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precious-little-scoundrel · 4 months

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Hop to it Tink

Pairing: Thumper & Tink

Summary: As the mid 60’s consume Elvis with his ever more arduous film schedule and immersive hobby pursuits, Elaine crafts a friend out of a rival. For either spouse it’s not the ideal of way to cope with a lost child and estrangement, but the confusion that can occur from dumping any old thing into a wound to close it up is enough to bewilder the most grounded person. Much less a young girl like Elaine Presley who finds herself scrambling for a hint of girlhood as her five children and husband rely on her to keep it all afloat. Just as she’s going under, a pretty painted hand lifts her up.

Dedicated: to Ashley and Christi who both begged for this to be written and added so many details themselves that enriched it. Credit is also due to @prompted-wordsmith for the wicked suggestion of Benetint being used herein.

Warnings: sensuality, 18+, no outright smut but many mentioned offscreen acts, suggestiveness, this can be read as two girl friends or a little more, I tried to keep it nebulous as I imagine it would feel for Elaine herself in her exploration. a rather alarming emphasis on feet, pampering and painting toes and Elvis being overly into that, phone teasing, Larry being a little too psycho analytical over why Elvis and Elaine are having trouble after Jo, mentions of a stillborn, mentions of marital dissatisfaction, hinted male infidelity, hinted Polaroids and homemade spicy films, Elvis turning shit into being erotic that isn’t? That’s men for ya. And then just fun fluffy stuff with the kids but that’s no warning. I didn’t edit this really, I’m too tired, my apologies for any errors.

Requested: yes ✔️

Circa: 63-67

“Hey Tink?” Ann’s voice, always enviously soft even while sounding mischievous, asks abruptly in the middle of an hour long chat.

“Oh what now?” Elaine giggles into the gold phone Elvis has stashed on his nightstand, feeling silly to be sat on her bed in the middle of the afternoon, frittering it away with chatting and giggling to a friend.

That’s rather proof that Elaine needs it. Too much ‘strictly business’ in her life these days and Elaine knows if Elvis were here he’d be poking her forehead and making her fall back and put her feet up. She taps them on the floor instead, tap tap tapping her heeled boudoir slippers on the bed frame in a giddy tick as she waits for her friend to spring whatever wickedness is behind that tone of voice.

Her friend.

Elaine had hoped Ann would like her, be willing to be a buddy to THE Mrs. Presley but what they’ve got now is something she didn’t even think girls could have. It makes her view Elvis and his buddies more tolerantly, the stupid and goofy comradery she was starved for without even knowing it has slowly had its way with her in the form of Thumper and bike riding with Thumper and chatting with Thumper and kissing Thumper while Elvis writhed beneath them…so maybe it’s not like his mafia boys at all, but somehow it’s deeper despite the unorthodox beginnings and carnal undertones that seep in and out of it at whim.

“Whatcha got going on tomorrow night?” Ann asks at last, sounding altogether too nonchalant.

Elaine's heart pounds and she purses her lips, sensing a game here. She’s so like Elvis, this friend of hers, maybe that’s why Elaine gets butterflies in her belly at the chance to see and enjoy Ann, or when the telephone rings and it’s her sweet self sounding like she’s actually had to pace herself from calling Graceland when she knows full well Elvis isn’t home. She calls for Elaine, and something about that makes Elaine bite her nails and kick her feet.

“Oh not much, Jack and Jesse are trying the scuba gear in the pool right now,” Elaine sighs, “and if they don’t die tonight I suppose I’ll be here tomorrow making sure they’re still breathing and fixing sandwiches and seeing to it that Ella’s got her puppy ready for the show.” she waits a beat and adds, “You know full well he isn’t gonna be home.”

“Who?” Ann asks with overacted ditziness.

“Him.” Elaine rolls her eyes, “At least another five days away, stupid Arizonan weather has decided to rain and there has to be reshoots.”

She can hear Thumper humm on the other line with something that’s more contemplative than compassionate for Elaine’s empty bed. “How’re your toes?” she asks.

Elaine peers over the fluffy slipper tops and the profusion of lime green feathers adorning the slippers, “Decent, but they’ll need to be redone before he gets back.”

“Red?”

“French tip.”

“Hmm, Pink next, I think?” Thumper says.

“Yeah alright.” Elaine bites her lip and makes herself stop or else they’ll start peeling and need more Vaseline.

