Riverdale does not belong to me; this is mindless fun.
Note: Thank you so much for the comments, they mean the world to me and they give me all the inspiration, so please, keep on leaving them here! I also got some amazing messages on Tumblr, you can reach me there at andsmile!
I established 12 chapters for this fic, and we're just half-way. Yes, without further do, this chapter is quick and sort of a filler, important to the plot but no Varchie interaction, because, you know, slow burn.
YOUR SOUL
.
.
.
chapter seven
.
But the first thing that I will do
Is bury my love for you
(Jaymes Young, Moondust)
.
.
.
Archie is not even sure he really slept when he wakes up again, disoriented, with a headache pounding behind his eyes. His body feels heavy under his plaid sheets. He reaches out for his phone over the nightstand: it's only half past seven, he has slept for less than three whole hours, and there are four new notifications blinking on the screen, all from the same unsaved number.
archie, i'm sorry, it's the first one, sent about half an hour after she left him standing in her foyer, stunned. we should talk about this at four-sixteen in the morning and then please followed by don't hate me, not even forty minutes before now.
He exhales, anger prickling on his throat, but he's not as angry with Veronica as he is with himself. He knew he was setting himself up for heartbreak, he knew he shouldn't have let her in. What was there even to talk about? They weren't on the same page, they had never been on the same page, and he could have had complete control of the situation, if only he hadn't been such an idiot.
Archie opens the app just so she knows that he's read her texts, but he doesn't answer them, doesn't intend to. He grinds his teeth together and keeps staring at her avatar, and he doesn't hate her, but he also doesn't want to give her any sort of comfort right now. It's childish and obnoxious, but he hopes she's anxious, he hopes to give her hell.
He's upset and confused, he wants his father, and he also can't stop thinking about her kiss, about the feel of her tongue sliding against his, about the little noises she breathed into his mouth, her body so close.
Archie turns onto his stomach and hides his face in his pillow, repressing an annoyed groan. Unable to fall back asleep, or to stop thinking, he gets up, puts on his running shoes and hopes the crispy morning air and jogging his way to death will help.
.
.
He runs on Fox Forest until his heart condition pulls the breaks, so he comes back to the house. After resting for exactly twenty minutes and drinking four glasses of water, Archie wraps his hands with a band and starts punching his dusty boxing bag with fierce determination.
He's listening to a playlist called Complete Chaos, because he's that sort of cliché, when his phone, which lies amidst his sheets since early in the morning, starts to ring incessantly. Eventually, he gives up ignoring it.
"I'm ringing the bell for the past nine minutes, you idiot," Lau announces. He had honestly forgotten she was supposed to come today. He checks the time: it's nine minutes past ten.
It hurts to breathe. This day is already so long.
.
"Oh my God," Lau says when he opens the door for her, still panting, covered in sweat from head to toe, "The no pain, no gain philosophy just got to a whole new level."
"I need the distraction," Archie lets her in. She's carrying his guitar case in one hand, and there's a duffel bag at her feet, "What did you bring that for?" he indicates the guitar with his head, grabbing his bag of clothes before closing the door.
She rolls her eyes, "So you could turn your sorrows into art but, apparently, you decided to become Rocky instead. You smell."
"Whatever," Archie says, going to the kitchen to have another glass of water. His chest hurts every time he inhales. He wonders if that was what his father felt before dying. Lau follows him, carefully, "I'm in a really bad mood today," he announces, sitting down.
"You're always in a bad mood, Archibald," she says, and he can see she places a brown envelope on the table in front of him. "I like these," Lau points at the two verses he's written on a corner, "I'm thinking Em D Bm A for them."
"Yeah, I'm not writing this song," he tells her, salty saliva on his tongue. He doesn't know how to tell her he's never writing any song ever again. He touches the rough paper with his fingers, and tries to control his breathing, ignoring the burning sensation between his ribs, "Veronica. My ex… The ex. She's around."
"I know," Lau nods, carefully, "Jughead introduced us at the funeral."
"No, but she stayed. Here, in Riverdale. We've gone out a couple of times. She showed up at my door and…" he runs a hand through his hair, that is plastered on his head with sweat, "What do you think?"
"I think she's damn hot," Lau winks at him, and he chuckles despite himself, "And I think it means something, that she showed up."
"Her mom and my dad were good friends. They even dated for a little while. She was here for her mom. But why stay? It's what I can't understand," he says, still touching the envelope, avoiding looking at his friend, "I asked her to be my soulmate," he makes a sound between a sigh and a laugh, exhausted, "I know it's not how it works, hey, let's be soulmates, but I had never felt that way before, about anyone, so I just asked her. She said yes, but then… she couldn't even love me back."
"You don't know that, Archie," her voice is low, "You're not inside her head, you can't decide what she feels or didn't feel."
"All these years… I thought I was over her, you know. I was bitter, true, but that was it, bitterness, nothing else. I think a part of me shut down just so I wouldn't have to deal with it," he traces the words he wrote in blue ink, almost disappearing on the brown envelope, "I don't know what I am holding on to."
