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deadpresidents · 9 months

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Front page of The New York Times, July 30, 1923.

After spending nearly the entire month of July 1923 in Alaska and Canada (the first sitting President to visit either location) as part of his “Voyage of Understanding” across the continent, President Warren G. Harding was forced to cancel stops in Oregon, Northern California, and Yosemite National Park when he fell ill in Vancouver and Seattle on July 26th and 27th.

From Seattle, Harding’s party, which included First Lady Florence Harding and several Cabinet members (including Commerce Secretary and future President Herbert Hoover), traveled directly to San Francisco. Despite his weakened condition, the President refused suggestions by his doctors and aides that he be transported via wheelchair from his special railcar, the Superb, to a waiting limousine. Upon arriving at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, reporters who briefly saw him said that Harding -- who was only 57 years old -- looked “old and worn.” As he and the First Lady headed to the limousine waiting for them on Market Street, someone snapped the last photograph ever taken of President Harding alive.

When the Presidential party had left Seattle and word first started to circulate that Harding was ill, White House doctors announced that the President was suffering from “ptomaine poisoning” and acute indigestion, “due to eating crabs or canned food.” While they decided to head directly to San Francisco, only the events of the next few days, including his planned trip to Yosemite, were canceled. But by the time the President arrived in the Bay Area, it was decided that Harding’s condition was more alarming than previously believed, and the White House scrapped all events scheduled for California, announcing shortly before midnight on Sunday, July 29th that “the President is reluctantly persuaded that it will be necessary to cancel his entire California program” and apologizing to the people of the state expecting to see him.

No further information about Harding’s condition was officially released at that time other than the fact that the President was expected to remain in San Francisco for the next two weeks to rest and recuperate, but according to the New York Times on Monday, July 30th:

Outside of this statement and the bulletin by [Brigadier General Charles] Sawyer, his personal physician, no other information was authorized. It is learned, however, that General Sawyer was apprehensive late this afternoon of a turn for the worse in the President’s condition. While he was hopeful that a good rest would overcome the violent attack of ptomaine poisoning from which the President is suffering, he was careful to make no predictions. By some of those in the Presidential party this attitude was attributed to professional overcaution, but events tonight appear to have justified General Sawyer’s course.

As this dispatch is written (at 5 A.M. New York time) members of the corridor on which the Presidential suite is situated in the Palace Hotel. All of them show signs of being anxious. The theory of the President’s friends is that acute indigestion has affected his heart action. The President is conscious and is much concerned over the serious turn his illness has taken.

Mrs. Harding is at the President’s bedside and is greatly helping him by her calm and cheering attitude. She expresses confidence that Dr. Sawyer will be able to bring Mr. Harding back to health.

Harding’s “Voyage of Understanding” had come to a sudden halt and his planned trip through California had been canceled, sidetracking numerous public engagements and likely eliminating Harding’s much anticipated private deep-sea fishing expedition with William Wrigley off of Catalina Island. Over 5 million people were expecting to listen to Harding deliver a major speech over the radio the next night about foreign policy and American participation in the International Court of Justice, but it would instead be published as he recuperated. As Warren Gamaliel Harding rested in Room 8064 on the 8th Floor of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on Monday, July 30th, his doctors were cautiously optimistic and First Lady Florence Harding was hopeful.

But the 57-year-old President of the United States had 72 hours to live.

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feverinfeveroutfic · 1 year

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sunburn | desert rose

“I’m so glad you could come along.”

It had been some time since he had last seen Sam, especially after the two of them had returned to the opposite sides of the state in the meantime: it would be a whole day trip just down to Los Angeles from the Bay Area alone, but then he had to hop onto a boat to reach Catalina Island as well on top of that, plus he had to hitch a ride on top of that given he had yet to earn his driver’s license.

It was the whole feeling of being unable to see your best friend after a great length of time: Sam was tucked away in the house on Catalina while her mother worked on her latest manuscript and without really anywhere else to go in the meantime as well. The one day came along when she called him up to ask him about what he had planned to do for the next weekend, and he was eager to tell her that he had nothing on his plate for the time being.

