Carol hates Venkar.
Okay, so she doesn’t hate it, hate it. She’s not allowed to say that anymore about any planet at all, because three intergalactic diplomatic incidents caused by running your mouth are too much to be impressive , according to Natasha. So, fine, she doesn’t hate Venkar, but the planet has always been filled with freak alien technology that even after her stint in Hala as Vers she’s still unnerved by tremendously.
Freak alien technology that isn’t the Tesseract or Asgard’s Bifrost. Freak alien technology that has Carol staring at herself after the explosion of a buidling used for experimental investigation, her vision swimming and fading out at the edges as she tries to blink some stability back into it. There’s debri still settling around her, threatening to crumble even further at any whisper of wind, the nearby crowds of Venkar’s streets in horrified chaos around the mess.
A recon mission, Rhodey had assured her, in and out in two Midgarian days and home in time for lunch with Monica. She’ll be holding this over his head for a long, long time, starting as soon as when her head stops spinning.
Carol groans as she holds her head from her spot on the ground, overly curious tourists trying to ask her if she’s okay and if the pair of them need any help, reaching with red, freakishly long arms that Carol bats away blindly. Her body aches and temples pound as she says, a little harsh: “I work alone.”
“What the hell?” she wonders, sounding far away, and its only when she turns her head when Carol realizes the words didn’t come out of her own mouth. Annoyance more than surprise washes over her when she meets her own eye, expression as sour as the one Carol’s wearing right now. “Shit.”
“Shit,” she repeats after- her copy? Her clone? She never managed to learn the Venkarian term for when your consciousness is split into two separate bodies while staying tethered together by the same soul .
Shit, is right. Shit, indeed.
The medic that checks on her after she walks herself- both of them to the closest thing in Venkar to an emergency room, only shrugs at them, cleans their scrapes and bruises and sends them on their merry way.
“This happens all the time,” he grumbles, frowning at someone else’s chart in his hands. “By accident, too, more than you’d think. There’s really nothing to do. Enjoy the rest of your life, you two.”
“That’s helpful,” Carol says, her dry sentiment voiced by another’s lips as she watches the medic go down the hall. She turns back to herself, eyeing her up and down in anxious wonder. She stares back, her lips slightly upturned. “You see something you like?”
“Um,” Carol stammers, unsure of how to follow the conversation. Talking to herself usually meant sleepless nights and anxieties she would never, ever admit to anyone as long as she was alive taking space in her brain until she needed to punch something. Not this, not… flirting. She adds, dumbly: “You look like me.”
“No shit,” Carol snorts, reaching to scratch at her temple and hissing when she touches the fresh stitches on top of her brow. “Are we gonna stand here all rotation or can we go back to the hotel? I’m starving and I’m not going out in public looking like this.”
“Thank you,” Carol deadpans back, imagining she must too look like a mess with dust from the debri, several set of stitches and bruises and her hair a tangled mess in a knot she knows it’ll take hours to undo. “Yeah, let’s go. I feel like crap.”
“You look like it, too.”
“Oh, a comedian, aren’t you?”
“Thank you, I’m here all night,” Carol smirks, uncaring of her split lip.
“Let’s go, joker,” Carol rolls her eyes, turning away so Carol doesn’t see her failing to hide her smile.
“I just don’t understand why you wanna stay here,” Carol keeps hitting the back of her head against the wall lightly as Carol paces around their hotel room, the one where she’d been staying and now apparently Carol’s expecting to share because she doesn’t wanna go home .
They’re both fresh out of the shower- separate showers, thank you very much, hair wet and clothes soft over clean, washed skin smelling faintly of citrus soap, bruises and scrapes bright reds and purples against pale complexion.
“You wanna fly down to Earth and explain this to the rest of the guys?” Carol signals between the two of them even as she doesn’t stop her pacing, from the entrance to the room to the bathroom door and again, again, and again.
“So, what? We don’t owe them anything,” Carol reasons, eyes tracking Carol’s movements, bored. “Get out of your pretty little head and sit for a second, okay? You’re giving me a headache.”
Carol almost trips over her own feet. Pretty , she mutters to herself as she goes for the bed, laying down unceremoniously with a grunt. Carol’s lips are tilted upwards in a soft smirk, pleased and a little flirty. “Good girl.”
“Jesus,” Carol says for a lack of a better expression, thankful that from her place on the floor Carol can’t see her flushed face. Still, she probably doesn’t need to look at her to know the kind of effect she has on her, given the fact that they share the same freaking soul . “They wouldn’t understand, okay? And as long as they don’t need us then we don’t have to go anywhere.”
“A vacation, then,” Carol thinks it over, then hums in approval. “I never thought I’d be the one for a romantic getaway, but alright. I see the gist of it.”
Carol groans, burying her face in her hands as another wave of blush washes over her. This is gonna be fantastic.