“I have to be in LA day after tomorrow. And I have a flight tomorrow morning. It stops in Memphis.”

“How nice.” Elaine murmurs, pulling on her lip now, slightly better than biting, she supposes, and it hides her grin from the gal a thousand miles away in New York.

“Yes, I thought so.” Ann agrees.

“And it’s such a long flight, New York to LA.” Elaine coos, “You’d get cramp if you didn’t break it up, can’t have you holed up like that, unable to walk out the shakes.”

“No, you wouldn’t want it for me, would you?” Ann babifies her tone and Elaine does fall back into the covers grinning stupidly up at Elvis’ ugly harem lamp above her.

“No, no I wouldn’t dream of it.” Elaine swears, “You just come by Graceland, stay the night, stretch your legs a bit, fill your belly, let me curl your hair.”

“And we can talk about boys.” Thumper agrees, like that’s her return currency for good southern hospitality…and it sorta is.

These nights when she stays, they’re something sweet and young and silly like Elaine hasn’t had in years. Never once herself in full since she married, losing all friends who knew her before Elvis, collecting folks who knew Elvis long before her, and a snazzy supply of darling children whose most stimulating conversations are about tricycles and losing a new tooth -Elaine is a little starved.

And Elvis -well, as Tink, she's his best friend, without doubt, and he is hers. But she’s also his wife, his woman and his home and his ballast and his doll and his lover and his mama and his ideal. So many roles. What she can’t talk to Elvis about is only relegated to one topic.

Elvis himself.

And such a man, a force more than a man at times, oh it needs an outlet and somehow the Mafia wives and even Betsy Blue Eyes Harrison with her discreet goodness and friendship can’t speak of what Elaine wants to speak about. A body can only go so long without bragging a little about what they’ve got, and when what you’ve got is a national heartthrob and the most famous man on earth -secrets about earth shaking ardor that rivals cataclysmic tempers, well, sometimes Elaine wants to speak of it. Or, rather, about the parts that make her love it, look forward to another day full of it. The little things that she can’t trust anyone else to know or love or see kindly.

Except for Thumper. Thumper -who has already admitted to loving him the same way, seeing him the same, living for him similarly. It’s the oddest consolation, and stranger still that his wandering eye gave it to her, but Elaine will take it.

“Yes, we could talk about boys.” Elaine agrees with Thumper, both knowing that when they say boys, they mean boys such as Naughty, Widdle Fella, Elvis Presley and The Memphis Flash.

Tomorrow comes and her sons are alive and hardly stripped out of their swimsuits to sleep before getting back in them and plunging to the depths of the swimming pool with metal tanks on their back and masks on their faces. She can’t bear to watch, looks like a perfect way to die at home, and so she stays inside and helps Ella groom her puppy for the pageant and Rosalee has an embroidered collar that needs help with fastening the buckle -she did the stitching herself- and although she hasn’t seen Daisy in hours, that wasn’t unusual.

In the afternoon she sends a car to the airport, Marty grins at her wildly and she gives him the old eyebrow before taking herself to her bedroom as the hour nears and going through a rather worn routine that still pleases her like when it was new.

The sound of the big door suctioning through the house can be heard upstairs, as can the chorus of children screaming “Aunt Tamale!” and Elaine knows it’s time to make an appearance.

Ann braces to a squat with her bag dropped beside her as a tidal wave of Presley children launch themselves at her over the foyer floor, tackling and clinging and squeezing vehemently with grinning, beautiful faces. Three are wiry, chlorinated and shirtless. It takes a moment for Ann to realize one is Daisy and that no, they’ve not made a third son since she saw them last. Jack’s golden hair has gotten darker and that’s heartbreaking but at least his dimples are deeper than ever and Jesse is just as sweet and courteously loving as always with Ella tagged behind with a wet doggie that Ann takes in her arms and let’s lick her face and Rosalee had a sketch to show her of what looked like a deformed couch but was most likely intended to be her beloved daddy’s profile and -

Oh Elaine.

Always one to make an entrance, to set the tone of a good game. She looks perfectly at home leaning against an upper bannister while observing the hubbub from above, with sheer navy cascading around her like a thundercloud and her hair tousled to perfection. Young Elvis’ portrait yearns behind her on the wall and Ann smiles at the rightness of it.

She waits till her children loosen the gambit just a little before wafting down the stairs in a tulle blur of long limbs and soft focused curves and she throws her arms around Ann and her sensible, tweed traveling suit.

