What are you BH headcanons? Do you think that jughead was pining for betty on the prepilot?
oh, bughead headcanons! hmmm!
i don’t think pre-pilot jughead pined for betty as much as i think he didn’t mind having her around and then developed feelings of caring for her.
i think he first was wary of her because she was archie's friend too and he didn't want to have her around, but then he grows into tolerating her and after that liking her.
i think he maybe always noticed how betty had a crush on archie and felt a little jealous of this - of archie and betty having a connection/bond. as a writer, i think he had it all planned in his mind, how BA would fall in love and get married and have 2.3 children and buy a house in the same street they grew up in etc.
i think he often felt a little lonely around them, but i also imagine that betty was always REALLY soft to him (like she is to this day): whenever she baked cookies with polly she’d save some to give him, she knew he was a creature of habits so she always asked pop for the booth he liked because of him, she asked about the music he listened to, etc. little things that made jughead comfortable enough despite his social anxiety to call her a friend and to admire her.
i think he always thought archie was kind of an idiot for not noticing how she felt but was secretly happy that he didn’t (because he didn’t want to lose his friend to a girl, and because his friend didn’t really deserve said girl).
i think he noticed whenever she tried to dress up a little, wore her hair down, just things about her appearance that she’d change and that’d catch his eye.
when cheryl told everyone she was too season five betty draper, she cried and archie was there trying to say something to make her feel better, when jughead said that he already had binged mad men and that betty draper lived to impossible society standards in a world ruled by toxic masculinity, and that january jones had to wear a fat suit because she was pregnant. archie was confused, and betty didn’t really understand how that was supposed to make her feel better but for some reason it’d come back to her mind whenever she felt self conscious.
he always appreciated her having good taste in films. he liked the action flicks they watched with archie but he always kind of wanted to watch a movie just with her. and they both liked to read, too, which is something that archie couldn’t understand - archie could never stand still for too long and he always tried to do his assignments with whoever he was crushing on, so often jug and betty would do their assignments together.
at some point he felt as comfortable around betty as he’d feel around archie, even though they didn’t know many details about each other’s lives.
archie got himself a girlfriend for three weeks during freshman year following the homecoming dance, and jug and betty felt a little sidelined, but he was especially concerned about her, because she was obviously said. archie got dumped though.
i think ethel stole a kiss from jughead at some point in freshman year, and that was his first kiss. he panicked for solid three days because people were laughing at his reaction and felt the urge to hide from everyone, but betty found him in the library one day and said ‘at least you kissed someone, most people haven’t yet’, and then he caught himself thinking he wouldn’t have panicked if betty had kissed him, and that was a little concerning, but he didn’t think about it a lot lot...
...until everything changed on sophomore year after jason blossom.
