now playing: cold love by the 8

”no one ever appreciates what they have until they lose it, don’t they? such a shame”

Morning coffees delivered with both hands, almost spilling because you’d been half-jogging to get to him faster. Snacks handed to him like they were rare treasures, carefully chosen because “I thought you might be hungry later.” You’d wait outside practice just to walk with him to the van, sometimes bumping into things because you were too busy waving the moment you spotted him. Talking a mile a minute, hands gesturing wildly, words tumbling out before you’d even finished chewing if you were mid-snack. Always beaming, always hovering a step behind or beside him, like gravity itself had decided you belonged in his orbit.

It has always been obvious to Minghao that you adore him.

He found it concerning at first, how you always seemed to be so energetic and chatty and everywhere at once. After a while though, he grew used to it and indulged you every once in a while with a pat on the head or homework reminders or something similarly perfunctory. It’s not like he dislikes you or anything, but it’s difficult to reciprocate the same intensity of someone always jumping around and bringing him things like some sort of puppy.

He never really knew how to process it, offering a hesitant willingness and awkward supervision at best. He’s never been too shy, but he’s always had a dreadful habit of growing docile in the presence of vitality and he never quite grew out of that inferiority complex of sorts.

you are the sun, and if he is the moon then he hopes that the eclipse will cover him forever.

When you give up on him, he blames no one but himself.

…

You’re still nice to Minghao after you stop pursuing him, but you don’t seem nearly as warm when your attention is fixated on others now. It doesn’t make him sad, but it doesn’t placate his pensiveness in any way. In truth he thinks his apprehension worsens after that. At least when you were prancing around him all the time he had something to focus on and feel about.

Now, he can go back to not wanting anything at all and it feels strange and dull and he doesn’t like how his life now reflects himself.

He has never liked himself, though, so it isn’t much of a difference.

——

”sometimes when you chase after something for too long it loses its value as a prize; sometimes that’s the only way to let go.”