Chapter Text
Kevin Keller got a megaphone for these auditions.
The longer they continue, the more secure he is in that decision. Not only are these people terrible, but none of them listen. Good God, he’d had to listen to Archie’s soulful piano-heavy rendition of “Cemetery Drive” for longer than he wanted to and that had deprived him of what little patience he had.
“I need you to scream, Archie!” Kevin said, and Archie had done it so badly that Kevin considered cutting him entirely. Unfortunately, he’s better than the rest of the candidates, so Kevin’s dream musical’s talent is quickly losing its star power.
After auditions, still in the auditorium well into the evening, Kevin sits poring over the options. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof. There’s a bit of resentment in his chest about how Jughead disappeared, rather than helping Kevin sort through the outcome of today’s flops, but he said he had “homework” and “rewrites” and “to study” so Kevin supposes it’s fine.
The heavy doors open behind him and he looks around to see Betty, heading up the aisles towards the table where Kevin’s lived for the past several hours. He’s not that surprised to see her, though he is grateful for her presence as she sits down next to him.
“Any luck?” Betty asks, peering over Kevin’s shoulder to get a glimpse of the cast that he’s trying to string together.
“What do you think?” Kevin asks, leaning back and rubbing his hands over his face. “None of them have it. It’s so disappointing.”
“Sorry, Kev,” Betty replies, her sympathy evident in her tone. “This was an ambitious one, though. I don’t think anyone really gets it. I mean, even in our group, Jug’s the only one really into the band.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true,” Kevin says, and as Betty nods, he continues, “You used to really like them, but I don’t know why that stopped.”
Betty stops mid-nod and looks at Kevin sharply. “What? When was that?”
Kevin can feel the confused expression on his face, but he tries to remain neutral. Jesus, Betty’s so intense sometimes. “Um, I don’t know, when we were kids? You don’t remember? I thought it was because your mom gave you one of their CDs or something.”
Betty laughs a little, almost in disbelief. “My mom? There’s no way.”
“I don’t know, Betty, didn’t she used to be kind of a punk?”
“Yeah, but…” Betty trails off, then stands abruptly. “I should go. I stayed too late working on The Blue and Gold, I was supposed to be back an hour ago.”
She turns and exits, leaving Kevin behind to ponder his casting, no surer than before.
On her way home, Betty’s mind races.
She’s well aware that there are gaps in her memory from her childhood. But this, the concept of blocking out a band she used to really like, for some unknown reason, is baffling to her. It’s almost more disturbing than anything else she’s encountered about her past.
She almost wants to ask her mom about it — things have been better, marginally, between them since Alice was finally freed from her undercover work with the Farm — but she’s not sure how Alice will react. Sometimes things that Betty thinks are innocuous she’s entirely misremembered, so she’s not sure if this is another one of those times.
Betty doesn’t have to worry about bringing it up, though. When steps into her house and goes to say hello to her mom, Alice looks up from her book on the couch and says, “Oh, Elizabeth, I heard about that musical that Jughead and Kevin are putting on! How exciting, you used to love My Chem. Funny how you acted like they never existed after they broke up, but I suppose you were really torn up about it.”
Betty blinks; surely it can’t be that simple. “Um… yeah, Mom, I didn’t even know they were working on this until last week. Veronica got us all tickets to their show next month, too.”
Alice gasps, her face alight. Maybe Kevin was right, Betty thinks, but she doesn’t voice it.
“Oh, how fun! I don’t know if I told you,” and here Alice scoots to the side of the couch and pats the space next to her, indicating that Betty should sit, which she does, before she says in an almost conspiratorial voice, “I used to go to their shows, back when I was in college.”
“Really?” Betty asks, intrigued. “Is that… you were the one who gave me their CDs, right?”
“Yes, you remember,” Alice says. “You were on the younger side, so I wasn’t sure if you did. Actually, I can tell you this now,” she dips back into that secretive tone, “I slept with the bass player once.”
Betty does a double take. “Oh, my God, Mom, what?”
Alice shrugs. “He was hot!”
“Weren’t you married?”
“Well, we all know what kind of man your father was, so I don’t feel particularly guilty about that,” Alice replies airily. “That was back when I was wild.”
Betty just laughs a little bit, in disbelief, before she finds an excuse to go upstairs and sort through her thoughts. The simplest solution is that, for some reason, when My Chemical Romance broke up, Betty had been so distraught that she’d blocked any thought of them from her mind, which is insane, but now that they’re back together, maybe she can experience this band she apparently loved again.
The next morning, at school, it’s evident that Betty isn’t the only one who spent the night thinking. Kevin blusters into the student lounge before classes begin and tacks the cast list to the bulletin board with what seems like unnecessary force, before collapsing into an armchair and preparing himself for the onslaught of attacks.
Reggie reaches the bulletin board first. “Who the hell is The Cellmate?”
Reggie’s the first to admit that he didn’t pay much attention to the script that Jughead shoved into his hand at that meeting earlier in the week. He really only learned one scene, just enough so that Archie could have a scene partner, but apparently that had done the trick.
He’s about to turn around and ask more questions about his role — all Reggie remembers from the one scene he did was that it had felt kind of gay, but he thinks he’d get yelled at if he asked about that specifically — when Cheryl approaches, Toni a step behind her. Cheryl forcibly pushes Reggie out of the way and he stumbles backward to let her read the cast list.
The pitch that Cheryl’s voice reaches when she shrieks, “What?!” is high enough that Reggie is surprised it was audible to human ears. She whips around, red hair flying, Reggie just barely managing to not get smacked in the face by a curl, and demands of Kevin, “How dare you, you Hallmark stereotype! You gave the Demolition Lovers to Archie and Veronica?”
Across the lounge, Veronica pats Archie’s leg with a satisfied smile on her face, as Archie says, “Oh, hey, nice!”
“No, not nice. Not nice at all.” Cheryl ignores Toni, who’s trying to put a placating hand on her arm, and stalks away from the bulletin board. Reggie lets out a sigh of relief. “I can’t believe you, Kevin. Toni and I were perfect for these roles. What happened to gay/lesbian solidarity?”
Kevin glances around at the rest of his friends, as though looking for some support, but everyone avoids his pleas for help. Jughead, the only person who realistically could’ve helped, is nowhere to be found.
Slowly, Kevin says, “Well, Cheryl, the thing is… actually, it’s a funny story, but it feels a bit more true to the original to have the Demolition Lovers played by a heterosexual couple —”
“Oh, so you’re somehow gay and a homophobe! Quelle surprise, Brutus. You know what, I don’t know why I expected more, despite how you let Jughead write the mutual jerk-off session between the Groom and the Cellmate —”
“The what?” Reggie asks, trying to catch Archie’s eye, but no one hears him.
“But no, when it comes to two women, you won’t let queer love see the light of day. I’m disgusted!” Cheryl punctuates her diatribe by honest to God stomping her foot. “And as if that wasn’t enough, Archie can’t even listen to ‘Thank You for the Venom’ without getting scared! How the fuck is he supposed to pull this off?”
“Okay, that’s actually not true,” Archie attempts, but Cheryl throws him a vicious glare.
“If I wanted a rebuttal from an oafish clown, I would’ve asked you, Archie!”
Taken aback, Archie says, “Whoa, that was mean, Cheryl. What, did you not get cast at all?”
“Actually, I cast her as one of the leads,” Kevin interjects, sounding more than a little miffed. “She’s playing the devil. Personally, I thought she would be amazing.”
Veronica, speaking for the first time since this debacle began, says in a somewhat placating tone, “That’s such a good role, Cheryl, congratulations.”
The look Cheryl bestows on Veronica would be a lot more withering if Veronica hadn’t been dealing with attention of this caliber, and much worse, for years at this point. “All of you and your blatant demonization of lesbians… I’m appalled. As Student Body President, I’ll be appealing to Mr. Honey about this act of discrimination. Let’s go, TT.”
They leave, Toni mouthing sorry as they go.
