Chapter Text
Archie Andrews is pretty.
He's pretty and handsome and kind, and he's the least awful man that Cheryl could entangle herself with and for that, she must be blessed by some higher power. Maybe He has finally seen her worthiness, she tells herself, maybe He has seen how much she's struggled and sent her a kind, sweet man who values going to church and saving himself for marriage the same way she does herself.
And he may not be attractive in the way that Veronica Lodge talks about her boyfriend — Forsythe, though everyone has called him Jughead for as long as they've known him — but he's like one of those men out of the magazines with his chiseled jaw and sharp features that soften when he smiles at her and his big hands that make hers feel so small. His redheadedness is simply a coincidence and not a tether to her late brother, either.
After all, Blossom children are always redheaded and fair, and Cheryl is preserving their lineage this way.
He smiles at her mother — the wretched, awful woman — and he'd talk shop with her father even though he's rather uninterested, and he dons a crisp Oxford shirt and slacks with the loafers Cheryl got him for his last birthday. He'll tithe properly because he's a good man, will drop ten percent of his earnings into the plate at church the way he should, then he'll slide his hand into Cheryl's and sing along to the hymns, too. And any apprehension that Cheryl feels about their engagement isn't cold feet like cousin Betty says — she's always been a harlot that thinks she can play by her own rules — it's simply natural.
"Darling?" Archie calls, his voice pitched up sweetly like it does when he speaks to her. "Are you almost ready?"
Is she ever?
Cheryl fluffs her curls in the mirror once more — it's been perfect the last three times she checked, but what's once more? — and she adjusts her dress and petticoat just so, and she smiles in the mirror just to make sure she still can — to make sure her lips don't stretch unnaturally and garish across her teeth and that her eyes soften the appropriate amount — before she slips on her kitten heels and grabs her handbag.
Archie will carry it, as he always does, because he's a gentleman in that sort of a way, too.
"Coming, dearest!" She calls across their small home, just a one floored thing with two bedrooms and a single bathroom for them to share. "I was just fixing my makeup."
She spritzes perfume on her neck and the insides of her wrists and she emerges from the bedroom with her handbag tucked under her arm, donning a dress that matches Archie's button up and slacks and looking every bit the perfect, happy couple that they are.
They're happy, aren't they?
There's no doubt that they're perfect, aesthetically so.
"You're gorgeous." Archie says, and he drops a kiss to her cheek because he'd never dare ruin her lipstick. "With or without makeup."
Cheryl flushes just a bit, offers him a soft little smile as her hand slides into his and they step out the door and to his car. It's yellow — gaudy and trashy but Cheryl will allow him this, will allow him the pleasure of having a car that all of the other boys at church gawk over — with red flames on the side, and it's a real piece of shit but it's theirs and Archie even holds the door open for her, just like he did when he first started courting her.
They're a happy, perfect couple and isn't she so lucky?
She's the luckiest girl on earth, Cheryl thinks, to have a hardworking man like Archie Andrews slide an engagement ring onto her finger fresh out of high school, to send him off to work at the construction site with a press of her lipstick-tacky lips on his cheek and a packed lunch in his hand. She's lucky that they get to return to Riverdale High just to watch him coach the Bulldogs, too, lucky that she gets to hold a poster board sign that she decorates with marker and stickers that says Coach Andrews has my heart! and she's lucky, above all else, that Archie doesn't pressure her for anything.
Archie Andrews is a good, pure man — the greatest man that Cheryl has ever known besides her beloved late Jason — and she's lucky.
She's lucky even as her stomach churns as he slides into the drivers seat and slides his right hand onto her knee, and lucky even as they pull into the church parking lot and Veronica waves at them from where she's talking animatedly on the steps, and Cheryl is especially lucky when Archie opens the door for her and helps her from the car with his warm, calloused hand in hers.
"My lady." He says sweetly, because Archie Andrews has never been capable of being harsh or rough.
They're a perfect couple, matching every Sunday morning to sit in the second row of pews like the seats are reserved just for them, and Cheryl adjusts her skirt and petticoat while Archie's thick fingers preen at her hair and adjust it where the wind has whipped at her curls.
"Thank you, Mr. Andrews." She says in that playful tone she only ever takes with him, and she kisses his stubbly cheek.
Archie shaves every evening after work, but there's always a shadow of rough, fresh stubble by morning. It sickens Cheryl sometimes, how rough it is under her lips, and she takes great pleasure in pressing a kiss to his baby smooth skin at night as he emerges from the bathroom clad in a matching pajama set — a button up shirt and pants to match, because Cheryl likes buying her fiancé nice things — smelling of soap and freshness because Cheryl has long since forbade cologne in their bed.
"Always, future Mrs. Andrews." He says, all dopey grin and sweet, sincere eyes, and Cheryl tries to school her face as her stomach swirls uncomfortably.
Cheryl Andrews.
What an ugly, ugly name.
Perhaps she'll hyphenate it, will force Archie to be an Archibald Blossom-Andrews so he can carry his late father's name and she can carry her late brother with her along with the family legacy. But Jason never wanted to stay a Blossom, wanted to change his last name to Cooper when he and Polly eloped, if only he had the chance.
Either way, it's too much to think about in the church parking lot with Veronica waving a handkerchief and calling her over and Archie's large hand dwarfing hers, so Cheryl shoves it down deep into her chest and smiles extra sweet — so sweet it borders on saccharine, even.
"Oh, Archibald." She says, and she leans over and kisses him on the cheek once more for good measure. "I can't wait to marry you."
Sometimes it goes like this: the two of them at the dinner table, Cheryl in a pretty dress and underskirt and Archie freshly washed from work and donning a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt.
Cheryl prepares a meal, all meat and potatoes and dessert, too, if she's feeling particularly kind towards him — she is most of the time, because he's a sweet man who works hard for them and doesn't ask her what she spends and where — a glass of wine each as they chatter about nothing of any importance, of the men at the job site or how many boards her big, strong Archibald carried from one place to another all in the name of building the new shopping mall. Her plate only half eaten, scraped onto Archie's because he's always hungry for a second portion and she's only hungry for another glass of wine to quiet her brain, and he never says anything because why would he?
Then they move to the couch, on either end with a cushion between them, and sometimes they chat and sometimes they play a round of cards — Archie is partial to Go Fish, and Cheryl prefers Gin Rummy — and then Archie turns on the television to watch the game. Cheryl sits and titters appropriately when he smacks the side of the television until they get enough signal for it to come through, then she excuses herself to the kitchen to pour herself another glass of wine — is this her third or her sixth, she isn't quite sure anymore — and fetch Archie a bottle of beer.
"Thank you, gorgeous." He always says, because he talks to Cheryl like she's a prize he's won.
And then she'll smile — always too many teeth showing but she doesn't quite care when she's at the bottom of a bottle of red — and kiss him square on the lips, stubble be damned, and he'll always whistle long and low when she pulls away.
He adores her.
She isn't sure how she feels about that.
"You're welcome, Mr. Andrews." She says, her tongue between her teeth and so, so sweet for him. Sweet for the life he's given her, really, away from the horrors of Thornhill and away from the horrors of a man who would pressure her into laying beneath him every night.
And sometimes it goes like this, too: the two of them in bed, Archie in a matching pajama set that Cheryl embroiders with a cursive A on the pocket and Cheryl in a nightgown made of the same fabric, laying side by side whilst they read by only the glow of the bedside lamp.
Cheryl wears her glasses — ugly things, she thinks, but Archie smiles fond and sweet when she wears them — a du Maurier paperback in her lap while Archie reads the sports columns of the paper, side by side in bed with the quilt tucked around their hips looking every bit a late forties couple and not nearly the twenty two year olds they are. They read until she yawns — she's always tuckered out before Archie is, despite his backbreaking work on the job site — and Archie will hand her a bookmark for her novel.
He waits for her to set her book back on her bedside table beside her glass of water — there's condensation running down it, soaking into the coaster that Cousin Betty hand knit for them as a Christmas gift, and Cheryl makes a mental note to launder it before it stinks of mildew — and then they both turn out their bedside lamps, almost in synchrony, and he leans overtop of her and presses a clean-shaven good night kiss to her lips.
She rolls on her side to face the wall — Archie sleeps on the side closest to both the door and the window, just in case, because he's a gentleman who would take care of her like that — and he pulls her into his chest. They spoon awkwardly for a few minutes, her hips nestled in his and his arm settled on her side and not creeping up any higher, then he presses a kiss to the back of her head before he rolls onto his back on his side of the bed and tugs the blankets up to his armpits.
"Good night, Cheryl." He says, voice tired and a bit deeper for the sleep pulling at the edges of his consciousness.
"Good night, Archibald." She says, her voice sweet and demure and the way a perfect wife should sound. "Sleep well."
And he doesn't answer — he never does, not in their clockwork life that is the same every night — for he's already drifted off to sleep, breath heavy falling from his lips and eyes shut.
Cheryl rolls over and props her head up with her hand, allows herself a moment to study him in the moonlight glow — his sleep-relaxed face, the lines beginning to etch their way into it from hours of hard work in the sun, his muscular shoulders, the bit of chest hair that peeks from the top of his pajama shirt — and she imagines a life as his wife. Would it be much different than it is now?
Would it feel any different?
And sometimes, it even goes like this: Archie asleep, a light snore coming from his lips, and Cheryl jolting awake with a scream trapped in her throat.
Archie's arm is like a vice grip thrown over her waist, his thigh over her own and holding her down, and Cheryl's heart beats erratically in her chest. She frees herself from his grasp — he flops onto his back on his proper side of the bed, a disgruntled sound forcing its way past his lips — before slipping her feet into her house shoes and padding quietly to the bathroom.
She stares at her face in the mirror for so long that she begins to look uncanny, a bit like a Salvador Dali painting, and she has to pat her cheeks just to be sure that she's real. She recalls her dream — her and Archie, a child on each of their hips and her belly swollen with another, standing on the front porch of their perfect for two but too small for many home and grinning awful, grotesque grins that border on preternatural — and she feels her stomach twist and churn until she's doubled over gripping the toilet and throwing up red wine and regret.
Cheryl dabs a washrag at the corners of her lips, splashes cold water on her face and fills the little cup she keeps at the side of the sink so she can swish and spit before she pours herself out a capful of mouthwash.
Spearmint.
Fresh.
These sorts of nightmares plague her sometimes, will wake her up with her chest heaving and her stomach turning, and Cheryl has never been able to understand it. It's always the same — her and Archie, a house and kids and a dog, and sometimes the ghost of sweet Jason — all scarily wide smiles and swollen bellies and the life she wants all twisted into something out of a horror movie.
Cheryl has never quite liked horror films.
And if she wants this life so badly, then why do the nightmares plague her even after all this time? Even after she's sure that Archie is serious about her and wants her and isn't going to leave and poof her perfect Stepford life away?
"Baby?" Archie murmurs from the bed, and Cheryl flicks the light off before it can disturb him any further.
She flushes the toilet, washes her hands in nothing but the glow of the nightlight she keeps plugged in beside the vanity, and emerges from the bedroom before Archie can stand up and come after her.
"Restroom, darling." She says as she crawls back into bed.
Archie fluffs the blankets around her, tucks them up around her and presses a kiss to her shoulder through the flannel of her nightgown. Sometimes it makes her feel a bit ill, how sweet and gentle he is with her. He handles her with care, like she's something precious that needs safeguarding.
He'd never hurt her.
He'd never raise a hand to her, would never shout in her face.
"Oh." He whispers, nuzzles at her shoulder before stroking the wispy hairs back from where they've stuck to her forehead from sweat and water both. "I love you, Cheryl."
Cheryl is lucky.
She's so, so lucky to have a fiancé like Archie Andrews — she is, and she loves him so much, her perfect, perfect boy with a sweet face that so much resembles Jason's — and she'll carry as many babies as he wants of her to prove it. And any grotesque nightmare she has of him are simply a manifestation of her worry that she isn't good enough for him — that she won't keep house nearly as well as she thinks she can, that she'll be an awful mother, that she'll become drab and boring and he'll walk off and leave her for someone younger and prettier one day — aren't they?
She makes a mental note to ask Veronica about it the next time they have a luncheon together.
Surely Veronica Lodge has all of the answers.
"I love you too, Archibald." She says it and she means it, strokes her hand over his freshly shaven cheek and smiles when he relaxes into her touch. He's so pliant, so sweet, so easy to love. "Sweet dreams, my sweet boy."
