which probably means she’s been crying.

“You up for some Christmas tequila?” she asks, busying herself with finding two glasses anyway, regardless of his reply. She appears to be a little breathless and alcohol doesn’t seem like the best idea, but she sets down two glasses rather roughly before he can voice this thought.

She pours the amber liquor, they cheers to nothing in particular, and then throw back the glasses. The tequila burns Jughead’s throat but he fights the cough and Betty pours them another shot each. He wants to ask what her mom had said and whether she’s okay, but he thinks this might be one of those times where either of those questions would send her over the edge of an emotional precipice, and it’s Christmas - he can hold off for a few more hours at least.

So he drinks the second shot, then a third and a fourth, and when her fingers wrap around the bottleneck to pour another, he finally makes a judgement call and stills her hand with his own. The action means that he’s swallowed in her scent; her knee pulled up and in towards her forming a barrier, but also meaning that their thighs press as he leans across.

The last thing he expects is her lips to land on his.

They’re still for a moment, but then they start to coax his into life, soft and then harder, sucking and then biting lightly until her tongue slips inside his mouth and he can taste the liquor she’s just had.  

A sort-of sigh escapes into the air and Jughead isn’t sure who it comes from, but it’s enough to help him collect his common sense and he pulls away.

“Betts, this isn’t a good idea.”

“Why?”

She seems hurt and he’s already feeling the crash of guilt. He should’ve let her keep pouring.

(He shouldn’t have let her pour in the first place)

“You know the best thing about being away from Riverdale?” she asks abruptly, not giving him chance to answer. “Nobody makes my decisions for me.” Her words are a tumbling a little into each other but she seems stoic to him somehow. “I thought you understood how having my mom make all my decisions made me feel; all those nights you told me I could make my own if I really wanted: I just had to believe in them.” A somewhat bitter laugh - more a burst of air than anything else - leaves her mouth. “And then you took that from me too. You took it from me then and you’re taking it from me now.”

It’s too much. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he starts, “God, Betts, you have no idea how much I want to,” and fuck , he thinks, that’s not what he’d meant to say at all.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I -”

“- Sex, Jughead,” she interrupts, all but straddling him. “Just…” Betty leans down to kiss him, the action brushing her centre against his and already his body is responding to her. “Just sex.”

Chapter Text

Somewhere in the haze, Betty thinks her sweater may have pulled a thread. Or, more accurately, Jughead’s long fingers may have pulled a thread in their haste to remove the garment from her body. It lands haphazardly somewhere on the floor - where though, she’s not sure (and she doesn’t care either).

Her chest crashes against his as she leans back in towards his face, her lips sealing his as their hot breaths entwine in what little space is left between them. She inhales and all but rips his sweater over his head, the button detail near the neckline catching his nose but he’s sucking on her bottom lip as soon as she’s flung the clothing over the back of the couch so it hardly seems like he cares.

Jughead rids her of her camisole next so she’s wearing only her leggings and bra, then deftly stands, clutching her to him as she locks her legs around his waist and he can pull at the elasticated band of black cotton. It snaps back against her skin so Betty helps him out, tugging blindly with desperate fingers until she’s yanked the cotton over her ass. In the end, he’s forced to set her down so she can use her feet to pull down the legs while lifting his t-shirt over his head at the same time, but once they’re done his lips are back on her skin - this time, sucking their way down her neck.

She has to hold onto his shoulders just so she won’t fall over.

“Betty,” he gasps breathlessly, and she has such a horrible feeling that he’s going to put the brakes on that she grabs at his jaw and captures his lips with hers, delving into his mouth with her tongue. Never before, she manages to determine, has she kissed him like this .

“Betty,” he says again, pulling away with a dazed expression. His chest is heaving, the tattoo he’d gotten only a couple weeks into senior year rising upward with every breath.

“What?” This time, she laves the skin of his collarbone with her tongue before biting down - not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to leave a mark. To prove she’s been there. A strangled sort of moan escapes Jughead’s mouth and she does the same thing again, only harder this time.

“Bedroom,” is all he says, and she pounces on him again, her leg brushing his straining jeans so that the next sound to leave his lips is an almost feral growl. It’s downright obscene, the way she claws at his belt buckle between kisses which are really more of a crash of mouths than anything else. Still, Jughead doesn’t seem to mind as he uses the wall for leverage, holding her against it with strong, steady arms as she uses whatever part of her body she can to rid him of his pants. They drop to the floor with a soft thud and now all that’s separating them is their underwear. Betty’s grateful for the matching set she’s got on: light pink lace from Forty Winks - not her most expensive set (nor her most sexy) but good enough for this unexpected turn of events.

And she wants to look good for him, she realises.

Not that Jughead is particularly paying attention to said lingerie. His fingers are roaming underneath the lace, gripping her pelvic bones almost to the point of pain and Betty hopes he leaves bruises.

“Can you…” he gasps as she bites down on his collarbone. “Can you take off your bra?”

He holds her steady as she reaches behind her back to unclasp the material. She drops it to the floor and lets her breasts fall freely and that’s when he pulls back enough to pause. His right hand reaches out to trace the tattoo inked into the underside of her breast and he actually gasps.

“Still there,” she thinks she hears him murmur, and there’s a look on his face she can’t distinguish. Maybe she should say something, but she’s not sure what - of course the arrow’s still there (like his is) just below her heart .

So instead, Betty urges him on in a different way, tugging at the cotton waistband of his boxers until they’re dropping around his ankles and reminding him of the task at hand. His fingers drop from the tattoo and dip between her legs and then she’s stuttering curses into his shoulder.

His hands were often rough back when they were in Riverdale - the skin pulled from too much time spent out in the cold without gloves - but now they’re soft and smooth as the pad of his thumb swipes her clit and sends her head backwards against the wall. The angle leaves enough room for him to graze his teeth down her neck and Betty’s not even certain she can continue to hold her head up. Her fingers clutch at his biceps, the muscles beneath flexing and contracting in a delicious rhythm as he slides a finger inside of her. She knows she’s wet. Embarrassingly so maybe, except she can’t seem to find it in her to care because his lips are once again close enough for her to capture with her own and so she does, zeroing in with laser precision.

All too quickly, Jughead works her up and over the edge, her mouth open in a silent scream that leaves her heart pounding so hard against her rib cage that she’s sure the bones could break.

He gives her minimal time to recover before he’s laying her down on the bed not particularly gently so he can yank off the saturated lace she’s wearing. Positioning himself between her legs, he reaches for her breast once more, fingering the tattoo for a split-second before massaging her nipple and drawing a needy moan from Betty’s mouth.

“I’m on the pill,” she manages to get out while tugging on his hair to pull him back up to her, mouth hot and desperately craving his. He bites down lightly on her bottom lip and then drags his teeth back down her neck, the valley between her breasts, all the way down her stomach and into her bellybutton before stopping just above her clit. She sucks in a breath in anticipation and he waits a half-second longer than she expects him to before drawing a long, flat line with his tongue up and over her entrance, sucking on her clit and then repeating his actions so that her fingers are left to claw the sheets and her eyes roll back in her head.

She doesn’t let him let her come, stilling him with fingers wrapped around his wrist so she can tug him back to her. Jughead’s expression is of slight confusion but when she uses her feet to maneuver him against her, he seems to understand. He sinks into her slowly and she can already tell from the way his jaw muscles are tightened that this isn’t going to last long.

Betty switches their positions so that he’s lying beneath her, so she can rest a hand atop of his tattoo and he can sit up enough to press kisses against her neck. They reach a rhythm after a minute or so, her mouth bursting out hot puffs of air against his ear, fingertips gripping down on the back of his neck while his own sink into the skin around her hips and her waist.

When he sucks hard on her collarbone, Betty doesn’t stop him like she might’ve done years ago: It’ll leave a mark Jug; do it where nobody will see . She wants the mark this time - wants to be able to see what he’s done to her each time she looks in the mirror.

It’s probably best that she doesn’t dwell on the reasons behind it.

He comes before she does, almost violently, holding her down on him like he’s afraid she’s going to be ripped away, and then stays inside of her while he uses his fingers to bring her over the edge too. They remain attached for a good five minutes after, Betty’s head dropping to Jughead’s shoulder as she regains a normal breathing pattern. Only when she draws back does he lift her off of him, hands so gentle this time until they release her and she can head to the bathroom to clean up.

Her limbs are heavy as she slides the warm washcloth between her legs. She catches sight of herself in the mirror just before heading back out to the bedroom - notes the mussed her and her swollen lips; her flushed cheeks and the bruise-like marks on her neck and collarbone and decides that probably, the last time she looked and felt like this was six years ago.

She wonders how she went so long without it. How she went so long without him .

-

She wakes in the morning to the sound of vibrating somewhere in the room. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust, not least to Jughead who’s lying on his front beside her, after which she manages to locate the source of the noise on the set of drawers across the room. Slipping out of bed before it can wake him, she grabs the blanket from its place half on the bed, half on the floor, and wraps it around her body.

Betty answers her mom’s call in the living room in little more than a hushed whisper.

“Betty, the trainlines are clear. I’ve booked you a ticket for this afternoon.”

It’s only two separate pieces of information, and yet in her daze, she’s struggling to comprehend. “What - what time is it?” she manages to ask, which, judging by Alice’s response, is not what she’s expecting to hear.

“Don’t tell me you were asleep Elizabeth; it’s almost nine!”

Betty rubs a hand over her face. She wonders how long her mom’s already been up. Alice sighs into the phone and Betty remembers her manners. “Thanks mom.”

She hangs up after strict instructions to be at the train station by 2:15pm. The timing will mean she won’t arrive in Riverdale until around seven that evening but she figures she owes her parents a cameo appearance if nothing else.

The tequila bottle on the coffee table catches her eye and Betty has a brief flashback to the previous night - to Jughead’s hands roaming her skin and then lingering on her tattoo. And then she thinks of the book - of his words regarding Charlotte and the drawing on her body.

The tattoo was inked into her skin, its symbol a language spoken only by the two of them.

Her fingers trail unconsciously over the delicate arrow under her breast and she thinks of his smile when they laid in his tiny twin bed side-by-side all of those years ago, him peeling off the dressing on hers before her delicate fingers peeled off his. A teenage ideal of permanence. The only thing that would be permanent, it had seemed back then in their ever-shifting reality, was their love for each other.

In the end, it was just another thing that changed.

Betty removes the bottle and the two shot glasses, placing them in the cupboard and sink respectively, then bends on her way back to the bedroom to pick up Jughead’s sweater.

He’s dressing when she opens the door, not stopping when he sees her wrapped up in the blanket and nothing else. She can already tell by the expression he’s wearing that he regrets what happened between them: that he recognises his mistake.

“Hey,” she says softly, trying her best not to betray the sadness in her voice. She wants to crawl back under the sheets.

(She wants him to hold her too.)

“Hey.” His voice is rough with sleep and she remembers how, when he’d greet her like that in bed, it would always be followed by a lazy kiss and a nuzzle of her nose. This time, he’s empty-handed when it comes to physical contact.

“Sorry you were woken up. It was my mom.”

He takes his sweater from her hand with a soft, “Thanks.”

Betty clutches the blanket tighter around her body, suddenly feeling far too on display. “She bought me a train ticket back to Riverdale.” She’s not really sure why she’s telling him.

(Except, of course, deep down it’s because she knows she wants him to say he’ll join her; wants them to go back home together. Together .)

“Today?”

“I leave Boston at 2:30.”

Jughead pulls the shirt over his head and runs a hand through the dark waves of hair that’ve since fallen across his face. Betty wants to reach out and do it for him but stays where she is, hands still clutching the blanket. She opens her mouth to say his name but he beats her to it, almost sighing out a, “Betts.”

She swallows.

“Last night, I...I shouldn’t have taken advantage.”

She shakes her head. “You didn’t.”

“I did. And I’m sorry. I knew it was a bad idea and with the tequila -”

“- Jug,” she interrupts, not really sure what she’s trying to say but knowing she needs him to stop before he says something that’ll crush her. Something she won’t be able to unhear. Yes, they had tequila, and yes, it’s probably the reason that they ended up sleeping together. But liquor or no liquor, it doesn’t change the fact that there are marks on her skin because she’d wanted them there; she’s deliciously sore because she’d wanted him to be rough with her - to fuck her (because that’s what last night was: fucking) In the end, all she says is, “It’s okay,” which they both know is a lie.

Still, he plays along and nods. “I’ll let you get dressed.”

He slips out of the bedroom and Betty wants to cry. She digs her nails into her palms instead.

Jughead leaves her apartment without any breakfast or even a cup of coffee. She doesn’t try and convince him to stay, nor does she mention him joining her in their hometown.

She arrives at the station by 2pm, boards her train at twenty past and spends the journey trying not to remember the way he’d held her as she fell to sleep, and only barely succeeds.

-

It’s snowing again when the bus Betty had boarded in New York pulls into the station. Already, the road’s reduced to two single sets of tracks and she hopes more than anything that she doesn’t get stuck here too. Her dad’s waiting in the car and steps out to help her with her suitcase when she appears in the bus’ doorway, his smile genuine. Betty wonders whether her mom’s given him a hard time (or harder than usual at least) while she’s been in Boston.

“Hey kiddo,” he smiles, pulling her into a hug. “You had a good trip?”

“Yes,” she lies, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“Good. Your mom’s busy getting dinner ready but she’s excited to see you.”

Betty wonders whether excited is the right word; she’s not sure Alice Cooper has ever been excited to see anyone. “I’ve missed you guys,” she says, climbing into the passenger seat and wondering - as the words tumble from her lips involuntarily - whether she really means it.

“We’ve missed you too,” her dad says, putting the car into drive. “So much.”

There’s a song playing on the radio as they turn left through the centre of town: When you said your last goodbye, I died a little bit inside...But If you loved me, why’d you leave me? and Betty reaches out to switch it off, her heart aching and her eyes heavy with tears.

