Chapter Text
Lizzie couldn’t focus.
She had about 9845 different assignments to do plus the impending midterm exams but she couldn’t sit down and focus on her notes for more than three minutes without thinking of the gorgeous auburn-haired girl sitting in the back of her psych classroom earlier that day. However, that girl wasn’t supposed to be there; the art class had been working on pottery that week and the kiln, which had the entire class’ clay projects in it, not only caught fire, but the excess moisture in one of the clay pieces caused all of the pots to explode during said fire, rendering thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the art room. Talk about shitty luck and bad timing. Luckily no one was hurt and no one was to blame - the fault being placed on the old and faulty electrical wiring. But now the art students have been rendered homeless (i.e., classroom-less) and Lizzie’s psych professor had volunteered to share the space until the art studio got restored to it’s original state; which could take months, not that Lizzie was complaining. So on the first day of the joint psych-art class the psychology students had to move all of the desks approximately five to the right to make room for the easels and students and whatnot.
That’s when Lizzie’s downfall began.
The art students maintained their original schedule, so when the psych students came back from lunch, very few of them were surprised to see twenty additional people sketching in notepads, their class beginning half an hour prior. Some of them looked up after hearing footsteps enter the classroom, and Lizzie immediately made eye contact with an absolute beauty sitting in the very left seat of the back row. The girl gave her a small smile, which caused the blonde to nearly trip and spill the latte she had just bought from the on-campus Starbucks. Once she regained her bearings, Lizzie returned to her seat, cheeks warmer than normal.
The only things Lizzie could recall from the following hour were the rapid beating of her heart and her professor talking about brain plasticity and social behavior and blah blah blah. She became fully aware of her surroundings again once the professor started talking about their upcoming project.
“You will find someone - someone not in this class - to interview. You will ask a series of questions from this packet and create your own personality type from their answers.” He then began distributing what looked to be half-dozen page packets. Lizzie looked to her best friend, Alyssa, and sighed. Normally they’d work together on partner projects but they were on their own for this one.
That same evening Lizzie decided to worry about that particular assignment later (since they had two weeks to do it) and work on her many other assignments since professors conveniently forget that students have at least four other classes to do work for plus having jobs and a life. And normally she would’ve had over half of her homework done already had it not been for the recurring thoughts of one adorably tiny art student.
Lizzie groaned and put her head down on the table. She was so screwed.
Hope could not be having a better week. Her grades were as high as they’ve ever been, she had just picked up a rather large care package from her family from the mailroom, and she just quit her boring job at the computer lab, allowing her to have a lot more free time. The only little hiccup was the art room being subjected to extensive property damage (or as her fellow art majors lovingly dubbed it as: The Art Studio Explosion of 2032).
Once the fire marshal told her professor that they could enter the room again they all spent an entire class period moving easels and sketch pads and paintbrushes over to the psychology room, which was located in the medical building…about a block away. Fortunately the psych students did not have class on Wednesdays, so the art kids were spared from the eye rolls and sighs as they entered and exited the room over and over again.
Was Hope upset about her safe space being wrecked? Sure, at least at first. Art was a passion of hers, of course (it was her major after all), and it was a passion she shared with her father. She always went to the studio when she was feeling all sorts of things and the scents of clay, paint, and ink as well as the scraping sounds of pencils on paper always relaxed her. However, in hindsight, it was rather funny that during one of her weekly facetime calls with her dad he was more heartbroken over that classroom being destroyed than Hope was. And Hope herself couldn’t be mad due to the events that would transpire later on.
