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precious-little-scoundrel · 11 months

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Let’s Fall Out of Love

Divorce Part 1

Fully co-authored with @elvisabutler 💋

Thanks: are due to so many friends on here who helped craft this timeline and concept and helped me hone the motivations into something I trust our readers will find evocative and sympathetic. Y’all know who you are, thanks for being my buddies

Warnings: 18+ for thematic and sexual material. Strong language and bitter accusations between spouses, mentions of drugs, divorce proceedings, lying to spouses (for their eventual good???) mentions of past infidelity, Colonel Parker being the worst, poor Elvis being in a bad place with his health and mentally -and dub con smut. It is in no way non con but the context, the lack of voiced or implied consent and the aggression make it dubious. It is fairly clear both parties are engaging in hysterical bonding, still the scene is dubious as is the language used by the man regarding a wife having no say in it. So please heed that.

Note: it was the attempt of the writers to craft a rather cinematic experience with this fic, one aim was to skip times and have plenty of fade to black moments. Please note the time stamps above each scene to keep track of progression. Anything that is not clarified in this chapter will either be clarified in the next part or else in others. You’re of course welcome to ask questions.

|| 10th, APRIL 1977 ||

Divorce. Lil Tink is divorcin' him. Lil Laney is gonna be his ex-wife.

The thought rattles around in his aching brain as he chases her up Graceland’s stairway, past the portraits of their children and the plaques celebrating their successes and haunting likenesses of younger selves. Both of them home for a brief stint after Vegas Showrooms and California Courtrooms.

Home -it won’t be his home much longer, she’s gonna see to that.

Divorce.

It had taken up half his year already but he was so sure, so damn sure all she needed was to make a fuss and threaten like she does and then it would cool down, smooth over. He was ready to humor all sorts of shit and then she went and pushed for more. More money, more assets, took out a damn lien. His Tink who happily chucked half of custody at him without a fight has now drug this little show on for months, all for a couple more bucks.

She’s takin' everythin' he's worked so hard for, takin’ it all, going back for more even, just to make sure she can still be taken care of in the conditions and standards he had raised her to.

Spoiled lil middle class girl grown into a spoiled, hardened rich woman.

“Till death do you part”, he hurled the promises at her over the phone, as soon as that court order had landed in his hands -but if ya ask Elaine, he's been dead more times than she can count. Maybe he's dead to her in everythin' but body. Ain't that the other joke, he feels half dead even in body.

"Elaine Presley! Turn 'round when I'm talkin' t'ya! Ya know I hate it when people do that” As if she’s required to listen to him or required to pay attention after two decades of focusing so much of her attention and time and energy on a man who has forgotten all of that. On a man who’s forgotten that he’s married to her. That’s forgotten he has children with her, a life he promised her, and not to his manager who's twisted so much of what was between them into this. Whatever this is.

"Why?" She spits still climbing stairs she's climbed a thousand times before. Faintly she hears Marie playing in her room and a surprising amount of silence from Jack's and her heart twists. They don't need to hear this. None of her children do but her youngest- oh her youngest deserve to think their father is still something resembling a good man.

"Why?" As if Elvis is some sort of parrot, he repeats the question back at her. His confusion colors his face, warring for control with his anger and frustration as he follows her through the padded master doors. "Why? The hell kinda question is that?”

“I told you come by and grab those things you said you needed so badly.” she hauls open one of his drawers and the thing squeals on its track from her violent tug. “So do that. If you wanted to chat then we coulda chatted somewhere else. Or, you know -a year ago? Ten?”

“I’m just askin’ why.“ He embraces her own wording and tries to get nearer her, hem her in against the dresser like he’s done countless times before in this very room with dazzling success.

Elaine slips away between them like water and he’s left bracing himself on the smooth wooden top.

“I’m not actively trying to be a shrew.” she murmurs as she turns away and goes to the other side of the room, opening the wardrobe, “No matter what you believe. I told you that you’ll be welcome in this house no matter what, so that’s why.’I’m not allowing you to come around -you just can, it’s your mama’s house still, for all I’m concerned.”

“No, no I mean- why’re you throwin’ this away?” He emphasizes it with his hands, a pleading gesture that sweeps the whole room and its host of sacred memories. He’s used this before but that was back when he figured it was all one big tantrum. Signing custody papers has rather shaken that hope, delusion, comfort.

Tink purses her lips and he notices her face has gone so white this summer, rarely in the sun and addicted to wearing black like some melodramatic Prima Donna. She does look stunning in the papers all decked out in veils and heels, he’ll give her that. He doesn’t know when she turned from being the heart of the operation to the glamor of it all -and he the opposite.

“What’s my favorite color these days?” she asks him instead.

He stares at the sable color he’s seen her wearing for months now and sighs in exasperation, “Shit I dunno -black?” he swings, knowing it’s a miss the second he says it.

“I can’t do this anymore.” she informs him, like color has broken up a twenty year long marriage and he grinds his teeth so hard he thinks he cracks a filling. The pain adds to his headache that matches the pounding in his chest and the roaring in his ears builds to such a degree he’s honestly terrified for them both.

“Stop this.” he warns her, quite sure she knows the red hot fit she’s stoking with her callousness and hurt that she won’t help him out of it like she used to, that she’ll let him go into a blind rage and then blame him for it, no doubt. “I know when you’re lyin’, woman, and I ain’t ever seen a more lilly livered liar than you right now.” he snarls and tries a last appeal that comes out as a barb anyways, “You wouldn’t be goin’ on so rash if your daddy were still alive,” he jabs a finger at her, “guess I can be grateful he ain’t, so he’s not breakin’ down my door for explanations ‘bout a offense you won’t admit to me!“

Elaine absorbs this blow with a wavering face before the nonchalance cloaks her features once more and Elvis would resort to smacking it off her if he were a different sorta man. “Black is practical, that’s why I wear it. It’s not my favorite though.” she simpers, clutching at the shoe she’s picked up from the floor, something for her hands to worry, to hide her own anguish at having to keep him in the dark. To lie repeatedly to him as he breaks apart, she didn’t know it would cut him up so much.

It’s a mess, this web of connections that used to prop them up, used to be a community. Now it’s a den of tattle tales and if one of them suspects she’s anything but angry at Elvis, that this this divorce and seizing of assets isn’t a scorned wife gone nuts, but rather a calculated endeavor to get at his manager once and for all -well Charlie will spill to Vernon and Vernon will spill to Elvis and Elvis will have all the fuel he needs to plead her right back into complacent heartbreak in his arms -before he goes on tour again and murders himself from the workload.

“I’m on orange kick, actually.” her voice is hoarse.

“Then I’ll buy ya some fuckin’ orange curtains and you’ll stop divorcin’ me.” he jabs a tinged finger at her and he looks like he might fall over, his face is so flushed and sweaty, from pills and passion. Elaine readies to catch him, break his fall if he tips. At least here there’s carpet, unlike the hotel hallway that busted his head last year.

“I’m rather in the mood to buy my own from now on.” she lies and sweeps past him to get to the closet.

She never gets past him. His hand darts out and engulfs her dainty wrist, tugging her back and in a spin like he practiced in his movies so many times, a romantic, gallant, possessive gesture that lands her smack against his broad chest, locked in with an arm around her shoulders.

"Buy your own, hm? Gonna sell my mama's house to do that? Gonna sell ya children's home to do that?"

“Elvis, you get your damn hands off me.” she bites back, throwing her weight on his forearm that might as well be made of steel, so little room does she gain from her effort.

"Never minded my hands on ya before. Even 'fore I married ya, it was fine for me to touch ya. To inspect that lil house of yours to make sure it could have all those lil babies ya wanted. Gave 'em to ya didn't I? Gave ya every last one and two've ‘em are even still with ya till they leave." Never mind that Jack's been bouncing between here and California in an effort to do what he's wanted to do since Elvis would play sharks in the bed with him. "But now you're wantin' my hands off. Goin' on 'bout gettin' new curtains yourself."

