Author's note: This is my first story! I'm eager to share it with you all. Mostly sticks to the Season 1 storyline, except F.P. stays in prison and Jughead went to live with the Andrews', so no Season 2 plot at all. The whole thing is done and edited, so the pace of the u dates will probably be every few days! I really love this story, and I hope you all do too.

09.28.2010

F.P. drums his fingers against the cheap tabletop, every thump-thump punctuated with the slight shake of the wobbly table. He's waiting, and its going to drive him crazy.

Its been over two months since he broke his parole, and his loose set of morals, and disposed of the teenaged body of Jason Blossom. He'd been calm through the clean up, the drop, and the subsequent investigation, as the sleepy town of Riverdale crept closer and closer to exposing the truth. But in this moment, waiting for his son, he was going to lose it.

He's made a lot of mistakes, he knows this. A lot of those mistakes involve his shortcomings as a father. But everything he's done, has tried to do, has been for his kids. For Jughead really, since his wife ran off with their daughter, and left him with their son and the harsh words he's too much like you and you know it, F.P.

Jug is not anything like him. Well, he has his brooding looks, but his quiet observation and his sardonic, loner ways are peculiarly Jughead. Despite everything F.P. puts him through, he's still fighting to avoid slipping into the crime and drink and despair that comes with being a quintessential Jones man. Jug is good. He is going to be so good.

Which is why F.P. did what he did. Why he's got to make this next move.

F.P. glances at the old clock on the wall, sees there's about 5 minutes between this quiet moment and Jughead's arrival to the trailer. About 5 minutes before he breaks his son's heart just a little bit more.

The police have been working overtime to solve the grizzly murder of the Blossom boy. Even Jughead and his Scooby Gang at school are trying to break the case. F.P. wants to laugh at the idea that at 15 years old, he had been sweet-talking his way up too many skirts and getting an early start on his rap sheet. At 15, his son is trying to solve a crime that runs so much deeper than he can realize.

F.P.'s inside guys at the Sheriff's station is the one who tipped him off. That they'd found a witness who put a Serpent leaving Sweetwater River a few days after it had been dragged; another who provided video footage of that same Serpent slipping into an expensive car behind the Greendale Water Plant later that same night, for only a few minutes, to meet with Clifford Blossom. They knew that that Serpent was strangely absent from the Whyte Wyrm that day except for when he threw a very large bag into the bed of his truck in the early morning, thanks to a statement from an undercover Jingle Jangle stakeout team. The same bag was found tangled around the decomposed body of Jason Blossom.

The same Serpent who was awaiting his son. They'd IDed him from the unique patch on his leather jacket. King Cobra.

F.P. knew it was just a matter of time before Sheriff Keller would show up with the warrant for his arrest. The evidence against him wasn't the gun or DNA, but it was too strong to ignore. And he was too easy to pin for something like this. He knew he had to come clean, but not to Keller. He needed to tell Jughead why this happened, and what was about to unfold. He owed him that. He'd fight the charges, but he wouldn't snitch on the real killer because he knew what he was capable of.

He knew that Clifford Blossom didn't flinch when it came to sons.

F.P. is about to lose everything. But he's gonna keep his son alive, give him the chance to break the chain that is the misfortune of being Forsythe Pendleton Jones.

He swallows hard and wishes for a drink. The door opens, the porch light cutting into the dark trailer.

"Hey, dad," his lanky boy slips in, pulling off his iconic beanie. "I grabbed Pop's."

F.P. smiles, and for the first time in what feels like his whole life, thinks he might cry.

"C'mere Jug, I wanna talk to you."