It’s Been A While | Sweet Pea x Reader
Prompt requested by anon: After moving away from Riverdale when you were nine, you come back to spend high school back in your hometown. But your childhood best friend is completely shocked to see you back and so different…
Warnings: None! Major fluff!
Stepping out of your mom’s sedan, your feet hit the gravel of the driveway. You look around you and you can’t help, but let a small smile slip onto your lips. “Did you miss it?” your mom questions.
The environment of the North Side just made a million memories flood back into your brain and you laughed to yourself. Blowing bubbles on your front stoop with Betty, running away from Reggie and Moose, giggling like crazy. All of it brought back this light. “So much,” you look at your mom who kisses your forehead. “I can’t believe the old house was for sale,” you shake your head, grabbing luggage from the trunk.
You had moved from Riverdale when you were ten years old in order for your dad to accept a job offer. However, the job was in California which was a long way away from Riverdale. Your ten year old self was devastated. Leaving behind your best friends and school for a place you had never even known was horrifying. But your parents reassured you that you and your friends could still chat through the internet and be pen pals–if you were lucky, maybe they could book a flight so you could meet up during a break. Yet none of it was the same. So, you grudgingly packed your bags and left for California.
California was great. It’s sunny days and warm rays were always pleasing to wake up to rather than Riverdale’s cloudy gloom. But the one thing, or one person, that California didn’t have that Riverdale did was your best friend, Sweet Pea. Sweets lived on the South Side of Riverdale, the other side of the tracks. The North Side’s perception of the South Side was that it should have been exterminated long ago. The South Side was dangerous, no doubt about it, but it was a lot of families’ homes. No one could or should take that away from them. Your parents told you to never go to the South Side, and you obeyed them. What they couldn’t prevent was the South Side coming to you.
It was like it all happened yesterday. You remember playing on the school’s playground when you were younger with Betty and her older sister, Polly, watching over you two as you played. Polly left to use the bathroom, leaving you and Betty to your devices. As you played on the playground, there were two boys that came over who didn’t dress like they were from the North Side. Both wore flannels and had on dirty jeans. “I don’t know who you guys are,” you spoke to them innocently as one of them smiled.
The bigger one of the two spoke back, “You don’t have to know, shortie.” He made a reference to your short height compared to his almost foot taller stature. You stomped your foot, demanding that you had to know who he was as Betty watched timidly. “Doesn’t matter shortie.”
And with that, you stomped on his foot as he let out a cry in pain. “Tell me and maybe I’d let you play with us!”
The boy just laughed, “We are gonna be good friends, shortie.”