#riverdalepromptathonweek3

It’s not the fastest revenue stream, Jughead finds. But it’s got potential.

Initially, Dilton doesn’t let him sell during the Twilight Drive-In’s concession stand hours. Before or after the movie, sure, but no overlap. “I’m not worried about competition, Jones. It’s just too humiliating for me to watch you sweat through that horrible yellow polo you call ‘branding.’”

But when customers asked him more than twice a night when the banana stand would be open, Dilton caved.

It’s not like being open during the screening hours is a whole lot more preferable. He only just transferred from Southside to Riverdale High last spring; now he’s the rising senior who hands out phallic symbols from inside a giant phallic symbol. Not exactly a boon to his popularity.

Still, recently the money is enough to pay the internet bill and keep JB fed for dinner when she can’t go to the summer breakfast and lunch program at the local park district. It’s still not enough for him to eat particularly well, and the smell of hot dogs and slurp of his classmates’ slushies makes the heat feel like a minor inconvenience.

He eyes the tip jar, willing himself to wait on rampaging the concession stand until the beginning of the film roar dies down. It’s a double feature tonight, which means maybe he can score enough cash to cover those damn college application fees his counselor will start hounding him about week one of school.

Then he sees her—Betty Cooper. She’s laughing, watching Archie Andrews try to catch popcorn in his mouth, tossed by his paramour, Veronica Lodge. She pauses to sip from her slushie straw, her lips—which he’s watched argue against homophobic and racist comments in their advanced lit class, or pressed to the cheek of her other best friend, Kevin Keller. Which he’s imagined, doing slightly less savory things, though the mere thought of said imagining has his heart pounding wildly.

(Jughead’s been eating way too many fucking bananas. Someone needs to check his potassium levels.)

His absolutely pathetic gaze, once available three times a day in their shared classes where Jughead has still not managed to exert any confidence whatsoever regarding speech, eye contact, or general acknowledgement of Betty Cooper’s existence other than whatever drooling may or may not be happening, all of which he finds he has no control over… is all interrupted by the absolute polar opposite of Betty Cooper. Hiram Lodge zooms up to the banana stand on his segway, angling to a stop just before taking out the stand’s foundation.

“Still getting a hang of that, Mayor Lodge?”

Hiram grimaces. “Just checking that you’ve renewed your business permit, Jones.”

They do this once a week. It’s still the same permit.

“You know,” Hiram starts as Jughead rustles for the paperwork to make him go the fuck away, “I could find you an arrangement with a better banana supplier. For a discount. If you’re interested.”

Jughead rolls his eyes. “I’m not interested in your GMO, black market bananas, Hiram.”

Hiram gives him a pointed look. Jughead rolls his eyes even harder. “Mayor Lodge.” He proffers the papers, Hiram waves them away. “I’ll take one chocolate peanut butter dip. With peanuts.”

Jughead kisses his teeth. “That will be $3.50.”

Hiram’s whole face goes serpentine. “Not between business partners, Jones. Put it on my tab.”

Jughead grits his teeth, handing the finished banana so aggressively he hopes that the chocolate splatters and stains Hiram’s $500 tie. It is only slightly worth it to watch Hiram struggle with navigating the segway one-handed, frozen banana in the other.

He muffles a chuckle before realizing he’s used the dead end of the chopped peanut topping, and exits the stand to update the order board hanging on the outside. It’s mostly an excuse to feel a ten degree drop in temperature, a sweet relief he might be able to extend by grabbing a hot dog before the intermission rush.

He’s crossing off peanuts from the topping list and spinning around when he hears a shriek and a sudden, cold slosh across his chest. The yellow polo drips with artificial blue slushie, but Jughead swallows his fucking hell when he sees that the shriek, gaping stare of horror, and stumble in question all belong to his very own blonde kryptonite.

“Oh my god. Oh my GOD, jesus, shit, I’m so sorry!”

