Chapter Text
The first time she kisses Hope, Josie insists she was making it up.
She blames the haze of the party at the old mill- the music too loud, the lights too dim, and the alcohol flowing far too easily. She's not even sure why Hope was there. The tribrid's usual weekend tradition involves brooding somewhere in the safety of the school premises, not showing up to impromptu off-campus gatherings. But Josie had been dumped by Penelope Park only hours before that invitation landed in her lap, and honestly? She couldn't bring herself to care about much of anything.
She obviously had way too much to drink, and Lizzie is probably getting cozy with one of the boys she's been eyeing all week, so going back to her room was definitely not an option. Instead, she chooses to wander into the forest, letting the raucous music of the party fade into a dull, buzzing static against her eardrums. She's surprised that she had gotten as far as she did before tripping over herself. She would have eaten shit if not for the firm hands that catch her before she could face plant into the ground.
"Easy." Hope's hands are steady and warm, a sudden defiance of gravity keeping Josie from floating off the face of the earth. Josie is way too drunk to question why she was following her. If it isn't for the fact that she can't even focus on what's in front of her, or the fact that she is currently devastatingly heartbroken, Josie convinces herself that she probably would have pulled away. Or slapped those hands away. Or something.
After sloppily guiding her back to the school grounds, her arms braced over Hope's neck, the other girl stops just before they go inside the gates and huffs.
"Get on my back," Hope deadpans. She looks like she's actually struggling to walk with Josie practically hanging off of her.
"So much for super strength," Josie giggles, slurring her words but not enough for them to be incoherent. "I'm not that heavy, Mikaelson." She lies. She feels suffocatingly heavy, weighed down by a bitter sludge of secrets that feels far denser than bone.
"No that's not-" Hope sighs, looking slightly annoyed at the situation she is in. "Just help me out here." Whatever she was about to say, she chooses to bite back because trying to explain herself to someone who is barely within this material plane right now is probably lost to the void.
Everything else is kind of a blur for Josie while she helplessly lets herself be hauled away by Hope back to her room, only realizing too late that it wasn't her room at all. She remembers flashes of the dimly lit school hallways and the creaky steps of the stairs. She remembers the faint smell of dried paint and linseed oil, a painful contrast to the oily, churning nausea coating the back of her throat, and the softness under her when she sits on Hope's mattress.
"Please just do me a favor and drink this before you like, pass out or something." Hope haphazardly shoves a glass of water into her hands and shuffles her way to close the door properly. Josie can tell that her gestures are stiff and avoidant, uncomfortable in her own space. She finds it almost offensive, if not slightly amusing, with the way Hope practically sinks into the corner of the room while she waits cautiously for Josie to drink her water.
She remembers taking a deep gulp from the glass before setting it down. "You can sit down, you know," she slurs. "I'm not diseased or anything."
"I know," the other girl whispers after a pause, and hesitantly walks closer to her bed. Josie shrugs, looking down at her hands on her lap. She realizes that the end of her skirt must have gotten caught on something while she was in the woods because there is a small rip along the hem line of the pleated article. Nevertheless, she doesn't dwell on it for too long and decides that future Josie can mourn her favorite skirt in the morning.
"You're stalking me." Josie sees Hope's eyebrows raising ever so slightly at her remark.
"I have far better things to do than stalking you, Saltzman. Trust me." Hope answers almost immediately, the sarcastic bite in her tone- the one that is always present whenever she has to interact with her and Lizzie. For a split moment, Josie wishes she could go back to seconds ago where Hope was speaking to her like someone she doesn't have some weird one-sided grudge against.
"Then why are you here?" Josie quips back. "Why did you help me?" Josie asks this with zero traces of anxiety in her voice, maybe because her blood is practically 90% alcohol right now, or maybe because she's just too tired to keep up the performance.
