Chapter Text
"Abigail's tongue is shaped different," Jessica blurts, "yes, it's as good as you think."
She's not sure why she brings that up—except that is she is. She wants Carol to feel jealous, to react, to give her something to work with.
Carol, ever vigilant, ever casual, simply nods. "Brand? Yeah, I can guess."
Jessica gets jealous often, so much so that she loathes herself for it. She can't help it though and jealousy is never logical, except in her case it isn't even warranted.
It started when she first met Carol, soaked head-to-toe in San Francisco Bay water. She thought, 'here's a woman who somehow manages to be attractive even though she's almost dead'. And she feels a bit jealous of it, Jessica never looks that good when she's half-dead. But it was a silly passing thought, she has a lot of those and they never mean anything. It should be been the end of it.
And then it wasn't.
Then she sees Carol properly, dressed in her Ms.Marvel costume and her breath catches. Then she flies up into the sky, like a star, and Jessica realizes that her costume is a bit more like a bikini than anything protective at all.
The guy beside her pipes up—'that's an ass I'd tap'—and Jessica is all red with fury.
'You can't say something like that about her! Do you know what she's just been through? You don't deserve her!'
Except those words weren't directed at the man, not really anyway. Jessica had thought the exact same thing, her eyes lingering on Carol's backside.
It sucks, being like this.
Then they're friends, and Jessica feels like absolute crap everytime her eyes accidentally ogle her best friend. But it's not her fault, she's only human and Carol is well fit—or so she tells Carol when she notices the staring, and they both laugh and brush it off.
But then other people stare too, and Jessica is green with jealousy.
'You can't look at her like that!'
But she has no right, no place to feel that. Carol isn't hers, will never be hers. She can't tell people to stop admiring her friend, stop fliritng with her. She does nothing bit sit back, nurse a beer, and seethe.
And that becomes her ritual for days, then weeks, then years.
"You've got a nice ass, Carol," Clint smiles that way he does, as though what he just said was perfectly natural. Jessica hits him on the arm hard enough to make him wince.
"Shut up, Barton," her lips quirked in amusement but her tone is harsh.
"Yours is better, Jess," Clint's grin widens, and there's honesty in his eyes.
Jessica isn't used to compliments, or flirting done so open and free. She likes that about Clint—liked that about him. Her face turns a little red, and she mutters out another 'shut up' before her eyes land on Carol.
"Clint," she looks a little angry, and Jessica mistakes the expression for jealousy until Carol finishes her sentence "aren't you married?"
"No," he rubs the back of his neck, "not anymore."
Carol relaxes as Jessica tenses. Not jealousy, just concern for a friend.
She starts dating Clint soon after, kissing him full on the lips after a mission—right for Carol to see.
She shoots Jessica an encouraging smile when she pulls from Clint and Jessica hates it.
When they break up, Jessica invokes his name very deliberately.
"Clint and I went shopping, actually."
No reaction.
"Oh, I stayed over at Clint's. Sorry, I should have texted."
No reaction.
"Clint was over, he left that here."
Absolutely nothing.
As if she doesn't care, as if she hasn't realized by now that the only thing Jessica wants is a sign that this isn't one-sided—that the way she feels when people saddle up to Carol is the same thing she feels when people do the same to her.
As Carol refuses to give her any sort of reaction, she learns the hard way that maybe…just maybe she should stop trying.
But then she gets drunk, and a drunk Jessica never has much sense.
"I slept with her, you know," Jessica slurs, leaning on Carol for support as she leads them back to their shared apartment. "That weather girl. It was really hard not to make a precipitation joke while I was in-between her legs—so hard, Carol!"
"Sure, Jess," Carol laughs, only amused, not agitated. Not even delighted to know her bestfriend likes girls too.
Jessica tries again, "she was fun. I should call her."
"Nope," Carol grabs Jessica phone out of her pocket, not taking a single second to linger on her skin. "Call her in the morning, when you're sober."
Nothing at all and god, does it hurt. She feels like a little girl throwing rocks waiting until Carol opens her window and Carol, that prick, never opens her bloody window.
Drunk, lonely and pining for her best friend, she cries into her pillow forgetting all about it in the morning.
When she's working for Brand, in Madripoor on a self-destructive spiral, she's happy to see that Carol cares. That Carol wants her to come back home, to their home.
She doesn't, she shakes her head and says her buissness isn't done.
When Abigail shows up at Jessica's temporary apartment, dressed down and eager to undress Jessica—she praises herself for not wasting a single thought on Carol the entire time.
When it goes on for a couple of days, when they're both sure they just using eachother, she doesn't think about Carol.
Then Carol shows up at her door, face furrowed with concern. "You're not answering my calls," she says, her eyes drift to Jessica's neck, marked with the evidence of the kind of thing Abigail Brand likes to do when she's got Jessica's soft skin under her lips.
