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soleilapproves · 10 days ago

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You suspect that Simon might have a crush on you (much to your happiness). So you decide to harmlessly manipulate him into admitting it by asking him to set you up with one of his friends.

Note: fem!reader

main masterlist

—

r/advice

u/throwaway123:

How do I (F) subtly find out if my friend (M33) likes me?

Replies:

u/sudsysoap: there’s no need to be subtle. ask him to sleep with you lmao [+50, -10]

u/pricetag: agree with u/sudsysoap, men will sleep with anything as long as it has a hole [+30, -20]

u/log1cal: ask him to set you up with his friends. I did that and now we have 2 kids and a third one on the way. That prank will work wonders [+100, -7]

You had a feeling that Simon liked you. It felt obvious. He would walk by the street on the sidewalk to protect you, brought you deadbolts for your mangy apartment that you only live in for the cheap rent, would buy you groceries when you were too tired to leave your bed, and of course, would be very patient with you when you’d be feeling irritated.

Okay, maybe, he just treated you like how a best friend should but that still wouldn’t explain why he’d come to your apartment, in your crime ridden neighborhood and cuddle with you right after deployment. Not even bothering to shower before laying himself down on you like a starfish.

“I just want to feel warm.” Was his answer whenever you’d ask him why he did so.

You never complained though. Instead, you relished the feeling of his heavy and exhausted body against yours. Enjoying the almost territorial hold he had on you. Like most friendships, it was a symbiotic relationship.

You both never kept much from each other. Obviously there were many aspects of his job that you couldn’t ask about and you respected that.

However, you both had hidden feelings and neither of you wanted to put your cards on the table out of the fear of rejection.

You watched as the man scarfed down his Sunday breakfast- a sort of inside tradition where you’d both go to a cafe near your apartment and scarf down food. It always happened on the first Sunday after his return from deployment.

The words from that one Reddit comment lingered in your mind.

He felt your eyes on him from your end of the booth and placed his fork down, still in his grasp. “Somethin’ on my face?” His gruff voice asked.

“No, I’m just wondering if they even fed you at all.”

He let out a sarcastic ‘ha’ and went back to eating. You were getting antsy to the point where you began to pick at your hash brown with your fork, the crisp golden patty crumbling with every poke.

You wanted to try the trick so bad.

But what if he doesn’t like you like that? What if he does end up setting you up with a man you aren’t interested in because you decided to be sly for a moment?

Fuck it. At least this would be the least explicit way.

“I’m so tired of being single.” You huffed as you leaned back into the leather cushioned booth. Simon did not give any sort of reaction. Instead he directed his attention to his coffee as he mixed it with some zero calorie sweetener.

“All the guys in this city are so weird. I’ve done everything to get a boyfriend.” You continued. Simon sipped his beverage and looked through the menu again (probably for a second helping of sausages).

Still no reaction. Sometimes you wondered how you even became friends with him.

“Wait, I know.”

His demeanor changed as his blue eyes flit to your figure. “You should set me up with one of your military friends.” You said as you smiled like a scientist who had just made a great discovery in his field.

Simon beckoned you over with his hand. Confused, you slid towards his end of the booth. “What?”

He lightly knocked on the top of your head like it was a door. “Thank God,” he muttered out.

“What was that for?” You replaced his hand with yours on your head, checking to see if he was trying to remove any lint.

“Tryin’ to check if your skull was hollow.”

“Fuck you, Simon. All I did was ask for a favor.”

The man folded his arms, biceps begging to be let out of the confinement of his sleeves. Your heart couldn’t help but beat a little faster at the sight.

“Is it because I’m not pretty?”

“Where’d that even come from? I-“

“So you agree that I’m not pretty.” You said before huffing and turning away from him.

“Oh my- fuck, just listen to me.”

You open your mouth to say more but you decide to give your friend a break.

He cleared his throat and turned your shoulders towards him. Your skin burned when his calloused palms situated themselves on you. “First of all, you’re not ugly. You’re basically out of their league.” You never understood why he couldn’t just compliment you like a normal person.

“Second, you deserve someone who will actually give you all their time. Something my military friends can’t do. You’re not going to be a priority.”

You felt like shrinking in your seat. His reasoning was ambiguous. You couldn’t tell if he was denying your request because he didn’t want your heart broken or because he actually liked you.

“Oh, okay.” You looked away from him in embarrassment. So much for miracles.

“Besides,”

He then went on to replace the deconstructed hash brown on your plate with his non battered one.

“You might find someone if you look hard enough.”

Your head perked up. Could he possibly be hinting at something?

“What do you mean?”

“Go out with me.” He didn’t beat around the bush this time. Went straight to the point.

“I don’t want you to date me out of pity, Simon.”

“It’s not pity. I like you.”

Oh.

OH.

You made a mental note to thank that one Reddit comment later. Trying your best not to smile, you let out a deep a breath before speaking. “Truth be told, I like you too. I don’t just let any man barge into my house and lay with me.”

“You’d better not.” Simon said as he pulled you into his side and then pushed your head close to his with his hand behind your neck.

“Been waitin’ for you to admit that.” He said before leaving a deep kiss on your mouth.

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revasserium · 2 months ago

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roronoa zoro; 21,051 words (not including epilogue), fluff and angst, ENEMIES!!! to lovers, the slowest of slow burns, canon-normal violence, on-page description of injury, excessive use of flashbacks, some banter, healing from trauma, baroque works!reader to strawhat!reader, no "y/n", emotionally constipated!zoro, hurt and comfort, angst with a happy ending; (epilogue tags will be posted separately)

summary: in which neither you nor zoro are the children you remember each other to be.

update: new chapters will be posted on @shouyuus!!!

a/n: IT'S FINALLY HERE!!! i honestly cannot believe i actually finished writing this lmfao. but anyway, this post will act as a table of contents/masterlist of sorts, and i will update links to the separate chapters as they go up. chapters will be posted every few days (but they are all done! except for the epilogue LOL). i've tagged everyone who has req-ed to be tagged in this series so far on this prologue post, but if you wish to be tagged for the upcoming chapters and you're not already on this fics specific taglist, please comment below to be added! and without further ado -- here we go!

TABLE OF CONTENTS ━

prologue: someone, somewhere

chapter one: a shadow of the past

chapter two: tell no tales

chapter three: sleep of the living, dreams of the dead

chapter four: another life

chapter five: true love's kiss

epilogue: la petite mort (nsfw)

prologue: someone, somewhere

He remembers you most as a child, in halcyon images and gold-limned flashes of his own childhood memories, the edges blurring watercolor soft, but the center (always you) carved in knife-sharp relief.

You were one of the few children that lived in Shimotsuki Village who hadn’t come from the doujou — one of the few children he knew that (at least to the best of his knowledge) had a thing called family. A mother to braid your hair, a father to chase the darkness away, a warm bed and a kitchen that always smelled of freshly made rice. And perhaps it was jealousy, or some other more complicated emotion that had been then too big to name with one single word, but he’d never gone out of his way to befriend you like the other kids from the doujou did — fascinated as they were by your soft hands and round cheeks and the bright, glittering array of homemade sweets you’d bring with you once every couple of weeks.

