#sarge asks

“Yeah, prom.” He repeats, disbelieving, “And the topic won’t be cars or college or even sex, it’ll be our parents. You don’t get it? You’re an idiot to go.”

Ella swallows hard, aware Jesse feels a martyr's superiority over everyone in this house at being invited to couple’s meetings and divorce proceedings and let into courtrooms while Ella was strategically burdened with banquets and charities and functions mama thinks won’t hurt her girlish mind so much. That clumsy kindness takes its own toll, the toll of having to act grateful and spared when you’re anything but. “It’s a sort of hell, you know,” she hisses, “Having to chat with all of those snobby old drunks, everywhere I go that’s all they ask about is her. At least you got your football-“

“-oh, oh it’s there, too.” Jesse scoffs, warming up for a twin-spat as only they ever seem to manage when given a moment's privacy, “Why, just last Tuesday, Gary Ingersoll offered to be my stepdaddy as soon as it was all finished.”

Ella sees regret for saying it in his face, soon as it’s out of his mouth. Blue eyes watery and mouth wobbling apologetically for being so ungentlemanly, so crass, getting into a competition of hurts with a lady, his little sister, at that. Whatever daddy’s faults, he certainly raised the sort of boy everyone else thinks the father is.

“Well you can imagine then, the absolute delight it is to be mama's little carbon copy during this time.” Ella snaps back, not at him so much as wanting to be heard for once, her cheerfulness is a facade and she’s about ready for someone to notice, “Those it doesn’t scare away, it draws, like creeps to a preschool. You wouldn’t imagine the pick up lines I’ve endured, actin’ like they’re picking her up, as if I’m not my own person. As if…it’s like they forget, I’m not the wife.”

“M’sorry.” Jesse mumbles contritely, “That’s gotta suck.”

“Oh it does!” she assures, “Exponentially.”

Jesse purses his lips and drums a baseline next to her own fingers on the doorframe. Her turtleneck suddenly feels stifling, despite the odd cold front that hit them in the middle of spring. Bleak March stomps in lead gray clouds across the sky and turns what bit off cheer the Bradford Pears gave into muddy dismalness. It’s awful, combined with the mood.

“-so, prom.” she reminds.

“Right, because proms are notoriously lacking in creeps.” Jesse laughs.

“More of the right kind!” She insists.

“Right kind?” he repeats, “It’s not gonna be like mama or daddy‘s heyday, everyone’s gonna be dancing awkwardly and passing time until they go screw. Sorry but it’s true. And in the meantime some acne-faced idiot will be talkin’ to you about your parents, if the girls don’t do it already. Meanly, mind.”

“They wouldn’t dare!” she balks, her dainty iron fist of popularity still rules that High School.

“Good! Then why do you need me?” Jesse turns and makes his way into his room, signaling a finish to his engagement.

“I don’t wanna be alone!” she begs, “It’s something to do together, we were always bound to have this memory!” he only looks dubious under his floppy hair and not at all moved, “And -you’re, I feel safe with you. Maybe I do need you. Everyone else, they’re either idiots, like ya said, or your friends. Bad dancing either way, it might end up being some fun if you were there.”

“All reasons not to go.” he points out, very kindly, from where he sits on his bed, mail clutched in his hand.

“Daddy has moved it up for us and everything,” she reminds him very quietly, “so it won’t get in the way of his schedule, so that he’ll be here! He’s making an effort!”

Jesse is quite used to gestures like a highschool getting bribed to throw prom months earlier than scheduled, just so the ole man can pin a boutonniere on Jesse’s chest and terrify whichever unlucky sod is Ella’s date. Something more moving would be him convincing mama not to divorce him. “I-I-it’s nice of him.” he agrees with a wince that tells Ella how much it cost him to say, “But -Ella, that makes it so much worse. Nobody is sayin’ it’s for Vegas, they’re sayin’ it’s for the court stuff- I’m not going. I’m sorry.”

It shouldn’t feel this devasting, having Jesse prove unable to pretend with her for a second, just one night, that it’s all turned out ok.

“You look so tired.” she sighs.

“I might take a nap.” he agrees.

He won’t, he’ll practice on his base as soon as she’s out of his room. “Ok.” she lets a dream go with stinging eyes.

“Ya know,” his soft call arrests her as she almost out the door, “mama didn’t have no prom.”

She turns back to him, surprised and unsure what the point is.

“I’m just sayin’-“ he waivers, “-you can be a great lady and have a nice life…without prom.”

“But I’m not mama.” she reiterates, firmly and annoyed, she was born a Presley, she was born to be prom queen and to be wanted and admired and loved.

Her plan to close the door, rather forcefully, when making her exit is stalled by his next comment, louder and challenging. “Then ask that Lieutenant guy, the one in California.”

“What?” she gapes, turning gingerly again to glare at him, at his presumption, at him knowing too much.

