Talos loved telling the story.
Ad nauseum.
Of before he and Carol understood each other, before they were friends, before they would kill and die for one another.
He loved telling the story of how “she just crushed them, all of them. Without breaking a sweat. Forty-five of my best men. With her hands bound!”
“Grampa Talos,” Monica would level him with her best Maria stare. “Last time you told it, it was forty. The time before that it was thirty-five. Is it gonna be seventy tomorrow?”
“It might,” he would answer, and Carol would offer her hand to her daughter with a wink and a smile, and Maria would roll her eyes and kiss her daughter’s cheek and put her hand on Talos’s shoulder and remind him that the first time he told the story, it was twenty of his best men.
“With your hands bound?” she one day mouthed silently at Carol, over Monica’s head and behind Talos’s back. Her eyebrows arched and Carol completely choked on her lemonade.
Maria liked to save her privately-made but still public innuendos for when Carol was in the middle of drinking something: it was definitely more amusing that way.
Because the first time she’d heard Talos’s story, her stomach had been in knots and her brain - and her heart - had been on massive overload.
Because the first time, there was no innuendo about it: Carol had been a prisoner. Her hands had been bound, and she’d fought her way off an alien spaceship all alone, with all that fire in her hands, and Maria couldn’t help but wonder if it had hurt, if it had burned her - having all that power in her hands, bound. Did it backfire? Did it scald? Had she been in tremendous amounts of pain? Had she been scared?
Carol didn’t do fear, not exactly. Well, she didn’t act like she did fear.
But Maria knew better, she knew her better.
So she wondered. And she fought a stomachache.
But the more Talos told the story, and the more time she spent around Carol - her Carol, returned to her, back and safe and very, very, very not dead, because dammit she’d always known that Carol was too stubborn to die, but she’d be lying if she said that six years wasn’t a lonely long time to hold out any kind of hope - the more she heard other layers to Talos’s story.
Layers like what a badass her wife was: which, of course, she’d already known, but damn. Damn.
With her hands bound.
When the trauma wore away from overuse and from Talos’s ridiculous additions to his story and from continued assurance that Carol was safe, she was home, she was safe, Maria’s mind started to wander at that.
Started to call up… memories.
And fantasies.
So this time, when she mouthed “with your hands bound” to Carol, she knew that Carol knew exactly where her mind was.
And she knew that when Carol started asking where all the time had gone, and didn’t Monica want to go over to Talos’s house with him so she could play with his kid, wouldn’t that be fun, Maria knew exactly what she wanted.
She turned her back to the door the moment it closed behind a skipping Monica and a winking-knowingly Talos. She bit her lip and watched Maria watch her, head tilted slightly and eyes darting up and down Carol’s body like she was contemplating where to begin.
“Something about my hands being bound got you thinking?” Carol asks, smirking slightly as she shoves herself away from the door and toward Maria. Slow, steady, still with her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Something about it, yeah.”
Their hands touched, just fingertips.
“Anything in particular?”
Maria’s lips found Carol’s neck, and Carol gasped lightly at the soft suddenness.
“Why don’t you get into our bed and find out?”
Carol’s hands found Maria’s hemline and slipped up her shirt.
“Why don’t you make me?”
Maria chuckled, and Carol froze in silent anticipation.
Maria’s hands found Carol’s wrists, and she paused before tugging her into their bedroom.
“All good?” she wanted to know, because roles were usually reversed, and because they were still finding their rhythm again after all these years, and because they both always made sure to ask.
“Five by five,” Carol smirked, but soft and nervous and a little bit shy.
Maria revelled in being the only one to get to see this powerhouse of a woman… shy.
She tugged and Carol yelped, both of them giggling madly as they kissed their way into the bedroom, laughing between kisses until Maria pushed Carol back onto their bed. Until Carol forgot what breathing was as she looked up at the woman her body had missed, even when her mind couldn’t remember, all those years.
“I missed you.” Carol said it without meaning to, more of a rush of breath than consciously formed words; and their laughter, with that breath, turned into a different form of tenderness, of possession, of renewal.
“I missed you back,” Maria murmured, bracing her hands, her body, on Carol’s wrists - which had slowly shifted from having her hands on Maria’s hips to resting, waiting, just beside her head - and leaning down to kiss her again, slow and determined and healing.
“And I missed this,” Maria sighed into the dip of Carol’s throat, their fingers interlacing as Maria kissed and Carol growled soft and low.
“If I recall,” Carol tried to keep her voice somewhat normal, and almost succeeded, “you in your infinite wisdom mentioned something about my hands being bound.”
They squeezed each other’s hands as Maria chuckled. “I do have infinite wisdom, don’t I.”
“Mhmm. Definitely.”
“And would you want your hands bound tonight?”
“Well we didn’t kick our kid and Talos out of the house so we could play cards.”
“Oh damn,” Maria chuckled as she drew Carol’s hands above her head so she could hold both her wrists down with just one hand. She used the other to lean over to their bedside table and pull out Carol’s favorite pair of play cuffs. “I was hoping we could play some go fish.”
“Got any eights?” Carol croaked weakly as Maria set to work clicking in her obedient hands.
“Afraid not,” Maria whispered, shifting from straddling Carol’s hips to her rib cage and leaning down to kiss her wrists just under the restraints. “All good?”
Carol nodded like she might die if Maria didn’t start kissing her again. Because really, she might.
