“…and it worked,” he says, “I didn’t feel any side-effects either, I just felt invincible like I knew something the rest of the world could only dream of knowing.”

Kris is beside him in a bed that’s much too big for the both of them despite being well into their adulthood. His list of things he wouldn’t reveal to Kris has been forgotten and Luhan spills his soul in the comfort of Kris’s guest room. For the first time in such a long time Kris is focused only on him, silent and listening, refusing to pass judgement even as Luhan tells him about the containers of pills he’d acquired from a brothel months ago.

One packet had been the sleeping pills his physician had stop giving him, the pills that brought him a deep dreamless sleep, the second was said to make a person feel and behave just like a Perfect. He wasn’t sure about the science behind it. The brothel madam he’d brought them from hadn’t gone into detail about it, and Luhan hadn’t bothered to ask.

He had been wary about testing them at first, but after feeling powerless to the events around him, and losing the little control he held over his emotions, he figured nothing worse could happen.

Fatigue clouds the outskirts of his mind, but Luhan pushes forward, loose-tongued, fuzzy-brained, talking to the only person he feels as if he can trust now.

“What did President Kim do to you growing up,” Kris asks in a pensive whisper. Luhan looks up to him, and instead of sympathy or pity, he sees the confused furrow of Kris’s eyebrows and the downturn of his lips.

“Nothing,” Luhan lies out of habit. He breathes in, recalling his first month of living with the cruel man. “Nothing that caused any lasting damage.” Another lie. “I mean eating issues started when I started living with him, but that's mostly my fault.” He’ll never tell Kris about his days of voluntary and then forced starvation, or when he swallowed the poison. Especially not about drinking the poison. He closes his eyes, trying to clear his mind of that last thought. He hadn’t thought about that in a long time. That had been a blip in his resolve, a moment of weakness when continuing on had just been too… hard.

"Tell me about Chanyeol," Luhan commands when he runs out of words and can’t seem to change the subject of their conversation.

"You should go to sleep, Lu," Kris replies.

"Tell me about how you ended up with him," Luhan presses. "I'll sleep after. I won't even comment or make a face. I can be neutral." He pulls his face into his best blank expression, eyes gleaming with a tired amusement.

"It just happened," Kris says, shrugging.

"I was right about you being attracted to him," Luhan says, grinning at his friend. "You're not spontaneous Kris."

"It wasn't a physical attraction at first, he was just sunny and determined and I guess…" he trails off.

"You have a type," Luhan says. "I don't mean that the way I did before. You like them pretty and strong-willed. You used to like 'em in need of saving but I guess you grew out of that."

Kris stares at him with soft eyes, and Luhan stares back a bit flustered. Their history is so different than all the others that grew up with them. He knows what Kris sees when he looks at him that way because he sees it too. The pair of them falling apart and trying to glue themselves back together throughout the years.

"Sleep with me," Luhan commands, moving closer to Kris while wiggling his eyebrows. "I know you're as exhausted as I am," Luhan adds, mumbling the words out as he presses his face into the sheets, mere centimeters away from his friend.

Kris ruffles his already ruffled hair and kisses his head despite knowing how it annoys the former model.

"Okay," Kris says, and then there's silence.

No one talks, but Luhan is thinking and he knows it will take Kris a while before he relaxes enough to sleep.

"It's not wrong for you to still love him and want to forgive him," Kris tells him.

Luhan hesitates for only a moment recalling the pain of being lied to and treated like a fool. "I never said I loved him," he replies.

****

Satisfaction. Luhan feels an overwhelming sense of satisfaction as reporters swarm around him outside the entrance of Nessen. It’s been four days since he’d told President Kim about his plan, and he was succeeding. He was back to being the tabloids most talked about celebrity, back to being in the center of the world’s attention, even if that meant something less prestigious than it sounded.

The reporters plead for comments, for things they can write about, or twist into something interesting. They ask about his partying, his love life. They mention Kai and Sehun, curious about the fate of the younger two careers and his relationship with them. He hears a nondescript voice shout something about a leaked rumor, but he keeps his expression as neutral as possible as he enters the company.

The reporters continue to surround him for the next two days, searching for answers he’ll never give.

Then they’re gone. On the Fourth day, not a soul surrounds him during his brief walk to the company building, and no questions are shouted at him. He’d thought he’d be upset about going back to being Luhan Executive Director, but he finds himself too busy to care.

Luhan spends the two weeks after the reporters’ disappearance running on the fuel of pills both illegal and prescribed to get him through the days of shadowing President Kim, and the nights sleeping in Kris’s guestroom.

In between the meetings, the financial projects, and everything else, he focuses his time on helping Minseok. Luhan finds himself becoming reacquainted with the Red Light District, divulging deeper into the illegal happenings of the district more so than ever before.

It’s a late Wednesday evening when Kris pulls him out of his manmade sea of work and distraction.

“You’re overworking yourself,” Kris tells him.

Luhan can’t help the quirk of his lips, and the raise of his eyebrows. “You do realize how ironic it is for you of all people to be telling me this, right?”

“I’ve had years of overworking myself,” Kris says, smiling as he speaks. “Doing anything less would make me feel lazy."

Kris walks deeper into the room to take a seat on Luhan's bed. "Why are you killing yourself for him," Kris asks, there's an edge to his words.

"Don't be so dramatic," Luhan retorts.

"Really," Kris presses. "You don't owe him anything regardless of what you may have promised him."

"I know that," Luhan says. He turns in his chair to face Kris. "When have I ever helped a person that wasn't you or the others?" The others are five other people he deems important to him, four now with Sehun's departure.

"Never," Kris says.

"Exactly," Luhan says. "You've seen how I've treated other people, and look at me now. I promised him I'd help, but my feelings are still all over the place. If I stop for just a moment, if I really give myself time to think, I might decide he deserves whatever he gets for using me and being an Imperfect, or worse. I might do the same as Sehun."