Jesse grins back, well wishing and honest in ways she can’t relate to. “If you’re gonna be a high and mighty little rich girl, do it properly. Get a man to take you, not one of those idiots. Make him wear his uniform, be your arm candy, and if it gets bad, he’s old enough to have a license and a car -hell, get him to fly you away if needs be. Make a scene.”

“I wouldn’t-“ Dare, she means, she wouldn’t dare. But now he’s suggested Johnny, the idea of anyone else accompanying her sounds as anti-climactic as Sandy’s crunchy lasagna.

“Oh c’mon!” he goads lovingly.

“Daddy wouldn’t-“

“Daddy is gonna try to scare the shit outta anyone takin’ you.” Jesse points out, “Might as well present him with someone who won’t mess up the floor. I mean, after all, sorry to break it to ya, but no matter who you go with, you ain’t gettin’ laid on prom night, Ella-“

“-how dare you!” she squeaks and rushes to shut the door in his laughing face, running to her own room with hands on her burning cheeks.

Five days later she’s still toying with the notion and trying to work up the bravery to both ask the man and be a little rebel when mama asks her of her plans point blank. Elaine Presley is ensconced in a plush jet seat, newspaper page turned to the crossword puzzle, eyebrow pencil brandished since none of these ignoramuses in the Mafia carry actual pencils. “Have you accepted anyone?” she presses.

“No.” Ella says, “Slim pickings.”

“No, really?” Mama is surprised, and she is right to be, Ella has had just about everyone at school asking her to go, so maybe it’s less of a case of slim pickings and more of a case of the pickings being slim. No one is intriguing, not after Johnny in the mustang and the gentle sexual innuendos. He was engaging, easily carried the conversation and just dangerous enough to be fun, he might even take liberties and Ella would finally get to know what all the fuss is about. She wasn’t sure anyone else would dare with Elvis Presley‘s daughter. “I’m sure you’ve been asked-“ mama starts to look worried, probably wondering if the divorce rumors have gotten so damaging they’ve ruined Ella’s dating life.

“Yes but they’re all sorta…”

“-soggy toast?” Mama suggests, knowing smile on her face and Ella sighs, it’s always easier with her than expected, just as it’s always harder with daddy than hoped for.

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“Well, it’s a little, off beat but-“ Elaine stipples her nails against the table top between them before shrugging “-you could ask somebody yourself. If you’ve got someone you’d like and trust and think would be fun. It is nineteen seventy six. So they keep telling me, at least, all bets are off.”

“Oh.” Ella can hear Jesse calling her a coward all the way from that first row of poofy seats as she sits there and doesn’t take the perfect segue into her wants.

“What about, uh, Sammy?” Mama asks, “Same class isn’t he?”

Ella gives her mother an incredulous look, the idea of Samuel Harrison taking her to prom somehow worse than wet toast. “He’s in love with Rosalee, I don’t want him to take me on a pity date!” she hisses.

“Is he really?” Mama perks up at this confession and Ella sighs, dismal at the thought of going with him and being abandoned five minutes in.

“Besides,” Ella deflects, “he’ll be with Jesse, probably on their stupid motorcycles while prom passes them by.”

1. I adore that man and he needs a fix it fic himself and in this universe we can start from scratch a bit, 2. I just always envisioned their last son being a distinguished darling of the nation in a political capacity, 3. he’s just terribly handsome and well…distinguished, I’ll use that again and has the down to earth goodness along with the charismatic gravitas that suits my vision for Danny.

Which leads us to those questions.

Oh the backlash is nasty. It’s awful as expected but for the first time in her life, Elaine Presley, though divorced and perhaps unforgivable for it by her husband, actually has Elvis’ full support under the media glare. This is thanks, in part, to Colonel Parker and his damned tabloid machine -which was always her nemesis and the bane of her dignity- being out of service due to the Colonel himself being neck deep in an immigration lawsuit. He can’t quite issue spoon fed statements about his investment’s behavior from a holding cell, not when the investment himself is rethinking his place as the head of his family while curled up in his ex-wife’s hospital bed talking to her barely protruding belly.

And Danny, oh sweet, their lovely Danny Boy. Made in the middle of such tragedy, you’d never know it from his easy presence and boyish charm, the way from the minute he can interact during Elvis’ later international tours he treats his Daddy’s fans like his own. He’s the one in the late 80’s and 90’s still passing out smooches to admirers, young and old, who still flock around the gate. He’s the one who gets invested in Memphian politics and continuing on what America got robbed of somewhere along the way. He marries Shiloh’s best friend Bee and he wins the senatorship, he’s straight and honest as they come… unless you wanna press an inquiry about some of those badges he gets his daddy. But no harm in those.

He coulda been known as the kid made when the two crazy Presley’s couldn’t stop hate-fucking. Instead he’s a recalled as a unifying legacy to everyone who ever dreamed about love enduring and good people making efforts to live for something bigger than themselves.

If it’s true you attract the love you give, then Danny’s his daddy’s replica to a T, and maybe it helps that they share a birthday. 😉

…the whole saga of him being made and the divorce and the reasoning and the reconciliation will be coming soon, I swear