Hey, babe! 🥰
Saw you needed some scenarios 👀 and idk if this is cute enough but I've had this idea for a while and just haven't gotten around to writing it myself—what if reader found some old photos of E when he was younger, and he catches her looking through them and he gets self-conscious, because he knows he doesn't look the same and he knows reader could have anyone else if she wanted, but she reassures him and they end up reminiscing as they go through the photos together. 🥹
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬
Word count: 3,2K
Warnings: angst-ish, Elvis feeling insecure, strong language.
A/N: thank you sm for the request, steph! i hope you like it, honey! 💗 the celine song was on repeat while i was writing this- i thought it fit pretty well. 😌
masterlist
“Mrs. Presley, I don’t think this is a good idea!”
Miss Jenkins called up to you from where she stood by the pull down attic ladder.
You managed to suppress a scream when you walked right through an old spider’s web and cleared your throat a little, shivering as you slapped it off of you.
“Don’t worry, Mary- I’ll be fine! It’s just.. very dark in here,” you made sure to lower the volume of your voice at the end of your sentence, but Mary heard you nonetheless.
Mary Jenkins loved you and she enjoyed having you around her whenever Elvis wasn’t home or sleeping, but you always came up with the darnest ideas.
Like on this relaxing Sunday afternoon where Elvis had some time for himself and was snoring up a storm in his bedroom, you decided you wanted to inspect the attic. When you told Mary and Minnie Mae that you had been hearing noises coming from up there and wanted to find out what it was, they told you not to do it.
Well, Mary told you not to, Minnie Mae cheered you on.
Graceland was built in 1939- there being wandering spirits wasn’t such a strange idea.
You liked the idea of it, but Mary did not like to mess with these things at all. Still, she wasn’t going to leave you all by yourself and stayed in her spot at the bottom of the stairs.
Partly to catch you in her arms if something would happen and you’d come down crying and screaming – which she knew was definitely something you’d do – and partly to keep an eye out if Elvis was coming out of his room or not.
“There’s a light in the middle of the room, pull the string if you can find it,” you did as she told you to, shuffling forward with your arms stretched out. “Oh, I really do think you should just come down, little girl. Mr. Presley doesn’t want you to go up there, you know that!”
Elvis did not want you to inspect the attic because he too has heard the noises and just like you, he was convinced it weren’t rats or mice. He told you to leave the spirits of Graceland alone, but he should’ve known that you weren’t going to listen.
“He’s asleep, don’t worry, Ma-AH!”
“What? Mrs. Presley, what happened?!”
You placed your hand over your heart, a headless mannequin standing in front of you, adorning one of Gladys’ dresses on the silhouette. Your adrenaline had grown tenfold, but still you didn’t come downstairs.
“N-Nothing- just another spider!”
“Hmmhmm,” she mumbled, obviously not believing a word you said. You were pretty sure she was rolling her eyes right now.
The lighting in the attic wasn’t much, but there was not much up there to see that you hadn’t seen yet. An old sofa that once stood downstairs, Elvis’ army uniform, some mannequins with Gladys’ dresses and a big, mahogany dresser- you smiled as you opened a few drawers and noticed Elvis’ baby clothing in them. You admired them for a little bit, until you spotted some boxes in the corner, propped up against the side of the dark Chesterfield sofa.
“Mrs. Presley, Minnie Mae needs me- I’ll be back in a minute. Please don’t stay up there for too long!” Mary yelled in a whisper as you sat down on the couch, waving some specks of dust out of your view while pulling the boxes closer to you.
You heard Mary shuffling away from the stairs, calling out to Dodger and you opened the first box. Inside of it were photo albums, a lot of them.
“Okay, Mary!” you yelled back, not caring if you woke up Elvis or not. You knew he’d forgive you for doing something he told you not to.
He was your husband, not your father.
Ofcourse, you couldn’t resist yourself.
You pulled out the first heavy album, placing it on your lap to open it. Despite the low lighting, you could make out that it was mostly pictures of Elvis’ parents, grandparents and other family members that you had never met. The pictures were old- the edges were frayed and in some were deep creases, indicating that they had once been folded and unfolded. Your smile grew as your eye fell on a picture of Gladys and Vernon, little Elvis sitting on their lap as he was shooting the camera a toothless smile.
Your heart fluttered in your chest, caressing your fingertips over it before you shut the photo album and moved on to the next one.
And the next one, and the next one…
Until you came across one filled with pictures from the 50s, from Elvis’ last years in high school and gradually going to when he was starting out his career.
You met Elvis in the early 70s and although you had seen pictures from when he was younger before, you hadn’t seen them all.
Mary startled you as she called out to you again and you quickly got up, shoving some albums back in the box though keeping the last one under your arm. You pushed the box back to the side of the couch and turned off the light, carefully climbing down the stairs.
“What’s the verdict, Mrs. Presley? Do we need a priest?” Mary grinned playfully at you and you frowned as if you had no idea what she was talking about.
Because of the pictures, you hadn’t even thought to check for mice or for ghosts.