“Thumper, I’ve missed you!” She’s no icy Madame in her own home, sweet Elaine, her porcelain face and macabre loungewear aside, she is warm and glowing in the rays of a waning day’s sun and Ann clings a little longer, arms around her neck and giving flesh beneath her hands, feeling oddly at home in this foyer.

“Missed you, too.”

The sleepovers always start with evenings like this. There’s playing with the kids and dinner, they may end up in the pool, they may end up watching home movies to show her what she’s missed since last visit. Perhaps there’s a new golf cart to try to flip on its top. But when bedtime comes, Thumper is a loving taskmaster, insisting everyone get to their respective rooms, starting the process thirty minutes early so that there can be as much dithering and “one more chapter” as can be and still get the kids conked out at a decent hour. Rosalee is allowed to stay and use the phone to talk to Elvis till 10:30 and in the meantime Thumper conducts tooth brushing competitions and Elaine sorts out breakfast plans with Mary.

And then it’s time for bedtime, and where Elaine might waiver about being so selfish as to deny her kids the little tiny bit of girlhood she’s carved for herself this evening, Ann has no qualms guarding that for her and summarily cleans out the big king bed of progeny.

Only little Jack is occasionally allowed to stay.

Weaned, or so Elaine swears but Anna has doubts, the kid is golden and soft and lanky like all little five year olds should be, and blessed with an unerring accuracy in beaming and scowling at the right times to get exactly what he wants. In short, he is Elvis come again in a tiny, button nosed, rosebud lipped cherub with sweaty curls begging to be pushed off his forehead by a loving hand and of course it’s half the delight to let the little fella stay and camp on the bed when they read their tabloids to each other, watching him laughing maniacally along with them at rumors about themselves that Jack doesn’t even understand.

Jack is also excellently skilled at wedging the foam pads between their toes when it’s pedicure time, allowing Elaine and Ann to bask back in matching boudoir chairs with their feet propped up on the matching stools Elvis got. Pink stain pouring over little round stools for when he wants to haul one up and chat to his wife while she applies her lashes. Jack insists on wedging the foam between their toes himself and sometimes tries his hand at painting with varying catastrophic results.

“Heyar, i’s wight heyer.” Jack’s little drawl still butchers Elaine’s diligent elocution lessons but both women fawn over him regardless when he passes them a roller they had planned on using later -not anymore- they drop the sectioned hair in process and start again with the one he gives them.

“He’s really precious, isn’t he?” Ann sighs once, staring down at him where he finally passed out between them, soft, chubby knees he got from his daddy bent askew and long fingered hands for a child tucked beneath a milk fat cheek.

“I don’t think I’d have made it without him.” Elaine admitted once and when Thumper gave her a searching look she went on, “Before there was you, there was just him. And when everyone else was ready to be happy again after Jo, he never minded when I’d take him to a room to nurse him and -“ she trail off, face lit warm by the harem lamp’s multi gemmed glow and the golden bedding around them, dark hair pinned up in rollers to show how young her face really is without paint and artifice, “-I even remember once being in Elvis’ trailer on set, right after and it was like every kid who cried around me-my body would respond and let down more and I-I didn’t have a baby for it. Except for baby Jack, and I remember sitting in that hot trailer on the lot while all the kids were out with Elvis touring the set and I was…crying.”

“Of course you were.” Ann snuggles closer, reaches over Jack’s little form to squeeze Elaine’s arm.

“I was sobbing my eyes out, actually.” Elaine admits with a shy turn of her head towards the padded headboard, “While he nursed. And then I felt his chubby little hand, all clumsy and sweaty, wiping them off without ever breaking his latch on the nipple. Wiping the tears off my cheeks.” She clarifies, “I didn’t know a baby could be so loving in the way I needed, and I’ve been close before, Jesse was my world I swear, and Ella is like watching myself again. But -his dimples pop when he gives that crooked grin and he won’t even let go of the latch, just a little…” she mimics his grin with her thumb in her mouth Ann laughs at the sight.

She laughs at the things Elaine finds funny and and she gets why Elaine loves what she loves. And night after sleepover night, Elaine finds herself admitting more and more and gets back an earful in return. It makes her giddy and makes her kick her feet when she picks up the ringing phone and hears her friend on the other line.

“I think I need to freshen up my hair.” Elaine will sigh into the receiver.

“I like how you’re growing it out, less structured, it’s younger!” Ann will agree before adding just as emphatically, “Just needs a little trim and some styling. I can come Thursday.”

