#and If anyone feels inclined to vote
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#vote now on your devices#if anyone feels so inclined for some unknown reason to rb that's cool#would be funny if my hair color was decided by committee (strangers online)
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Gale's Childhood + Mystra
I just have some thoughts and need to articulate them because they will not leave my brain alone at all and I cannot think about much else. Feel free to sit down and join me as I word vomit how I imagine Gale’s childhood went. I did not edit this or proof read it at all, so bear with any grammar/spelling/flow mistakes please!
So, Gale’s mother is Morena Dekarios, we know that. She’s an angel, an icon, and she cares so much, and she is wicked smart. I also headcanon that she is a high quality escort in the City of Splendors, and so grew up knowing how to please people and blend in with high society in any way she can. So, she raised Gale right. She told him about what she did, never hid anything from him, and would bend over backwards to ensure that her son was happy, healthy, and cared for. Because she had to blend in with high society, she had so many books, and art pieces, and high quality alcohol and clothes all over her house. Gale grew up around these, and absorbed it all with ease, and Morena thought that was fantastic. She frequently sent him to school whenever she had to work even if he had already spent the entire day there because she knew he would be safe and looked after, because his dad was not around to look after him.
Speaking of his dad, let’s talk about Waterdeep politics for a moment, shall we? We will circle back to Gale’s parentage. Waterdeep is ruled by a council of 16 Lords, all of whom are anonymous. Whenever they are ruling in public, they use magical masks called the Lord’s Helm that hides their identities. A common game in Waterdeep is to identify the Lords and figure out the rumors that float around about them. The Lords actually start most of their own rumors, though, so these can be easily misleading. Because the Lords elect the other Lords via anonymous vote, it is difficult for the Lords to even know who is who, but they do know their names, and so they have more information. So, while the Lords are frequently protected from assassination / bribes / stalking / lobbying from the public, they are not as always well protected from each other, so the secrecy is still important, and caution is warranted. I imagine some of the Lords take this very seriously, and value the job over forming families or bonds, so high quality well-to-do escorts like Morena are highly sought after.
Now, back to Gale’s father. So, Morena is an escort for a Lord, one thing leads to another, some mistakes are made, and Morena gets pregnant which was definitely not the goal, but she can’t tell anyone she is pregnant with a Lord’s child, so she just pretends the child’s father is another client and moves on. So, if the Lord happens to be a (maybe red) wizard/cleric/paladin of Mystra… who is to say? If this Lord happens to be highly talented and magically inclined (or magically manipulated) who would ever know? Gale starts showing magical inclinations in the womb. Morena’s 9 months of pregnancy are absolutely hell. She isn’t ready for a child, but she isn’t not ready, either. So, she gets shit done and gets ready. She talks to the local Blackstaff Academy and seeks help and these teachers are /interested/ because rarely does anyone show magical talents in the womb and they are here to support her and more importantly here to teach this would-be-prodigy.
Morena is wealthy, so she can pay for private tutors and Gale shows magical abilities akin to a teen when he is a child, and so she fanes those (sometimes literal) flames. She knows her son’s child is powerful, and so Gale must be powerful, too. She loves him, and fully enables him to make his own decisions, but he is /good/ at magic and a child. He likes being good at things, and so of course he follows his talents naturally. So much so, in fact, that when he accidentally sets off a fireball trying to pick his mom some roses with a mage hand, Elminster shows right up. He had been watching Gale, after all. Mystra had told him to. Mystra had told him to watch Morena when she was pregnant, too, because Mystra knew what would happen. Mystra willed this to happen, and neither Morena nor Gale are any wiser about it.
“I wanted to give my mum something pretty,” tiny Gale had said, tears in his eyes and chubby cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry! I thought the roses were pretty, like sunsets are pretty, and I must have thought of the fire of a sunset by accident and—and—please don’t get mad at me.”
Because if there is one thing that Morena did instill in Gale other than politeness, a love for the finer things in life, and a sense of ambition (heh, ouch), it was to be respectful of authority, because Morena isn’t stupid. If a Lord could use another Lord’s child against them, they would, no hesitation. So, Gale is taught to be a good, rule-abiding little boy who has a healthy caution of leadership but mostly knows how to smile and nod and keep his head down. And Elminister, while not masked, gives off waves of authority, so Gale aims to please and keep his head down.
Elminster smiles. Gale clutches Morena’s skirt and hides behind her and Morena glares at Elminster as if daring him to do something. Elminster puts out the fire with a wave of his hand, and introduces himself. “I’ve been keeping an eye on your talents, Gale Dekarios. You’re so talented, but you do not know where to aim your talents. May I help you?”
Morena knows who Elminster is, she has heard the rumors. She does not know he is Mystra’s chosen (Morena knows Elminster to discuss grandiose tales with her clients, not to study magic or doctrine) or his relationship with Mystra at all. Morena frequently says, only in private and after a few glasses of wine, that the Gods can fuck right off because they were no help to her, she helped /herself/ thank you very much, so she does not know. She just sees this powerful and well-known figure who might be able to help her protect her son from his dad who is maybe still a Lord, and says yes.
Gale’s private study with Elminster goes on for a few years before Mystra gets involved when he turns 11. He excels, he goes to Blackstaff as one of the youngest students ever, and his classmates hate him. He is too good, too favored, too young. He does not have to try, as if he is blessed, and Gale does not understand why his classmates hate him. He’s studying just like they are, just many years ahead. He is young just like them, but a few years more. He has a favorite teacher in the form of Elminster, just like his classmates have their own favorites who actually are teachers at the academy and not a rumored hero of Faerun. His experience is close enough for Gale to not understand why his situation is unique, and why his peers hate him for it. So, he asks for a cat. Cats are nice and soft and hiss at people who they do not like, and Gale always had a hard time saying when he didn’t like someone so maybe the cat would do it for him. But Gale needed to focus on his studies, and cats couldn’t live with students at Blackstaff, so everyone tells him, respectfully, no. Gale keeps trying to make friends, and keeps failing, and he finally says “fine I’ll summon my own friend!” and summons Tara, which is an impressive feat, and within a single hour Tara says “fuck everyone this human is /mine/ and no one can tell me otherwise.” People try to banish Tara away, and she always comes back, but only for Gale, and sometimes for Morena.
Everyone knows Gale is talented, but it is not until he casually wields the Blackstaff entirely by accident that everyone realized how much so. The staff molds to his hand, and flutters in his direction ever since he picked it up. The school is furious, and Gale does not understand, because does that not mean that he is good at what he studies? He doesn’t understand it means he is a threat, he is too good, he is too strong, and some people would rather eradicate him than educate him.
One of the requirements for students at Blackstaff is survival training. The students are released into nature and told to fend for themselves, summon food and water or use their magic to otherwise make some, to create shelter, to prove that in practice they can manage a bad situation. The teachers are nearby, of course, to help should something go wrong. However, at this point, teachers feel one of two ways about Gale Dekarios, and that sometimes is a help but frequently is a hinderance. These teachers see this child, and can easily understand that one day he will be a threat to their jobs, their research, their theories. He’s just that good. And some of the teachers get together to make this test akin to the hells for Gale, and he goes off by himself. Waterdeep is surrounded by beautiful golden beaches and stalagmite caves, which are beautiful blessings during the tourist times of year. They are deathtraps during high tide, and the teachers know this, and so does Mystra.
It's pouring by the end of the first day, and Gale does not know where to go. He can heat his closes, and summon food and water, but he is aware of the fact that magical exhaustion is a thing, and that he cannot keep himself dry and warm constantly with magic for the duration of the test. So, when he sees a rainbow will-o-whisp that feels safe, he follows it into the cave. Mystra leads Gale into a shallow grave planted by the Blackstaff teachers, and watches him almost drown. The teachers would have let him drown. They would have let this eleven year old boy get grabbed by the rushing water and dragged to the bottom of a sharply pointed, mud filled cave. At the bottom of that cave is a large hollow tree trunk, and the teachers would have waited for tide season to end, and eventually drug Gale’s tiny corpse out of where it was wrangled around the smooth wood, where Gale had tried to hold in and climb out feebly, crushed by the weight of the water overhead, until the calmness of unconsciousness met him.
Drowning was calm, for Gale, at first. It was calmest when the rainbow will-o-whisp appeared again, a single speck of bright light in the murky darkness, his eyes stinging with water, his chest and stomach throbbing for oxygen. Drowning was calm, as he felt warm arms wrap around him, and felt the water get expelled from the hollow tree. Gale felt the weave rid his lungs of water and dry him off and warm him. Mystra lead Gale to his death just so she could save him, and so easily, Mystra became an exception to Gale’s distrust of authority, because she taught Elminster. She was the very rush of security and rose and love that Gale felt every time he channeled the weave. Mystra was magic—what Gale was good at, what made Gale who he is, what Gale loved. So how could he not love his savior? His muse? Mystra welcomed him into her hollow tree and taught him of Her. Her world. Her gifts. Her abilities. The three days of the test passed in a blink, and Gale emerged from the cave tinged with blue and white and the teachers who sent Gale to die heard Mystra’s laugh in their ears.
Mystra had staked her claim on Gale, and everyone knew it. Everyone had suspected it, when Elminster kept showing up, but now they had proof. Gale’s magic was sprinkled with starlight, brilliant blue and white and purple of Mystra. Gale vanished in his dreams to visit Mystra in her domain, and she continued to teach him everything that the teachers couldn’t or wouldn’t. The teachers who tried to kill him snapped to attention and did everything they could to help Gale, then, because to not would be to betray the Weave itself.
Gale went back to the hollow tree when he was about to graduate and the tide lowered, and met Mystra again. She took a more physical form, then. She guided his hands and arms as she taught him magic, and she kissed him on the forehead. She whispered, “my child, my star, my boy, my prodigy,” and Gale fell further and further under her spell. The Blackstaff Academy had graduation ceremonies where everyone would dance and celebrate their victories with one another. Morena was so, so proud. A few Lords showed up to congratulate the students, and check on the fresh talent. Gale was the equivalent of the valedictorian, and when he danced with himself, the more learned students and the teachers and Tara could see the strings of Mystra’s weave manipulating his movements like a marionette until they were perfect. Because he was her’s, and she would settle for nothing but the best.
#bg3#gale of waterdeep#gale dekarios#fanfiction#morena dekarios#tara the tressym#bg3 gale#bg3 headcanons#fanfic#writers thoughts#because gale was groomed and I will talk about it#fuck mystra#I have so many thoughts#screaming crying throwing up#feel free to add to this#would love to hear if folks have different thoughts#syr and the amazing devil fueled this ramble#baldurs gate gale#baldur's gate gale#baldurs gate#baldur's gate#baldur's gate three#baldur's gate iii#baldurs gate 3#baldur's gate 3
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We Need To Talk About Mahiru
Mahiru's second Trial is out and oh my god she just jumped up on my faves list. I love analyzing the MVs from different perspectives so I thought I'd give my 2 cents on Mahiru's character.
My vote: INNOCENT
The first thing I really feel the need to bring up is that people tend to ignore that Mahiru is actually very intelligent. There's multiple kinds of intelligence, and while she might not be "traditionally" smart in the linguistic sense, she's incredibly emotionally intelligent. She's a master of empathy and mood making and is an incredibly charming talker to the point you don't realize she's completely controlling the conversation. That being said, I genuinely don't think she uses her intelligence for malicious gains.
One of the theories going around with her first MV was that she was overbearing to the point of being abusive, while being oblivious to her own toxicity. Now after rereading and rewatching, I'm inclined to disagree. Her love may be seen as overbearing to some but we have not seen any explicit bad behavior towards her boyfriend. (Contrast with someone like Muu, who was revealed to have bullied as much as she was bullied herself). In my unpopular opinion, I genuinely think Mahiru was in a "healthy" relationship, at least on the surface.
[TW for discussions of death, murder, and fictional depictions of suicide]
[Side Note: One of the sticking points people have while saying "Mahiru was toxic" is that "Mahiru's relationship only lasted 16 days" which is blatantly not true when you check the translations for MV1. Day 1 takes place during college finals (mid-March-ish in JPN), Day 7 explicitly takes place in the summer, and Day 15 is New Year's Day (January). Mahiru's affection towards her boyfriend lasted almost a year, and they dated for around 6 months-ish during that. The "16 Day Memorial" isn't about a period of 16 days, it's about 16 days over the course of their relationship where she was explicitly making moves towards her boyfriend.]
I need you to take a real hard look at how Mahiru talks about "love" and "being in love." More specifically, when she talks about the concept of "love," she often brings up the action of "loving/showing love" in her explanation. Never once have I heard her say "My boyfriend loved me." or "This is what my boyfriend did for me." The focus is all on her actions towards the boyfriend. And I genuinely think she was a sweet girlfriend! She loved trying his hobbies and cooking his favorite foods and going to his favorite spots. She was sweet, and kind, and playful, and maybe just a bit clingy. But she was never jealous or possessive.
Es: I see. So, you became a murderer as a result of some relationship conflicts? Jealousy… Grudges… Having your partner stolen from you… Those stories aren’t all that uncommon now are they?
Mahiru: You’re wrong. It wasn’t that. I…never even wanted to kill anyone in the first place!
She explicitly states that her crime was not based off of negative feelings towards her boyfriend, but she still takes responsibility for what happened. Compare that to Fuuta, who, despite his own feelings of guilt, continually verbally denied that he had anything to do with his victim's death. Mahiru not only takes explicit responsibility, but also pins her "love" as his cause of death, to the point where if she was voted guilty, she would never try to love anyone again. Without "loving" anyone, she has no reason to live.
"To not forgive me means to take the act of loving away from me. That’s the same as not being alive. It’s the same as not being able to drink water or breathe."
It's interesting the way she compares basic needs to "the act of loving". Not the concept of "love" itself, but the act of showing someone love. If she is not allowed to show someone love, to her it's like suffocating, like dying of thirst, or maybe...dying of starvation?
Mahiru in her second MV may be dirty and barefoot with torn clothes, but the one thing she is not is starving. You could argue that "perhaps it doesn't show," but when compared to her boyfriend...
She's incredibly healthy.
And of course she's healthy! Her lovely boyfriend's been feeding her those bites of cake! So is the cake "love" then? But if the cake is love, why is her boyfriend, the one whose being "smothered," the one starving?
Feeding the cake doesn't represent "love." Feeding the cake also doesn't represent "the act of loving." Feeding the cake represents the boyfriend letting Mahiru "love" him. Does that make sense?
The boyfriend lets himself be vulnerable, he feeds pieces of himself to Mahiru for her to "love." But yet, he himself is starving.
...Have you even noticed Mahiru hates talking about herself?
It's evident from her first interrogation. Es can barely get two words in before Mahiru interrupts them to ask them questions about themselves or to offer her own advice to problems she thinks Es may be having.
Es: Oh… yeah. Uh… I apologise for that.
Mahiru: Did you zone out just then? This job must be pretty difficult, so you might be mentally burned out from work. Herbal tea’s good for that, you know? Oh! Like ginkgo tea—they say it helps improve brain function.
Es: Oh, is that so? I’ll try a bit then… I mean, no! Enough about me.
Compared to one of the few times Es gets a question in:
Es: I don’t completely understand what you’re saying, but… Being in love and loving someone—are they really that important?
Mahiru: They are.
Es: Hm.
Mahiru: They are… More so than anything else.
When reflected back to her, her answered become short and vague. Her voice grows soft and shy. She avoids questions, especially questions about difficult topics, not because she doesn't understand the gravity of them (like Haruka) but because she does. Like I said at the top, she's incredibly emotionally intelligent. She was beaten nearly to death because Kotoko decided to be Es's "fang", and yet she still empathizes with them. She still makes a strong attempt to see their point of view, and even to encourage Es to keep working hard. Compared to the other attacked prisoner we've seen, Fuuta, who blames and grovels for forgiveness, these responses are like night and day.
But what do we know about Mahiru, really?
She's 22
She's a university student
She likes romantic novels, comic, and dramas
She loves love. [But she's not obsessed with being loved. Haruka is obsessed with being loved, Haruka wants to be loved and taken care of, Haruka killed out of jealousy and for attention because he didn't feel loved enough. We never get that from Mahiru.]
Everything else we know about Mahiru? Is for other people.
Her favorite hobbies? Whatever her partner is doing.
Her fashion sense? Whatever will catch her partner's eye.
Her favorite food? Well, as long her partner cooks it, anything's her favorite!
The only time we ever get a sense of her and her boyfriend possibly disagreeing on something is Day 14 in MV1. Mahiru wants to see a French film and begs her boyfriend to take her. This is odd, because just a few scenes ago, she was bragging about how their tastes in films perfectly line up. If their tastes are the same, why would she have to beg him to take her to see this one?
Mahiru, like Yuno, is hiding behind a facade. But unlike Yuno, Mahiru doesn't have a strong core underneath her mirroring. Yuno can drop her "nice girl" act and she still has strong opinions and feelings and acts accordingly. Mahiru, when you try to go behind her mask, clams up, redirects, searches for a way out.
So. Back to cake.
The boyfriend feeds pieces of himself to Mahiru. He makes himself vulnerable, he lets her in, lets her care for him, lets her "love" him.
But Mahiru? She never feeds him until the very end, and even then, her "cake" isn't anything edible.
She's not stupid. She knows she can't give him what he really wants: any sort of vulnerability.
Their relationship is one-sided, but not because Mahiru is toxic or the boyfriend is apathetic. Their relationship is one sided because that's how Mahiru wants it to be. She wants to be the perfect girlfriend, because, if we're being honest, Mahiru doesn't like herself very much.
Why else would she hate talking about herself? She clearly loves to chat.
She puts her all into everything...as long as it's for someone besides her.
She will outright ignore her own pain and suffering, her own emotions, because she doesn't want to make anyone else upset.
Mahiru: Sorry… for making you worry. I’m fine! It doesn’t hurt at all.
Es: It’s a horrible injury. There’s no way it doesn’t hurt.
Mahiru: It doesn’t!
So why did her boyfriend die?
Mahiru's very good at hiding her emotions. If she slipped up and her boyfriend realized and noticed how she refused to love herself, it could cause friction in their otherwise perfect relationship.
Maybe Mahiru was the one who wanted to die in the woods, and her boyfriend, starved for any sort of real connection to her, found her at the last moment? Maybe her mental health dragged his down with her.
Mahiru's incredibly complex and tragic and endlessly relatable. She only loves too much because she can't love herself. If she's truly unforgivable, and she keeps her promise to stay alone...what's stopping her from killing the only thing she hates most?
#milgram#mahiru shiina#this is how to be in love with you#character analysis#i love you#daisuki#meta#deco*27#milgram project#mahiru innocent#i log into the milgram fandom#i post a 1.5k word essay#i leave for another 5 months#lux talks
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Milgram and The Court of Public Opinion.
this analysis will be about milgram's voting system, nuance and a whole lot of my own opinions mixed with eng fandoms translations, theories, and observations.
t1 = trial one / t2 = trial two
mv = music video
vd = video drama
voting and verdicts:
voting forgiven/unforgiven or innocent/guilty from the standards milgram sets for us (including es) isn't enough or easy.
being that milgram is set towards the court of public opinion and judgement can come from:
"sensibility, morality, ethics, legality, preference, taste, or sexual inclination..."
we end up arguing semantics, trying to find specifics in the crimes and making the best judgement possible. although in doing that the only conclusion anyone can come to is innocent when all is considered.
if we were doing it based on guilty and innocent then 5 are guilty, 2 are guilty on technicality and 3 are innocent
just in case you're curious, in guilty to innocent order as i just stated.
haruka, muu, amane, mikoto, kotoko, shido, fuuta, kazui, mahiru and yuno
it'd be over so quickly. but this... is milgram.
nuance/the grey area:
as the undercover song says, can you really judge them?
002. yuno, as for now, doesn't have a reason. ofc in western (american specifically) public opinion or at least those who view abortion as a choice. she's been innocent from the start. this is her autonomy, her choice, even if she's 18. i won't deny she is so young to be doing sex work, or more specifically compensated dating, and yes it may be common in japan but that doesn't take away the age being factored into what she decided to do. it wasn't for money and she has a good home life. with how analytical and cold she can be, im assuming her desire to be loved in this way comes from somewhere and she's become jaded towards actual relationships. opting for the material and superficial. even without pitying her, she'd still be forgiven/innocent since t1.
001. haruka did it for attention. with how he's coded - intellectual disability - and his mother being extremely neglectful after a certain age which prevented the possibility of his growth in intellect (understanding cause and effect/actions and consequences, along with many other things) it's easier to claim he's innocent. even more easier to forgive him due to this and extremely so if looking at it from his view point, albeit flawed. killing = attention = "affection", even if that attention/"affection" is negative it what he wanted. for someone, anyone to acknowledge him. he's innocent/forgiven because of his circumstances but if he's forgiven then he's being told it was his only option, and he was right, when the fault is on his mother.
003. fuuta was only trying to call out liars and scumbags. he is well versed in the court of public opinion, but he has never seen or experienced a result that lead to someone's death. looking at the undercover mv, then we can see he possibly doxxed his victim. if we take a nuanced approach here then we'd be looking at how he feels after the fact. he remembers the victims name, the fear in his eyes in his t1 and t2 mv, his voice drama after the first trial, him not approving of violence as a solution are all evidence of him feeling horrible. if he could go back, if he would've known. sure he did question why he's there instead of the people who actually killed the victim, but he also recognizes that he lead the charge. his innocence/forgiveness comes in the form of recognizing his actions were wrong. him being guilty/unforgiven is the action in itself.
004. muu is a love/attention reason. she's always been adored, admired, and cherished. she's always had her way. she also has never had to face heavy adversity. sure she was a bully, the queen bee, and a drama queen but didn't her school's culture allow her that? infact with us/es forgiving her, in the second trial song she claims as such, she'll always be queen. and for the t1 mv she says, "my 'im sorry' spells aren't working anymore." which leads me to believe that she's cried and apologized so many times that her old friends couldn't believe her. not forgiving her affirms to her that "two wrongs don't make a right" but forgiving her says the opposite to her. if she's to be forgiven/innocent the blame is tossed to the school, not her, but she won't see it that way.
