My submission for secret santa 2018! This one’s for you @pembrokebitch! :) I hope you like it.
I actually made a bonus video too, but I can’t post 2 video’s at the same time, so I’ll make a different post for that one.
To @vxj-veronica-jones with love. Merry Christmas. Thanks for your continual love and support of the fandom. You’re a real MVP. Sorry, all I can offer is angst as that’s my #Thing. Summer mentions because it’s summer on my side of the world. Sorry if it’s too much angst for the festive season but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, right? Formatting is annoying because I’m posting this amidst travelling overseas for Christmas on my phone. I should face posted on AO3 instead of posting this long ass post that won’t work with a “read more” cut. Merry Christmas anywho ❤️
Be With Me
Warning: mentions of sex, gang slanging (lol), swearing, heart ache.
Summary: She pops up everywhere. In the taste of shakes at Pop's. The writing she left on his kitchen table that he hasn't been able to move. In the text messages he reads before he forces himself to sleep at least two hours at night. He's still learning how to perfect that, though. Because sometimes it's a messy forty-five minutes just before school. Or it's a solid sixteen hours and he's missed the whole fucking day. At the moment, there's no in between.
————————————|
Jughead lights up a cigarette. It just alleviates the urge pulsing through him but he takes them anyway; three deep drags in a row with rushing bloodstreams and noisy thoughts. Jughead turns up Tame Impala and lets the music drown him in noisy basslines and clashing cymbals - clashing thoughts. But his eraseture of his messy mind is a battle lost. He stubs out menthol cigarettes in the ashtray, watching it burn into itself, mystic wisps of smoke, but he reaches for another one. The urge he has for Veronica is pulsing faster now. As he flicks his lighter, he wonders how much her happiness would grow if she watched him light up his Serpents jacket the same way he burned this cigarette. Red hot flames, up in smoke….
What’s the price I pay for loving Veronica Lodge? He thinks.
Pure fucking torture is what I pay, the back of his mind reminds him.
Jughead’s craving for Veronica doesn’t feel much more than a gentle rustle in the breeze at the moment. It’s a welcome change to the raw throat burning he usually gets at four in the morning, at two in the afternoon; ten at night. He zones out of imagining Veronica’s sugary, honeyed calls and he feels lighter all of a sudden. In her zone. But he comes back down to earth, it hits him harder than it usually does; Jughead’s craving is sated because she’s here with him.
Though she’s with him, fears eats away when all he can think about is the skin scratching, blood thickening feeling he’ll get when she leaves.
Love is confidence. Confident is what he feels when Veronica is here with him. I’m undefeatable, I’m God-like right now.
She’s almost aerobatic – fucking artistic the way she flies through the air and it’s all because of him. She wraps her arms around his neck, dots sweet kisses. Skin tearing jaw bites that he can smell, cinnamon mixed with his favourite brand of menthol. He smiles against her as he tastes her skin, she tastes like she did at four in morning and during her break at lunch, the back wall of Pop’s knows the shape of her body almost as well as Jughead does. She tastes absolutely edible as her thighs creep up his sides, pulling herself up his body with her legs around his waist. “I missed you,” she tells him, scratching on his leather back.
Jughead feels his cheeks burn, his heart whistle; fingertips numbing all because of the girl around him. He hisses up courage, tasting her a little more. Saturating myself in her, he begs himself. “Tell me how much you love me,” He begs her. His fingers are pins and needles, his heart is tight in her grip.
Veronica leans back as Jughead grips onto her ass, keeping her up with his mind trying to keep up too. “I want you to stay with me.”
He sniggers as his mouth fills with saliva; he’s salivating, - a man starved, hungry, feverish from starvation. His mouth feels dry now, not keeping up. “What’s the price of loving me?” he ask her this time.
She raises an eyebrow. “That you can’t live without me.”
He groans against her; he fucks her against the wall.
When you love the way we love, who the fuck requires a heart? He asks himself.
Because it’s a pause in heart beats, it’s the lack of blood flow. He doesn’t exist anywhere else but in her.
He kisses her dirty; he kisses her until he can’t breathe.
They’re in the trailer. When they came in, the sun was shining so bright on the two on the floor. Now it’s just cold, dark and Jughead’s heart feels like a hoarder – almost as if he’s keeping her all to himself and he won’t share her; he won’t let her loose. If I let go, she might not come back to me...
“I love you,” Veronica tells him. “More and more everyday.”