Archie smiles, the corners of his lips twitching upwards in his half asleep state, and Cheryl runs her pointer finger down the bridge of his nose just to see it scrunch up. He looks young like this, sometimes — physically young like when they were in high school, maybe, but emotionally young too like somebody who is, at his core, just a young boy who likes to romp around in the yard and play — and Cheryl feels her chest tug, feels herself ache for that sweet boy who dreams of throwing a ball in the yard with a son or having tea parties with a daughter.
She'll give it to him, Cheryl decides, because it's the right thing to do — to give him a child or two or three, to get her hands filthy cooking him a hearty meal and then clean them off so she's presentable when he gets home, to keep the fridge stocked with Heineken for him and Zinfandel for herself.
It's what she needs to do, isn't it?
Isn't it?
Cheryl wakes an hour before Archie does these days.
She's going to be a good wife — a great one, even — after all.
She fixes her hair, pats on a bit of makeup, pulls on a dress with a fluffy petticoat all before he rises. She wakes him up a few minutes before his alarm with a press of her lipstick-tacky lips to his forehead, whispers in his ear until his eyes open and a grin blooms on his lips, all sleep-dry and morning breath.
"Good morning, Mr. Andrews." She says, smooths his hair from his forehead. "Time to get up, darling."
He rolls from the bed, slides his feet into his slippers, and kisses Cheryl on the head as he walks to the bathroom to get himself ready for the day.
He takes a shower and dresses in his clothing for work — Cheryl lays his jeans and shirt on the counter with his belt and undergarments because she's considerate like that, because she knows how to be a good wife and she'll show him now to prove it — and he brushes his teeth before he spritzes cologne on his neck, and Cheryl pads in her house shoes to the kitchen to prepare for the day.
She puts the water in the machine and sets the coffee to brew — it's always a bit bitter, even with a spoon of sugar, but there are concessions to make when they pay all of their own bills and indulgent, expensive coffee was the first to go — cracks an egg and lays three strips of bacon in the frying pan with the heat on medium high as she lays out Archie's lunchbox to pack.
He comes into the kitchen, fresh faced and sweet, and Cheryl drops a kiss to his cheek before she slides his breakfast plate in front of him at the table.
Archie pretends to read the paper sometimes — Cheryl always catches him reading the comic strips, and she indulges him by letting him, because they both had to grow up too quickly in their own ways and Archie deserves this — smiles into his coffee with cream and four sugars and his plate of eggs and bacon and toast.
"D'you have any plans today, darling?" He says, looks at her like he's genuinely interested.
Sometimes he eyes her spot at the table while he eats, asks if she plans on having breakfast and offers to share. She declines every time, of course, says that a black coffee with one sugar is enough for her until lunch.
It is.
It is.
"Not much of anything, dear." She says, swirls the little spoon in her mug for something to do more than functionality. "Lunch with the girls, then I'll head to the market for some produce. Do you need anything while I'm out?"
Archie finishes his coffee, scrapes the last of his meal into his open mouth straight off the plate — it's a bit disgusting, and Cheryl has to avert her eyes because it makes her stomach turn — and he drops his plate and cup into the sink like he expects it'll be taken care of. It will. And even if she didn't, Archie Andrews is such a pure, sweet boy that he'd stand at the sink tired from work and wash up after himself.
He doesn't deserve a life like that, though.
Cheryl would never let him do it.
"Some berries would be nice." He says, and he laces up his work boots. "Maybe we could have that cobbler you make?"
Archie says it devoid of any expectation — like he fears it would trouble her — and for that reason alone, she'll do it for him. Cheryl will do anything he wants so long as he keeps smiling at her like this, all soft and sweet, and she slips his lunchbox into his hands and their fingers brush and she wonders, not for the first time, if his love for her has limits.
"Of course." She says, because she'll do anything Archie Andrews wants of her. "Maybe with some vanilla ice cream."
His face lights up, and Cheryl sees so much of sweet Jason in him that she thinks she might be sick.
She sees Jason always, but also that scared young boy who lost his father in the war, too. It's not always noticeable to the naked eye, but Archie has courted her and subsequently been engaged to her for four years now and she sees the signs clear as day. War movies make his eyes go stormy and dark, and novels where the man passes and leaves a woman and child at home make him upset.
Cheryl would do anything to make him happy.
"I'd love that." He says — means it, too, for he's always sincere — and she follows him to the front porch to see him off for work. "Have a good day, my darling."
He kisses her, a slide of lip against lip and stubble on her smooth skin, and she stands on the top step as he climbs into his car and waves at her with the window down.
"I love you, Mr. Andrews." She says, waves her pocket handkerchief at him in the way that makes him smile dopey and sweet like the seventeen year old boy she set her sights on.
Even as a young girl, Cheryl knew that Archie Andrews would be a safe option — a good man, a sweet man, all of the things she should want to have.
"And I love you, future Mrs. Andrews." He says as he backs out of their driveway and pulls down the road.
She'll blow a kiss, he'll pretend to catch it and store it in the pocket of his shirt, and she'll giggle and push her handkerchief back into the pocket of her dress before checking the front porch mailbox and going back inside.
It's always the same.
Clockwork.
The American dream, even — a house with a pretty picket fence with enough room for a doghouse, two bedrooms and a bathroom shared, a living room that's spacious enough to house some toys if needed — and she's so lucky to have it, so happy to live this life with sweet Archie Andrews and his gentle smile and his strong work ethic.
Cheryl is happy.
She is.
A glance at the clock mounted on the kitchen wall tells her there's enough time to sort through the mail and wash up from breakfast before Veronica and Betty are over for lunch, a Thursday afternoon standing tradition they've held since high school. She doesn't particularly like Cousin Betty's company sometimes, but she's better than Evelyn — annoying Evelyn Evernever who thinks she is the closest thing to perfection this side of heaven — and marginally better than Midge, who hasn't done much of anything at all, really, but she does annoy Cheryl and that's enough.
She washes the dishes with the kitchen window open — it's sun-warm enough that she won't need a cardigan, but chilly enough that she'll need a throw blanket over her lap to sit on the front porch — dries them and puts them up before sorting through the mail. Junk in the trash, bagged and taken outside to the can, bills in the organizer stuck to the side of the refrigerator with magnets, and a postcard from Reggie Mantle — one of Archie's friends, a sweet boy who is off traveling — on the fireplace where they display things of the sort.
She takes a moment to admire the living room when she fluffs the throw pillows on the couch, for Archie has afforded them such a beautiful home — not the biggest by any means, but it's nice and it's theirs and her wretched mother can't take this from her — and she lays her dress and pantyhose for the day on the bed.
Clockwork.
And some would say it's monotonous — on her bad days, Cheryl may even say this, if only to herself — but she's lucky to have a clockwork life, to have a redheaded fiancé sitting at the table reading the comic strips while she packs his lunch.
There are so many worse things in the world.
She bathes, washes the sweat of the night off of her body and the grime from cooking Archie's breakfast, and she closes her eyes and sees Jason's face on Archie's body. She could save him, Cheryl thinks, though she doesn't know if she means Jason or Archie or both. She's told Archie as much one time, when the wine loosened her lips just enough and her head had lolled to his shoulder where they were seated side against side on the couch.
"I see Jason in you. Or you in him, maybe." She had slurred, words spilling from her lips before she could stop them. Cheryl is good at that sort of thing, at holding her tongue. "I could save you, you know. I want to save you."
Archie had set his beer down — on the coaster, of course, she's trained him well, wants him to have a nice home with nice things he's proud of providing — and stroked her sweaty copper hair from her forehead where the fan wasn't circulating the air as well as it should've.
It was a balmy night, pajamas stuck to their skin and hair to their foreheads.
"Darling." He had said, looked into her eyes like he meant it and so Cheryl was forced to believe it. "I think that's my job around here, isn't it?"
And she thinks of it as she dresses — thinks of Archie Andrews, mostly, and his sweet face and how she wants to save him, how she wants to tuck him in the pocket of her tweed coat and keep him safe there, for he is still, at least in her mind, the young boy who stood on the football field with her twin — as she pulls on her navy dress with the red accents and ties a matching bandana into her hair, puts on her daily jewelry, too. There's her engagement ring — a beautiful yet simple one that Archie worked through their senior year to afford — a string of pearls around her neck, a heart shaped locket with photos of both Jason and Archie, and a pair of dainty pearl earrings.
Not a Blossom heirloom piece on her body, not even the ones she swore she'd never get rid of.
Just as it should be.
Veronica arrives to lunch first, as she always does, and she comes with a fancy bottle of scotch in her hand.
She's a good guest, for she was raised in the same sort of home that Cheryl was, and she frowns when Cheryl already has the table dressed with the nice tableware and a salad in the center of it. But Cheryl would sooner keel over than accept help setting her table or fixing the meal — and she's desperate to prove that she can be a good housewife, too — so she tells Veronica to sit and pours them each a glass of white wine while they wait on Betty.
Cousin Betty always runs late, is always caught up in that fancy journalism job of hers, and Cheryl wonders if she'll ever make a good housewife or mother because of it.
Cheryl would make a good mother, maybe, if she weren't so afraid of being like her own.
"Do you ever think of having children?" She says, swirls the wine in her glass like she's indifferent to the topic.
A bit like she's asking about the weather, almost, and Veronica laughs loud and hearty like Cheryl has told a joke.
"Not at all." She says, because Veronica Lodge never splits the truth nor talks in circles. "I don't want them. Do you?"
And Cheryl doesn't have to think about it, not really, for she already knows how she feels on the topic. A little boy first — redheaded like the two of them, eyes a chocolatey brown and kind or a pretty green, but honest all the same — and then a little girl, with dimples in her cheeks like Archie's, though they don't come out nearly as much anymore now that they're grown. She thinks of Archie throwing a ball in the yard, then coming in and washing up for a tea party.
Archie wants children so badly that it aches, and Cheryl wants to make him happy.
All she's ever wanted is for him to be happy.
"Archie wants kids. He wants the whole two and a half, white picket fence, dog barking in the yard thing." Cheryl says, and Betty pulls up in her beat up car. She waves, and Veronica summons her up onto the porch like she has the right to. "We've got the picket fence down already."
Veronica's face sobers just a bit, and Betty slides onto the arm of the chair Veronica is occupying.
She plucks the wine glass right from Veronica's hands, presses her naked lips to the dark lipstick stain that Veronica left, and Cheryl's stomach twists uncomfortably and she isn't sure why. Cousin Betty has cooties or something of the sort, she decides, and it grosses her out that Betty is drinking from her fanciest crystal wine glasses.
"But do you want kids? Do you want the yard and the dog?" Veronica says, and Betty's face screws up in disgust.
Betty is single — of course she is, really — spends more time chasing a lead for a back page story in the Register than she does chasing a husband. And she'll be sorry for that one day, Cheryl thinks, when she's past her prime and all of the suitable men are already married off to the girls who will keep a home and tend house.
Cheryl thinks she should start a garden.
She reminds herself to pick up seedlings and fertilizer at the shops later.
"I want what Archie wants." She says, and it's not a direct deflection so it counts. "And anyways, aren't you being courted by Jughead? Doesn't he want children?"
Veronica laughs, like the idea of being courted is some hilarity, and her free hand — the one not holding her wine glass — comes up to hold tight around Betty's hip, like she's anchoring her in place on the tiny arm of the front porch chair. She needs a third chair, Cheryl thinks, though they look better as a set, so perhaps she needs two more.
An even four.
"Jughead and I are just having fun." Veronica says, and Betty titters like it's funny. "He's funny, we like the same movies and going out to eat, the sex is good. I mean, if he asked me to marry him tomorrow it would be hard to decline."
And Veronica has to be kidding, really, because how does she sit in the third row of pews at church every Sunday knowing that she's having premarital sex? And how is she so unapologetic about it?
It makes Cheryl feel a bit sick, knowing that Veronica is being defiled like that.
"You…" She trails off, takes a sip from her glass of wine as she thinks of how to phrase it. "You and Jughead are… doing that? You aren't even engaged to be married, Ron!"
Betty snorts — an honest to goodness fucking snort, indelicate as always — and she rolls her eyes like Cheryl is some sort of prude.
She isn't.
She isn't.
"It's not illegal, Cheryl."
And Cheryl knows this — knows a squad car won't roll up to her house and arrest her for premarital sex, no matter how wrong it is — but is there nothing sacred anymore? Is there no one who goes to church and sits in the front rows of pews and listens to the pastor, not because they'll be stoned or arrested for not but because it's right?
Betty Cooper is the daughter of a preacher and the furthest thing from heaven itself, Cheryl thinks.
