#stack moore fluff

At first, he doesn’t talk much about Elijah. Refers to him as Smoke, and you initially assume it was a business partner, but once you’re close enough, he tells you everything about that fateful night.

How he still sees Elijah’s face in his dreams. How he can’t even see his own brother’s face in his reflection anymore. How the last thing he has of him is a faded photograph.

But the two of you have a sweet life in the city. You’ve got a shared apartment that you’ve turned into the perfect sanctuary.

It’s definitely hard living away from the sun, but that just means that the daytime gives you two an entire day in bed. The black-out curtains drawn closed, maybe a candle or two lit for comfort, and the two of you lazily lounging in between the sheets.

I don’t even have to say where that leads to…

And since he is a gentleman, he has a habit of bringing home dinner. He’ll be gone for around an hour or so, but then a knock rings at your door.

“How’d you get this one?” You’ll ask quietly as he leads your unsuspecting guess to the kitchen.

He never has a real answer. Always just give you that grin and says, “Told ‘em I got a real pretty woman at home for them to meet.” You don’t question him much after that.

Elias is a gentleman!! Meals will usually mean there’s a big mess in the kitchen, but he’ll always insist, “Nuh-uh, baby. You go get cleaned up, I’ll take care of this.” One steaming shower later, and you come back to a nearly pristine place.

Naturally, nighttime is your favorite with him. It’s the only chance you two can freely roam, and most of the time, you don’t even pay any mind to the delicious scents of passerby’s. “You smell that?” You ask with a hungry smile, but the two of you have been around long enough to control yourselves.

And Elias loves to see you in the moonlight. He’d burn the whole city to see you in the sun, but he can settle for the silvery glow against your skin. The two of you casually stroll the streets, hand in hand, in sweet silence.

Sometimes, you’ll be out the whole night. There’ll hardly be anyone else around, apart from a few taxis and teenagers breaking curfew.

He doesn’t notice that he’d woken you up; you make no attempt to reveal yourself. Instead, a warm smile appears on your face at the sight of him holding your sweet girl.

You liked to think she had your eyes, maybe even your nose or hair, but the truth was that she was her daddy’s spitting image.

“She’s gon’ be beautiful, just like her mama,” Elias had told you almost every day of your pregnancy. It’d only been two days since he took you home from the hospital and insisted that you stay in bed.

It was almost unreal to have her bundled in your arms. He’d kiss her nose, then yours, and say how he loved both his girls more than anything in the world.

He wears the sweater you got him for Christmas years ago; you remember it like it was yesterday. You’d dreamed of having this life with him, but never had you though it’d come true.

And now, it was right in front of you.

“Mornin’, babygirl,” he pauses his singing once she stirs and her eyes peek open. Elias rubs the soft curve of her head with his thumb.

“Gave your mama some trouble, didn’t you?” He gently bounces her and continues rocking almost rhythmically. A small chuckle comes deep from his chest. “Seeing her cry when she had you—God, I don’t think there’s anything worse. But we waited a long time for you, sweetpea. You remember when I would sing to you?”

The memory of him with his palms placed softly on your bump, caressing the skin and singing every tune he knew with the smallest bit of hope that your baby would hear it, was enough to relieve you of the pain that very much continued to rock through your lower body.

“I’ll sing for you always.”

The deepest corners of your heart lightened at the sight of Elias—your husband, your man, your dream—cradling the joy you’d made together.

You remain still in bed, worried that even the slightest move could disturb the moment. For now, you watched.

“My daddy,” Elias thickly gulped before steadying his voice. “He, uh…Well, he was a bad man. And I lost my mama before I could even hear her voice.” You’d heard the story only twice and never asked to again. Every time Elias mentioned it, a distant, heavy weight returned itself upon his shoulders. But now, as he whispered to your baby girl, he seemed eased. “But I was lucky. I had-”

He chokes on his words, and even from the bed, you can see the gleam of tears in his eyes against the moonlight.

“I had a brother. And he protected me from our daddy. Looked just like me too. In a way, I s’pose he looked like you.” A pit grows in his stomach, but Elias continues. “He woulda loved you, sweetheart, and your mama, too.

“And I know he’s somewhere better now. With his baby and his woman. I think he’d happy,” he leans in so his nose nuzzles against hers. “That I got my own.”

On Elias’ bedside table sits a framed photograph, faded from the sun and time. Two of the same face look back at you as you glance at it, and you can only imagine what the SmokeStack Twins were like in their glory days. You look back in the corner when the sound of Elias’ voice cuts through the silence again.

“And it’s important you should know the woman you’re named after. She, uh…” he chuckles. “Well, she and I didn’t get along much, at first, but there’s a reason why Elijah loved her.” You wonder if he’s still speaking to your daughter or to himself now.

He closes his eyes contently, lips curved into a soft smile as if lost in a memory. “She was one of the strongest women I know—apart from your mama, of course.

“See, babygirl, my brother protected me. And she protected him.” Unaware that you’re awake, Elias up at you, but he isn’t surprised to see your eyes open. “And I’m gon’ protect you.”

The eyes he fell head over heels with so many years ago. The ones that grounded him when the memory of his brother infested his dreams. The ones that he swore he couldn’t live without.

The eyes he sees when he looks at your baby girl.

Instead, his smile widens.

“The both of you.”

But he’s not completely alone.

He has you.

Thank God for that he thinks to himself. He doesn’t know what he’d do without you.

There’s something inside him—an instinct from the curse on his soul—that knew, the first moment he landed eyes on you, that you were just like him. Eyes that shone like the moon behind a foggy sky, a smile that was too pretty to be true.

You’re a lot older than him, too. There came a point where he (correctly) assumed you knew a lot more than him. Elias wouldn’t doubt if you knew everything in the world. And even if he did know something better than you, he had a habit of keeping his mouth shut.

“That there’s the carotid.” Your finger points to a spot on its neck where Elias once heard a pulse. “It’ll be warmer and sweeter there,” you say casually as if there isn’t a corpse lying in your arms.

He remembers this from the military. But he watches you with childlike wonder.

You point down to the corpse’s thigh. “But here is the sweetest…” The femoral Elias thinks. “You drink here, you make it quick.”

He follows you in the shadows. He shields you from the dark. And though his soul aches to see his brother, even just one last time, Elias lets the time pass by your side.