“I should’ve been more careful.” Minseok winces as Luhan applies a strong smelling ointment onto his leg. 

“You’re lucky Yixing keeps this stuff around,” Luhan says, gesturing to the first aid kit on the coffee table. 

Minseok smiles sheepishly. 

“Yeah, I guess I am.” 

“Hey Han, how’s that nasty bump healing up?” Baekhyun slides into the seat next to him with nothing but a tiny spiral bound notebook and a chewed up pen. 

“Huh? Oh…” Luhan looks down at his leg. There’s a discolored patch and he can’t seem to remember how he got it. 

“You smell like Yixing’s herbal medicine,” is the last thing Baekhyun says before their professor walks in. 

“It’s not a bad idea,” Minseok muses, swaying gently on the swings. 

Luhan pulls a face and grumbles something under his breath. The playground is empty of children, leaving them free to occupy the swings, and after a game of rock paper scissors, Luhan is forced to sit in the creaky one. 

“You need someone you can talk to,” Minseok continues, kicking up his legs. 

“I have you,” Luhan counters, but it sounds childish even to himself. Minseok finds it silly too, laughing and shaking his head as he swings higher and higher. 

“Not the same thing,” he says. 

He doesn’t say anything after that, focusing on the swing, and Luhan feels his heartbeat increase as Minseok’s seat starts to creak. 

“Hey, don’t you think you’re going too fast? You could fall and hurt yourself!” 

Minseok only laughs.

“I won’t!” 

“How was it?” Yixing perks up when he sees Luhan sprawled across the couch, phone in hand. 

“It .” 

Yixing raises his eyebrows. 

“Really? I heard that Jaeyeol is an excellent counselor.” 

“Yeah, and who’d you hear that from? Baekhyun?” Luhan shakes his head. “I’m not going back.” 

“You should talk to someone about your depression and…stuff. It’s good for you.” 

“Funny how I don’t see you making appointments then.” 

“I’m not depressed, Luhan.” 

Luhan rolls his eyes. 

“We’re all depressed, ‘Xing.”

Yixing frowns and Luhan clicks an email notification that pops up on his phone. 

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected] 

Good afternoon, Luhan. 

You missed your session today, but if you’d like to reschedule I’ve attached a

He deletes the email without bothering to finish reading it. 

“I’ve only got enough for a couple days before I need to get more,” Luhan sighs, resting his head on his desk. Minseok snatches the pill bottle from its place on top of a textbook before returning to his seat on Luhan’s bed. 

“How many do you have at a time?” 

“I don’t know, like four?” 

“The label says you’re only supposed to take one.” 

“And I did, until it wasn’t enough.” 

Minseok plays with the childproof cap, clicks filling the silence as he twists it the wrong way.

“Are you sure it’s alright to take so many?” 

“Would you rather I not get any sleep?”

Luhan reaches over, plucks the bottle out of Minseok’s hands, and that’s the end of that. 

“You do realize that you were only awake for six hours today, right? Like, out of twenty four possible hours, you were only conscious for six. That’s only one fourth of the entire day.” Yixing crosses his arms in an attempt to look as disappointed as possible. 

“It’s Saturday,” Luhan shrugs. 

“Don’t! Do not. I don’t care that it’s Saturday, because you have been doing this for a very, very long time now. The day is irrelevant.” 

“You’re overreacting.”

“Were you with Minseok?” 

Luhan pauses. He puts his fork down and chews his food very slowly. Yixing narrows his eyes.

“You were! I knew it. Let me meet him and I’ll stop ‘overreacting’.” 

“..You can’t.” 

Yixing presses his lips into a thin line and they finish their meal in silence. 

“They talk about you.” 

“I know, Luhan.” Minseok smiles and Luhan doesn’t know how he can be so calm all the time. 

“It doesn’t matter if we can only meet like this. You’re real enough for me,” he stresses. “We’re real enough for me.” 

Luhan looks at where Minseok’s placed his hand on his arm and swears he can feel warmth. 

“Don’t you care?” His voice sounds far away and detached from his body, as if it’s being pulled away. A sense of dread washes over him when he notices the walls start to flicker in and out of existence. “What’s happening?” 

Minseok tilts his head.

