#yea that's right y'girl wrote an entire opening monologue about BUBBLES

[onceuponamirror]

heart rise above

///// CHAPTER 13

summary: It wasn’t an experiment with freedom borne of some Americana fantasy; rather, a road trip of purely logistical intentions. The plan was simple. Drive from Boston to Chicago for his sister’s college graduation. That’s it.

Or, he drives a Ford Pickup Named Desire.

Mechanic!AU

fandom: riverdale ship: betty x jughead words: 75k chapters: 13/19

[read from the beginning] [read the latest]

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You're walking meadows in my mind Making waves across my time

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He realizes he has always been fascinated by bubbles.

He thinks most people probably went through a phase as kids where they liked them, enjoyed them, but for him, it was much heavier an interest—because the concept of a near-endless supply of anything was enough to appeal to the attention of the quiet little boy in threadbare sweaters.

In fact, one of his earliest memories is of just that thought. Sitting cross-legged in the itchy grass of the Andrews’ backyard, it was Archie’s birthday party, and even then, Jughead felt like an outsider and wondered why he’d been invited. Everyone else was playing on the Slip ‘N Slide and he’s always been afraid of water, so he’d sat off to the side in his oversized t-shirt, next to the babysitter on whom he’d later have his first crush.

She’d nudged him in the side and procured a bottle of bubble soap. Dipping a pink bubble wand inside, she’d pulled it up to her lips, and then her mouth formed a perfect o shape. He had inhaled, blinked, and then dozens of little circles of air and soap were blowing into the sun.

His mouth had too made an o shape, but accompanied by the softest o sound he’s probably ever made. He’d leaned back on his palms to tip his chin up to the sky and watch them float away in swaths. Running away was a notion he’d already become familiar with, but that’s not the feeling he got from watching the bubbles drift away, even as they left him there in the grass, growing smaller and smaller in their line of sight.

He knew, even then, that they were just something borrowed and being returned. Later, he would learn the color in a bubble was simple light refraction, but right then and there, it quick wink of time and magic, as he saw himself rainbowed in their reflection and felt briefly beyond.

One floated his way, and he broke it.

As he got older, and his habits got older too, he and Archie would test the limits of bubbles. He remembers getting stoned in the Andrews’ garage in a way they’d thought was the peak of stealth, passing a joint to Archie in one hand and the makeshift, tinfoil bubble wand in the other.

Jughead would try to smother his giggles while Archie took a healthy puff of the joint, suck it in for a moment, and then blow the smoke into the wand. A bubble would appear at the other end, filled with a tiny gray storm cloud. It’d hover above them, and with an itch he could never quite scratch, Jughead would always reach forward and pop it with his finger, littering them in soap and weed vapor.

“Jug,” Archie would groan, “why do you keep doing that? I wanna see how long it’ll last!”

He never did figure out why he couldn’t resist that urge to pop the bubbles. Perhaps it was just a preview of the personality trait labeled morbid curiosity that would come to define him. Or maybe it was the only slice of destruction he was allowed; the spoilsport in him, or the desire to end something before it ended by itself.

(By then, he’d already seen his share of ends, and this was the only lesson he’d learned.)

Later, older still, he’d learn a lot more about bubbles. About the science, the physics. It’d be a glow on his computer screen at three in the morning, hours deep into a black hole of Wikipedia articles, as he’d read about torpedoes and something called the violent collapse of bubbles that propelled them into devastation.

It’d been a strange moment, to realize something as innocent and as ethereal as the little bubbles blown into a backyard at a child’s birthday party could be darkened, turned inward, and used as weapons.

He’d write about them as literary devices too, in the last college class he’d ever take. He’d watch the words housing bubble fly across the eight o’clock news in his junior year of high school and wait for his father to find something new to blame.

And he thinks about them now, watching Betty Cooper helping her niece and nephew perfect their cartwheels in a backyard not at all unlike the place where his first memories live.

Because he’s written about them, romanticized them, intellectualized them, but he’s never actually felt like he’s lived inside a bubble before. Even in retrospect, having a full family unit until age fourteen didn’t feel like one because it was far too destructive to ever be lost in.

This is different. It feels almost too simple to describe what he’s feeling as happiness, but that’s what it is: a bubble of happy. He’s traced the dictionary up and down for something more profound than such a commodified word, but every time he comes up short.

It’s just happiness.

The way he feels like he can reach forward and tuck Betty up into his side without questioning it, or the way she’s already snuck him no less than three kisses this afternoon and the little smile on her face when she’d quietly thanked him for socializing with her family.

The way they haven’t talked about a damn thing regarding what’s between them, almost blindly, and clearly on purpose when he overhears her sister trying to bring it up. That’s the real mark of this kind of bubble, he supposes; the plausible deniability. But he’d laid her bare and she’d held him right back, and twice already, and he can barely stop thinking about when they’ll get to do it next.

Or, perhaps most of all, it’s the way when her nephew finds something in the back of the grass and he shows it to Betty, she leans down and whispers something in his ear while pointing at Jughead. And soon the little redheaded boy is scampering over to him, thrusting a tiny dandelion in his face and proudly exclaiming that he gets to make a wish.