006. mahiru is another love case, romantic, and in a roundabout way she never committed a crime in the first place. from the voice drama and interrogation q&a slips, we find out that she's a sheltered girl and loves/idolizes soap opera and shoujo mangas. from her mv's we see she romanticizes everything, especially with her t1 mv. she's innocent because of not actually committing murder and forgiven because this is her first love, she wouldn't have known that it was toxic and messed up.
005. shido is a love case, but for family. im thinking son because of a theory i saw, but either way when looking at it with nuance it gets heavier here. is taking from brain dead patients to save someone wrong? are the brain dead really dead? in my opinion yes, but that's the crux of the situation right? same goes for all the other inmates in this court of public opinion. he can be innocent from the view point that brain dead patients are already dead, and forgiven for his motive.
007. kazui did it in hopes of a dream, righting a mistake, being free. although he deeply regrets it, although he says he loves his wife? that love is mainly platonic. from his second trial mv, we see that he met her through his job - most likely police officer - so they had some kind of amicable relationship through their job. he only married her out of societal obligation, and noticing she liked him. not to mention in his t1 mv he says he messed up from the beginning. he is innocent because his crime is indirect, and forgiven because being gay isn't a crime and the regret he feels shows he never had negative intentions.
008. amane did it out of obligation. now, listen to me. i know she's literally 12 and was raised in a cult but notice how im stating the motive of each of these as they are from being stated in vd or pure observations from the mv's. now to any grown up it's self defense, but also imagine having gone through the worst hell imaginable all because you did something "wrong" stated by the adults around you. wouldn't the revenge be sweet? justice in its purest form. now take that and double it down with what you were taught. amane is not only forgiven/innocent because she was just a child, but because of the circumstances surrounding the murder.
009. mikoto (miko from here on) did it out of pent up stress an emotions, in turn creating john (koto from here on). miko is innocent without a doubt, and no i am not taking on the theory he actually did it til we get trial three. if koto was supposed to be his protector, and if he was born from a sudden explosion of pent up anger then (at least to me) it makes sense that he reacted the way he did. imagine being a corporate slave - no actually double it down, again, with growing up always trying to keep the peace. miko has a habit of laughing when he's upset. he laughs it off in hopes that things get better, his vd affirms this and even his mv after that. miko's smile that shifts to an extremely tired expression right before koto is born and a mirror shatters, right at the start. an intolerable stress from working so hard he grew grey hairs, cried himself to sleep, and yet continued to work, hold it in, and endure. the fault isn't on him or on koto. it's japan's work culture and the endure it mentality. koto is innocent/forgiven in the sense of motive. miko is innocent/forgiven because he's never killed to begin with.
010. kotoko did it to save the innocent. though she doesn't deal in nuance, much like fuuta. a key difference between the two is kotoko chooses violence because the justice system failed her. infact she's been hunting down the awful criminals of the world so much that she even has a covered bulletin board with pinned strings on it. on top of that, from the interrogation cards, we find out she dropped out of college and she was studying law. she'd be innocent for what she was seeking to do, in the court of public opinion, many would agree that awful people deserve a murderous punishment and she'd be even forgiven with that same reason. the nuance appears when considering the criminal, the crime and the reason. factoring those in then she can easily become guilty and unforgiven in the eyes of many, see the results after t1.
when it's all said and done:
they all had their reason, it all has a reason. who are we to say their crimes weren't just or fair? we're the judge, the jury, the executioner, and warden. in milgram whatever we says goes.
i'd love to see them all innocent, but at the same time do each of them deserve that? are their ideas being affirmed a detriment to them or their saving grace?? will they kill again?? will some of them be able to get the therapy and treatment they desperately need??? will they go back into society with an improved outlook on life or will they remain the same?
ofc i already have who i'd like to see forgiven and have already forgiven them myself, same as you reading this and those in the jp fandom (where it originates)
anyway. moving forward please vote with this in mind, and check out the audio dramas i beg you all. i hope that there are nuance voters and voters with sympathy but with how amane was guilty in t1, i have a strong feeling it's not gonna end well. but if it does, you'll see me rejoice.
#milgram project#milgram analysis#milgram#haruka sakurai#yuno kashiki#fuuta kajiyama#muu kusunoki#shidou kirisaki#mahiru shiina#kazui mukuhara#amane momose#mikoto kayano#kotoko yuzuriha
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Pink Scarf - PART 18.2 (Elvis/Austin!Elvis x Reader)
Character/Fandom: Elvis - Elvis (2022)
Requested: kinda
(Read more here--Pink Scarf Series Masterlist!)
Prompt: You are part of Elvis Presley's coveted inner circle, and the currently-disgruntled wife of one of the members of Elvis' famous entourage, the Memphis Mafia. After Elvis' dynamite first performance in Vegas, you find yourself in deep water when his magnetism finally gets to you after all these years. [ Fem!Reader ]
TW: Sex. SO MUCH ANGST. Medication/drug use/overdose. Dub con (sort of?). References to medical trauma, miscarriage, infertility. Blood. Cussing. Infidelity. Historical inaccuracies in the Vegas timeline. Priscilla doesn't exist in this timeline.
Rating: Explicit/Mature (NSFW, 18+, so minors Do NOT Interact) || Word Count: 16.3k (LOLOLOLOLOL)
A/N: Y'ALL, I'M SO SORRY, it's a monstrosity. I couldn't help it. There was just so much to be said while still in E's POV, so that's how we ended up here, over 16k. But we finally learn Elvis' BIG SECRET and experience the mighty fallout from that in his eyes, so hopefully it's worth it. This is my Thanksgiving gift to all of you, but you may want to pace yourselves. I feel like I had to rip my heart out a little bit to really get in E's headspace. Prepare yourselves emotionally. That's all I will say.
A quick note about the pictures...the first is actually from when he bought Graceland in March 1957 and it just works PERFECTLY for the beginning. I couldn't resist the pics from Red West's wedding in 1961, even though I know the timeline and the people don't match but the VIBES, the VIBES my friends, are oh so Jack and Reader's wedding so I just had to include them. The one for 1960 was taken the night of the Rollerdome. *sob*
If you so desire, you should now have the ability to tip my blog or different chapters in the story! Some of you have been asking about this, and of course, no one is obligated to do so! If you do choose to tip, thank you so much! I've never had anyone want to pay for my work before, so this is a big step towards my romance novelist dreams. 💜
Speaking of Thanksgiving, I am so FREAKIN' GRATEFUL for every single one of you babies, honeys, and lil' mamas supporting me out there, YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARY which is always evident but especially so when someone tried to steal PS last week and y'all went 'ride or die' for me instantly, without question, getting it taken down in record time. I didn't in a million years expect this kind of support and response for Pink Scarf, and your reactions, reblogs, messages, asks, and comments you've given me have been a blessing beyond expression. You all are the best community a writer could ask for! Thank you so much for your support. I am loving getting to know y'all better! I love every single reaction and comment and ask, and I'm sorry if I don't get back to them all as soon as I'd like but know that I love you all and am so excited to be making new friends! And a big "Hey, Y'all!" to our friends from Elvis Twitter, Elvis Discord, and Elvis Instagram--I see and appreciate you coming over to join us! 👀💋
If you feel so moved, please let me know what you think or how you're feeling (or send me asks)! I think I put everyone on the taglist who requested it, but please let me know if there are any issues or if I missed anyone. There seem to be some issues with tagging that I can't seem to fix, so please know I'm not leaving you out intentionally! Also, if you comment on a previous part that you want to be tagged, I might not always see it, so feel free to message me if I miss you!
I imagined this with Elvis in mind, but Austin!Elvis works here, too, whatever floats your boat!
Apologies in advance if there are any grammatical errors or TW that I didn't catch.
(I did start cross-posting Pink Scarf to my AO3 account, as well as my NEW Wattpad account. so if you are so inclined, you can check it out/support me over there with kudos and votes and whatnot!)
(Elvis in March 1957, Graceland)
March 1957
Elvis parks in front of your house, his mind whirling with noise. He’s not exactly sure how he ended up here, but as soon as he’d gotten off that train, he knew he needed something that he couldn’t get from any of the guys or even his mama. So, he finds himself unexpectedly here.
Turning off the car, he seeks any sort of relief from the heartache he feels. He’s been holding it all in since the train stop in New Orleans, the one that sent the world crumbling under his feet, destroying the pretty picture he’d had for the future. But all that is gone now and here he sits, hands tapping on the steering wheel with nervous energy.
He nods to himself, finally leaping out of the car, and then he saunters down the walkway to the front door. The chime of the doorbell can be heard through the door, and he listens carefully, grateful to hear light footsteps from beyond.
When you open the door, it’s like he can breathe again for the first time since the train pulled away in New Orleans. You look surprised to see him, those big eyes of yours widening the slightest before you speak.
“Elvis, you’re home?” you ask with a hint of confusion, but overall, you seem pleased at finding him on your doorstep.
“Just got in, baby,” he says, that boyish smile curving up. He gathers you up into a big bear hug and instantly feels better as he breathes in the unique scent of your shampoo and lingering perfume. A scent that feels like home.
“And you came right here?” you ask, brow furrowing when he pulls away. He notices that you look a bit worn around the edges, darker circles rimming your eyes as if you haven’t been sleeping well.
You’re right to be confused. Of course, he hadn’t planned to see you right away. He’d planned to sweep June off her feet in New Orleans, wanting to show her Graceland immediately, the home he’d thought they’d share together for the rest of their lives. But all that had been dashed as soon as she’d blurted out that she was engaged to another man. Engaged. His June.
“I want to show ya something,” he blurts out instead of saying any of this. “It’s a surprise! Will ya come?” Oh, god, you have to come, he thinks. His heart might shatter if you don’t, though he’s not exactly sure why. You’re not his—you and Jack have been dating for nearly a year—so it’s not as though if you don’t come that it really means anything. Yet, still he hopes. He needs this. He needs to share this moment with someone he cares about.
Despite the fatigue in your eyes, you nod quickly, and then as if you can’t leave the house fast enough, you grab your purse and coat and shut the door behind you without a word.
He smiles gratefully, and relieved, he grabs your hand and practically skips to the car. Once he has you tucked in safely, he runs around the front of the Cadillac, jumps in, and peels away. It’s not too far of a drive, and he yammers on about the last few months he’s been away, the words flying out of him. You nod and ask all the right questions, but he notices that you are pensive, quieter than usual.
His verbal diarrhea halts for long enough for his brain to take into account that you don’t seem your usual self, and he asks, “Are you okay?”
You look down at your hands and then out the window, as if contemplating if and how much to share, which makes him a little nervous. Your fingers twist in your lap.
“Honestly? It’s been a hard few weeks, E,” you finally say, still unable to meet his eyes. “My nana passed last Tuesday.”
He’s mortified that he’d just been going on and on about himself and here you were dealing with such a loss. “Oh, darlin’, I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t know. I know how close you two were,” he says remorsefully, reaching his hand over to clasp one of yours.
You shake your head, sniffling back tears. “It’s okay, you’ve been away. There was no way for you to know. And I keep telling myself that she’s in a better place now, but that doesn’t really help all that much. I guess it still doesn’t seem real.”
He nods, because he can’t seem to think of anything to say that will make any of this better for you. “We can do this another time, baby, if you’re not feeling up to it,” he finally gets out.
“No, no. I need something to do instead of moping around the house. I’m worn from being sad and worrying about the rest of it. No, I’m glad you showed up, E. I can’t wait to see your surprise,” you add quickly, trying for a smile.
“The rest of it? What’re you so worried about, baby?” It’s obvious you don’t expect him to pick up on that because he sees the quick look of panic that flashes over your face at the question, so he’s quick to add, “I mean, you don’t hafta talk ‘bout it if ya don’t wanna, but I can tell somethin’ else is weighin’ on ya.”
“You could say that,” you sigh, raising your eyes to the roof and back down again. The twisting fingers are back. “God knows I haven’t been sleeping, and it’s giving me these terrible headaches.” You pinch the bridge of your nose for respite. “I…well, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to tell you, Elvis, because it’s about Jack, and I really don’t want him to think I’m running around telling everyone our business.”
A warning rush rolls over him at this because he suddenly and very desperately wants to know what has happened with Jack, and that is a dangerous game for all kinds of reasons, many of which he’s not ready to admit to himself.
“I swear and cross my heart I won’t say a word, if you wanna tell me,” he says instead, a little too eagerly, so he quickly adds, “If it’ll help ya feel better and all.”
He forces himself to watch the road and not you, but he can practically hear your mind whirring.
“Oh, fine, but not a word out of you to anyone, Elvis Presley, I mean it. I know how bad you are with secrets,” you glare at him.
“I promise, I promise!” he concedes, crossing his heart. “I swear on my mama!”
“Well, in the midst of all this with Nana, I found out that Jack was dating other women a while back while we were going together. Apparently, I thought we were exclusive, but he didn’t, and well…” you trail off bitterly.
Elvis has to bite his tongue and bite it hard because somehow this wasn’t what he expected, and oh, lord, he knows too much for comfort.
Thankfully, you take this as him listening intently, because you continue, “I know I shouldn’t be too mad at him. I suppose it’s an honest mistake, seeing as maybe we didn’t communicate clearly enough about where we stood with each other. But it was so obvious to me, and I don’t understand how it wasn’t obvious to him. It’s not like I was going around with other guys all the time! I know it was months ago, but damn if it doesn’t really sting. Part of me feels like such an idiot, you know? What else don’t I know about him and what he’s doing? It just makes it hard to trust him, even though he was truthful about it when I asked.” He can sense the conflict in you, as your voice fills and shakes with the emotion of your held-back tears.
His heart is beating fast now, and all he is seemingly able to do is nod furiously, as if agreeing vehemently with all you are saying. The problem is that Elvis is complicit in all this and you have no idea. You have no idea that he was the one who pushed the showgirls onto Jack when he came to visit him in Vegas in November. You have no idea that “dating” didn’t have much to do with it at all. And now he feels altogether shitty for being the one to put Jack in that position in the first place. He’d managed to spread his own unfaithfulness and debauchery right on over to Jack, and now you are the one paying for it.
Shit.
Although, knowing Jack, it’s also possible that there was other dating happening, too. Either way, Elvis knows he’s got to tread real careful here and needs to keep his trap shut.
But Elvis can’t stand that hurt look in your eyes when he dares to take his eyes off the road to glance at you. He hates how angry and sad you look, the blue-black circles under your eyes conveying your distress.
And his emotions feel complicated, too complicated for comfort. He suddenly wonders if he didn’t present Jack with those temptations on purpose because there is a very deep and selfish part of him that desperately wants you to kick Jack to the curb for this, and that terrible, selfish part of him wants you to finally see Elvis in the same way he sees you.
Maybe there’s a reason that things didn’t work out with June, that voice pokes at him hopefully.
Stop that shit right now.
All this is playing through his head and leaving him outwardly silent. He realizes he has to say something, anything, because you are waiting for him to do so.
“I-I’m sorry that happened, ‘specially finding out at the same time as all this with your Nana. W-What are you gonna do about Jack?” he says, trying not to gulp.
He watches your eyes narrow and then he quickly looks back at the road. He can feel you shift in your seat.
“I…well, right now, I wanna pummel his brains out, so I told him I need some space to figure out what I want to do. I just—I thought we…” you trail off dismally. “I don’t want to go through this again,” you add quietly.
Elvis knows you are talking about Ted. Stupid Teddy who stepped out and got Judy Cole knocked up and then left you brokenhearted in his wake. It still pisses him off, even though he knows he’s got no right to judge Ted, not now, not after all the foolin’ around he’s done.
But when it comes to you, he can’t help but be protective. It’s in his bones, the way he wants to take care of you. In fact, he wouldn’t mind punching Jack in the face right about now for hurting you like this. And he’s even more pissed at himself for his part in it all.
Elvis just wants you to be happy and to be with a man who deserves you, and deep down, he doesn’t know if that man is Jack, even though he loves Jack like a brother. But the real problem is he’s not sure if he thinks any man will ever be good enough for you.
But his brain is wary to dwell on the meaning of that, wanting to avoid anything else that feels uncomfortable, so instead, he lets the excitement of showing you his new home overshadow any other unwanted feelings he might be experiencing.
“Okay, baby, we’re almost there, so close your eyes,” he says excitedly, changing the subject abruptly, before pulling up the long drive.
“Alright, Elvis, this better be a big surprise with how hyped up you are,” you chuckle, letting the mood turn by doing as you are told.
“The biggest,” he breathes, sliding to a stop in front of the Colonial mansion. “Don’t open your eyes yet! I’ll come around!”
You wait until you hear the car door open and feel his hand take yours. He gently brings you out of the car to standing, an excited energy vibrating through him.
“Okay, darlin’, open!” he drawls dramatically.
You do, blinking out the early Spring sunlight. He watches your face light up as you take in the architecture.
“Oh my god, Elvis, it’s beautiful,” you say in awe. “Is it yours?”
“Yes, baby, it’ll be all mine very soon. And for Mama and Daddy, of course,” he adds hastily, as if you’d thought he’d abandon his parents.
“Of course,” you smile, looking at him with those pretty, though tired, eyes of yours. “Can we go inside?” you ask.
All he can do is nod excitedly. Elvis takes your hand, pulling you up the steps and past the huge white columns on either side. He can’t unlock the door fast enough, the keys rattling and shaking in his hands. Once inside, he pulls you through the house, mouth running a mile a minute about what he wants to do in each room, how he wants it to look.
Finally, you make it to the top level, the last room. “This is gonna be my bedroom,” he rambles on. “I’m gonna get the biggest bed you’ve ever seen in your life, made special.”
You gently pull your hand out of his, and he watches as you take a small pill bottle out of your purse and pop two of the pills before downing them dry. Aspirin, probably, for the headache you were talking about in the car.
“E, stop a minute,” you say. “This is all amazingly wonderful and beautiful, and I am so excited for you, but…well, what exactly am I doing here?” You look at him with curious and concerned eyes.
“I…uh…I…,” he stammers, unsure of what to say or how to say it, as it’s all been spinning inside for hours and hours. He looks away, unable to meet your eyes. He certainly doesn’t want to put any of his stuff onto you, not now, not after what you told him earlier. His hands fall to his sides, and he shakes them, wiggling his fingers like he does to come down after a show. It doesn’t help. There’s just too much emotion rolling through him all the sudden.
You step to him, first putting your hands on his shoulders, then you run them gently down his arms before grabbing his flailing hands, absorbing some of that wild energy. The feeling still manages to send little electric shocks through him, even after all this time. Only then does he finally still and dare to look at you.
“E, what’s wrong? You let me talk earlier, so why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?” you ask, your eyes searching his, open and concerned. He should’ve known you’d see right through him. Maybe that’s why you’re here, because he knew you’d understand, that you’d be able to tell he wasn’t okay when no one else cared to.
It takes a moment for him to gather his words as his emotions get in the way. Emotions he stoically hid from the guys the rest of the way to Memphis. Emotions he pushed down when he saw his mama because he just couldn’t bear to break her heart yet with the news. God, he’s spent so much time recently learning how to hide everything real about himself in order to become the man everyone wants him to be. But here, now, with you, it all begins to overflow.
“I-I-I told June to meet me in New Orleans. I-I w-w-was gonna bring her back here, to show her w-what I-I wanted to buy…for us,” he says, bouncing on his toes, tears welling and clouding his vision. He hates how it’s tearing him in two to say this.
You squeeze his hands, urging him to continue, and for you, he does.
“But when I-I got there, she was acting so strange. There w-wasn’t much time and, uh, she told me she’s engaged to someone else.” He blinks and the tears run over, finally spilling down his cheeks. Saying it out loud suddenly makes it feel all too real. His chest aches with betrayal, with loss.
You look at him with such care, though you do not look shocked at this news.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, E. I know you how much you loved her,” you say, squeezing his hands again gently.
‘Loved.’ As in past tense.
“Did you know?” he asks suddenly, stepping back, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
You take a conscious deep breath. “No, I didn’t. But she did call me a few times wondering where you were, if you were okay. She said she hadn’t heard from you in months…” you say awkwardly, petering off.
“Aw, shit,” he curses, running a hand through his greased hair. A wave of anger rolls through him, burning him from the inside, but as much as he wants to put it on June and her spiteful engagement, he knows the anger is mostly towards himself. He fucked up. He fucked around. And he’d expected June to just sit back and wait for him while he did it. He didn’t even make the time to call her.
And you know what he’s done. He can see it on your face. He looks down, unable to meet your eyes.
You don’t speak. You don’t lay into him or tell him he’s an asshole, although it might be better if you did. God knows he’s already thinking it. You just look at him with sadness and understanding and forgiveness, even though he doesn’t deserve it.
With that ache in his heart, he finally realizes that he couldn’t have loved June the way he said he did and then leave her hanging like that. But he did love her…at least, he had. They’d had such a beautiful summer together and he was sure he wanted to marry her, once his fame was settled. Three years, he’d told her.
Shit, I didn’t even make it six months, he thinks absently.
And then everything changed almost overnight. His fame exploded. There was Hollywood, then Vegas. And the girls, good god, there were so many beautiful girls who wanted him, needed him, who threw themselves at him. He’d been weak. He hated being alone. He couldn’t help it. It was just sex, he’d told himself, just a way to blow off steam as his world became smaller and smaller and nearly suffocated him. A thousand excuses run through his head, but in the end, it was his choice not to pick up the phone. It was his choice to screw around, to live this life.
It’s no wonder that June moved on, he thinks. I’m a first-rate asshole.