“Want something?”
“You,” Carol answered as cockily as she possibly could, given the circumstances.
Maria smirked and shifted back down Carol’s body, so one of her legs was between Carol’s thighs. Carol hissed and tried - and failed - to keep her hips down on their bed.
“Care to be more specific?” Maria asked, looking down at Carol like she was the entire universe.
Because really, she was.
Carol tossed her head back in frustration as Maria shifted her weight, perfectly calculated to make Carol make exactly that sound.
“You gonna fuck me or are we gonna have a nice chat about the weather?” Carol wanted to know. Maria rolled her eyes but moved quickly. Her mouth covered Carol’s and she ground her hips down as her fingers found the zip on Carol’s jeans. And when she chuckled into Carol’s lips, it elicited the exact response she’d been looking for.
“Maria,” Carol whined, just a little bit, just enough to make Maria take pity on her.
She still gave her pressure between her legs torturously slowly. But she sounded so pretty when she whined. This woman who whined about nothing.
“How would you feel about me going down on you while your hands are all otherwise occupied?” Maria mused, mostly to watch Carol’s body writhe and to listen to the sounds coming out of her mouth. Because she already knew the answer.
“Yes please.”
“Good,” Maria murmured as she kissed her way down Carol’s body, tugging her shirt aside where it was inconveniently covering her skin. Her entire body, not just her hands, were almost scaldingly warm, but Maria had grown used to it, grown to take comfort in it.
And she knew, as she looked up at Carol biting her lip and trembling, that this was the only kind of restraining herself that Carol looked forward to, that she enjoyed, that she would willingly do again and again.
She smiled into Carol’s skin and worked her jeans down her hips. She chuckled when Carol tried to help by wriggling her legs, and she kissed Carol’s knees - all those scars from childhood, and that one from basic training - as her pants made progress down her legs.
“I love you,” Carol sighed, because who took the time to kiss someone’s knees?
Maria Rambeau.
And, well, Carol did too, when the roles were reversed. But she supposed that’s why they were such a good fit.
She shuddered as Maria worked her way back up Carol’s body, pants and underwear discarded somewhere they’d figure out later, and under any other circumstances, Carol would feel exposed, agitated, scared even.
But right then, the only thing she felt was pure excitement, raw need. “Please,” she murmured again, because it couldn’t hurt to be nice to the woman who was about to make her scream with pleasure.
Maria arched an eyebrow and crawled up Carol’s body once more to kiss her mouth. “You’re gorgeous,” she whispered. Carol’s renewed shudder got them both smiling as Carol blushed - a rarity that Maria loved bringing out - and Maria traced her way back down Carol’s body.
She settled between her wife’s legs and looked up at Carol tugging, with only a fraction of her strength, at her restraints. The idea of them, preserving the idea of their play, was the more realistic restraint than the prop, Maria knew.
“Where’s your head at?” she checked in, and Carol smiled even as her hips rolled of their own accord.
“I want your mouth on me.”
“Do you?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Anywhere in particular?”
“Maria,” Carol growled, equal parts irritated and ecstatic.
Carol whined as Maria kissed her way up her inner thighs, and squirmed until Maria… stopped.
“Carol,” she murmured. “Look at me.”
She did, panting slightly and biting her lip. “Yeah? You good?”
“Mmhmm. But here’s the thing. I’m gonna make you come in my mouth, but I don’t want you to make a sound, you hear me?”
Carol scoffed, but the corner of her mouth was pulling up and her pulse racing even harder.
“Oh come on, our kid’s not even home!”
“True, but where’s the sense in having you all tied up if I can’t get what I want?” Maria winked to let Carol know that if she didn’t want to play this way, she could make all the noise she damn well pleased. But Carol just quirked out a grin and a wink of her own.
“I can be quiet,” she muttered, more to herself than Maria.
“Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart,” Maria smirked as the first stroke of her tongue on Carol’s clit - Maria was a lot of things, but someone who messed around, she was not - made Carol squeak out some type of sound that she would swear was definitely not, at all, a squeak.
“Totally quiet,” Maria teased. Carol arched her hips up, and Maria took pity on her. It apparently didn’t take that much.
That little whine Carol made just for her was enough.
She teased Carol’s clit with her tongue until neither of them could handle any more, and she gave her proper pressure with her tongue. Carol bit her lip and rolled her hips, but she tried - unsuccessfully - not to make any noise.
“Maria,” she panted, and Maria just chuckled against her.
“May I?” Maria asked, shifting so her fingers could join her mouth between Carol’s legs.
“Mmhmm.” It came out as part whine and part desperate head nod, and Maria again took pity.
She slipped inside Carol, first with her tongue and then - when Carol couldn’t stop whimpering - replaced her tongue with her fingers, bringing her mouth back to Carol’s clit, hard and determined and skilled, just like the rest of her.
“Maria, I can’t -”
“You can come for me, babe,” Maria curled her fingers inside her, letting Carol ride her orgasm through on her mouth, lips closed against the pressure until Carol’s body relaxed and she could lick her lips with relish.
“So apparently there’s a lot you can do with your hands bound,” Maria arched an eyebrow as she crawled up Carol’s body.
“Uh uh,” Carol shook her head, smirking through hazy eyes, her voice still thick with Maria’s name on her lips. “Take off your jeans. I’m gonna show you what else I can do with my hands bound.”