#better spend her free time studying to make up for those disgraceful grades

[pergaminaa]

Just some points on my modern au:

Both Dorian and Manon are from old money families (it’s how they met it was during an exclusive event)

Dorian hates it lowkey he wants freedom and to do as he pleases so he skips as many of these events as he can. But he also knows that if he leaves and Hollin gets in charge… their family would be over because his brother will ruin everything. So he stays around for the sake of his family.

Manon is the opposite. She is always present and taking charge of things in hopes that it would appease her grandmother. But just like everything else she does, it’s never good enough.

She’s a perfectionist who always needs to be in control otherwise she starts falling apart.

She was raised on the notion that emotions are a weakness, and she wouldn’t dare bring shame on her grandmother by being emotional. So from a young age she learned to suppress her emotions and carry on.

She is what her teachers would call ‘academically gifted’ but the truth is, she spent many hours studying and skipping sleep in order to be the top student at her school. Even when she was burnt out (she usually spends summer break studying for the next school year before it starts) she keeps going. Result? Getting a final score of 99.7% caused her to have a breakdown because how was she so careless as to lose that .3%? Her grandmother wasn’t too happy with her score, and she made that very clear.

She’s just so emotionally repressed and very anxious but she’s so good at hiding it no one can tell anything is amiss. Because when Manon is having a breakdown, she does so privately behind closed doors.

She has attachment issues and she’s very emotionality dependent on her dog. Abraxos is her rock and she has no idea what she’d do without him.

Those attachment issues? (Thanks to grandmother’s emotional and mental abuse) Manon often ends up with awful/toxic men just because they’re giving her the right attention that makes her easily want to be with them thinking it is ‘right’ and honestly just doesn’t think much of it (Asterin notices tho and she and Sorrel are always ready to interfere).

She doesn’t have much faith in men anymore. One night stands are way better than a steady relationship and so she swore off dating. All she needs is Abraxos anyway.

[artificialqueens]

What's Her Name? (Gigi x Nicky) - Mina

A/N: I’m working really hard on a fairy au right now (go to @goodemornting for updates on that lmao) but in the meantime I wanted to do something different! I hope you all enjoy it :)

Your soulmates name shows up on your arm when you turn 15. Gigi’s only problem is that her’s is in French, and she doesn’t speak a word of it.

Soulmates are a pretty common thing. Realistically they shouldn’t be; even with someone’s name written on your arm, what are the odds you’re going to find them in a sea of seven and a half billion people? Not only is it unlikely, it’s improbable. What if you have a name on your arm like John Smith? How many John Smiths do you have to go through before you can find the “one and only”? Soulmates were romanticized, and frankly unnecessary in Gigi’s humble opinion. She wouldn’t have had the slightest interest in finally finding her own but it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t at least have some idea of who their soulmate is. There are a lot of tells, like what language the name is written in, what gender the name is usually assigned to, stuff like that. Probably the biggest reason why so many people in the world have managed to find their soulmates is because they care so much about it. Apparently there’s also like, a gut feeling you get, when you meet them. Like you know for a fact that they’re the one and only. She’d never experienced it herself, but according to the people in her life who had met their soulmates before, there’s just some kind of pull, like on an instinctual level. This subconscious feeling you have that they’re the right person for you. And when the names match up - well, there’s really no way to deny it, at that point.

It’s kind of a sweet notion, in a way. To know someone all your life by a set of letters and then when you finally get to meet them, that they’re the right person, and they’ve been thinking of you too. Gigi was independent sure, career driven and logical, but she would’ve been lying if she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in what her soulmate might look like, what perfume they might use, what their favorite band might be. It was drilled into her since she was younger, in her defense, but that yearning feeling that encased every bone in her body whenever she accidentally glanced down at the cursive words delicately engraved on her arm made her wish that she could just find them already, so she could focus on more important things than the love of her life.

The only problem was, that the name imprinted neatly on her arm just happened to not be written in English, but some terrible variation of French.

Truth be told, she’d started studying French ever since google translate had helpfully informed her that’s what language the name was written in. She knows it starts with N, probably ends in L or Y, but her soulmates parents must’ve decided to give their child the most unique spelt name on the planet because the letters every French person had told her that the name possessed didn’t form anything that has much of a ring to it. She really hoped it was a girl’s name, because, well, it would be pretty inconvenient for her if her soulmate was a guy (Considering that she’s, like, a lesbian, and all). But other than that there were absolutely no indicators as to what it could say.

