Work Text:
Easy Silence
Hey you’’ve goott a car, righhht
Though she blocked all external communication in edit mode, Josie still somehow noticed the discord message in the corner of her monitor. She clicked over, and three more messages followed in quick succession.
also hi
I forgott to say that sorry
I hoipe you’re havinng a good day?
Hello to you, too, Josie typed back. Hope rarely—if ever—initiated conversations. Usually Josie or Lizzie had to reach out to her first. Though typically her spelling was much better. Josie tilted her head and typed, Day’s much better now. Talking to you beats editing anytime.
good to kow where I ranmk. A smiley face.
To answer your question: my car’s name is Wade and I love him, Josie typed. Why do you ask?
Three dots appeared in the bottom of the window for such a long time that she wondered if Hope was typing out an entire soliloquy. They vanished and a second later, an incoming video call request popped up on her screen.
Josie raised her eyebrows, checked her hair in the dark second monitor to her left, and hit Accept. Only an entire lifetime of being queer in gym class saved her from outright gawking when the video came on to show a very sweaty Hope in skintight workout clothing. “Sorry,” she said, setting her phone down at a low angle so that she could look into it. She was slightly out of breath. “Typing in these is a nightmare.”
She wiggled her gloved hands at the camera, and Josie very belatedly noticed the punching bag behind her.
“Y-yeah,” Josie managed to choke out. “Yeah, I can see how that would be annoying. Hi.”
“Hi. Sorry, am I interrupting anything important?”
Nothing that Josie could absolutely remember in this moment. She kept her neck very still to avoid straying eyes. She really needed to stop making such hot friends. “You know I always have time for you,” she said, inwardly cringing because that sounded like flirting.
Luckily, it seemed to fly right over Hope’s head. “Aw. So, I have news. I’m moving.”
“Congrats!”
But Hope rolled her eyes. “This isn’t exactly my choice. But Dad’s been on my case about having a doorman. And in true Klaus fashion, he went around me and bought a place.”
Josie tilted her head. “He bought you a whole apartment?”
“My place was fine. It’s cozy.”
“It’s a little small.” And not in the greatest neighborhood, though Josie didn’t say that part aloud.
“Oh, don’t take his side.” Hope craned her head to one side and then the other, then began to stretch out an upper arm muscle. Josie prayed to the gods of pansexuality to distract her from tracing every line of that muscle with her eyes. “The only reason I’m agreeing to it is there’s an extra bedroom, which means I can have a dedicated art studio. And the light’s apparently great.”
“It sounds like a thoughtful gift, if a little excessive.” The biggest thing her father had ever bought her had been a car for her sixteenth birthday, and it had been a junker. She’d had to pay off the loan herself. “When are you moving?”
“Sunday.”
“Aren’t you doing a 12-hour stream this Saturday?”
“Don’t remind me.” Hope picked up the phone so that she could sit down and propped her chin on her fist. Josie heroically did not take a screenshot, but she did allow herself a small peek at the way the pose displayed Hope’s shoulders so beautifully. “But that’s actually why I was trying and failing to text you. Dad was supposed to take me over, but he had a last-minute thing out in Miami or Majorca or something. Want to come with me instead? And maybe we can take some of my stuff on the first trip?”
Josie looked at her to-do list, which had climbed to extraordinary lengths over the past two days. “Absolutely. When?”
“Uh, whenever you’re free?”
“Be there in half an hour.”
Hope’s eyebrows went up. “Wow, somebody’s eager.”
“Please. You’re saving me from editing out every time I say ‘um’ in a four-hour stream. You’re doing me a favor.”
Hope beamed at her. “Well, when you put it that way. I’d better go take a shower. If I’m not out by the time you get here, go ahead and let yourself in.”
And that was why, Josie figured, Klaus Mikaelson had a point about the need for extra security.
Though Josie made it a point to dawdle on the way to Hope’s apartment, she still hit every green light on the way. Nobody answered her knock, so she poked her head in. She immediately heard a shower running, and the neighbors arguing—her walls must be thinner than the paper filling her sketchbooks—so she stepped inside.