“Y/n, I messed it all up,” Elvis finally chokes out. The sob fully breaks the dam holding him together, the pressures of his fame and the realization hitting him like a truck: he is never going to be able to have that normal life with a wife and kids he’d once dreamed of. His knees buckle under the weight of all of it—his decisions, both good and bad, the fame he doesn’t know what to do with, the unexpected consequences of this privileged but isolating life he’s chosen.
He sinks to his knees, defeated, on the carpet of his future bedroom, the one he’ll probably never share with someone who loves him for who he truly is. Because he isn’t just Elvis Aron Presley anymore—he is “Elvis Presley,” the celebrity, the commodity, the fantasy.
While he relishes in the luxuries of it all, in being able to provide the life his family deserves, a small part of him cannot help but feel like he’s made a deal with the devil. That this talent he has been blessed with will also be the thing that damns him. He is overcome by the feeling that he’ll never know ever again if he is loved for who he really is, or if it is his fame and his image they love. And there is something about that that crushes his soul.
But he can’t say all this to you because it sounds dramatic and indulgent, and he knows there are very few people in this world who’d actually understand. This is his cross to bear.
And yet you still comfort him. You are still here. “Oh, hon, I know. It’s okay, I know,” you say, kneeling down with him.
In the midst of all he’s achieved and gained these past few years, June is the representation of all that he stands to lose, all that he’s already lost. “She was my last chance, y/n. I’m never gonna be able to trust that a woman loves me for me and not for my fame after this. And I screwed it all up,” he says quietly, tears running freely. “I just feel so fucking alone.”
“Oh, that’s not true, Elvis, it’s not,” you say, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “You’ll find her, I know you will. And you have so many people who love you for just being you, not for the fancy cars or the mansion or the fame. You’ve got your family, you’ve got Jack and your true friends. And you’ve got me.”
The way you say it, so softly, yet so matter-of-fact hits him hard, so hard that his heart stops beating for a moment. If he wasn’t already kneeling, the honest way your tired yet beautiful eyes search his face might knock him right off his feet.
It’s you, it’s you, it’s always been you, he thinks suddenly. This is the feeling he was avoiding in the car. The feeling he’s been avoiding since he watched Jack kiss your cheek in the diner a year ago.
It takes his breath away. You take his breath away, you always have. He’s been enamored with you since you plowed into him all those years ago in the hallway at Humes High.
Suddenly, June is all but forgotten because you reach up, cupping his face in your cold little hands and wipe a tear off his cheek. He cannot help the way his eyelids flutter closed at the sensation of the pad of your thumb dragging softly across his face. His breathing, rapid from his cries is now labored for another reason entirely.
Opening his eyes slowly, he shouldn’t be shocked to see tears in yours, your grief and sorrow, not only for yourself, but for him, too, welling there, as if you are connected to him. In fact, Elvis feels like his brain is short-circuiting because you are too damn close and the tension in the room is suddenly so thick, he feels like he might suffocate.
Every cell in his body feels on fire as you lean in closer and closer until your lips press against his forehead. You’ve never kissed him, not once in all these years, and this alone sends heat rushing through his young body. Then when you kiss his nose, and then one tear-stained cheek, he holds his breath, feeling like he might die from this chaste sensation.
Warning bells explode in his brain because suddenly he wants you more than anything in this world, always has. And now you are so close. This is Jack’s girl, he thinks, and she’s my dear friend. Don’t be an idiot.
But when you lean in to kiss his other cheek, you place your lips alarmingly close to his, his tears wet underneath your soft lips, and his body is on high alert as only a twenty-two-year-old’s could be. His heart flutters as you pull back just enough to look deeply into his eyes, tears shining in your own, and then you lean in once more.
This can’t be happening. This should not be happening, his mind screams, but then your lips are grazing his and all rational thought ceases to exist.
You taste so sweet.
Heat blooms through the ache in his chest, and in his disbelief, he freezes. Part of him wants to devour you whole, but he is terrified that if he moves, he might spook you and he cannot bear that.
His confusion is overridden when your hands, shaking but demanding, pull him closer. Your lips are soft and sure, and he cannot help but be swept away by them. He’s kissed so many girls, too many to count, all over the country, but not one has ever made him feel like this, like his heart is going to leap out of his damn chest.
But this is a betrayal of a monumental kind, for both of you. While he is no stranger to betrayal, he does not want this for you. As much as he wants you with every fiber of his being, he does not want to be the source of your regret or heartache. He’s already done enough in that regard already, though you don’t know it. Mustering up every ounce of his self-control, Elvis pulls out of your kiss.
“Y/n, baby, you don’t want this. I’m no good for you this way,” Elvis says in a hushed tone, his forehead resting against yours. “I-I can’t have you regretting me, I-I-I couldn’t bear it.”
You lean back the slightest bit, and he thinks you might be listening, reconsidering, making him feel mostly dismay but also a little relief. What he does not expect is for you to press your little pointer finger up against his lips, hushing him, as you stare into his eyes. It’s as though your soul is as weary and needy as his and it feels as though you see him, truly see him, which is a new feeling for him. This sends a welcoming shiver down his spine, and he knows that despite every scrap of logic and propriety he is trying to lean on, with you he is powerless.
When your finger drags down his lips, catching on the bottom one, it sends a bolt of pleasure straight to his groin. Yet still he resists (even though he wants more than anything to see where this is going), thinking you might realize your mistake, and this will all be over in an embarrassed, yet still salvageable, flash.
Instead, you very deliberately scoot closer, your knees bumping his on the carpet. You lean in again, your lips grazing his again with a yearning he cannot help but return in kind. It’s barely a kiss, but the intent is there and when you pull up, effectively opening your mouth to him, the way he can feel your warm breath mingling with his own has him struggling to control himself.
You are testing him, testing the waters, hesitant but somehow insistent at the same time. His long lashes flutter closed when your fingers brush his jaw then rake into his perfectly styled hair. But it’s when the tip of your tongue touches his, sending a hot shockwave through him, that he can stand it no longer and closes the gap between your mouths with a longing sigh.
Pressing his pliant lips to your yielding ones, he rolls his tongue softly but firmly against yours, earning him a quiet moan from you. This is like fuel on the fire, finally spurring him into action, and his hands fly to the back of your head, pulling you closer.
If there is one thing besides music that Elvis excels at and loves to do, it’s kissing. He plays with it the same way he plays a crowd, listening to you and adjusting his performance as necessary. The buzzy way it makes him feel, like every nerve is magnetic, is one of the only things in this world that is anything like how it feels for him to perform for an audience. He loves the way it makes him feel.
But kissing you is unlike anything Elvis has experienced before. It’s as though you are tuned to the exact same frequency, finding his rhythm immediately, adapting easily. The usual fumbling of people getting acquainted in this way does not seem to apply to the two of you, the ebb and flow so natural it’s as though you had done this with each other many times before.
But the passion of it stokes a fire that has been denied a long time. Intense heat crashes over him, sending tendrils of warmth through his limbs and deep into his belly. He drinks you in as deep as he can without being desperate, and oh how close he is to being desperate for you. His grief over June melts away the more he tastes you, and he wonders how he ever lived before having the taste of your lips on his.
It's all very dramatic and romantic, which he is both at heart. From just a few kisses, he suddenly knows that if he could kiss you and only you for the rest of his life, he would be a happy man indeed. This surprises him.
But what truly shocks him is when you lean so far into him that it pushes him over, his knees screaming a little, and he falls back into the wall with a thump. He scrambles backwards, maneuvering his long legs into a more comfortable seated position while you don’t even miss a beat or attempt to come up for air. And when you crawl into his lap, hoisting the flowing fabric of your dress up just enough so your warm, bare thighs are straddling his, his heart actually flies right out of his goddamned chest.
Speaking of which, you are currently running your hands down his, pulling his silky shirt up enough to dance your fingertips over his stomach. His breath hitches then hisses at that, his arms involuntarily encompassing you, large hands splaying across your back to draw you ever nearer.
And you go willingly, inching up his lap until you are straddling his hips. When you grind down into his lap, he thinks he might’ve died and gone to heaven, his blue eyes rolling back into his head with a low moan.
He'll admit he’s dreamed of this, fantasized about this, but nothing could truly prepare him for the reality of the way you are making him feel. A trickle of attraction that began six years ago is now a roaring river, and is so, so much more than anything he’s felt before with anyone else.
He doesn’t understand it. He loves women. He always falls in love too fast, enjoying the rapid descent into the madness of it all. There have only been a few that he feels were true, though every girl he’s with, he loves in his own way.
But you are not like any of them, not at all. With you, it has been slow, so gradual sometimes that he didn’t even realize it. A teenage crush turned into friendship, and within that has blossomed a love that he didn’t know he was capable of. It is not until this very instant that he realizes it truly for what it has become. He doesn’t just care for you. He loves you.
He is in love with you.
Fuck.
Realizing this as your hips begin to rock steadily over his crotch is not the best timing. He’s as hard as a rock, fighting both the swell of his physical need for you while wrestling with the emotional needs he’s quickly realizing at the same time.
If he didn’t love you, he might not care if this is just a quick fuck between friends, but he does care. And he’s worried about where this is coming from, likely your overall grief and your anger at Jack. No, he doesn’t like the messiness of that at all.
But another grind of your pelvis into his, coupled with your tongue down his throat has the physical quickly taking over any and all rational thought. He wants you, more than he’s ever wanted anyone. And he desperately wants to give you what you need, which based on the mewls escaping your lips, is a physical release, a connection.
God, he can feel the wet heat of your cunt now through your panties and his pants as you slide over his length, back and forth, again and again. He clings to you as your hands wind through his hair, burying his head in your neck, his lips taking in as much of your skin as he can. He revels in the scent of you, your perfume and your irresistible musk that is permeating the room. He is positively dizzy with it.
You are frantic in his lap now, chasing something he’s not entirely sure you’ve ever had. He knows about Ted, but he highly doubts Ted knew what to do with you. And with Jack, well, he’s not sure how far the two of you have gone, but he can only guess based on Jack’s recent actions and your desperation for no one to know that Ted had popped your cherry that you’ve been trying to be good and pure and wait.
But as you reach for his belt, pawing at him, for the first time in this whole event, he gets the distinct impression that you’re not sure what to do next, only that you are needy for something. And goddamn him, he is willing to give you what you need, but only if you really understand what it is you’re asking for.
“Wait, baby, just…wait,” Elvis pants, stilling your hips with one hand while grabbing the hand at his belt with the other. You whimper a little at the interruption, rolling your hips for emphasis, but despite the groan he can’t help, he’s having none of that.
“Baby, I need to know that you really want this,” he says, brushing your hair off your deliciously pink cheeks, your lips swollen from his kisses. He looks into your eyes, almost getting lost in them and forgetting what he set out to do. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes,” you whisper, and then add, “Elvis, please,” in a begging tone that sets him completely aflame.
“Oh, damn, okay, baby, okay,” he breathes, barely able to contain himself with that. He’s only human, after all. He races to help you with his pants, pulling them over his hips and down his legs in record time, his erection springing free, precum already glistening the tip. You lift up on your knees, you move your panties aside, and touching the silky soft skin of his cock, you help him line up with your entrance. He can’t help but gasp at the feeling of your cool little fingers circling his shaft, losing it a little more when he feels how incredibly soaked you already are.
He can’t believe this is happening. It shouldn’t be happening. But all logic is gone from him, replaced by the sweetness of your mouth and the wetness of your pussy and his desperate need for whatever love you have to give him.
He watches as you bite your lip in concentration, your fingers digging into his shoulders as you try to take him in. You are incredibly tight around the sensitive tip of his cock, and he moans a little at the constriction. That’s when he knows for sure that no one else has touched you like this for a long time. You aren’t ready for him, not yet.
Reaching under your skirt, he deftly finds the delicate little bundle of nerves there and begins to work it ever so gently. He shifts his hips down, his cock regretfully released from your hold on it. Sliding his fingers through your folds (oh, god), he gently slips one finger into your tight heat, then two, allowing you to adjust around him before pumping them in and out. Your eyes go wide and you gasp with the intrusion, but then they flutter closed with a sigh, and then another, and another before your hips begin to rock again.
He watches you in your ecstasy, taking in every delectable reaction he can and committing it to memory. The way your brow scrunches and your mouth falls open into a little O. The feel of your thighs clenching around his hand as he massages and fingers your dripping pussy. Those alluring little breathy moans escaping your lips. Every part of you has him completely mesmerized and he knows it. He knows his mouth is agape and he is moaning softly right along with you. He is so aroused just by watching you, he feels like he could come without you even touching him.
“E, I need more…I need you,” you breathe with your eyes closed and brow concentrated, and oh sweet lord, those might be the best words in the English language with the way they come out of your mouth.
He is utterly unable to deny you this. He can’t even speak, he just pulls his fingers out of you, lifts your hips, and maneuvers his cock back to the place it wants to be most. And you are more ready for him now, your tightness yielding much more easily around the sensitive tip of him.
It’s in that moment, as you sink down ever-so-slowly onto him and he is enveloped by your wet heat, that Elvis realizes he is utterly ruined for any other woman, ever. They cannot and will not ever hold a candle to you. He should’ve known before. He should’ve stopped this while he still could. But as you finally settle in his lap, taking him in completely, your fingers relaxing and your eyes bright and glassy, he knows he is well and truly fucked in every way.
He kisses you deeply again and again, memorizing your mouth, as you begin to raise and lower yourself on his cock. You feel so good, so completely perfect, it’s as if you were made just for him. He is drunk on you, hands wandering your body, finding what makes you keen, and he’s unable to get enough of you.
But you are so needy and ready that unfortunately it doesn’t take very long of you riding him and him playing with your clit for you to begin falling apart at the seams. Based on your surprised gasps, he’s not sure you’ve ever come before, so he does his best to help you get there while holding on to his own release for dear life. You begin to shudder around him, clenching his length, and with a strangled moan you hit your peak. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, the way you are coming undone on top of him, around him, your eyelashes fluttering closed and then popping open, all wild-eyed and rosy cheeked as the hushed sound of his name falls out of your perfect mouth.
He's so fucking enraptured that his orgasm hits harder and faster than expected, chasing yours almost immediately, not giving him time to pull out like he should have. But he can’t bring himself to care because it’s all you. All he’s ever wanted or needed—it’s you.
Oh, sweet Christ, I love you, I love you, I love you, he chants in his mind as he follows you over the edge.
He clings to you, head pressed into your breasts as he pulses hard into your warmth with a grunt, then stays there as he comes down from the high. And then you are both gasping in the silence, and there is an air of disbelief that fills the room that the two of you just did that, together.
This is making love, he realizes suddenly. It must be, considering the incredibly overwhelming feelings he has for you that are pouring through him in unreasonable amounts. He never wants to let you go, not ever.
He pulls back enough to kiss you tenderly, lingering a little too long. There is a sinking, nearly unbearable feeling that this may never happen again, and it threatens to break him, so he pushes it as far away as it will go.
You press your forehead to his, silent, you still enveloping him as he eventually begins to soften inside you. Neither of you rushes to move. He cannot read what you are thinking and that makes him nervous.
“Are you okay?” he finally whispers, his thumb grazing your cheek.
You nod but say nothing.
“Okay, baby.”
You both sit there a while, simmering in what you have done, and he wishes you would say something, say anything at all to let him know what is going on in that head of yours. But you are quiet, unreadable.
Finally, you remove yourself from his lap and stumble your way into the ensuite bathroom to clean up.
Elvis runs a hand down his face, wiping away the mixture of salty tears and sweat that has collected there. He uses his handkerchief to wipe himself off and then puts himself back together. Blissed out in his refraction, he is so full of love for you that he almost can’t stand it. He thought he’d known love before, and perhaps he did, but this realization of love for you is so big that he doesn’t know what to do with it. God, he feels like with you by his side, he could conquer the damn world.
But you’re not his girl.
Fuck. Shit. Fucking shit.
His head falls back onto the wall with a thump.
Somehow, he’s both on top of the world and completely buried by it at the same time. You interrupt his thoughts, coming back in quietly and falling, exhausted, into his arms. He takes off his coat and puts it on top of you both. He can’t help but pull you closer, up into his lap, so your head rests against his chest. This is where you are supposed to be, he can’t help but think.
He knows the two of you need to talk about this. While he has been having his epiphany, he has absolutely no idea what you are thinking. He has no clue if you feel anything even close to what he feels for you. It is possible that all of this was just some sort of revenge on Jack, and that breaks his heart a little. And even if you did do it for that reason, you chose him. You felt safe enough with him to choose him.
But something deep inside him tells him it isn’t just that, not with the way you kissed him, not with the way he felt like his damn soul was connecting with yours. That deep connection he’s always felt to you, it can’t possibly be one-way.
But what if it is? a worried little voice creeps in.
He wants to ask you, but he looks down and sees you passed out on his chest. Fatigue begins to hit him, as he hasn’t slept in over a day.
It’s not long before he, too, falls into an exhausted slumber.
*
He’s not sure how long you sleep, but when he wakes, the sun has moved and the room is nearly dark. Disoriented, it takes a moment for him to realize that it’s you in his arms, and when he remembers why, his cheeks flame with heat.
Oh. Oh.
Drowsy, he rubs his eyes with one hand, trying to wake up. As the memories of your lovemaking resurface, his heart beats faster, and he knows the moment you wake you will both have to face what you’ve done. You’ll have to decide what comes next. And more than anything, the hopeful little voice inside him realizes that he wants to share this all with you—that’s why it is you he brought to Graceland today, and why it was so important to him that you like it.
“Y/n, honey, wake up,” he says quietly, not wanting to shock you awake, but you don’t even stir. He shifts under you, hoping that might get you moving, but you just lie there.
“Hey, baby, it’s time to wake up,” he says at full voice now, but you remain still, too still, and silent.
His heart starts to pound. Something isn’t right.
“Y/n! Honey, I need you to wake up!” He is getting frantic now, his hand gently tapping your face, which feels too cold. But still, you do not wake.
“Fuck. Fuck! Y/n, wake up!” He shakes you. Panic and confusion roll over him as he tries to figure out why you are knocked out. His sleep-addled brain runs through what happened before you both fell asleep, before you made love.
Her headache, he thinks. She took pills for her headache.
He had thought they were aspirin, but as he frantically rummages through her purse, pulling out the little prescription bottle, he reads “Percodan, one tablet every 6 hours for pain and sleep relief” on the label.
Elvis swears you took two tablets, not one, way too much for a girl your size. You hadn’t read the bottle.
Shit.
Having been in Hollywood, he knows that this happens. People overdose from taking these narcotics, usually to get high, but he knows that you did it on accident. Based on how full the bottle is, he’s guessing that you maybe hadn’t even taken the meds before today.
Regardless, he’s not taking any chances with you. There’s no phone hooked up at the house, so with his adrenaline now working overtime, he lifts your unconscious form and quickly carries you to the car. He peals out, driving to Baptist Memorial Hospital as fast as he possibly can.
The those few hours are some of the most terrifying of his life.
He bites every nail down to the quick in that waiting room, pacing there as your family sits, equally worried. He can’t help but feel that they are judging him for letting this happen, even though it was an accident.
He can’t bring himself to call Jack.
Guilt eats away at him, even though he knows he had no idea about the pills, but if he hadn’t fallen asleep, maybe he would’ve realized sooner that something was wrong. Part of him feels like this is punishment for his sins, for what he let happen in the house. He prays and prays to God, harder than he’s ever prayed before.
Please, God, I love her. I can’t lose her. Do what you want to me, just let her be okay.
His prayers work.
You wake up. The doctors say you are going to make a full recovery. His heart nearly explodes with relief.
He offers to stay while your family goes home to get some rest. It is past visiting hours, but being Memphis’ own superstar, the nurses take pity on him and let him stay, as long as he doesn’t keep you awake.
When you finally stir, it’s the middle of the night.
“E—Elvis?” you croak. “What happened? Where am I?”
He sits up straight and leans forward to take your cold little hand in his. “Y/n! Oh, baby, you took too many of your headache pills and I couldn’t wake you up. You scared the hell outta me. You’re in the hospital, but you’re gonna be okay,” he whispers, squeezing your hand.
“Wake me up? Why—why was I asleep?” your brow furrows in confusion.
His heart drops into his stomach, dread like ice in his veins. He doesn’t want to ask, but he knows he must:
“What’s the last thing you remember, honey?”
Obviously still groggy, you close your eyes for a moment to think. “Um, I remember you picked me up and took me to…to your new house,” you say, then your eyes pop open, “You were showing me your beautiful new house, and then my headache got really bad, so I took some of my pills, and then…” You stop, looking at him blankly. “And after that, I don’t remember. You said I fell asleep?”
Oh, God, no. No, no, no. He feels like he’s going to vomit.
The force of his dread hits him like a tsunami as he runs through what happened in his head again. You took the pills first and then he told you about June and then you kissed him.
But you don’t remember. You don’t remember because you were accidentally fucking high.
“Elvis, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” you say.
“Sorry, baby, I-I-I was just really worried about you, is all. I-I guess it’s all kinda hittin’ me at o-once, now that you’re o-o-okay,” he says, unable to keep his voice from shaking, unable to keep from stuttering through the half-truth.
“Please, go get some rest, E. I’ll be fine. I’m so tired, I feel like I could sleep for days…” you say, drowsily, eyes fluttering closed.
“Okay, okay, baby, I will…Get some rest,” he says, kissing you on the top of your head as you drift back into slumber.
In a panicked daze, he manages to make it down the hallway and to the men’s room before his stomach rolls and he is violently sick into the toilet.
Oh, sweet Lord, he took advantage of you. You were drugged and didn’t know what you were doing, and he had sex with you.
He vomits again, tears running down his face.
I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have ever let it happen if I’d known! I would never hurt her! the reasonable part of his brain cries out.
Shame eats at him from deep inside, cutting him. He deserves it.
How could he do this? How could he let this happen?