He’d learn later on that it was because Shimotsuki-sensei had saved your father’s life at some point in time; the story now lost to the annals of legend and withering memory, but back then, he’d only assumed it was the natural way of things. Of waking up for kata practice and then settling in for lunch, and then maybe, if it was to be a good day, you, with your basket of sweets and your blue-bell laughter.

And perhaps this is why, years later, when he meets you again in a dark, nameless village tavern, he doesn’t recognize you — not at first. Because you’d looked so different. Gone was the roundness in your cheeks, or the natural star-bright light in your eyes. Gone, too, were the bright braids that your hair had always been set in — he remembers so clearly, watching the other boys from the doujou jab their fingers into the rings of your pinned up braids, pulling down just to hear you squeak. He hadn’t said anything then, stupidly thinking him above it all, watching as you tried to jerk away, but laughing when the boys finally relented with half-hearted apologies.

You always threatened to take their sweets away; you never did, in the end.

But there, then, in that tiny tavern, you’d been thin, your hair dark as an oil spill, loose and inky as it cascades over your shoulders, your eyes lightless as the windows to an abandoned house — the hollowness made all the more visceral by the light he knew once inhabited them. The way loneliness is always more potent when coming back to it, the second time around.

He wanders up to the bar, slates you a glance before rapping his knuckles on the worn wood to catch the bartender’s attention.

“I’ll have beer and a refill of whatever the lady’s having.”

You shift slightly, shoulders hunching towards your ears.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” you say, shifting to shield your face from his gaze.

Zoro cocks his head, tossing a few Berry towards the bartender as they set down a stein of beer and a champagne flute to replace the one in front of you.

“Can’t a guy buy a girl a drink?” Zoro asks, rolling his shoulders as he reaches out for his beer. You eye him warily.

“Not for a guy that’s been tracking me for three weeks straight.”

Zoro hums, thumb poised on the hilt of his swords.

“We just happened to be going in the same direction.”

You reach out to run a forefinger along the rim of the thin champagne flute before swirling it once by the base. You watch the bubbles fizzle before leaning in to take a dainty sip.

“And they say chivalry is dead…” you murmur, almost too softly for him to hear. Zoro scoffs, allowing himself a twinge of a smirk before his mouth falls flat.

“You let me track you for three whole weeks.”

There’s no question in his words, only a harsh, accusatory certainty.

You lick your lips, leaning back in your stool, tugging your glass of champagne with you.

“Maybe I wanted the company.”

“Or maybe… you wanted me to follow you here.”

Every muscle in his body is tense, drawn taut as a tightrope, coiled tight as a spring.

You sigh, twisting a single lock of your hair around a finger, examining the ends as if looking for split hairs.

Then, quick as a flash, you’re at each other’s throats — him with a sword poised at your jugular, you with a knife pressed against his stomach.

“One move —” you warn, digging the knife slightly further into his skin. Distinctly, Zoro feels the pressure slice through his thick linen shirt, the cool kiss of the blade against his abdomen. And he’s killed enough by now to know that you’ve picked a major artery — one that would hurt, and take minutes for him bleed out. Just long enough for him to suffer, but not enough to get help.

The edge of his mouth ticks upward — not bad.

It’s then, in the infinitesimal flicker of your eyes meeting his, that he realizes who you are.

He nearly topples back, jerking away slightly with the revelation. Your eyes go wide, jolted by his sudden movement. But he’s quick enough to evade the sharp jab of your knife and a second later, you’re on either ends of the tavern, drawn blades and bared teeth.

“Y-you!” the word rips from Zoro like an unripe scab, thick and hard and still bloody underneath.

You lick your lips, eyes narrowing to slits beneath your long, lanky hair.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The hell you don’t.”

“Oi! No fighting in the bar!” the barkeep’s voice is gruff and loud, and for a second, Zoro wonders if you’ll listen. The next, the sharp clang of metal on metal stuns him backwards a few steps as you wrest your knives from between two of his katanas, snarling.

“If you’re so much of a gentleman — let’s take this outside.”

“Ladies first,” Zoro spits out as he whips both swords through the air before sheathing them. He makes a show of holding the tavern door for you as you stalk out in front of him, your hackles raised, your knives jutting out from your belt like so many pairs of sharpened claws.

“What do you want?” you ask, as soon as you’re both out of the bar and standing in the moonlit street outside, the wharf to your left, the strip of small, rundown taverns to your right.

The air twangs with the metallic smell of fish and the thick, oppressive sweetness of rotting wood.

“An explanation,” Zoro says, crossing his arms and planting his feet.

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Zoro nods, “Sure. But that doesn’t mean I don’t wanna know.”

You lick your lips, glaring at him for a second longer before turning and marching down the rickety boardwalk. A moment later, Zoro levels himself with you as you round a corner onto a small stretch of beach, pillowed against a backdrop of sharp, unrelenting rocks, the tips bleached white by the round, silver moon.

“There was a beach just like this,” you say, stepping onto the tide-soaked sand, leaning down to pick up a fragment of a broken seashell, washed ashore by an errant wave.

It takes Zoro a second to realize you’re talking about Shimotsuki village, and the tiny little beach on the other side of the dense, cedar wood.

“Yeah. A bunch of us used to play there — see who can throw rocks out the furthest.”

“You were always the best at that,” you say, your voice softer than he’d heard all night.

“Yeah, well…” Zoro shrugs, leaning down to pick up a piece of rock, weighing it in his palm a few times before whipping his arm back to snap it into the gentle, shushing waves. You both watch as the rock skids out over the water before plunking into the sea, “Guess I’ve always been kind of a show-off.”

The sound of your laughter sends summertime sparklers racing up his spine.

The quiet pools between you like spilt blood, rank and dripping.

“So. You go by Ms. Double Nines now, I heard,” Zoro says, in a flagging attempt to be casual as he turns to glance at you, both his hands resting on the hilt of his swords.

You stand next to him, your eyes focused on a point far out on the horizon, still as statue.

“What’s it to you?”

Zoro sighs, looking down. In the pale, cool moonlight, his earrings glint like baring teeth.

“What happened?”

You suck in a breath.

"Life happened,” you say, turning back towards him with a steely glint in your eyes. Zoro stiffens, his grip tightening on his swords as he sizes you up. He does the mental calculations — you’re just far enough for him to defend against an attack, but close enough where if things were to go south entirely, he’d have a hard time getting back to safety.

You grin, seemingly noticing his rough internal calculations.

“Do yourself a favor, Roronoa — and don’t ask questions you don’t wanna know the answers to,” you say, flicking out one of your blades and tossing it up into the air, only to catch it around your finger, swinging it round and round, the sharp edge of the blade nicking the air just shy of your cheekbone.

“Who said I didn’t want to know?” Zoro presses, bracing himself for a fight.