It used to bother her a lot more when she was younger. Being seventeen and knowing absolutely no characteristics of your soulmate is both pretty rare and pretty sad, but it’d never been her primary concern. She had other things to fill her life with, like good friends and family, school, art, overpriced coffee. It was frustrating that she couldn’t read it, but also extremely easy to distract herself from. Besides, having no way of knowing what the her soulmates name was gave her plenty of time and energy to spend helping her friends with their soulmate problems, and there’s plenty of those to go around.

Gigi stirred her tea, poking her tongue out slightly from between her lips. She hated that all the tapioca pearls end up sinking to the bottom, she didn’t want to put the straw in only halfway and get a mouthful of tea, but at the same time she didn’t want to drink all the boba all at once because it’s all pooled at the bottom. There were probably more important things that she could be focusing on right now, but this was a major pet peeve of hers. She cares a whole lot about how her bubble tea is consumed! The tapioca should be dispersed evenly throughout the drink, anything else is a disgrace.

Jan looked between her own two multicolored drinks, narrowing her eyes in contemplation. She was probably trying to decide which one to drink first, but it’s still pretty funny to watch. After Gigi had given up on fiddling around with the tapioca pearls, she sipped her tea and laced her fingers together, leaning forward to look at the blonde closer.

“You could try drinking the one they gave you for free.” She remarked, Jan’s golden brown eyes sliding up to meet hers with a sheepish smile. They’d been best friends since grade school but she still got way too easily embarrassed when Gigi gave her advice, it was pretty stupid. “Since you like the other one more, right?”

“I mean,” Jan pouted again, cocking her head like an upset puppy. “I like taro and lychee evenly, I just wanted lychee this time.”

“Hmm.” Gigi hummed, chewing her lip. “I’m trying to decide if you’re an immediate satisfaction kinda girl or the kind to bide your time. Or you could alternate between the two. Get a good mix of the one you’re in the mood for and the one you’re not in the mood for to keep you going.”

“That’s pretty gross, Gigi.” The older pointed out, wearing a wry smile. “It’s weird that I even have two to begin with.”

“Business as usual for you,” she chided, taking another sip of her single strawberry flavoured tea. Jan was lucky, generally. Gigi didn’t mean that in a jealous way, it was just true, and a little unnerving, at times. The fact that whoever ordered the taro bubble tea had completely took off, prompting the worker to offer it to the blonde, wasn’t even surprising to her at this point. Jan was even lucky in the soulmate department, kinda. The name on her arm was Jacquline Cox, pretty basic, and apparently they’d already met - though Jan hadn’t given her a lot of information about the mystery woman other than something about long dark hair and Persian food.

“It makes me feel awkward,” Jan complained with a sigh. “Who comes to a cafe and orders two boba teas?

“People who are really thirsty, probably.”

“I guess you’re right,” She conceded, but she still looked apprehensive, so Gigi reached across the table and grabbed the taro drink to take a long sip of it. She wasn’t the biggest fan of taro (It’s hard to describe, it’s too earthy for her taste?) but the eyebrow raise from the older woman was funny, so it was worth the slightly unpleasant flavour. “Gigi?”

The brunette glanced up from the tea, watching as Jan’s lip curled up harshly, thinking about her next choice of words. “You said wanted to catch up today?” She asked after a moment, and Gigi buffered briefly before nodding.

“Yeah. It’s so weird not going to the same school.” Gigi smiled sadly, drawing a smiley face in the condensation of her cup, “I’m not used to not seeing you every day, but you said the new school is better, right?”

“It’s not much different than the one we went to last year,” Jan shrugged, “But it’s a good school. It’s nice going somewhere where people don’t all remember me from primary.” She chuckled, rubbing the back of her neck. “It’s how I met Jackie, so I can’t be too mad about it.”

Gigi can’t help being a little bit more attentive after she hears the name, but she’s not very expressive at the best of times, so there probably wasn’t much more than a slight shift in her expression. The shorter woman was pretty good at picking up on that stuff, though, so she wasn’t surprised at the knowing smirk smiling back it her. “You know, you could just ask if you want me to tell you about her.”

Gigi winked, leaning forward on the table and resting her head against her hands. “Tell me then, what’s Miss Jacqueline like?”

