I’ll be home for Christmas by atharaigas
Genre/Rating: PG
Warning: none
Word Count: 2356
Description: the one where chanyeol is an alien and wyf teaches him about the holidays, kind of
Author's Note: title from the song, obvs, cut from the neruda poem. dont look at me

 

---

 

 

I like for you to be still / And you seem far away / It sounds as though you are lamenting / A butterfly cooing like a dove

 

“So what you’re telling me is--” Yifan keeps Chanyeol upright while navigating a particularly treacherous area of ice-covered concrete. “Is that this isn’t for everybody?” He frowns, face cocooned by the thick faux fur ringing a loaned winter coat.

 

“No, well--kind of. Christmas is really kind of, um.” Chanyeol radiates warmth. At least, that’s why Yifan’s pressed so close to him, whispering a clumsy excuse about a holiday he usually doesn’t go crazy about. “It’s kind of religious?”

 

“It’s what?” Chanyeol wrinkles his nose at the new word. Yifan wonders what kind of place Chanyeol comes from, to have nothing like religion at all.

 

“Like? There’s a god, and he’s sent his son to Earth to save the planet, kind of. And Christmas is his birthday.” God, Yifan can see Chanyeol struggling to make connections already, and abruptly wonders if he should explain it fully anyway. “Like, Superman? Right? Remember that? Kind of like Superman. Except millions of people believe in this one.”

 

“I believe in Superman.” Chanyeol worries his upper lip with his teeth, even pale blocks of white biting into pink. He looks so human. “Is that what religion is?”

 

“Kind of. A lot of people like this particular holiday even if they’re not, you know, adherents. Believers.” They’re passing by too many red-trimmed displays to count, Chanyeol’s eye catching on every shiny bauble hung on evergreen branches. “I don’t really, uh, religion? I don’t do that--I used to, when I was a kid.”

 

“Like a hobby.” Chanyeol’s gaze is oddly heavy. Yifan suddenly remembers the dusty Sundays in church, his church clothes heavy and stifling, and shudders.

“Some people see it that way,” he agrees. The wind flaps at their jackets. “For some people, it’s about that. And some people, it’s about, um. Good will? Yeah. Like, being nice to other people for no reason. And sometimes it’s about food, or it’s about snow. Shopping, kind of--but that’s Boxing Day. Sometimes it’s all of these things.”

 

“This is a poorly organized holiday,” Chanyeol observes, and tucks his mittened hands into his pockets. “And it’s really, really cold outside. I can see why people choose to celebrate indoors.”

 

“I thought your planet had colder temperatures.” Yifan punches the crosswalk button, waiting for the ‘go’ light and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Miles of iced-over snow stretch out before them; a sleepy town covered with winter.

 

“It does! This is a nice day, but you told me that I’d stick out if I didn’t wear this stuff.” Chanyeol peers at the crosswalk light curiously. Yifan wonders what it reminds him of. “Not like there’s anybody outside.”

 

“Precautions,” Yifan shrugs. (Chanyeol waddles like an oversized penguin after Yifan when the light turns. It’s kind of cute.)

 

 

 

 

“I didn’t know medicine looked like that.” Chanyeol crosses his arms and stares down the milk carton in Yifan’s hand. “Why do humans get sick like this?”

 

“It’s not medicine. Sometimes, pharmacies sell other stuff. Like this. It’s milk. You like it with cereal.” Yifan lets Chanyeol eye the refrigerated goods while he pays for the single carton at the register. “You want anything?”

 

“Uh, no. This stuff looks terrible.” But Chanyeol pastes on a bright smile while he says it, and Yifan can’t find it in himself to feel offended on behalf of his species. “Let’s go home.”

 

“Yeah,” he agrees, bracing himself for the cold. “Let’s go home.” Yifan sticks by Chanyeol’s warmth on the way.

 

 

 

 

“Christmas, huh.”

 

Chanyeol only needs to sleep for four hours a day. He sprawls out on the guest bed and can hear Yifan sleeping in the next room. Chanyeol can, if he tries, probably hear every delicate sound made within a six-block radius; breathe underwater; can fix every electronic device in Yifan’s apartment.

 

The wall calendar tells him that it is exhausted from shouting the same thing, day-in and day-out, to humans that can only read its face on certain days. (And that Christmas Day, the one after Christmas Eve, is in two days, which makes today December the twenty-second.) Chanyeol thanks the calendar and pads toward the living room. The television obliges him by switching on to something quiet.

 

Bathed in its blue light, Chanyeol slumps, practically boneless, against the couch and watches flickering footage. Choirs of children decked out in stupid-looking red hats, cats stuffed in unfortunate sweaters, humans crying, humans laughing, an elegant-looking man in tights dancing and fighting a giant mouse, stained glass windows, gold ribbons, bright paper, a sparkling tree.

 

Bolting upright, Chanyeol stares at the image of a Christmas tree wreathed in lights and tinsel. It glitters even in television. A running bar underneath the picture says it is a tree in ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, NYC. Chanyeol wonders if all trees there look just like that, or if it’s a particularly sparkly specimen.

 

Onscreen, the glittering apex of the tree looks like it could blend in with the polluted field of stars. Abruptly, Chanyeol tastes loneliness iron-sharp in his mouth. The television cruelly keeps the image alive.

 

“What’re you doing?” Yifan mumbles, rubbing at one eye with a loose fist. “Can you not sleep?”

 

“Slept already.” Chanyeol curls up into the couch, affecting nonchalance. “Thought I’d TV.” Yifan nods, disappearing back into his room to grab his blanket. “Should it go away?”

 

“No, it’s okay.” Yifan settles next to Chanyeol, long legs draped over the armrest as his head finds comfort on Chanyeol’s lap. “You’re warm, stay there.”