You chuckle, the sound harsh and mirthless.

“If you’d wanted to fight me properly, you wouldn’t have waited till I got you onto this stretch of deserted beach.”

“Maybe I just wanted a quiet place to kill you.”

“Or maybe…” your voice is so low Zoro almost doesn’t catch the stomach-wrenching longing in your words, “I just wanted a quiet place to die.”

The sharp shink of blades being drawn is heart-rendingly familiar, but the bone-rattling clash of metal on metal still shakes him to the roots of his teeth. Zoro grunts as he parries a blow from either side, before crossing his swords to catch your assault down the center.

You’re fast, he’ll give you that, your body smaller and quicker. You slip through the shadows with the comfort of a person who knows nothing but and he can’t help wondering at the life you’ve led that had pushed you to this point.

To having a mark on your back, a bounty on your head.

You’re a good fighter — this much, he acknowledges. But good isn’t usually good enough to best him. This much, he also knows. Yet somehow, you’re keeping up, somehow, you’re pushing him back, forcing him to retreat one step and then another. It’s not until you duck beneath one of his pin-wheeling blades and force yourself into a knife’s-breath of his space that he realizes — it isn’t that you’re good, it’s that you’re reckless.

Reckless with your own body in a way that makes him stumble back at the realization. Reckless, in the way you charge forward and thrust your body into spaces where he’d easily be able to slip a blade between your ribs — and later, when he’s wiping his swords clean of your oxidizing blood, he’d wonder why he didn’t.

Still, there’s something terrifying in the way you barely flinch when he knicks your arm, drawing a dark line of blood through your clothes, or how you jerk yourself forward when the tip of his sword catches your stomach, almost as if daring him to impale you in one fell swoop.

“You — you used to be… someone else,” he says, panting as he steadies himself against a sharp jut of moonlit rocks. Behind you, the ocean churns, dark and foaming as it throws itself onto the jagged reefs.

You lick your lips, wiping a smear of blood from your cheek. Your chest heaves with the exertion, but there’s a pale, flickering ache behind your eyes that sets Zoro’s whole body on edge.

He shivers as you grin, savage and unrecognizable as the tiny girl with mochi-round cheeks who had once upon a time offered him sweets in a hand-woven basket.

“Yeah? Well — so did you.”

TAGLIST: @brairslair @msheds0519 @yunabelless @lynndt-chocolate @lostonthrillerbark @stunies @tsumu-senpai @phroggii @ssailormoonnn @breathinginyoursmoke @guridoodles @kyllium @naomihatake @itoshiexx @mythicallystupid @mars-mizuko @astroniii @crispynutella @enhastolemyheart @fanficwriter101 @jamesbparker @dira333 @weirdowithaphone @ink-perfect

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sturnioz · 3 months ago

Note

fratboy!chris when he gets word that shy!readers friends have dragged her to a party at a frat house he does not fuck with

dude would still find a way to make a comment about how he literally doesn’t care (him rushing over there, pissed off at the inconvenience, severely contradicts that)

- 🫧

"what is your girl doin' at some other frat party?"

chris barely registers the question over the thumping bass of the rap track pulsing through the speakers and he lifts his head, momentarily distracted from counting crumpled dollar bills he'd made selling drugs all night.

"the fuck are you talkin' about?" chris snaps, his brows knitting together in irritation as nate shoves his phone into chris' line of sight, squinting at the bright screen as it presents an instagram post from your friend with a series of pictures at another frat house. "nah.. nah, s'not her. she's at home. studyin' for some stupid—"

"bro, it's her." nate insists, his voice cutting through chris' denial as he jabs at the screen, a tag of your username popping up on a photo of you in a short, black dress, one that's never seen you wear before.

chris refuses to believe it's you — of course he does.

why the fuck would you be at another frat house when you've always said you don't like parties? he clings to denial like a lifeline, but as nate scrolls to another picture, your face lights up the screen, a small smile gracing your lips beside your friends. it twists something dark and primal in his gut, igniting an anger he can't shake.

a humourless laugh escapes him, bitter and sharp, as he presses his tongue to his cheek and shakes his head in disbelief. he shoves the crumpled dollar bills into his pocket, the sound of his tongue clicking against his teeth echoing his frustration.

"yeah i uh, i don't give a fuck. nah, don't care." he mutters under his breath, but the words feel hollow as he stands up from the couch, his heart pounding in his chest. he sniffs defiantly, grabbing his phone from the armrest with a sense of urgency.

nate raises his brow, "then where are you—"

"shut the fuck up."

he's strides away from his fraternity house, jaw tensed and hands buried deep in his pockets, each step driven by a determination that pulses through him. the closer get gets, the louder the music and chaos of the party become, a mix that only fuels his irritation and subtle worry.

he pushes his way inside, shoving past people who block his path, eyes scanning the room frantically in search of you. familiar faces from his own parties greet — the guys giving casual handshakes and dap-ups, while a few girls giggle and tug at his arm.

he uses their attention to his advantage, pulling them in close, leaning down to whisper your friend's name in their ears, knowing she's the more well-known one out of you both.

they eagerly point him in the right direction, and he shoved them away without a second thought, their surprised gasps fading behind him as he navigates deeper into the crowd of bodies.

as he approaches the kitchen, he spots you and your friend filling up your cups, a smile present on your lips. without hesitation, chris saunters over, invading your personal space so suddenly that it makes you flinch back, nearly spilling your drink.

his hand grips your chin, tilting your head up so he can scrutinise your face, searching for any signs of drugs coursing through your veins.

you blink at him in surprise, confused etched across your features. "oh, what are you—"

"did y'take anythin'?" he cuts you off, voice low and urgent. "someone give you anythin', huh? what have you had? tell me, kid, i swear to god—"

"no, i didn't take anything," you frown softly, your cheeks squished together by his grip. chris exhales deeply through his nose before he finally pushes your head away, causing you to whine softly. "ouch—"

"the fuck do you think you're doin'?" you assume he's talking to you, but your surprise deepens when he turns to face your friend, who looks livid at his sudden appearance. "why're you bringin' her here, huh? are you fuckin' stupid?"

"i'm not going back to your stupid frat house again," your friend hisses, glaring back at him. "your asshole of a frat brother—"

"yeah, i don't give a fuck about what happened between you 'n my frat brothers, alright? 'cos that shit got nothin' to do with me. at all. she—" chris points back at you and you blink innocently, caught in the crossfire. "she got somethin' to do with me, yeah? you don't bring her here, you understand that?"

your friend opens her mouth to argue back, but chris is already pushing you out of the room, his hand pressing firmly against your lower spine as he guides you forward. you remain quiet, chewing your bottom lip nervously as you step outside into the brisk night air, the cold nipping at the bare skin of your arms and legs.

your glance up at chris who walks beside you with a tense jaw, his eyes narrowed at the ground, sniffing angrily.

"are you mad at me, chris?" you ask him softly, a hint of worry threading through your voice.

