Chapter Text
Friday, 9:30 PM
Pedro notices everything.
He’s a fantastic listener, according to Lizzie.
Okay, so she might not have said that in those words, but why else would she talk to him about all her problems? He has listened to her rant about Hope Mikaelson so many times now that he has gotta assume she chose him (out of everyone) because he is a good listener.
So, what if he has an itty-bitty crush on her? And a teeny-weeny part of himself hopes she rants to him because she likes him back?
That is not important.
The point is Pedro notices everything.
That’s how he knows that MG is pining after his girl.
That’s how he knows that Lizzie was pining after that much-too-old vampire. Thank goodness he’s gone.
That’s how he knows that Dr. Saltzman liked Ms. Tig and Ms. Tig like Dr. Saltzman back - but couldn’t like him back because she was with Mr. Dorian?
That’s how he knows that Raf likes Hope, but he likes his friendship with Landon too much to do something about it.
That’s how he knows that Hope doesn’t like Raf back and barely likes her boyfriend.
That’s how he knows that Hope stays with a boyfriend she doesn’t like because…
Well, Pedro’s not too sure about that one.
But he knows that Hope has a lot of admirers (i.e., Landon; Raf; Josie; and more than a little surprising—Lizzie, sometimes).
It’s just that everyone forgets he’s there just because he’s little. That, of course, leaves Pedro able to hear and see everything. Notice everything. Sometimes, even things he wishes he wouldn’t notice… like that one time, he saw Landon scratch his butt and then sniff his hand.
What does Hope see in him?!
Regardless, Pedro is a minor character in a big story. He’s always been good at watching. At playing his small part here or there. Been content, even. Knows his turn at being the leading character (or at least the main supporting character) will come. He just has to wait.
~~~~
That doesn’t mean he has to wait quietly.
~~~~
Which leads him to this moment.
He’s not sure how he got here exactly…
Just, okay, listen…
He was reading a book about spells related to crushes. And even though his teacher always tells him and his classmates to never do spells dealing with matters of the heart, as she wags her finger at them, Pedro decides this one is safe.
The spell only affects people if they have a crush on each other, so nothing will happen if the crush goes unrequited. And if Lizzie returns the crush… well, the book says something about sharing a dream, and that isn’t bad at all.
If he were to share one of his dreams, it would most likely be the one he has recurrently about him and Lizzie at the top of a Ferris wheel holding hands.
The spell has a mild effect if you ask him.
And all he must do to complete the spell is pick up three items, which can all be found in his Foundational Magic classroom.
It’s really the school’s fault; if they didn’t want him to do the spell, then they shouldn’t keep all the ingredients in one place.
And it’s also Ms. Tig’s fault; she has been telling him he’s getting stronger as a witch. And what better way to evaluate his witch strength than with an ancient spell?
Pedro gathers the materials easily and then waits until his roommate goes to sleep to lock himself in their shared closet.
He’s small enough to have more than enough room in the closet. Plus, he would rather not get caught doing magic without supervision… again. He says a tiny spell to light up the closet space and then gets to work.
~~~~
Saturday, 8:13 AM
Pedro wakes up more than a little frustrated that his efforts were for nothing.
He either did the spell wrong (which he highly doubts because again, he’s a good listener, which means he’s good at following directions too), or Lizzie does not return his affection.
Which, if he was honest with himself, it was a bit of a long shot… you know, with Lizzie being over six years older… he expected as much. This is what he needed to move on, this confirmation of a one-sided crush.
(It also doesn’t help that he had a weird and mundane dream about this boy in his math class. It was just them talking about their favorite movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.)
Of course, he never expected it to feel this bad. He mopes into the cafeteria and eats a sad bowl of oatmeal. This pain is, of course, the only reason he doesn't notice the chaos he started.
~~~~
Friday, 9:30 PM
Hope comes back from a run a little earlier than expected.
Well, three hours and thirty minutes earlier (at least) - she expected to be out until well after midnight.
Usually, whenever she lets out her wolf for a while, all She (Hope’s wolf) wants to do is chase squirrels up a tree for hours on end –
tell anyone and Hope will push you right into Malivore
– but Hope has to wake up early tomorrow morning for some big family meeting.
The thing is… this will be the first time she’s spoken with her family since the whole Malivore-thing.
To be honest, she’s been avoiding it. She’s sure they have questions, questions she won’t be able to answer.
Questions like:
Why didn’t you come home after you got out of Malivore?
or like:
Why did you jump into Malivore, to begin with?
or like:
What the hell were you thinking?
or like:
Why are you so naive?
Hope doesn’t think that her family will ask that last one… well, maybe… yeah, probably… it is her family Hope is talking about.