“I don’t think so,” you then laughed, helping her push the ladder back up before you followed the other woman down the stairs.
Figuring Dodger was in her room and Vernon was in his office or at his own home, the house was silent. Extremely rare, but you liked it.
Mary joined you as you looked through the photo album together while nursing a cup of coffee. You giggled together as you pointed out Elvis’ boyish but flirty smirk in one of the pictures.
The both of you were so engrossed in the pictures that you hadn’t seen or heard Elvis wandering into the dining room where you were seated until Mary looked up and got up from her seat.
He told her to stay seated, but she just flashed him a smile as she told him she’d make him something to eat before disappearing into the kitchen.
“What are you looking at, baby?” he questioned as he walked over to you, his large hands engulfing your smaller shoulders as he stood behind you.
“You,” you grinned. As you looked up and behind you, you noticed his eyes were on the open photo album in front of you. He grimaced, though his features softened as he looked back at you.
“I told you not to go up to the attic,” he mumbled as he sat down in Mary’s seat next to you, keeping his eyes strictly on you.
You chuckled, looking at him with a small pout and a raise of your shoulders. “Someone had to check for mice,”
He hummed teasingly, squinting his eyes a little at you before he leaned in and planted a kiss on your lips. “Ghosts, mice- same thing, right?”
You hummed in agreement as he laughed softly, his arms snaking around your waist to pull you onto his lap. He gently leaned his chin on your shoulder and closed the photo album.
“Why are you even lookin’ at that? It’s just old, boring pictures,” he mumbled, trying to distract you by moving your hair over your shoulder and hiding his face in your neck, his lips parting against your heated skin to lick that little sensitive spot underneath your ear.
You would’ve given in any other time – it was hard not to – but Mary was right there in the kitchen and you weren’t done looking at the younger version of your husband that you never got to experience in real life.
“They’re not boring, Elvis!” you protested, raising your shoulder again to get him out of your neck. You opened the photo album again, flipping to the page you had been looking at before you were interrupted. “These are really beautiful memories, you should treasure them, not put them up in the attic- besides, you were really handsome,”
He scoffed, looking at the side of your face as he squeezed you in his embrace. He could practically see hearts popping out of your eyes and drool dripping down your chin.
“Were, huh?”
“Oh, you know that’s not what I meant,” you shushed him, waving your hand before you leaned your elbows on the table, happily looking at the pictures of your boyfriend posing with his car.
If the comment hadn’t struck some kind of nerve inside of him, he would’ve grabbed your hips and thrusted his hips upwards against your ass that was currently sticking out, but it did.
He didn’t know why – he did, but he just didn’t want to admit it because he knew it were his own damn insecurities coming out to play – but your words made his mood drop in a matter of seconds. Grabbing your waist, he got up from underneath you and pulled the album toward him as he stood next to you.
You sat down on the chair, looking up at him with confusion written on your features. You could see his mood had shifted, you just didn't know why.
“I told you not to go to the attic, so why would you do it- why don’t you listen?”
He kept his flat hand on top of the photo album, preventing you from taking it back when you tried. You scoffed and got up, folding your arms in front of your chest.
“It’s just the attic, Elvis. You’re acting like you have some kind of gold treasure hidden up there,”
You had to surpress an eye roll, knowing that would get him even deeper in whatever emotion he was feeling.
“It’s just a bunch of old stuff up there, like this,” he tapped his fingers against the book, placing his other hand on his hip. “And the lighting up there is bad, you could’ve hurt yourself, Y/N,”
“Well, maybe I like old stuff,” you smiled as you took a step closer to him, your hand sneaking to the photo album. “I like you, don’t I?”
The words flew off your tongue before you could stop yourself. But that was who Elvis and you were- you’d tease the hell out of each other and your age difference was usually the main subject.
You’d call him an ancient old vampire and he’d call you a child, putting on Sesame Street during your movie nights.
And you could always laugh about it together, but right now, laughing was the last thing he did.
Grasping the album from the table, he turned around and stormed out of the dining room and up the stairs.
Elvis didn’t know why he was acting the way he was. He knew you- knew your jokes and what your personality was like and most importantly, he knew you loved him.
You had told him so many times, showed him so many times. You were the type of girl that would bite someone’s head off if they said something nasty about him, even stuff that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about. You were always there to stand up for him even though he could handle it himself perfectly fine.
But seeing you look at those pictures of his younger self, seeing you swoon over them, it made the demons in his head overrule the rational part of his brain.
Because he didn’t look like that anymore. He didn’t have the same body, nor the same face, nor the same hair. His body had gotten fuller and let’s be real- who would be happy about that?
Ofcourse he knew that you loved him for who he was and that you thought he was attractive, but he couldn’t help but wonder if you wished he was a little skinnier, maybe even a little younger.
A knock on the door startled him as he was sitting up against the headboard of the bed, looking up at a random show that was playing on the ceiling TVs. He knew it was you, so he mumbled a soft “come in”.
“I come in peace,” you announced yourself, stepping inside your shared bedroom with a tray full of food Mary made. He didn’t say anything, instead turning his head back to the TVs.
