Work Text:
"Have you filed your taxes yet?" Malcolm is in the kitchen doorway, his arms crossed.
Jessica squints at him and he comes closer, nudges her desk with his hip. He has a pen stuck behind one ear and a pencil behind the other.
"What?" She does a mental calculation, comes up woefully short. "Um. For which year?" She hates how her voice rises when she's embarrassed, a nervous tick that only Jack Daniels can erase.
He sighs, and she waits for him to say, "You're a mess, Jessica!" or "You're awful, horrible, terrible, why can't you just be normal like everyone else?" or maybe "How could you, you're special and owe it to society to be a role model!" Instead, he just sighs, hands her a stack of neatly filled out forms, and tells her to sign here, here, and here.
*
Another case, another boss suspecting someone stealing from the till, another morning waking up hunched over her desk with her hair tangled in the mouse cord, empty cans of soda at her feet. The door creaks as Malcolm shoulders it open. Jessica shoots up, yanking hair out of her head and a slew of papers off of her desk.
"I totally didn't fall asleep at my desk." She ducks down, starts scooping up the mess. A page falls out of her fingers, slides to her lap. The words flash and something in her mind just clicks and she's got it, shouting, "Shit, it's the goddamn secretary, I can't fucking believe this, she's the one who stole the money, I'm the dumbest bitch on the planet!"
She's up, grabbing for her coat and keys and phone as she considers the merits of taking the train or the bus downtown to give her client the good news.
"Coffee?" Malcolm offers, the paper cup steaming, the brown liquid already beige with just the right amount of milk. She drinks it down as she hits the street, the cool morning air on her face.
*
That night she celebrates by getting abso-fucking-lutely wasted. It's not hard to find a bartender that doesn't know who she is in the big sprawling city, and is willing to be a little generous with the ratio of scotch to soda.
She gets home, pukes all over the bathroom floor and is still drunk enough not to care. She sleeps on the couch, face pushed into the crease the cushions make.
Malcolm is already at her desk answering calls and doing discoveries when she wakes up. The bathroom floor is spotless. She doesn't ask questions.
*
"You don't want to come with me, it's going to suck." Jessica shoulders the camera bag, checks her pockets for cigaretteslighterphonekeyswallet. "We probably won't get anything, it's a waiting game. I hate it."
Malcolm hands her a pack of gum and a bottle of water. She makes a face, but sticks them in the voluminous pockets of her trench coat. "Why do you do it if you hate it so much?" he asks.
She scoffs, yanks the door open. "What else can I do? I don't have a degree, I hate people, and I used to be a fucking superhero. It's not like I have references. Plus, this job lets me prove that people are lying sacks of shit."
"Not all people."
"You know what I mean."
"No, I really don't."
She sighs. "Fine. Are you coming or not?"
He shoots down the stairs ahead of her.
She turns back to close the door, twisting the key in the lock. "You're one of the most annoying people I know. And I used to be an Avenger!" Her voice rings through the hall and down the stairs. "Those guys are super annoying, hardy har har! And fucking Spider-Man, Jesus Christ, I know Spider-Man! I wish I didn't! He's the worst!"
*
"I feel like shit."
"Did you eat dinner?"
"What are you, my mother?"
"Well. I didn't eat dinner, either. Told my ma I'd get something with you."
A beat.
"Well, fuck this noise, let's go eat."
*
"So, what's your story?" Jessica asks Malcolm as he slaughters the cheeseburger the waitress put before him 15 seconds ago.
He startles, reaches for his glass of water before chomping through the huge bite he just took. Jessica knows he's stalling, but that's good, gives her time to read his reactions, catalog his ticks and tells.
"Why don't you just investigate me?"
"I'd rather you tell me."
"Jessica."
"Don't worry. I asked the other Jessica to look into you, make sure you weren't psycho or whatever. I'm not that dumb."
"I don't think you're dumb at all. Why do you think you're dumb?"
"Don't be a smart ass. You're changing the subject."
"So are you."
They stare at each other, ketchup dripping off their plates and onto the cheap linoleum tabletop.
Jessica blinks. "Fine. You first."
"We moved around a lot when I was a kid. One day my father didn't move with us. A few years later I found out that he killed himself when he jumped from the top of a three-storey building. Apparently he thought he could fly."
"That's—"
"—awful, yeah, I know."
"I was going to say insane." She drains her coffee mug. "So is this—" She draws a line in the air between the two of them as the mug clunks against the table.
"It's has nothing to do with my father. He was a drug addict and an alcoholic and an asshole."
"Is that supposed to be my intro?"
"Why do you assume the worst of people?" He chews through a fistful of French fries. "And yourself?"
