lazyqueeen - Tumblr blog

lazyqueeen · 6 months

Note

Hope/Lizzie: Dealer’s choice! 21, 22, 23, or 25!

(lets try to go for broke and pick all)

21. sharing long term dreams, goals and aspirations with one another 22. playful teasing 23. being unable to keep their eyes off of them 25. finding comfort in their scent

--- ao3 ---

Lizzie Saltzman shone.

She was... the most alive person Hope knew. It was hard to look away from, - which... a bit ironic that, considering how it was Hope who killed her.

But it was the truth all the same.

Even on a night like any other, where they were just hanging out in the library going through piles of grimoires and fairy tale books - and what were their lives that both were equally useful now? - the last ones still awake, with everyone else having abandoned them almost an hour back. Even here, under the simple light of the table lamp, Lizzie pulled Hope's eye like a magnet.

Lizzie's hair was pulled up in a messy bun, with little golden tufts of hair fallen out of place and tickling her neck. Little micro-expressions flit over Lizzie's face as she read, - a scrunch between the eyebrows; a sharpening in her gaze as she leaned closer to the book; a brief uptick to the corners of her lips as she took a brief note.

Hope's chest ached with the increasingly familiar sensation of longing.

It was getting harder trying to hide it. If this was what Lizzie had felt during Hope's dramatic roller coaster of a romance with Landon, she didn't know how Lizzie had dealt with being Hope's one big constant at the time.

Which was exactly what Lizzie had been. And it was so easy to see that with all the reflection available to Hope now.

Lizzie had always been there. Having Hope's back, helping Hope even when it nearly cost her everything. Even when they fought, even during the moments in time when Lizzie would proclaim her hatred of Hope, Lizzie would always - always - come through.

And Hope had begun to take it for granted.

"Lizzie?" she asked spontaneously "What do you want to do?"

"What?" Lizzie looked up, blinking rapidly a few times, like she was trying to wipe away the imprint of pages and pages of text from the back of her eyelids. "Figure out how to deal with this brownie infestation?"

"No, I mean... when we leave the Salvatore Boarding School, what will you do?"

"Oh," she bit into her lip and Hope felt it like a slice of a heated blade somewhere deep within the lining of her stomach, her fingertips tingled with the urge to reach over and run them against Lizzie's bottom lip to ease the tiny sting. "I... don't really know. I mean I want to go to college. Go visit Josie in London. But existentially? With potentially the rest of all of eternity? No idea."

There was a moment of heavy silence as the air between them seemed to stretch, their eyes caught by a single spiderweb string.

Frazzled, she grasped for something to say.

"I miss New Orleans," she admitted quietly, "I miss seeing my family."

After her dad died Hope had... kind of walled herself off from everyone. Sometimes she blamed her aunts and uncles for letting her. They hadn't at first, of course, had called nearly every week and visited more than a few times too. But Hope had barely spoken to them, the pain too deep, missing both her dad and her mom too much.

She'd let the calls go to voicemail. Barely spoke during the visits until Rebekah, Marcel, Kol and Aunt Freya finally started giving her the space she'd been fighting for.

It was probably because they didn't quite operate on a mortal timetable. Didn't quite remember anymore what a year or two meant to someone who was sixteen and not one thousand and sixteen.

"I'd like to go to New Orleans someday," Lizzie's eyes dug into her in a way that made Hope think she really could see right through her and into Hope's head. Like she saw into the very depths of Hope's heart and saw it laid bare.

She wondered if she was translucent enough for there to be Lizzie's own face staring back at her.

"I could show you," Hope offered with a traitorous skip in her heartbeat. One that by the way Lizzie's eyes slipped briefly to Hope's chest she had clearly heard too. "I could introduce you to my family, I think they'd like you."

Which was a bit of an understatement, she could already picture Aunt Rebekah taking one look at Lizzie - or better yet, the way Hope's eyes had lately been going to Lizzie with something like a compulsion - and starting to grin like she was having the best day of her millennia-long life.

She wondered what it said about her... feelings, that the thought was strangely compelling instead of terrifying.

"Okay," Lizzie said and pulled Hope back into the present.

"Okay?"

"Yeah, I'll come meet your scary family. But just so you know, if I die I'm going to have to sucker punch Frodo and come back as a ghost to haunt you," Lizzie said, tone very frank and practical.

Hope fought back a smile.

It was strange, Lizzie's careless mention of Landon should have hurt and yet somehow it just reminded her that he was still... there. Somewhere in the grand space of reality he wasn't truly gone.

