“I wanted to offer you my most sincere apologies for not informing you.”

Minseok and Chanyeol stood back as they watched the other six people and two children load into the three-carriage caravan that would be taking them on their journey to Baekhyun’s home.

“You sister is a lovely woman with none of the same ideals as your parents, but I knew of the resentment you held towards her. I found her enrapturing and was interested in your research, she wanted a line of communication with you and someone who would impress your old-money parents, and you needed supplies. I saw it as beneficial for all parties.

“I can understand that,” Chanyeol replied. “I think you were right.”

Yifan along with the other two carriage drivers were loading the group’s possessions into the back of each carriage—a custom-designed compartment Minseok liked to call the ‘trunk’. In the middle carriage, D.O. and Jongdae were hitting it off. The former had only been dismissed from the hospital earlier that day and the two had only been introduced when Chanyeol and Jongdae had gone to pick him up, but they were already laughing like old friends.

Junmyeon handed his month-old son up into the last carriage to Jongin, before holding Yoora’s hand while Mrs. Kim held a steadying hand on her back as the woman eased her way up the carriage steps. Minseok excused himself in order to verify with his wife that she wanted to make the journey, as pregnant as she was, and she confirmed that she did. It was clear that she shared a tenacious nature with her brother.

Chanyeol laughed as he watched Jongin held the baby boy; he normally look so sure-handed, but he cradled the infant awkwardly. Even so, the little boy looked completely content.

Junmyeon offered a hand up to his wife, then after handing their one-year-old daughter up to her, climbed in himself. He was already proudly explaining the theories behind their most recent research to Yoora, as he would do to just about anyone who would listen. Looking back to see that Yifan and the others had pretty much packed up, Minseok shut the door.

“Let me do my job, will you Xiumin?” Yifan turned around from where he was now checking the latch on the lead carriage, the hearse, for the third time. “You’re making me look like a terrible butler.” He sighed when he was shot a mischievous grin in response.

“Hey Yeol! What are you waiting for?” Jongdae yelled. “Get in here!”

He obliged, followed by Minseok, and Yifan (mostly to prove a point) closed the door behind them before taking his place at the head of the caravan as the driver of the hearse.

{Three years ago}

“When I die, it sure better not be like that,” Baekhyun said over his book to Chanyeol and Jongdae.

The three men were enjoying a Saturday lunch break out by the river bank when they had noticed a funeral procession crossing the bridge. In a wave of black, people walked behind the slow-moving carriage either in mourning or somber silence.

“You mean normal?” Chanyeol asked as he attempted to skip a rock farther than the one Jongdae had just done. It skipped twice before sinking.

“No, it’s not that. I just don’t want it to be all sad and . I mean, doesn’t it that the last thing anyone usually does is make people cry?”

“I’ll be happy that you’re dead if you want me to.” Jongdae offered, once again skipping his rock four times.

“Har har, . But really, there’s two things I want. One: I want my funeral to be a celebration of my life. I want my friends and family to come together and be laughing and smiling; no somber . Two: If I conk out early for some reason, it’d damn well better be for something.”

‘We got half of it right,’ Chanyeol thought. ‘Let’s just hope the ‘for something’ part turns out to be true as well.’

{One month after the funeral}

The atmosphere in the room was normal, save for the tension could have been cut with a butterknife. Junmyeon and Jongin tried to act as if it were just a regular day in the lab, but if one were to quantify the number of idle taps made by Junmyeon’s feet or fingers, or of times Jongin had lost focus, it would have been easy to see that they weren’t paying attention to their busy-work at all.

They dropped their ‘work’ immediately upon hearing footsteps from all the way in the stairwell and turned their attention toward the laboratory door.

“Guys, it worked!” Chanyeol started yelling the second his hand touched the door handle. “It worked! Not everyone turned around, but over three-fourths did, and none of them died of acute death. Dr. Junmyeon, you did it! Your theory was right!”

Chanyeol had taken Junmyeon up in a hug that the shorter doctor reciprocated with near-equal excitement.

Even Jongin had an impressed look on his face. “This is one of the most valuable pieces of information discovered in history. All that needs to be done now is to establish a blood typing center at the hospital.” He shook his head in awe. “Who’d have thought that blood is different between individuals?”

“This genius over here who had me spend hours combining blood samples underneath the microscope until I could find a universal match. Thank God Kris survived this thing.” Yifan had come down with the illness shortly after returning from the funeral, and Minseok had implored them to put every effort they could into saving him (regardless, they wouldn’t have fathomed putting anything less than their best effort into it, and it paid off.) “And without the medicines you developed, Dr. Jongin, he might not have! And Baekhyun… without him, we may still be thinking the bacterium was causing this.”

“And without you, none of the rest of it would have happened,” Junmyeon finished.

Chanyeol looked startled. “What did I do?”

Jongin was more than willing to give a tally. “You broke seventeen pipettes, four beakers, six Erlenmeyer flasks, countless bottles, and that list of grievances goes on, but I suppose it was worth it for you to have brought the existence of microscopic organisms to our attention. Without your prior medical tourism, we may not have made progress from last year.”