She thinks Jughead must’ve been right - that the previous night was a mistake. It’s taken years not to feel like this and now here she is, right back where she started when she first left for Columbia.

“Have you heard from Polly?” Betty asks in a bid to focus on something more positive, because if there’s anything in the world that can cheer her up, it’s her niece and nephew. She tries not to focus on the way her words seem too light, too bright, but her dad doesn’t appear to find anything amiss.

“She said the snowstorm on Christmas Eve was so bad that the power went out. Tilly was worried that Santa might not be able to find them if he couldn’t see the town’s lights. Tom was worried that the trainset he’d set up for Finn wouldn’t work but the power came back early yesterday morning so they were fine.”

Betty finds that, as intended, the shifted focus helps ease the squeezing feeling in her chest just a little. “He’s so good with them,” she says, happy that her sister found someone who cares for her children like he was the one who made them.

“Tom’s a good man,” her father agrees. And then, slamming into her mind from nowhere, is the question of whether he’d say the same about Jughead if things had been different and they’d had children of their own. If he’d spent all of Christmas Eve laying a train track beneath the tree so their son would be able to play with it in the morning, wearing tartan pajamas and a beaming smile.

Her heart almost gives out again.

“Betty?” her dad questions, and she turns her head towards him.

“Yeah?”

“I said, I saw Archie and Veronica this morning.”

“Oh,” she replies, not sure how she feels about this information. Her dad’s implying that he saw them together and Betty wonders whether it’s supposed to sting. Whether it’s supposed to make her feel anything more than vague satisfaction.

“Have you made plans to hang out?” he asks.

“Uh no. Not yet,” she adds.

“Well just make sure that you stay in tonight,” he tells her. “Your mom’s probably ready to barricade you in the house.”

She manages something of a chuckle and the rest of the journey continues in silence.

Inevitably, Alice asks her many, many questions. Boston, her diet and skincare routine, whether she’s taking her pills as prescribed (she isn’t, but her mom doesn’t need to know that) boys and her career are all topics of particular interest. Betty fields the questions as best she can, answering with what she knows her mother will want to hear while cutting her carrots up into such tiny pieces that nobody seems to notice none of them entering her mouth.

She clears the plates and then Alice retrieves a pie from the kitchen, cuts all of them a larger-than-her-usual-average slice with a prim “Seeing as it’s Christmas,” to which her dad rolls his eyes good-naturedly, and Betty sits there feeling like a fraud.

They share a bottle of wine between them and it provides Betty with the excuse that the combination of alcohol and travelling has made her feel so tired that she’ll have to go to bed. Alice acquises, kisses her on the forehead and tells her how lovely it is to have her home, though how she wishes both of her daughters would’ve made it back to Riverdale for the holidays.

The words imply that her visit is good, but not quite good enough .

When Betty finally makes it to the sanctity of her old bedroom, she unzips the suitcase she’d brought in order to grab her pajamas and toothbrush, sees the gifts she’d brought for her parents and debates taking them back downstairs so they can open them. It feels like it’ll be too hard to fake any more smiles though, and so she decides against it for now, gathers the items she needs and shuts the case again.

When she straightens up, she sees Archie’s old bedroom filtering soft light through the falling flakes and before she can think anything more, she catches sight of him and Veronica making out. A real, fleeting smile crosses her lips and she closes the curtains, heads to the bathroom to brush her teeth and then changes into the old Columbia t-shirt and grey shorts she’s brought from Boston.

Only when she’s surrounded by the safety of darkness does she allow herself to cry.

-

She sees them the following day when she’s on her way to the grocery store. Her mom’s run out of applesauce - imperative apparently, for the lunch she’s making - and Betty practically jumps at the chance to escape the house.

Veronica has her fingers clasped around Archie’s arm but drops them with a somewhat guilty expression when she sees Betty. She wants to tell her that there’s no need - that seeing the pair of them together makes her glad if anything, because they’ve found their happy ever after.

Someone should.

“Betty!” Veronica chirps brightly - too brightly, Betty thinks, and of anyone, she should know the difference.

“Hey!” The smile on her face is genuine, although she widens it for emphasis - just in case. “I didn’t know you guys were coming back for the holidays.”

“We didn’t...we’re not...we didn’t come back together ,” Archie replies, and she can’t help but chuckle when Veronica widens her eyes at him rather indiscreetly.

“I saw you last night,” Betty tells them. “Through your window Arch.”

“Look, Betty -”

“-Seriously guys, it’s...you don’t have to…”

Nobody seems capable of finishing their sentences and it’s somewhat pathetic. They’re all adults now and Veronica and Archie were way more of a something than she and Archie ever were, despite what Jughead had always thought; despite what he’d written down in his book. If there’s anyone that should feel guilty, it’s her. She hopes Veronica knows that loneliness and some strange sense of acceptance were the only reasons they finally tried being together.

“If you guys are together, than that’s great, seriously. And if you’re not, then that’s good too - if that’s what you want.”

Veronica leans forward and squeezes her arm. “Thanks B.”

Archie smiles too. “So are you here for long?”

“I head back to Boston the day after tomorrow.”

“Do you fancy a milkshake?” Veronica asks. “Tonight at Pop’s?”

She tells them both that that sounds perfect, and she’ll see them later, and then continues on her quest for applesauce. Peering back over her shoulder a few yards down the road, she sees Archie drape an arm around Veronica’s shoulders, watches the brunette lean closer and thinks about all the times Jughead would walk her home like that - pressed impossibly close so she could burrow into the cool leather of his jacket.

Betty digs her hands into her coat pockets, dips her chin into the soft wool of her scarf and makes do.

Later, after she’s talked on the phone with Polly and received thanks from Finn and Tilly for the Christmas presents she sent, Betty showers and changes into a red sweater and jeans before heading out to meet Archie and Veronica at Pop’s. They’re waiting in their old booth when she arrives, each nursing a milkshake with a third - untouched - seated opposite them, presumably ordered in anticipation of her arrival.

She sits down and then peels off her coat and scarf, folding them so they can lay on the seat beside her and she can get a taste of the vanilla goodness she’s been missing since she was last here.

She asks Veronica about California and Archie about New York and they, in turn, ask about Boston. Betty tells them about her job and the apartment she rents, her few friends acquired mainly through work, and the annoyingly infrequent subway. She decides to leave out Jughead’s arrival and the interview he’d given - not to mention what happened between them two nights prior. She does wonder though, whether Archie knows more than he’s letting on. She knows they see each other from time to time - they live in the same city after all - but Jughead has never really been one to spill his feelings out into a room.

(Spilling them out across pages in a book however, must be different)

She learns that Veronica had been in New York for a job interview a few weeks ago, and had decided to call up Archie to ‘check in’. Betty wishes she was more like the other woman - self-confident and assured enough to just pick up the phone and dial her ex-boyfriend’s number and instruct him to meet her somewhere of her choosing. She knows there will have been no real preamble - Veronica Lodge does not negotiate and Archie Andrews has never been the person to put up a fight when it comes to her.

She’d been offered the job as a stylist for an up-and-coming fashion website immediately after the interview, and both she and Archie had celebrated her upcoming return to the city with several drinks, some substandard tapas and a night in a bar which had ended in her hotel room bed at close to 3am.

Betty smiles through the story as Veronica recounts the events and Archie drinks his milkshake contentedly and she thinks, this is how things were supposed to be.

All three of them walk back to Betty and Archie’s childhood homes with the blonde promising she’ll attend Veronica’s house-warming when she makes the switch from the west coast in a few weeks.

“I’ve missed you B,” Veronica says in her ear as they hug goodnight.

“I’ve missed you too,” she replies. “Both of you.”

When Betty goes inside, her mom is seated on the couch with a glass of sancerre and narrowed eyes. “I heard those two arrived together.”

She holds in the sigh and presses her lips into a smile. “We’re all happy mom,” she says. “Archie and Veronica are good together. Archie and I weren’t.”

“I know that,” comes the reply, and she can’t even be bothered to work out which of the statements Alice is addressing. She hopes it’s the lie.

It’s probably the latter.

-

The sky is a weak blue when Betty opens her curtains the following morning. It’s her last day in Riverdale and she intends to spend it taking a long walk by the river and benefitting from as many lungfuls of clean air that she can before she’s back to breathing in the city’s carbon emissions.

She dresses in jeans and a thick-knit navy sweater that swamps her a little, and then pulls a few strands of her hair backwards so she can pin it at the centre so it won’t fall into her face once she’s wearing the pink bobble hat Polly bought her for Christmas.

Alice sets a plate full of croissants on the table at breakfast and Betty wonders how many she’s supposed to take - or if she’s not supposed to take any and they’re merely decorative bystanders amongst the fruit salad, yoghurt and granola. When her dad places two on his plate though, she decides she can have one without argument from her mom, and proceeds to pull small pieces of the pastry off with her fingers.

“I’d have loved for you to spend some time at the Register today,” her mom says pointedly, foregoing the pastries in favour of coffee alone.

“I’ll drop by later,” she promises, pausing before popping another piece of croissant into her mouth. “I’ll bring you some lunch.”

“No carbohydrates,” she instructs with a dramatic shudder. “We’ve had enough these past few days.”

Betty glances at her dad who seems either not to notice or to care. Either way, it makes her smile a little and she nods. “No carbs.”

The air is still when she steps outside. It calms her in a way that living in the city can’t, but still, she thinks, she’d rather be back in Boston right now. Her feet march through the snow with purpose despite the fact she doesn’t have any real destination in mind. Sweetwater River is where she’s heading, but she hasn’t made a decision about whether she’ll follow it north or south.

She passes a few other people when she’s following the rushing water, most of them walking dogs which makes her think of Vegas and the times her and Archie had spent calling out the golden lab’s name when he’d wandered far enough out of sight that they could no longer ascertain his whereabouts. Those times had, of course, occurred before Veronica’s arrival, and it had been the brunette rather than Betty who’d spent her weekends dressed in boots and walking beside Archie during their high school years.

Betty had been sad to hear of the dog’s passing during their junior year of college.

Time drifts by as she continues walking, the thick trees stealing most of the light so she doesn’t get the benefit of the sun on her face. Still, she follows the river’s course until she’s crossed the invisible border between the north and south sides of town and the snow her feet land on is officially serpent territory.

Before her intentions have registered, Betty’s making her way away from the river and towards the usual grey expanse of Sunnyside. The snow makes it look slightly less oppressive than she remembers, although as she starts her journey along the main road snaking through the trailer park, Betty finds that some of the sun’s brightness seems to have dissipated.

It’s been six years since she’s walked this road but everything is the same. Maybe it’s just in her mind but the wind seems to have picked up and taken on a crueler motive, blowing just hard enough that the furry pompom on the top of her hat bobs forwards and she has to tug the garment further over her ears.

***

“You’re going to catch a cold,” Jughead tells her, ducking out from under the covers they’re wrapped in so he can find her one of his sweaters and a thick pair of socks. She’s already dressed in pajamas (her own, although she wouldn’t say no to a pair of his too) but the trailer is absolutely freezing in winter at the best of times and now that the heating’s broken it’s even worse.

“I’ll be fine,” she tells him, taking the clothes he passes her gratefully and sitting up so she can tug the sweater over her head. She probably won’t be fine and come Monday morning: she’s likely to have a sore throat and stuffy nose, but she figures it’s worth it to know he hasn’t spent the night alone here in the cold.

She pulls the socks on too before laying back down. Jughead slides in beside her again and brings her close to his chest, tucking her head in the crook of his neck so she can rest her lips against his skin. He uses his free arm to arrange the blankets so they’re wrapped in a cocoon of sorts, then takes both of her hands between his, rubbing so her fingers won’t be quite so stiff from the cold.  

She’s grateful for the tiny twin bed now.

“You don’t have to sleep here you know,” she whispers into the dark, the words muffled against his neck.

When he doesn’t answer, Betty says nothing more, just burrows impossibly closer and closes her eyes. She feels him drop a kiss to her hair as she slides a leg between his and thinks this is the kind of sacrifice she’ll continually make if it means they’re together.

***

As far as she was aware, he never did get the heating fixed.

The road curves round to the left and the Jones’ trailer comes into view. It looks sad, Betty thinks, alone here without anyone to call it home; without an attempt at Christmas lights or one of those ‘Santa Stop Here’ signs she’s seen beside a few lots.

Her feet are carrying her towards the wooden steps without her brain’s permission and yet, when they reach the top, they’re stuck: nowhere else to go when the only option forward is inside of the trailer. She’s turning and busy wondering what the hell she’s doing when there’s a noise from inside and the door suddenly opens.

There, standing in front of her like they’ve travelled back in time, is Jughead.

Chapter Text

He has to blink twice and even then, Jughead isn’t sure whether or not what he’s seeing is real.

“Betty?” He reaches out a hand and it lands on her arm, confirming that she is, in fact, standing on the trailer’s sad excuse for a porch.

“What are you doing here?” she asks with wide eyes and a somewhat alarmed expression. Really, Jughead should ask her the same question: she has no reason at all to be walking through Sunnyside, let alone without anyone by her side for protection.

What he’s doing in his trailer is ensuring everything is how he left it. What he’s doing in Riverdale is seeking her. “I wanted to see you,” he says. “To apologise. And....” And more is what he wants to say, but stops himself just short of uttering the final syllable. “I went to your parents’ but nobody was home so I figured I’d come here first and then head back.” He’s rambling.

(She’s biting her lip and it’s making him nervous.)

He wonders if he looks as pained as he feels; whether that crushing feeling inside of his chest is evident on his face, or if it’s something reserved only for him. He’s not sure, but he thinks that maybe, Betty might wearing that feeling too.

“Will you come inside?” he asks her.

She nods and swallows but it seems to take her feet a few moments longer to process the request before she’s stepping into his trailer for the first time in six years. She tries not to make a show of looking around at the sad couch and the threadbare rug beneath the coffee table but Jughead sees in her eyes the sorrow she feels that this was his home. It’s not quite pity that she’s displaying (but it’s not far off).

“Did you finish the book?” he asks her.