So anyway, fast forward to the first day of the joint class. Out of habit, Hope nearly made her way to the charred remains of the art studio before remembering that it was rendered unusable and a safety hazard and diverted to the medical building. On her way she said hi to her best friend Landon and after what felt like a ten day walk (mind you, it was literally a block away), she finally arrived at the psychology department’s third floor classroom. Her professor informed the class that the psych students were at lunch and they had half an hour to set up and begin that day’s landscape sketches before the others returned and needed silence to learn about emotions and how to see right through people or whatever. She also asked if anyone had any questions about their current assignment - which was to create an abstract painting of five memorable places. Hope had four: the bayou, where she had fond memories with her mother, New Orleans, where her family was originally from, Mystic Falls, where her parents met, settled, and raised Hope, and finally, Paris. Hope and her parents had traveled to many places due to Klaus Mikaelson being a world-renowned artist but her favorite trip had been a one day stop to the French capital where Klaus and Hayley had impulsively decided to go see as many places as time allotted them; they went to several bakeries, the Louvre, saw the Arc de Triomphe, stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and had lunch by the Notre Dame. Hope remembered her and her mom giggling as Klaus dragged them from place to place, not caring that they looked like the most extreme tourists in Paris, which was saying a lot. Now that Hope was in college and her parents were a little older it was more difficult to travel, however they still went on yearly trips to wherever came to mind first.
Hope still needed a fifth location, though, for her assignment. Her other trips were fun and all but none of them had as much meaning as the other four. She could’ve just said screw it and chosen a random trip as her final location but she did not have enough foresight to avoid telling her dad about this project which led to him wanting to see the work once it was completed. Art - more specifically, painting - was his specialty, and he could always tell when Hope just drew something solely to have something to hand in and always knew when Hope was feeling uninspired just by looking at what was on her canvas. He would absolutely be disappointed if Hope showed him an abstract piece with four lovely places and one from a random trip to Florida that was painted with a maximum of three colors.
So she had to rack her brain and come up with something fast.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the door and shuffling of footsteps as the psych students returned from lunch. Hope instinctively looked up and found a very pretty blonde already looking at her. Fighting a blush she gave the girl a small, nervous smile and turned her attention back to her work, but not before seeing the girl nearly faceplant out of the corner of her eye.
Later on, she will thank whoever incorrectly did the wiring in the art studio back in the ‘90s for her current situation, as weird as it will always sound.
“Don’t be a chicken, go talk to her!”
Alyssa and Lizzie were seated; they had returned from lunch early and the bell wasn’t set to ring for another few minutes. It was the third day of the joint class and after the initial awkwardness of the first couple of days the two classes were now being more friendly towards each other. Alyssa had noticed her best friend stealing glances at one of the art girls and decided to intervene. After a very hard nudge to her side Lizzie whipped her head around to face her friend.
“Talk to her? Are you crazy?”
Alyssa rolled her eyes at Lizzie’s dramatics. “Well how else are you gonna ask her out?”
Lizzie, wide-eyed, had to refrain from screeching. “Ask her- who said I was going to do anything like that?”
“Come on, Liz,” Alyssa groaned, shaking the blonde’s arm. “You can’t just keep staring at her for the rest of the semester.”
Lizzie bit her lip to keep herself from admitting that that was exactly what she was planning to do.
The dark-haired girl then gave Lizzie a pointed look. “When was the last time you went out with someone? You can’t still be thinking that your dating life is a cursed mess or whatever.”
Lizzie knew Alyssa was referring to her previous dating escapades, all ending in some sort of disaster, which included a foreign exchange girl who had to go back to her country for reasons she never disclosed, a guy in his third year who was arrested for drug possession (which Lizzie had no idea about, so imagine her shock upon hearing the news), and most recently, her will they won’t they “romance” with her childhood friend MG. In the case of the latter she realized, after several attempts at making it work (and feeling like she owed it to him as a testament to their decade-long friendship), that he simply wasn’t for her and that they were better off as friends. Not to mention during said “romance” she realized she was a lesbian. Needless to say, Lizzie wasn’t so eager to put herself back on the market again.
She wrung her hands nervously. “I’m just...scared, you know? It just feels like I’ll never stop getting hurt.”
Alyssa gave her a sympathetic look. “Oh honey, I know. But you also can’t live your life in fear of what’s out there.”
