Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide a method for wireless communication by a user equipment (UE). The UE receives signaling configuring the UE with a control resource set (CORESET) activated with two transmission configuration indicator (TCI) states. The UE further receives a downlink control information (DCI) triggering transmission of aperiodic channel state information (CSI) reference signals (RSs) on aperiodic CSI-RS resources. The UE applies a quasi-colocation (QCL) assumption of at least one of the two TCI states for processing the aperiodic CSI-RSs, when a scheduling time offset is less than a threshold value and depending on whether same or different aperiodic CSI-RS resources are received from two transmission reception points (TRPs) associated.