Jughead is frozen while Betty grabs about half his napkin dispenser and starts pawing at his shirt in a vain attempt to right the giant sticky blue mess all over his chest.

Finally, Jughead swallows the golf ball in his throat and chokes out. “Honestly, it’s fine. That stand is a sauna. I needed that.”

Betty stops, both her blotting and her stream of apologizing (which includes a fair bit of cursing, and he is a little revolted with himself by how much this turns him on).

“It’s going to get very sticky, soon. Maybe I should buy a bottle of cold water?”

Jughead can’t help himself. “Oh, impromptu yellow t-shirt contest?”

Betty grins.

I did that.

“Do you have any employees who could bring you another shirt?”

Jughead shakes his head. “Just my sister. She’s playing video games at home. There’s no earthly way she’ll bring me a spare.”

Betty cocks her head. “I had a feeling you were more than the silent back row kind of guy.”

The fact that Betty Cooper has, at any point, considered what kind of guy he is triggers full-on nervous blathering. “I’m usually very tired at school. I have this little sister—but I’m kind of um, her guardian. So I’m doing this stupid banana stand thing because it’s like one of the three assets to our entire family name I guess? Anyway, it’s hard to engage with Haggly’s basic discussion questions at eight in the morning when you spent the whole night dreaming about wholesale banana margins.”

He’s essentially vomiting words, but Betty is still smiling.

“Anyway, I should crawl back into my fruit-shaped purgatory and let you go back to your friends.”

She’s biting her lip, hedging. “Honestly, they’re probably using the alone time to make out in the car, and I’d rather let them get all their sexual tension out so that I don’t have to feel it radiating off of them for the whole second half of the double feature.”

Jughead laughs and tamps down the impulse to offer her a frozen banana, because he cannot possibly say something like that without making it sound sexual.

“What are frozen banana profit margins like, anyway?” Betty asks, either genuinely interested or legitimately flirting with him. Jughead finds both potentials baffling.

Jughead hesitates, then ducks inside the stand, pulling out his spiral bound notebook. “I’m still kind of figuring it out. All my records are in here.”

Betty sidles up to the stand, taking up the whole window. They’re both leaning over the scribbled line items on college ruled paper; he can smell her shampoo. She takes the notebook, scanning thoroughly.

“Do you have a pencil?”

He hands her one and observes her going to work, writing out some algebraic formula and calculating quickly in her head. There is a calculator within his reach, but he thinks handing it to her might come off as an insult. (Jughead wouldn’t know; he assumes Betty is in an advanced math class. Jughead is not.)

After a few minutes of watching her devoted focus, thinking about her hands touching his pencil, thinking about her hands wrapped around his hand, or his—

“I don’t know how to tell this to you, Jug.”

The shortening of his name stops his heart for a jolt, and his response is embarrassingly delayed. “What is it?”

Betty winces but smiles through it, a combination she’s surely learned to use when delivering bad news. It’s well earned, it really does soften the blow.

“There’s no money in the banana stand. At least, not with these margins.”

Jughead finds himself less than devastated by this news, mostly because it makes a hell of a lot of sense. The messenger doesn’t hurt, either.

“But,” she interrupts. “I don’t know if you’ve nailed down your course load for senior year. But I’m taking AP Econ? This could be, um, a good project. Like, if you want to take the class. Or even if you don’t. Not that you’re like a project or… whatever. I’m just saying we could figure it out. Make lemonade out of… bananas.”

Betty Cooper is extremely cute when she stammers.

Jughead doesn’t know what to do, so he gives her an easy out. “I can’t like, hire you, if that wasn’t obvious by the whole… deficit spending or whatever the whole negative circled number at the bottom of the page really means.”

She flushes. “No, that would be highway robbery. I just thought there might be an… opportunity. For um, us. I mean, for you and I. I mean—” she clears her throat, as if it’s closing up. “An academic opportunity. Or, in your case, professional. Well, a betterment of your livelihood. Okay, um, shit, just… I should go!”

