"Have you ever kissed anyone before, Jess?"
Jessica had only been half-listening to Trish talking; there was only so much she could take in about camera angles and makeup and the inane lines of Trish's next It's Patsy episode that she was fretting over how to give intonation to without her mind completely liquefying. But it hurt Trish's feelings when she told her to shut up, and besides, as long as she didn't have to actually listen or do much more than mumble a semi response every now and then, Jessica didn't mind her company or her incessant talking. It was pretty obvious to her that Trish needed the outlet; for a teenage celebrity surrounded by people most of the night, Trish had very few that she could actually trust to keep to themselves what she had to say. Since Jessica had had limited friendship before her family's deaths and had managed to shove away the few she did have after, and she hated speaking to her Trish's mother, Dorothy, if not absolutely necessary, there was no risk of her giving away any of Trish's confidences.
Not that she would have, even if she did have friends she could have talked to. Somehow, without Jessica quite knowing how the other girl had managed it, Patricia Walker had gone from a spoiled, irritating rich girl that Jessica was forced to live with against her will to the only person on the planet she could stand to be around. Actually, Trish was the only person on the planet that Jessica cared about anymore.
It had happened shortly after Jessica saved Trish from Dorothy for the first time. Trish hadn't wanted her to stop Dorothy from hurting her, even as her body shook with fearful adrenaline and her cheeks stained with mascara-darkened tears on the bathroom floor. She had made Jessica promise not to save her, to keep her knowledge of Dorothy's abuse to herself. And to this day, Jessica had kept the secret, but she couldn't stand back and listen to a girl her own age being hurt by her mother. Even someone as annoying as Trish deserved more than that. Even someone who felt as numb and empty inside as Jessica did sometimes couldn't let herself tune out Trish's suffering.
It was so damn unfair that a woman like Dorothy Walker, a lying, manipulative snake of a woman who called her daughter names, used her for the money she could make, and beat her into submission when she tried to fight back, was still alive and well in this world, when Jessica's own mother was not. Alisa Jones had done her share of yelling but never raised a hand against Jessica or her brother, no matter how much they might have provoked her. It wasn't fair, and Jessica couldn't let it continue.
And so she hadn't. Any time she heard Dorothy start in on Trish, whether it was calling her names, raising her voice, or in any way starting to escalate towards physical coercion, Jessica would interrupt immediately, forcing her way into the room and close to Trish's side. It seldom took more than her presence and her narrow-eyed glare in Dorothy's direction for her to back down; even months later, the woman had not forgotten being on the receiving end of just a small portion of Jessica's strength. And although Trish had continued to protest Jessica's interference for the first few weeks, she eventually stopped arguing and let her face relax, her shoulders loosening up with relief that she would not be subjected to anything more.
It was shortly when the protests stopped that Trish started hovering outside Jessica's bedroom at night, after she had finally come home from her day's shooting schedule. It was usually late, but Jessica was never asleep. She didn't sleep much anymore without nightmares plaguing her unconsciousness, so she tended to keep herself alert for as long as she could manage before giving in to exhaustion. Trish had long ago observed and commented on this, but still, she always whispered the same tentative words from the doorway.
"Hey, Jess. Are you still awake?" And then, when Jessica grunted something approximating an affirmation, "Can I come in?"
She never told her no, even if she sometimes never exactly verbalized a yes. And within a few days it became a nightly routine for Trish to sit or lie back with Jessica on her bed, talking to her about anything and everything that was on her mind. She never pushed Jessica to open up in kind, although she did often direct questions her way; if Jessica didn't answer, she would move on, assuming the subject to be closed on Jessica's end. Her blanket of words around them and the closeness of her presence somehow made it easier for Jessica to fall into more peaceful sleep when Trish finally padded back to her own bedroom. And on the nights Trish fell asleep beside her, Jessica slept best of all. Not that she would ever tell her that.
This was an evening like any other, blandly soothing in its familiarity. Jessica had even allowed her eyes to half close, drifting off to the rise and fall of Trish's voice, until the words aimed at her suddenly jerked her wide awake.
Kissing? Why the hell was Trish asking her about kissing?
She pushed herself up abruptly onto her elbows, shaking back dark strands of hair from her face and scowling towards the other girl as she responded with far more energy than Trish could normally expect from their usually one-sided nightly conversations.
"Kissed anyone? You're seriously asking me that? WHY?"
Trish, her face scrubbed clean of makeup, blonde hair braided loosely down her back, blinked at Jessica's response, her blue eyes wide and earnest as she answered.
"Because I'm curious. We're fifteen, that's something most people our age talk about with their friends. Who they like, what kind of things they've done so far with people, you know. We haven't really talked about that stuff before."
"Yeah, because it's stupid," Jessica shot back, rolling her eyes, but her heart was starting to beat just a little bit too quickly for her to be comfortable with its pace. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them in an unconscious effort to hide its rapid beats.
"It's not stupid, Jess, it's normal," Trish argued, a bit of stubbornness coming into her tone and the set of her jaw. "You don't have to be embarrassed about it, everyone starts to experiment with dating and kissing and stuff at some point. Plenty of people our age are having sex."
"And I'm not one of them, that's disgusting," Jessica snapped, hugging her knees even more firmly against herself. "And if you think I want to hear about you having sex, think again. It isn't even legal."
"You don't have to be embarrassed if you've kissed people, you know, I won't think you're a slut or anything. You're going to be sixteen next year," Trish pressed, nudging at Jessica's shoulder with hers. "It's okay if you haven't yet either. I won't tell anyone."
"Why are you so hung up on knowing this?" Jessica demanded, nudging her back, slightly harder, but holding back her strength to make sure that she wouldn't accidentally hurt Trish. "What does it matter if I've kissed anyone or not, what's it to you?"
Trish's eyes cast to the side, and she bit her lower lip, her fingers pressing hard against the balls of her knees until Jessica saw their tips grow white. She swallowed, then with a determined breath out, lifted her chin, looking Jessica in the eye as she responded.
"Because I haven't ever kissed anyone before, that's why."
When Jessica sputtered disbelieving contradictions to this, eyebrows raising to her forehead, Trish flushed, holding up her hands as though to ward her off.
"I know, I know I've kissed people on It's Patsy episodes! But that's…that doesn't count, Jess. That isn't real. That's because I have to, and the guy has to. It's Patsy doing it, not me, and it's Patsy being kissed. I haven't ever kissed anybody as Trish before."
Jessica considered this, admitting to herself that this made sense. It would be very different to kiss someone because it was required, as a job, than kissing someone because it was something both people wanted to do. Still, she couldn't quite believe what Trish was telling her.
"You've never kissed anyone other than on set? Ever? But there's got to be like, a million guys that would slobber all over themselves to kiss you, Trish."
"Exactly," Trish said with surprising emphasis, nodding. Her shoulder pressed into Jessica's again, staying in contact this time, and Jessica let her, resisting her initial urge to flinch away. "But that isn't because of Trish. It's because of Patsy. It's still Patsy. I can't know if they really want to kiss me, because of who I am, who Trish is, or if they just want to kiss Patsy."
Jessica hadn't considered that before. Not that she often thought about Trish kissing people, because the thought made her feel strangely restless and angry and very uneasy, but she could see why Trish would feel that way. Dorothy and her insistence on fame really had worked to make Trish's life far more screwed up than any teenager's should be.
She shifted uncomfortably, picking at an invisible piece of lint on the bed's spread. She hadn't intended to actually answer Trish's question, mostly because it made her feel uncomfortable, more than a little embarrassed, and vaguely irritated to say out loud that she herself had never been kissed before. Ever. Under any circumstances, even in a game or under the guise of acting.
But Trish was becoming her friend. Hell, she was the only person left in the world that Jessica could still bring herself to care about. And Jessica hated leaving Trish feeling bad about herself even more than she hated talking about anything this personal.