One such Thursday in ‘64 Tink came out of the bathroom with tin foil in her hair and scared giddiness in her smile.

“I’ve got a surprise for ya,when you get back, Naughty.” Elaine told Elvis on the phone, forcing herself not to bite her nail in anticipation and ruin the new coat of polish.

The surprise had been an auburn haired wife.

Elvis noticed the effects of the sleepovers himself, beyond the wild sight of auburn hair, even as he looked at them askew and with a confused belligerence about fun being had without him, and many a demand regarding “what sorta fun are ya having? You’re my wife, dammit!”

His logic that ‘it don’t count if its two girls’ when excusing a night of the three of them rolling in Ann's rough cotton sheets as soon as Viva Las Vegas wrapped, didn’t hold up now. Now it very much did count that they were two little girls. Two unsupervised little girls and he was relieved when Jack stayed with them, but less so when he heard from Jack that they painted their piggies and arm wrestled in their nighties.

Elaine legitimately enjoyed grappling on the fluffy white carpet of the music room floor after ice cream had been served and wiped from childrens’ chins. It was something she tried with Elvis and never managed to win except by clinging to his back like a limpet, and even then he’d win by crushing her into the pile with his weight.

But with Ann she could tussle and strain and keep up some of that old verve that had once had her nailing softball practice in high school and currently crushing Vernon at tennis. No one in the Memphis mafia was allowed to tackle her or ought else when games were played on the lawn and no amount of flattery convinced Elaine of competency she had not exercised in years. Thumper provided just such a foil and Elaine found herself winning and losing with a clean conscience and sore body time after time, children applauding at either result.

She felt a little wild, like she had when Elvis brought the three of them together that first night, pacifying her qualms about the rightness of it as only he and his unfailing logic could do. But these days she was less and less burdened by rules or even expectation, it was her own house, her own life and if Elvis Presley had cracked open the door on hotel sheets, then Elaine saw little blame to be garnered from stepping over the threshold and creating a little world for herself that made her feel more than used up and unsellable. A “fact” Colonel Parker and the family Enterprise winced over daily. She could shut herself up in Graceland or Palm Springs and see to it that her children got an education, her husband's favored meals were served when he deigned to come home and her sanity was somewhat in place for it all by any means possible.

Elvis, for his own part, knew damn well he’d invited in whatever wild spirit of independent merrymaking Elaine now partook of. He also trusted her implicitly to keep it under wraps within the halls of their house, to indulge respectably and set a good example for his children.

It was undeniable, since her friendship with Ann began, she was looking younger, happier and more content than he’d seen her since before the tragedy, before Jo.

And Elvis cared mostly about that.

And in the way of those who do not know how to comfort others regarding a tragedy that they themselves have not recovered from, he found himself making concessions and negotiations, a bit of “so long as I can keep this, you can have that” sort of bargaining.

The ‘this’ and ‘that’ were never quite verbalized, but it was understood in that miserable harmony of married couples that he’d keep his women and his crowd of unedifying friends and employees so long as she might have household stability and a certain license to be a nutcase. Perhaps it would buy him and Larry time to figure out whatever fucked up Retrograde or inner chakra was keeping him from being able to bodily make love to his wife in the traditional way.

Larry swore he was only scared to make another child and lose it, hence why his wife remained hypothetically attractive but he could not complete his attraction carnally.

Elvis thought Larry should stick his head in the wood chipper for such a simple answer, there’s no way in hell that’s all there is to it and yet it likely was and Elvis couldn’t quite manage to accept that. Accept that he was still grieving. It wasn’t an option really. Not with everything else going on, all the different ways he was needed and wanted elsewhere, and not with the way Elaine swore she was fine until he could figure it out, so long as he loved her and was there for their kids.

Which he is. And when he’s not, Ann’s there. And Dodger. Or Marlon -on Daisy’s insistence. Or the whole damn nation.

So, much as the current order of things rankled Elvis, perhaps out of some suppressed awareness of his own role in it, ultimately having his Happy Tink back was his greatest wish.

And if it made Thumper happy as well? -goodness, it was a better end than most dalliances could boast.

But it was hard being a little sidelined, and when Charlie pointed out that Elaine must feel similarly about his flings and his fellas, Elvis wasn’t sure what the hell he was on about as Elaine was very much incorporated in both, as much as she liked to be. She just liked to be less and less and that was on her. Charlie still suggested he tell her how he felt about it.

