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morphituu · 4 years ago

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Milagro

Chapter 22: Rehearsals

Ch: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21

“Maaaama, mi amore- say mama,” Callie encouraged, her shirt clasped in Leo’s hold and a wide smile clamped around a melting teething chewy. The round, golden eyes locked on Callie still glimmered with unshed tears after waking from a nap following a sharp tooth breaking through his gums, but now his short legs kicked excitedly when she squealed like he after some numbing gel was lathered across his swollen pads.

“Oh my osito,” she sang, giggling when his staticky voice spiked into an excited shriek after she laid him across her chest. With any luck he'd catch the last of his afternoon nap and not completely derail his schedule the night before they left him. With one hand rhythmically patting his bottom in tune with a gentle song she hummed, the nails of her other dragged down his thick stripe of sandy colored locks, thick and tangled as hers always was.

Leo’s sleepy growls wound down to soft grunts, his little mouth pursing when he sucked on his tongue.

Her bottom lip quivered. To think she'd go four days without kissing this face or hearing his voice almost made her call off their already brief honeymoon despite desperately needing the break, not to mention the alone time she so craved from her husband to be. Quickies were fun in the moment, but when she'd have to walk right back out and balance Leo on her hip and a stack of laundry and dishes in the other arm, the yearn for a quiet, post-sex cuddle session resounded loudly in her bones.

“You know we’ll be back, right Leonardo? You won't even notice us you'll have so much fun with abuela y abuelo,” she smiled, recalling all of the toys Oleg had gone out to purchase in preparation for his grandson's extended visit, excitedly sending pictures to Nick every time he found something new.

Callie giggled, her eyes drifting up. She gasped softly, looking down at Leo. “Guess who's back?”

Her door swung open and Leo’s head craned back to find Nick placing their contribution to the dinner at her feet, a smile spreading across his gummy face immediately.

“What's with those sad eyes?” Nick pouted, reaching for Leo.

“His tooth broke through,” she handed him over, their son rubbing his tired eyes against Nick’s chest after being leaned into the crook of his beefy arm. Nick groaned, rubbing Leo’s back.

“I feel bad we're taking off right when this starts,”

“Me too,” Callie sighed, pushing her messy hair back from her face. “I keep rethinking it,”

Nick’s head lifted with a pout. “You don't wanna go anymore then?”

She exhaled loudly, shaking her head. “I really wanna go but I don't think the guilt will go away so I just gotta suck it up and deal with it,”

“We’ll only be a few hours away,” he reassured, a comforting squeeze left on her knee before he carried Leo to the backseat. Nick wiggled his face between Leo’s round cheek and shoulder to elicit bubbly giggles, his affections unyielding even after his son was safely strapped in his seat again, not until Callie reminded him that they were needed elsewhere.

A final squish of his cheeks, and Nick was off to the drivers seat again.

“Let’s do this,” he chimed, the dark clubmasters hiding the excited glint in his yellow eyes.

The weather was ideal for the windows to stay down, a soft breeze drifting through the cab that neither worried about overwhelming Leo as long as the traffic stayed this slow, but neither minded that, either. Nothing- not even that Callie’s dress had been delivered with a rip in the seam, could dampen their moods that day.

For weeks, more notably the sleepless nights they'd planned this and endless trial and error from music to food to seating, keeping enough excitement alive until their day came, and through rejections from churches that deemed their union unholy to now having a backyard wedding at his parents that a shocking number of family wasn't arriving to, they were here, the day before their wedding, and Callie couldn't shake the warmth that had held in her cheeks all day.

The butterflies fluttered about her stomach, bubbling in her throat when she tried to speak. As usual he held her hand while they drove, but now more than ever he toyed with her singular ring that would soon have it’s pair. When they stood in line to pick up Leo’s fitted outfit, he brought her decorated hand up to his lips to kiss shamelessly before the humans that rolled their eyes in disgust, further stirring the churning excitement before she leaned into his side to hide her blush.

Callie’s head landed against his arm rested over the center console, his big hand landing on her leg. Nick kissed her head while he drove, his thumb tracing the supple skin of her freckled thigh.

Callie grinned then. “I hope this song plays tomorrow,” she noted the raunchy beat bumping softly through the speakers.

Nick snorted. “Someone's uncle is gonna grind on someone's aunt,”

She giggled harmoniously, her face rotating in to hide against his bicep. Nick egged her on, the dirty comments flushing her cheeks and leaving her breathless as they drove leisurely along the backroads. At red lights he made it a point to steal kisses, his hand leaving the steering wheel to hold her jaw when a taste of her tongue became too tempting to refuse. They were honked at a few times, but Nick blew them off, telling his pretty fiancée “this is why we should've put the cans on the truck today”.

Their bantering settled enough to let silence pass between them, listening to Leo babble against his crinkly blanket or exclaim when he caught sight of himself in the mirror.

“Did Ward tell you what you guys are doing tonight?” she asked, pulling her hair over her shoulder when it whipped before her face.

“He won’t even give me a hint,” Nick huffed, endlessly worried they’d end up at a strip bar. “What about Rosie?”

“Just a girls night at her house,” she shrugged, hiding her excitement. A night to kick back with her feet up and gossip? With unproblematic people? It’s fucking paradise, she’d clarified to Nick when he was confused as to why bachelorette parties weren’t rambunctious like the mens. “I’m not drinking until the reception though,”

“Is it the Orkish champagne?”

She moaned, her eyes closing as saliva pooled in her mouth. “Forget the food, just hand me another glass of it when mine is empty,”

“One glass will have you on your ass, mama,” he reminded, peeking at her from over his clubmasters.

“Good thing my husband will be there to carry me away from the judging eyes of the public,” she said, her chin balancing on his shoulder as he pulled into his parents' driveway. The street was lined with their guests, the chatter from the backyard heard over their engine.

“Only because my wife is the fairest in all of LA,”

She pouted. “Just LA?”

“Who even matters outside of LA?” he asked.

“You’re right.” She leaned in for a quick kiss.

The pair went about gathering Leo from his seat and his numerous bags they’d store tonight in preparation for the following day, including a bouncer and swing. He was excited as ever when Callie lifted him from behind the buckles, the teething toy in his grasp. It took only three months for Leo to reach a girth that Callie could carry on her hip like a six month old, his head unwaveringly steady and held upright as he learned the world around him. Their pediatrician warned he’d fly through milestones faster than they could record, so when Leo started angrily gnawing on their hands and crying through the night, it took them some time to figure out he was simply teething when they’d normally not expect it until later. Moments were cherished with greater excitement after they realized how quickly Leo was growing, and how brief this baby stage would be.

It wasn’t until they’d at last received the results of his genetics test were they able to find some peace of mind knowing when he’d hit a year, this rapid aging would slow drastically.

Being seventy-six percent Orc meant doctors felt confident leaning towards the likelihood that Leo’s growth would match that of a full-blooded one, but the moments remained bittersweet for the parents. In the blink of an eye Leo went from being a wiggling newborn to a hefty calf able to sit up on his own and mimic their mouths when they spoke to him.

His yellow eyes tracked and narrow in on objects he wanted, his colored hands able to pick items, and Nick’s ear was always on the menu of items he loved to gnaw on.

At the call of his name he’d turn his head, and a smile would grace his lips when it was either of his parents. Callie would walk from corner to corner with him between her feet, his grasp tight around her fingers and his feet dragging less everyday he built up the muscles of his strong legs. When he’d be done from such an exerting exercise, a frown up at Callie would signal his reluctance to waddle any farther.

The pouts and angry chuffs were Nick’s favorite. He’d gnaw Leo’s thighs and roll him side to side just to see his little face snarl, a sharp cry rattling in his throat before he’d clamp onto Nick’s arm. Now that the sharp fangs were coming in, he found instigating a fight with his vicious little boy wasn’t in his best interest. It had only taken a few times for Leo to learn if he laid over his dad’s head, he was further defenseless, including those ears.

“Ah!” Leo exclaimed, reaching over Callie’s shoulder towards Nick. “Ahh!” he cracked again, looking at Callie.

“He’s comin’, don’t worry,” she assured, his chuff tickling her ear.

The door was cracked open upon walking up to it, and inside the furniture was already being moved around to create more space to linger around in.

“Late to her own rehearsal!” came Oleg’s booming voice, strutting in false intimidation from the hallway, but his angry scowl melted into a wide smile once Leo recognized him and reached.

“Is everyone here?”

“The booze went quickly,” he teased, walking toward the back of the house with Leo excitedly squealing in his grandpa’s arms.

“That’s what happens when you get Orcs and Mexicans together,” Nick commented, grunting his way in with all the bags slung across his arms and shoulders.

“They didn’t drink the champagne, did they?” Callie frantically asked, following Oleg and leaving Nick to topple over with Leo’s luggage.

Nick and Ward both sipped their beers alongside Matuk and Sergey, the summer sun having been unbearable until Dinara silenced the mens whining and dished out the cold drinks. But the sun still kept glaring down at them even as it drew near sunset, their shirts sticking to their skin and hunger growing. Dura had been the only one to be blessed with a chair at the front, her belly near bursting as her due date approached.

“Pay attention,” Dura hissed at Sergey, fanning her face with her sun hat.

“All I do is stand here-” he hissed back, silencing when Ward elbowed him.

“Can you shut the fuck up she’s about to come down,” Ward growled, jabbing his hand in the direction of the house.

“We’ve done this eight times, why do we need to be quiet?”

“He’s right, there’s no point,” Nick answered loudly, sipping his beer.

Ward glared at him in disbelief. “At your own rehearsal?”

“Look, they’re talking,” he pointed to Callie’s mom who sat beside Dyani and Joaquin, Leo and his mother coming to join them once she’d finished walking down the mock isle.

“Okay music, yada yada everyone stands, then Callie,” Dinara called, tip-toeing around the line of bridesmaids to stand beside Nick at the front.

It was just the rehearsal, and there was nothing to match how spectacular and dreamy it would be the following day, but Nick still smiled watching her walk down like that, a glowing smile on her face and hanging onto her father's arm. Nick tossed a kiss to her before she was even there, tipping his bottle back over his lips to hide a nervous smile when she winked at him.

For the eighth time, Nick shook Diego’s hand and accompanied Callie back to their spot at the front, his actions growing clumsier with every round.

“Pre-gaming?” she asked, smiling at Nick’s loose nod. She was sure his eyes were half-lidded behind his sunglasses.

“Okay dearly beloved and all that, they exchange vows, beads, rings and kiss,” Dinara recited from the front with Leo still in her arms, wiggling towards Nick when he made faces at him. He stopped only to peck Callie sweetly, snatching his son from his mother's arms. “And we’re done,”

There was a collective sigh of approval from everyone placed about in the wide yard, all of which were starved for the cool drinks and savory dinner laid out under the shade of the patio.

Sergey stumbled to Dura’s side and only laughed when she scolded him for already drinking himself into a cloud, but Callie was there to loop her arm around the expectant mother’s and assist in her waddle across the yard. Nick and Ward picked Sergey back up, leaving hard slaps on his back while they teased him over being a lightweight.

“I hope Morn feels better by tomorrow,” Callie pouted, feeling her friend's absence.

“She kicks shit fast, she’ll be good,” Ward answered. It was useless denying they’d become quite cozy with one another, especially when Nick had stopped by unexpectedly to find her wandering around Daryl’s house in his shirt. It was a sensitive topic, but Callie thought it sweet how lovingly he spoke of Morn when she wasn’t around. There was always the hint of a longing sigh somewhere in his words, a hardened pout pushing his mustache up.

“Was it a stomach bug? Daryl wasn’t feeling too good either,” Rosie noted, following her ear into their conversation.

“Was Dejza sick too?”

“Yeah I think that’s where she got the bug from. Grandparents wanted to see her,” Ward explained, finding a spot beside Nick once they all came up to the table. Leo perched on Nick’s thigh, reaching over to tap Callie’s arm so she’d talk to him as the others found their seats. The chatter of Callie and Nick’s chosen family was lively among their friends, the last minute preparations or concerns rising into question and then settling quickly. Food was passed through mouths as fast as the words, the plates filling just to empty minutes later for seconds and thirds. The men of Nick’s bachelor party were ordered to lay off the beer and instead fill up on food before their night of celebration and farewell, waving off their disapproving groans and wails.

By the time they were all dug into their meals, Leo was drifting in Nick’s arms with a bottle balanced on his chest, at last catching a nap to soothe away the throbbing in his gums they’d managed to mostly keep at bay all day with the chaos swarming around them.

When Leo spat out the bottle and rubbed his face, Nick took a final bite of the crispy pork ribs to lean back in his chair and cradle his son closer to his chest, a wide palm patting his bottom. Soft chuffs were the last of Leo’s attempts at consciousness before Nick’s purring did him in, his big eyes finally sliding shut.

Nick was lost staring at his son when Ward suddenly came into view, his ear almost close enough to press against his shoulder.

Ward snapped up, mild disbelief coloring his expressions. “Are you… vibrating?”

Callie laughed out loud, covering her mouth filled with food.

