passion and frustration

After the latest attack of the monsters end up nearly killing Sosuke because he was alone at the mill, Alaric decides to let him come back to his room while begging him not to destroy their school.

Simultaneously as he comes back to the house, so do Josie and Lizzie who were staying with their mother shortly after the whole Josettte incident. The midterms are also finally behind the students but Alaric feels that there is no sense of rest anymore in the students, not like it used to be before monsters kept showing up.

"I gotta do something to turn everyone's frown upside down." Alaric tells Hope, who is hanging out with him in his office.

"Like what?" Hope asks, raising an eyebrow doubtfully.

"I'm sure... We can come up with something." He replies, looking at her for help.

"Dad! We're back and you've barely said Hi to us!" Lizzie complains storming into his office before glaring at Hope hatefully.

"Of course you are in the way again." Lizzie snorts at the brunette.

"Perfect timing. Your dad needs help. Good Luck." Hope says, ignoring the bad treatment and hops out of her chair, making Lizzie sit in it and look at her father with expecting eyes.

After leaving the headmasters office Hope makes herself a sandwich and heads down to the pier to eat it in peace.

To her dismay however Sosuke is already sitting at the pier cross legged and she can see that he's facing someone, just not who from her position at the top of the hill leading down to the wooden platform.

When Hopes shoes hit the pier's deck making small clicking noises with every step she sees the person sitting hidden by Sosuke flinch and Pedro suddenly leans out from behind Sosuke's larger frame.

"What?" Sosuke asks, hearing her approach.

"What are you two doing?" She asks curiously, never having understood why Sosuke and Pedro got along since they used to be as different as can be, although maybe Pedro just saw Sosuke's true self when no one else did.

"We are meditating. Step one in casting spells." Sosuke says, repeating what Pedro told him only minutes before.

"You're no witch." Hope tells him, sitting down next to him and scoots in close until their knees are almost touching.

"I know. But I promised Pedro to help him with this stuff." Sosuke replies keeping his eyes closed while she sees his hands tense on his knees however when she starts to eat her sandwich.

"I'm hungry. See you later Sosuke." Pedro suddenly tells the former child soldier after staring at Hope eating her sandwich with envy.

"Why are you going around distracting the new generation?" Sosuke asks her, turning to look at her after Pedro left.

"I'm bored. I don't have classes today." Hope tells him.

"So go annoy our good doctor or something I'm trying to work here." Sosuke says, closing his eyes again and trying to concentrate.

"Have you tried the instinct approach yet?" She asks him nonchalantly.

"No. I was a bit busy getting killed in my dreams over and over." He replies.

"You should try working on that." Hope tells him, setting down her sandwich and leans in closer, one hand settling on his back and the other on top of his knee and thigh as she whispers, "Does this help?"

Sosuke feels his energy building up inside and in record time jumps up and directly into the water, where seconds later a bright light flashes underwater and a shockwave ripples through the lake, Sosuke dragging himself out of the water and dropping on his back in front of her unceremoniously.

"See. Now, we're gonna do this a bunch of times and you'll get the hang of what your energy feels like in no time." Hope tells him mirthfully, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

Unknown to them Lizzie Saltzman is staring out of a window at the two annoyed. She just told her father that she will organize a party for tomorrow to get everyone to relax a bit and she already had Sosuke in mind as her date.

"Why are you glaring out of the window? Isn't planning a party your thing?" Josie asks her twin, coming over to her.

"Not when Little Mrs. perfect keeps getting in my way. I need a date and it's going to be Sosuke." Lizzie says.

"Why? You don't even like him." Josie asks confused.

"That was before he became supernatural plus someone has to make him realize that there are other options that Hope Mikaelson, better options." Lizzie says, stomping off to make a plan while Josie looks after her concerned.

"Why are you trying to torture me?" Sosuke asks dramatically back at the pier.

"I'm helping." Hope says insistently, half telling the truth, half hoping to see if she can get any headway in figuring out what to do about Sosuke and Landon both liking her.

She scoots closer to the edge of the pier, folding her legs sideways beneath her and places a hand on Sosuke's stomach, sliding it up slowly, with the shirt clinging to his body moving up along with her hand.

"Feel anything yet?" She asks leaning down to him, their faces centimeters apart and meets his eye contact unwaveringly.

It doesn't take long for Sosuke's breath to hitch and he rolls over, into the water again where another light flares up underwater.

"Lie back down." She says teasingly, patting the spot in front of her when his head pokes up out of the water.

Sosuke has a grin of his own and pulls himself onto the pier with more strength, landing on top of Hope horizontally.

"Seriously?" She asks mildly annoyed, pushing him off her and he sits down in front of her with an amused smile until he looks down as he's trying to fix his shirt in place and sees Hopes now wet, white shirt clinging to her body almost translucent and her red bra peeks through the pale color.

Sosuke only says a quick sorry before jumping into the lake.

When another light appears underneath the water she looks confused as to why it happened this time.

"What happened? I didn't even do anything this time." She asks him while he climbs out of the water.

"Uhm... You are the reason but I'm the cause."

He says awkwardly and goes over to a bag he brought with him, having intended to work out before Pedro showed up.

"Here." Sosuke says, offering her a towel and a black shirt.