She nods, just a fraction. “Yes.”

“So you understand,” he continues, “Why I had to let you go.”

“Because the Serpents were stronger than our love was,” Betty replies dejectedly, and Jughead feels his stomach lurch because that’s about as far from the truth as she could get.

“Fuck, no Betts. That’s not it at all.”

“Then no.” Her voice is flat and her eyes are cast down. “I don’t understand.”

He sighs and reaches out to take her hand in his. He runs his fingertips over her palm and the deep crescent indents that suggest she’s been sinking her nails into her skin again. He hopes it’s not because of him but knows that, more than likely, it is. “Betts, I wanted so much more for you than a life with the constant threat of something bad being just around the corner. And I knew I couldn’t be the one to give you that while I was with the Serpents. I was selfish.” The next part, he says so quietly that it’s almost inaudible. “I knew you were better in New York but I didn’t want to watch someone else take you from me: you were too much to lose.”

“So pushing me away was better?”

“Yes.” That way, he didn’t have to watch as it happened.

“Would you do it again?” she asks abruptly, like the thought has only just entered her head. He’s thought about this plenty of times before; wondered if he’d made a mistake; wondered if he could’ve foreseen his dad’s orders from jail and held onto her until then. But each time, he remembers the nights he’d poured alcohol onto cuts to clean them; wrapped bandages around his fists and stuffed drugs into the toes of his boots and thinks that if she’d ever came home to find him living like that, she wouldn’t have gone back to Columbia. She’d have stayed to make sure he was safe; to make sure she was the one dressing his wounds and never sleeping a whole night in fear that someone might come and take him from her.

So yeah, he’d do it again.

Betty already knows this too.

“But you still love me,” she states. “Every day since you left, you’ve loved me.”

She doesn’t need to remind him. The constant ache in his chest does that. “You have no idea.”

Her eyes narrow at that and she pulls her hand out of his. His fingers instantly feel cold. “Do you think I haven’t spent the past six years loving you ?”

Jughead thinks there might be a sob waiting to escape his mouth. She didn’t deserve this.

“You’re right,” she says. “You were selfish. Because I’ve loved you this entire time and I love you now and -”

He cuts her off with his lips. She tastes like fresh air and something else sweeter - something you’d get from a bakery perhaps. Just as he’s about to push his tongue past her open lips, Betty pulls back. “I mean it Jug,” she says soberly.

He knows. He can feel it in her now - the way she grips him when she’s in his arms; the way she moves her mouth against his; the way her eyes land on him when he’s talking. And still, “I didn’t want you to love me Betts.” It’s the truth.

“I know.”

He suspects she didn’t want to love him either.

“But I did. I do. And...” she trails off, obviously fighting the descent of her nails in towards her palms, but steps closer so she can pull the cuffs of his jacket (denim with a sheepskin lining - not leather) between her broken skin and her nails. He can feel her breath against his face and as it fans through the air, he realises what that sweet smell is: she’s been eating almond croissants.

“And?” he asks, trying (and only just not failing) to fight the urgency in his voice.

“And I’m terrified that now I’ve admitted it to myself, you’ll leave again.”

Fuck . “Betty,” he gasps, taking her hands in his and tugging gently so she’s impossibly close. “God, I’m not going to….I can’t leave again. Not if I’ve got - getting - if we’re…”

It’s hard to get his words out when she’s chewing her bottom lip between her teeth and looking at him with such wide, watering eyes. He doesn’t want to be presumptuous: she’s in his arms, yes, and she’s not pushing him away having told him she loves him, but there’s the not-at-all-insignificant fact that he doesn’t deserve her forgiveness - let alone her - and whatever they are is too precarious to make a wrong move now.

In the end, Betty’s phone rings and she pulls away before he’s had the chance to say any more. She’s already apologising profusely and saying she lost track of time on her walk, and for a moment, Jughead’s not sure who’s on the other end of the line until “I’ll be right there mom,” leaves her mouth.

“My mom,” she tells him after she hangs up, like he hasn’t just been standing in front of her. “I promised I’d take her some lunch.”

“Oh.”  

She seems reluctant to step away and Jughead counts this as a positive, although his trailer is hardly the best place they could be having this conversation. “You’re not going anywhere?” she asks. “If I stop by The Register and then come back. You’ll still be here?”

He hates himself for her having to ask that. Tilting her chin upwards with his forefinger so she can see the honesty in his eyes, Jughead lowers his voice to something barely a fraction more than a whisper. “I’ll be here.”

She looks like she might be about to kiss him, but instead. Betty clutches at his wrist and trails his fingers down his hand. “Okay.”

He watches her all the way down the road until she’s claimed by the gathering snow clouds and he can no longer make out the pink bobble hat bouncing through the trailer park. A long, heavy breath leaves his lungs when he finally closes the door of the trailer and surveys his surroundings.

Everything is as he’d left it, which is to say, rather tired. There’s no power - not that he’d expected there to be with nobody here to pay the bill - but he wishes there was so he could make the place warmer for Betty’s return. It occurs to him then, that if she’s delivering lunch for her mom then she must not’ve eaten either. Again, there isn’t any means of cooking her anything and other than a can of out-of-date chicken soup, there isn’t much on offer in the cupboards anyway.

He figures he can make it to the nearest diner and back before she returns. It’s not on the same level as Pop’s - far from it - but the food will be warm and filling and better than whatever horrifying kale/quinoa dish she’ll be delivering to Alice.

After he arrives at said diner, Jughead spends a somewhat alarming amount of time selecting what to buy when normally he wouldn’t even look at the menu before ordering. This feels like it deserves more though, like Betty’s opinion on the food he buys weighs more than it would usually, so after much careful consideration, he decides on two hamburgers, two large portions of fries, a chili hotdog, mozzarella sticks and - despite practically shuddering at the thought of anyone eating something so monstrous - a veggie burger. It’s enough of a selection that Betty will be able to pick something she likes and Jughead will be able to eat whatever’s left over without a problem (aside from the veggie burger of course). He tags two milkshakes - one vanilla, one strawberry - onto the end of his order and then waits for it to be bagged up.

He hurries back through Sunnyside before the cold weather claims the food’s heat and ahead of him, he spies a car which looks remarkably like that of Betty’s parents. He quickens his pace to something of a jog - or as much of one as he can manage with the two milkshakes balanced in his left hand - so that she doesn’t assume he’s gone against the promise he made when he said he’d be there when she returned.

He reaches the trailer as Betty’s turning around from its door with a crumpling face. Jughead doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look at him in real life like she’s doing now. Her words are littered with cracks. “I thought you’d -”

“- I know. And I’m sorry, but I wanted you to have something to eat and I didn’t have anything I could give you. I thought I’d be back first.”

“Jug -” It’s a gasp-cum-hiccup, relief flooding the one syllable of his name so quickly that he thinks his legs (or his heart) might be about to give out.

“The key’s under the plant pot,” he tells her, not caring to dwell on her assumption that he’d left again, and yet instead of picking it up like he expects her to, Betty comes towards him, taking the milkshakes from his hand.

“Did you get the heating fixed?” Her voice is soft - almost knowing - but still tinged with anxiety and Jughead wonders if he’ll ever be able to do anything to remedy that now.

Her words take him back to that truly awful winter when the crappy excuse for the trailer’s heaters gave out, plunging his then-home into something akin to an ice cave. He’d never felt the cold like she did - almost undoubtedly because this is all he’d ever known as a kid (although his first ever sleepover at Archie’s was something of an eye-opener) and his body had become used to the colder climate - but sleeping in the months from early November to late February had only been bearable on the nights she’d stayed over.

***

“Give me your hands,” he whispers into the dark, his words a welcome warm puff of fog between their faces. Betty pulls her palms out from under their opposite armpits and lets him take them between his so he can rub the redness back out of them. The movement rocks the little twin bed so their bodies collide and she giggles when her chest presses against his.

He seals her lips with his but they’re cold too. “Betts, you’re freezing,”

“I’m fine,” she murmurs, snuggling closer and bringing the blankets with her. Never complaining, he thinks, even when she has every right to.

It’s hard to find space in a bed so narrow but that’s the last thing they need right now. Jughead loops his leg over hers in hopes that he can cocoon in enough heat that she won’t catch a cold. She shouldn’t have to sleep here.

(She doesn’t have to sleep here, and yet this is where she chooses to be rather than her perfectly comfortable, perfectly warm floral-patterned bed.)

“I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I won’t.”

He stops rubbing her fingers and places them beneath his sweater and pajama top instead. “Jughead Jones,” she muses, and already he can sense the single cocked eyebrow. “Are you propositioning me without words?”

“Not unless you can manage it with all of your clothes on,” he replies honestly. “I don’t want you to get any colder than you already are.”

“It’ll only be for a minute,” Betty replies, tracing the shell of his ear with her tongue, and fuck - he’s so gone already. “You’ll get me warm again.”

They move together barely rustling the sheets, but the action creates a delicious amount of heat that simultaneously warms his bones and seeps into Betty’s skin so that when he holds her, his fingers sink into her now-warm curves beneath the layers she’s wearing.

When they come - quietly and only a minute or so apart - neither make any effort to complete the post-coitus tasks they probably should. Jughead’s reluctant even to pull out of her (though he forces himself to in a bid to avoid any unnecessary infection on her part) as her breaths begin to even out against his neck. He kisses her forehead and whispers an ‘I love you’ but finds himself wishing for something better for her. Something that isn’t a tired trailer on the wrong side of town. Something that isn’t tainted by the Serpents.

And to get those things, he knows, she needs to be with someone that isn’t him.

***

When he realises he hasn’t responded in words, Jughead looks up to find Betty already opening her driver’s side door. “It’s okay,” she says with a gentle smile. “Hop in.”

She turns on the engine once he’s seated inside and the radio plays out a song he’s unfamiliar with as the heater blows out a gentle 74 degree warmth. “I got a few different things,” he finds himself himself saying. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like.”

“You got a burger in there?” she says, turning to face him as she sets the two milkshakes into the cup holders - vanilla nearest her.

“And fries,” he replies, handing her the wrapped bun. “There’s mozzarella sticks too, if you want them.”

She takes one, although Jughead figures it might be out of politeness, and takes a delicately small bite as he shoves a whole one into his mouth, wincing a little at the temperature. So he hadn’t managed to make it back before the cold air took its toll on the food.

“Sorry it isn’t warm.”

“It’s perfect,” she says with such such sincerity that he almost believes her. (It isn’t, but he supposes it’s better than a salad or cold canned soup) “You were sweet to get food.”

There was a time, Jughead recalls, where he would’ve practically recoiled at the idea of anyone thinking he was sweet, let alone a girl. Now, he’s sitting across from a woman (who, incidentally, happens to be the only person in the world whose opinion he cares about) trying not to let the smile tugging at his lips invade his entire face.

“Can I take you out?” he blurts - mouth full of burger. “Somewhere you can sit at a table and have a proper meal.”

His heart is thumping in wait for her answer and he watches her swallow the mouthful of fries she’s got before she rests a hand on his knee. It both scorches and freezes at the same time. “Is this Jughead Jones before me declaring that a burger and fries isn’t a proper meal?”

“In terms of food groups, you could say of course it’s a meal,” he replies. “But I want you to have plates and cutlery. You deserve better than takeout eaten in a car.”

“Always thinking about what I deserve versus what I want,” Betty says softly, her voice dipping further in cadence. “I want this burger. In this car.” Her eyes meet his and he sees she’s telling the truth. “With you, Jug.”

And that there, is enough.

He forgets about the burger, focusing instead on the only thing that matters. Framing her face with his hands, he closes the distance between them and with the gentlest of pressures, captures her lips with his. It’s the second time he’s kissed her today, although it feels different now. Like something’s shifted - the planets in line maybe (or something much less cheesy but equally as significant) or his brain has finally registered that she wants him; that she wants him regardless of who he is or where he’s from or what he did (or maybe even because of those things) that she wants him and she loves him and for her, he’s her something better.

So yeah, it’s different this time.

“I love you.” He doesn’t even think twice about saying it now. “God, I love you Betty.”

-

Jughead boards a train back to New York that very night, only just managing not to blow off the meeting he has early the following morning. It’s physically painful to watch Betty drive her parents’ car back to the north side of Riverdale and he gains some understanding of how she must’ve felt that night before leaving for Columbia. This time however, he knows he’ll see her in a few days and there’ll be no time limit on how long he can hold her for.

(Because actually, that’s all he wants - to hold her.)

She’d kissed him goodbye while he stood outside of the car at the driver’s side to ensure they couldn’t get carried away. It’s one thing letting her drive away after a kiss but it would’ve been a whole other ball game if they’d gone any further than that.

He spends the few days before New Year’s Eve answering emails and trying to persuade Liz not to force him to do the whole book launch thing she appears insistent on, although he loses that battle pretty quickly though suspects it was never really up for discussion to begin with.

He tidies the apartment and washes his sheets, even going so far as to buy a selection of relatively healthy food items so that Betty won’t have to worry about ‘empty carbs’ as her mom had always referred to them.

They text throughout the day and at night, she calls him to say she’s exhausted as she’s travelling home from the Herald’s office so would he talk to her so she doesn’t drift off on the train and miss her stop? Jughead can hear the tiredness in her voice and it worries him - knowing she has to walk for a good number of blocks once she’s reached Back of The Hill station - but he doesn’t voice this, just talks to her about where she might like to eat when she comes to New York to celebrate New Year’s Eve with him; tells her too, about his rather eccentric neighbour, Mrs Horowicz, whom she’ll have to dodge which makes her laugh in that throaty way that makes desire coil low in his stomach.

She lets him know when she’s arrived at her apartment and he stays on the line until he’s heard her slide the chain across the door with a yawn and a mumbled apology, “Sorry.”

“Get some sleep,” he tells her with a smile and poorly-suppressed excitement. “I love you.”

“I can’t wait to see you,” she whispers, and he imagines her smile as she’s peeling off her clothes on her way to bed. He hopes she leaves them scattered across the floor. “Good night Juggie.”

