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It starts out inconspicuously between them.
Josie was always the one to reach out to Hope. She was, after all, the one anomaly in her life, the one thing that Josie could not quite grasp. They weren’t close as kids, Josie never understood Lizzie’s animosity towards the tribrid but was always too passive to question it. Of course, she kept her eyes on Hope throughout the years, observing her from a distance with a panicked attraction in her chest. A panicked attraction that she always thought was one-sided.
That is, until after Josie locked away her magic.
They always say that once you learn to be alone people automatically start surrounding you, but that never seemed to be the case. The one person who never strayed away was Hope.
Hope Andrea Mikaelson snuck into Josie’s heart and left a five-foot-something hole in her life. The same Hope who was the most powerful being in the supernatural world, baked cookies with Josie in the middle of the night when she was sad. And suddenly Josie doesn’t know anything but the warmth that she felt when Hope first nuzzled into her during a hug. She doesn’t know a movie night without Hope’s sarcastic remarks or a walk in the woods without their hands intertwined together.
They don’t talk about it and Josie doesn’t clarify, afraid that if she pushed too far, whatever it was between them would end. There was a perfect balance, Hope pulled, Josie pushed, and somehow, just somehow, at the end of the day, they wind up wrapped in each other. In the back of her head, she knew that Hope needed her as much as she needed Hope.
The signs were always there, the way that Hope orbited around her, the way that her gaze always seemed to linger on the siphoner. Even if they drifted far apart, she always found her way back to Josie. After each hard day of fighting monsters in the real-world and demon’s in her head, she sought comfort in the brunette.
And Josie wouldn’t have it any other way.
Josie’s transfer to Mystic Falls put a strain on them. She knew that Hope was upset she couldn’t be there to protect her every step of the way. It led to heated arguments and passive jabs that they were both too stubborn to compromise on.
“I don’t need your protection, Hope”
She hated feeling undermined, hated it when someone made her feel less than she was. Josie Saltzman was done letting other people walk over her.
“I know you don’t need my protection, I just worry about you Josie,” Hope paced back and forth and eventually settled her pace, “I care about you,” she added quietly.
She strode towards Hope in calculated steps, backing her into the granite counter. Hope held her gaze, her expression softening. Her eyes rested on the tribrid’s, not unblinking but slowed; yet it was inviting and soft. Perhaps it was the way she tilted her head that gave away her intentions.
“How much?” She breathed out against Hope’s lips.
“What?” Hope held their eye contact, a clear statement that she wasn’t going to back down.
Josie pressed a delicate kiss against her jaw.
“How much do you care about me,”
Whatever inhibition Hope seemed to have before was thrown out the window at that moment. She surged forward and captured Josie’s lips in a blazing kiss as if she was trying to convey her emotions. Hope whined as Josie pulled back and stared at her, catching her breath.
There wasn’t a question after that. Even after Josie moved off campus, Hope ended up in her bed at the end of each day. She took it as her chance to run and Josie wasn’t going to complain.
The public school treated Josie well, it allowed her the space to find herself again. There weren't any hostile gazes and people actually acknowledged her presence. Her first day was scary but there is peace in the mundane. It reminded her that she was more than her magic, she was more than her past, she was Josette Olivia Saltzman and she wanted to be heard.
And she was heard, by her family, by Hope, by newfound peers at school. She excelled in her classes and served on the student council board at Mystic Falls. And at night, she went back home to the warmth of Hope Mikaelson who reminded her that her magic was the least important part of her.
Of course, they fight. Hope’s recklessness when it came to her own life was often the subject of their arguments. As a matter of fact, a bad run-in with a golem that left Hope battered and bruised started a four-day rift between the two girls that boiled into the charity football game.
Josie, led the charge against the Stallions, putting them up 12 within the first 10 minutes of the game. She wanted to push the boundaries, curious to see how Hope could take before she snapped.
It came after the lack of fouls called by the refs in the second quarter. An especially rough tackle from Hope landed Josie on her back. Hope stared down at her and Josie felt her breath catch in her chest. The whistle broke through their bubble and Hope pulled her up not making eye contact. Lizzie eyed them suspiciously from the other side of the field and Josie felt a blush on her neck.
The tension of the game built foul after foul, tackle after tackle, until halftime. When Hope is dragged into the nearest bathroom and pressed against a wall. Just like their other apologies, Josie was fervent, her kisses were passionate and deep, she had missed Hope that week.
After a moment of silence between them, their gazes softened and Hope pressed soft kisses along Josie’s collarbone.
“I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you,” Josie whispered.
Her fingers traced the outline of Hope’s face gently as if she was afraid the tribrid was going to disappear at any given moment.
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,”
Hope gravitated towards her touch and Josie felt her resistance melting with every breath. Hope was only doing what she had been taught to do at a young age: protect those she loved. And maybe, just maybe, Josie was one of them.
“Hope”
Hope looked up at her hesitantly and Josie felt all the anger drain away, in its place: guilt.
“I love you,”
There it was, three spoken promises that hung in the air. And for a moment, Josie was sure Hope was going to run away. Perhaps it was too soon, perhaps she pushed too far, or misread it all. But slowly Hope’s gaze softened into an unreadable expression, one that made Josie want to melt into her.
“I love you too, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, Josie,”
It’s safe to say no one saw them for the rest of the game. Lizzie and MG even checked the locker rooms at the end of the game for the missing girls, but by then they had already made their way back to Hope’s dorm and ended up tangled up together in the shower.
Whatever they had wasn’t perfect, or conventional, but it was what they both needed. Solace and understanding, a partner in crime to navigate the already challenging supernatural world with.
And maybe, for now, that was enough.