She places her hand on top of his, making him look up her face, "You're holding on to your soulmate," she says with a minute grin on her lips, "That's not something to let go of."
.
.
Archie goes with Lau to Greendale, and they watch a movie at the Bijou. It's an action flicker, no romance whatsoever, and it does its job of entertaining him and cleaning up his head. It's late in the afternoon when he drops his friend at the bus station, thanking her for bringing his clothes and his guitar, and she pesters him about the new EP before saying goodbye.
The exhaustion hits him once he's alone again in his father's house, which is no longer his father's. He hasn't checked his phone since morning, afraid he'll have new texts from Veronica, afraid he'll have none.
He sits on the couch for a while, facing his phone turned down on the coffee table like a giant white elephant in the room, not knowing what to do. He thinks about reading her messages again (and hoping) he would have a new one just for the sake of his own sanity. He feels his heart breaking all over again if (and most likely) she has not sent anything, playing the game of arrogance he started. Perhaps the best he could do is drink his impatience into oblivion and sleep restless, to wake up hungover and miserable one more time. He decides against it and leaves his phone standing at the same place, still waiting for a closure he can't give, and another one he's not sure he'll ever get.
.
.
.
Monday comes six hours later, with the first day of June. Archie is even more tired than he was before going to bed, the excessive workout from yesterday taking its toll on his body. The day outside is cloudy, warm and humid, the kind of day that makes you perspire even when you're standing still.
He takes a long shower, hoping the water pressure will release some of the tension on his shoulders, and begins to complete a long list of boring errands: scrubbing the bathroom, folding clean clothes, putting dirty ones in the washing machine, cleaning up the fridge. The whole time, he's aware of three objects staring at him: the brown envelope on the kitchen table, his guitar laying on the couch, and his phone, still untouched on the living room.
Around noon, he decides to start slaying his dragons.
He grabs his phone. The battery is critically low, and the screen brightness is off, but he can see, amongst texts from his friends, another message from Veronica's unsaved number, from this very morning.
hey, it says, i understand. i have to turn in my paper, and i'll be in nyc this week. i hope to come back on friday, if you want to talk about it.
He feels a little numb after reading her words, and wonders if it would've been better if she hadn't said anything because this is nothing. This means nothing. It doesn't meet any of his questions; it doesn't tell him anything he didn't know yet.
Archie doesn't answer and doesn't think he should.
Instead, he takes the same notebook Betty gave him for the to-do list and sighs as he writes down the things he's been avoiding. Lau was right, Em D Bm A would be a great start to whatever song. He writes those chords down; rewrites the two verses he'd written before, and then writes down something else,
I don't wanna talk about it, I don't wanna listen all that much.
Setting the notebook aside, he then moves to the envelope, the last thing his father wanted from him. Taking a deep breath that still makes his chest hurt, he tears the edge of the thick paper and pulls out a bunch of white sheets that are, most definitely, a contract of some sorts. The document is folded in a way the last page is the first one he sees, and there's a line with Archie's full name underneath, and a little cross beside it, indicating where he should've signed.
He sits down and, very, very carefully, reads the whole file, his brows furrowing deeply as he tries to make some sense out of the complicated legal language. It looked like his father was trying to get Archie – his pro forma business partner – to sign the sale of Andrews' Construction to another company.
The terms established that his father would've become general manager of the company as it expanded – the plans seemed extensive and intricate – but would no longer be its owner, its entrepreneur. That title would've been passed on to another company, who would've paid Fred Andrews an amount of $400,000 dollars.
What the hell.
"What the hell," Archie says aloud, astonished. He knew his father needed him to make some decisions on the business, but he never, not once, thought he would be selling it.
He tries to squeeze his brain and find some conversation, something. The last time had seen his dad with his eyes opened was when he went to New York to attend one of his gigs, and when they had dinner after that, amongst glasses of wine and talking about girls and concerts, not once Archie asked anything about the company, about his father's lifelong venture, about the business earmarked for him to take whenever he wanted to.
There's an odd feeling in his chest, something he's felt before, when Betty and Jughead got together in their sophomore year, some sort of twisted entitlement shattering: someone else taking something that was supposed to be his, and he can't even protest, because he never even really wanted it in the first place.
But $400,000? He's not the brightest in mathematics, but he also knows that $400,000 was not enough money to buy a business so important to Riverdale, and Fred Andrews was way better with numbers than Archie ever was.
He reaches out for his phone again and, despite its warnings of critically low battery, opens his internet browser to google who on Earth were HN Realty and how did they'd convinced his father to sell the company for half its worth.
When nothing comes out of his research, he types Riverdale besides the buyer's name, and the results are very clear on the screen, mocking him.
HN meant Hermione Nichols. Former Hermione Lodge. Veronica's mother was going to buy the company before his father died.
Archie can't remember how to breathe.
.
.
tbc
.
.
Note: errr, don't quit on me. I promise next chapter will be a lot more exciting, and… rating will change. #winkwink