He and Louie hitched a ride over to the Reno-Sparks area, especially since Zelda was going to be there as well. Chuck and Eric had their giggles about it as well, but they had to promise not to tell Louie’s girlfriend while they were away; Eric wanted to come along but there was a far amount of work to do on Legacy’s, now known as Testament’s, new album, especially with Metallica having dropped Master of Puppets the month before. Meanwhile, Alex stayed in the front seat of the car with his long beautiful jet-black hair billowing in the wind and with the sunglasses covering his eyes, all without a care in the world, especially once he and Louie reached the northern edge of Reno and made their way down to Virginia City. Sam had hinted at a little surprise of sorts once they showed up outside the Julia Bulette Café.

It had been quite some time since those two boys had last visited that whole area as well, and the first time they had gone through that canyon due south of Reno, through the hillsides and those lush, low bushes in junction with the sparse grasses that sprouted up with the recent rouses of rainfall over the course of the past winter, so the whole area seemed alien to them. A couple of boys trekking along through the hills as if they were on some wild quest to find buried treasure, Louie’s car hummed along the little two-lane road until they reached that stretch of desert land right smack in the center of the hillsides. The mouth of Sutro Tunnel gaped off to the left side of the road, but there was the café right at the northern edge of the ghost town that rose in the face of the silver mine around the same time of as the California Gold Rush.

“Apparently, it’s also a sex museum,” Louie told Alex once they passed the mouth of the tunnel.

“What, the café?” Alex asked him with a chuckle.

“Yeah. Eric and I were reading about it the other day—it’s like an old western style saloon complete with a makeshift brothel right next door.”

“Ah, man. I assume I won’t be able to go inside for at least another few months.”

“We’ll sneak ya in,” Louie teased him. “You could also just say you’re eighteen, too.”

“Times like this I wish I still had that fake ID from a couple of years ago,” Alex said with a sly smirk.

“Whatever happened to it?” Louie asked him as they slowed down at the northern side of the town.

“Lost it at Ruthie’s,” Alex replied with a nudge of his sunglasses up the prominent aquiline bridge of his nose. “Jeff—Becerra—and I were at the back of the room watching Exodus perform and I literally felt it fall right out of my pants pocket. I’m glad he and I got in otherwise because they were great that night.”

They reached the narrow dirt parking lot on the side of the wooden building there on the right side of the road: no sooner had Louie switched off the car when Zelda’s head of short black hair topped with shiny silvery sunglasses emerged from behind the corner.

“There’s my girl!” Louie exclaimed, and he and Alex climbed out of the car in unison. A gust of wind swept up Alex’s black curls all around his head: he had just dyed the little pearl of gray hair at the crown of his head that solid black, and thus, he hoped that Sam wouldn’t notice the fact that he had covered it up. Then again, she was older than him, and he wasn’t even old enough to hold a beer bottle much less kiss her on the mouth.

They had met Sam as well as Aurora, Marla, Belinda, and Zelda the year before back at L’Amour in New York, and the second that Alex laid eyes on her, he could feel his heart beating faster, and he could feel the heat rising up inside of him. It was a feeling he couldn’t shake, and yet there was no way of telling anyone about it, either. He was just a boy still: what did he know about love?

Indeed, as he and Louie strode on over to meet up with Zelda, he could feel her presence around the corner. Her long hair twirled in the high desert wind and she wore that hat upon her head to accentuate it. It belonged to Cliff, but he and Louie both knew that it was for her. Her face lit up at the sight of him, and he knitted his knees together a bit to show off the slight curve to his hips.

“Hi, Alex,” Sam greeted him: that muddied California accent that, at one point was tiresome for him and yet she had resurrected it and polished it in the loveliest way possible.

“Uh, hi, Samantha,” he returned the favor, and he knew that his face was turning bright red at the utter sight of her before him. He couldn’t help it at all.

“I’m so glad you three could come along here to beautiful Virginia City,” she told him as well as Louie and Zelda. “My parents and I used to come here all the time when I was little and now that I’m old enough, I decided to invite you guys here to Julia Bulette’s after they’ve renovated the place—”

Alex couldn’t help but imagine himself on top of her as she led them into the cozy café and saloon. She belonged to Cliff but the feeling was driving him out of his mind, and more so at the thought of them sitting so close to the sex museum. They sat together at the heavy dark finished wood bar with the matching bar stools to go with it all. While Sam and Louie were of drinking age, he and Zelda could sit there together as long as they served up food.

