“He liked it~~~”

“I say, boy, can’t you say anything else?” Baekhyun said in a rather poor imitation of Jongin’s uppity tone.

Chanyeol was practically floating over the cobblestone street along which he and Baekhyun were returning home for the day. Apparently, Jongin had a thing for sugar-marinated eggplant that he’d never revealed to anyone, judging by the way the plate was scraped so cleanly that Baekhyun could only wonder how much willpower it took to keep the man from it.

“But really, firstly, did you think the outcome would be any different? You’re an amazing cook, and no human, not even Dr. Scrooge-in, could deny that fact.”

Chanyeol kicked a seeded dandelion that was one of the few survivors of its group. “I thought we were going under the assumption that he was Lucifer, not human?” He snickered when a few of the white seeds landed in Baekhyun’s hair.

The seed victim noticed the other seeds flow by him in the mild wind at their backs and sighed, trying to shake his hair free of any that may have landed there, to no effect. “Alright, I doubt any human or Master of the Underworld could reject your food. Happy with that clarification?”

“Very. Thank you kindly.”

“Secondly,” Baekhyun continued as they opened the door to their building again (and he didn’t fail to notice the slight limp in the eldest twin’s step,) “Oh drat, what was that ‘secondly’?” He fell silent for a moment as he tried to remember what he was going to say. “Right! What I would love to know, pray tell, is why you still didn’t tell the doctor that you made it, even after he clearly enjoyed it?”

Chanyeol didn’t respond until Baekhyun unlocked their apartment door with a ‘click!’ and turned his eyes from the lock to meet with Chanyeol’s.

“Iunno... Because…?”

Baekhyun rolled his eyes. “Whatever. You’re a weird one, you know?”

He didn’t get another response since Chanyeol had pushed past him and hustled over (not that ‘hustling’ across an 18’x18’ room resulted in much of a gain of time) to the ice box, where he promptly pulled out the morning’s unused eggplant and the nicest green pepper he had left and got to slicing.

“You’re making tomorrow’s now?” Baekhyun asked, looking over to Chanyeol in curiosity.

“No, this is more for tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“We think we might have find some differences between the saliva samples from healthy and sick patients." Chanyeol gabbed excitedly. "We were pondering techniques for isolating the little critters from the sick samples. He stayed back to get started on some of them, and there’s stuff we need for tomorrow, so I thought that I would fix up some more of this, drop by the pharmacy to pick up the reagents, and head back over.”

“The big pharmacy? It’s in entirely the opposite direction... You think you have time to cook and get there before it closes?”

Knife still in hand, Chanyeol smiled and pointed down to remind Baekhyun of his long lanky legs.

“I run fast.”

“Whaaatever.” Baekhyun smiled and opened his briefcase to grab his book before he collapsed and curled up on the bed with a great sigh.

“You could offer to help,” Chanyeol said around the mixing spoon he was holding in his mouth while he tried to grab all of the rest of the supplies to bring them down to the building’s large shared kitchen. The tiny in-room stove was more of a convenience than an actual stove: Small enough to boil tea water or a pot of cereal, and heated up the room well enough, but to do any real cooking Chanyeol had to go downstairs.

“I’m moral support.”

Chanyeol scoffed and pouted. Baekhyun laughed and got off of the bed, taking the vegetables and condiments out from under Chanyeol’s arms. Chanyeol smiled around the spoon.

He did a very swift job of cleaning up the kitchen before bolting out of the door with the neatly-tied-in-a-cloth box of food. The pharmacy was a 7-minute stroll west of their apartment, so he figured he could make the run in the four minutes he had before they would close their doors for the evening.

His plan was perfect except for the part where he ran into this one guy.

Literally.

Both men fell spectacularly onto the street, onlookers cringing as they could only imagine how painful the collision was, when it had been almost too painful to look at.

“Oh gosh, I am so sorry, I was in a rush to…” he stammered as he got to his feet and tried to help the man to his. His heart sank to somewhere around the area of his appendix as he looked to find out the fate of the lunch box. It had landed about five feet away, still apparently intact, and with one gigantic step he swooped it up and returned to his apologies to the man he had just trucked. He looked to be about Chanyeol’s age, but was much shorter (as was most everyone) and had sharp but very kind eyes framed by thick eyebrows.

“Are you alright?”

“Nothing broken; couldn’t be better!” He dusted himself off a bit while smiling. “And how about you?”

Chanyeol hadn’t even taken time to register pain in his own body, and when he did he was able to feel a slight soreness in his left wrist, but nothing important.

“I’m alright. I’m so sorry-“

“You must be in quite the rush! Don’t let me stop you. But I can offer you a ride if you wish.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t ask you to-“

“As I remember I simply offered you a ride; you’re not asking anything! Come, come!” The man gave Chanyeol a friendly push toward the buggy he had been about to board before being knocked down.