His words are punctuated with spit and a hissing anger Elvis doesn't normally indulge in. The bitter anger she used on the road with champagne making her head float in a sea of lies and wants and needs and a twisted sort of love till she had to call it. She can feel her jaw tensing up at his calloused fingers finding their way under her chin, tapping at first to try and have her look up at him before clenching around it and tilting it upward instead.

"Who is it, Laney? Who's the person who's gonna take care of ya? Gonna help ya buy those curtains? Get Marie those cameras? Help Jack and Rosie pay for those commie schools of theirs?" With each passing word Elvis’s voice drops lower and lower in octave until he's reaching levels Elaine's never heard. Against her will, her body shivers in his arms. A sneer crosses his lips- a twisted version of his raised lip that everyone knows and loves. That raised lip she's kissed before with laughter and jokes on how "if you keep doing that your face'll stay that way, Naughty." It shouldn't be there like this and yet it is. "That why ya dragged me to our lil Ella Bella's weddin'? Figured the Martins could spoil our daughter rotten away from you and your new caretaker? Your new piggybank? Don't get shy on me now, Laney! Who's the lucky sonuvabitch who gets to have my wife?"

Elaine's learned how to be composed in every situation with Elvis. She'll shoot at the Colonel over love handles and movies that killed her Elvis's spirit. She'll titter at army wives mocking her house and implying she couldn't keep up with being Mrs. Presley and growing a second set of twins in two years. She'll handle losing little Joesphine with a body that betrayed them all and with a smile on her face because Mrs Kennedy had just lost hers and then John died and the US can't handle their Irish Catholic and their Southern Baptist Camelots falling to pieces all at once. But this, this is too much. This is her soon to be ex husband mocking her. Like she'd have had time to find someone else who would take care of her, like taking care of Elvis and their children allowed her to seek any other comfort than in the aging movie star her husband sought to emulate once upon a time before realizing he's just a man too. The aging movie star she considers one of her nearest and dearest friends and who'd- who would be her caretaker if she let him.

Knowing her luck it'd end up worse than this.

No, this is Elvis throwing out an insult to her character, the one he'd have defended till his dying breath except for when she turns on him like Red and Sonny did. Their book's gonna be coming out sooner rather than later and- she's made it obvious he can't trust a soul any more.

It won't do either one of them any good to react. It's not going to help her escape from his grip that's a vice around her. It won't help him see what she's doing and how she’s doing it for him. But she is only human just as he's only human and her lipstick covered mouth opens in defense of her own honor.

"What makes you think you deserve to know?" He can't see through everything to see why shes doing this, so why should he get an answer. "You won't have to worry, we'll all be taken care of. And you can be rebranded! A seasoned entertainer who's free as a bird to do whoever and whatever he wants. Or oooh -maybe the colonel will pick you out a new wife. Pretty little fool to take my place, without trappings like children -or brains."

“I chose my wife.” it sounds like a beg, anger and hurt battling for the upper hand in Elvis’ heart, his hand squeezes her chin stronger, watching her lips pucker just that little bit. Such a soft mouth has no right being so stern and derisive as it’s been these past months, once upon a time he knew how to make it gasp and smile with a word, a kiss, a mere glance. “I chose you, and you promised. It ain’t me breakin’ that promise, ain’t me sayin’ I can’t do this no more -I-I-I’ve spent my goddamn career givin’ you all this, I gave up w-women for you, I gave up movies for you, when you come to me with what’s wrong I do my damndest to fix it. Now you won’t tell me nothin’ but orange curtains, and if I thought those’d fix us I’d be out the damn door right now, headed to find you the best in the country. I would, Laney, you know I would. I’ve given-“ he stops to gasp in a ragged breath, unsure of what part of himself he hasn’t poured into his Tink, entrusted to her once caring little hands, vulnerability poured like so much oil into her heart for safe keeping, his flaws and secrets tucked safely in the little nooks and crannies of her generous mind. “I’ve given-“

-So Damn Much.

“I’ve given you my life.” His Laney stares back at him entirely unmoved, her eyes hard and sharp with their ebony liner, the squish of her lips beneath his fingers barely dismantling her disdain for him, “And seven children from my body. I never said you weren’t a good man,Elvis, or that you're not generous, but we both know we don’t want to go toe to toe in measuring costs for twenty years in heaven. And I’m saying, -I can’t do it anymore.”

“Anymore?” it’s bothered him all these months, that word and he wonders what she thinks she��ll have after this, like they’re not so intertwined and connected that, like twins, they will forever feel what the other feels, want what the other wants, a string tied between them from countless, immeasurable amounts of time spent merged as one, “I ain’t ever not gonna be in you, woman, once mine -always mine. What’s there for ya after this, huh? Seven children -twenty years! -Goddamn I’m in you!” he shakes her at that and sees a spark of something he knows light up her eyes.

Elvis slides a hand from her shoulders, down over her sternum and feels her heaving intake of breath at the missed feeling of his hands on her, down past the tie at her waist, down to the planes of her firm belly, just a little swell and some soft skin that speaks of the souls they once made with their love. He presses his hand, large and warm and cupped to that precious sanctuary, kneading it, lifting it, weighing it just that little bit in his palm.

The little house is empty.

Elvis outright laughs at his mistake then, a booming, jarring laugh at having forgotten just who he’s got in his arms. He can feel Elaine’s violent shuddering along the entire length of him at the strange sound in their gloomy bedroom. Or maybe it’s from the dig of his fingertips at her womb, like he’ll claw inside it from the outside if he’s barred from plundering her the natural way.

Sweet Miss Phipps, Elvis thinks, with her hungry mind and starved body, so damn eager to be possessed, to be made good use of, to be pumped full and burdened with child again and again. He shoulda kept her swollen this past decade, prioritized her hunger over the tours and then, maybe then, she’d not have gotten notions like this.

“God gave me a remarkable woman.” he murmurs to himself in realization, his hands loosening their grip on her jaw to run the backs of his fingers against against the soft swells of her cheeks and Elaine’s heart speeds up in recognition of the shift in his demeanor, that thrumming resolution taking over his body behind her and helplessly her own responds to it.

As if she's another person, someone she would counsel to resist, to stay strong, Elaine feels her face turn towards the caress of his ringed fingers, towards the admiring touch that’s been her joy to wake to a million times, a touch that’s brought her purpose and comfort for twenty years. Her mouth falls open with a surrendering quiver and she makes no move to avert her mouth when his fingers sweep over her face and across her lips in a revenant mapping of his wife’s well known features. Her tongue darts out to taste even a sliver of his salt, she tastes metal instead as his ring glides by. It’s a heady feeling for anyone to realize Elvis Presley intends to fuck them, it’s entirely heightened by a familiar knowledge of his capabilities and a divinely witnessed right to his person.

It’s no villain staring down at Elaine, pressing himself to her -the distance has been necessary all these months to keep her anger and fear prominent, to remind her of the need for such dire action as divorce, the slightest, kindest of touches from him would dismantle that resolve, that garish image in her imagination. Now she’s close to the finish line, so close he’s fully panicking and she can feel the lightness of soon being free of her deceit. He’s no villain, he’s just a good man who has hurt her, who hurts himself more often and worse than how she’s hurting him. And soon they’ll be able to save each other. Just not today.

His hand slips to her throat and he kneads it, contemplating the give and delicacy of her pale flesh, and her responses, the languid subjugation of her body to his touches, just like he’d taught her in this very bed across from them.

She sees when his eyes flick up from her throat to their marriage bed and it’s like a million hummingbirds erupt in her belly in disbelief, in panic, in a frantic sort of hopeful missing.

