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ab4eva · 1 year ago

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“He was a wonder, that’s what he was, a wonder of a fathomless heart, deep and uncharted in its capability for love.” - my baby Marina, the poet who bends and shapes words to her will.

A Whole Man is Hard to Find -chapter sixteen

Notes: my many thanks to my friends and my readers, all of you so dear and good to me, for the support and ideas and interest that you’ve continued for this story. It’s so dear to my heart and it’s plot and heart has become more clear yet sprawling than I could ever have imagined when I first began. Thanks for your patience, I intend to see this through. Your feedback means the world to me

Warnings: 18+, all the canon and period typical warnings apply, although this chapter is far softer than most of the previous, still the current themes remain as does smut

Last chapter link since it was ages ago when I last updated

Just once, Rosey would like to have woken before him, the singular time she had was fueled by panic when she found him not breathing after that night spent in Helena. Just once she’d like to roll over and find him asleep beside her, a perfect face to study and to adore as he did her own most mornings.

Just once would be nice but she could hardly blame herself on this occasion, coming out of the stupor of sleep felt similar to being hauled out of a quagmire, soupy and thickheaded with leaded limbs and a pounding heart too strong to be ignored and to sluggish to be of use. It was dismal waking up this morning except for the feel of him cradling the side of her face in one of his large, work worn hands, shaking her head upon the pillow with more and more emphatic jerks. His hand was warm and large enough to span the height of her skull, his calloused thumb had anchored itself on her cheek and she got a powerful yearning to suck on it before coffee or orange juice even entered her thoughts. But he was tapping her cheek with it and shaking her head,

“C’mon now, I don’t pay ya to sleep, I’d like to stay too but lord knows it's gonna be dawn a’fore ya know it, c’mon now, I didn’t give ya that much for pity’s sake, you just open those pretty lil eyes f’me, babydoll….”

It was worth keeping them closed with her neck lax and her legs inert just to hear him babble to her, every bit as patient and teasing and inexorable as when he knew her to be conscious. A consistent man in all his dealings with her, even though he was consistent only in his mercurialness.

Rosey realized that this morning she had not startled awake, nor did she play asleep in order to gauge her surroundings, those were the behaviors of a hunted thing. This morning she lay abed with the feel of her naked beloved stretched beside her and half atop her as he thumbed at her face, jostled her bruised breasts and squeezed her neck to coax her to awaken. She lay unresponsive in order to savor it, nothing more complicated in her heart than that. Just playing at it a little longer as he jostled and sweet talked to her, nearly breaking her act with a unbidden smile at that strange behavior of his to chat to one anatomical part of her and then another, the sidetracked weighing of assets so unstudied and boyish it tickled her worse than his breath on her nipples.

It was delicious to feel him so near and so gentle and so large and warm and eager for her company. She could melt back into this bed for a few centuries at least with such attentions being lavished on her. Or maybe it was all due to that metal taste that still clung to her mouth.

What did you do to me, you scoundrel? -she thought with drowsy ire.

Suddenly his babble made more sense, but drawing from his lack alarm she assumed there was no real danger of her being drugged beyond capacity and he seemed neither to regret nor blame it for her inertia and so she chose to follow his example.

Comfortable and secure she might be in her morning rituals with him but there was still the matter of deciding which battles were worth fighting each morning. Each day could have an allotment of two to three spats, depending on size and significance, and Rosey found that his blithe use of tonics might be concerning but it was hardly so significant a battle to waste her fights this early in the day. She had a feeling that she would need each of her favors and each of her fights on this trip and she shouldn’t start spending them like a spendthrift.

The thought exhausted her once more and she burrowed further into her pillow and the dip of the ratty cot mattress that buckled under their combined weight. It was simple here, laying beside him, it was simple.

“I saw that sliver of eyeball, you can’t fool me, you’re awake, c’mon now. Never have met someone who liked sleepin’ so damn much…” his grumbles had no heat to them and Rosey thought that was a rich sentiment coming from a man who’d blown his boat’s roof off in his exhausted state and temperamental need for a nap.

“If you felt what I feel at this moment you’d never wanna leave this bed.” she mumbled, eyes still screwed shut and savoring that last unconscious moment where only her skin and her ears told her he was spread atop her, smooth and heated, weighted and anticipatory.

“Bed? More like a plank with some cotton on it.” he bitched in reply and suddenly she realized that the bright sunlight streaming through his shutters that she’d been squinting her eyes to keep out was not there to pierce the gloom. Rosey’s eyes fluttered open suddenly at that, all safety having flown from her breast at the familiar surroundings being gone but then it occurred to her, they were down in the hold, with the horses and the boilers and Cal and the gator door, and in this tiny cubby of a room there with no windows to tell her the time of day. “Shh, shh.” he soothed into her ear, somehow attuned to her calculations and concerns. “We’re down in the hold, ‘member?” he prodded, gravelly and gentle in her ear and he turned her face with his hand, the better to pepper her cheek with sloppy, lazy, scruffy kisses.

“I’d forgotten where we were.” she admitted in a scratchy voice although she had been right in her assumptions about his posture, he was indeed lying half atop her and half on that sliver of cot not occupied by her body, between her and the wall, propped up on one forearm with the other hand massaging her scalp into hypotonic complaisance. Above them still swung the dimly glowing gaslamp, creaking and unsteady as a lantern on a barn beam, and Rosey’s blood ran cold at the realization they’d never doused it while they slumbered. The hay bales stored not ten feet away came helpfully to mind and her body shivered, the cold dread of memories wrestling with the delicious scritches of his morning stubble against her throat.

