Crossroads || Elias "Stack" Moore (Sinners)
Elias "Stack" Moore x Fem!Reader
Summary: You and Stack get into an argument that shows a side of him that you've never seen. He's no poet, not a man that's good with words, but he can speak through actions better than anyone.
Tags: Angst, Major Angst, Slight Toxicity from Reader & Stack, Arguing, Potential Cheating, Stack is Bad with Words, Softcore Non-Con, Violence Between Lovers
You stand with your arms folded and hip jutted to the side as you ponder which table cloth to pluck from the large shelf of miscellaneous supplies in front of you. Annie had directed you to this large supply closet that’s basically just a room where all of the supplies for the juke joint is kept.
Dark liquor and shimmering jugs of moonshine make up the largest demographic in the room. The space smells of dust and old, dry wood. There’s a single light bulb swinging from the ceiling that casts an amber light throughout the space that’s too weak to reach the outer corners of the wood box of a room.
Your eyes scanned up and down the shelves, playing back the color scheme of the scenery outside the supply closet door so as to choose the best match. Linens and table cloths of various patterns and colors sit one atop the other carrying a thin layer of dust. As you stand pondering, you hear the creak of the door swing open behind you, three heavy, masculine footsteps follow, stopping behind you.
You know it’s him, you feel his energy buzz atop the surface of your skin the moment he enters the room. His presence bares an intensity that tends to have that effect. The man carries such a signature aura that it's impossible to miss or fail to notice. So distinct, that what emanates from him is starkly different and distinguishable from his twin. The air seems to shift around him when he enters a room and then he proceeds to take up all of said air.
“I said I don’t wanna talk to ya, Elias.” You huff, but not nearly as venomously as would accurately reflect your lack of desire to be in the same room as him. You wish your words had come out harsher. But you’re mature enough to know that showing the true extent of your anger would do you no good.
Besides, you know that he’s like a bundle of dry hay that any spark from you will ignite into flames. Your back stays facing him, which sends a message in and of itself. He didn’t see the way your eyes rolled to the back of your head when you recognized his footsteps.
Elias studies you from behind, taking what he can get since you won’t even grant him a face-to-face conversation. Your pale yellow dress hugs the feminine roundness of your shoulders nicely. In an instant and with the quick flick of his sharp eyes he studies what’s radiating off of you as well. A tension that speaks in frequencies that only he can hear and that shows itself in the stiffness of your posture.
The wall of a man slowly steps closer into you, not in a way that denotes carefulness, but in a way that radiates entitlement. He stops just before the fabric of his clothes press into your back. His presence sits on the nape of your neck. Still you don’t turn around, staying focused on your task, or at least trying your best to.
His cologne all but burns your nose, it’s smells like sandalwood and musk and a strong alcohol aroma that binds the two scents together. The fragrance blends with the warm, smoky scent of whiskey on his breath in a way that’s very him.
Stack plucks the toothpick from between his full lips, flicking it to the floor before shoving his hands in his pockets. A simple gesture done with such nonchalance that would’ve pissed you off if you’d been facing him to see it. Him following you into this secluded space where it's just the two of you feels predatory and unfair.
Like he only followed you in here because it would create a private moment between the two of you that he knows you’re in no mood to create knowingly or willingly.
He’s not touching you, though might as well be. But he likes how your frame fits into his, how he can swallow you up or absorb you into himself like this. This is a tactic he employs often whether you’re in the mood to be this close to him or not. He takes in your spirit the way a plant will grow towards a window just to have the sunlight touch it’s leaves. Just proximity to you feeds him down to his bones. Though he's not the type of man that's able to put that into words.
The top of your head stops at the middle of his broad chest, freshly hot-combed hair swirls towards your face like wisps of unraveled clouds. The front of him, chest-to-crotch, is nearly pressed flush against your back. The roundness of your butt is the nearest to pressing against him but not quite.
“Now how I’m gon invite you to my get-together and you can’t even spare a brotha a hello, a kiss-my-ass, nothing?” You hear the smile in his voice, the boldness of his entitlement sets a trap that you fall into.
At last you stop pretending to still be picking out a table cloth and spin around to face him. “Kiss my ass. Happy?” Your words are sharp and sarcastic and patronizing enough to satisfy you. Before he can fix his lips to shoot something back, you’ve spun back around towards the shelf to grab the cloth you decided will do. You just want to get out of here as soon as possible.