“Yeah, I don’t turn twenty-one for another couple of years,” she told him. “December thirtieth, no less!”

“At least you’re more than barely legal,” Alex pointed out, and she burst out laughing.

“I really am,” she said with a tuck of a lock of black hair behind her ear. Zelda was like a little elf with her small, slightly pointed ears and slim, wiry body: her hands almost seemed too big for her arms.

“It’s funny, you don’t really strike me as a drummer,” he pointed out.

“I’m tryin’ to put on some weight,” she told him. “Just a few pounds to help me play better. I feel like I can’t keep up most days.” She turned her head towards him: Alex spotted the crown of Sam’s head on the other side of Louie. When he looked past Zelda, he flitted the quickest glimpses into those big brown eyes. Something inside of there, a feeling that he hadn’t seen all too often. Maybe it was the way in which that her face lit up whenever Louie said something humorous to her. Maybe it was the way that they seemed so innocent and yet so ancient at the same time. He wanted to drink down the feeling that resided within, and yet it seemed so out of reach.

He was a boy with a crush, and yet he knew in his heart that that was all he would ever be in the end.

“Alex? Alex!”

He shook his head about and glanced down at Zelda and the slight smirk on her face.

“Penny for your thoughts, big boy?”

“Penis for your thoughts? Is that what you said?” Louie joined in right then and the four of them burst out into an uproar of laughter.

“Penny for your thoughts, Lou!” Zelda exclaimed as her face turned bright pink. The bartender strolled on up to them with a big grin on her face and two glasses in hand, one with a creamy white drink with ice and the other looked like just a straight beer.

“Virgin screaming orgasm?” Sam raised her hand, and Alex nearly choked on his own spit at the sound of that.

“And a beer!” Louie drummed his fingers on the edge of the bar in excitement. The bartender then picked up two more bright red glasses lined with maraschino cherries from the speedwell next to them.

“And a couple of Roy Rogers,” she declared as she set the glasses before Alex and Zelda. When she turned her back, Zelda reached into her pocket for something small and slender.

“Hope no one notices,” she whispered to Alex as she unscrewed the cap and poured in a dark liquid into her drink.

“Oh my god, really?” he demanded.

“Relax, it’s just sarsaparilla,” she scoffed as she put the cap back onto the flask. “Coke’s always been a little too strong for me.” She then chuckled at him. “What, did you think I had booze in here?”

“Maybe,” he quipped as he picked up his glass and sipped it down. The sugar from the Coke made him shake his head about. “Yeah, that’s awful strong.” Zelda took off the cap again and poured some inside. He gave it a quick stir with the straw before the bartender could return and catch them with something from the outside. He then took another sip, and right then, he caught the bite of alcohol in there.

“Whoa,” he breathed.

“Now it’s a Pimm’s cup,” she whispered to him, and flashed him a wink.

“Thought you said it was sarsaparilla?” he sputtered, and he could already feel himself slipping.

“It is, but there’s a little kiss of gin in there,” she whispered to him. “I just didn’t want the bartender to hear.”

“You snuck that in?” He hiccuped. He was without a doubt a lightweight.

“Babes, I’m from New England—we work hard, we play hard.”

Alex looked down at his glass of Roy Rogers, now spiked with the tiniest bit of gin. He didn’t want the drink to go to waste, and thus, he drank it down as fast as he could while he still enjoyed it and kept anyone from giving him odd looks. He was a teenage boy in a saloon next door to a sex museum and the girl whom he had a crush on was two people away from him.

That is, until Sam herself wanted to show them the museum in question, the doorway of which stood right across the room from them. But Alex stayed there at the bar with the Roy Rogers right there in front of him, to which he kept the straw rested upon his bottom lip, as if he was still a young boy who had come there with his parents.

And yet, he was alone there at the bar. The bartender had gone into the back room behind the mirrored, brightly lit back wall of the bar, and the three of them were enjoying themselves together in that sex museum.

He was still seventeen but no one was looking.

“Welcome to manhood, I guess,” he muttered to himself, and he picked up the glass and ambled across the floor. The drink had filled his slim belly to where it felt as though a big dead weight resided within him. He rested his free hand on his waist to steady himself, and he staggered over to the swinging doors there. Deep rich red lights washed over the crown of his head, a more intimate feeling to everything as well as their four precious bodies congregate inside of there out of mere curiosity.

