Chapter 4
A sheriff’s office is place of good, and bad news, rest, and unrest, sobs, and smiles, and psychopaths.
Today, there is Jughead Jones, and Archie Andrews.
Even the sheriff, though he’s there, and even Fred Andrews, though he’s there, are caught on the opposite side of a spell of hunched shoulders, and careful, needy, gentle touches. Jughead sits across from him, their knees skidding. They’re both on the floor. The Sheriff and his dad are a cautious seven feet from them, sitting in armchairs, their arms crossed over their chests.
Archie’s hands skid across his, bumping over the valleys and mountains of his knuckles, the tiny brooks and springs of his skin. He wonders if this is one of the only places on his body that isn’t spotted with moles.
Archie opens his mouth, the words you know you have to tell them, Jug flitting over his mind.
“I know,” Jughead says.
Sheriff Keller frowns.
“How?” Archie asks, slipping their fingers together, overlapping, caught together, the knots on a sailing ship, holding the sails ready, moving the pirates along.
Squeezing his fingers, Jughead's hands pick to the hem of his loose, black tee-shirt. Archie’s fall to his lap. He stands, pulling his shirt over his head as he goes, tossing it onto Archie’s shoulders. Like a curtain, moving the shirt off his head reveals the stage.
Though Fred Andrews had seen bits, had seen pieces, a section of a lower back in low light, he hasn’t seen all of it.
Archie staggers up, clenching Jughead’s shirt in his hands. He exhales sharply, his voice cracking on a sob.
In the warm lighting of Sheriff Keller’s office, Jughead’s skin looks soft. His collarbones pool with ocean water from the very bottom of the sea, the dark and the deep. His arms are pecked in bruises, the rings of coarse fingers, rough hands circling them. His forearms are slashed with vertical welts. The skin of his stomach is purple, stretched with bright purple bruises, edged with yellow, and green. His ribs peak in violent reds, and arching blues, mixing and mixing and mixing, never making lavender.
“Jughead,” Sheriff Keller says, palming a hand down his face, the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth more pronounced. He turns to face him, mouth caught in a perfect line.
Archie tugs Jughead’s shirt up to his face, holding it over his face, showing only his eyes. His hand reaches up to grab his hair, the red slipping under his fingertips. His back is built from belt marks, crissing and crossing, using his spine as a highway. A burn picks its way over his right kidney.
“If you’re going to tell me that you tripped, or that you wiped out on the ice —“
“I won’t.”
The Sheriff nods, eyes skipping down the boy’s torso. The skin around his mouth is taut, his hands are digging into the shirt of his uniform, resenting the law for a moment, for a split second of sheer anger at an anger being beaten by the person who’s supposed to love them most.
“When did this start?” The Sheriff asks, and his voice has punished itself into one of an upright man of the law, not one of a father, of a single parent, of a protector.
“June 27th.”
“Have you told anyone other than us?”
“No.”
“Do you suspect anyone knows?”
“No.”
“What m-method does your father primarily use?”
“Belt, and boots. The iron.”
This merits a pause. Archie has edged closer to Jughead, who refuses to look at him, watching the wall behind the Sheriff with steadfast boredom, unwavering attention. He can feel the warmth coming off Archie, hears the shift of his hand moving closer to his own. His palm furls open. Archie links their fingers, like they used to when they were kids. He has a flash of memory, a mirror, of doing the same thing in Jughead’s treehouse, late at night when Jughead pretended he wasn’t crying.
My parents like to shout, he would say, it makes them feel better.
My parents like to laugh, Archie argued, it makes them be better.
“Do you want to press charges?” Sheriff Keller’s voice is tight and roughly hewn, barking against his instincts.
“No,” Jughead says, “I want out.”
A sheriff’s office is place of good, and bad news, rest, and unrest, sobs, and smiles, and psychopaths.
Today, there is Archie Andrews, and Jughead Jones.
He’s just finished pulling his shirt over his head, wincing against bruised ribs, against the lash of smarting skin, when Archie folds him like chocolate chips into batter, wrapping his arms carefully around Jughead’s waist. He stiffens, eyes darting to the Sheriff. Archie hesitates, pulling back, unwinding his arms, unfolded, unhinging, unbeing.
“Arch,” Jughead says, catching his hand as he moves. He takes a slow breath.
“I…”
Sheriff Keller straightens from his spot against the desk.
“I… had sex. With, with, with Ms. Grundy, since the summer.”
“Oh god,” he says, hands twitching.
“I — I consented —”
“It doesn’t count in a court —”
“I know.” The Sheriff sighs and straightens, tries not to imagine what would happen if it were Kevin in this situation, his son instead of Fred’s. He feels molten curl in his stomach, arrows bustle from his heart, and he can’t imagine, won’t.
“Does anyone else know?”
“Uh, no.”
“In your vernacular, what does sex mean?” Archie tenses, blush blooming on his cheeks, breaking away from Jughead, crushing his arms around his chest to hide from his father.