The bell rang before Alyssa could finish her pep talk; the professor got up from his desk and stood in front of the class.
“Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a good lunch. After receiving some feedback from other students and talking to the art professor I decided to choose your partners - and they will be from the class currently sitting on the other side of this classroom.”
Gasps and mutters erupted from both classes. The professor continued, taking out a clipboard with what Lizzie assumed was the partner list. “When I call out your names you will raise your hand.”
“Jed, you will be partnering with Ben.”
“Kaleb, you will be with Miss Cleo Sowande.”
Lizzie gulped as her teacher called out her name.
“Elizabeth Saltzman.” The blonde tentatively raised her hand.
“...your partner will be Hope Mikaelson.”
Lizzie tried not to give herself whiplash in her eagerness to see if fate had been kind to her. And so it had. She watched as the cute art girl, Hope, raised her hand. Lizzie caught her eye and gave her a shy smile of her own before putting her hand down. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see her best friend giving her the biggest smirk.
She’s definitely never hearing the end of this.
As the students slowly made their way out the door, Lizzie felt a hand on her elbow. She turned back to see that it was Hope (who she noted to be adorably short even while standing up).
“Uh, hi. I guess I’m your partner,” Hope mentally facepalmed herself because duh of course you’re her partner what do you mean ‘I guess’.
Lizzie, for her part, found the nervousness very endearing. She also jotted down “cute and awkward” in her mental notes, accompanying the “adorably short” from earlier. “I know the teacher said Elizabeth, but everyone just calls me Lizzie. It’s nice to meet you,” the blonde introduced herself.
Hope smiled and nodded. “Likewise. So, when do you want to start? I’m free after five.”
“I have to stop by the library at five. So 5:30? There’s a cafe near campus that’s pretty quiet.”
“5:30 it is,” Hope pulled out her phone. “Here. Put in your number and I’ll text you. You know, in case something comes up or…something.”
Smooth moves, Mikaelson.
Once Lizzie had entered her number into Hope’s phone and vice versa, she bid goodbye to Hope and left to take a much needed nap. When the blonde was out of earshot the auburn-haired girl let out a quick squeal before rushing out of the classroom. She then, like a loser, proceeded to giggle all the way back to her dorm room and threw herself into bed, staring at the new contact: “lizzie <3”. Hope had been so enthralled with her phone she nearly forgot she had two other classes to attend to. After muttering a quick oh shit, and gathering her things for the next several hours, the girl locked her door and rushed to class, hoping 5:30 would arrive quickly.
Finally, the time came. Squinting at Google Maps, Hope saw that she was a few feet away from her destination; the small cafe was tucked away between two brick buildings near the corner of an intersection. Hope opened the door (which had a cute little bell attached to it) and was immediately hit with the scent of roasted coffee beans and pastries. She looked around for a familiar blonde head and saw movement out of the corner of her eye; Lizzie was waving at her from a booth located near the back of the shop.
The blonde herself had only arrived a few minutes prior; she would’ve been earlier but in the process of checking out a book she needed, an emo loser theater major named Sebastian (who worked at the library’s front desk) decided to try his luck with her for quite possibly the twelfth time since the beginning of the semester.
“Elizabeth, fancy seeing you here,” Sebastian practically purred. Lizzie tried not to laugh as she saw one of his coworkers give him the side-eye; she looked at Lizzie, eyebrow raised, silently asking her if she needed any help. Lizzie subtly shook her head - she could deal with the mop-headed guy; it’s not like he was much of a threat anyway.
She tried not to visibly gag as she turned her attention back to the pitiful sight in front of her. “Yes, well, this IS a library, Sebastian. People go here.” From behind Sebastian, Lizzie could see the other desk girl snort while sorting through a pile of books.