"Bite me, Elizabeth." Cheryl sneers, and she stands from her porch chair and makes her way inside to dish up lunch before she loses control of herself and slaps Betty Cooper across that smug, smirking face of hers.
Veronica follows her inside, heels clicking on the red and white checkered linoleum of the kitchen floor as she attempts to diffuse whatever fight is brewing between the three of them.
"It's okay to be… confused." Veronica says, like she doesn't sit in the same church as the rest of them and bow her head for the same prayers — like she doesn't murmur amen and listen to the pastor preach, too. "Sex isn't… It's not a bad thing, Cheryl."
And Cheryl doesn't think of sex much, but she likens it to be something you just have to do, like a thank you card dropped in the mail after a party or the ironing of church clothes. Her mother was a wretched woman, but she still taught her these sorts of things growing up, for a Blossom woman was expected to keep house and tend to the children, to uphold a certain sort of image in town.
This is how you host a party, Cheryl, she would say, this is how you'll be a good wife.
"Sex is for married couples." She says, bends at the waist and pours fresh wine from the decanter into the three glasses on the table. She's a good hostess — a great one, even — and she barely flinches when Betty slams the door as she enters. "And Archie and I aren't married yet."
They'll set a date soon, Cheryl thinks, for they've been engaged quite a while, but Archie insisted on making sure they were ready — making sure they could afford a wedding, he means, and to take her on a nice honeymoon, too, with enough money to afford the babies they'd have after marriage — and they could be ready now, maybe, if there ever was a time.
"You've been engaged for years, he's serious about you. It's not like it'd be some dalliance with the milkman." Veronica says, though she isn't teasing when she says it. "Don't you want to try? To make sure it'll be good and that you're not engaged to be married to some loaf in the sack?"
Betty's eyes shoot up into her hairline, and Cheryl has to bite back the scathing remark that bubbles up on her tongue.
She practices it a lot more these days — being kinder and softer, that is, holding the aggression in her chest and letting it bubble out in a shake of the napkin she lays across her lap, the scrape of the salad tongs loud and angry against the bowl as she serves herself — thinks it'll make for a better housewife and, by proxy, a better mother. She won't be full of aggression like Penelope Blossom was, won't ever hit her children or shout in their faces.
"Would it matter if he was?" Cheryl says, and she wonders just how awful sex must be if Veronica has tried it with so many men and hasn't settled on one yet. "It's for functionality, anyways. To lay and get pregnant so I can carry his child or consummate our marriage."
Veronica and Betty share a knowing glance, and Cheryl hates how left out it makes her feel.
"But you try shoes on before you buy them, don't you?" Betty says, and she's being nicer than she usually is. More civil, Cheryl thinks, perhaps she made a break in whatever case she's desperately trying to solve that her boss says is for the men. Betty has never believed in that, though, has never wanted to just do as women should and leave the big jobs to the men. "It's like that. But just trying it out before you commit."
But Cheryl thinks she'd marry Archie either way, whether the sex was good or bad — though she hasn't much of a litmus to compare it to, save for the bodice rippers she reads sometimes or the columns in the tabloids she flips past — for he's a good man and would make a good husband, too.
"A marriage for the rest of your life is more important than a pair of shoes." Veronica says, and her fork scrapes indelicately across the plate.
Bone China, a gift from Archie, ordered from the Bloomingdale's catalog on his lunch break and fetched for her whilst using his paid time off. Archie Andrews is such a good man, Cheryl thinks, a bit like Jason Blossom in not only looks, but in how gentle his adoration of her is.
He's an excellent man, and he'll make for an excellent husband.
Cheryl just knows it.
"I'd marry him either way." She says, lays her fork beside her plate and takes a long drink from her glass. "Besides, he's never asked."
And he hasn't — not even hinted at it, even — though Cheryl has, once or twice on a rare occasion, awoken to the tenting of his loose pajama bottoms pressed to the back of her thigh. But he was asleep on all occasions, and he can't exactly control his body in his sleep — and lord knows what sorts of embarrassing things Cheryl herself has done in her rest — and so she never mentioned it, nor has she thought much about it.
"Oh, honey." Betty says, and she sounds a bit patronizing. Veronica kicks her under the table for it, and Cheryl bites her inner cheek to keep from laughing. "He wants it, trust me. All men do, even the most devout."
And Veronica nods, like the two of them know something Cheryl doesn't, and it makes her stomach twist a bit, though she isn't quite sure why.
She's a good Christian woman, after all, and she'd never do such a thing as engage in premarital sex.
Wouldn't she?
Sex — or rather the morality of it — fades from her mind as Cheryl washes up after Betty and Veronica depart, and it returns full force on her walk to the market.
There's a wicker basket tucked into the crook of her elbow — handwoven French wicker, made of sea grass and lined with a red fabric square — and a pair of sunglasses on her face, and she stops in front of the shoe store just a few minutes' walk away from the supermarket and looks into the window like it's something symbolic. She steps inside, if only to look because she loves a new pair of shoes, and buys a pretty pair of kitten heels without so much as trying them on first.
Red, Mary Jane style with a strap across the top, a pretty patent leather that feels soft and supple under her fingers.
Suck it, Veronica Lodge, Cheryl thinks.
And she carries the paper bag from the shoe store in her hand all through the market — carries it whilst she fetches the few bits of groceries that she needs and a few bottles of wine from a shopkeeper that always smiles at her a bit sadly — and all the way home, too. It feels a bit heavier than it should, Cheryl thinks, and she wonders if her moral confliction has somehow transferred itself into the leather of the shoes, if it's settled into the soles heavy and solemn and weighing them down, down, down.
When she tries them on — after she's settled dinner warming on the stove and prepped the cobbler to slide into the oven when they're midway through their meal — with a clean dress and her apron hung on the hook in the kitchen, they ache at the fronts of her toes and pinch the backs of her heels. But she can deal with it, Cheryl thinks, for they look pretty on her feet and match the cherries on the fabric of her dress.
Cheryl Blossom can do uncomfortable things for the image it puts forth, she always has.
And maybe future Cheryl Andrews can do it too.
"You look lovely, darling."
Archie says it when Cheryl is serving scoops of dessert into bowls — peach cobbler, for it's the end of summer and they're delightfully in season, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side — when she's standing at the counter with her apron tied around her waist so as to not drop anything on her dress.
"Thank you, Archibald." Cheryl says, and she feels a blush warm her cheeks because she does so enjoy when Archie compliments her. "The weather has been so nice, I'll be so sad to pack away my summer dresses in a few weeks."
She serves the bowls of cobbler, hers across from his at the small dining table, and she returns the ice cream to the icebox and hangs her apron on the hook before returning to the table. When she sits, she tucks the skirt of her dress beneath her and crosses her ankles demurely, and she doesn't look at the seat to her left where Veronica Lodge sat for lunch and likened sex to the purchase of shoes.
Cheryl's ankles ache.
There's surely a blister rubbed into alabaster skin by now.
"I like this dress most of all." Archie says, and he smiles like he's smitten. "And are those new shoes? You look so beautiful tonight."
And Cheryl knows this, of course, for she picked her nicest dress that Archie is fondest of — navy blue with cherries on the fabric, a white petticoat beneath it and a red collar and thin belt at her waist to draw it all together — and if she's trying to impress him, she isn't quite sure why.
Maybe she's trying to prove to herself that if she looks good enough, Archie will want to have sex with her.
Or maybe she's trying to prove that he's a gentleman and would never ask.
"They are. I can't believe you noticed." Cheryl says, and she smiles sweetly because he noticed, he noticed, he noticed her. All she's ever wanted is for someone to see her. "I passed by the shoe shop on the way to the market — you remember, don't you, Moose Mason's father's shop? — and I didn't have the chance to try them on but they fit, aside from pinching the backs of my heels."
And Cheryl doesn't know why she's blithering on about it, really, but the wine from dinner is loosening her lips just a bit and she slides the dessert from her bowl into Archie's and she watches as he shovels it down hungrily.
She runs her fingertips up his muscular forearm when he finishes, watches goosebumps bloom on his perfect, perfect skin as she scratches gently with her nails.
"It's nothing a couple of heel pads can't fix." Archie says, and Cheryl watches him shiver as she scratches at his bicep. "I can stop by the shops and pick you some up on my way home tomorrow. I mean, you just have to wear a pair of shoes like that to church on Sunday."
And maybe it's the flattery — and maybe it's the wine, even — but Cheryl feels some stirring in her gut when Archie compliments her, feels a hungry sort of feeling settle in her belly like when she reads those pulp novels in the afternoons sitting on the porch swing.
She uncrosses and recrosses her legs, drinks down the rest of her wine glass and eyes Archie's.
She won't take it, though, not until he offers it.
"I'd really like that, my love." Cheryl says, and she wishes they were on the couch so she could scoot closer to him. "You're so handsome, Archie. Have I ever told you that?"
And there's something that comes over her, almost like a woman possessed, has her sliding off her chair and into Archie's lap with her arms draped over his shoulders and her breath mingling with his. He holds her at the hips, hands firm and manly but not gripping too tightly, and he kisses her lips softly like he's holding something delicate in his lap.
There's a touch of stubble on his face, for he hasn't shaved for the evening, but he smells clean from his post-work shower.
Cheryl doesn't even flinch away when it scratches against her skin.
"A time or two." He says, almost bashful in nature, and his hands squeeze gently at her hips. "What has gotten into you tonight?"
He says it a bit jokingly, like he isn't complaining about having a lap full of his fiancée stroking at his skin and kissing his soft, full lips, but Cheryl's stomach twists at how this should be wrong — they should feel wrong about it, even, for they're a good Christian couple who sit in the second row of pews every Sunday and bow their heads and fold their hands in prayer.
He wants it, trust me. All men do.
Cheryl's head fucking spins. Does he? Does Archie want it? Is he aching for her in the same way that she feels an emptiness settle over herself?
Is he going to fuck her?
Would she even like it?
"I was talking to Veronica over lunch today." She says, her lips grazing the shell of his ear as she lowers her voice. It feels wrong — downright filthy, even — but she's desperate to prove something to herself. "And she told me that she and Jughead are having… premarital intercourse."
Archie shivers underneath her, air rushing from his lungs in a sigh that sounds a bit affected, and Cheryl presses herself further into his lap. She's testing the waters, feeling the press of his tented jeans against the back of her thigh, and her skin prickles with something she can't quite place. It's the sin of it all, she tells herself, but doesn't she want to know what it's like?
Doesn't Archie want to know?
"Are they?" Archie says, a bit weak like he's trying to tamp his desires, and Cheryl wonders if he's ever fantasized about sex with her. "I… I think Jug mentioned it a time or two."
Cheryl runs a hand over Archie's chest, the thin fabric of his white shirt stretching with each pass. She strokes up and down, from his developed pectoral muscles to the spot just above his belt, and his muscles tense and twitch as she strokes at him. She's never thought much about Archie's muscular build — he was a little softer when they were in high school, if memory serves her correctly, but he's solid and defined from working construction these days — but she knows for certain that he has the body that women drool over.
She squeezes at his bicep experimentally, feels her stomach swirl at his sharp intake of breath.
"Do you want to have sex with me, Archibald?" She says, and it rushes from her lips before she can stop herself. What she's trying to prove to herself, Cheryl isn't quite sure. "Do you want me, Mr. Andrews?"
He takes a breath, sobering and shaky — has the wine gone to his head too, Cheryl wonders — and his fingers stroke feather light at her hips through the chintz fabric of her dress.
"We're… not married yet." He says, a bit like it pains him to admit.
And Cheryl should care — she should, should be terrified about what the pastor would say if he were to find out — but she finds that with Archie looking at her like she's some sort of prize, she doesn't quite care.
"But we will be." She says, and she says it like she means it and therefore she does. "If Jughead and Veronica do it, don't you want to try too? Just this once?"
Archie Andrews is sweet — a certifiable darling, sweeter than he has any right to be with the grief that he carries with him — and his eyes sparkle with delight, like he's so thrilled that Cheryl is finally offering, but he doesn't dare say yes, for Archie isn't the sort of man who would ever take so easily.
His fingers stutter on her hips, squeezing gently before going slack, and his chest heaves a bit where she's pressed up against him.
Cheryl thinks she just might explode.
"Cheryl, I…" He trails off, and he looks so eager — not unlike a puppy, a bit like his childhood pup Vegas who whines and wags his tail for him when they visit Mary Andrews on occasion — and Cheryl thinks, not for the first time, that she'd give Archie Andrews anything he wanted so long as he asked for it. "If you're sure of it."
