bromances between guy friends are becoming more and more normal as society progresses. these days, a bunch of straight male best friends push the limits of their sexuality by flirting with one another, but no one really questions it because at the end of the day the flirting really doesn't mean anything and the boys are still straight. but archie and jughead have a lot of people questioning that.
the two have been best friends since kindergarten. jughead had accidentally stepped on archie's new shoes but archie said he wouldn't be mad as long as he could do it back to jughead, who had also been wearing a brand new pair of shoes. jughead agreed to let archie step on his shoes too, not wanting to anger the boy and ever since that moment, the two have been borderline inseparable. it wasn't until high school though, when people began to define their close relationship as a bromance.
their freshman year of high school is when the "fake" flirting began. all of their guy friends thought it was funny as they too occasionally participated in fake flirting, and girls thought it was cute that the two had such a close friendship and felt comfortable enough in their sexualities to flirt without worrying that people thought they were gay. but of course, there was always the big questions every now and again.
"are you guys dating?"
"is he your boyfriend?"
"y'all are gay?" to which the answer was always, "no, we're just best friends."
some people believed it, others called bullshit, but archie and jughead couldn't care less. they knew they were nothing more than best friends, and that's all that mattered. however, the rumors did continue to follow them throughout their high school experience. now entering their senior year, the boys are still constantly being asked about their sexualities and relationship status. when they were freshmen the questions didn't bother them too much, but now it was starting to get a bit annoying.
"you know what we should do? we should give the people what they want and just pretend we're dating, then everyone would stop asking." jughead suggests to archie who was sitting across from him in a booth at pop's.
archie just raises his eyebrow at jughead in confusion.
"nah, i'm just kidding. unless..."
"unless what jughead? you're not serious? are you?" archie questions.
"not fully, but kind of. how many people have come up to us in the last thirty minutes asking us if we were on a date?" jughead asks.
"five." archie answers.
"exactly. five more people than there should have been. i'm kind of tired of it."
"i get it, i am too. so you really think fake dating will change anything? because i'm not really against the idea, anything to make the questions stop." archie says.
"i'm not sure, but i think it's worth a try. we'll fake date for like a month or something and then publicly "break up" and go back to just being best friends. problem solved." jughead explains.
"that doesn't sound too bad, but i don't want girls thinking i'm gay or anything so what are we gonna do about that?"
"i feel that, me either. umm, when people ask, cuz they definitely will, we'll just tell them we're bisexual. that'll spread around the school and girls will know we're still into them once we break up." jughead says.
"ok, ok fine. i'm in. how do we start?" archie asks.
jughead thinks for a little bit before an idea hits him.
"kiss me on the cheek real quick."
"what?" archie exclaims with a shocked expression.
"just do it." jughead huffs.
archie hesitantly does as told while jughead quickly snaps a pic, then archie watches as jughead opens instagram and prepares to post the picture.
"hold on, wait wait wait. are we sure we wanna do this? there's no going back if we do." archie says.
"i know, i know. but the easiest way to stop a rumor is to make it true." jughead replies.
"ok, do it. and caption it, finally official, or something." archie suggests.
jughead does just that, captioning the photo 'it's finally official <3' and posting it. the two boys had not the slightest idea of how much this quick little decision would end up changing their lives in more ways than expected.