He’d never watched as folks were burned alive in the distance, caught in a frenzied conflagration, the shrieks of barn animals and humans indistinguishable in their agony. She’d never wish it on her worst enemy, and yet she wished she could impress upon him how badly she wanted to make certain the lights were doused each night. It was a bad habit of his she had noticed and while the steady gas lamp fixtures of upstairs gave her some comfort, these creaky lanterns terrified her down below. The Captain might not understand but he’d be willing she was sure of it -and almost as soon as she thought it she realized she’d been a fool. He very likely had seen what she had, he’d been to war after all. He’d been to sea, and that’s how they kill you there, drowning or burning or slow decay are the trifecta of ways to die. Sometimes she forgot he’d had a life between picking cotton and showboating on the Mississippi. He’d fought a war between, and nothing was spoken of it except for the bulletproof shutters in his room. There was so much she didn’t know about him, a strange thing to admit about someone who made her feel safer than anything else in all her life. How’d he get taken prisoner anyway? Was there fire then?

“We never doused the light.” she decided to voice that observation and that alone, hoping he’d pick up on her tone.

“Yeah, damn foolish, m’sorry.” He paused in his nuzzling to wait for her to add a condemnation of the heavy slumber he’d put them both into but it never came, she could feel him relax as the moments of silence ticked by after his initial bracing for her nagging. It confirmed her decision to let the subject lie for the time being. “Won’t happen again, I swear, darlin’.” his voice was rich and deep in her ear as he relaxed again and the promise of another time, of his agreeing to be down here with her whenever he could, soothed all else and she turned her face to press a kiss of her own to his cheek.

He was still here, after her lies and her prudery and her demands, he was still here, in the dark of an early morning, trying to please her. He was a wonder, that’s what he was, a wonder of a fathomless heart, deep and uncharted in its capability for love. It made her own heart swell in gratitude and she returned his nuzzles and pecks with ferocity, kneading the shoulder nearest her and trying to pour out her gratitude through her touches.

“Honey, honey dear, y-you’re cryin’.” he pointed out with soft concern before she even registered her own emotions had carried her so far.

“Just happy.” she swore, really trying to just enjoy the feel of him thumbing at her tear tracks and looking down on her so tenderly her heart could burst from it, “Just very happy you’re still here with me.” that was the meat of the matter, she figured, it’s what she could define as best she could, “Just grateful.” she supposed, because this was more than transient joy, she wanted to jump up and thank someone for him, worship someone for being so good and faithful and forgiving to her. It was an entirely new emotion and it made her eyes weep even as the rest of her remained calm and lulled by his touch.

She saw that look of barely restrained adoration mirrored in his own beautiful face as he hovered above her. “Let’s go thank the Lord for another day together.” Elvis suggested eagerly and she should have guessed that was coming, that this new emotion was an old one for him, one he poured out to a God that Rosey had never been convinced was all that merciful. Not until she’d met him. Not until she’d tasted a bit of it through Elvis’ love.

“Yes, let’s.” she laid in bed for a moment longer, not that she didn’t wish to match his vigor but it was rather more delightful to lay at that vantage point and watch him boyish and pretty above her, digging about the small room for clothing and refreshments, bare as god had made him. He bent in half with ease to pet a sleeping Sweet Pea on her velvet cushion under the rickety chair before dressing himself with that pleased precision of a man well aware of the impact of a good appearance.

Rosey found something to be thankful for in the sight. As she did with his chosen wardrobe that was in no way the fashionable dandy of the past months but instead a working man’s attire, worn leather overcoat and buffed out denim trousers, even his shirt a homespun butternut. Only his kerchief, lazily looped around and hanging limply against his unshaven throat spoke of some wealth and elevated taste, bright orange and shiny in the gaslight.

“Now there’s the man who bought me.” she observed, the difference between “Captain” and Showboating Peacock glaringly obvious now she thought back.

He just gave her a bashful grin of acknowledgment of his fashion amendments, “I oughta get Cal sorted, too. Dress the part if he’s gonna try his hand at bein’ crew. Last thing we need is one of those horse soldiers mistakin’ someone for a goddamn fairy.”

“You’re worried for him.” she realized and the way he spooked when she said it aloud told her it resonated even as he was quick to deny it.

“Nah, nah just, just want him -want him -I don’t want nothin’ to take him unawares.” he decided upon his motivation after much stuttering and a fidgety hand jangling his watch chain in his trouser pocket.

“Does the presence of so many soldiers concern you?” she figured she’d ask and he looked at her with surprised exasperation, as if he couldn’t believe she hadn’t understood all his complaints about the cavalry coming aboard. Untill he saw her true meaning in her face.

It was odd still, and he wasn’t convinced it wasn’t a little wrong too, to confide such things in a woman. T’weren’t right to be talked about aloud no matter what, no matter what she’d heard Scotty say just the night before. “Not much.” he replied truthfully after some fight with his conscience as to wether or not he meant it, but it was the truth by the time he managed to say it, “Not much, reckon it’ll be like ole times in the navy, buncha fellas shootin’ the shit waitin’ to get from one place to the next. Harmless. I’m good at that.” he pondered aloud and then at her inquiring expression explained a little bashfully, “Fosterin’ camaraderie.” he smiled, “That’s what captain Phillips said. Said I was good at that and I must be -one time I got a sing along goin’ in the Memphis jail while waiting for the sentencin’. That’s where I met Jerrah, actually.”

“Of course it was.” she marveled and he turned pink and cleared his throat self consciously.

“Nah, m’not worried.” He reaffirmed, “Hell, they’re likely all splendid fellas, s’just that it -it only takes one bad sort.” those blue eyes took a journey before focusing back on the wood paneling, Elvis then laughed as if something funny had occurred to him, “Hellish bein’ a father, ain’t it? I mean, look at me turnin’ all fretful and shit. Daddy never acted like this.” he scoffed at himself but Rosey hardly thought Vernon Presley a stellar example to follow.

“Your mama did.” was all she added, sat on the bed in her most demure frock and watching the spectacle of his emotions like a play, and that reminder was enough for them both to share a look of understanding.

“I’m glad for the break from preformin’ and schmoozin’.” he suddenly went on in a burst of candor directed at the door frame, “S’just a little, a little -reminiscent, I’sppose.” and with that heavy admittance mumbled so inconsequentially, the subject was closed for the time being and worship was engaged in for the next hour, amidst the ruins of the rearranged hold and with the remaining dwindled crew.