He feels Betty’s eyes on him, and tries to remember how to talk to children. It’s been so long since his sister was this young, but she always is in his mind and it’s just like a bike. Jughead folds his arms playfully and tells him that he’d better think about it real hard first, better make sure he’s really visualizing what it is that he wants.

Arthur scrunches up his face until he says he’s thought his hardest, and then blows on the dandelion until almost all the seeds are picked up in the wind.

Jughead makes a wish too.

It’s a bubble, and he knows—he just knows—he’s going to pop it.

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After second helpings (and thirds, for himself) and the kids start showing the telltale signs of exhaustion, everyone starts packing things up. Even the penny dreadful stock character named Cheryl helps out, clearing paper plates and deigning him with an actual smile when he takes them from her to throw away.

“What the hell did you say to her, you witch?” He mutters to Betty after it happens. They’re standing in the kitchen while the rest of her family is tidying up the backyard and he’s just grateful Cheryl’s gone, even if she was being nice to him, because it means he’s finally alone with Betty. “Pretty sure that’s a totally different person.”

She smirks and helps him scrape off food into the compost bin. “That’s between girls,” she says, clearly deliberately being vague.

“Again, otherwise known as witchcraft,” he murmurs against her ear, coming up behind her. There’s a terrible joke on the tip of his tongue about the spell she’s cast on him, but that’s a little too on the nose, even for him. Instead, he wraps his arms around her waist, because he’s going to take the first inch he can get, even if it’s in front of a garbage can.

She puts down the paper plate and twists in his arms. Her hands come around his neck, and he feels it again. Happy.

“You want to stay, after everyone leaves?” She asks, and god, every time she says that little word—stay—he swears it adds a year on his life.

“Yes,” he tells her, his fingers scattering where they’re strewn across her hip. “I need to go back to the motel and get a change of clothes and probably shower, but I’ll come right back.”

“I have a shower here,” she says softly, and with that same kind of teasing innocence she’d used on her sister, winking through the veil of the Virgin Mary.

He groans. “I see what you’re doing, for the record, and it’s practically Draconian. But I want to try to work a little tonight, and I need my laptop for that. So let me go peacefully into the sweet night, and I’ll be back before you know it. Plus,” he adds, his voice dropping, “I only grabbed a few things when I left.”

She seems to catch his meaning and that’s the trick, because she unravels herself from his grasp and returns to her cleanup duties. And then she looks up at him, with that now familiar and thrillingly pleased, secretive smile. “Juggie?”

“Yeah?”

“Just bring the box.”

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They of course don’t go through a whole box of condoms, because neither of them is inhuman.

But—in their defense—they do make a decent stab at it.

That first night, he throws his things so rapidly into a bag that he barely registers what he’s bringing. It’s not until he gets back to Betty’s that he realizes he only brought the accidental System of A Down shirt that he solely still owns for the spare day he exercises.

He gripes when he pulls it out of his bag, but Betty promises them he won’t need clothes anyway, and, well, she ends up being right.

She rises annoyingly early for work on Monday morning, tells him to sleep and stay as long as he wants, and yes, she’s sure, her mother definitely won’t be home for days. Then asks if he’ll stay over again tonight, and tells him where they hide the spare key when he assures her that he absolutely wants to, and kisses him goodbye.

(They keep a key under the little concrete fairy a few feet away from the front door. It’s completely conspicuous, but he supposes an All-American town like Riverdale has never heard of a burglar.)

He rises a few hours later, still smelling her on his pillow, and takes his time wandering around the Cooper house to catalogue Betty’s childhood. He wouldn’t call it snooping, per se, but he might closely examine the books on her shelf—perhaps taking notes about what to recommend based on what she hasn’t got—or maybe admire her framed diploma from Columbia in the study, or he especially might possibly linger in front of her family photos and wonder what it would’ve been like to grow up with her.

Eventually, he decides to head back to his motel and grab an actually decent change of clothes, if nothing but to get some fresh air and hopefully some fresh perspective. However, if he thought leaving the first location of Norman Rockwell’s Home Improvement Show was going to help shake him from his euphoria of sex and post-sex, he was sorely mistaken.

Rather than stay in his motel and write while we waits for her to finish up work and summon him back, he decides to try something. It feels fluttering, even as an idea, but it’s something he’s always desperately wanted to experience, and he might not ever get the same chance again.

So he heads back to the Cooper house, retrieves the key from the little fairy, and lets himself back in. And then he sets up his computer on the dinner table, and works on his novel until he hears the lock turning.

He feels it then too, as she walks through the room, looking somehow more beautiful than when she left, and sees him sitting there; the little bubble of happiness expanding out of his chest and all across the kind of big house he’d never thought he’d sleep in.

“Honey, I’m home,” she says in a singsong voice as she drops her things onto the kitchen counter.

“Hello dear,” he plays back, “how was your day?”

It’s a game and they’re being wry and teasing, but it’s just what he was hoping for. It was why he came back when he did; he’s always wondered what it would feel like to be working from home and one day have a partner walk through the door and be happy to see him. He thinks it should be sad, that once again his greatest fantasy is nothing more than the simplest domesticity, but he’s so glad to see her that he doesn’t dwell on it.