You put the tray on the bed as you crawled onto it on your own side, sitting on your knees. Smiling at him, you pushed the tray closer to him.
“’M not hungry,” he mumbled, grabbing the remote to absentmindedly switch the channel.
“Liar,” you squinted your eyes at him, catching him off guard as you snatched the remote out of his hand and turned the TV off, throwing the remote to the end of the bed. He sighed deeply, leaning his head back against the bed as he closed his eyes.
“What’s going on, Elvis? I know this isn’t about me going up to the attic,”
He sighed deeply, opening his eyes. He didn’t want to look at the food nor at you, so he opted for the black tv screens. You hated when he was this distant, because it usually meant something was wrong and in this moment, you had no idea what happened that got him to this point.
Moving the tray further away from the both of you, you crawled closer to his side and lifted his arm, forcing him to put it around you. Leaning against him, you put one hand on the side of his neck, your fingertips pressing against his jawline to get him to look at you.
He was resisting.
“Elvis, I know something’s up, but I’m not a mind reader,” you whispered, the teasing tone of your voice nowhere to be heard. You were getting a little worried now, because truly upsetting him had never been your intention.
For the first time since you came into the room, he looked you in the eye. A heavy sigh slipped past his lips and his arm that you put around your own shoulder squeezed you into his side a little firmer.
“It’s.. it’s those damn pictures,” he eventually admitted, his voice a mere whisper. “Ofcourse they’re great memories- I looked good, I looked better,”
You frowned, moving your hand down his chest as you sat up a little, looking at him as if he had just grown two heads. “Baby, you still look good,”
He scoffed softly, shaking his head as he looked down at your hand on his chest, placing his own atop of yours. “Hardly. I don’t look like that anymore, Y/N.. and when I saw the way you were looking at ‘em, I-I don’t know.. You can easily find some better looking fool- you’re fuckin’ gorgeous,”
You shifted your body, sitting back on your behind on the soft mattress to properly face him. You laced your fingers together with his, slipping your other hand in his as well.
“I don’t want any other fool, Elvis, only the one I already got,” you smiled softly at him, squeezing his hands firmly.
He sighed deeply, his thumbs rubbing the back of your hands as his eyes watched the repeated motion.
You hated to see this was bothering him so much. If only he could have a peek in your heart, then he could see it was full of him and only him. He stayed silent, so you continued, wanting your husband to know that you loved him more than life itself.
“Elvis,” the serious expression on your face made him a little nervous. “I love you for you- not for your body, or anything superficial like that. To me, you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on, but I fell in love with you, your soul..” you managed to release one of his hands, flattening yours against his chest. “… your kind soul and heart. Even though I can tape you to the ceiling on some days, you’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met- you put up with me on my worst days, you’re always here for me and that’s why I love you,”
“You mean that?”
“Ofcourse I do, you silly man,” you laughed softly, moving to straddle him. Gently cupping his face, you grinned and pecked his lips. “Besides- Elvis in the 50s was cute, but he could never handle me,”
He watched with an amused look on his face as you threw your hair over your shoulder and fluttered your eyelashes at him. Laughing, he pushed you against him by placing a hand in between your shoulder blades and hugged you tight. “I love you, little one,”
“I love you too,” you hummed, pecking his lips once more as you pulled back from the embrace. Getting off his lap, you grabbed the photo album he had put at the foot of the bed and the tray of food, putting it on his lap. You sat next to him again, with the album on your lap.
“Now, let’s look at these pictures and I promise you I will make fun of every single one of your outfits,”
“Hey! There was nothin’ wrong with what I wore!”
“I meaaaan…” you opened the book, pointing at a picture of him on stage dressed in the gold lamé suit.
He ripped into a piece of bacon, grimacing at the photo before he looked at you. Giving you a nod and a small shrug of his shoulders, he agreed. “Fair enough,”
Elvis knew he had to get over himself and he was glad you were there to help him with it. You loved him and only him- you didn’t care about the clothes he wore, the size he was, or the wrinkles he inevitably was going to get.
You loved his style through all the years, but you kept making jokes here and there about some pictures to lighten the mood and he appreciated it. He’d joke along with you, or tell you stories about something that happened before, during or after a show or the backstory about certain pictures.
Being there with Elvis at the very start of his career sounded exciting – at least, from the stories he told you – but he was doing great things now as well. He was still making his fans happy with new records and live shows, or simply by chatting with them about their personal lives if he had the chance to.
Your husband was a person with layers- sometimes that manifested in moments and outbursts that were not so pretty, but most of the time it manifested in kindness and empathy.
So, yes; young Elvis was amazing. A trendsetter, if you will. That twenty something year old changed people’s lives even though he might’ve not realised it (and probably still doesn’t now).
But the man that was currently laughing at a picture of himself and telling you the funny story that went along with it was extraordinary.
No matter what he looked like, you thought the world of him. And if there was any possible way for you to give Elvis Presley the moon and the stars, there was no doubt you would.
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