summary: after returning home from Club Juke’s opening night, annie and smoke have a real conversation about their years spent apart and the pain and tears shed.
cw: angstyyy, mentions of childhood trauma, mentions of the death of a child
a/n: here y’all goooo. i’m so torn apart by their love like goddamn. inspired by Sade’s “Love Is Stronger Than Your Pride.”
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The air in their home felt heavy with uncertainty and draining emotion. The home Annie had made her own after seven years without the love of her life felt different now that he had found his way back. It was like the walls could sense his presence. Like the hardwood floors were buzzing under his footsteps—knowing he would so easily fall back into the routine he held seven years ago.
Smoke had been gone so long, but Annie hadn’t forgotten anything about him. About their life together.
It was like her mind paused when he left her, conserving every emotion, memory, and conversation they ever shared. She wanted to hate him, wanted to stop living when he tore their family apart, but now that he was back, she realized that no matter how hard she tried to feel that way, she couldn’t do that to him.
She wanted and needed that man like she needed air to breathe. When he was gone, nothing felt the same. Her spiritual life faltered as she put every ounce of her body and soul into keeping him safe until he was to return.
Him being back made her body reverberate again. It felt like she had confidence in her power again.
Elijah’s body moved through the house, stronger and wilder than it was seven years ago. His form was stormier than she remembered, but it didn’t overwhelm her. As she eyed the way he moved in a calculated and routine manner, ridding his upper body of his pressed, sweat-drenched button-up and throwing it over a chair, she vowed to quell those storms in him like she once had.
She promised—quietly—to take care of her man and cast out every one of those demons in him.
“I ain’t ever been good at forgiveness, Elijah,” Annie spoke up after staring at him boldly. Her eyes were cloudy with every emotion she had felt over the course of their relationship:
She didn’t know how to quiet the litany of swirling thoughts in her. He looked at her, confusion etched into his face—and something close to sorrow.
“Annie,” his bottom lip quivered, hands shook violently at his sides. He tried to reach for her even in his trembling, but she pulled back sharply. Hurt flashed across his face, but she was just trying to not give in as easily as she had earlier. She was so embarrassed that she let him back into her body so quickly—that she had facilitated the entire event.
Their bodies craved each other, and not once in their time apart had she thought to find solace in another hot, needy body.
“Don’t,” she warned, pushing past him and to the tin wash basin tucked into a corner of the front room. She drenched her hands in water as a distraction from the conversation they needed to have, trying to wash away her pain. “I wanted ‘tah hate you so bad, ‘Lijah. I wanted ‘tah forget you the way you forgot me. I wanted ‘tah curse you. Put roots on you so bad that you wouldn’t be able to rest well without me hauntin’ yo’ mind.”
She huffed, turning to face him sharply. She roughly raked her hands against her haint blue velvet dress to dry them. Annie’s eyes burned with fire as she made him trembled under her hardened gaze.
“You ain’t have to put no roots on me, woman,” Smoke blew out a heavy breath of air. “Thoughts of you haunted me day and night for seven years. Didn’t let up on me ‘til I stepped foot in that yard earlier.” He gripped violently at his own hands to calm the tremble. He had never seen her so mad. Not when he admitted to killing his father. No when he admitted to enlisting in the military. Not even when he left her during the heat of a Mississippi night.
Annie always gave him the benefit of the doubt, but here, seven years and a bunch of heartache later, things had dramatically changed.
She laughed exasperatedly, shaking her head in disbelief.
“So you mean to tell me you left me, left our home, left our baby girl just for you ‘tah come back talkin’ ‘bout some I was hauntin’ you?” Her voice shook with anger, tone carried very bit of pain she had held in just waiting for him to be standing in front of her again. “You left our baby to rot in that ground without her daddy here—”
“Don’t you dare say that,” Smoke challenged, walking into her heaving body. It was like smoke blew out of his ears and nose as he pressed his chest to hers in an attempt to intimidate her. “Don’t say that about her,” he tried again with a more steady voice, but he didn’t realize that there was nothing that could stop a grieving mother from saying her peace.