“My day was good,” she says, in almost off-hand voice as she slides into his lap, one arm hooking around his shoulders and the other closing his laptop. And then she’s kissing him, and as is becoming habit with them, quickly grows to something more.

They have sex on the low kitchen counter that night, him standing between her legs and she’s her loudest yet, and he’s never once thought himself as insatiable in any way but regarding to food until now. After, having moved upstairs, he makes her come with his mouth and she returns the favor.

It’s almost too much to think about, how little they can keep their hands off one another. He’s fairly sure they’re both lost to the looming deadline and trying to get the most out of each other while they can through the guise of lust. 

He’s becoming increasingly aware that he is not ready to leave her.

He wants to tell her he’s not sure he can go back to life before her, thinks he has to tell her, but that would break the bubble and he desperately doesn’t want to. He decides he’ll do it, but not until he has to go. 

Instead, they make quesadillas at midnight in nothing but their underwear while the radio plays a tribute to The Best of the Seventies.

“Wow. Someone’s a major dork,” he tells her, grinning, watching her hips sway to along to some vague boogie-oogie, the spatula held up to her mouth as if it were a microphone.

Truthfully, this is a side of her he very much likes. He suspects she was a Taylor-Swift-Blasting-From-My-Bedroom type of teenage girl, and oddly enough, it’s not a turn-off for the person who stalked around high school with a pair of headphones and a Bright Eyes album.  

“Shut up,” she laughs, flipping a quesadilla, “or you won’t get any!”

“So I was looking through a drawer for a napkin, saw the aprons, didn’t see any that said Kiss the Chef. What have you got to say for yourself, Cooper?” he asks, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her stomach.

She giggles, and he’s half-sure he’s hallucinating it all but he’s not willing to blink.

Tuesday follows a familiar pattern; he goes for a long, solitary walk through town and then later makes sure to position himself as working away for when she comes home. The thrill he gets when they greet each other and talk about their days continues not to disappoint.

That night, however, they actually decide to have dinner at a normal hour, rather than immediately jumping one another, and eat while they debate whether the concept of the Great-American-Novel has to be inherently metafiction in order to be successful. The conversation actually turns him on a bit.

Afterwards, they cuddle up for a movie wherein more time is spent bantering through it than actually watching. She throws popcorn at his face and he kisses her when the music swells.

The eye of the bubble grows bigger in his chest.

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On Wednesday, she originally wakes at 5:30, which by now he knows is her usual alarm to get to the garage by 7, but he still growls when he hears the humming little harpsichord ring tone she uses. “No,” he murmurs into her neck, once she shuts it off and tries to get out of bed. “Sleep.”

“Juggie,” she whispers, half-warningly. “The garage.”

“Open late,” he grunts, eyes still closed. He pulls her closer against him, and thinks perhaps once describing this moment as reverence for the peach of her skin wasn’t far off. “C’mon, girl boss. Sleep in for once.”

She sighs, like maybe she’s thinking about it. He opens one bleary eye to find her looking at him with exasperation, or maybe affection. But there’s something else there too, like a nervous, flittering thought. “You’re a bad influence,” she tells him, even as she settles back in against him, her forehead pressed into his chest, and exhaling gently. “Just one hour. That’s it.”

He drops a kiss at the top of her hair. “Yep, one hour.”

She doesn’t set another alarm.

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Instead, they wake a couple hours later (a reasonable time for anyone to still consider morning, he thinks) because his phone has erupted in an uncharacteristic amount of text notifications. He makes a muffled sound, reaching over Betty to scrape around for his phone. And then he realizes that it’s not just his phone buzzing away, but hers as well. She seems to realize that at the same time and sits up, and together they check their messages.

“Veronica,” she sighs, at the same moment that he sees the litany of texts from an unknown number. Still, an invitation that feels more like a demand couldn’t have come from many people, and he probably would’ve guessed it was from Veronica anyway. He recognizes Archie’s number up at the top too and assumes that’s where the raven-haired princess got his contact information.

“Oh god, is it already after nine?” She mutters, looking at the clock on her phone. “I better text Joaquin and ask if he can work a few hours today. He’s usually got mornings free.”

While she does that, Jughead scrolls through the new messages, frowning. “She wants to throw a party tonight? It’s a Wednesday.”

Betty chuckles, clicking her phone off and rolling up against him. “You clearly don’t know Veronica very well yet,” she says lightly, smiling up at him. And then realizes that he’s still frowning. “What?”

“I probably won’t go,” he sighs, hating the way her face falls at this information.

“Oh,” she says softly, her eyebrows furrowing. “Is…is it because of your dad? You don’t want to be around alcohol?”

That would actually be a decent reason in comparison to the one he actually has, but it would also be a lie. He flops onto his back, pushing his hair back from his face. “No, no. I mean, being around drunken people isn’t my favorite activity in the book, but it doesn’t really bother me in a ‘Nam-flashback kind of way.”

She shifts a little closer. “Then what’s wrong, Juggie?”

“There’s just a lot of people in this group text,” he says carefully, not wanting to outright admit that he’s got the social anxiety of a jackrabbit, especially not to the woman he’s still expecting to come to her senses at any moment.

“Not that many,” she replies, grinning a little now. “You should’ve seen the invite list from her last party.”