She turns away, her face the deepest scarlet he’s ever seen.

“Betty, wait.”

She pivots back, eyes down at the ground.

“How about I buy you a new slushie and you come back into the booth. Tell me everything I’m doing wrong for the rest of the night.”

Betty looks up, biting the corner of her smile. “Sounds like a deal.”

“She did. But I was very hungry, Jughead. I don’t think you are gonna understand. Mom says we shouldn’t eat anything after dessert otherwise it’s gonna make my tummy grow bigger but I am really hungry, Jug. I couldn’t sleep,” Betty rambles as she paces in the small space of the kitchen, her eyebrows scrunched together and lips pursed tightly. “Also you shouldn't be up too. If you are gonna rat me out, we both are gonna go down together. And I am sure you wouldn't want that.”

“Betts. It’s okay. It’s alright. I won’t rat you out,” he chuckles, holding his hands up in faux-surrender. “Come on. I’ll show you my midnight secret snack stash.” He takes her cold, clammy hands in his warmer ones.

Betty looks up into his eyes and her face lighting up. “Y-you would do that for me?”

“Of course, Betts. You are my best friend. Come on now,” he pulls her towards the last shelf in the corner of the kitchen, beside the refrigerator, as he bends down to reach inside and pulls out arms filled with mini cereal packets, Rice Krispie treats, pretzels, candy bars, and a jar of peanut butter.

Betty looks up at him with mirth as he motions for her to pick whatever she likes. They giggle and devour one-fourth of his extensive inventory of snacks in the next hour. 

“If you don’t mind me asking, why do you even have a midnight secret snack stash in the Andrews’ kitchen? How does Mrs. Andrews not know about this?” Betty asks, biting into a sugar-coated pretzel.

“I have my ways.” Jughead smiles back up at her and stuffs a marshmallow covered in peanut butter at which Betty scrunched her nose. “And I am nothing but perceptive, Betts. I know I always get hungry two hours after dinner. I just didn’t expect you to.”

“This isn’t a common occurrence, Jones. Not everyone has your metabolism of digesting the entire town’s worth of calorie counts and still look the way you do.”

“Well then maybe I should start eating like you to look as good as you then.”

Betty throws one of her pretzels at him and looks down with reddened cheeks trying to tame the unfamiliar fluttering in her stomach.

After they're done, he safely places all of the remaining snacks back into the cupboard he had retrieved them from while he tucks the peanut butter jar under his arms.

“What are you gonna do with that?”

“Backup. In case you get hungry again because I know I will. The golden two-hour rule.” He grins back at her.

She scrunches up her nose in disgust at the thought of consuming peanut butter straight from the jar. Desperate times call for desperate measures but she has her boundaries too.

“Honestly, you are kinda weird.”

“Took you long enough to find that out.” He begins walking towards the garage opening the backdoor.

“Jughead! What are you doing? We need to get back in bed. Now.” Betty crosses her arms across her chest and taps her foot on the ground

“I just need to watch ten minutes of the midnight news and weather forecast to get over my impending sugar rush. We can head back to bed after that,” Jughead says as he continues his way towards the garage.

“Wait for me!” she says as she trails behind him.

Hours later, Mr. Andrews finds them on the couch in the garage after ten minutes of worrying about kidnapped kids and amber alerts. He huffs in relief and can’t help smiling at their entangled limbs barely hanging off the couch and Jughead’s yellow blanket draped over them. 

“They grow up so quick.”

She sees the uniforms now for what they are: a little chintzy, a little sexist. None of her servers have to wear one. A shirt and slacks are equally acceptable.

But the dresses stay for those who want them, and she still feels a little thrill of satisfaction every time she fastens the little white buttons over her chest.

      The second thing she decides to keep is the jukebox.

