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.