CHAPTER NINE
Blue and purple splotches all over, messy curls stuck to a sweaty forehead, bloody knuckles knocking on the dorm door, desperate to enter — this was Adrian Aquilo's appearance at one am outside his dorm room in the Salvatore school.
"Come on, Owen!"
"Open the fucking door!"
A door opened and the creaking sound made the boy turn around to check who or what opened it. Hope Mikaelson looked up from the book that she had been reading, stopping when she saw the boy. The two werewolves stood at both ends of the hall, eyes on each other. It had only been a few hours since they last saw each other but Hope remembered the boy without the blood, wounds, and bruises on his face. She knew for a fact that she hadn't kissed his swollen bloody lips but the soft pink lips.
The auburn-haired girl sighed before she approached the boy, "Who did you get into a fight with this time?"
The male shook his head, "No one, I just ran into a pole—"
Hope cocked a brow skeptically while scanning the boy's bruised and severely beat up face, "It was Jed again, wasn't it?"
The brunet turned away, accepting defeat wasn't his thing but he also hated to look vulnerable. The female's expression immediately softened, "Adrian..." Reaching out, Hope took his hand and pulled, making him face her, "Come on, let's get you cleaned up"
Bringing the male back to her dorm, Hope made him sit on her bed. She kneeled on the floor and reached under her bed in search of her first aid kit. When she found it, she dropped next to the boy with the open kit. Adrian took his blazer off and unbuttoned his shirt to help the girl. Ripping the packaging open, Hope grabbed a gauze pad and pressed it to staunch the bleeding from the boy's chest.
Once she had taped the gauze pad down, the auburn-haired girl reached for a cotton ball and a bottle of alcohol. She scanned the boy's torso, a worried expression spread across her face when she noticed his scars, new scars, "What the hell did he hit you with?"
"These aren't from Jed"
Those words were enough and the expression on the boy's face was all she needed to see an hear to know that the male went through horrible things in that orphanage of his.
Adrian winced when the girl dabbed the liquid covered bit of cotton all over the boy's open wounds. He had forgotten just how much the alcohol stung and burned when applied to the wounds, "Fuck m— Hope... I—you don't have to do this—" The boy inhaled sharply, the alcohol stinging his skin once again as the girl dabbed the cotton ball over his cuts, "I'll heal"
"Alright" Hope set the supplies down beside her, "What did you do this time?"
The boy reached for his shirt and started to button it up again, "All you need to know is that I attempted to befriend Jed"
"And then what?"
The Aquilo boy licked his lips, "And he is now walking around the woods... with a dislocated shoulder" He avoided meeting the girl's eyes that were on him, "Though the wolves probably popped it back into place by now"
Hope pressed her lips together, "Mhm. So you're one of those guys who just goes around dislocating shoulders?"
Adrian shrugged, "I suppose I am"
The tribrid cocked a brow, "What's next, smashing bottles on heads?"
"I mean—"
"No... Just, no"
✶
The next day, Owen and Penelope were seated on the young Aquilo boy's bed, while he was out, with a composition book in front of them, Adrian's composition notebook— his journal, when the bedroom door opened and Hope Mikaelson entered the room.
"We have a problem" The auburn-haired girl announced.
The male wolf and the Park witch faced the tribrid, "Yeah, you don't know how to knock"
"Forget knocking" Hope shut the door behind her, "I think I'm turning into one of those pathetic local teenagers"
"What's wrong?"
The Mikaelson witch looked around the room, searching for the infamous brunet teen wolf, "Where's Adrian?"
"Taking a shower" Owen answered, "He left like fifteen minutes ago so you got about five minutes until he gets back"
Penelope cocked a brow, "And why do you know this?" The boy shrugged in response which the witch only ignored as she turned to face Hope who had taken a seat beside her on Adrian's bed, "Why are you here? I hope it isn't because of what you wrote the last time in your diary"
The auburn-haired girl nodded for a moment before her brain finally registered Penelope's words, "Wait, you read my diary?"