“Night Betts,” he grins softly into the phone. She ends the call and he scrubs a hand over his face because he’s that guy now (or again, maybe) and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. There’s nothing he wants to do about it either.

The following day is New Year’s Eve and he knows Betty has to work in the morning before catching her flight. He has to work too, which means he can’t meet her at the airport like he should, and he tries desperately to quell the rising thoughts that already, he’s not good enough for her.

“I used to live there, remember?” she’d said, and he’d known she was rolling her eyes good-naturedly. “I know how to get the subway to Carroll Gardens.”

That’s not the point though. He’d wanted to greet her at the airport with flowers; wanted to wheel her case for her and buy her subway ticket; wanted to sit beside her with his arm over her shoulders so she’d be able to rest her head against him.

Instead, he has to settle for hanging around Carroll Street station, blowing into his fingers to keep them warm as they clutch a bunch of white roses, looking vaguely like he’s been stood up. Betty had text at the airport to let him know she’d landed and from that point, he’s spent the last hour and a half anticipating the moment she’ll exit the station and see him waiting for her.

Still, that time hasn’t prepared him for the moment she actually arrives, ascending the stairs with her little case in hand, scarf bundled around her neck making her look like a winter parcel of perfection. There’s this look on her face when she sees him though, almost like she hadn’t dared hope he’d be standing there waiting, and Jughead finds himself rushing forward almost before his brain has worked out that he needs to move.

He simultaneously takes the case from her grasp and hands her the flowers, which she takes with a soft, “Oh Jug, they’re beautiful,” and he thinks not nearly as beautiful as you .

His reply is (what he assumes is a grinning) “Hi,” which he follows up with an incredibly unsmooth “Welcome to Brooklyn.” What is he? Some sort of tourism guide now?

Betty giggles though, her eyes dancing as she brushes the fingers of her free hand against those of his. “Let’s go,” she tells him gently, and he knocks his fingers again with hers as they make a right and head the short distance to his building.

Jughead realises, once they enter his apartment and he stands there somewhat awkwardly as she glances around at the high ceilings and wood floors, that he hadn’t quite anticipated the question of how to be with her. He sets Betty’s case down but stuffs his hands into his pockets because they’re itching to touch her and despite the fact they’ve kissed and declared their love for each other, he’s not exactly sure where he stands in terms of acting on these types of urges.

“It’s a really great place Jug,” Betty tells him and he thinks he might detect something akin to awe in her tone.

“The bathroom’s through there,” he says, indicating the door across the room to the left. “If you wanted to wash up or shower or...not that you need to shower, but maybe -”

“- Jug,” she all-but-whispers, cutting off his rambling and tilting her head to the side with an amused expression. “I could use a shower. I feel kind of gross.”

“Well you don’t look gross,” he blurts out like he’s in the midst of a nasty bout of verbal diarrhoea. “I mean...you look…” he steps closer, stroking his thumb down her face because clearly, words are failing him. “You look beautiful.” You always look beautiful .  

She secures her fingers around his wrist, holding it in place. “You’re sweet.”

“I put clean towels on the rail.” His voice is lower now. “I’ll make coffee. Take your time.”

He looks at her lips for a long time but she doesn’t close the gap between them and so Jughead steps back, clearing his throat and removing his coat. Betty heads to the bathroom and closes the door.

-

Later, when Betty’s dressed in what can only be described as a deep emerald creation (it’s so, so much more than a dress) and he’s in pressed slacks and a dress shirt - sans beanie, they leave the apartment to source food. In his desperation to ensure he takes her somewhere she’ll love, Jughead hasn’t actually managed to make a decision in time to book a table at a restaurant and needless to say, there are none available.

Despite her protests otherwise, he feels very, very strongly like he’s failed her (again) and here she is, all dressed up like some kind of grecian goddess and with nowhere to go. When they pass a tiny hole-in-the-wall Chinese place however, she gets an excited look in her eye that she tries to subdue.

“You know what we should do?” she asks, and he can pretty much figure out what she’s going to say but he plays along because if she’s about to request eating sesame chicken on his couch then his stomach is more than okay with this.

“What’s that?”

“Order an obscene amount of food from this place, take it back to your apartment and eat it without worrying whether we’re slurping wonton soup too loudly.”

God, he loves her.

“Are you sure? You don’t want to go to the waterfront?”

“Is that what you want to do?” she asks.

Jughead steps close enough that Betty has to tilt her head to see him as he fingers a wave of her hair. “I just want to be where you are Betts. Other than that, I don’t care.”

“I want to eat butterfly shrimp on your couch,” she says with a smile.

He decides not to questions it and buys the food and they hurry back through the falling snowflakes to his apartment.

Jughead hangs up her coat once they get there, noting as it rests beside his, that there’s something incredibly domestic about it. It’s the first time in his life he can remember ever having that feeling and when he looks across at her rummaging through his cupboards to find plates for their food, that feeling increases. He spends a good half a minute simply watching her, mouth watering (and not because of the food) as she bends and her blonde waves tumble forward to reveal the expanse of bare, porcelain skin on her back.

When she straightens, Betty turns her head towards him, eyes shining. “What?”

“You look incredible you know?” he crosses to her, reaching out to skim a hand across her back but stopping before it reaches its destination. He needs her to be the one to initiate where they go from here: he doesn’t get to dictate anything anymore.

“Thanks Juggie,” she says softly, smiling a smile that reaches all the way up into her eyes. “You look really good too.”

They eat on the couch with plates balanced on their laps and New Year’s Rockin’ Eve playing lowly in the background. Betty tells him about the New Year’s Eves she’s celebrated in Boston (fireworks on Boston Common; fireworks over the harbor; fireworks at Copley Square - a lot of fireworks, Jughead thinks - followed by a morning run on Boston Common the following day) and he tells her about the one time he and Jellybean ventured into Manhattan to see the ball drop. His sister had been adamant about experiencing it their first year together in the city, but in all honesty, Jughead had found it to be an all-round horrendous experience never to be repeated.

Unless, of course, Betty wants to see it first-hand.

Once they’ve eaten, she begins clearing away the plates and empty cartons but this time, Jughead doesn’t think twice about stilling her with his hand at her waist. “That’s my job Betts.”

“I want to help,” she argues but he shakes his head because she didn’t come to his place to start tidying up after him.

“Sit down. I’ll run these down to the trash and then I’ll be right back.”

He takes the time away from her to collect his thoughts in an attempt to figure out how exactly the rest of the night is going to pan out now that they’re not spending it away from his apartment. The privacy is both thrilling and daunting, not least because it extends the list of possibilities regarding what might happen, although the last thing he wants is for Betty to feel uncomfortable. He only has the one bedroom and hadn’t wanted to presume that they’d share his bed, so prior to her arrival he’d ensured that spare pillows and blankets were readily available for the purposes of sleeping on the couch.

Wait for her to initiate anything , he tells himself, and then reenters the apartment to find her stretched out across his couch. She makes to sit up when he crosses the room but he stops her, lifting her feet so he can sit down before plopping them in his lap. She’s turned up the volume of the tv while he’s been out and they watch some new girl group perform what he’s informed is the current number one on Billboard while he rubs her feet.

With her tights, Jughead’s fingers slip easily along and underneath the arches, sinking into her skin to loosen the knots that’ve come as a result of the heeled boots she’d been wearing earlier. Betty lets out a soft hum of contentment and when he chances a peek at her, he finds that her eyes are closed.

He continues to rub her feet long after all of the knots have disappeared, mainly because this way, he’s touching her freely and he can tell she’s comfortable. From time to time, he hears her breathing even out indicating light slumber, but each time a particularly loud segment on the tv occurs, her eyes blink open again and he can’t help but smile.

“We don’t have to watch the fireworks,” he says softly, moving his fingers to the top of her foot. “If you’re too tired.”

Betty lets out a quiet moan at his ministrations but sits up a little on her elbows. “No, I want to,” she says. “I think I’m just in a food coma because I’m so warm and comfy. What time’s it?”

“Nearly half eleven,” he replies, working her other foot. “If you want, I’ll wake you up just before the ball drops.”

There’s a smudge of makeup just under her eye that he wants to wipe away with his thumb, but instead he keeps his fingers trained on their current task. “I’m sorry I’m such terrible company,” she says, stifling a yawn. “I’ve been up really early these last couple days so I could -”

“- Betts,” he interrupts, because he refuses to let her think that for him, this moment is anything other than perfect. “If you want to spend the next three days sleeping on this couch, it’s fine by me.”

He really means it too.

Her fingers reach to gently squeeze his forearm as she offers him a sleepy smile. “Maybe not three days. But thirty minutes might do the trick,” she says.

(Jughead spends those aforementioned thirty minutes with the tv on mute and his fingers pressing delicately into her feet.)

He wakes her up in time to watch the ball drop and then they spend a good fifteen minutes by his living room window looking out in the direction of the river and the fireworks lighting up the sky in the distance. Betty stands just in front of him, resting back against his chest and so he takes the opportunity to play with the fingers on her right hand until she interlinks them with his. Jughead rests his chin atop of her head and neither of them say anything.

He can feel the exhaustion in her body though, her warm weight heavier than he would’ve initially suspected, and when the fireworks are over he squeezes her hand gently, tilts his chin downwards and lets his lips rest against her crown before whispering, “Happy New Year.”

She turns in his arms at that, smiles sleepily and strokes her fingertips down his face until there are tingles running down his ears and neck. “Happy New Year,” she returns, then kisses him so incredibly softly. Their lips move slowly together and when they eventually break apart, Jughead presses his back against her forehead. Betty’s eyes sweep closed and so he uses his forefinger to tilt her chin upwards.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?” she mumbles.

“Get some sleep.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be out here,” he replies, planting one more kiss on her forehead and then her lips. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Oh,” Betty says softly, her hands releasing his face. “Okay.”

Jughead wonders whether he can sense something like disappointment tinging her reply but if he can, she doesn’t follow it up.

“Good night Jug.”

“Night Betts,” he responds. He watches as she disappears into his room, closing the door behind her.  

The next thing he knows, he realises he must’ve drifted off because the tv is circulating a news bulletin about the new year’s celebrations around the world that he doesn’t remember starting. It’s only when he blinks and rubs his eyes that he realises what must’ve woken him: Betty is walking towards him, her lip tugged between her teeth like she’s nervous. She’s wearing only a long-sleeved t-shirt and little plaid shorts - a visual overload for this time of day (or night) if ever there was one. Not that he’s complaining.

“Betty?” he asks hoarsely. “Is everything okay?”

Wordlessly, she takes his hand in hers, tugging gently so he’ll stand up. He looks at her questioningly but she remains silent, leading him back in the direction she’d come from, and into his bedroom.

There, she seals her lips over his, her fingertips tracing small circles at the nape of his neck that make the hairs on his arms stand up. He kisses her back, just as tender as she’s being with him but long enough that when they break apart, he can feel her breath in deep pants against his face.

Jughead’s about to question whether she’s alright, but then she lifts her pajama shirt up and over her head to reveal her naked breasts and he stops thinking altogether. She presses her chest into him as she captures his lips once more, and there’s something so incredibly sensual about having her flush against him like this while he’s still wearing his shirt that he’s finding it difficult to swallow.

The next time they pause for air, her fingers reach for the buttons on his dress shirt, fumbling slightly in her sleep-haze, but managing the job eventually. All he can do is stare at her as she pushes the material over his shoulders so he’s bare-chested too. His fingers find the ink of her arrow tattoo and he examines it as best he can in the soft lamplight, stroking the skin until she rests a hand on his chest and he looks up at her face.

She’s watching him, waiting, he supposes, to see what he’ll do. When her fingers reach for the button on his slacks, he steps closer to help her out, letting them fall to the floor in a puddle of dark grey before stepping out of them and lending his hand to the hem of her shorts. He takes the time to pull them down her legs carefully, running his palms up the back of her calves, then behind her knees and to her thighs before she too steps out of the material and lets him set her down gently on his bed.

The sheets are a little rumpled from where she’d slept earlier, but he draws them back just enough that there isn’t a single part of her naked body covered by material. He wants this view of her unobstructed.

Pressing a kiss first against the tattoo, Jughead then moves upwards, butterflying his lips against as much of her skin as he can manage. All the while, Betty pulls him impossibly closer, like any air between them is too much; like he’s a shield she needs to have against her at all times. He works his way upwards, trailing his lips across her collarbone, resting for a breath in her sternum before continuing up her neck and round to her ear. He doesn’t dart his tongue out to lick or tease, but simply breathes against the shell of her most sensitive part. (She’ll hear him then, without him having to use words.)

Back across her jawline he travels, lips kissing every step of the way until he reaches a blonde barricade formed by her hair and he’s forced to sweep it to the side so that his access to her neck is opened up once more. And then he starts his descent back down towards her breasts and like she knows his destination, Betty halts him with her hands at either side of his face so she can pull him back to her lips.

They fit against his in a way that makes Jughead seriously consider that one human being might actually be made solely for another. He’d never quite understood it before, but now, as a delicate moan tumbles out of Betty’s mouth and into his, he thinks he gets it.

His fingers reach down between her legs and he’s ready to rub the pad of his thumb across her clit when she shakes her head, shifting to secure her own fingers around the base of his dick so she can guide him into her. He sinks home slowly, dropping his head to the valley between her breasts as the breath is stolen from his lungs. Only when he’s buried fully inside of her does he lift his head up to kiss her again, his hands slipping beneath her shoulder blades so he can cocoon her.

He moves carefully, listening to every tiny breath that stutters out of Betty’s mouth in order to determine whether or not to move faster or harder, or whether to keep this deliciously sweet pace where he can attach his lips to hers without fear of them breaking apart.

She watches him the whole time with green irises glued to his blue-grey ones and he tries his absolute damndest to makes them say I love you . He thinks, when he sees those words mirrored in her own, that he’s managed it.