"I've been busy," Jessica replies and she lets Carol in to her hotel room. The sheets are a mess. Abigail's left her panties in the corner since Jessica ripped them, and the thought of someone like Abigail Brand going commando is unbelievably amusing, but Jessica can't bother to think about that now. Now, she's thinking about Carol and all those times she forced herself to think about anything but her half-kree all-blonde friend come rushing back into her. She thinks about how much she wished it wasn't Abigail that had been undressing her for the past month, but Carol instead. How much she misses her friend, how much she misses their friendship.
And how much she hates herself for ever wanting to be more than that, more than friends. For every thinking someone like her was allowed to ever hope for that.
Carol doesn't bat an eyelash, and Jessica has since learned to stop being so sad everytime Carol doesn't flinch.
"I missed you," she says, as if those words weren't the exact thing Jessica longed to hear.
"I missed you too," Jessica says back, because it's true and she's tired and she just wants Carol to hold her.
Carol gets her new outfit, it's sleek and sexy and so much better than that dumb Ms. Marvel costume.
"Woo," Jessica lets out a whistle when Carol models it for her, "looking hawt."
"You're an idiot, Jess," she laughs, rolling her eyes but amused all the same.
"Finally, I can stop hearing people talking about your arse," Jessica leans back, admiring her friend and her cool new outfit.
"Jealous?" Carol quirks up a brow.
Yes, Jessica wants to say. You have no idea.
But Carol doesn't mean it like that. Carol means it in the jealous-they're-not-talking-about-your-ass sense. Not that I-hate-that-I-cant-touch-you sense.
She forces out a smile, "you wish."
And god, does she want Carol to wish.
There's a party. Jessica can't remember what for but Carol is here and Clint and Abigail and god, Jessica realizes just how many people she's slept with over the years.
"Lookin' good, Jess," Clint smiles, popping a cheese cube into his mouth. Jessica can tell he's uncomfortable, and trying to use humor to dissipate his anxiety. She can also tell it isn't working so she simply points to Kate and tells Clint to go bother her instead.
"He's right," Carol slides into his place, smiling wide with a glass of water in her hand. She wearing a suit, one that's tight on all the right spots and all Jessica could think when she saw Carol walk in was how much she wanted to rip that thing off her. "You do look good."
Jessica looks over at her friend. Compared to Carol, she doesn't shine nearly as bright. She's wearing one of her old red dresses from her S.H.I.E.L.D days, it's not a dress Carol has ever seen but it's one Jessica has worn quite a bit.
She wanted something familiar if she has to be here.
"I always look good," she counters with a smirk, "tell me something I don't know."
Jessica's green eyes fall on to a woman regarding Carol with interest, she's got eyes full of desire and a tongue that darts out over her lips everytime Carol moves. Jessica hates it, she hates that woman.
She's jealous, she gets jealous often. She's jealous of how people stare at Carol, how they talk about her.
It took her a while but she realizes it's less possessiveness and more envy. Sure, she'd love it if she could grab Carol close everytime someone gawked at her so she could smile with pride and say 'this one's mine'.
But mostly she wishes she could do that; stare so openly, desire so freely.
She hates that woman because she could walk up here, she could flirt with Carol and tell her she likes the way her biceps look in that jacket. She could try to have the things that Jessica can never have, and she hates this stranger for it.
"Hey," Carol leans over, concern wrought on her face as she tries to get her friend to look at her. "Are you okay? You've been tense all night."
Jessica forces a smile, "yeah well, when all your exes are together in one room, you'd be tense too." This time she doesn't say it for a reaction, she doesn't care anymore. She says it because it's true and kind of funny and she thinks Carol will appreciate the laugh.
Carol doesn't laugh, and for the first time in Jessica's life she notices a reaction. Maybe they'd always been there and she was simply too self-absorbed to notice them. Maybe Carol is just tired of hiding them. Maybe this is new, Carol is just now feeling this. Maybe it's been built up, suddenly she's had enough of the way Jessica throws her romances in Carol's face.
Jessica doesn't know what it is, but she doesn't like it. For all the times she wanted Carol to feel something, she doesn't like it when it happens. She doesn't like the look of pain on her face, or the way she forces out a smile.
"Yeah," Carol's lips form a line thin, "I can only imagine."
Jessica doesn't want to push it, she doesn't want to stand there and demand a reaction. It's immature and wrong—but she needs to know, needs to see if she didn't just imagine that frown. "I can't believe I've dated this many people," she tries to sound casual, "do you want talk to one of my exes? They probably have very colorful stories."
"No," Carol's jaw tightens, "I don't want to do that. Why would I want to do that?"
Jessica simply shrugs, "it could be fun."