Disregarding the fact that she has probably never even seen the inside of Hope's room before, the fact that she is holding a conversation with her that's more than a couple of minutes is enough for her to sober up a bit. She wonders if she'll wake up with two left feet tomorrow, feeling that it would be the more likely scenario.
"Please, you were about to walk into the lake if I hadn't stopped you," Hope answers, looking anywhere but at her. "I don't wanna see your dad having to fish your corpse out of the water in the morning. It's depressing. And Lizzie? Gods know she'll burn the school down and then find a way to blame me for it."
Josie feels something burning behind her eyes. It seems she has entered the part of the night where intoxication turns her into a miserable, crumbling mess. It seems she had misjudged Hope's gesture, mistakenly assuming that there is still someone out there that is looking out for her. Her girlfriend had just dumped her. It figures. Her sister and dad are god knows where doing god knows what, and the only person that stopped her from getting killed in the middle of the night in the woods did it because of pity?
"Right." Josie laughs bitterly. She thinks she is crying but she is too drunk and tired to give a shit. "I keep forgetting that we're not friends. Sorry."
Hope seems to notice the tears in her eyes, because Josie feels a weight dip into the mattress next to her. She doesn't look up from the torn patch of her skirt, but she feels Hope's eyes burning a hole into the side of her temple.
"I didn't mean-" Hope hurriedly corrects herself but anything she planned to say seems to have died on the tip of her tongue. Josie is starting to think that Hope might have a speech problem from how many times she's cut herself off.
Josie knows that she gets things wrong sometimes and bears her heart out to the wrong people, and sometimes she gets hurt for it. But god forbid she would love it if people stopped speaking to her like she's an idiot while she's trying to pick the pieces of herself back up. She's not an idiot. She's not.
"I'm sorry."
That was weird. She could have sworn Hope just said sorry to her.
"Josie."
Hope says her name for the first time in a very long time. This causes her to finally look up and meet her eyes and god they are piercing and deep and so fucking blue.
It doesn't take a single drop of alcohol to see that Hope Mikaelson is so devastatingly beautiful, but it does make her painfully aware of how close she is to her. The pull isn't just romantic, it is visceral, a starving being in her chest demanding to be fed. She can smell the perfume that she chose to wear that day, and she is slowly, but inevitably leaning into her.
She thinks she remembers Hope saying something for a while after they made eye contact. Whether she was explaining herself or apologizing to her, she doesn't quite catch it. Everything is a bit spotty after that. She thinks she must have drifted off onto Hope's bed afterwards or passed out onto the other girl mid-sentence because the next thing she can definitively recall is the nauseous lurch in her stomach the next morning.
Although, she could have sworn that she remembers the feeling of Hope's lips on hers when she leaned forward, and the feeling of them moving in response to hers when she didn't move away. She could have sworn she can feel her hands on her waist, no longer firm like before but soft and gentle as she guides her closer. She could have sworn that she remembers her whimpers and the way Hope arches into her touch, and how her hands ball into a fist against Hope's shirt when she moves down to her neck.
She remembers the feeling of her hands gliding over her skin, and the warmth on the back of her neck-
She could have sworn that they kissed, but she must have been imagining things since she woke up the next morning in Hope's bed and the other girl sleeping soundly on the floor next to it. She knows they didn't sleep together because they both seem to be fully clothed and decent.
She must have made it up since Hope is acting as if that never happened. Hope explains her own version of last night where she stumbled upon Josie in the woods, and that she couldn't bring her back to her room because there was a sock on the door and that she passed out after they got to Hope's room.
So yes, Josie believes it and says her thanks before leaving to go check on her sister who's probably wondering where she is. She exits Hope's room and continues on with her day like nothing ever happened.
She leaves and re-enters her own orbit, shoving the memory down deep where it can fester in the dark, pretending the fire isn't already lit. Hope didn't seem to have any trouble returning to hers, so therefore she must be losing her damn mind.
Josie knows she's making it all up, because she knows that it will never happen again