“What am I to do while you’re up above all day?” Rosey asked him the question burdening her as they made their way back to the little room, to deposit her therin before he went up above and met the General who’d be taking over his boat for the foreseeable future.

“I dunno cricket, whatever ladies do when we menfolk let ‘em alone.”

“I’ve never had time for being a lady before.” she felt like whimpering it, so strongly did she dislike the idea of peace and boredom, it was foreign and suggested time to reflect and she wished for nothing less.

“Etta used to practice witchcraft in betwee- when I let her alone.” He offered helpfully.

Rosey, ever thirsty for any divulged scrap as to his past perked up, “In between what?”

“You know what.” he scowled at her, unable to understand such an open lack of jealousy.

“She ever use witchcraft on you?”

“God, I hope not.” he seemed to actually ponder it for a moment which suggested he wasn’t positive she hadn’t.

Rosey stood in the doorway of the little room and glared at the cramped space and windowless walls and piled boxes. “I just might take it up.” she pretended to seeth.

“Do that, if it pleases ya.” he snarked unapologetically, “But you ain’t comin’ above decks. That’s final.”

Rosey felt secure enough in his affections after all his doting this morning to huff a little and throw herself upon their cot like a petulant child. -Or a fine lady, face first in the unmade sheets, the picture of desolation.

“Now what’s this?” his sigh morphed into a giggle the longer she lay there.

“I’m being a fine lady.” came from the pillows.

“Ohh, s’that right? Pardon me ma’am, didn’t recognize the signs with your backside exposed like that.”

Rosey’s face jerked up from the bedding and craned behind her to realize her skirts had flown up indecorously in her playful fit. She set it to rights with a genuine blush and a frantic patting of her backside that made him envy her little hand.

“Aww hell, I was enjoyin’ that.” he fussed, lounging against the doorway and looking so very masculine in this new garb -or was it old?- that a shot of respectful appreciation for his size and strength shot through her as if they were strangers again. “Maybe you’ll be back at bein’ a lady when I come back.” his leer suggested something of a game and she swallowed in panicked excitement.

“I’ll always be a lady,” she replied in measured correction, “just as you’ll always be a mudborn hick no matter your clothes…captain.”

She saw him blink. Twice, thrice, half a dozen times, and then that long tanned throat worked up and down with a thick swallow. His hand twitched beside his thigh and that little friend of hers, tucked down the left side of his pant leg perked. Rosey held her breath in hopes she’d succeeded, hoping he’d give in for just a minute and do something to her before he went above. Insulting him in play was a gamble but it had worked physically, all that was left was for his mind to bend as well.

Elvis knew she wasn’t being mean, not really, not in earnest now that he knew she was made of the same bog-sodden earth as him. If Miss Beaumont had said it he’d have felt like striking her -but she didn’t, it was Cricket playing and if he could just drown out the echo chamber in his mind of other women, other clients, other folks who had eagerly wanted to be coupled with something they thought lower than themselves: well then he’d have been able to finish this game he himself started right here and now. But it weren’t fair to fuck sweet Rosey with a thousand other voices in his head, it wasn’t his fault he responded to jeers; that had once been a craft for him. And that’s all there was to it.

“This ‘mudborn hick’ owns your ass.” he teased instead, feeling secure enough in her security to remind her of the 2,000 greenbacks spent on her infuriating self.

“You make very little use of me for such an investment.” she whispered so softly an average man wouldn’t catch it.

“Oh Ho! Careful what you wish for, lil girl.”he warned with a wagging finger and a thunderbolt of a grin before turning on his heel and jogging up the three flights of stairs from the hold onto the top deck.

It was still cold as balls outside on deck. Figured, with winter setting in but sometimes one could harbor hope that autumn would last longer than a couple of weeks. Captain Presley tried to console himself with recent recollections of horseback rides in the golden sun and balmy nights on the wheel deck with that crisp autumn breeze slicing the muggy river air. Fall was short but it was prettiest on the river, and he’d have to recall that and count his blessings on e the river turned into a goddamn ice block before December even hit. He was torn from these reflections by a troop of cavalry men dismounting at the foot of the gangway and clomping their way up it to meet him, booted and spurred with a peculiar display of red kerchiefs poking out their dark blue uniforms. The sight of Yankees still made his fists curl after all these years, it took a studied nonchalance to neither fight or flee at the sight of government men.

“Gentleman.” he greeted with a tip of his hat, there were less than ten of them and the one wearing the most distinguished insignia looked peculiarly familiar-“General?-“

“-Sherman.” the officer provided stoically but with the aspect of a man expecting recognition.

“No shi-eeet.” Elvis balked with a chortle of disbelief, staring at the man who single handedly fucked the South up the ass back in ‘64…metaphorically of course. Arson was the real weapon.

“Let me guess, I burned your house awhile back.” General Sherman had a dry sorta charm to him, Elvis had to admit, even when making light of war crimes.

Elvis could appreciate such humor, though he feared a certain little girl of his would recall such war crimes more personally and object to harboring so ignominious a man. Couldn’t get helped. “Nah, reckon my shack was one of the few ya spared. You’da had a real lark in Tennessee pullin’ that shit, wood’s so wet half the time you can’t burn a place unless you powdered it with turpentine beforehand.”

“Yes, well, blame God for drought if you want to.”

“That what decides a just war, sir?” the Captain perused with amusement, “Draught?”

“You a religious man?”

“Of a sort.”

“Then you tell me.”

“Now you’re off for more of the same?”

“Orders are orders. Law and order is the same anywhere, south or west.”

“D’you read orders to burn a buncha Lakota, General, like the rest of us read the paper over eggs?”

“Something like that.” General Sherman was probably smiling though it looked more like a gash across his weathered face.

“Right, well, I told them I ain’t a transport but they wouldn’t hear otherwise.” Captain Presley explained, “I’ll do my best to get y’all boys up there, you have your men behave and keep from harassin’ my staff and I’ll drop y’all off quick like, and we’ll have no issues. Straight up the river and drop, simple, shouldn’t take more than two weeks.”

