“You look like you’re feeling better today,” Sehun tells him in the morning.

Luhan smiles and their knees brush each other atop the scratchy sheets of his bed, soft fabric against stiff denim.

“It’s all because of you.”

Sehun’s smile is more of a quirk of the lips than an actual smile, but it elates Luhan nonetheless and sends his heart soaring.

They never say much when they’re together, simply preferring to observe each other and smile and kiss, and the air around them is quiet, voices numbed by the presence of one another. Luhan doesn’t mind the white pajamas he’s forced to wear or the way everyone seems to look at him like he’s lost his mind whenever Sehun comes to visit, so long as the boy is there with him.

They smile more and laugh more and talk more and Sehun makes snide comments about the other patients under his breath, only loud enough for Luhan to hear, only ever heard by Luhan. His bleached hair and pale skin blend into the whiteness of the room, melting into the patients and the walls and the windows and the florescent lights and the—

“Luhan-ssi,” Baekhyun approaches him with a frown, eyeing the area Sehun occupied wearily. “It’s… time to take your medicine now.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No,” the nurse states, albeit hesitantly. “We’re upping your dosage this week.”

Sehun’s eyes wander to the bed sheets while Luhan keeps his expression stoic. “Why?”

“Because you need it.”

He asks again. “Why?”

Baekhyun sighs loudly, running a hand through his hair in frustration. His eyes flick between Luhan and Sehun in a desperate attempt to acquire some sort of understanding of the two and gives up within seconds, instead exclaiming loudly, “He’s not real, Luhan!”

Luhan struggles against the new death grip Baekhyun has on his arm as he tries to pull him away from Sehun—his Sehun—and Luhan shouts in protest, earning the attention of two other assistants who are on him in seconds, pulling pulling pulling until Luhan has fallen to his knees on the tile floor, refusing to be taken away.

He fights with all he has, because he can’t be taken from Sehun, not now, not again, but the others are considerably stronger then him. The onslaught of punches and scratches he delivers diminishes when he feels himself being dragged into a different room and he gives up, accepts that he’ll have to be away from his Sehun, just for a little while. A needle sticks into his arm, causing his vision to become blurry, then completely black, and his last thoughts before going under are all sehunsehunsehunsehun

He sees Sehun in his dreams. At least, he thinks they’re dreams.

Luhan sees him behind the lids of his eyes, sees him smiling, hears him laughing, feels his kiss. But it’s all off, skewered somehow, peppered with a blank starkness he knows to be fake, because he’s asleep, or he’s dead, and this isn’t the real Sehun. He needs to wake up, and he needs to tell his Sehun that he’s sorry for leaving, that he’ll never leave him again, that he loves him.

His dreams drift through his mind and melt into one another, showing him images that burn into his very being. Sehun’s smile soon morphs into Sehun’s frown, his tender hands against Luhan’s cheeks disintegrate into claws that tear into his skin, his soothing voice cracks and becomes a wail that shatters the light bulbs and the windows, and the glass pierces Luhan’s chest, and he can’t breathe, he’s dying, he’s—

Waking up.

Some hours—days weeks months—later, he awakens from the dreams that so torturously plagued his mind while he slept. He still feels asleep, like he’s still under the falsely safe pretense of unconsciousness, his heart heavy and slow, though it quickly speeds up when he realizes that he had been sedated, put under for who knows how long, and Sehun isn’t there. There’s someone else in the room instead, someone who must’ve taken Sehun, someone who must have him somewhere and Luhan can’t let that happen, he has to go.

He has to find Sehun.

Anxious and impatient, he tears the trickling IV out of his wrist, only flinching slightly from the sharp pain (he’s done this before) and he pulls numerous sensors from his chest and neck. The apparatus designed to help him breathe now suffocates him and he rips it from his nose, causing the machine to beep and scream and it sounds like Sehun.

“Where’s Sehun,” he calls to the man in the room, voice shaking and hoarse from underuse.

The man stands up, hands held out in either defense or a declaration of peace. “He’s not here right now, Luhan,” he says steadily. “My name is Minseok, I’m going to—”

The floor is cold when Luhan leaves his bed, “Where is Sehun,” and the white linoleum catches up with him as his legs give out, whether from hours of sedation or immeasurable fear he isn’t sure.

The man, Minseok, tries helping him up, but Luhan pushes him away with such a forceful shove that it sends him into the wall. As if they were prepared to do so, a throng of nurses file in as soon as they hear the commotion and then they’re grabbing him again, poking him again, like he’s their servant who’s dropped their precious china and this is his punishment; cruel and unusual.