“Does Morn not purr?” Nick asked, Ward leaning away from him.

“P-purring? Y’all… purr?” he looked up hesitantly at the other Orcs around him who were unphased by his discovery.

“Does Morn really not?”

“No! I think I’d know if I heard somethin’ like that!” Ward exclaimed, returning to his meal with a shudder.

“I bet she does n’ it just puts you to sleep,” Sergey added, talking around a corn on the cob.

Daryl looked back to Nick. “Sophia always told me she reminded her of a cat and I thought it was cuz of the ears n’ shit,”

The table chuckled at that, their laughter heightening when Daryl again leaned into Nick’s chest to listen to the rumbles, even placing a hand flat on him to make sure it wasn’t some elaborate prank. The fervent manner in which everyone devoured the food calmed into small pickings here and there and the low rumble of chatter filling the backyard, everyone in their separate conversations or stories until Dinara pulled Nick's attention away from Callie and Rosie who spoke so fast, it only sounded like clicking.

“Ukmall, you’ll need to be here before eight to get Leo,” she informed, and his brows furrowed.

“So early?” he groaned, having fully expected a few hours to sleep off a hangover.

“Callie needs to get her hair done. The fumes are bad for him,” she scolded, and he looked back to his bride.

“You’re changing your hair?” he questioned with big eyes.

“Just a little bit,” she smiled, internally screaming. She’d come to this decision to alter her hair after talking herself out of going entirely blonde despite her curiosity for years pulling her the other direction, but now she wondered if he’d even notice.

“I guess I can get him,” he griped, leaning down to kiss Leo when Callie and his mother sucked their teeth in discontent.

“What time are people arriving?” Callie asked around Nick.

“Three, so we have a lot to do and a lot of cooking before people start showing up. That being said,” she grunted, standing at the head of the table with her glass of sweet tea raised. “I’d like to propose a toast and a thanks,”

Everyone hushed, reaching for their variety of drinks to hold up.

“We want to extend our thanks to Callie’s family who have graciously accepted us in, not to mention our son who came with a reputation,” she gestured at Nick, the table chuckling. “To everyone who’s helped and put up with my screaming,” she admitted to bashfully. “To my son, who I knew would be the father his own raised him to be, and now the husband I always knew he could be,” she smiled lovingly at Nick, his own grin goofy and adoring. Callie rubbed his arm, squeezing his wrist affectionately.

“And to Callie,” she cleared her throat, raising her glass. Callie’s smile dropped when she looked up, her anxiousness kicking into high gear. “It’s because of you my son smiled again, and it’s with your help he’s shown that beautiful baby in his arms such love. You weren’t only a gift in his life, but ours too, and no matter the paths you both might take from here on out, you’ll always have a place in our family. Cheeruk, mausan daughavas. Lat've bleukukun avhiuk famipak.” She finalized, her glass raised and Oleg following suit.

“I’d like to also say something,” Diego stood creakily, his age at last catching up to him after decades of back breaking work. He smoothed his hand down his church shirt, lifting his glass. “Mija, you haven’t always had the best of luck when it came to men, and to be honest I would’ve pulled my hair out if you had brought home another white boy,” he chuckled, the table following suit as Callie hid her face in despair. “But now I can rest easier at night knowing you have a man I would’ve hand-picked for you specially,” he tipped his head at Nick, the orc nodding once in return even though he was inwardly elated.

“I’m sorry the ones you were told growing up were your family didn’t make it here, but it’s their loss, cariña. If they can’t grow as much as you, let them leave. You’ve always been better than them. Nick,” he turned, startling his daughter’s groom.

“Thank you. You’re the standard I raised my daughters to expect, so thank you for taking care of her and Leonardo. I only want forever for you two.” He finished, his free hand resting on Luciana’s shoulder as she looked on at her daughter with watery eyes.

“I second that!” Rosie declared, Santi’s glass following his sister only to spill across the table's surface and onto her plate.

Her cheeks were hidden in her palms when they toasted, Dinara’s words whispered in translation into her ear by Nick after drinking to their parents speeches. He kissed her flushed cheek, promising the sincerity of her words. Her eyes wandered while Nick adored her secretly, watching their parents take turns hugging and speaking with smiles plastered across their faces. It helped ease some of the burns she’d been dealt when her family started RSVPing just to say they wouldn’t attend, and she wondered how much of it was because of Leo and how much was because of their choice to marry. Either way, she knew now who to keep up with.

The couple was dragged from their steamy bubble of secret kisses and whispers when Ward elbowed Nick insistently until he turned, motioning his head toward the door, but his hairless brows drew together.

“Are you okay?” he whispered, noting Ward’s lighter complexion.

He shook his head, waving his hand. “Drank too much,”

“They took our drinks-”

“Man let’s go!”

Nick turned back to Callie, a loose smile curling her lips.

“Is it time?” she asked, and he nodded, leaning in for another lengthy kiss. “If I get a call from Jake that one of his girls is shaking their asses in your face I’m gonna make sure you can’t make anymore babies,” she warned quietly, trying not to laugh when he gagged.

“I hid a nanny cam in the house so if I see a male stripper shoving his junk in your face I’m gonna throw you in the ocean,” Nick cracked back.

“I can’t swim!” she giggled, trying to frown.

“Yeah, you’ve been warned,” he kissed her before she could respond. “I love you, have a good night and be safe,”

“You be good,” she reminded, pursing her lips for another kiss before he lowered Leo into her arms and smooched him goodbye. “No tequila,”

He sucked air through his teeth, pointing at her. “I can’t promise that,” and he was off, following the others into the house after kissing his mom on the head. They grew rowdy once separated from their lovers except Matuk who was as stoic as ever, and they could be heard causing a commotion all the way to the cars until they were off.

“Ten bucks says they don’t make it past midnight,” Rosie announced.

“Make it twenty,” Oleg raised his beer, his bright smile tightening when Dinara elbowed him in the side before making her way over to Callie as the rest of their guests found separate conversations to delve into.

“Callie, I’d like to show you something we picked up today,” she said under her breath, tugging on her elbow.

“Oh?” she piped, tapping Rosie’s shoulder so she could deposit her hefty son into her arms. Rosie doted over him lovingly, endless kisses pressed into his cheeks as he was roused from his nap, but that would be her problem, now. By the time Leo was awake and gnawing angrily into his tia’s cheeks in retaliation, Dinara had led Callie into her room where the bed was lined with pressed and covered clothing, some decorations and linens hung over the small bench at the end. Callie wandered, her hands gravitating towards the colorful flowers protected in plastic boxes.

“Here, look,” Dinara called from the desk at the corner of the room.

The small lamp was flipped on when Callie was at her side, watching as she lifted the lid from a silver box carefully, but upon removing the satin material protecting whatever was underneath, her hands moved even more gingerly than before until a shining, silver plate looked up at them. Orkish letters were carved deep into its face, but the polished grooves were clean, elegant.

“Marriage Armor, it’s called. The bride wears the plate with her new name upon her back and the groom wears the bride's zodiac on his shoulders and chest,” she explained, a smaller pouch that she had in the top drawer of the desk emptying into Callie’s palm. The charms were attached to thin, dainty chains, and carved from a deep, grey metal shaped into bull heads.

Callie smiled, studying their details. “Nick will wear these?”

“Mhm. You’ll both wear the bracelets that are exchanged, but those are kept for the day of. Right now we need to get this on you to make sure it fits,” she explained, opening the pouch so Callie could deposit the charms back inside.

The ‘armor’ had length to it she at first couldn’t see between the satin covers. Her own sparkling chains braided across the shoulders as one long, jeweled piece ran the length of her back, stretching from the plate that spelled Jakoby. When Dinara had it balanced on her shoulders so she could clasp it at her front, she saw where the chains came together into the shape of the Taurus symbol. With delicacy she touched the pieces on her shoulders and at the center of her chest while it was adjusted at her back, her smile beaming. It was heavy- this was definitely some special mineral, for she’d never seen one of such weight be polished finely enough to catch even the smallest glimmer of these dim lights.

“Tomorrow you’ll glow during that sunset,” Dinara smiled, tugging the chains at either side of her shoulders. “Poor Nick will be so blindsided we might have to give his men a heads up,”

They giggled, Callie’s smile wavering when Dinara held her hands tightly, staring at her with glossy eyes. “These plates are traditional. A male’s mother hands them down to his bride if she approves, so these should have come from my own mother in law, but they didn’t,”

Callie’s smile fell. “What?”

“Oleg’s mother hates me. She wanted her boy to have the smiling, waxy wife who pops babies out like rats. So I had these made the day before we were married, and I wore them in front of her,” she grinned.

“Reclaimed the name?” Callie smirked.

Dinara nodded. “It’s a good name despite the reputation that came with it when you met my son,”

Callie only hugged her, their arms tightly wound one another in that moment. “Thank you,” she said, giving her a last squeeze before they both wiped their cheeks of any stray tears.

“Well it fits,” she giggled before the two got her out of the intricate chains and back into the sleek box.

“Come on then,” the orc sniffled, turning the light off. “Let’s finish the night.”

↠

Nick’s hand still hadn’t come down from shielding his eyes, but as long as Ward was emptying his dinner and three beers onto Sergey’s lawn, he wasn’t going to even bother glancing at him. His excitement had drained the entire two hours it took to get here, it’s gradual drip starting as soon as they’d left his parents.

“I’m fine, I just drank too fast,” were the kind of things Ward kept saying to excuse his deteriorating, sweating form, but Nick knew he’d heard him heaving into the toilet after calling Morn to ask exactly what she’d come down with. Still, he insisted he was fine the entire duration it took him to shower and change before they headed to Sergey’s next, but by the time they’d gotten in the car, Sergey was starting to look worse for wear, too.

As soon as the car had come to a stop, both of them were falling out, one running into the house and the other making it to the lawn before he lost his composure. Now, Nick was alone in this filthy mess after Matuk had ditched them, but Nick hadn’t expected him to go, really. Bachelor parties didn’t seem like his thing even though there was nothing to celebrate anymore.

“Juh- just gimme a min-” Ward choked, retching loudly.

“For three months I’ve dealt with puke almost daily,” Nick explained calmly, his eyes still hidden.

Daryl coughed.

“You’ve been hyping me up for this for weeks,”

Ward nodded, spit hanging off his bottom lip. “I’no,”

Nick dropped his hand and sighed when thirty seconds had passed- the longest yet- without him heaving, and he couldn't help laugh a little. Ward wasn’t the kind of person to ever show vulnerability even when he was hurt, so seeing him hunched over and whimpering meant taking a few photos should’ve been his top priority, but Nick showed mercy on his friend while the other was lost somewhere in his house likely calling Dura to cry.

“C’mon,” Nick groaned, lifting Ward’s limp body off the ground.

“I need t’go to Morn's,” he grunted, walking unsteadily beside him.

“She can come get you after I drop you off,” Nick used his lighter voice, clearing his throat when he realized what he was doing. “Sit down,”

Ward instead flopped into the backseat, exclaiming when his head smacked the door panel. He continued to wail when Nick used his foot to push his feet in, flinching at how loudly he protested.

“Jesus now I know why Sherri was such a bitch,” Nick mumbled, closing the door before Ward could scream at him. “Stay there,” he knocked against the window, turning towards the house. “Let me go check the other child…”

What started as Nick’s bachelor party he had looked forward to for weeks, had turned into a mini-pandemic between the parties involved- thank god they left his parents house when they did- and had resulted in Nick getting one giant man baby into bed with clean clothes after he was found on his bathroom floor, and cleaning the puke out of Ward’s car when he voided even more of himself while waiting. It hadn’t come without a cold scolding from Nick, demanding to know why he couldn’t have opened the door beside his head if he had enough power to sit up and spray everywhere, but Ward stopped listening when the words became languages he didn’t know.

He hollered and gagged the entire way back to driving Daryl home, bursting from the car as soon as he was parked, but that only meant helping clean this one up too.

After nearly three hours of scrubbing, and gagging, and screaming, Nick sat on Ward’s porch waiting for his Uber, a cold beer in hand. No amount of air freshener or borrowed cologne would mask the raw stench of vomit under his nails and on his clothes. He’d likely throw these away- his nose was too keen to allow back into his closet. Too bad; he really liked this shirt.

Night had at last crept over LA, leaving only a soft orange glow where the sun had slipped from. The night was humid, but cool, and the woven chair he sat in wasn’t half bad.

He looked at his phone, tracking the driver who was coming down the street.

He’d made the move multiple times to message Callie, but he couldn’t bring himself to halt her night, either. If she hadn’t messaged him about anything, that meant no sickness had befallen them either, right? Maybe they’d been lucky to avoid catching it from Daryl. He texted his mom at least, warning of a stomach bug floating around and to keep a closer eye on Leo.

A compact little sedan rolled up, and Nick groaned. Now he had to squeeze into that.

What am I even gonna do all night… he pondered, walking towards the car. He chuckled. Sleep.

Nick slipped in the open door, closing it noisily behind himself before spinning the bolt shut. His palm popped up just as he smacked his inner arm, his keys flying onto the counter and sliding noisily across its surface.