She’s glittery beneath the moonlight, dark hair turns midnight in the light. Skin turns tasty in the moon. She turns magical in here, he reminds himself. She’s supernatural right now. Every kiss on her lips tells the story of us, he knows, starvation, lust, love, dependence, poison, love, affection, pure, love, lost, love, needing, love, I can’t live without her. Love.
“Tell me how much you love me,” he asks.
“Come with me, we’ll go, Jug,” she promises. “New York.”
“Princess,” he prays.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“I love you more than they do.”
“I love you so much, I go fucking crazy.”
“Go fucking crazy then,” she orders, “Do it, then you can come with me and we’ll start a new life.”
“A new life,” he copies, “One where you love me happily.”
“I love you happily anyways,” she says with a sigh. “Even when it hurts.”
She’s purple painted toes digging into her blankets. She’s laying in satin kind of tired.
He feels cold without Southside on his shoulders. “Were you Southside?” she asks before even looking at Jughead standing at the trailer window.
“I was,” he says, catching in his throat.
“And?”
“And now I’m not.”
Veronica hums. “What time are you going back?” she says so thickly, Jughead can feel her words hitting him in the heart; sharp, harsh arrows. “Are you going back?” An arrow to the heart.
“No.”
She rolls over, her eyes are red bloodshot and her skin sun kissed in the dark. “So today you’ll pretend like you’re all mine?”
“Only if you pretend that you’re all mine, Princess.”
Veronica shakes the earth to give Jughead more than anything in the world. I am a man starved. I am greedy in loving her. I take all of her, nothing to spare.
She took all of him until there was nothing left to give her.
“Just be with me here,” she prays.
“I’ll be here.”
Jughead ignores the necklace that hangs around his Princess’s neck that his best friend bought her. Just like she ignores the smell of Betty’s vanilla on his own skin.
xxxxx
Jughead stares at the time on the alarm clock as it beeps to wake him up. He doesn't switch it off, he doesn't have the energy hit snooze. He thinks briefly on the time and he wonders what Veronica is doing at this exact moment. If his thoughts didn't betray him, then the smell of her in his sheets did. He woke up with her smell mixed with his smell and he knows he's fucking lying to himself when he tries to make out that he's unsure of how many days it's been since he last saw her fake smile.
Thirteen.
She pops up everywhere. In the taste of shakes at Pop's. The writing she left on his kitchen table that he hasn't been able to move. In the text messages he reads before he forces himself to sleep at least two hours at night. He's still learning how to perfect that, though. Because sometimes it's a messy forty-five minutes just before school. Or it's a solid sixteen hours and he's missed the whole fucking day. At the moment, there's no in between.
She's the marrow in the bones of his fucked up days.
Veronica Lodge is the marrow in his very bones.
Veronica is him.
Jughead punches a pillow as the alarm keeps going. He screams into the same one. He realises it smells like her, so he clings on a little tighter.
And then he feels the ache in his jaw, the pulsing of blood in his split lip and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.
XXXXX
"You hate me, don't you?" Jughead asks his best friend.
Archie Andrews wasn't a liar. And Jughead knows that Archie Andrews has a level of loyalty that the Southside wouldn't be able to rival. Archie Andrews also had a weird way of saying exactly what was on his mind even if maybe, Jughead thinks, he shouldn't. Jughead also wonders if he can count how many times Archie opens his mouth in an attempt to make up some lie, but, yet again, Archie Andrews is not a liar and it almost irritates Jughead that his best friend is torturing him in this way. "I don't hate you, Jug."
Jughead sniggers, kicks his boots on the lino floor of the trailer and stops himself from rolling his eyes. "You hate me."
"Betty still loves you she just..."
"Doesn't love what I've become."
Jughead can’t even come up with a string of truths. It wasn’t Betty. And it wasn’t love lost between him and her either. It was Veronica. Jughead continues to lie through his teeth, humouring his best friend. Trying not to think too loudly about his best friend’s girlfriend. Trying not to be too harsh about Betty.
Archie scrambles for words again. Jughead can tell. He's frantic and stumbling over his own tongue. He grabs Jughead by the collar and shakes him out, but Jughead can just feel boiling blood. "This stupid jacket is what we hate, but we love you, Juggie," Archie takes a steadying breath. "Betty loves you; I miss you, Jug. Veronica does too.”
Jug wishes they were kids again. Way back when. When FP and Fred were best buds and they were back up in the treehouse. Or even not that long ago, when he was crashing on the Andrews floor and the biggest issue was Archie burning pizza.
But they're not. Archie is a Northern Suburban Knight in Shining Armour and Jughead is a Southside Serpent earning new fangs while cycling with the training wheels still on.