His eyes are bright and his face is earnest — he'd stop her right now if it wasn't what she wanted, and doesn't she want to please him? — and his breath is coming in little pants, in and out and ragged through his mouth, lips slightly parted like he's so affected that it sucks the air from his lungs. And god, if she shifts the right way, Cheryl is positive that she would feel the hard press of his strained jeans against the backside of her thigh.
She stands, slides from his lap in a way that she hopes is more sultry than awkward, and she nods a bit shyly like she's afraid he'll tell her no.
He doesn't.
Archie would never deny her anything.
And perhaps that's what makes it easier — easier to unbuckle the belt cinched around her waist, easier to step delicately from her new shoes — knowing that Archie Andrews is so kind and so sweet that he'd never deny her anything she wanted.
"I think we should try it." Cheryl says, though her voice sounds a bit foreign for how breathy it is. "If only to know what Veronica and Jughead are on about."
Archie stands, and his face morphs into something of an excitable pup — Cheryl can see his childhood dog in his face a little bit, and she wonders if the saying about looking like your pet over time is scientifically proven, and if it were to be true, did Archie morph into Vegas or did Vegas morph into Archie? — and he steps out of his shoes and starts to undo his belt, and the reality of what's about to transpire spreads like ice water down her spine and leaks out into her limbs.
She pictures Archie above her, dress pulled down to free her breasts and hiked enough to pull her undergarments down, rocking into her and dripping sweat onto her face and chest.
He's always been a heavy sweater, but especially so in adulthood.
And she pictures Archie above her, naked entirely save for his socks, howling and groaning as he pushes his way into her like the pornographic films her father would purchase at the video store three towns over — the ones that Jason would sneak from his bedroom to watch and Cheryl, ever the good girl, would stand at the top of the staircase and watch from the space between her fingers, hand clapped over her eyes.
"Yeah?" Archie says, and he grasps the ruched fabric at the waist of her dress and pulls her closer.
And Cheryl kisses him — she's kissed him more this evening than she has their entire relationship, she's sure of it — her lips insistent against his as she runs her tongue along the seam of his lips.
"Mhmm." She hums out, hand clasping the loose fitting shirt that hangs from Archie's body. "We should."
His hands clasp around her hips as he kicks his shoes off, and he bends a little to kiss her. He's so much taller than her, especially so when she's not wearing a shoe with any height to it, and he lifts her with a steady hand until she shrieks out in delight. Cheryl laughs — an honest to god laugh, unrestrained and a bit unbecoming on her, all open mouth and thrown back head — and Archie kisses her, more teeth than lips, and he carries her through the halls to their bedroom.
Is this what being smitten feels like?
She giggles when he sets her down, loops her arms around his neck and pulls him in for another kiss, and her hands roam and untuck his shirt and pull it up, up, up until she pulls it from his body and can toss it across the room. She'll have to clean the mess up later — shoes and belts in the kitchen, clothing thrown about in the bedroom — will have to roll from the bed and gather it all when Archie is shaving his face in the bathroom.
"I don't… we don't have protection." Archie stutters out, and Cheryl feels a bit sickened at the thought. "I could try and make it to the corner store before they close?"
He offers politely, and Cheryl almost feels inclined to take him up on it, but he's stood in their bedroom with a pretty flush rouging the skin of his chest and neck and an erection straining at the material of his jeans, and Cheryl thinks that if she doesn't do it right this moment, she'd back out.
"No, no." She says, and she removes her jewelry and places it into the delicate wooden jewelry box on her vanity. A gift from Archie, cherry wood and carved beautifully, accented with golden hardware. "It's okay, Arch. We're to be married, after all."
And if she says it enough, she may just convince herself that it's true.
It's okay.
Archie, for his part, looks properly delighted, stood there with his shirt off and his chest heaving slightly, and Cheryl thinks she'd do anything for this sweet, sweet boy — so eager, so willing, so kind as to not move forward without her explicit confirmation. She'd give him the world if she could.
After all, he's given her everything.
"Okay." He says, and his hands fumble with the button on his jeans.
Archie doesn't pull them down or off just yet, waits for her permission — or is it Cheryl's approval that he craves? — and she'll give it to him, whatever it is that he wants. She pushes his hands out of the way — gently, for she's always gentle with Archie — and his breath hitches when she drags the zipper down, pulls his jeans to the floor and caresses his legs as he steps out of them.
"You're so handsome." Cheryl murmurs, standing back up and slipping her panties down her body and tossing them in the direction of Archie's jeans. "So strong. So muscular."
Archie is all hard edges to Cheryl's soft, womanly curves.
He's rock hard and defined, like her own personal modern day Adonis, and he stands there with his head cocked and sweat glistening on his chest and his boxers straining against his erection, and he waits on her word like a polite, sweet boy.
Oh, Cheryl is so enamored by him.
"You're gorgeous too." Archie says, and his hands clasp firm on her waist as he turns her around. His big, strong fingers play at the zipper at her upper back, but he doesn't dare unzip it — not yet. "Can I?"
Archie Andrews is such a good boy, and Cheryl will give him anything he wants.
Always.
Forever.
"Of course." She murmurs, and he pulls the zipper down slowly. It's loud in the quiet room, the metal teeth snapping as they slide through the zipper, and her dress falls, pools at her feet. "Goodness, Arch."
He presses into her from behind, erection pressing to her backside as he kisses at the back of her neck, sweeps her hair to one side and pulls the pins from it gently. And she does feel a little exposed, stood there in nothing but her bra and petticoat, but he wraps a strong arm around her front and strokes his fingers idly down her stomach and she can't help the stuttered little breath that chokes in her chest.
"You're so beautiful." He says, and he kisses her shoulder as he slides her bra from her arms and she pushes her petticoat down to fall at her feet in a crumpled heap with her dress. "My beautiful Mrs. Andrews."
And it occurs to Cheryl that this is the first time they'll have seen each other nude — with this lens of attraction, at least, for she's never so much as gotten more than a peek at Archie's naked body as he steps from the shower and she herself closes the bathroom door when she dresses — and her chest prickles with a flush as she wonders, not for the first time in her life, if Archie will find her to be attractive.
Will he pinch at the pillowy skin of her stomach?
Will he think it's unsightly?
He doesn't, of course, not as he walks her backwards to the bed and not as he climbs atop her, either, and Cheryl isn't quite sure what to do with her mouth or her hands so she just lays, watches Archie slip his boxers from his body and fist his cock with his hand like she's out of both her body and mind. She isn't quite sure how she ended up here, and she has to take a deep, calming breath and tell herself that this isn't wrong.
This isn't wrong.
And then he's on top of her, hands pressing into the pillow and bracketing each side of her head, and his knees are on either side of her hip — he's so close that it pinches a little at the stretchy skin of her hip as it traps beneath his knee, but she doesn't dare say a word because she can withstand discomfort, she's always been able to — and he kisses sloppily at her mouth as he lines the head of his cock up with her entrance and pushes in.
Cheryl cries out, and her fingernails dig into Archie's shoulders.
She isn't sure how long it goes on for — the burn and ache between her legs, the stretch of her body to accommodate him, the back and forth of his hips pushing into hers — but her eyes flutter shut and her hands roam on his chest and biceps, more to engage and ground herself in the moment than anything, and her mind wanders ever so slightly as he sweats and pants above her.
Does it feel good for him?
Is the rough slide of skin against skin supposed to feel good?
She's startled from her musing when something drips wet and hot on her skin, and her eyes snap open to see sweat beading on Archie's skin and running down his face, dripping off the tip of his nose and onto her own face. And it's disgusting, she thinks, but she wouldn't dare say it because how could she?
Archie Andrews is perfect.
What a perfect, perfect boy.
"Oh, God." He groans out, and Cheryl closes her eyes and tilts her head back to expose the column of her throat. He kisses at it, and she feels the barest tingle stir in the pit of her belly. "Feels so good, Cher."
That makes her ache just a bit — makes her tighten involuntarily around him and gasp out a pretty sound — and Archie is burying his face in her neck, kissing and kissing and kissing at the sensitive skin he finds there. His breath comes in ragged pants and his kisses are a little uncoordinated, but Cheryl combs her fingers through his hair and holds him close to her, cradles the back of his head to her neck like a babe suckling at her breast.
And they're no stranger to this part of it, really — the kissing, sometimes sloppy with Cheryl in his lap on the couch and tipsy or Archie atop her in the bed — and she can do this part easily, can tilt her head back and feel the liquid heat spread down her spine as he kisses at her skin, can gasp and wind her hands in his pretty red hair and hold him to her and demand more, more, more.
The snap of his hips into hers is a mere bonus.
It doesn't feel like much other than chafing, anyways.
"Oh gosh, Cheryl. I'm…" He trails off, and he sounds positively wrecked. She's glad for it — glad she can please him, glad she's good for him— feels the arousal trickle hot and molten through her lower belly, wetness spreading around him inside of her. "God, Cher. I'm gonna…"
He's so gentle with her and he's so sweet, asks for permission before he does anything, and Cheryl wants nothing more than to make him happy. Her fingers scratch at his scalp while her free hand runs up and down his back. She doesn't scratch him, doesn't dig her nails in, but he exhales a shaky breath into her neck and it feels like the finest praise.
"You can." She whispers, for she isn't naïve about sex and she knows about the culmination of it.
And maybe it should scare her, how willing she is to let Archie do anything to her, but wouldn't anyone? He's so good, with his fiery red hair and his slight tan from working on the job site in the sun, sweet with his gentle grasp and his measured breaths.
Archie Andrews is so good — such a good, sweet boy.
She tells him as such when he's fully sheathed inside of her, hips snapped against hers and groaning loudly into the skin of her neck as he quakes above her. His skin is slick with sweat, wet sliding against her, and his arms shake with exertion.
He'll surely be sore tomorrow, and Cheryl makes a mental note to draw him an Epsom salt bath.
"Good boy." She murmurs into his hair, kisses his head and holds him close as he shakes apart. "You're such a good boy, Archie. My sweet angel."
He collapses on top of her, all sweaty body firm and hard against hers, and Cheryl combs her fingers through his pretty, pretty red hair as he breathes hot and heavy into her skin. He's still inside of her — it hurts less now, and he's pressing against her in a way that could feel pleasurable if he were to move again — and she strokes at him as he catches his breath.
Cheryl wonders if it was good for him.
Was she good for him?
"Was it good?" She asks, and her eyes flutter shut when his nose nudges at the skin of her neck.
He rolls off of her, lays on his back beside her panting with a Cheshire Cat grin spread across his face. He looks so young that it aches at Cheryl's chest just a bit, and the cool breeze of the overhead fan chills her sweat-slicked skin and she's suddenly gravely aware of what they've done.
Cheryl feels a bit sick.
She thinks she may go to Hell, and she's not sure if she's terrified at the thought or relieved that she's finally got a reason that she'll end up there.
"So good." He pants, and his hand smooths up and down the skin of her bare stomach. Cheryl fights the urge to tug the blankets up to her chin. "I mean wow, Cheryl. That was amazing, I get why all the boys at work do it now."
And Cheryl thinks that if she opens her mouth she'll surely throw up, so she says nothing at all and trails her fingers up and down his forearm as she settles into her thoughts.
As a little girl, she always pictured her first experience with intercourse being on her wedding night. They'd be champagne and wine tipsy, her in a poofy dress and Archie in his tuxedo, carried over the threshold of their home — or a hotel room, depending on how much they'd want to spend on the endeavor — giggling and excitable and shaking with anticipation. She pictures moonlight and a candle lit room, pictures earth shattering release and crying into Archie's mouth, pictures rocking the bed frame into the wall for hours and hours until they're too exhausted to continue and then laying there sated and sipping on wine in the nude.
Instead, she just feels dirty and sticky and unsettled, ache in between her legs and slick with Archie's seed spilling from her.
It's the guilt, she decides, for they aren't married and it shouldn't be good unless they are.
"I'm so glad you enjoyed it." She says, and she smooths a hand over his cheek and kisses his forehead. She tucks the blankets up over him, rolls from the bed and presses her thighs together as she stands. "I'm going to wash off. Take as long as you need, I'll change the bedding while you wash off."
Archie smiles, soft and content, and he burrows a bit into the blankets.
Cheryl thinks she could love him for an entire lifetime when he's like this — when he's sleep softened and boyish, rosy cheeked grinning a bit like Jason, all impish and delighted — and she thinks, perhaps for the very first time, that Archie could love her for lifetimes, too.
"I love you, my darling." He says, and his eyes are closed but he doesn't stop smiling at her.