So, as soon as she heard about the meeting (after producing every excuse to get out of it), she decided she will need to be on her A-game to get through this meeting unscathed, hence the self-inflicted early curfew.
Just as she’s about to drift off, she feels a chill in the air and shivers. Before she can regain full consciousness, it stops. Hope mildly thinks, ‘hmm, that’s weird,’ before turning over and falling to sleep.
~~~~
Friday, 9:30 PM
Josie doesn’t ask for much.
She swears she doesn’t!
All she asks for is a little peace. But Lizzie, in all her popularity, is talking to a guy she met last week. Loudly. And obnoxiously.
She’s all like: Oh, you don’t say… Well, how about we fix that… I can talk you through it right now… Yeah, just like that.
She says all of this in a seductive *shiver* tone of voice.
Her sister and the word seductive are the last two things Josie has ever wanted to associate together.
Guys, Lizzie is having phone sex… while Josie is right-fucking-there!
Josie wants to fucking barf. She thought about hitting her sister with a silencing spell (or a hammer), but she will never hear the end of it. (Plus, Lizzie will just siphon the spell right off, anyway. Josie knows because she has tried this tactic before.)
So instead, Josie hits herself with a deafening spell. She recently found this one after not finding a brain-bleach spell. Josie could just get a vamp to compel her to forget, but then she would have to tell the vampire what she needs to forget… and the mental image she has does not need to traumatize anyone else.
Josie will wake up disoriented and more than a little scared because she won’t be able to hear, but it will totally be worth it.
Josie turns away from the sight of her sister and contemplates (yet dismisses) the thought of finding a blinding spell as well. That would be going a little overboard.
She feels a bit of a chill. She can’t hear a thing, so she attributes that to her sister turning on her bedside miniature fan. Josie thinks nothing of it as she snuggles into her blanket and falls asleep.
Lizzie notices as well and then thinks, it’s probably something for Hope to handle. Lizzie doesn’t think about it again.
~~~~
Friday, sometime after 9:30 PM
Dreams are weird.
None of Hope’s dreams have ever been worth remembering.
They have all been abstract.
And she thinks, she thinks, that often they are about losing her parents. But they’re so vague that she doesn’t know for sure.
Hope has talked to Ms. Tig about it, reluctantly, after mentioning that she was tired during one of her sessions.
Ms. Tig asked why.
Hope mentioned something about an anxiety-provoking dream with images of her New Orleans home burning, and the only thing saved was her father’s favorite picture of Hope as a baby–
It was a whole thing. She doesn’t really want to get into it again. The point is her dreams are vague.
Ms. Tig seems to think that they aren’t.
Ms. Tig said the dream Hope described was “very clear,” and then started in on some psychoanalysis mumbo-jumbo. Hope had mostly just checked out of the entire conversation, only humming her agreements at moments until it was time for the next student, Lizzie Saltzman, to have her session.
But this dream-
Well, she didn’t even realize it was a dream at first. Even as she’s in it now, she still has a challenging time believing it’s not real.
Hope runs her hands against the wood of the old mill. She feels the edges of its splinters at her fingertips and marvels at the detail. She can see the swirl patterns like tree fingerprints in each panel. She pushes at the wood and knows it won’t give.
This feels like that film noir scene Ms. Tig trapped them all in. But the last time, inner struggles were fought and won before anyone was aware that they were even in the simulation. Then Dark Josie happened and-
She was first tipped off that this might be a dream because she’s outside while she distinctly remembers going to sleep early.
The second thing to tip her off is that as she goes to strip (because if she’s gonna be outside, she might as well wolf-out), Hope can’t feel Her. Usually, her wolf is always on the outskirts of her mind, ready to play and hunt.
But now, nothing.
The situation freaks Hope out for all of ten seconds before she sees Josie, feet away, just outside of the old mill.
Josie has both of her hands touching the ground, a lip bit between teeth, and a scowl. She’s crouched low on bent knees and just looks frustrated.
Hope thinks Josie’s being almost as adorable as Pedro is when he’s able to join them on super squad missions.
“Whatcha got going on over there, Jo?” Hope teases, amused.
Josie – doesn’t smile. She’s anything but amused as she falls from her crouched position right on her butt from fright.
Hope’s smile gets wider and Josie (honest to gods) huffs. What is she, a puppy?
Josie lets her lip pop from between her teeth as she climbs to her feet.
“I was, um, trying to siphon from the earth,” Josie is upright now, dusts off her hands, and looks Hope straight in the eye, “I can’t feel any magic, and the woods and grounds around the school are usually soaked in it. Do you know what’s going on?”