“Wow,” Archie says to Veronica as the tension in the room dissipates. “I’m glad there’s at least no more questions about it, now that the roles are settled.”
“Oh, Archiekins,” Veronica replies, frowning. “I doubt that’s true.”
Veronica has more on her mind than Three Cheers for Sweet Riverdale, so she was less concerned about the cast list than the rest of their class. She’s not sure how everyone else seems to be devoting so much of their time to worrying about a school musical, but Veronica is a businesswoman. A goddamn successful one at that. Plus with trying to get into college and focusing on maintaining a 4.0, she can allot maybe 6.5% of her mental capacity to learning her lines, and that’s if she’s being generous.
She’s actually quite busy allotting more of her time to organizing something else behind the scenes. Say what you want about Veronica Lodge, but she’s known far and wide as a good fucking friend, so with everything that’s been going on for their group lately, she decided to take it one step farther.
Unfortunately, Veronica’s been working on taking it a step further for several months now. She’s been reaching out to every industry contact she has, every someone who might know someone who might know someone, even going so far as to DM various team members and potential executives on Instagram, but the only response of even mild interest she’d gotten had been a vaguely creepy reply from some much older guy vaguely connected with more influential people who wanted to meet up when the band is in town, who she had immediately blocked. It’s disappointing, because Veronica’s been busting her ass trying to make this happen, and she just doesn’t know how to.
She just can’t seem to get in touch with the right people to get them backstage passes to the My Chemical Romance show at the end of the month.
This is disappointing. Not even just as a concept of not being able to do this — it’s not like they have bad seats or anything, she’d pulled some strings to get them in a VIP area, but she’s just trying to make it possible for her friends who care about this more than her to meet the band — but just because she, Veronica fuckingLodge, hasn’t made something happen.
Like, she should be able to do this, right? Veronica got the Jonas Brothers to play her quinceañera and they’d been broken up at the time. She should be able to do anything.
A small part of her thinks that maybe it was her father who made all of that happen, but Veronica doesn’t want to acknowledge that. Besides, it’s not like she can ask him for assistance now, even if she was willing to. He’s rotting in prison across town, as he should be.
Plus, she almost feels guilty for having a father to even potentially go to, after Archie lost his so recently.
That’s not the point right now, though. The point is that Veronica has been trying and failing to make an upcoming experience better for her boyfriend, her best friend, and also Jughead, and it’s goddamn frustrating that she hasn’t succeeded.
A week or so later, as they progress through the beginning of September, it’s revealed that opening night is not only at the end of the month, but it’s just a day after the My Chemical Romance show. This causes quite a stir at rehearsals.
Cutting through the increasingly loud crosstalk in the auditorium, the cast and crew loitering on the stage, Jughead stands on a chair and yells, “HEY!”
To his immense surprise, everyone actually quiets down to look at him. Encouraged by this, Jughead continues.
“Look, we all know what the problem is. Raise your hand if you have tickets to MCR.” Nearly every hand in the room shoots into the air, which surprises Jughead. “Jesus. I — really, Reggie? Even you?”
Reggie shrugs, looking slightly embarrassed as heads turn in his direction. “Everyone else was doing it, I didn’t want to be the only loser who didn’t go.”
Jughead just stares at Reggie for a moment — the idea that someone, much less the captain of the football team, could be considered a loser for not going to the My Chemical Romance show is baffling to him — before he continues. “Uh, yeah, sure. Anyway, as we all know, we’d originally planned for the day before the show to be focusing on dress rehearsal, so we were going to be here all day. Probably late into the night, honestly, working on last minute tweaks.”
Jughead looks to Kevin, who’s watching his speech with a pained expression. Kevin takes pity on him and assumes the role of the writer-director who actually knows anything about how theatre works, raising his voice so that everyone can hear him. “We’ve decided in light of this, since basically everyone will be attending the show, that we’re going to move our dress rehearsal forward by a day. The day of the MCR show will just… have to be a day off for everyone. I know some people in here have pit, so it’s not like they’ll show up for rehearsals anyway.”