Never, not even after his most grueling days at the academy or after an even more grueling workout did he ever desire a shower and sleep like this moment, kicking his shoes off excitedly.

“Nick?”

He froze, his head half in the cabinets looking for something to take with him. Nick leaned out of the kitchen entry, his ears twitching. Was that…?

“Cal?” he called back warily.

“Maybe,” she called back, and he was off towards the bedroom he hadn’t even noticed had been shut.

The TV was mumbling lowly with her favorite show, but she wasn’t on the bed like he expected. Instead, sitting on the carpet on a folded blanket surrounded by her phone and wires that made up her headphones and charger with a pre-roll between her fingers, he found her sitting beside the cracked sliding glass door so the smoke could wisp out into the night.

Her eyes were just as wide as his, the pair speechless.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, almost afraid to move. Where’s Leo?

“What are you doing here?” she returned, knowing he’d seen the joint in her hold.

“Ward and Sergey-”

“Got sick?” she interrupted, her mouth tightening. He nodded, snorting.

“The girls too?”

She nodded, relaxing a little bit. “I thought you were off already doing the bachelor party thing so I just came home… and left Leo with your parents,”

“Yeah I didn’t call them either,” he confided softly, licking his bottom lip.

“So…” she looked around. Why was this so awkward!?

Nick watched her, leaned back on his hands after pulling a fresh shirt over his scrubbed skin. His head lolled to the side, watching her at last let out the insane breath she’d pulled in. The smoke from this one smelled foul compared to the scented trails from a cartridge, but he wouldn’t speak out against it.

By the time he’d come out of the shower, she had gone through half its length and her eyes were already falling shut. Eight months of sobriety brought her tolerances way down, but this was also the first time in months he hadn’t seen her chewing her inner lips or bouncing her knee. What a wonderful remedy this was, but the stigma attached to it would always leave Nick hesitant.

“That wine is gonna knock you out tomorrow,” he mumbled, grinning when she swatted sleepily at his foot.

“I thought we already agreed you’d catch me,” she reminded, twisting the butt in the ashtray before looking at him.

“Only if I can get really shit faced in San Diego,” he whined, and she laughed.

“Duh, me too,”

He smiled, watching her fidget around on the blanket and fix her hair hanging around her shoulders. She looked down at the ring on her hand, smiling adoringly at its face then clutching her palm to her chest. Soft humming came from her, a soft sway back and forth starting.

“What’re you doing?” he asked, knowing she’d fallen into her dreamy haze.

Callie shrugged, looking up at him. Those balmy eyes were glowing, her cheeks flushing. “I can’t believe we’re getting married tomorrow. It feels like it’s taken decades to get here but it’s only been… pfft three years? And now we have our baby?” she pouted, holding her own face.

“Wow,” Nick mumbled, smiling at her in amusement.

“I shouldn’t have left him there, I need to call your parents-”

“Cal,” he called, catching her frantic eyes. “He’s fine. Take a breath,”

She paused before nodding, sighing instead of taking an appropriate breath.

“I wanna be on whatever planet you’re on,” his words nudged her away from that guilt, a little smile lifting his spirits when he worried about her mental state. Sometimes the break-through anxiety was sneaky.

Her brow perked up, her smile growing devious.

“I can’t,” he reiterated.

“You can,”

“I can’t,”

“It would be out of your system in two days. We’ll be back way after that,” she too reminded him of the miraculous gift that was an Orcs metabolism, but Nick was a faithful worker and had his own, brittling views on the earth-made herb she relied on. “You didn’t get enough that first time,”

“It tastes like ass,” he defended, growing weary when Callie sashayed towards him with the ashtray and lighter pinned under her palm. “It makes my lips dry,”

“I’m not stopping until I hear ‘no’,” she clarified, sitting between his spread legs stretched across the floor and lighting the end of the blunt.

Still, Nick remained silent, watching her suck in her own small hit until the embers were crackling at the end. “I won’t make you do it if you don’t want to,” she told him, sensing his hesitation. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. If he liked the buzz from drinking, he was sure he’d like the buzz from smoking, but his encounters in the past not to mention the particular one that had left him in a room full of laughing people during a bad trip left bitter emotions.

But he trusted Callie when reminding him she’d never do such a thing, and she trusted her when she said, “You’ll like it,”

“And I’ve seen how jittery you’ve been,” she noted, patting the hand that had moved to rest on her thigh when he sat forward.

“Who wouldn’t be?” he asked, pinching the shrinking joint between his fingers when she passed it. Then she sat back on her bottom, crossing her legs.

“It’s your decision, baby. I want you to have a good time but not if you’re uncomfortable,” she told him, knowing even in her bombed state that despite Nick accepting this more over the years and his own curiosity growing, pressuring someone wasn’t how you did it.

He rolled it a little bit between his fingers, glancing at her with his critical, yellow eyes.

Ugh, he’s so yummy-

“How long do I hold my breath?” his voice disrupted her thoughts.

“As long as you can,”

Nick sighed, looking at it one last time. “Fuck it, why not,”

Callie’s eyes widened every second he kept inhaling, caught between warning him and possibly making him panic or letting him get one huge drag in instead of coughing through a bunch of little ones, but by the time she decided, he was done. Silent, holding his breath, his eyes already watering when he handed it back.

Without looking she snuffed it out, waiting. “Nick?”

He exhaled loudly, a cloud of smoke blowing around her that she swatted towards the cracked door. The coughing started before he even finished his breath, the next one bubbling up his throat before the previous one finished. His throat and nose burned, and he could’ve sworn he felt his trachea vibrating with every ragged cough.

“Cough as hard as you can, it helps,” she coached, rubbing his back when he rolled onto his stomach to smother his teary eyed face in the carpet.

The ferocity of the coughing rang down his arms, his head throbbing when he managed to sit back up, but with the calming of his body came… warmth.

Nick cleared his throat over and over, wiping the back of his hands across his eyes, but the warmth surrounding his head was making it hard to keep his eyes open. They felt like they could fall into a slumber at any moment, but his mind was as wakeful as ever. He glanced down at his body; why did he feel so… floaty? He cleared his throat again of its scratch while rocking side to side, tensing his arms. Upon lifting his hand, he found he still had full coordination.

He snorted, coughing a little.

“Are you okay?” His head snapped around, finding Callie staring at him in suspense. “How do you feel?”

He inhaled. “I feel like there’s cotton in m’head,” he mumbled, an eye closing. “Like fuzzy cotton,”

She repressed giggles. “But are you okay?”

He nodded loosely, looking around their cluttered room. “It’s like being drunk but sober,”

“I’ve never been able to explain it that well,” Callie grieved, her arms throwing up into the air. “Are you gonna be one of those insightful people when you’re stoned?”

Nick blinked, his eyes reflecting when Callie snapped a photo of him. “Who?” he asked.

“Oh my god.” Callie mumbled.

“Damn,” Nick exclaimed under his breath, his face twisted in horror.

“I know,” Callie nodded, her knee draped over his thigh.

“Could you imagine…?

“No. It’s bad enough we have dragons,” she said against his chest. Every blink felt like eternity.

“Imagine if they did that,” Nick pictured, his body shuddering under hers. “What’s this movie called?”

“Princess Mononoke,”

He scoffed; no way he was remembering that. Nick took a final bite of their ordered dinner, chewing slowly as he stretched to rest the bowl on his nightstand. Maybe this would finally calm his voracious appetite, but as long as Callie kept opening that bag of Doritos, he was hopeless.

“I’m gonna gain thirty pounds by tomorrow,” he mumbled into her hair, the both of them chuckling.

“I never lost my thirty,” she pouted comically, stuffing another chip into her mouth.

“Damn, what that mouth do?” he teased around a yawn.

“Yo mama,” she mumbled, giggling when he snorted.

Silence lulled between the two snuggled and surrounded by snacks in the bed, both of their minds lost somewhere in the clouds as they re-watched various Netflix series.

He thought he’d heard her slip in and out of sleep earlier, but truth be told, he could’ve been listening to himself breathe. There had been a few times his reddened eyes snapped open to be in the middle of a completely different episode, but mentioning it would be admitting he was falling asleep which he continued to adamantly deny. With a blind reach, he retrieved his phone from the nightstand.

Just a little past midnight, but way too late. He was enjoying this too much, though. Nick was only selfish in the sense that sometimes he just wanted to snuggle right up to Callie and feel her body against his. The last time they’d had a moment like this without Leo in the way was at the beginning of her pregnancy, and laying like this only made him realize how long ago that was.

“We should be in bed,” Nick mumbled, rubbing his eye.

“We are in bed,” she laughed, sliding her cheek up to look at him.

“You know what I mean. Big day tomorrow,” he looked down at her, reaching to move some of her hair from her cheek so he could better see those big eyes that always sparkled.

“Everytime I think about it I get so nervous,” she whispered.

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. It feels like that first time I met you at Santa Monica. I stress ate like seven funnel cakes. I was so anxious,” she admitted shyly.

“I changed a bunch of times. Couldn’t decide on anything,”

“Oh you did good, sir,” she winced, biting her bottom lip. “You could’ve drowned in my panties,”

“I would’ve if your sister hadn’t’ve interrupted,” he grumbled, forever bitter.

“Oh hush, it was a sign we would be together forever,”

“How so?” he questioned, twisting in her direction a little.

“I would’ve never called a guy back if that happened with anyone else, but you were so perfect that I swallowed the embarrassment and saved my horniness for another day,”

Nick smiled, a big goofy one. “Shut up,”

“Shut me up then,” she came back with, fast as a whip.

His eyes dropped to her lips, lingering before coming back to her eyes. “Isn’t that bad luck?”

“It was bad luck when we both ended up home,” she whispered, the weight of her hand once on his chest now coming to stretch across his meat.

That was enough convincing for Nick.

Callie was a little slower getting over him, but her heated kisses kept him concentrated on what they both wanted. When she was in her spot sitting in his lap, he could better taste her tongue after pulling her chest flush against his, his strong hands quickly continuing to her round ass he pulled back and forth over his growing dick. A steadying hand against his chest meant he could leave her skin that was marked red where he grabbed, her hips resuming the motions.

With his bottom lip pinched between his teeth, he easily pulled her loose sleeping shorts aside, revealing her plump pussy lips.

He could already feel how warm she was through his sweats, shortening his breaths in anticipation.

“You’re so hot,” he admired, looking up in time for her hair to fan around them when leaning down to kiss him. Strong, sinewy arms wrapped tightly around her waist, grounding himself to the angel that squirmed in his hold deliciously. Silently, inwardly, he thanked those who had blessed him with such a girl, promising to worship more as soon as he was done with this.

A firm tug on the ends of her shirt had it flying past her fingertips, thrown to the floor.

Callie gripped the railing to the headboard when he pulled her chest into his open mouth, a long lick gliding over a hardened nipple that had goosebumps fire up her arms. She snickered when he smacked his lips a few times, moving onto the other side. An old technique had her limp in his hold, her thighs tightening at his sides. He encouraged her hips to keep moving, his cock desperate for attention, but her mind was only a pool of melted pleasure at that point.

A hard gasp fell from her wet lips when he graced her clit with tight circles, hanging off of his neck to look down at his hand flat against her lower stomach as his thumb massaged her into a trance. Gradually her eyes fell shut, hair sticking to her cheeks while she panted softly.

His loose smile made her rock into his touch. “You want it already, don’t you?” he asked quietly, his voice vibrating with growls; Callie could only nod. He pecked her sloppily. “Get naked,”

Callie stumbled off into the center of the bed to kick off her shorts and socks, moving onto the food and remotes and phones that were now being swept onto the floor without a care.

Nick’s shirt and sweats had already been tossed off, but now as he rummaged through the drawer of his bedside table, his excitement was plummeting. Here was the box, but…

“We’re out of condoms,” he announced, looking back at her sat naked at the center of the bed on her knees with her dishevelled hair a mess around her shoulders. It only added to the tragedy of the situation.

“So?” she asked, her fingers drumming against her thighs.

Nick stood straight, his head cocking.

Since she’d been cleared for sex there hadn’t been a session they forgot to use protection, no matter how it dampened the sensation. He’d done it for her, for he wasn’t the one who’d be carrying anymore surprise babies, although it was the memory of her sweet, bare pussy around his unsheathed cock that helped bring him to an end, now. He’d wanted to ask her, even just for one quick slide in, but Nick had always assumed this was the new norm until either of them were snipped.

“Are you- really?” he asked.

“I hate them, Nick. I’m so over using them,” she exhaled, her shoulders drooping. “I’ve been trying to be good but if I have to ride your dick one more time with a balloon over it-”

She yelped, her legs pulled from under her ass and Nick finding his spot between her flailed knees when she realized what happened.

The mood shifted again, and suddenly they were in perfect sync.

Her knees drew upwards when the top of his thighs pressed under her bottom, his hand finding its place at the bend of her leg that was closest to her chest.

She made it up onto an elbow when he spit at his tip pressed against her entrance, her hand hovering against his belly.

