"I'm just an average man, with an average life.
I work from nine to five; hey hell, I pay the price.
All I want is to be left alone in my average home;
But why do I always feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone."
-Rockwell, Somebody's Watching Me
It takes him fifteen minutes to figure out he's in a dumpster.
It takes him another fifteen to get out.
His feet roll from underneath him when he finally brings both wobbling legs straight to the ground. A whine, the one he's been trying so hard to keep down, peels slowly off his tongue when his pulsing wrist is the only thing that stops his face from slamming to the ground.
It's a clear night.
Nothing but spiteful stars in the sky.
It's the kind of night that spits on people like him.
The moon's a spotlight over the bruises painting onto his chin.
The wind is still, holding the smell of spoiled meaty mass to his skin and Southside piss under his nails. When he takes a shaking hand to wipe away the wet drops of red that're skimming down his lip he quakes in to hold his stomach. His throat opens with the dry sensation of vomit.
He doesn't gag.
He doesn't cry.
He holds himself, his forehead an inch above the dry concrete ground.
"Better watch yourself."
His soiled and trembling fingers dig along the ribbed spaces of his chest.
"Jones."
He wants to dig inside the bones and hold his heart until it stills. Until it's numb. Until he's not feeling anything at all. Until the pounding adrenaline that did him no good as hands grabbed around his mouth and hood and threw him against the wall, and then the lockers, and then their fists, and feet and the beat, the over and over and over again, held him flat against the ground as he choked when one caught him in the throat -
Until it's over.
The pain resonating from his wrist softens to an ache and he takes the hint that it's time to move. The stinging, wet slope of pain, that's sending stitches of pins and needles from his jaw to his eye, doesn't end, and even seems to increase tenfold with each wince he takes to steady himself on his feet.
But he doesn't need his face to walk.
He does, however, need his legs to stop shaking.
He also needs to breathe. He hasn't really been doing that.
He reaches up to skim the edges of his beanie and pull his lungs away from their adamant practice of short and shallow hiccups. Pathetic and predictable. His fingers come to only find his matted hair and his chest gives in to the buckling suffocating of heaving panic.
Getting jumped somehow felt worse after the fact. It's like he's been rewired, his entire existence now revolves around the idea that the shadow around the corner may pounce. Maybe he's concussed - he probably is - because he can't follow that fight or flight thinking right now. He's too tired to fight, and any flight is deflating as he slowly slinks forward in the vague direction of his bike.
(Dumpster meant he was in the parking lot - and that was the end of his coherent thought - the next is that he kind of hopes the faceless shadow of his fears will creep up and finish the job.)
There's also a mourning sense filling his throat and blistering his cheeks like an ill-timed blush. Asshole with the unbreakable fists and feet probably trashed his beanie. Whatever.
If he thinks that it may be in the dumpster, where he was left to rot, he doesn't consider turning back for it.
He brushes his half swollen wrist across his nose before he loses control of the tight knot clumping his throat and the bulging hot drops in his eyes.
"Hey."
His feet shuffle to a stop. He doesn't look up until the new, and soon-to-be familiar, voice speaks again.
"You look like shit."
He turns up to find the fuzzy image of blacks and pinks with smirks and hands on hips.
"Jones."
The siren's voice is singing. He knows well enough that it's offering a hand this time instead of just a shackle. He knows he has to take it. Once again making a gamble on black leather and broken homes.
"Don't say I didn't warn you.
The dice he's about to roll is fated to be snake eyes and once the squares of sin leave his hand the devil will be ready to skewer him. But surely, that was his luck the moment he was born.
Jughead let's pink hair and hardened hands pull him by the forearm so he can be slung over a shoulder.
He's sold his soul to save it. He knows the narrative outcome is eventual damnation. It's not too hard to resign himself to it, in a way it was accepted, excepted, and always looming over him like the blade of a guillotine. Waiting to drop and fail at slicing his head off in one stroke, leaving him to flounder half alive in a Southside High dumpster until he finally died.
Some part of his brain, the one spared from bruising, thinks that if he's going down he at least deserves a last meal. But since the moon is phasing into three in his vision and each step Toni takes is leaving his head and chest throbbing to the point that he feels like he'll never normally feel hunger again, he reasons that he can exchange a last meal for a final phone call.
It's probably bad that he can't clearly envision the sharp lines of blonde hair or pale skin or even the name, he must know, that attaches to it - but it's good enough that he may have a reason to live a little longer in the form of a voice.
A struggle of air and groaning breaks him from the imaginary phone call of light giggles and soft hands drifting along skin. They're so different from the claws digging around his flesh and dragging him against the metal of his bike.
"Whatever you're eating." A long sigh emits. "You might want to consider cutting back."
When the world straightens again, an engine revs and a crumpled satchel is thrown his way along with a decrepit and inside-out piece of wool.
"Found it lying inside," a faraway drawl tells him.
Jughead looks down at the foreign thing.
It takes him five minutes to realize it's his beanie.
It takes five him five hours to call Betty.
This is for the lovely fluff loving Raptorlily...I'm so sorry... haha... no I'm not...
(Hope you guys enjoyed this pain! Please let me know what you thought!)