“Elvis-“ she doesn’t know if she’s trying to warn him, trying to remind him of the wrongness of what he’s thinking, or if it’s a beg for him to ignore her sensibilities, to take her and make her that new little wifey with the carefree face and the mindless little head.

His face is dark and flushed like he gets when he’s aroused, his features seeming to get richer with the heightened intensity of his feelings and she can feel the sweat break out behind her through his silk shirt, slicking up her own back through the gauze of her dress. Elvis’ eyes drop back to her face, remaining there with a million intentions painted therein but not a single flicker of wavering shows.

Elaine had no reason to be as startled as she was when she felt his hands drop to her waist and spin her around, picking her up beneath the ribs with his astounding strength and tossing her like he would rag doll on his karate mats. She landed with a silly bounce amongst the bedding. It could have been romantic if he had any blue left to his irises as he looked down at her, sauntering to the foot of the bed himself and surveying her where she lay.

“Wife.” he greeted before taking hold of a footsie in each hand and spreading them apart for him to step between her legs.

"Elvis." A whisper as if saying his name any louder would unleash something they might both come to regret. As if it'd cause the dam she's locked her emotions in this entire ordeal will finally break. If she calls him husband it's over. He knows her inside and out, every crevice and dip in her body and soul has been mapped by him. The lie will come apart with a simple utterance of his title that he still has in this moment. The title he still has for three more weeks.

"Elaine." Her name comes out in a shaky breath that she can tell he's attempting to control, to rein in. Those blue eyes she's fallen in love with more and more as years had gone by are an inky void, pupils covering every inch they can and not just because of some pill he had to take or because she had watched him die right in front of her. Both their tongues dart out to wet lips and catch errant drops of sweat before she hears the *clink* of his belt.

That noise isn't new to her, the jangle and clanging of the metal a familiar sound. In the quiet of the room, in the quiet of the house? Of their home? It steals a breath from her lungs as sure as his body pressing down on her would have. The belt sounds like one of the heaviest ones he owns and a shiver unbidden rolls through her body as the cacophony of that gaudy belt gets louder and louder in her ears. Each breath takes effort, forcing air between the two of them that threatens to stifle any calming thought or action. A final puff of air- of his breath- warm and humid runs across her hair, forcing a loose strand of it to move.

Elaine doesn't. Elaine doesn't move an inch even as his belt finally comes off in a subdued flourish and a minor curse. Her eyes focus on the gaudy little harem lamp above them even as Elvis drops the belt ever so gently next to her body. It still clangs against the rings of his hand and its own golden links.

Sweaty and warm, his bejeweled hand moves to cup her cheek. "Mrs. Presley." he breathes her title into her lax mouth like it’s Holy Spirit anointed before slotting his mouth against hers with firm conviction in the rightness of his claim to her.

"Elvis."

It's not fair that all this force, all this passion, all this wanting that has -if she’s being honest- waned for her at times over the years is coming out of him only now, now when he thinks he’s lost her. Now that he’s more fool than he’s ever been. They’ve been alone too often in their marriage, if not separated by miles and oceans, separated by intent and interpretations of it.

“Still mine, for a few more months you’re still mine. Ain’t nothin’ you can do about it. You jus’ take it, jus’ take me, Laney”

And if she weren’t blinded herself by a heartache the proportions of which were only matched by losing a child, she might think every grip and clash of their bodies tells her he wants her every bit as bad as she wants him.

Still.

Mindless and hazy she waits for him to notice how every give and shudder of her own frame declares her want for him. He thinks he’s forcing the matter -but all he’s doing is giving her some false hope to curl around and cry over when the fissure finally splits apart.

I wanted you. But I thought I was alone in it, she thinks she hears them both saying it with every lewd squelch and pant.

It’s cruel confirmation of how entwined they’ve become, how much knowledge of the other they’ve collected over the years that he can make her writhe even under these circumstances, have her shattering beneath him effortlessly like older, kinder, gentler times. It’s made worse when she can feel him slow, stopping partway in that familiar way when he’s edging himself, intending to make her go round the loop once more, the familiarity of it makes her want sob, not from any hurt of the present, but at the notion this may be the last time she feels it -they both want this to last. And that unity is a mocking thing, all context considered.

He’s sweaty and she’s trembling, there’s so much warmth coming off his angry frame that she feels like curling inside the furnace and letting him make her forget anything beyond this physical connection that was never in doubt, the sheets are cold and dry and foreign against her back by comparison and she thinks of sleeping alone amongst them for the rest of her life. Elvis seems to sense this weakness of hers, one he wished he supported sooner, taken advantage of back when she looked so indestructible but was privately fraying at the seams, trying to hold the whole fairytale together. He shoulda done this sooner.

Old dog, new tricks, maybe, but Elvis has always been clever, opportunistic even, and he keeps his thrusts shallow and tantalizing as his wife gasps back to life beneath him and he keeps her close, his hands wound into her hair, hairy forearms beneath her shoulders, her ankle caught somewhere near his ear and his sweaty nose dripping onto her cheek.

“C’mon now Tink, you’ve thrown your fit,” he reasons to her in a coo that is underscored by the cajoling gait of his hips rocking into her, it has her clenching around those first few inches of him again, “ya made your point. Don’t -don’t do this to us baby. You c’mon back now. Ain’t anythin’ out there that’d satisfy you like us. Ain’t nobody else needs ya more dan hims does, satnin, don’t leave hims, baby.”

A good fuck, that’s all she needed, he’s sure of it. Or a couple of ‘em. He shoulda started dishing them out in Palm Springs but he’d been so angry when she filed and she’d been so cold. A couple of good fucks, that’ll solve it.

And to be heard. Which -she’s gotten that, all of America’s been hearing how he can’t keep his own wife.

Whatever bit of sentimentality he’s feeling right now, the sort that makes him wanna spill over how pretty she looks, vanishes in the angry tumult of his recalled humiliation. It fires him up instead and he snorts in his breath above her like an angry bull, perfectly capable of making her pay, making her see some sense, too. The longer she doesn’t reply the more this feeling surmounts the gentler ones and if Elvis were being honest, he knows denial had given way to rage and now bargaining and he’s full on panicking, trying to keep a woman who he shouldn’t have to chase.

She’s his wife.

“Elaine?” even to his own ears he sounds frantic and rough.

She is crying beneath him now, he thinks, that’s not all sweat making her face shine and her lips are taut like when she’s trying to hold it in and he wonders why the hell she’s the one crying. He feels like crying, he’s being left without an explanation or a pot to piss in. And all that while he’s still perfectly capable of proving he’s the best she’ll ever get. It’s like she’s agreeing with him when her hips start to move on their own accord, disagreeing with his teasing thrusts and instead she impales herself up on him, rough and sloppy to the rhythm of her fits of crying.

“I loved you.” Elaine sobs into his neck and he could wring hers for the confusion of it, for the way he just doesn’t get her after a lifetime of trying and how only this, this communion, this passion, this fucking is the only thing they make great sense at. Back when it had a purpose, back when it was to bring joy, to make a baby or five, and even now -to tie her to him somehow.

He folds her body viciously and plants his foot on the bed, thrusting so hard into her with all that wild abandon he knows she’d been jealous of him expending on his audience and not his family. “You greedy lil bitch, you love me,” he growls, “-what a revelation.”

‘Just an ounce of all that passion would go a long way, Elvis’ -he can hear the echo of her stupid little voice even now.

Passion? You want passion, Tink? He doesn’t think he’s ever been so passionately furious when he’s climaxed before ever in his life. For once it’s quite obvious he’s not ‘made love’, war maybe, but not love -and ain’t that another joke, he’d meant to make her love him again.