“We’re not goin’ upriver, young man.” General Sherman adjusted the toothpick he had cradled in the corner of his straight mouth like most would a cigar, “You’ll be taking us up the Missouri. We’re going west till we get to the Dakotas. I’ve got no time to waste waiting on railroads to be patched up from Saint Paul’s westward. We’ve got a river. We’ve got a captain. We’ll do it the old way. Those are your orders, Captain Presley. We depart at noon.”

“Now hang on!” Elvis flung out his hand, “I ain’t ever been off onto the Missouri, see, there’s Mississippi captains and then there’s tributary captains and I ain’t one. Hell sir, they got special flatboats for the Missouri it’s so damn shallow and fickle, we’ll run aground in this lug. She’s built for a mighty river, I can get you to Saint Paul’s but we won’t make it a hundred miles down the Missouri ‘fore we hit a sandbank, tear my hill to shreds. I’m tellin ya sir.”

“And I’m telling you, captain, orders are orders.”

“You want an inexperienced pilot to take a boat too big down a river too small to get to some fuckin’ territories nobody cares about ‘cause you don’t trust trains? Have I got that right?”

“Yes, and I’d like to leave by noon. No time to waste.” The general was still smiling that grimace of a smile, “I imagine you’ve made the adjustments for billeting my men?”

“Yeah, yeah I have.” Elvis nodded with his pretty mouth twisted in a impotent snarl.

“By noon then, captain.” The general tipped his own hat and moved forward through the glass doors into ballroom, decamping inside on the abandoned billiard tables, turning them into desks.

“General Fuckin’ Sherman.” Elvis grumbled and after a moment of disconsolate rage for his burnt country and his inconvenienced self, resigned himself to the unchangeable and, seeking comfort and knowledge, found himself hustling back down below to Rosey, bent on satisfying a craving he felt coming on.

He needed maps of the west. And he needed…her, he supposed. So he went right back down to her.

Rosey was still abed when he came in, lying on her back with her frock’s skirts crumpled around her and her legs crossed as she held a book up for perusal. Morton’s Guide for Nautical Engineering. He hadn’t unearthed that dull tome out of his trunks since the war.

She perked up when he opened the door, like a prisoner when their meal arrives, and he strode straight up to stand over her after closing it behind him.

“Still layin’ here?” he observed, petting the hair off her forehead.

“As I was told to.” she replied accusingly.

“Mm, obedient little investment.” He teased, stealing a kiss that she nipped into a little too much for his taste.

He was no longer in the mood for banter and wanted more. Cunt, to be honest.

The juicy, fragile, pungent perfection of hers might wipe out the memory of his orders for ten minutes or more and he wanted that. “Came down here to make use of ya, as you offered.” he tried to jest.

“Is this what I am to do?” she bemoaned playfully, “Languish in ennui until you choose to come and make use of your purchase? What a life. Beetles have more independence.”

“If that elevates the experience for ya, go right ahead, consider yourself a purchase. Or a beetle. Now let me at ya.” he knelt down at the edge of the little cot and grabbing her hips pulled her round till she was crumpled against the wall in a petulant slump with her bum hanging off the cot and legs flung over his shoulders. “I’ve just been told by general Fuckin’ Sherman himself that I gotta take him all the way to the dakotas.” he elaborated on his peckishness as he hiked up her skirts and parted her pantaloon split, “Just like Clemens suspected, n’I hate it. It’s bullshit -oooh god are you always so wet? just born soppin’? I’m not complaining I jus-“

“THE general sherman?” Rosey rose right up from her slump and dug at her skirts to uncover his face as he licked at her damp thighs, his day old stubble chafing her a little.

“Yup.”

“No!”

“Yeah.”

“No, not that bastard! Elvis you can’t!-“

“Honey, there ain’t no can or can’t, just orders. It’s just orders. Now spread your legs, I’m cramped in here.”

“But he’s-“

“Just be thankful he’s not on his way to burn your house. Somebody else’s nightmare this time. C’mon now I can’t get to ya like that.” he was near whining right now and hated himself for it. So he barked, “Spread ‘em, girl!”

“Oh, sorry. There.”

“Mmm, better.”

“That bastard.” she mused again. “I just might, dunno, but if I ran into him I just might- ow!!”

Elvis had bitten her little rosebud before returning to the lazy, aimless licking he was indulging in before. “No murder.” he mumbled into her wetness and went back to it.

Rosey leant back on her hands and anchored her heels to his shoulders, puzzling at this mood of his, serene in some aspects but utterly without context or prefix. Like he’d just come down for this. Like it was some tradition she ought to know about. Like worship service or the dinner bell. Something about his sweet entitlement to bury his face in her most vulnerable parts turned her belly to goo. She had not anticipated him being back down here in the hold for hours yet and even then there had been this imposed chastity of sorts between them.

Now there was…this.

This tasting of her like one would partake of a nap or a tonic, something more restorative rather than erotic. He was crouched to reach her on the low cot and his back bent beneath his leather jacket and the room was growing warm, her breathing and temperature not unaffected by the lavishing of his tongue. His hands lay listlessly beside her thighs as if he wanted all sensation to be directed through his face and she sat herself fully against the wall so that she might free her own hands from her weight and entwine them with his.

She could feel his cheeks bunch in a smile against her slick.

He squeezed her hands again and again and she took to watching his methodical enjoyment of it, his slurping tongue making some progress on her for all that she was taken by surprise. Some slick had gone up to his brow bone, so thoroughly had he burrowed, and his eyelashes clumped together with her dew.

“I’m sorry about your boat.” she murmured, rubbing her heel against his ribs in a gesture she intended as soothing.

“We’re gonna die goin’ out there.” he pulled away to declare in a bored tone of resignation, disentangling one hand to plunge his fingers into her tight channel without warning, jostling her cunt impatiently like trying to get the last drops from an empty keg. It made Rosey yelp in pain and shock at the demanding pleasure it sent through her, “Or else we’ll die on the way back. Nobody just fucks off to the Dakotas and comes back all dandy. Otherwise the tables would be full of insufferable idiots tellin’ bout their lil adventure.”