Elias doesn’t move, because he doesn’t have to. He’s a brick wall that would have to move out of the way to let you pass, anyway. When you turn back around to face him, fully intending on leaving hurriedly and in a huff, he’s still standing in the same spot.
Now the buttons holding his black, sleeveless vest together are nearly pressing into the butter yellow silk that’s stretches across your bust. His shoulders are massive beneath his white dress shirt, his chest is broad and tone in a way that makes his clothes fit nicer than the average man. Your nose is level with his crimson tie when you begrudgingly make eye contact with him.
He examines you like something he’ll always possess, like something inevitable. Like you’re the once making a needless fuss about something that will always be; that, being this push and pull routine the two of you have done for years. Unspoken words and spoken ones and the times you’ve made each other feel so good that you couldn't formulate any at all.
“Look, baby, didn’t I tell you that wasn’t what it looked like?” There’s a desperation in his tone that’s accompanied by his usual smug playfulness. You only catch the latter.
A delivery carrying such little seriousness makes a poor companion to the sincerity hidden beneath the many layers of his voice. His default chuckle and the twinkle of gold in his teeth when he smiles distracts from any candidness hidden on his tongue somewhere.
If looks could kill, he would be dead, cold and buried by now. Your gaze is hot with an anger that’s barely bridled. You swear you feel your eye twitch under the strain of keeping your mask of togetherness up. You want to explode and tell him to fuck off. But you also want to dish him out the coldness apathy possible, because that’s what truly gets a man like Elias bothered.
But how dare he condescend to you like this? Insulting your intelligence, that's your trigger. Like you’re just supposed to take his word for it that the girl you saw kiss him ‘wasn’t what it looked like’.
The second the last syllable leaves his tongue, your own is already on him like white on rice. “And I told you that I didn’t believe yo slick ass!” Your words cut through the small space room like the crack of a whip. His expression falls subtly from an ego-driven grin to one more serious, concerned even.
You maneuver to push by him, fed up with this horribly timed interaction and wanting to get back something that will distract you from his nonsense. “Look, I don’t want to play these games, Elias, I’m here to help my sister set up and have a good time.” You huff, your voice is strong and decided as you step to the side to push past the road block that is his large frame.
Your fingers spread atop his crisp cotton shirt when you place your hand on his large bicep; pushing him out of the way enough for you to slide by. You weren’t halfway past him when he grabbed your wrist, not harshly, but certainly firm enough to stop you in your tracks. Your breath catches when he pulls you against him.
“C’mon baby, don’t be like that.” His southern drawl is thick and dripping sweet, he says the words like he’s scolding a fussy kitten. His large hand is warm, strong as a hundred-year-old oak and could wrap around your wrist twice if that were possible.
He holds your wrist firmly against his chest, hindering your forward motion entirely. Your forearm is pinned between his grasp and the fabric of the clothes across his broad chest. Each of his fingertips feel so warm and pronounced against your skin.
Your eyes flick back and forth between his wild and livid, but you find no similar expression reflecting back at you from his eyes. Only an uncharacteristic softness shown through a gentler gaze that doesn't match the other parts of his hardened-by-life countenance.
Somehow that makes you more angry than a harsh expression from him would make you. Because it feels like a very unfair weapon formed against you. It's easy to be mad at someone who's mad at you. But the softness that you see in him every now and again keeps you hooked and you hate that more often than not.
You snatch your wrist away so quickly that he couldn't tighten his grip fast enough to keep you caged in the moment. A hot breath seethes from your flared nostrils, your gaze looks past him towards the door as you try to swallow the feeling of offense. Your eyes stay ahead, refusing to feed his antics by so much as a glance in his direction.
You straighten your posture, committed to not having this become something uglier and night-ruining. “Thank ya kindly for the invitation Mr. Moore if that’s what you’re looking for, now if you don’t mind–” The sting of your sarcastic tone is cut off.
That's when he suddenly snakes a single muscular arm around your waist and pulls you against him. The impact of your body slamming into his ejects a breath from your lungs. Your entire body and bust make contact with the expanse of his chest as his lips crash into yours. He claims the air in your lungs as his own through bruising open mouthed kisses. His mouth is hot and his tongue invasive.
His bicep curls around your waist and his hand is planted against your back, holding the warmth of your body against him. The plushness of your curves pressing into him numbs any worries in his mind. He takes your mouth in hot, whiskey-sweetened kisses that don't ask for consent or care about being crass. Lapping up every corner of the heat of your mouth like a poor man digging for gold.
