Guard dog pt. 1
Pairing: Sweet pea x Female reader
Summary: when you life is threatened by the leader of the Ghoulies, Jughead decided to assign you Serpent guard dogs. One of them seems to volunteer more than the others.
Warning: threats of violence, mentions of violence, description of patching up wounds and blood!
A/N: my teenage obsession with this fine ass characters was recently rekindled after a brief Riverdale rewatch. Unfortunately, the amount of Sweet Pea writing is very slim, so i have resigned to writing it myself. PLEASE let me know if you have any recs, thank you!
Now the plotpoints in this are totally made up, i just wrote something lol
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"im sorry but can you please stop talking about me like im not here?"
You were doing your absolute best to remain calm, but Jughead and Archie were talking about you like you were no longer in the room and it was driving you mad.
"im sorry, its just a lot to wrap our minds around".
"i know, but seen as im the one being threatened, can i at least be involved in the conversation?" you asked them. You and Betty were still seated at the dinner table, the unvoluntary audience to Archie and Jugheads pacing back and forth.
Betty looked up from the papers splayed across the table, "Jug im not sure i understand where all of this started can we just- can we start over?"
Jughead nodded and pulled the papers back, "it started back after Malachai had a pack of the Ghoulies try to raid the Whyte Wyrm. Some of us retreated back to the cottage to patch up and spend the night in case some of them decided to retaliate during the night"
Your house had always been the go to safe place for all your friends. Your parents were among the wealthiest in Riverdale, easily tailing right behind the Blossoms which drove Cheryl crazy.
Your parents were both surgeons, signed with Doctors without Boarders, and flitting across the world to help active war zones and crisis sites. This left you in a rather spacey multiple bedroom home at the outskirts of town, by yourself.
The petname "the cottage" was something the boys came up with when you guys were all little, finding great amusement in the irony.
Your parents made sure to call and text you multiple times a day, and the parents of your friends were constantly checking on you, as well as the Sherrif.
But this left you alone in a house with a huge allowance and several bedrooms available to your friends. In the beginning you were the designated sleepover house, each of your friends would lie to their parents and claim there was a babysitter watching you. You guys would stay up all night and stuff your faces with junk.
Later it became the party house, and now, it was a refugee center for young Serpents. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but bordering on true still.
When Jughead was forced to step up and become a full fledged member, he quickly realized that he would still need the help of his Northsider friends. Especially you.
The first Serpent you ever met was Toni. She and Jughead had seeked refugee at your house to study since a party was booming against the walls of the trailer park, defeaning any attempts at conversation.
You liked Toni, she was charming.
Since then it rapidly evolved, your knowledge of basic first aid and your endless supply of food, quickly resolved in a designated safe haven. Word got around to the Whyte Wyrm and every serpent in need of care or a place to crash, inevitably came to you.
Now in true Serpent nature, they didnt just take from you. For every time you patched someone up, fed them or allowed them to spend the night, you were ensured a favor.
Now these were hardly ever cashed in as the need very rarely occured, but the mutual benefit and care resulted in a fond partnership. You were protected, cared for.
And that became evident now.
Three days ago, the Ghoulies had attempted a raid on the Wyrm. They wanted to force the Serpents off their terf, to take over the southside.
The raid had failed miserably, but a number of Serpents had still rounded your place to get their wounds tended to. Unfortunately, the rat that is Malachai had trailed them all the way to the edge of town, to your house.
And he was after revenge.
Jughead thumbed through the papers. "and now he is threatening to "take her away from us"" he quotes, panning the papers out so the threats were readable.
Betty sighs shakily, leaning back in her seat and tracing her hand across my underarm for a second.
"Malachai has left numerous threats regarding the soft spots of the gang, partners and children and elderly family members..." he picked those apart in a pale and splayed the rest. "most of them however, are directed towards you"
The room fell silent for a moment, you were all racking your brains on how to get out of this. Going to the cops was not an option at all, local law enforcement could barely keep gang activity down as it is. A restraining order would not stop Ghoulies from making you disappear.
The thought send a shiver down your spine.
"well we´re not going to find a way out of this tonight, and i definitely need to talk to the others about this" Jughead concluded, rubbing his hands down his face.
Archie looked up at him from the papers, "what do we do in the meantime? i mean we cant just leave her here, but i dont want to put my dad at risk if i have her stay with me and they decide to pounce"
Archie shot you an apologetic look but you brushed him off with a wave of your hand. You understood.