“I know I’m a writer, but I can still count, Betts, and there a lot of numbers here,” he sighs. He scratches behind his ear, thinking about the lonely spot by the bonfire at Reggie’s party. “I’m not…great at parties, and especially not at ones where I only know three people. I don’t do well with small talk.”

“You know Kevin too,” she says, one of her hands rubbing distractedly at his stomach. She seems to have something of a preoccupation with that part of his body. “And Joaquin.”

He lets out another breath. “What about my favorite person, Persephone, queen of the underworld?”

“Cheryl?” Betty gives a half-hearted roll of the eyes. “She’s not in the text thread. And they’re definitely not there yet. So she won’t be lurking any more dark corners, waiting to bribe you for information.”

“She should’ve tried a bribe last time, she might’ve gotten a little more out of me that way,” Jughead says, which makes Betty smile.

“Oh. You’d say you’re open to bribes, then?” She asks, her hand on his stomach wandering a bit lower.

He pretends to look offended, but makes no effort to readjust her hand. “My stars, Betty Cooper,” he tuts, putting on an attempt at a terrible Southern accent.

“I’m just wondering what I can do to make you want to come,” she says brightly. “To the party,” she adds after a moment, because now he’s grinning. She whacks him in the shoulder. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“You go,” he tells her, shifting so that he’s leaning over her. He drops a kiss onto her jaw. “And you can come here after.”

She actually blushes, but curves her arms around his neck and meets his eyes. “Please, Juggie?” She asks, and he knows that’s it. “I promise I’ll protect you from small talk. And Ronnie said she wants to celebrate you two coming into town; it’s practically in your honor.”

What she doesn’t say is, it’s because you’re leaving this week, but they both hear it anyway.

“It is not,” he snorts. “It’s clearly in Archie’s honor, if anything. But…”

“But?” She repeats hopefully.

“Yeah, I’ll go,” he says, sighing heavily and smiling despite himself.

“Yay!” She squeals, pulling him closer so that she can kiss him fully and he thinks, distinctly not for the first time: worth it.

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They have a round of late morning sex—his favorite kind, he realizes, because he gets to see her fully in the rising light—and when she comes, it’s through a string of curses, which is new for her. He likes it.

Afterwards, she announces she has to get to the garage, even though she sounds begrudging and lingers the whole way through dressing. He considers asking her what’s bothering her, but he has an inkling.

The truck is supposed to be done this week.

So he can’t ask, because that definitely would pop the bubble, and watches her go. He dawdles in bed for a little while before showering and heads into the backyard to do some writing outside. The weather has turned humid again, and will be unendurable in the coming afternoon, so he wants to enjoy what he can.

Betty comes home earlier than usual, tenser and less willing to play the mid-century-couple game, and immediately trots upstairs for a long shower. Once she emerges, looking clean and refreshed and willfully cheerful, she parades outfits in front of him for tonight’s party. He’s apparently very unhelpful, because he thinks she looks beautiful in every one of them, but with some heavy prompting, he admits he likes her best in blue.

She pulls on a baby blue top and a short white jean skirt, while he dresses in the same outfit he’d worn for their date. It’d gone over well then, and his options are limited. Betty pulls her hair into her usual ponytail, but this time leaves several locks of blonde laying against her forehead, and they walk to Pop’s for dinner.

They sit on the same side of the booth and do their best to talk about nothing; she’s still got that fidgeting look in her eye, and he’s still not brave enough to ask if it’s what he thinks it is. After a while, Betty glances at her phone, sees a flurry of texts, and exclaims that they’re already late, so they pay and rush to Veronica’s apartment.

“Lonely Boy!” Veronica greets as she throws open the door, beaming at him. She’s wearing something he thinks might be a typical ensemble of a cropped black shirt with an equally dark skirt. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. Archie said it was a fifty-fifty shot.”

Betty grins up at him as Jughead shrugs and says, “Hope he bet against me, then.”

“Noted, for next time,” Veronica smirks, and then moves aside to beckon them into the apartment. “I’ve got IPA and lagers in the kitchen, and Betty—pour toi, a bottle of your favorite rosé is on the counter.”

Raising a cautious eyebrow, Betty laughs. “I thought you said rosé was only suitable as a brunch wine, unless, and I quote, ‘one was at the Riviera.’”

Veronica waves a hand and makes a dismissive sound. It’s just exaggerated enough for Jughead to realize she might be quite tipsy. “Yes, and that’s still all true, but I know you love it. And I already bought it, so! It obviously must be drunk!”

“You’re in a good mood tonight,” Betty observes as they follow her into the kitchen, and Jughead realizes this is true. Granted, he doesn’t have much of a barometer for Veronica at this stage, but the only emotions of hers he’s been exposed to are coquettish, coy, surveying, wary, and coy again.

“I am,” Veronica sighs happily. “I am.”

When she doesn’t say anything else, Betty snorts. “Are you going to tell me why? You quit your job, or something?”

Dropping a none-too-subtle look over at Jughead, Veronica just says, “I wish. No, no, I’ll tell you later, B,” and then flounces out of her kitchen with an announcement that she’s off to be a perfect hostess and that she expects to see them mingling soon. Betty rolls her eyes after her, but fondly all the same, as she digs around in a drawer for a corkscrew.