"nah. nah, not mad at you, kid," chris mumbles, tone gruff as he sucks through his teeth, glancing over at you briefly. he exhales deeply, then moves in front of you, fingers brushing beneath the thin shoulder strap of your dress. "look at you. what're you wearin' this for? never seen this shit before in m'life — got dresses like this lyin' around on the sly or somethin'?"

"it's not mine," you reply quickly, wanting to clarify that it was borrowed from your friend. you take a breath, wanting to address what just happened. "chris—"

"y'look pretty, kid," he interrupts, the compliment tumbling out suddenly. the implication is clear: he does not want to talk about it.

"oh, thank you, but—"

"c'mon. let's go back to mine, yeah? s'borin' here and uh, y'don't need to be here — safer with me, y'know?

you hesitate for a moment, wanting to stay put and try and make him talk to you, but chris is already moving, leading you further away from the party, the tension in his shoulders telling you that he's struggling with his own feelings and emotions.

you can't help but steal glances at him before you speak up again. "chris.. i want to—"

chris stops abruptly, turning to face you, the intensity in his eyes making your heart race. "i don't wanna talk, a'ight? 'cos yeah, kid, i am mad. m'not mad at you, but m'fuckin' pissed at her for bringin' you here when you don't even fuck with parties anyway. and i — i don't want you caught up in any of that shit that goes on here, okay? jus' wanna go home with you... okay? ...please?"

#ᯓ꒰asks꒱#ᯓ꒰anon꒱#ᯓ꒰🫧anon꒱#☆ fratboy!chris #☆ shy!reader #☆ fratboy!chris x shy!reader #★ ⋮ sturniolo hours !#★ ⋮ chris hours !

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gothwineaunts · 5 months ago

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Wow, hello!

So, I was actually feeling pretty motivated to write this post yesterday. But things have gotten exponentially worse, and I admit the pressure is getting to me. There seem to be a ton of expectations surrounding what I should be saying here, in order to… I guess, absolve myself? As if there’s a checklist people want me to go through to perform the “perfect” creator apology. But, I don’t see the point. I care a lot about this community and I think you deserve something a lot more sincere than some hollow chat-gpt apology. I understand that that’s foolish, on my part. Things are done that way so often because they work. But what you’ll find throughout this post, is that I’m kind of an idiot about some things. I’m stubborn and hard-headed and a little bit pretentious. And so, what I’m planning to do here is to simply tell you the truth about what happened. No cherry picking. All my mistakes, but also the context that goes with them. And at the end, my formal apology. This is a long and winding tale with a lot of characters. I’m going to be sharing some usernames as we go, in the interest of clarity and transparency. You’ll understand why with the context. But please do not seek these people out. Don’t pick fights with them. It will only make everything worse, for all involved.

Cool? Cool. But first I need to address the elephant in the room. This will probably seem like irrelevant drama at first, but this is the nuance and background that I wasn’t adequately able to articulate the night before last. In more ways than one, this is a story told in twos. The first set of twos is you, the readers. Who you are, and what you’re hoping to find out in this post.

1. The overwhelming majority of you, are earnestly wanting to understand what has happened in the Nevermore Discord. You are concerned that I am not who you hoped I was. You are disappointed, and I understand why. To you, I am so sorry. I want to say that things are not as bad as they seem, but that is not for me to decide. You will need to draw your own conclusions from the words I write. And I understand, whatever you choose to do next.

2. And there is a small, but incredibly vocal minority of people who are absolutely living for this. They are spreading complete fabrications with no screenshots to speak of. Horrible, horrible accusations. People who are more excited about watching a dumpsterfire than they are about the series that brought them here in the first place. I’m not going to attempt to cater to those people in this post. Because nothing will ever be good enough. Everything that can be taken in bad faith will be taken in bad faith. It would be pointless. But you’ll see them in the comments and reblogs. This is a known group to not only myself, but many others. I will share some of their names in a later section so you know who to watch for. They will make a lot of noise around this post because they’ve been trying to make something like this happen for actual years. And now that I had a genuinely concerning response that good people reasonably want me to explain, they’re lunging at the chance to throw absolutely anything at the wall. It’s parasocial levels of hatred. This is some deep and horrible lore.

The next set of twos is how two things can be true at the same time. And that is exactly what is going on here, in this situation. Let me be really clear, because I don’t want either truth to be lost in my explanation as they are intrinsically linked to one another.

1. I did a downright terrible job explaining myself in the Discord when people started asking about crimson. I can give you all kinds of contributing factors for this, and I might later. But none of them really matter. It was incredibly careless of me to use “egging them on” and “cried wolf” to describe what I understood. At the time I was really laser-focused on expressing what happened as simply and quickly as possible because the channel replies were paused and I felt like everyone was just waiting for me to be finished with my message. But after stepping back, I immediately understood how badly I messed up, because of course these idioms are routinely weaponized against survivors of SA and CSA. That is not how I intended to use them. It was an unfortunate case of one thing looking and sounding like another thing. Incredibly ham-fisted and irresponsible on my part. To the survivors who read my words and felt that it echoed their past experiences, I’m heartbroken that I did that to you. That lapse of judgement was a betrayal to both you and me. I don’t know where my head went, and I’m just blown away by my own lack of awareness in that message. So for that I am and will continue to be sorry.

2. The second thing that can be true is that, while you are all absolutely owed an explanation and an apology, there are also some people amongst you who are using this fuck-up on my part as a springboard to take me down. These people have been trying to get a call out post to pop off about me for at least a year, and they have been very quick to jump into the reblogs and comments about this very serious topic with complete lies and slander. Just, anything that might stick to the wall. We’ll address this later on as well. But please understand that me discussing the harassment I’ve faced from these groups is not at the expense of me also owning up to my faults and taking the proper accountability.

And the last set of twos is one I’ve alluded to in the first sets, concerning a pair of toxic side-servers that ran adjacent to the main Nevermore Discord. Completely unofficial cliques. And invisible to myself and Flynn and our mod team. We were eventually made aware that both of them were breaking laws and Discord ToS in ways that leaked into our server and affected our members negatively. As such, both groups were mass-banned. And the cliques are the ones running a majority of the discourse you’ve been seeing here, because while they are formally banned from the discord, we have absolutely no say in their participation on Tumblr. Now, keep in mind. Both of these groups were uncovered after crimson was banned the first time. That’s important later.

Clique #1

My understanding of the first group is that it started as a gaming server for people who met one another through the Nevermore Discord. I don’t know when or why it started being used to talk shit about other readers, but I do know that it got really vicious. And it was sort of an open secret for long before I knew anything about it. I found out after that there were a lot of people passively in this server, just observing. It was that much of a spectacle.

Now, this clique had been pretty rude. Like they’d try to start fights with me in the discord fairly often, both in the Patreon and free spaces. But it wasn’t grounds for dismissal until we found out about the baiting and the alts. These people had a lot of grievances, but one really united them: they were extremely upset about anyone who would ship Prospero.