“You’ve come back from worse.” she pacified him even as she hissed at his rough handfucking and tried, and failed, to slow his frenzied forearm with her halting little hand. He was a man determined and after a couple dozen jabs of his coupled fingers he struck the spot he’d found before and her abdomen dommed in response, clenching violently.

“There's a reason I haven’t gone out west.” he shook his head as he continued, mercilessly bored with this part compared to the oral aspect, “Got no curiosity about gettin’ scalped and now I gotta go buy me some maps before we leave at noon. It’s bullshi-Ah, Ah Ah there we go, that’s it c’mon, coat my hand baby, wanna have to wring my sleeve out after this, c’mon, spew. Gimme something real to taste. Give it to me, that’s it, that’s it, don’t push my hand away I ain’t done, I say when we’re done -I want somethin’ to taste, you gimme somethin’.”

“Please god please enoug— ELVIS!”

“Alright, alright, calm down, I’ll clean ya up, don’t gotta be so cross about it.”

Rosey panted and pressed her palm to her poor womb to still its last, frantic clenches of pleasure, feeling like she had gotten spanked from the inside by a couple of calloused fingertips, so roughly and hard had she come undone. Contented with the gush of satisfaction she had let out for him, Captain Presley ducked his head again and resumed his leisurely supping, smacking and licking at her sensitive petals while contentedly grasping hold of her hand again with his now sticky fingers. She spread her legs wide and tried to breathe, tried to let him have this -whatever this was. His eyes were closed again and he had that peaceful look on his face that she’d happily kill to ensure, all the more willing was she to sit there with legs cramping and hold his hand while he got his fix.

Unused to him engaging in this activity without the use of his talented hands, she found herself spreading her legs as much as possible to help him burrow his face deeper and received a happy hum in acknowledgment, bucking up to meet his licks since it seemed to please him. When he had thoroughly slurped her down and coated his face with her essence he seemed to finally fatigue after awhile, or else accomplished what he wanted, and he stayed knelt there with his cheek against her tacky thigh and his breath coming out in slow drafts.

“I’ve never seen you reach for a map.” she realized, keeping her tone soft and running her thumb along his knuckles soothingly, “Not even for going far north.”

“Cause we were goin’ vertical, damn it.” he knew she would know his tone wasn’t meant to hurt her, if he could hurt general Sherman with his tone he’d do it and in the meantime he growled it into the thick plushness of a good woman’s thigh. “I know the damn Mississippi like the freckles on your face, could lick ‘em blindfolded and have navigated this wild ole stream when blind drunk and - well, I know it. Never even been on the goddamn Missouri. Nothin’ but a fuckin’ piss trickle of a river that oughta be called a creek ‘cept the rapids get so bad in a couple places they’ve killed enough folks so it gets called it a river. Politics, Nothin’ but river politics. Shit shit shit.”

Rosey regretted working him up from the soothed daze of his unorthodox snack. “Shh, shh please just, let me take care of you?” she pleaded, running her hand down his chest as far as she could reach with him laying fast first in her lap.

“I’m calm, I’m calm.”

“No I meant- let me taste you.” she puzzled that he didn't get it.

“Oh.” he raised his face up from the swampy delight of that little oasis and smiled softly at her flushed face, still a little surprised, maybe even doubtful, that she enjoyed pleasuring him that way. “I-I don’t need it, sweetheart, and we haven’t got the time. We’ve gotta go to the bookstore, get those maps.”

“But- but it’s not fair, me gettin’ treated so sweet and you left without tending to.”

“But I got what I wanted.”

“You didn’t get any relief.” She pressed and tried again to reach somewhere lower than his belly.

“I got to lick cunt,” he laughed at her shocked expression, “that’s exactly what I wanted and thanks for that, my sweet lil possession. Now does my baby-honey-pie-sweet-cakes wanna get outta her widdle prison and buy some maps w’me or is hers gonna lay here and sulk?”

“I’m coming with you!” she bounded out of the bed at lightening speed to find her boots and clutched at her belly as she did so, “Lord you rubbed right though me, Elvis! Feels like someone knifed me in there!”

“How the hell can you be sore from some lickin’?” he scoffed, rolling his eyes as he stood up himself, wiping his shiny face off in the elbow crook of his jacket.

“It was all that jabbing you did with your fingers!” she accused in a low moan, mimicking the jackknifing motion of his wrist as she wobbled back to the cot to lace up her boots.

“Couple fingers up there and you act like you done had a child.” he shook his head at her and gripped a pale leg and hauled it up to his waist so that he might help her shove on a boot.

“You were very rough!”

“You weren’t cummin’ fast enough.”

“Wh- it was very rough.”

“You sure acted like you didn’t mind it, we’ll have to change the sheets you soiled yourself so much.”

“Cause you made me!”

“Sure did.” he sucked on his bottom lip in smug remincience.

“I’m just sayin’ you were mighty rough about it and that’s why I’m sore.” she patiently repeated while standing up and smoothing out her skirts.

“Uhuh, alright,” he opened the rickety door for her like a true gentleman before adding with calculated roguishness, “well if a couple fingers got ya bitchin’ bout soreness you can kiss goodbye to any goddamn consummation.”

“Oh Elvis, no!” she cried aghast, wheeling around to face him, pleading like her life depended on it and he nearly lost it at the woe so clearly stamped on her face at the threat of never getting bedded. “Please I-“

“I’m a damn sight thicker than that, and you’re obviously a delicate lil flower that can’t even take a puff of breath witho-“

“Oh Elvis please, it’s not so bad, I swear I was just kidding!” she begged him all the way to the sequestered stables where poor Beans and the other crew’s horses had been corralled.

“I dunno, you were awful adamant that I was rough.” he bit down his laughs and kept on as he went about saddling good, patient, silent Beans.