She pauses just as she’s uncorked the bottle in the same way Archie hesitates before grabbing a beer in front of him. “It’s okay,” he tells her, passing her the large wine glass Veronica had also left out for her and then cracking open a lager for himself. “Really. I promise, the trauma is a lot less obvious than that.”

“But you’ll tell me if anything makes you uncomfortable, right?” She asks softly, clearly dodging his attempt at a joke, her hand on its increasingly most common spot along his jaw. He nods, the bubble moving all the way up to his throat.

She fills her glass with the pink wine and then hooks her arm through his to lead him out of the kitchen. There’s a brief moment where he thinks she might’ve been about to hold his hand, but he’s not sure.

Veronica’s apartment is spacious, but he’s starting to wonder if most of Riverdale is this way. It has an open floor plan, with a relatively small but gleaming kitchen tucked away in the corner, and a couple of doors that must lead to bathrooms, closets, portals to the dimensional reality where he usually lives, and bedrooms, in some order or another.

Whereas Betty’s room had spoken volumes about the push and pull between the person put on display versus the person she truly was, Veronica’s sense of décor fully fits her personality: purple orchids, white vases, but just enough indoor palms and plush dark velvet to evoke a kind of smoky art deco lounge filled with literati and their muses of the century.

Faint music drifts absently through the apartment, and there are probably about twenty some-odd people in milling about across the furniture or leaning up against walls, including Joaquin and Kevin, the latter of whom immediately fixes a wide but rapidly narrowing eye on them. “Hey Kev, hey Joaquin,” Betty says, fidgeting slightly as a furtive smile digs at Kevin’s lips.

His eyes flick over to Jughead, down to the place where Betty’s arm is tucked through his, and back to her. “Hey,” Kevin replies, somehow managing to say quite a lot with that one word. No one says anything else.

“Okay guys, good talk,” Jughead drawls, if only to cut the tension. Joaquin snorts, and it seems to break the silent conversation-slash-staring contest between Kevin and Betty.

She turns to Joaquin. “Thanks again for covering me this morning, by the way.”

He shrugs as if to say no big deal, but Kevin’s head swivels towards him. “You worked in the garage this morning?”

“I overslept,” Betty explains, sighing when Kevin immediately appears to read between the lines.

“Hm, betcha did,” Kevin demurs, taking a long sip from his beer. Betty flushes—it’s true that technically she overslept, but Kevin’s meaning isn’t lost on either of them and to deny that they didn’t afterwards have sex would be a lie.

“We’re going now,” Betty says, falsely bright as her fingers curl around Jughead’s arm. She introduces him to people around the room as they pass through it; most of the people here are friends from work or people from high school, and she says she only really knows a few of them. She doesn’t like Veronica’s coworkers very much and cleanly avoids them, but they have a decent chat with a guy named Dilton who happens to be in town visiting his parents and apparently recently sold his first tech company for a sum he seems itching to announce.

As promised, Betty protects him from small talk. She’s a completely natural charmer, skilled in a way that he could spend decades honing but still never match. She deflects and switches gears like the driver of a car she herself built. Once again, he’s in total awe of her.

Eventually, they find themselves with Archie and Veronica again, and he feels like he can breathe a little easier. Soon after, Veronica and Betty disappear to refill their wine glasses, leaving him with just Archie—which would be fine, except Archie is being evasive and seems uncharacteristically nervous about something.

Jughead opens his mouth to ask him what’s crawled up his ass, but Archie has other ideas. “Dude, wait, you know what I got?” Archie scampers off to a set of hooks and digs around in his coat pocket, one of those bombers that is made to resemble a letterman’s jacket. He retrieves a little Ziploc bag and dangling it in Jughead’s face. “Look what I snagged from Reggie before we left.”

“You stole his weed?” Jughead laughs. “Do you have a death wish?”

Archie scoffs. “Whatever. He’ll never notice, he has so much of it. So, wanna smoke?”

Given that he’s almost done with his allotted beer, he might as well. “Yeah, gimme. I’ll roll it.” He sinks onto a couch and clears a space while Archie disappears back to his jacket and quickly returns with a grinder, some rolling papers, a lighter and leaves him to it, saying he’ll be back in a few. It feels almost like high school again—left to roll a joint in the back of a foggy party he’s never quite sure he agreed to attend. Only this time, he definitely knows why he’s here.

As if hearing her name in his thoughts, Betty plops down beside him, placing her wine on the table as her chin nestles into his shoulder. “Jughead Jones,” she says slowly, and slightly impishly. “You getting high?”

He finishes grinding up the weed and turns to look at her. “Please tell me you were a D.A.R.E. pledge,” he says, which earns him a whack on the arm and a smirk. Depositing the bits of pot into the valley of the paper, he runs his tongue along the edge to seal the joint and then pauses, realizes Betty is staring at it, her pupils blackened.

Jughead finishes his work and tucks it behind his ear as she watches him, biting down hard on her lip. His hand trails up her knee and onto her thigh in order to shift closer. “Got something to share with the class, Officer Cooper?”

She’s looking at him in the way that usually precursors the moment that she pounces on him, but instead she seems to straighten her shoulders with resolve to do the opposite. Disappointment surges through him, but he understands why she might not want to start something she can’t finish in a room full of people.