He sits up in his seat to meet Kris’s eyes. “Look, I'm almost done planning everything out, and once I give him this I'll be back to normal." Kris frowns, but he doesn't say anything.

"Did you just get in," Luhan asks, eyes now sweeping the length of Kris's body. "Is my being here cutting into your life?"

"Shut up, Luhan," Kris says glaring at the former model.

"I won't say anything if you brought him home, this is your home after all. Besides if this place is built anything like President Kim's, you could bed the world's loudest screamer and I wouldn't hear a thing," Luhan says. "Is Chanyeol a screamer, Kris?"

"You can go back to work," Kris says, standing and still glaring down at him. Luhan grins in return and turns back to his desk. He sits back in his chair, looking towards the packet on the desk beside his paperwork. He was running low on the "Perfect" pills, and he wasn't sure about making the trip back to the brothel.

He could feel himself developing a dependency on the pills, and he’d seen others and the way they put their addictions above everything else, including themselves, it had always made him cautious about falling down the same hole.

He needed himself awake and aware now more than ever, because besides Kris, the only person looking out for himself was himself.

****

There’s a dullness to the day. A muteness to the colors around him like the sky and sun has begun fading in shades. Even the rumble of noise, from the city around him to the space inside his car, seems quieted. Minseok sits beside him in his car, hands clutching the food container in his lap so tightly that it has begun to bend. His eyes are staring out at the city, and Luhan wonders if he feels it too.

 “Do you have an ID number,” Luhan finally asks, batting away his distracted thoughts.

Minseok looks up at him, an eyebrow arched in question. “An ID Implant,” Luhan clarifies, eyes traveling to Minseok’s wrist.

“No,” Minseok says with a shake of his head. “The one I got before disintegrated over time, and I never bothered to get a replacement since President Kim figured out what I was.”

“I found someone that could do it for you,” Luhan says. “He’s supposedly really good, former CNS tech turned rogue.”

“Former CNS,” Minseok repeats with a skeptical frown.

Luhan shrugs his shoulders, “People don’t usually give their entire backstories when they’re dealing illegal things. He can be trusted.”

Minseok nods and mutters a soft, “okay.”

“The problem is the ,” Luhan says with a grimace. “I found a guy, but he’s only willing to get you as far as the wastelands, and it’ll take a month at best. I have an emergency alternative, but there’s no way they can take you to an active compound.”

“I don’t want to go to a compound,” Minseok says. Luhan looks at him, really looks at him for the first time and finds his eyebrows furrowing in question. Minseok doesn’t look ill, he doesn’t look as if he’s lost out on sleep, but there is a difference now. Luhan can’t pinpoint it. It’s so obscure, Luhan’s not even sure if it’s really there.

“Your parents,” Luhan says.

“I won’t be able to find them,” Minseok says. “We didn’t discuss where they were going, they didn’t even know where they were going. Besides, I don’t want to trade one extreme for the next.”

“Do you know where you want to go,” Luhan asks. Minseok gives him a solemn nod of his bed.

“I can send you the general coordinates later,” Minseok says.

“Then I’ll have you away from him in a month,” Luhan says, starting the car. He can feel Minseok’s gaze hot on his skin, but he ignores it. Focusing his attention on driving and nothing more. He feels raw, like his nerve endings are connected to his emotions and any type of interaction with Minseok will cause them to alight.

Minseok grabs his arm, once they’re back in the Nessen’s parking deck. Hands clasped on his bicep in a loose grip. Luhan should pull away. He really should draw back, his emotions are heightened and he knows he could do something stupid, promise something dumb. Luhan doesn’t pull away.

“Thank you,” Minseok breathes out, and it’s so low Luhan isn’t sure if he’d actually said anything. He continues speaking, his voice getting stronger as he continues on. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I knew it was cruel of me from the beginning to be with you under such falsities. I was just afraid of my feelings for you, and President Kim, and your hatred for Imperfects.” He bites his bottom lip and glances up at Luhan in a contemplative manner.

“Just… thank you. You could have reported me. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had, but you chose to help me.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Luhan states.

“I know,” Minseok says. “I still want to thank you, because I’m sure if you had tried you could have thought of something else, something that made you feel less guilty, or less of whatever emotion that’s fueling you to help me. Thank you, Luhan.”

Minseok lets go of Luhan’s arm and leaves the car just as Luhan’s phone starts to ring, and Luhan does his best not to sigh in relief.

“Hello,” Luhan says, not bothering to check who is calling him. There’s nothing at first, only the soft hum of static, and Luhan frowns, ready to end the call, just as a cracking voice speaks his name.

“Yixing,” Luhan asks, frowning. It sounds like the younger male, but it also doesn’t.

“I,” Yixing says, stopping. “Can you… I need you to come here… to me, Luhan.” He’s speaking in fragments, like his words have been cut and pasted together in an unnatural manner.

“Where are you,” Luhan asks, attempting to keep the alarm from his voice. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Yixing says, his voice cracking once more. Luhan can hear him breathe in a deep, stuttering breath. “I’m at the… ha-hospital on the outskirts of the city.”

“Where’s Junmyeon,” Luhan asks next, starting his car as he does so.

“,” Yixing breathes out. “Luhan, please, just… come here, quickly.”

“Okay,” Luhan says, “I’m coming, I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”

I have this on AO3 now under the username lady_luck12 if anyone prefers that site.

Quite a few things have been implied in this chapter specifically in the beginning, some of which has been implied a few times before some of which is brand new information. I think I said it before that I really enjoy writing platonic KrisHan, and I really got to indulge myself in this chapter.

This chapter is a bit hurried by the way, so I'm sorry about that.