Hearing Veronica’s name made his arteries connected to his heart harden and stop pulsing, the blood was coagulating, stiffening and hardening.
Archie's words only made him feel half the amount better, because 'I-love-you's' from Archie Andrews were dished out as often as 'hellos', Jughead doesn't think it as a dig at his best friend, he likes to think of it as Archie just has a big heart.
But he sees his best friend glaring at the leather jacket on his shoulders and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.
Jughead thinks quickly on everything that he has control over.
He has freedom and the trailer is his.
He can ride out at any time, there's no limit to where he can go.
And then his chest feels tight, and his breathing is too shallow.
He can't control his repetitive reading of Veronica’s last texts.
Or the way he thinks the only way his heart is still beating is because Veronica Lodge is still on his mind.
But the trailer is his, the bike is his, though not something he had initially wanted, Hotdog was his. And so were the bad thoughts, the mess of hair on his head, the dark rings under his eyes, the two hours sleep, the love he holds for Veronica, the cigarettes he all of a sudden acquired and the pills Sweetpea insists he'll like.
They're all his.
And then he remembers how he got here in the first place.
XXXXX
Toni has a body that is out of this world. Toni has a mouth with lips that look like they need biting. She has hair you can hold on to. Toni has words that make guys drop to their knees, Jughead knows, because Fangs told him.
She gives him that taste of Southside without the pain. And when there is pain involved, Toni makes a good makeshift nurse. She's seen things before that he's only just learning about and she makes a good teacher. And if Betty was good at teaching him school work, then Toni is schooling him at life. He feels bile at the back of his throat when he thinks of Betty and Toni in the same go. But things are complicated and no amount of digging his snake pit further into Southside was going to change that.
He couldn't be further from the North than he is right now.
Even while sitting in the Red and Black with dust plumes glittering in afternoon sun, Toni is making a passionate speech about showing the true identity of Southside High to Riverdale. And as much as taking photos of the Football team and the Drama class that just so happens to have an uncountable amount of students with nose rings and belt buckles with studs on them, he can't help but think that Toni would have a better chance at portraying this place for what it was. A festering wound that is hard to cover up.
"You've got some dark rings under your eyes, Forsythe," she says with a smirk. "You been up all night or something?"
Jughead reads the bite of her lip and the wink of her right eye. He reads it dirty but he shrugs in reply. "Hmm," he says.
Toni knows secrets about him that no one else does. She keeps them locked up inside - Toni is the safest place he knows and one of the only places he trusts. “Veronica,” she says, slapping on a look of pity. She slinks behind his chair, pats his shoulder, ruffles his hair. "Don't worry, Juggie, if you love each other, you'll find your way back."
Do marrow and blood every actually touch? He's not sure.
He flickers briefly between thinking about how he and Veronica would find their way back and believing that they had never actually ever fucking lost each other.
He flickers between words from Toni's lips and Veronica’s soul.
He flickers between loving Veronica and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.
XXXXX
Veronica has been working at Pop’s alone. He can tell by the way her skin is slick and she’s an overbitten lower lip. He knows she’s tired, but she knows she works harder than anyone else. He knows the taste of her overbitten lips and the feel of her hair in his fists.
Out of selfishness for his own battered feelings, he doesn't approach her. Or he might tell her how much he needs her. How he can't live without her. How he can’t fucking breathe.
But he's at risk of looking like an idiot and his ego can't take another blow.
Her shoulders slump, he watches her hand smooth over her face and then over her hair, she cranes her neck a little, leaning on the mop handle.
He doesn't order, he walks out hungry. He kicks his bike before getting back on it.
And then he remembers how he got here in the first place.
XXXXX
It's sick, because every punch from the Ghoulie sounds like Veronica’s name against his skin.
He feels the Ghoulie’s knuckles sing against the right side of his jaw, his teeth grate against each other but he manages a swing too, weak with his left hand side. Princess, it ghosts.
Somehow, the Ghoulie gets ahold of the scruff of his neck and he's trying to tackle Jughead down, but Jug is younger, faster, he spins out, spits blood on the floor and swings his right, stronger hand. Veronica, it sings against the Ghoulie’s nose.
The Ghoulie laughs manically, "Yeah, you little Serpent’s tougher than you look, huh?"
Jughead thinks ironically that the Ghoulie isn't right because if only he knew of the girl that has him crippled most of the time. But he shouldn't be thinking of her when he gets landed a blow to the temple.
He's almost out cold when he hears Sweet Pea call his name.
