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In Philosophy class their teacher, Mr. Haddad, always talked about how we know who we are up from the moment we know who we aren’t. When we look at another person and know all the things in that we are not like them, the list gets shorter in a sense where we eliminate what we know for sure we aren’t until we figure out who we are.
That’s how Jughead knew.
It didn’t take a child prodigy to figure it out. The sex jokes weren’t that funny and the sex part of them was specially unnerving. As simple as it sounds, Jughead understood he just wasn’t wired that way. And for him it was natural, he was already weird before finding out. This was just another level of weird.
So coming out wasn’t a specially big deal for him, he only came out to his closest friends anyway. And, just like himself, they already knew how weird of a guy he was.
Betty shrugged and said “Okay, makes sense.” Veronica found out through Betty and was also completely fine with it.
And Archie just smiled like when a kid already knows the answer to a question, for he knew it all along. Archie smiled with his chin up, pointing the scar of when he fell from his bike in 5th grade up towards the air, and Jughead Jones felt like screaming at himself in the mirror for two hours. He felt like the warm it brought to his chest could light up entire buildings in flames.
Archie was the kind of person who would move nations without even realizing; every time he turned his head, it was as if the clouds followed the movement with him, just to accompany the brightness of his eyes.
And Jughead couldn’t help but noticing that, he couldn’t help noticing he wouldn’t mind being a cloud if it meant following someone as beautiful at heart as Archie.
(And that’s how Jughead knew another thing.)
*
It was a Wednesday morning when Jughead took a picture of his best friend. At first it was a joke, just because Archie was complaining his hair was weird and pointing in five directions.
“Jug, please don’t.”
“Sí, sí, por favor. I know you want me to, gingerbread man.” And just like that he took the photo. “Come on, look. You look just like you do every day.” If not better.
“You’re saying that to make me less miserable.”
“Ok, maybe.” No. “But you do have to admit I’m a very nice photographer and you just happen to have an aesthetic pleasing face.”
“Shut up.” Archie said laughing while pushing his friend’s face back, almost pushing him out of the bench in his back.
“You know I can’t. It’s true, I’m physically incapable of shutting up.”
“Yeah, It’s true. Dude, you’re so lucky I like you.”
And maybe he was.
When he got home, all he could do was stare at the picture, count all the freckles in Archie’s face and trace the scar in his chin while staring his pretty teeth, trying to figure out how easy someone can grab his attention considering he struggles with hyperactivity for long as he could remember.
*
After he grew the habit of counting every single one of his best friend’s freckles or wrinkles or dots like they were constellations and his mind was of an astronomer, ready to connect them and immerse his thoughts to, he realized he was too deep.
It didn’t seem like an okay thing, to spend every waking second trying to understand how Archie view the world as we know. But it wasn’t that much of Jughead’s fault; after all he was just a kid and the world seemed so much of an interesting place in his friend’s perspective. He also didn’t know how Archie Andrews, someone who didn’t have reading dictionaries as a hobby and, frankly, wasn’t much of a diverse vocabulary enthusiast had such an unique way to describe and perceive everything around him.
Even after an entire adolescence of European cinema and South American poetry, nothing sounded like Archie.
*
Eventually he grew more and more tired of hiding something that so organically became a part of who he was, who he loves. All the romance movies he had watched with his sisters did not really pay off, it was so fucking far from all yellow butterflies and smiles and the sentiment of happiness hugging his chest in all the right places.
It felt like he was Altas: doomed to hold the world in his shoulders. Every second it got more and more heavy but he could never just toss it aside, he did not have the stomach to simply discard a beautiful — yet destructive — anything for someone like Archie, it just didn’t feel right.
Therefore, he was left with only an option; bear the weight of the world.
*
Betty and Veronica figured it out eventually.
It was 16th of October when they came to talk to him after Geography while he was attempting to get the books he needed without any of the others falling. The look the girls had was just like the one Archie had when he first came out to him, they knew.
“Jug, we needed to talk to you.” Despite the innocence in her voice she was far from it, Betty always knew what was happening even if she never said anything.
“Well, I’m kinda busy trying to not fuck up every single one of the books Archie lended to me.”
“Good, It’s actually about that.”
“You’re here to talk about books, Veronica? Oh, because you’re such an intellectual.”
“Can you please be a little more respectful? I read.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you do.” Jug tried his absolute best not to roll his eyes out of his head.
Unfortunately, this was just an example of how their conversations went by.
“I can’t believe I still try with you two… And why would you even consider we would be here talking about books? It’s about Archie, you moron!”
This was one of the times Betty was proud to be the voice of reason, it could maybe even get her extra school credit and it would look great in applications.
“What, do you wanna plan him a birthday party or something?”
“Why the fuck would we?” Being oblivious didn’t suit the Jones teen very much and Ronie would like to explore it as much as she could.
Partially since her friends were too much of a pain in the ass, Betty spent half of the conversation — if you could call it that — mumbling insults at them; until she had enough.
“Juggie, here’s the deal: we figured it out. You and Archie.”