“You were -I’m sure it was transient. Just in the moment I-“ Rosey cast about the place for a better excuse, “It was just at the moment I was a little surprised. I’m fine now, entirely fine! See!” And she hopped about as if that was proof of anything.

“If you think that was rough, lil girl, you’ll go join your grandmother in the great beyond on a day when I’m really hungry.”

“I-I- didn’t mean it, Elvis, I’ve already said that.” Rosey went so far as to lay her hand beggingly on his arm as he tightened the saddle’s girth and he nearly wheezed from holding in his laugh. “Please, please I’ll not complain,” she dropped her voice significantly as Charlie passed close by and another worker shifting the feed sacks, still she was desperate enough to keep on even in this low tone, “I can take you, I’m sure of it. All of you, to the very root, I will. I promise I’ll not even wince!”

“Hell woman,” Elvis cut his palm on the buckle upon hearing that promise so beggingly whispered, hot and submissive in his ear, yet he straightened up and pretended to chide her as he turned to her and picked her up to sit her on top of Beans, looking up at her with consternation, “where’s all that decorum gone to? Hellfire, to think if you -YOU!- beggin’ for cock in public. What would your mama say? What would my mama say?”

Too late she realized he had been goading her into this little display of infatuated wantonness.

“Ooooh I could kick you, Elvis Presley!” she cried out in the prettiest little rage he’d ever seen. “Evil, evil man.”

Fully laughing now Elvis backed away from her one legged kicks as he bent double to indulge in one of his belly clutching fits of amusement. Still snickering he mounted up behind her and she could hear how much he’d been crying in merriment from the stuffiness of his nose when he said next,

“Oh honey you shoulda seen how earnest you looked, like the mama pleadin’ for her baby’s life from King Solomon in the good book.”

“Yes well, if given the chance I’ll not plead a damn thing for you in future-“ she couldn’t think of anything quite humiliating enough to punish him with so she left it ambiguous as Elvis, still wheezing behind her, steered Beans out the low gator door and down onto the wharf that abutted the boat’s lower levels.

St Louis in the daylight was less impressive than it had been the previous evenings she’d been out amongst its street and citizens, in the bright light it was lines of brick houses with patched streets and a desperate prevention towards something more than trading post. St Louis had its judges and its lawyers and its haberdashers and they proclaimed themselves loudly as if begging to be recognized as a real and realized city, like a flat chested girl swearing at ripe maturity. They had book shops too, and second only to the saloon and tailor -alright that made it a third,- Captain Presley was a frequenter of Kinsley’s Books at the corner of Monroe and Market streets. St Louis might also pride itself on being a big, ill organized mess of a city and it was a goodly ride from the docks to the shop.

“Whadda ya think of St Louie?” he asked her, jarring her out of her reverie of trying to soak in her last minutes of freedom and finding them ironically dull.

“It’s nothing like New Orleans.” she ventured.

“Well, no,” he laughed, “but that ain’t it’s fault. No comparison there.”

“I prefer Memphis.” she decided.

“What’s it like now?” he asked in a tone so forcefully neutral it made her cringe at his pain. “-Memphis.” he said it like the homesick.

“Memphis is -busy, in a martial law sorta way.”

“Still?”

“Three months ago, still was.”

“Ah.”

“Why’d you leave?” she asked him and after hearing Elvis grunt as if hurt she’d forgotten Scotty’s confession last night, she quickly amended: “Why’d you join the navy? During the war, I mean. Thought you always wanted to be in the cavalry. You loved horses so, I thought you’d have gone for that.”

“Too poor to own a horse.” he reminded.

“Then why not join the local boys, for soldiering? You’d have kept been nearby.”

Near her, she meant, near his mama, near that child he’d thought he’d begotten -and he knew it.

“I built a damn submarine in old Beaumont’s cornfield, Cricket.” he huffed, “They thought me a whiz. Sank of course, but it worked for a couple missions. Ever after that they wouldn’t keep me on land. Shame, really.”

“Hold up,” she tried to crane her neck to look him in the face as Bean’s gait jostled them, “you built a submarine in a cornfield?”

“Yeah.”

“And it worked?”

“Yeah for a few runs.”

“Wh- why? Oh good Lord, you’re full of surprises, sir!”

“Yankee gunboats were shellin’ the hell outta us, the confederacy had all the ships sent to protect Vicksburg, just let Memphis get wrecked, I’d had enough.”

“Simple as that.” she marveled, “Elvis Presley got tired of his ears hurting so he built a submarine. In a cornfield.”

“I guess you were too young to recall, Mama hadn't slept in a month, kids were dyin’ , just starvin’ from their nerves bein’ shredded” he muttered, “you yourself were a lil scarecrow. I’d always been quick with those engineering books. T’weren’t hard.”

“Ha.” she scoffed in admiration, “And what do you mean by a few runs? Runs down the Mississippi? Did you actually launch the thing?”

“Yeah, me and Scotty and Bill and a couple others.”

“That’s horrifying.”

“You’ve no idea, felt like getting nailed into a metal coffin when they screwed us in.”

“Well did it do any good?”

“We took down an ironclad. It blew us to hell, too. But we sank some Yankees.”

“Oh hurrah, that’s marvelous.” Rosey cheered, entirely forgetting the war was quite over, “Please be sure to tell General Sherman this story over cards. No wonder they wanted you for the navy!”

“I was sixteen, Rosey. The hell was I gonna do for the navy?”

“Elvis!”

“Well, really! I was an engineer if anything, all I did was putter around in a lil tube in a river and they thought I was a sailor. Broke mama's heart takin’ me away.”

“Oh, yes, it did, didn’t it.”

“Yeah it did.”

“Mine, too.” she whispered.

“Mine three.” he shrugged and poked her side.

Maddy’s heart, perhaps the most obvious and endangered of any, was conspicuously unuttered. Rosey wasn’t sure she found that soothing or ominous, had he forgotten or did he simply neglect his attachment so as not to imperil their own, current, precarious arrangement?

“Is this what you were tryin’ to learn? Reading my old books?” he asked with amusement.

“I was just trying to get a taste for what you like.”