"Well, relax," Jessica muttered, her voice rough-sounding even to her own ears as she studiedly avoided meeting Trish's all too earnest gaze. "You're not some kind of lone ranger in the unkissed or something just because some guy never drooled on you if that's what you're worried about, okay?" She took a breath and said even more quietly, "No."
Trish blinked, tilting her head in a gesture that Jessica totally didn't think was adorable. At least, if anyone ever asked her thoughts on it, she would never in any way acknowledge them.
"No? No, what?"
"Follow along your own line of questioning, god, you would suck as a journalist or interrogator," Jessica snapped. Seeing Trish's blue eyes register hurt, she breathed again through her nose, forcing her voice to even out as she continued more gently. "No, I haven't kissed anyone. That's what you were wanting to know, and that's the answer, okay?"
"Oh…oh!" Trish realized, her voice taking on a tone that was too bright for Jessica's liking.
It wasn't because it sounded fake- it didn't. Jessica was well used to hearing Trish's "fake cheerful" voice nearly every day, when she had to speak to almost anyone outside of Jessica or Dorothy. Jessica didn't like how happy she sounded at her response, because it seemed like she was going to try to make this topic of conversation continue.
She wasn't wrong.
"That's okay, though, Jess!" Trish reassured her in the same bright tone, reassurance that Jessica had not been seeking or wanting. "I'm kind of glad, actually. That you haven't either. I mean- you're right, it's kind of nice to know that I'm not some kind of freak. That I'm not the only one."
"Well, if your judging criteria of whether or not you're a freak is me, then you might want to revisit those assumptions," Jessica deadpanned. "You and the rest of the school literally call me a freak every day. And you're not exactly wrong."
"I do not!" Trish exclaimed, horrified. When Jessica just raised her eyebrows at her, nonplussed, Trish flushed, biting her lower lip, and looked down, shamed.
"I don't anymore, anyway. And I don't let other people say that either. I just, I didn't know you then. You're not a freak, Jess. You're…"
"Gifted, heroic, supergirl, whatever," Jessica exhaled, her tone deliberately as bored and flat as she could make it. She rolled her eyes, but a part of her sort of liked Trish's denial of what she herself had long ago accepted as true in regards to her status of freakiness. "Otherwise known as freaky. The super strength just added on to what was already there before anyway."
She shrugged, stretching out her legs. "I don't care, Trish. About any of it. Freakiness, kissing. I don't think about that shit."
Until now, that is. For some reason, now that Trish had put the thought in her head, it was hard for Jessica to think about anything else.
Stupid. What was the point of thinking about kissing, or not kissing, when it wasn't like it was about to happen any time soon? And why did she suddenly want so badly to examine Trish's lips, to wonder if the other girl was any good at it, or if she herself would be good at it? Why was she wondering if Trish's lips were shaped significantly differently than her own, or if the shape and size of lips mattered when it came to how it would feel to kiss someone?
Jessica licked her own lips before she could stop herself, noting that her bottom lip felt a lot fuller than her top. She resisted the urge to look up at Trish's in comparison, but in the end couldn't stop herself from glancing up, just for a second. Trish's lips were smaller than hers. Did that matter?
She was preoccupied with these thoughts, so when Trish sighed heavily, she almost jumped, startled.
"What?"
"It's…it's just hard," Trish fretted, her voice smaller, hesitant. It was she who kept her gaze down now, avoiding Jessica's direct attention on her. "I just…sometimes I think no one is ever really going to like me. Like…that they won't like me for being Trish, or that I won't know if they really do, or if it's just because I'm Patsy too. How can I ever know the truth? What if just Trish isn't enough? What if no one would like me if I wasn't Patsy?"
Her voice had grown slightly shaky by the last few words, and Jessica felt her shiver slightly, as though to hold back a stronger emotion, possibly tears. Jessica spoke up quickly and with honesty, letting her shoulder press into Trish's deliberately.
"Hey, I like Trish. And you know how much I hate Patsy."
Trish laughed a little unsteadily. When Jessica watched her, she saw her blink back tears, swallowing.