It's carnal and rough and deep and just as soon as it happened, it was over. Your muscle memory is overpowered by what's left of your sense. You push off of his chest to untie his tongue from yours. Your lips break away from the snare of his with a crudely wet click. The sudden lack of touch feels premature to him, and like putting your foot down to you. In reaction he simply looks at you, with a flatter expression than your own but heaving for air as well, nonetheless.
In seconds he managed to make your lips feel swollen and your head felt lighter than it did twenty seconds ago. You glare at him, your eyes have darkened with so many different things. Your bust heaves as you make an effort to catch your breath. You feel a wrathful heat rise up your neck to spread across your face, leaving cool beads of sweat on your nose. Emotion boils over into the physical feeling of fire all over your body.
Before you knew what had happened, you felt your palm slap him across the face; his head turned with the force of it. The crackling sound of the strike bounced off the ceiling and the impact stung your palm a pinker shade than usual.
You feel sick at yourself. For a split second you feel like a monster for displaying such violence, then the next second justification swoops in to wash those feelings away.
Tear prick the corners of your eyes but you refuse to let them fall. “How dare you kiss me with your filthy mouth that’s been god-knows-where on god-knows-who?!” There's a strain in your voice that's evidence of whatever knot of emotions you'd been holding in your belly bursting undone.
Elias looks at you with his lips slightly parted in disbelief and his right cheek still stinging with pain. The taste of you suddenly feels like stolen goods on his tongue. Realization hits him, and it scares him like nothing has since he was a boy. The realization that he still has the energy to play a game that you grew tired of ages ago.
A somber curtain shades his eyes with something unmasked and miserable that you've never seen before. He says nothing, he can't think of anything to say.
The well of wit and charm that's always so plentiful on his tongue has gone entirely dry. His silence leaves an uncanny feeling in the air and your stomach because he always has something to say. He just looks at you with a surprising lack of anger on his face.
You won't let the tears fall, you won't let this ruin your plans to have a great time tonight. You simply will not grant anyone that sort of power over you. Your throat is tight with emotions that you can barely hold back. Your attempt to regain the breaths he'd stolen from you feels like breathing through a straw.
You blink your eyes in an attempt to mop up the tears welling in your ducts. “Whatever this unwelcome interaction is, is over!--” Before your feet can move towards the door, again he cuts you off by stopping your lips with his own. Is he an idiot or just the most selfish man on earth? You don't know.
In one step he closes the space between you again, softer this time, gentler and less selfish. He catches your lips less like a beast and more like a gentleman that doesn't quite know how to be one. He kisses you again like it's an impulse he can't help and it's softer but somehow still so smothering. His arms stay by his side rather than repeating his previous seizing of your body like a man claiming war spoils.
The plush of his full lips brush yours again, but he keeps his tongue to himself this time. The feeling of his still throbbing face and his lips pulsing against yours is a sadistic high he's never ridden before.
He holds you hostage for only a few seconds as you writhe against him in shock and anger at his audacity. You hiss into his mouth before tearing your lips from his grasp again before he can finish tasting you.
This time the strike comes immediately after the offense like a reflex. The moment the kiss breaks, you cock back your hand and deliver another stinging slap across his face. Again, his head turns with the force of the hit. Your hand burns from the strength of the contact and the sound of it is a merciless one.
Elias takes the full brunt of the hit in silence. Your sweetness on his lips in combination with the hate you poured into that slap is a feeling that's already burned into his memory. He pauses, wincing the pain away under his breath before looking back at you from the direction the slap had turned him in.
It happened so fast that it scared you. It scared you how quickly and easily you'd struck him.
You look at him bewildered and panting, your hand stings from the harshness and speed of the impact. So many different things have you feeling sick at him and yourself. Your chest heaves, you're breathless with anger and shock and a growing heartbreak that feels like an infection you're trying not to contract.
Tear sting in your ducts, and a few finally break the barrier holding them back and pour hot onto your cheeks. Your throat is tight and painful as you inhale a shuttering breath. You feel so belittled and even worse, violated, and that feeling leaves a nasty, nasty scar.
His face is pulsing with stinging pain, but Elias doesn't move or lash out. He doesn't say anything, his massive frame doesn't even wordlessly display any hostility towards you. His back is straight, and his expression is unreadable apart from the softness in his brown eyes.
That softness confuses you and that confusion morphs in anger because it feels like all of this is nothing to him. For you to be so angry and him to be so calm.
