#katefic

It was Patsy Walker’s sweet sixteen, and Jessica was the luckiest kid on the planet… if you asked Tiger Beat or J-14 or whatever other freaks were camped out on their lawn, which she wouldn’t recommend.

“I don’t get it,” said Patsy, an infuriating mix of haughty and tearful. “You love me, right?”

Sometimes Jessica thought otherwise — frankly, the Princess was no picnic —  but the fact of the matter was that yes, despite everything, she guessed she did love her. She had just not wanted that to come to light when Patsy cornered her in a bathroom, pupils like saucers, and fucking kissed her. Maybe Jess felt guilty — it was her birthday, for God’s sake, and no one was even looking for her — or maybe it was because she knew Patsy would never remember, but she decided, in the moment, to be honest.

“Yeah,” she said simply, not backing away. She didn’t — couldn’t — look at her, not directly, but she knew her eyebrows were having a field day trying to process. Several moments passed, the two of them still pressed together and staring at opposite walls, before she broke the silence.

“Is it… not like that?” she asked, her voice catching. Jessica sighed. The truth was, she’d known she was bi ages before Trish had tried to come out, but after Dorothy’s reaction to that…

She smiled sadly at Patsy, then reached out and took her stupid wig.“I love you,” she told Trish. “She scares me. And you’re wasted.“

They were drinking (at eighteen, that was still something they could do together and it be “fun” rather than “desperate"). Trish and Jessica were on their own for the first time, and their Dorothy-free apartment needed christening or whatever, after all. Jess hated champagne, but she liked the thought. Mostly she liked that it seemed to make Trish happy.

Trish, for her part, was happy, by her standards. There she had it, in black and white: concrete proof of her own agency. Some hope for a better future. She was totally framing that rental contract and showing it off. Maybe with the art they’d confiscated from the house, or on her dresser, when she got one.

Maybe by then, they’d have more to sit on than their mattresses and a couch.

“We should get a cat or something,” Trish mused, hugging her pillow to her knees. Jessica snorted. “A cat?”She threw the pillow at her, of course, but not very hard; there was alcohol at stake. “Isn’t that what people do when they’re aimless? Get a pet?”“We’d kill a cactus,” she countered, and Trish couldn’t argue with that: they were still living on takeout, for Christ’s sake. “Besides, cats are assholes. They think the world revolves around them.” Jessica grinned her worst grin. “I’ve already got you.”

Normally, a comment like that would sting, especially from someone like Jess, who — at least on some level — meant every word. Normally…

“You love me,” Trish insisted, crawling over to her side of the mattress and wrapping her arms around her. Jessica, to her surprise, did not make a comic display of squirming away, as was relatively customary. She leaned into the hug.

“You’re okay,” she conceded, facing her, as if the Princess might be a pain but she was hers to bear, and she wasn’t terribly upset about it. They would remember later that it was hard to kiss, that first time; they were pleasantly drunk and both of them were laughing and their teeth kept colliding, instead.

(There were, certainly, worse ways to fail.)

“You’re okay, too,” Trish said, and nothing else mattered just then.

They drifted, both willingly and unwillingly. They found their way back to one another. Despite Jessica’s well-intentioned “I can’t risk you” bullshit, it was always worse for Trish when she wasn’t around. She wondered, sometimes, if — after everything they had both been through — what Jessica was really afraid to risk was making herself vulnerable.

It wasn’t that she held it against her; Trish Walker knew a thing or two about masks.(Patsy Walker was, quite explicitly, not a lesbian. She’d signed that more or less in blood.)

She didn’t really mind how her relationship with Jessica existed, as long as it did; as long as she was a part of her life, as long as she didn’t drop off the face of the planet and let her think she was dead. They were trying; they were healing. Jess still had her apartment, but she had given Trish a key, and she spent a lot of nights at her place. Sometimes, she even used the door, though that night there had been no such luck.