"It's easier that way."
"Easier for who?"
"I'm not having this conversation with a teenager."
"That's cool." She thinks, for a second, that he might drop it, but he keeps speaking. "Just sayin', if you wake up every morning thinking that you're an asshole and that you're going to be an asshole forever, well, you're going to find a way to make that happen, y'know?"
"Did you learn that from Dr. Phil?"
"It's pseudological fantastica in reverse, you know, like that guy--"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not talking about him...or that case*. Ever." She pushes her plate away, hands high on her stomach. "Christ, I just ate and I already have fucking heartburn."
He swiftly dumps the rest of her fries on his plate. "Carol dropped off a package for you while you were gone earlier."
"Great, that's fucking great. Are you just laying it all on me at once? Did you invite my mother over for Sunday dinner while you're at it?"
"It's your old uniform."
"You opened it?!" Her voice cracks and the spoon she was playing with bends. She tucks it underneath some napkins swiftly.
Malcolm pretends not to see her furtive movements, instead signaling for the check. "And if I didn't?"
"It could have lived a quiet life unopened at the bottom of the hall closet."
"Exactly." A pause. "You're welcome."
*
Ten minutes after they get back to the car, their target walks out of the apartment building with a heavily made-up woman on each arm.
"Jackpot." Jessica snaps the pictures and grudgingly accepts Malcolm's high five and easily steals half of the oversized chocolate-chip cookie he charmed off the waitress.
*
The next morning is a Saturday. Malcolm calls her from his mother's cell phone.
"You want something at Starbucks? My ma's buying. She feels bad about you buying me dinner last night."
"Tell her it's not a big deal. And, yeah, I'll have a triple espresso with a shot of vanilla."
They get her a decaf mocha latte. She drinks half of it greedily before she realizes "This isn't goddamn espresso! That's what happens when you call some kids who make coffee by some fancy name!" She quietly savors the other half as she decimates the scone Malcolm's mother insisted she have along with a Tupperware filled with lasagna. It's barely lunchtime when she heats that puppy up. The microwave dings and she realizes she didn't say "thank you" and feels like a heel for 10 seconds until she remembers how hungry she is and how that stack of paperwork wasn't going to take care of itself. She sends Malcolm an email, even though he's sitting five feet away from her researching their latest client with her clunky old laptop propped up on the coffee table, asks him to thank his mom for her. He responds with a string of letters that she has to Google before she realizes that he made it up just to see her stumble onto a truly awful porn site. He doesn't duck when she throws a pencil at him, just grins.
*
She comes back from Luke's house** feeling lighter than she has in years. Her feet float off the stairs, and she has to grip the banister so she doesn't fly down the hallway. Her cheeks hurt from smiling, the muscles weak. She's going to be a mother.
The office is quiet; Malcolm isn't due in until school lets out. She makes a list of all the things she has to do, the foods she should be eating, the vitamins she's probably lacking, pushes down thoughts of all the poisons she's loaded her body with over the years, focuses on the here, now, today.
("Do you think I'll be a good mother?" She feels weird asking, but she wants to know what he thinks, she has to know.
Luke scoffs. "Hell, girl, I think you'll be a great mother. The best one there is.")
Just before three o'clock, the key turns in the lock and the door opens. Malcolm's sifting through the mail that Jessica forgot downstairs in her happy daze.
"Oh, sorry, thought you'd be out. Mail was still downstairs."
"Yeah, sorry, my fault. Um." She pauses, not sure how to say it, if she's supposed to tell anyone but Luke, not sure if she should, do normal people do that? Tell people when they're—
She looks down at her list. "Hey, I need you to go to the grocery store for me, would you do that?" She holds the list out.
"Yeah, sure, can I get some Doritos? My mother won't buy them for me. Says their unhealthy and stuff." He takes the list from her, skims it quick, says nothing, just puts his palm out for some cash. She hands over a c-note, her insides numb, her heart crushed. Just another person letting her down—
"—so, Malcolm's a good name, you know. Manly and shit." His back is turned, his hand on the doorknob.
"Manly and stuff," Jessica says automatically. She's pretty sure her heart might beat its way out of her chest.
Malcolm looks over his shoulder, his face gleeful. "And now you're officially on your way to being some kid's pain in the ass. Congratulations." He heads out the door.
"Yeah—hey, hold up." She waits until he turns around, looks her in the eye. She's not good at this, talking and sharing and a being a "normal" fucking human being— y'know?— but she knows she's going to get better at it, has to, for this kid, for Luke, for herself.
Fuck it, she thinks. "So, uh, thank you," she says, and for the first time in a long time, feels pretty good about herself.
FIN