She’d visited, of course, but she’d never been in this room alone. Hope’s bed was shoved against one wall of the loft space, messily made up since she obviously wasn’t planning to film. She’d painted the walls a really beautiful shade of blue and covered them with so much artwork that the color only had a sliver of a chance to peek through. Her streaming setup ate an entire corner and sprawled out into the rest of the room, a jumble of lights and wires. Right next to the kitchen, where most people might set up a dining room table, a punching bag hung. And on every single available flat surface, paints, erasers, brushes, and pencils jostled for space. It hurt her organized soul.
Curious, Josie wandered over to the easel, which for once was by the windows instead of the cameras. Hope had obviously just started this work: half the canvas was covered in line drawings of people caught mid-dance, the other covered in giant, blotted colors that Josie imagined would serve as the eventual undertones for the finished work. She leaned in to admire the expression on one dancer’s face, wondering not for the first time just how Hope did that.
Hope had set a couple dairy crates full of art supplies by the doorway, stuff to take to the new apartment today. Josie abandoned the canvas and went over to poke through. What did Hope deem most important, that it had to be carried in on the first day? As far as she could tell, it was even art supplies, some pantry staples, and at least five sketchbooks. Weirdly practical and yet still somehow…dreamy? Not quite the word she was looking for, but she couldn’t think of it.
The shower cut off, startling her out of reaching for one of the sketchbooks. Quickly, she scurried to the other side of the room and sat on the edge of the bed.
Hope poked her head out of the bathroom, eyes lighting up when she spotted Josie. “You made it! Great. There’s food and stuff in the fridge. Aunt Freya stopped in last night and stocked it with a lecture about not living like a heathen, so help yourself to anything in there. Seriously. I’ll be out in just a minute.”
Josie, reeling a little at the sight of her friend in nothing but a towel with dripping hair, couldn’t help but be grateful that Hope immediately vanished without needing any coherent response. Water, she decided. She was thirsty, and it would give her something to do with her hands, so she didn’t poke through Hope’s art.
“Stop lusting after other streamers,” she told herself. “You remember what happened with Penelope. This will lead nowhere good. She’s a friend, and you’re not a lovesick teenager. Get it together.”
Did self pep talks ever really work? Anecdotal evidence pointed to no.
Josie poked through the fridge. The shrine of takeout containers had to be Hope’s contribution and half the Whole Foods store on the other side had to be Aunt Freya’s. Josie pulled out fixings for sandwiches for both of them—veggie for her, turkey for Hope—and set to digging through Hope’s kitchen for plates.
Hope wandered in five minutes later and Josie immediately turned. “I need you to do me a favor,” she said.
“Anything. What is it?” Hope asked.
“Your kitchen at your new place. Please just let me organize it for you. This…” and Josie gestured at the mess of pots and pans shoved into the oven. “…hurts me, Hope. It hurts me deep inside.”
“Organize whatever you like.” Hope thought about it. “Just stay away from my art supplies.”
“Got it.”
“Ooh, you made sandwiches? Oh my god, thank you, I’m starving. I was just going to grab granola or something.” Hope practically pounced on the plate. She spoke with her mouth full. “Seriously, you’re the best. I skipped lunch.”
“Me too, sadly,” Josie said, grimacing.
“Would you mind if we take these to go? I only have a couple boxes to transport today, and I’d like to see the new place in full light, if that’s cool?”
“Lay on, Macduff,” Josie said, wrapping her sandwich up in the saran wrap it had taken a full two minutes of excavating to locate.
They toted the boxes down to the trunk of Josie’s reliable Honda Civic, the aforementioned Wade. Hope seemed to be in a good mood the entire time, even though Josie had to remind her to lock her front door on the way out.
“I really appreciate you doing this,” she said as she climbed into the passenger seat. “I know I could’ve grabbed an uber or something, but it feels better to bring somebody else along since Dad can’t make it.”
“What about your mom?” Josie asked, genuinely curious.