“Oh well, that one ain’t for pleasure, doll.” he sounded quite droll, “Put the dullest man to sleep. You know what I like, we’ve been readin’ enough together.”

“We’ve completed one book.”

“So? I liked it. Dicken’s is-a-helluva writer.”

“So you like novels?”

“So what if do!”

“I’m just asking!”

“Yeah, I like novels. How bout you then, hmm?”

“I haven’t had the time.” she confessed, “Being a fine lady, as you called it, kept me shockingly busy morning till night at a plow or else the accounts.”

“Then why’re your bitchin’ bout having a month long lie-in? I’d do anything for that.” he teased.

“It’s far less enjoyable alone in the bed.” she realized it as she said it, cupping her hand to her mouth in sudden bashfulness.

As usual such modesty had a fond effect on him and he rested his chin on her shoulder cozily as Bean’s gait rocked them in the saddle, “It’s new f’me too, baby.” he whispered like he was scared to realize it himself and only confessed it to put her at ease.

Kinsley’s Books sold far more than just books and in the dim ,dusty and charming maze of the place Rosey could have found maps and stationary and inks and chalks and stamps and pressed flowers to her heart's content. It was perhaps more thrilling than having herself outfitted at the finest of lady’s emporiums.

She was running her hand admiringly over a rhinoceros skull when she heard Elvis strike up a conversation and a voice she knew take up the banter.

“You were right Clemens,” Elvis was saying and, peering through a gap in the books, Rosey spied the wizened old journalist of yesterday’s courthouse wedding -Samuel Clemens, “my orders were for the Dakota’s. All the way, it’s the Missouri for us. You sure you still want that damned adventure? Hell of a risk for a lark and some newsprint.”

“Somehow I feel the story will be worth it with you cast in a leading role.” Clemens replied with dry affection.

“No sirree I’ll be strictly captaining.” Elvis protested any ambitions toward excitement, “And poorly at that.”

“Ah, the river’s not so bad. Not with what you're used to.”

“But that’s the difference,” the captain became grave, “it’s entirely a matter of used to a’not. I ain’t used to it and I- lord I pause before sharin’ this but- well, you’re still a pilot ain’t ya? Got your license still?”

“I do.” Mr. Clemens drug out his syllables in the way those fearing entrapment do.

“Then -look I’m beggin’ ya, I ain’t joshin’ -I’m beggin’ ya to take it off me, hmm?”

“Flattered but -no.”

“You won’t do it or you’re scared too?” Elvis sneered but there was no venom in it.

“Frankly terrified of how dull it would be to let you off the hook.” Clemens chuckled, “Why’re you so scared yourself?”

“I-I dunno.”

“That hogwash, ‘course you know. Tell me, son.”

“Well,” it was the Captain’s turn to draw it out, “you’re a river man…”

“Mhmm.”

“So I can -I can sound off my rocker and you’ll, you’ll under- you’ll not fault me?”

“Course not.” Clemens grunted, “Tell me you’re scared of the mermaids in the muddy Missouri and I’ll find you credible but just don’t tell me you don’t have designs on ‘em, cause know you would.”

Elvis whooped a laugh before settling into his confession with more ease than before, “You know how it is sir, rivers, they give ya what you put into ‘em. I been good and I was respectful -even in my wildest days I was respectful- of the old mississippi and she’s been good to me when she’s dashed other, she’s been good to me and I been good to her and I- makes me damn uneasy goin’ onto another river I ain’t ever paid respects to and doin’ it to carry men up her so they can commit slaughter. If that river don’t claim my boat it’ll be -it’ll be a mercy of God, that’s what. Divine intervention and nothin’ short.”

Mr. Clemens hummed contemplatively and then gave a shrug as he himself saw the merits of this argument. “Have you got a choice?” he asked the million dollar question.

“None at all.” The captain bemoaned.

“Well then,” Clemens smiled, “I suggest you bring along a good map, the best brandy you can get your hands on, a generous woman to soothe you and a writer to tell the tale. Haven’t you heard? The author never dies in the tragedy”

“I’ve got all but the map.” Rosey could see that Elvis was grinning then, before she had to duck as he caught sight of her spying.

It was Mr. Clemens who sought her out as she weaves her way deeper into the shop.

“You searching for something in particular?” he asked her, and it was the genuine interest in his tone that placated her once more into trusting him. He seemed to have the same effect on Elvis and for once she was not wary or spiteful of what must’ve been a decent judgment of human character. She had never before seen it used so benevolently.

“I was looking for a gift.”

“Oh? Found it?” he smiled at her little lost expression. There was a gentle timidity about her when she felt herself out of her element that suited her so well it Clemens sympathetic to Captain Presley’s ravenous admiration for his fleshy little creature.

“No, I am torn.” she admitted and after seeing the inviting sparkle in his eye went on in a low voice, “I wished to find something to alleviate the captain's preoccupations between shifts. He likes to read, he likes me to read to hi- well, he likes it and so much so he hasn’t any books left that he hasn’t read. He likes novels.” she tried to relay this as if she hadn’t learned it herself within that hour.

“Novels, hmm?” Clemens pondered, “And you? Do you like them? Or are you more of a woman of prose?”

“I- we read Charles Dickens together, it was my first.”

“First?-“

“First novel, sir.” the young lady was more scarlet than cream at this admission and he found such furious frustration with her perceived inadequacy most endearing.

“Yes, well, those worn hands haven’t been holding books, now have they, my dear?” and he said it so admiringly, he who was an author and man of letters, that Rosey’s heart melted with his acceptance of her circumstances.

“I’d take your recommendation most gratefully, sir.” she hinted.

“Tragedy or adventure?”

“Oh nothing too maudlin, I don’t think we could take it just now.“ She laughed merrily as if over a good joke but Clemens was sure that it was truer than either would like to believe. “Adventure, preferably with some ingenious margin for error. If I’ve learned one thing it’s that he’s made for the impossible.”

