#i purposefully took really simple low-homework classes in an attempt for this to *not* happen and clearly that did not work

[justablah56]

bro ngl I am so fucking tired

[apocvlypsed]

( wiz khalifa vc )  yeah... uh huh, u know what it is -- linc is addicted 2 bringing new muses !

hello hello my loves, i present to you my socal sweetheart, shiloh correia! tap the clickity click to read more about this chill dude !!

reece king. — oh, have you met shiloh correia? he is a twenty two year old cis male that is feeling phlegmatic about the planet’s imminent doom. a gym receptionist, this leo is known around town as the viscerotonic, because he is bona fide & mellow, as well as distrait & extemporaneous. hopefully, loh will survive. 

alright here we go: a very rushed, disorganized draft of his background because i have to leave for a doc’s appointment soon!! ( tw for illness, mentions of possible death, mentions of hospitals, mentions of homophobia )

backstory:

his name is shiloh, he's 22, and he works as a receptionist at the local boujee gym!! he moved to hawley when he was 19ish because he was in pittsburgh for testing and like... decided he might as well stay in the area a while to escape his smothering family? 

born & raised in los angeles, so he's got one of those very chill, relaxed personalities. like... someone spills coffee on him? 'it's cool, man, really. good fashion statement.' survive a 5-year battle with leukemia? 'awesome, great, thanks doc.' just... very easy-breezy, chill vibes. he can often be misinterpreted as caring too little, but he’s just a very serene soul.

he kinda didn't have much of a real childhood after he got diagnosed with leukemia when he was 13. he was in and out of the hospital for a couple years before things got to be too taxing on his parents, and they sent him to a live-in treatment center shortly after his 15th birthday. they couldn’t handle Seeing Him Like That when things took a turn, but they said the real reason was the transit bills. going back and forth added up so much, and with not a lot of money to spare, it was too much for them to shoulder. shiloh didn’t question it because like... he knew how hard this was on his parents and younger sisters, he could see it. it saddened him to go to this treatment center though, because every shred of normalcy was ripped away. he could no longer go to school when he felt up for it -- his parents suggested getting lessons at the center, but shiloh insisted on staying enrolled at his high school. he learned mainly through emails and work brought to him by his friend elijah.

his younger sisters ( twins, sara & mackenzie, about 8 at the time ) would visit him in the center because they missed him? shiloh was very ill, but his siblings would take the bus across thecity and bring books for him to read to them like how he did at home. so this 15-16 y/o kid would be hooked up to chemo, literally reading harry potter quietly to his little sisters, making sure to do every single silly character voice, and look at them to gasp at the scary parts. admittedly he was quite low energy, but he put considerable effort into seeming 100% for them, so they wouldn’t worry. ( one time sarah asked him if he was going to come home sometime soon, and saying he didn’t know literally broke shiloh’s heart. after they left, he cried a lot. )

that’s kind of shiloh in a nutshell too. going above and beyond for others, not quite at what he would call his expense because it doesn’t bother him... but it kind of is at his expense in instances where he was ill and he pushed himself to extremes to quell peoples’ worries. he’s always been a charitable soul. 

he returned home when he was 17, successfully in remission, and he would spend every waking moment with his sisters when he wasn’t at school. but remission was short-lived. he was at a party with his best friend elijah when the nausea and nosebleeds hit, and his classmate delayed calling an ambulance until all the alcohol was hidden. during that delay, shiloh lost consciousness. elijah fought his way into the ambulance. he held shiloh’s hand all the way there, right until the moment he woke up.

treatment gradually picked up again. some chemo visits turned into constant returns to the hospital. shiloh picked up pneumonia at one point, and school was just out of the question. elijah visited him on weekdays and his parents on weekends, so it worked for a bit, keeping their relationship masked. linking fingers in the stupid hospital hallway, taking slow walks along the terrace. but then shiloh’s family surprised him on his birthday. so did elijah. and it was a mess.

after elijah left, his parents were basically like, ‘we love you, but no. no. you can’t be This and That. you can’t be both.’ meaning sick and gay. his mother spent an extra hour there lecturing shiloh and crying about how the doctors said his prognosis wasn’t looking good, why would he do this to himself if he knew he could be passing soon? why would her boy purposefully deny himself entry to heaven? shiloh should have been angry, livid. but he... wasn’t. his natural disposition wasn’t conducive to getting defensive and he just didn’t have that kind of energy in him. so he just sat in his hospital bed and listened to his mother crying and cursing him, cursing their situation, praying to god for forgiveness on his behalf. when she finished, he offered her a tiny, tired smile. he squeezed her hand and murmured, “thanks ma.”  after she left, shiloh had to sit with that. all of what she’d said. and it kind of changed his attitude about the leukemia. his test results came back worse, and things took another, more drastic hit. things really got bad for the subsequent six months. it was a rapid decline, probably the worst he’d ever experienced over the course of his illness. he couldn’t be as sociable, or as vibrant. smiles of ease became grimaces because no amount of painkillers could keep him comfortable. one time, when his sisters came to visit, he stood up to bring them to the cafeteria for ice cream and fainted in front of them. he slept for days, but the bags under his eyes never ceased. he got thinner. his hands shook when he held elijah’s hand. and for the first time in all of this, shiloh realized he truly might not make it.

elijah kept things normal. well. as normal as they could be. aside from a quiet “how’s it going?” and a couple minutes of leukemia-talk, they’d indulge in other things. watching netflix curled up in shiloh’s bed. sneaking peanut m&ms in for shiloh. bringing homework because shiloh insisted he was going to graduate that year, with elijah, with their friends. sometimes elijah’s visits consisted of watching shiloh sleep. and that was fine. every time that happened, he’d leave a note, so shiloh knew he’d stopped by.