Luhan begins to scratch at his arms with blunt fingernails and his screams sound horrible even to his own ears, ripping through his throat without his permission. He feels another needle inject something thick and cold underneath the skin of his arm, and this time, although he wakes up just a few hours later, he’s feels like a corpse.

The bandages they put on his arms where he drew blood during his episode begin to itch after just a day, and the new pills they force him to swallow every morning prevent Sehun from visiting him.

Luhan falls deeper into himself, searching his brain for images of Sehun, and he takes to staring at the walls during the day, trying with everything he has to project his fondest memories of his Sehunnie onto the chipping off-white paint.

Baekhyun senses his depression and recommends that he begins a new regimen of drugs normally given to schizophrenics (“For the hallucinations”) as well as anti-depressants (“So you won’t need him.”) Luhan has no say in the matter and takes the medication the nurses place in his clammy palm with the numb disdain of a broken person and he’s just falling falling.

Without his Sehun he’s nothing—he feels nothing, he does nothing. His body and mind go on autopilot but the plane crashes anyways, and within days he refuses to eat, refuses to sleep, because only when he’s deprived and starving does he get just the smallest glimpse of Sehun.

Three weeks into his new routine Luhan gets desperate. He starts vomiting minutes after taking his medication, or hiding the pills beneath his tongue and trying not to cringe when the sour taste of dissolving medicine burns his throat. The effects of the drugs soon wear off, and Sehun visits him again, if only for short periods.

Luhan sometimes sees him in the flickers of the lights and the shadows that dance on the wall and the dirty mirrors in the bathroom. He sees him in the perpetual static shown on the television, hears his voice in the breeze blowing against the window panes, notices him drifting around outside with the dead leaves when the season shifts to something much colder. He sees him when he’s at the edge of consciousness, seconds before his body surrenders to sleep, sleep that brings him blurry dreams of Sehun.

The newfound bliss only lasts for so long. During one of his four mandatory checkups of the year, the doctor he’s come to loathe points out almost patronizingly that there are hardly any traces of his required medication in his bloodstream. Baekhyun frowns at him, Chanyeol frowns at him, and he sees Kris bow his head from across the way, at his post in front of the medicinal storage room like always.

Baekhyun doesn’t look happy to be doing so, but presses a needle into Luhan’s arm every day after his checkup, injecting him with drugs he has no way of getting rid of.

Sehun doesn’t visit him for a month.

A scab forms around Luhan’s injection site, and he picks at until it becomes a scar, and it reminds him of the mark on Sehun’s cheek. 

He hadn’t believed it possible to fall any farther than he already had, but he sees where he is now, sits uncomfortably at the bottom of a chasm that was constructed between him and Sehun by the people who had been trying to help him.

All in vain, he thinks. Only Sehun can help him.

Luhan stares at the television, out the window, up at the dying lights, but Sehun isn’t there. He closes his eyes as tightly as he can and clenches his blankets in his fists, but he can’t find Sehun in the darkness of his eyelids. He listens for Sehun’s voice in the wind and between the murmurs of the other patients, but he can’t hear him anymore. He eats, he sleeps, and he doesn’t bother fighting with Baekhyun when the needle stings his arm every day, because there’s nothing else he can do. He can’t die, he can’t live, so he has to be there, and exist.

There is no greater hell for Luhan than a life without his Sehun.

“I can help you,” Yixing offers during lunch.

Luhan responds to his stale bread. “No you can’t.”

“You want to die,” he states solemnly. “I can help you.”

Yixing is required to take a plethora of drugs, probably twice as many as Luhan gets every day. He says that he doesn’t bother taking the ones for depression and insomnia since “they don’t work anyways” and he hides them instead, usually flushes them down the toilet as soon as they’re handed to him. Only a week before his checkup does he actually swallow the pills, just to avoid the risk of direct injection.

“But I’ll start keeping them for you, if you want,” he explains. “If you take enough pills at one time they’ll easily kill you. Doesn’t matter what kind.”

“Won’t you get caught?”

“Chanyeol is the one who distributes the medication for my wing,” he laughs. “He’s not very attentive.”

Luhan agrees to the arrangement and Yixing starts collecting an array of pills for him during the coming weeks, handing them over to him in the bathrooms.  Reds, blues, and whites lay in a proper line on Luhan’s bedside table, growing every night, and in a month he has what is surely a lethal amount of drugs at his immediate disposal. He leans against the wall from his spot on the floor and takes all the pills in one night, swallowing ten twenty thirty tablets until his eyes glass over and his mind lets go of his body.

He sees Sehun all night.

