Jughead spent a grand total of one hour and seven minutes unpacking his belongings into his new apartment.
Spending those months being homeless as a teenager had really paid off – his habit of only owning the essentials had followed him into his adult years, making his move to New York City after college much easier than expected.
He placed his last two picture frames on his nightstand, one of him and Jellybean as children, and the other with Archie from the past summer, both home from their respective college graduations before heading off to their real-world jobs – Jughead to a position at a publishing company in New York City and Archie to a record label in Boston. Jughead smiled fondly at the photos and then collapsed backward onto his bed with a happy sigh. His apartment was exactly what he needed, its small size suiting him well after his time in the drive-in projection booth and school closet, and then years of sharing Archie's bedroom and with roommates at college dorms. The one-bedroom apartment was simple and sparsely furnished; Jughead wasn't expecting to have much company over except for an occasional visit from Archie, and so hadn't bothered getting more than the bare minimum.
His eyes were just beginning to close when he heard a muted bang from the next apartment over. He sat up and cocked his head to the side, listening. It was nearing midnight, hardly the time for construction projects. The walls were thin, so he could just make out the sounds of a voice laced with anger, but not thin enough for him to understand the words of the speaker. In answer to the angry voice, he heard another, even softer and not at all angry, maybe belonging to a woman? He heard a muted conversation for a few moments longer, then the voices stopped, followed by another banging noise, heavy footsteps, and the slamming of a door.
Jughead waited for a moment, listening, fighting with himself. He prided himself on keeping his nose out of other people's business unless absolutely necessary for information for his writing. On the other hand, upon leaving Riverdale, Archie had reminded Jughead that he shouldn't shut himself away in his room all the time. Jughead apparently needed to get out and meet people and stop being so antisocial.
Jughead sighed and rolled his eyes, mentally cursing Archie before rising from his bed. He stepped out into the hallway of his apartment and made his way to the door adjacent to his. Number 304. He raised his fist to knock, hesitating momentarily, before steeling himself and rapping three times on the wooden door.
There was the sound of shuffling from inside, and then the door was flung open, and Jughead was temporarily stunned at the sight before him.
The woman who stood in the doorway was breathtakingly beautiful. She was a bit shorter than Jughead, with platinum blonde hair escaping her high ponytail in long strands that framed her oval face. She was wearing sweatpants and an oversized sweater that her petite frame seemed to swim in. She looked up at Jughead, mouth open and green eyes filled with surprise, as though she'd been expecting someone else to be at her door. Jughead couldn't blame her. The sight of his tall, lanky frame, awkward expression, and messy dark hair spilling out from the crown beanie he still couldn't bear to part with was usually met with odd expressions from strangers.
"Uh.." Jughead said, trying to come up with an adequate introduction. How do other people (Archie) do this so easily? And what the hell had he been thinking, coming over here anyway? "Hi. I'm your new neighbor, just moved in next door in 303. I heard some…banging and stuff, just wanted to check and see if everything was alright."
The woman stared at him, and Jughead had the uncomfortable feeling of being scanned, as though she could see every single thing about him just from a glance. Then, she blinked and peeked her head out of the door slightly, eyes darting up and down the deserted hallway.
"Yeah, of course," she said. "I just had the TV on, must have been up a little loud. I'm sorry about that."
Jughead gave her a small smile that she didn't return. He didn't believe the obvious lie, but already felt as though he was sticking his nose where it didn't belong, and so decided against calling her out.
"It's not a problem." He replied. "I'm Jughead, by the way."
He stuck out his hand. The woman looked at it warily before slowly reaching out to shake it.
"Betty." She said. "Forgive me for asking, but what kind of a name is…Jughead?"
Jughead sighed. If he had a dollar for every time someone asked him that question…
"Believe me, Betty," he said. "My real name is even more ridiculous."
"Well, it was nice to meet you, Jughead-with-an-even-worse-real-name," Betty said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I was kind of in the middle of something, so I should get back inside, but I'll see you around."