Betty reaches forward, plucks the joint from behind his ear, and nestles it between her lips. “Got a lighter?”

He quickly grabs it from the table and holds it up for her, flicking on the flame. She drapes herself into the pillows of the couch and takes a puff. He likes this look for her—not necessarily just the joint between her teeth, but the relaxed lean in her posture, the half-lidded and comfortable glow in her eyes as she blows a bit of smoke out of the corner of her mouth.

He has already learned she’s not a person easily unwound, so to see her draped into a couch and smiling lazily at him is enough to fill him with warmth.

She passes him the joint, and he falls back into the couch alongside her as he takes a light hit. “Hi,” he murmurs.

“Hi,” she hums back. The once-familiar hazy din of the pot is already settling above his thoughts and he wants to kiss her so badly, but he’s not sure what she’s comfortable with in front of her friends. He gets his answer quickly though, because she soon closes the space between them. It’s a short kiss; something sweet, and more like a promise, but there all the same.

Hand-in-hand, Archie and Veronica arrive back at the couch just as they’re pulling apart and he tries his best to ignore the smug, satisfied look on Veronica’s face. “Yo, pass that,” Archie says, and Jughead complies. He takes too big a hit and coughs as he releases his smoke, trying to pass it on to Veronica, who declines.

“Not my thing,” she says, one hand held up and the other grasping a nearly empty wine glass. She seems a bit surprised when the joint is then offered to Betty, but more surprised still when she actually takes it. “Uh oh,” she says, amused. “You’re going to regret that.”

“No I won’t,” Betty insists, her eye rolls already becoming more exaggerated.

“I wasn’t talking to you, sweetie,” Veronica replies, glancing at Jughead. “Fair warning, Stoned Betty is a very Emotional Betty.”

“Okay, I don’t get emotional,” Betty scoffs, but it definitely sounds defensive.

Still addressing Jughead, Veronica says, “Last time she smoked pot, she lied on my floor, made me put on Fleetwood Mac while she silently stared at literally nothing, and then immediately spent half an hour crying at the memory of the time she accidentally stepped on a snail, or something.”

“You’re exaggerating.” She pauses. “It wasn’t a snail,” she tells her friend, but drops her head closer to Jughead, her eyes slightly glazed over. “But, I mean, thunder only happens when it’s raining! Isn’t that so beautiful, Juggie?”

She is absolutely already stoned, and he tells her as much, raising his eyebrows. She shushes him and shuffles closer so that she’s fully curled up besides him on the couch. He smirks, draping an arm around her shoulders while he takes another hit of the joint.

One of the things he’s always liked about weed is the body high; the tingling awareness of every inch of skin and the blood moving beneath it; the organs in his chest inhaling and exhaling to the beat of his nerves. With Betty next to him, it’s like that feeling magnified ten fold.

He can feel his heart plucking louder than ever, but the album has flipped. It’s a song he’s never heard.

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After they’ve passed the joint around to its last nib, Veronica says they have to get off the couch before they’re all forever fused to it, and insists they dance. Jughead laughs and says no way, but Betty is tugging on his arm and pulling him from the couch, all the while he tells her it’s not going to happen several times. Veronica twirls by her lonesome at what is clearly her favorite spot at the center of the room, and Jughead notes that she’s well past tipsy at this point.

“Oh, shit—hold on, I know what I’m going to play,” Archie says, and then scampers off. The music cuts for the briefest moment before being replaced by the one song Archie must know is sure to annoy him the most. The opening chords to Don’t Stop Believin’ filter through the room, and he groans loudly as Archie approaches them, his head bobbing.

“Boo,” Jughead drawls over the guitar intros, making Betty laugh. “How many bad pubs in Southie do you have to hear this song in before you’ll get sick of it?”

But Archie’s barely listening through his set of air drums. “You can take the boy out of Boston, but you can’t take the pub out of me!” And Jughead doesn’t have a moment to call out how little sense that makes before Archie breaks out into the first lines along with the song, “Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world!”

“Please, I will pay you to stop,” Jughead moans, but Archie is drunk, stoned, and deliberately lost in the song and just waves his pointer fingers in Jughead’s face as he sings, “She took the midnight train, going an-y-whe-e-ere!”

Suddenly, Veronica has thrown her arms around Archie and has joined him in belting out, “Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit! He took the midnight train going any-whe-e-e-re!”

“You two are a match made in hell,” he mutters, as Veronica drunkenly announces that she just loves to sing. A few people have moved into the circle, joining along with the lyrics, and he spots more getting up, even Dilton.

That’s the problem with this song, and really, why he hates it—other than the fact that Archie always puts it on whenever they’re near a jukebox—it’s the hypnotic spell it casts on every person in the vicinity wherein they’re physically incapable of not singing along like complete idiots.

While the first guitar solo takes over, he glances over at Betty by his side, biting her lip through a mischievous grin, and he realizes what’s coming next. “Not you too,” he sighs, but she’s already joined the crowd in their rendition of, “A singer in a smoky room, the smell of wine and cheap perfume!”