By the tone of voice, it’s clear that Josie thinks Hope has something to do with this. Hope doesn’t mind though because she’s already been able to work out that this is a dream and what good is getting mad at Dream-Josie? She is not sure what really convinces her that it’s a dream, but other than the no magic situation, something just feels off.
And then of course, there’s the golden rain pouring from the sky all of a sudden, drenching Josie in what could almost be paint and then she’s completely convinced. She gets that it could also be an elaborate curse/prank or something that Alyssa Chang devised, but something just tells her it must be a dream.
Hope walks closer so she doesn’t have to yell at Still-Getting-Drenched-Dream-Josie who is looking down at the color running from her hands, “What’s happening, Hope?”
Like Hope, Josie doesn’t seem worried, simply confused.
“I think it’s a dream.”
“A dream?” Josie repeats. “But I could feel the dirt…”
“But you couldn’t feel the magic, right? I can’t feel my wolf and I’m sure if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to do any magic either.”
It feels a little weird to be explaining to Dream-Josie that this is, in fact, a dream, but the tribrid feels protective of this Josie.
“Doesn’t that scare you?” Just as suddenly as it appeared, the golden rain vanishes. Josie is instantly dry without the rain coming down and there’s a lazy pink sun glowing through the roof of the old mill. “I was going to ask how you’re so sure it’s a dream, but I think that answers my question.”
(Later analysis will confirm that Pedro mispronounced a single word in the spell which threw some things out of whack: i.e., the weather.)
Josie is looking up at the parted skies to take in the new weather.
Hope just kind of stares for a moment.
Well, that’s all she’s been doing since she first saw Dream-Josie but now the light is hitting Josie in that cinematic way. It’s so hazy pink that it makes Josie look softer than normal. Josie appears all glowy and beautiful-
And Hope is kind of like a boat bobbing in water.
Josie’s pinkened skin, a lighthouse, calling her nearer.
And yeah, dreams are weird because all Hope wants to do in this one is touch.
Hope wasn’t lying when she told Lizzie she had a crush on Josie, she just left out the part where her crush never really went away. Hope doesn’t think Lizzie would have appreciated all the details of her pining away, anyway. And then, by the time Hope realized she might have had a chance with the brunette, she was with Landon and she was happy.
Then she threw herself into Malivore and ruined everything.
In her defense, she was trying to save the world, the school, and all the people she cared about-
That’s actually not the point here.
The point is that Hope’s crush on Josie had not vanished, not even when she was dating Landon. Not even when she was in the bottom of a black pit. But now? Her crush is kind of too big to hold inside her body.
“Hope?” Josie asks softly. Josie’s eyes are soft chocolate and slowly searching, a teddy bear with only warmth to give. “Where did you go?”
“Hmm?” Hope hums. For a dream, Hope feels connected to her body in ways she doesn’t when she’s awake. Everything sparks like a downed powerline in a New Orleans’ hurricane. So, when Josie reaches up to direct Hope’s attention, Hope flinches slightly.
Dream-Josie yanks away too.
“I’m sorry. Y-You kind of zoned out f-for a moment there. I was making sure you’re okay.”
breathe.
Hope, just breathe.
“Yeah, I’m fine, Jo.” Hope’s voice cracks at the end and she feels far too sensitive, too close to Josie. Hope touches the yanked hand briefly with her own.
Hope is sparking all over her body. Maybe even actual sparks now; she’s not sure.
But Hope’s mouth feels like she stuffed a spoon full of cinnamon down her throat: dry and too full.
Josie’s still close and her lips are really all Hope can think about at this distance.
“This is a dream, right?” Josie asks.
Hope is startled by the question. She looks up to catch Josie’s eyes, but can’t. Josie’s gaze is aimed somewhere lower, and Hope knows it’s wishful thinking, but she thinks Josie’s gaze is aimed towards her lips.
Hope pulls a lip between her teeth before, “Yeah.” It’s raspy and Dream-Josie must know how affected she is.
fuck.
breathe.
Hope is decidedly not breathing.
All the breath in her body kind of just settles low in her abdomen. Like a lightness and a weight all at the same time.
And yeah, she gets this is a dream.
She understands that there are no consequences in a dream that no one will ever know about. Hope gets that if she does everything she wants to do to Dream-Josie, no one has to know. So, she doesn’t need to hesitate.
But she does.
She’s hesitating because she’s afraid if she moves too fast, this will all disappear. Or because it’s too real. Or because even Dream-Josie is everything and deserves everything.
Hope is not everything.
Hope is a lot of things, but not everything.
Hope hesitates.
Until her breath stutters.
Until Josie’s hand finds Hope’s hip.