I should’ve known. I should’ve known the moment she kissed me that she wasn’t in her right mind.
But he didn’t, and what the hell does that say about him? He’s fucking selfish and he took something from you that you weren’t in your right mind to give.
He dry heaves, wanting desperately to expel his regret but knowing that he never will, not until the day he dies.
And what’s even worse is that he is still left with the fact that he is desperately in love with you. You don’t remember what, up until a few minutes ago, was one of the most amazing moments of his young life. You can’t share that with him. And that makes him feel even more selfish because the last thing he should be thinking of is his own damn feelings.
Sitting there on the cold floor, he tries to convince himself it’s for the best. It’s much less complicated for you this way. For you, there was no betrayal. For you, making love with him can never be a mistake you once made in a moment of anger and desperation. For you, there is only the love of friendship between you two.
Yes, it’s better this way, he thinks. He can carry the burden for both of you. He deserves to.
Because he knows he cannot give you what you need. He cannot be there for you, day in and day out, holding you tight and keeping you safe. Especially not now. Not after what he’s done.
He has to lock this away. You can never know, not ever. He must protect you from this and from his guilt. He knows you wouldn’t be able to look at him if you knew.
Oh, God. Please forgive me.
He can’t stop crying. He has to stop crying because he has to go out there and he has to look fine. He has to be fine, for your sake. You’re alive and going to be okay, and it’s that which he latches onto as a mantra in order to slide into the persona that has made his name.
He manages to make it to the car without losing it again, as the dawn starts to break on another day. He can’t bring himself to go home; he can’t look his mother in the eye right now. So, he drives aimlessly, for hours, his sins eating away at him until he finds himself at the church.
He waits for Reverend Hamill in a pew, his thoughts dark and churning. This is just the straw that broke him, for he knows that since his fame began two years ago, he has fallen so very far. He has been self-centered and vain. He has fornicated and broken hearts and caused pain to those he claimed to love, all in the name of this new life of his. And he’s pushed his friends to do the same. His stupid, selfish actions have had a ripple effect that has completely ruined lives.
Not only had he driven June away and into the arms of another man, he’d played with your life and Jack’s as well. If he hadn’t pushed Jack to cheat, you would never have needed those pills in the first place. You almost died because he didn’t want to be alone in his debauchery, and he knows that some sick part of him pushed Jack to it because he wanted to sabotage your relationship.
Then he realizes that, on top of all that, he did another incredibly selfish and stupid thing. He came inside you, which means that you could be pregnant. And that would ruin you completely, and you wouldn’t even know why, you wouldn’t understand. He would do the right thing, of course, and maybe, someday, you would learn to forgive him, but it would ruin you all in the process.
Oh, Lord. Oh, Jesus.
He thinks he might vomit again.
When the Reverend emerges, he looks surprised to find Elvis sitting there.
“Pastor, I am the most miserable man you’ve ever seen. I am doing the things you taught me not to, and I’m not doing the things you said I should,” he sobs, “Please, please pray for me.”
“Oh, son…come in,” Reverend Hamill says.
Deflated, consumed, and heavy with his guilt and the repercussions of his actions, he follows the pastor into his office. He can’t bring himself to admit what he’s done, to admit how horrible he is. He just cannot get the words out. Instead, he weeps and prays, over and over, the Reverend praying with him.
All he can whimper out is, “Please, please forgive me for my sins. Please.” He’s not sure if he’s asking the minister or God or both. He only knows he cannot live with himself for hurting you, even if you don’t know it.
After over an hour of this, by the grace of God, he finally calms some. His entire body and soul aches.
But he knows what he has to do now. He understands the deal he has made.
It doesn’t matter what he wants or needs. You being okay is all that matters. He has to make sure you’re taken care of. He has to make sure that you are happy.
In the days and weeks and months that follow, Elvis pretends he is having the time of his life, becoming every bit the budding superstar that the country insists that he is now. Sometimes, he even believes it; sometimes, he even forgets. Though every time he sees you, his heart breaks a little more, his love for you permeating him to the core.
But he knows he can’t have you. He knows he doesn’t deserve you.
Instead, he plants seeds in Jack’s ear. “You love her, don’t ya, Jacky Boy? When are ya gonna make an honest woman of her?” He pushes Jack to fully commit to you. He even goes with Jack to buy the ring, though he stops himself from paying for it. Jack has his pride, after all.
Instead, he throws himself into work, grateful for the grueling cycle of touring and recording and appearances and acting. He throws himself into fixing up Graceland for his family, building a life of extravagance that he never could’ve dreamed of.
And, God help him, he starts seeing other girls. He leans into the image of the playboy they all want him to be. He dates and he fucks, thinking that maybe, just maybe, one of these girls will make him forget the perfect way you fit into him, forget the way your face looked when you came undone around him. That maybe one of them will come close to the wonder that is you. That they will help him forget his past sins by cutting new ones. He cannot seem to help but do the sinful things he swore he wouldn’t do, lest he drown in his sorrows, but the girls help keep him from the one thing that is off limits: You.
When Jack finally pops the question in the summer, and you accept immediately, he can barely keep himself together. He convinces himself this is the right thing, that he is happy for the both of you as he stares into the night sky knowing deep in his soul that it should be him. He reminds himself that this is the deal, this is what he wanted, to see you happy and taken care of.
And he will damn himself for your salvation every time.
December 28th, 1957, Graceland
Oh, God, what have I done?
The moment you appear down the aisle, looking ever the most beautiful, blushing bride, every part of him aches with love for you. He’d thought that by giving you the life you dreamed of, the life you needed, that it would be enough to let you go. But as Elvis stands by Jack’s side at the altar, he realizes that no matter what has happened, no matter what he has done, he is always going to love you and it’s never not going to hurt, especially not after this.
Not after the quick look you shoot him as you step up to meet Jack, your pretty, wide eyes full of excitement and emotion. Not after seeing you all in white and wishing to God that it was him marrying you right now. Not after he keeps his peace after the minister asks if there’s a reason these two should not be married.
He somehow manages to keep himself from openly weeping during the ceremony by biting the inside of his cheek repeatedly but still finds himself caught in your radiance more than once and must force himself to look away. During the wedding pictures, he cannot help but maneuver himself close to you to press a lingering kiss to your cheek, to be memorialized for all time on film. The press of his soft lips into your warm cheek sends that tell-tale shiver through him, one that drives in the fact that he still loves you. He gives himself this tiny thing, and no one questions it because they all know you are close friends, and a congratulatory cheek kiss on your wedding day is not strange.
Discretely, he makes sure to let the photographer know he wants copies of the pictures, with the excuse that he is paying for them and wants to make sure they are perfect. This, too, is not questioned, as if it is the most normal thing in the world.
To torture himself even more, he offers Graceland up for the reception. These are his two best friends, after all, now cleaved together in holy matrimony for the rest of their lives. No expense should be spared because they deserve all the happiness in the world.
And they do, he reminds himself throughout the day. They do deserve all the happiness in the world.
At least if you are with Jack, he thinks, he still has you in his life. He can still see those beautiful, wide eyes whenever he wants without question or suspicion.
He clings to this.
Even so, he feels as though he is being sucked into a riptide. It seems fated that his life is going in a much different direction than the newlyweds. The draft notice he received a week ago confirms this, weighing heavy on his heart and feeing like a nail in the coffin of his hopes and dreams.
God is testing him, he thinks. It is all a very clear and stark reminder that where he goes, you cannot follow. He cannot help but feel that God is punishing him for his sins by taking him away from the fame he has just settled into to, taking him from the people he loves and the things he loves to do. He wants to lament that it isn’t fair, but part of him knows that he deserves this, too, for what he’s done and for what he’s done to you.
And perhaps God works in mysterious ways, as while he is loathe to leave his parents and his career and his fans, he cannot help the small part of him that is relieved he doesn’t have to watch you and Jack in your newlywedded bliss for the next two years. It’s the only upshot to this entire disaster.
But he won’t let his sorrow overshadow your big day. With a smile plastered on his face, he gives a charming and loving speech of how wonderful it is to see his two best friends find such happiness with each other. He only stutters once or twice, which comes across as endearing rather than damning. But the thing is, even though he is miserable, he is still happy for you two. He wants more than anything for you to have everything you’ve ever wanted and more, and if that is with Jack, then so be it.
The only time he truly falters is during the dance.
Your little sister (who at 18 is not so little anymore), Rosie, as the Maid of Honor, dances with Jack, while he, the Best Man, dances with you. The moment he touches you, sparks fly through him and down his spine, and he cannot help but pull you in a little too close, even though everyone is looking. His large hand wraps around your smaller one and the other clings to your waist.
The thing is, you do not react to this at all, not outwardly, anyway. You let him hold you and press his cheek against your temple. You let him breathe in your scent and lean into you, as if memorizing everything about you. You let his hands contract, pulling you in closer. You let him lead because it’s like somehow you know, in your soul, that he needs this, even if you’re not exactly sure why.
And for that he is grateful. He is grateful as he takes in every bit of you, committing you to memory, knowing that soon that is all he will have of you. All you will be is a memory, imprinted on his heart, for the rest of time.
When the song comes to an end, he leans back slowly, his eyes searching your face for any recognition, any understanding of his plight, any feelings of your own that might linger in your subconscious. You stare back at him openly for a moment, and for a second he thinks he sees a glimmer of something in your eyes, but then Jack is pulling you away and the moment is gone.
As the party continues into the night, he feels like he is suffocating and escapes upstairs to his room. And as people know not to enter his bedroom without express permission, he feels safe to let out the shaking sob he’s been holding back for hours.
He’s not sure how long he cries before a tap at the door startles him into motion, frantically wiping at his face.
“Bewbie, sweet boy, can I come in? It’s just me,” his mama’s voice echoes through the door.
“Yeah, Mama, come in,” he croaks out, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. While he is relieved that it’s her and not one of the guys, or God forbid, you, he still doesn’t know how he’s going to explain the state he’s in.
His mama comes in quietly, shutting the door quickly behind her. She looks him over and in one fell swoop seems to understand, even though he’s said nothing, even though he’s spent months perfecting his nonchalantness for the world, what is going on.
But a mother knows.
His mama sits next to him on the edge of the bed, putting her arm comfortingly around his broad shoulders. “Oh, my wittle baby, it’s her, isn’t it? Our beautiful y/n. You love her,” she says, less of a question and more stating a fact.
That does him in, the way his secret is exposed so easily by his mama. It terrifies him that she knows him so well, and terrifies him that if she knows this, what else does she know? There’s no point in denying anything, so he curls into her like a child and lets go of it all, the tears streaming once again down his cheeks as his body shakes with quiet sobs.
His mama has always loved you, taking quickly to your genial ways and how you always made time to spend with her. Maybe she suspected something from the start, he doesn’t know, but she doesn’t judge or scold him now.
“H-hurts so bad, Satnin,” he hiccups out. And it does, now that he’s letting it. It feels like his heart is being ripped from his chest.
“I know, baby, I know,” she coos, rubbing his back. He can sense all the questions she wants to ask but doesn’t.
“I-I-I couldn’t…I-I ain’t w-w-what she needs or wants, Mama,” he stutters out. It’s as close as he’s willing to get to telling her the truth.
“It takes a brave man to let the girl he loves marry another, when he knows that’s what she wants, though I can’t say I wish it didn’t work out the other way,” his mama tuts.
“Y-you knew?”
“Course I knew, Bewbie. A mother always knows. To be fair, I been watchin’ the way ya look at that girl for the past few years and it didn’t take much t’put it all together, baby,” she says. “But the question is, does she know?”
He stills and stays silent for a moment, before answering truthfully, “I don’t know, Mama. I don’t think so.”
“Hmm,” she tuts, “I’m gonna trust you had good reason for lettin’ that wonderful girl go without tellin’ her how ya feel?”
His heart constricts, causing him to doubt his choices, but he can’t explain how he nearly killed you with his terrible decisions. He certainly can’t tell his mama that he made love to you when you weren’t yourself, no matter that it was you came on to him. And he knows his mama would balk if he told her how much he doesn’t deserve your love because of his sins.
“It’s better this way, Mama,” he says quietly, sitting up and staring at his hands. “And she’s happy, both she and Jack.”
His mama nods, resigned. “Alright, my sweet baby, puttin’ your friends’ happiness before your own…I know ya made the choice ya thought was best,” she says, wiping his face and pinching his cheeks, “but ya get yourself cleaned up now ‘n go be at least a ‘lil happy for your friends, okay?” She leaves the obvious unsaid—that he’s leaving to film in a few days and straight from there, it’ll be into the Army, so this will be one of the last times he can spend with them.
He nods. “O-okay, Satnin.”
And with that, he does as he’s told.
*
And then, in a blink of an eye, she’s gone. His mama is gone and his world fully collapses and it’s all his fault.
You are the only one who saves him from being completely swallowed in the blackness of his despair, and he’s not in his right mind to think or care how that looks. All he knows is you’re there when he needs you the most. You’re there to get him through the absolute worst of it before they send him a world away, and then, he loses you, too.
He loses everything that means anything to him—his mama, you, his career—and he wonders how long God will continue to punish him for his misdeeds, until he can’t bring himself to care much anymore about anything at all.
Germany feels like a cold fog that clouds his brain, even when he brings his Daddy and Dodger and Red over to live with him off base. In his haze, he writes Anita promises he wishes he could keep but deep down knows he won’t. Then, he turns around and does all the things he shouldn’t do because he can and what does it even matter if it’s all lost anyway? He takes the pills they give him to keep him awake in the field, and those make him feel pretty good, for a time anyway, and then he starts taking other pills they give him to bring him down after. In his off time, he screws and tries to forget the life he used to know.
And in those horrible quiet hours when he lies awake, trying to sleep when even the pills won’t let him, trying to escape and can’t, he thinks of you. He thinks of his love for you and your hold over him even now, a world away, and when he’s extra lonely, he imagines you on top of him, writhing and beautiful. And when he comes undone, there’s nothing left but a gaping hole in his heart and a mess in his hand.
*
March 1960
Elvis bites his nails to the quick on the long journey home. It’s not just because of the planes and the exhaustion and not knowing if he’ll ever get back to being “Elvis Presley,” but he knows he’ll be seeing you in a matter of hours. Not years or months or weeks, but hours.
And he thinks that maybe he is finally over you, that maybe he’s healed enough from everything and that he’s on his way to start something new, something fresh.
But, God, somehow you are more beautiful now than before, but you act so strange around him, and his heart wants to leap and implode all at once. Somehow everything has changed…but you, you still own his heart.
Once he discovers your pregnancy, he is over the moon for you because he can sense how badly you want this. He doesn’t care that the baby is Jack’s—he loves it more than anything because he loves you and seeing you so happy brings him true joy for the first time in a long, long time.
His career is taking off again, his new image impressing those who denounced him a few years ago, and he already has appearances and recordings and films lined up to go. Life feels…almost good, like maybe he’s finally paid his karmic debt.
Then you almost bleed to death in his arms.
His terrified confession of love is spoken in an act of desperation, a singular hope that if you know he loves you, you won’t be able to go, that the string of fate that draws you both together cannot be broken, that he can somehow will you back to life with the power of his love.
He begs God, begs as he’s never begged before, an inner wail of blood-soaked prayer that does not cease as he rides with your near-lifeless form to the hospital, nor when he calls Jack and your parents, nor as paces the waiting room.
Singularly focused on his pleas to God, he doesn’t even realize he’s covered in your blood until Charlie and Jerry arrive shortly after the ambulance and look at him in shock.
“Jesus, EP,” Charlie gasps quietly, taking in the macabre scene, “We need to get you changed and cleaned up before Jack gets here.”
That’s when he looks down and sees your life’s blood staining his pants, his shirt, his arms, his hands. God, it’s even under my nails, he thinks as he watches his hands shake, feeling utterly disconnected from his body.
He’s frozen, unable to move, repeating his prayers again and again, until Charlie whisks him away and has to physically help him strip down and wash the blood from his body in the bathroom. As he watches the pink-tinged water swirl down the drain, he cannot bear the thought that maybe it’s the last thing he has of you, these stains, and that maybe he’s truly lost you.
He just got you back. He can’t lose you. He won’t.
No, his inner mantra of prayer doesn’t cease until he is absolutely sure you are going to be okay.
Though “okay” is relative, he learns quickly. You have a long recovery ahead of you, the surgeons say, wiping their sweating brows, and the next few days will be crucial. The baby is gone, and the doctors say that more tests need to be done once you are well to see if that is even an option in the future.
He is heartbroken for you, and for Jack. But you are alive. You are alive.
Lamar and Red have to physically drag him from the hospital in the morning to get him ready and put him on the train to Florida for Frank Sinatra’s special, which is the very last thing he wants to do. But it is absolutely pivotal in his career comeback, so he tells Rosie in no uncertain terms that she is to keep him posted about her sister and any developments.
As he showers and packs, exhaustion seeping into his bones, it suddenly hits him that he told you he loved you, and it’s likely there will be fallout from that. It makes him incredibly worried, and he is even more loathe to leave until he knows where he stands with you. It’s possible you won’t even want to see him again.
Or it’s possible she loves you, too, a little voice hopes. But he knows better than to feed that monster. You don’t love him, not like that, and it’s selfish of him to even consider at a time like this.
“It’ll take your mind off things, EP,” Jerry tries to convince him, seeing his trepidation, prodding him along to get on the train. “And it’ll give y/n and Jack and her family time to get situated.”
The message is clear. Elvis is not in the inner circle of your life, not anymore, not as he wants to be. This fact is both sobering and cutting at the same time. It reminds him yet again that where he goes, you cannot follow, and where you go, he is not always welcome or needed.
He nods solemnly, thinking he finally understands, yet again, the terms of his deal with God. You live and he keeps his distance, he keeps his sins from tainting you. You live and he lets you go.
He pops a couple of pills, brought over from Germany, to wake him up, to get him in the performing mindset, to rev him up to being THE Elvis Presley. “Anything she needs, anything at all, comes to me,” he tells Jerry, “Hospital bills, recovery costs…and I want the best doctors helping her figure out her pregnancy issues. Oh, and send flowers, every day.”
Jerry nods, eyes observant and keen. “Of course, EP. Anything for y/n and Jack.”
Yes, anything for you.
*
You don’t remember a thing from that night, he learns from Rosie, and most of him thinks it’s for the best. But a small, egotistical part of him thinks bitterly that you certainly have a knack for forgetting anything monumental that happens between the two of you.
But he is busy. So busy, in fact, that he barely has time to think of you at all after that.
Except half the songs he chooses for his comeback album have something to do with you, which he only consciously realizes when he steps up to the mic to sing. And just as he thought of you the night of the talent show, he thinks of you now, singing about the girl of his best friend and how it feels so right being with you. He pours his hopes and dreams and frustrations and sorrows right into that album.
Perhaps it will cleanse him of needing you. Perhaps it’ll help him let you go.
When you find out that children are likely not in the cards for you and Jack, he sends more flowers, every day for a week. Jack is devastated and practically begs to come out to Hollywood to escape the sadness, so he agrees.
Anything for his friend, right?
He takes care of you from afar. He takes care of everything. Anything you could possibly want or need is yours. But he keeps his distance.
That is the bargain.
He falters at Christmas, almost letting his grief and yours ruin everything. He swears that you feel something for him, that maybe your impulse to be with him was not entirely driven by the drugs all those years ago. That maybe you do somehow remember his confession. Part of him swears if he had let it happen, you would’ve been his once again.
But you are not his, you never really were.
And while he knows this on a logical level, the more he is away, the more he fills his days with mindless movie making and wooing his costars and taking pills that bring him up and more that pull him down, the more he lets himself imagine you are his. From a distance, he can take care of you. From a distance and in the deep recesses of his mind, you belong to him and him alone.
“Elvis Presley” becomes a household name, now with a clean-cut image, alluring to both housewives and teenagers alike. His fame and wealth grow, and so does his isolation and loneliness. So does the need for the pills and to bring the rest of the guys into it all with him. Even Jack.
Especially Jack.
But he doesn’t like to think about why that is.
He manages to destroy his relationship with Anita along the way. He loved her, in his way, he really did. But she was not you. Neither is Ann, though he thinks for a moment that she may be the answer to his prayers, but in the end, he screws that up, too.
As the years drag on, he thinks he finally understands why he sabotages every relationship he’s ever had—it’s you—none of them are YOU. So he flits from fling to fling without ever truly landing because all he really wants is your love. But he doesn’t deserve it, he never has.
He knows this as he watches Jack descend into alcohol and drugs and women, and a small, horrible part of him wants Jack to self-destruct, and even though he knows this hurts you, he is too selfish to stop it. And the guilt of this, coupled with the downturn in his career, pushes him to self-destruct, too.
Still, he keeps his distance. When he’s home, he tries not to shoot you too many lingering glances. He reins himself in, most of the time, but in moments of weakness, he allows himself to get too close. He catches you alone, he makes a pass. But because you are you, you always rebuke him with a laugh. Silly Elvis, ever the jokester.
But sometimes, in the dark of night, in your beautiful, wide eyes, he sees something else. That deeper connection that drew you together in the first place, mixed with a heat he has only seen once or twice. And it is that which keeps his hope alive.
In an attempt to bury it and fill the hole in his heart, he almost marries, but in the end, he can’t go through with it. He’s wildly unhappy and dissatisfied, and it’s not until he finally gains some control over his career again that things take a turn for the better. He finally starts to clean up his act. He seeks knowledge and spiritual clarity. He finally finds his passion for music and performing again after nearly a decade.
But it’s too late for Jack. He managed to drag Jack to hell and while he made it back, Jack has not. And you are miserable because of it. This breaks his heart.
He tried to give you everything you wanted and needed by stepping back to let Jack do so. He kept his distance. He did what he’d promised God, and yet life still destroyed your dreams.
Jack no longer makes you happy. Jack is no longer the man who can give you what you need.