And she doesn't answer him — is there any particular reason for this, she wonders, aside from the moral conviction that has wound its way around her lungs like a vice — but he's mostly asleep, blissed out and in his own world, and she doesn't think he notices anyways.
Cheryl wars with herself the entire time she washes — whilst she soaps up the washrag and cleans the evidence of their lovemaking from between her legs, washes the sweat from her chest and forehead — wonders what came over her, what possessed her to do something so irresponsible and rash and wrong. But it's not wrong when a girl like Veronica Lodge does it, she thinks, for Veronica is a different sort of person than she is — the type of girl who can be alone, the type of girl who can have a career and be courted but never married.
Sometimes Cheryl wishes she could be that sort of a girl.
The thought thins until it slips from her mind entirely as she towels off and steps into clean pajamas — white with little red polka dots, and she lays Archie's matching pants and a red t-shirt on the bathroom counter with a pair of plaid boxers for his own shower when he rises from his rest — and she grins when she reenters the bedroom to find him walking into the bedroom with her new shoes in hand. He places them on the rack on her side of the closet, straightens them out like he cares.
"I won't be too long." He says, pecks her on the shower-fresh cheek still sticky with moisturizer. "Wait up for me?"
And she will — always will, whatever Archie wants always — and so she nods as she strips the bedding from their mattress and tosses it to the empty laundry basket she's carried in from the bathroom.
"Of course, my sweet." She says, and she lets him peck her on her lotion-slick skin once more before she shoos him off to the bathroom to wash off.
She redresses the bed in light colored sheets — pale blue with a matching white and blue floral comforter, because Cheryl is clinging to the last dredges of summer before they're stuck shivering beneath flannel sheets and fleece blankets — and she drops the bedding in the washing machine and loads it with soap so she can start it once Archie is done bathing.
There's likely little hot water for Archie, though he'd never say anything about it.
He never complains, not even when he has the right to, and not even when Cheryl has one of her bad days — the ones in which she's teetering on her heels at the bottom of a bottle of red wine when he arrives home, when she has dinner half burnt on the hob and she calls him sweet Jason in her drunken delusion — and she feels a pang of sorrow in her chest for just how much sweet Archie deals with from her.
She needs to be better.
She must.
And so he finds Cheryl after his shower in a clean bedroom, their clothing put away and a scented candle burning on her bedside table, a novel in her lap and a smile painted across her lips and not a sign of strife etched into her pale, pale face. He kisses her on the forehead, slides into bed beside her with a novel of his own in his lap.
"Was your shower alright, love?" She says, a bit like she expects to be scolded for using up all of the hot water.
Archie just grins, lovesick and dopey, even more boyish with his face cleanly shaven. He looks a lot like the young boy who showed up at her door with a bear hug when Jason died, long before he was even courting her, and he leafs through his novel like he isn't quite paying attention.
Auntie Mame.
Cheryl isn't too familiar with Patrick Dennis, but she leafed through the book herself when Archie picked it up at the bookstore a couple of months back. Stories of a young boy in the care of his aunt and a dead father — not dead from the war, though Cheryl could almost imagine it as she glossed over the novel — and she wonders if Archie sees himself in the fatherless son.
She sees herself in the protagonist of A Death in the Family, if only for relating to the sudden death of her father and the grief she carries.
"Perfect as always." He says, and his eyes scan over the page without really reading much of anything. "Thank you."
He says it with a lot of conviction, like he's trying to imbue so much meaning into two little words — is he thanking her for the intercourse, or is he thanking her for being a dutiful fiancée? — and so Cheryl turns to him, reading glasses slipping down her nose and smile painted on her face, and she presses a kiss to Archie's lips.
"Always, Arch." She murmurs, and if she says it enough times she may imbue it into her words too. "For you? Always."
Cheryl doesn't tell anyone about that night with Archie.
She doesn't speak of it for a week and a half — not through two Sunday masses, seated in the second row of pews as always with Archie by her side in a coordinating and not matching outfit, and not through a Thursday luncheon with just Betty because Veronica is out of town — and she nearly buzzes with the secret of it all, heavy in her stomach like lead and regret, and she wonders if everyone can tell just by looking at her.
Is there a glowing neon sign above her head?
Has it changed the very fabric of her being?
And she finally does talk about it on a Tuesday morning, when Veronica returns home from her big business trip and lets herself into the Andrews-Blossom house with a heavy bag of presents from out of town on her arm like she belongs there.
Cheryl makes a mental note to start locking her doors during the daytime.
"You look different." Veronica says, and she bustles about Cheryl's kitchen pouring liquor into a shaker bottle. "Did you do it?"
And curse Veronica Lodge, really, for being so perceptive. She always has been, has had a knack for reading people — not any people, but her people, and Cheryl oft forgets how special it is to be one of those people that Veronica Lodge is strangely in tune with — for noticing the tiniest shifts in someone's behavior or facial expression. Perhaps that's what makes her such a successful businesswoman, Cheryl thinks.
"No." She rushes it out before she can think, before she remembers that Veronica will know either way. "Yes. How did you know?"
And Veronica doesn't look away from the task at hand — she's spilled lime juice on the countertop and wiped at it with Cheryl's decorative tea towel that has a permanent home on the stove and of course she does, for they're from completely different worlds in this way, a businesswoman and a homemaker — but she smirks a bit knowingly as she pours the mixed drinks into two of Cheryl's crystalline glasses.
Cheryl grins, takes the proffered glass and leads them to the front porch.
"You're just… different." Veronica says after a long sip. She tips her head to the side a bit like she's pleased, and Cheryl is too, for a Mai Tai is one of her favorite cocktails and only when it's made by Veronica. "You're fidgeting with your engagement ring, for starters. And you're blushing like you've done something wrong."
Cheryl bites at the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning.
She was always told that she was expressive as a little girl, the sort of child whose eyes you could read before she even spoke. And maybe that's what drew Archie to her when she sidled up on him in their junior year, her expressive eyes and pouty lips that could never truly hide anything.
"You're infuriating." Cheryl says, though she doesn't deny anything.
There wouldn't be much of a point anyways, not with Veronica.
"Only for you, babe." Veronica laughs, but she doesn't push or make fun of her or call her filthy or wrong, and Cheryl is at the very least thankful for that. "So. How was it?"
And Cheryl thinks of all the things she could say, but they feel a bit too racy and uncouth for somewhere like her front porch just before lunchtime, and so she shrugs and motions to the house with her head and waits for Veronica to follow her in. Cheryl sets her sweating cup on the coffee table — on a coaster, white with a red cherry on it — and Veronica sets her drink down on the bare coffee table.
She's not much of a housewife, Cheryl doesn't think, and her fingers twitch at her sides as she resists the urge to take a coaster from the stack and relocate Veronica's drink atop it.
"It was… exactly as it should go." She says, and she hates how her face heats with a flush. "We undressed, he told me I was beautiful, it lasted far less time than I expected."
And Veronica laughs — head tipped back and a polite hand over her mouth, for she's always a lady but never a housewife — and she seems to settle when Cheryl prickles with discomfort. She's always hated people laughing at her, even if they're people she keeps close to the chest like Veronica or Archie or, begrudgingly, cousin Betty.
"Oh, babe. Of course he didn't last long, you're a total smoke show. I'd bust in a second if I had you beneath me in my bed." Veronica says, and Cheryl's stomach flips a bit uncomfortably. It's foreign, talking to her best friend this way, for they've never shared much more than a short compliment about clothing. "But did you enjoy it?"
Cheryl doesn't know how to answer that.
And so she doesn't, not for a long moment, contemplates stepping into the laundry room to switch Archie's work clothes from the washer to the dryer. They have a modern machine — a Philco, top of the line and able to hold ten pounds, though Cheryl never lets the laundry lapse so long that there's all that much — and she needs to get Archie's work clothes transferred over so she can put her dresses in and hang them to dry by evening.
"It was… categorically fine." She says after a long while, and she nearly twitches under Veronica's laser focus on her. "It burned. More friction than I pictured, perhaps. He was… sweaty."
Veronica doesn't laugh, not this time.
She purses her lips and plucks her glass from the table — there's a ring of water on the coffee table, and Veronica wipes at it with her sleeve, but she doesn't bother to put a coaster down before she sets the glass back down. And she's serious, face as sober as a judge, and Cheryl wonders how she does it for half of a drink has already gone to her own head.
"So you didn't… achieve an orgasm too?" Veronica says, her tone a bit weak where she attempts to tread lightly and save Cheryl from embarrassment. "You weren't… wet?"
And Cheryl isn't sure why, but it makes a prickle of shame burn deep in the pit of her stomach like she's wrong for even discussing it, so she bottoms out her drink and has to bury the urge to throw the glass into the sink. She slams Veronica's cup onto a coaster, however — the white one with blueberries on it — as she stalks off to the kitchen and pours herself a few fingers of rum to sip on.
Veronica has always been partial to her rum.
"It was functional." She spits, and she isn't even sure why she's so upset. "I'm sorry if it's not a more interesting story, Vee, I'm not a miscreant like you. Of course I didn't get… no, I wasn't wet, but I enjoyed it. It made me feel closer to Archie, holding him to me like that."
And Veronica's face softens just a bit — Cheryl hates it worse than the teasing, if that's even possible, hates how Veronica feels badly for her like she's some put upon damsel — but she doesn't say anything else about it, blessedly, just runs her finger along the lip of her glass as she prattles on about her newest business endeavor.
The Babylonium.
The theater has sat abandoned in the middle of town since the opening of the Bijou, with its modern conveniences and higher capacity showrooms, and Veronica gesticulates with her hands as she details the renovations that are already taking place to turn it into a bar. And what a world to live in, Cheryl thinks, to be Veronica Lodge and think that the rules of society are simply a suggestion.
Cheryl half wonders if Jughead will have to accompany Veronica to her own bar.
"And how exactly do you plan on… attending your establishment?" Cheryl muses, and she doesn't mean to say anything aloud but she's sipping straight rum and it's gone to her head.
"The same way I attend everywhere else." Veronica says simply, like they live in some futuristic society where unaccompanied women aren't turned away by bartenders. "By myself, someone on my arm if I feel so inclined."
She says it with such conviction that it about turns Cheryl's stomach. Veronica really does believe she can reinvent the wheel and change the world, and if she weren't so womanly, Cheryl almost thinks she can do it.
Or then again maybe she can, for Veronica Lodge has never really taken no for an answer.
"Jughead?" Cheryl asks, could laugh at the image of Jughead — of Forsythe, if Veronica made him answer to that in her grand and lovely establishment — in a tuxedo jacket and escorting Veronica into her bar.
And Veronica laughs, not in a bad way but like she finds the mental image just as funny as Cheryl does. Veronica is like that — doesn't care enough to hide her true feelings or reactions — and she's forward enough to know how she feels about things, too.
She doesn't hide behind the cloak of placid plastic smiles.
"Jug? God, no." She says, like taking the Lord's name in vain isn't a sin. It's always struck Cheryl as odd, the way Veronica shows up at church each weekend and sits just a row behind her like she isn't cussing and having premarital sex. "I'm… just having fun with him. It's not serious."
That strikes Cheryl as odd too, the idea of courting a man just to have intercourse with him like some sort of schoolgirl entertainment, and she wants to ask about it — wants to ask what about the friction burn and ache in her core is fun — but it dies on her tongue, another question tumbling out before she can help herself.
"But don't you need a man? An escort?"
Because that's just how things work in Riverdale, really — if you want to visit the bar or nightclub as a woman, it must be on the arm of a man like a chaperone — and who is Cheryl to butt against that?
After all, a grimy bar with free flowing alcohol is no place for a woman like herself.
"Cheryl, darling." Veronica starts, and she leans forward with her voice as saccharine as the sticky sweet rock candy syrup in their cocktails. "I don't need a man. Fuck, you don't need one either — no offense to Archiekins, of course — because I'm a Lodge. Do you know what Lodge women do, Cher?"
Veronica is bordering on intoxicated now, gesticulating with her hands as her words drag out and she uses more fillers — she's usually to the point when she's sober, while Cheryl rambles and will quiet down when drunk — and Cheryl wonders if she should offer the guest bed for her to take a nap and sober up before she goes home.
She pours water from the bottle on the table into Veronica's cup when she's distracted by the glint of sunlight on her tennis bracelet.
"No." Cheryl says, and she doesn't really have to ask because Veronica will tell her either way, but she does ask because she's polite like that. "Tell me."