This time she doesn’t flinch.
And Josie doesn’t yank away.
fuck breathing.
She wants to do this instead. Whatever this is.
“If this is really a dream, then I can say anything,” Josie whispers, “do anything?” Josie’s eyes are melting chocolate now. Smooth and creamy and – Hope really has got to stop comparing this girl to food.
Hope’s voice is stuck behind her sternum. One of Josie’s hands finds Hope’s cheeks for a second and then comes away glistening in the pink sunlight.
“Why are you crying?” Josie’s all warmth like pink sunlight and melted chocolate and everything Hope has ever hoped for.
And that’s why Hope’s crying. Nothing Hope has ever hoped for has come true. She knows this won’t last past the dream’s conclusion.
Josie seems to know an answer is not forthcoming. To her, even Dream-Hope is closed off.
Josie bites her lip and decides to be brave. With a hand still hooked around the edge of Hope’s hip, she reels Hope in a little.
Hope is caught on Josie’s line a little too well.
Like so well, she can’t even tell she’s being pull towards the shore.
Josie is everything.
Been lighthouse and shore.
Been so much warmth and pink sunlight.
Josie is everything and Hope just wants to be enough.
So, yeah. Hope still has tears slowly rolling down her face and feels a little silly about it. But Josie continues to reel her in. Until Josie’s arms can wrap around Hope tightly. Until there is no room between them, and Hope’s cheek is tucked against Josie’s collarbone.
“I got you, Hope,” Josie whispers into the side of Hope’s head.
“This isn’t real.” Hope mummers against the soft of Josie’s neck.
And Josie’s brain stops working. Not because of what Hope said, but fuck. Her skin is burning where Hope’s lips are.
“Hmm?” It takes a moment for Josie to catch on that something has been said.
“This isn’t real, Jo.” Hope forces herself back and holds her arms against her chest.
Josie knows she shouldn’t pay attention to that last detail, but Josie is all kinds of pan, and Hope’s arms frame her chest so good.
But what Hope just said begins to register.
This is a dream.
This is a dream.
And everything Josie has ever dreamt of is right in front of her.
“Maybe…” Josie shakes her head a little and steps a little closer to shrink the space Dream-Hope created, “…maybe that doesn’t matter.”
Josie lifts her gaze to find Hope’s eyes again and this time she isn’t disappointed. There’s a hitched breath in between them.
And Hope’s still sparking, one wrong (right) touch away from setting this whole place off.
Josie, oblivious to the impending explosion, reaches out.
To Josie, the tribrid’s hands are so soft. Kind of like the clay she imagines Hope molds sculptures out of.
She drags the tips of her fingers up the redhead’s arms so, so, so slow, squeezes at the shoulders, and then lets them settle at the nape of Hope’s neck.
Hope is all kinds of stiff in this moment, even when she can taste the mint toothpaste on Josie’s breath.
They’re so close and Hope just wants to touch.
Unfortunately for Hope, she used up most of her resistance when she took those steps back minutes earlier. So, when Josie tugs at the hair near the base of her skull, she moans so loud it reverberates in her ears even after.
Josie burns.
Wants to hear it again. Pulls again.
This time, when Hope moans loud, Josie kind of just dives. Catches Hope’s bottom lip between her own.
fuck.
Josie never thought a dream could feel this good.
Hope’s hands move from her sides to Josie’s, wrinkles the fabric at Josie’s hips. Yanks Josie’s hips to her own.
Josie’s fingers dig into Hope’s scalp. Pulls. Rough. They comb through Hope’s long hair.
Hope’s sanity kind of disappears then.
Hope’s legs are jellyfish: no bones, just electricity, and vibes.
Meaning she can barely stand but feels like her body is on fire with electricity.
Josie makes her feel on fire, which is fitting because Josie is a bit of a pyromaniac.
And if anyone can set Hope’s body of water on fire, it’s Josie – and maybe Hope’s going a little far with the ocean and water metaphors because they seem to be getting a little out of hand.
Yeah, that one kind of yanks her out of the moment.
So here it is, without the poetics:
Josie’s lips feel so good against hers.
Hope wants to stay like this forever.
Hope's legs feel weak and if it wasn’t for Josie, she would be on the floor right now.
Josie is surprisingly strong- solid in a way the real Josie rarely allows herself to be.
In the back of Hope’s mind, she thinks that this may be how Dream-Josie is different than Real-Josie: she’s braver.
No. She’s bolder.
Real-Josie is brave all on her own, but this Josie is bolder.
Josie is easily the bravest person Hope has ever met; Josie is always willing to fight for the people she loves despite her fear, like that time Josie took a Malivore-bullet to save Lizzie.