“We have to queue, obvi,” Cheryl says, sitting on a half-finished wooden altar and inspecting her flawless nails. She looks up and flashes the room a wide smile. “TT and I plan to be at the barricade. If any of you would like to join us in the line, you’re more than welcome, but be aware,” and here she punctuates it by pointing, “we take this seriously. If you show up late, you’ll have to go to the back of the line with the rest of the plebeians. We don’t save spots.”
“…Yes, thank you, Cheryl,” Jughead says, trying not to let his bewilderment show too much on his face. He’s never been to a concert, at least not one of this magnitude, he barely knows what Cheryl’s talking about. Plus, he thinks the tickets Veronica finagled for them are in some sort of nice section, which is somehow both relieving and terrifying, but at least he won’t have to worry about lines.
Jughead clears his throat. “Anyway, the point is, we’ll manage. It feels kind of fitting that we’ll have our own show right after seeing the band live, right?”
“No, Mr. Jones, you will not,” comes a booming, slightly nasally voice from the doorway of the auditorium, and the collected students turn to see Mr. Honey, menacingly backlit by the hallway and approaching them with a serious, pinched expression on his bespectacled face.
“I — I’m sorry, what?” Jughead asks, stepping down from the chair. He frowns and moves to the front of the group, vaguely aware of Kevin following. “Is there something wrong, Mr. Honey?”
“There are a multitude of,” Mr. Honey raises his hands to do air quotes, in a gesture that feels insultingly mocking to Jughead, “‘things wrong’, Mr. Jones, but to begin with, this musical has been cancelled.”
The room erupts. “What?” Jughead demands. He knows his tone is, at this point, openly hostile, but he doesn’t care. “You can’t do that!”
“Oh, I can and I will,” Mr. Honey replies. Jughead hates him. “I read your script. Students have to run their work by administration before a musical can be approved for performance, which you and Mr. Keller did not, and I have to say, I’m appalled at how you two managed to think this was an appropriate production for high school consumption.”
“What…” Kevin begins, sounding legitimately bewildered. “What’s wrong with it?”
Mr. Honey looks like he’s trying not to laugh in derision, but he maintains his composure. “What’s wrong with it, Mr. Keller? You should be asking what’s rightwith it!” Mr. Honey holds out his hand and starts to count offenses off on his fingers as he lists them. “The glorification of murder, suicide, gun violence, self-harm and Satanism! And at a school where a student has tragically been killed during a musical, in a town that has been terrorized by violence for years… I’m disappointed in you all. All this, and that’s not even touching on the… homosexual mutual pleasuring scene, which is far and away too graphic for a high school production!”
Towards the back of the congregation, Jughead thinks he hears Reggie muttering seriously, someone needs to tell me what’s going on with that scene, to which Archie replies I’ll fill you in later, Reg, but Jughead’s blood is rushing too violently in his ears to focus on any of the other whispers floating around the room.
He becomes aware of Kevin weakly attempting to explain that they’re in the middle of rewrites, that there are some things that will be changing, that they can’thave their musical shut down, they’re just getting into the swing of things with their rehearsals and he and Jughead worked so hard on this, just give them a list of things that need to be adjusted and they can make it happen, but Jughead has had enough.
“You know what?” he snaps, cutting Kevin off. “Fine. We’re shut down. Let’s go.”
Jughead hops down from the stage and miraculously, after a moment of hesitation, his cast and crew follow him.
It’s like a walkout in a movie or something, like an impromptu protest. Jughead’s rage knows no bounds. Well, it knows some bounds. It carries him and his fellow thespians out of the school to the front steps, where he stops and everyone lingers awkwardly for a moment, until Archie says, “What now, Jug?”
“I’ll tell you what now, Archie,” Jughead says, as triumphantly as he can manage. “Fuck it. We put on the show ourselves.”
There’s a resounding cheer, and Jughead has a moment of thrill, before he realizes that he has no fucking clue how to do that. It’s fine, though. He’ll figure it out as he goes.