Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandoms:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Series:
Part 3 of These Moments Spent Between The Stars
Stats:
Published:
2020-04-06
Words:
1,327
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
25
Kudos:
127
Bookmarks:
14
Hits:
1,121

Of The Old and The New

Summary:

The ring on her finger always felt especially heavy when she thought back on that time. They couldn’t formally marry back then. All that time ago when Monica was so small and Maria still wasn’t sure about her sexuality. Still couldn’t deal with it, found it even harder to accept in the face of Carol’s intense devotion to her. What she’d said, how she promised to wait, to go slow, to be a pillar for her to lean on when she was ready and to stand back when she wasn’t.

Carol was never perfect, but she’d always been pretty damn close to it.

Notes:

Ok so I’ve been playing with this lil thang for a couple days and tbh it was supposed to just be a drabble! XD but ya know mah girl Maria got chatty I guess, lol. Please do accept my latest offering to y’all lovely readers. :)

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Maria’s eyes drift over the planes of her wife’s body. Examining every line, every inch of skin exposed to the humid night air, taking in every new addition to the woman’s body.

They were scars mostly, though some of the difference came in the form of muscle too. Carol had always been lean but she was more muscular now and the moonlight spilling in through the open curtains highlighted every new detail. Every new curve, every new mark of battles barely won, every new indent on her body some impression of strength either physically or in endurance. Marks of a fighter who would never back down.

Her hair was short now too and Maria somewhat mourned that fact. She used to enjoy running her fingers through the gold tresses that fell down her lover’s back. It’s current length though brought out the sharp cut of her jawline and Maria couldn’t deny she found that attractive too.

Everything about her wife is attractive. Always had been. Even when her body adorned more pudge, or when her hair was an unruly mess, or when she wore awful sweatpants, or when she was sweaty and irritated at everything for no reason.

Carol was just as beautiful now as the day Maria lost her.

Carol’s body shifts, hands reaching out, padding over the sheets in search of warmth, of skin. Maria smiles softly, meeting Carol’s hands and allowing the sleeping woman to yank her into an embrace. Nose nuzzling into the blonde’s exposed collarbone, soaking up the heat of Carol’s body —her skin is much hotter now too which often rendered the blankets useless as a result— and breathing in her smell.

She smelled different now too, something Maria had noticed the first time they’d slept in the same bed together. (Carol smelled like fire now, like what had always so aggressively burned in her soul was seeping through her pores, escaping in every way it could until she literally combusted. She smelled like Maria imagined the stars did.)

It was a change that continued to startle her even now. Not really because Maria didn’t like it, or because it seemed too foreign. It didn’t. It was just different from the scent which still permeated the fibers of her old shirts. Her jackets. Her clothes which Maria had held onto for six years, cried into, and wore when she felt loneliest during that dreadful time she assumed her best friend, her wife who she hadn’t married yet, was dead.

The ring on her finger always felt especially heavy when she thought back on that time. They couldn’t formally marry back then. All that time ago when Monica was so small and Maria still wasn’t sure about her sexuality. Still couldn’t deal with it, found it even harder to accept in the face of Carol’s intense devotion to her. What she’d said, how she promised to wait, to go slow, to be a pillar for her to lean on when she was ready and to stand back when she wasn’t.

Carol was never perfect, but she’d always been pretty damn close to it.

Monica thought so too. Her daughter had almost loved Carol more than Maria herself did. During the time she was gone from their lives, Monica would request bedtime stories in the form of recollected moments spent with Carol before she was born. She’d wanted to know what it was like entering into a work field dominated by men and treated like a boys club. Everyone inside refusing to allow girls past the door. Or of the times when they went out and got into trouble. Anything and everything Maria could tell her about, Monica wanted to hear.

One of Monica’s favorite stories to listen to was of the time Carol had punched out some guy’s tooth. The man stood a head taller than her with a sneer on his lips and too much foul language exiting them that the blonde felt it was only right she shut him up with the hard edge of her knuckles.

Her method was effective in both getting him to be quiet and to spark heat over Maria’s skin in a way she couldn’t attribute to the beer she had consumed earlier on in the night. Though Maria hadn’t ever told Monica about that part. She’s never told Carol either. That the first time she felt anything beyond a friendly love for her was when she’d laid a man flat out on the concrete.

Maria’s skin lit with an entirely different kind of heat aboard Mar-Vell’s laboratory, watching Carol attempt to fight an alien man who carried odd weapons and was the one who stole six years of her life away from her. Six years of time away from them both.

Anger and terror in equal measure quaked over her flesh, made her step forward when the bastard pushed Carol to her knees. Shouted when his fist collided with the side of her head and knocked her unconscious. Within that moment Maria was helpless to do little more than watch when he dragged her away, hands which gripped hard enough to bruise holding her back. Again Carol was taken from her. Again she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

That moment, those feelings, the utter devastation of having lost Carol once and the terror that she’d have to lose her again still haunts her now (it’s why she’s awake). Falls over her at night like a raucous wave falls over the shore. Harshly, heavily, leaving her cold, and breathless. Often she wakes like this to search for Carol. Afraid the woman won’t be there, that her return may have been little more than an odd dream, and that reality was far colder than the glow of Carol’s warmth.

Carol is good at that too, at quelling the waves of panic like the moon, pulling them back, calling them away from the shore so Maria can breathe.

Carol is her moon, and her stars, the ones which shoot across the night sky and the ones which lay stagnant upon it. Blinking down at her as she drew comfort in the knowledge that her wife thrived up there. Monica is her sun, her clouds, her breath. Monica is what kept her grounded whereas Carol kept her head up between the stars. The two of them, her small family, are her entire world.

Carol stirs, the arms around Maria’s body tightening as the woman cuddles closer to her. Maria tilts her head back and out from under Carol’s chin, looking over the slopes of her face. The slight part of her lips and the shadow of her eyelashes. Her features are sharper now too, even under the soft streaks moonlight of moonlight falling over them in a veil.

Maria’s wife is so different from the woman she’d fallen for and yet still so much the same. At times the changes were overwhelming, painfully so, during others the opposite was true. Either way, she loves the woman currently sleeping like she hasn’t rested properly since the last time they shared a bed together (which was several months prior, she’s only just gotten home since her last intergalactic mission to help out some alien species in need) and Maria knows that with every fiber of her being, of who she is, that she’ll never let this woman disappear from her again.

Maria doesn’t ever want to have to learn about everything that’s changed about her wife, rather, she wants to be able to witness every new thing about Carol come into fruition.

There’s security in knowing Carol feels the same, and when she puts her mind to most anything, it always becomes a reality.

Maria sighs, the anxiety which had been keeping her up leaving her body. Every muscle which had been tense with it relaxing fully into her wife’s arms. Wrapped in the embrace of a star and the warmth of her love, Maria closes her eyes, content.

Notes:

If you made it this far thank you for reading! Comments and Kudos make my day so do leave a few if you liked this. :) Peace out. Stay healthy y’all.

Series this work belongs to: