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Josie woke up to the sound of pencil scratching softly across paper. She opened her eyes and lifted her head, a little confused about her surroundings until her sleep-fogged brain cleared and she realized that she was in Hope’s bed.
She must have fallen asleep after sex, which was something that she never did until she was sure that her partner was asleep as well, and sometimes not even then. But in this, as in all things, Hope was the exception that proved the rule- not only did Hope wear her out more than any other lover ever had, Josie had quickly discovered that she would fall deeply asleep when Hope was holding her, and sleep even better than she did in her own bed.
It must have been Hope's absence that had drawn her out of slumber, and she sat up slowly, looking around to see where she'd gone. She didn't have far to look- Hope was at the desk in the corner, hunched over whatever she was working on, an open textbook at her elbow and three or four more piled haphazardly by the lamp.
"Hey" she said softly, and Hope turned, not at all startled to see her awake, and smiled at her. Of course, Hope probably noticed her breathing change the moment she'd started to wake up, and would have also been able to hear every shift and sigh, not to mention her actually sitting up.
"Hey" Hope said back, turning her chair. "You crashed."
"I know" Josie said. "What time is it?"
"Two something in the morning" Hope said. "You were sleeping okay"
"I always do, with you here" Josie said, a sad and sappy truth. She'd been back from all the dark Josie fiasco and she had been having trouble sleeping ever since. Except when she was with Hope. It was the reason that she'd show up at her room more nights than not, and Hope was always waiting for her. Josie had given up being embarrassed by it, and had decided just to be grateful that Hope was there for her, and that Hope didn't need that much sleep anyway.
Hence the current hour of the morning. "What are you working on?" she asked. Hope blushed and turned away, a sure sign that it was yet another secret that she'd kept hidden till now. Josie's curiosity hadn't been satiated by Hope's bigger secrets, and she suspected that she would never stop wanting to know everything there was to know about Hope Mikaelson. Another sad and sappy truth.
She got up and padded barefoot across the cold floor to peer over Hope's shoulder. Hope didn't try to hide what she was working on, just sighed and let her head fall back to rest against Josie's chest.
Josie blinked at the complexity of the math on the paper in front of her. "This is your maths homework?" she asked, slightly incredulous. she was sure they don't teach that in boarding school.
"Um, not exactly" A suspicion entered her mind, and she glanced at the titles of the four other textbooks. All college-level math, and all of a level that Josie was sure you can only understand if you were a math genius. What was Hope doing with them?
"And you're doing college math why, exactly?"
Hope closed her eyes. "Because I was past calculus by the time I was in seventh grade?"
Josie stared down at her. "You're not just a tribrid, you're a prodigy. How the hell did you get so good at math?"
Hope opened her eyes, looked at Josie for a second, and then pulled Josie down into her lap. Josie made a noise of protest that she refused to admit was a squeak, but Hope soothed her with a hand stroking down her spine and explained, "I just wanted to be able to look you in the face for this conversation, you know?"
Josie was loathe to admit that she did know, but it was Hope, so she subsided without too much grumbling for the undignified position. "So?"
"I think it's just a tribrid thing" Hope explained. "Since I'm so fast, I guess my brain must be fast too to process everything around me, right? So I figured that i just have a natural aptitude for it or something. Either that or I'm just weird. More weird"
"You're not weird" Josie said automatically, the oft-used reassurance falling from her lips by force of habit, but she was still focused on Hope’s unexpected talent. "But you're not that great at math in school" Josie said slowly. "You barely pull a C"
"And you know that how?" Hope asked, one eyebrow arched. Josie winced, but Hope just laughed. "It's okay, Jo. I already knew you were a stalker"
Josie made a face at her. "I prefer 'interested'" she said loftily.
" sure "
"You still haven't answered my question" Josie pointed out.
"I'm sorry, was there a question?"
"There was an interrogative statement" Josie said. "So answer"
Hope apparently decided to stop dancing around it. "I kind of act stupid in some of my classes" Hope said. "old habit, from when I was going by Marshall"
"The same way you did wrong spells all the time and are constantly late for everything and act kinda dorky " Josie said, getting it. "Even though you're the most graceful person I know and from what you've told me about your last time in New Orleans, you're anything but a dorky girl"
"I'm still that girl" Hope said quietly. "The person I was there, after my mum’s- that's not me"
"But you can't unlearn what you discovered there" Josie said. "Trust me, I know"
They were silent for a minute, before Josie gave herself a mental shake and roused herself from her thoughts. "So you act stupid in math, because you're a math genius" Josie said. "Why English, though? You get straight A's in there"
"Because I'm not good at it" Hope said.
"You can read as fast as vampires" Josie said, since she'd witnessed such an event once or twice, and it was still awe-inspiring. Running fast was one thing- reading a several-hundred-page novel in a matter of minutes was quite another.
"Reading quickly doesn't mean that I understand what I'm reading" Hope said. "And interpretation is something else altogether. I have to work at it"
"That's why you want to go into teaching" Josie said. "And here I thought it was my dad's influence"
"It is, a little" Hope said. "But teaching… It's taking youngest minds and show them a better way. Math is simple- you follow the right formula and you will always get the right answer. Teaching is more than that. It's a connection from the teacher to the student, and it means something"
Josie wasn't sure that she entirely understood, but she nodded anyway. It didn't matter why it meant something to Hope, only that she knew that it did. Knowing more about Hope was swiftly shaping up to be one of her life's ambitions. She thoughts sometimes that she could actually take her entire lifetime, and still not know everything about her.
"So how do you do it?" she asked suddenly, a minute later. "Take college math while you're still in high school, I mean."