“You’re waking up.” 

“It sounds like he’s really gone off the deep end this time,” Baekhyun comments. 

Yixing slumps in his seat, taking a sip of his tea. 

“I tried talking to him about it but he just got mad at me. He knows it’s all in his head, that Minseok is just something he’s made up, but…he doesn’t care. He’s in love with him. Or something. I don’t know anymore.” 

Baekhyun swirls the around the ice in his coffee. 

“Well, what are you gonna do? I’m not sure you can call the police about this. I mean, he’s not a danger to himself or anyone around him, right?” 

“I don’t think so,” Yixing shrugs in defeat. “He’s just been sleeping a lot. And missing classes. God, He’s probably going to fail half of them.” 

He scrunches his eyes shut and does a brief breathing exercise. Baekhyun pats his shoulder sympathetically. 

“I don’t know what to do, Baekhyun.” 

Yixing clenches his hands into fists. 

“I don’t think I ever knew what to do.” 

“Can we stay like this forever?” 

It should’ve been windy so high up, but curiously enough, the rooftop was still when Luhan climbed up the stairs that night. Minseok waits for him on the ledge, legs dangling off the edge and face pressed against the safety railings. 

The sky is clear and filled with stars when he slips his legs through the rails, tightly gripping the metal bars. The traffic and lights below them seem so far away and unreal, just how Luhan likes it, and he slips his hand into Minseok’s.

Minseok grins wide and swings his feet back and forth. 

“We can stay like this for as long as you want.” 

Halfway through naming all the constellations, Luhan notices something strange. 

“Why don’t you have any shoes on?” 

“They’re restricting,” Minseok laughs. “I wanted to be free.” 

Under the silver moonlight, Luhan can see cuts and dried blood all over his feet. He idly wonders why he’s never noticed before. 

“Doesn’t it hurt?” 

“It doesn’t.” 

Luhan is afraid of heights, but sitting next to Minseok seems to be working wonders on that fear. In fact, he suddenly can’t think of a single thing he’s afraid of. It’s as if every negative emotion was suddenly removed from his body and sent somewhere else, never to be seen by him again. Maybe this is how Minseok feels all the time. 

Imbued with a new energy and confidence, Luhan turns to Minseok and says the one thing he’s been holding back this entire time. 

“I love you.” 

When Minseok looks back at him with a knowing smile, Luhan thinks that the twinkles in his eyes could very well be the same stars in the sky above them. 

“I know.” 

“For s sake,” Yixing swears roughly. “Sleeping pills, of all the things in the world. ing pills and alcohol.” He tosses the empty bottles aside and violently shakes Luhan by the shoulders. “Wake up, ! Tell me how many you took!” 

“Yixing, stop it!” Baekhyun shoves him. “We need to call a hospital!” 

“Wake up, Luhan! I can’t believe you ing did this, you delusional bastard! Wake up, wake up, wake up…” Yixing screams, handling Luhan like a rag doll. 

“Hello, this is 911, what’s your emergency?” 

“Uh, hi, our friend just committed suicide..er, tried to kill himself, we found alcohol and sleeping pills next to his bed…we don’t know how long its been, we just got back and could you send someone over maybe?” 

“Is anyone else at the scene hurt?” 

“What? No, no..just him…” 

“What is your current location? We’ll be right there.” 

Luhan’s parents clean away his side of the room when Yixing is in class, so the single cardboard box left out on his desk is unexpected. Dropping his bag on the couch, he runs his hands over the box. It’s plain, like every other cardboard box he’s ever seen in his life, but it has Luhan’s name on one side and Yixing’s on the top. 

There are three things in the box. 

The first is Yixing’s old notebook, covered from front to back in stickers. It’s the one he lent Luhan at the beginning of the semester. He flips through it, not really expecting there to be a secret message or something stuck in it but still a bit hopeful. There isn’t. 

The second is a keyring. So you can stop having to call security to let you in, he imagines Luhan saying. 

The third is a purple post-it note with Luhan’s chicken scratch all over it. Yixing sits down in Luhan’s chair to read it, and he’s glad he did. 

xing,

thanks for everything 

-luhan

A/N: it was not supposed to end like this originally i dont know what happened