Chapter Text
Betty Cooper could trace all her life’s problems back to the weather. Like most people, she wasn’t a huge fan of extreme temperatures or storm conditions, but working for the last year as a glorified weather girl on a local NYC morning show really made it a hard topic to escape. When she wasn’t gesturing with fake enthusiasm at a green screen, she was standing in gale force tropical winds, reporting from the center of nor’easters, or wading into flood waters. This wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she graduated with a journalism degree from Columbia University, but – as her mother frequently reminded her - she had to pay her dues if she was going to ever work her way up to something bigger like the features desk or field reporting.
The weather had also been the reason Betty’s sister, Polly, left town. The older girl had been eager to go on a camping trip with friends once the Spring season thawed out. Once it did, and she'd left on her one-week trip, their family quickly learned Polly wouldn’t be returning home at all. Her traveling companions had been cult members and Polly was now part of their flock. Betty's sister had always been mercurial and irresponsible, the tangible proof of that being the three-year-old son she’d given birth to her senior year of college after a pregnancy she'd told no one about until the day she went into labor. Polly hadn’t been much of a mother when she was still home, having left most of the child-rearing to their mother, Alice, but abandoning her kid wasn’t something Betty thought Polly was capable of.
The weather was responsible for Alice Cooper slipping on the black ice that covered her driveway, fracturing her hip and requiring a lengthy hospital stay. And consequently, it was how Betty ended gaining custody of her nephew, J.J., with whom she now shared a cramped two-bedroom apartment in Harlem. Having J.J. come to live with her left Betty in a bit of a pickle. While she adored her nephew and stoically tolerated the huge shift in lifestyle and responsibilities his presence entailed, the schedule of a weather girl was often unpredictable, requiring her to leave the apartment at a moment’s notice. This made it vital for her to get live-in childcare help, something almost impossible to find when a murphy bed in the living room was the best she could offer for accommodations. Affording rent on a two-bedroom in NYC was already a financial squeeze, renting a three bedroom was an impossibility, and so her options for nannies had been limited.
After several frantic days of searching with her best friend’s assistance, Betty managed to find a somebody appropriate, Jughead Jones, a man around her age who seemed to really enjoy kids. He was a doctoral candidate at Columbia, on the waiting list to become an adjunct professor in the creative writing department, and seemed to have no issues with the lack of privacy and space. Apparently, he’d raised his sister – now a film major at NYU - in very similar circumstances. His only requirement was an apartment near the campus library and one night off a week to meet with his dissertation supervisor. He was great with J.J. and always cleaned up after himself. One week in and Betty had no complains at all…until the heat wave struck.
With a child in the house, Betty was forced to put regulation safety locks on all the windows, restricting them to only a four-inch berth when opened. The window A/C units were wheezing unattractively, the carburetors intermittently shutting on and off, sometimes pumping only hot air into the apartment. Each unit had a pan to catch the puddles of condensation that collected beneath them, something Betty unsuccessfully tried to have fixed in the past. Betty was lucky Jughead didn't complain much about the accommodations and that the one unit that still functioned properly was in her nephew’s room.
As J.J. took his afternoon nap, Jughead was working hard at his laptop, which sat on the kitchen table next to a well-used legal pad. There was a pen clutched between his teeth which he sometimes took in hand and clicked nervously as he wrote. He squinted at the screen through a pair of black-rimmed glasses that were perched on the bridge of his nose as he pulled at the neck of his white tank top, which was soaked through with sweat and clung lovingly to the planes of his well-defined abs. Over the course of the morning, he had already made two clothing changes, eventually stripping down to a pair of small running shorts, which rode up his thighs as he propped his lean legs up on a nearby chair.
She tried not to stare at the spectacle in the middle of her kitchen, but she hadn’t seen a man wearing so little in a while.
Betty had never hated the weather more.
Jughead groaned and pushed his hands through his hair, still damp from a recent shower. “You ever stare at a word so long it begins to lose all meaning?”
Betty finished rinsing out her coffee mug and placed it on the drying rack. “The entire English language starts to look strange if you really take a step back. It’s completely illogical, and--” When she turned around to add another point, he had a glass of iced tea pressed against his throat - eyes closed, head thrown back in ecstasy - and her thoughts promptly evaporated.
His head jerked forward at her silence, eyes now open. “And?”
"Hmm?" She pressed a hand to her own neck wondering if he could see her flush and hoping if he did he’d just chalk it up to the temperature of the room. “I, um, was just going to say that English is a living language, so its rules aren’t even static.”
Betty loosened a button on her blouse and flapped the thin material in a vain attempt to cool down.
When Jughead simply stared at her blankly, rather than responding, Betty wiped at her mouth, assuming she’d left a trace of coffee on her lips.
He finally cleared his throat and nodded. “Any idea when your super might come up to fix the A/Cs?”