"Veronica?" Jughead asks the buzzing in his ears, it surely has to be her.
But then he realises it's not because he remembers how he got here in the first place.
XXXXX
Jughead feels exposed and he tries to sit up quickly when he sees her, but he also wonders if maybe he shouldn't bother. He has to be dead to be seeing Veronica Lodge sitting on the end of his bed.
Once upon a time it was sneaking through bedroom windows. Then crashing out on the overused sofa in the trailer.
Then it was shouting, hateful words. Soft tender kisses in the rain. Wiping tears away in the booth at Pop's. Making himself physically fucking sick because love shouldn't be this hard, right? Veronica had promised him that their love was unshakeable, unmovable, limitless.
She had promised Jughead that their love was as easy as breathing. At what point of their love did Veronica become a liar? He wonders.
When we chose to fall in love, he reminds himself. Nothing was harder than hushed secrets. Lying to the people they swore they loved.
Now, she was so close that he could smell her perfume, but he could also make out the tracks and paths of her tears thanks to black mascara. And as much as Jughead wanted to look away, he was a man starved. He drinks her in, he soaks up her sun, he wants to feel pain in his palms when she's in his hands. But the way she drips disgust in him hurts him more than it hurts her.
"Why are you doing this, Jughead?" she asks, a malicious tone in her voice. She shakes the room, she slams a fist down on the same pillow he does every night. "Don't do this Jughead," her tears fly. "This is crazy! It's dangerous."
He thinks his love for her is the only dangerous thing around here.
He reaches with a shaky, beat up hand and wipes her tears and she sinks into his hand, closing her eyes. "You know I’d do anything for you. And if that means keeping on the Southside to keep them from you in the Northside, then so be it."
"Run away with me. Please," she begs. "I'm serious."
She slides into the bed with him, shaking with cold even if it's warm outside.
He wonders why she's so cold, why everything hurts. But then he remembers how they got here in the first place.
He can't keep away from her. But then, he never could. He dreams of Springtime when he was a kid, riding bikes with Archie. And he misses that too. The old Archie. The one who wasn't so scared. The one that was funny. But Jughead remembers, they were all funny back then.
He laughs lightly about Betty and how way back when, she used to be a pigtail kind of girl and not much has changed, only that she's now a single ponytail kind of girl.
He remembers when he wasn’t in love with the girl he shouldn’t be. When he wasn’t hurting his best friend and Betty. When things were simple. He prays for those days. But he couldn’t survive without Veronica, so the prayers are futile.
Now he’s late nights in The Pembrooke where he’s kissed Veronica a million times after paying the price of Southside, he made it up to her with her thighs around his head and her nails in his hair. He laughed against the insides of her ankles and soft kisses on her wrist and for once, Southside was left on the floor next to her radio.
Jughead lies in Veronica’s arms with her fingers still playing with a curl at the front of his face. "I want to go, V," he tells her honestly. "I want you and I to go, let's go, get out of here."
It was crazy but Jughead knew it was doable. He had arranged everything, he had money, a car. He wanted to skip, get out of here. Veronica stops, tilts Jughead's head with her hands and gives him a serious look while frowning. "Are you serious?"
"Do I look like I'm joking?" he challenges.
She inhales sharply. "Leave all this mess behind?"
He nods. He nods so hard, he feels like he looks stupid but he was serious and if he could, he would leave now. "You and me, Princess, what do you say?"
She smiles. She kisses him a million times. He smiles against her collarbone and then he remembers how he got here in the first place.
XXXXX
It’s hot-sweat in the middle of summer kind of heat. It was sweat dripping from the tip of her nose. Veronica and Betty had been ice-cream-sweet all day. Veronica smacked her lips and looked up from shy eyes, whispered rumours and quiet laughs were painful. Her lips smack together with pleasure when she humours Betty; Summer heat carries summer secrets. Veronica keeps warm in the memories of last night.
It’s hot-sweat in the middle of summer kind of heat but Jughead was muted-twilight-tones with the sun setting on his skin. It was sticky tar pavements and sticky fingers against Veronica’s iPhone screen from summer sun when she messages her mom to tell her she’ll be late home but through the heat, Jughead still wore red Docs with long socks and sweat-sticky leather against his back. They stand outside his trailer with the overused door handle and the worn out paint that spoke volumes to her. Old. Muted. Worn. Sticky-summer-sun is setting on the worn out paint and made it seem a little colder than cold around here.
Jughead stands on a cigarette butt to put it out and nods at Veronica. “Tell me how much you love me,” he says. “Come on, Princess,” he says with a scuff of his boot.