Looking down at her nearly translucent top she takes the items annoyedly and puts the shirt on top of her own, the fabric also starting to cling to her firmly but at least not being see-through.

"For that I'm gonna kick your ass." Hope tells him annoyed and gets in a fighting stance.

"Seriously?" Sosuke asks.

"Yes." She replies angrily and waits for him to get in his stance before she rushes towards him and punches his midsection a few times, Sosuke seeming unsure if he wants to fight back at all.

"What? Does being a pervert now stop you from being able to fight?" She asks challengingly.

"Hey. That's not fair. This was your idea. I was fine just sitting here." He tells her in response.

"Yeah well that won't get you any closer to controlling your powers, now does it?" Hope asks him.

"Maybe but just screwing with me for the fun of it is no help either." He replies, kicking at her with Hope ducking under the kick and trying to sweep away his other leg, but Sosuke does a flip backward and lands in his stance again.

"I was trying to help." She insists annoyed and throws a few punches which he blocks easily, but he gets hit by a backhanded punch to the side of his face when she twirls around and her slightly wet hair blocks his field of view for a moment.

"You're not helping. You're just making everything harder. You know how I feel about you now. You saw what my nightmares were like." Sosuke tells her angrily and pushes her away, Hope caught off guard by what he's saying.

"Look if you like Landon then leave me alone already. You showed me that you' re not interested plenty over the years." He tells her pissed off and leaves, heading into the woods where a booming sound can be heard from soon after when Sosuke punches the ground and a wave of electricity shoots off around his body, scorching the earth.

Hope looks after him with both shock and guilt, wondering if he's right and she should just leave him alone.

"What happened out there? There was a loud boom?" Alaric asks Hope when he sees the half wet girl coming into the school building looking upset.

"Nothing." She says offhandedly and he decides to leave her be for now.

Later that evening Sosuke is lying in his bed, looking up at the ceiling lost in thought when he realizes that Hope won the bet, today of all days.

Sosuke knocks on Hope's door, but after waiting a few minutes she doesn't answer it, so he just opens it and sees her missing.

"Usually she's here around this time." Sosuke says surprised.

Not thinking anything of it he places the wrapped gift he brought over on her bed with a small card reading "You won the bet."

and heads back over to his room, lying down on his bed and gets lost in thought again while looking at his fingers, with a trickle of blue electricity connecting his fingertips to the light on his ceiling, making it flicker.

"What am I?" He asks himself.

Ten minutes later, Hope returns from the pier, where she wanted some time to herself and opens her door, seeing the somewhat large present on her bed.

Hope looks surprised when she reads the card, not having realized she won the bet at all.

"Let's see what he managed to make." Hope says and starts unwrapping the present, her breath hitching in her throat when she unwrapped the upper half, seeing a bust of her father staring back at her.

Finishing to unwrap the whole statue she realizes what it is.

It's a wooden carving made to resemble the picture of her with her father she lost in a fire in her room years ago.

Tears flow down her face while she's sitting down on the bed, caressing the carving of her father's face.

She stays like this for a good five minutes, remembering the painting and her father clearly.

She then sets aside the carving and steps out of her room and goes across the hall, using a spell to unlock Sosuke's door, who at the sound of that shoots up in his bed, drawing his knife from under the pillow.

"Hope?" He says surprised, putting the knife away. When he looks back towards her she already cleared the distance and wraps her arms around him tightly, sniffling against his shoulder while saying "Thank you."

"I take it you saw the present." Souske says in realization and hugs her back awkwardly.

"It's perfect." She tells him, her tears soaking into his shirt before she finally calms back down and releases him from her hug and wipes the tears out of her eyes.

"I'm glad you like it. And while I didn't start the fire, I saw how much losing that painting meant to you." Sosuke tells her, not looking at her.

"I didn't know you noticed that it got burned." She says surprised.

"Well... It took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure it out, since I rarely go into your room." He says sheepishly, scratching his scarred cheek.

"How long did it take you to make this?" She asks, leaning into his side, sitting on the bed beside him.

"Multiple months. I'm not really what you'd call artistic." He admits.

"Yeah that was plainly obvious during our art class." She laughs lightly.

"For the last time, it was supposed to be a horse." He replies with a deadpan look.

"Yeah well, it looked like an ant. But the intentions count." She says with a smile and kisses his cheek, whispering a silent "Thank you".

"You can see how things like this make it hard for me now that you have a boyfriend right?" Sosuke tells her.

"I told you he's not my boyfriend." She insists quietly.

"Come on, you were in love with him from day 1 and things between you two only got more intense since then ." Sosuke says.

"Yes. You're right. But there's also... I don't want to make the wrong decision because I rushed into a relationship just because I'm starting to open up to people finally." Hope tells him honestly.

"Well, I can respect that. But can you please not tease me again like earlier today. Regardless if it was with good intentions, I already feel lost because I don't know what my powers do. I don't want to have to wonder if moments like those mean more. So let's just keep our training PG-13 alright?" He suggests chuckling.

"Deal." She says with a smile, offering a handshake.

"Alright I'm gonna head to my room then. Again thank you for the gift." Hope says, receiving a nod in response before she leaves his room.