The greasy-haired boy gave her a strained smile. Lizzie would’ve felt bad, but since she let him know multiple times that she wasn’t interested in him, or in men in general, and he still couldn’t take no for an answer, she wasn’t going to be very sympathetic. Plus she had a date - no, not a date, a… meeting? - with a pretty girl to get to. She put the book she was checking out into her bag and headed towards the door. Before she could open the double doors, Sebastian’s whiny voice made it’s way to her ears once more.
“It’s a lovely day out, would you like to go out and have dinner with me?”
The blonde looked right into his hopeful face and said, “Sorry, I have a date with this super hot girl later,” putting extra emphasis on the phrase “super hot”. Lizzie took much pleasure in seeing the boy’s face fall. And with that, she exited the building, but not before hearing a final exchange between Sebastian and his coworker.
“Why won’t Elizabeth go out with me?”
“Man, give it up. That girl is gay!”
That little exchange wasn’t enough to sour her mood; as soon as she arrived at the cafe she had ordered a coffee for herself and a selection of pastries for her and Hope to share. Lizzie wasn’t one to be nervous, however her leg was shaking of it’s own accord and she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t almost kept giving herself whiplash by looking up every time the door bell chimed. Luckily, Lizzie was spared of the vertigo when the third person who walked in was Hope. She caught the girl’s eye and waved her over. Hope sat down across from her, giving her a soft smile that Lizzie quickly realized was infectious.
To prevent any unnecessary staring (which was very difficult to do because wow Hope’s eyes were a gorgeous shade of blue), Lizzie hastily pulled out her assignment packet and nearly knocked over her coffee. Hope chuckled and steadied the cup.
“I’ve never met anyone who gets this excited about homework,” she teased.
Lizzie could feel her cheeks warming up. She needed to recover and show some game and fast. “Well, most people would also be excited if they had a pretty girl as their partner.”
It was Hope’s turn to flush. For a moment, Lizzie was worried that she had been too forward, but her fears were stifled when the girl opposite her grinned.
“Guess you can speak for both of us.”
Lizzie had never felt so warm. And giddy. And all those cliché feelings that should’ve stayed in the scripts of the rom-coms she often watched. Smiling and slightly shaking her head, Lizzie remembered what they were actually at the café for.
She cleared her throat. “So, this project’s a little…intrusive,” Lizzie began, skimming over the question prompts.
Hope nodded in understanding. “I figured as much for a psychology assignment.”
“Maybe I should buy you a year’s worth of art supplies as a thank you for sitting through all of this,” Lizzie muttered, handing Hope the packet so she could see the questions she was supposed to answer.
Hope bit her lip as she read each one, noting that they were a bit intrusive - some requiring a bit of introspection - and in the back of her mind wondered why their professors partnered up absolute strangers for something like this. She looked up at Lizzie, who was sipping her coffee, lost in her own thoughts, and suddenly felt grateful; the blonde seemed very sweet, and Hope knew she could’ve ended up with a horrible partner for an assignment that wasn’t even hers.
Lizzie snapped back to reality when Hope handed her back the packet; she looked at the girl across from her expectantly, thoughts running a million miles an hour, ranging from Hope walking out on her to the auburn-haired girl demanding money for each question she willingly answers.
“Okay, these questions aren’t too bad,” Hope shrugged. “At least they’re not asking for my deepest darkest secret or my worst childhood memory.”
Lizzie breathed out in relief. “So you’re actually okay with this?”
Hope nodded. “On one condition.”
Lizzie eyed her warily. “Which is…?”
“I pick the order in which these questions are asked.”
The taller girl was more than happy to agree to this stipulation. It didn’t really matter to her as long as Hope was comfortable.
Hope bit into a croissant and leaned forward. “So, shall we begin?”
Once the girls were done, Hope volunteered to walk Lizzie back to her dorm. The latter was damn near upset when they reached her room, not wanting her time with Hope to end.
“I guess this is me,” Lizzie grumbled, not even bothering to repress the pout currently on her face.