They learn how to exist together.
For some reason neither of them thinks of walking away, even though it’s a very common practice for people in their life and has been since they were kids. They make due with the one bed and sleep on opposite sides of it, the fact that they’re sharing a soul meaning that they inevitably come closer during the night and end up beet red in the morning trying to not talk about it.
It, that need for closeness that no one has really been able to fill and so Carol simply gave up on, instead running away from anyone who might’ve wanted to try and satiate it. They don’t talk about it, at least not at first, but Carol can tell they’re both thinking about it, leaving so many things unsaid just so they can keep existing peacefully, stealing moments of touch and tenderness they both need but never ask for.
Once when they were out eating dinner, Carol reached for her and painfully slowly dragged her thumb over the edge of her mouth, her own tongue slipping past her lips to touch at whatever she’d been wiping away. Sauce, Carol could tell from the way she then brought her finger to her mouth and licked it off without ever breaking eye contact.
She proceeded to choke on her sandwich and Carol bursted out laughing, but Carol dreamt about that moment for too many nights after it happened. How easy it had been for her to just reach out and touch , and for herself to take it while overpowering her need to hide away from the caring of it all.
How easy would it be to let her do it again? she asks herself and doesn’t answer.
“We never told Monica.”
Carol hums a questioning sound from where her nose is buried in a book, a murder mistery Natasha insisted she’d like and now reads between missions. This is as between missions as its gonna get, apparently.
“About Maria,” Carol goes on when she gets no other reaction, watching Carol carefully from the chair in front of the bed, her feet resting on the coffee table that came with the room. “How we were… together, more often than not. You think she would’ve asked about it, at least. It was pretty obvious.”
“Was it?” Carol asks, already over this topic, deliberately keeping her mind away from Maria, shared rooms with only one bed and darkened alleys after too much too drink.
“We seemed to think so,” Carol goes on. “That’s why we ended it, didn’t we?”
“What?”
“It was too much,” Carol explains, as if she needed to, as if Carol wouldn’t understand what was happening in her own mind. “She was getting too close, so we broke it off. She will forever be one of our best friends, but just that. That’s as close as people get, these days.”
“And that’s a problem?” Carol asks defensively.
“It’s lonely,” Carol says quietly, an odd expression on her face. “Lawson’s dead. Yon-Rogg betrayed us. Monica might never forgive us for leaving. Nick and the Avengers, they’re friends at best, coworkers at worst, and that’s all they’ll ever be. We fly halfway across the galaxy whenever they try to get us to stay for movie night and drinks.”
“It’s hard,” Carol defends herself, arms crossed on top of her chest as if it were enough to hide from Carol’s scrutiny. “Not many people understand… me. What we’ve went through. Even the ones that love me have left me or… worse. One way or another.”
“I know,” Carol placates, and it’s starting to dawn on Carol that she does know. That if anyone would, it’d be her . “I just hate it. I wish things were different.”
Carol doesn’t say, I wish the accident had never happened, I wish I didn’t still miss Yon-Rogg, I wish I hadn’t missed Monica growing, I wish there was a home for me with the Avengers.
Carol only says “I know” and looks at her as if she’d said everything she was just thinking. It’s a little unnerving, but most of it all it’s a relief, to be understood without being scrutanized.
They go to a carnival the next rotation.
It’s Carol’s idea, their last conversation too heavy and too serious for her to stop thinking about it just like that. Her dreams are plagued by her and Lawson being shot out of the sky, Fury by her side and then suddenly vanishing into ashes before there’s anything she can do, Monica crying and begging her to save her mother, nine and twenty seven all at once.
“I want the purple one!”
“I already bought you the blue,” Carol reasons, shaking said slushie in front of her face and feeling for a moment as if she were scolding Monica after the little girl dragged her to ice cream truck at the other side of the street. She always caved, in the end, and Carol knows it, too, because she’s already grinning conspiratorially at her. “Don’t look at me like that, if you want it, you buy it.”
“What kind of date would that make you?” Carol reasons, but she rummages her pockets for Venkarian credits and makes a victorious sound as she hands it to the vendor, taking the blue slushie in grabby, eager hands. “Come on, I think I saw some guy offering rides in something like gokarts over there.”
She grabs onto Carol’s wrist and pulls her away from the slushie vendor, who screams something back at them in thanks, but Carol’s mind is stuck on the word date, date, date, date, looping inside her brain like a broken record.
When they realize they’ve missed the guy with the gokarts Carol deflates a little but doesn’t let go of her, only rearranges her hold so instead of gripping her wrist their fingers are intertwined, hand safely holding on and a little sweaty. She seems unaware of Carol’s internal breakdown, and gains her attention as she points excitedly towards another ride, expression conspiratory before she pulls Carol towards it, her laugh loud and bright in a way she’d never heard it before, not in the company of other people.
