jing yuan has taken up residence in my brain and won't leave, so here goes recurring thought #1 i guess
thinking about a jing yuan who learned over the years in his friend group that he was never the first choice, never the priority, always loving others more intensely and yearningly(?) than he seemed to get in return, and deciding that being able to call them his friends was enough for him even when it started to hurt.
and then after The Big Split, when everything went to hell and he was alone again, he never stopped caring about those he lost. and the hurt of losing everyone could have been enough to break him, but over time he made peace with it, as he did all those years ago with loving more than being loved (and really, how was this all that different? perhaps he was the last one on their minds even in death because why else would dan feng's fate twine itself with yinxing's as it did, and jingliu's mental state shattered only for baiheng's loss. if he had gone instead, would anyone break for him the same?)
and then comes the present. the people of jing yuan's past are returning and even with all the prestige and new connections and new family he built for himself over the years he still finds himself caught up in the magnetic orbit of their new lives, roped around each other as always, he's the outlier observer as always, but somehow it feels like maybe this is their way that they show they care? that is, until dan heng with his new name and his new life shows up and begins to seek him out, him, jing yuan, specifically, for company (how lovely, but he mustn't get too attached... he knows how that ends), and then the "blade" who wears yingxing's face seems to be around more than he should be (he's an intergalactic wanted criminal, why he would continually return to a place he claims to despise the memory of is beyond comprehension... but likely he's here for dan heng, because aeons know the last time he paid any real mind to jing yuan)
and it all cracks when they seek out jing yuan at the same time and he thinks that it can't possibly be that they're there for him. he must be intruding on their moment, he should go and leave them to it, they probably wouldn't even realize he left, he was never a priority for them before and he probably wouldn't know how to handle being that even if he tried, etcetera,,, and dan heng and blade begin to piece together how jing yuan thinks. yada yada (because i'm really not tryna write a whole fic here) cue ghosts of the past learning how to convince jing yuan of the fact that they care about him too, and jing yuan in turn learning how to carefully deconstruct the walls he built enough to let others know how he yearns (and oh, how he yearns) and to be yearned for in return
