You Better You Bet
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Author’s Note: Holy shit y'all. It's been a hot minute, huh? I have spent a lot of time thinking about finishing this fic and I just simply must be done with this. I've got a few more chapters coming your way, and then I must bid au revoir to YBYB. It's just been so long. I love you guys so much and thanks for sticking around.
Pairing: Riverdale, FP Jones, and 19-Year-Old Reader
Description: A bet with Jughead leads to so much more than winning.
Warning: Language, Adult themes, Age Gap,
Song Inspiration: Everybody (Backstreet's Back) - Backstreet Boys (Get it?)
By the time Thursday came around, you were doubting everything. Your mind changed every five minutes. You shouldn’t tell Jug. You should have told Jug from the beginning. Well, better late than never, right? You shouldn’t even be with FP. You should be with FP and not tell Jug outright, but not hide it either. Your head cycled through every possibility all day long. You barely accomplished anything other than going through the daily motions, as you were too preoccupied with worrying over how tonight was going to go. No matter how anxiety ridden you were, you never texted FP. For one thing, you didn’t want to freak him out. He was probably already worried and didn’t need your freak out on top of his. But more than that, you trusted him. You knew this was important to him and the right thing to do overall, so you let him take the reigns. It was comforting to know that whatever ended up happening, at least you and FP would have to deal with it together.
You weren’t sure when Jug was heading over to the trailer, so you sent a text to FP after you got out of school simply asking him to keep you updated. He texted back quickly saying Jug was coming over now and he’d let you know how it went as soon as he could. You thought about doing something to preoccupy your mind while you waited, but knew that trying to do anything would be useless. So you just went home. And waited. And waited.
It felt like decades had gone by when your phone finally chimed with a text from FP asking you to come over for dinner. Was he serious? No context, no update. Just a dinner invite? You typed back furiously “uhhhh what am I walking into here, Jones?”. Fuck, it went bad. You knew it was a bad idea. Fuck.
His response came quick, but not quick enough to calm the rising anxiety in your stomach.
“He took it good. Invited Betty over too. Figured it'd be nice to get everyone on the same page right off the bat”
Oh. Okay. So Jug didn’t hate your guts. That was promising. You’d have to feel out exact how he was taking it when you got there, but knowing Betty would be there too was promising. You got yourself ready, texted Betty to see if she wanted a ride, and then you went on your merry way.
Betty had a lot of questions in the car ride over. She knew you had seen FP again because of your sleepover text escapades and you’d made some casual comments about how it was going here and there, but nothing of any substance. You kept FP from Betty mostly because you didn’t want to have to ask her to lie to Jughead. She kept the little information she had known to herself, but now that it was out in the open, she was ravenous for details. Between her and Jughead’s thirst for knowledge and inability to leave anything alone, you were shocked it had taken this long honestly. She asked how serious things had gotten and how often you saw each other and if you’d discussed any future plans. And you told her everything. Honestly, it felt nice to be able to confide in someone about your relationship.
By the time you got to the South Side, Betty was fully clued in on your life. You walked up to the trailer, letting Betty enter first. You ambled in behind her nervous as all hell. It was like telling Jug about the bet all over again, except with way more than 50 bucks at stake. FP greeted Betty with a warm hug and then turned to you. “How’s my girl?” he asked with a grin, throwing his arms around you and kissing the top of your head before you could even get a word out.
“Oh you know, living the dream,” you responded angling your head up so he could plant a quick kiss on your lips.
“God, it’s so much worse seeing it. Like I knew it was happening but- fuck, that’s just off-putting” said Jughead, with no real malice in his voice and just a dash of pure disgust.
“Aw, stop it; they’re cute!” Betty gushed. Your cheeks turned pink at the attention, but FP made no move to let you go which comforted your anxiety.
You hadn’t really thought about the whole “my boyfriend can’t cook anything that isn’t microwaveable” thing when you had originally made dinner plans, but thankfully he had taken the initiative to order in at some point. And Chinese food was bound to make anyone agreeable to even the most uncomfortable of situations.
But luckily, things were mostly normal at dinner. Jug and FP caught up on Serpent news, while Betty filled you in on Riverdale’s mystery de jour. (She was 100% convinced that there was something funky up with that new girl and her weirdly blonde dad, but everyone else thought she was crazy. You believed her, but knew better than to get involved. You were NOT going to be the next girl knifed to a musical background because you sniffed around too hard at the insanity that followed B around). Somehow, the conversations got intertwined when FP and Betty connected the dots that maybe this weird girl’s “Farm” was where Fangs had been disappearing to, and you found yourself extremely out of the loop. You excused yourself to start dinner clean up, and, to your surprise, Jughead volunteered to help you. Not that Jughead was a necessarily unhelpful person, you just assumed he would be of more help with the discussion at hand. And that he would probably want to give you a wide birth while he processed the news that you were dating his father. Either one.