For the very first time, Jughead makes her come without any need for his hands or his tongue and only then, when she falls over the edge clinging to him, do her eyes slip closed. He continues rocking gently until he spills into her with his head dropping between her shoulder and her neck so he can inhale her perfume and the unique scent that is, simply, Betty Cooper.

He gathers her against his chest after he slips out and wordlessly cards through her hair until her breaths even out on his skin and her eyelids stutter closed.

I love you , he mouths against her temple, before covering her with the sheets and closing his own eyes to sleep.

Chapter Text

The day after New Year’s, Betty arrives back in Boston with a heavy heart and a renewed sense of longing that tugs in her chest every time she inhales. She’d had an utterly perfect New Year’s Eve, the likes of which she’s unable to recall ever having experienced before. Things with Jughead are different this time.

They’re not kids for starters. Despite his obvious attempt to suppress how badly he’d wanted to touch her when she’d first arrived in Brooklyn (though she now knows it was because he needs her to set the pace this time) they’re able to talk about where they stand with each other.

Maybe people will say things have moved too quickly: they’re just exploring their relationship (and each other) again, but Betty figures having spent six years loving each other - and two years before that doing the same - they’re pretty capable of knowing what this is this time.

It’s it .  Unequivocally

Her phone rings as she’s dicing potatoes for dinner and after wiping her hands on the teatowel, she picks up when she sees it’s Veronica’s name on the screen.

“Hey, V,” she says. “What’s up?”

“What’s up ?” Veronica practically screeches over the line and a sinking feeling settles in Betty’s stomach. She knows .

Jughead had called her the previous night to say he was meeting Archie in the morning and that he felt he should tell him about the upcoming magazine article for the Herald (just incase - however unlikely it might be - that he saw it) and subsequently, he should tell him about them .

And now, as it always had in high school, news appears to have reached Veronica who inevitably has an opinion.

“Jughead wrote an entire book about you and you didn’t tell me!?”

“Veronica, I -”

“- Look B, I get it,” she says. “Or...I don’t know, maybe I don’t because it’s not like anyone ever wrote a sixty-thousand word page-turner about me, but I mean...he told Archie. And...Archie told me and…”

Betty hears the heavy pause followed by a sigh.

“Betty, are you okay ?”

“Yes,” she replies after a few seconds’ consideration. And she is. More than okay in fact.

“So, what now?” Veronica asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, is he still gonna publish it?

Betty frowns despite the fact that the girl at the other end of the line is in an entirely different state and therefore cannot see her expression. “Of course.”

“And you’re okay with that? Like, everyone’s gonna know your story.”

Betty supposes she hadn’t thought about it in that way. But Jughead had changed her name and he hadn’t ever given one to the narrator. It wasn’t like he was a famous author - successful, yes, but not famous . Also, it feels weird talking about this with the girl she still supposes is her best friend, although Betty wonders whether that title is fair given what happened while they were all in college. She hadn’t meant to hurt Veronica by doing what she did with Archie, and she knew he hadn’t meant to hurt her either. It was simply loneliness finding a common ground and having someone else’s lips on hers had done the job of blocking out what she’d felt for Jughead, albeit temporarily. She figures the same was probably true for Archie too.

“B?”

“Sorry,” she replies, shaking her head. “It’s a great book V. And now the story isn’t quite so tragic.”

“Yes.” Betty can hear the pleased lilt in her voice. “In fact, one might call it la historia de amor perfecto .”

“I could say the same about you and Arch,” she counters, smiling. It feels like it used to, despite the fact they’re all in New York and she’s here in Boston. The thought gives her a feeling of contentedness, much like she’d felt lying on Jughead’s couch with him rubbing her feet.

“ Destino ineluctable ,” Veronica replies. “It just took a while to arrive.”

“About that,” Betty starts. “Veronica, with Archie and me...I never meant to -”

“- Really Betty, it’s fine. Arch and I have talked about it and there’s no hard feelings. Honestly.”

She breathes out a long, slow breath, wondering quite how their conversation is supposed to continue now, but Veronica switches the subject.

“Anyway, the main reason I’m calling is to invite you to my housewarming party next weekend. It’s at my new place - obviously - and Archie’s already invited Jughead so there’s that. Say you can come?”

Betty laughs. “I’ll have to check with my boss but if you don’t mind me arriving a little late, it’s probably doable.”

“Great!” She can hear Veronica’s excitement. “And perhaps the four of us could go out for breakfast the following day. Really catch up, you know?”

“I’d like that,” Betty smiles.

They hang up with her promising to text Veronica as soon as she knows whether she’s a definite yes for the party.

-

Betty is, thankfully, a definite yes for the party.

She clears things with Garrett and arrives at the office early the following Saturday in order to get her work completed by mid-afternoon so she can board the Amtrak to New York. It’s a significantly slower way to travel than a plane, however costs a great deal less and it’s not like she’s got money to burn. Contrary to how movies portray the glamorous life of those working in the journalism industry, not many people in her office can afford to walk around in designer clothes: H&M is her friend.

There are butterflies in her stomach when she boards the train (there have been butterflies in her stomach since she woke up, truthfully, but they’ve since intensified as if knowing that at the end of the line, waits Jughead) and she orders a small bottle of wine to drink as she looks out at the scenery rushing past. It’s an attempt to settle her nerves and quell the excitement but manages to achieve neither.

She decides to do her makeup instead.

Betty isn’t someone who usually gets ready for an event while in transit (not least because actually, she thinks it’s a little tacky - transforming one’s appearance in front of everyone else - and if she were to lock herself in the bathroom to apply a new coat of mascara and some bronze eyeshadow, that’s just selfish) but today, needs must.

The journey is relatively smooth and she only messes up her eyeliner once, which is easily rectified with a sweep of a face wipe, and once she’s happy enough that her foundation blends in (despite the artificial lighting, so she can’t be 100% sure) Betty snaps her mirror shut and excuses herself past the passenger next to her. Her hair cannot be styled in front of a compact mirror and so she heads to the bathroom to complete two jobs at once: she can asses the hair situation whilst washing her hands after using the toilet, so nobody will be put out by excessive time spent in there.

Having had her hair braided loosely since she washed it this morning has resulted in the defined waves she knows Jughead likes - not that she’s styled her hair solely with him in mind, although her intention is for him to run his hands through it later. Her cocktail dress is stowed carefully in the little suitcase she’s packed, chosen partly because this is Veronica’s housewarming so the current pencil dress she’s wearing won’t suffice, and partly because it’s one of the only mildly-fancy items she owns and after Jughead’s reaction to the dress she wore at New Year’s, she wouldn’t mind seeing that look in his eyes again.

She’s not going to put it on until they’re nearer New York because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. She can hear her mother’s words in her head already: Sitting on a train dressed like that is terribly cheap, Elizabeth .  

So she’ll wait.

Once the train arrives at Penn Station, Betty disembarks and makes her way through the crowds of people as best she can with her little case and wearing shoes that she probably should’ve rethought bringing. She’d texted Jughead as the train had arrived to let him know she’d made it, and they’d arranged to meet at the entrance to the subway: they’re taking it down to Greenwich Village where Veronica’s new apartment is situated.

He steals her breath when she sees him. He’s dressed in a blue-grey shirt with suspenders attached to his dark pants and a smart black coat open across his chest. Betty can tell he’s scanning the crowd for her and it speeds up her walk, her shoes clacking on the floor as Jughead turns his head in her direction, his eyes boring into her before his whole face softens and folds into an easy smile. It pulls at her chest and she’s only a few paces short of a run by the time she reaches his arms.

“Hey you,” she says before he leans down to seal his lips over hers. She’s never been one for PDA - and neither has he - but right now, with his hands pressed against her waist beneath her open coat and her heart hammering away inside of her chest, she couldn’t care less.

“Jesus Betty,” he tells her, breathless with his eyes a dangerously dark shade of blue. “You look amazing.”

She dips her head, automatically pulling her lip between her teeth in an attempt to stem the flush of her cheeks. Her fingers hook around the cuffs of his coat as she says, “You don’t look so bad yourself, Jones.”

“You sure we have to go to this thing?” he asks, still pressed against her. “Because I’m having a hard time finding a reason why we can’t skip it so I can take you back to my place.”

“Because Veronica’s our friend,” she replies, although with the way he’s looking at her and the way he looks , Betty too, is having a hard time extracting herself from his arms so they can head through the barriers and down to the subway. “And it’ll be good, the four of us together again.”

“Can I take your case?” he half-sighs, resigning himself to their attendance at Veronica’s place.

“It’s okay,” she shrugs as she pulls away. “I can manage,” but Jughead stills her with a hand over hers.

"I meant, let me take your case Betts,” he says, sealing his fingers around the handle before she’s even had chance to protest. “If you want something to hold, hold my hand.”

She settles for that with a giddy smile and when she chances a look up at Jughead once they start walking towards the barriers, she sees his eyes are shining too.

-

Veronica’s apartment is rather different to how Betty expected it to be. Granted, it’s an incredibly expensive area of an incredibly expensive borough, but still, she hadn’t expected it to be so...normal. She figures (though she’d never dare ask) that the apartment’s rent is paid for by Veronica herself, and not her father. The thought makes her smile.

There aren’t too many other people there when Betty and Jughead arrive, but Archie’s clutching a beer when they step into the living room and there are a few other women dressed in the same way as Veronica: exuding wealth and status without being ostentatious about it so Betty makes the assumption that they might be old friends of hers. There are several guys too, all of whom are dressed in suits or at least a shirt and tie, making Archie’s jeans and cotton henley stand out. Betty smiles at that too (it’s almost like nothing’s changed).

Except, of course, it has.

Veronica wheels Betty’s little case into her bedroom and gives her a tour of the rest of the apartment - which consists of only said bedroom and a surprisingly spacious bathroom.

“So Jughead huh?” she grins against her ear, right before the man in question crosses the room towards them with a smile playing on his lips. He’s holding two glasses of wine and Betty feels Veronica squeeze her arm as she says, “I’m happy for you B.”

Jughead hands her the wine and they’re left to it as their hostess begins chatting to one of her other guests about a painting hanging on the wall. Betty leans against him while he rubs her back, the action making her both incredibly warm and relaxed at the same time.

“I’ve missed you,” he tells her, breath fanning out across her neck.

She turns in his arms. “I’ve missed you too.”

With his free hand, he traces her cheekbone and she finds that her eyes close involuntarily. She can hear his exhale despite the general noise of the party; can feel it too across her lips. It makes them burn for his. “I uh…I don’t just mean this past week.”

She opens her eyes at that and finds the expression in his is almost too much. “Jug…” her fingers wrap around his wrist and she moves her head a fraction so she can brush his fingertips with her lips.

“I love you so much that I ache with it,” he whispers. His words make tears prick in her eyes but rather than letting them fall, Betty leans forward to kiss him, wishing they could just sneak back to his place and cocoon themselves in his bed.

She spends the rest of the party leaning against him as close as she can get without throwing it in everyone’s faces. Every time she moves, his hand is on her hip or her waist or the base of her spine. His chest is always there for her to lean back against, radiating the heat she wants to feel pressed against her later without any room for air. The thought sends a jolt through the lower half of her body that makes her press her thighs together and Jughead must notice because as they’re standing at Veronica’s tiny kitchen island to hold high a champagne flute in cheers to her new place, he whispers roughly into her ear, “You’re driving me fucking crazy when you do that Betts.”

They leave fifteen minutes later.

The following morning, Betty wakes with Jughead’s arm wrapped around her waist. His apartment is a little chilly what with its high ceilings and wood floors, and the fact she’s not wearing any pajamas doesn’t help in that department. She snuggles closer to him, pushing back until he stirs and nuzzles into her hair, tightening his arm around her body.

Although they’d spent many nights together while they were still in high school, this is new. Betty wonders whether she’ll ever get used to crawling into bed with him or waking up with him wrapped around her and no threat of her mom walking in or the Serpents banging on his trailer door.

There’s the small matter of having to be up and showered ready to meet Veronica and Archie for breakfast, but when she glances at the lit numbers of Jughead’s alarm clock, she decides they can enjoy another few minutes of peace. And there’s always the prospect of showering together….that’ll earn them a good ten extra minutes lying here like this too.

“Noooo!” he mumble-whines into her shoulder when she attempts to sit up. A light chuckle leaves her lips but she feels pretty much the same way. She’d give up breakfast forever to keep doing this with him.

“Veronica made a reservation,” she warns, although her voice loses any impetus when he starts sucking kisses across her bare skin. “Jug…”

“I shared you last night,” he tells her, sinking his teeth into her skin just hard enough to send a shuddering gasp out of her mouth. Betty’s all too aware when she tilts her neck to the side to allow him access to her other shoulder that she’s not really sending out the right message here. Still, she finds it rather difficult to care when Jughead begins a descent down her spine with his lips, grazing his teeth as he goes so that by the time his hands reach around her front to palm her breasts, she’s already arching into him and accepting that they’ll be late for breakfast.

-

A week later, she’s agreeing to accompany Jughead to visit his dad in jail. “It’s the last chance I’ll get to see you before I leave,” he tells her, like she needs any more convincing to spend time with him - in whatever circumstance it might be. Besides, she’d like to see FP too: he is, probably unbeknowingly to him, part of the reason she and Jughead are together. Whatever order he’d issued from his cell in order to release his son from the clutches of the Serpents is one she’ll be eternally grateful for.

They arrive at the prison under a veil of fog which looks as though it’s strangling the trees in the distance. The sun, which had been doing its best to poke through the cloud back in Brooklyn, is hidden well out of sight and Betty laces her fingers with Jughead’s as the bus pulls away.

“You okay?” she asks, running her thumb over his hand. He squeezes in response and offers a kiss to her temple.

“Yeah. C’mon - it’s freezing out here.”

Betty sees the shock register in FP’s eyes when he sees her sitting beside his son in the visit room, but he’s too polite to say anything other than, “Betty,” with a smile tugging at the creases of his lips. She watches him eye Jughead and the two appear to have a silent conversation before his dad pulls him in for a hug.