But then Tink beat him to it.

He was laying there in bed, at Graceland, at some pitch black early morning hour one time, with five sleeping children scattered in their bed, when she told him she didn’t mean to make him feel lonely. It was all Elvis needed to hear. That she knew she was doing that, and if she knew it, then he knew that before long she’d find a remedy. He just needed to be a little more patient.

Which wasn’t his forte but Tink was quick and ingenious and once she’d come up with how to help, he just about wished she never had. The cure was as cruel as it was mouthwatering.

Elvis was in his trailer one day, on a movie set as Elvis was most days this year, and had spared some time from shooting due to another department needing to sort something out. The something didn’t matter, what did matter was that he got to sit in his trailer with his friends earlier than usual for an evening, put on his helmet and watch the game. And then his team won. Which, in the raucous, bottle clinking, cigar lighting jubilation of celebrating such a win, had him almost missing the ringing of the telephone he had wired in.

Only the Colonel and Graceland and little blonde Shirley from last movie set had his number and so Elvis scrambled over his red sofa cushions, threw off his helmet and leaned over to pick the phone up, hollering, “H’allo?” into the receiver while chopping at his throat with his hand in a demand for silence from his boys.

“Naughty?”

“Why, if it ain’t my pwecious baby wife.” he cooed with a sappy grin on his face, happily flipping on his back in the cushions, all being right with the world with his girl’s voice in his ear and his team in the playoffs.

“How’re you doin’ baby?” she asked him sweetly, and he could hear her settling into the sheets, the rustle couldn’t be from the kitchen.

He kicked his feet up above his head and propped them against the wall, “Pretty damn good, you watch the game?”

“Jesse and Thumper gave me a play by play.” she informed him.

“What were you cookin’?”

“Dumplings. Couldn’t step away.”

“Aww.” he knew it had to be something precious and easily burned to keep her from watching. “And now?”

“Now I’m petting Whiskers.” she informed him.

Their cat. “I trust Annie ain’t pettin’ any kitties of mine, is she?” he mumbled in a discreet little growl, cupping the phone to his mouth.

Joe glanced over anyway. Elvis found the toe of his boot tapping a jittery rhythm against the trailer wall and as annoying as he found it himself, he couldn’t stop. He felt nervous, oddly, like when he used to call Elaine from Germany, way back when before she’d joined him. Back when he wasn’t sure he knew her fully. She kept him on his toes and he liked that, it made his blood rush and satiated his natural eagerness for newness -but oh how he wondered sometimes how she always dredged up this newness. If he knew her, really knew her would -would she keep being so surprising?

Fuck. Maybe Larry was right, maybe he needed to pop a pill like an old fart and get it on with her, get it outta his system.

Where were they? Oh, cats. And Ann.

“Elvis, c’mon, really.” Elaine chided with a giggle, “Ann is setting up the pedicures.”

“Oh.” Elvis sucked in a breath at the way such a reassurance sent the blood from his panicked brain to his jealous heart and then melting down like molten desire right between his legs. He flexed his belly and gnawed on his thumbnail. “Oh yeah?” he tried again and sounded so damn wrecked that every friend in the place looked at him as if he’d just put on a porno. “Y’all paintin’ your piggies? Mmm? Pink, yeah? Fuck’meee.”

“Mhmm, well, she hasn’t gotten to painting yet.” Elaine expounded with a sigh, “She’s oiling them up, I’ve had to endure a fifteen minute sermon on dry cuticles, Elvis, and now she’s squeezing and rubbing my poor piggies till they’re tingly-“

“Laney!“ he hollered as if she dropped a 2x4 on his own toes and the guys crowded in, a mixture of mockery and interest on their faces. Elvis spread a hand out on his chest to regulate his breathing and cursed at the realization that his wife wasn’t the slightest bit clueless as to what she was doing. “Oh Laney, what -what’s she usin’ to oil ya?” he begged to know, his nose breathing deeply as if he could guess it a thousand miles away.

“Baby oil, Elvis,” Elaine sounds so earnest in his ear, “I told her you don’t let me use nothin’ else on them.”

“Good girl.” he growled after realizing she couldn’t see his decisive nod of approval at her obedience.

“Oooh” he hears her breathe in his ear and startles up from the couch in a little flail that has no destination save that he heard his wife moan and it requires some expenditure of energy from him or he’ll go nuts laying here imagining her in her babydoll nighty, her pretty little bare toes getting oiled up by Annie.