“I’ll go slow,” he soothed, meeting her eyes. The first time they’d reunited in bed, his excitement resulted in hurting her, and from that came the need to remind him to be gentle, even this far down the road. A guilt he’d always carry, but he’d work on fixing it.

It didn’t burn this time his head popped in, his thick shaft following until she was filled to his base. Her shoulders fell back with a loud sigh while his eyes slammed shut, pressing to her as tightly as he could. He’d dived into a pool of ecstasy, sending strong shivers up and down his spine as he basked in her heat.

The stinging tug of a condom was at last absent, and there was only Nick’s velvet skin gliding against hers, creating the friction she so wildly desired.

“Baby,” she called, holding the hand at her leg when he stared down at where they were joined. His dilated eyes landed on hers, a low snarl curling his lips when he withdrew only to slip back in.

Her head rolled back in time with her eyes, a loud moan rumbling under the hand that slid up his chest when he rested forward on his hands, her knee hooked around his chiseled arm. He’d draw out until her heat was kissing his head, just so he could feel that delicious pressure before pushing back in. Nick leaned into one hand so he could touch her, dragging his rough hands up and down her body that gravitated towards his caresses. When her pussy bucked into his thrust, a surprised moan came from him, an eager thrust bouncing her.

A low, rumbling growl moved into her when he yanked her hips up in line with his, his nostrils flaring as he scented them together like this.

“Do it,” she smiled, her feet planted into the sheets behind him.

Their eyes locked during the time he adjusted his feet beneath himself, his breaths deep and loud. A few leisure bucks were her warmup, and then came that smirk. She bowed until she balanced on her shoulder blades, his grunts and chuffs nothing compared to the singing made in his name during his fucking. He was a force driven purely by instinct; the need to fill his girl again, to lay claim to what would officially be his that day.

The slapping of their bodies coming together drowned out the TV beside them, Callie’s resounding cries piled atop his raucous moans as he shoved his way into her body again and again, her juices covering them as he pounded that spot hidden deep between her tightening walls.

Her ass was dropped from his hold so he could lean forward for a kiss, her mind spinning when he rolled her on top of him.

With a flip of her head to move her hair off her sticky back, Callie sat straight, her fingertips guiding him back in as her knees slid out until she was sitting flat on him, flinching when his tip found the back of her pussy.

God, she was so small in his hands when he held her cinched waist; if he stuck his thumbs out, they could touch.

A deep moan rang in his chest when she snapped her hips back and forth, her sweet cunt massaging his entire length. When a dip of her center was particularly low, she’d gasp, holding her stomach where it felt he was poking, but a wide smile always followed those overpowering shocks of spine curling bliss.

Nick held steadfast to her hips, guilty in keeping her flat against himself so there was the added friction on his head.

“Oh fuck,” he drawled, his hand landing back into the sheets.

“Nick-” she gasped, her hand flying to his chest. “I’m-”

His last burst of energy was used flipping them again so she was spread below him, his hands hooking under her knees to push back into the bedding beside her ribs.

There was no more words as he poked his way back in, pistoning into her with such power her toes curled, her arms falling limp above her head when her climax came crashing around her. In an instant, she was stiff as a board, her legs strong enough to fight past his hold and stretch straight in tight trembles at his sides as he continued. When she could catch her breath, she shouted, a deep flush blooming across her cheeks and chest. Nick watched with a proud smile as she convulsed under him, her silent mumbles barely words as she came down from her high.

Her limp thighs shook mightily in his hold when he pushed them apart, their bodies touching in a paused moment so he could adore her with soft kisses.

She was still breathless as he brushed his lips across her jaw, her soft throat pulsing with the blood racing through her. Her pussy throbbed dully around him compared to the fist like hold he barely made it through moments ago.

A soft whisper in his ear brought the tempo back up, but Nick wanted to stay like this.

A beauty such as her was only admired best this close, and even though she’d found her climax, she whimpered below him, holding his face as he fucked her sweetly. Her ankles locked behind him, a heady groan to follow before he dropped his face beside hers.

“Should I cum on your stomach?” he panted, his thrusts weakening as the pleasure peaked.

“Inside me,” she kissed into his cheek, tightening the hold with her legs. “Cum inside me baby,”

The hand lost in her hair gripped her roots, a loud hiss coming from between her teeth when his entire body tightened and jerked against her flushed cunt. The screaming engine of Nick’s orgasm overtook him like a wave would at the beach, ringing from every end of his body and back to his center that spilled into his ecstatically beautiful bride to be. He grunted with every thick stream of semen forced into the space they both snuggly occupied, slowly stilling until they were both a heaving pile of sweaty parts and cloudy minds.

He worried he’d crush her the longer he laid over her, but the soft gliding of her hands up and down his back were too good to pass up. He exhaled, his face buried between the mattress and her head. “Fuck,”

Callie giggled, her cheek leaning into his so he’d force himself up to look at her. The urgency was gone in their kisses, but now he could feel how sleepy she was.

“Ready?” he asked against her mouth, only moving when she nodded. Her thighs trembled when he dragged out of her, bringing a thick stream of the nectar he’d left behind.

“Oh I can feel that,” she grimaced, sitting up on her elbows warily. It wasn’t clear at that point if it was the weed or sex that had left her feeling like her head was vacant.

“You should see it,” he smirked, his cocky pride coming through. “How many siblings did you want Leo to have?”

“Ha,” she shouted. “Good luck getting me pregnant ever again. My body said one and done,” she grunted sitting up, scurrying off to the bathroom after Nick had hoisted her up. He didn’t answer, and wouldn’t. Callie adored the idea of having a big family, but the night the topic came up when Leo was two months old, it only ended in her confiding in Nick that she felt she’d never be so lucky again. She wasn’t wrong in saying her body would likely fight off pregnancy for years, maybe endlessly if they ever tried again. Where it once happened so effortlessly, the time following to get where they were now had left them both a little… doubtful.

Nick yanked the blanket off their bed, tossing it beside the door so he could flop into the cool sheets of the mattress after turning off the lights and TV. His arms were already open when she came wobbling back in, her naked body collapsing into his. They rolled and wiggled until they found their spots, her head tucked under his chin and their legs tangled.

“We broke like four traditions,” she mumbled through a closed jaw.

“Thinking about it, I don’t think it applies to us,” he yawned; the sleepiness was at last getting to him. She looked up at him curiously.

“Our whole relationship is taboo. Curses don’t apply to morally incorrect choices,” he explained, laughing when she did.

“Yeah I guess you’re right,” she settled, her soft smile lingering when he rubbed her arm. The soft breeze from their ceiling fan moved her loose hair around his arm, tickling his skin, but the gentle strokes across his chest from her was lulling him into sleep.

“You’re not gonna bail on me tomorrow, right?” she asked suddenly, and his eyes opened.

He leaned away from her so he could better see her face when she looked up. “Why would you ask that?”

“I had to ask, my mind wouldn’t let me put it to rest,” she sighed. “I’m sorry,”

“Hey,” he pulled her chin up, holding her face. “I’ve been trying to get you to marry me for years, remember?”

She giggled, nodding. “What if right when I said yes you were like ‘fuck, she said yes, what do I do now?’”

“Oh my god that brain of yours,” he sighed, laying back down to pull her tight against his chest. “I’ll prove it to you when I’m waiting at the altar,”

“Promise?” she asked, her big eyes already closed. He pushed some hair aside, her lids fluttering a moment.

“Always.”

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did i plant a seed in this chapter? are those church bells in the distance? honeymoon in san diego where they have the best tacos HWHAT?

only 3 chapters left! ;_; thanks for reading, my loves! ❤

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illyrianwingspans · 5 years ago

Text

Do Not Go Gentle: Grave Digger

Link to song: Grave Digger (stripped) by Matt Maeson (my absolute fave artist)

Synopsis: A wedding. Kind of.

TW: Violence, domestic abuse, domestic violence, dark thoughts, mention of self-harm and suicidal ideation.

Ao3 Link

Chapter 10: Grave Digger

The dress was monstrous. When I’d first tried it on, I thought it was a joke. Something Ianthe had picked out to make me laugh. But when I saw the joy and approval in her face, I realized the grave mistake I’d made in even setting foot in the thing. She’d called over the shopkeeper without a moment’s hesitation to announce that we’d made our decision, though I hadn’t even said a thing.

It didn’t matter anyways. Weddings weren’t my thing, and I knew Ianthe had better taste than me. She knew that this would probably make Tamlin happy. Gods knew that I would’ve picked a dozen dresses before even nearing this one.

And the mess and tangle of lingerie that I was wearing below this had me sweating and itching as I paced the entrance of the wide double doors leading into the church. I couldn’t even scratch—I wouldn’t know where to begin amidst the layers of tule and chiffon. The corset also made it hard to breathe. I’d balked when Alis had first presented it to me when she aided me in dressing, cursed everyone and everything as she’d pulled the strings taut and nearly squeezed the life out of me, yet appreciated the effect of it nonetheless. Though I was already thin enough as it was.

“Are you almost ready?” Alis asked, her face bubbling with joy and excitement. I nodded my head in affirmation, trying to mimic her expression, but couldn’t help as my thoughts wandered to my family.

I’d sent the invitation. I’d even called my father during those months of boredom, several times—fruitlessly. No one would walk me down the aisle, not that I needed it. I could walk myself. And I didn’t need my sisters as bridesmaids, my sisters who hadn’t deigned to speak to me in years. Alis would walk before me and hold my bouquet. White peonies, roses and baby’s breath. It was so enormous that my hands were lost in them.

As though I was hearing it through water, the string quartet began to play in the distance through the closed doors before us. Ianthe was already in there, finishing last minute details, ordering everyone in their places, and was probably gushing with delight at this very moment.

“Alright, it’s time,” Alis beamed, and I nodded my head hurriedly. Panic squeezed my lungs as the doors opened and Alis began walking ahead in her gold satin slip.

Everyone stood, people I had seen at office gatherings, this or that party—my list of invites had been extremely short. Most of my friends were already in the wedding party, anyway. My family hadn’t showed up, which wasn’t to be a surprise. And Rhysand—

I hadn’t bothered inviting him or Cassian. I knew Tamlin would’ve said no anyways.

The first step I took was shaky. Alis was nearly to the end, and I could only just be seen at the mouth of the church. Finally, people turned where they stood to take in the sight of me—baubled and made up like a dazzling doll. Murmurs of excitement and approval ran through the gathered crowd.

And there, at the podium with the minister and Lucien at his side, Tamlin stood in his white tuxedo and black bowtie. His face was set in a full, dazzling smile as he took in the sight of me, and his green eyes were enough to have me melting. I took another step, ready to join us together, ready to step into the next chapter of our lives—

I looked down. To the white, velvet carpet that��d been laid on the church’s sandy, tan floors, and was transported to a memory that surfaced a few mere weeks ago.

“Flowers,” Ianthe said, clicking her pen against her lips. She’d invited me up to her office to discuss the finalizations of colour schemes, seating charts and the photo-booth (I didn’t know why we’d need a bloody photo-booth if we had a photographer already) while Tamlin finished up for the last hour of the day. I was still jittery after passing by Hum’s on the building’s main floor, and tried to ignore the intrusive thoughts trying to jam their way into my consciousness.

“Um, whatever fits the scheme. White?”

Ianthe thought it over for a moment, her eyes flicking upwards as he tried to imagine it in her mind. “Yes, I guess that would work with your bouquet. For everything else, though—”

“I don’t care, honestly. Whatever fits the scheme.” I had no clue what the ‘scheme’ was, but I had to pretend as though I was reading her emails and was actually invested into this entire affair. Another thought of the shop entered my mind, and I blurted out, “Except red.”

“Hmm?” Ianthe clicked away at her tablet, eyes stuck to her screen.

I repeated, “Any colour, except red.” She nodded absentmindedly, and I continued to flick through pictures of flowers, eyes training on the peonies.

Before, scattered perfectly haphazardly across the aisle leading me to my soon-to-be husband, were red rose petals, drops of blood speckled across the white.

When I looked up at Tamlin, I saw that the handkerchief in his pocket was gold and red.

Three hundred people blurred and melded together as they stared at me, dressed in this ivory gown. I shouldn’t be wearing this. Because I was a fraud. Because my hands, clutching the bouquet for dear life, were so filthy.

Everyone else was thinking it as their eyes drank in my every step. They had to be.

Each second extended longer than the last. Every pace closer to Tamlin, though, felt too fast—

He stood there, his chin held high, his eyes glistening as the warm afternoon sun glinted across the velvet accents of his tux. Ahead of me, a cluster of red petals loomed—just like the pool I kneeled in next to Isaac’s dead body.

I stopped in my tracks. Ten feet before the dais, I just…stopped.

Lucien’s brow furrowed. Tamlin only stepped forward and extended his hand, the unwavering confidence in his features begging me to close the distance between us. Hundreds of eyes watched me as I stood there, unmoving. My heart was pounding in my ears.

I was going to vomit.