"Yeah. I guess I can always count on a freak like you to be the odd one out."
Jessica knew the words were meant affectionately now and took no offense; in fact, she smiled back, just a little. When Trish sighed again, then leaned fully into Jessica's side and rested her head on Jessica's shoulder, Jessica let her stay. She even slid a hesitant arm around Trish's waist to anchor her more comfortably into her. For several minutes the girls rested against each other in comfortable silence before Trish spoke again.
"You know…we could try something out together. If you wanted."
Jessica responded automatically, anticipating her line of thought from previous schemes Trish had come up with and been caught out in.
"You know Dorothy locks up the medicine cabinet and the liquor cabinet now."
Trish snorted, a surprisingly inelegant sound for her. Jessica was surprised to discover she kind of liked it.
"No, silly," Trish giggled, giving Jessica's side a light, playful pinch. "Something else. Not like that."
Jessica turned her head enough to look at Trish from profile, trying to read her expression. Her voice was hesitant and too purposely casual in its tone; Jessica was already suspicious.
"Something else like what, then?"
Trish bit her lip briefly, and Jessica's eyes were drawn towards it again before she dropped them down to Trish's chin.
"I mean, it's a little crazy," Trish hedged. "It's not, like, bad, or illegal, or anything. But it's a little crazy. You probably won't want to, or you'll think it's too weird-"
"Trish, just say it already," Jessica interrupted, exasperated. She pulled away from the other girl enough to lift herself up on her elbows, turned towards her. "What?"
Trish swallowed, her lips pressing together nervously, and she met Jessica's eyes only for a moment when she responded, sounding as though she were asking Jessica more than answering her.
"We could kiss each other?"
When Jessica just stared at her, not convinced she had heard her correctly, Trish seemed to take this as a need for further clarification. She hurried to do so, the words tumbling over each other faster in her rush to make Jessica understand her thoughts.
"Like, I was thinking we could just kiss each other, maybe, almost like a dare? People do that, like spin the bottle or seven minutes in heaven, and it's no big deal, it's just we haven't been to those kinds of parties or played those kind of games because I'm always working and you don't have any friends-"
"By choice, not by misfortune. Having friends hasn't seemed to do you any favors," Jessica muttered, but Trish didn't seem to hear.
"So we just haven't gotten this thing out of the way with, but most people have, and it isn't a big deal. People just kiss boys they don't' even care about and it's over and done with, no stress. Or um, people practice for that with their friends, and then they know what it's like, since lips are just lips anyway, it isn't like girl lips and boy lips are that much different. So I thought, maybe we could do that, we could just kiss each other, like friends, or a dare? Then we could both say we've kissed someone before, and it will be okay, because I won't have to worry that it was about Patsy, and you don't have to worry about your first kiss talking bad about you later, or breaking your heart-"
Jessica didn't think she could take much more of this explanation that was becoming far too many words to process into sensible thought. She reached out on impulse, covering Trish's mouth with her palm, and quickly regretted this when her cold hand registered how warm and soft Trish's lips felt against her skin. Trish had been saying something about how kissing Jessica would make sure that she didn't end up with a broken heart, but Jessica wasn't so sure of that, given how hard her heart started to pound in response just to feeling the warmth of Trish's mouth against her hand and being close enough to wonder if Trish's own heart had begun to imitate the rhythm of its beats.
She forced back all thoughts and sensations clamoring to surface within herself and focused on Trish's wide blue eyes, on how her torrent of words had immediately come to a halt from behind Jessica's hand. When Jessica slowly removed her hand, Trish took a ragged breath in, her eyes dropping down. Jessica's followed to see that she was worrying the cuticle of one already tearing nail.
Dorothy would kill her for already ruining a doubtlessly expensive manicure. But then again, Dorothy would kill them both if she ever discovered the contents of this conversation.
"Sorry," Trish nearly whispered, the words small, almost crushed. Jessica looked up at her sharply to see that her shoulders had slumped, rounding inward, and she seemed suddenly far younger than usual, enough that Jessica saw a glimpse of the Trish that must have existed long before Patsy was born. "I'm sorry….you're right, it's weird. It's okay that you don't want to. I was just having a crazy thought. We can forget it."
It had taken this long for Jessica to fully digest what Trish had been suggesting, to accept that it had been a serious offer rather than a joke or some sort of teasing banter. The hand over her mouth had not been to shut her up and shut her down, but rather to give her time to catch up. She certainly hadn't meant to hurt Trish or strike that wounded look into her eyes. She would have wanted to kill anyone who had done the same.
"Wait," Jessica blurted, still feeling as though she were slogging behind, catching up to where Trish's train of thought had long ago chugged ahead and then, thanks to Jessica, derailed from its intended destination. "Wait…I didn't say that. Um, about forgetting it."
When Trish furrowed her brow, confused, Jessica took a slow breath, trying to put words out that made some sort of sense with what she was thinking.
"I mean…it's, it is kind of weird. But maybe not that weird?" she said somewhat gruffly. She swallowed, then in a slightly jerky gesture, reached out to rest an awkward hand on Trish's shoulder. "I don't know, maybe…maybe we could do it. Just once. Like you said, uh, like no big deal. Get it over with."
Seeing Trish's eyes lose the faint sheen of tears that had been glistening over their surface and immediately brighten in hope and renewed energy, her shoulders drawing back straight, gave Jessica's nerves a small boost of resolve. She cleared her throat, shrugging, and let her hand stay on Trish's arm.
"Yeah, whatever. Let's do it."
"You're sure?" Trish asked, trying and failing to sound nonchalant as she shifted, sitting up and across from Jessica, face to face. "We don't have to if you don't want to."
"No, it's cool," Jessica said quickly, her palm sweating already against the material of Trish's shirt. She loosened her grip with some effort, not wanting to accidentally hurt the girl with an unconsciously strong squeeze. "Um- we're not going to tell anyone later, right?"
"No, no, of course not," Trish hurried to reassure her, shaking her head quickly enough that some of its ends lightly hit Jessica's cheek.
Jessica dropped her eyes, looked back up to Trish, and then dropped them again when the girl's lips seemed to loom impossibly large to her gaze.
"Uh…okay then. I guess…let's do it."
She waited, expecting Trish to swoop in, lips first. After all, she was the one that had at least some prior experience, even if it was as Patsy. But Trish seemed to be waiting for her to make the first move, or else was already paralyzed with anxiety or second thoughts. Jessica shifted, uncomfortable.
"Uh…how do we start-"
But Trish chose the few moments she began speaking to lean forward, her small hand lightly cupping Jessica's cheek, thumb exerting just enough pressure against Jessica's jaw to tilt her head up. Jessica's words were swallowed up by Trish's open mouth against her own, so unexpectedly that at first, Jessica didn't even close her eyes.
There had been other times when Trish's physical presence had seemed to overtake Jessica's own, when her body seemed to override Jessica's usual aversion to anyone close by allowing Trish to almost merge as part of her. When they lay close together on each other's beds or on one of the Walker house's couches, Trish's legs stretched out over hers, her head on her shoulder and her hand slipped into Jessica's own, it seemed that the scent of Trish's hair, the rhythm of her breathing, and the warmth of her soft skin lulled Jessica into accepting what she would normally go to great lengths to push away.
Kissing Trish was another level over any other physical contact she had accepted and become used to. Kissing Trish did more than to make Trish seem part of Jessica; it overpowered Jessica's own sense of self to the core, making her feel that Jessica Jones no longer existed. As overwhelming as that was, it was also not at all unpleasant.
Kissing Trish was more than just a touching of skin or a coordination of movements of mouth, lips, and tongue. Kissing Trish was more than a gesture of curiosity, defiance, or even affection. Kissing Trish felt like stumbling into a new world, one where there was no gravity, no brakes, and nothing to keep Jessica from falling out into openness, and yet there was nothing more Jessica wanted than to keep spinning out into the same exhilarated spiral.