The brunette witch let out a heavy sigh, pretending to appear defeated by the fact that the tribrid figured it out, not that Penelope was attempting to disguise it, "At first I didn't know it was your diary. I thought it was a very sad handwritten book. Just like Adrian's" The Park girl waved the composition notebook in the air.
Hope cocked a brow, a curious yet cautious expression spread across her face, "That's Adrian's diary?"
"Mhm," Owen took the diary out of Penelope's hands and offered it to Hope, "Wanna read it?"
"No" The tribrid shook her head, gently pushing the boy away from her, "I really shouldn't"
"You sure? He talks about you a lot. There's a whole paragraph about your eyes" Penelope and Owen snuck a glance at each other.
"Here" The boy dropped the book in Hope's lap, "Here, take it. Just make sure to put it back under the broken floorboards beneath his bed before he notices"
The Park witch smiled proudly when the tribrid accepted the diary, "Now, Hope, tell us. Why did you come here? You said you had a problem"
The auburn-haired girl nodded, getting back to the reason she even entered the room, "Right, okay. So I was sleeping when I suddenly woke up to someone knocking on my door and Adrian was outside—"
"Wait, wait, wait" Owen furrowed his brows, waving his hands around to prevent the girl from speaking, "So you were in your dorm the whole time?"
The tribrid's eyes left the book that laid in her lap, "What are you talking about?"
The Whitaker boy shrugged, "Adrian came back here complaining about how no one answered when he knocked on your door. Dude thought you were dead"
Penelope glanced back at the Mikaelson girl, "So why didn't you open the door?"
"Okay, so I had a dream about him..." Hope trailed off. She took a deep breath before the words literally flew out of her mouth, "And I dreamt about waking up to him laying on the pillow beside me"
Owen nodded, pretending to understand what the problem was but then gave up and shook his head, "I don't get it. What's the problem?"
The auburn-haired girl sighed, "The problem, Owen, is that I've never had these kinds of dreams and especially not with Adrian in them. The only Adrian themed dream I've had is the one where his head isn't attached to his body and that was the day he got here"
The eyes of the witch and the wolf widened, both of them shocked and thought it a bit morbid even, "Uhm, that's—"
"Don't look at me like that" Hope narrowed her eyes when a moment passed and the teens still wore their awkward wide-eyed expressions, "I said— stop giving me those looks... It was one time!"
"Title of your sex tape"
The three supernaturals turned around to see a shirtless Adrian closing the door behind him and Hope instantly stood up with the diary hidden behind her back. The Aquilo boy stopped when he saw the auburn-haired girl, "Owen, look, Hope is alive" The girl sent him an awkward wave, "I'm just gonna change and stuff then we'll leave"
With his friends' eyes on him, the boy walked over to his closet in the search of something to cover his upper body with. He opened the wardrobe and the teenagers, curiously leaned forward to see inside the tall wooden cupboard from his bed.
"So..." Penelope trailed off, pushing herself up from the bed to stand by the boy's side, "Are all your uniforms bloody?"
"I'm sorry" Adrian tossed a bloody dress shirt at his brunette witch friend, "I would've washed them if I had known that the fucking queen was going to be here"
Owen let out a chuckle when Penelope swatted the shirt away from here, "What crawled up your ass and died?"
"Jed" The brunet answered, pulling a navy blue sweater over his head.
"Well then"
Adrian sat down beside the tribrid who had moved over to Owen's bed, "So what were guys doing before I came?" The two witches and the blond wolf all faced each other, Hope shook her head as she didn't want them to expose her.
Penelope shrugged, "Oh, you know, girl talk. Girl and Owen talk. We were chatting about how you have a crush on Miss Mikaelson over here and she doesn't believe us"
"Because it's not true" Hope snorted and the other teens fell silent, "I mean, it's ridiculous, you don't have a crush on me... right?"
Owen nodded, a smirk playing on his lips, "No, he does"
The brunette witch nodded in confirmation when Hope's gaze fell on her, "He does"
"I do"