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“Yan,” she whispers to him, her voice picking up a quiet, sing-song tune. “We don't have time for this. No time to kiss.”
“You kissed me first.” Yan whispers back. His words are stilted. It's a game they have between them - he speaks, she sings. Mostly because she-
Is too busy chewing on his collarbone to think about how that sentence was supposed to finish.
She has him pressed against the wall, his hands cradling the back of her head, and he is making very pretty, strangled noises as her mouth bites bruises into the dip of his neck. This one might be her fault. But in her defence, he had innocently suggested that he needed some help getting into his armour-
“Carol?”
Kamala's voice pipes up out of nowhere and she pauses. And then she realises that her voice was coming from right outside the dressing room, and the door is open-
Carol turns so hurriedly she almost breaks her neck. To her relief, Kamala is not in the doorway, but somewhat outside. She can see just the edge of her red sleeve on the doorframe. Her voice echoes inside. “Are you ready?”
She slowly looks down at herself. Her new suit is only half on. Uh oh.
“...No.” She forces herself to say. “Can you- uh-”
“I’ll wait outside with Monica!” She assures oh so very nicely. Her footsteps echo, signaling that she’s walking away, and both of them still until she’s completely left.
She cringes, feels her cheeks burn, and turns back to Yan. He's just as flustered as she is, his collarbones turned into a very attractive painting of bruises and bite marks that would have been extremely difficult to explain away to Kamala, but he grins anyway and slowly drifts a finger up to trace her mouth. “One more?”
-
Yan, unsurprisingly, picks a set of armour with a high collar.
-
One minute, Carol is beating the shit out of Dar-Benn. Then the tables turn and Dar-Benn is beating the shit out of her. Had this been like thirty years ago when they were both in Starforce, then Carol would not have been complaining, but now they are very much not in Starforce, and Carol is very much complaining.
Well, she would, but the whole “Dar-Benn is beating the shit out of her” is a bit distracting. She opens her mouth to scream something, before she takes her by the throat and slams her into the ground. The words come out strangled as she’s hit by a sense of deja vu. And not the kind that memories from before the crash give her.
Dar-Benn pauses, her hand still locked around her throat, then presses harder until it feels like her throat is literally being crushed.
Oh! Carol remembers this! And now “this” is going to probably kill her!
It turns out that it doesn’t kill her, because Monica knocks into both of them at approximately the speed of sound and they’re thrown onto opposite sides of the ship. Carol chokes for breath as Monica comes into view, focusing on her rather than Dar-Benn-
“Are you okay?” She offers her a hand and she fumbles for it, allowing herself to be yanked. “You look... flustered.”
Carol’s brain malfunctions as she tries to scramble for an excuse - she thinks she would rather die than let it be known that she had slept with Dar-Benn. Thankfully, she doesn’t need one, because Dar-Benn is back to beating the shit out of them.
-
Monica suggests that she stays at her house when she gets back to Earth. It’s a little awkward at first, but it’s nice. Nice to be around someone who understands her powers, her as a person. Nice to not be alone with only Goose for company when the nights get rough. Nice to know that she’s… welcome, that she’s family to someone.
What she also finds nice is Valkyrie quietly knocking on the back door in the middle of the night, smirking.
“Hey princess,” she whispers, and Carol grins and lets herself be pulled outside. There’s no one for miles outside, and Monica is fast asleep upstairs. What happens next involves an awful of being shoved into the wall, an awful lot of pulling her hair, and an awful lot of kissing until feels electric and giddy and can hardly think,
She can feel Val smirk into a kiss and she sighs as a hand slowly touches her chest and begins to trace downwards-
“Carol?”
It doesn’t matter how much time has passed - hearing a thirty-year-old Monica’s voice when she’s getting intimate with Val sends her into the same panic it did when she heard a three-year-old Monica’s voice when she was getting intimate with Maria. Both of their heads snap up in unison. Monica looks like she’s just woken up - she’s wearing her bonnet and pajamas, draped in a dressing gown, and is currently staring at them. Her face starts out confused, then dawns with realisation, then grows mortified-
“It’s… not what it looks like,” Val says weakly. Though it’s kind of hard to pretend that when she’s using one hand to pin both of Carol’s to the wall. And oh, her shirt is on the floor. When did that happen?
“...Oh my God.” Monica looks like she wants the earth to swallow her. “I'm going back to bed. Take it to the bedroom- or… don't- bye-”
She doesn't go for the door and opts to walk straight through the wall, face screwed up in pain.
She's not even been gone for a minute before Valkyrie bursts into laughter.
-
They took it to Carol's room. If Monica hears anything, she doesn't mention it, and pointedly ignores that Carol is disheveled, limping, and wearing the longest sleeved and highest necked shirt she owns.
And then Valkyrie walks out her room, grinning. Her niece slowly thunks her head against the table.
