midnight calls | jarchie

the first letter

if something happens in your life that made a significant impact on you, but you're ashamed of it, are you supposed just to pretend it never happened and move on, even if it's a huge and emotional chapter of your life? if you're archie andrews; yes, yes you are, and you're doing your going to do your absolute best to forget about it.

on the other hand, if you're jughead jones, you don't.

there are things in jughead's life he wishes would have played out much differently, one of them being his relationship with archie andrews. he often finds himself overthinking about it, blaming himself for how it ended, and he more than anything wants to talk through it all with archie, but it's hard when he pretends it never happened.

what happened the other night, at sweetwater river, is something they haven't talked about. jughead isn't sure archie even read what his note said, nor if he understands it. that's why he's writing a new one.

jughead is sitting by his desk in his room, with a pencil in his hand and a blank paper in front of him. he has a million things he wants to say but can't figure out a single way to do it, and he's even more clueless on how to starts his letter.

'dear archie, i've been thinking,' he writes, but quickly erases it again. 'dear archie,' no, that sounds so cliché and stupid.

what about 'hi archie'... this just sounds like a text message.

what about just 'archie'? that must work, right?

jughead decides to start the letter that way, 'archie, i've been thinking, thinking about you' he erases the last word. 'thinking about us.'

it takes jughead a long time just to write a few sentences, and without him noticing, he has been up all night.

just as he finishes the letter, his alarm clock starts making noise, so he walks up to it and shuts it off. it doesn't take him long until he's ready to leave, and just minutes later, he's on his way to school.

jughead knows archie inside and out, and he knows that archie is always early to school, and he knows which way he walks, so instead of just walking to school, jughead walks the opposite way, hoping to meet archie. 

and he does.

jughead notices archie before archie notices him, so he takes on his headphones and continues walking like he doesn't know they're about to bump into each other.

"hey, jughead," jughead ignores him.

"jug!" he takes off his headphones and looks at archie as if he didn't hear what he said.

"oh, hi archie," they both stop walking and look at each other. they don't know what to say, they hadn't known what to say since that rainy night when archie got a note, and jughead got an apology.

archie scratches his neck and looks down at their feet, "so uhm..." he looks up at jughead, "I'm not sure what to say to you,"

"not me either, that's why i'm giving you this," jughead hands over the letter, and archie takes it. "now continue walking so you don't get late for first period," and before archie knows it, jughead is gone.