The fury you'd poured into him not once, but twice and all he can give you is that stupid, pitying look. As distressing as all of this is for you and it didn't even spark a fire in his eyes. Just a remorseful softness that won't let your gaze drift away from it.
The man stands like a brick wall in front of you, unwavering and confident in what, you're not sure. But his shoulders are relaxed, his jaw isn't even tight and he just looks at you, watches you.
In some ways it feels like he's seeing you for the first time; seeing you as a separate entity and not a character in a story where he's the main. It crashes down on him that you're something real and losable, and that clearly he has realized that too late.
The first hit shocked him, the second him confirmed what he already knew after the first strike, but foolishly thought he could fix. He's faced with the reality that he messed up. That he'd damaged the only flower in his life. Self-loathing made plenty of space for letting you loath him to.
The silence in the small room is uncomfortable and cut through only by your ragged breaths. Hot tears pour down your cheeks in streams, but still you hold back the urge to let it all out. You growl through gritted teeth at how he dares to give you this meek look after behaving like such a selfish beast. He doesn't get to corner you, shove his tongue down your throat and then look at you like a shamed puppy.
The air between you is hot and thick with humidity; your scents are combined in the air. Elias wants to say something, but he feels tied up by his own superficial nature. For the first time, it feels like a binding shackle keeping him from what he wants. He doesn't have the words, his brother is the deep one, he's always preferred to stay on the surface of life. Even if he did he wouldn't know what to say to fix this anyway.
The memory of what he'd just done flashes in your mind as if it were still happening; stoking the fire in your chest all over again. The lingering feeling of violation kicks up a level of rage that you thought you'd swallowed down and breathed out. That you thought you had exerted by hitting him.
A fed-up breath huffs from your lips that still buzz with the remnant of his touch and the taste of dark liquor. You sharply raise your hand to strike him a third time, for reasons that are too complex and frustrating to put into words. But your lack of surety this time is evident, like you’re hoping this will solve a problem that you know it won’t.
Your wherewithal to slap his face again is smaller than a mustard seed but you want to because how fucking dare him?
Elias doesn't even flinch when you cock your hand back with snatching force. He leaves his entire body at your mercy to do with as you will. His submission isn’t begrudgingly. It’s a heartbreaking admission of guilt that’s so loud but entirely wordless. He’s kneeling before you in every way but physically and for a man with such a boisterous personality, the sight stuns you.
You pause, hand still in the air and tears staining your cheeks. Your eyes scan over his demeanor, he’s so…docile, despite everything. Your teeth catch your bottom lip, displaying the hesitancy in your heart. For the first time since his mouth crashed into your, you had a moment of clarity. You’d struck him twice, and such a large man didn’t even flinch when you raised your hand to do it a third time.
Stack isn't a man that does a whole lot of deep conversing, but he is a man that knows that actions speak louder than words.
He stood straight and unshielded to take whatever you were going to throw at him. Your eyes soften into a puddle of remorse and damp lashes. The tension that had your face tied up in a wrathful expression came undone. Anger unravelled into regret and shame and tears that burn with something different now. The hit never makes contact, your breaths are ragged and dry in your throat.
Elias’ body language didn't grow volatile and the look in his eyes never hardened. Your open palm that remains in the air slowly closes and your hand lowers back down to your side. You inhale a softer, calmer, still shuttering breath.
The heat on your face transforms into the warmth that shame brings to one's cheeks. The blindness of your rage wears off a bit and the look on your face that was enraged perplexity is now a humbler awe. An admiration that you'd previously not know him to be capable of inspiring.
He feels like a brute in the presence of a lady, some would call that self-awareness. Elias watches intently as your posture softens as well as your expression. The sudden change in countenance is the drastic result of revelation. Your eyes shift from piercing sharpness to the roundness of a does eyes. Your lips press into a thin line like you're wincing at yourself.
He sees your change in demeanor as his chance to finally speak. The arrogance that he entered the room with has long since departed.
“Baby–” Stack begins, his voice is just above a whisper and careful, but he stops when you begin to raise your hand towards his face. The movement is with a tenderness that's been absent since this interaction began. His brows knit together a bit with confusion. Your silence doesn't grant him any explanation as to what you're doing, but he doesn't dodge.
You lift your hand, much slower and gentler like you're asking permission to touch him for the first time; because it feels like you've lost the privilege to. Your expression is tentative and unsure like you're intruding and waiting for him to bite your fingers off. But he doesn't, he stands there open to you. His eyes carry a docility that stands out among the rest of his other very masculine features.