“Even though she actually agrees with my dad on something for the first time in my entire life—me getting this apartment, that is—she’s busy this week.” Hope’s left eyebrow rose just a fraction, one of her tells that something deeper bothered her. “I’m a little relieved. She wouldn’t be able to hold her snarky comments in for long, not when Dad’s involved.”
“Is it weird having parents who hate each other?” Josie asked. Her own parents were indifferent to one another, but they’d been good co-parents, even in spite of the truly bizarre circumstances of Lizzie’s and her birth.
“I don’t know if ‘weird’ is the way to put it. For me, it’s status quo.” Hope fiddled with the seatbelt.
Ever since Landon had accidentally outed Hope’s identity as a secret Mikaelson, the daughter of a famous rockstar, Josie had been absolutely dying to ask her about it. Which would be a bad idea. Hope could be kind and generous and incredibly funny, but bringing up the Mikaelsons was a guaranteed way to make her clam up.
“The good news,” Hope said, scooting so that she was sitting up straighter, “is that for all of their many, many flaws, they do love me and therefore keep the squabbling to a minimum while I’m around. Which will be fun to see how long that lasts, considering that my mom and my uncle are back together again.”
“Say what?”
Hope looked at her sagely. “No, you heard right.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Turn left up there, it’s just around the corner.”
When she pulled into to the designated parking spot, Josie leaned forward to peer through the windshield up at the towering apartment building. “This is like a ten-minute walk from my place,” she said. “There’s a really good coffee shop around the corner. Sometimes I go there to edit if Lizzie’s being more Lizzie-like than usual.”
“The horror,” Hope said dryly, collecting one of the crates from the trunk.
“You know,” Josie said after they’d been greeted by the doorman, and Hope had informed him she was on her permanently accepted visitors list, “I’m really glad we’ve made it to this level of friendship.”
“What level?”
“The ‘helping each other move’ level. It’s an honor.”
“Really?” Hope slanted a look her way. “Most people would think it’s more of a curse.”
Josie shifted the crate in her arms. “It means I get to be one of the first people to see the brand new chez Mikaelson. Definitely not a curse.”
“Don’t expect too much,” Hope warned.
The elevator took them up to the top floor, and it was like night and day compared to Hope’s current apartment. A bright hallway led them to unit 307, which Hope unlocked, and they stepped into a gorgeous room, blazing with afternoon sunlight. The ceilings were tall enough to make Josie’s place feel cramped by comparison. The entry hallway opened up into a communal area with a kitchen off to one side and a living room on the other. Floor to ceiling windows and a sliding glass door leading to a patio gave a breathtaking view of the city spreading out below.
The kitchen island alone looked like it could seat twelve people. A flatscreen TV covered an entire wall.
Hope strode to this and plucked up a note taped to it. “Seems Dad felt bad he couldn’t make it today and left me a housewarming gift.”
“I don’t think it’s big enough,” Josie said dryly. She’d been to movie theaters with smaller screens than that. In the center of the living room, she spun about in a slow circle, gawking at the ceilings. “This place is massive. I should be filming this. Your first time in your new home.”
“Nah,” Hope said, smiling fondly at the TFV. “No cameras yet. Let’s just see what the rest of it looks like.”
The hallway led to a massive master bedroom (which could fit Hope’s current apartment inside) with its own bathroom, jacuzzi tub and everything. Josie turned on the faucet and squeaked when several jets of water cascaded down. “Okay, it’s official, I’m coming over to borrow your shower. It has cross-body jets. This is insane.”
“All yours,” Hope called from the other room, sounding distracted.
Josie stepped back into the master bedroom to find Hope standing in the center of the room with her arms folded. “You can fit like five people in that tub, just so you know.”
Hope smirked over her shoulder. “Only five? I’ll take that challenge.”
Do not blush, do not blush, do not blush. Josie turned away to ostensibly study the molding over the door.
“This is going to look so empty once all of my stuff gets here.” Hope walked the perimeter of the room, stopping to survey the wall a couple of times. “So incredibly empty. I really don’t have a lot.”
“We could find you some things in consignment shops.”
