oneshots and other shit

5: there's a time and a place for everything (except this) (jughead/archie)

vague continuation of the oneshot before lol

it's 3am I'm sorry

it's 5:28 a.m., the sky is a tentative shade of blue, as if the morning is yet to be sure of itself, and they are both awake.

archie is running laps. jughead, as always, is watching.

yet at once, watching is a thing he is allowed to do.

there almost seems little fun in it anymore: taking all that is given to him upon a spoon, but he's resigned himself to comfort and ease, and mornings which he chooses for himself. for if anything can be said, it was not archie who dragged jughead out of bed at 5 in the morning to watch him run across the school field; his skin gathering dust and sweat.

yet, in many ways, archie andrews was a magnet. sunlight glistened upon his skin, as if was him alone that coaxed it from over the horizon each morning. trouble came to him like a flock of birds returning home for summer. but most of all, archie attracted jughead's stares.

jughead was yet to quite get his mind around attraction. and thursday, 5:30 a.m., the school field, was neither the place nor the time. but archie andrews had kissed him. just days prior. and his head was buzzing. non-stop constantly.

he knows he doesn't acquaint himself with school field and the sunrise for fickle things: archie's chest, the flexing of his arms; things jughead knows he's supposed to find attractive. especially in someone like archie andrews.

truly jughead comes out to see the sunrise for the very same reason archie comes to run. for who they are. even in the early morning light, archie runs like he's got the whole world on his tail, and jughead is idle, watching.

perhaps, even, jughead is all that's tailing him.

he wonders if they should talk about that kiss. with long words and hand gestures. like people do on tv. the way his mind paints romance out to be. but still jughead is in this state where the word romance sounds wrong and twisted; he wants nothing of such a world.

yet if it brings a weight off archie's chest; or at the very least grants them both an extra hour in bed, jughead will slave himself away to awkward conversation and the fickle ideas of the soft-hearted.

-

it's 4:16 p.m., and the school day rings like an echo in his ears. he is living his life in reverbs and echoes alone, it seems; yet the prospect does not terrify him as it should. whatever 'should' might make itself out to be.

archie is all hands and eyes and animated conversation as he serves up a slice of himself for the whole room to devour. jughead, is forever, silent, arms-folded, watching.

pop's is busy. busy for a small town. yet busy enough to wire jughead entirely wrong. he misses solitude - it's an odd notion, but a stark one. for since their kiss, archie has seldom left his side. as if somehow, he fears that jughead will be the one to run from him, even with his lanky legs and sedentary lifestyle.

jughead is in the corner of the booth. his booth. he doesn't recall ever wanting to share it. archie is another matter entirely - even if he is pressed up against him, loud and yet so very distant. but directly adjacent from him sits betty cooper, eyes sparked bright with wonder, watching archie as if he was carved from marble; it's more than friendly adoration, jughead knows. it even seems simple. from a distance. objectively.

there is nothing objective about archie's hands around his waist and a smell of pine and summer sun that had thrown him for days.

in answer to his own problems, jughead ignores them. and instead plays the silent observer, for that is what he knows. just as archie knows smiles and loud conversations, and having every person in the room fall for him.