And so Veronica does, her eyes a little glassy as she leans forward and drains the rest of her cocktail. She'll never make it home in one piece if Cheryl lets her walk out the front door, and she thinks she should call cousin Betty to fetch her, for even though Veronica is her very best friend, Betty has always had a knack for getting her to cooperate.
Betty is special to Veronica like that.
Cheryl wonders if Archie is special to her in the same way.
"We make our own rules." She says, a bit like Cheryl could be included in that we if she were so apt to it. "We go to bars that we want to attend, without men on our arms. We cook what we want for dinner and not some bullshit steak and potatoes meal for a man. Wouldn't you like it, Cher? To throw together a fresh summer salad and not spend hours at the stove?"
It's a nice fantasy, perhaps, if Cheryl were to give herself the time to entertain it.
But Veronica is intoxicated — well and truly drunk, even — and it's another one of those half cocked Veronica Lodge ideologies that would get a girl like Cheryl nowhere in life.
Veronica's place may be in a boardroom or on the sales floor, but Cheryl's is in her kitchen that she shares with her handsome fiancé.
"Mm, it does sound nice, Vee." Cheryl says, and she takes Veronica's glass back to the kitchen as she slumps back into the plush couch. "I'm gonna call cousin Betty for you, okay? Get her to pick you up and take you home?"
Veronica murmurs something that Cheryl doesn't quite catch, and she holds the handset of the phone up to her ear with her shoulder as she tidies up the counters — as much of them as she can reach with the cord pulled taut but not too tight, for the connection is loose and will fall straight from the wall if she isn't careful. Betty seems to always be on standby for Veronica, answers Cheryl's call within three rings like she's been waiting on it all afternoon, and she doesn't even fuss that Veronica needs picked up again.
Betty will walk over, as she always does so she can drive Veronica's car back to the Pembrooke, and Cheryl thinks the devotion is sweet.
It's darling, even.
"Cher?" Veronica says, voice a little thready and a lot slurred. "Will you come sit with me?"
Her voice is sleepy-soft, innocent in nature and a bit hesitant like Veronica isn't quite sure Cheryl will agree, and for that reason alone she dries her hands on the tea towel atop the counter — the lime juice from their cocktails sinks into a paper cut on her hand and it burns something awful, though she doesn't do anything about it — and she lifts Veronica's head for just a moment so she can tuck her dress and sit wedged in the corner of the couch.
"Betty is on her way." She whispers, and Veronica's head falls heavy into her lap.
Cheryl's fingers comb through Veronica's glossy, dark hair, and she resists the urge to run her fingertip down Veronica's face — resists the urge to glide her pointer finger from between her brows down to the tip of her nose soothingly like her mother would do when she had trouble resting as a little girl. They don't touch like this often — don't sit close, not like Betty and Veronica do — reserved specially for when Veronica is drunk and waiting on Betty.
Cheryl soaks up the affection either way, no matter if it sends an uncomfortable prickle down her spine at the proximity.
It's nice to be needed.
It's even nicer to be wanted.
"She always comes for me." Veronica says, her voice soft. She goes quiet for a long while — so long that Cheryl thinks she's fallen asleep, maybe — and then her eyes flutter open and she attempts to hold Cheryl's gaze like it's something serious. "You don't have to live like this, Cher."
And it's easy for Veronica to say, Cheryl thinks, for she comes from a completely different world than the Hell house of Blossom raising. The Lodges weren't perfect — aren't perfect, are barely functional as it is — but they're a family, which is quite a bit more than the Blossoms have, really. Veronica was barely raised, dumped off on her own as a teenager when she was too troublesome for her parents to deal with, but it's not hardly the life of dead brothers and hanging fathers and wretched, abusive mothers that Cheryl was raised in.
Cheryl can't go back to that house.
She'll do anything to ensure she never has to.
"I do, Ronnie." She says, and she swallows past the lump of emotion that rises in her throat. "I do. I have to keep Archie happy. I can't… I can't deal with the fallout if I don't."
Betty swings open the front door, the spring doorstop reverberating loudly because Betty has always had a habit of being a little too rough. She's not the dainty Elizabeth that aunt Alice had hoped for, Cheryl thinks, isn't one that's suited to be a housewife in fruit and floral printed dresses and holding a cobbler in her oven-mitted hands. But she's happy enough — really happy, Cheryl can tell — and doesn't that count for something?
"I'll take her." Betty says, and when she kneels by Veronica's side it's like all of the stoicism and fight dissipates from her body.
She's gentle with Veronica.
Only for Veronica.
How fascinating.
"Can I help?" Cheryl says, and she holds her hands a bit awkwardly at her sides, fingertips pressed to the rough barkcloth of the couch as Betty strokes her fingertips down Veronica's cheek and murmurs something to her that Cheryl can't quite catch.
Betty's fingers are calloused and unmanicured, and she hardly ever wears polish on them. It's a rare occasion if she does, usually on a holiday to match a dress or — on even rarer of an occasion — when they have a girls evening and Veronica tugs Betty's hands into her lap and paints them blue. Always blue.
Red for Cheryl, purple for Veronica, and blue for Betty.
As it's always been.
And Betty's hands don't ever stay manicured for long, not even when Veronica strokes a reverent finger down Betty's thin, thin fingers and whispers 'now don't go and ruin these'. Betty's nails are always chipped by the time the day is through, anyways, for she enjoys things like hauling the heavy trash to the can and throwing a football in the front yard with Archie when he arrives home.
Veronica doesn't seem to mind Betty's calloused fingers, though, and she tips her head into the gentle touch.
"I've got her." Betty says, and her voice drops a bit lower and a lot softer as she coaxes Veronica from Cheryl's lap with a hand cradling the back of her head, a bit like a newborn babe. "C'mon, Ronnie. Let's get you home."
And Veronica always gets the last word — she's bossy like that, always has been since the day she stepped into their homeroom class at Riverdale High — teetering on her heels as she presses into Betty's firm grasp. Betty has her, always has her, a tight grip around her waist as Veronica raises a finger towards Cheryl that looks more silly than the sternness she likely intends.
"You don't have to live like this, Cher." She says, and Betty has to tighten her grasp on Veronica to keep her from toppling entirely. "I'm serious."
Betty's eyebrows knit together, like she wants to ask about it, but her hands are too full of a drunken Veronica to say or do much of anything. Cheryl is thankful for that, at least.
"Okay, Vee." She says, a bit like she's trying to appease her because she is. "Go get some rest, yeah?"
When the door closes behind them — Cheryl doesn't bother to stand up and lock it — she waits to hear the roar of Veronica's car leaving her driveway before she stands, washes the glasses in the sink and transfers Archie's work clothes to the dryer so she can toss her dresses into the machine. And she hopes — likely in vain, for Betty is an investigative reporter and a damn good one at that — that Betty doesn't ask about Veronica's comment.
She hopes that Betty forgets about it entirely, both Veronica's outburst and the way Cheryl sat ramrod straight like it affected her.
As it turns out, Betty doesn't forget about what Veronica said.
The universe has never been particularly kind to Cheryl in this way, really, and the phone rings as she's sliding the baking sheet of potatoes and parsnips into the oven for dinner. She answers it — of course she does — with the handset wedged between her ear and shoulder as she rinses her hands off in the sink.
"Andrews-Blossom residence." She says, her tone perfectly practiced and chipper.
Cheryl is a good housewife in this way, she thinks.
"What did she mean by that?" Betty says, speaking before Cheryl can even properly greet her. Betty wouldn't make a good housewife in this way, but Cheryl doesn't think Betty has domestic housewifery as part of her five year plan anyways. "When Veronica and I were leaving. What did she mean?"
And Cheryl doesn't really have time for this, not with Archie due home soon — he'd never be upset with her if dinner were a bit of a wait or there was a mess in the sink, but Cheryl wouldn't ever want him to come home to an unkept house or a meal unfinished — but Betty is stubborn to a fault and would knock down her door if she wanted an answer, so Cheryl just sighs and fingers one of her curls.
She needs to freshen up before Archie gets home.
"She thinks I'm unhappy."
Betty hums, a bit like she's heard this before, and it sounds a lot like she's considering her words carefully. Cheryl wonders if it's consideration imbued into her every fiber from having a mother as gentle and kind as Alice Cooper or if it's a womanly nature, the sort of thing that breeds good housewives and good mothers.
Penelope Blossom never had an ounce of consideration in her body, and perhaps that's why she has always been such an awful mother.
"So are you?" Betty says. "Unhappy, I mean."
Cheryl doesn't know how to answer that, so she doesn't.
"Vee lives in such a different world than everyone else." She says, and it's not too far off from the truth. "She lives in this… alternate timeline where a woman can run a bar just because she wants to, like she can change the way things work just because she wills it to happen. Not all of us can live like that."
Betty sighs, and Cheryl steps as close to the stove as she can to put the lid on the pan. She contemplates setting the handset down and walking away, perhaps hanging up on Betty entirely.
"You're infuriating."
Cheryl almost laughs at that, for she does so love antagonizing Betty. She's nicer these days, softer around the edges now that she doesn't live in Thornhill anymore, but Cheryl doesn't think she'll ever tire of Betty's exasperated sighs.
"You're talking to me like I'm going to become one of your articles in the Register."
Betty does laugh at that, a quiet little thing through her nose like she's trying to keep quiet. Cheryl wonders if Betty is at Veronica's, if she's sitting there waiting on her to wake up. Of course she is, she decides, for Betty and Veronica are just like that and always have been.
Cheryl always feels like a bit of a third wheel around them.
"Maybe you will be." Betty says after a long while, and then she makes a sympathetic little sound and shushes something. Veronica, presumably, and it stirs something in Cheryl's chest at the thought. "But you're okay? Everything's okay?"
Okay is such a subjective term, cousin, Cheryl wants to say, but she hears Veronica stirring in the background and the potatoes are starting to burn in the oven and, above all else, Cheryl is entirely too busy to unpack the topic of what okay means. She's safe, she's healthy, and she's engaged to be married to a man who would fight circles for her.
Of course she's okay.
It could be so much worse.
"Of course." She says, imbues it with sincerity and so it is. "I've never been better."
Betty hums like she doesn't quite believe her — if they had been closer as children, would she believe Cheryl? Would she see right through her lies? — but she lets it rest for once, likely because Veronica is there and stirring and making sleepy sounds that Cheryl can hear through the phone.
She rolls her eyes.
She's not jealous.
"Okay." Betty says, a bit unconvinced, and Cheryl wants to hang up the phone. But Betty is stubborn — always has been — will call back and hang up just so she has the final word. "But you'd tell us if you weren't okay, right? If you weren't happy?"
Would she?
Cheryl likes to think that she would, though she can't be entirely certain. And she's happy with Archie — safe with Archie, and doesn't happiness go hand in hand with safety? — and so she has no reason to say anything at all, really.
"I tell you both everything." Cheryl says, a non answer and a confirmation rolled into one. "Begrudgingly."
And so Betty laughs and they both say goodbye — she's sure that Veronica is unlikely to really wake up for a few hours, but Cheryl invites them for dinner either way, knowing they'll decline politely — and Cheryl hangs the receiver back up and goes to check on dinner.
The potatoes are slightly burnt around the edges — they won't taste acrid in her mouth, but they're a bit too charred to be considered good — and the meat on the stovetop has been sitting too long. It falls from the bone when she prods it with a fork, myoglobin spilling from the spots where the muscle falls from bone and sizzling in the pan.
It smells a bit like copper.
Cheryl's mouth fills with saliva, a bit like when she's going to be sick.
But she doesn't throw up and she doesn't relate the smell to Jason — sweet Jason, copper penny blood dripping from his forehead and ghastly in complexion — at least, not until she tells herself that she doesn't relate it to him. And she'd sink into it if she had the time — would press her thumbs heavy and angry into the wounds of her mind, would rip herself apart — but Archie is due home soon and the meat has fallen clean off the bone and she doesn't have time to hurt and so she simply does not.
She slices two hunks of sourdough bread from the loaf she picked up at the market the other day — she's never been quite gifted at making her own, always too crisp or too doughy, though Archie will eat it all the same with a grin on his face — and she finds herself a little bit lost in the glint of light on the serrated edge of the bread knife.
She could be violent like a dog if she wanted to, could be teeth and jaw muscle and rip into flesh.
She could be girlish and sweet, too, oven mitts on her hands as she holds a tray of fresh cinnamon rolls that she won't eat but has made for Archie and the other foremen.