“Uh, every—everything. All the way.”
Fred gives a short exhale, chewing roughly on his nails.
“Do you want to press charges?”
Archie doesn’t say anything.
“Archie —”
He and Jughead stare at each other, brown against grey and green and blue and rain.
“Yes.”
It takes months.
Months of saying it over, and over, of looks and comments in the hallways, some of disgust (for him and for her), some of sympathy, the occasional admittance of a similar situation (these ones always get hugs — the big, Archie Andrews kind, sunny, and all-encompassing).
She’s convicted of twelve to twenty-two years, after pleading guilty. The first page of the school paper says HALLELUJAH in big, bold letters. Archie loses his shit laughing at it, takes it home to show his dad, who chuckles and shakes his head, muttering about Jughead under his breath.
It takes a day, for Jughead.
The Sheriff goes to his father, bangs on his door and pulls him out of a hangover with sharp words (both unofficial and official ones), threatening him with a court case.
He turns a lawful, blind-eye against Jughead spending his time at the Andrews house, collapsed onto a double bed, into a small room, into another life.
Fred Andrews doesn’t say a word when their touches turn constant.
He watches when they make waffles in the kitchen, tossing flour at one another. Jughead throws a handful of sugar at Archie, saying something about a sweet ass between laughter and bits of batter. When he huffs a laugh, going for the coffee machine, Archie flushes red up to his hair. Jughead gives him a cautious smirk. “
In the kitchen, Jughead? Really?” Is all he says, before he leaves the room, shouting over his shoulder about going to the office.
He never goes into the garage while Archie’s writing, because he asked him not to, muttering about privacy. He nods, smiling, and installs a doorbell as a joke. Jughead, however, seems to gets a free pass.
Over Christmas, Jughead makes a small, lame excuse, attempting to excavate himself from the holiday.
“Christmas is just a capitalist tradition inspired by the plights of modern america and our failing economic system, Fred ―"
Fred just looks at him over the rim of his reading glasses, before flicking his eyes back down to his book.
“Archie's a mess in the kitchen, Jughead, and the two of you are in charge."
Jughead smiles.
He comes home one night, late (after a date with Hermione, though he’d refused to tell them because his boys loved to tease more than anything), and finds them both on the couch in front of a Star Trek episode, dead asleep. Jughead is sitting against the arm of the couch, pillows built up like rumours, with Archie lying in the v of his legs. His head is tilted back against Jughead’s sternum. One of his heads is a heavy weight over Jughead’s thigh. Their hands are clasped.
Fred blinks, smiles, and leaves.
They don’t tell anyone when they start dating. It happens naturally, a careful progression of improvised chords on a keyboard and a guitar.
They hold hands in Pop Tate's, gently, laughing and shoving one another. Veronica and Betty stare for a little bit. Kevin comments that the two of them are no longer the hottest gay couple in Riverdale. Archie shakes his head. "We'd never beat out B&V."
Jughead nods. "Well, considering none of us are actually gay or a walking stereotype, that award goes to you, Kevin. You can be the hottest gay couple all on your own."
Kevin rolls his eyes.
It's an hour and a half after their first date, when Jughead finally tells Archie.
"I don't like sex."
Archie doesn'r say anything, just breathing quietly in the small room, less irritating than the hum of a bumblebee, but lower, softer.
"I'm asexual. It means I don't like sex, having or giving or anything, and if that's―"
"Jughead," Archie says, brushing his hand against his, "I don't care, okay? The last person I had sex with was my 35 year old music teacher who's now in jail, and I'm not really, well, feeling it. I'm sure I'll start to again, but that's not the point because if you don't want to have sex with me, I don't want to have sex with you."
He unfurls like a flower, smiling.
"Thank God."
There's a silence in the room, comfortable and heady, like a warm glass of hot chocolate. Jughead has to pull his courage out of his gut, coax it like a wild animal, until it swims up his throat, over his uvula, his tongue, his teeth, his —
"I think kissing would be fine."
Archie laughs, rolling over to face him, propping himself up on one elbow, brushing his fingers over Jughead's collarbones, eyes warm with affection. He stares, trailing his eyes over his face and throat and chest. Under the streetlights outside his window, Jughead, somehow, looks heavenly. Expressive eyes, unending. His skin is flawless, pale and smooth, spotted with leopard's marks. Jughead huffs an impatient breath out his mouth, trailing a lazy hand up to his face, curling around his neck and pulling Archie to meet him. Their mouths are dry, without caution, just slow, with the tempo of a slow ballad, elegant, and timeless.
Archie makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat when Jughead licks across the seam of his lips before pulling away.
"Arch?" he says, eyes wide, cheeks flushed. He falls a little bit farther with that expression, digs himself deeper into the rabbit hole. His heart pounds against his ribs.
"Yeah, Jug?"
"You think your dad will kill us if we sneak out for a burger?"