“Not to mention befriending Minseok. Without his microscope upgrade, our work would have been impossible,” Junmyeon added.

“It was Dr. Zhang’s microscope,” Chanyeol reminded.

Junmyeon sighed fondly. “Just goes to show you can never go it alone when it comes to science and medicine.”

He looked up at the doctor and apprentice with a smirk.

“Or other things.”

Chanyeol grinned.

Jongin scowled.

“Oh come now, Jongiiin,” Junmyeon said, walking over to his former protégé with outstretched arms, “You should be happier than that! Where’s your smile?”

Jongin backed away.

“I don’t smile.”

“Everybody smiles!”

“Well I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“Chanyeol told me you do.”

Wide-eyed, Jongin looked over in Chanyeol’s direction to see him smile even wider and shrug.

“Traitor! I’m through with you!”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve only said that nineteen times this month.”

“I’m serious this time!” Jongin realized only once Junmyeon had wrapped his arms around him that he had forgotten about him. “Chanyeol, get him off of me! Chanyeol-!”

He did the complete opposite, moving in to throw his gangly arms around both of the men.

“CHAN-YEOL!!!”

“No, you cannot stay over at my house tonight.”

Chanyeol looked like a kicked puppy when Jongin gave the rigid answer to his question. He had already washed the dishes from their dinner, and he now slumped over his desk as he waited for the other to finish the last late bit of his work for the night.

“Why not? You owe me cuddle time, Jongin, and you said you are a man of your word!“

“You took your 'cuddle time' just two hours ago!”

“What!? Innie, that hug doesn’t count! Iiinniiie!”

“What’s final is final. You can’t stay over tonight.”

Chanyeol gave out a whine before going totally silent in protest.

Suddenly, he felt a light hand on his shoulder and he looked up to see a shining, newly cut steel key being dangled over him.

“I figured that perhaps you stay with me so often because being in the apartment might be a bit, erm, lonesome, so I’m um… *ahem* I’m having a housecleaning and landscaping service come tomorrow to do a good thorough cleaning job… The hedges need t and the exterior windows haven’t been washed in years, not to mention that a proper cleaning hasn’t been done inside once since I purchased it. I'd think it improper to ask someone this sort of thing if their house isn’t in the best shape, and I wouldn’t want you getting in their way or-“

“Jongin,” he said once he realized the man was never going to be able to get the question out. “Are you sure? You did say you want to take baby steps through this.”

Chanyeol could see what little confidence Jongin had drain before his eyes; he’d probably been counting on Chanyeol’s normal explosive approval. His mouth fluttered open a couple of times to reply, but each time he shut it again and his face went two shades deeper in the red spectrum.

He looked so adorably unsure.

“Hey,” Chanyeol said, coming to his feet and planting a soft kiss on Jongin's forehead before embracing him. “That wasn’t a rejection. I would absolutely love to, I just want to make sure you’ve thought it over.

Jongin buried his rose-colored face into Chanyeol’s shoulder. “I did. I thought it over for a long time. It’s a practical decision; you don’t have to pay rent and most of your clothes are already at my house. This way…”

“This way...?”

“…You’ll never have to be lonely again.”

“What do you get out of it?” Chanyeol whispered into the crook of Jongin’s neck.

Jongin looked up and met eyes briefly with him before breathing,

“…You.”

“You’re too cute for your own good, you know that?” Chanyeol murmured.

“Don’t call me cute,” Jongin said, giving the rack of reagents a pouty glare.

“Either I get to call you cute, or you let me stay the night in our home tonight.”

Jongin tried but failed to keep his tight, stern lips from curling into a smile.

“…Don’t call me cute.”

Chanyeol grabbed him and hugged the life out of him.

“Anything you say, Dr. Innie. Anything you say.”

Jongin was beaming.

“I hate you.”

“I love you, too~”

Bonus Chapters are here: http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/887104/

Thanks for reading!

I'm marking this story as "complete", but this isn't the real conclusion of the story, just the end of Part II. I'll definitely be doing at least two bonus chapters, and since they'll be standalone from the main story, I can make them actually fluffy (I tried to write fluff here, honest to god, but it just seemed so weird going "Everyone is dying but JongYeol is so KAWAII THO!" I couldn't do it.)

I want to send a special thank you to everyone who upvoted and/or subscribed, and an extra-special thank you to everyone who commented. 100% honestly, I could not have finished this without your support. I would have been completely uninspired. Which is why I want to send an extra special SUPER thank you to LavenderDreams, who told my story better than I did ^^ Especially in the later chapters, when I would finish one chapter and be like, "I have no idea what I'm going to do next," I often had to wait for her comment before I could get a burst of inspiration. Pretty much all of the comments that talked about what happened in the chapter had a similar effect on me, too ^^

See you guys in the bonuses!

~Señorita TacoMal