Many of you know, that Prospero is an aromantic character, canonically. And you may notice that canonically, he has no apparent love interest. But this group wanted to make sure other readers were not thinking about Prospero in relationships, or creating ship content of him for any reason on the grounds that it would be considered a “proship.” I told them (and I stand on this) that it’s not up to them to police the thoughts of other readers, and that aromantic people have widely varying lifestyles and experiences and do not need to be infantilized that way.

This turned out to be a bad move on my part, because it brought with it an onslaught of alt accounts coming in and "innocently" kicking up what I now refer to as the “prosp-aro” debate every time they had the chance. But because of this and what a common occurrence it was, we started being able to pick out the alts. And we realized that this group of people had been using the same alt accounts with different names to antagonize certain readers they’d decided they hated, and it had gone on for a long time.

I did a lot of investigative work in dms trying to figure out who all was responsible for the harassment, and settled on a list that was vetted by three different people who knew about the clique. And all three of these people insisted that, while Laci was in the group and in a lot of the screencaps saying pretty dubious things, that she was good people. So I believe them, and let Laci stay. This group was banned on April 3, 2024, and contained the following users:

- lilnatx (nat)

- suitino (sushi)

- jj_the_jet_plane (layden)

- rivsticks (jasper)

- atheimee (athena)

- jinxs.com (lanx/jinx)

- smartestginger (nico)

- thereallandofbugs (bugs)

- rosienemui (rosie)

These were the names they were known by on the Discord. I don’t have the Tumblr accounts tied to these identities. But some might be the same. I know a lot of them are here. It should be noted that jinx was later unbanned due to pressure from Laci that they had been banned in error, after the fact. We allowed them back in after a few days as a favor to Laci since the situation seemed like it was very stressful for her. This would prove to be yet another a mistake since, as you have probably seen in the screenshots from the night before last, jinx rapidly escalated things to another level while I was trying to figure out how to handle crimson’s unbanning and subsequent rebanning an hour later.

Clique #2

Phew. Still with me? Great. The second group we needed to ban was one that actually started long before the first one, but was a lot smaller and comparatively more subtle. This group, to my knowledge, cropped up around the time that ep. 39 of Nevermore was released. (11/10/22) We knew about this group but not who all was involved in it or in what capacity for a very long time. They would consistently post things on Tumblr trying to start a scandal. I recall posts alleging that we were racists, or SA apologists, or that we were sending death threats to a random confessions account.

To be clear, these allegations are completely false. This clique will say anything. Like a recent post one of them put up during this discourse said that hiwi (our mod) is both a r*pe apologist and a childhood friend of mine and that’s the only reason she hasn’t been banned. Hiwi is absolutely nothing of the sort, and I have never met her in person. In fact, she lives on the other side of the continent.

Now, this clique is a little different than the first. The first, to my knowledge, was a group of friends that got toxic and felt morally superior about their opinions and it all kind of got away from them. The vibe was a little catty, I guess. Gossipy. But this clique has more of a stalker vibe. It’s dark.

They’ve had it out specifically for me for as long as I can remember. And some of them (at least one, at all times) would subscribe to our patreon, both to sow dissent in our stream chats and also to leak literally all the content back to the others, including me talking about random shit like what I ate for lunch. Just so they could like. Laugh about it, I guess. I’ll never understand why. [Editing note: because in the final moments of proofreading this post I see one of these people has made some master post about what a terrible person I am? A lot of those screenshots are from Patreon channels and the guy STILL has them laying around. I’m telling you, they stole everything that wasn’t nailed down.]

The biggest grievance this clique had is that any ship with Montresor is an “SA fetish ship” because to them he is a r*pist because of how he made Ada bark (?) and since Montrada is canon, that means we are supporters of SA, and that Morella and Ada should be together instead. Listen, I’ll level with you, this one baffles me. I don’t even know how to begin to untangle it. But if you see a lot of vitriol about us being SA apologists from these users, it’s because Montresor exists. That’s pretty much it.

You can ask them for screencaps ‘til you’re blue in the face, but unless they build fake ones from the ground up, they’re never going to be able to back up their wild claims. Simply put, they’re provocateurs, and they use the scariest words they can to whip people up into a panic.

We became aware that they were leaking patreon content when one of them was caught publicly referring to things that were being said behind a paywall when we knew they weren’t a patron. It unraveled from there. People who knew about their antics shared screenshots and information with us, and we finally realized the scope of the clique’s hatred and banned whoever was even left in the Nevermore Discord. But they continue to be active in the community on tumblr. You’ll have seen them around. They were banned on 5/11/2024 and the names involved are as follows (again, a mishmash of discord names, nicknames, and tumblr accounts):

- percy (gremlinguy145 on tumblr)

- queenmorningrose (annabel-lee-nevermore on tumblr)

- spoopycactus630 (spoopy-nevermore-dump on tumblr)

- grif/horrorshow (conscience-grim on tumblr)

- unreqiknizd

- duke aralt (westofthestyx)

- eden (sapphic-mad-scientist on tumblr)

- priemium

Again I’d like to reiterate. The point in sharing these names is not to incite any sort of response against these people. But they are folding themselves into the fray and doing what they can to whip everyone else up into a mob, and all as we’re talking about a discord server that they have been banned from for months now. The above context is also relevant for the next section, which is why you’re all here in the first place.

What the hell happened with Crimson?

I hope it’s not confusing, but now we’re going back to 3/14/2024, before anything I just outlined above had come to light. The cliques were quietly doing their harassment and baiting and raiding and whatever-the-hell behind the scenes, but Flynn and I and the mods were blissfully unaware of how bad it was getting. We get a dm from Laci. The same Laci who was part of Clique #1 and was rescued from being banned with the others by her friends outside the group. Jinx’s friend, who managed to get them unbanned as well. You have probably seen these screencaps already, but I will show them to you again, just in case.

Sufficed to say, we were immediately alarmed by the information Laci shared in her DM with us. Now, I want to be very clear about this because it’s been lost in the game of telephone. What Laci outlines in her dm to me, were the events that occurred between six users (including crimson) in a group chat with minors. Everyone in the evidence was censored (pfp and username), as was the image that crimson showed them. When I asked, Laci agreed to give me one name of one of the minors in the dm. I’ll call them Alice, but that is not their real name. I asked if I could talk to Alice about this, I was told by Laci, no. Alice doesn’t want to talk. I was like, ok I understand, that’s fine.

I hope it makes sense when I say that it is not feasible for us to moderate the things that happen in peoples’ dms. As you’ve seen above, the mod team doesn’t usually get involved with drama unless whatever is happening is directly affecting the experience people are having in the Nevermore Discord because that is all we can see and the only place we have any real authority. But this was obviously a special case. We banned crimson very quickly without asking any follow-up questions, because of course we did!? I’ve seen people say I’m harboring or defending crimson or that we’re buddies but we barely spoke, ever. They were a stranger to me then, and they still are now.