Jughead pulled his phone out of his pocket, "i will call for some backup, have some of the guys watch the house until we figure something else out"
He left the living room, trailing around in the kitchen as he spoke.
Betty turned to you, wrapping her arms around your shoulders and pulling you to her chest. She had a sweet vanilla scent.
"i will stay over too, we can make a sleepover out of it" she told you, and you smiled into the pink sleeve of her sweater.
"id like that please"
Jughead returned to the living room, rounding the table to crouch next to you and his girlfriend.
"i called in a few favors and we got some guys coming over in 20 minutes. I asked some of the older guys to come over, and Toni volunteered herself, Fangs and Sweet pea"
Your heart involuntarily fluttered at his name and you prayed to god Betty couldn't feel it. You straightened up and reached over her to squeeze Jugheads shoulder.
"thanks Juggy, i dont know what I'd ever do without you guys"
He squeezed your hand before standing up.
You got the pleasure of meeting Sweet Pea after he and Fangs had gotten into a fight with some drunk tourists outside of the Wyrm and needed patching up.
You had been embarrassed at the deep swoop rounding your belly the second you laid eyes on him on your coach. You had been on a run when Jughead texted you, asking for a favor.
They had already been there when you got home and there he was, sitting in your couch with his heavy jacket resting on the arm of the couch while Toni cleaned his arm of blood.
The tourist had carried a pocket knife, and had sliced Sweet Peas bicep.
They had looked up at the sound of you entering the living room, and you had felt unusually hot under their gazes.
You had asked if they needed help with anything and they had thanked you for letting them come over. Well Toni and Fangs did, Sweet Pea looked at you silently.
You hadn´t been able to decipher his facial expression.
The two of you hadn´t spoken until two weeks after that, when you had hosted a party and he had gotten into yet another fight.
You had found him in your kitchen, trying to clean his split eyebrow. The blood had kept trickling down into his eyes and he had struggled to get anywhere with the wound.
You were tipsy, and therefor bold. You had asked him if he needed any help, and when he had grumbled he did not, you asked him to sit down anyways.
With the warm damp cloth in your hand, you gestured to his face and silently asked if you could touch him.
He had once again looked at you silently, long enough to make you nervous but then he nodded and looked way.
You had gently held onto his jaw, wiping the blood away from his eye and sticking a thin band Aid on it to close it back up.
You didn't speak again until he and the other south siders started attending Riverdale high. You weren´t close by any means, you would small talk here and there but nothing further than that.
He showed up half an hour later with Toni and Fangs, and three older Serpents you had met before.
Jughead had sprung back into his role of the makeshift leader and had delegated posts to each of them.
You and the girls had remained upstairs per Jugheads orders, the time had tipped way past midnight and it was still a school night.
The others had fallen asleep relatively fast, leaving you wide eyed and bushy tailed in your bed, shifting back and forth and tossing the covers on and off.
When the clock struck 3 am, you slipped out of bed and past your friends on their mattresses splayed out on the floor of your bedroom.
You had creeped downstairs, smiling at the guys in your living room and moving into the kitchen for something to drink.
Your skin was hot and a little clammy, so you pushed open the back door in the kitchen, and snuck onto your porch.
Your heart leaped out of your chest at the sight of the large figure waiting outside for you.
The figure turned towards you and you breathed a sigh of relief at the familiar face. Sweet Pea was having a smoke break on your back porch, he wasn't a vengeful Ghoulie waiting for you to misstep.
"aren't you supposed to be in bed?" he asked you, blowing the grey smoke into the night air.
You shrugged "guilty as charged". You moved towards him and settled on the porch swing installed to his right, tugging your legs up under you and leaning back against the cool wood panel.
He studied your profile for a moment, visibly weighing his options before moving to set next to you on the swing.
You tried not to let it affect you. But it was harder said than done.
"you okay?" he asked you, short and direct.
"i dont know" you hesitated for a moment, debating how honest you should be, " its hard to feel like im in danger when they haven't actually made a move"
He nodded his head, stubbing his cigarette against the edge of a potted plant and resting it on the rail of the porch. He made sure you knew he would bring it inside with him, part of you found it endearing.
"you probably shouldn't go outside like this unless someone is with you. You were lucky i was already out here" he told you. You glanced at him.
"my knight in shining armor"
He chuckled at your comment.
"its the least i can do" the earnest tone in his voice made the heat rise to your cheeks and you hoped it was too dark for him to notice.
"im glad you feel that way"