She shook her head. “Every time he says he’s going to fix it, an ‘emergency’ always comes up. I’ve tried to call an outside service to do it, but with the heat wave they’re all booked up for weeks.”
“I’d do it, but…” Jughead gestured to himself, drawing Betty’s gaze to his chest. “I’m a bit of an indoor cat. Maybe, I can call my friend, Archie, to help?”
Betty’s brow furrowed. “Didn’t you say he was a personal trainer?”
“His dad owns a construction company. He’s handy.” Jughead shrugged, then stretched his arms over his head, exposing the thin strip of skin below the hem of his shirt.
If she didn’t get those A/Cs fixed quickly, she was likely to die of heat stroke.
“Always good to have some extra hands,” She blurted out, then quickly covered up the suggestiveness of the statement with an awkward chuckle. “I mean, that’s nice of you offer, but I’m sure he’s very busy. Anyway, I should probably go. Don’t want to be late. After all, the weather waits for no man…or woman.” Her laugh was higher-pitched this time, more strained. If she kept this up, she wouldn’t have to wait for the heat to kill her, she would die of embarrassment.
Jughead’s lips curled into an amused smile. “You might want to button your shirt up first unless you want to give the neighborhood a show?”
“What?” Betty looked down and noticed she’d accidentally loosened two extra buttons than she’d intended to, exposing the top of her bra. With a gasp, she brought her fingers up to frantically fasten her shirt. “Thank you for that. I don’t need HR banging down my door with a sexual harassment claim.” She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping if she couldn’t see his reaction it would be like she hadn’t even made that last comment. She really didn’t need her nanny thinking he might be living with a sexual predator. “I’m going to—.“ She pointed to the door before practically sprinting toward it.
“Betty,” Jughead called out, just as her hand reached the knob.
She froze, then turned around slowly. “Yes?”
He smirked and gestured to her handbag, which was sitting next to his computer on the table. “I assume you need this?”
Betty rushed back to the table. “Thank you. Please give J.J. a kiss from me when he wakes up and tell him I will be home soon?”
“I’ll make sure to give him a big kiss from you.” Jughead pressed her bag into her hands. “Have a good day at the office, boss-lady.”
“You, too?” She flashed him the megawatt smile she was known for on television and immediately fled for the safety of the hallway.
The moment the elevator doors closed behind Betty, her phone was in her hand calling her best friend.
The line had barely connected before Betty hissed into the phone, “What the fuck have you gotten me into, Veronica?”
“Good morning, sunshine,” Veronica sang into the phone.
“No weather quips today, Lodge. I’m too perturbed!”
Veronica’s laugh was low and mocking. “I could ask you what has gotten you so perturbed, but I have a feeling it’s more of a who.”
“You did this on purpose!” Betty was angry, mostly with herself. She’d been so busy with work and making unforeseen preparations for J.J. that she’d outsourced the nanny-hunt to her friend.
“Of course, I did. Did you think a hot, eligible man just accidentally turned up in your living room?”
“You were supposed to be finding somebody for J.J., not me.” Betty walked off the elevator and kicked her building’s front door open with her foot, shrinking back as a gust of steamy air hit her in the face.
“Are those two concepts mutually exclusive?” Veronica tutted as if Betty’s complaint was unreasonable. “He had excellent references and cleared the criminal background check. Doesn’t J.J. like him?”
Betty sagged against the side of her building. “J.J. adores him.”
“Then, I’m failing to see the problem…”
“Everything was fine until this fucking heat wave hit and he started walking around half-dressed and sweaty all the time. I can’t stop staring at him like some pervert. I feel like one of those sleazy characters on ‘Mad Men’." Betty bit her bottom lip in irritation.
“Hmm, you do rock a rather Betty Draper aesthetic.”
“I meant Don Draper, not Betty!” The studio car pulled up to the corner and Betty got into it, sighing as her warm skin soaked up the chilled air. “Maybe the heat is just frying my brain?”
“Or, maybe, you just need to get laid?” Veronica suggested, unhelpfully.
“Obviously, I need to get laid, but it’s not going to be by the guy watching my nephew. I can’t exactly escape back to my place when the whole thing goes sideways, can I? And that’s assuming he doesn’t find me repulsive and bolt in the night after my advances,” She huffed into the receiver as her back collided with the leather seat. “This is a disaster.”
“No, Alexander MacQueen’s 2015 Fall line was a disaster, this is just an inconvenience,” Veronica said, correcting her. “Stop stressing and we’ll work everything out when you get here.”
The line disconnected before Betty could respond. She cursed once last time at the phone before shoving it back into her handbag.
Veronica was right, Betty needed to get laid. Maybe if she got everything out of her system with some other guy, she could avoid turning into a desperate cliché?
Just then, a photo popped up on her phone. It was Jughead holding her tired-looking nephew with his lips pressed to the side of J.J.’s sleep-rumbled hair along with the caption, ‘Mission Accomplished!’.
Veronica was wrong. This was a disaster on par with Krakatoa.