Cheryl could be a lot of things, she thinks as she plates dinner, but then Archie walks through the door — gentle, the door never slamming open to announce his arrival — and the only thing she can think of wanting to be is Archie's wife, the mother of Archie's children. Not Cheryl Andrews, perhaps, but not Cheryl Blossom, either.
Just Cheryl.
Just Archie's Cheryl.
"Honey, I'm home!" He says, like something out of a sitcom. His shoes have a place against the wall, placed there carefully and never kicked into the baseboards. "How was your day?"
And Cheryl can say so much, but she melts into his embrace and lets him kiss her before she speaks. His hands are calloused but never rough, grasping gently at her hips over the apron and her dress and thumbs stroking idly at the fabric, and he smells like outside and sweat and that Archie Andrews smell she's so fond of, and all of the frustration of her conversation with Veronica dissipates in an instant.
"So good." She says, pecks him on the upper lip once more for good measure before she returns to her task. "Cousin Betty called while I was cooking. The meat's a bit too overcooked to serve on the bone, so I hope you like sandwiches. I can always make something else—"
She's cut off by Archie's gentle hand on the small of her back, a kiss of his lips pressed to the junction between her neck and shoulder.
"Anything you make is perfect."
He says it like he means it, and Cheryl is forced to believe it for no reason other than because Archie says so. She puts blind faith into him a lot of the time — knows he will take care of her, knows he will always be safe and kind and gentle — a bit like she did Jason for so many years.
Sometimes if she squints, Archie's facial features sharpen in that Blossom-typical way. He could look like Jason if he tried.
Cheryl doesn't think that she wants him to try — not tonight.
"Go wash up, lover." She says, and her voice is a reverent whisper. "Dinner's almost done."
And so he does — Archie is pliable, almost, will do most anything Cheryl wants of him — goes off to the shower to wash the sweat and dust from his body while she slides dinner onto the plates. She doesn't always use the bone china — it's reserved for special occasions, for having friends over and, on the rarer occasions, when Archie's mother comes for a meal — dishes dinner up onto the Homer Laughlin plates from Macy's that Archie put on layaway for her last Christmas.
She serves less meat for herself than she does Archie and she'll tell him he needs the protein, will tell him there was chicken in the salad she ate at lunch — did she eat lunch? Cheryl doesn't remember — will slide the meat off her plate onto Archie's mid meal.
She serves herself the most burnt potato chunks, though, for a hardworking man like Archie should never taste the char of burnt food.
"Veronica is going to open a bar." She says while Archie is halfway through his sandwich and finished with his sides.
He's always been a man who prefers fixings to the main course, and Cheryl wonders if it's because he's always tried to save enough for her. They struggled when they first moved in together — Mary Andrews, the darling woman she is, offered for them to live in the upstairs of the Andrews home, but Archie was too proud of a man to accept the offer — and there was oft a time that there was barely a hunk of meat to split between the two of them.
Cheryl never minded.
Archie always took care of her so well, even then.
"Is she?" He says, sets his fork down like he needs to pay full attention to her.
Cheryl has always loved this about him, the way he gives undivided attention so freely. He's sweet with her, makes her feel important for more than cooking a meal and sweeping the leaves from the porch and doing the laundry. Archie makes her feel human — alive, maybe — and Cheryl isn't sure if she much cares for it, but she does know that it makes her blood rush and her skin pinken under the attention.
"She is." She says, and she digs the tines of her fork into a cube of potato. The charred bit cracks under the pressure, and the soft cooked inside spews out. Disgusting. "A bar where women can go without a male escort, she says. She's always had fantastical ideas like that, hasn't she?"
Archie considers it, chews long and deliberate on a piece of meat.
Does he taste the myoglobin that coated the chunks like a gravy, Cheryl wonders, and does he hate the taste?
"I think it's a cool idea." He says, like he's remarking on the weather or Cheryl's suggestion to search for seasonal throw pillows for the couch. "Are you going to go?"
Archie is the sort of man who would come home from work and shower so he could dress in a nice outfit — slacks and a button down, tucked in and proper, though a little dressed down from Sunday church — and escort her to Veronica's bar for no reason other than she would want to go. He'd sit while she socializes — maybe he'd speak with Jughead, if Veronica chooses to let him escort her — will sit happily while she downs glass after glass of wine — white in the summer and red in the winter, Cheryl is a creature of habit — and he'd drive her home when she was done and not a moment sooner, even if he had to work the next morning.
"Maybe." Cheryl says, and she mashes at the food on her plate with the side of her fork, takes a long sip of wine. "If there's a night we're both free. For you to escort me and not work the next day."
Archie's brow furrows, and he looks so much like Jason that it makes the food in Cheryl's stomach turn to lead. The wine in her glass is liquid fire, and it stokes at something deep in the pit of her stomach.
"But why would I escort you if it's somewhere you wouldn't need it?" Archie says, and then his frown deepens as he thinks about his words. Sweet, sweet boy. "Not that I don't love having my pretty lady on my arm, but don't you want a night out with the girls?"
Darling, wonderful Archibald.
He's not one to oft go, but Archie does visit the bars with the other foremen from work sometimes. Cheryl never complains — and why would she? She's never been the type to care much about being left alone and Archie deserves it, after all — stays home dutifully with a nice meal warming on the hob for when he returns.
"Are you saying that you could survive without me, Mr. Andrews?" She teases, because it's easier than admitting she thinks she doesn't belong somewhere like unaccompanied in a bar.
Archie grins, dopey and sweet.
"Yes." He says, and he's so boyish when he says it that it aches. "But not for much longer than an evening, so you'll have to hurry home to me."
And it feels like so much — so much that her heart could stop beating and her lungs could stop breathing and the dinner she choked down could spew from her liquor loosened lips — like home and like living and like something she can't quite place. Perhaps the thrill of doing something she feels she shouldn't, maybe, or perhaps something deeper.
"Oh, Arch…" She breathes, soft and sweet and pliable from the wine. "I'll always come home to you."
Archie lays his fork and knife on his empty plate — when did he finish eating, Cheryl wonders — stands from the table and drops his dishware in the sink. He rinses them off, the sweet boy he is, and dries his hands on the tea towel instead of flicking water around the pristine kitchen.
He's a good man, Cheryl thinks.
"You'd better, Mrs. Andrews." He says from behind her, hands on her biceps and lips pressing soft and sweet to the back of her neck. "I couldn't live a single day without you."
Cheryl does end up going to Veronica's bar.
It's a speakeasy technically — Veronica has always enjoyed a period piece and reinventing history — and it's not quite done yet, but Veronica is training her staff and it's a good a reason as any for their friend group to be invited for drinks and to check it out.
And Veronica has done a good job with it, for it looks like any other soda shop up top, a phone on the wall with a hidden door — hidden so well that Cheryl has to squint to make out the separation where door nestles into wall, even — and a password that'll let them down into the bar.
The password is ladder, and Cheryl doesn't quite know why.
She does so hate feeling stupid.
"Like the publication." Betty says, and Cheryl can tell by the flutter of her upper lids that she's barely suppressing the roll of her eyes. "Daughters of Bilits."
And she still doesn't know what Betty or Veronica mean by that, so she hums appreciatively like she does and follows Veronica down the steps to the bar. It's fully lit despite it being late evening, for construction is still wrapping up and they aren't servicing customers yet, and Veronica wiggles her fingers at a slimy looking man at the bottom of the steps.
"This is Chad." She says, and her fingers reach out to trail down his forearm and tickle at his wrist before she's pulling away again. "Chad Gekko, my security. He knows you're both VIPs."
He's conventionally attractive, Cheryl thinks, dressed in a suit and tie to stand at the bottom of the stairs, all square set jaw and thick eyebrows, but there's something about him that makes Cheryl's spine go ramrod straight and her palms prickle with sweat.
Betty picks up on it too, it seems, and she does roll her eyes now.
"Chadwick." She says, and she doesn't give him the kindness of even looking in his eyes.
Veronica's hand — the one that was on Chad, the lithe fingers that were encircling his wrist — moves to Betty now, stroking down her spine and scratching at the tweed of her jacket over the small of her back.
"Elizabeth." He sneers, and Cheryl decides that no, she doesn't like this Chad Gekko character.
Veronica sure knows how to pick them.
They keep walking — away from him before Betty can pull out the blade she keeps tucked into her waistband, even in the tweed skirt and blazer set she's wearing — and Veronica is prattling on about details of the renovation process that Cheryl hears but doesn't quite retain. Something about warm wood tones, Cheryl thinks.
It's homey in a good way, though, not sterile like the bar they all visited — her and Archie, Veronica and Jughead, and Betty with Reggie Mantle — in New York City last year around Christmastime.
"Let me get you a drink." Veronica says, like she's trying to be the perfect hostess. There's a nervous energy that bubbles within her, Cheryl knows her well enough to be able to tell. "Toni's around here somewhere, I'm sure of it."
Cheryl bristles at the thought of a man serving her a drink — and really, she'd prefer it if Veronica would just uncork a bottle of wine and pour it herself, is that too much to ask for around here? — and perhaps she's too cautious, but there's a rise in men using barbiturates to drug and coerce unattended women in the big city bars.
You can never be too careful, really.
"Toni?" Veronica calls out, but she doesn't step behind the bar. "Could I trouble you to pour my friends a couple of drinks?"
And Cheryl is about to decline — she really should decline, isn't one to drink outside of her home save for a glass of red at Luigi's when she and Archie go for a celebratory dinner — but then a woman steps out from the little room behind the bar, all caramel skin and bright, shiny smile. Her hair is pretty — thick in the way that Cheryl's has never been, even when she eats more than usual — tied into a ponytail with bangs that hang just past her eyebrows, gold hoop earrings and a leopard print scarf around her neck and a leather jacket around her shoulders despite the fact that it's a little bit stuffy in the bar.
"Sorry, Vee." The girl says, and she blows a puff of air that flutters her bangs and clears the stray hairs from her face. "What can I get you?"
Betty says something and Veronica says something and Cheryl?
Cheryl is making a fool of herself.
She knows she's staring — and can you blame her? Women aren't supposed to be in bars, let alone bartenders — brows pinched into a furrow and lips pressed tightly together and hands clasping at her handbag. It's red, Italian leather, a gift from Archie for her birthday just a week ago and being taken out for the first time.
It matches the Mary Jane heels from a few months ago.
They still pinch at the backs of her heels, even this evening.
"I'll have what they're having." She says finally, and she's so flustered that she has to sit, slides into a barstool and looks curiously at the bartender. "Are you… always going to be a bartender? Not a hostess or a bar girl?"
And Cheryl does know what a bar girl is, thanks to the visit to the bars in New York City at the insistence of Veronica — you'd do well at this, Betty had said, would use your pretty face to get the men to buy you expensive drinks — and she thinks, if she's being quite honest with herself, that Veronica is probably a little too new age to have bar girls at her establishment.
"You're nosy." She says, but her lips quirk up in a smile and Cheryl isn't apologetic anyways. "But no. A bartender most of the time — was one at the Wyrm for a while — and an… activist."
She says it like it's something cryptic — and Cheryl would so love to ask about it but she doesn't, doesn't want to make more of a fool of herself than she already does — and she mixes three identical drinks that look stronger than anything Cheryl has ever had before.
"What do you do for work, princess?" Toni says, and Cheryl wonders if Veronica has hired an entire staff to do nothing but aggravate her and Betty.
She had to have, Cheryl thinks, with the way Toni is smirking at her with a pretty arched eyebrow rising high into her bangs. It makes Cheryl think of the time the three of them — her and Betty and Veronica, too — sat in Veronica's bedroom at the Pembrooke and cut themselves bangs. They were jagged and choppy — none of them were ever much gifted with a pair of scissors like that, especially not rusty ones from Hermione's sewing kit — and Cheryl's mother had yelled at her and grounded her for a week for doing it. Alice Cooper said nothing, and Hermione Lodge never even noticed.
How on brand for all of them.
Cheryl isn't sure if Hermione Lodge has even seen Veronica since graduation.
"Princess?" Cheryl scoffs, indignant as ever, and Toni slides her drink across the bartop like she doesn't care about scuffing it.
Cheryl picks the glass up and sets it on a cardboard coaster.
"You haven't told me your name." She says, and Cheryl thinks she should slap the audacity right from this girl's face.
And maybe Cheryl is ill mannered for it, but she does so enjoy a bit of banter, so she traces her finger around the rim of her glass and cocks her head to the side like she's taking on a challenge.
"You haven't asked me for it."
She glances to the side — Betty is involved in a conversation with Chad, brow furrowed as Veronica strokes at her lower back like she's trying to keep her temper at bay — and then again at Toni, the way she's bent a bit at the waist so she can rest her chin in her hand and her elbow on the counter.