“Tink, what she doin’ to yous, Tink?” he demands urgently, and the guys crowd closer, Elvis tugs at his pant leg and knows it’s futile, his rock hard dick is trapped in Edith’s well tailored trousers and all he can do is bring his feet off the wall and spread as much as he can.

“S-she’s rubbing my arch.” Elaine tells him, “I was wearing those pretty little white heels all days, the white ones you got me.” she reminds him and he smiles at the visual of her clicking through their home.

“She makin’ ya feel good?” he prompts his eyes glossy and far away from his gaudy trailer and the smell of cigar smoke. “Rubbin’ the sore right out?”

“Yeah, yeah feels good.” She slurs.

He can just picture her all puddled and lax and slippery- “Hers all gooey?” he hopes, running a hand over his belly that keeps flexing and quivering like little Elvis is deep in cunt.

Elaine on the other end of the line smirks at the shift in his tone, gone entirely from jealousy to fanciful imaginings that are far, far beyond anything she’s indulging in but somehow it’s terribly exciting to know what he’s thinking, to lure him in and have only his own, nasty, boyish mind to blame for the misfire. She winks down at Thumper who truly is doing a remarkable job on those sore arches and gives another little moan. “Yeah, yeah I could fall outta bed I’m so gooey.”

She hears the shuddering breath he takes and can imagine him, crisp slacks and ruffled pompadour, laying on his back against velvet red cushions, legs splayed in a pantomime of dying and his lackeys gathered around like a sleazy last supper.

“I think we’ve really got his motor thrumming, Thumper.” she feels safe enough to giggle and hears Elvis give only a heart rending:

“Goddamn, whyyyy!” over the phone in reply.

“Need a defibrillator, boss?” she can hear Marty ask him and hears only petulant moaning about needing a wife in reply.

It did the trick, or at least, part of the trick. The trick of making the Presley’s feel connected to each other again and Larry agreed that it was good, a good step towards normality even if it was a little polyamorous and crowded for a typical marriage. Such phone calls made Elvis feel included and Elaine nearly re-besotted with a man who, when on the other end of a phone line and thousands of miles away, sounded desperate and devoted, something her wifely self hadn't felt from him in a little while.

Elvis brought home amongst his many gifts a couple of new cameras, and having taught Jesse how to use the still one, paid his son five dollars for each documented arm wrestle and diving contest. How he paid his wife for each documented lingerie try-on and manicure session was never revealed but her shoe box of pastel gauzy Polaroids suggested the compensation was ample incentive. How Tink paid Thumper was anyone's guess and no one’s knowledge. Maybe it was that Cartier diamond set she wore to a premiere the following week.

It was a natural graduation of events that Elvis should, being at home during one of Thumper’s convenient memphian layovers, be a camera wielding witness to one of these night time pamperings. They politely ignored him and his bright lights that beamed on their little haven in front of the dresser, pink satin chairs aglow and their faces almost angelically washed out on the film. That night, Elaine’s hair was restored to a deep chocolate color, Ann’s outfit for her next premiere was chosen and the silk pajama’s Elvis donned for the evening had to be discarded.

The camera wielding didn’t stop there, when Thumper was brought down to Circle G Ranch, an entire production was made, the only picture film Elvis Presley ever fully produced and directed and costumed in the 1960’s -and it was full of subtext, straw, piglets, bare skin and harmed vegetables. But it occurred over an slippery, sweaty, pungent afternoon and was not a sleepover and so has no place being detailed in this chapter.

What does deserve a place here is the great Tink and Thumper adventure with Benetint that happened about a year into this charming, girlish, sleepover habit.

They’d bought matching nighties you see, sheer with a gingham print. Yet, when going to photograph their charming selves in them, they found the rosiness lacking -or at least, Thumper thought it could be improved. The printed fabric was to blame for the faded-nipple effect but was too adorably bucolic to be abandoned entirely. So, after a foray into the smokey backstages of some Vegas showrooms, Ann arrived one day in Palm Springs with her sundry gifts for the children, and tucked into her purse, was an uninspiring little bottle of something that could easily have been mistaken for nail polish.

Sitting cross legged on the vanity, Elaine soon learned it was anything but.