And suddenly Elvis wonders if he was wrong all along. That perhaps he wasn’t the man you needed then, but he is now. Perhaps his sins have been forgiven. Perhaps the more he pushes you away, the worse things become for both of you because you are indeed supposed to be together.
You are his. You’ve always been his.
So, riding high from his first Vegas performance, he finally allows himself to pursue you. He pushes away a decade and a half of guilt and shame and lets his charm and confidence entice you. He lets the sparks fly between you, finally free after all this time, and more intense than ever. To his gleeful surprise, you accept him willingly, if not a bit hesitantly.
Maybe it is just sex, he thinks at first, this carnal need he has for you, but he knows better. As soon as he tastes you after all these years, he knows he can never let you go again. As soon as he coaxes, then watches you come undone again and again, he realizes that still, after all this time, this is it for him. You are it. You always have been. And he will do anything to keep you, to make sure you know that you are his.
He thinks you might remember it all after that first night, but you don’t, not right away. He senses your fear to let go, to let yourself have him, to have this affair. He knows you want this to be only sex. And maybe it is for you, at first.
But he will have you. He doesn’t care how many mountains he must move or what he has to do to convince you to stay, but he loves you more than anything in the world and he’s not willing to part with you, not anymore.
It’s true that his fame, wealth, and influence have spoiled him into always getting what he desires. Of course, what he truly desires always has been you. Now unlocked, his love and want and need for you is insatiable, and he will do anything to keep it that way.
Anything for you. Anything but letting you go.
*
As the blackout of his rage starts to dissipate and he comes to, he assumes that his friends are holding him back from quite literally killing the disheveled and beaten man who used to be his best friend, and he watches with deep satisfaction as you slap the shit out of your husband.
He also feels the immense guilt of letting it get this far, of not knowing just how bad Jack was to you, and his part in all of it.
But when you vomit and promptly fall to an unconscious heap on the ground, his fear is what overshadows his rage and guilt. Something is wrong, he knows it.
Not again, not again, not again.
Triggered by your history, Elvis, with untold strength, wrenches himself from the four men holding him down and clamors to your side, everyone else forgotten.
Pulling your limp body into his lap, he screams for someone to call the doctor. His heart pounds so hard he thinks he might need one, too.
Please God, please God, please God. Not now, not after all we’ve been through.
That deep-seeded, old shame creeps back in as he rocks you: This is your fault. Your selfishness did this. You destroyed Jack, he took it out on her, and you’ve put her at risk, yet again. You are a scourge on this woman you claim to love so much. A pestilence.
He’s getting lost in this fearful despair, and then Jerry’s voice in his ear snaps him back: “EP. EP! You have to let her go, man. The doctor is here.” Jerry pulls his arms off her as the doctor examines her.
Elvis’ fingers go straight to his mouth, his obsessive habit of biting his nails taking over as he watches the doctor carefully.
The doctor looks up, taking in the scene. He looks at Elvis, then at Jack bleeding against the wall, and purses his lips. “Will somebody tell me what happened to this young lady?”
“There was an incident…” Jerry begins diplomatically.
“Her husband slammed his fist into her face!” Sandy yells over him, furious, earning scathing looks from the entourage. They knew better than to give details, knowing to keep things close to the chest and avoid any legal issues, to protect him at all costs.
“Sandy!” Jerry admonishes her.
“No, it’s okay, Jer,” Elvis says firmly, waving him off. “I’m sure the doctor knows to be discreet.”
The doctor looks up at his hovering, intimidating form, and says nothing for a moment. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I need to get her to a hospital and stabilized as soon as possible. She needs x-rays. It’s likely she has a serious concussion, Mr. Presley.”
The men start to argue, knowing that as soon as she leaves this room, a whole host of problems could fall down on them, but that’s the last thing he cares about right now. All that matters is you.
Elvis holds up his hand and everyone goes silent. “Do what you need to do, Doc. Anything she needs.”
The doctor nods and asks that someone phone for an ambulance.
Elvis looks up and sees that the men cleared the room at some point, leaving only the major players. Jack still sits, leaning on the wall next to Red, his face battered and bloody, watching the doctor. Elvis can’t tell if Jack is sorry or not. Elvis walks towards Jack, his anger tempered only by his concern for you.
“EP!” Jerry says in a warning tone, signaling for the men to flank him.
“I’m fine,” he commands, crouching at Jack’s side.
Jack flinches.
“Are you proud of yourself, Jacky Boy? Are you satisfied, seeing her laid out on the ground like that? Is this what you wanted?” he hisses.
Jack says nothing. He sees the tears in Jack’s eyes, the regret through the pain, and for a second, Elvis almost sees the man he used to know in there.
“Hmm,” he tuts, looking over his friend with disgust, shaking his head. “I’ll deal with you later. And you, too,” he says, with a low, deadly calm, pointedly to Red. Then he rises easily from the floor, his attention on the men with the stretcher who just entered the suite.
“It’s never enough with you, EP, you selfish motherfucker. The man who gets everything he wants, no matter how many lives he has to destroy to get it. The rules never apply to you, do they? Dammit, you coulda had anyone, anyone! Why did it have to be y/n?” Jack spits out mournfully from behind him.
Shame snakes through him, through the anger that continues to boil under just the surface, covering the sorrow that flows under that. There is truth in Jack’s words, he knows that, even though he wants to deny it.
“How long, Elvis?”
He supposes he owes Jack that much, though he doesn’t even turn his head.
“Opening night.”
“No, you bastard. How long have you been in love with my wife?”
The room goes silent yet again.
Elvis turns around, but he cannot bring himself to look Jack in the eyes for a moment. A lifetime of memories flashes through his head, of times much better than this, of times when they had each other’s backs. Ultimately, he knows what Jack has become is partially his fault. Ultimately, he knows it was wrong of him to want you when you weren’t his, wrong to have sex with you, even before the debacle of you and the pills. It was wrong of him to manipulate Jack into marrying you.
As much as he hates Jack right now, he once loved him, and still, he betrayed him.
Jack chuckles darkly, “That fucking long, huh?”
Elvis finally looks Jack in the eyes but says nothing. Nothing he can say will make any of this less of a fiasco. Nothing he can say with make it right, no matter how much he wants to jump in to defend himself, to tell Jack he saw you first, to tell him he wanted you first, to fucking explain that you’re his goddamn soulmate and he’s had to watch you be with someone else for almost two fucking decades.
“Ahhh, and she didn’t even know, did she?” A hint of a smile plays on Jack’s bloodied lips. “Didn’t even give the King the time of day! Well, at least I got that goin’ for me,” he laughs.
His brow furrows as he fumes, and he steps towards Jack again. Lamar puts himself between the two men.
“It’s fine, Lamar, let him at me. What do I have to lose now anyways?” Jack laughs, which turn suddenly to sobs, “You were my brother. I gave up my life for you! I loved you, man!”
The words cut Elvis to the bone, flooding his fury with more guilt.
“And I love her,” Jack sobs.
“You don’t fucking love her,” Elvis says, infuriated, pushing past Lamar to grab Jack’s chin, wrenching his head to look at you being put on the stretcher. “You hurt her. You been hurtin’ her. And Jack, if she dies, I don’t care what brotherly love was between you and me—I will fucking kill you,” he says, low and vehement in Jack’s ear, for only him to hear.
He pulls back to stare Jack in the eye, to let him know just how serious he is, to make sure he understands that through the pain and the alcohol and whatever pills he might be on.
Jack blinks through his tears and nods his head once, shakily.
Elvis releases him.
Then he steps in behind you, still unconscious, on the stretcher as they take you out of the penthouse and to the elevator.
“EP, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to…” Charlie starts, hustling behind him.
He turns, seeing the stares of the men who have given him their lives to stand by his side. Some of them are befuddled, some understanding and resigned, some even a little suspicious after tonight’s events.
“I don’t give two shits if it’s a good idea or not, I’m goin’ with her. Anyone wanna argue with me about it?” he says impatiently, shooting up an eyebrow.
No one does.
It’s good it’s the middle of the night, otherwise he would’ve caused a huge scene at the hospital. But the nurses and doctors seem to gather by his demeanor that now is not the time for autographs. Instead of putting them in the waiting room, they set up an empty room at the end of the hall for the lot of them, a gruff old nurse warning them they best be quiet and not wake any of the patients before she closes the door on them.
And for the third time in his life, he waits to know your fate.
He waits for you, just as he’s been waiting for you for the last 18 years.
He waits and he prays, though this time, he makes no bargains with God.
He stills when the doctor finally comes to tell him that, yes, you do have a concussion and though you will likely experience symptoms as you recover, you should recover fully. He feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders.
When the doctor leads him and him alone back to your room, the doctor mentions the other symptoms you’ll likely experience and that you might have issues with your memory leading up to the event. Elvis cannot help but chuckle at that.
“Oh, I’m betting she will,” he says under his breath, though this time, he thinks it might be best after what you went through tonight.
He sits by your side in the quiet, dimmed room, and is taken aback by the angry bruising already spreading over your beautiful face. His fury at Jack swells through him once more, followed immediately by sadness. You look so innocent and fragile lying there. Suddenly, he feels afraid to touch you, as though you might break.
So, he waits. He waits for you to wake and he prays. He thinks of the lifetime he’s had without you and the life he wants with you going forward. And this time, he knows he won’t be leaving your side for anyone or anything.
But his secrets still lay heavy and dark on his heart. There are those things he cannot tell you of that day at Graceland so long ago, and the things he still cannot bring himself to admit to, like his confession of love as you almost died in his arms and his meddling in your life. He doesn’t want to tell you how all of it has led to you lying here in this hospital, hurt and fragile but somehow still his, he hopes.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do about it yet, so for now he just waits for you to come back to him.
He’s been too rough with you, he thinks, in his quest to show you how you are his. Pushing you too hard to keep up with his rockstar lifestyle and his insatiable need for you sexually has not been good for you. You’re exhausted, not eating, and have been on an emotional rollercoaster for days, and he was too consumed by his own selfishness to listen, so much so that he almost drove you away. The hurt, the feeling of pure panic that shot through him when you said you were leaving was enough to bring him to his knees, but of course, he could not tell you that. He couldn’t show you that weakness. Instead, he’d covered it with anger and passion, fucking you into submission.
He realizes his dominance, while fun in the bedroom, is perhaps masking his true feelings. He has told you in so many words how desperate he is for you, how he wants you to be with him, to let him take care of you, how he is yours, that he needs you. But in truth, he is afraid. Afraid that you don’t and never will feel the same towards him as he does towards you. That it is only his coercion, manipulation, and his sexual prowess that keeps you here with him. No matter how much you say you are his and that you will stay as he fucks it out of you, he’s not convinced that you’ll feel the same in the light of day, of your own accord.
Lord, the way you said you needed him tonight flashed him right back to that first time with you at Graceland. The time you don’t remember. He is putty in your hands now, just as he was then. But that need of yours was only sexual. If it is truly just sex for you and you are only staying for that…well, that scares him and makes him want to hold onto you so tightly that you can’t leave even if you wanted to.
If you don’t ever feel that same pull inside your heart, in your soul, that he has for you, he’s not sure what he will do.
Gone is the bravado and confidence gleaned from years of being Elvis Presley. Instead, he sits here at your bedside feeling stripped to his core: a nervous, stuttering boy with a funny name who loves you more than life itself. He is that boy who picked your books up off the ground, the one who you calmed backstage with your sweetness and wit. For you and you alone, he is just Elvis. And he’s worried he won’t recover if you don’t ever grow to love him.
Anxiety courses through him, a throbbing pulse that serves to remind him that for all he has and is in this world, he is still only a man. And you are the girl who has comforted him through some of his worst moments, yet now after all this time he’s still terrified to let you truly see him. If he lets you in, you will see him for all that he is and all the terrible parts of himself he’s ashamed of: his selfishness and possessiveness, his overindulgence, his obsessive tendencies, his goddamned vanity and ego. His secrets. If you know the things he’s kept from you, he’s not sure you’ll ever forgive him. Certainly, you could not love him.
His heart aches at that thought, flooding him with despair. He needs you so badly that he cannot bear to risk showing you everything; however, a deep part of him wants to flay himself bare to you, to expose himself in a way that he has never done before, not with anyone.
Elvis puts his head on the bed near your hand. He is going to be gentler with you, especially after tonight. He will prove to you that he is worthy of your love, that this is so much more than just sex. He’s going to take care of you and give you the life you’ve always deserved.
God has humbled him once again tonight, and he knows he must do better.
He loves you so deeply he can hardly breathe.
So, he waits. He prays.
And he hopes that one day, you will love him, too.
*
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#Pink Scarf Part 18.2#Pink Scarf#elvis#elvis presley#elvis presley x reader#elvis x reader#if you're looking for trouble#you came to the right place#austin!elvis presley x reader#austin!elvis x reader#elvis x y/n#elvis presley imagine#elvis presely smut#elvis smut#elvis x you#austin elvis x reader#austin elvis imagine#austin butler elvis#austin butler#elvis 2022#elvis movie#austin!elvis smut#austin!elvis x y/n#austin!elvis imagine#elvis fic#elvis fanfic#austin!elvis fic#elvis presley fic
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Does anyone know how to make masterlists on here?
Can anyone make one for me?
Cause LORD I can't make one.
I have tried and failed.
Idk what to do right!
Also I'm trying to get back to writing JJK stuff.
Cause writing for Hawks now is SO DAMN HARD IDK WHY!
Why is this happening?
Maybe cause this JJK withdrawal is meeting resistance.
That and I got three JJK mini AU series ideas.
I do have several Hawks pieces in the works.
But I'm feeling less inclined to work on them.
To those that voted for Hawks in my recent poll, sorry for my ADHD coping mind.
But I miss JJK.
Writing it and seeing it.
Writing to cope with it.
Also tagging my AU mini series cause I can't make a masterlist to save my life.
Hawks stuff will come out when the mood hits.
Otherwise ...
Stuff.
#jjk au#jujutsu kaisen#gojo satoru x reader#geto suguru x reader#jujutsu kaisen au#nanami kento x reader#ryomen sukuna x reader#toji fushiguro x reader#jjk x y/n#jjk x you#jjk x reader#jjk first years#jjk second years#satosugu x you#satosugu x reader#satosugu x y/n#i need support#where do i go from here#bnha hawks x reader#bnha au#mha au#masterlist#keigo takami x you#keigo takami x reader#takami keigo x reader#keigo takami x y/n#takami keigo x you#i cant wrap my head around it#my hero academia au#boku no hero au
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Thought I’d have a little fun with a classic… vote for the one you think is the lie!
Tagging some random friends - no pressure but would love to see your own truths and lies, if you feel so inclined! 🤗 @nahoney22 @clonethirstingisreal @proadhog @freesia-writes @orbital-mirror @eternal-transcience @arctrooper69 @dragonrider9905 @justanothersadperson93 @starlightsearches @the-bad-batch-baroness @ireadwithmyears @moonlightwarriorqueen @sunshinesdaydream @vodika-vibes @starrylothcat @dangraccoon
+anyone else who wants to, i don’t mean to leave anyone out!
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would asking if the ros have kinks be too specific? :0 if it is, then which ro's will peel the clementines and which ro's want mc to peel the clementines :> (casual acts of service my beloved)
kinks are fine! i was running a temperature this morning (i'm sick rn 🥲) and i briefly thought peeling clementines was a new euphemism for topping and bottoming and i was like oh! how creative!
jinwol is repressed both sexually and romantically and up until his mid-twenties thinks missionary with the lights off is the height of scandal. he has a thing (like a REALLY BIG thing) about control so i think he'd be into overstim and edging tbh
yul is up to try most things at least once with the mc! i think they're pretty adventurous in that regard, but imo they have a strong inclination towards light bondage. i think they'd enjoy shifting the power dynamics within bdsm like that, but i also just have an inkling it's because they like looking at the mc and enjoying the surge of possessiveness they feel
iseul is really into shows of strength. like reaaaaally into it. both manhandling the mc and getting manhandled, she's lowkey (highkey) into fighting and would have the time of her life sleeping with the mc after sparring. she's an adrenaline junkie, that one. voted ro most likely to grab you by the back of the head and start kissing you with a nosebleed after the two of you have a friendly fistfight
??? is harder just because i think they're the opposite of yul in that they've done so much when they were younger they're a little been-there-done-that at this point? LOL i think it also has to do with the fact that they don't have anyone they'd consider enough of a partner to try things out with so they're pretty vanilla in that regard. and with that being said they have a praise kink
#anon#ro: jinwol#ro: yul#ro: ???#ro: iseul#nsftt#not safe for the tosa#tbh i don't think any of these are set-in-stone kinks#i feel like a lot of sex is circumstantial depending on the partner/situation#fiction is for exploration#practice safe sex irl everyone 👍
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5 months ago I started my first smau that I never finished (rip D?NHOH!) and I’ve been wanting to try again but now I have extra time since I got my diploma/certificate and it’s the winter holidays! If i were to make a new smau who would you want it to be?
BEFORE VOTING PLEASE READ THE TEXT BELOW THE POLL ⚠️
I’m a n/sfw acc so I post both sfw and nsfw works, for the smau it will most likely be nsfw HOWEVER if Niki wins the poll it will automatically be sfw since it feels weird and makes me uncomfortable writing about him when he just turned 18 even if I’m just 6 months older. I hope you understand that I won’t write for him for a while and I mean like at least 6 months to maybe a year. To mutuals or just anyone who waited for him to turn 18 to post nsfw blogs about him I really hope yk i and the majority of enhablr don’t fw you. Also if there’s a star next to a members name that means I’ll probably be more inclined towards writing for them since I have more hcs so character and world building would be easier depending on the genre and type of smau I’ll write :)
Thank you for reading and good luck <3
-Rinnie 💟
#enhypen x reader#enhypen smau#heeseung x reader#enhypen smut#heeseung smau#jay smau#jay x reader#heeseung smut#jay smut#jake smau#jake x reader#jake smut#sunghoon x reader#sunghoon smau#sunghoon smut#sunoo x reader#sunoo smut#sunoo smau#jungwon x reader#jungwon smau#jungwon smut#niki x reader#niki smau#enha niki#enha jay#enha heeseung#enha jake#enha sunghoon#enha sunoo#enha jungwon
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ahh thank you so much for the detailed response (and I’m so sorry you lost the first draft that’s awful😭) !! this makes me realize I only know like bits n pieces of felix’s system’s details like each alter’s role and how they came to be, would it be possible for you to give a similar small overview of his system as you did for izzi’s?
Okay this one I tried saving as a draft to prevent history repeating itself and now it crashes the editor when I try to edit it on desktop lmao. i also found old summaries of them in my writing notes channel.
felix's system is less integrated than izzi's, obviously, but, it was never really as "intermixed" as hers; there's a gatekeeper to keep fronts and memories quarantined, and an elevator to represent the private separation of the front from the inner world.
this is felix, the host. they've hosted for like 7 years i think. prior to this they were an inner peacekeeper and comforter of the system. they are an introject of a stuffed animal felix had when they were very young, which they would periodically mutilate and seek to repair.
not identical, but they bear obvious resemblance to the toy that anyone would notice.
they're also a split from brigitte, and the stutterer in the system. there was a pretty famous less-than-ethical study about stuttering that showed children who had no stutters but were told that they did developed permanent lifelong stutters simply from being told that their identity was a stutterer -- that's felix
they're a people-pleaser, doormat, empathetic to a fault, and strive to be someone kind, soft but masculine, open-minded, and, most importantly, beloved by everyone-
old notes:
felix (affectionately called cho or chō by alter #2): felix is a genderfluid alter and current host of the system. they have hosted for about 6 years as of catharsis. prior to hosting, felix's function was a hybridization of an inner self helper and a caretaker. they know about the other alters extensively, but not completely, and operate well as a host due to their ability to mediate and their tolerance of stress. their appearance is an introjection of one of the only toys felix had as a young child, which they would reenact violent experiences and healing fantasies onto. although inner self helpers and caretakers are frequently seen as rather emotionally calm, alters are individuals even if they fit archetypical roles, and tend to individuate more and more if exposed to real life experiences. felix themself is fairly histrionic in terms of personality, partially due to an intrinsic part of their disposition, and partially due to a strong reactivity to passive influence within the system -- empathy once needed to efficiently caretake.
this is #2. she's the cohost of the system. while izzi's cohost might front 10% of the time, #2 can front up to 70% of the time on bad months, but closer to 40% of the time.
she's a foil to felix in many regards; her emotions are flattened or nonexistent, she has no drive to be social and no aesthetic inclinations, and she only cares about her reputation insofar as it's functionally necessary to maintain for efficient exchanges. like felix, though, she is a people-pleaser in a different way; with the identity of a robot, she has few hobbies and doesn't feel enjoyment about pretty much anything. her goals and actions are informed by what others want. her self-awareness about this identity was up for voting as a side comic plot iirc, but ultimately didn't take.
as a split from deadname, her core purpose is to protect the body, moreso than accomplishing goals she's told to accomplish. #2 is built more for assessing, reducing, and enduring chronic stress, allowing deadname to largely recede into unconsciousness outside of explosive episodes of Protector Rage during acutely stressful and threatening situations. had the split not happened, deadname would become unmotivated to protect from a constant barrage of stress, causing all stressful stimuli to blur into noise instead of coherent threats. deadname retains a technical ability to feel emotions, while #2 is completely removed from them on a conscious level to preserve her morale.
she is ironically a little more aware than deadname of the importance of emotional health to physical health as a result of her more regular sustained exposure to physical symptoms of stress. she coordinates scheduling systems for alters to all have a piece of the front if they want it, and is generally receptive to requests from other alters, even if the desires make no sense to her, for confusion matters to her as little as any other emotion. she's also a lesbian somehow.