Hope pointed to the computer on the other side of her desk and tried not to look too amused. "There's this cool thing called the internet-"
Josie backhanded her casually on the bicep. "I know that" she muttered. "But there's no way that you can take everything online. And don't you have to have a certain number of credits before taking some of these? And what about the fact that you're still in high school? And how do you pay for it, anyway? "
"I run to Richmond when I have to meet with any of my professors" Hope said. "But most of the stuff really is online. I'm eighteen. And yeah, normally I'd actually have to have graduated to take these, but I took a bunch of tests and got special permission. And I have my dad’s money"
"And how do you find time to do all the work?" Josie asked. She Knows how much work there are to some of those classes, and she thought that Hope might be even more advanced than she shows.
"Well, you know I don't need much sleep" Hope said with a shrug, as if it was no big deal. Josie thought that it was a very big deal indeed.
"So, wait. You get up, train with my dad, go to school, do homework, then stay up and do the real work? And yet you still find time to spend with me, your friends, and to save the school from the monster of the week?" Josie shook her head in disbelief "I don't know how you do it. I mean, your family must-"
"my family doesn't know" Hope said quietly. Josie wasn't sure she'd heard her right.
"Your family don't know about your college courses?" she asked, just to make sure. Hope nodded. "For God's sake, why?"
"I don't think they would understand" Hope said. "they are pretty cool about being able to do all the things I do, but somehow I'm not sure they be able to get me being good at math because I'm a tribrid. So I didn't tell them."
"I thought you told your family everything" Josie said. Hope shook her head, gave her a smile with edges.
"Not everything" she said. "Not you"
"I know" Josie said. "your aunt Freya probably hates me. I think I'd like to avoid another encounter with her after hit her with that dark spell, if I could"
Hope glared into the distance as remembered that time and how Josie was dating Landon. "Did I ever mention how much I hate it when you were dating Landon?" she said, almost idly. "Because I really, really do. Don't do it again, please"
Josie laughed and pressed her cheek into Hope's shoulder. "I think I can manage to avoid dating for now" she said dryly. "Until we go public, anyway."
Hope didn't say anything, but it wasn't a rejecting sort of silence. Just thoughtful. Hope knew how Josie felt about her, how Josie wanted every part of her, and if she'd had a problem with it, she probably would have made it clear before now. She probably wouldn't have answered Josie's every question, told her every detail, wouldn't have welcomed her so thoroughly into her life, into her heart, into her bed. She wouldn't have sat up every night, doing her math homework and watching Josie sleep, just because she knew that Josie needed it.
"You know, I never thought about it" she said thoughtfully. Hope tilted her head at a questioning angle when Josie didn't continue.
"What's that?"
"How complicated your life is" Josie said. "The way you have to check yourself all the time, just to no scare the people around you. The way that you keep parts of yourself hidden from everyone"
"Everyone but you" Hope interrupted, and Josie rewarded that with a quick squeeze of the hand she held captive within hers.
"Everyone but me" she agreed. "But honestly, what was it like for you growing up? How hard was it to learn to act like everyone else?"
"Hard" Hope admitted. "But I did have my mother and my aunts, and they helped a lot. Plus the bayou made it easy to practice my full powers without getting caught. I had a lot going for me" She wasn't really smiling, though, when she said, "but yeah. It was hard. I was lucky I never screwed up too much, got noticed. My greatest fear was always that someone would come for me or my family"
Josie knew what she meant, and she couldn't even imagine that kind of weight on the shoulders of a child. Well, maybe she could. Merge was in many ways more terrifying than any specter of pain.
"I think that's why I fell for you, you know" Josie said. Hope quirked an eyebrow at her.
"What, because I had a complicated childhood?"
"No. Well, yes. But not like that"
"Then like what?"
Josie looked at her, all seriousness now. "You were always so damned pretty, and so clearly a good person, and anyone would have fallen for you. But for me… It was when was a kid and I really started talking to you, and I realized that for some reason, things weren't as easy for you as I thought they were. I didn't know why, not like I do now, but I knew that you didn't feel like you-"
"Fit in" Hope finished. "I never knew that you noticed that. Not that soon, anyway"
"It was… familiar" Josie said, and Hope nodded with instant comprehension.
"You didn't fit in either"
"God, no" Josie said. "Can you imagine? The witch without own power"
"I wish we had talked back then" Hope said, pressing a kiss in Josie’s cheek. "I would have been your friend"
Josie smiled up at her. "I know you would have but I had Lizzie" Josie said. "But I would have liked even if it was just because you felt sorry for me"
But Hope shook her head. "No" she said. "You're the most amazing person I know. You're brilliant, and care about things. You keep yourself in great shape because you like to be healthy, not because you want to look good. You care about this school, not just because we live here but because it's your home, too. You're loyal to the bone, and love to the ends of the world. Why on Earth wouldn't I have wanted to be your friend?"
Josie almost couldn't speak. And when she did open her mouth, the confession she'd never intended to make spilled out.
"I love you" she said, her voice shaking. "I know I've never told you before and I don't know if it's what you want to hear, but I love you. Because I think you mean what you just said"
"I do" Hope said. "And I love you too. You have to know that"
And when she really thought about it, she did. Because Hope never would have let her in, in her life if she hadn't loved her.
"I know" she said, and Hope smiled at her before tilting her head to kiss her softly on the mouth. Josie wrapped one arm around her neck, digging her fingers into Hope's long hair, and held her there for a much more leisurely kiss.
Hope was panting slightly when she pulled back, but she was still smiling, and Josie did what she always did when Hope smiled like that, like Josie was the only person in the world- she smiled back. She couldn't help it. Hope just brought it out in her.
"You're the only person who really understands me" Hope whispered, and Josie hugged her tight and whispered back, "Me, too, Hope. Me, too."
They sat like that for a long time.