A River In Egypt
By: Raptorlily❤

Note: Originally written as a tag to Episode 1.05

"I'm thinking we should get a panel van," Jughead announces abruptly, interrupting the concentrated quiet of the newsroom. "How about it, Bets? Paint it sky blue, some hippie flowers, a splash of obnoxious orange..."

Betty doesn't look up from her laptop, doesn't stop typing. "Our very own Riverdale 'Mystery Machine,' you mean?"

"Yeah, that's got a ring to it," he agrees, pretending like he's considering it all for the first time. "We could get a dog for a mascot. I hear great things about the Great Danes..."

He doesn't need to look over to see Betty's expression. He knows she's rolling her eyes, that there's amusement tucked into one corner of her mouth. It's a small offering but it releases a puff of warmth into the room, like a flash fire.

"Get back to work, Velma," she jokes and Jughead grins and returns to the outline he's prepping.

Normally, he doesn't object to silence. Or going unacknowledged for too long. He's a loner by nature. Making an ass of himself to catch the attention of a pretty girl isn't the kind of drum he likes to beat often. Or ever. But Betty isn't just a girl. Betty is just… Betty. And, in the wake of everything that has been happening with her lately, he can't resist the urge to check her pulse every now and again.

Because brooding and tortured is not Betty Cooper's style.

Then again, neither is going five minutes without bringing up Archie Andrews.

It was funny. Jughead spent literal years watching her not-so-secretly pine after Captain Oblivious, sometimes taking pity and offering a few comforting words when the elephant in the room became too suffocating a presence. On more than one occasion, he thought about putting her out of her misery and talking to the big dope on her behalf. Archie was his best friend, after all. Maybe he could have opened his eyes, made him see that a caring, smart and beautiful girl was hopelessly in love with him.

And yet, somehow, Jug could never bring himself to say anything.

He tells himself it's because dating and boy-girl politics had never been any kind of priority. Neither is football or lacrosse or whatever cliché thing separates the popular kids from the weirdos these days. While the other boys were tugging on pigtails and tossing pigskins, Jug was going through his John Huston phase. In middle school, it was the Coen brothers, then Tarantino. While everyone around him was in a hurry to grow up recklessly and free, Jug shunned the chaos and reached for the safety in structure, in rhythms, in narratives that made sense. And if John Hughes ever taught him anything about coming of age, it was that young love was supposedly sweetest in its torture and anticipation.

Betty seemed to agree. She always enjoyed those kinds of films too. Curling up with blankets in the back of Uncle Herman's pick-up truck, back when the Twilight was a regular Saturday night occurrence and the whole town would come out to schmooze. Whenever Archie was on a date with someone-not-Betty, the two of them would sit together and eat corndogs and she'd tell him how sorry she felt for John Cryer and Mary Sue Masterson and all the Unlucky Childhood Friends of the eighties and the unspoken fear that she'd end up one of them.

As if she were somehow the Duckie Dale in this scenario.

He knew that eventually, she'd tell him. Or, Archie would somehow come to his senses on his own. Maybe. Possibly. But eventually their stories were bound to converge. It was a narrative inevitability. The town golden boy and the girl-next-door. Childhood friends turned high school and then college sweethearts. Married young in suburbia with two point five kids, a dog and an American Four-Square. It all seemed so alarmingly foreseeable that there was no need for him to get involved—even if passive and detached hadn't always been his M.O.

At best, Jug figured he'd end up their eccentric writer/high school buddy that would come over for Sunday dinner and overstay his welcome on their couch. The friend they'd worry about, try to set up on dates, try to convince to get a real job.

At worst (and more than likely) they'd simply drift apart. Not every childhood friendship survived high school, after all. Jug had already started seeing less and less of Betty ever since quippy Kevin Keller rolled into town. Then, in freshman year, when Archie came to terms with the fact that he'd never make the grade and decided to throw in for football as a potential ride to college, Jug started seeing less of him too. Now there were other friends, other interests. Archie stopped returning calls. Started bailing on plans. Slowly, slowly, it became apparent where their narrative was taking them. That road-trip over the July 4th weekend was a last-ditch effort to scoop their friendship out of the proverbial toilet and instead, Archie hit the equally proverbial flush bar.

Jug hadn't expected a way back to either of them after that. Not when Archie didn't even bother with apologizing. Not when he didn't make any effort to even see him at all that summer. And certainly not when mom took Jellybean and high-tailed it across state and Jug was left to grapple with an alcoholic father and abandonment issues all by his onesies. No, after that, his forgiveness was short in supply.

So was hope.

But then…

Well.

Funny how Jason's death seemed to reshuffle the deck. With everything, with everyone. Like Riverdale was suddenly a different town, a different story.

Or maybe it always had been and they'd never noticed.