“Maybe. Knowing him, Dad will just sweep in with an interior decorator or something. He and his siblings will just kind of steamroll you until you get out of the way.” Hope crouched to run her hand over the carpet and made an appreciative noise. Abruptly, she rose to her feet. “Let’s go check out the studio space. That’s where the real magic will be.”
“I don’t know. This room seems like it has magic of its own.” A split-second later, Josie realized what she’d inadvertently implied. The flush from earlier threatened to spread once more.
Hope, however, was already halfway to the door. Scrunching her nose at her own gaffe, Josie followed after her.
On its own, the studio would have been a masterpiece, but coming from the bedroom and its view over the valley, it served as a bit of a letdown. Or it did until Josie caught Hope’s expression as she studied the light from the massive windows: utterly entranced. “It’s perfect,” Hope said. “North light. Of course, he would have thought of that.”
She trailed her hand through a patch of sunlight, splaying her fingers out and enjoying the play of shadows on the carpet below.
“What are you thinking?” Josie asked, looking about the room. As big and empty as it was, every step echoed. The entire room would be an audio nightmare until Hope filled it with her gear.
For a moment, she wasn’t sure if Hope heard her at all. But Hope turned in a small circle, head tilted as she pondered. “That wall will be my background, I think. I want to paint it something. Green this time? And I want to get a really comfortable couch for right there. Prime napping spot. Something that will look good against the green wall.”
“And will help soak up reverb,” Josie said.
Hope grinned. “Shelves here and here to hold all the supplies, I think? And right here—” she gestured with both hands “—a great big old fuck-off sized worktable. I’ve always wanted one. Maybe I can refurbish something from a junk store. Over there, I can set up some sculpting space.”
“What about that wall?” Josie asked, pointing to the largest blank expanse without windows. It seemed intimidating somehow.
Hope tilted her head, considering. “Mural,” she said at length.
“Of what?”
“I’ll let you know when inspiration strikes. It might be a while.” Hope disappeared briefly into the hallway and returned with one of the crates from the kitchen island. Like a woman possessed, she dug out a sketchbook and flipped to a new page. She crossed her legs and sat down right in the center of the room, propping the pad up on one knee. “Here’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
And she began to sketch.
It had always amazed Josie that she could do that, see things so clearly in her mind and put them right on the page. The pencil moved across the paper with ease, and in a few seconds, Hope had sketched the bare room itself.
Josie padded over and sat down next to her, pulling her knees to her chest, and wrapping her arms around them. Hope roughed in the same set of shelves Josie recognized from next to her bed currently, now much neater with different storage containers. And next to that, the big worktable. She drew in potted plants on the wide windowsill, though as far as Josie knew, she didn’t have any plants of her own. Different paintings that Josie did know she owned were quickly sketched up on the walls.
“See?” Hope asked, drawing in a streaming desk with her computer and microphone near the big worktable. “It would have that wall and that wall as a backdrop.” She gestured with the eraser end. “Some lights here, probably, you and Lizzie could tell me which ones to get because I know she’s been dying to do that for ages—”
“She probably just made a really happy noise and has no idea why,” Josie agreed. “But yes, she’s got ideas.”
“I knew it.” Hope grinned down at the page, then squinted at the walls she’d selected for her backdrop. “Hm, the paintings I have aren’t quite the mood I want for the new backdrop. I’ll have to make some new ones.”
“Content,” Josie said. She picked up Hope’s phone and unlocked it. “Speaking of: smile!”
Hope looked up briefly from the sketch to grin at the camera as Josie pressed their cheeks together, though she returned to concentrating in a hurry.
“Mind if I post this for you?” Josie asked. “Or were you saving the apartment reveal for later?”
“Now’s as good a time as any.”
“We really need to talk about social media strategies someday,” Josie said, typing out a message. “Or how to be strategic at all, really.”
“That’s your domain.” Hope flipped the page around to show it off to her. “What do you think? This good?”
Now it was Josie’s turn to tilt her head. “It looks great. But you may want to switch that and that. It’ll be less distracting in your shot and give you a little more space to move around.”
Hope flipped the book around to squint at her suggestion, shrugged, and began erasing. “See? Never would have thought of that.”
It took a little bit of back and forth, but the room came alive under Hope’s pencil, each eraser mark somehow adding to the authenticity. Josie opened her mouth to make another suggestion, but her phone rang. “It’s Lizzie,” she said, and for the first time in a while it didn’t feel like an automatic apology to the person she was with, family and MG aside.
Penelope had always rolled her eyes at the constant calls and texts, but Hope merely glanced up from her sketchpad to toss over a distracted smile.
“You’re on speaker,” Josie said by way of greeting to her sister.
“Hi to you, too.”
“Hey, Lizzie,” Hope said.
“Hope? Wait, you’re the one who finally convinced Josie to stop hunching in front of a screen and giving herself chronic back problems?”
“Hey!”
“I lured her away with the promise of a tour of my new place and an offer of some truly mediocre Indian takeout,” Hope said, glancing questioningly at Josie, who shrugged back at her. “You’re officially invited to both, too, by the way, if you get your butt over here in time.”
“She’s in Atlanta,” Josie said at the same time as Lizzie said, “I’m in Atlanta.”
“More for us,” Hope said, returning her attention to the sketchpad.
“What’s up?” Josie asked her sister. “How’s Mom?”
As expected, Lizzie launched into the rant that Josie had sensed was building up since a series of cryptic texts that morning. Knowing her role, Josie listened patiently, offering the right beats of moral support and occasional comments. She examined her nails—she really needed to either fix this manicure or get a new one soon—as she made “Mm-hm” noises into the phone as appropriate. Hope flipped to a new page without looking up or contributing to the conversation.
The rant eventually petered off into channel talk, and Josie picked up her phone to make notes in the shared folder. She’d been actually planning to call Lizzie and talk shop, as it were, after she’d finished editing that evening, so it worked out. Normally it might have felt rude to focus on a call with a friend around. But Hope wasn’t giving off bored or impatient vibes. In fact, she seemed relaxed as she sketched away.
Still, Josie hung up twenty minutes later with an apologetic look. “Sorry, she’s going to be traveling all day tomorrow and who knows when we could’ve sorted that out.”
“No worries,” Hope said.
“Are you still drawing room plans?” Josie asked, tapping away a final note before she forgot it.
“Not exactly. By the way, did you mean to make it seem like we were moving in together when you tweeted earlier?”
Josie’s head snapped up. “Did I what?”
Hope bit her bottom lip, clearly to keep a laugh contained. “Your mentions are probably going insane right now. But don’t worry, I did damage control while you were talking to Lizzie the Great.”
A cold feeling of dread swirled up Josie’s spine as she opened her social media manager. Indeed, there were six times the amount of notifications. Typically this meant something had happened to a member of the Vamp Squad or Penelope had said something nasty on stream again. But this time, it seemed to be a bunch of random users with either her or Hope as their profile pic button mashing in agony over the thing she’d tweeted from Hope’s phone: a selfie with the two of them and Gotta love that new apartment smell.
“Oh my god,” Josie moaned, closing her eyes against the horror. “I totally did make it seem that way. I’m so, so, so sorry. I wasn’t even thinking.”
Hope’s cheek twitched, and a laugh escaped. “It was a cute tweet. People are incredibly happy for us.”
“Shut up, this is embarrassing.”
“I already handled it, see?” Hope passed over her own phone. She’d retweeted her own tweet with the correction Sorry, folks. Josie’s place is too pretty for her to give up. It’ll just be me here! “Though we’d make really great roommates.”
“And the view is amazing,” Josie said. When she realized it might seem like her gaze had been lingering on Hope as she said that, she stammered. “I mean, the view out the w-windows. That view. It’s really great. I’m jealous.”
“I broke so many shippers’ hearts with that correction,” Hope said, clicking her tongue in disappointment as she locked her phone.
Josie willed the heat rising to her cheeks to go far, far away now, please. It was something of an open secret, that she and Hope had shippers. Being an internet personality and pan meant that it was apparently open shipping season for her. Especially since she’d already made the colossal mistake of dating Penelope Park, beauty blogger. People tended to ship her with anybody and everybody under the sun, no matter how she actually felt about said people in real life. It had the potential to make things very awkward, so she tried not to think about it.