Her head reared back at his audacity to limit her speech. He knew better than to keep her from doing anything she had set her mind to.
“Don’t say what, Smoke,” the use of his nickname made his heart break just slightly, “that she dead? That you left? That I go out to that grave everyday to sit with my baby? That I remind her that her daddy love her even if you ain’t here?” Annie fumed; Her voice raised, threatening him to come at her crazy again.
“Please,” Smoke broke down, tears spilling from his eyes and a sob tearing his throat apart.
The quietness he had developed over the years had only worsened in his time in Chicago. He sat within himself everyday blaming himself, cursing his own name, finding dishonor in the man he had become.
He never wanted to be a man that left his family and couldn’t deal with his emotions so much so that he neglected the people he vowed to be committed to. He saw himself as worse than his father. He didn’t beat his wife, and he didn’t utter a foul word her way, but he left her. His body was ridden with cowardice, and he didn’t know how to contend with the truth in words she was spitting.
Annie bit her bottom lip, trying her damndest to not break out in a mirrored cry. She had cried so much in the past years that she hated the idea of letting him see her cry now. She bowed her head, shielding her eyes from his trembling form.
The man she knew was a crumbled lump of sadness. Emotions passed over him that she had never seen before. His pride had collapsed. The sure fire man she knew wasn’t standing before her any longer.
It made her own pride and ego chip away ever so slightly.
“I’m sorry, Annie, baby. I swear wanted to come back,” he cried, kneeling before her with thick tears streaming down his face and across his dimpled cheeks. He gripped at her hips, bunching the fabric of her dress as he pleaded and cried bloody murder for his words to pierce her ears. “I just ‘bout left Stack up there ‘bout twenty times ‘cause you all I ever wanted.”
Annie rolled her eyes. She didn’t point out the irony in him wanting her but still leaving her or the heartbreak in him not departing from his twin even with her constantly on his mind. She watched him fall apart at the seems and fell apart right beside him.
“Elijah,” she uttered, pulling his body up off the floor. His feet scrambled but he stood before her—back slouched, eyebrows draw together. He still didn’t look at her fully—he couldn’t—forcing her to grab ahold of his face and stare directly into his eyes. “As much as I want to hate you, you all I ever wanted, too.”
Their bodies shook against each other as the house ran quiet again. The rising sun was beginning to peek out from behind the horizon. It marked a new day full of possibilities and lost chances.
Smoke thought about the first time her ever saw Annie: big, brown eyes looking through his body like she saw everything he was and could be. Annie thought about the day their baby girl was born: Smoke smiling wider than she had ever seen, toting around their tiny, eight-pound baby in his big arms.
They didn’t think about the fights they had.
Or the nights they spent crying over their sick child.
Or the agony it was to bury her little body before she had even surpassed that newborn weight.
Or any of the lonely nights spent apart for seven whole years.
They just thought about the love they shared—the good times and how they could create so many new memories together.
“I love ya’,” Elijah chirped, voice clipped but full of hope. He rested his forehead against Annie’s, attempting to search her brain for what thoughts she was having, coming up unlucky. She was as hard to read as he was.
But as her arm began to stroke up and down his arm, Annie slowly let the rest of her pride slip away. Nothing was gonna ever keep her from her man.
“I love you, too, Elijah.”
That had him smiling a melancholy smile. He had waited so long to hear her utter those words again. He thought that he’d never get to have a place in her heart after the foolishness he had done.
“I vow to make it up ‘tah you every day of my life, baby,” he assured. He punctuated his words with a gentle squeeze to her waist, eyes refusing to leaves hers. “My love for you is stronger than everything. Stronger than the depth of German trenches. Than the thousands of miles of the Mississippi River. Than any level of pride in my body.” Annie finally let her tears flow. He placed a warm hand on her cheek to steady himself. “You my everythin’, Annie.”
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