Elaine tears at his back with her fingernails and hears him snarling at her that he won’t stop, can’t stop, why can’t she stop this nonsense? She grips him harder, she seizes herself as he starts to slow, claws at his back with each vicious pump -seems they’ll both be shifting in their seats next time in the courtroom.

“Elaine?” he sounds so broken, like he does those times when they bring him back from heaven’s gates, it’s mumbled into her neck again like always but this time there’s no drugs to blame, not directly, not if she’s honest. She’s the one killing him. This little plan of hers to save him, just might finish him.

She prays God will be kind, prays he’ll keep her man alive long enough for her to finish this ugly business and restore his freedom, prays that maybe the hot slosh of spend coating her womb won’t be a waste. That she’ll have something of him left, just once more, please just one more. Something left of the man she married. Something to remind her of why they married and of what it was like to be happily married. Maybe just once more she wants to carry his entire world inside her.

“No, Elvis. I-I’m sorry, no.”

When he pulls away, it's not just sweat coating his lashes and his face. This plan of hers might just finish them both.

_______________________________

Every day in that courtroom is another layer of pride and image stripped away from Elvis and her and their perfect Southern Camelot. Every day is another headline for the papers with pictures of Elvis making a fool of himself in a way that can’t be smoothed over by anyone. Every day has cameras being shoved in Elaine’s face as she leaves with another hickey on her neck, bruising and blossoming in a way that looks grotesque when she sees it on the news later that night. The black outfits don’t help the contrast.

Every other day is being thrust against a bathroom stall’s wall with heels digging into Elvis’s back.

“E-Elaine-" He’ll stutter out, the feel of her clenching around his cock making it hard to focus or maybe it was the bite of her nails through his dress shirt. "You stop this. Been grovelin' 'n I deserve to have my wife listen."

"Ex. Wife." Elaine will huff out, words slurring into a quiet mewl as his cock brushes that one spot.

"Wife." An argument and a fact that he'll hammer home until the very last second he can. She never corrects him after the first time, too worried the knowledge would crush him to the point of everything finally giving out.

Jesse has taken to looking askance at her, worried and haunted little looks with fluttery hands at shoulder level that remind her of Elvis before he married her. If she had Elvis’ grit she’d ask her son if he had something to say and tell him to say it.

As it is she just pats his elegant hands, a man’s hands, she realizes, and thanks him profusely for his support, for being there at court with her day after day, missing practice and missing dates, letting a youthful spring and summer slip on by. They’ve been at this for close to a year.

“It’s nothin mama.” Jesse insists, almost offended at the idea he’d be anywhere but by her side.

________________________________

|| 5th, JUNE 1977 ||

When Ann makes her call, Elaine’s heart fills with all the old butterflies and girlish excitement of a past decade. They’ve kept in touch, of course they have, but between the touring, the marriages, and the unspoken acknowledgment of life falling apart from one and coming together for another, there’s less common ground to chat about compared to the days when Elaine used to share her husband and two little vixens named Thumper and Tink got to pick him apart in gleeful adoration like girls with their crush.

“Can I come by?” Thumper asks her, soft and kind but without the playful undercurrent that precipitated all her other visits.

“Well of course you can, you know you can.“ Elaine puzzles, finger worrying the wire in a nervous tick that has nothing to do with anticipation, dread pools in her belly instead.

There’s no children to greet Ann when she comes to the door, Marie at school and Jack away at his apprenticeship in California, Jesse has taken to spending his days in the studio when he’s not needed elsewhere, Daisy on the road and Rosalee in College, Ella married and attempting to assimilate with her in-laws. It feels like a ghost house compared to what Ann recalls. Maybe it’s just the passage of time but something terribly wrong and lonely strikes her at the lifelessness of the grand house, like it’s become haunted without a single death.

Unless it’s the death of the Presley’s as a whole. That would do it.

Elaine stands at the top of the stairs like old times, but there’s no gambit of children to wait for and so she speeds down the stairs at a breezy gait, smiling soft and subdued even as she refuses to be coy with her hug. She wraps Thumper up in a deep embrace and Ann squeezes her back, saying a million things at once by their clutching hold, murmuring little half sentences of condolences and “missed you’s”.

“What’d you come for?” Elaine asks her at the dining table after having supplied ice water and coasters for her guest. Ann turned down the saltines Elaine devoured with peculiar relish.

Always a straight shooter, Elaine. It makes Ann sigh and smooth out her skirt, clearing her voice to repay her candor with like. “I came to see what on earth was going on. To see if you were ok. And, I guess I came to see if it’s really happening. Nobody really thinks it’s happening. Or -I don’t know.”

“It’s happening.” Elaine replies with grim resignation.

“I don’t understand because Elvis says you’re the one divorcing and I always thought if one-“ Ann stops herself to scoff, “-I actually never thought either of you would ever divorce. You’re sincere?”

“It’s happening.” Elaine repeats, shielding her saltine chewing with a manicured hand. The action also flashes her still worn wedding band.

“So it’s not a threat?” Ann marvels, “When Roger insisted it was true, I thought it must be some drastic measure, something to get Elvis’ attention. His cooperation, you know, something to just-“

“-I’ve tried many drastic measures to gain that.” Elaine responds, “ all of them failed. I’d never ‘threaten’ something as horrible as this.“

“But…you’d do something…this horrible.” Ann murmurs, scared to play devil's advocate but utterly confused.

“You don’t know what I’ve been dealing with and, what you saw in the early days of residency, even the stuff on the film sets, it’s like aspirins compared to what he’s on now.”

“So it’s the drugs?” she whispers, heartsick, “You can’t handle being…around them? Around him?” she asks, then adds after careful consideration, “I have noticed you seem, seem still very tactile with him. I see the-“ she waves her finger at Elaine’s collarbones, “-I see the marks. Are you scared of him?”

It is unthinkable of Elvis. It really is, and Ann knows her face must show disbelief even when presented with her friend's mottled skin, and she hates herself for doubting a woman’s account, but if Elaine were to say she’s scared, Ann isn’t sure she’d be able to buy that. Not of Elvis. Even under the influence.

“Gosh no.” Elaine scoffs, a beat too late. “I just can’t do it anymore. All of it. Just the typical little things that build up in a marriage, I suppose.”

She tries to grin and Thumper thinks it’s the weakest acting she’s ever seen. Elaine more convincingly played a virgin in their home movies when deepthroating cucumbers for Elvis’ enjoyment.

“How’s Roger? Elaine asks, through with defending herself and Ann feels lost, adrift and unable to get near like she once did.

“Roger is fine.” Ann replies, “He sends his best. How is Ella?”

“Tell him I’m sorry they brought your name up, last week.” Elaine sighs, no apology offered to Thumper. They both know she’d be offended at an apology for being associated with them. “Ella is decidedly pregnant, that’s what she is.”

“Is she?” Thumper coos, followed by an alarmed quavering of hope and concern on her face. “Elaine, that’s-“ it is wonderful despite the circumstances but Elaine’s brittle posture suggests a to-do about it might sink her. “Congratulations, Grandma Tink.” Thumper settles for, daring to reach across the table top, seizing Elaine’s hand and squeezing its saltine dusted elegance.

“Thank you.” she whispers hoarsely, “She calls me everyday. Reminds me of you and me back when … her man he -he sounds sweet. Of course he’ll be gone awhile and so I’m all she has got to talk to about throwing up each morning and watching things swell.” None of this is how they expected or intended, Elvis and Elaine should both be hovering about and annoying their first grandchild before they’re even out in the world. Instead Ella’s perched down in Texas, no doubt terribly homesick, and Elaine’s talking about grandbabies like it’s another addition to the carport. “Tell Roger we’re sorry they brought your name up. Please tell him.”