Sehun takes over all of his senses, encompassing him completely, assuaging him with his scent, commanding an army of goosebumps across his skin with his voice, filling him with bliss and euphoria through his touch. Luhan can feel Sehun with him, feel him everywhere, and he swears that the boy is sitting right in front of him, in the flesh, smiling and holding his hand and telling him to just let go, to just fall asleep.

Luhan feels his heart slowing as his head falls back against the wall, no longer able to hold it up on his own. His vision goes blurry until one Sehun turns into three and the room is spinning and he closes his eyes in order to prevent himself from vomiting and possibly eliminating the toxic pills from his system, eliminating Sehun from his reach. Luhan’s lips barely cooperate when he forces them to curl up into a smile at the sound of Sehun’s departing words.

I’ll be back soon, hyung.

It happens again and Luhan can’t even believe that he’s surprised. He wakes up, in a too small bed, inside a room with beeping machines and lights that hurt his eyes. And his body hurts, his mind hurts, his heart is in shambles, and Baekhyun is watching him from his seat across the room, with a sadness in his eyes that Luhan doesn’t completely comprehend. What reason does Baekhyun have to be sad? He stopped Luhan from killing himself; doesn’t that mean he’s done his job? Shouldn’t he be happy?

“Who gave you the pills, Luhan?”

Luhan doesn’t answer him, stares at the white tiled ceiling instead.

“Tell me, Luhan.”

The machines beep into the uncomfortable silence and Baekhyun’s sigh further disrupts the still air.

“I’ll make sure this person won’t get in trouble for giving you medication. I just need to know who it was.”

“What does it matter?”

“Excuse me?”

Luhan struggles to sit up but manages to get elevated enough to meet Baekhyun’s eyes. The man looks tired, almost as tired as Luhan feels, and Luhan briefly wonders how long he was out, how long he had been away this time. But then he realizes that much like everything else, it hardly makes any difference

“It doesn’t matter who gave them to me,” he says quietly. “They didn’t work.”

Baekhyun keeps his gaze on Luhan and takes a moment to speak, shifting in his seat as if he’s allergic to the cold metal it’s made out of.

“Another patient complained about noises coming from the room next to him the other night, the room we assigned to you,” Baekhyun explains without being prompted. “The staff didn’t look into it until the noises stopped. And then they found you, unconscious and nearly dead and they brought you to me on a stretcher because they didn’t know what else to do.”

“I don’t care what happened, Baekhyun.”

“And then they asked me what to do with you. I had to decide whether to try and save you or give up and let you die.”

Luhan’s head begins to hurt and he rests back on his limp pillow, feeling numb everywhere else. He can only manage to get out a shaky mutter. “Why didn’t you?”

“What?” The nurse moves toward Luhan’s bed, seemingly angry, or frustrated, with some kind of sadness mixed into his expression. “Why didn’t I what?”

“Why didn’t you let me die?”

Baekhyun remains quiet, hovering by Luhan’s side, looking conflicted in every meaning of the word, like he doesn’t understand Luhan’s question yet still understands why he’s asking it. Luhan reaches out a hand and takes the fabric of Baekhyun’s sleeve between his fingers.

His voice is nothing but a strangled whisper as his throat has turns to sandpaper. “Why won’t you just let me die, Baekhyun?”

“I’ll have failed at my job if I give up on you that easily.” The muscles in Baekhyun’s shoulders visibly tense and he pulls away from Luhan with little resistance from the other. “You need to rest,” he advises, and then begins to leave.  

“I need to see Sehun.”

Although nearly out of the room, Baekhyun quickly turns around at Luhan’s statement. “Do you know that he’s not real?” he snaps loudly, curious yet still inherently angry at Luhan’s stubbornness. “Do you know that every night I have to hear you speaking to someone who’s not there, that he’s just some ed up figment of your imagination you’ve thought up to cope with some ed up tragic event in your life? Do you know that he doesn’t even ing exist?”

The words are sharp and incisive but Luhan has lost the ability to feel himself being cut. “I know that he used to.”

Baekhyun pauses and looks to the floor and then to the ceiling, anywhere but Luhan and his broken form. “I didn’t realize that he was—” He stops himself and considers starting a new statement, before turning and leaving the room entirely, Luhan staring silently at his back as he retreats.

Baekhyun avoids him during the following days, not coming into contact with him except to distribute his medication. Luhan wanders, sometimes speaks softly with Yixing, sometimes observes the others in the room, sometimes stares at the wall and waits for time to pass. He begins to spend more time in the bathrooms, just sitting inside one of the stalls with the door closed, and every now and then he’ll stay in there the whole day because it’s quiet and it’s small and he’s tired of feeling Baekhyun’s eyes on the back of his neck all the time.

