[OOM] Let It Starve
Feb. 21st, 2021 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thesecondjadeIt was maddening to know that when Wei Ying slept in his bed, Lan Zhan could not tell him what lay beneath it. The floorboards had been moved, a space made, warded and protected. He had kept the Yiling Patriarch's notes besides a carefully kept plush kangaroo, a book of Paris with Wei Ying's art within, and of course, the thing that had kept him from ever forgetting Wei Ying's face: the photograph from Max Caufield.
He had watched Wei Ying pack his things and walk straight past the bed that held the trove of longing and grief, Lan Zhan told himself to be careful: it was not yet safe to want, again, to see and wish to hold. Years had dulled the ache, but sometimes the point of it still found the softest parts of him and jabbed deep.
Lan Zhan boxed it up with his treasures and told it: Not now. Maybe not ever. Do not want again what is never to be. Just be satisfied with what you have. Nothing has changed. He lives and breathes, but he does not want the same things you do. He packed up the feelings that had never left, like his treasures, and placed it inside the smallest box within his heart. There was too much at stake to feed hope.
Let it starve, Lan Zhan. he told himself. Let it starve. Your heart has grown used to unslaked thirst, unfed hungers. To give it scraps would only make it worse.
He had watched Wei Ying pack his things and walk straight past the bed that held the trove of longing and grief, Lan Zhan told himself to be careful: it was not yet safe to want, again, to see and wish to hold. Years had dulled the ache, but sometimes the point of it still found the softest parts of him and jabbed deep.
Lan Zhan boxed it up with his treasures and told it: Not now. Maybe not ever. Do not want again what is never to be. Just be satisfied with what you have. Nothing has changed. He lives and breathes, but he does not want the same things you do. He packed up the feelings that had never left, like his treasures, and placed it inside the smallest box within his heart. There was too much at stake to feed hope.
Let it starve, Lan Zhan. he told himself. Let it starve. Your heart has grown used to unslaked thirst, unfed hungers. To give it scraps would only make it worse.
