Delectable
Pairing: xiuhan
Rated: PG-13
Genre: zombie!au
Length: 800 words
Summary: Lu Han's morning breath literally smells like the dead.
Lu Han is dead. He’s been dead for about a week now.
But that’s okay because Minseok has his faithful shotgun, Mr. Browning Automatic-5, slung around his shoulder, just in case Lu Han feels like having Minseok’s brain for a midnight snack. Or a midafternoon snack.
“Your brain smells delicious. Absolutely delectable,” Lu Han sighs, burying his nose in Minseok’s hair and taking a whiff or three.
When Lu Han proceeds to lick Minseok’s cheek like it’s a pistachio ice cream cone and not, for the record, Minseok’s cheek, Minseok whips out Mr. Browning Automatic-5 and jabs it against Lu Han’s abdomen.
These days, he trusts his shotgun more than his best friend, his partner-in-crime, the only man he wouldn’t mind drying up in the sun and wrinkling with. It hurts to think that their tomorrows have been stolen, that Minseok will have to pluck his gray hairs alone, if he even survives this. But this is After, not Before. And even though it hurts, it’s for the best that Minseok keeps his finger steady on the trigger.
“I’m just kidding!” Lu Han cries, raising his hands in surrender. “Can’t you take a joke?”
“This isn’t funny, Lu Han,” Minseok says, increasing the pressure on Lu Han’s abdomen so much that it could cause a living man to howl and clutch his gut.
It’s strange because Lu Han looks like he’s about to cry, his eyes shiny and his mouth twisting into a protest. But the dead don’t cry. Their bodily functions, like tear production and activation of the visceral motive system, stop working. That’s what being dead means.
But.
Even though Lu Han may have mottled skin and yellowed fingernails and a tendency to sniff Minseok’s brain, he also whines about his own dead morning breath, swats away at the flies that follow him in swarms, and brushes the hair out of Minseok’s eyes when he thinks Minseok is asleep and dreaming of Before.
It’s hope that will end up killing Minseok. He’s sure of it. At night he counts the stars carefully, pocketing them in hopes of keeping Lu Han’s dissolving remnants of humanity intact. So far, the stars, the aligning planets, someone up there is listening to him. But for what price?
When Minseok slings his shotgun back around his shoulder, Lu Han asks, “You wouldn’t really shoot me, would you?”
Minseok pauses. The question weighs heavily on his blood-stained palms.
Would he?
“No.”
Even if Minseok no longer believes in stars and the deities that light them, he believes in Lu Han. The placebo effect alone will save him, save them.
“I want you to,” Lu Han says so quietly that Minseok almost mistakes it for a breathy exhale.
Is he hearing correctly? After all, his ears have been ringing since the last time he used Mr. Browning Automatic-5.
“I want you to be able to kill me,” Lu Han clarifies.
And the words ring so violently until Minseok’s heart threatens to shatter along with his composure.
Minseok squeaks, “What are you talking about, Lu Han?”
They both know the answer already, but they’re reading the lines of their script because this is what Minseok needs-closure. An arabesque melting into a finale.
“I was lying about kidding. Your brain actually smells delicious. More than delicious, actually. My mouth is watering just thinking about it,” Lu Han says. “I can just imagine my teeth sinking into your skull right now, my tongue lapping up the juices seeping out of your head. And your screams would be a Shostakovich symphony to my ears with a hint of Mahler.”
Lu Han’s eyes brighten, and he becomes more animated.
He continues, saliva dribbling from his chin, “You would plead me to stop, to think back to Before. But I want to see you beg. I want you to struggle under my grip, squirming and wriggling like the maggots in my ears, until, finally, you don’t struggle anymore.”
Now Minseok grasps Mr. Browning Automatic-5 in his hands, but Lu Han doesn’t seem to notice.
“And your brains! Your tender brains would spill from the goblet of your skull!” Lu Han screeches.
As Minseok pulls the trigger, a loud bang erupts, and everything around Minseok is muffled. Even Lu Han’s face is muffled, bright red distorting what had once been long eyelashes and a jawline tattooed with butterfly kisses.
Minseok wonders how Lu Han could have decayed so suddenly. He cleans the barrel of his shotgun and tries to recall when Lu Han’s eyes stopped sparkling and started burning. But Minseok must remind himself:
Lu Han is dead. He’s been dead for about a week now.
A/N: So tired that I feel like a zombie right now. Braiiins.