Second City, chp. 1
Summary: Sometimes she worries she's settling — for a smaller job, a smaller city, a smaller life than she'd promised herself — but that was before she found out Jughead Jones lives in Chicago. That was before she found out the final secret of Jason Blossom’s murder.
slow-burn, eventual smut, eventual references to violence.
(ao3-->http://archiveofourown.org/works/11409360/chapters/25556550)
There are some weeks you eat lots of kale salads and açai bowls and only drink green tea. Then there are weeks where you eat grilled cheese for four meals in a row and main-line stale coffee. This week is one of the latter. Which is why she is so glad Mary has invited her to dinner.
Her move had not gone smoothly. A truck full of her boxes had somehow wound up in Kentucky, an unlikely outcome she refused to think too hard about because, really, that meant at some point the truck driver had to turn left and south instead of right and north but whatever. It’s fine.
It just means she is wearing rain boots and jeans instead of sandals and a flowy skirt. It is barely May but it is already summer in Chicago and the rubber is making her feet sweat.
But. but. Mary lives in a bungalow in Rogers Park, which is far north enough that people actually get to have yards and there are so many trees and everything is colourful and glorious and smells like flowers and barbecues and new beginnings.
She lingers a little, walking more and more slowly as she gets closer to the house, wanting to preserve this twilight in amber — the colors and the textures and the quiet and the utter peace she feels. Because, no matter how much of a disaster this week has been, no matter that she might have to wear ratty jeans to her first day of her new job tomorrow, this is the first decision she’s made in a long time that feels like it is really and truly hers. And that is something to celebrate.
Eventually the humidity gets to her though, and she doesn’t want to be late, doesn’t want Mary to worry she’s gotten on the red line the wrong way, so she knocks on the door while pulling a bottle of Syrah out of her tote bag.
Mary answers and immediately pulls her in for a hug. She clutches her own hands behind Mary’s back and lets out a sigh. After all these years, hugging Mary Andrews still feels more like home than hugging her own mother.
Mary had already been treated to the ongoing saga of Betty’s moving crisis — in fact, had calmed her down when she called crying because her dishes were in Kentucky so she couldn’t bring the casserole she’d promised for tonight. Mary made her promise to take a nap, and she had tried. She now knew she had 292 ceiling tiles in her bedroom.
So tonight is all about gossip and catch up and making plans for a new life.
“Did you get a chance to see my son before you left?”
Betty grins. “We had coffee last week. Did he tell you he has a date with Veronica?”
“Of course not. He doesn’t tell me about the girls he dates. I didn’t know you two had broken up until parent’s weekend of your freshman year when he introduced me to some girl named Lilah.”
Oh Arch, never change. “Well they ran into each other at fashion week and have been talking since — she’s a buyer for Bloomingdale’s now — she asked him out right before I left.”
Conversation continues in the same vein, punctuated by trips to the kitchen for more wine and plates of cheese and grapes and other little hors d’oeuvres the likes of which Betty normally only sees on Pinterest.
Around 9, a knock sounds at the back door and startles them. Mary walks through the kitchen to answer it, and Betty can just see her between the walls of the hallway and the doorjamb. When she opens the door, all Betty can see is that the visitor is tall with dark hair.
Then he opens his mouth.
“Hey Mar, is Mike home yet? I didn’t see his bike.”
Mary steps back and it’s Jughead.
She hunches forward, even though there’s no way he could have seen her. And—more than that—no way Mary would let her get away without saying hi. A million thoughts spin through Betty’s mind like tilt-a-whirl but they all telescope down to the refrains “is my lipstick smudged?” and “Jughead.”
“No. Jug, I wasn’t expecting you. Mike had to go to London last minute this afternoon, he must have forgotten to text you.”
“Oh that’s okay, we were just gonna work on the desk for a while. Do you mind if I still do—” She could hear him walking into the house, the sounds of a helmet being set down, a jacket shrugged off. She processes these details from a distance, as if staring at the sun underwater.
“Of course not.” Mary finally closes the door. “Here, come into the living room, I’m having dinner with Betty.”
He stops in the hallway, a sudden interruption to the quiet thump thump pattern of his feet on the wood. Her head is still hidden by the door. “Betty. Betty Cooper?”
But Mary is already pushing the door open. Betty tries to paste a nonchalant smile on her face.
“Of course Betty Cooper. Didn’t I tell you she was moving here?”
“No actually, I don’t think you did.” Is she imagining it or does his voice sound smaller?
And then he’s there. Taller than she remembers, maybe bigger too. Or maybe it’s just that she’s sitting down. She stands up, brushing her hands down her pants, trying to convince her stomach to stay where it belongs.
“Hi Jug.” She reaches a hand out for him to shake. That’s a thing people do, right?
“Betty Cooper.” He takes it but doesn’t shake. Maybe it’s not. Her stomach vaults back up into her throat.
Everything about him is so very strange and yet exactly the same. He is bigger. His hair is shorter. There is the slightest bit of scruff on his cheeks and down his neck. But he is still wearing a black t shirt and he still has a flannel shirt tied around his waist and she can see the beanie sticking out of his pocket. His eyes, all the colours of the ocean during a thunderstorm, still seem to cut right through her. She doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath.
“Can I get you some food, Jug?”
His eyes widen and he drops her hand. “Always, Mary. Do you even have to ask?”
When Mary turns back to the kitchen, Betty takes the moment to sit down, tucking her hands beneath her thighs. He follows suit in the chair across from her.
They stare at each other. This is going to get awkward fast.
“Did you say something about a desk?”
“A—? Oh yeah. Mike and I are restoring this turn-of-the-century roll-top desk Mary found at an estate stale. It was a gift when The Final Fissure hit the bestseller list.”