“She’s from Iran, transfer student, stupidly funny, super smart, tall,” Jan sounded wistful, smiling serenely. The expression was generally deceiving, but thankfully Gigi had a pretty good idea of how to read her, too. It comes with being best friends for so long. She chewed her boba, waving a hand to encourage the blonde to continue. “I’ve been so happy lately, she really completes me. I don’t think she likes me much yet though.”

Gigi swallowed, narrowing her eyes. “Hmmm, maybe she’s just nervous. Does she have eyes? You’re pretty attractive.” She hesitated, “Probably.”

“Thank you,” Jan giggled, “But that’s not really what I meant.” She sighed, swirling her tea with her straw. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ve got time.” She hinted, rather than say that she’d been waiting on this tea since Jan had first mentioned meeting her soulmate, and that she’d been starved of this kind of thing in her own life so she was more than happy to be hearing about it in her friends.

Gigi had never been good at any of that… romantic stuff, which people often found surprising given how confident she was normally. She didn’t read often, but on the rare occasion that she did, and she got to the romantic part of a book, she felt terribly flustered the whole time through. She had no composure. She’d just have no idea what to say, or what might be tactful to do in any situation. Sure, holding hands and cuddling sounded nice, but beyond that- things like communication, and physical gestures of affection, were intimidating. Not scary, necessarily, or unappealing (because wow Gigi loved to be kissed by g… girls…) but definitely intimidating. A large part of her was worried that when she eventually met her soulmate, she’d embarrass herself with a total lack of expertise in that area. Then again, the whole point of a soulmate is that they’re your one and only, so maybe they’d both be completely unequipped to handle what being a soulmate might entail. In general Gigi was most worried about identifying them, though. Who’s to say that they’d know English? Maybe they don’t know what the name - which was hopefully written nicely since her handwriting could be terrible at times - on their arm says either.

Jan groaned. “She’s so nice to me but she’ll never initiate it? Like if I compliment her she goes along with it otherwise it feels forced?”

Gigi scoffs, picking at her nails, the answer is fairly obvious. “It sounds like she’s doing that thing that people do in the movies.” She dipped her thumb in the puddle of water that’d formed on the table from the drips of condensation dripping off her drink. “What’s it called, playing hard to get?”

“Y’know, that does sound kinda accurate,” Jan smiled, which told Gigi that shes completely right. She’s glad for that, too, because she really just repeated platitudes. “Why don’t we talk about something else? You haven’t told me how you’ve been, recently.”

By the time they’d both finished their bubble teas (as well as the taro one in the middle of the table), they figured it’d be a good time to head home. Gigi begged the shorter woman to keep her posted on the Jackie situation, and Jan swore that she would with a roll of her eyes.

The brunette’s text came in while she was at the mall. When her phone vibrated, she stopped for a second to check the notification. It was Jan, of course, the paragraph of emojis next to her name lighting up Gigi’s lock screen.

The blonde has texted her a picture; she doesn’t recognize the subject of the photo, but she can only assume that it’s the Jackie Cox soulmate woman, or else there’d be no reason for the candid shot. She’s facing away from the camera, looking off into a cityscape, but her head is turned very slightly, and there’s a fond smile practically glowing off of her face. From what Gigi can see, her eyes are a deep wood brown, she’s freakishly tall and probably towers over Jan, and her hair is dark and curled slightly at the tips. She nods sagely, this woman and Jan would look like a cliche Pinterest board aesthetic together. The Persian woman is beaming, which probably means that the two getting along just fine- which is contrary to what Jan had told her so mayb-

Someone (or something? But she’s pretty sure it’s a someone because whatever it is is warm) collides into Gigi’s shoulder, and knocks not only her phone out of her hands, but also her feet out from under her. With an undignified sound, she watches the ground get closer to her, and then blinks in confusion when it suddenly stops roughly a foot away from her face.

“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!” it’s a woman’s voice, Gigi thinks, and vaguely accented, but her English sounds pretty okay. When she turns her head she is accutly aware of of pale blonde hair brushing against the woman’s shoulders, the sweet scent of honeysuckle perfume, a Lana Del Rey shirt tightly hugging her chest. “I wasn’t looking where I was going, are you alright? Mon dieu, your phone..”