-
“Carol?”
She falls out of the bed before she realises what's going on, and then blinks-
Kamala is staring down at her in concern.
“...how did you get in?” She squints, prising the Skrull memory device off her head. As usual, it leaves her disorientated, but she had unknowingly spiraled into a not so great collection of memories about Yon-Rogg, and that had made everything worse.
“I opened the door.” Kamala gestures wildly behind her. “Do you not have doors in space?”
“I'm going back to bed.” Carol glares and picks the device back up again, fumbling at the controls to turn it off. She doesn't want to remember what did or didn't happen between her and Yon-Rogg. It was good at the time. She supposes. It shouldn't matter.
Both of them are silent for a few moments, before she feels the mattress dip next too her. Kamala's not leaving, that much is for sure, and instead of letting her fight off the bad memories by herself, she wraps two, steady arms around her and pulls her into a hug.
It's almost laughable the way that she, Captain Marvel, defender of the universe, is pulled down into the hug of a tiny sixteen year old. She's warm - surprisingly so - and it's comforting.
“What did you remember?” Kamala asks innocently.
“A guy I knew.” Her voice cracks. It sounds like she's upset, but she knows, secretly, that it's more to do with embarrassment. She is not explaining that to a teenager.
She leaves it at that.
-
“Carol.” Monica's face is drawn half shut as she hunches slightly. They're both sat at her clean, bare table. “Can I ask you something about mom?”
She bites her lip, and nods stiffly. This isn't… this isn't how she wanted her day to go. But she can't say no, she'll never say no to Monica.
Silence fills the air. Its oppressive, abrasive, and she feels like she's choking in it. She can tell that Monica isn't faring any better, but she pushes forwards and manages to meet her eyes.
“Were you two…” her voice stills. “Together?”
“Once.”
Monica might be looking her in the eyes but she can't, can't dare to look at her back. The word feels like a betrayal.
She makes an angry, tearless sigh and stops trying to get her too look back at her.
“Why did neither of you tell me?”
Something within Carol's heart cracks. “I… don't know. I don't remember.”
-
An agony of time passes before she tries to get up and leave, but Monica is slipping through the table before she can go, pressing a hand against her shoulder. “Carol.”
She doesn't turn around to look at her.
“You don't have… to hide who you are from me.” Her tone is uncertain, wary.
“I know that.” She says solidly, and slowly turns around to face her. Monica doesn't care for who she likes, has never given any reason to suggest why she would. The assurance is nice, but she doesn't get it. “I know that.”
“And listen, I really don't know how alien relationships work,” Ahe'd be surprised if she did, to be honest. “I genuinely don't know if you're romantic with your husband or not. Or even with Valkyrie. But you don't have to hide that part of you either.”
Was she crying? No, but she was about too. She blinked the tears back with a fury and tried to focus on her. “Thank you.”
She was pulled into a hug, and for once, Carol allowed herself to be emotional.
-
“I don't understand the Kree.” Fury rolls his one, good eye, and grins at her expression. “How do you sleep with someone platonically?”
“I'm not telling you about my relationship with my husband.” Carol groans into her hands.
“Yeah, your “platonic” husband.” He raises a singular eyebrow. “Who you kiss. And fuck.”
“I hate this stupid species.” She sighs. “Have you considered there is a reason I haven't told you about the kissing part?”
“What about the King of Asgard?”
She furrows her eyebrows. “That's different.”
“And… how is that different?”
“Because we're romantically involved.”
“And how aren't you romantically involved in your husband?” She shoots Fury a withering glare and he raises his hand, although the grin lingers.
“Because we're just friends.” Carol frowns. “This is literally so easy to understand.”
“And he's… okay with you dating the King of Asgard?”
“...why wouldn't he be?”
“Okay wait, hold up.” Fury raises his hands. “Are you gay? Lesbian? Bisexual?”
“I don't know what any of those words mean.”
“They describe what genders you're attracted too.”
“Why would I be attracted to someone based off gender?” She stares at him.
“I…” He leans back in his chair. “You have no idea how confusing this is.”
“I don't understand how this is confusing.” Carol admits. Yeah, she knows that her attitude towards relationship is more Kree than human, but it was easy to wrap your head around it. Skrulls understood it just fine. Asgardians got it easily. Aladnans did the same thing all the time. “And this is exactly why I don't tell people the details. Monica is so awkward about it. Can you imagine how bad Kamala would freak out?”
“She'd probably put it in her fanfiction.”
“Please don't remind me about the fanfiction.”
-
“Kamala,” Carol takes a deep breath. “Why did you put my marriage in your fanfiction?”
“Fun.” She declares, leaning back. She smiles sheepishly. “I don't actually care about your relationships. It's just funny.”
She buries her head in her hands. “Can't you just… delete it?”
“I can tag it as gen.”
Carol is going to scream.