Taking the helm of her family’s legacy was not an endeavor that Tabitha had entered into lightly. She’d done her homework. Decades of market research on the service industry had been gathered since the last time Grandpop refreshed his menu, and while the residents of Riverdale might be willing to pay $5 for a creamy, hand-poured milkshake, they were statistically likely to order more of them for $4.99.

So she knew that she stood to make more money by updating the jukebox. The modern touchscreen types took credit cards, and had nearly unlimited selection. Even Tabitha couldn’t name half of the artists whose long-forgotten hits filled up the carousel at Pop’s, and she didn’t expect their patrons to carry around pockets full of coins when she’d never do the same herself.

In the end, though, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Sure, the diner was in desperate need of some upgrades – seat cushions that weren’t all splitting at the seams, for starters, and tabletops free from cracks.

But the jukebox was more than a decoration. It was the soundtrack to so many memories of her own – standing on her grandfather’s toes while he swung her around the empty diner, laughing with her parents as they all danced the twist one last time before hitting the road for home – and so many memories she didn’t even know about, that belonged to people she’d never met, who might nonetheless think of it fondly every now and again, just like she did.

And so the jukebox stays, and anyone who wants to can borrow a quarter from the cup on the counter to play their favorite song.

      The third thing she decides to keep is Jughead Jones.

The first time she heard – or rather, saw – his name, she was probably fourteen or fifteen years old. By then, her parents had stopped taking her to Riverdale every year; they were too busy with work, and Tabitha had to study if she was going to stay at the top of her class, and couldn’t Dad take a week off to come see his family for once instead of the other way around?

But it was summertime, and they weren’t taking a beach vacation this year because her mother and father both had big, overlapping client meetings to prepare for. Instead they’d packed up the car and driven out to Riverdale for a few days. She’d been picking at a grilled cheese sandwich while her parents argued over whether it was finally time to trade in their car for a newer model when she noticed a photo on the wall beside their booth that wasn’t there before.

The photo was of a pale teenage boy, slightly scruffy-looking, wearing a weird gray hat covered in pins. Apparently he’d broken a Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe record by eating eleven hamburgers in one sitting. There was a smudge of ketchup on his chin, and he wasn’t smiling.

Jughead Jones, it said beneath the accolades. The name stuck with her. How could it not?

When he shuffles through the diner’s front doors one sunny afternoon years later, and then stops, staring at a booth occupied by two women, she doesn’t make the connection. Not until Grandpop spots him, bustling out of the kitchen to greet this slouching, surly man with the warmest welcome she’s ever seen him give anyone other than herself.

Without really knowing why, she finds herself offering him a job. She could use the help, and he could clearly use the money, so it works out.

What’s more: she finds that she likes him, this strange, adult version of the strange boy whose photograph still hangs on the wall. Behind the scowl there’s curiosity. Empathy. A willingness to get his hands dirty. He has a sense of humor.

He seems to like her, too.

Jughead is not without fault. He drinks – often. Sometimes on the job. He has a habit of spiraling down long, rhetorical rabbit holes. One afternoon he disappears in the middle of a shift without warning or explanation; later, she finds a full tray of cold cuts wedged into the fridge.

When she kisses him, he doesn’t kiss back, and when he tells her why, he can’t meet her eyes.

She tells herself it’s for the best. She signed up to rescue a failing business, not a flailing human. Sometimes it’s not her choice, which things she gets to keep.

But when he looks at her and his mouth quirks up at the side and he says just friends in that particular way of his – she wants to. She does.

And if he decides to stay –

she’ll let him.

Little Archie picks up a yellow marker -his favourite colour- and draws his house, with the porch and the tree, and then himself, Betty and Jug under a shed with a sign that reads “Betty and Jughead’s GreaTest DeeTectivs Ever! – Head-Quarters of THE ReD PaLLadi” (spelling isn’t Archie’s strong suit). The three of them had spent all summer hunting down thieves and spies and up-to-no-good villains: Betty and Jughead making up clues and then following them and Archie -dressed-up as his favourite comic book hero- pursuing their imaginary adversaries.