It was too quiet in the bathroom, just their huffed breaths and the squeak of the lid unscrewing. Even before the icy chill flicked over her skin she felt her arms break out in gooseflesh and she sucked in a breath, bracing for the tickle. Elvis had done this, to her belly, that first time she’d grown his children and her belly rent apart with a lightning bolt down its middle.

It had felt loving then, kindhearted and boyish.

Ann crouching to bosom level, flicking the little brush with its smelly mixture across her pert nipples, breath ghosting against the red blush of Elaine’s breast, silk pooling useless off her shoulders -this was different, oddly so. Somehow more intimate than when a man, or what Elaine knew of men, did it. Here was no pleasurable usage to brace for, only girlish admiration and a charming lack of regard for ought else but this, this single, charged, shivering moment.

Elaine could see Ann’s dark roots from up above. She wanted to pull that thin bottom lip of hers and snap it back against her teeth. Feeling useless sitting getting adorned so soberly, Elaine swiped the hair falling into her friend’s eyes, up and off her brow and into the buoyant coif that chasing the children had already half dismantled.

It made Ann drop her brush. “I wasn’t expecting-“ she fumbled.

She went back to it, such warmth so close and Elaine watched with a confused heart as Ann swirled the icy slick once more over the outer ring of a babe abused areola, taking her bleeding little rosebuds and making them into dark cherries.

“How do they look?” Elaine asked Thumper as Ann stood at a little distance in the large bathroom, eyeing up her art with her absurd little brush raised, a consummate artist and a distracted friend.

“You look like I imagined.” Ann replied as if without thinking before her face colored the shade of the pink rug and she must roll her eyes in an effort to sabotage the escaped sentiment.

“Imagined when?” Elaine asked, leaning forward on the counter, not bothering to cover up as it would only smear, perhaps some part of her knew without consulting the mirror the image that she made.

A dark haired vixen with the body of an ivory cello, leaning forward with those creamy mounds topped like Shirley Temples with their little ornaments.

-knowing yet curious, hungry yet soft.

Ann swallowed hard and thought about the end of all this that Elaine had once predicted in the beginning, an end that was all wedding veils and bouquets and everlasting vows with some fella Ann was supposed to find and love since Elvis wasn’t available. Elaine swore it would come and Ann had hoped she’d been right. The idea sickens her lately, thinking of somehow there being some other best friend, someone else to flick bath water at and ogle in their silk pajamas, someone else to have her heart lurch over when the children crawl atop them and the motorbikes thrum beneath them. The more successful she got the more she wanted this.

Just this.

“When he used to talk about you.” she admits her imaginings had been detailed and flattering for the wife of the man she once lay beside. Not even in dreams of wildest jealousy and unfair slight could Elaine be anything but something Ann craved to know and be known by. “I-I dreamed of being stabbed by you.”

Ann had woken up flaming with desire from those nightmares. Pretty Elaine Presley coming alive from the front of a newspapers and screaming “traitor!” hacking at Ann’s broken little heart with a pie server. Only for Elaine to end up being kind, lonely and a bit of a tease.

“Why’re you crying?” Elaine asked softly, finally slipping off her marble perch and taking Ann’s chin in her hand firmly.

“I’m going to miss this.” she muttered miserably in realization of the overseas tours next year and the boys she entertained but didn’t like enough to trust with a single secret and the way Marlon was around here too often lately. “And you know too much of me.” she hit Elaine’s arm playfully.

The grip on her chin jerked in retaliation. “I’ve been worried. You’re getting famous.” Elaine admitted, and the way she referenced fame was if it was a cancer.

“But I can come here, right?”

“Always.”

“Even if I’m married?”

Elaine looked a little surprised and questioning and when Ann shook her head in the negative to being currently engaged she lightened again, “Especially if you’re married. Married women go mad without some woman to talk to about being married.”

“You’re some woman.” Ann purred because Elaine Presley was stood too near with her pale soft breasts brushing Ann’s arm.

“You could be too, if you’d let me paint you.” Elaine dug the bottle out of Ann’s chilled fingers and went back to the sink, her reflection showing the heightened color crawling down her neck. “Get over here Thumper.” she snapped her fingers and Ann slinked up on the counter like a condescending house cat. “Am I to paint over chiffon?” Elaine stared at the still tied nightdress unimpressed until Ann was forced to fling it open - to her credit, not without adding much pizzaz to the whole thing with a high kick that only barely missed Elaine's face and a haughty toss of her head.

Her act petered out with a shy chuckle that faded into fully nothing.