Carol follows. At this point she’s starting to realize there’s pretty much nowhere she wouldn’t go with her, and it doesn’t bother her as much as she thought it would.
“You look ridiculous.”
“Screw you,” Carol replies without pause, eyes glued to her reflection in the mirror as she goes to chop another long strand of blonde hair. “I look fantastic and your blood’s boiling with jealousy.”
“Why would you insist on doing this yourself?” Carol wonders, leaning against a wall in the bathroom and forcing herself to maintain a you-don’t-amuse-me expression when Carol spins on her tippy toes to look at her, excited, scissors in hand.
“Come on, you know it looks fantastic,” it doesn’t, not right now at least when the cut she’s going for is not even halfway done, but she looks so happy about it that after memorizing her her hair Carol’s eyes drift downwards. It’s only when Carol speaks up again that she realizes she’d been staring at her mouth, pink and slightly chapped lips turned upwards, a common shape these days now that they spend all of their time together. “If you think you can do a better job then take these scissors from me and prove it.”
“Don’t tempt me, I might as well leave you bald and call it a day.”
“You’d miss my hair too much,” Carol doesn’t look worried, aware of what she looks like when she’s bluffing. “I would, too. Sex isn’t that fun when you’ve got nothing to hold onto.”
Carol looks away as Carol smirks back, their ‘ say something that’ll make me blush and enjoy the hell out of it ’ routine too perfected to fail at this point.
Gods help her, she begs to no one, and fights Carol for the scissors before working on her hair, biting her cheek every time her fingers go through the silky soft blond strands effortlessly.
Carol, unusually still as she works, sucks in a breath every time Carol comes in contact with the skin of her neck, hands cold from the water they’re using to cut her hair, her touch steady.
They’re good together, despite how hard it is for Carol to admit it to herself.
They understand each other better than anyone has. When Carol insists on staying in and cooking just to prove that she can, Carol already has the ingredients she’s about to ask for ready in hand, her lips pursed like she’s trying not to laugh. They read together, now, finished Natasha’s book weeks ago and spent a weekend around town looking for bookstores or whatever Venkar has that’s equal to those. They spend afternoons at parks and wherever else they can sit down and read out loud without being interrupted, one of their heads in the other’s lap most of the time.
It’s nice, which is the scariest thing. The last time Carol had felt this comfortable with someone it had been taken away. She can count in both hands the list of people that have disappointed her, whether they meant to do so or not, and it would be the most exhausting, the one thing she won’t be able to come back from, if this turns out to be one of those times.
She wants to pull away. Return to Earth for her next mission and leave Carol behind, give her enough credits to send her to the other side of the galaxy, maybe take turns checking in with the Avengers every couple of months, except-
Except she can’t run away from herself. She doesn’t want to, as much as she does, and the complexity of her feelings keeps her awake some nights. Nights in which Carol, as if sensing her distress, mumbles in her sleep and reaches to throw her arm around her midsection, a thoughtless form of affection Carol soaks up greedily in the dark of the night when no one’s there to see.
No , she thinks with a slight smile as she feels Carol shuffle closer, mouth sleepily moving against the skin of Carol’s neck as she searches for as much skin to skin contact as she can find, her hand underneath her shirt resting limply on Carol’s stomach.
No, there’s no running away from this. There never had been, from the second one of them was created from the other, they were made to fit, made to exist together. Carol’s starting to believe she can live with that more than happily.
When Carol kisses her, it’s a long time coming.
It had to happen this way, she reasons as she reaches for Carol mid rant about some asshat back in the military who gave once upon a time her and Maria a hard time, cradling her face in one of her hands and drawing her close to slot her mouth against hers. They’d had to build up this thing between them, because otherwise neither of them would’ve believed it to be what it is.
Carol hums against her and wastes no time in answering, taking a few blind steps towards the wall and pressing Carol against it, cradling her hips and then slowly, painfully slow, making a path up her waist, her sides, her shoulders and neck. Someone whimpers between them, and Carol isn’t sure who, can’t bring herself to care as Carol laughs against her mouth.
“Took you long enough, honey,” she grins against her jaw, and Carol, despite herself, laughs and laughs and laughs, even as she tries to draw her by the shirt and bring her in for another kiss, blond short locks of hair soft and silky between her fingers. “What? What’s so funny?”
She mumbles it against her skin, just as Carol’s laugh fades into a long, drawn out moan when Carol touches her chest, fingers slow and tortuous over her most sensitive parts, repeating the sensual motions at the reactions she gets. “This. Us. Everything.”
“If you’re laughing this much then ‘m not doin’ a very good job, mmm?” she’s smiling as she says it, unable to not be affected by the light that seems to radiate off her partner. She tilts her head to kiss and lick and bite into the skin of her neck, smelling day old sweat and plain Carol, someone she would know with her eyes closed and every other sense stripped from her. “Come on, what are you thinking about?”