One week into their games, they’d commandeered the Andrews’ garden shed. Archie had created a sign for their headquarters, Betty had made Archie a red cape, and Jughead had brought Betty 10 square pieces of paper. They’d seemed completely blanc and kind of crinkled, as if someone had dripped water all over them. Maybe they were a new clue for their game? When Archie had turned to Betty for help, he’d found her practically vibrating on the spot, fists clenched tight in front of her mouth, green eyes big as saucers, darting from the bits of paper in Jughead’s hand to his face and back excitedly. “Are they … Did you … Is it … Is this sympathetic ink, Juggie?!” she had whisper-shouted. At Jughead’s nod, she’d let an ear-splitting squeal and launched herself on him. She had hugged Jug real tight, probably crashing his ribs, because Archie still remembers that Jughead had looked rather red in the face.

Betty had then clasped both their hands and dragged them inside the house to ask for help with the hot iron (“please, please, please, Mrs Andrews!”) so that they would read what apparently were “Business cards, Archie! In invisible ink! Aren’t they The. Best. EVER?!?!”

Archie hadn’t really got what the big deal was but his mom had seemed quite charmed.

…

From the corner of his eye, Pop observes as little Jughead Jones keeps tally of the empty plates that Kathy brings back to the diner’s kitchen. It’s the first time he’s done this and Pop can’t make head or tails of it. Usually, when Gladys parks Jughead by the counter late in the afternoon, with one order of fries and another one to behave while she takes care of “things” for the next three to four hours, the little guy keeps busy reading books or writing in his notebook.

One hamburger and one chocolate milkshake later (“I made the wrong order, how silly of me! Won’t you help with these, Jug?”), Jughead confesses that he wants to make business cards for his and Betty’s Detective Agency with lemon juice. He explains excitedly the inner workings of heat fixed ink and timidly asks if he could use the half-squished lemons from when Kathy brings back the dirty dishes, since the lemons are going to be thrown out anyway. Pop’s heart does a little half-squish of its own. The glass he brings Jughead is, of course, full with fresh juice, even if he’s not telling him that.

Jughead spends the next two hours cutting little square “cards” from his notebook and writing on them using a brush he fashions out of a straw and a bit of paper napkin. At first, he tries to write “Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones” but it’s too long for the little bits of paper, so, he changes gears, and goes for a fluffy curl that looks like an “s” and something resembling a crown. He excitedly informs Pop that it’s Betty’s ponytail and his own hat. It’s even better than their names, he tells him, because lemon juice is yellow and Betty’s hair is blond, and this makes it a perfect match. Pop’s heart does the little half-squish again but for a different reason.

When the roar of Gladys’ Honda CB550 can be heard from the Diner’s parking lot, he claps Jughead on the back and tells him to go charm his girl. Jughead’s ears grow hot under his beanie.

…

Eloping, thinks Jughead, as he unbuttons the front of Betty’s dress, has been his best idea yet. The pale violet-blue material (“Something new and something blue” Betty had winked earlier at the City Clerk’s Office) parts to reveal a soft butter yellow bra over flushed flesh. Tucked at the place where the cup meets the strap are folded little pieces of paper. Jughead slides an inquisitive finger under the lace and traces the length of the strap to pluck the odd accessory. It takes him a few seconds to recognize the Betty and Jughead’s Greatest Detectives Ever! invisible-ink business cards of their childhood. These days their info is printed on 12pt cream card stock with black museo sans font that simply reads Cooper & Jones, Private Investigators. Betty’s smiling. “My something old” she whispers. “Charming” he smirks back. She makes his heart swell and his dick harden, and usually Jughead’s a bit more eloquent, even in thought, but he’s feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. So, he takes Betty’s face in his hands, the gold ring on his finger warm on their skin, and kisses her tenderly. And then he kisses her hard.