“You’re very pretty.” Elaine whispered as she stood frozen in front of her in a ready stance, bottle clutched and tiny brush brandished, looking like a juvenile boy trying to recall his father’s tips on how to flatter. “But, then - you know that, I suppose.”

“I’m cold.” Ann whispered, her eyes darting to the side.

“Oh, yes,” Elaine was suddenly in motion, stepping nearer with clear eyes, “this makes it worse. Trust me. I’ll be fast, I swear.”

“It’s fine.” Ann breathed and then promptly forgot how.

As if in slow motion she watched Elaine crouching to better see her work, and her pretty hand burdened with all of Elvis’ shiny spherical gifts descended until it made contact on her bare nipple.

“Oh Elaine.” Ann enunciated through a gasp, her hands that had been listlessly sitting on the countertop curled over the edge of the marble, gripping tight.

“Cold isn’t it?” Elaine murmured again, her hand coming to rest beside her work in direct opposition to the cold paint. Firm, steadying, warm flesh on her sternum made Ann tremble, she watched Elaine‘s eyes flick up to meet hers, an odd sort of edge and command in them she’d never seen before.

Or. Rather, she had, but only ever with Elvis, only ever directing that look to him.

“He did this to me once.” Elaine told her, voice gone deep and then another stroke of the brush. “Not my nipples -it was my belly.”

“Captain Marvel.” Ann huffed a laugh, recalling the way he’d made her trace the bolt on his wife their first night, eager as a boy who’d discovered magic.

“Captain Marvel is telling you to hold still, missy.” Elaine chided her wiggling friend and Ann felt a flush all over.

“I’m just breathing.”

“Hard.” Elaine snarked, staring down at Ann’s heaving chest with a sardonic brow.

The intensity of that gaze was too much.

“It’s too much.” Ann said it in defense and Elaine’s eyes fluttered up to meet hers, her whole body straightening.

“For you too?” Elaine begged tremulously and Ann felt a rush of connection at her vulnerability.

“For me too.” she nodded.

“Gosh.” Elaine exclaimed, startled but making no move to flee, she just stayed there, hemming Ann in on the countertop and studying her face like it was the dearest thing.

“This isn’t making it better.” Ann whined as she felt that beautiful face near hers -the thunk of Elaine’s forehead against her own soon followed.

She felt her hands hold her waist gently like a dozen lovers had before and none felt as tender as this.

“You know the thing about fame is,” spearmint wafted over Ann’s face and she closed her eyes to listen to Elaine’s soft, pondering drawl, “it's held up all those years as the thing that’ll make everything all right. When the only thing that makes things even slightly bearable is a friend who knows what you're talking about. If you ever get tired, Annie, of being known for all the wrong reasons, you just come on back. We’ll always find something of us here, I know it.”

Elaine’s thumbs played across freckled skin like dainty wipers on Ann’s cheeks, swiping off one tear after another into her dyed hairline and one mere jut of Ann’s set chin brought the lower half of their faces together.

plush, warm, minty, sticky, glossy, brushing, lilting

-turn aside.

“Do you wanna -the camera, Tink?”

“No.” Mrs. Presley answered honestly as she stepped back, a little tremble in her voice, “Not tonight. I think -perhaps I, perhaps we, should call Elvis.” Elaine stared off into the adjoining bedroom with swimming eyes, their little project once undertaken for his gaze had suddenly become too intimate to be shared, even with him, even as dried ink on a glossy Polaroid weeks from now, “And maybe bring in Jack, he looked restless.”

“Oh yes.” Ann cheered and it was weak, snotty, hoarse little lie. But it was for Elaine. Anything for Elaine. “Let’s.” she agreed.

—Yes. Bring in Jack, why don’t you? And Elvis and Marlon and your charities and your causes and when it gets too crowded with just us two, bring in the whole nation!—

Ann willed the puddling tears away from the rim of her eyes, it wasn’t fair how a woman so immune to jealousy as Elaine Presley could spark so much in others.

“I bet Jack will be up to my shoulder by the time I get back from tour.” Ann joked as they crept down the hall to their boy’s bedroom, “And Jesse will break my heart with your face on a teenager's runty little body.”

It was a promise. To be back.

And come back in good spirits and with good intent. To take as much as was offered, be happy with it. Just as she knew if she herself showed up tomorrow with a husband, Elaine would be as ecstatic as if it were her own dream come true.

Some friends really do just love you enough that way. And that had to be enough.

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