On a day that was initially irrelevant, Luhan finds himself staring into the bathroom mirrors instead of sitting in the stalls, and catches a glimpse of someone out of the corner of his eye. For a moment he thinks it’s Sehun, in the flesh, coming to get him and take him away, but then he sees that it’s just another boy, tall as well but with darker skin and lighter hair. The boy briefly meets his eye, then smiles a half-smile similar to Sehun’s, and begins washing his hands in the sink next to Luhan. Luhan watches him scrub at his palms with scalding hot water and cheap soap for half an hour and he learns that the boy’s name is Zitao, Zitao who prefers to be called Tao, Zitao who gets free hand sanitizer from the medicinal closet, courtesy of his favorite Kris-ge.

Luhan takes this information and rolls with it, slowly befriending Tao every day in the bathrooms as he watches him clean his hands and eventually asking him for help. Luhan has a plan to get to Sehun, but it can’t work without Tao.

“I just need access to the closet where they keep all the medication,” Luhan explains. “All I need you to do is get Kris away from the door long enough for me to slip inside.”

Tao seems hesitant and slows his obsessive-compulsive hand washing to consider Luhan’s proposition. “Why can’t I just get whatever pills you need on my own? Why do you have to go inside?”

“I need something specific,” Luhan lies. “A few things, actually. It’ll just be easier if I go inside myself.”

The answer is good enough for Tao and the boy shrugs as he dries off his hands. “Alright then. I’ll help you.”

Luhan’s plan goes into effect as soon as the two of them exit the bathrooms. Tao approaches Kris in the common room, in front of the medicinal closet, while Luhan watches from a safe distance. Even from a few yards away, Luhan can hear parts of Tao’s intricate story about a ghost in his room that won’t leave him alone and although it’s completely ridiculous, Kris buys it and agrees to leave with him and go investigate, but only for a minute.

Heart racing, Luhan walks towards the closet as inconspicuously as he can manage, and quickly punches the passcode Tao recited him into the electronic door handle, listening for the click that tells him it’s open. His blood pressure continues to rise at the thought of being so close as he slowly opens the door, and suddenly he feels eyes at his neck, familiar eyes that belong to a familiar nurse. Luhan turns to see Baekhyun just entering the common room, staring at him almost blankly, save for the lingering sadness that is constantly behind the light of his eyes. They hold each other’s gazes for no more than two seconds before Baekhyun turns away to leave, silently giving Luhan his permission and his acceptance.

The medicinal closet is cold when Luhan enters, and smaller than he originally thought, but the rows and rows of drugs assure him that his plan will work. The door clicks shut behind him and Luhan pauses for a moment, considers where to start and where to end, but then he throws reason and logical thinking away and goes for the first thing his hands find—a chilled syringe filled with something thick and yellow. Without a second thought, Luhan viciously stabs the needle into his arm and lets the serum slip underneath his skin with a freezing shock.

He starts grabbing as many needles as he can find, in all different sizes and colors, and sticks them in his arms, his shoulders, his hips, his thighs, anywhere he can get the medicine to disappear, even going for his palms when too much blood gathers around the veins in his forearms. The floor greets him coldly as he collapses to the ground in a fit of shivers and spasms, his body rejecting the different drugs he forced into it, but he pushes further, reaching for more needles to stick into his skin. His calves, the backs of his knees, his neck, all become bloody and broken as more and more syringes empty into his body. When he loses the strength to push down another plunger, he goes for the pills, spilling bottles of them into his hands and swallowing as many as he can, chewing them up when his throat starts constricting.

Within two minutes, Luhan breaks into a cold sweat and his limbs lock up completely, disallowing him from getting his hands on any other medications, though if his hammering heart and hazy mind are any indication, he thinks he’s done enough. He’s taken enough drugs, sent enough liquids into his bloodstream, and swallowed enough pills, and he’s sure this is it when he sees his Sehunnie on the other side of the closet, smiling softly at him with open arms.

They’re in such a small space, but Luhan’s taken so many drugs, so many death wishes, that he can’t move towards Sehun, or maybe he's moving so much that he can't control where he goes, but then Sehun comes forward on his own, and Luhan feels Sehun with him, holding him close. He feels Sehun’s arms tight around his tired, convulsing body. He hears Sehun’s voice in his ear telling him that he’s here, it’s over now, it’s okay. He feels his own cheeks wet with tears of relief and sorrow, and eventually his body gives up and heart begins to swell, then slows to a firm stop, and finally finally Luhan is with his Sehun.

a/n: hope the ending isn't too ambiguous, i was trying to make it pretty clear. 

anyways that was weird and sad but i hope at least one of you liked it. 

and check out this sweet gif!

also comments are very appreciated and thanks for reading~