"Maybe we got off on the wrong foot." She says, lips twitching as she fights a grin. "I'm Toni Topaz. And you are?"
And Cheryl falters for just a moment because who is she, anyways?
"Cheryl Blossom." She says, twists the engagement ring on her finger. "Um, Andrews, technically."
Toni leans forward — god, she's so close that Cheryl can smell the mint of the gum she's chewing — like she's actually listening, like she cares about what Cheryl has to say. And it's strange, in a way, how Toni Topaz can make her stomach flutter in the same way Archie does when he sets his fork and knife down and cocks his head like a puppy hanging on her every word.
Cheryl likens it to a strange symptom from her starvation for affection, that's all.
"Married?"
"No." She says, and she feels a bit embarrassed for how harsh it sounds. "Soon, maybe. I don't know. It's…"
Cheryl trails off, and her chest and neck heat with a flush that reaches the tips of her ears. She's always blushed with her entire body — ever since she was a little girl, blushed at praise and in embarrassment and when she feels she's prattled on for too long, too — and she thinks she has to look ridiculous with her red cheeks and red dress and her red handbag to match.
"Complicated?" Toni finishes, the ghost of a smile never leaving her face.
Cheryl nods, because how can she explain her entire life — and Archie's too, for that matter — to a stranger in a bar?
She sips from her drink and Toni watches her, like she's chasing Cheryl's approval and praise, and Cheryl hides her grimace at the burn of liquor on her tongue and the back of her throat and she stifles the sputter that threatens to spew past her lips, too, and she doesn't do it because she cares about Toni Topaz' reaction — she doesn't care, not one bit — but because she cares a great deal about how people see her.
Cheryl Blossom isn't the sort of woman who embarrasses herself.
"What're you ladies talking about?" Veronica says, slides into the barstool directly to the right of Cheryl and Betty flanks her on the left.
She swallows the mouthful of her drink — it burns less on her tongue now, and she'll sip politely at it in small bits until it's socially acceptable to ask for a water — and while she does, Toni takes it upon herself to answer Veronica.
"Cheryl was just telling me that she's engaged to be married soon."
Cheryl wishes the ground would open up and swallow her whole.
"Oh, Archiekins." Veronica sighs out, like she's affected by him in some sort of way, though they both know that she isn't and never has been. "Has Cheryl shown you a photo of him?"
Toni shakes her head, and Veronica rifles in her purse for her wallet. She carries a slim one that's obnoxiously full — not with paper money or store charge coins, because Veronica stuffs cash into the bottom of her purse and rifles for hours at the checkout — of photographs, small pictures of all the people she holds dear to her.
She flips past at least ten of Betty in her stack before she finds one of Cheryl and Archie, a Polaroid photo taken on Easter Sunday that isn't the posed one Cheryl expects to see, but a candid of her and Archie giggling together in a church pew.
"You carry photos of me?" Cheryl says, because she has nothing else to say other than that she looks a bit bloated in the photo.
The camera adds ten pounds, she reminds herself, and alcohol is full of calories.
"Yes. Only a few. Not as many as I carry of Betty." Veronica says, and she hands the photo over to Toni like she really thinks Toni needs to see it. "Isn't he handsome?"
Toni hums appreciatively, and Cheryl tracks her gaze and watches the way Toni's eyes rove over the dress she's wearing in the Polaroid. The colors aren't very vivid — Veronica has gotten a newer camera since then — but if she squints, she can make out the butter yellow dress with the white and spring blue accents.
"He is." Toni says, and her voice is something far away that makes Cheryl's brows knit together anxiously.
Does Toni think she's ugly?
Does she think that she's undeserving of a man like Archie?
"They've been together since high school." Veronica says, and she tucks the Polaroid back into her wallet. Veronica is special in this way, Cheryl thinks, the way she holds on tight to those who mean the most to her — and isn't Cheryl special too, being one of the people Veronica holds dear? "They're endgame."
Toni's eyebrow furrows just a bit — she schools her expression quickly, a bit like Cheryl herself can do, and she isn't sure if it makes her feel better or twists the nauseous feeling further into her stomach — and Cheryl tries to push the sick feeling away. It's like Toni is prying her mind open and digging into all of the insecurities she's tried to bury for four years with one well-placed glance.
Cheryl needs to go home.
"I'm sure it'll be the wedding of the century." Toni says, and she's smirking like she thinks it's funny. "Maybe Ronnie will be nice enough to take me as her plus one."
Cheryl wants to slap her.
Cheryl really, really wants to slap her.
"If they ever set a date." Betty says, and she rolls her eyes like she has for the past three and a half years.
Betty thinks she should have gotten married right out of high school — hell, if Betty had it her way, Cheryl would have been married the day after graduation — and sometimes Cheryl thinks this is Betty's way of projecting everything that Polly never got with Jason onto Cheryl and Archie. And Cheryl could pretend to be upset about that — and she should, she thinks — but isn't Archie just a physical token filling the void of everything that she lost when she lost her twin?
"Bee." Veronica warns, her tone soft but stern. "Be nice. Archie and Cheryl wanted to wait until they're ready."
Cheryl wonders if she could convince Veronica to install a trapdoor that could open at the push of a button and send her hurtling into Hell.
"And if she waits much longer she'll die a virgin with cobwebs in her—" Betty says, and she's cut off when Cheryl grabs a lock of that stupid blonde hair and pulls. "Jesus, Cheryl."
Cheryl doesn't apologize, but she does let go of Betty's hair and tuck her hands demurely into her lap.
Toni is grinning, though, and it makes Cheryl's throat tickle with a laugh. She pushes it down, past her belly and past her hips — so far down that she about chokes on it — and she kicks Betty under the bartop with a sharp nudge of her toe to the bony bit of her ankle.
Serves her right.
"I'm sure it'll be a lovely wedding." Toni says, and there's a brilliant smile dancing at the corners of her lips that makes Cheryl feel like she's going to be sick. "And I'm serious about that plus one. Maybe if Ronnie doesn't bring Jug."
Cheryl would rather die than see the look of judgment on Betty's face, so she chokes back a sip of the amber liquor — it's watered down now, just a little bit, but still somehow more tolerable — and she smiles politely in the way she was taught as a little girl.
"You'll be one of the first to know when we set a date, then."
When Cheryl returns home — by Jughead's escort, because Veronica takes Betty home and Cheryl can't stand to watch her trail her fingers up and down Betty's forearm as she drives — she's a little past tipsy and heading full tilt into drunk, and she pours herself and Archie both a glass of wine as she steps out of her heels.
She doesn't put them away, and Archie doesn't expect it of her.
"Good night?" He says, sits up a little straighter on the couch when he sees her coming. "You look so beautiful, Cher."
And she does, she thinks — or she's drunk enough to believe it, maybe — and so she allows herself a little bit of closeness that she'd never indulge in, a seat on Archie's lap and the hand that isn't holding her wine glass pressed to the thin white t-shirt on Archie's body. He's so warm, despite being hard and muscular beneath her touch.
"Mm, a very nice night." She says, and she isn't even sure why she says it because it was rather awful, really. "We could make it even better, though."
Cheryl flushes at her own words, heat prickling itchy and insistent across her chest and up her neck. But she wants him — wants him so badly that her whole body burns with it — wants Archie on her and to claim him as hers and to forget the judgmental glances of stupid Toni Topaz and even stupider Elizabeth fucking Cooper.
"Really?" Archie says, a bit like an excited pup.
And Cheryl thinks that Vegas learned it from him — the head tilt and big wide eyes and puppy excitement — or maybe Archie did learn it from Vegas, morphed into a human version of his pup somewhere in childhood and has retained the panting and shaking and giddy excitement for his whole life.
"Would you like to?" She says, and she swallows down the last of the wine in her glass.
Red wine, because the air may be clinging to the last dredges of summer heat before they swing full tilt into autumn but Cheryl is ready for fall now more than ever, and Archie lets her finish off his glass too. It goes directly to her head, makes her dizzy and loose in Archie's grasp, and she sets both glasses onto the end table with a clatter as her hands fumble with the buckle of his belt.
"I want anything you want." Archie says, a bit breathless, and she can feel his cock hard and straining against the denim of his jeans. "Do you want to?"
Does she?
Cheryl thinks she does — or maybe the wine in her system and Betty's crass commentary does — and she nods eagerly as she pulls at his belt with shaky hands and works at the button of his jeans.
She needs him — needs him so badly that something within her aches, empty and sore and wanting so much that it hurts — and she'll have him right here so long as he'll let her.
"I can carry you to the bed?" Archie offers, ever the gentleman, and Cheryl can feel his shaky, hot breath against her neck as he tries to fight against the arousal — as he tries to be the perfect gentleman he always is. "If you'd like me to."
Archie takes such good care of her.
He always has.
"No." She says, murmurs it against the skin of his jaw as she kisses at it. He's freshly shaven, barely a hint of prickle against her lips, and she feels a breath punch from her lungs at how nice it feels. "Right here."
And it takes a bit of maneuvering to get comfortable — Cheryl keeps her dress on and shifts her panties to the side, Archie's pants and briefs around his knees, and Cheryl isn't wet like Veronica describes but she's buzzing with alcohol and it doesn't hurt as much as last time when he pushes into her — and she buries her face in the side of his neck as she rocks in his lap to give him the sensation that he needs.
It could almost feel pleasurable if she wasn't so focused on Archie, she thinks.
She's desperate to prove it to herself.
"God, Cheryl." Archie gasps out, ruined and pretty all at once. She wants to make him sound like this more, she thinks, like his whole world has narrowed to what Cheryl can provide for him. "I'm gonna…"
Cheryl can almost feel it, the way his thighs twitch beneath her and the way his breath goes ragged. She sits up, unburies her face from his neck so she can sit back just a bit and study him, cups a hand to his clean, soft cheek and stares into his eyes like he holds the answers to all of the questions she's ever had.
In a way, Archie does.
"You can, sweet boy." She says, coos it as she strokes her thumb across the soft skin of his cheek and places her other hand on his chest. "It's okay. You're okay, Arch."
And she studies him while he comes, studies the way his face pinches up — he's lost his baby fat, Cheryl thinks, is all angular bones and still kind and soft despite it all — and his breath falls ragged from his parted lips and his eyes squeeze shut as he rocks up into her, and she thinks that she's never seen Archie look quite so pretty before.
She tells him as such.
"My Archie…" She trails off reverently, sweet and soft towards him despite the ache between her legs and the stickiness of him. "My pretty, pretty boy."
His eyes flutter open and a grin spreads across his face — slow at first, and then beaming so wide that it could split his face — and any guilt that has wound itself into Cheryl's stomach fades away just a little bit.
"Wow, Cheryl." He breathes, and he looks so boyish when he says it that it aches. "That was incredible. You're incredible."
And her chest warms just a little bit at that, the way she feels like she's finally useful and finally doing something right and finally wanted.
Wanted despite it all and wanted in spite of it all, too.
"Go wash up, sweet boy." Cheryl says instead of commenting on his praises — they flow honey sweet down her spine, spreading like wildfire — easing his cock from her and pulling her panties back over herself. "I'm going to toss some laundry in."
Something leaks from her, hot and a bit slick, and Cheryl has to suppress a shudder and a gag at the feeling.
"I'll hurry." He says, because Archie is a sweet man who would rush through a cold shower so Cheryl can have a long, hot one. "I love you, Cheryl."
She says it back — of course she does, because she loves Archie dearly — and she doesn't wait for him to disappear into the bedroom before she's washing the forgotten wine glasses and tossing Archie's work clothes into the washer, the sodden cotton of her panties rubbing against her sensitive skin cold and slick in a way she can't quite ignore.
Cheryl finds she can ignore it when she drinks mouthful after mouthful of wine, hand fisted around the neck of the bottle as she tips it back until there's nothing but a drop or two rolling down the tinted glass.
She doesn't think about it after that — and what it is, Cheryl isn't quite sure, perhaps the residual feeling of Archie or perhaps the lingering prickle down her spine from Betty and Toni's eyes on her imploringly — doesn't think of it as she showers the slick from her body and the smell of alcohol, and doesn't think about it as she slips into bed in her matching pajama set. It's pale blue with yellow florals, a bit like the Easter dress she wore in the photograph that Veronica showed Toni in the bar.
And when she falls asleep — which does come fitfully these days — she doesn't, under any circumstances, picture Toni Topaz and her caramel skin and her pretty, pretty brown eyes.