The sunlight was too harsh, the people surrounding me crowding in, trapping me, until there was barely any air left for my aching lungs to breathe. As inescapable as the vows I was about to make, binding him to me for life, to this broken, weary soul.

Forever—I would never get free of myself, of my mind, of the beast that roiled within me, the one that’d pulled that trigger, the one that spent every waking and sleeping moment stuck in that car, kneeling in that storage room—

“Feyre,” Tamlin said, a small smile on his lips, but there was panic in his eyes. It was nothing like the panic within my chest, a bird flapping its wings, begging to break free. I only stared back, wide-eyed, unable to move.

If I turned away, people would whisper. If I walked out—I’d find myself completely and utterly alone in this world. But I couldn’t make it to the dais. Not for my sake, but for his—he couldn’t shackle himself to me. I wouldn’t let him.

Butcher. Killer. Murderer of innocents.

My foot stumbled as I tried to retreat, but a piercing noise broke the silence as the middle-most stained-glass window of the church seemed to burst, then fall to the floor in scattered, broken pieces.

People screamed, falling back, and many fell to the floor as the resounding sound of a gunshot echoed throughout the large space. I just stood there, mouth agape, unable to move. Everyone else was on the ground—I looked over to see Tamlin sprawled on the dais, Lucien and Ianthe beside him. But I could only stand there.

Frozen. Paralyzed.

Then I felt heat, heat in my hands, and I looked down to realize that the flowers had been completely destroyed. They were shaking, and I realized it was my hands—shaking, just like they had been when I clutched that gun.

And to my right, embedded in the shredded wood of the pew, was a bullet.

I sat in bed, the blanket curled around my shoulders, staring straight ahead as Tamlin made another phone call.

It hadn't taken long for everyone to clear out of the church. People fled, alarms blared in the distance, and I remembered Tamlin yelling for me. But I'd only fallen to my knees, unable to move as I was brought back to my trembling legs buckling, falling to the cold cement blanketed in warm blood. His arms had wrapped around me, and I'd clutched him hard as he near dragged me out of the church, down the aisle of blood, to safety where the police were stationed.

Rounds and rounds of questions. The angle of the bullet, the timeline of events. Tamlin frowned the entire time I carefully recounted walking down the aisle, and I left out the whole detail of me barely making it to the dais. Hours went by. Questions, security measures, phone calls and possible suspects. They'd scoped out the buildings nearby and found nothing. The security footage was requested from them all and would be looked over meticulously in the coming days.

Still, as I wrapped myself tighter in the warmth of the sherpa throw, I couldn't help but think of Rhys's warning yesterday. How I'd blatantly ignored it, and purposefully kept it secret from the cops.

Tamlin sighed and ended the call. His words had all blurred together throughout the day, I could barely decipher one from the next anymore. No, all I could focus on was the terror, the guilt—

Because bullet or not, I wasn't sure I would've walked down that aisle today. And that...

That's what terrified me the most.

Tamlin's eyes met mine. I didn't know what it was about the expression on his face, the exhaustion that weighed down his shoulders, but my eyes filled with tears. Chin quivering, I looked away, unable to face him.

“Feyre,” he murmured gently, then kneeled on the bed, climbing into it until he sat beside me. A sob tore from my mouth as I turned into him, clutching his shoulder as I buried my face into his chest.

“Why?” he asked. The betrayal in his voice stung. “Do you...” he trailed off, his voice thick with tears. “Do you not want to marry me?”

I looked up, telling myself that he at least deserved some sort of explanation.

“No, Tamlin. I love you. I love you.” My fingers trembled as I ran my hand through my hair to pull it away from my face. “It's just... I don't know what it was. I had a panic attack.”

His face hardened. We didn't usually talk like this, but it felt good to say it. To know he would listen. I continued, face heating with embarrassment, “There were red roses. And I looked at them and all I could think of was...” I couldn't finish the sentence.

He knew, though. He knew, because he sighed and rolled away from me until he was standing once again, pacing the length our bed. I shifted until I was kneeling at the foot of it, sheets pooling around my thighs. For a few moments, he was just silent, until he finally turned to me with a sharp glint in his eyes.

“Why couldn’t you have just tried? Held it together, for once?”

My expression dropped into a placid, stony one, filled with contempt. It was like all the blood left my veins and I was left with only icy, lethal disdain. “I’m sorry if I inconvenienced you today. Really. My panic is completely controllable, I just decided, I chose to make a fool of myself in front of you and all your friends.” Then I stood, unable to be beneath him, below him. I saw, I saw the rage that was beginning to burn his eyes, and I knew what it would bring—

And I didn’t care.

“Why aren’t we talking about the fact of how you inconvenienced me today, Tamlin? About how that bullet that nearly killed me was all because of the situation you put me in? For your company, and yourself?”

He pointed an accusatory finger at me as the blood filled his face. “You don’t get to say that. Everything I do is for you. For us. Don’t you dare tear me apart for the sacrifices I make.”

I laughed bitterly. “Sacrifice? You sit up in your ivory office pushing papers, signing deals and sweet talking crooked businessmen while I am nearly beaten to death in the trenches of your dirty work. So don’t fucking utter that word around me ever again.”

I turned away, prepared to barricade myself in the bathroom, take a cold shower maybe to cool the rage simmering my blood. Only I felt his hand wrapping around my wrist, pulling me back to face him.

Before I knew it, I was against the wall, clutching at the hand wrapped around my neck, squeezing.

No air. There was no air in my lungs, and I choked, sobbed, eyes wide with panic as Tamlin’s furious face was all I could see. Black spots danced at the edge of my vision, and I kicked, kicked with all my might—

He released me. I fell to the floor, hacking, heaving, trying to shove as much air as possible in and out of my chest. Everything burned, and my fingers felt numb. Tamlin didn’t say a word as I kneeled there, a trembling hand running over the aching skin of my neck.

He didn’t say a word as he walked away.

I’d pushed him. I’d pushed him too hard, and I knew how he’d react. I knew he’d do this.

In the distance, a door slammed shut, and I knew he’d be sleeping on the couch in his study, tonight.

I didn’t care.

I didn’t care as I pulled myself up and half staggered into the washroom. I didn’t care as tears streamed down my cheeks, descending my bruised neck tentatively as if not to disturb the skin anymore than it’d already been violated. I didn’t care as I drew a bath, sank into its waters, and stared up at the ceiling wishing the human body wasn't so adamant on staying alive, that I could breathe the water into my weak lungs and finally have it all be over.

I didn’t care about what Tamlin had done to me. Not anymore. Because the cruel, black wicked part of my soul, the one that murmured in my ear every waking second—butcher, killer, murderer of innocents—

It knew. It knew that I deserved it.

#dngg #acotar #acomaf #acowar #a court of thorns and roses #sarah j maas #sjm #acotar fanfic #acotar fanfiction #feyre #rhysand #feysand #feysand fanfic #feysand fanfiction

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nathlomon · 5 years ago

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very rough concepts for apophistuck

so today ive been questioning over what planets there would be for the whole story n stuff. bc its not just hanging around but a buncha other stuff. so. yea. each so far has like 2 level varieties- the “architecture” levels w/built stuff n the “natural” ones which are just like the ecosystem around it. but there will be more.

(i accidentally turned this into somewhat of a narrative as i kept writing, sorryy)

Gaia

The “Earth” setting of the story. It has a very biology-based, natural setting. There are cave levels, eventually the player is brought to other ones where they fight prokaryotic beasts as they evolve in little-oxygen, volcanic Proto-Earth. Godzilla is available in this setting as the level progresses into the city. There they meet an enormous human congregation, panicked, in one of the final levels, where monsters flood the scenery. In the end of the world they are chased by a beast that resembles some sort of...Miasmad Jr.

Stygius

Stygius is a planet- well, not really a planet, but sort of like an underworld setting of Gaia, full of mountains and ghostly opponents. Hokmuto is unlocked upon completing the first level. Lots of large spiderlike beasts trot around shack-like structures and many slightly bigger that Miasmad Jr in Gaia. In some levels, there are no opponents though the focus is more on some sort of visual storytelling, talking about the story of many game aspects, one of the visions being of Solomon and Red fighting, as well as some sort of funeral pyre being offered to a giant monster as some sort of sacrifice. Some revelations are made about certain characters and the boss is like a giant aquatic beast dwelling inside a lake, resembling a fish-squid mix. As it dies, its body dissolves in the water into a mass of garbled graphics that resemble somewhat intelligible game glyphs.

Audacium

The entire world has a rather industrial look and organic robotics aesthetic. where horned grey abstractions of monsters climb on top of walls and attempt to attack the player, who is made incredibly small and whose attacks deal much lesser damage than usual for the first half of the planet’s levels, which are some of the hardest of the game. Upon completing them, the opposite happens and the player’s usual size doubles, as well as its attack power and health- but so do the enemies (...so the game doesn’t really change that much from normal). The colors of the assorted forms of the enemies seem to be sequential, with groups of enemies ranging from red, to orange, all the way until purple and a slightly-pinker purple, where the level layout starts to resemble more of a river platform thing more than anything. The boss resembles a large pink human/fish/salamander thing with a large rainbow-y trident for a weapon. It towered over the player and often opens its mouth to reveal a large robotic cannon that shoots lasers at the player. Upon defeat, the monster drops a small, black pixelated mass that can be picked up.

Secular

A planet that has plain-looking natural features that are like the surface of a moon, with opponents that look like half-alien lich beasts. It also contains levels that take place in what seem like space colony formations with mostly inorganic enemies, like traps that can be found around, like rockets and explosives. Every once in a while scientist-like figures with elk heads can be seen using giant syringes to take life from the player, with every wave of them being completed by a giant monster that resembles an upside-down rotting elk head which “walks” with its antlers and spits out swarms of blowflies. The final boss resembles a strange, lanky white form (somewhat like Not-Gezora) with a large featureless head, and at death it has an animation of it melting down into diminutive, spider-like animals.

Baroque

A world that is marked by nearly full darkness. What makes the natural levels even remotely visible are the impaled poles in the background, which contain horned, humanoid skulls with bright yellow lights radiating from its jaw gaps and eye sockets, like a jack-o-lantern. Enemies often resemble wormlike beasts that stay underground until they sense they player, which is when they attack. Multiple-headed bats are also other enemies seen in the natural levels, with a miniboss being eventually fought that resembles a beastly cleric. The final blows aren’t the ones that defeat it, but rather a giant sword that swings and decapitates it.

The other variety of levels involve colorful and unusually cheery church-like structures depicting stained glass art of morbid events, strangely enough. The level includes enemies such as greyish flying cherubim/seraphim and quadrupedal caprine monsters wearing what look like nun robes. The boss of that level is a large dark grey monster with messy white and black face markings and long, distorted purple horns with multi colored splotches. At death, a cutscene plays, and text that says “ORDER HAS BEEN VIOLATED BY YOUR GALL. THE MARK IN YOUR DISOBEDIENT FLESH SHOWS A PREMONITION OF YOUR DOOM.” Upon viewing this, Kaiju!Janavo becomes available as a player character.

Hiraeth

A stage where everything feels old, nostalgic, like eons ago- or was it something perhaps closer, more recent? The levels seem to resemble a castle with eagles and lizards decorating it. Worn, yellow papers with interrogation marks on them mark the walls, with enemies looking like ghostly formations made from cobwebs and tattered bags of straw, and haunted knight armor filled with what looks like a slime monster. In the end of each level there would be a chest that revealed to be a crablike mimic. After defeating it, the player receives some HP. Another level features what resembles a swamp with towering mangrove trees. The enemies resemble skeletal sea snakes and dryad-esque opossums, as well as six-winged parrots. At the end of the level, the player finds a hooded figure kneeling in the shallow water. When they notice its presence, the hood is lifted and a nearly unrecognizable face is visible, covered in wounds and a sorrowful look in its features. The screen turns black as to display text, that says “GONE FOR SO LONG. THE LOST SPAWN OF ATLAS. REUNITE.”. Upon that, the figure starts to weep, and tears begin to drop from its sprite. As it cries, the water level rises and it incentives the player to continue walking, as to end the world.

Dysphoria

A level that has its entire atmosphere drawn to a colorless and sharp aesthetic. Unlike the other levels, that contain a horizontal line as its route for the player to walk towards. one of Dysphoria’s level types involves having them climb a diagonal, upwards-facing mountain. For flying characters, the rise is relatively faster although they are vulnerable to airborne attacks like a pendulum-like mace that appears from the top of the screen and swings for a couple of seconds.

Enemies come crawling downwards the mountain and tend to resemble frozen, incredibly thin and bony wolves, which tend to every once in a while self-sacrifice by detonating themselves and sending bone shrapnel to deal gradual damage to the player. Other enemies involve vultures which open their mouths to throw spinning daggers. Upon reaching the summit, the mountain begins to break apart as something like an earthquake strikes the soil, pushing the player into platforms. There they meet one of the bosses- a beast that resembles a large dragon covered in quills, whose attacks are based off spitting a black fluid that immobilizes the player for melee offense, and also beam attacks that resemble fiery raindrops. No cutscene follows the defeat.

