It was about thirty minutes later when D.O. started choking for breath.

Light sleeper that he was, the loud, almost asthmatic noise woke Jongin from where he had drifted off almost immediately, and after taking a couple of seconds to get his bearings he got up from the chair he’d fallen asleep on at the table and hurried over to his gasping friend. Realizing he didn’t have the tools to help, he rushed over to the door, throwing it open and yelling down the hall, “I NEED A NEBULIZER AND A BRONCHODILATOR IN THIRTY-FOUR!!!” to whoever could hear. All nurses in the hallway scurried to find the first nebulizer they could get their hands on.

This yelling and the subsequent clamor woke Baekhyun and Chanyeol, who were shocked to wake to D.O.’s pained, blue face and nurses running into the room with various nebulizer components. They set up the device with amazing speed, and after getting D.O. to calm down enough to allow him to breathe the vaporized medicine through the tube, his panic calmed down and his face’s normal hue returned. The entire room let out breaths of air at various times as they realized he would be okay for the time being.

Baekhyun opened his mouth to comment on how frightening the ordeal was, but after no sound except for some difficult wheezing came out, he realized that things were about to get a lot scarier. D.O. did the same, to the same effect.

Neither of the two could speak, and not many people returned from this stage of the disease.

And no one from the next.

“I want breathing tubes on standby for these two,” Jongin ordered.

“No…” Chanyeol whispered. “No, no, Doctor, we have to do something else; breathing tubes are just palliative.”

“Something else? Like what?” he asked sharply. “We’re doing everything we can.”

“Not everything.”

Jongin paused.

The room between him and the three men became very still.

Finally, Jongin turned to one of the nurses, the same one who had come to take Junmyeon earlier.

“What’s the status of the L3 experiment.”

“Nothing yet,” she replied. “Nothing at all.”

“Bring Dr. Junmyeon up here. We need him for this.”

“Doctor, I wouldn’t advise it. He authorized twenty 50 milliliter samples.”

Jongin’s hand came to his face, and Baekhyun's jaw dropped. D.O. looked between the three.

“Is that a lot?” Chanyeol asked.

“For his own blood, yes! How do you not know that, you're a researcher!” Jongin spat, before running a hand through his already disheveled hair. “She’s right, the Doctor is out.”

“Use me.”

Jongin spun around to look at Chanyeol, who had rolled up his sleeve and with his arm offered forward and a completely serious look was staring him down.

“Do it. I’m getting better. If it really is how we think it is, my blood should be just as good as Dr. Junmyeon’s. And if it isn’t, my blood shouldn’t hurt them, right?”

Jongin’s eyes went from Chanyeol’s arm, to Baekhyun, to D.O., to Chanyeol, and back to his arm again. He turned back around to the nurses.

“…Do 100 milliliters for each of them,” he said, forcing the words out of his chest before he could stop himself.

“250.”

Chanyeol’s command made him turn back for a second time.

“One hundred.”

“Two fifty.”

“Are you insubordinating me?”

“I can’t, I don’t work for you anymore.”

“Then you have even less authority than you did before. One. Hundred.”

“I don’t think it will be enough, Doctor, please. Just trust me on this.”

The pros and cons felt like carrying the weight of the world.

Which he was technically doing to some extent anyway.

“…Fine. Do two hundred, but not a milliliter more!”

The nurses obliged, one going over to Chanyeol to prep him for blood draw while the others who weren’t caring for D.O. went to get the breathing tubes, supplies for the blood draw, and another nebulizer in case it was needed for Baekhyun.

As much as Jongin just wanted to walk out of the door and not look back at the outcome, well, he wasn’t at liberty to make that decision.

Another thirty minutes later, the first of the two blood draws was administered to D.O., who was nervous but knew they were out of other options, and he would rather live or die now than wait for the disease to run its course.

“…What’s L3?”

“We’ve heard from other laboratories that the blood of a person who has survived the disease, if injected into a sick person, may be able to help them overcome it,” Jongin explained.

“I’m assuming that there’s a bad side to this,” D.O. said.

“Well, yes,” Jongin continued. “In some people it works, in some it doesn’t, but some laboratories have reported that in some people it can cause death within minutes. We’re working under the assumption that some people can’t handle the influx of bacteria and it ravages their system, but we have yet to discover a way around this.”

D.O. rolled his lips between his teeth and closed his eyes.