But something about the entire situation wasn’t adding up to me. And I want to be clear that none of this is in any way meant to discredit csa survivors, I’m really just trying to put you in my headspace and walk you through my thought process. But I found that the evidence was just, sort of strange. Laci started her dm explaining that she found this information out because she and a group of people were investigating crimson for ‘art tracing’ which felt, to me, like a bizarre non-sequitur and totally irrelevant next to the evidence of them showing nsfw content to minors. Petty, kind of. Like I wanted to ask – why were you doing that in the first place? People trace Flynn’s art all the time. As long as they’re not selling it, it’s not a big deal.

Most of the crops are from a PC but the windows are oddly small, and only contain a couple messages at a time. Some have American formatted time and some have European formatted time. So different users, I assume? The names were blotted out, which I would understand for a public call-out but not for a private report to the mod team. Laci was not in this gc at any point in time, despite being the one to report.

One of the users was apparently 12, to which I ask – what is a 12-year-old doing on discord at all? If we knew who they were, we would have reported the account. Discord is not a safe place for a child that age, let alone a small group chat. Along with 18-year-old Crimson, there was also a 22- and 17-year-old in the chat, which left us wondering – why hadn’t anything been done?

I had no evidence that anyone ever told crimson they were minors, and I feel if it existed, it would have been in the screencap dump (I find that sometimes a noticeable lack of key evidence is evidence in itself). No one seems to have tried to kick crimson from the group chat or report their account for inappropriate behavior. Then there’s the fact that this is a group chat. Anyone in it can leave at any time.

Then I came across the messages that started this whole gc, and it only got stranger when I realized Alice started it, called it “Women Lovers” and created it “so we can talk about Nevermore women without having to filter ourselves” after they all reacted to a sultry but sfw drawing of Lenore that crimson had made and posted in our hideout channel. And all that made me wonder why Alice didn’t just kick crimson, if she had admin power? Do you see what I mean? It’s just all a bit head tilty. I noticed it at the time. But I said nothing. Because it didn’t matter. Crimson, no matter what happened, exposed minors to nsfw content. And that’s on them. And I’ve never in my life defended it. We banned them.

Crimson was beside herself. She came off humiliated and apologetic, and insisted she had no idea and begged to come back to a community she said she loved. But we told her no, there’s no coming back from doing what she did.

Time passes and we uncover Clique #1. And while we figured out who the main players were, I dmed with Laci. And it was Laci herself, who tells me that it was Alice who made most of Clique #1’s alt accounts, and that it was Alice who used those alt accounts to harass people and try to get them to start fights or say something that might get them in trouble.

And I’ll be honest with you, the mod team still didn’t think much of it, outside of – we need to figure out which accounts were the alts. So we did. We had several confirmed to us. And those accounts were zeroing in on certain users that the clique didn’t like. At the time we noticed two notable targets in addition to the mod team. I won’t name them, it’s their business if they want to weigh in about all that. But in screencaps, they’ll be labeled Target #1 and Target #2.

More time passes and Clique #2 comes to light. As you can imagine, by now we’re feeling disillusioned, and very tired of trying to moderate shit we cannot see for ourselves. And that’s when crimson comes back to very hesitantly ask if they might be able to appeal their ban. It wasn’t until then that it occurred to us that Laci (on behalf of Alice) was the only one who ever reported anything to us about Crimson.

And I want to just say that again. Because it’s gotten lost too. Laci was the only person who ever reported Crimson. There was not one single other person who ever sent a modmail or a dm or even a ping to anybody on the mod team. I have since (only yesterday) seen some screencaps that are rather skin crawly, but even those happened in yet another side server. Thinking on this, the mods went back through the known alt accounts Alice had used. And they found that Alice harassed crimson both on her main account and on the same alt accounts that she used to harass the other targets.

By now, Alice is banned for completely unrelated reasons. Not because of what happened with Crimson. I’ve seen that one flying around and I’m sorry it’s just not true. It’s because she was relentlessly harassing and cyberbullying people in the discord we moderate. Laci is still there, but had lost my trust, for being involved with both the drama I’ve mentioned here and more that I don’t care to dip into. It’s ultimately irrelevant. But what am I going to say to Laci? “Hey, did you and Alice, by any chance, coordinate some kind of bizarre trap together to get crimson banned from the discord because you suspected them of tracing their art?” And once again. Because I want to keep this top of mind. Even if that were the case, it doesn’t make what Crimson did alright, and it never will. Sharing nsfw content in front of minors is a disgusting thing to do. And one that we frankly are really irritating about in the moderation of the discord. I’ve heard people say that we over-moderate when it comes to art.

But all this stuff about a “known pedophile?” If it was known, then we were on the outs. And to even this minute right now, I don’t have any conclusive evidence that Crimson is a pedophile. The evidence I have is that Crimson shared nsfw with a group of people whose ages they did not know. Which is fucking gross. It’s an adult’s responsibility to make sure they’re speaking with other adults before posting things of that nature.

But at the time, the way I read the situation is that Crimson had only just stopped being a minor and was egregiously negligent in how they were speaking and what they were posting, likely in part due to them not being aware enough of their adult responsibilities. And hey. I know some of you are chomping at the bit. You can call me naïve for this! This is what I’m referring to when I say that I can be a real idiot. But I feel everyone has been very quick to call Crimson a pedophile. I know this is pedantic to say, but the prerequisite for being a pedophile is “being attracted to minors.” Based on the information I had at my fingertips, I did not think Crimson sought out these minors. Crimson was invited to the gc, they did not ask to join.

I have seen discussions about all the things crimson did to their victims since we unbanned them but I have not seen screencaps to support that whole ‘marriage proposal’ thing, and again I think it sounds a bit odd coming as a pedophilia accusation from someone only one year younger than crimson.

But you know what? I don’t know crimson. Maybe we were wrong. But even if we weren’t, I realize in hindsight that it was a stupid decision for the mod team to give them a second chance. We didn’t have anyone to consult about what happened because all the other people in the chat had been obscured from me and I didn’t feel like Laci would give me a straight answer.

The mods and I felt at the time that crimson, like the other targets of Clique #1, had been singled out and that they deserved another very closely monitored chance in the discord, which they said they still missed dearly. I’m a bleeding heart, alright? A total sap. I know that. But being honest with you, I felt bad. It feels horrible to be singled out and targeted. And I was probably too close to that feeling at the time, seeing as we were on the tail end of finding out the Clique #2 had pursued me so relentlessly for so long.

So for my part, I’m sorry. I made a rash decision that was influenced by some very personal circumstances. And we should have left it alone. Based on the evidence I've seen, I don’t know if I personally would call crimson a pedophile and certainly I wouldn't call them a known pedophile, but I am regretful that we risked it either way.

When I was trying to explain all of this in the west common room channel two nights back, things had boiled over and were already getting out of hand very quickly. A lot of brand new accounts were joining the discord with one word intros just to start conflicts in the public server with crimson. Alts. Either from banned users or burner accounts. And I got panicky. One of the mods paused the messages in west common room but no one besides me was available to handle the situation at that moment. Reacts about being silenced were pouring in and I felt pressured to quickly take over and try to explain.