But there was a very vocal subgroup of her fans who longed to see her date Hope, and they’d been very loud since their first collaboration together, when they’d both been on one of MG’s charity gaming streams. It was weird, and invasive, and she hated it solely because the reality of it always had a small chance of exploding whenever she was hanging out with Hope. Who she had a crush on, true, but also Hope was one of the greatest people she knew, and quite possibly her best friend outside of Lizzie and MG.
“RIP both of our mentions, I guess,” she said in an awkward attempt to cover all of that up. “I haven’t given them much fodder lately on the romantic front.”
“Me either.” Hope kept her gaze on the sketchpad. “But this apartment thing will be a nice break from people asking when I’m going to get back together with Landon.”
“You’ve been broken up for nearly a year. Like, he’s had three relationships in the meantime with—sorry…” Josie trailed off. “Is this a weird subject for you?”
“Not really. I’m happy for him.”
Something in the sudden jerkiness to her movements told Josie otherwise. “Then why do you kind of look like you want to murder whatever’s on the page?” she asked.
Hope made a face. “Trust me, I don’t want to commit murder over Landon fucking Kirby. If I’m going to wind up in jail for life, I want it to be for a good reason.”
“That’s the spirit,” Josie said. Once more, she pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on top of her folded arms. “I did the dating a streamer thing. Big mistake. Big fallout. Zero stars, do not recommend.”
“It wasn’t that so much,” Hope said. “I mean, I’ll date whoever I find interesting, streamer or no—”
Josie bit her lip over mentioning that she could be remarkably interesting if she chose to, thank you very much. That wasn’t the point.
“—it was just that with Landon, he wanted to make it a big thing. You know? He wanted to do ‘Couples Content.’ Stupid prank videos and that girlfriend/boyfriend tag video that had him spilling the beans about Dad and the whole extended fam.” Hope rolled her eyes and closed the sketchpad. She leaned back on her elbows to look up at the empty ceiling. “I’m happy he’s found what he’s looking for, which is somebody to make cutesy thumbnails with. I guess I’m more compartmentalized. There’s life, there’s content. Sometimes they mix, but I like it more when they don’t.”
It was such a different philosophy than the twins deployed, having mined their entire life for content since they were sixteen. Josie mulled it over, and decided to focus on the important bit. “So you’re not swearing off streamers altogether?” Josie asked, smiling.
“Not like you have, no. But I’m…cautious? I guess that’s a good word for it.”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure I’ve sworn off streamers altogether myself.” Josie threaded her fingers through one of her pigtails.
Hope’s eyebrows went up.
“There’s—someone. She’s…”
“Slid into your DMs?” Hope asked.
“To use an outdated term, sure. Maybe she’s flirting, maybe she’s just friendly. I’m not sure if it’ll be a thing or not.”
“Are you going to tell me about her?”
“Not sure. It’s new. I may let it steep for a bit.” She hadn’t even brought up Finch to Lizzie. Talking about the fitness influencer she’d thirst-followed to Hope felt even more taboo than that.
But Hope shook her head, smiling. “Josie Saltzman, always a woman of mystery.”
Josie laughed and pushed feebly at Hope’s shoulder. “It’s definitely not that. There is nothing mysterious or alluring about all of this.” She waved a hand up and down her front.
“Well, I beg to differ, but…” They both looked over when the front door buzzed. “Looks like we’ll have to argue about that later. That mediocre takeout I promised is here. Want to go eat at the new kitchen island?”
“You’re on,” Josie said, allowing Hope to tug her to her feet. A thought occurred to her as she followed. “What were you drawing while I was on the phone, by the way? I didn’t get a chance to see.”
“Just some sketches. Memories I want to keep, even after my dad wins the war and fills this place with stuff,” Hope said cryptically. “Maybe I’ll frame it and put it in the new studio or something, and you can see it when it’s finished.”
“I’d like that,” Josie said, and let Hope pull her out of the room by her hand.