As the lyrics announce that for a smile they can share the night, Kevin appears out of nowhere and grabs Betty by the waist, dancing her out of Jughead’s grasp, while the beats of the instruments rise and Veronica and Archie start bouncing and singing the first chorus up at the ceiling. “Strangers! Waiting! Up and down the boule-e-e-vard!” 

Figures move between them like shadows on the wall, and as if in slow motion, the haze of pot and the faint buzz of beer in his eyes, he watches Betty throw her head back in laughter as Kevin dips her. He whispers something in her ear and she giggles even harder. The guitar swells and she looks so beautiful under the dim yellow light.

He has a thought that he cannot admit.

“Fuck it,” he mutters, striding through the swaying crowd to reach her just as the song buoyantly declares that they’re living just to find emotion and hiding somewhere in the night.

Kevin releases Betty in order to drag his boyfriend into the throng, and Jughead happily takes his place, one hand at her waist, the other grasping her hand. It’s possibly the magnetic build of the music, or maybe it’s just the room full of people spinning in circles and releasing the words into the air as their beers slosh around madly, or maybe it’s the pot, or the delight in Betty’s eyes when he touches her, but he finds himself joining in.

“Working hard to get my fill, everybody wants a thrill!” 

Archie whoops and hollers in loud approval when he hears Jughead’s voice in the fray and Veronica’s arms are waving in the air above her, and Betty is dancing with him, their fingers laced, and he loses his voice to the song. “You know the words, after all!” Betty laughs, as he rolls his eyes. 

“Every single person in the country knows the words to this song, Betts,” he says, trying to sigh and appear appropriately brooding, but then the lyrics surge again and the attempt is lost. 

“Some will win, some will lose! Some were born to sing the blues!” They all collectively belt it out at the top of their lungs, practically screaming this goofy, cheesy, terrible, bonding-with-strangers type of music that he definitely hates, except as he twirls Betty in his arms, he thinks he understands the appeal a bit more.

Another guitar solo runs through them and the room is alive with energy. He feels at once so one with the crowd—an unfamiliar feeling, to say the least—and equally alone with just Betty as she moves against him in an entirely new way; with utter, bubbling joy, her ponytail bouncing with her. The song urges everyone to don’t stop believing and to hold onto that feeling and that the movie never ends because it goes on and on, and on, and on—

And he agrees, especially as the moment pulls back and becomes fisheyed, just like the reflection in a bubble twenty years ago.

He spins her again, and the moment goes on and on, and on, and on.

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The playlist is clearly Archie’s, because the music that follows next is a procession of the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and otherwise vague, crowd-pleasing bar music—including one that leads to a terrible rendition of the song Come On Eileen. And despite having exercised his limit of what might be considered dancing, he has to admit he’s having a good time, even as the pot wears off.

Eventually, and with considerable effort on her behalf given her height, Veronica slings her arms over both Archie and Jughead’s shoulders and informs them that they’re low on beer and would they please go get more and that there’s a liquor store just around the corner and please again.

Betty throws him a worried look, clearly not sure what his limits are, but he just kisses her on the cheek and assures her it’s really fine, following Archie out the door.

“Sorry I’ve been self-imposed as persona non grata lately,” Jughead says, as they meet the late spring night air. “I’ve just been…busy. Writing.”

“Uh huh,” Archie muses. “Is that what you’re gonna call it?”

“Shut up,” he says, shoving Archie in the shoulder just hard enough that he stumbles a bit. “I mean, yeah though. I’ve been with Betty.”

Archie waggles his eyebrows. “So I heard from Veronica, who heard from Betty. Sounds like it’s going well, dude.”

It is, he thinks. He looks up at the dark sky and nearly imagines something translucent wiggling overhead, a bubble blown too big. They reach the liquor store, and he is almost thankful for the harsh white light of the fluorescent bulbs, because it feels like a dousing relief from the fog and warmth leftover from the party. He hangs back while Archie selects a few six packs and pays and then they’re on their way back to the apartment.

“Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been hanging out with Veronica a lot too,” Archie says, grunting as he redistributes the weight of the beers in his arms. Jughead offers to take some, but Archie says he hasn’t been working out lately and that it’ll be good for him. “So it’s okay, dude.”

“Yeah, I just figure we get to see each other all the time, so I didn’t think it was really a big deal,” Jughead sighs. “And we’ll have the drive to Chicago, and back in Boston, and so on.”

Archie doesn’t say anything, and at first Jughead thinks it’s because he’s still trying to figure out the best way to carry all the beers. But then he realizes that Archie has put them down entirely, even though they’re still a block away from Veronica’s.

“Uh, about that,” he says slowly, scratching at his temple. “I have something I gotta tell you.”

“Gee, that’s not ominous at all,” Jughead tries to chuckle, but Archie’s face is rarely serious and it makes him hesitate.

“It’s good news,” Archie says quickly. “It’s… Okay, so I think I’m not going to go to Chicago. I can see my mom another time, and I wanna spend a bit more time with Ronnie here.”

Jughead sighs, because honestly he’s been expecting something like this for a while. Archie is already self-described as head over heels for Veronica and it’s definitely not unlike his best friend to throw away time with him in favor of a girl. And besides, he’d probably be extending his own trip if there weren’t such a specific reason for why he himself has to leave, so he can’t judge. Not really sure why he’d label that good news, but it is Archie, after all.