Hope couldn’t help but laugh. The shorter girl had lost track of how many times Lizzie managed to amuse her that entire evening, the blonde being full of sarcastic quips and animated expressions. It was cute, and Hope couldn’t get enough of it.
She looked up at Lizzie, turquoise eyes sparking. “Same time tomorrow, then?”
Luckily for Lizzie, she caught herself before she drooled. “Uh, yeah. Yup,” she stammered. “5:30. PM not AM.” Didn’t hurt to clarify…right?
Hope laughed. “Definitely PM. Goodnight, Lizzie.” She got on her tiptoes and gave the blonde a quick kiss on the cheek before walking away.
Lizzie stood rooted to the spot, cheeks flaring, and probably would’ve stayed there the entire night if she hadn’t heard the door behind her whipping open.
“Oh my god,” the ecstatic voice of Alyssa Chang echoed throughout the hallway. Lizzie shook her head; leave it to the housing department to put her best friend in the room right across from hers.
“Were you spying, Chang?” Lizzie asked over her shoulder as she began unlocking her door. Alyssa leaned on her doorframe, arms crossed.
“No I absolutely did not watch your entire exchange through the peephole as soon as I heard your voices outside my door.” The blonde struggled between choosing to roll her eyes or groan. So she did both.
Lizzie finally got her door open and strolled inside, throwing her backpack onto the chair; she didn’t bother with closing the door, knowing Alyssa was going to follow her in and ask for every single detail. She toed off her shoes and jumped into bed, Alyssa taking a seat on her desk chair.
The blonde put her arms under her head. “So, what do you want to know?”
Alyssa crossed her legs and leaned back. “Well, for starters, I wanted to congratulate you. Twelve hours ago neither of you knew each other’s name and now you’re at cheek-kissing status. Maybe you’ve got more game than either of us thought, kid.”
Lizzie gasped in faux-shock and placed a hand on her chest. “Why thank you, Alyssa. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, truly.”
Alyssa snorted and took a pillow from Lizzie’s bed, throwing it square in the blonde’s face. “But seriously, she’s already falling for you, dude.”
Lizzie sat up. “Whoa, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. No one is “falling” for anyone right now. We literally just met!”
Alyssa rolled her eyes. “You two have clearly got an instant chemistry thing going on. It may not be love at first sight, but there’s something there.” The girl leaned forward, looking her taller friend dead in the eye. “Please try and give this a shot, Saltzman; you know that all I want is for you to be happy.”
Lizzie let out a long breath. She really did like Hope, but she also didn’t know how much more heartbreak she could take. Was this nice girl who became her project partner by chance worth the risk of getting her feelings stomped on again? What if Lizzie had read too much into things? Maybe Hope gave all her friends cheek kisses. Maybe she looked at all of her friends with a glimmer of something in those blue irises.
Could they even consider each other friends?
“Hey,” Alyssa shook her leg, breaking her out of what could’ve been a downward spiral. “As much as I truly think this girl likes you, don’t do something you’re not comfortable doing. Give it until the end of the project. Get a feel for her, see what she’s about. If you don’t want to ask her out by the end of this then maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. Okay?”
Lizzie nodded. That seemed reasonable; she was going to go ahead and assume she and Hope were going to be seeing each other almost every day outside of class, and sorting her feelings out for this girl would be much harder if she only saw her once a week or whatever.
“Alright. Two weeks.”
While the girls chatted the night away about school, gossip, and Alyssa’s abysmal partner for her own assignment, Hope was on the phone with her mom and aunt.
“No, I haven’t finished it yet.” Hope had been telling them about her struggle with finishing her project. “Please don’t tell dad.”
“It’s due in, what, a few days, sweetheart? He’s going to start asking questions,” Freya reminded her while she chopped some vegetables. From what Hope could see through her phone screen Freya and her mom were prepping for dinner. Pretty late for a meal but they did just return from a work trip.
“She’s right, Hope,” Hayley answered from the sink, where she was washing more produce. “It’ll hurt his feelings even more if you tell him you don’t want to show him because it’s “not good”, which isn’t even true, and your father knows it. You’re very talented, Hope.”