Huh? Gigi followed her line of sight and noticed that her phone was on the floor some ways away. As soon as her eyes landed on it, the blonde woman kneels and lifts it up delicately, wiping it off with the silky red scarf she’s wearing. It’s at that moment that it occurs to her that she’s still being held up by the other girl, and when she’s pulled to her feet, she takes a step back and chews her thumbnail, blinking at the vision before her.

This girl is fairly tall, definitely has an inch or two on Gigi. Her hair is shiny, concealed by a stylish black beret, and her eyes are sharp and seemingly all knowing. She’s remarkably pretty, Gigi’s heart beginning to get that fluttery feeling she gets whenever she makes eye contact with an unfortunately attractive girl her age. She tries to calm it down, though, because she can’t imagine that going all ditzy-highschooler on this girl will help the interaction any. It’s awkward enough as it is.

“I’m fine,” She says quietly, before the blonde girl can begin to fret about her phone. “I shouldn’t have been standing in the middle of the walkway on my phone, so it’s my fault, probably.” Gigi wipes down the wrinkles in her shirt, watching relief cross over the girl’s features. She’s looks French, the brunette concedes. Like she stylishly sell you a baguette on the side of the street, and her accent further hints at it. She’s probably around Gigi’s age as well.

“I’m happy that you aren’t mad.” The girl smiles. “But it’s still my fault.” She clears her throat, rubbing the back of her neck. “Could I make it up to you?” The way she asks it is curious, like she has some sort of other reason for asking, but Gigi holds her tongue. “I was going to this restaurant- pardon me, my name is Nicolette — are you free right now? – Not that you have to be, we could do it later – they make a really good stir-fry.”

For a pretty girl, Nicky stutters more than Gigi would’ve expected. It’s cute, charming almost, and the offer sounds great right about now. “That sounds fine.” She smiles, suddenly forgetting whatever she had come to the mall for because stir fry and French woman definitely sounded like her cup of tea.

“Perfect! I didn’t catch your name, by the way,” Nicolette - that’s a long name, maybe she could shorten it to Nicky - remarks thoughtfully, and Gigi realises that she’s a fool.

“Gigi.” She replies, and then adds, “Goode. My name is Gigi Goode.” Inwardly she scolds herself, that introduction could’ve been much smoother. For a minute she thinks she was so weird about it that Nicky has been thoroughly unsettled, but it crosses her mind after a bit of thought that the French woman’s comically widening eyes probably isn’t on account of her stuttering.

“Gigi Goode?” Echoes the girl. “Wait, uhm,” she shakes her head quickly, eyes frantically flicking between her arm and Gigi’s own, which is concealed by her coat sleeve. “Do you-” Nicky fumbled with her shirt, yanking it up with one hand. When Gigi looks down at the girl’s arm, she sees some incredibly familiar letters written, tiny hearts dotting every i. “Do you spell your name with-”

“Yeah. Yeah - yeah I do.“ The brunette interrupts, vision suddenly becoming blurry. She pulls up her own sleeve, feeling like she’s in some kind of a stupor, and holds out her forearm shakily to the taller woman. “Is this your name? I’ve never been able to read it.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“That is certainly my name,” Nicky replies, voice high pitched and frantic. “It’s spelt weird, you know, with the q and u and stuff but - merde that’s my name.”

Honestly, Gigi isn’t really capable of thinking clearly right now, but by the sounds of it she might’ve just found her soulma-

She gets knocked off her feet for second time within five minutes. This time, though, Nicky isn’t able to catch her, because though Nicky is again the reason she goes down, the blonde’s arms are occupied by being thrown tightly around Gigi’s shoulders.

“I’m so glad to meet you!” The woman bursts out, and the brunette’s face warms at the close proximity. “I came to America to look for you, did you know that? I suppose you wouldn’t, as we’ve never met before, but I- well- I’ve been searching for so long and some days I felt like I would never find you- that is a bit too much information for a first meeting, sorry, - and I’ve knocked you over again too, oh-”

“It’s okay,” Gigi dismisses quickly. “I don’t mind.” She doesn’t, though her face is definitely like a thousand degrees right now. Nicky beams at her, strands of angel blonde hair falling in front of her eyes, and Gigi swallows down a bit of flustered anxiety. Her heart is beating hard, she can hardly hear anything through it’s ringing in her ears, and Nicky can definitely feel it, but it’s not so embarrassing when she realises that the other girl’s heart is beating just as fast. At the same tempo, even, though it might be a bit presumptuous to say as much. She clears her throat a few times, trying to figure out something cool to say. “Uhm, well, how about that stir-fry then?”