if asked now, shiloh wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the day when things stopped getting worse and started getting better. maybe it had something to do with elijah asking him to their own prom and getting the nursing staff in on it. maybe it had something to do with being able to leave the care center, just for the night, and forget that his own body was the enemy.

on his 18th birthday, shiloh no longer looked like a shadow of himself. he looked healthier -- not 100%, but certainly not as terrible as before. “you look hot,” was elijah’s response when he came in after a week of not visiting -- training for soccer, he’d said -- and shiloh greeted him with a smile that was, for the last few months, unusually void of pain. 

on a warm, golden march day, shiloh got results of his blood test saying he was officially in remission for a second time. and god, it felt so good. so freeing. he pushed through the last of his graduation requirement and was able to walk with his class to receive an honorary diploma -- his real one came two months later, after completing some online courses.)

naturally, he and elijah broke up so they could venture off and do their own things. shiloh didn’t want to be a burden. elijah went to school abroad. they still talk sometimes.

the correia’s, however, are worriers. they weren’t convinced that shiloh was alright, that he could go off somewhere far away and come back in one piece. so they spoke to his aunt and uncle in pittsburgh, pa and worked out a deal -- he could go stay with them for the summer working for their law firm. the east coast had better treatment if he ever needed it during that timeframe. but at the end of the summer, they expected shiloh back in la with them.

there were a few scares in pittsburgh, but the bloodwork never showed any dangerous levels that couldn’t be fixed by some isolated treatment, or rest. by his 19th birthday, shiloh had been steadily in remission for half a year. aside from some long-term side effects from treatments, he experienced no lingering discomfort. 

while browsing the welcome center at the airport, waiting for his flight home, shiloh stumbled upon a brochure for a small town called hawley and just... fell in love with the way snow dusted the small streets in the cover photo? the freshness of the air, or how the pamphlet described it, at least. so he called his parents and spoke through their protests. “ma, dad... i’m gonna stay out here a while.” and then when his mother attempted to power scold her way into getting her son home, he hung up the phone. 

he moved into a small studio apartment and landed a job as the receptionist at the local upscale gym! he honestly adores his job. sometimes dealing with stella from yoga is a bit much, but the contact and the stories he hears... it’s worth it. plus, the gym is super awesome and there might be a cute boy there he’s kinda into, on the down-low. ;)

shiloh’s just very easygoing and can converse with anyone. he’s agreeable and it takes a lot for him to get offended because honestly, everything kind of pales in comparison when you’ve barely survived your own body attacking itself.

he lives paycheck to paycheck most of the time. gladly. he’s enjoying his simple life, his normal life, existing without being tethered to wires and tubes and hospital cleaning smells. he probably always burns sweet-smelling candles because the scent of those hospital rooms is kind of ingrained in his memory. he just... he loves absorbing it all. the mid-afternoon sun, the silly coffee shop people, the way the panels of hawley sidewalks don’t always align just right. he’s thriving here, just breathing minute to minute.

headcanons

all in all, he’s very unbothered by the asteroid because he just... feels so lucky to be here? and he can’t change anything about a big rock careening toward the planet. so he’ll enjoy his time and not worry about it. because worrying is forfeiting valuable time he can just be spending having a laugh or enjoying the fresh air.

he’ll say he doesn’t care about snapchat streaks but then bombard you if your streak is in danger.

he sings! he’ll like, loop piano chords and a mellow beat and make up some r&b song about the pasta he’s making for dinner. he sounds like... a mix between daniel caesar and kevin garrett. just v chill and like warm honey. he can also lowkey rap really well but... shh... it’s a secret.

he kinda dresses very stereotypically la despite being in pennsylvania now? a lot of basics with loud details. he also really likes painting his nails in those cool holographic colors? yee

the first thing he did when he moved to pittsburgh was teach himself how to cook super well because he needed to make up for all the Shit he ate while in treatment. so get ready... ya boy’s gonna make you a masterpiece for dinner !

definitely doesn’t mention his illness a lot. his parents are constantly calling worried about the status of his remission so like... if someone acts really worried he’ll be like, “i’m fine, no symptoms, chill” and not even realize he didn’t tell them about his past. he’s just... all about living in the moment so things get lost in the shuffle.

he shamelessly plays words with friends while at the reception desk. pls tell him a good 4-letter word he can make with Z, K, I, and N bc he is struggling.

his footsteps are straight up silent. he moves so gracefully like.... he could sneak up on even the most alert people, and it’s mostly always by accident. he’s just got that calm air about him where he commands attention but in a subtle way. so people won’t notice him enter the room, but they will be locked in by his intrigue once he’s inside.

“pls remember to hydrate today xo” -- an actual text from shiloh correia.

he wears a LOT of hoodies layered with denim jackets. don’t judge him, it’s COLD here !!! (he says when it’s like... literally 60 degrees out... yikessss.

refuses to buy snow boots. his combats will suffice. and tbh buying snow boots feels like admitting defeat? even tho he chose to live here? he doesn’t want to seem like that wimp cali boy that can’t handle the northeast. *cue shiloh buying yet another heated blanket*

never learned how to drive?? so that’s super fun ! someone try to teach him, i’ll cry

as for connections, like.. anything? he’s been here for a solid 3 years, so there’s def potential for lots of stuff! aight i gotta run but i will be on mobile/discord !!  pls come love me, i love u xoxo