The fluid that was pumped into him felt the slightest bit cold, but otherwise he felt fine. He’d imagined something like fire running through his veins, coursing over and through his body until he burned away, but nothing was happening yet. By the time they finished with him, another nurse had come with breathing tubes, authorized for use in D.O. or Baekhyun at the next sign of respiratory distress.

“Mr Park? Mr. Park??” said one of the nurses who was doing the blood draw on Chanyeol. Jongin’s attention snapped to where the tall man’s head was now lolling to the side.

“Stop the draw, stop the draw!” he ordered as he rushed over. The nurse did as she was told, withdrawing the needle from his arm, and Jongin shook Chanyeol by the shoulder, to no effect. Jongin could see he was breathing through pale but still pink lips, and he put an ear to his chest to hear that his heart was still going at a normal pace.

His heart…

“Doctor…?”

Jongin stood back up immediately to respond to the nurse who was looking at him curiously. He cleared his throat and shook his head clear of any unnecessary thoughts. “He’s fine. How much blood did you get?”

“I’d say it’s about one hundred fifty.”

“That’s more than enough. Go ahead on Mr. Byun.”

The nurses nodded and moved their sample over to Baekhyun, where they promptly began to administer his cure. Baekhyun let out a relieved sigh as the fluid slowly began to his circulatory system without incident.

While they took on their task, Jongin’s attention returned to Chanyeol, who remained passed out.

“Bring a blanket for Mr. Park,” he said to whoever was listening, not breaking his gaze from the sleeping man.

Before he realized what he was doing, his feet had brought him to Chanyeol’s bedside, where he observed the peaceful face. He glanced quickly over to D.O, who had had his arm patched up and been left to rest. He didn’t look any better than he had earlier, but didn’t look any worse, either.

“Thank you,” he murmured just under his breath to the sleeping man.

“Mr. Byun!?” one of the nurses administering the blood called.

Suddenly, from the other side of the room, there was a groan followed by coughing, which quickly turned into ragged gasps for air in between wheezes.

“, , get that needle out of his arm and a breathing tube in him immediately!” The nurses rushed to do as they were told, but by the way Baekhyun’s face was beginning to flush a yellowish hue, Jongin could tell it was too late.

Sweating and shivering all at once, and unable to talk, Baekhyun looked out at the world with pained, fearful eyes as the breathing tube was forced down his silent, constricting throat. He gagged, but the nurse persisted until it was properly in place, and as his own diaphragm began to shut down, she took up the job of manually breathing for him.

“Baekhyun, stay with us,” Jongin implored, attempting to keep the man awake and focused on him, but he could barely see the doctor through the tears welling in his eyes. The voice coming to him from close seemed so distant. “Baekhyun… Baek…!”

The light faded from his eyes and they fluttered shut for the last time.

Chanyeol went in and out of sleep for several hours until his eyes finally fluttered open for good. The room was dark save for a light by D.O.’s bed, but the bed’s occupant had fallen asleep while perusing a novel he’d been lent by Jongin. Chanyeol squinted at the brightness and flipped over, curling up to avoid the light.

When he did so, he was met by an unexpected sight.

Sitting in a chair, resting his head in his arms that were folded over the bed, Jongin was sound asleep next to him.

Chanyeol’s heart skipped a beat in surprise, but in the still of the room, it quickly began to speed up. The doctor’s usually neat hair was entirely disheveled and he breathed slowly though thick, lightly parted lips. He was so close; their faces were less than a foot apart. Jongin’s light breath played at Chanyeol’s own messy hair.

Slowly, Chanyeol lifted a hand to run through the soft head of hair in front of him.

“God, you are so beautiful…”

His hand curved around Jongin’s strong jaw line and brushed over slightly chapped, but still plush, soft lips. He found that the amount of space between them had been halved, and he realized that he himself was inching closer.

A slight, quiet moan came from Jongin, and Chanyeol pulled his hands back and turned away immediately as the doctor began to stir. Jongin blinked his eyes a couple of times, looking up to see Chanyeol notice him.

“Oh, hey Doctor, didn’t see you there...”

“Chan-“ he cleared his throat, “Mr. Park…” Jongin said groggily. He sat up and tried to look presentable, ignoring the strong instinct to stretch.

“What are you doing in here? You’ve been spending every waking moment you don’t need to be here in the lab up until now.”

It wasn’t until Jongin opened his eyes that Chanyeol could see how red-rimmed they were. He had seen the doctor go to sleep and wake up dozens of times, and never wake up with eyes like those. It almost looked as if he’d been crying.

He remembered the reason for his own fatigue, and he looked over to see Baekhyun’s bed, then D.O.-

His attention immediately fell back onto the empty bed across from his.