Kissing Trish felt like every theme park ride Jessica had ever experienced all rolled into one, exploding through her body in a dizzying array of vertigo, adrenaline, nausea, and joy that somehow managed to coexist. And when Trish drew back, her hand still cupping Jessica's face, Jessica had to struggle to draw air into her lungs, to orient herself back into an existence where her lips belonged to her alone.
"Jess? Are you okay?"
Trish's voice was slightly breathless, but she didn't seem to be struggling to simply maintain basic bodily functioning in anywhere near the manner that Jessica was. Even before Jessica forced her eyes to meet the other girl's gaze, she knew that Trish was calmer- to Jessica's mind, not nearly as impacted by what had just happened as she herself was. Not physically, not emotionally….and that was alarming to Jessica.
It was obvious, in her own observation, that Trish truly did see their kiss as nothing more than practice for the future "real thing" with someone else, someone Trish wanted to kiss far more than she seemed to have wanted to kiss Jessica. She seemed to see what had happened as a simple physical action that meant little more than just another life experience.
Whatever Jessica was feeling now- and she didn't want to spend even another second analyzing it, or even actually experiencing it- Trish clearly didn't feel the same way. And there was no way in hell she wanted to fuck things up for herself even further by letting Trish see that for herself.
She had to say something, fast. The longer she was quiet, the longer it gave Trish to look at her and start guessing what chaos was running rampant through her mind. She had to fix this, she had to act normal. She had to make this normal again.
Jessica didn't look up at Trish closely enough to see the flush down her neck and mottled over her chest, how she had to take slow, deliberate breaths to calm down her galloping heart. She didn't notice the brightness of her eyes and how it flickered and then dimmed when Jessica answered her question with more irritability than she knew Trish deserved.
"Yeah, of course. It's just kissing, it's not a big deal just because you're a child star, you know."
Even Jessica wanted to cringe at the sarcasm she put behind the words "child star," and she wished she could take it back as soon as the words were out in the air between them. What the hell was wrong with her, was that really the best she could come up with?
She could see Trish flinch, hurt, even as she avoided eye contact. When the blonde drew back, silent, Jessica breathed out, hard and still exasperated sounding, and reached for her shoulder with an awkward but gentle hand.
"Sorry, I think I'm PMSing. Probably why we even went through with this, you know? Hormonal shit."
Trish gave her a small, hesitant smile, but she wasn't a good enough actress to fool Jessica even in the best of times.
"Yeah…maybe."
"Anyway, that's done," Jessica tried to smooth over, her voice still a little rougher than she wanted it to be. She cleared her throat, shrugging. "Both of us have kissed."
"Right," Trish nodded, but she seemed subdued, in spite of her continued smile. "That was, um, that was the idea…so, right, all done."
Fuck, could this be more awkward?
Part of Jessica wished she could erase the last ten minutes and just never let Trish talk her into this craziness in the first place. An even larger part of her knew that she couldn't regret the best feeling she had ever experienced, no matter how strangely she felt about it now.
"Let's watch TV or something," she said abruptly, throwing herself back against the bed again and fumbling for the remote on the nightstand. "There has to be some bloody horror thing on that will make me laugh and you squeal this time of the night."
For a horrible few moments she thought Trish was going to actually force her to talk about what had happened, whether Jessica wanted to or not. But then the girl let out a small huff, lying back beside her on the bed and half-heartedly attempting to pull the remote from her hand.
"You got to pick the movie last time, Jess, that isn't fair."
"My bed, my TV, my pick," Jessica shot back, just to be talking more than because she actually cared. "Oh, this one's good, the one with the killer clown!"
"Jessica, no! I hate clowns, we cannot watch that!"
As Jessica and Trish settled back gratefully into their usual, far more comfortable banter, Jessica's heartbeat slowly steadied into something approaching normal in tempo. But she noticed that the conversation still felt just a little off, as though they were not quite talking to each other so much as towards each other. And although she and Trish were lying close to each other, neither one initiated another even casual touch.