“Hey Mr Jones,” she says softly, resting a hand on Jughead’s knee beneath the table once they sit down. It’s just as much comfort for him as it is her body’s desire to touch him at all times. With him heading across the country on what is, essentially, a bit of a press tour come Tuesday morning, this will be the last weekend she gets with him for a while.

She misses him badly enough through the week so it’s almost impossible to fathom how much worse it’s going to be with him gone close to a month. He’ll miss her birthday too. She’s not even sure he remembers when it is, but there’s a snapshot section of his book that comes to mind every time she has a spare minute lately and it’s becoming an increasingly louder voice in her head.

The poem he pens for her that night joins its family at the back of his journal, folded into four neat squares that are a stark contrast to the looping, scrawled letters he’d inked onto the page.

There are so many things about her to write in verse form that he could probably fill an anthology before the year’s out

Tucking in the opening of the envelope so the poems won’t get lost, he heaves out a heavy sigh and hopes she’s celebrating somewhere.

He hopes, when her friends toast her a ‘happy birthday’, that she isn’t thinking of him.

There are a few details in the book that are strictly fiction, and Betty wonders whether these poems are one of them.

She squeezes Jughead’s knee when he tells his dad about Jellybean and then Veronica’s move back to the city and she suspects he’s about to tell FP about his upcoming press tour when he says,

“Just you to come back then Betty.”

She smiles and feels Jughead set a hand over the top of hers, but then his dad utters something else.

“You need to put a ring on her finger this time son. Keep her close.”

“ Dad ,” he replies, and Betty hears the warning in his voice. Her heart seems to stutter and jump inside of her chest, and FP raises his eyebrows, unaffected.

“Just sayin’.”

They don’t stay too much longer after that. Visiting times are rather short, which Betty deems to be unfair in the grand scheme of things. There can’t be much to look forward to when your life revolves around staring at four grey walls whilst wearing a jumpsuit and eating the world’s poorest excuse for food. That said, prison does have to be a punishment.

She just wishes it wasn’t so much of one for Jughead.

They take the bus back to the city and rather than going out for dinner that evening, they order Thai to Jughead’s apartment and eat it straight out of the cartons whilst watching some old black and white movie he’d selected when she was in the bathroom. It doesn’t matter to Betty what it is though, if it means she gets to snuggle in against him with a blanket covering them and his hands combing through her hair.

Unlike New Year’s, neither of them make an attempt to clean up the cartons once they’re done, and they watch the movie quietly. It only registers with her that she must’ve been dozing off when Jughead’s voice, rough and filled with apprehension, rouses her.

“About what my dad said -”

“- It’s okay,” she says, rubbing her left hand across his chest, but he catches it with his and toys with her ring finger. It sends something like nervousness through her veins, but it ignites something too. Something she doesn’t want to think too much about.  

“What did you imagine for us? He asks. “All of those years ago?”

“Jug…” she starts, because she only has two options here and as much as she doesn’t want to lie to him, she also doesn’t want him to know the extent of where she’d considered things might go. (Where she’d hoped things would go.) “We don’t have to talk about this now.”

“You imagined getting married?” He guesses correctly, circling where a band would fit and making her desperately want to pull her hand away. “An aisle scattered with petals and a white dress. One of those veils over your face? Your sister as a bridesmaid; Veronica too.”

There’s a lump in her throat and she just wants him to stop because yes, she’d imagined it all in that way young girls do - dreaming about their dress and their Prince Charming waiting at the end of the aisle (and for so long, that prince had been Archie. Until, one day, it was him and the whole thing was more tangible than she could’ve ever imagined) But in her head, it had never been the huge wedding she suspects he might think it was. In fact, what she’d imagined was the two of them, his dad and Jellybean, her parents and Polly and her niece and nephew, Archie and Veronica and Kevin too. But she hadn’t imagined a guest list beyond that because at that stage in her life, those few people had been the only ones of importance.

She’d managed to let those thoughts go, somewhere along the years when she’d been at Columbia first, and then in Boston. They’d slipped away quietly into nothingness, not stowed away in some far recess of her heart like her love for him had been kept. No - she’d let go of that dream first, and a reunion second, then, in time, more and more until the only thing she couldn’t let go of was her love for him.

Betty only nods as Jughead entwines their fingers beneath the blanket.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you that fantasy,” he tells her in a whisper, but she shakes her head, no, because he doesn’t have to be. “I wanted to,” he admits. “And when I knew I couldn’t, I made my peace with setting you free to find it.”

“I wanted it with you , Jug,” she chokes, shuffling impossibly closer. “But what we’ve got now is just as perfect.”

Jughead is silent for a moment, and she wonders whether she’s gone too far; said too much, but then he kisses her, all blazing fire and need . The blanket falls to the floor and he grazes his hands all the way from the back of her knees to the back of her thighs, up and over her ass so that his fingers are resting beneath the soft silk of her underwear. He lifts her like she weighs no more than a feather, settling her back down on his lap so they’re face-to-face and she can curl her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck.

Betty can feel him hardening beneath her, accelerated when he peels the straps of her dress over her shoulders so he can release her breasts. He bends to take one into his mouth, toying with the nipple until she’s gasping his name so he’ll give the same attention to the other one.

Her fingers reach for the buttons of his shirt, pulling them as quickly as she can through the holes so she’s got access to his chest too. She manages to push the material over his shoulders and then grips his hair to pull his head upwards, sliding her tongue into his mouth before planting kisses against his chest.

Jughead shifts against her and it draws a whimper from her mouth, his hard length pressing against her centre through too many layers of clothing. He sucks at her pulsepoint while she raves at the zipper on his pants, tugging once she’s managed to loosen them. She gets them - and his boxers - over his knees but after that, she couldn’t care less whether they’re off over his ankles or not because he’s dragging her damp underwear off and pulling her down onto him.

She sinks slowly, gasping as she feels the delicious stretch when he fills her, then moaning when he starts to raise his hips.

His right hand grips her neck the entire time - not painfully, but hard enough that Betty knows something about the way they’re doing this tonight is different. They’ve had sex enough times now since his interview at the Herald for her to recognise that the first time was pure fucking. The second (the first time here in his apartment) they’d made love. But this? It’s some sort of hybrid of the two and she’s almost scared to think about what it means.

She bites his shoulder when she comes and he grips her hip so tightly with his left hand that she has no doubt there’ll be marks there in the morning.

“Juggie?” she says once he’s carried her to his bed and pulled her against his chest to sleep. She wants to tell him that they never have to get married; that this is enough, and it absolutely is.

But he’s painted that vision for her now and all she can think of as she closes her eyes is him waiting at the end of a church, watching her like she’s the only thing present in the world.

She tells him “I love you,” instead.  

Chapter Text

Maybe he hadn’t realised that this book has the potential to be big. Jughead enjoys writing and the fact that sales of his previous few books have been enough to pay the rent on his apartment is, really, a bonus. He doesn’t need a multi-million dollar publishing deal, and yet here he is, sitting in some glass-fronted, heavily air-conditioned office in Los Angeles listening to words like ‘film rights’ and ‘sequel’.

He’s given a few interviews here and there - one in Seattle for the Times, two prior to that in New York (for the post and NY Mag) and there’s another booked in for this afternoon before he flies from California to London. There have been many visits to bookstores for signings - one of the tasks he doesn’t really mind, because at least he meets people who are genuinely interested in his work - but he’s been away from Brooklyn (and, more specifically, Betty) for over three weeks now and all he wants is to go home and have her snuggle against him in bed.

There’s also the fact that it’s her birthday in two days and he can’t be with her for it. He’s already arranged for a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her apartment, and he knows that Veronica plans on surprising her with a visit, but neither of those things make up for the fact he won’t be there in person to give her the collection of poems he’d written over the past six years.

Now that she’s read the book, he knows she’s aware of their existence and she’s been polite (or, maybe, scared) enough not to comment on them, but he figures he owes it to her to pass them on. And besides, after what his dad had said during their visit - and then their...conversation (of sorts) afterwards, Jughead needs her to understand that this is it for him this time.

The day ends at the airport, at which he calls Betty before boarding his flight. Despite Boston being only three hours ahead of L.A, when she picks up, he immediately notes the sleep in her voice.

“Hey baby,” he says, picturing her looking at him through heavy eyelids. That image inevitably leads to him thinking of her in bed, and immediately he wishes he hadn’t. It’s a struggle to repress the groan building in his throat. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” she replies.

He chooses not to fight her on the specifics, but he’s pretty certain he did. “What’re you doing?” he asks, like he’s sixteen again.

“I was waiting for you to call,” Betty says, and immediately his grin widens as she yawns.

“Are we that couple now?”

“You bet,” she answers, and it makes his fingers ache to touch her. “Tell me about your meeting.” Another yawn - louder this time.

“Not much to report,” Jughead replies. It’s not a lie - there’s no promise of a movie, and he and Liz have only - very briefly - discussed the sequel thing because they were getting coffee and there wasn’t much else to talk about. He’d rather not waste this time with his girl by talking about work. “Air conditioning, potted plants, lots of white walls. You know the type.”

“That I do,” she muses, and he briefly wonders whether he can just forget about going to London and fly back to Boston, persuade her to call in sick and spend the remainder of the week holed up in her apartment. “Jug?” she questions, her voice quieter than before.

“Betts?”

“I miss you.”

“God,” he sighs. “I miss you too. So much. And I’m sorry I can’t be there for your birthday.”

There’s a pause at the other end of the line and then something that sounds a little like a gasp. He frowns. “You didn’t think I’d forget your birthday did you?”

“I...I wasn’t sure you remembered.”

He closes his eyes and shifts in his seat. “Of course I remember.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. Now he’s had a taste of her, this whole being apart thing is ever harder than he’d imagined it would be. “I’m really sorry I can’t be there.”

“That’s okay,” she says softly, but no - he thinks - it isn’t.

Jughead talks to her until his flight begins boarding and even then, Betty seems reluctant to hang up, like she wants every possible minute until they’re separated by airplane mode and the Atlantic Ocean.

“I love you,” she whispers into the receiver, and that ache in his fingers spreads through his entire body.

“I love you too.”

***

They enter the trailer and he watches her appraise the surroundings, taking in the straightened couch and vacuumed rug.

“Until he gets out, I’m not giving up on him Jug,” she says with that determined edge to her voice - the same one that means she’s always going to be on his side.

“Hell no. That is why I love you Betty.”

Her eyes are wide when she turns, watering too, like she’s surprised and overwhelmed and awed all at once. Truthfully, he’s surprised too. Not that he loves her - nobody could ever not love Betty Cooper, but surprised that the love flows so freely through him that he can say the three words he’s previously been so terrified of without fear of her rejecting him. That’s all her.

“I love you, Betty Cooper.”

“Jughead Jones,” she begins, walking towards him with a look so completely pure written in her eyes that he’s almost paralysed. “I love you.”

He’ll never forget the way she always, always glances at his lips, right before kissing him.

***

Both telling her he loves her and hearing her say it back will never not be overwhelming, he thinks.

-

London is as grey and as wet as he’s expecting. Betty had planted in his head before he’d left, some idealistic picture of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben dusted in snow with the kind of bright blue sky stretching above the city that only appears in winter. By the time he was due to leave California however, he’d checked his weather app and gotten a much more realistic idea of what to expect in England.

The tiled floors of the tube stations he’s seen so far are all marked with brown-grey footprints trudged in from outside, but even he’s managed to crack a smile at the chalkboards by the information windows. The Brits seems to have a penchant for motivational quotes, and he’s already snapped a couple photos on his phone to send to Betty.

When he reaches Tower Hill station though, things take a more sarcastic tone and Jughead actually grins at the sign there:

I’m gonna take a hot shower - it’s like a normal shower, but with me in it. (C. Falzone)

Again, he takes a picture with his phone and then continues out of the station and towards his hotel. He has one more signing tomorrow at Foyles and then the following day, he’s flying home. Or, not home , but Boston.

He sends Betty the latest quote once he’s reached his hotel room, with her response arriving almost instantaneously. It’s early evening across the ocean, which means she’s probably seated on the subway on her way home. Veronica is scheduled to arrive later and his flowers should be delivered too.

When he opens the message, he gets only a few words:

Don’t tempt me…

Biting the sides of his mouth so as not to indulge in the smirk his lips seem intent on creating, Jughead types out his response:

All those water droplets sliding south. Steam. A tiled wall.

Betty messages back:

It’s not nice to torture someone the night before their birthday.

He shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over the chair.

Call me when you’re home. He types. I’ll make it right .

He means it as a joke really, and he half-expects her to feign outrage when he apologies over the line, so he doesn’t think too much about her response when a you’d better arrives in his inbox.

He takes a very normal, not-at-all-steamy (except in the literal sense) shower and by the time he’s dried himself off and shoved his beanie on after redressing in pajama pants, he has enough time to make himself a coffee in the Nespresso before Betty’s text comes through:

I’m home.

He chuckles at the bluntness of her message - a coded ‘I’m ready’ if ever there was one. Settling back against the feather pillows on the bed, he hits the call button and almost laughs when she picks up on the final ring. She’s being petty and he kind of loves it.

“Hey Betts.”

“Did you enjoy your shower?” she asks with such a strange edge to her voice that his interest is immediately piqued. He’s glad she can’t see the grin on his face.

“Absolutely. Would’ve enjoyed it more if you’d joined me though,” he says, and then immediately cringes internally because he’s not Archie or Reggie. He can’t get away with saying shit like that.

Betty however, doesn’t seem to feel that way. “I’m in the bath,” she tells him bluntly. “Candles. Bubbles. Wine. You know the drill.”

He’s almost certain there won’t be any of those added extras, but that fact doesn’t help him in regard to halting the image forming in his mind. Naked Betty is a hard enough image to battle, without the added detail of her being wet; bubbles covering everything but her neck, head and breasts - her nipples pebbled above the water; hair pulled up on the top of her head so her shoulders are bare.

