☔: jessica’s reaction to opening their front door and seeing lori drenched in rain:
The knock is so small she can barely hear it over the goddamn thunderstorm outside. It’s a damn good thing she never sleeps.
She walks towards her door slowly, reminding herself that the days of Kilgrave sending her clients are long over. Still, she pauses when she reaches the warped wood, listening through the cardboard she has instead of a window. He’s dead. You killed him, Jones, get a goddamn grip,
Breathing heavy, she opens the door – and her stomach drops.
“Chatty girl,” she says, running her eyes up and down Lori. She’s drenched, and not the kind that’d come from walking from a cab to her building. The kind of soaked that takes hours to seep into your skin, her hair hanging in dripping strings around her face. But it’s nothing compared to the look in her eye.
Lost. She’d known it the first time they’d met, when Lori started rambling about meds and needing them, but not wanting them. Had known it when she passed the girl on the street, saw her sitting alone, as if she had nowhere to go. And she knew it now. Only somebody lost would show up on her doorstep.
Lori held her gaze for a moment, then her eyes fell to the floor. “Sorry, I can go –”
“Christ, get in here,” Jessica said, pulling her inside. She jammed the door into place, steered Lori to her couch. “Sit,” she said, like someone would say to a dog. Like Kilgrave would say to a person. She brushed the thought away, snatched the bottle off her desk while she headed for the bathroom.
She returned with a ratty towel, tossed it to the dark-haired girl who had listened to her, and was sitting shivering on her couch. “I got your couch w-wet,” she stammered, teeth chattering.
Jessica shook her head. “Trust me, it’s seen worse,” she said. Thunder clapped outside, sent a sliver of panic through both of them, though Lori flinched more than Jessica.
She hesitated, then moved to sit beside the girl, elbows resting on her knees. “You want a drink or something? You seem pretty goddamn riled up,” she said. Lori shook her head, just absentmindedly patted her hair down.
“You gonna talk about it?” Jessica asked. She didn’t say want.
“My dad --” Lori started, then bit her lip. “He just -- we had a fight about -- I don’t know. Everything. Me, and this Act thing, and just -- just everything.” Her eyes flicked to Jessica’s, so dark and swimming with unshed tears that could easily be mistaken for rain drops. There was an unspoken question there, lurking, a tremble in her lips just barely holding the words in.
“You can stay here,” Jessica said. “Take the bed, this futon sucks,” she said, getting up to make sure there were actual blankets on her bed. She hovered in the door frame, glancing down the hall, then looked back at the girl. “And don’t bother fighting me on this. I’m goddamn stubborn, in case you haven’t realized.”
Lori’s mouth opened, then shut again. She nodded once.
“Come on, shower’s this way,” Jessica said, motioning for her to follow.
Lori padded after her, towards the bathroom. Jessica wrenched the hot water on, let it run a minute because her shower was ten kinds of shit. She turned to leave, then paused, her hand on the one door in her apartment that actually managed to stay on its hinges.
“I’m not gonna say don’t let it get to you,” she said, to the floor instead of meeting Lori’s eyes. “Because it will. Shit like this, it finds a way to get under your skin, bury in deep. The best -- the only thing you can do is try to keep it from being the only voice in your head,” she said, her voice low. She finally glanced back up. “Remember your voice, okay? What you think, and what you feel. And hold onto that.”
She tapped the door frame twice with her hand, then headed back to the futon. She stretched out across it, stared up at her ceiling, and tried to pretend she couldn’t hear the soft cries over the sound of running water.