Jughead's eyes flick over to where Betty is seated across the room. There's a tiny crease between her brows, her lips pinched together in a pout. It seems like ever since Archie broke her heart, she'd been going through her own Capote in Kansas episode. These days, it seems like the two of them are the only ones who seem to care that there's still a murderer on the loose. Everyone else seems is almost too willing to pretend like nothing is going on.

J. Murphy Christ. Of all the ways Jughead imagined was going to spend this year...

She doesn't look up from her laptop screen. "You're staring at me," she says, then adds that teasing lilt to her voice: "That's not work."

"You better believe it." He mangles his mouth into a grin. "You've always been easy on the eyes, Betts."

Betty blinks up at him in surprise and then ducks her head and breaks into a shy smile. And that's the other thing. He'd always been openly complimentary with her before, back when they were kids, back when that sort of thing was harmless and innocent.

Back when Archie was a more of an omnipresent buffer between them.

Because now that he isn't, the reflex suddenly doesn't feel so harmless and innocent anymore. Now there's possibility. Now there's hope.

And Jughead is shit with hope.

And Betty blushing pinker than her sweater and looking away isn't doing anyone any favors either. "You're being so ridiculous right now. We have a print deadline in just under an hour."

"Relax, Cooper. Think I'd be flirting with you if I wasn't done? I just sent you an email."

Her green eyes flick back to her laptop screen. She clicks the keypad and gives a curt nod. "Oh, right. I got it."

There is a tiny pause. Her lower lip pouts outward again in a soft, pink crescent as she seems to be considering something.

And then:

"Are you flirting with me?"

It's almost hopeful. Almost.

Jughead's heart throbs once, twice, and then picks up speed like a stone skittering down a hill. Because again, he's shit with hope. His, hers, anybody's.

So instead, he takes the opportunity to take a long quaff of his cold coffee. The caffeine will do nothing for his already erratic heart rate whenever she's around, but it's an adjustment he's learned to take in stride over the years. Food has always shuttled all his uncomfortable impulses back into more manageable grooves and alcoves.

When he finishes, he's refreshed enough to attempt flippancy: "Please, Betty. I flirt indiscriminately. I'm a cad. A rake. A scoundrel." He waggles his brows at her. "That's old speak for bad boy, B.T.W. I hear-tell the ladies love those."

The crease between Betty's brows deepens, but whatever mild tension that her question hung between them breaks when she huffs out a laugh. "Sometimes I have a hard time knowing if you're being serious or not."

That's the idea, Jughead thinks. Promises are better side-stepped than broken and he hands out his sarcasm like parking lot flyers, there to be discarded.

Outwardly, he thumbs his nose at her and guns his fingers with a wink. "When in doubt—never serious."

Because he can never be sure; he'll always be wondering if Betty still thinks about him sometimes. If any of those long, drawn out silences are occasional tumbles back down the ol' Archie rabbit-hole. Even if, truthfully, he rarely ever comes up these days. Jughead figures that maybe Betty confessing to him and getting looked over for a woman nearly twice their age finally cured her of her affliction. Or perhaps she's simply thrown herself into catching Jason Blossom's killer. Nowadays, the names that come up most often are Mom, Dad, Polly, Jason, the Blossom and a vibrant contextual tapestry haphazardly stitched with fears, suspicions, family secrets... anything that could be pertinent to their case.

Or perhaps she simply talks to someone else about it. There's the Veronica-factor to consider-and, of course, Kevin. Though Jughead has honestly no idea where Betty would find the time to use to anyone as a sounding board about that anymore. Aside from her commitment to the Riverdale Vixens, homework and commitment to health and hygiene, the school paper takes nearly all their time. The hours are long and they're practically living together in the offices of the Blue and Gold. Whenever he sneaks back into the room late at night to crash on the garish old couch by the window, he can still catch air pockets of her perfume that she's left behind cutting through the ink and the must.

Some kind of citrus. Grapefruit, he'd guess.

It's familiar. An odd comfort. Clean. Energizing. A distraction from the fact that he doesn't have a roof over his head and all of sixty-four dollars and eighty-eight cents to his already preposterous name. But it's not like he's thinking about her in any other capacity other than a concerned friend. Her family is bat-shit insane and again, it's not like Archie is around to offer his comfort when he's chasing tail and musical aspirations. Nor is anyone else around, for that matter. It seems like these days, everyone's got some crap to deal with and Jughead seems to be the only one who has noticed the girl-who-does-everything-for-everyone needs some help too.

And that's it. That's really, honestly, it.

Because anything else… anything else…

"Oh crap," Betty says, glancing at her phone. "I'm late." She starts packing up her things and shrugging on her jacket and Jughead looks up, one eyebrow raised. "I'm supposed to be meeting Trev for our date in like, fifteen minutes."