“Doctor... Where’s Baekhyun?”

Despite Jongin’s tired expression, Chanyeol picked up on the slight change exhausted to solemn.

“No… Doctor, he’s not…” Chanyeol’s focus became distant before he was able to force it back to the man in front of him. “Tell me he’s not…”

“How am I supposed to tell this to Chanyeol?”

The tears continued to burn in his eyes without actually falling; Jongin swiped them away as they threatened to, all while making sure D.O. didn’t see his face as he paced up and down the room. The body had been taken away for the morgue only moments prior. Funerals at that time weren’t cheap, and most families opted for a mass burial ceremony, but whatever Baekhyun’s family would be unable to afford, Jongin would make absolutely sure was covered, whatever it took.

“Those two are as close as brothers, as close as you and I were,” D.O. said, finally able to speak in the hoarsest of rasps. “What would you want to hear from him if it’d been me?”

Jongin thought about it, but was unable to come to a conclusion. “There are no words.”

“Exactly. There aren’t any magic words to make him feel better. All you can really say is the truth. What matters more is what you do.”

“That’s even greater of a challenge. What can I do?”

“More than damn near anyone.”

Jongin stopped pacing.

“I can’t act like I’ve known him as well as you and Baekhyun. But I’ve come to the general conclusion that what he needs most, hell, what he’s needed most this entire time, is you. He needs you to be more than there for him, he needs you to actually be with him.”

“…He’s got a funny way of showing it,” Jongin said, perplexed. Save for the day Jongin brought him to the hospital, Chanyeol and he had been either at ends or ignoring each other entirely.

“No, he’s got a perfectly normal way of showing it, because he’s nearly ready to give up on it.”

Jongin forgot entirely about keeping up appearances, and began to slowly walk back toward D.O.’s bedside.

“How do you mean? Give up on what?”

D.O. sighed. The latter question was one that even someone as dense as Jongin would come to realize eventually, but he could at least help out with the former.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed, but the man is very sensitive.”

“Sensitive is perhaps the last word I’d use to describe him,” Jongin said, the contrasting images of what he imagined as ‘sensitive’ and Chanyeol’s cheery, hyper disposition clashing in his mind.

D.O. ignored him. “Every time some sort of rift comes up that separates you two, like him getting fired, or you avoiding him, he gets depressed. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed that.”

Jongin thought back to earlier in the day, when Chanyeol had tried to refuse his medication, all of the days Baekhyun came to the lab with Chanyeol’s sullen mood still stuck to him, and the day he’d had to force Chanyeol to the lab.

D.O. was entirely right.

"He needs you."

“We did all we could to try to keep him with us long enough for him to recover, but it was simply too much for him.”

Chanyeol nodded shallowly, not taking his eyes off of the empty bed. Jongin placed a comforting hand on his forearm.

“...I’m going to stay here with you as long as you need me to.”

Chanyeol looked over to the doctor, who was looking up at him with earnest eyes.

It was obvious that Chanyeol didn’t believe him, returning his attention to the bed across from his. “I-I’m fine,” he said. “Besides, you’ve got to go back and analyze the L3 data with Dr. Junmyeon.”

“He can handle it when he recovers.” Jongin’s gaze didn’t break.

“This is more important than me,” Chanyeol persisted.

“I think I’m finally ready to answer that question.”

“Question?”

“You asked me what Chanyeol is to me, and I never gave you a proper answer.”

“You have to go back and-”

"Be quiet for once, Mister Park, because I'm not going to repeat what I'm about to say."

His words dissipated as Jongin slid his fingers down Chanyeol’s forearm and laced in with his. He brought both of their arms upright and clasped Chanyeol’s hand between both of his before bringing his forehead to it.

“Nothing in the world is more important to me than you, and if it means that the world has to wait for me to make sure you’re okay, then so be it.”

“He is the world to me.”

Jongin lifted his head and released a hand from Chanyeol’s as the man tightened his grip around the hand with which his fingers were entwined, and brought it to his lips.

Jongin's emotions coursed through his body on high speed as he watched him kiss his hand, and Chanyeol looked on with a loving smile as Jongin gently pulled their hands back closer to him, and reciprocated the action on Chanyeol’s. As he replaced his other hand to its original position on Chanyeol’s and put his forehead against it once more, on the doctor’s entirely red face the most adorable smile Chanyeol could ever recall seeing, was visible.

He couldn’t help but lean over and put his lips to it.