“Nobody likes someone who’s so needy,” she replies, rolling her eyes.
He laughs quietly and reaches out to her shorts, hooking his lazy-long fingers in the belt hoop of denim shorts, pulling Veronica closer. Her hips bump his hips, her breath hitches in her throat as she feels him but his breath is breathing on her skin. Jughead’s mouth meets Veronica’s neck; his tongue dances on sweat-sticky, soft-aching skin. He kisses her. “Let’s see how needy I can get then.”
His words echo. His smile, though she can’t see it, is larger than ever. She can feel it; she feels his smile on her neck; on her skin. His hands? She can’t see them; she feels them, edging on the start of denim, popping her buttons, second button, third button, and the rest after that. She gives in with her eyes curious-kind-of-wide and her voice on his tongue.
“Where have you been?” she asks him.
“Gone,” he groans against her skin. “Preparing the world for you,” He keeps running his fingers on denim. Punishment reaches down and starts doing denim up, never looking away from his leather jacket. But his fingers stop pulling and he steps back, running a hand over his face. “V...” he murmurs.
“Jughead,” she says strongly back. Loud in her mind. Smirk dancing on her lips. “Punishment,” she tells him.
He smirks to himself and shrugs his shoulders; exhaling loudly as he reads her erratic mind. “Tell me you’re not mad at me…”
“But then I would be lying,” she says putting her hands on hips.
He pulls her by the hips again, bumping her to him again, making her weak all over again. “Tell me a lie.”
“Where have you been?” she asks him. He was supposed to be so much more than secret-whispers and smug-cocky smirks.
“Southside,” he says biting his lower lip and shoving his hands pocket deep.
His eyes flicker down to the dirt he’s standing on and his lips purse but she can read them and the words he’s trying to speak. “Stop going Southside,” she begs. Her hands finding his and pulling them up to her lips. “Just be here with me.”
Jughead sighs and his hands tighten in hers. He pulls Veronica’s hands to his lips this time, kissing them over and over. “I’m here,” he mumbles. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” he repeats his prayer, on her knuckles, smoothing out fingers, running over her nails.
She feels them building in her chest first then it runs up into her mind; half-prayers and mumbled promises. “I can give you more than they can,” she promises. “I just want you to be here with me.”
He chuckles again and lets go of Veronica, pulling at belt loops again. “I’m always here,” he answers. “Always.” He was here but he’s not here. He was in her space but he wasn’t really here with her. “Tell me a lie,” he murmurs sugar-sweet. “Tell me a lie, tell me a lie,” he murmurs as he pulls her in; shoulders easing, anger still running electric through her. “Tell me you don’t hate the Serpents, tell me you’re okay… Tell me another lie.”
She pushes at his chest; shoving him away. Weak-handed, pissed-off-strong. “I hate that you don’t tell me everything.”
He sniggers at her. It’s all cocky-truths and rolled eyes. “That’s not a lie, Princess,” he says running his tongue over minty-fresh teeth. “That’s the worst kind of truth.”
“You’re right,” she whispers against his lips.
“We’ll be leaving, any day now, Princess.”
She’s lost in the taste of his tongue and his hands between her thighs.
XXXXX
The SS Camaro is in need of a paint job, but it's enough to do the trick. His heart races and the arteries barely open up but this time, not from pain. From pure, unfiltered excitement.
Jughead is okay, but he's not at the same time.
The sun shines through the window of the car and he knows it should be burning him, it's unnaturally hot today but he feels almost nothing at all. Crashing waves is what he feels in the tightness of his chest and freefalling right in the pit of his stomach. He's scared. He's worried.
He'd give up his entire life just for this.
Veronica is two minutes late but the way her hair swings with her brisk walk and her suitcase rolling behind her, he can see that those two minutes was part of his time well spent. She was here, and every step on the pavement as she walks to the car feels like they sprout dark petalled roses from the concrete and her smile is rooting itself in his veins. Just seeing her is completing him. He revs the engine, she opens up.
They look at each other; Jughead lets Veronica peer directly into his soul and at one point, he feels her inside of him. She shuts the heavy door, it makes her flinch but she takes a deep breath, steadies herself, closes her eyes. Inhales.
He turns on the indicator to signal out of the street but before he moves, he kisses her cheek. "I love you, Veronica."
Veronica smiles like the sun in the middle of summer, burning him, charred skin. "I love you too, Jughead," she breathes. "Let's go."
"Where to?"
"Our new home," she laughs. "Anywhere!"
Jughead remembers how he got here in the first place.
Love.