Not quite, but close enough, because Nicky’s responding smile feels like a billion dollars.

[onceuponamirror]

eggshelling

a/n: oh my god why am i doing this, please help someone set me free from this teen soap!!! 

set during 1x02; this is kind of an exercise for me to work through the themes of expectation riverdale explores, some of my headcanons for the characters’ relationships/pasts/thoughts via Jughead, who’s not as objective as he thinks himself. 

i’ve been doing a lot of reading on ace representation lately and i’ve been wrestling with the fact that i do really like bughead (and frankly have since i was a kid) but it is also inherently erasure now. then i read this article (An Asexual’s Defense of Jughead’s Kissing Betty) and felt that it made only good points, so i went forward with this writing. jughead can still be ace and love/be in a relationship with betty. 

implied pining, ace jughead.

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It was supposed to work. It was girl meets boy. He’d been forced to put on enough rom-coms at the Twilight by said girl for him to know about the expected subtext. In a way that only Betty Cooper can be presumptuous without condescension, Jughead always knew that she planned on dating Archie.

Literally, he thought, watching Betty flee the lunch table. As in, it was part of a plan, subconscious or not, towards perfecting the image. Good grades, good extra curriculars, good boyfriend. It made sense, after all. She expected to date Archie, and a part of Archie probably expected to date her too.

Archie twisted after her, calling her name, but it was half-hearted at best. Still, he followed after her, but now beyond Jughead’s earshot. They spoke for a moment, a quick conversation of unfiltered teenage anguish he was sure, before Betty practically sprinted away. Jughead raised his eyebrows and dipped his head back down to his fries, but for perhaps the first time, his appetite failed him.

Poor Betty. He couldn’t hear them, but could gather what happened enough based on body language. Archie had always been a quick study anyway.

The night before at Pop’s flickered into his thoughts. Archie had come in looking for Betty, sat down, seemed tense and upset; that conversation they’d had about Jason’s death—

"Seventeen years old and how will he be remembered?”

—Jughead shuffled his fries around with his finger, looking for one that would strike his fancy. He wasn’t sure when he’d get his next meal, so he forced himself through a couple, but his stomach was still swirling, thinking about Archie and Betty.

Their relationship must’ve finally snapped. Based on his earlier observations in combination with the ominous conversation he’d had with his old friend, he wagered that Betty had probably put her heart on the line and Archie had turned her down.

Archie wasn’t known for his introspection; he’d coasted well enough through life that it had never occurred to him to question it, which is why, last night, Jughead had been surprised by the tremor in his former friend’s voice---

“Was he doing everything he was supposed to do? Everything he wanted? I mean, did he even know what that was?”

---Hindsight is 20/20, and watching Betty retreat up the hill towards the main building, he couldn’t help but think something about Jason Blossom’s murder has opened up more than parents installing an earlier curfew. Death is a reflecting pool, and all that.

Archie, who had become a chiseled study of Americana, was already Jason’s heir apparent, on the very same path of all golden boys---but something about their conversation gave Jughead the suspicion Archie was gathering the courage to refuse a throne.

Betty Cooper was the first casualty of that. Archie’s an idiot, of course, Jughead thought with an eye roll. But that was nothing new; only Archie Andrews would see Betty as an obligation.

Still, Jughead was glad of it, if he was being honest with himself. Jughead was never one for authority, and destiny was no different. Something about the idea that Betty and Archie should be together just because they were best friends always sat wrong with him.

He remembered lying awake, the floorboards creaking below him as he pretended not to be able to hear his father’s hushed conversations with the thuggish men who only came in the night.

He remembered staring at the stick-on stars that Betty had forced him to put up after he mentioned he liked sleeping under the stars (irony was certainly not a fickle friend) and thinking about the look on her face when she’d seen Archie flirting with Tina Patel.

He remembered thinking even then that Archie didn’t deserve her.

Still, despite all his riot acts, Jughead had long accepted that one day, fate would step in and bring Betty and Archie together. One day, he’d turn around and be a third wheel and frankly, he’d rather be prepared for it.

So on those long nights where he’d watch shadows move across the wall, he did his best to not think of Betty Cooper.

It was oddly easier said than done. Most people didn’t interest him—he’d certainly never understood Archie’s preoccupation with chasing girls—but Betty was...different.