“How easy this is,” Carol admits while working to get rid of her own shirt and bra to get Carol’s touch straight to her skin. She reaches to hold her chin in her hand and turn her head to keep eye contact, steady and sure even through the daze of lust that’s fallen over them. “How… how much sense we make. Don’t you think?”
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it,” Carol can only deliver honesty after Carol did the same, their voices hushed as a moment of clarity clears the hot, frantic air that taken over the room for a moment. “It’s never felt like this, has it?”
“No,” Carol says, stare faraway as if thinking about every time it hasn’t worked out, brought back by Carol’s lips at the corner of her mouth, soft and loving. She smiles. “I’m glad it does now. And I’m glad it’s with you.”
“It wouldn’t be like this with anyone else, I think,” Carol knocks her forehead against hers gently, nosing at her cheek, nose, before going in for another kiss, languid and wet in a way that leaves them both breathless very quickly. “Maybe this had to happen, you know. Maybe the accident wasn’t an accident at all.”
“It doesn’t feel like it, no,” Carol breathes against her mouth, now cupping her cheeks, fingers touching the ends of her short hair. “That’s oddly sentimental of you, you know.”
“What can I say?” Carol smiles, a joke at the tip of her tongue even if it doesn’t sound like a joke at all. She nuzzles at the skin under her jaw, warm and content and in love. “Turns out I’m a bit of a romantic.”
“Pffft, a bit,” Carol manages to half giggle half moan as Carol’s hands roam her body, back at it again with newfound intensity and intent. She tucks her leg between Carol’s and watches her partner enjoy the friction with half lidded eyes. “Your hair tickles.”
“Yeah, and you’re fucking gorgeous,” Carol can’t help it, leaning back to keep her eyes glued to every single change Carol’s expression goes through as her hands keep going over her chest. Soft, supple skin bows under the pressure of her fingers. Carol moans and gasps, mouth open and eyes closed in pleasure, and fuck, Carol wants . “Look at you, Gods. You feel incredible.”
A pool of giddiness and something else settles deep in her belly when she watches Carol’s pale complexion flush, the apple of her cheeks and part of her neck colored in pretty, bitable red. Her hands travel, inevitably, just like this thing happening between them, holding onto her hips for a moment and keeping her in place as she rocks into the pressure of her leg between her thighs, feeling warm and content and in need for more.
Carol, still stronger than most beings in the galaxy even while aroused and pinned to the wall, reaches for Carol’s back and goes for her ass, squeezing the skin and pulling her back in so she can keep rocking into her leg. She catches their open mouths in a kiss that’s barely one, panthing into each other’s mouths as they try to get close, close, closer-
“Okay, okay, shit,” Carol gasps and reaches for the back of Carol’s legs, wrapping them around her waist and holding her up, still breathing air into each other’s mouths. “Bed, bed, now, come on, let’s go.”
“You don’t like wall sex?”
“Oh, honey, we’ve got more than enough time to try every surface of this room,” she promises, voice hoarse and eyes dark, a thrill surging up her spine at Carol’s shiver. “But if we don’t do this in the next two minutes I think I’m gonna explode.”
“I can work with that,” Carol says breathlessly as she’s being dropped into the bed, watching Carol take of her shirt and leaving her exposed for her eager, avid eyes. “You know how fast we recover.”
Carol groans and falls into bed on top of her, reaching. Carol’s already, as always reaching back.
The morning after, Carol wakes up to quiet peace and lips trailing down the back of her neck. The little tension her posture had gained just by waking up melts at Carol’s touch, searching hands joining her lips when she realizes Carol is awake. They don’t speak for a few moments, trapped in their cocoon of warmth and the gentle tide of change that washed over them last night.
Carol kissed her. Carol kissed back, and so many other things followed. Something should feel different, except-
“What’re you thinking about?” Carol murmurs against her neck, her front now glued to her back. It’s the same question as last night but its context is different: the rush, the excitement of last night is gone and now there’s nothing but time, nothing but the slow feel of her hands on bare skin, the covers lost to the floor somewhere after the third round and having all of her partner on display for her liking.
“‘m hungry,” she says back, voice pitched low and rough with sleep still. Carol makes an amused sound, expression delighted and open when she turns towards her, leaning in for a kiss.
“Already?” she teases, fingers trailing downwards.
“Get some food in me and then we’ll talk, you insatiable monster,” Carol smiles against her mouth, filled to the brim with contentment in a way she never has before. Carol smiles back, a little teasing and a whole lot loving, slender body looking golden and welcoming under the morning sun filtering through the window.
“That’s a promise?”
“I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t give to you, sweetheart,” Carol replies, unusually honest.
“Yeah,” Carol gets a hand in her hair and draws her in for another kiss. “Yeah, no, I know the feeling.”