“Now, where are you headed?” he asked once they were both seated. The driver, an man slightly taller than Chanyeol and of a slightly more sturdy build than Chanyeol's somewhat wiry frame, closed the door to the ornate carriage and listened in upon taking his seat up front.

“Well, I was headed to Grater’s Pharmacy to pick up some experimental reagents, but… has it passed 6 p.m. yet?”

“I’m afraid it will have by the time we arrive,” the man said with a check of his pocket watch. “Anywhere else I can take you?”

“I was just planning on going to the university hospital area,” Chanyeol said. “If that’s out of the way, I can just-“

“That’s just the direction we were headed!”

Chanyeol readjusted himself as the expensive-looking and surprisingly roomy horse and carriage, with its one white and one black horse, lurched to a start. It had been years since he’d had the pleasure of riding in one of the vehicles; he hadn’t done so once since he left home.

“My, I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of exchanging names. I’m Minseok Kim.”

Another Kim to add to his list of names was not at all surprising. “Chanyeol Park.”

“Park? As in the Parks?”

Chanyeol’s face fell flat. There were very few people who could draw the relation between his own fairly common last name and his family.

“You look just like your sister. I met her and your mom during business talks between our fathers a couple of months ago. Funny thing; they didn’t… mention…” Minseok trailed off when he put the stoic look on Chanyeol’s face together with the fact that he hadn’t been told by Chanyeol’s family that they had a son.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. So you’re from the Kim family, then?” Chanyeol asked, emulating Minseok’s style of indicating the prestige of the family name. The Kims were the Kims after whom the university hospital and half the scientific supplies in the city were named.

“Indeed I am,” Minseok smiled. Not wanting to linger on the subject of their families, he quickly changed the subject. “Did you say you were going to pick up supplies for an experiment?”

“Ah, yes, I was. We’re working on experiments related to curing the plague. We’re not quite sure how to go about experimenting upon our more recent findings, but until we can somehow come about a better microscope, we’ll just have to make do.”

Minseok was silent. Chanyeol glanced up for a split second, then did a double take when he realized Minseok was grinning at him.

“Mr. Park, I do believe you’ve run into the right man.”

“Dr. Jong-iiiin!”

“Yes?” Jongin replied flatly. “It’s late. What are you doing back?”

He put down the copy of the medical journal Chanyeol had left for him with a suggestion that they may have some beneficial techniques in them. He had already clearly delved into the setup for several other experiments, indicated by the controlled chaos of the spread of materials in front of him. Looking up, he saw a wide grin on Chanyeol’s pink, windbitten face.

He raised an eyebrow. Chanyeol spoke up excitedly.

“Let’s eat!”

“So you were the one who made this, I presume,” Jongin murmured after taking a generous swallow of eggplant.

Chanyeol nodded in reply, then waited a few seconds.

“Hm.”

The non-compliment put a smile on Chanyeol’s face that he hid by slyly lifting a hand to shade his mouth.

“Okay, so,” he said as he finished chewing a mouthful. “I ran into someone today.”

“I hope you don’t mean literally…” Jongin sighed. Coming from anyone else, it would have been a joke.

“Well… that’s beside the point. I ran into Minseok Kim from the Kim family. He’s going to give us supplies to upgrade Dr. Zhang’s microscope!”

Jongin’s eyebrows rose in what Chanyeol took to be, for once, an impressed manner. “How’d you manage to pull that off?”

Chanyeol shrugged cooly at first, but then quickly attributed the donation to Minseok’s own kindness.

“I was going to bring by the reagents for the experiments today, but I couldn’t get to the pharmacy in time… I’m sorry,” he mentioned as their meal came to a close.

Jongin shook his head as he stood up to begin storing the materials from the desk in their appropriate places. “I’m mostly done for today anyway. Do bring them by tomorrow, though. Good work.”

The taller could have exploded. “Yes, sir!”

“And… erm… Do… prepare some more food for tomorrow…”

Chanyeol couldn’t contain himself this time. Seeing Jongin enjoy the food was wonderful in itself, but hearing that he wanted more was a whole new type of confirmation.

Jongin gasped in surprise when he found himself being wrapped around the arms and torso by two strong arms and lifted a few inches into the air.

“YOU DO LIKE IT YOU DO LIKE IT YOU DO LIKE IT!!!”

“PUT ME DOWN, BOY!!!” Jongin roared as he tried to squirm out of Chanyeol’s hug, which he finally managed to do.

“FIRED!”

“Hm?” Chanyeol said, beaming grin still on his face, certain that he hadn’t heard Jongin correctly.

“You’re fired! Fired!”

The smile instantly melted from Chanyeol’s face, and he was about to open his mouth to protest, but no words came out upon seeing Jongin’s face flushed an angry red.

“I don’t want to see you in this laboratory ever again! Go! Leave! Shoo!”

Chanyeol, having gone from what felt like one of the happiest to one of the worst moments of his life in less than ten seconds, didn’t have the mindpower left to do anything but do as he was told.