With that, Betty retreated into her apartment, gently closing the door after her.
Jughead stood in the hallway for a moment, feeling conflicted. He had a gut feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Betty hadn't been cold, but had seemed distracted and had an air of sadness about her. Jughead's interest had been piqued. Apartment number 304 was a mystery, and he wanted to solve it.
"Screw staying out of other people's business." He muttered, heading back to his apartment. He was going to do what he did best – hunt down the truth.
Hunting down the truth was almost immediately pushed to the back burner, as Jughead quickly became too busy to do anything about his personal curiosity, given the fact that he had started his new job and was quickly saddled with mountains of work. He found he didn't mind being busy – his position was definitely at the bottom of the totem pole, but he was excited to find that many opportunities to work his way up were available, and he still had time to work on his own writing. Until the day when he could become a hot-shot editor and publish his own books, he was content with his current assignment of reviewing manuscripts that were sent to the company, filtering out the completely shitty ones, and forwarding the rest on to the next person up the totem pole.
On Friday, after his first full week came to an end, he treated himself to some truly greasy Chinese food and lounged on the couch comfortably, looking forward to the weekend ahead of him. Life was good; he'd made it out of Riverdale, started anew in an exciting city at a job he loved, and he still had Archie and his dad at his side, despite the geographic differences.
The only downside so far was the whole…adulting thing. Being able to fend for himself since he was fifteen didn't make him like doing any of the boring adult stuff any more, and it wasn't like he had had to pay bills or do his taxes when he was homeless. Speaking of mundane adult chores, Jughead caught sight of his trash bin, which was somehow already overflowing. He groaned at the prospect of lugging it down three flights of stairs to the trash room (one drawback of his apartment complex was the lack of elevators).
As he headed for the stairs, laden down with a week's worth of trash, he passed by apartment number 304, and was again reminded of Betty. Her apartment had been relatively quiet for the past week, but he hadn't caught so much of a glimpse of her nor the person she presumably lived with, the one with the angry voice.
He made his way down to the trash room and he opened the door, lost in thought about how he should approach this new mystery in his life, and was halfway through dumping his trash out before he realized that the focus of this mystery was doing the same right next to him.
"Oh," he said in surprise. "Hi, Betty."
She looked up at the sound of her name, but quickly turned away, suddenly very interested in the trash can before her. Her hair was loose today, long strands hanging in a curtain so Jughead couldn't get a good view of her face.
"Hi Jughead." She said quietly, placing the lid on the large trash can and turning to exit the room.
"Wait, Betty," Jughead said. Betty stopped and hung in the doorway, facing away from him "Um..I'm new around here and don't know many people, so I was wondering if maybe you would want to watch a movie with me?"
Betty didn't turn around, but her shoulders visibly tensed.
"I have leftover Chinese, if you're hungry," Jughead plied. "Honestly, I'm not that great at making friends, and my best friend from home keeps nagging me to be more social. So I thought I'd give it a go."
"Well, how can I say no to leftover Chinese food and such a heartwarming story?" Betty said, tension slowly leaving her body as she laughed lightly and turned to look at him.
Jughead's initial pleasure at his success turned to shock as he noticed that Betty was sporting a split lip.
"Your lip," he blurted out, grin sliding off his face. "What happened?"
Her mannerisms changed faster than her agreement to hang out with him, smile evaporating and a neutral, steeled expression replacing her previous happiness.
"Oh," she muttered, fingers raising to gently prod at the red line. "I can be a bit of a klutz. I just fell while I was getting out of the shower this morning."
Jughead didn't answer. She was obviously lying again, but it wasn't his place to call her out. Despite his apparent lack of social skills, he knew that she was uncomfortable around him, and if he wanted to build up trust and a relationship he would have to respect that.
So, Jughead plastered a smile on his face, launched into a story about Archie's own clumsiness, and tried not to think about the yelling he'd heard from apartment number 304.