Another level features a scenario that resembles a courtroom, with multiple uniform, faceless entities as the jury, two horned creatures that seem covered in drapes as the parties and a judge that looked more like a strange sharklike beast. After the “trial” ends by the shark slamming a femur on the table as a gavel, the entire setting is attacked by batlike creatures with human skulls, one of the draped parties being mauled by the monsters, and a dark pink puddle of blood pooling under its dying body. One of the skullbats proceeds to impale its body with a trident coming from its mouth as a final blow. The screen, again turns to black and text saying “A MEMORY REVIVED, TO NEVER BRING JOY AGAIN”.

Lugubre

The final level. It’s almost completely natural in terms of level scenery, resembling some sort of haunted, bone-filled forest with frozen puddles of water on the ground. The enemies resemble mostly half-reptile, half-mammalian beasts with snarling teeth and drops that caused the game interface to become nearly invisible from darkness for around 30 seconds, only the player sprite being outlined white. As the level progresses, humanoid skulls with spider legs appear and use green lasers as ranged attacks. Another level features cobra-like beasts with centipede legs inside a flooded cave, which has a viperfish-mudskipper hybrid covered with spines and open wounds. When defeated, it soaks the ground in a dark red fluid, which starts to consume the level’s walls while phasing through all of the spectrum until it reaches pink, when the entire screen has become covered. Eventually black fish skeletons begin to pile up at the bottom of the level, slowly rising, and eventually the player is stuck in a mound of bones, without having an end-level route. After they get consumed by bones, the level ends.

When they move to the final level, the scenario resembles a rocky wasteland covered in inorganic parts and surrounded by glowing cyan lakes. There are barely any hostile enemies though NPCs can be viewed interacting with each other, like fishes getting snatched up by crows and carrion being consumed by bears. Eventually, the layout begins to become more aquatic, and it’s the stage where hostile characters begin to appear, which resemble intermediate stages of cetacean evolution and amphibians. They tend to attack the player with pink “acid fluid”. The level, after it becomes simply a far-away platform-jumping scene with water in between, starts to include fish. Passive, pink fish are seen jumping out in schools, only to splash back underwater again. Suddenly, a lightning bolt is seen zapping the fish mid-air and causes them to float around, with a lonely one falling back into the water.

The player finally is left to swim only, having to fight large mollusk monsters that have the average health of a miniboss. A particular one, which seems to resemble a large, plate-covered squid with lobster pincers, manages to drain away a large portion of the player character’s health, and when they find themselves trapped, the dropped fish returns as a large whale, striking itself against them and having them attach themselves to its sprite, as if somehow riding it. The two float around the air for around 8 seconds, which then is followed by the whale splashing back into the water and spraying water onto the player from its blowhole, restoring the health of all its characters. However, when it returns underwater, it dissolves into sea foam- leaving the player alone yet again.

The sprite of Warlock appears, half-turned into a shark. A black screen with text says “FROM THE WALLS YOU’VE SMASHED. THIS IS THE ONE THAT WILL BREAK YOUR NAILS”. The duel between Warlock and the player is tricky, as he moves extremely fast and is able to sacrifice local NPCS for health, as well as draining it from the player. His attacks are somewhat like a combo, managing to inflict lots of damage multiple times in a short timespan. Ranged attacks involves him glowing bright green and making a radius of boiling water around his body that deals damage. Easily he could bring half of the player’s monsters to less than 5 life bars during the fight.

And when he is finally defeated- he does not swim away or dissolve, but instead has his mouth open and from within, is revealed a much larger and intimidating marine beast, skin covered in deep wounds, blotches of pink and blue littering its hide, with two jaws, four sharp claws, and a sharp extendable fin. A black screen with text says “I’VE MANAGED TO TEAR DOWN AT YOU QUITE WELL, JANAVO. I CAN SENSE YOUR WEAKENING MUSCLES, YOUR MIND SHUTTING DOWN. NOW SOON I WILL DISPLAY YOUR CARCASS TO MY REIGN, YOUR BLOOD WILL MIX WITH MAERAH’S FOR OUR ULTIMATE FEAST!”

The player is locked to only utilize Janavo as a character, whose attacks seem to deal not a lot of damage to the scarred beast, and his move which involves lowering his damage from an attack by using his hood is rendered useless. Its attacks involve spraying dark purple ink at the player, temporarily disabling their attacks, and slashing at them with its claws. This combination of moves makes for a challenging and nearly impossible battle, together with taunting comments and imagery. The beast, once Janavo is at one life bar, makes one last comment, saying “HOW WEAK AND LAUGHABLE OF YOU TO SUCCUMB LIKE THIS. JUST LIKE YOU WERE MANY YEARS AGO, FRAIL AND SENSITIVE. HOW ABOUT YOU FINALLY RETURN TO SUCH A FORM AGAIN, AND LET’S END YOUR PATHETIC, PETTY EXISTENCE!”

And so it proceeds to charge a bright red beam and shoot it at his sprite, which was twitching, becoming thinner and smaller, until Janavo resembled nothing but a dry, shriveled husk worm contorted into a curled up shape, surrounded by a blue “mist”. A laugh comes from the killer monster, which proceeds to grow large tentacles from its scars which start to consume the screen, but when it least notices, they are all pulled back and torn from its body in a gory fashion. Then it is shown that the whale had ripped them off itself and was consuming them. It faces the screen and everything fades to black as it dialogues with the player.

“Dear. The blood of Atlas still flows through me. This is not the true fate of you. Remember the dueling behemoths that once managed to climb their way out. The two, who now offer their own lives to reverse this nightmare.”

The screen returns to the death of Janavo and the husk is devoured by the whale. On his place, appears a strange, purple tauric creature which was labeled “Mialomon”. The scarred beast went at full speed to successfully devour and kill him, but 10 health bars were taken away as its body seemingly goes limp as if broken inside. Mialomon’s attacks are a heat beam and using his tail as a whip, which both seem to deal a moderate amount of damage yet he shows to have an extremely high level of defense, with every blow received draining around only a quarter of his life bar. With every hit he gives, the beast seems to be torn to shreds, with its scars becoming screaming mouths, and its movements becoming more frantic. When nothing but its heads, spine and ribs remain, Miamolon inserts its front legs on the top jaw and pushes them apart, splitting both heads in half, ending its existence and clouding itself in dark violet blood.

The whale appears again, and says “The pain has been vanquished, at last. Salvation has been reached. Now it can all sprout back again, fill itself with life and joy”. It opens its mouth, and from it, comes the revived sprite of Janavo, large and majestic again. The other characters are again accessible and soon the whale turns into some sort of mermaid. “I’ve missed you so much. The spawn of Atlas truly did save and reunite with its ophidian cavalier. I will never allow anyone to separate us again“. A pink sigil appears, and the game returns to the Godzilla: MoM home screen.

BONUS: Password Screen and More

The glyphs that can be seen at the death of Stygius’ boss can be used as an input. It will make so that the next time you (re)play the final level of Gaia featuring the human cluster, you will receive a cutscene that features Aloisio and his relations to both Earth and Stygius, and upon that, you will gain him as a playable character. Smaller in defense and size, he compensates it with high attack speed and strength.

By replaying the courtroom Dysphoria level, without setting in any code, by leaving the scene before watching the murder of the draped entity, the screen also turns to black. But the text instead says “A familiar yet so fresh scene you had to witness. Much like the manuscripts mention. Pain so sharp and tearful, like a talon slash to the eye. Not evaporating, not even when you try to close them. May warmth be in your heart, might by your side, and you will never shed blood tears again.” After that display, the player has a new playable character in the board- Sebastian.

By typing in “ENDOGENAS” as an input after finishing Lugubre, by replaying the game, Janavo’s sprite is shown to wear the carcass of the scarred beast as a lavish cloak.

#long post #lore

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casquecest · 7 years ago

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Tagged by the inimitable @sl-walker, I present to you:

TWENTY FACTS

about me: Nic!

The facts I’m about to reveal are not at all influenced by the ones sl-walker did

1. I wanted to be a volcanologist as a kid. It was one of my earliest obsessions, and I was especially enamoured with the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD. I was finally able to make it to Pompeii in 2007, and it was a dream nearly twenty years in the making come true. I wish I had had more time to explore; I’ll make it back one of these days.

2. I tend to mimic accents as I hear them. I don’t mean to, but it happens (and now I live in an area with a very distinctive accent, so it’s kind of ridiculous), although I never really fell in with the St Louis accent (where I was born and raised), which tends to be a bit nasal and ORs magically become ARs (”I lived off highway farty-far a majarity of my life”).

3. I was selected to be in the choir of the Missouri Ambassadors of Music in 2002, which basically meant I got to go bum around Europe for a couple weeks and sing in empty churches with a slew of people from all around Missouri. Our time in Austria marked the first time I got slightly drunk in memory (two-year-old me apparently got sloshed on the last warm dregs from Budweiser bottles revelers left on the pool deck at a party. Pure class).

4. I used to draw and write every single day. Not so much these days. I should really get back on that.

5. I was held up at gunpoint in 2009 while sitting on my front stoop in St Louis. Consequently, I’ve no real desire to interact with revolvers again (I thought I was cool, but a month or so after I got robbed, I was riding around with my dad and he asked me to get something out of the glove box, and a gun came tumbling out when I opened it, and I was just <=o. So, yeah, not as chill as I thought). I crashed at my friend’s place that night, and we had an awesome photo shoot in which we dressed up as Soviet soldiers, and I played the world’s smallest violin for my plight.

6. I was at Game 5 of the 2006 World Series in which the Cardinals won =D =D =D. I slept on the outfield at Busch Stadium that year as well (and I went to Opening Day, too). That was the year that Ozzie Smith sat down next to me at the bar, we chatted, and he said “[I] really knew [my] baseball.”

7. I’m wicked good with years (like knowing when things occurred, as well as when movies and music were released). It comes in terribly handy at trivia.

8. I lived in London when I was 20. I moved there knowing no one, with just a suitcase and $2000 in traveller’s cheques, which didn’t go terribly far since the exchange rate was awful for someone coming from the US (but I fully recognise it’s a lot more money than most people have), and it was the best thing I’ve done for myself, while also being among the worst because I think I’m constantly trying to recapture the feeling I had there - the freedom, the possibility. I’ve been kind of restless since, which is also a good and bad thing.

9. I can pop my limbs out of socket. Though my thighs don’t disengage from my hips quite like they used to, I regularly sit with my arms out of socket.

10. When I was little, I thought you pretty much got to choose if you became a man or a woman. Like, I pretty much thought that if I wanted it hard enough, I could magically grow a dick as I got older. That, or in my next incarnation, I’d be a boy, and I couldn’t wait.

11. When I was about five or so, my mum was watching me in the bath and had to pee. It was the first time I’d seen pubes, and I was aghast. “WHAT HAPPENED?! WHY DO YOU HAVE HAIR THERE?!” “It happens when you get older.” “That’s gross. It won’t happen to me.” “It will.” “No, it won’t. I won’t let it.” I was also very determined that I would not grow boobs.

I grew giant boobs, and I have pubes. Life has been a continual disappointment to little Nic’s expectations of her body.

12. My first vague memory is of my Aunt Cheryl giving me a stool with my name in removable blocks on it when I was about one. More concretely, I remember when my brother was born when I was two, going to see him at the hospital, and calling him “baby doctor”.

13. When I was about four or five, we lived with my grandparents while we were building a house, and my grandfather would take us around the yard (which was huge - about five acres - and full of hills). There was a tree in the front yard where I decided Alvin & the Chipmunks lived. There was a large stump in the back, my grandfather pointed it out to me, and said, “That’s where I found you.” Found me? What? I hadn’t been lost recently. I hadn’t been round that stump with Grandpa before. What did he mean? He told me a tale of a dark and stormy night, and him finding a large egg sat on that stump, which he brought inside, kept warm, and a bit later out I hatched. I was livid. “I DIDN��T HATCH!” “Yes, you did. Like a little birdie” “NO! I’M NOT A BIRD, I’M A PERSON!!!!”

I don’t necessarily know what that proves or means in my development, but I feel it’s indicative of something.

14. My first car was a 1995 T-Top Camaro. There was a lot of space behind the backseat that served no real purpose, so I would decorate it seasonally. I loved the fuck out of that car, but, sadly, it was totalled in a head-on collision in January of 2001. I’ve had my current car since April 2001.

15. Speaking of decorating things seasonally, for high school graduation, my friend gave me a life size Fabio standup, so when we moved into an apartment together two years later, Fabio came along. We’d dress him up for every holiday, and he would stand guard in front of the sliding glass door that led onto a small deck. Every time we would leave the apartment and walk in the alley that deck overlooked, we’d glance up, see Fabio’s silhouette, and it’d scare the ever-living fuck out of us. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

16. In 2006, I had an apartment with two of my friends, and, upon hearing Pluto had been demoted, we decided to drink to its memory on the fire escape. We sang songs for it, but our neighbours didn’t appreciate our form of mourning and called the cops on us.