old notes:
#2 (affectionately called "hon" by felix): co-host of the system, and a tried and true Apparently Normal Part, if the label were to apply to any alter. internally, she assists with mediation with duties similar to that of a secretary's, such as scheduling time for alters and work, maintaining appointments, fielding complaints, and gently enforcing rules. externally, she often fronts to take care of less emotionally demanding tasks, such as chores, errands, work shifts, appointments, etc. #2 has no traumatic memories, and is extremely level-headed. despite an intrinsic numbing effect attached to her identity, she has a sophisticated self-awareness, and has developed thorough emotional literacy for dealing with others. she finds emotionally arousing scenarios unpleasant, as feeling emotions causes a strong cognitive dissonance with her robot identity, and will subtly avoid them or people who cause them. also, she is a lesbian.
since i brought them up so many times while describing #2... this is deadname. they are not a split from anyone and one of the oldest alters of the system. they used to be the host prior to felix, and looked almost identical to the body.
over time, the stress of the circumstances eroded their identity down to the core motivation for hosting in the first place: a desire to protect the other parts.
deadname is a fairly standard protector, and generally comes off as hostile toward the company of other alters and to fronting in general without necessarily bearing malice toward either.
their physical and emotional sensations are dulled by a literal numbness, but, unlike #2, deadname is capable of feeling these things voluntarily without detrimental cognitive dissonance; they weren't always like that, and remember having a more normal relationship to these senses. to be dead, they had to be alive at some point.
old notes:
deadname is an agender protector alter, and the previous host of the system. at one point, they looked very similar to the body of the system, and their personality was closer to that of a peppy big sister.
over the course of hosting during hard times to protect the rest of the system from suffering, this personality eroded into a jaded, bitter, depressed one. they hate other people and other alters -- #2 and felix are the only two to receive good graces as they have relieved deadname of their position as host, but deadname will become protective over any alter. their most intense and primary protectiveness still resides over the safety of the body.
while many alters have their traumatic memories removed to keep them functioning, deadname retains all of their traumatic memories. a few alters split from deadname over time to maintain necessary functions that deadname had once performed as these functions came to conflict with the function of a protector. these alters do not remember the splits, although deadname does. deadname's identity was too eroded over time to be considered worth trying to repair to nero and saga, and, more importantly, they could still adequately perform their role as protector with the burden of the memories. deadname is expected not to talk about the traumas they have endured to other alters, and they usually only allude to something horrible happening, or their previous status as the Owner Of The Body. they have a special hatred for saga and nero because of this.
as one of the oldest alters of the system, deadname is aware of its inner workings, various alters' roles, and where they came from. they have a fair amount of life experience (for an alter), and technically CAN offer beads of wisdom or emotional maturity; they just frequently choose not to.
the rest will only be the old notes because... because.
nero is the gatekeeper and system manager. he enforces stability in the system and safety in their outer life. he has the ability to force alters out of the front, as well as influencing and directly controlling them. he can access any alter's memories at any time without restriction. he also has the ability to alter and completely remove memories from other alters. however, due to his specific function within the system, he cannot actually front.
nero is extremely ritualistic and favors rules and routine strongly. although fairly emotionless, he has a penchant for extreme anger, necessary to strictly enforce rules. his anger is usually only roused by perceived threats to safety, but wraith seems to be able to torment him successfully.
due to his function existing at a crossroads between memories and schedules, nero works in tandem with both saga and #2, who maintain good graces with him (in addition to felix, who gets good graces for hosting).
saga is a memory holder alter, also genderfluid (in a way). saga holds not only traumatic memories personally experienced by them, but memories that are instinctively too intense and catastrophic to stay in their alter's consciousness.
they are very, very rarely present in the front, and are detached from reality in many ways. they view memories and the system as fairy tales or a game to adequately cope with harboring such memories. extensive interaction with real life can cause them severe distress. saga is fairly benevolent, but because their role is inherently related to maintaining a smokescreen around other alters, their presence is usually considered a bad omen.
they may continuously accost an alter innocuously before actively attempting to inculcate them into relinquishing awareness of a memory or avoiding triggers that they are unaware of solely to make this function less obvious. this can lead some of their behavior to seem "random" or bizarre.
the snake tail saga possesses is a fragment alter they harbor with several memories too intense for saga alone to tolerate in their conscious awareness while still maintaining their function. the pseudo-integration of the fragment allows the two to feed into each other's motivations and thoughts seamlessly as one identity without being able to recall the memories of each other. saga also has a secretive and cooperative dynamic with nero, the gatekeeper.
vincent is another Apparently Normal Part whose original function was to maintain grades and participate in school as an untraumatized student.
over time, the function became obsolete, and vincent's identity suffered damage when felix did not continue to college. still, he remains fairly active in bursts. he is a split from deadname, and, in addition to fulfilling the role of a good student, he took a large part of deadname's curiosity and wonder for the world, instilling in him a sense of playfulness, open-mindedness, and optimism.
because he is a split, he benefits from deadname's ambivalence rather than outright hostility; he misreads this as friendliness between them, which deadname tolerates. vincent enjoys using writing as an intellectual and creative outlet, and maintains a free online serial called Time and Time Again about a motley crew of heroes who endure and fight against timeline fuckery. before this, he wrote fanfiction. he also enjoys reading, but because it is so time-consuming, and his free time is not that of an adult fully conscious at all times, he frequently watches media now instead.
vincent also identifies as a different "species" -- just a regular human, as opposed to a cat. he finds fronting for too long unpleasant, and can react negatively to being exposed to too much unbroken awareness of the body's sensory system.
related to this, vincent carries a more pronounced desire to try to be connected to his heritage and japanese culture. vincent has no traumatic memories, and he is consequently relatively mature and even-headed among the system members.
wraith is a female persecutor alter oriented around eating food.
wraith is a female persecutor alter oriented around eating food.
she has absorbed the message that eating certain foods or certain amounts of foods makes her an evil person and runs with it. she is acutely aware of the body's hunger as well as other physical senses even when she is not fronting.
wraith perceives her own motivation for eating food to compensate for other alters undereating as eating out of boredom or out of hedonistic desires. she antagonizes other alters, and plays multiplayer online video games as an outlet for her innate boredom and anger.
felix is the only alter with whom she is on good terms, as felix often capitulates to, and actively seeks to accommodate, wraiths wants and needs. her antagonism towards him is much closer to pestering than tormenting.
(i don't know how to delete that text it won't let me SEND HELP--)
brigitte is a female Sexual Alter who bears the burden of trauma related to sexual abuse as well as misogyny and compulsory heterosexuality.
brigitte is about as old as deadname as an alter. she also has extensive fronting experience, and several alters split from her as well. unlike deadname, brigitte's memory about these splits has been removed from her, and the alters that split from her.
because her identity is formed so foundationally in trauma, the memories of some traumatic events are not removed from her; however, traumatic events unrelated to her primary roles have been removed from her consciousness. whether she is aware that her memories have been altered is ambiguous, but because of how long she has been in the system, it can probably be presumed she is at least somewhat aware of the dynamic, and displays a lack of fear for danger from knowing about this.
brigitte is "goal-oriented" and strong-headed, and, unlike the other alters, will influence her environment to accommodate her role and identity instead of waiting to react to it. if she does not have enough influence over her environment, she simply won't continue to front. she has gone through lengthy periods of dormancy followed by short relationships that she ruins herself.
over time, as the body has been altered by felix's transition and wraith's eating habits, brigitte has naturally fronted less and less. still... love finds a way, i guess......
romeo is a male persecutor alter whose primary role is to contain dysphoria and anxieties about masculinity. he can frequently but heads with felix out of a dislike for felix's softer kind of masculinity and emotional openness. he fronts somewhat frequently -- probably 3rd place for frequency.
he handles some work shifts, and maintains his own friend group separate from felix. he is quick to anger, and struggles to see in a mature, nuanced way, frequently simplifying things to "good" or "bad."
romeo has a strong desire for approval to validate his identity. he is more aware of his appearance at any given time than felix is. he willingly interacts with felix's friends, and co-fronting from romeo during felix's social times is not uncommon; this is, unfortunately, part of what causes conflict between them, as romeo wants to be viewed very differently from how felix needs to be viewed to feel Seen.
among his own friends, romeo has a small group that he regularly lifts weights with. felix attends this group when romeo is not fronting as frequently for him.
it's over it's finally over that's all of them i'm free--
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The more I rewatch the first episode of OFMD, the less convinced I am that anyone besides Pete and maybe Roach actually wanted to commit mutiny (which, tbc is not the same thing as saying they were against the idea). Right off the bat, as Pete is trying to gear everyone up for mutiny, everyone seems to be largely ignoring him at first in favor of focusing on making their flags. But even once the conversation gets going, I just don’t get the vibe that this a group of people eager to see Stede dead. Running down the list:
Buttons: Obviously against
Oluwande: Obviously against
Pete: Obviously pro
Roach: Is probably pro? He does raise his hand when Pete is asking who’s with him, but he’s seems hesitant about it. Hard to say if that’s because he’s uncertain about committing mutiny, or if he’s just reluctant to *say* that he wants to commit mutiny.
Wee John: Votes pro mutiny, but is clearly primarily interested in setting things on fire. So in his case I would say it’s not that he wants commit a mutiny so much as he wants to commit arson and is not opposed to a mutiny as a way to make that happen.
Jim: Unclear, as they never say anything or give any indication one way or the other, though I’m inclined to think they’d just side with whatever Olu wanted to do.
The Swede: Totally unclear. He never expresses his opinion on the matter one way or the other. Him pointing out that Lucius reads may be him trying to shoot down Olu’s suggestion, but it could also just be a statement of fact. I ultimately land on probably doesn’t actively want to commit mutiny or he would have more obviously expressed support for the idea, but isn’t against it either.
Lucius: This is where we start to get into a deeper analysis territory and there’s a lot more interpretation going on. Lucius also votes pro, and he definitely seems to find Stede annoying, but at the same time Lucius character does not seem to be one of someone who would prefer to serve on a more traditional violent and bloodthirsty pirate ship. We know from episode 9 and the whole “strong reader/writer” thing that Lucius is willing to throw his lot in with a side he does not like to protect himself if need be, and also crucial here is that Lucius does not see the preceding conversation or the lackluster support that Pete is getting. It’s very possible that Lucius thought everyone else was more in favor of the mutiny than they actually were, and so also pretended to be more gungho about it than he actually was in order to make sure he didn’t get lumped in with Stede and caught in the fall out.
Frenchie: He doesn’t actually express an opinion one way or the other either, but I get the feeling he’s actually anti-mutiny (if for no other reason than he knows a cushy gig when he sees one), but just not strongly enough to voice that when he’s not sure where majority opinion is going to land. Because we do see a lot of little shows of support for Stede from Frenchie, “maybe Captain’s trying a new type of slow pirating” in particular is the first time anyone in the entire show defends Stede, and also when Pete is trying to rule everyone up into a mutiny, Frenchie’s comment is “mutiny or no, we’re going to need a scary flag.”
#ofmd#stede bonnet#black pete#nathaniel buttons#oluwande boodhari#jim jimenez#wee john feeney#roach ofmd#lucius spriggs#frenchie ofmd#the swede ofmd
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What do you think Ted thinks about gay people? He’s obviously conservative, but he doesn’t strike me as a particularly politically involved Republican. I feel like he’s too unmotivated for that lol. He’s very Milquetoast Suburban Dad™️.
Also, the Wheelers don’t seem to be very religiously motivated either. This is not to say that Ted would think gay people are “normal,” or that he wouldn’t be homophobic, but do you agree that it wouldn’t be in a fire and brimstone way?
Ted seems like more of a cultural conservative to me who votes Reagan because things are “good” under him, and there’s no reason to think any differently. Maybe he turns on the radio occasionally, but it’s not like there is FoxNews and evangelical preachers constantly in the Wheeler home. Is it possible he cares more about the economy than about social issues?
How do you think he would feel about having a gay son? Is it possible he already suspects it? Or suspected it at some point?
Also it’s hard to get a read on if Ted loves his kids. He obviously doesn’t really show it, but does he feel it? I feel like he at least loves Holly.
you really read my mind with this analysis on ted, anon!
i am absolutely obsessed with the wheeler family dynamic and how stereotypical it is of an 80s family
i cannot imagine ted wheeler being a fire and brimstone type of homophobe. is he homophobic? almost certainly, but i don't think it's due to deep seeded religious views. like you mentioned i think it's mostly because it's just not what is typical or 'normal'. i'm inclined to believe that ted doesn't extend much thought to gay people until it's brought under his attention by maybe discussion of the AIDS crisis or his son being gay
and, yeah, i'd say ted probably cares more about the economy than social issues. it's just so difficult to imagine ted extending the energy to care about social issues either way or hating a specific group of people - he's genuinely just kind of indifferent it seems
as for mike... i feel like ted might suspect something. he's made too many comments throughout the seasons for me to think otherwise, especially when he's like "our son with a girl?" of course that could have been him in disbelief over a girl liking mike because he's nerdy and not popular in any sense of the word, but with every other context clue about mike's sexuality in the show it just makes you wonder
i don't think that ted would be the type of homophobic parent to threaten to kick mike out of the house or become abusive (*cough* lonnie the son of a bitch *cough*). but i do think he'd tell mike to keep his sexuality and especially his relationship with will behind closed doors, and it'd be a subject not really talked about. ted likely wouldn't approve simply because it's not what is 'normal' and he might make some passing comments to mike that make his opinion known, but i can't see it becoming overly aggressive. i really believe ted would just rather not talk about it or acknowledge it at all instead - an out of sight, out of mind mentality
and i do think he loves his kids, actually. he's just a very stereotypical 80s dad that doesn't show it well at all. he probably assumes he's showing his love by providing them with a good house and food on the table. to him fathers aren't the ones who deal with the emotional stuff, that's up to the mother. he's no doubt even worse with mike about showing affection because it would be even more awkward for him to be open and vulnerable with his son rather than his daughters, and that of course is caused by misogyny and rigid gender roles/expectations
i am interested to hear what anyone else thinks about this!
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thinking about how much a death in the family sucks again (tbh idk why i always expect the comics that are deemed "important" to be good. because they aren't.)
long rant under the cut, cw for discussion of the anti-iranian racism in the comic
like we start out with bruce and jason in conflict and i want to see that play out! because we just saw how things went with dick and so i'm reading this thinking about how i want to know how bruce is going to handle things, did he learn from his mistakes? (no) will he and jason work things out? (even bigger no) and then we get the bit about jason's bio mom and thats interesting too and could be fun, jason going on a globe trotting mission to find his bio mom, i was personally hoping that jason would also come away with new understanding that just because catherine wasn't biologically related to him doesn't mean she wasn't family. that kind of thing you know? and like i already knew how this story ended so i knew this didn't happen but i think it could've been a really important moment in bruce and jason's relationship, bruce could've realized that he screwed up with jason the exact same way he screwed up with dick and found a way to make things better and jason could accept bruce as family after realizing that catherine didn't have to be related to him by blood to be his mom. that kind of thing. sickly sweet? maybe. but a guy can dream lol. but jason's death just feels? forced? like i know he was around pre crisis so its not like they introduced him then immediately killed him (although compared to dick his robin run is shockingly short pre & post crisis combined) but you don't give a guy a brand new origin story just to kill him off a year later. and i know it was down to a vote or whatever, but i'd be pretty damn inclined these days to vote to have bruce wayne killed off if DC asked, that doesn't mean they SHOULD.
and then theres the racism, which is abundant and took a boring comic with a poorly thought out plot thread into an unbearable slog of a read. i don't know how i never heard about the racism in a death in the family until after i read because it really is horribly pervasive. the entire thing is just "iranians are terrorists". i know i sure as hell never heard this until after i had read it so: if you guys didn't know! a death in the family is about the joker selling nukes to "iranian terrorists" and then he becomes an iranian ambassador for the UN because "their views align" or some other bs. the story doesn't work if it isn't racist, like it's genuinely tied into the fabric of the story. there's no a death in the family without racism.
also the racism makes the story completely nonsensical to anyone who isn't a racist asshole because it relies on the reader believing racist stereotypes, so if you just, don't believe those things, then the story makes no goddamn sense.
basically what i'm saying is a death in the family is disappointing and i DO NOT recommend reading it. even if you haven't read it, if you're in the fandom you probably have a pretty good idea of what happens anyways. just read the wiki page or something, you'll save yourself half an hour of racist bullshit.
#a death in the family#batman#jason todd#bruce wayne#robin#analysis#<- does this even count as analysis?#posts afflicted with a strange sickness#red's bat problem
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tagged by: @meyerlansky and @redbelles 💕 thank you darlings!
rules: summarize your WIPs badly and let people vote on what they’d most like to read
and i'll reblog with a snippet of whichever fic wins! (or you can ask for one if you're feeling saucy)
tagging @aeide @artschoolglasses @leofrith @natashatrace and anyone else who is so inclined 😘
#i am slightly 🤏 lying here because i only really actively work on 1-2 wips at a time to keep my sanity#but all of these live in my brain 24/7 and have words on a page. so. wip it is.#poll games#reiverwrites
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When the senator of Chandrila’s debts catch up with him at last, the Galactic Empire places a bounty on his daughter’s head. But Elain Archeron is cunning, and she will not go down without a fight—certainly not to the handsome Mandalorian hunter, intent on claiming his prize.
Notes: Part 1/2 of my contribution to Day 7: AU of @elucienweekofficial! Dedicated to @melting-houses-of-gold who patiently listened to my ramblings about this fic <3
Tags: Alternate Universe - Star Wars, Mandalorian Bounty Hunter!Lucien x Bounty!Elain
Warnings: None (filthy smut in part 2 as I am once again unable to write porn without feelings)
Read on AO3
Part 1
The ship is disturbingly loud.
Elain doesn’t know much about spacecraft, but the sputtering hum of her H-Type Nubian’s engines is concerning enough that she imagines anyone else in her position would feel unsettled. She should have expected the complications—she’d been warned about them, in fact—but she still shifts in her seat uncomfortably.
The yacht has been borrowed to her by Vassa, the former queen of Naboo and a longtime friend—and, for the past four years, a senator within the ranks of the Galactic Empire. Vassa herself had not been present on Naboo during Elain’s stay, called away by what she called a sham of a voting in the Senate, but her people had been informed in advance well enough to take care of the entire process.
Elain Archeron is being smuggled.
It is precisely why she’s been lent the H-Type. The ship is pre-Empire, which means it will—it should—fly under the radar, staying off the Empire’s scopes. It’s not that Elain is a fugitive—not yet, at least—but she has no doubt the Chandrilan government will alert the Senate of her disappearance once they realise Lord Archeron’s daughter has escaped. She isn’t important enough to have Destroyers sent after her, but Elain has never been one to take her chances. Especially not on a day like this.
Especially not on her wedding day.
She has been putting it off since the day she turned fifteen, and it was only the love Lord Archeron supposedly bore for his daughter that kept Elain from an arrangement to be put in place immediately afterwards, as per the Chandrilan custom. Now, though, at twenty-three…Elain had run out of excuses.
The message arrived while she was on Naboo, spending the summer with Vassa as she did nearly every year. A holo-recording of Senator Archeron happily announced her engagement to Graysen Nolan, the only son of Governor Nolan—perhaps the single richest man on Chandrila, Elain’s own family not even coming close in wealth. This will be good for us, Elain, her father said. Finally, the tide turns favourably in our direction.
Elain was not inclined to agree.
Vassa, thank the Maker, had helped her put the plan in motion almost immediately, arranging for safe, undercover passage to the Outer Rim through one of the old hyperspace lanes, abandoned by the Republic during the Clone War. Her intel claimed the route to be safe enough to pass through undetected, which, for Elain, was more than enough.
Graysen Nolan is not old or, superficial as it may be, unattractive by any means. He is quite handsome actually and, as her father so vehemently assured her, quite ridiculously wealthy—but the twenty-eight year old man has a flaw.
He’s an Imperial.
Elain would never dare voice it out loud—in the eyes of the Empire, she is all but a loyal subject, a pretty face to put on Chandrila’s posters and nothing more. But deep down, in a place deep and uncharted like the Wild Space itself, Elain despises them with her whole, insignificant being.
The Senator does not share his daughter’s sentiment, of course—he is a loyalist through and through. It’s what made Elain despise him, too—despise the coward hiding behind expensive gestures and grand speeches. The coward who’d chosen the Empire over his family.
Over the two daughters it had taken from him.
Elain closes her eyes and rests the back of her head against the yacht’s sleek wall, the cool metal doing nothing to ease the pain of the memory. The ship shakes slightly as it charts the course into hyperspace, sending tremors into her bones where it comes into contact with her body. This is one of the crafts with strong deflector shields, Elain reminds herself. As long as they manage to avoid the asteroid field, they will be fine. Probably.
The ship sputters again, and, once again, doubt washes over her in a surging wave. This is probably the fourth or fifth time in the past hour that she’s reconsidered this whole ordeal, the very first one nearly sending her into cardiac arrest as she first saw the ship, the once glistening silver now rusted and peeling off in certain places, as though damaged by battle. It probably was. Elain can’t even begin to count how many attacks on her life Vassa had endured during the Clone War, the controversial Senator constantly the subject of immense interest to the now-extinct Separatist leaders.
She looks around the space, the air suddenly tight. She knows this is going to work—has been assured of it a hundred times—and yet, for some reason, dread continues to build in her chest all the same. Through the wide viewport of the cockpit, even the stars seem to flicker in warning.
“Are we clear?” she asks the pilot nervously.
The pilot, a man Vassa has personally vouched for, half-turns to her from his chair. “We’re calculating the jump, my Lady.”
Elain shifts in her own seat. “How much longer?”
The ground shakes violently before he manages to open his mouth.
Her four guards—or Vassa’s guards, since Elain abandoned her own when she’d sneaked out from her bedchamber’s terrace—jolt upright, white-gloved hands wrapped tightly around their blasters.
“What is happening?!” Elain yells when the floor trembles again, the ship groaning loudly.