“We don’t care.” Thumper insists and Elaine hopes that’s an accurate representation of Roger’s feelings. “He only asked-“ Ann stares out the front windows and down the drive towards the gates, summer colors brilliantly lush outside the house, she’s seen this view so many times it hurts, “-he asked that I make sure that…any…videos, and such, were disposed of.” she winces as she gets it out, once her manager, always her manager that man. “I wasn’t sure which of you to ask about them.”

Elaine stares at her intensely as if trying to read her soul. “I’ve most of them upstairs. Ruined by pregame juice mainly but the labels are sentimental so I’ve kept them.” Ann wonders if they’re ruined at all, and if they are she wonders if it’s by orange juice or by something far more lewd. Elvis never had great aim, “I’m sure Elvis has the ones we sent him under lock and key. Either way, you know neither of us would endanger you. You know that, Thumper.”

“Yes, yes I do.” Ann breathes, resting her chin in her hand, mournful at having insinuated otherwise.

“So you can tell Roger they’re not a worry.” Elaine prods with the shadow of an old smirk, “And you never know, in future it might not be so hard to track Naughty and I down at once.”

“Oh?” Ann squints at her in confusion.

“Mhmm.” Elaine just hums and shrugs her shoulders, the purple little mark on her clavicle shadowing with the movement. “Are you saying the night, Thumper?”

Ann leaves that evening more bewildered than when she arrived. “You were right, Roger,” she tells her husband as she settles beside him late that night, “she didn’t tell me a thing. Not really.”

___________________________

|| 9th, JUNE 1977 ||

“They’re gonna stop pressin’ ‘bout Thumper,” the murmur of his voice registering before the hand on her arm does as they both find themselves heading to the bathroom. It’s a flimsy sort of an excuse and one she’s beginning to think the papers and the news cameras see through.

“That’s good.” Her voice is a little too airy but today’s been a back and forth of yelling and excuses and all Elaine’s thinking about is how one of Daisy’s bandmates called her up from a payphone telling her that they almost couldn’t wake her for the show. The show she shouldn’t be doing but the show that Elaine let her do because she’s been playing being an adult for so long that who was she to argue against it?

“Told her we’d make sure it was- nothing came out. Roger was worried about it. For her image and for his, maybe.”

After all, it’s one thing to just be married to Ann-Margret, another thing entirely to be married to Thumper who’d rolled in the hay literally and figuratively with the Presleys at their lowest point. He’s never minded her continued friendship with them but that was before whispers of infidelity turned into whispers of sexual romps that were taped and stored or pictures that were taken and used as masturbatory material. He's never minded until Joe E, bless his soul, implied he might've seen copper locks in a video from Circle K that Elvis had shown a few of the members of the Mafia. Not that the court or anyone could find such a video.

The lock to the bathroom clicks behind Elvis and he turns around, raising an eyebrow. “Now hold on a minute, she- Thumper thought we’d- I’d never-”

“She didn’t. Roger was concerned. She knows us well enough, Elvis.” Still reassuring him as if they’re not going through what is turning out to be the messiest divorce the world has ever seen and likely will ever see. “I told her as much and she felt bad about asking.”

About the tapes and the photos, not so much about their divorce, Elaine reasons. As much as she wants to fault one of her oldest friends -it’s understandable. That was the purpose of the divorce. To come out of left field and appear to all concerned as if the faithful wife has finally grown unable to force herself to put up with Elvis Presley any more. The Colonel wouldn’t question that and had wanted it for years, if anyone were to ask him. Ann- their lil Thumper wouldn’t have been able to keep her plan a secret, her loyalty to Elvis and Elaine would have put her in a spot that Elaine didn’t dare want to shove her into. No, it was better for her to question the same as everyone else. Maybe if this went well they could all have a laugh about it in Hawaii. Or at the very least, Ann could forgive her.

“Don’t know why she didn’t jus’ ask me, ‘m the one who-'' Elvis's voice trails off when it hits him. Why would she ask the person who likely doesn’t hold most of them. Who’s fixin’ to lose everything in a divorce he desperately doesn’t want. “Least she knows now."

Elaine should agree with him, she should agree with him that at least Ann knows now, but she only knows part of the story. She only knows that the man she fell in love with on a movie set and his wife she maybe sometimes loves as more than a friend won’t damage her the way they’re damaging each other. How even Elaine had to joke that maybe it would be easy to run into them together in the future. Even during these hellish days in court they can’t escape each other’s orbits.

Pretending to not love and care for Elvis is an impossible task when what she’s doing is because her love and her care for a man who is sometimes brutish and stupid and selfish is so overwhelming it threatens to choke her.

At her silence, Elvis allows himself to crowd into her space, hands grasping at her hips ever so gently. "How's Rosalee?"

They're both too tired to fight in this bathroom, their energy having been spent outside of it for everything else. Asking about his favorite daughter, the one who's lived and breathed for her daddy for years feels safe.

"Not- she's not very good, Elvis. It's been- she hasn't really been the same." Since what happened. If things were different maybe she'd be taking the time to relax at home and maybe Daisy wouldn't have run off from guilt and - no. Elaine can't dwell on that even as her eyes start to water.

"It's hard on them." His tone isn't accusing, instead managing to just state a fact. This whole divorce has been hard on all of them. Even if Elaine's the one instigating everything he sees how unhealthy she looks. Feels how her body seems to be breaking down in ways that aren't as flashy as his body but the signs are there.

God knows he's not always been the most pious of men in action, that somehow all his good intentions and gospel songs haven’t managed to pull him back as he skidded down the road to hell, yet he’s got such a hankering to hide in the cleft of the rock once again. Acknowledge he’s a man, a failing man, a wayward husband, a prodigal son.

He finds himself reaching for Laney’s hand, palm up in a way she recognizes without a word. She clasps it without hesitation, in a time worn manner they’ve used before marriages, births, trips, shows, bedsides of sick and dying friends and here in this tiled little haven of the courthouse where they’re allowed to be as vulnerable and broken as their Heavenly Father knows them to be.

They bow their heads and Elvis finds himself begging his Almighty not for a return of fortunes but merely a cessation of tragedies. Elvis’ hand twitches, a pinky disentangling from Tink’s clasp and tickling her belly, like a presentment, like a benediction of nothing more than a heartbroken hunch on his part.

_____________________________

|| 29th, JULY 1977 ||

Elvis regrets answering the door to his penthouse the moment it swings open to reveal Johnny Cash with that sort of frantic and half crazed look in his eyes that Elvis thought he'd given up at the beginning of the decade. Wasn't that a hoot, the two of them swore up and down they had gotten clean for their women, the loves of their lives- the ones that God blessed them with to live out their present and future everlasting lives with- only to fall back into those old habits. What a cosmic joke.

"You're a fool, Presley." Short and to the point in a way that only Johnny can manage. Elvis exhales, wondering what exactly he's done to God to earn one of his oldest friends calling him a goddamn fool at the closest thing he's got to a home nowadays. His lil Schnucki comes to visit him, and Jesse's called once or twice but ever since that- ever since he realized how serious his Laney was about leaving him- Graceland ain't his home anymore.

"Ain't gonna say anythin'? No fight left in you?" The door to the penthouse is kicked in and if Elvis was any other person, or Johnny was any other person Elvis might've jumped. As it is, all he manages is a shrug as he pinches his nose. His head's achin' and his eyes hurt and all he wants to do is sleep. Take something to make every whisper floating in his head die down. An older brother telling him how he's ruined his life isn't remotely something he's got the patience for. Not after today's courtroom.

"Whatcha want me to say, John? Ya know everythin', so whatcha want me t'say, hm? Laney's leavin' me, takin' what she wants and leavin' me poorer than I met her."

Not monetarily, no, Elvis figures he could handle that better than the reality of his Laney, his Tink, the bjggest part of his soul other than his mama leaving him. Elaine's leaving him a man with barely any soul left in him to fight and go on. And he swears- lord he swears he felt something different about her recently. Something swelling that shouldn't.