17. I get a lot of compliments on my hair colour, but I’ve never been overly fond of it myself.

18. I was in a band in high school, and we made the cover of the local alternative weekly (The Riverfront Times, or RFT as it’s now known). They put a copy of it in my high school’s trophy case my senior year. I doubt it’s still there, but it was nice to walk by it on the way to lunch and be like, ‘dat me’.

19. I’m a published poet. I even got a trophy for my shitty little scrawl.

20. If I’ve not been drinking, I sleep four hours like clockwork.

#This is me #meme #my childhood!

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historybehindassassinscreed · 7 years ago

Photo

Because this historical figure was intersex and used both male and female pronouns throughout his/her life, I will be switching part way through the article. I apologize in advance for any confusion.

In Game:

Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont, usually known as Chevalier d'Éon was a famous transgender French aristocrat, diplomat, spy, dueler and, during the Seven Years' War, a soldier in the French Army.

She first started to present as a woman in 1777 after forty-nine years of dressing as a man on most occasions, sparking a public debate on gender. When the Bastille was stormed in July 1789, she wrote to the National Assembly and offered to lead a division of female soldiers, although this offer was rejected by the Assembly.

D'Éon was known for being a talented swordsman, and frequently challenged fencers to friendly duels, betting they could not defeat a woman. This practice proved to be profitable for her.

Sometime during the French Revolution, she contacted the Assassin Arno Dorian. Upon meeting him, she told him not to be alarmed by her appearance. D'Éon also told him that she knew of his allegiance to the Assassin Brotherhood and that she needed his help. To prove that he was capable for the job, d'Éon asked the Assassin to challenge several swordsmen to duels and defeat them. After Arno returned as the winner, d'Éon challenged him to a duel as a final test. After the Assassin won the duel, the latter congratulated him on his skills as a swordsman.

D'Éon later requested Arno's help in investigating Sir Reginald, also known as the Crimson Rose, suggesting he help her so that he could be allowed into the Crimson League. Upon her discovery that the league's members were all Templars, d'Éon quickly alerted Arno to this fact, following which the Crimson Rose was assassinated.

In Real Life:

Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont was born October 5th, 1728, to a minor aristocratic family in the Hôtel d'Uzès in Tonnerre, Burgundy. D'Éon’s father was Louis d'Éon de Beaumont, an attorney, and director of the king's dominions and his mother was Françoise de Charenton, the daughter of a Commissioner General to the armies of the wars of Spain and Italy.

Despite later claims, there was no hint of anything unusual about his birth and he was declared a boy. It came out eventually, though, that d’Éon had androgynous physical characteristics and natural abilities as a mimic, good features for a spy. As a child, though, many people thought that d’Éon was a girl masquerading as a boy, due to his fair features and petite figure.

After a largely uneventful adolescence and completing his studies in Paris, d’Eon’s family’s connections secured him a place in civil service. He graduated in civil law and canon law from the Collège Mazarin in 1749 at age 21.

As he lived in a time where dressing up was common and popular, especially at parties, d'Éon first dressed as a woman at a costume ball, aided by his slight build. King Louis XV took notice of him, and realized that d'Éon's appearance of a beautiful woman would make it easy for him to be a spy. That was when Louis not only had d'Éon become the French ambassador to Russia, but also had him join le Secret du Roi, or “King’s Secret”. The Secret was a network of spies and diplomatic agents established in the 1740s with the aim of putting his cousin, the Prince de Conti, on the Polish throne and turning the country into a French satellite. The Secret was so secret, it was hidden from and sometimes acted against the official French foreign ministry.

D'Éon was sent to Russia as a spy in order to meet Empress Elizabeth and conspire with the pro-French faction against the Habsburg monarchy. At that time the English and French were at odds, and the English were attempting to deny the French access to the Empress by allowing only women and children to cross the border into Russia. In the course of this mission, d'Éon was disguised as the lady Lea de Beaumont, and served as a maid of honor to the Empress. Eventually, Chevalier Douglas became French ambassador to Russia, and d'Éon was secretary to the embassy in Saint Petersburg from 1756 to 1760, serving Douglas and his successor, the marquis de l'Hôpital. He listened at doors and stole documents with great dexterity, all the while dressed as a woman (if he was discovered, he likely would have been executed by the English), although his gender identity was not public as of yet. For this, Louis decorated him with the Order of Saint Louis.

(Image source)

D'Éon returned to France in October 1760, and was granted a pension of 2,000 livres as a reward for his service in Russia. In May 1761, d'Éon became a captain of dragoons under the maréchal de Broglie and fought in the later stages of the Seven Years' War. D'Éon served at the Battle of Villinghausen in July 1761, and was wounded at Ultrop. After Empress Elizabeth died in January 1762, d'Éon was considered for further service in Russia, but instead was appointed secretary to the duc de Nivernais, awarded 1,000 livres, and sent to London to draft the peace treaty that formally ended the Seven Years' War. The treaty was signed in Paris on February 10th, 1763, and d'Éon was awarded a further 6,000 livres, and received the Order of Saint-Louis on 30 March 1763, becoming the Chevalier d'Éon. The title chevalier, French for knight, is also sometimes used for French noblemen.

Despite the fact that d'Éon habitually wore a dragoon's uniform, rumors circulated in London that d'Éon was actually a woman. A betting pool was started on the London Stock Exchange about d'Éon's true sex, although it was eventually abandoned. For a while, d'Éon claimed to have been assigned female at birth, and demanded recognition by the government as such. D'Éon claimed to have been raised as a boy because her father could only inherit from his in-laws if he had a son. King Louis XVI and his court complied with this demand, but required in turn that d'Éon dress appropriately in women's clothing, although d'Éon was allowed to continue to wear the insignia of the Order of Saint-Louis. When the king's offer included funds for a new wardrobe of women's clothes, d'Éon agreed. In 1777, after fourteen months of negotiation, d'Éon returned to France and as punishment was banished to Tonnerre.

After 49 years of dressing as a man on most occassions, d'Éon took to appearing publicly as a woman in 1777, sparking a debate on gender. She was eventually ordered by the king himself to choose a consistent gender presentation, d'Éon decided to live the rest of her life as a woman.

(Image source)

The pension that Louis XV had granted was ended by the French Revolution, and d'Éon had to sell many of her personal possessions, including books, jewellery and plate. The family's properties in Tonnerre were confiscated by the revolutionary government. In 1792, around the time of the Storming of the Bastille, d'Éon sent a letter to the French National Assembly offering to lead a division of female soldiers against the Habsburgs, but the offer was rebuffed. D'Éon participated in fencing tournaments until seriously wounded in Southampton in 1796.

D'Éon lived most of the rest of her life quietly in England; the devout and eventually elderly Roman Catholic woman later had a female roommate, a widow known as Mrs. Cole, in London who was completely unaware of her history as a man. D'Éon became paralyzed following a fall, and spent her final four years bedridden, dying in poverty in London on May 21st, 1810 at the age of 81.

The mortician who examined her body post-mortem stated that she had "male organs in every respect perfectly formed", while at the same time displaying feminine characteristics such as rounded limbs and "breast remarkably full". D'Éon was buried in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and all of d'Éon's remaining possessions were sold 1813. D'Éon's grave is listed on the Burdett-Coutts Memorial there as one of the important graves lost.

Sources:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-incredible-chevalier-deon-who-left-france-as-a-male-spy-and-returned-as-a-christian-woman

http://www.paulinepark.com/2013/07/transgender-history-the-chevalier-deon/

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/D%27%C3%89on_de_Beaumont,_Charles_Genevi%C3%A8ve_Louis_Auguste_Andr%C3%A9_Timoth%C3%A9e_(DNB00)

https://books.google.com/books?id=2i0MAQAAMAAJ&q=isbn:9782213616308&dq=isbn:9782213616308&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZ6NmIvMPTAhVX8WMKHYplBHUQ6AEIJzAA

https://noonobservation.com/2013/11/15/what-a-gentleman-keeps-up-his-skirt-is-her-own-business/

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biofunmy · 5 years ago

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How a clean-cut Eagle Scout became a fentanyl drug lord

The photo that flashed onto the courtroom screen showed a young man dead on his bedroom floor, bare feet poking from the cuffs of his rolled up jeans. Lurking on a trash can at the edge of the picture was what prosecutors said delivered this death: an ordinary, U.S. Postal Service envelope.

It had arrived with 10 round, blue pills inside, the markings of pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone stamped onto the surface. The young man took out two, crushed and snorted them. But the pills were poison, prosecutors said: counterfeits containing fatal grains of fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that has written a deadly new chapter in the American opioid epidemic.

The envelope was postmarked from the suburbs of Salt Lake City.

That’s where a clean-cut, 29-year-old college dropout and Eagle Scout named Aaron Shamo made himself a millionaire by building a fentanyl trafficking empire with not much more than his computer and the help of a few friends.

———

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

———

For three weeks this summer, those suburban millennials climbed onto the witness stand at his federal trial and offered an unprecedented window into how fentanyl bought and sold online has transformed the global drug trade. There was no testimony of underground tunnels or gangland murders or anything that a wall at the southern border might stop. Shamo called himself a “white-collar drug dealer,” drew in co-workers from his time at eBay and peppered his messages to them with smiley-face emojis. His attorney called him a fool; his primary defense was that he isn’t smart enough to be a kingpin.

How he and his friends managed to flood the country with a half-million fake oxycodone pills reveals the ease with which fentanyl now moves around the world, threatening to expand the epidemic beyond America’s borders. It is so potent, so easy to transport, experts say, large-scale traffickers no longer require sophisticated networks to send it to any corner of the globe. All they need is a mailbox, internet access and people with an appetite for opioids. And consumption rates are rising from Asia to Europe to Latin America as pharmaceutical companies promote painkillers abroad.

The case against Shamo detailed how white powder up to 100 times stronger than morphine was bought online from a laboratory in China and arrived in Utah via international mail; it was shaped into perfect-looking replicas of oxycodone tablets in the press that thumped in Shamo’s basement and resold on the internet’s black markets. Then it was routed back into the postal system in thousands of packages addressed to homes across this country awash with prescription painkiller addiction.

When Shamo took the stand to try to spare himself a lifetime in prison, he began with a nervous chuckle. He careened from one topic to the next in a monologue prosecutors would later describe as masterful manipulation to convince the jury he thought his drug-dealing was helping people. Customers wrote thank you notes because their doctors refused to prescribe more painkillers, he said. It felt like “a win-win situation” — he got rich and his customers got drugs.

One of them was a struggling 21-year-old named Ruslan Klyuev who died in his bedroom in Daly City, California, the envelope from Utah at his feet. Shamo was charged in connection to that overdose alone, but when investigators scoured the list of customers they said they counted dozens more dead.

———

The question before this jury is being debated all across America: Two decades into the opioid epidemic, is there such a thing as justice for 400,000 lost lives?

The largest civil litigation in history is testing how the pharmaceutical industry should be held accountable for inundating the country with billions of addictive pain pills. Purdue Pharma, seen by many as the primary villain for deceptively pushing the blockbuster drug OxyContin, reached a tentative $12 billion settlement this week with about half the states and roughly 2,000 local governments. Attorneys general who didn’t sign on say the figure is far too low. A trial of other pharmaceutical companies is scheduled for next month, in which communities will contend that their mass marketing of prescription painkillers sparked an epidemic.

This crisis began in the 1990s and has since spiraled into waves, each worse than the one before: Prescription opioids spread addiction, then a crackdown on prescribing paved the road to heroin, which led to fentanyl — a synthetic opioid made entirely in a laboratory. Traffickers added it to heroin to boost its potency and profitability. That transition happened slowly at first, then with extraordinary ferocity.

By 2017, deaths from synthetic opioids had increased more than 800 percent, to 28,466, dragging the United States’ overall life expectancy down for a third consecutive year for the first time in a century. Fentanyl deaths have been reported abroad, in Canada, Sweden, Estonia, the United Kingdom. Countries with surging prescription opioid addiction, like Australia, fear they are on the brink.

“Fentanyl will be the bubonic plague,” said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, warning that any country with a burgeoning prescription opioid problem could soon find itself following American footsteps. “It’s just a matter of time.”

No one can say exactly how or why fentanyl, first synthesized in 1959 as a powerful painkiller, entered the modern illicit drug market, said Bryce Pardo, a researcher at the Rand Corporation. In 2013, people began overdosing on heroin laced with fentanyl in New England and Ohio, and it spread from there. Shabbir Safdar, the Partnership for Safe Medicines’ executive director, said the first known death from a fentanyl-laced pill was in San Francisco in October 2015.

It was a frightening development: The DEA estimates 3.4 million Americans misuse prescription painkillers, compared to 475,000 heroin users — meaning the pool potentially exposed is 10 times bigger.

There are two sources of supply. Mexican cartels and packages shipped direct from China, where it is produced in a huge and under-regulated chemical sector. A Senate investigation last year found massive quantities of fentanyl pouring in from China through the Postal Service. The report largely blamed dated technology that left customs inspectors sifting through packages manually looking for “the proverbial needle in a haystack.” The Postal Service wrote in a statement to The Associated Press that it is working hard with its international counterparts to close those loopholes, and is improving its technology to intercept fentanyl shipments.