They were sitting in her living room actually eating cake for once, even if it was in ice cream form. Trish was trying to ignore her phone, because she knew she was due a text from Dorothy, and Jessica was telling her about her day. Mostly, Jessica was complaining about Matt.

The elephant in the room, her birthday, went unacknowledged, as far as talking went. That was how she liked it. “It’s good to see you like this,” Trish said, once the news ran out and it was just the two of them. She did not say the H-word; it was, as always, implied. “Sober? Fucked up, I know,” Jessica cracked, but she was smiling. Trish rolled her eyes. “You seem…” Well, that was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? How to describe Jessica Jones? She had never really been a happy person; to describe her that way, especially now, would seem contrived. “Purposeful.”

It wasn’t an orchestrated choice of words, at least not like that, but it worked.

Jessica purposefully closed the space between them on the couch, sat their bowls on the coffee table (under Trish’s stupid coasters, because it was her birthday), and lifted Trish, re-situating her on her lap.

“Hi,” Trish deadpanned, deliberately still, though Jess could feel her heartbeat. The asshole  wasn’t making this easy, but she wasn’t fooling anyone, either.“Hi,” said Jess, “I’m about to do something stupid. You in?”Trish considered her for a moment, making a show of it. Her and her goddamn eyebrows. Then she reached out and put her hands on Jessica’s shoulders.“Do it purposefully, Jessica,” she said, though she only got about halfway through before she was laughing, and then Jessica’s mouth complicated everything.

In a year you’ll be gone, but right now, you’re with her.

You spend most of her eighteenth birthday in the garden, picnicking and laughing. She wears one of her ridiculous hats and about a gallon of sunscreen, and you take a picture every hour so she never lives it down. You take a picture every hour so you never forget. When the sun goes down, you chase after fireflies and she watches from the porch. She rolls her eyes and reminds you you’re a senior now– time to grow up– but she can’t hide her grin when you catch one for her. There’s not much she can’t hide, so you figure she must be pretty happy.

You’re both pretty happy.

You sit next to her on the steps and you lock arms, rest your head on her shoulder. You wish you could stay like this forever, but you can’t, and you know it.

But right now, you’re with her.

“Thanks for this,” she says, and you tell her you’ll run after bugs any time. Juliet sighs and you laugh and take her hand, almost like an apology. She squeezes back and laces her fingers through yours, the same way you’ve done for over a decade. There’s never been space between you that you’ve created, not yet. She’s an extension of you, your own heart outside of your body. At least, that metaphor would hold if you had half her light.

That’s what you tell yourself.You don’t deserve her, not really, but she doesn’t seem to mind.She doesn’t even seem to notice.

So when you kiss her, you shouldn’t be surprised she doesn’t pull away. You shouldn’t be surprised that instead, she relaxes into it like you’ve always been there. You shouldn’t be surprised, after all this time, that she would kiss you back, but you are.

You shouldn’t be surprised, either, that you’re the one to break it: you’ve got seventeen years under your belt, and you’ve been a runaway for all of them.

“You got me,” Kate said. “Just want you all to myself. Gotta get creative without any cages.”“Yes,” Juliet agreed, amiable. “That would complicate things.”

And she smiled.Did she have to do that?

They gathered together sometimes, both of them needing to unwind, but they didn’t talk much. They liked each other more when it was quiet. Sometimes, though, when they were too tired to keep their guards up– and just comfortable enough to let them down–  it was like being with a friend.

Slowly, Kate gathered herself and sat.They’d almost made it back to the beach, but they hadn’t cleared the cemetery.

“How long was I out?”“Just a couple of minutes,” came the answer. “You do that a lot?”

Sometimes, when Juliet talked like that, she had to remind herself that she was a doctor, that looking after people was what she did.

It wasn’t that she cared.(Not that Kate cared.)

“No,” she told her. “Just haven’t been sleeping much.”Juliet nodded as if to say she understood.Kate figured she probably did.