“Alright,” he says. “We wouldn’t really have had much time to do anything except drive, since we’ve been here so long. I get it. It’s cool.”

He turns to go, thinking that’s the end of it, but Archie is still rooted to the spot. “There’s something else too,” he says tentatively. “So…uh, I’m gonna move to LA.”

Jughead blinks, sure he’s heard him wrong. “You’re—you’re going to what?”

“I’m going to move to LA,” Archie repeats, much firmer now.

He stares at him, and then starts to laugh, even as his stomach sinks low. “What the fuck, Arch, no you’re not.”

“Yes, I am,” he insists, his voice growing stronger. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and…it just finally seems like the right moment.”

“You’ve been thinking about it for a while?” Jughead repeats, scoffing derisively. “Yeah, okay, sure. Then why haven’t I ever heard you mention it before?”

“Because—” Archie hesitates, but seems emboldened by the mocking scowl on Jughead’s face. “Because I know I’m, like, your only friend, and I didn’t know how you’d take it.”

“You’re not my only friend,” Jughead spits, even though it’s probably true. Really though, who else does he ever hang out with? He ended things with Ethel amicably enough, and he sees her sometimes, but probably not enough to consider her a friend. Does he even count Reggie, especially if their friendship requires Archie’s presence to bring them together?

“Look, I’ve been telling you for a while that I’m, like, at a wall with work. I can’t keep doing these stupid local commercials forever, it’s really bumming me out. My industry is mostly in LA, and if I’m there, I can try to do songs for TV or movies, or something,” he says in a placating voice, and Jughead hates that Archie actually has a valid point. But then he adds, “And…you know, with Veronica moving there, it just seems like the right time.”

Jughead releases a choked laugh and throws a hand into the air. “There we go. You know, you almost had me there, trying to justify this as a career move. Jesus, this is ridiculous, even for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Archie says, his voice rising.

“I’ve been watching you pull shit like this my whole life, Arch. ‘Sorry Jughead, I can’t go to the Yankees game your dad saved up for because Pepper just really needs to see me,’ or, ‘Actually, Jug, I think I’m going to apply to Berklee School of Music because Valerie said she was.’ Take your fucking pick. You make these impulsive life decisions because of some girl you barely know, and then you’re completely confused at what went wrong when it blows up in your face!”

“I—okay, I applied to Berklee because of Val, but I went there because I love music, okay?” Archie is yelling now. “And fuck off, because none of that’s the same, because I love Veronica!”

Jughead slaps his hand hard across his forehead. “Jesus Christ—you can’t love her, you don’t even know her!” He yells, but as he hears the words come out, they sound oddly like a lie.

“Oh, yeah? What the hell do you know about it, Jug?” Archie snaps, his arms crossed. “You’ve never even been in love! Because you’re too much of a coward to ever try!”

“I’m not a coward,” he hisses, even as he feels as though he’s been sucker punched. A car drives by, the headlights passing over them as Jughead’s chest begins to stutter. He’s not a coward, he’s got issues. There’s a difference. Right?

“Yes, you fucking are,” Archie seethes. “Or it wouldn’t have taken you a million years to make a move on Betty when you were so clearly into her from the start. I mean, dude, have you even told her that you like her yet?”

“I—” Jughead feels all the words and breath leave his lungs all at once. “She knows I like her.”

“Have you actually told her that, though?” Archie scoffs. “Because Veronica said that Betty was really confused about what you wanted.”

He inhales sharply, indignation surging. “What the hell, do you guys talk about us? It’s none of your fucking business what—”

“Veronica was just asking because she wanted to look out for Betty, because she’s a good friend and a kind, protective person,” Archie interrupts, scowling madly. “And the woman I love.”

“You’ve known her for three weeks!” Jughead yells, almost delirious with exasperation. “You cannot love her! It doesn’t work like that!”

“Tell me how it works, then,” he snarls. “Go ahead. Enlighten your much stupider friend with a-a-all you know about love.”

His mouth opens and closes once. “It…takes work, and time—you—you compromise and grow, you don’t just—”

“That’s just a relationship,” Archie interrupts, smug with dark satisfaction for the moment wherein he understands something that Jughead doesn’t. “Love is the feeling when you look at someone, or how you feel when they walk in a room. It’s the way I know I’m not ready to say goodbye to her. You’d know that, if you ever even tried.”

He realizes Archie is right, and it sends his blood boiling. That kind of love is the thing one he’s always craved and all the while justified not looking for because it always felt so unattainably complicated, like a riddle with no end, and it cannot be that obvious or that simple. It just can’t.

He wants to punch Archie.

“Fuck you,” he says instead, and because he can’t admit to anything else. Jughead turns on his heel and storms away, with no destination in mind as long as it’s far fucking away from Archie and his childish fantasies about love and life.

“Yeah, well, fuck you too!” Archie shouts at his back.

His feet carry him past Veronica’s apartment, past Pop’s, past the turn off for Betty’s street, and onwards into the night. He stomps up the stairs to his motel room and slams the door shut loudly behind him, his fist punching uselessly once at the wall when that doesn’t satisfy him. He curses loudly and slides down onto the floor.

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Later, he realizes he never actually popped the bubble.

In the end, Archie did.

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