Hope smiled. “Thanks, mom. But I’m not worried I’ll disappoint dad, it’s more like…I’ll disappoint Klaus Mikaelson, painting extraordinaire. I’m the legacy of a world-renowned artist; what’s he going to think when he sees that his only child got taken down because of some school project?”
Freya snorted as she dumped some chopped onions into a pot. “And it’s that same world-renowned artist that knows as well as anyone what it’s like to lose inspiration. You don’t think Klaus got frustrated with paintings and threw many canvases away in his career? You’re also in school, Hope, which means you’re learning. Mistakes are bound to happen. Our family has kept every drawing, sketch, and painting you’ve ever made, and it’s all to see your progress.”
Hope stayed quiet for a moment as she let her mom and aunt make some progress on their dinner. She didn’t know why exactly she was beating herself up over disappointing her dad; he would find beauty in anything she presented to him. Maybe she just needed some rest. She’d ponder more on it later.
“Homework aside, how’s life been?” Hayley entered the frame, being able to fully see her daughter on screen. “We haven’t seen you since the holidays. You haven’t made any big changes, right? No surprise tattoos or piercings? You know I want to be there if you get either.”
The auburn-haired girl chuckled. “No, none of that,” she bit her lip, wondering if it was too soon to tell her family, but oh well. “But there’s this girl…”
There was a clang as Freya dropped her ladle and poked her head in frame next to Hayley’s. “A girl?”
Hope would have laughed at her aunt’s dramatics if she hadn’t been so nervous. “It’s nothing really…yet. We got partnered for this project and we just spent the afternoon together,” Hope began rambling, “She’s tall, blonde, very sweet, has a hell of a sense of humor -” She paused when she realized she needed to breathe.
Hayley and Freya had been listening with rapt attention with no intention of asking Hope to stop what was about to become a long-winded speech. Neither of them remembered the last time she was this taken by someone, if Hope had ever been this taken by someone.
A thought occurred to Hope. “Please don’t tell aunt Rebekah, or dad, or really anyone from our family. They’re all equally capable of driving down here and embarrassing me to the point of dropping out in shame.”
Hayley chuckled while Freya nodded in understanding, knowing how her siblings could be, especially when it came to the youngest member of their clan. “Of course, dear,” Hayley assured her, “we won’t tell them unless you want us to.”
Hope breathed out in relief. If there were two people she trusted with her secrets it was her mom and her aunt Freya. As much as she loved and cherished her father and the rest of his siblings they had the tendency to be very overprotective. And Hope didn’t want them to somehow find her in the middle of a study session with Lizzie during a surprise visit and scare her off and out of state.
“So, how do you plan on asking her out?” Freya inquired, returning to the stove.
Hope bit her lip in nervousness. “I haven’t…exactly…planned that far ahead?”
“What?” Hayley and Freya exclaimed in unison. Hope rolled her eyes; her mom and her aunt spent way too much time together.
“We just met. Like today?” Hope defended herself. “I don’t even know if she’s interested in me. I don’t even know if she’s interested in girls! Did I mention I hardly know her?”
“Well, Hope, you are doing a school project together, which will require spending a lot of time in each other’s company. Use this as a chance to get to know her - and vice versa.”
Hope was about to open her mouth to create a rebuttal when it died on her tongue. Her mom had a point; based on those assignment questions Hope was going to have to do some pretty deep soul searching. She wasn’t great at opening up to people, even if it was just for the smallest thing; it took her six months just to tell Landon her middle name. She may not have much experience in the romance department, but the thought of being vulnerable with someone in general scared the living daylights out of her.
Before she knew it, Hope was agreeing with her mother. “Okay fine. I’ll give it a shot.” She was slightly started by Freya jumping back into frame.
“Should I start planning the wedding now or later?”
Hope sighed. It was going to be a long couple of weeks.