Alex stood in the doorway of the sex museum, and the only things he was missing were his cowboy boots and a matching hat.

“Oh, my god,” he breathed. Sam, who stood right by the doorway with the glass of virgin screaming orgasm, showed him a smile.

“I’m glad you came,” she told him in a near whisper.

A soft rustling noise caught his ear as the four of them stood there at the front part of the rather small, intimate museum: the walls were all smooth and rich in appearance, and they seemed to close in on them in there, the vast dark cavern that gave him so many feelings the more that he thought about it. Alex kept his attention to Sam with his lips slightly parted, and she kept her gaze fixed on the conspicuous patch of black over his forehead. A small vein in a dark tapestry of blackness that riddled about his head in a thick, lush helmet, and yet, he knew for certain that Sam could see it for herself given the fact that his hair there did not grow the same way as the rest of his hair.

She sniffed the side of his face.

“Do I smell a little booze on you?” she asked him, still in a low whisper.

“No,” he assured her.

“You sure?” She flashed a glance over at Zelda, who was checking out some old lingerie from the Gold Rush era on display with Louie at her side.

“Positive,” Alex promised her. Zelda and Louie bowed ahead, but Sam led Alex over to the corner right next to the doorway to keep him in the shadows, away from prying eyes, be it the bartender or from someone else who desired to come into the saloon for any reason. Alex downed the rest of the dirty Roy Rogers while Sam polished off the rest of her virgin screaming orgasm.

“I feel like we could at least have some time to ourselves,” she said, and her voice swept over his soft smooth skin. “I saw you looking at me back there.”

“You’ve read my mind, my dear—” Alex could feel her hand on his shoulder, and she nudged him further into the corner, into the safety of the shadows and between two posters for peep shows no less. Alex gazed on at her with his glass down by his hip and nowhere to set it down. Sam put her glass down on the floor and all the while, she never released her gaze from his face, into those crystalline eyes which gazed back at her from the veil of earthy darkness around us: where everything was dry as a bone out there, Alex could already feel the humidity press itself onto his skin. It was like they had gone to the beach instead of the desert.

“Would you mind at all if we had some time to ourselves?” she whispered to him. Alex parted his lips to speak but no sound came out. Zelda hadn’t poured a lot of sarsaparilla into his Roy Rogers but it had dried him out to where he could hardly say a word.

He had no idea what overcame him. Her body welcomed him as he loomed closer to her. They were behind the corner, out of Zelda and Louie’s sight: as far as Alex and Sam knew, they had disappeared over by the primitive sex toys.

“Please,” he said right into her face, and he moved in closer to her. He rested a hand on her belly and brushed up her shirt: his fingers glided up her skin, and she shivered from the feeling.

“Damn, that’s so soft,” he whispered.

“Just you wait ‘til you touch me below the belt,” she breathed right into his mouth, and he let out a soft whimper right back at her.

Alex pressed his lips onto her own, and he pressed her to the wall to the left of him, right underneath the poster for the peep show. Sam wrapped her arms around his slender waist. His hands glided up her belly to her chest, and then onto her back for the hooks on her bra. His curls fell all around the sides of his head, and the ends brushed against the sides of her own: these frizzy, fuzzy little corkscrews that brushed against her skin. She could feel his hair while he drank down the scent on the crown of her head as well as the sides of her neck.

Alex could feel something there between him and Sam. Something he couldn’t exactly put into words. It was a genuine connection with something else, a feeling that someone like Zelda wasn’t telling him a whole manner of things while he was there with Sam. It was as if his body had a mind of its own and all his feelings intertwined in a delicate web within him, and they could wait in his untangling them.

It did. He had his desires, and Sam had her own, and walking along there in silence ignited something so fast between the two of us. If this wasn’t going to make Zelda drink down some more of that sarsaparilla with Louie, then he had no idea as to what would.

“Lord, it’s like making out with the devil himself,” Sam whispered to him in between kisses. And with her, it was like making out with someone who could fit right into his arms.