By the time a seized package heading from China to Utah led investigators to Shamo, he had already turned fentanyl into at least 458,946 potentially poisonous pills, the government said. There are many more like him, officials say, upstart traffickers pressing pure Chinese-made fentanyl into pills in their basements and kitchens with unsophisticated equipment. In a single batch, one pill might have no fentanyl and another enough to kill a person instantly. One agent at Shamo’s trial compared it to making chocolate-chip cookies, only if too many chips ended up in a “cookie,” whoever ate it dropped dead.

For traffickers, the profit margins are irresistible: The DEA estimates a kilogram of fentanyl synthesized for a few thousand dollars could make a dealer more than $1 million.

“Any moron can basically become a major drug kingpin by dealing in fentanyl,” said Vigil. “You can have somebody with an IQ minus 100 who becomes an overnight multimillionaire.”

———

Aaron Shamo dreamed of entrepreneurial riches. He idolized Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and studied self-improvement books like “Think and Grow Rich.”

He and a longtime friend, Drew Crandall, worked at eBay after failed stints in college. But Crandall was fired and Shamo decided it was “unfair” that he still had to work, so he quit. They wanted easy money.

Shamo grew up in Phoenix with three older sisters. As a teenager, he started smoking pot and refusing to attend services with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His parents sent him to boarding school in Utah, where he earned his Eagle Scout badge. He later met Crandall through their shared love of longboarding and they moved in together. Crandall was awkward and shy; Shamo was charismatic, and prided himself on helping his friend talk to girls.

The pair concocted a plan to sell their Adderall, prescribed for attention deficit disorder, on the dark web — a wild, unregulated layer of the internet reached through a special browser. There are underground marketplaces there that mimic Amazon or eBay, where guns and drugs and pirated software are traded. Money is exchanged anonymously through cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

They learned what they needed on the web, searching with queries like “how to ship drugs.” It was so easy. They expanded, ordering drugs in bulk, breaking them down and selling at a mark-up, all while barely having to leave the house.

They used the postal system like a drug mule, peddling the club drug MDMA, magic mushrooms, date rape drugs — they once bought a kilogram of cocaine from Peru. They recruited friends, offering them $100 to have parcels mailed to their homes, no questions asked.

But the profit margins were slim and their ambitions were greater: They bought a pill press, ordered the sedative alprazolam online from India and watched YouTube videos to figure out how to turn it into fake Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication. Crandall, math minded, created the recipe. They mixed it up by shaking it in mason jars.

Then Crandall fell in love.

His new girlfriend grew suspicious when he would sneak away to package drugs. When she confronted him at a party, he tearfully confessed. She forgave him, if he promised to leave the business. They bought one-way tickets to New Zealand.

Then a local drug dealer made a suggestion to Shamo that would change the course of his life: There was a fortune to be made in producing fake oxycodone.

Shamo enlisted his gym buddy, Jonathan Luke Paz, to help him. Shamo ordered fentanyl online from China, set up the pill press in the basement and bought dyes and stamps to match popular pharmaceuticals. Then they handed them over to the local dealer, who tested them on his own customers. The first batches were weak or speckled in color, he told them, or didn’t react like real oxycodone when users heated it on tinfoil to smoke it.

But they were getting better.

“Close to being money in the bank,” the dealer messaged Shamo. “You did it, bro.”

On the first day of 2016, Shamo wrote out his goals for the upcoming year: He would be rich. All the girls would want him.

“I will overachieve,” he wrote. “I will overcome.”

He went online with his products a month later. Some were specified as fentanyl, but some weren’t, purporting instead to contain 30 milligrams of oxycodone. Shamo named this new store Pharma-Master.

———

As winter turned to summer, sales skyrocketed. Pharma-Master started selling thousands of pills a week, charging around $10 each.

On June 6, a relatively small order came in: 10 pills, to be shipped to an apartment house in Daly City, a working-class suburb of San Francisco.

Like every order, it was sent in an encrypted email to two former eBay co-workers in charge of distribution. Alexandrya Tonge and Katherine Bustin counted out the pills in their suburban condo, packaged the shipments and dropped them in the mail.

The envelope arrived at the doorstep at 3 p.m. on June 11.

Under different circumstances, Shamo might have been friends with the 21-year-old man who lived there. Ruslan Klyuev, a Russian immigrant, was also an aspiring tech entrepreneur interested in the dark web. He had a baby face: rosy cheeks and curly hair. Klyuev loved to cook and would make extravagant meals for the house.

But his relationship ended, his web design business sputtered and he became estranged from his family, said Barry, a roommate who spoke on the condition that his last name not be published. His emotions toggled between sorrow and elation, and he struggled with substance abuse.

After drinking vodka, Klyuev crushed two of the pills with a battery and snorted the powder with a rolled-up sticky note, according to testimony. He started drifting in and out of sleep. He couldn’t stand up.

He was found dead the next day, with fentanyl, alcohol and a substance associated with cocaine in his system.

His was the only death with which Shamo would be charged. His defense attorney, Greg Skordas, argued that neither his death nor any others can be definitely linked with Shamo’s operation.

But in documents, prosecutors connected Shamo to a veritable slaughter:

A 24-year-old man in Seattle overdosed three weeks after he bought pills from Pharma-Master in March 2016.

Later that spring, 40 pills were shipped to a 21-year-old in Washington, D.C. He died in his dorm room 11 days later.

In Utah, a 29-year-old software analyst named Devin Meldrum had been searching since he was a teenager for a cure for cluster headaches that felt like knives stabbing his skull, said his father, Rod.

Doctors had prescribed opioids but limited the dosage, so he bought a backup supply from Pharma-Master. On Aug. 13, 2016, he ran out of pills days before his refill. As he got ready for bed, he texted his fiance and took a pill from his reserve for the first time, his father said.

He was dead before she arrived to say goodnight, blue on his bathroom floor.

His father isn’t sure Shamo even now understands the magnitude of what happened: “Does he even comprehend how many families have had their hearts torn out?”

———

Online, Pharma-Master was getting rave reviews.

“These will make u a millionaire in under a year, guarantee,” wrote one shopper who called himself “Trustworthy Money.”

He was a dealer in Portland named Jared Gillespie. He bought 80,000 pills from Pharma-Master, according to documents filed against Gillespie in Oregon. He knew he was buying fentanyl pills, the Oregon prosecutors alleged, but the people buying from him had no way to know that. They are unknown and uncounted.

Shamo offered steep discounts for bulk buyers. Tonge, one of his distributors, testified that she began to question Shamo’s claim that he was helping patients who couldn’t get medication: Why would one person need 5,000 pills?

Her vacuum cleaner would become a critical piece of evidence. Its dust bin was filled with pills. The operation had grown so frantic, pumping out tens of thousands of tablets a month, that when they spilled onto the floor, they weren’t worth saving.

Tonge and her partner complained that the orders were coming too quickly, so Shamo hired a “runner” named Sean Gygi to pick up the packages and drop them in the mail, dozens of them a day.

Drug manufacturing became routine: Shamo once wrote himself a to-do list, and included a reminder to “make blues,” the street name for oxycodone, along with getting a haircut, washing his sheets, cleaning the kitchen. And Shamo planned to expand. He bought another press so big agents would later need a tow truck to drag it out of his garage.

The money was pouring in, and out.

Shamo hired a personal assistant; she did his shopping, had his car detailed. He stuffed a duffel bag with $429,000 cash and asked his parents to hold it. He bragged to friends about VIP bottle service at clubs and gambling in Las Vegas. He shopped for real estate in Puerto Rico; took photos sipping champagne on a cruise ship; bought designer jeans, an 88-inch television, a boat and a BMW.

Crandall and his girlfriend posted photos on Instagram of trips to Laos, Thailand, Singapore, kayaking and partying. But he was running out of money and agreed to become a remote customer service representative. The list of people accepting packages from China ballooned to more than a dozen. Everyone was making easy money and getting text messages from Shamo dotted with “lol” and “awesome!”

Shamo penned another note: “I am Shamo. I am awesome. My friends love me. I created an empire.”

But even as he cheered himself on, there were signs of danger.

One customer reported an overdose death. Shamo scanned obituaries, then declared it was a fake, Crandall said. Then a message said pills were making people sick.

Crandall forwarded it to Shamo with a dismissive question: Should he tell them to “suck it up?” Or send more pills to pacify them?

———

They didn’t know it, but a suspicious customs agent at the Los Angeles International Airport had flagged a box from Shanghai, China, pulled it off the belt and looked inside. The agent found 98.7 grams of fentanyl powder — enough to make almost 100,000 pills. The box was destined for Utah.

Agents looked for more packages making their way from China to Utah, and eventually one arrived, said an agent with Homeland Security Investigations who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect ongoing investigations. On Nov. 8, 2016, postal inspectors seized a box en route from a port city in China known to law enforcement as a fentanyl-trafficking hub. It was addressed to Gygi, Shamo’s “runner,” so agents arrived at his house with a search warrant.

Gygi said he thought the hundreds of envelopes he’d put in the mail contained the party drugs he sometimes took himself. Told it was fentanyl, the agent recalled, Gygi drooped.

He agreed to wear a wire while he picked up the packages, like he did every day. But instead of dropping them in the mail, he delivered them to police.

This single day’s shipment contained 34,828 fentanyl pills destined for homes in 26 states.

Four days later, on Nov. 22, 2016, agents stood on Shamo’s stoop, shouted through a bullhorn, then broke the door down with a battering ram. They were dressed in neon-orange hazmat suits with clear bowls around their faces that made them look like astronauts.

Shamo came up the stairs in a T-shirt and shorts, a mask and gloves in his pocket. A pill press downstairs was running, in a room with powder caked on the walls and the furniture.

Others were raiding the stash at Bustin and Tonge’s condo. Veteran vice officers would say they had never seen so many pills, even in international operations. In total, they packed up over 74,000 fentanyl pills awaiting distribution.

In Shamo’s sock drawer, agents found stack after stack of cash. There was more money in a safe in the closet. Agents totaled up more than $1.2 million, not including the money he had tied up in Bitcoin or bags he’d stashed with his family. Investigators eventually caught up with Paz, whom Shamo paid around a dollar per pill, and he surrendered $800,000 more.

Crandall was in Laos, still traveling with his girlfriend, when he heard the news. He stored his drug-related data on a flash drive, threw it down a storm drain and sent an email to the dark web marketplace: “This account has been compromised.” After a few months, he figured he was in the clear. He and his girlfriend planned their wedding and invited guests to meet them in Hawaii for the big day: May 12, 2017. They bought rings, and a dress.

Agents were waiting when they stepped onto American soil in Honolulu.

———

When Crandall sat on the witness stand, he was slump-shouldered and shackled, clumsily trying to maneuver his handcuffs to pull a tissue out of the box to wipe his eyes. In the two years since his arrest, he has been imprisoned in a county jail and watched his fellow inmates suffer the brutal fallout of an opioid epidemic. They stole from their parents, cycled in and out of jail and shivered, sweated, sobbed through withdrawal.

He’d helped feed this, he realized. For money.

He and Shamo’s other ex-partners and packagers pleaded guilty, agreed to testify against their friend and hoped for mercy.

The story they told convinced the jury to convict Shamo of 12 counts, including continuing criminal enterprise, the so-called “kingpin charge” that is typically reserved for drug lords like El Chapo and carries a mandatory life sentence. The jury deadlocked, though, on the 13th count: the death of Klyuev.

The bust was one of the largest operations in the country in 2016. But the fentanyl trade has only grown more sophisticated since. By comparison, Shamo now looks “small-time,” said Safdar, with the Partnership for Safe Medicines. The most notorious Mexican drug cartels have transitioned to fentanyl, even as homegrown upstarts like Shamo’s proliferate.

Seizure data in the United Nations World Drug Report shows trafficking quickly expanding worldwide. In 2013, four countries reported fentanyl seizures. By 2016: 12 countries. In 2017, 16 countries reported seizing fentanyl.

There is no reason to believe it will not spread further. In Africa and the Middle East, the synthetic opioid tramadol is widely abused, much of it illicitly manufactured in Asia. If that market transitions to fentanyl it would be catastrophic, said Scott Stewart, a former agent with the State Department. In Australia, prescription opioid consumption has quadrupled. Marianne Jauncey, medical director of a Sydney harm-reduction center, can’t think of any reason fentanyl won’t soon arrive — all they can do is prepare for the day that it does.

As Shamo was convicted, a single dark web marketplace still had 32,000 listings for drugs, thousands of them claiming to be oxycodone. There was no way to tell whether they originated in a pharmacy or somebody’s basement.

One vendor even borrowed a version of Shamo’s name. Pharmamaster peddles oxys online, sold in bulk at a discount. It has, it boasts, an “unlimited” supply.

“Pharma-grade A++,” the listings promise. “24-hour shipping!”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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