The face his friend made after processing the information he had just heard was enough for her to pity the soul out of him. He looked like a child when they do something wrong. Ever since his first crush in 3rd grade Betty had never seen Jughead being head over heels for anyone, so this was very alarming.
“No big deal. We’ve all been there. Hell, everyone in a mile radius probably has been there.” Veronica must have pitied him too; his lips were now in a straight firm line as he was still trying to figure out how to arrange Archie’s books like nothing had happened. “You know you can count on us, right?”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Maybe you have just found out our international scheme of book fraud. You don’t know.”
However, they did.
*
Jughead wasn’t the kind of person that worked with feelings. Not like he didn’t feel them or anything. Is just he wasn’t very good at understanding or admitting or sharing. So far, he had understood and admitted his feelings for Archie so he was already in a better place than he normally found himself in. Consequently, it left him feeling like a protagonist in a Nicholas Sparks novel; and that left him feeling weird.
Coming from someone as weird as he was, saying he was “feeling weird” was a very expressive affirmation.
After his little chat with Betty and Ronie he felt like he was constantly being observed by everyone, which wasn’t very good since he was already as paranoid as a kid who gets beat up can be.
Every time he saw Archie or encountered him in Pop’s or, hell, even the corridor, he would stand as straight and as rigid as he could. They wouldn’t share their food or laugh in all the secret ways they used to. That made Jughead feel like a fraud for some reason, as if he was committing the worst crime anyone could. Specially seeing Archie’s face curling in a scuff and twisting his eyebrows.
*
When Archie Andrews confronted him as in why he had been acting so weird, Jughead Jones III froze like Captain America but without the serum — and the glory.
He didn’t know what to say or which lie to come up with. It was just like a pop quiz.
“I don’t know what to do anymore, Jug. I tried. I really did. I don’t know if you are uncomfortable with our proximity, I can be a little too handsy sometimes, I guess. I don’t know, dude. Are you okay?” His voice was low like he was unsure, and everything he said was a bit louder than a whisper. “Do you need me to stop?”
It was sad that Archie would blame himself, as if he could ever be to blame of anything.
“What? No, no. You know I’m weird. I just have been taking it to the extreme lately.” Saying stuff like that was like proclaiming a page of an emo kids’ diary (which, frankly, he was).
“Don’t say stuff like that. You’re not weird.”
“Man, I know you want to comfort me and everything but we know I am.” Jughead scuffed.
“But you’re not. You’re just… different. You’re better.”
And that felt like a caress after fifteen punches over everything he was.
*
After ten years of being Archie’s friend, the pep talks weren’t over. Nor were the crushes he had. Not Jughead, not Betty, maybe not even Archie, could put a finger on how intense was the flux of the oxytocin in the ginger boy’s veins.
Last week was the Caribbean girl from Bio class. Now, apparently, is the janitor’s daughter.
Jughead didn’t even know how between music classes and football practice he found the time to invest in small talk in order to master his flirting abilities; unfortunately for him, he had seen his best friend flirting and as much as it was funny to admit, he was good. Like, very good.
It almost had him wondering how he’d do it with him. Almost. In a total hypothetical heterosexual situation.
Maybe he would smile with his chin up just like the ones Jughead plays in his head repeatedly. Maybe he would laugh at all his sarcastic jokes just like he does when they talk. Maybe he would stare at him like he was his world. Total hypothetical heterosexual situation. Because he was a pretty imaginative guy.
So, naturally, when they got high together at Archie’s house while his father was away and Archie did the things Jughead presumed he did with other girls, his entire body froze again. When he laughed with his chin up at his jokes and would look at him like he was his world it was just like any other dream he had. He tried his absolutely hardest to not pinch himself and just let himself appreciate the moment.
After smoking more, they eventually landed in a position where they were both laying on the floor facing each other. And Jughead was over the moon. Oh, and high. They were both pretty high.
“Man, why do you have all this, like, freckles in your nose.” Before he could stop himself he was poking Archie’s skin like he was a pianist. “I mean, why would you do this to me? And, like, everyone. Ever.”
“They aren’t even that impressive. Have you seen Jason Blossom? That was a good looking redhead. I’m like the Aquaman of redheads. Cool but not that cool.” No one knows why but when you’re high sentences that would be spoken in 10 seconds becomes 30 seconds and 30 seconds becomes 2 minutes.
“But Jason Momoa is good looking, though.”
“Yeah, he is.” Archie lighted up another smoke. “You know who else is good looking?”
And they took a hit. And another hit. At this point Jughead was so high he didn’t even have a filter anymore.
“The janitor’s daughter?”
“What do you mean, dude? That blonde girl? Fuck, no! There are other fish at the sea…”
“Or sea-horses like me.”
“I know, you’re so coooooool.”
“That’s right, I am! Your one and only: Jughead Jones, the third. Ocean god.”
“You kinda look like a god. Yeah. Yeah, definetly.”
“You think?”
“Godly. It suits you.”
“I know what suits me.”
“What?”
“Your mouth.”
“I knowwwww.”
“Like atop of mine. Like, together.”
“You’re so high, Jug.”
“Yes, I am. Over heels. For yooooou.”
And then Archie’s drugged up mind wondered what he had to lose.
And they kissed.