“Betty,” he half-whines, half-growls. “That’s not fair.”

“Shouldn’t start something you can’t finish, Jones.”

Fuck , he realises, she’s actually baiting him. Well …

“Where are you now?” she asks.

“My room.” He swallows. “On the bed.”

There’s an audible pause at the other end of the line, during which he hears the soft splash of water as though she’s dipping a hand in to test it. “What would you do?” she asks, her voice dropping an octave for the next part. “If you were here?”

Jughead closes his eyes and tries not to groan out loud. “Join you,” he replies. Have you inch forward so I can slide in behind you.”

“Kiss my neck when I sit back,” she adds with something like a sigh. “Suck at that point just below my ear.”

“Run my hands along the outside of your legs,” he continues, emboldened by her breaths down the receiver.

“I’d want you to do that same on the inside.”

“But I’d move up to your stomach,” Jughead tells her. “Use my fingertips to draw a line from your bellybutton to the space between your breasts.”

He can hear how her breathing’s quickened and already, his pajama pants are feeling too hot. Too restrictive. He continues though, unable to pass up this opportunity. “I’d catch your nipple between my thumb and finger.”

“Tug it,” she whispers breathlessly. Jughead hears the distinct sound of more splashing.

“I’d tug ,” he smirks. “But gently. And you’d make that noise you do when you’re trying to be quiet.”

As if on command, the aforementioned whimper tumbles down the line and Jughead exhales heavily. “Betts,” he groans, and her words are staccato when they come.

“Don’t. Stop.”

“You’d arch your back.” His words are tight now too. “And I’d bring my hand back down to your...” he’s overthinking now, because he can’t bring himself to say pussy - and vagina is too formal. “Your…clit.”

Betty whimpers again and he sucks in a shallow breath.

“You’d meet my hand with your hips but I’d hold you down with the one that’s not working you… there .”

He’s working himself now, pumping up and down his length as he listens to the ripples of water and her moans at the other end of the line.

“I’d circle you until you were begging. Wait for you to say please, Jug .”

“Please, Jug,” she chokes.

He can barely think straight enough to form a string of coherent words, but just about manages to wrangle some together from some far recess of his brain. “My thumb would press against your clit as my middle finger dipped inside. Curling,” he gets out through gritted teeth. “Until you -”

“- Fuck” Betty curses over the line, her breath leaving her in a series of ragged exhales and that’s enough to send him over the edge too, spilling out over his hand in four hot, quick bursts.

It’s sound that pulls him back first, starting at the edges with faded notes until he can make out the words leaving her lips.

“I want you to take me to bed.” It’s so soft that it’s barely even a whisper, but she’s not playing anymore and Jughead feels something pull inside his chest.

“I want that too.”

They don’t say anything for a while, but eventually, he knows he’s got to get her out of that bath and into a semi-respectable state. Veronica will be arriving in about an hour or so, and the delivery guy should be there with her flowers within the hour too. He knows her well enough to figure out she’ll be pissed if she has to answer the door in the state she’s probably currently in.

“Betty,” he murmurs.

“Yeah?”

“Happy birthday for tomorrow.”

There’s a brief pause before she says, “Thanks Juggie.”

He nods even though she can’t see it. “I should go, but just know I love you and I can’t wait to see you when I get back.”

They hang up and around two hours later, just as he’s drifted off after his second shower of the evening, his phone buzzes with a message from Betty:

I got the flowers - and Veronica. I love you.

He sends three kisses in response and then drifts back off.

-

The following day, Jughead is up earlier than he would prefer in order to be at Foyles for the store opening at 9:30. He sends Betty a quick ‘Happy Birthday Betts’ message as he leaves the hotel but by the time he’s met Liz and reached Charing Cross Road, there’s no reply and he doesn’t get chance to check for one until midway through the afternoon.

When it comes, it’s the blowing kiss emoji - accompanied by four kisses - and he sends the same one back, followed by a heart.

“So, I’m going to head back to the hotel,” Liz tells him, interrupting the grin he knows is plastered across his face. He has never been more whipped in his life.

(He’s more than okay with that.)

“Are you coming or -”

“- I think I’m gonna spend some time playing tourist,” Jughead replies, locking the screen of his phone and sinking his hands back into his pockets out of the cold air.

“Just make sure you’re up and ready to leave at five in the morning,” his publicist warns. “Although if that grin’s anything to go by, you’re not going to have any trouble in making sure you don’t miss your flight.”

He says nothing more about the subject, but they both know her words are true. They part at the junction of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, at which point he heads in the direction of Covent Garden.

He grabs something called a pasty from a little store selling rows and rows of them, eating as he walks around the cobbled streets. It’s like a piazza - framed on all sides with restaurants and planters and all he can think is Betty would love it here .

He’ll bring her, he decides. One day.

His plan is to head towards the river, walking along The Strand until he reaches St Paul’s Cathedral, only, a store window catches his eye. It’s unusual for him to be interested in anything much inside a store (other than food of course) and especially unusual when said store is selling jewellery. Yet, here he is, standing in front of the window with his feet pointed towards the direction of the object stealing his attention.

It’s a ring.

He’s not stupid: he knows that the thin band cradling a diamond on top is an engagement ring. And still, his feet are carrying him inside of the store anyway.

Jughead hears words like ‘solitaire’ and ‘platinum’ and ‘insurance’ and none of them really mean anything to him because he appears to be in some sort of trance. (He’s not entirely sure they’d mean anything to him even if he weren’t.) The only thing he can focus on is the picture in his mind - having hit from absolutely nowhere - of Betty and her left hand with that ring seated on it.

Before he can fully-comprehend anything other than that picture, he’s leaving the store with a single bag housing close to four thousand dollars worth of jewellery. Once he’s back at the hotel, he tries (and simultaneously, fails) to figure out what the fuck just happened.

He wonders whether the ring has triggered some deep-seated need to get married that he’s had buried forever. Jughead can’t ever recall really having thought about it until those few weeks ago, lying with Betty on the couch, and even then he’d decided that marriage wasn’t necessarily the predicate to ‘I love you’.

But now - now that he’s imagined the band on her finger - he thinks there might be some primal animalistic urge within him to show everyone that she’s his. In reality, Betty is of course, her own person and belongs to nobody but herself.

(But for all intents and purposes, that ring will let everyone know she’s his girl.)

He’s not going to ask her right away but Jughead is certain there’ll be a point in the future that he will.

-

Finally, after what feels like a lifetime apart (and, in many ways, it is) he’s on his way back to her. The flight from Heathrow to Boston takes a little under seven hours, during which Jughead semi-panics about the ring in his suitcase. Never in his life has he made such a snap decision (if you could even call it that) and it’s not that he doesn’t want to marry Betty - now that he’s pictured her as his wife , it’s all he can think about. But if she ever thought that his proposal - when it does come - is a reflex to what his dad had said, he’d never be able to forgive himself for ruining that dream for her too.

(The movies never tell you about this side of the coin.)

The panic completely dissipates however, when he makes it through baggage claim and into the arrivals hall. Betty’s standing just beyond the barriers, wide-eyed and looking so excitedly hopeful that his heart leaps into his throat, thumping there until her eyes register his presence and she flies forward towards him, crushing herself against his chest.

He’s immediately immersed in the scent of vanilla and sugar - she smells like a damn bakery - as he buries his nose in her hair. His lips press a kiss to her crown as her hands sneak underneath his jacket so she can pull herself closer. There’s already no air between them.

“I missed you Betts,” he tells her honestly.

When she doesn’t say anything in response, Jughead pulls back slightly so he can get a look at her. Tilting her chin upwards with his finger, he sighs out a content exhale. “C’m here.”

Her eyes lift to meet his and he seals their lips together, cupping her cheek and holding her close until they’re both out of breath. “I don’t ever want to be apart for that long again,” Betty tells him softly.

He swallows. He doesn’t want to be apart at all .

They’re forced to separate though, when a mildly irritated member of staff insists they move along so he can wheel a train of luggage trolleys through the hall. Jughead joins their hands and they walk to the train so they can head into the city.

“Are you tired?” Betty asks once they’re seated in a carriage and she’s resting her head against his shoulder, his arm holding her close. He’s exhausted really, but he’s not going to admit that in case she’s got plans for lunch and the remainder of the afternoon somewhere other than her apartment. “I figured you might be,” she tells him anyway, not waiting for his response. “So I made chicken pot pies last night so I’d have something we could heat up. Or we could go out - if you’d prefer?”

He smiles and thinks again about the ring seated deep inside of his case. Turning his head so he can dust a kiss across her temple, Jughead squeezes Betty’s hand. “Chicken pot pies sounds perfect.”

His legs feel heavy on the walk back to her apartment from the station, the biting cold wind doing nothing to help matters. The snow has gone now, but its current absence is only due to dry weather and not the temperature. England had been wet and pretty cold, but before that he’d been in California so the numb feeling in his lips comes as something of a surprise.

By the time she’s unlocked the door, he’s almost ready to drop. The frequent travelling has obviously messed up his body clock and the plane air hadn’t done much to help matters either. The heating is on in Betty’s apartment and once he’s removed his jacket and shoes, he sinks into the couch with a satisfied groan.

He hears Betty giggle and only turns around when she doesn’t join him like he expects her to. She’s busy pulling a tray out of the fridge, upon which are two perfectly-formed pies in individual dishes that wouldn’t be out of place on a cooking show. He only notices the bouquet of flowers sitting in a wide vase over by the window when he finally tears his eyes away from his girl.

Despite his exhaustion, he figures she deserves the second part of her present, and so rises from the couch to dig the poems out of the notebook in his bag.

“Uh, Betty,” he says somewhat nervously, leaning against the edge of the counter. She turns her head to look at him, then puts down her knife when she sees the pieces of paper in his hand. “Happy birthday.”

He holds out the poems for her to take, but instead of doing so, Betty’s eyes grow wider and Jughead can see them swimming in tears. “You don’t have to read them,” he tells her. “But uh...I wrote you one each year and...it’s only fair you have them.”

***

He sighs at the piece of paper and balls it up, tossing it towards the trashcan which - inevitably - it misses. No wonder he’s not an athlete.

His hands rub harshly at the back of his neck and Jughead squints in the fading light. Writing her a letter seems pointless when the only words he really wants to say are I love you .

Those words though, are for   him . It is not   his birthday. It’s hers.

If he could paint her, he thinks, it wouldn’t be in pastels like the sweaters she wears. It would be gold - soft around the edges but strong and vibrant in the centre. He’d use deep jade for her eyes and creamy white for her skin, but all of the while, everything else (hair, lips, heart ) would be gold.

He might not be an artist, but he does have his words. Moments later, they spill across the page like ink and the poem forms without him even trying.

***

“Juggie…” she starts, then trails off, reaching out to take the poems from him, fingers stroking the paper delicately. Her swallow is painfully visible. “Thank you.”

He watches as she takes them to her bedroom. He doesn’t follow, but does spend a long fifteen minutes balancing on the edge of the couch, trying to decide whether or not to call her name or snatch the poems back before she appears again, eyes rimmed with red. She’s sniffing too, so Jughead knows she’s been crying.

There’s a twisting pain in his chest.

He opens his mouth to apologise (or at least, he thinks he does) but the words that fall into the room come from Betty’s lips, not his.

“They’re beautiful Jug.”

Maybe, but all the words in the world couldn’t paint her accurately enough though, he thinks. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here to celebrate with you.”

“You’re here now,” she says with a tiny shrug. “We can make the most of that.” She crosses over to him and settles herself in the space between his legs so she can lean into his chest. Turning her head slightly, she tucks herself into the crook of his neck so her lips rest on his skin.

“What if I didn’t have to go back?”

She pulls back slightly, frowning. “What do you mean?”

He thinks that what he means is I want to stay here with you . What he says instead, is a barely intelligible monologue about always wanting to be where she is - wherever that might be.

Her response almost breaks him though. “You promise you won’t leave?” And it’s enough to make him realise that she can’t know about the ring - not yet. Not until she’s sure that the night before Columbia was a one-time never-to-be-repeated event.

(That expression she wears each time she sees him again - like she’s surprised he’s actually come back to her - makes him want to rip his own throat out sometimes)

Jughead frames her face with his hands, firm enough that it commands her to look at him without him having to use words. One her eyes meet his, he nods, then seals his lips over hers. “I promise.”

Chapter Text

Weekend mornings are Betty’s favourite.

This used to be so, because of how productive she felt - especially when she’d baked bran muffins, been for a run, showered and dressed again all before eight thirty.

These days though, that productivity while the rest of the city’s still feeling its way out of slumber has dissipated somewhat, to be replaced by only two activities - both of which involving their bed.

Just thinking of the mahogany-framed king bed as theirs makes her smile, despite the fact that it dwarfs the room and it’s always a huge struggle to change the sheets. They’d bought it from Crate and Barrel - one of her absolute favourite stores - and regardless of Jughead’s protests about it being “produced for the masses, Betts,” the day it got delivered to their apartment (because that’s theirs now too) is pretty memorable. The consolation for Jughead had been the size: he wasn’t about to pay over the odds for something that could be found in at least three other apartments in their building if he was only getting a double. He was however, prepared to pay over the odds if Betty agreed to get the largest size.

She finds it amusing that despite all of the space on the mattress, they barely even use half. Case in point: she’s lying on her right side, face pressed deliciously into the cool pillow, and she’s barely even sure where her limbs end and Jughead’s begin. He has an arm beneath her neck and another wrapped around her waist so her back is pressed against his chest (or vice versa - it doesn’t matter about specifics) and she’s also pretty certain that he’s sharing her pillow too. There’s a dip behind her head that shouldn’t be there otherwise.

Weekend mornings are reserved these days for snuggling - or, if she wants to burn some calories (not that that’s the motivation behind such a thing) something a little more...rigorous.

Jughead grunts into the back of her neck and the hot burst of air from his lips sends a strand of hair upwards so she can feel his exhales against her skin. He nestles impossibly further into her and then sinks his hand beneath the cotton vest she’s wearing.