All the blood drains from the pilot’s face. “Someone docked in from below.”
Elain’s blood chills. “Impossible.” They couldn’t have realised it yet—she’d purposefully opted to run in the middle of the night, way after the Chandrilan guard conducted their security check. She expected them to find her bed empty in the morning—but not now, merely an hour after her escape.
The commander of her escort looks at his subordinate, his face tight and deep with what seems like thousands of creases. “Check out the disturbance,” he barks, the guard only nodding before he disappears from the cockpit.
“Empire?” Elain asks, the question no more than a whisper. The pilot shakes his head, looking at the beeping controls in disbelief.
“It can’t be—this ship is supposed to be invisible.”
Elain chokes on a breath. “Supposed to?”
The pilot seems breathless, too. “My Lady—”
His words are interrupted by a singular shot of blaster fire as it cuts through the air. Then, a loud thud as a body falls to the metal floor.
Elain yelps.
One of her guards grabs her by the arm, his grip tight enough to crush the veins beneath her skin. “My Lady, we must hide.”
“Escape pods?” Elain pants.
The commander’s expression looks grave. “There are none on this ship.” He looks at the entrance to the cockpit, and a ringing silence ripples through the air as they all realise the guard has not yet returned—which means the body they’d heard was likely not the intruder’s.
“Hide her,” the commander barks to his remaining two men. “Seal the entrance.” And with that, he, too, disappears between the automatic door, the sharp whoosh of it closing foreboding in a way Elain can’t quite describe.
Not a single person in the cockpit dares to utter so much as a breath as they listen in to the commander’s steps, echoing through the passageway. One second passes, then two—then three.
There is a muffled sound of struggle before the blaster is fired again, yet another thud as what is undoubtedly the commander’s body falls to the floor.
What happens next is a blur to Elain.
The pilot sucks in a breath, and the two guards begin shouting at each other, one order after another as Elain is pulled back toward the small storage space hidden under the pilot’s seat. One of the men lunges for the door, his own weapon at the ready as he aims for the control panel. Elain squeezes her eyes shut, preparing for the shot.
Except that when the shot finally comes, it does not sound from her guard’s sleek, elegant S-5—the man hadn’t even managed to raise it toward the source.
No, it comes from a different pistol, rough and heavy, a trail of smoke hissing upward as the man’s body, too, slumps onto the metal.
Elain tears her gaze off her lifeless guard to look into the eyes of his murderer.
What she finds is a face covered entirely by beskar, the silvery helmet glinting even under the dying starlight.
The Mandalorian comes into view, his powerful frame scraping against the blast door as he takes a step forward, the sound as loud as the bodies of the three men he’d killed. Elain’s breath hitches in her chest, as though afraid to so much as graze the faded green of his chest plate, the metal she recognises as durasteel—hardly comparable to the sheer strength of beskar, but enough to keep the laser-like beams from piercing his heart—something many people have tried to do, if the ashen marks staining the armour are any indication.
Elain’s own heart—one she suspects will not keep beating for long—thumps loudly in her chest as the Mandalorian man sheathes the blaster back into his belt, so many weapons strapped to its side Elain struggles to understand how he manages to walk with all that weight. He looks calm as he looks over the cockpit—over the three people still alive and waiting for his next move. Elain cannot explain how she knows this—but she swears she can feel his gaze pinned on her, even with his face hidden behind a black, T-shaped visor.
“Stand down, Mandalorian,” the last of her Nubian guards orders loudly, his blaster pointed straight at the masked warrior.
Elain feels his eyes drift away from her face, like a magnet releasing its hold as he looks over the guard with nothing more than an angle of his head. The man actually squirms under his scrutiny.
“I said,” he repeated, no longer able to hide the slight tremor in his throat, “stand down.”
To Elain’s complete shock, the leather-clad hand hovering above his belt falls loosely down his side. The guard, too, seems to release a breath. “This is a diplomatic mission you have disrupted,” he says. “You will be reported to the Guild—”
“I’m not with the Guild,” the response cuts in. It makes Elain shiver—his voice is low and deep, the helmet’s vocoder modulating it slightly, making it seem like a gravelly rumble from his throat.
Once the shiver passes through her spine, the Mandalorian’s words register. If he isn’t with the Guild…
“Hand her over,” he orders. “Now.” One word—deadly. He does not seem like the man to revel in hiding his threats.
The guard gulps, sensing it, too. To his credit, he still manages to tell him, “We will not.”
The Mandalorian’s vocoder sounds with a low hum, the sound seeping a scorching fire into her bones. “My orders are to leave witnesses,” he finally says, his metal-clad body entirely still like a predator fixed on his prey. “It’s a shame I happen to be forgetful sometimes.”
Elain’s heart threatens to stumble out of her chest. He came here for her, and the men sent to protect her—Vassa’s men—do not need to die trying to protect her from the inevitable.
It’s just her luck, Elain thinks bitterly, that the one and only time she’s ever tried to rebel, she has to be hunted by one of the most ruthless warriors in the galaxy. The Mandalorians are known for their violent ways and brutal efficiency—they are, after all, one of the Empire’s most loyal subjects, having allied themselves with Emperor Koschei the moment he came into power.
Since it isn’t the Guild, then, it must be the Empire who have sent this bounty hunter after her, which could only mean two things: her plot to escape her impending marriage had been discovered by Governor Nolan much earlier than she’d expected, or…
Or Father was in a lot more trouble than he'd originally made it out to be.
“It’s okay,” Elain breathes, placing a palm on the guard’s arm. “It’s okay—I’ll go with him.”
The guard shakes his head vehemently. “No—you can’t my Lady, we have been ordered—”
“It’s okay,” she repeats, then squeezes his shoulder. “Lower your weapon.” She turns to the Mandalorian. “I’m going to walk towards you now. Do not hurt those men.”
The bounty hunter does not move, and so Elain takes this as his agreement.
She takes a half-step—then another, crossing the space on shaky legs. She’s almost there—has almost reached that magnetic presence of his when she hears a light swoosh, and a click of metal.
“Lady Elain, duck!” the guard shouts, and fires his blaster.
Elain whirls back just in time to see him sink to his knees, his mouth agape, the hole in his chest sizzling with that same, smoky trail. She shrieks, running back toward yet another man who’d given his life to keep her safe—when a tight, steady grip on her wrists holds her back. “No more tricks, sweetheart,” his warning comes purring as her back hits the hard steel at his chest. Elain whips to face him again, anger stinging hotly at her eyes. “You said you needed witnesses!”
His helmet moves an inch as he seemingly glances at the pilot cowering in his seat behind her. “One is more than enough.” He jerks his chin at the trembling man. “Deliver the message to the Senator. He has seven rotations.”
Elain starts, “Do not—” but her words are cut short as the Mandalorian yanks her back. “Where are you taking me?” she breathes, her attention transfixed on the rough feel of his leather gloves against her bare skin. “Answer me right now, or I will not follow you anywhere—”
His steps come to a stop so abruptly she nearly slams face-first into his back. Slowly, he turns to look at her, silence passing through them in a tremor before he asks lowly, “No?”
Elain swallows. Hard. “No,” she says, accepting that the word might mean her death.
To her surprise, the Mandalorian lets go, crossing his arms over his chest instead, the silver vambraces clanking against each other with the movement. “Look, sweetheart,” he says, the nickname already making a flaming anger stir in the pit of her stomach, “the way I see it, you’ve got two choices: you either come willingly, or I make you.”
Elain grits her teeth stubbornly. “If you want to collect on your bounty, you’ll have to bring me in alive.”
His hands brace at his hips as he cocks his head to the side, and though the black of his visor is nearly impenetrable, Elain swears she saw a flicker of a smirk. “Lucky for me, my orders weren’t that specific.”
Elain’s blood chills.
“So what’s it gonna be,” he pauses, a hint of mockery in his modulated tone as he adds, “my Lady?”
Elain considers.
If Nesta were here, she would have opposed the Mandalorian without a shadow of a doubt, the cold venom in her words perhaps enough to melt through the beskar itself. But Elain had never been much like her elder sister—and so she thinks of Feyre.
Her heart clenches at the memory of her name, but Elain does not linger—instead, she listens to her sister’s voice the way she remembers it—calm and wise, far too knowing for a seventeen year old Padawan—and yet still unmistakably Feyre’s, blue-grey eyes twinkling with mischief as she spoke. Don’t worry, Elain, she had told her four years ago, they won’t see us coming.
No, Feyre, Elain silently agrees now, a plan already forming in her head. He won’t.
She points at the circular opening in the floor—at the ladder to the ship docked directly beneath. “Lead the way.”
—
Elain finds herself in the cockpit of yet another crumbling ship.
The Razor Crest is even older than the H-Type, the model predating the Clone War by at least four years. She supposes the advantage of staying off the scopes is worth it, though right now, she can’t possibly imagine why the Mandalorian working clearly on the Empire’s paycheck would ever need to avoid it.
She sits a breath’s distance behind him, watching as those leather-clad fingers press so many controls her mind begins to spin as they shoot into hyperspace, the blue-white blur of stars blending together a sight beautiful enough to appreciate even in Elain’s current predicament. The ship is fast, too, no doubt tweaked with improvements over the years. She wonders how long the Mandalorian has owned it, frowning as she realises she doesn’t even know how old the bounty hunter is.
She doesn’t even know his face, let alone his name. She would’ve guessed a bounty hunter of his skill would be renowned all the way to the Outer Rim. “What’s your name?” she asks him, curiosity getting the better of her.
He ignores her question entirely.
Elain huffs. “It is rude to ignore a lady, you know.”
No response.
That familiar frustration stirs inside her again. “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to have to simply call you Mandalorian.” Her lip curls. “Or just Mando, perhaps—”
He turns back to her at that, and Elain realises triumphantly that she’d struck a nerve. “You are not to call me anything,” he tells her gruffly. “And besides,” his seat squeaks slightly and he turns to face the viewport again, “Something tells me that you are no lady.”
Her eyes dig into his back, and Elain sure wishes she could will a burning fire into them right now. When she realises it’s a futile effort, she asks, “Where am I to sleep?”.
“Here.”
“Here?” she frowns, looking at the chair, already groaning under her weight. “Where are you taking me?”
There is a brief pause—as if he’s considering how much he can really tell her. Then, “Chandrila.”
Elain’s eyes widen. “Chandrila?”
There is a raspy sound coming from beneath his helmet that Elain can only take for a chuckle. “I’m not taking you home, sweetheart. Sorry to disappoint.”
Elain squints. “So he does have manners after all.” When her hope of hearing a retort fades away, she asks again, “How long before we get there?”
“Too long.”
“Are you always this infuriating?”
He simply chuckles again.
Elain leans back into her seat. “I’m going to need a change of clothes,” she announces.
A glimmer of surprise passes through the space between them—as if whatever the Mandalorian was expecting, it was decidedly not this. “What?”
“I have to change,” Elain repeats, making a point of gesturing to her Naboo-fashioned gown as he turns to face her again. Then, doing her best to sound as bratty as he surely expects her to be—as everyone expects her to be—she says, “Travelling in these is uncomfortable.”
She looks into his visor, which seems to stare at her blankly. “You can’t be serious,” he then says.
Elain tilts her chin up in challenge. “Have you ever worn a gown, Mandalorian?”
“You know I haven’t,” he grumbles darkly.
“Then you have no right to tell me what’s comfortable and what isn’t. These fabrics are heavy—”
“Beskar is heavy,” he cuts in.
Elain stumbles over a breath, irritated less that he’s thrown her off her track, but more that the bastard Mandalorian is right.
Still, she presses, “You’re a Mandalorian, and I’m not. I demand we stop on the nearest planet so that I may—” she hovers a hand over her form, “adapt to the situation at hand.” She angles her head. “Besides, I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to attract any attention now, would you? I am a Senator’s daughter, after all.”
For a moment, the bounty hunter says nothing, simply leaning back in his seat as he assesses her. She tries not to shift under the stare she knows lurks beneath the helmet, her mind for some reason wondering if his eyes are the same green—or silver, perhaps—as his armour. She immediately dismisses the idea, though—he burns far too hot for his gaze not to blaze with that heat in some capacity. Not that she particularly cares—Elain has simply never had the chance to speak to a Mandalorian before, and those that she had seen had not seemed to share this one’s sentiment to stay perpetually hidden beneath the beskar.
She decides to flat out ask him, then—if only to satisfy that strange curiosity in her chest—when he surprises her again. “Alright,” he says, his visor seemingly focused on the thick folds of her gown. “We’ll make a stop.” Then, he adds, his voice rumbling with warning, “But no tricks, sweetheart. You won’t be able to escape me that easily.”
Elain has to bite back a smile. We’ll see.
—
A mechanically distorted cough stirs her from sleep.
“We’re landing up on Llanic,” he announces, and walks away.
Elain sits up, her back straining from the worn-out leather of her chair, the heavy dress not helping it at all. She curses herself—and not for the first time—for not thinking to wear something allowing more flexibility as she’d dressed in Vassa’s estate. Though, Elain now supposes, that same gown is the only reason she now has the opportunity to escape.
Soon enough, the Mandalorian lowers the Razor Crest onto a landing platform. Despite its proximity to Naboo, Llanic looks nothing like the planet’s vibrant, ethereal ecosystem. Everything here seems dull and grey—even the people opting for garments of pale blues and sulking whites as they move around the settlement.
“Llanic is the smugglers’ den,” the Mandalorian explains, as though reading the thoughts from Elain’s face. “All of this,” he waves a hand, gesturing to the view ahead as they step out of the ship, “is to help them stay out of sight.”
Elain looks to her own dress, the deep amethyst standing out almost ridiculously, already drawing more than a few pairs of eyes. The shiny Mandalorian at her side, Elain thinks with a sigh, certainly does not help.
The last thing she wants is the attention of more criminals.
“We need to get you a change of clothes quickly,” he mutters, making Elain look up at him with a smirk. “I told you—” she starts, but he’s already begun to walk off the platform, his gruff, “No time” her only invitation to follow along.
Her eyes scan her surroundings quickly, noting a cantina farther out back, already humming with a strange music she doesn’t recognise. He leads them left, though, toward what seems to be the market—one crowded enough that Elain can’t help but loose a breath of relief.
It should be easy to get rid of him here, Elain thinks. If, of course, she is quick enough.
Feyre would have thought this to be no more than an adventure. Elain smiles, the thought pouring a surge of courage into her chest.
They stop at an Ithorian merchant’s stand, one of the largest ones on the stony street, as he grumbles something to a bartering customer. Elain begins to fumble through his selection, her mind already tracking her route of escape. She’ll find some other, proper clothes later—the only purpose of these is to serve as her distraction.
She picks up a matching set of a top and trousers of dusted ivory, and a beige poncho to supposedly help her blend in. She’ll have to pick out something similar later if she truly is to disappear.
Elain is already side-eyeing the cantina, the copular structure practically calling out her name far at the street’s end. Perhaps she’ll be able to find a transfer there—someone to get her off-world and, hopefully, as far away from the infuriating Mandalorian and the Empire as possible
A warm, heavy presence appears beside her, and she chucks the clothes into the bounty hunter’s hands. He only stares back, confusion rolling off of him in waves.
She can’t help but snicker. “You’re impossible.”
“I…don’t understand.”
Elain huffs. “Well, my apologies if I forgot to remember to bring my credits as I was being kidnapped,” she sputters, the word making the elderly couple behind the Mandalorian turn to face her with a frown.
“Be more quiet now, would you,” the Mandalorian growls, the sound a deep rumble from his chest.
Elain narrows her gaze. “Just go buy these, yeah?”
He chuckles at the apparent drop in formalities, though his voice remains firm as he reminds her, “Don’t move until I’m back.”
She smiles sweetly, motioning to the streets around her. “Where else would I go?”
He seems to agree well enough, because the Mandalorian soon disappears between the hanging layers of cloth as he moves towards the Ithorian seller. When the familiar glint of beskar vanishes out of her sight, Elain turns and begins to run.
The amethyst dress and the tightness in her back is a strain on her speed, but the adrenaline surging through her is enough to keep her legs moving swiftly. Not for the very first time, Elain wishes she had the lithe speed and remarkable strength both of her sisters have always displayed, their movements carefully supported by the Force.
The thought leaves her as quickly as it arrived as Elain makes a sharp turn, pivoting into a darkened alleyway that she hopes will discreetly lead her to the back wall of the cantina. Her steps slow, as though the silent darkness compelled them to do so—and Elain quickly looks around, letting herself take a breath before she continues on again.
“Not so fast, princess,” a low, hissing voice sounds behind her.
Elain’s feet freeze into the ground.
“Don’t be afraid,” it croons, stepping in closer. “It will all be over soon.”
Elain’s breath quickens.
The man, unmistakably a Trandoshan, slithers beside her, his scaled, greenish skin finally coming into view—but it’s not his appearance Elain finds her gaze glued to, but the long, heavy Mortar Gun resting in his large hands as he points it directly at her face.
“Sssuch a shame,” he muses. “To ruin such a pretty face. But I find myself in a desssperate need of credits, you sssee.” He angles his scaly head, yellow eyes narrowing on her. “The Empire is paying quite the sum for you, little princess. If it was any lower…I might have taken some time to play with you firssst.”
“A shame indeed,” a voice agrees somewhere behind him. “Unfortunately, your time seems to have run out.”
A single shot booms through the air before the Trandoshan evaporates into dust.
A Mandalorian—her Mandalorian, Elain realises—stands a few metres behind where the reptilian bounty hunter stood a moment ago, a forked sniper rifle Elain had never seen before still pointed at the dissipating dust.
“Where did you get that?” Elain breathed. Has he been carrying that weapon this whole time? Could he have turned her into…into this?
He shrugs. “Had it lying around.”
He reaches her in a few quick strides, his head dipping as he appears to be sweeping his gaze over her, assessing. “Are you hurt?” he asks.
Elain shakes her head, her body slowly moving out of stillness. “No.” She clears her throat, begging the Force to bring clarity into her voice. “Thank you,” she rasps, then sighs, exasperated. The Force had never seemed to be her ally, anyways. “I’m…sorry for running.”
He hums. “I knew you would try something eventually. You got lucky.”
Elain blinks. “You would call this—” she gestures to the Trandoshan bounty hunter’s remains spread out over the stone ground, “—lucky?”
He nods, strapping the rifle to his back in one, swift movement. “There are others out there who would not hesitate to kill you on sight. I’d say,” he adds, “you got more than lucky to end up with me.”
“How very fortunate,” she mutters. He only chuckles, though she feels as his gaze lands on her again. There is a pause of quiet between them before he finally asks, the voice behind the helmet softer, somehow, “Are you, though? Alright?”
Elain sighs. “Yes. I’m…” she searches for the word. Tired. Confused. Lost. “Hungry,” she decides.
Another chuckle. “Follow me.”
The cantina beams a more lively song as they enter, though Elain, despite all that thorough education she’d received, can’t seem to recognise the language. They take their seats at a booth stuck into a dim nook before a waiter approaches, his gaze shining with curiosity at the unlikely pair. “What can I get you?”
“Spotchka,” Elain sighs, earning yet another amused huff from her companion. “And—whatever your special is today.”
The man nods. “That would be the stew.”
“Perfect,” Elain says, then turns to the Mandalorian, the waiter, too, looking at him expectantly.
“That will be all,” he says tightly, his tone enough to make the waiter scatter immediately out back. Elain frowns. “Are you not going to eat?”
“No.”
“But—”
“I’m not hungry.”
Elain counters, “I have not seen you eat since you put me on that rusted old ship.”
The visor seems to glower at her. “The Crest is fine.”
“Stop changing the subject.”
“I’m not willing to discuss this, Elain.” She doesn’t think she’d ever heard his name fall from his lips.
Does he even have lips? Elain can’t help but wonder. He appears human, but beneath that armour, he really could be anyone. It’s not that she truly cares about his face—the curve of his nose or the angle of his jaw. But she wants to be able to see if his gaze burns as brightly as she’s been imagining it, like a hot, midday sun.
His tone does not invite such questions, though, so Elain gives up with a deep, long-suffering sigh. “Fine,” she says. “Tell me your name, at least.”
“No.”
“I’m sick of calling you the Mandalorian in my head.”
“Then stop thinking about me, Elain.”
She throws her arms up in exasperation. “You are impossible!”
He seems to snicker at that. “So I’ve heard.”
Elain sinks further into her seat. “Are you able to answer any of my questions, at least?”
He hums, making a show of considering. “Probably not,” he finally said, earning yet another huff from Elain. “But perhaps you can answer some of mine.”
Elain feels her brows rise. “Oh?”
He laces his fingers atop the table. “What has your father done to get the Empire to put a bounty on your head?”
That, Elain did not expect. “I thought bounty hunters were taught not to ask any questions.”
“To their clients. The bounty is a whole another story.”
“How convenient,” Elain murmurs, and, once again, she swears she can feel his smile in her chest. “Very well. If you must know, he borrowed some money—too much of it for me to even begin to describe, and all of it from the wrong people.” She chews on her bottom lip before quickly releasing it from her teeth, a sharp exhale pushing past her mouth. “It’s why my…engagement was arranged in the first place.”
“To the Governor’s son. So I’ve heard.”
“Yes, well, they had money. But look how that turned out.”
“Do you…” his helmet cocks to the side, as though from this new angle, he can read the answer simply by looking at her face. “Do you regret it?”
“No!” Elain quickly says. “Kriff, no—it’s why you found me on the Nubian instead of the planet itself. I was…” she clears her throat. “I was escaping.”
Silence falls, broken only for a moment as the waiter arrives with Elain’s food. She begins digging into the warm stew, realising the conversation has most likely come to an end, the Mandalorian seemingly gazing off into the distance.
But then, a quiet sound reaches her, so indiscernible she initially thinks she must’ve imagined it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For disrupting your plans.”
