It starts simple.
Trish spills hot coffee on herself one morning, soaking into her shirt and dripping down her chest. It doesn’t hurt as much as it should, considering how hot she drinks her coffee, and she makes a mental note to fix her Keurig when she can as she wipes herself down and changes her shirt.
Jessica tells her, later that day, that she thinks she might be allergic to her new client because her chest started burning when she met with him.
“I think I might just be allergic to assholes,” she says, and Trish rolls her eyes with a laugh.
She hurts sometimes, out of the blue and usually when she wakes up in the morning, gingerly rubbing non-existent bruises and dull pains. At first, she thinks it’s just weird sleeping positions, but after a week of no reprieve, she finds herself in a private doctor’s office.
He prescribes her some drugs, and she throws it away on her way out.
She gets a papercut while sifting through some more files her mother dropped over and on the other side of the room, Jessica hisses.
“Damn paper,” she mumbles to herself, and Trish looks down at the tiny cut on her index finger and wonders.
She wakes up one night with a pain in shoulder and finds it colored in light purples and blues the next morning. She puts ice on it and waits for the pain to subside enough to put on her shirt before heading into the station.
That night during drinks, Jessica tells her about the dick she’d caught trying to sneak into his ex’s apartment.
“He couldn’t even put up a decent fight,” she says, shaking her head disappointedly. “Tried punching my face and hit my shoulder instead. Barely even hurt.”
Trish nods, her own shoulder aching in sympathy, as the pieces of the puzzle come together.
She decides not to tell Jessica, because she wouldn’t know what to say. She can’t just buy a round and go, “Oh, by the way, when you get hurt I get hurt too, just so you know, anyway doesn’t this beer taste awful?”
So she remains silent, listening to Jess tell her about the idiots she’s been catching and the weirdos she’s been helping and hiding any injuries that may have appeared in the night. (Jess never tells her about the few people who genuinely need her help, who appeal to her sense of honor and justice, whom she doesn’t accept payment from if they can’t afford it – those only Malcolm tells her about. For all the heartless loner Jessica paints herself as, Trish knows she gives a damn more often than she’d like to admit.)
Jessica gets punched in the face and Trish finds the beginnings of a dark mark on her right eye. She does a decent job of covering it up but it’s still too conspicuous for no one to notice.
“What happened to you?” Jessica asks, brow furrowed in concern. The bruise doesn’t look nearly as bad on her.
“Bad zit,” Trish says, a little too quickly. She orders another round and asks after Malcolm, and the matter is dropped.
Trish wakes up the next week with a scrape across her cheek. She gets up and heads out of her room, only to come face-to-face with Jessica. She points to the cut on her own cheek and it’s obvious at this point that Trish has been found out.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she finally asks, on their way to Alias Investigations.
“I didn’t want to interfere with your work?” Trish says. It sounds feeble and weak, but it is the truth. Or, well, part of it.
Jessica rolls her eyes and the rest of the ride goes by in silence.
“So let me get this straight,” Malcolm says. “One of you gets hurt, and the other receives the same injury?”
“Basically, yeah,” Trish nods.
Malcolm runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “How did this even happen? Did you have some weird Freaky Friday thing happen?”
“I don’t think so?” Trish shrugs, looking over at Jessica. She’s standing against the wall, staring down at her hands and cracking each knuckle. Trish can feel the echo in her fingers.
Malcolm looks between the two of them and sighs. “All right, I’ll do some research see what I can dig up. In the meantime, I’d advise that neither of you get into any trouble.” He points his finger at Jessica, who rolls her eyes and leaves the room.
“We will,” Trish assures him, and goes to follow. She finds her grabbing a bottle out of the fridge, leaning against the counter and popping it open.
“You should’ve told me,” Jessica says after a moment.
“And what, have you feel guilty about doing your job?” Trish shakes her head. “You don’t need that.”
“I could’ve at least taken better care of myself,” she points out.
“You should take better care of yourself regardless,” Trish snaps back. She takes a calming breath and says, “We’ll just do what Malcolm says and avoid getting unnecessarily hurt doing whatever it is we’re doing, okay?”
Jessica sighs. “Fine,” she says.
“Good,” Trish says. And that’s that.
Things continue. In the middle of a broadcast, Trish feels a little woozy – tipsy, even – and shoots Jessica a text.
Stop drinking in the middle of the day
She doesn’t get a response until much later, after she accidentally stabs herself with a pushpin while organizing her desk.
Stop stabbing yourself with things
It was a pushpin
An accident
Either way, it hurt like a bitch
Watch yourself.
Trish chuckles and smiles a little.
Later that night, Trish feels the breath knocked out of her and a heavy pain in her gut. She waits a few moments to recover before grabbing her phone.
You okay?
The reply comes quickly, by Jessica’s standards.
Yeah, just a dick that caught me by surprise
Metaphorical or literal?
Not much of a difference with this guy, to be honest
Trish smiles, satisfied, and is about to put her phone away when it buzzes again.
Are you okay?