"What I want'ya to say is that I'm gonna go back to my hotel and me and June are gonna tell each'otha that this whole thing's jus' you all been stubborn as a pair o'mules. Cause if it ain't, I gotta be real concerned June's gonna up and do the same thing on me." Johnny's always been someone who doesn't let Elvis get away with half the things everyone else does. Maybe it's because of how they started things together or how Johnny knows that half the reason he's got June is because of Elvis. Or maybe it was some misplaced need to be a brother to Elvis- to fill in a spot he figures his twin would've.

"June ain't gonna-" Elvis starts before Johnny uses the two inches he's got on Elvis to his advantage, staring the other man down as he cuts him off.

"Lane wouldn't've. Shouldn't've. Yet she is. This ain't- this ain't 'bout whatever damn excuse she's got. Can't be. There's somethin' you ain't tellin' everyone."

More and more Elvis has to laugh at his life and how everyone seems to think he's got some power over his Laney. That this whole divorce and the way he's embarrassing the both of them day after day is just another show. A snow job as the colonel would put it. This would be so much easier if that was the case. It isn't the case though, it isn't the case and Elvis feels his laughter escape him like the boom of a cannon.

"If there's anythin'- The whole damn country thinks I'm an idiot who can't keep his wife and here- I don't need you to be thinkin' 'm an idiot who don't know some grand plan his wife's cooked up. Ain't no plan. Ain't nothin' I ain't already groveled about and cried about in those hallowed halls. Laney jus' don't want me any more."

A silence settles between the two men at that revelation with Elvis breathing sounding so labored that even through the haze of his own drugs Johnny levels a look at his friend. It’s only after he’s sure that the other man won’t pass out and die on him that he actually speaks.

"You- You ain't me. She ain't Vivian. She- Elvis there ain't no way she's- that ain't it. You're both- you two can't keep your hands off each other even divorcin'. She- she still wants ya.”

“She wants my cock, John. Wants my money. Wants my house. My mama’s house. Know I said it was hers the moment we got hitched but- it wasn’t ever supposed to be hers. It’s- It’s ours.” Elvis isn’t one to break down, not in front of certain people and Johnny might be one of his friends that are near and dear to him but he doesn’t want to lose it in front of him. Doesn’t want to cry and blubber like he has been in the courtroom, pleading and begging for Elaine to just see sense. “We don’t- She don’t love me any more. T-That’s all there is to it. No grand con-spear-ah-see. Jus’ my wife wantin’ to be my ex-wife. Don’t know if I blame her. I ain’t-”

“You been a better husband than I was. Better husband than a lotta men. If- if 'Lane wanted to leave ya? She'd have done it back in the 60s. When you were carryin' on wit' what's her name- Swedish girl- fire hair. But she went 'n made friends wit' her. That woman's supposed to be yours till Kingdom Come 'n beyond. This doesn't make a single lick of sense and ya know it!"

One would think that nothing could echo in this penthouse and yet somehow Johnny's booming yell, filled with bass that Elvis is sure have made men greater than him bend and cower, echoes and reverberates in his ears. A stark reminder that Elaine and him seem to affect everyone around them for better or worse. Elvis's heart pumps a little harder as he tries to wrap his aching head around everything for what feels like the millionth time.

"I-I know it don't. This- you know these things don't take this long, John. I've-I been draggin' this out. Stickin' my damn heels in the mud. Anythin' to get her to come back, to see what- anythin' to not lose her. And she's jus'- ain't none of it workin'. Daisy up'n'ran off, Rosalee jus' wants me to be near her mama or her mama near me. Jesse's lookin'-"

"That what it is? Her doing it for the kids?” Johnny’s question has him tilting his head, not entirely unlike the millions of dogs Elvis’s children have had over the years. He ought to be offended Johnny cut him off so easily and without a care in the world and yet Johnny’s one of the few people he’d let do that. “She’s doin’ this for your kids.”

For once, Elvis has to look at Johnny and guess at what he means whether it’s because the man is too stunned to put it into words or because he doesn’t want to even entertain the idea, Elvis doesn’t know. He can hear his heartbeat going a bit too and a bit too hard in his ears as he answers.

“Ya mean- have i been failin’ them too? Have a been as bad of a father to ‘em as ‘ve been a bad husband?” The laugh that leaves Elvis sounds more like a sob than anything else. Johnny purses his lips even as he listens. "Ya mean how I found out I'm havin' a grandbaby through Laney? Or how Daisy's worse than you’n’I together on whatever she's takin'? Or how my boys acted like superheroes for their sister? How my lil Schnucki had- how I had to find that out from the Harrisons and my boys? ‘N I wasn’t there to blow those fools’ heads clean off their necks?”

Johnny realizes right then he’s made a mistake coming here. Or maybe just made a mistake pressing this point like it’s honestly any of his damn business. “You haven’t-”

Elvis cuts him off with a wave of his hand as he steps away, trying to feel less like a caged animal. “That’s right, I haven’t. I haven’t, John. Haven’t been there, haven’t given ‘em what they need. I had one job. Take care of all of ‘em and love ‘em. Failed so- I don’t blame her, John. I- I love her. Ya know I do. You know this sorta love but I can’t, I can’t make her love me again. S-she ain’t gonna love me again. Not the way she has.” His breath comes in short pants as his hand shakes and his leg jitters like he’s a man twenty years and nearly ten children younger. “I tried fixin’ this. The kids- the kids tried fixin’ this. But they can’t- can’t get through to her, these days! They’re all beggin’ and cryin’ and torn up and the Tink I know wouldn’t’ve lasted a week after causin’ such hurt to our babies. Well this new edition of her’s done made it close to a year.”

Johnny opens his mouth to speak only for Elvis to hold up a finger and force himself to take a deep breath, like Laney told him to those times after she thumped his heart back to life for him. Laney’d get what she wants if he died but he’s got a grandbaby he’s gotta see. Wants to try and see. “A year. Been nearly a year and it ain’t workin’. Nothin’- been tryin’ to remind her’ve what we had. What I give t’her. It-” Elvis starts to trail off, the fight that Johnny had put inside him slowly deflating till all he’s left with is the shell of a man who’s bone tired. Bone tired and losing everything no matter what fight he puts up. His shoulders slump.

Watching someone who’s as larger than life as Elvis Presley seemingly fold in on himself feels wrong in Johnny’s mind, but it gives him the answer he needs. It gives him the answer he’s looking for when it comes to just what’s going on with this whole divorce and what’s going on with Elaine and Elvis. His legs cross over to where Elvis is in only a few steps and without missing a beat, his arm wraps around Elvis’s shoulder. Elvis might not be his brother in blood but they’ve gone through enough that- that he wouldn’t leave him out in the cold without a hint of comfort.

“You gotta make peace wit’ it, then. Gotta- The Lord ain’t gonna want to see the two of ya fightin’ till ya keel over and die. Gotta give- If what she wants is to not be your wife any more, ya gotta give it to her. Just to make peace.” His voice isn’t much louder than a low rumble and yet Elvis can hear him clear as day.

“She won’t be my Laney any more. Won’t be my Tink.” A response as if he's a child being denied his favorite toy. Johnny doesn't stop himself from huffing out a laugh.

"But she'll still be Elaine, your children's mama. It ain't like you won't ever see her, EP." But that’s not the problem, that’s never been the problem and from the way Johnny’s looking at him, he knows that. “But ya gotta- it’s not doin’ either of ya a bit o’good to be draggin’ it on and on. Not after everythin’. Been livin’ ‘part for so long-” Johnny trails off, hand moving to rub at his eyes as he shakes his head. “Nothin’ you’ve done’s fixed it. Might not be meant to be fixed in those ways.”

