Everything Jeronica

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This goes on for a few weeks.

After the first few days, they call a truce on the writing on faces thing, after Jughead demonstrates that he can absolutely give as good as he gets. They stick to insults, usually written on the inside of their left arms. Jughead has never been one for writing on himself before, so when his roommate Archie sees the absolute mess of ink, of course, he asks about it.

“Did you exchange addresses?” he asks, once he’s done freaking out about how exciting it is that Jughead’s been talking to his soulmate.

“Are you kidding?” Jughead asks. “I’m not telling this bitch where I live. Look!” Jughead holds out his arm indignantly, indicating the bright red ink. “She called me a bitchface!”

“…It looks like you called her a bitchface first,” Archie says, in a calming and reasonable tone that hasn’t the slightest effect.

“Yes! I did! She stole my word!” Jughead complains.

Archie shakes his head and tells him that whoever Red is, they’re perfect for each other.

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Jughead’s actually starting to agree with that. By this point, he doesn’t mean any of his insults, and he knows Red doesn’t either. It’s mostly just a contest to see who can be the most creative. Plus, Red is willing to play hangman throughout the entirety of Jughead’s incredibly boring economics class, and you can’t hate anyone who’d do that.

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About three weeks after the maths homework fiasco, Jughead can’t sleep. At two in the morning, he steals Archie’s rainbow of markers and starts writing and drawing all over himself. Jughead’s not the world’s best artist, but he can draw dinosaurs and dragons and stick figure people pretty well. He finally collapses at about five, at which point his entire body is covered in drawings.

He dreams that his soul mate is seven feet tall and absolutely enormous and all of Jughead’s drawings become awkwardly stretched out on her body and she decides she never wants to meet Jughead because Jughead is so bad at art.

Jughead sleeps straight through his alarm. He then has to take an incredibly careful shower so as not to wash off either his drawings or Red’s comments on them. As a result, he ends up nearly late to maths, which is at one in the afternoon. The classroom is almost full when he gets there, so he has to sit in the back. He picks a seat to the left of a (very attractive) dark-haired girl just as the professor starts talking.

Jughead normally pays attention in class, but he’s almost instantly distracted by the rainbow drawn on the back of the girl’s left hand. Jughead glances at his own rainbow, at the girl’s, back at his.

Okay, there’s a better way to test this. He sets his pencil down and goes rummaging through his bag for a pen, but he’s left all the pens at home in his rush to get to class on time.

He nudges the raven-haired girl. “Do you have a pen I can borrow?”

“You have a pencil right there,” Jughead’s potential soulmate grumbles. Oh yeah, this is definitely her. Matching drawings and matching rudeness.

“I need a pen,” Jughead insists.

The girl rolls her eyes and then pulls out a red Sharpie. “This is all I’ve got.”

“Thanks.” Jughead takes it, uncaps it, and turns away from her. He then writes, Hi :) underneath his own rainbow, and looks around at the girl’s hand.

It’s there.

“Ha!” Jughead says.

A few heads turn. Jughead looks as innocent as he can until everyone, except Red, turns away again.

Red snatches the Sharpie from him.

Hi, bitchface, she replies underneath Jughead’s message. Jughead is about to kick her, but she keeps writing. I’m Veronica. Want to get coffee after this?

She offers Jughead the marker.