But the difference between brave and bold is confidence.
And Dream-Josie…
When Hope parts her lips a minute into the kiss, Dream-Josie pushes her tongue past the small opening quickly and without remorse.
A visitor that makes herself at home the moment she steps through the threshold.
And to be completely honest, Hope couldn’t care less that Josie’s a guest, or that this is her first visit.
Josie can do whatever the fuck she wants if she lets her tongue stay for a while, let it come back often, and she keeps making Hope feel this good.
After a few minutes, they part for air, Hope pants against Josie’s lips, “Fuck.”
Josie opens her eyes to find Hope’s pupils blown. Hope looks about as wrecked as Josie feels.
Josie wants to close the space between them again, so she pulls Hope’s lips towards her own with a palm on the edge of the redhead’s jaw.
Josie makes quick work of splitting the seam of Hope’s lips with her tongue.
And then Hope goes to ruin Josie’s whole entire life in one move.
Hope sucks harshly on Josie’s tongue.
And Josie makes such a desperate, strangled noise when it happens that she surprises the both of them.
The noise is the catalyst for Hope to move them until Josie’s back hits a wall.
Before, they were just standing in the middle of the Old Mill, almost free-floating, staying upright by some miracle. But now, Josie is against one of those panels Hope noticed earlier.
And Hope was right!
The panel won’t give, no matter how hard Hope pushes Josie against it. Which is admittedly a little harder than she meant to, but Josie just moans and pants into Hope’s mouth and lifts a leg around Hope to pull her closer, so Hope figures the brunet isn’t bothered.
The kiss only gets sloppier from there and Hope thinks for the first time that dreams do make sense.
This makes sense.
~~~~
This is why she is absolutely devastated when it ends abruptly.
~~~~
In different rooms, both Josie and Hope spring up gasping for breath.
~~~~
Saturday 7:30 AM
Hope looks over at her alarm clock and shuts it off with a heavy hand and a deep groan. Her face is flushed apple red.
She covers her eyes with her forearm and flops back down to lay on her pillow.
What the fuck was that dream?!
Hope has never had a dream that realistic before, nor one where she felt like she could make choices.
Her phone dings on the bedside table next to her and she picks it up to find a text from Landon.
Are you still sure you want me to meet your family?
Choices.
Even if it wasn’t real, Hope made a choice to kiss Dream-Josie (senseless).
Right?
Hadn’t it been her choice?
She’s with Landon and not a single moment in her dream did he come up. Maybe her subconscious is trying to tell her something?
Hope glances at her alarm clock once more:
7:38 AM
Well…
Hope thinks mildly.
Now is as good a time as any to give Ms. Tig an early morning visit.
~~~~
Saturday 7:30 AM
Josie is almost frightened to death when she awakes to her twin’s concerned eyes inches from her face.
“What the hell, Lizzie?”
Even though she knows she said the words, she can’t hear them.
Lizzie’s lips are moving, but she can’t hear her either.
There’s a lightning bolt of fear that races through her veins when Lizzie keeps talking and no sound enters her brain. She’s on the verge of an extraordinarily strong panic attack when she remembers the spell from last night.
With a trembling hand, Josie reaches for the wall behind her headboard to pull magic into her. She closes her eyes to do the reversal spell, but when she starts to feel like she can’t feel her own body she snaps her eyes open before she can begin to mumble the words.
She grabs onto Lizzie’s hand to ground her as she clumsily repeats the words she learned last night before bed.
All the sound comes to her in a rush. For a moment she can hear snoring, yawning, and even a shoe scraping the hardwood of the gym floor before her hearing goes back to normal.
“Jo, are you okay? What the hell just happened?” Lizzie’s concerned voice fills her ears like music.
Two frights in as many minutes, that’s one way to start a morning.
~~~~
Saturday 8:13 AM
Across the cafeteria from Pedro, Josie sits next to her twin at breakfast, a smile attached to her lips.
She knows the moment she actually sees Hope she's going to be an awkward, blushing fool, but for now, she can reminisce a little... can't she?
Whenever Josie replays last night's dream in her head, her smile becomes bright enough to rival a pink sun.
There is no way Lizzie won't notice her 'cheesing' all over the place and not see straight through her thoughts.
Hence, why her face is tilted down and away from her sister's prying eyes.
For once, she wants this to be hers, and only hers.
Josie's efforts are for nothing, unfortunately, when only moments later as she brings her first fork full of fruit up to her mouth and Lizzie asks, "So... Josette Olivia Saltzman, what and or who were you dreaming about last night?"
Josie feels a piece of fruit lodge in her windpipe at the question.