“I-I- I don’t have anythin’ to fall on, John. I leave her it’s jus’ me and-” The medicine I got coursin’ through me, is what he should say. “I don’t know how to not be her husband.”

A silence settles over the two of them, punctuated only by Elvis’s heavy breaths and Johnny’s sharp and quick ones until Johnny settles himself against the wall, crossing his arms and raising his leg to press against it.

“Never said ya had to stop actin’ like you were.”

__________________________________

|| 6th, AUGUST 1977 ||

It’s a supreme irony that after a year of wishing for a cessation of that old stubbornness, that bitter pride of his, when such submission comes in the form of a mute and sullen husband opposite in the courtroom, Elaine feels her heart hammer in her chest, bewildered and terrified as he concedes one settlement after another in quick session.

Jesse gasps beside her at the change, even looks ready to beg her to reconsider her greediness as 90% gets handed over without a hint of the raging qualms her opposition has been voicing for five months.

Only Colonel Parker appears scared as shit, angrily grabbing at Elvis’ limp arm and trying to interrupt his directions with the lawyers. Each new verdict gets waved through by a lazy flick of a bejeweled hand and Elaine thinks the repetition of the gavel granting her all she wants could make for a decent backbeat in the studio.

After an agreement to give up 90% of his catalog, Elaine and Jesse both share a look, heartbroken and relieved that he’s really, truly, finally given up.

It’s obvious to all that it’s a bodily wearing out, Elvis looks awful and no amount of jewelry or eyeliner or Snow Job paraphernalia can hide the fact Elaine’s husband is a sick man. Even the papers who’ve found him easy pickings for ridicule and blame suddenly find some heart for his obvious suffering, even if the compassion is wedged between headlines about his expanding waistline and her latest money grab.

“What’s with you?” she demands and this time it’s her hand around his wrist, the unsteady clop of his boots following her heels after the click of the bathroom latch. When she drops his wrist his gold studded hand lands heavily by his thigh, he makes no move to crowd her, to grip her hair and kiss her like old times. “What was all that about?” she finds herself angry instead of relieved, mimics his lazy hand waves and scoffs in his face. She knew and planned on this day coming, but it doesn’t make it less unsettling as she takes in the victory of her spirit over his. He’s her man after all, her daddy and her provider, tough and proud and one of a kind and she’s beat him at the game of wills. She can feel her eyes pooling and angrily runs a hand under her nose as he stares at her with a blank, droopy expression.

“M’tryin’ to make peace.” Elvis shrugs, it was Johnny’s advice. Whatever it took, even if it meant giving in, he’s the man of their house and he’s here to make peace. Maybe if they end on a kind note he’ll be thought of, invited into the inner circle even even, by the time Ella pops out their grandbaby. “Never cared about the fuckin’ catalogue Tink, was only ever about buyin’ time to convince you to stay.”

The colonel’s panic at this latest settlement, one that finished the final prying open of his carefully constructed facade, one that’s exposed him to years of investigations, jail time maybe -though few outside of Elaine, Mr. Corleone and the FBI know that yet- is like sipping a mojito after a long day baking in the sun for Elaine.

Two decades of her saying he wasn’t right and Vernon telling her to go mind the carpet bill, change a diaper, redo a curl.

It should be refreshing, it should be a tonic to the way she feels shaky most mornings and ravenous in the evenings. Instead she finds herself trembling and laying an icy hand to Elvis’ burning forehead, registering the unnatural heat even in this chilled bathroom. It’s not just the stupid velvet coat, one blue eye is far more dilated than the other now she’s pulled his glasses down. He flinches from it, whether from the brightness of the bare bulbs or her touch, she isn’t sure.

“What’ve they got you on?” she sounds like a frog, throat all constricted and voice thin. She cares, she still cares so much and it could’ve been just yesterday she folded her handsome young groom into that bathtub in Germany and held him through the shakes. She wishes she could ask him ‘why do you always waste my love?’ But somehow, even after all her cruelty, that feels a little mean. “Baby, talk to me, what’s -“

Elvis grabs her hand, gently this time and he folds it with her other in both of his, a tan, sparkly little cage, she wonders how long it’ll take him before he pulls his wedding band off. Will he discard it before they make it out of the courthouse today? “Don’t you fret yourself, lil mama, those days are over.” he rumbles as he squeezes her hands and she wonders if he means days of fretting or drugs, they coincide often enough, “You jus’ take care of y’self, ok?” he sucks in a trembling breath and his glasses pinch between her fingers in his squeeze, “Without me there to nag ya bout it I-I -you take care of y’self.”

“Oh Elvis-'' she whimpers, moving closer, wanting to beg for some forgiveness, all clever plans and well timed revelations beginning to fray as she watches him rally his old magnanimity despite his grief.

_____________________________

|| 28th, SEPTEMBER 1977 || >>

He’s not alone in this concern, Elaine doesn’t know if she has Jesse or Daisy to blame for the way Marlon shows up in Memphis like that Yankee son of a bitch belongs that land bound. There’s never been a reason to see Brando except on one coast or another and it’s jarring for Elaine, seeing him take up space that’s so uniquely Elvis’ property, even if it’s under her name.

To see him in her home. Her true home.

She’s no good at hiding her nerves or the exhausted paranoia of wondering how Elvis will react when he hears of this visit. Marlon reads her like a book and leans against her kitchen counter, acting like Mary isn’t throwing them a million side eyes over the biscuit batter, and asks after her well being.

“Pretty terrible, thanks. And you?” she shrugs, wringing out a dish towel over and over. She doesn’t know when she became so fidgety, nowadays it seems she’s always betraying her nerves with restless hands and she never had that trouble before. Always a baby to hold if she needed the excuse, she guesses.

Her last baby is nine years old. And so she wrings out her dish towels and stares back at an old lover with the weary openness of a woman who doesn’t really care anymore. Elvis has been her one goal, and saving him is killing her as effectively as it is him. Those last days she wasn’t sure he was going to keep making it into the courtroom, shifting in his chair not from her nails furrows but from the repeated shots in his rump. The ones that have killed him a few times over.

Jesse made a visit to him in Vegas. Elaine doesn’t know what he said but her boy has barely spoken since. She asked her son how his father was, quite aware she doesn’t know the particulars from his fevered attentions in the handicapped bathroom of the Santa Monica courthouse. Her man would crawl out of his grave for the chance to make love one last time, it’s not a good gauge. Jesse said he keeps the curtains closed constantly. That he’s not letting anyone up. Charlie barely let Jesse up. His eyes are bad, so bad the curtains stay closed, otherwise Jesse couldn’t tell, couldn’t get a good look at him. He didn’t stay for the concert. Cissy says his voice has held up this time, at least.

“Pretty terrible.” She tells Marlon, because he’s always been more friend than lover, and that’s why he’s in Memphis when it’s a fool's errand anyway.

For all Marlon will speak his mind about this that and the other on things he cares about- yet God does he *care* about Elaine and so he bites his tongue at the first thought that pops into his head. *You've been pretty terrible for years and now you decided to care and do something about it*.

Instead: "You look terrible."

Which is a gross oversimplification of his feelings, but Elaine doesn't watch as his eyes slide over her pale and wan cheeks that look thinner than he's ever seen them. She doesn't watch how his eyes drift downward to breasts that are pressing against the dress she's wearing.

They remind him of when she was pregnant with Marie. They remind him of her breasts when she cried out beneath him against her tiki bar. If he closes his eyes he can picture them bouncing in front of his face, begging for him to bury his face in them. The boy- her oldest boy was right. Marlon doesn't even need to look at her stomach and yet some sick twisted masochistic tendency compels him to as if that'll change things.

It's small. Smaller than he figures any of her bumps have been and yet it's there. Mocking and growing at its own pace.