He unhooked her bra and then his hands slithered down her sides: his lanky fingers pulsated on the tops of her hips, and she giggled at the feeling. She rested her own hands on his upper back and hooked a knee up onto his hip. The fear of being inside of a dark cave went away right then, and the sound of his own heartbeat filled his ears. The sound of his own heart in his own ears made him think of the ghosts which haunted that very ghost town.

They were watching them. Their eyes were watching them.

Even with the cool feeling of the museum around them, Alex could feel the warmth swell up inside him yet again. The warmth from his own body as well as the warmth from hers there before him.

“I want to make you dinner,” she whispered to him. “The biggest dinner you want for your sexy little belly and then I want to draw your beautiful body.”

“Please,” he said as he lunged in for another round of kisses on those lips.

“I want to give you everything,” she begged him.

“And I want to make you everything,” he whispered, and in a husky low tone as well, a tone that seemed to come right out of nowhere. “Everything and anything you could ever ask for—”

“Please,” she begged to him, and she reached down into the front of his jeans for a feel of that skin there. His skin underneath his belly button that was so soft, but when she caressed down under the waistband of his jeans, he knew that it felt like stroking silk. His hands then slithered around her chest for a feel of her breasts, right under the cups of her bra. Her skin was so unbelievably soft and smooth under there. Silk on silk, satin on satin, darkness topped by a whisper that morphed into a growl.

She gave him a nice hearty fondle with nothing more than her fingertips, and his body shuddered and shook at the feeling. She moved from her fingertips to her palm for the job and he barred his teeth. The pad of his thumb caressed over her nipple, and she gasped. He snickered at that, and then she gripped onto him for doing that.

He moved his fingers down from her breast back onto her belly: she gasped from the feeling as he brought his index finger to her belly button and all its sensitivity. It was almost pointless to remain quiet given every noise, every sound, every single part of it, echoed throughout the sex museum around us. That whole room catalogued sex. For a second, Alex swore that they were surrounded by the ghosts of the loneliest miners from the thick of the Gold Rush. And then he realized they were the real ghosts, and especially when he peeled off Sam’s shirt and pushed it up to her face so she couldn’t see him drop his pants part of the way. She couldn’t see him press his lips onto her nipples, as dark as the earth beneath us.

She writhed underneath him. She had to be coming soon enough. She pushed her shirt off her face, and he raised his gaze from her chest with his tongue out and his face flushed. It was right then she realized that she had let go of him.

Quickly, she reached back down to his underwear, and she let her hand make its way down there again. He held still, complete with a big euphoric grin on his face: though his pants were still on, he could feel himself growing wet from her loving touch.

He was going to come before her and before he turned eighteen no less. He couldn’t believe it.

He held still so she could find it. And then she found the damp spot.

She slipped her fingertip in there for a little fondling. Alex closed his eyes. He panted right into her mouth from the feeling when he stuck his hand down the front of her jeans for a feeling for himself. But it was too little too late for him, though. He could feel himself coming right onto her fingertip before he could do anything more. Sam beat him to the punchline.

He gasped, and then let out a low moan right into her throat. His moan then morphed into a low, gravelly growl, a sound so primeval that even the ghosts that haunted the walls of that museum could hear him.

He shoved his hand down the front of her jeans for a few little twitches on her clit, and she burst out laughing at the feeling. When he touched that little nub of nerves, Sam’s laughter stopped, and she let out a soft low moan as well. She came so fast, and she came so softly and quietly, and it was enough to let a wave of warmth wash over the two of them. It helped that the room was somewhat humid: Alex could feel the warmth and the glow over his forehead and his cheekbones.

Sam raised her head to him, and she, too, had a warm sheen over her face. She put her arms around him, and he let some of those corkscrews fall around the sides of her head. As far as they both knew, Zelda and Louie had never heard them, even though their voices echoed enough through the museum that be heard from the outside. Alex let out a low whistle.

“I’m so glad you could come along,” Sam told him once again, and that time in a low whisper into his ear.

“And I'm glad you could come along, too,” he said with a clearing of his throat. “Dearest Samantha, my dark shadow, my secret face. Let's get out of here before Zelda and Lou see what we’re doing here—”

#spring fever #fever in fever out #fever in fever out fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #testament fanfic #testament band #testament #louie clemente #alex skolnick #alex x sam #smut #smut and humor #one shot collection #also on ao3 #text

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