You want to test if this is real, if what you think he's saying through his body is real. All your years of knowing him and you've never seen this side of him. Elias is a wildfire of a man. A slick-talker that goes wherever the wind blows him and uses less-than-ethical tactics to steer things in his favor wherever he lands.
He's boisterous and arrogant and won't give anyone power over him. So who is this man standing in front of you? It's like someone that you've never met with softer posture and warmer eyes is occupying his body. Is he even real, is this another mask or what's always been behind it?
You reach out to him like he's a mirage that you swear will fade away.
He never stops watching your movements. Your hand lands not on his cheek or chin, but the entrance of his lips. Your wonder overpowers your hesitation. You push past them into his mouth without need for force, he parts his lips for you without resistance. Four of your fingers and your palm to the first crease push into his warm mouth and he fully lets you.
He doesn't move or shift atop the wooden floor, the moment your nails touched his lips he let you put your hand into his mouth. He exhales a slow, deep sigh through his nose; holding your gaze with your fingers resting on the hot slick of his tongue and his lips closed around your knuckles. His tender-eyed gaze as he lets your hand rest in his mouth is so out-of-character it's almost startling.
This feels more intimate and bare than anytime he's ever been inside of you. Half of your hand sits on his tongue and is enclosed by the wet heat of his mouth. The ridges lining the roof of his mouth press against the soft skin on the back of your hand, and he just stands there. His shoulders are loose, so are the muscles in his face. It's like he's dissolved into someone you've never met.
The energy coming off of him is like a lion that’s become so tame that it’s true nature has vanished before your eyes. This man has shot people for looking at him the wrong way, but he opens this tenderness and compliance only to you.
It’s because you know him and his cocky, unyielding personality that this stark contrast baffles you to silence.
Elias hopes that letting you have your way with him is enough, that it says enough. He’s never let anyone close enough for them to have the option to be done with him because he’d never really let them in to begin with. Until moments ago he didn’t realize what being rejected feels like. It’s a foreign and awful feeling that penetrates the barrier of pride around his heart.
He knows what you’ve seen from him over the years, and it's been harsh and insensitive at times. But that means that you know that this meeker side of him is shown to nobody. Hell, you didn't even know that it existed.
Elias is avoidant at his core, he doesn’t wallow. He bounces back up before things can sink in and creates an outer shell that’s charming enough that people don’t notice that it only goes so deep. He’s no poet, but he knows how to speak through actions.
The way your previous anger has dissolved before his eyes gives him hope. That maybe the resilience it took to fight his nature for you has paid off.
It takes a horrible person to strike someone that won't fight back, and you truly feel horrible. The heat of anger washed back out like the tide leaving you feeling sick in its place. The tears in your eyes are hot with shame and pose as a wordless apology that you know isn't sufficient.
Elias Moore, a broad-shouldered wall of a man that's never without a gun and a crafty smile, is showing that he's meek as a mouse for you. And the feeling--the sight--is so foreign and so new that you don't know what to do with it. How do you wield this newfound power and privilege?
The soft texture of your fingertips is a welcome presence on Stack's tongue. He likes the way every part of you tastes, having you in his mouth feels right. Other women have been there, but you're the only one that owns the place. He likes the look of surprise in your eyes when he tastes you with such a lack of hesitation.
He hopes that you get the declaration he's trying to make and he can be spared from the sappy love talk that he's never been good at.
Your eyes perform a slow dance across his expression once more before you slowly pull back your hand from the warmth of his mouth. The second he feels you reclaiming your hand, he obeys your movement and lets you leave him without touch.
"Baby--" He tries to begin for a second time.
"I'm sorry, Elias. I shouldn't have--I'm sorry." Your eyes don't meet his again, the air is too hot and thick and hard to breath in. The heat of embarrassment ties itself around your neck. You sniffle, wiping a wet stream from your cheek as you push past him to finally leave him alone in the small, stuffy room.
Elias words are still somewhere lost in the air without direction, you'd left before he'd gotten to say them. He knew that you would, and he knows that it was the right thing to do. For such a haughty man, he sure doesn't have the confidence that what he wants to say to you will fix things.
Maybe the explosion between the two of you left too many millions of pieces scattered everywhere to be mended. But he wants to try, not to keep someone that he views as a possession; but because he wants to eternally be possessed by you. And it took two blows to the face for him to realized it. That part, would surprise no one.
