When Yixing died, the first time, Luhan buried him in the small section of grass at the side of the parking lot. They had no family, which made costly funerals pointless, so Luhan arranged a small goodbye at midnight and invited a few friends by word. Only Minseok came, and he left when he knew there was nothing he could do to stop the kneeling man's tears that night, but came back for him in the morning when he found him sleeping, curled up under a tree.

Yixing was all Luhan had. Luhan needed Yixing to be there, to hug him when he was sad, to hug him when he was happy, to hug him all the time, to talk to him until he was lulled to sleep, to coax him with explanations of self-worth and why they needed to be motivated to survive anything that hit them. Luhan doesn’t really understand how he survives now, one month later, because he still needs Yixing.

Yixing needs Luhan, too. But he doesn’t want Luhan; Luhan is now his worst conscious nightmare. He can’t sleep, he can’t leave, he can’t look away, he can’t rip himself away from where he was buried because Luhan is always there, always crying, asking for Yixing to come back, bringing meals and offerings that don’t appetize him anymore, even though he really wishes it did more than Luhan.

Luhan needs to survive, and Yixing will do anything to make sure he does.

Minseok dies the next day, and Luhan cries a bit, then even more because it reminds him that Yixing isn't there either, leaving him all alone. Yixing kills himself because he can’t comfort Luhan, but he doesn’t cry because he hypothesizes he has one and a half months before he needs to kill himself again.

*   *   *

A month passes and Luhan still feels an emptiness that can’t be filled, but he thinks that it’s getting better with time because everything about Jongin reminds him of Yixing (but not everything about Yixing is like Jongin).

When they met, it was in the shadows of a large garbage container as Jongin hid Luhan from a group of high school delinquents, and Luhan was mostly thankful (although he feels like a part of him wanted to get caught by them so he might have been able to join Yixing, wherever he is). Jongin is fairly well built—more well-built that Yixing was—and his abs remind him of Yixing and his short hair reminds him of Yixing—hell, his gender reminds him of Yixing, but Jongin doesn’t mind. He offers to accompany Luhan for the rest of his life and Luhan accepts when Jongin says he doesn’t mind if all he talks about is Yixing.

But he didn't expect that Luhan was serious when he said that all he talked about is Yixing, how Jongin resembles Yixing, how Jongin is different from Yixing. Sometimes Jongin gets annoyed, but Yixing gets the most annoyed because Jongin is nothing like him, because he knows that he does the job of accompanying Luhan to his death the best. But he still thanks Jongin for staying by Luhan’s side because he can’t be as close as Jongin. But he can only thank Jongin for half a month until he apologizes.

And for the first time in half a month, Luhan goes to sleep feeling cold because he’s all alone again without Yixing or Jongin to cradle his frail body through to another day. Yixing kills himself because he can’t comfort Luhan, but he’s stuck in an endless loop of killing and living while he’s always been dead.

*   *   *

It’s been another month and a half and Luhan still has no one to comfort him. He goes back to where his sorrows all started every night trying to find a trace of what he's wanted back for months now. Minseok’s body had been picked up by local authorities—same with Jongin’s—and Yixing is all Luhan really has again. Except Yixing isn’t really there, either.

Luhan is hungry, but Yixing is hungrier, and he kills himself over and over again as Luhan walks closer and closer to the patch of grass in the parking lot.

“Yixing?”

Everything goes blank and Yixing kills the both of them that night.

a/n: im so disatisfied with this but i wrote this in an hour and whelp what can i do. thank you school for the three tests and three assignments in the next two days. the drabble is a bit vague (as are a lot of other fics i've written) but if anyone wants an explanation, just ask (:

prompts: protagonist kills antagonist, drama, mysterious character, "there are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. types of dying you can't smell," aspect of time