“In that case,” Mr. Clemens gently steered her by the shoulders till she was staring at a glossy row of gold embossed titles on shiny green leather, “it’s something of Mr. Verne’s you’re after. Hell, he’s insisting we can go to the moon or ‘least camp out in the bowels of earth in his novels. Makes a trip to the Dakotas look tame.”

“That should do it.” Rosey mumbled, still a little enamored with the sleek bindings and ominous titles: Journey to the Center of the Earth, 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea, From Earth to the Moon, Around the World in 80 Days.

The titles alone suggested a reality so outlandish and daring that she felt dizzy by it, the horizons of Memphis expanding somewhere far far far more brave that she would have imagined. Was this the thrill Elvis felt tinkering around with such inventions as he had made?

Rosey made her purchase and parted from Mr. Clemens with a meek smile of thanks. Elvis found her pondering the selection of Penny Dreadful’s whose titles were equally promising as Verne’s but in an entirely sordid sort of way.

“Bandit and the Countess” may have been conservative in name but in illustration it was not, boasting a cover piece depicting a young woman in the throes of ravishment by a swarthy rogue of dark features and rich lips. For one glaring moment Rosey saw how she herself, her situation and her captivity, might be perceived by others. A pang of sympathy for Elvis’ precautions regarding their being seen together struck her. It was a wicked book and she snapped the book closed guiltily at his tap on her shoulder.

He had his left eyebrow up in judgment of her taste before recalling why he had sought her out in the first place:

“Rosey darlin’, there’s reporters out front, got wind of me bein’ here and they won’t leave without givin’ ‘em a word. We can’t have the colonel seein’ you’re still with me, least not ‘till we are well on our way. You understand.”

Smiling bitterly in recent enlightenment, she agreed nonetheless. “I understand.”

“I propose you go out the back, take Beans yourself and get straight on back to the boat now, they won’t know ya, you just get on back. I’ll get a coach or else walk. I could use to walk.”

“Right right right,” Rosey soothed and stood a’tiptoes to kiss his cheek, he leant sideways to aid her in this attempt, “straight back to the boat I shall go, and down I will go and down I will stay and -you’ll come see me, when you need to rest, you’ll come down too?”

“I will.” he promised, “I’m gonna try’n get us through the Missouri’s mouth a’least hy nightfall. I’ll be late.” but he didn’t mean it as an excuse. He’d promised.

Beans was no testy young stallion, seasoned and more than a little used to being holed up, he enjoyed the change of rider and pace and gave Rosey little grief over being in charge instead of his beloved master. The fact she let him go at full canter through the streets of St Louis and back onto the dock may have helped his mood. He was huffing and puffing as much as his red cheeked and glimmering eyed rider by the time Charlie grabbed the bridle and made them slow, six feet deep inside the hold.

“Foolish child.” he cried without any real heat, shaking his head as if she reminded him of someone.

There were soldiers down there, billeting their own horses and working with the crew on accommodating them all. She hadn't expected that, doubted Elvis had either or else he might’ve cautioned her.

As it was there was nothing to do but dismount and toss Cal the reins with a word of thanks before slinking away down the narrow hall to squirrel herself away in their inner room with his trunks and his books. She thought she might try to find something to wrap her little present in, an old shirt or some lace. She was pondering this and angry at herself for not thinking to buy parchment when she laid hold of the door knob and turned it.

No one was supposed to be within but when she went to open the door, it felt obstructed and while at first she thought maybe a trunk had fallen before it, or in their hasty departure some coat was caught in the jam, the startled, rustling noise behind suggested an occupant. One who was as surprised and panicked to be found inside as Rosey was to discover them. Crouching down to grab her pistol from her boot, Rosey slowly turned the knob again, imperceptibly until it was fully unlatched and then threw her weight against the old oak as forcefully as possible, conquering the latch. The door flew open.

Down the barrel of her pistol Rosey saw the manically glaring, disfigured beauty of Ada Overton’s onyx eyes, and her arms buried a full two feet in the captain's trunks.

Rummaging.

And not for jewels or watches, as the many discarded items of the same would suggest. Not for books as they were discarded with not a care for bindings. Not for letters as the few ribboned starches he kept were not addressed to her, Rosey has snooped enough to know that. No, something else that Rosey had either not found as yet, or else did not as yet know enough to consider important. That dreadful feeling of dread that had been so put to flight today returned and it wasn’t just those hideous eyes turning cold and acknowledging in the face of Rosey’s glare, it was that familiar terror that Captain Presley had a lot more to tell her than he’d ever want to. With her own lies put to rest, it seemed like his own remaining ones were all the more burdensome in the light stepped happiness of her honesty. Aida Overton, from what she could tell, was some remaining and hideous portal to a time she should not pry into, yet it seemed to her starved curiosity that she deserved to know a bit of the times and particulars that might yet sink them all on their return. These long hours to be spent in the hold might prove not be so boring after all.

With this in mind Rosey chose to ask, “What is it you're after, Miss Aida?” over the metallic click of pulling back the pistol’s hammer.

The boat’s bell rang a quarter to noon.

Historical Note: as stated before, the only fun for this AU to take place in the 1870’s is if I bend the timeline and cram in as many 1870’s happenings as pleases me. So as a result we’ve got Tina Turner as a boat Captain and General William Sherman committing crimes against indigenous people in the Dakotas instead of Kansas. Don’t learn your history from here, though I’d be happy to clarify the fudges. ;) Also, Samuel Clemens’ (pen name Mark Twain) authoring has been pushed back as well for reasons later revealed in the narrative. He’s just a journalist as of yet in this story.

One more thing. A boy from North Carolina did indeed build a prototype submarine in a cornfield to defend his hometown during the civil war. And yes, it worked. For a bit. And if that ain’t 1800’s style superhero/comic book material then I dunno what is

Hope y’all enjoyed! I seem to have lost my Whole Man taglist and so I did the unthinkable this time and used Sarge’s as there’s a lot of overlap. If you’d like to be tagged specifically in this one or omitted from it, please pop a note down below.

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@heartbrake-hotel

@stylespresleyhearted

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