Her eyes stray to her purse, and the book just peaking out of the top. He must have seen her because when she turns back, he is staring at her purse and one corner of his mouth has quirked up. She blushes. Then she blushes more because she can feel herself blushing.
“If you ask me if I want an autograph, I’ll clock you.” He laughs.
“I would never.” But before she can stop him, he is up and pulling the book out.
“Why, Betty Cooper, no annotations? I’m shocked.” Could her face get any redder?
“Actually—that might be my second copy. I got to the airport way too early and, in a whirlwind of productivity, I’d already shipped all my books here—well not here, cause they’re in Lexington at the moment—but I didn’t have anything to read and I’d already finished the newspaper and it was on display in Hudson’s. I picked it up just to look at but before I knew it you’d sucked me back in. So I bought it so I’d have something to do on the plane.” God, Betty, stop talking.
“Hey you don’t have to justify buying my book to me.”
She wants to say I love it, Jug. I’m so proud of you, Jug. How did you get here from there, Jug? What happened to you when you left me? Do you know how long it took to put me back together? But the words get stuck in her mouth, repeating.
Mary comes back in with a plate piled comically high with food and the moment is broken.
“Here you go, Jug. Let me know if you need anything else.” He drops the book back into her purse, gives her a quick wave with the chicken leg already en route to his mouth, and disappears into the basement, and, presumably, into his furniture restoration.
She blinks and tries to mentally re-settle herself.
“So,” she begins. “Jughead?”
A tender look crosses Mary’s face. She is—apparently—oblivious to the current of electricity that seems to run from Betty to her purse and down the stairs to the flannel-clad man.
“That boy. You know it took me a year of inviting him over after he moved here to finally get him to come? I had to show up outside the library at Northwestern and ambush him. He was afraid I was just being polite because he and Archie hadn’t talked in a while.”
“A while” may have been an understatement but Betty doesn’t think this is the best time to correct her. To Mary, it’s just college that drove them all apart. Old friends on different paths. After all, that is what happened to Betty and Archie, and, as she learns when Mary continues, the end of college did bring Jughead and Archie back together.
But Mary, safely ensconced in her new life in Chicago, hadn’t seen the fall out of the Jughead-and-Betty break-up, hadn’t seen the broken pieces that sometimes still cause Betty to wonder if she’ll ever be able to sand them down far enough.
They can’t get back to the place they were before Jughead arrived, joking about Archie’s dating mishaps and all the new men to be surveyed in Chicago.
After an hour of stilted chatter and awkward silences, “I know you’re way too big for this now, but would you mind letting me braid your hair?”
Betty smiles. When she was little her mother had volunteered her and Polly as models when Mary wanted to learn to French braid. Polly could never sit still. But when it was her turn, Archie would bring her legos to play with and snacks. She had spent many afternoons on a bar stool at the Andrews’ kitchen island, constructing castles while her blonde locks were tugged and twisted.
“Of course.” She sets her glass of wine down and rolls off the couch to sit in front of Mary.
She cut it off before she left New York, into an angled bob that brushes the tops of her shoulders when straight, but skims her chin when she lets it air dry into waves and curls—a style she’s been trying to embrace lately — a more laid back version of herself she’s consciously trying to cultivate. A more laid-back city, a more laid-back Betty.
The activity makes the silence feel less awkward. And the soothing feeling of Mary’s nails scratching her scalp soon lulls Betty to sleep.
She comes to slowly. Her mouth feels fuzzy and there are voices above her.
“I was going to just let her sleep on the couch but I’d forgotten you were here. Maybe you could carry her upstairs.” You. You? Jughead?
“I’m awake!” She sits up and peels her eyelids open.
He smirks at her and her traitorous heart gives a single, loud thump. “Hey Pippi Longstocking.”
She’s confused for a minute but then remembers the braids, raising a hand to her head to confirm.
“No, Betty, you’re not riding the red line home by yourself this late at night.”
She tries to protest. It’s not like she has to switch trains, it’s not that late, it’s not that many stops. But Mary chimes in and she is outvoted and before she knows it, she is pushed out into the now-cold night and is strapped into one of Mike’s spare helmets.
Mary kisses her helmet, then Jughead’s, and then it’s just the two of them.
“So where to, Miss Daisy?”
She names the address.
“Of course you live in River North.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ask me again in a month if you haven’t figured it out.” She rolls her eyes but secretly gloms onto “in a month” like he still expects to be talking to her in a month?
“And where do you live?”
“In Logan Square. And before you say anything, I lived there before the hipsters moved in.”
She gapes at him. “Really? Before the hipsters moved in? Well okay then. By all means, continue to proselytize on the ills of gentrification.”
He glares at her through his visor and for a moment, just for a moment, it feels light and easy. It feels like Sunday night milkshakes at Pop’s and swapping English homework in the Blue and Gold office. The thought makes her chest ache, and her self-consciousness descends like a blanket.
It is cold on the back of the motorcycle, colder, even, than she had imagined it would be. That is why she snuggles more deeply into the back of his leather jacket—brown not black. No embroidery. She’d double checked. He smells like coffee and cigarettes and petrichor. And that fucking kills her. How does a person get to smell like the morning after a thunderstorm?
She’s had that thought before.
When they pull up outside her building and she returns the helmet and finds her land legs, she reaches out. “Thanks, Juggie.”
Then she realizes what she’s done and presses her lips into a tight, white line.
He puts a hand on her shoulder and runs it down her arm until he reaches her hand on her own. He lifts it off and squeezes. “Night Betts.”
“Night.” Then she disappears into her building and turns back to watch him through the tempered glass. A moment later, the motorcycle slings its way around the corner and is gone.