And somehow, as was Lizzie's way, she'd said the exact right thing in what might have been misconstrued by someone who didn't know Lizzie as the exact wrong way to say it. It wasn't though. It was just... the Lizzie way to say it.

And Hope kind of loved-

Lizzie.

Hope loved Lizzie.

The thought wasn't new exactly. She'd been thinking it with increasing frequency in the past few months - and with a strangely more pointed edge since Lizzie and MG had broken up; like the side of her that had taken over when she'd switched off her humanity was getting bored with Hope's pace.

Or her complete absence of pace.

Instead Hope just... stewed. At first, not ready to move on from Landon. Then, not ready to face what she'd done to Lizzie and how making her own growing feelings for Lizzie obvious might hurt her just as she was clearly moving on from her confession to Hope. And once she'd dealt with that, there was the fear of being too late.

Hope had hurt her. Hope had hurt her so much. She had killed her, it would only be rational to have moved on from whatever it was she felt for Hope.

And yet Lizzie had remained Hope's best friend and one constant - something Hope was no longer stupid enough to take for granted or to abuse.

And sometimes - like right now - Hope caught Lizzie staring back. A look of something deeply fond on her face, like Hope's brief, swallowed smile had pushed everything else out of Lizzie's head.

"Oh, screw it," Lizzie said under her breath and in one vampire-quick movement of air moved around the table, grasped Hope lightly by the back of her neck, and pulled her forward until Hope's lips landed against Lizzie's.

Blood rushed to her head as she leaned even further into Lizzie's hold on the sheer rush of instinct and pleasure. Lizzie's lips were warm and tasted of cherry lip balm. Her scent, which Hope usually tried to push into the background - she did kinda still need to function sometimes - exploded around her with overpowering strength. It made Hope dizzy and giddy.

She wanted to fall asleep to that scent, to wake up to it, to-

Lizzie kissed her like she was trying to prove a years-old point. And Hope kissed her back like she was finally ready to listen. Their lips moving against each other with the need to meld together. Her own hand moving under nearly its own power to slide Hope's fingers between the messy strands of Lizzie's hair, swallowing into their kiss the response of the little, contracting gasp of air Lizzie released in response.

She'd been wanting this for so long. Waiting. Hoping.

And then, as the emotion of it all reached some kind of crescendo Hope felt veins begin pulsing under the skin of her eyelids, - with the hot need for Lizzie, to pull her close, so close they'd never be parted from this moment - when her suddenly sharpening teeth accidentally nicked the skin of Lizzie's lips.

"'Sorry," Hope gasped at Lizzie's hiss, pulling back, panting heavily.

"It's fine. Though... it's a good thing I used your blood," Lizzie said, rueful and a bit dazed, a look of a tiny smirk blooming on her lips and glinting over her eyes, "it would be very annoying needing to drink from you every time you bit me."

Hope's eyes widened with a brief spike of panic. Werewolf venom.

"Are you okay, do you feel anything? Maybe you should still- just to be safe-"

"Chill, sweetie" Lizzie soothed her, running a reassuring finger over the side of Hope's face "I'm fine. If you'd just poisoned me I'd feel it, Mom told me how it feels, and see?" she extended her lip in brief pout "Already healed."

Hope's eyes flicked back to Lizzie's lips and she swallowed, feeling heat rush onto her face.

An extended beat passed before an old lesson they'd had once also managed to push forward from the back of her mind, reminding her that also-

"You're a heretic, heretics can pull the magic from the bite."

"Oh, right. I forgot. I'm awesome," Lizzie grinned and swung forward to plant a tiny kiss on the very tip of Hope's nose.

Hope smiled, something warm flickering within again and then growing slightly more serious. Asked, "Why did you kiss me?"

Lizzie had never tried to kiss Hope before, not even during their ill-fated road trip when Hope's darker side was behind the wheel and had left more than a few openings for it. She was glad for it now, though, not because Hope thought she'd have regretted it happening - she knew she wouldn't have - but because she was afraid of how she might have hurt Lizzie's heart further with her gaping, empty lack of care.

Or her possessiveness. There had been quite a bit of that in the No Humanity version of Hope where Lizzie was concerned.

"Because you were taking too long," Lizzie smirked matter-of-factly.

Hope widened her eyes in mock offense, enjoying Lizzie's teasing "Was not!"

"I'm immortal now but I think I still would have died of old age before you came out and actually-"

"I would have said something eventua-"

"Hope Andrea Mikaelson, you would have let the universe crumble into dust before you went ahead and actually-"

Well, with fighting words like those there was only one thing Hope could do.

This time, Hope kissed her.

16 notes · View notes