Elain flashes him a cryptic smile. “My plans aren’t disrupted just yet.”
—
When Elain emerges from the Crest’s refresher, she finds the clothes she’d picked out at the market laid out on a new cot.
“We’re almost done refuelling,” the Mandalorian’s voice reaches her from where he leans against the ladder leading up to the cockpit.
Elain arches a brow. “What happened to not leaving your side for a moment?”
“Well, I trust you’re not reckless enough to jump out of our ship once we’re in hyperspace.”
Our ship?
Elain dismisses it as her mind playing tricks on her. “Thank you for getting these for me. Believe it or not, but that gown was uncomfortable.”
A grunt of agreement. “It sure looked like it.”
Elain takes the poncho into her hands, her palm smoothing out the fabric. “I’m sorry about nagging you earlier. I—I don’t know much about Mandalorians, I just assumed—”
“You assumed fine.” A deep sigh rattles through him as he bounces off the ladder, stepping closer toward her. “Not removing this,” he points to the shining beskar atop his head, “is my choice.”
Elain dares to ask, “Why, though?”
“Does it matter?”
Yes. No. Maybe.
No, Elain finally decides. Soon—within the next rotation or two, perhaps—the Mandalorian will hand her over to the Empire, a toy to toss over her father’s head. She’ll never have the chance to think about his face again.
Her expression must have told her enough, because his body seems to stiffen as he halts less than five feet away from her.
“Are they going to kill me?” Elain asks him openly.
Silence ripples through the air.
“The Empire doesn’t kill innocent civilians,” he says carefully. Elain can’t help but laugh. “Even if that were true, I am hardly innocent.”
He seems inclined to disagree. “Your father’s mistakes are not your own, Elain.” His words sound deeper than usual as he says them.
She shifts on her feet. “Still, I’m afraid my family’s sins are already beyond repair.” She sighs, a sudden wave of tiredness washing over her, as though the words alone were enough to make her body feel limp. “My…” she can’t say it, her throat tightening on its own as she tries. Elain simply looks away.
But then, a few shallow breaths later, a heavy weight rests on the cot beside her. “My father is the head of an…important clan back on Mandalore,” he begins to tell her quietly. “He’s not a good man—to say the least.” He clears his throat. “I have six brothers, each of them worse than the last, as if they’re all competing to see which one of them can become cruel enough to finally catch Father’s attention.”
Elain turns to look at him at that.
He continues, “I never wanted to be like them—any of them. My mother is the only good thing about my family, and she was the only one not to send bounty hunters after me when I finally left.”
Elain’s eyes widen. “You—you escaped from Mandalore?”
His laugh feels bitter. “There is no escaping from my family. I’m the youngest—not important enough for them to keep on wasting credits to drag me back, but, I suppose, a reminder annoying enough to make my life miserable for as long as they wished.” His hand flickers up for a moment, then falls back onto the cot—as if he was going to run his fingers through his hair before remembering the helmet shielding them from view. “So I cut the best deal for myself as I could—and I’ve been picking up the Empire’s dirty jobs ever since. I don’t like most of them,” he admits, “but…” the words trail off. He does not need to finish them for Elain to understand.
But I’m glad I met you.
It is why Elain tells him plainly, “My sisters were Jedi.”
The Mandalorian goes completely, breathlessly still.
Elain nods. “Traitors to the Republic,” she adds bitterly. “To the Empire. My older sister—Nesta…” she fights back tears at the memory of her icy eyes, softening whenever the two of them got to see each other. “She was—she was on Corellia when…when the Order was given. And Feyre…Feyre was at the Temple on Coruscant.” She swallows the thick words in her throat. “She was—she’s gone,” Elain finishes, unable to speak the full truth. It’s too soon—it will never not be.
Her sisters were discovered late—Feyre at six, and Nesta at ten years old, when all the other foundlings had usually come to the Temple at no older than three. But the great masters had foreseen something in the two of them—something Elain had never quite been able to understand without the Force whispering to her the way it did to her sisters. Something with the potential to change the Galaxy as they all knew it.
Whatever her sisters’ purpose was, it would never be fulfilled. It had never even been given the chance to.
“It’s how I know my father will not come for me,” Elain adds quietly. “When you hand me over to the Empire. He’d aligned himself with them when it took not one, but two of his daughters away. Now, it will take away the third.”
Once again, the ship is enveloped in silence.
It had been so long since Elain had last spoken her sisters’ names that she isn’t sure she’d even talked about them to anyone since their death. The Mandalorian is a quiet presence beside her, strong and warm even through the hardened metal encasing his body. It feels relieving to her to know that he, too, lives in accordance with the Empire’s cruelty not by choice, but by the lack of it, hoping that one day, he will be free enough to leave and never look back.
But then Elain is reminded that neither of them are free just yet—and that, while he might still be able to harbour that dream, it is already too late for Elain. That the only way for him to get a step closer toward it, he has to make sure Elain never gets to reach it herself. There is something about the irony of it all that makes her want to weep—and yet, Elain can’t bring herself to feel angry.
“I hope the Empire pays you well for all of this,” she tells him earnestly.
He turns to face her then—as much as he can with the self-imposed containment of his beskar—and perhaps it is merely wishful thinking, but, for a whisper of a moment, Elain knows with the utmost certainty that she saw a flicker of gold beneath the darkness.
His voice is quiet as he responds.
“Not nearly enough.”
—
Once again, Elain is violently ripped from sleep.
They cannot be landing already—Elain can swear they’ve only just left Llanic’s atmosphere, her face hitting the cot the moment the Crest’s navicomputer was programmed and the stars blurred into a singular light again. Chandrila is still a long journey ahead, at least two, if not three more refuelling stops since the Crest is unable to withstand such a distance on a single tank.
They aren’t landing, Elain understands as the last remnants of her sleep sharpen into reality—into the loud, flaring sound echoing off the ship’s tight space. Into the red light blazing on and off, illuminating her shaky hands as the realisation finally sinks.
The Crest is under attack.
Elucien Week Taglist: @melting-houses-of-gold @areyoudreaminof @fieldofdaisiies @kingofsummer93 @witchlingsandwyverns @gracie-rosee @stickyelectrons @selesera @sv0430 @vulpes-fennec @captain-of-the-gwynriel-ship @screaming-opossum @autumndreaming7 @sunshinebingo @spell-cleavers @starfall-spirit @lectoradefics @this-is-rochelle @goldenmagnolias @labellefleur-sauvage @bookeater34 @capbuckyfalcon @betterthaneveryword @tasha2627 @tenaciousdiplomatloverprune
#breaking news: velidewrites can't write a one-shot to save her life#breaking in the sense that we been knew#elucienweek2023#elucien#pro elucien#elain x lucien#elain archeron#elain acotar#lucien vanserra#lucien acotar#elucien fic#elucien fanfic#elucien fanfiction#acotar fanfic#acotar#a court of thorns and roses#my writing
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Pink Scarf - Epilogue (Elvis/Austin!Elvis x Reader)
Character/Fandom: Elvis - Elvis (2022)
Requested: kinda
(Read more here--Pink Scarf Series Masterlist!)
Prompt: You are part of Elvis Presley's coveted inner circle, and the currently-disgruntled wife of one of the members of Elvis' famous entourage, the Memphis Mafia. After Elvis' dynamite first performance in Vegas, you find yourself in deep water when his magnetism finally gets to you after all these years. [ Fem!Reader ]
TW: SEX. FLUFF (!!). Cussing. Historical inaccuracies in the Vegas timeline.
Rating: Explicit/Mature (NSFW, 18+, so minors Do NOT Interact) || Word Count: 2.6k
A/N: Oh, lord, here we are. THE END. It seems highly fitting that it all comes to a close on our man's birthday. (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELVIS DARLIN') 💗 So here's some tooth-rotting, sexy fluff for you because I love them and I love y'all.
I have heard your requests for a paperback/ebook loud and clear (ahhh, thank you!) and can tell you I am writing bonus material as we speak and working on the process of self-publishing through Amazon. I will warn you that the physical book is gonna be HUGE (my estimate is close to 600 pages with the bonus material added 😂), but that does mean the cost of the physical book will be a little spendy (not outrageous or anything) because of the cost of printing. Just wanted to let you know in advance!
Also, I know in the past that people were interested in me dropping in for a Q & A type thing on Discord or Twitter Spaces to talk about Pink Scarf...is this something y'all are interested in still? (If not, totally okay!) Let me know in the comments if that sounds like something you'd want!
I sincerely hope y'all will stick around for my next projects as I try to get my writing career off the ground. I'm hoping to soon have a website and an Amazon page up and running soonish so you can follow my other works. I'll keep you posted! Y'all are the OG's and the best fans a girl could ask for! 💗
If you so desire, you should now have the ability to tip my blog or different chapters in the story! Of course, no one is obligated to do so! If you do choose to tip, thank you so much! I've never had anyone want to pay for my work before, so this is a big step towards my romance novelist dreams. 💜
Finally, and I can't say this enough, I am so FREAKIN' GRATEFUL for every single one of you babies, honeys, and lil' mamas supporting me out there, YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARY! I didn't in a million years expect this kind of support and response for Pink Scarf, and your reactions, reblogs, messages, asks, and comments you've given me have been a blessing beyond expression. You all are the best community a writer could ask for! Thank you so much for your support and generosity. I am loving getting to know y'all better! I love every single reaction and comment and ask, and I'm sorry if I don't get back to them all as soon as I'd like but know that I love you all and am so excited to be making new friends! And a big "Hey, Y'all!" to our friends from Elvis Twitter, Elvis Discord, and Elvis Instagram--I see and appreciate you coming over to join us! 👀💋
I also want to give a special shout out to my flower, Daisy, @powerofelvis for keeping me sane (relatively lol) and on track throughout this whole process. Thank you for all your encouragement and love (and for listening to me scream into the void), baby! 💜
If you feel so moved, please let me know what you think or how you're feeling (or send me asks)! I know I'm terribly slow at getting to them but I love every single one!
I imagined this with Elvis in mind, but Austin!Elvis works here, too, whatever floats your boat!
Apologies in advance if there are any grammatical errors or TW that I didn't catch.
(I did start cross-posting Pink Scarf to my AO3 account, as well as my NEW Wattpad account. so if you are so inclined, you can check it out/support me over there with kudos and votes and whatnot!)
Graceland, New Year’s Eve, 1969
The mansion you now call home still sparkles with Christmas decorations as you make your way through the throng of friends and visitors, smiling and laughing, sipping on a delicious champagne that you are positive is ridiculously expensive for the way it melts on your tongue. Everyone is rested and in great spirits, as 1969 was a monumentally successful year for Elvis Presley Enterprises and all those involved.
For you, it’s been a monumental year in many ways. You would never have imagined six months ago that by the end of the year you’d be in the midst of divorcing Jack, preparing for your new career as a backup singer, and moving into Graceland with Elvis, who you are wildly, madly in love with.
A whirlwind, to say the least.
Speak of the devil, you feel that telltale rise of goosebumps on your skin, that magical sixth sense you are now so aware of when you know that Elvis is watching you. You turn from your conversation with Joe and his wife Joanie to find Elvis gazing at you from across the living room with a dangerously coy smile playing on his lips and that unmistakable glint in his eyes. The heat of the look sets your body aflame, a flush rising quickly to your cheeks.
Lord in heaven, this man, you think, giving him a furrow of your brow and a disbelieving look back, only this man would be so bold as to want to take me in the middle of a party at his own damn house.
But damn it if he doesn’t even waver, completely uncaring that any of the guests might see the blatantly sexual, heated intensity of his stare. He calls it “that lean and hungry look,” and you cannot help the shiver that cascades down your spine because you know he’s about to eat you alive, party be damned.
And sure enough, he strides across the room as if no one else is here, and saying nothing at all, grabs your hand and yanks you away from your conversation. You briefly catch the look of surprise from Joanie and Joe’s smirk before being whisked away.
“Elvis!” you whisper loudly enough for him to hear you, “We have guests!” You manage to set your champagne flute on a nearby table before doubling your steps to try and keep up with his long strides.
He gives no indication of hearing you, though you know he has. But he is singularly focused, which sends warmth into your core and wetness already pooling in your panties because you know what’s coming.
He surprises you by not even making it up the stairs to the bedroom, instead pulling you into the half bathroom on the lower level. You yelp at the change in direction and then he’s slamming you up against the door while locking it at the same time.
Your yelp quickly turns into a quiet moan because his large hands and luscious mouth are suddenly everywhere, all at once. His lips crush into yours, then burn down your neck, sending fire into your belly, and you can’t help but respond. Your hands fly to his head, raking through his scalp. His hand grips the outside of your bare thigh, hitching it up to his waist, his hand slipping under the hem of your dress.
He rolls his pelvis slowly and deliberately into yours. He’s already rock hard, and the sensation of his bulge pressing into your core through his pants has you groaning a little too loud, considering you have a house full of people. Elvis doesn’t say a word though, he just smirks and places a ring-clad hand over your mouth.
That action alone has you melting into a puddle because you know, you just know how he’s going to take you: quick and dirty.
“You better be quiet, lil’ mama, or ev’ryone’s gonna know I’m fuckin’ ya senseless,” he whispers, his hot breath tickling the shell of your ear. You can smell the musk of arousal on him, the pheromones so strong they are nearly dizzying. He nibbles the lobe of your ear possessively. This action coupled with his words sends sparks showering through you.
You think you might come apart already, and he’s barely touched you.
His brilliant blues are blown black when he draws away. Free hand snaking up your thigh, his fingers first dance over your soaked panties, then dip them underneath the delicate fabric to graze up through your folds and straight to your clit.
Your eyes roll back, his hand muffling the moans that escape your throat involuntarily. He’s so worked up already, he doesn’t tease you long. Two long fingers plunge knuckle deep into your wet heat, the cold edges of his rings making you squirm a little at the intrusion. You begin panting into his hand as he so expertly thrusts and curves them to give you the maximum amount of pleasure as he stretches you out.
This doesn’t last long, though. He’s too far gone and much too needy for foreplay. A deeply primal instinct has taken over the man you love—you can see it written all over his handsome face. And you welcome it, even as you whimper at the loss of his digits when he unceremoniously pulls them out of you. You welcome it as he spins you around, pushing you up against the door. You welcome it gladly as he hikes your dress up to your waist and rips your lacy panties right off your body.
You gasp, hearing the tearing of fabric as your flushed cheek is pressed into the wood of the door, shivering both from the exposure of the air on your bare ass and for what you know is next. Soon after, you hear the clink of his heavy belt and the woosh of his pants as they thump to the floor and then he’s filling you so completely that you are clawing at the door for purchase.
He can’t stop the growl that comes from within when he sinks deep inside you to the hilt, bottoming out quickly. He’s impatient and does not linger, however, instead pulling back and thrusting into you hard, gripping your hips like his life depends on it.
You manage to keep your gasps quiet as he sets a relentless pace. Your entire body tingles, the obscene sounds from your joining sending you hurtling towards the edge of your own release. He knows your body so well, rubbing desperate circles on your clit that, along with the way he’s filling you, already has your legs shaking and abdomen tensing with pleasure.
Neither of you are going to last long. It’s evident as your breathing speeds up and the coil in your belly snaps, causing you to hit your climax hard with a strangled cry. The wave crests fast,and your walls tense and flutter around him. You love how he still can make you see stars, even in these circumstances. His hips stutter, the rhythm faltering, and he follows soon after you with a relieved and gracious groan, pulsing and coating your walls with his arousal.
Heavy breathing is the only sound in the tiny space. Elvis envelops you from behind, wrapping his arms around your waist and burying his face into your hair as he pulls you close. You live for these moments when he’s stripped vulnerable, his love so evident and overflowing, making even a bathroom quickie more like making love than you’d had in over a decade of marriage.
You sigh into him, and he kisses the back of your head. “Sorry about your panties, baby,” he whispers almost bashfully into your ear.
You can’t help but laugh, “At the rate you go through ruining them, you might as well just buy me the whole store, love.”
Elvis pulls out and turns you around, grasping your chin before pulling you into a deep kiss. It has you melting into his arms, but you know you can’t stay there long, not with a house full of people.
The swell of love you feel for this wonderful, talented, charismatic man is incredible. So many years of shared history has made it easy to slip into a comfortable life with him, so much so that you almost forget what your life was like before. It’s not without its challenges, certainly. He is still mercurial, and you still get locked up in your own head sometimes. The both of you are stubborn as hell, especially now that you’ve taken more agency for yourself in this relationship, more than you ever had with Jack.
As you pull apart and clean up, you feel incredibly lucky that things have worked out the way they have, despite so many years of struggles to make your way to each other.
Once put back together (though sure some of your guests will know exactly what was going on in the bathroom), you reach for the door. Elvis stops you.
“I was gonna wait ‘til midnight and make it a big thing, but I just can’t,” he drawls behind you.
“Wait for what?” you ask quizzically, turning around.
You gasp and your heart begins to gallop in your chest as you watch him sink to one knee as best he can in the tiny space. He pulls a little black box from his pocket. You’re afraid your heart might flutter right out of your body at the sight of it.
“You make me a better man, baby. I love you so much it hurts sometimes, and I thank God every day that He put you in my life. I can’t imagine tryin’ to go another day without you by my side. Now, I know it feels real soon, but if we’re honest, it’s been a long time comin’, and I-I-I know you’re still in the middle of the divorce and all, but y/n, would you do me the honor of bein’ my wife?” Elvis asks, his eyes brimming with unshed tears.
Your heart drops into your stomach. It’s both exhilaration and trepidation all at once, flooding every part of you. Part of you screams with excitement: Of course! Of course! Of course, I’ll be your wife!
But another part is filled with latent fear—fear of being consumed by another marriage so soon, still afraid that this man before you will love you and leave you like the rest. Elvis had said many times over the years that he wasn’t really interested in marriage, and you can’t help but think of that in this moment, as much as you don’t want to.
“Elvis,” you manage to breathe, “I thought…I thought you said you weren’t the ‘marrying kind’? That you didn’t want to be tied down? Are you…are you sure?”
You watch something flash in his eyes for a moment before he looks up at you again. He stands and takes your hands in his. “I-I said that cuz I didn’t think I could ever have you. I knew I couldn’t marry anyone else, wouldn’t be right. You’re the only one I ever truly wanted. I-I-I…you’re my soulmate, y/n. It’s only ever been you, honey,” he says quietly, laying it all out for you, as he pushes an errant strand of your hair behind your ear.
A happy tear trickles down your face. You know he loves you—he tells you every day. But this is so much more than that. You didn’t realize he’d put his entire life on hold for you like this. His soulmate.
As much as it scares you, you know it’s true. He’s right. This inexplicable pull that’s been between the two of you for all this time, the pull you tried so desperately to ignore and forget for so many years, is stronger than anything you’ve ever felt for anyone in your life. Every cell in your body yearns for him, and he feels like home. You fit together perfectly. Now that you’re finally in sync, everything just works.
You cannot ignore the truth that finding your way to each other after all these years feels utterly meant to be. He is there when you need him. He brings out a side of you that you never knew existed—in the bedroom, with your music, your unyielding love for him, even in the hardest moments.
The way he gazes at you now, full of hope and love, makes your knees weak. But part of you is still scared that it’s too soon, that you’ll lose yourself all over again.
Elvis reads your mind, sensing your doubts in that intuitive way of his. “The wedding part doesn’t hafta be right away…I know we gotta wait for the divorce to be final anyway. But whenever you’re ready, whenever you’re comfortable, I’ll be here,” he says, pressing his forehead to yours.
This sends a sense of relief through you, a release of pressure. Finally, you find your voice. “Let me be your everything?” you whisper, taking his face in your hands, your eyes searching his deep and worldly ones.
Elvis knows what you are asking of him, and he doesn’t think twice. His lips curl up into that beautiful grin of his as he nods. “Yes, everything,” he says back.
“Then yes, yes, I will be your wife,” you laugh, through more happy tears.
“Yes?” he asks joyfully, just to be sure.
“Yes!” you squeal as he scoops you up in his arms, pressing his pliant and soft lips to yours.
His hands shake adorably when he slides the tasteful yet extravagantly sized diamond on your ring finger.
And it sits perfectly, as though his ring was always meant to be there. You both stare at it for a moment, your hand resting on top of his.
Squeezing your hand, Elvis looks at you with a boyish kind of awe. “Are you happy, baby?” he asks quietly, his long lashes fanning out as he runs his eyes over your face.
A moment of déjà vu hits you. He’s asked you this before, many different times, and those moments flash through your head, reminding you of your deep history together. The history you now remember and share.
All he’s ever really wanted to do is make me happy, you realize. The thought sends warmth blooming through you.
You look up at him, into that handsome face that you want to spend eternity with. “Oh, I’m more than happy, my love,” you respond. And you are. So much so, you almost don’t believe it. Then you pull him down for a sweet, soft kiss. He drinks you in as if you are oxygen, bringing you closer.
“Are you happy?” you ask as you nuzzle his nose.
“Darlin’, I’m so happy I wanna sing from the rooftop,” he drawls, grabbing your ass. “I’ll marry ya right here in this damn bathroom, if I gotta. Gonna make you Mrs. Y/n Presley. Then I wanna parade you around and let everyone know you’re mine.” He almost growls the last part and presses his long body into yours.
You laugh. “Well, I don’t think we have to resort to getting married in the bathroom, but Mrs. Y/n Presley has quite the nice ring to it,” you say, smiling, putting your hands in his back pockets.
“I love you,” Elvis says unabashedly, suddenly serious.
“I love you, too,” you whisper, kissing him again. “Now let’s go tell everyone how I’m gonna make an honest man out of you.”
He laughs at that, a big and boisterous sound that makes your own heart sing.
And it will do so for the rest of your days.
*THE END*
Please let me know in the comments/DMs/asks if you are interested in me doing a Pink Scarf Q & A type thing on Discord/Spaces! 💗🧣💗
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