Would love to see the “are we really doing this...are we really dancing” ( I may have paraphrased a bit)
It just seems like it could be funny/sweet.
“Can you believe I swapped my shift at the diner for this?” Jughead pops an Oreo into his mouth as he comes to stand beside Betty at the snack table. “No gargoyles, no snuff films, no nothing. I’m not sure I’d even call it a school dance.”
Betty raises an eyebrow, taking a sip from her plastic cup of punch to hide her smile. “All of that happened at prom,” she points out. “Not homecoming.”
“Still. These kids don’t know how good they have it.” He cringes, rocking back on his heels. “And with those words, he officially became an old fogey.”
She laughs, some of the tension melting away from her spine. These days she never knows which version of Jughead she’s going to get: brooding and taciturn, sharp and dismissive, drunk and stumbling. This version – loose and good-humored, but sober – is her favorite. It’s also the rarest. She’s grateful it’s the one that decided to show up tonight, when the whole faculty’s been roped into chaperoning the homecoming dance.
Jughead plucks two more cookies from the table, offering one to Betty. When she shakes her head, he shrugs, cramming them both into his mouth. She rolls her eyes.
“They look like such babies,” she remarks. It feels a little silly, saying that out loud when she herself is only a few years out of college. But she feels decades older than the version of Betty that had once spent weeks planning school dances, fretting over what dress she’d wear, crying to Kevin that the boy she liked had invited another girl to be his date yet again.
The boy in question is across the room, standing close to Veronica, whose enormous diamond ring had disappeared from her left hand without fanfare just a few weeks ago. Betty had refrained from asking, but all mentions of Chad in their light, quippy teachers’ lounge conversations had ceased, and she’d overheard Jughead make some comments that indicated Archie was no longer sleeping at home most nights. She’s happy for them – but envious, too. Not because she longed for anything with Archie herself, but because they were so easy with one another. Natural. The way she and Jughead used to be, back before everything.
The lights shift from glittery, up-tempo swirls to beams of color that sweep around the dance floor. A slow song starts – an old, romantic doo-wop number, like something you might find on the jukebox at Pop’s. “This one’s for the chaperones,” the DJ intones, and most of the teens peel away from the dance floor, taking the opportunity to use the bathroom or rest their feet.
Betty scoffs. “How old do they think we are? Eighty?” But when she glances at Jughead for his reaction, he’s looking back at her with the kind of soft eyes she hasn’t seen in years. For a moment she almost forgets how to breathe.
He nods his head towards the dance floor. “You want to?”
She can’t believe what she’s hearing. “Do you want to?”
Jughead shrugs again. “Yeah. Why not.” He extends his hand, and she takes it, letting him lead her past the snack table.
It’s not like all the times they’d danced together before. He’s far more careful with her now, hands light on her waist, a few extra inches of space between them. Anyone watching from the sidelines would assume it’s a friendly dance between friendly colleagues, nothing more.
But she’s so nervous. “Are we really doing this?” she wonders aloud, just to break the silence.
“Why are you so surprised? I always danced with you.”
“Sure, but. You know. You just wanted to make me happy.”
Jughead seems embarrassed; he clears his throat, ducking his head a little. “Yeah, well.”
That’s all he says, but it’s enough. Betty’s glad they’re not pressed together the way they might have been seven years ago, lest he feel how hard her heart is pounding in her chest right now. “Oh.”
His fingers press gently into her waist, like he’s afraid she might pull away. “Just…finish this dance with me, okay? Just this one.”
“Okay,” she says, letting the tips of her fingers drift to the nape of his neck, hoping they’ll tell him the things she isn’t ready to say out loud right now.
(send me a prompt. literally any prompt!)