Proof that Elaine Phipps wants to remain Elaine Presley till one of them dies and maybe even beyond. Marlon can't help the way he exhales through his nose, unable to look away even as Elaine talks,

"Marlon, are you even listening?"

No. But he needs to.

"Mind wandered off, you know how I get, Elaine." He straightens up and tries to stay alert, “So, all this really fixed things for ya, eh?” he quips sardonically and she smiles, rolls her eyes, fully aware he’s not mocking her, he’s mocking the hopelessness of it ever working.

“Yeah. It’s all coming up roses.” she snarks.

“I uh-“ he stipples his fingers on the counter and weighs his next move, “-I heard that Colonel Parker’s recently landed in some seriously hot water. Something about the audits during the divorce and how certain things don’t match up. Got it from the papers, you know how long they stretch a few vague facts. I had to read two whole pages to get ‘fraud’ and ‘debts’ out of them. Anyways, I thought you’d find that nice -hot water, all that.”

“So hot it’ll boil his coat of lies right off with any luck.” Elaine seethes and her sudden passion takes Marlon by surprise. Stirs an old appreciation for just how much verve is always bubbling beneath her doll-like exterior. His fingers itch to let out the excess in a gush around his fingers. “Illegal alien.” She expounds, warming to her argument in the way of someone long overdue a listen, “Would you believe it? All those endless homebound tours -runing Elvis into the ground on the same circuit simply because that greedy fool couldn’t tag along. Couldn’t step outside the country. Always wondered why he never crashed our time in Germany, knew he would if could. Fake, heartless, toad.”

“Fuck him.” Marlon agrees vehemently and Elaine looks up with the same appreciative eyes of a decade past when she got no arguments from him, unlike all the menfolk surrounding her most days. Marlon abides by a simple rule: if it pisses Elaine Presley off, he needs no further research to say it ain’t shit.

“Yes, well, I’ll leave that to the Justice Department, I’ve done my bit.” Elaine sighs, her little victory crow short lived and even with his bias for the unattached Miss Phipps, Marlon can see how hollow her achievements are without Elvis to pat her pretty head for them. “It’s been weeks and I- I’m afraid he’s angry Marlon.” they’re not talking of the Colonel now, Marlon can tell by her love-sick face, “I knew he would be, with the divorce and probably with framing Parker but -he was so kind that day. So kind I thought he might’ve forgiven or just, I don’t know but now, now he won’t even answer my calls. Marie hasn’t gotten through either and -it’s not like him, Marlon, it’s not.”

“You got something pressing to tell him?” Brando asks and doesn’t even bother to hide the way his eyes flick back over her ripening form, pondering if her boy hadn’t been silly after all, going on about her not noticing. If he were a woman, a pretty woman like Elaine still is, Marlon would be weighing those growing tits each day with pride and mesmerization -but then again, Elaine’s had more on her mind than appreciating her own assets like a horny old star who never learned to aim for his own league.

“No I only wanted to-” she bites her lip as if unsure or else what she wants is unspeakably optimistic for a woman who just threw it all away. “I missed his voice.”

_______________________________

<<< || 16th, AUGUST 1977 ||

The knock at the door startled them both. Elvis pulled his back from it and faced it like he was gonna defend his wife from the mob he suspected was outside. Old habits die hard.

“Y’all?” Jesse yelled through the thick wood, “There’s half the city crowdin’ outside, there’s not gonna be a path to squeeze through soon.”

“Yeah alright son, thank you.” Elvis cleared his throat as he dropped her hands, straightening his posture fully. “You ready?” he asked dully, eager to get the worst moment of his life over.

“I gue- I- yes.” she stumbled over her meaning and smoothed out her black jacket.

"Daddy?" Jesse's voice was heard over the wood once more and both Elaine and Elvis took matching deep breaths, sweat droplets falling on Elvis’s eyes with a wince.

It's not pity that had Elaine putting the glasses back on Elvis’s eyes, her fingertips brushing against his temples in a simple gesture she's done a million times before. No, it's her last hurrah as his wife, her last action as his wife. They may have signed the papers within the past hour and legally she may be Elaine Phipps once more but until they walk out of this bathroom and this courthouse she was Elaine Presley, wife of Elvis Presley. A low hum reverbated against her chest before she pulled away, a soft smile across her lips.

"There there, Mopey, all better," she whispered in the sort of tone she only uses for the children when bandaging a hurt. "Let's- let's go face the music."

“Got me more nervous than any curtain I’ve been behind,” he joked even as it falls flat and his breath comes quicker and quicker. This was the beginning of their new life as separate entities. As an ex-husband and an ex-wife.

The door wasn’t that heavy when he shut it earlier and yet it felt as if someone had remade it out of concrete as Elvis tried to push it open once the lock clicked open. He could already see the flashing bulbs from the cameras and the press of the mass of people outside waiting for them. They were no stranger to crowds but this one was one none of them wanted to face. A look was exchanged between the three of them as their shoes clicked against the floor of the courthouse, a silent acknowledgement to try and get to their waiting cars as soon as possible.

"Jess! Mama!" Elvis and Elaine looked up through the mob of people as they pushed and pulled at each other trying to catch a glimpse of the former couple with their oldest son. They found themselves half blinded by flashes of cameras and the sun's own light, trying to find the source of the bellowed words. "We're over heyer!"

Jack then. Jack who was growing more and more into Elvis’s twin if not in bulk but in charm and whose shout sounds something like Sargent Presley’s in the army. Elaine looked at Elvis, biting her lip as she did.

"Soundin’ more like me everyday." Elvis commented as if he was commenting on the weather. It had never been hard to talk to Elaine. Yet in this moment, Elvis found himself at a loss for words. And from the way Elaine was looking at him, the feeling was mutual. Matching pink tongues darted out to wet dry lips and Elvis opened his mouth, his arm outstretched as if he was going to grab at Elaine's only for his oldest son to pop up between them, taking Elaine's arm without a second thought.

"I've got you mama. I gotcha, let's go."

The look he leveled at Elvis made every single moment in this courtroom for the past five months seem like child's play. To have his oldest son look at him like he did with any suitor that tried to come Elaine’s way, hurt. But that was his life now wasn't it? That's Elvis Presley’s life without Elaine Phipps. That's Elaine Phipps's life without Elvis Presley, protected only by her sons and her daughters from a man she once called husband. The man she once loved with every fiber of her being or so Elvis thought. Make peace with it, Johnny said. Make peace with her, Johnny said. Elvis didn't think that it would feel like this.

“I know you do, Jesse. Let me say goodbye to your father.” Elaine said as softly as she could in order to avoid the prying ears of every journalist between here and her car. “Jack and your siblings aren’t going anywhere. Not in this crowd. Even if Jack’d run them over to protect me.”

A smile unbidden crossed Elvis’s lips at the joke between their eldest and Elaine. She wasn’t wrong, but that was his boys and their love for their mother in a nutshell, wasn’t it? Capable of murder to protect her the same as him. She- she would be alright even if- even if what he suspected to be true was.

“Jack drove us here, all of us.” She explained as her eyes flitted across his form one last time to check for imperfections and for signs he might be needing anything. “I’ll make sure Ella calls you about-”

“It’s fine, Elaine. Made my bed, gotta lie in it now.” His eyes scanned across the crowd, even as he winced from the light of the sun and the flashes even through his sunglasses, finally settling on his car with Colonel Parker in the passenger seat, waiting for Elvis with a look of pure displeasure and mild panic on his face. “Gotta get him and I outta here ‘fore I give him a heart attack.”

Elaine’s face hardened at the words, and Elvis, in a fit of nostalgic responsibility for her happiness, moved to place a soft kiss against her cheek, squeezing at her hands as he did.

“S’been the joy of my life knowin’ you, Miss Phipps.”

🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀

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