In my rush, I stupidly didn’t backread more than a quick skim. And I ate shit, y’all. You saw. One thing I want to state outright. I’m talking a lot about my thoughts and my feelings and it’s because I don’t wanna speak for Flynn or for the mods. But I didn’t make this decision alone. In fact, I was dragging my feet and being really lazy about okaying the whole thing. Just because I was busy, not because I was fretting over it or anything. But I had to be pinged and then literally tapped on the shoulder by Flynn, asking me to respond to mod chat when this was being discussed earlier that day. That doesn’t change the fact that I was part of the decision. I agreed to unban crimson. Foolishly. I understand that, now.

I hope that now it makes some more sense though, how it came to happen. I never meant to hurt anyone. My own past and present feelings got in the way, and I own that. But in the moment, my personal intention was to give crimson a second chance because I felt that they’d been targeted by Clique #1. Not to ignore anyone’s concerns or make them feel unsafe, even if those were the ultimate outcome.

So, completely underprepared and defensive, I jumped into west common room and I just. Blew it. Totally fucking blew it. I knew it instantly but it’s hard to stay logical when people are telling you you’re vile and evil and they’re sick that they ever thought you were a good person and that they’ll never see you the same way again. My mind went blank and I don’t really remember much of what happened next. But I said what I said, and I should have done better.

I wish there was a word bigger than sorry. I’m beside myself. I know there was probably a way to make everyone happy. To make everything okay. But I wasn't clever enough to figure it out in the moment, and it eats at me. So it’s like I’m sorry for my poor judgment and my terrible choice of words, but there’s another layer where I’m also sorry for not matching how wonderful this community is with how wonderful (or well, unwonderful) I was two nights ago. I promise I am going to work harder to be better for you all.

Again, to every victim of SA and CSA, my heart is with you, more personally than you might realize. I don’t think I could have handled my explanation in a worse way. And I’m so so sorry.

Moving forward, I am also going to take an enormous step back from moderating and participating in the discord in general. I feel like a lot of this happened because I was still treating it like it belonged to a smaller fandom, like Shiloh’s. But realistically, I don’t have time to both moderate and make the series itself, and I really dragged my feet on being honest with myself about that. And for that too, I apologize. We’re going to get more mods, they’re going to have full control of the moderation, and Flynn and I are going to do what we love more than anything in the world and just make Nevermore.

I understand if you won’t be there for it. This is not a flattering picture I’ve painted for you. And you’d be well within your rights, to decide not to give us another chance. But it's been a pleasure to lurk here in this wildly talented corner of tumblr. And I’ll never forget it. <3 Yours truly, -Kit Trace

#red post #nevermore webtoon #cw pedophila mention #cw sa mention

672 notes · View notes

feminist-space · 12 days ago

Text

"Joy Spence, 21, said she visited emergency departments at two hospitals in St. John's over the course of nearly two weeks this May.

What began as weakness and abdominal pain on her right side quickly deteriorated into blacking out from the agony in her torso.

But no matter how dire her symptoms got, doctors kept sending her home.

"They would just tell me, 'Your bloodwork's normal, there's nothing we can do.' They would send me home, then same thing again," she said. "I would go back again. They would get me to do the bloodwork, say everything's normal."

Ultrasound and CT scans apparently turned up nothing, but Spence, in such severe pain, says she had no option but to keep returning to the hospital, where she says she was eventually left screaming in a waiting room, ignored by hospital staff.

"If somebody doesn't help me, I'm going to die," she recalls wailing, watching doctors and nurses pass her by.

At one point, she was dismissed outright by a walk-in clinic nurse, she adds.

"Somebody said to me, 'I don't know what you expect me to do,'" she said. "'You're a healthy 21-year-old young female.'"

One night, she says, her boyfriend had to help her into an ambulance. Spence was in so much pain she couldn't stay conscious and stand on her own.

"I remember the man in the ambulance telling me … how often he sees other young women going into the hospital and seeing them be misdiagnosed and not taken seriously," she said, speaking through tears.

"He said that he would do his best to … get things going for me."

Spence says she went to an ER at the Health Sciences Centre or St. Clare's Mercy Hospital about 10 times over a 12-day period, beginning on May 21. She also visited her family doctor, who could do little except tell her to speak directly to the surgeon at Health Sciences Centre, she said.

Each time she saw a doctor, she says, she was sent home and told to dance around her living room or do yoga to cure what physicians believed was anxiety or sluggish bowels.

"I had so many laxatives," Spence recalls. "I would tell them … nothing's even coming out anymore. It's not just this, I don't think. But no, they were dead set on the constipation and only constipation. Like, it can only be that."

...

Spence says doctors only began to take her seriously once she began vomiting in a Health Sciences Centre hallway. The contents of her stomach were green and black.

An older doctor walking past her happened to notice, stopping in his tracks. Spence says he immediately identified the issue as appendicitis.

At that doctor's urging, Spence was finally wheeled into an operating room, where she says her burst appendix — now gangrenous — was removed.

"I think when I walked into the room and they seen a 21-year-old young girl, they immediately dismissed me and thought that there couldn't be anything wrong with me," Spence said.

"I was not on their minds and not on their radar. And if they didn't have that preconceived idea of me, those thoughts wouldn't have been formed and maybe I would have gotten the proper care that I should have."

...

Spence is still struggling to recover from her ordeal. Physically, she's now fine: her appendix was removed and her stitches have healed.

But she's lost an alarming amount of weight, she says, wakes up gasping in the middle of the night and can't stop herself from crying whenever she remembers the hospital.

"I've been losing a lot of hair," she said. "Mentally, it's just been a struggle."

Spence only received an apology from the health authority after CBC News requested comment and confirmed that Spence had done an interview — a move she says felt hollow and frustrating, since the manager who called her didn't give her an explanation about why she was repeatedly ignored while waiting to be admitted.

The ripple effect from her illness, and how she says she was treated when seeking care, has uprooted her life. She's taken a year off her studies in Memorial University's social work program and has lost her job. She's looking for trauma therapy, but now doesn't have the money to pay for it, she says.

"I think as young women we're always told what we're supposed to do, how we're supposed to think, and not to trust our instincts," she said.

"But most of the time … the gut instinct is right. I knew I was sick. I knew what was happening wasn't right, and I could have died if I didn't keep going back to the hospital.

"If I had listened to those doctors and went back home — what could have really happened?""

