Watching him fall apart was never part of the plan.

He stands in your doorway, his shadow taking up less space than you remember it before, a suitcase in his hand.

Unconsciously, you reach up, fingers tracing the dark circles under his eyes, the prominence of his bones through his skin, arms holding him (and wondering when he started feeling so fragile, when the cheery boy with a six-pack had turned into a pale, gaunt form of his former self), you try your best to hold back your tears.

Because it wouldn’t serve anyone well for you to break down too, not when Luhan is in such poor shape.

“What happened?” you ask, words a whisper – you haven’t seen him, not up close like this, in ages, and even though you suspected from the plethora of pictures and fancams that he hadn’t been in the best of conditions, seeing it in the flesh makes it so much worse.

“I don’t know,” he replies, burying his face in your shoulder, voice muffles against your skin. “I’m… I’m tired.”

Tired doesn’t even begin to cover it, not when he looks like death grazed by him one too many times, but you know there aren’t many other better words to describe it.

You lead him to the couch, and he collapses onto it, head in your lap – a position you’ve been in many times, but it’s not romantic, not now.

“I thought this was going to be everything I ever wanted,” he murmurs, as you play with the ends of his overprocessed hair. “We were going to be just like DBSK.”

“DBSK broke up,” you say dryly, and he chuckles, humorless.

"Yifan’s already gone," he says, and he pauses, swallowing. "And… I-I’ll be next."

Your hands pause, and Luhan pushes himself up to look at you, doe eyes sunken and weary.

“I’ve already filled out all the paperwork, and I’ve been holding off on filing it for a while, but I think it’s time, now.”

“Luhan,” you say, and what else can you say? You had no idea how bad it had gotten, how much he had deteriorated to want to leave the only thing he’d ever dreamed for.

Idol life was no walk in the park – everyone knew that – but you didn’t realize that Luhan had grown so tired of it already.

“I hated Yifan, at first,” he muses, sinking back down, “but as time went on, it got me thinking. There he was, shooting a mo