At first, their relationship was only tangential to the fact that they were both friends of Archie. And Jughead had actually resented her for it, expecting her to come between them. He’d glare at the back of her, roll his eyes at everything she said, give her firmly monosyllabic answers to her prodding questions---

(Okay, that part may not have changed)

---but then the summer when they were eight happened, the summer that Archie signed up for pee-wee football and disappeared into sports. Jughead had seen it coming---Archie was a people-pleaser, and football pleased everyone in Riverdale---but it still stung a bit. Maybe because it was the first time he admitted to himself he wasn’t sure what it was he had in common with his best friend.

Jughead spent the first few weeks of summer lying under the tree of his backyard reading comics. His parents were still on good terms then, even though his dad had taken on some extra work after his sister was born and hadn’t been around as much.

Hot Dog had started barking from inside the house, which usually meant that someone had rung the doorbell. He’d hoped it wasn’t one of his dad’s new friends---they were kind of shady---but he knew Archie was at football practice so he returned his attention back to his comic. And then---

“Jughead! Your friend is here to see you!” His mom called from the back porch; she opened up the screen door and little Betty Cooper skipped out.

“What are you doing here?” He’d asked, eyes narrowed.

“Do you wanna go to the water park? I’m allowed to bring a friend.”

He’d gaped at her. “Why are you asking me? Why don’t you wait for Archie to get out of practice?”

She’d shot him a look that clearly said she thought he was messing with her. “Because I wanna go with you.”

It was the first moment that Jughead had realized that Betty wasn’t the enemy, but his friend too. She was giving and thoughtful and understood things that Archie didn’t. They spent that summer making up mysteries to solve, watching old movies, and drinking lemonade. It was pure and innocent, and sometimes a lot more fun than he ever had with Archie.

She stood up for him when Reggie Mantle started calling him Jughead---a spiteful play on the old family business of blowing glass maple syrup jugs, which his father had run into the ground not long after Jughead had been born---and suggested he take the name in stride.

“It’s like how I go by Betty,” she’d said, hand on his shoulder. “Making it mine.” What she didn’t say was, how I rebel against my mother, but they were a little too young for that kind of self-awareness.

Then they got older and Jughead, ever the observer, began to see the way Archie effected Betty. It put a sour taste in his mouth; he was going to become a third wheel. Then when his dad got fired by Archie’s father, things got bad at home.

Archie got more into football. Betty started spending summers away at internships. Sleeping under glow-in-the-dark stars turned into occasional nights outside. Occasional nights became crashing at the Twilight. Crashing became living. Living became surviving.

Jughead exhaled, closing his eyes, trying to force himself to be present. When he opened his eyes, he saw Betty at the crest of the hill, watching the scene below her. She shifted, and for a fraction of a moment, he thought she was looking at him, alone on his bench.

He frowned and forced himself to look away. Betty always was able to see right through him, and a special knack for doing it especially when he didn’t want her to.

Maybe he should reach out. But he hadn’t spoken to her in months, not since the night he left home, eggshelling around the broken glass of his father’s anger. Jughead figured it was better that way; the Jones were already a disgraced founding family, and he didn’t need more scrutiny. He especially didn’t want the pity.

He thought of all the emails Betty had sent that summer that had gone unanswered, and felt a sting at his side; guilt, maybe, or empathy. Archie’s selfishness had taken both him and Betty as casualties, but for him, it had only cemented his opinion that one should just look out for themselves and not bother with anything else.

He wondered what it would do to Betty. Kind, thoughtful, knowing Betty. Betty who always was a sacrificial kind of sweet. Betty, who was the light that made shadows.

Still grimacing, he dumped the rest of his fries into the sad excuse for a tupperware container he’d been lugging around. Waste not, want not.

He tried to throw his thoughts back to the murder---Archie was now in a suspicious conversation with Principal Weatherbee, and he should be paying attention, but his thoughts remained with Betty.

He hoped he was right about her loving the idea of Archie more than anything, and he told himself that it was because she deserved something with more meaning. She was always wrapped up in what other people asked of her that Jughead isn’t sure she’d ever asked herself what she actually wanted.

Then again, that wasn’t a question he was interested in asking to himself, so maybe he shouldn’t judge. 

Suddenly annoyed with himself and deciding he wasn’t going to get any more ground in on the novel today, he got up, gathered his things, and slipped away behind the scenes. The only thing you’re good at.

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