Flatline ((Jughead Jones)) 3

21

Jughead was searching for his trailer, deploying his Serpents to search every inch of Riverdale. We were almost sure that the trailer had become the main centre of drug production. Once the Serpents had ran out of the bunker, Jughead turned to me. I had been standing behind him the whole time, watching as his desperation poured out of every word he spoke.
"Do you want to go hunting with me tonight?" He asked, turning to me. I stepped closer to him, leaning to press a soft kiss on his lips.
"I'd love to, but I really need to try and sleep tonight. If my dad see's I've been having nightmares, then he'll call the devil." The Devil was the new code word for the psychiatrist. Jughead smirked at my words, nodding.
"If you need me, just call." He was always like this. Every time I slept at my own house or without him, he would tell me the same words. He was reinforcing the idea that I may be alone in the dark, with a rattlesnake for protection, but I wasn't alone. Now, especially, he was only next door.
"Oh, Betty asked to borrow your camera."

The next day, I got a message from Jug. I had just finished talking to Betty about how our Principal was part of the farm, when he messaged. Now, Weatherbee being part of the farm wasn't surprising. I mean, in Riverdale, why would we have a normal Principal, or a normal school year. But now, I was at Junkyard Steve's.

"Tonsils called it in." Jughead held my hand tightly in his. We were inside the trailer. The counters that used to be filled with dirty plates where FP hadn't washed up, or the remnants of whatever Jughead tried to cook was now filled with conical flasks, beakers tubes and chemicals. The shelves didn't hold the staple foods that I would buy and stock up on. In their place was rows upon rows of bottles with various labels. The trailer held the musky scent of burning and the sickly stench of drugs.
"Oh my goodness." I sighed, too afraid to touch anything, fearing what diseases were still lingering on the surfaces.
"This was my childhood home." The trailer had barely changed since the first time I stepped foot in it. Given, since I had been living there, it was a lot cleaner and the bathroom was no longer a nuclear bomb site that proved it was only men using it. Although little had changed in that time, now nothing looked the same, and I dared not to imagine what state his bedroom was in. "My mom destroyed it."

Jughead moved to sit on the couch which looked to be surprisingly clean. As he moved, his nose turned up at the sight of everything, disgusted by it all.
"How the hell did we get here? When did our lives go from worrying about who's gonna sit next to us on the bus to drug lord mothers?"
"And fathers that can kill their sons." I added.
"What are we gonna do?" Things were bad when Jughead angrily removed his beanie. Tha hat never came off. The amount of times he fell asleep with it on, or it ended up getting thrown to the other side of the room during late night escapades, was too many to count. Jughead never took the thing off. SO I knew how much he was breaking when he pulled it off and let his head rest in his hands, biting back the tears.

We were going through a lot, everything getting on top of us. It wasn't fair that Jughead finally got to see his mom after years of her living away, but she turned out to be the new evil mastermind set at drinking all innocence from a town that three years ago was the most picturesque place to be. And everything that had happened in the town and with his family seemed to fall on Jughead's shoulders, and right now he felt the weight of the world far more.

"Fine, we're damaged, really damaged but that does not make us wise." I tried to make him look at me, but he was leant forward, sitting on the edge of his couch, not wanting to talk, but I knew I had to try. The musical was meant to bring us together but for him it just seemed like another thing on top of him. "We're not special, we're not different, we don't choose who lives or dies. Let's be normal, see bad movies, sneak a beer and watch TV." Over the course of our relationship we had never had a chance to be normal. We hadn't taken a breath since we took over the Serpents. "We'll bake brownies, or go bowling. Don't you want a life with me?"