Her smile grows.

At first, Betty assumes his fingers are just searching for her skin - he prefers them to rest directly against her stomach rather than the material of whatever pajamas she’s wearing. But then they begin a slow descent towards the waistband of her shorts and she knows what’s coming next.

The pillow moves and his lips graze a kiss between her shoulderblades, then left to her shoulder itself. She rolls a little further onto her stomach, then inches her left leg so his fingers can tug down the shorts. When they get wedged between her right hip and the mattress, he lifts her slightly to free them and Betty can feel his smirk against her skin.

She removes her vest too - that’s more tricky than shorts when one of his arms is trapped beneath her - then shifts so she’s back to lying on her side and Jughead can bring his left hand to stroke her breasts.

Everything’s softer and more languid in the morning like this. She loves the unhurried nature of it; loves knowing that if he wants to spend twenty minutes just kissing her (because sometimes, he does) there’s no alarm to tell them to make it quick.

His lips against her neck are slack now and his palms - flat and a wonderful combination of calloused and smooth - move lazily across her skin until they reach her inner thigh, drawing it up and forward so he can slide inside of her.

Butterflies dance in Betty stomach and she finds herself wondering if it’ll always be like this. There are times (in particular, when they’re doing this ) that she tries to figure out just how she managed to stumble through her life for those six years she didn’t have Jughead to come home to; when she didn’t know that they’d get to do this every weekend.

A quiet gasp leaves her mouth when he draws back and sinks in again, her left hand searching for his right one so she can sew their fingers together. She’s learned now not to grip the sheets: he prefers her to steady herself against him instead.

The sunlight is streaming in through the curtains, pouring over the sheets in golden hues so that as she lifts an eyelid when she cranes her neck to look back at Jughead, he appears in an aura of sorts. He cranes his own neck to kiss her, although their lips meet in more of a graze, and then Betty lays her head back against the pillow and it’s just their heavy breaths once more.

After a while, she begins to grow impatient. The pace he sets is just enough to keep her teetering on the edge of coming, although not enough to send her off of the cliff - and yes, she knows they don’t have anywhere to be or anything else to do, but it’s sweet torture and Jughead knows.

He’s waiting for her to beg .

Betty isn’t sure how this semi-roleplay first began, but now it’s routine: he’ll work her up until she’s arched so far off of his chest in attempt to gain some friction from the mattress that he has to pull her back against him and use the heel of his hand whilst instructing her to tell him what she wants.

It’s always the same thing.

Jughead tugs on her ear with his teeth, lightly at first, and then a little harder until a moan tumbles out of her mouth and into the warm summer softness of the bedroom. She feels his lips slide into a grin and she’d roll her eyes at the cockiness of it all, except, she figures, it’s pretty deserved.

“Please, Jug.”

(It always, always works, too)

Afterwards, they shower together and when they’re done, Betty watches with her lip caught between her teeth as Jughead wraps a white towel neatly around his waist, tucking in the cotton at his hip before wrapping one around her and prising her lip from its little pearly prison.

“The only dents I want in your skin are mine,” he says, and despite the fact they’ve been doing this for months now, it still catches her off-guard when he says things like that. She lets him catch her wrist, watching as he traces the tiny new feather tattoo with his fingertips before laying a kiss on the dark ink: her reminder that he’s not going anywhere. Not now. (Not ever)

It’s her unspoken words to him that she’s not going anywhere either.

Betty pulls on a sundress over her underwear and leaves Jughead in their bedroom while she sets about brewing a fresh pot of coffee and figuring out what she can make for breakfast with the few ingredients housed in the refrigerator. He joins her a few minutes later, his hair damp and wavy from the shower.

“No chocolate chip pancakes?” he asks, eyeing the granola she’d set on the counter only moments ago.

“We didn’t buy eggs because I didn’t want them to turn bad while we’re away.”

“They won’t turn bad if we eat them,” he says, opening the fridge door and grimacing at the contents before closing it again, empty-handed.

“You can’t eat twelve eggs in one go Jug. Besides, granola won’t kill you.”

She rolls her eyes at his suggestion that it might, but then steps towards him to kiss him anyway. “You can have pancakes in London.”

“Promise?”

Betty grins and smacks her lips against his once more before turning back to the bowls of yoghurt and fruit. “Promise.”

-

The following day, they’re up early in order to reach the airport for seven thirty. Betty’s not sure that she’s been this excited in her life. Even Christmas mornings as a child - despite the magic of it all - hadn’t done to her insides what the promise of their first ever vacation together has.

Jughead grins his special brand of smile that makes his eyes crinkle and her stomach flip, and she does a little hop towards him. “You ready to go?”

He looks at her, really and truly looks at her and Betty wonders what he’s thinking. Before she can ask though, he’s sighing into a kiss and fingering the tiny cut-out of her dress which reveals a diamond of pale skin each side of her waist.

“This is distracting,” he mumbles, tracing the edge of the cotton material.

“I’ll put a cardigan on,” she starts, but he pulls her back before she can leave the room, capturing her lips again. Betty figures he must be excited about the trip too.

“I didn’t say I don’t want to be distracted.”

“Oh,” Betty shrugs with a grin that grows into a satisfied smirk. “I’ll leave it in my bag then.”

Despite the early hour, the city air is already warm and humid, signalling yet another scorcher. The east coast has been enjoying a heatwave for the past week but as much as Betty loves the cloudless sky, the promise of her boyfriend and a four-night stay in the city she’s been obsessed with since she was in her early teens is way better than any eighty-degree weather.

She checks the weather app on her phone though - a habit she’s gotten into lately, as though the forecast might change within minutes - and finds that although London isn’t the same high temperature as Boston, it too is still enjoying warmer than average weather. Jughead wheels their case in one hand and holds her hand with the other and Betty feels legitimately giddy .

(Later, on the plane, he’ll take her hand in his during take-off so she can squeeze her flight anxiety into his fingers rather than her own palms. When the pressure doesn’t come, he’ll ask, “You’re not nervous about crossing the ocean?” and she’ll shake her head - no - because he’s there. When the seatbelt sign is turned off, she’ll lift the divider and snuggle into him to watch a movie and think that if the plane were to go down it wouldn’t matter anyway because she’s already got everything she’s ever wanted.)

-

Their hotel is in Soho and after disembarking the tube at Tottenham Court Road, Betty finds the short walk to the Victorian building to be something akin to a movie set. The buildings either side of the road are brick-built with huge wooden windows painted in creams and greys and framed with pretty planters. Wrought iron railings separate the hotel from the flagstones of the sidewalk and she marvels silently at the charm of it all.

Their room is decorated a kind-of-strange deep green, and Betty finds it to be mildly sinister-looking (although there’s a huge four-poster bed - even bigger than their one at home in Boston - which looks incredibly inviting).

When she glances over at Jughead however, he appears to be having an internal debate because his eyes flit from the suitcase he’s wheeled to a stop beside him to the bed, then back again, and repeat the process several times until she steps close enough to kiss him.

“Jug?” she asks, and his eyes are so soft when he looks at her that Betty’s throat seems to close up. It takes considerable effort simply to swallow. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Bringing me here.”

His eyes roam her face - like he can’t decide where to look - but eventually come to a stop on her lips. “I...you don’t…” He seems flustered suddenly, and red. “Just...I need to use the bathroom quickly.”

He scrambles away and Betty tries to shrug away her confusion. She’s about to begin unpacking when Jughead returns from the bathroom still looking a little panicked.

“What’re you doing?”

“Unpacking,” she answers. “Our clothes’ll all get creased if they’re not hung up.

“Later,” Jughead says, tugging her away. “I thought you wanted to see as much as you could.”

“I…” she trails off - because he does have a point, albeit a rather intense one considering it’s already quite late here. “Well we could go see the Broad Street pump first. Or Piccadilly Circus seeing as it’s dark.”

“Covent Garden,” he instructs.

Betty doesn’t really care where they start. She just wants to see it - with him .

They head out and walk east to Covent Garden which isn’t very far away at all. Betty’s in awe of the charm of it all, but Jughead seems intent on getting them somewhere, pulling her by the hand until she’s practically tripping over the cobbles.

“Hey,” she says softly, running her fingertips along the crease of his elbow. “You okay?”

“There’s too many people,” she hears him mutter, although he doesn’t appear to be saying it to her. It’s merely more of an observation. He does stop however, turning to face her before sighing and running a hand over her cheek. Her heart catches and stutters when he brushes his lips against her forehead before saying gently,

“You hungry?”

She isn’t really, but there’s a pretty little Italian restaurant in the corner of the piazza and she kind of just wants to drink wine and soak everything in. “Yeah,” she says. “A little.”

-

The following day, she’s scheduled in a visit to the aquarium on the banks of the Thames, a ride on the London Eye and then late afternoon drinks at the Shard and by the time they’re heading back to the hotel to change for dinner, Betty’s starting to panic that their very first vacation as a couple is already going wrong.

Jughead has been pretty quiet the whole day, constantly sinking his hands into his pockets so they’re not free to hold hers. Occasionally, he’d placed a hand on her back as they’d queued under the hot rays of the sun, but the conversation had been somewhat stilted and Betty’s now wondering whether ordering in might be the better option.

She’s about to suggest as such (trying desperately to chalk Jughead’s mood down to tiredness) but then he tells her there’s something he wants her to see later and she keeps her mouth closed.

He joins her in the shower, opening the wide frosted door as she’s shampooing her hair so it’s scented with vanilla and almond, and takes over - massaging his fingertips across her scalp deliciously. He’s careful when rinsing it out too, tilting her head so that neither water nor shampoo sting her eyes, and everything that he didn’t say or do earlier is forgiven.

It’s petrifying - how much she needs him now that she’s let him back in. (She’s certain she’ll do anything to have him stay, too)

Eventually, they step out and dress: him in a short-sleeve shirt in which he looks effortlessly attractive, and her in a deep plum-coloured dress that clinches at her waist before flaring out to just above her knee. If he’s going to look like that, then she’ll do her damndest to look good beside him.

They eat at a tiny French place which sells a variety of tasty open sandwiches and good wine, and Betty sits back, stuffed, to watch everyone outside go about their lives. It’s one of her favourite things to do - watch people like this - and when she spots a dog sporting a union jack sweater, she turns to Jughead to point it out.

“Hey Jug, look at....” she trails off, noting the somewhat anxious expression etched into his forehead. “Are you okay?”

He rubs a hand over his face. “I just...Betts…”

“What?” she questions, and it takes her right back to her bedroom when they were sixteen. The very first time he kissed her.

And he does the same thing again. Leaning across the table, he takes her jaw between his hands lightly, cupping her face so he can seal his lips over hers. When he eventually pulls back, she feels somewhat dazed.

“Jug -”

“-You ready to go?” he asks. “I uh...have something for you.”

Excitement ripples through her and the smile that pulls at her lips once Jughead’s paid the check and taken her hand in his, well, there’s no sign of it leaving.

He leads her through the streets, the warm air from earlier in the day now tinged with a light breeze that’s only just on the right side of being cool. The couple glasses of wine she’d had with dinner have left her with a calm, sated feeling and her limbs feel a little heavier than normal.

Their steps grow slower as they arrive in what Betty figures must be the centre of Covent Garden - the piazza with its numerous Italian restaurants and a beautifully decant-looking macaron store painted in light pink and gold. They could be in mainland Europe right now and Betty decides, as she stops to really take everything in, that if she ever reaches a point in her life where she starts to forget things, this will be something that never leaves her.

She only realises that Jughead has let go of her hand when she begins to walk forwards once more. When she turns her head though, she finds him presenting her with an envelope.

“What’s this?”

He swallows, looking nervous, and her heart speeds up. “Open it and find out.”

She takes the cream-coloured envelope in both hands, watching his face first, then turning her attention back to the stationery when he gives nothing away.

It’s a letter.

Betty,

I wrote ‘Free’ as your story.

This is mine.

Accompanying the letter are two more pieces of paper, numbered in his scrawled handwriting. She looks up at Jughead again, her heart thudding like a jackhammer against her chest as she opens her mouth to ask him whether she should read it here.

He nods once before the words have left her mouth.

There must’ve been a point where liking spending time with him became liking him. Perhaps the timing of it was indefinable - or, perhaps it wasn’t - but the point is, that like soon turned to love .

He felt unworthy initially, like she could (and should) do better than someone who enjoyed existing on the fringes of a society that would inevitably shun him for daring to taint her perfection. But she poured love on him - drenched him in it until it didn’t matter how many holes there were in his armour because she would make sure whatever seeped out the first time was offered again and again until he was convinced to hold onto it.   

“Jughead,” she sighs sadly, tears already pricking at her eyes.

His voice is clogged with emotion when he says, “Keep reading,”.

She casts her eyes back down to the paper.

For six years, the thing he was most grateful for was that she let him let her go. And then, all of that time later, the realisation that the letting go had been temporary (on both of their parts) hit like a strike of lightning.

This time, she was the storm.

Fierce and unyielding in her fight for what she wanted - even if he thought it should be different - she gave him what he hadn’t known he’d needed.

She was lying on his couch the evening he thought he had everything, eyes blinking tiredly against the sleep threatening to defy her. This, he had decided, would be all he’d ever need.

And then he arrived at 182.

Betty turns the page over but there are no more words. With her breath caught in her throat, she looks up at Jughead.

“Turn around,” he says softly.

She does, to find herself standing opposite a jewellery store - the number 182 written in black paint on the doorframe.

“Read the next page.”

I didn’t know I wanted to marry you until I saw a ring in this place.

She reads the line again. And again. And then over and over until she’s sure that what’s written on the paper is what she thinks it is.

There aren’t words to explain how or what I felt but just know that if I ever find them, you won’t have to read about them in a book.

Love, always.

Jughead.

Only when he catches her left hand with his does she realise she’s shaking. “Betty Cooper,” he starts, and already she’s nodding, the black box appearing from his pocket in slow motion, her pulse thudding in her ears. “Will you marry me?”