#ableism #ableism in medicine #medical malpractice #medicine #medicine dismissing patients #misogyny in medicine #hospital management system

399 notes · View notes

hyuuukais · 6 months ago

Note

heyllo :3

can i request reader x chan? reader is overwhelmed but keeps it in because that’s what they see chan doing a lot of the time. but eventually it builds to a breaking point where the stress causes them to completely shut down. chan doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong so it might be cute if he just sits on the floor in front of reader and plays clips from a song he’s working on and asks for their opinion (by basically talking out loud to himself) and then after reader calms down they are able to verbalize they just need a human weighted blanket and to be told they are doing amazing and their efforts are not going unnoticed.

im fine. 🥲

just hold me, tell me you love me

pairing : chan x reader

notes : me vs the long title. anyway thank uuu for being my first request! i hope this lives up to ur expectations and can provide u some comfort 🫶 sending u hugs and love 🫂💙 sorry it's taken a bit long to get back to! kind of was getting this feeling myself and have been unable to write, but i think i'm getting back

warnings : reader is overwhelmed, mentions of anxiety, fear of opening up to someone, reader is called pet names (love, baby), reader breaks down

wc : 1.4k

All week there's been a growing pressure in your chest threatening to spill all over the floor and leave you a mess, lying on the ground with nothing else to give. Give, you've given all you can, and now that you're home, you can't do it anymore. You seek peace in the quiet of your shared bedroom, your boyfriend still at work in his studio.

Your boyfriend, who works hard day and night. Your boyfriend, who's loving and caring and sweet. Your boyfriend, who you're scared to open up to when things get really hard, because he doesn't share with you either. Although the relationship isn't fresh, going on a year and a half, there are still things you don't talk about. You don't want to burden him with your struggles when you've always been able to power through by yourself.

Fisting the sheets under you, you can feel the need to cry in your body, the hollow feeling in your chest and the tightness in your throat, but nothing comes. It's like your body knows you're too tired for even that simple of an action, for even one tear to slip. So instead, you sit the the blanket over you, face peeking out to stare at the wall with tired eyes. You can't sleep. If you close your eyes, you know you won't drift off and wake up feeling better, you'll just lie there for hours.

"Baby?"

Something spikes in you when you hear Chans voice ring out through the apartment, curling into yourself more. He shouldn't be home this early and yet, here he is, calling your name and wondering where you are; you're never in bed this early. Chan continues to call out for you until you hear the bedroom door opening quietly.

"Love?" Chans footsteps get closer, and you can feel the edge of the bed dip with his weight as he sits down. "My love..."

His hand brushes over your shoulder, but you can't face him. When you bring the blanket over your head more, he seems to get the hint, shifting to lean against the headboard next to the statue that is your body, unmoving and heavy. You can feel him fiddling beside you, and soon, a soft melody fills your ears. It's enough to distract you temporarily from the raging storm in your head, focusing on the beats, and when Chans voice comes through, it's like you can feel a sense of comfort washing over you. Although it's not enough to completely take these feelings away, you're grateful for what he's doing.

"This song has been giving me trouble," Chan comments over the music, sighing heavily. "I can't figure out if I like the chorus or not, and it feels like it's missing something in general, but I don't know what. What do you think, baby?"

Unable to answer verbally, but still wanting him to know you're listening, you roll around so you're facing him. He chuckles as you bury your face under his thigh when you see he's sitting cross-legged, the pressure on your face oddly comforting. Chan places a hand on your back, his arm resting behind your head as he rubs small circles over your thick layer of blanket. Another song starts playing after a while, another soft one, too. You relax under his touch, feeling the vibrations through his body as he hums along to this one and makes occasional comments about changes he'd like to make.

Exhaustion hits you like a ton of bricks, your eyes fluttering shut as he keep playing different songs and telling you all about them. Both of you are aware that he shouldn't be playing so much unreleased music, but all Chan cares about in this moment is you, helping you, calming you, loving you. The company will never know anyway.

"Chan," You whisper, voice barely audible. His humming stops and he pauses the music, looking down at your limp form with furrowed brows. Moving your head slightly, you're able to look up at him on an angle, the cool air of the bedroom breaching your blanket cocoon.

"What is it, baby?" Chan moves some hair from your face, leaving this palm to rest on your cheek.

"Can you just-" You clear your throat, one hand coming up to play with the hem of his shorts at his knee to calm you more. "Just hold me, tell me you love me?"

Without words, he shifts down to your level and nods. Carefully, Chan guides you to face away from him and brings you close to his body, your back pressed tightly against his chest. His chin rests on your shoulder, now enveloped inside your blanket as he holds onto you tightly, scared that if he let's go, you'll fade away. The thought of you being in so much pain, whether physical or emotional, is something he can't bear; he can't sit on the sidelines and watch you wither away. Neither of you speak as you lie there for what feels like hours, although it must only be a few minutes. The feeling of Chan's breath on your neck is oddly comforting, your own hands finding his arm around your waist and holding onto him.

Something about the way Chan is holding you, comforting you without the pressure of being asked what's wrong, has you finally breaking down. It starts small, holding back a few tears, but a few escaping despite your efforts. Then Chan shifts closer, pressing soft lips on the skin behind your ear.

"I love you, you know that? So, so much," He whispers, inhaling the scent of your shampoo as he buries his face into your hair. "You're doing amazing, baby, and I mean that. I thought... I thought something might have been wrong, but I didn't know how to go about this. I'm sorry it got to this point, I should have asked. I want you to know you can always turn to me, okay?"

His words have the dam breaking and soon enough, the sobs ripping from your chest have you gasping and hiccupping like there's no tomorrow. You don't register the way Chan tries to soothe you as he pulls you around and into his chest. Subconsciously, you wrap your arms around his shoulders and roll his body onto yours, his head sitting in the crook of your neck. The weight feels nice, grounding, and you can finally hear Chan speaking again.

"Shhh, it's okay, you're okay." Chan whispers into the skin of your neck, one of his hands smoothing back your hair. "You're okay, I'm here, now breathe, alright? Breathe, baby."

He inhales deeply, and you do your best to mimic his movements. It's shaky, but you're doing it.

"Good job, you're doing great," Chan keeps his voice low as he speaks. "Keep breathing."

It gets to the point where you don't need to think about breathing anymore, your head throbbing slightly from the sudden outburst of emotion. Chan's body stays on yours, but he props himself up enough to look at you, his palm on your cheek and his thumb wiping away any remaining tears. You can barely look him in the eye.

All he does is stare at you with those pretty, dark eyes, but you realize there's a dampness under them matching yours. You open your mouth to question it, but he shakes his head, a soft smile on his face.

"I don't want you to be in pain alone ever again." His thumb continues to caress your cheek, even though the tears have dried. "I love you too much to let you go through that. Whatever's going on, tell me when you're ready, yeah? For now, just let me gush about my beautiful partner until they're feeling better."

You can't help the small laugh that escapes you as Chan surges up to pepper your face in kisses, saying praises in between each one. With every kiss, you can feel your face heating up until you try and cover it, but he just grabs your wrists and pulls your hands away. Eventually, he slows down, pressing one last kiss directly on your lips, and settles back onto you.

"Let's stay like this for a while," Chan suggests, knowing you need it, but so does he. "My favourite place is in your arms."

─── taglist : @chaeryred @toplinelix @channie-143 @staysinbloom

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