Yeah of course
Just be careful
Yeah, sure
You never let me do anything fun
You’ll thank me when you don’t end up with liver cancer
If you say so
Anyway, got to go
See you
They continue like this the next few days, whenever something happens to either of them. Jessica comes by one day while Trish is having serious period cramps, along with some comfort food and a stupid easy-to-watch movie they make fun of together. Trish does the same thing for her after a particularly brutal fight that bruised their ribs.
It makes it easier for Trish, knowing when Jessica is hurt so she can go and be by her side. She wonders how Jess feels about it in return.
“Soulmates,” Malcolm says.
“Soulmates,” Jessica repeats, a little incredulous.
“I know it sounds strange,” he says, “but look at yourself.”
“Fair enough,” she concedes, sitting back in her chair. “Any specific details?”
He nods, scrolling through his phone. “Basically, it’s a sort of bond formed by people who care for each other immensely. You share each other’s’ burdens, instead of having to face them alone.”
Romantic, Trish thinks, but doesn’t dare say it. “Is there a way to remove it?”
“I’m still looking into that,” Malcolm says. “But at least we know what caused it, right?”
“Yeah,” Jessica says, a little quieter than usual. She looks far away, deep in thought, and Trish is just about to ask her what’s wrong when the phone on the desk rings. Jessica moves to pick it up, and the moment is gone.
“Do you think all we can feel from each other is pain?” Trish asks, one night while they’re eating greasy takeout from a nearby Chinese place.
Jessica shrugs, swallowing down her lo mien. “Well, I haven’t had the sudden need to use the bathroom whenever you do, so…”
Trish rolls her eyes and tosses a fortune cookie at her. “I’m serious. Maybe we can read each other’s minds or something. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“So you can keep nagging at me whenever I go out and fight?” Jessica asks.
“I don’t nag,” Trish huffs. “I just… politely insist.” She rolls her eyes again when Jessica laughs and starts chowing down on a piece of orange chicken. A lock of hair gets loose from her bun and she’s about to move it when Jess leans forward and tucks it behind her ear.
It’s a quick gesture, short and sweet, and her finger barely brushes against the nape of Trish’s neck when she moves her hand back but it was almost electric in a way, overly sensitized in a way that made you crave for more, and it took Trish’s breath away.
They stare at each other for a good moment when Trish clears her throat.
“I, uh, have a broadcast tomorrow,” she says. It’s a lame excuse and Jessica knows it, but she nods anyway and lets Trish leave without finishing her food.
Her neck is still tingling when she gets back home, as well as her index finger, and she tries not to think about it as she climbs into bed and tries to sleep.
They don’t talk about it the next time they see each other, though it lingers in the air between them for a while, until it dissipates almost completely and they’re back to normal.
Trish tries not to think about how she wishes the feeling wasn’t gone.
It’s the middle of the night and there’s been hardly any word from Jessica, save a text earlier about how she’s working on a case for Hogarth. Trish is just about to give up on waiting up for her when, all of a sudden, her head is aching and her chest hurts and she feels like she’s being beaten to a pulp and oh fuck does it hurt it hurts everywhere and she can hardly breathe –
But all she can think about is what’s happening to Jessica, and if she’s okay.
The beating stops and her muscles start feeling strained, and Trish can finally breathe a little better as she figures that this must mean Jess has finally beat whoever she was fighting against.
She climbs up from the floor with deep breaths and sits down on the couch, watching the window and counting the minutes. She barely gets to five when Jessica knocks on the glass.
Trish gets up and moves to open it, ignoring the pains in her body as they make their way back and sit down. She licks her lips and the two of them are quiet for a long while.
“Are you –“ Trish starts, at the same time Jess says, “Trish, I’m – “
Trish shakes her head. “Don’t say you’re sorry, it’s not your fault.”
“How is it not?” Jessica asks. “I should’ve been more careful – you could’ve gotten hurt because of me.”
“I’m not the one who was getting beat up,” Trish retorts.
“But it sure as hell felt like it, didn’t it?” Jess takes a deep breath, shaking her head. “Why can’t you just – not care about me? Then we would’ve avoided this whole problem.”
“I can’t not care about you,” Trish says. “Why do you care so much about me getting hurt by this? I’m a big girl now, I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t want to be the reason you’re hurt,” Jessica says after a moment.
Trish can’t think of how to respond to that, so she doesn’t. Instead, she takes a deep breath and says, quietly, “You’d never hurt me. Not on purpose.”
They look at each other and something passes through Trish, like an electric current, some sort of understanding, and the next thing she knows is Jessica’s mouth on hers and her hands carding through her hair while she starts pulling off her shirt and there are kisses, touches, and it doesn’t matter who is doing what because they’re doing it together.
Jessica digs part of her nails into Trish’s back as she starts trailing her kisses lower and lower, and Trish doesn’t feel a thing.
“So how did you get rid of it?” Malcolm asks a couple of days later.
“Sex,” Jessica says, not looking up from her computer.
Malcom looks between the two of them and nods, a hint of a smile on his face. “I think I get it. You two finally got your shit together, right?”
Trish lets out a light laugh and nods. "Yeah, basically."