There's sudden a twitch in his chest at that word, like he's allergic; a weird fizz bubbling up in his lungs. He swallows it down and schools his expression into something wry. "Your intelligence-gathering mission, you mean."

He recalls her conversation from earlier. The excuse she gave. Not a date-date. Just a cover to pick an ex-footballer's brain about being Jason's teammate. It was just as effective at soothing the spike in discomfort as a double chocolate milkshake with all the dressings.

"Yeah," she agrees breezily, but then ruins the whole effect when she goes RED—like five-alarm fire, Blossom hair, Cheryl lipstick in devil RED—and suddenly milkshakes and hackneyed Nancy Drew excuses aren't enough.

Because next she's turning around and fumbling around with a compact mirror from her purse, touching up her lipstick, checking her mascara.

Fretting and grooming for the guy.

Good lord.

Betty going school-girl over a boy other than Archie signals a turning point in the story, he knows, and Jug figures it should be a good thing but somehow it feels a lot like he wants to stab the pencil he's holding into the worn cork of his desk instead.

"I just emailed the proof to Sven. Do you mind picking up the print on your way home tonight?"

Oh yeah. Just stab-itty, stab, stab it. Repeatedly. Draw a Nirvana smile and just BAM! Give it a nose.

"Planning on making it a late night?" he says aloud and he's so preoccupied he's forgotten to carefully pluck and scour the bitter out from between his teeth.

Betty pauses in the middle of buttoning up her coat and looks at him so sharply the end of her ponytail whips her cheek.

"This whole Trev thing is really bothering you, isn't it?"

Her lips curl a touch at the accusation. He can't tell if its smugness or amusement.

"I'm just mad I didn't think of it first." Jughead feels heat crawl up his neck to crouch behind his ears. His coffee cup is empty and he feels strangely exposed, unable to meet her eyes. "You get to do a shake down and get a free meal out of the whole thing."

He throws the pencil back into its holder. He misses and it bounces off the desk, onto the floor and rolls right under Betty's soft blue ballet-ish shoe.

"Is that really all you ever think about?" Betty tilts her head to one side. "Food?"

And he swears there's a stitch of disappointment woven into that statement there, somewhere.

"I'm a growing teenage boy, Betts. I need the protein."

She crosses her arms and he remembers why he has to work so hard at keeping her off-balance. Betty Cooper knows him. And while there's a 50/50 chance she'll demure from calling anyone else out on their bull crap (even Archie sometimes), Jughead never gets off so scat-free.

"Really?" She pops a hip and an eyebrow and now he knows they're treading somewhere perilous. "Because, if I didn't know you any better, I would've said you were jealous."

"It's a good thing you know me then."

And there, he slaps it down on the table like a face-down card to show her he's got nothing up his sleeve and it's suddenly a game of chicken and poker rolled into one.

The rules of engagement require him to look her in the eyes and he takes his time to draw himself up lazily, gaze climbing up the curve of her pink-sweater enclosed arms, past the collar of her shirt, the point of her chin, the sweet bow of her lips, nose, before finally meeting The Green. He tilts a smirk up at her, but she smirks and stares back too.

Tucked in around the faults and shards of her iris, there's a challenge. And maybe, an invitation too. She raises an eyebrow and he discreetly tries to swallow as her eyes flicker back and forth over his searchingly.

Jughead leans forward on his elbows, refusing the break eye contact because this is crucial, because despite everything, pretenses are still important. No matter how hard his heart is pumping in his chest or how pink Betty's cheeks are turning. No matter that its right there in front of them, because it isn't there, but not really, not before one of them acknowledges the other pachyderm in the room. The newer one. Maybe, possibly replacing the one they used to walk around.

He doesn't dare to hope.

He's shit with hope.

"Aren't you going to be late for your date?"

And it's cheap, so cheap, because apart from disappointing anyone, there's nothing Betty Cooper hates more than being late.

Still it does the trick and the moment breaks and short of exploding into a sigh, Jughead feels the relief of someone who's been whooshed, narrowly having missed stepping out in front of a speeding bus.

Betty pulls back, chuckling softly to herself and stoops down to pick up his pencil.

"I'll bring you back a Scooby Snack," she promises archly and then places the pencil back down on the desk beside him. There's a knowing in her eye. A sparkle. Her hand lingers there longer than strictly necessary…

And then she's gone, the door closing behind her and leaving behind a scent trail of grapefruit and sugar.

It's only then does Jughead allow himself to break into the broadest grin he can manage and just maybe, maybe he doesn't feel so bad about Trev anymore.

Or Archie.

And maybe some hope isn't that shit at all.

Thoughts and comments are welcome. They're nice encouragement to keep writing! ❤