You started to silently put away leftovers and wash dishes by hand, as you couldn’t think of anything to say to each other. Silence with Jug had always been comfortable before- a time to think and write and not have to fill the void with mindless bullshit. But for the first time it felt fragile- like one loud noise and the whole trailer would blow up. You just had to say something. Anything. But before you could decide on whether or not it was stupid to talk to your best friend about the weather, he decided to point out the giant leather-clad elephant in the room.
“I’m trying really hard to not be weird about this,” he admitted while drying the plates you were washing. You blinked at him, afraid to cut him off. “I mean, logically, i’m not…opposed. Dad and I have never been particularly close and it’s not like I even live here. You’ve just always fit into a particular space in my life and now I have to find a way to fit you into a very different space.”
“I get that. And I’m not asking you to change anything for me. I know we’ve always had a bond over growing up the way we did. Independent" - i.e. neglected- "and rocky." - i.e. unstable- "And I don’t want this to change that.”
He looked mildly incredulous, “Of course it changes that. I can’t-“
You cut him off. “Yes you can". You lowered your voice and turned to look Jughead in the eye for possibly the first time in weeks. “Yes, FP is my boyfriend. Yes, I have incredibly strong feelings for him that I’m still trying to work out. But I was your friend first. And he was your dad first- a shitty one! And you’re still trying to repair that relationship. You can still talk to me about him, even the bad stuff. I’m not going to automatically take his side in everything. I knew who he was when I started seeing him, don’t think I don’t know.”
Jughead studied you like one of the boards with red string and different clues he has set up. He just stared at your with those unwavering eyes and you refused to look away, not even once. He finally found whatever he was searching for. “Okay,” he sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s just going to be an adjustment period. But if you’re both happy then…” he trails off and shrugs, but you can tell there’s more thoughts in that always one-step-ahead brain of his. You wait for him to form them into a sentence. “I don’t want you to get hurt either. He wasn’t always particularly good with my mom. Or Alice. Once things settle, he gets... complacent. Stops caring.” Jughead's gaze found a point in the distance to fixate on while he thought, surely, about his own relationship with FP Jones and how once things got hard, he stopped trying with him too.
“I know. And this has only been a few weeks, I’m not expecting anything at this point. I’m not saying he’s changed because I don’t know. I wasn’t there for the before and I can’t be sure if we’re in the after. i just know that I believe he has the capability to be a good guy, and that’s enough for me to give him a chance. I see it in the way he tries now. Please don’t think I would ever date a man believing he’s still shitty.”
Jug snorts at that. “You do love to put men in their place.”
“I really, really do.” Jughead bumps his shoulder into yours and it feels good. Normal. Feels like acceptance.
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By the time Jughead and Betty left, you’d decided it was late enough to warrant you staying the night. You and FP flopped down onto the couch, coming down from a joint anxiety wave that you hadn’t even really noticed.
"That went well,” he stated to no one in particular. “I think,” he added, scrunching up his face just the tiniest bit.
“Very well,” you responded, turning towards him and tucking yourself into his side. “Jug and I talked for a little. He’s okay with it.”
FP just twisted his head to look and you and quirked it to the side, looking for more details. “It'll be an adjustment period for him,” you continued. “But nothing he can’t handle. I think he knows that this makes sense. We make sense.” You laced your fingers in between his as he kissed the top of your head.
“Good. That makes this so much easier,” he admitted, resting his head on top of yours. You sat like that for a while, wrapped up in each other, breathing slow, enjoying the silence, and sharing small kisses and light touches.
Eventually FP scooped you up and carried you to bed, where light touches became heavier and kisses became feverish, until you were both so warn out that you passed out, wrapped up in each other again.
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Author's Note Pt 2:
I will never get over the Chad Michael Murray Organ Harvesting Incest Cult plot line.
Why are you, as an adult man, blonde, CMM?
Trying to get back into the flow of writing this as a full blown adult is crazy because I lack the suspension of disbelief that I had when I started writing this. Why are you dating that child, FP Jones? But for you all?? I will suspend my life if you asked.
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