 

“The bed’s more comfortable,” he reminds him, human eccentricities aside. He keeps his hands near his sides, palms facing upward, and tries to give off enough heat to keep Yifan close. Tries not to look at the fuzzy image of stars backdropping the giant tree.

 

“But you’re lonely,” Yifan answers. “That’s really what Christmas is about.” He lets Chanyeol wind careful fingers through his hair, body warm as a furnace.

 

 

 

 

“It’s hard to wrap gifts when he’s in my apartment,” Yifan grouses. He thumps his head on Yixing’s kitchen table, arm snatching up the tube of gift wrap before it can fall off the crammed surface.

“Does he even know how to wrap stuff?” Yixing stays well away from Yifan’s Mad Scientist corner, except to hand over extra clear tape and a mug of coffee. “What is he even doing in your house right now?”

 

“Uh. Probably watching television.” Yifan folds the corners down, thumbnail scraping the thick paper as he maneuvers around the box.

 

Yixing blinks, sipping at his own mug of tea. “That is incredibly normal.” He watches him flip the box over, grinning when Yifan finally realizes that the tape is facing outward. “I was wondering when you’d catch that.”

 

“I’m returning your present.” But it’s a remark made only to pull Yixing’s smile out, because Yifan wouldn’t let his newly-single best friend go giftless this year. “Hand me that tape again.”

 

“If you re-wrap it, I swear to god--”

 

 

 

 

“Did you go to the pharmacies again?” Chanyeol greets him at the door like an oversized alien puppy, watching him like a hawk as Yifan kicks the snow off his feet against the mat.

 

“Did you stare at the Rockefeller tree again?” Yifan deposits the brown paper bag in his room and hangs up his coat. Chanyeol waits for him to quit moving before wrapping his arms around Yifan’s waist. “Get off me,” he mumbles, but the smile on his face is louder than his complaint.

 

“Humans get cold too easily. And you didn’t answer my question.”

 

“Neither did you.” Like some strange mirror-limbed biped, Yifan lets Chanyeol cling to him. The television steadfastly broadcasts the plaza. “I got you a Christmas present,” he finally admits. “I didn’t want you to see it while I was wrapping it, or something. They’re usually a surprise.”

 

“What if I had X-ray vision?” The innocent question takes Yifan off guard enough for him to actually detach Chanyeol from his back.

 

“Do you really?”

 

Chanyeol grins. “No. I’m not Superman.” He lets out a laugh that probably has resonant waves in multiple frequencies, or something, when Yifan pushes him away. “I got you, huh?”

 

Some aliens are, Yifan discovers, slightly ticklish.

 

 

 

 

He clings to him in bed, warm puffs of breath against Yifan’s face. “I’ll stop looking at TV’s tree,” he promises.

 

“You don’t have to stop. It’s nothing bad--it’s kind of famous for that thing.” Yifan props his head against his palm and sits halfway upright. “What makes you say that, though? Talk to me.”

 

“It makes me sick.” All the small details aside, Chanyeol practically passes for human. He looks vulnerably human to Yifan, eyes shut in the dark. “I want to go home.” His eyes are unnaturally bright when he opens them, seeking out Yifan’s face, like dark brown stars.

 

Wordlessly, Yifan opens his arms and lets Chanyeol’s skull thud against his collarbone. “‘m sorry,” he can hear him say, and thinks about shushing him--but he’s probably been holding this in since he’d crash-landed on Earth all those months ago.

 

Chanyeol stays like that for hours, until Yifan’s eyelids grow heavy with sleep as the sky lightens. “I’m glad it was you I found, when I came here. I’m glad it wasn’t someone else.”

 

Yifan’s breath grows even.

 

 

 

 

Yifan gives Lu Han and Yixing their gifts separately on Christmas Eve. He goes to Yixing’s house first, towing Chanyeol along at ten in the morning with a brightly-decorated box. “Merry Christmas!” Chanyeol crows when Yixing opens the door, still in his pajamas.

 

“Sorry about the alien,” Yifan deadpans. “No, don’t bother, we’re just dropping this off. Merry Christmas, Xingxing.” He lets Chanyeol shove the box into Yixing’s hands and pulls him in for a brief, one-armed hug. “We’ll see you before New Year’s, yeah?”

 

“Yeah. Sounds good. Thanks a lot, dude.” Yixing leans against the door frame and watches them go. Chanyeol can hear his shuffling footsteps as he finally goes to shut the door.

 

 

 

 

“Why does nobody give you a present?” Chanyeol unwinds his scarf and drapes it over the only armchair in the living room. Finally home, Yifan clutches at Lu Han’s gift and stares it down, wondering if he should deliver it at all, when he finally processes Chanyeol’s question.

 

“Yixing already did. His present was kind of early.”

 

“And you opened it?” Curious, Chanyeol swings his gaze around the room as if he could spot the theoretically unopened gift.

 

“Of course. It’s the coffee maker.”

“Aaaahhh. That makes sense.” Chanyeol sagely nods. “It smells new. It’s very shy.” He glares the television into submission, waiting until it obediently switches itself off, and smiles.

 

“That’s not ever gonna get old,” Yifan comments, as if his crash-landed alien roommate hadn’t just bullied his TV into silence. “We should let you do that for parties.”

 

 

 

 

Lu Han’s gift is left on his doorstep, Yifan knocking and running away like a kid playing a prank. He waits for Chanyeol’s confirmation, head cocked in Lu Han’s direction two blocks over.

 

“Quiet,” Chanyeol laughs, hand muffling Yifan’s mouth. “You’re breathing hard, and it covers up his--wait--” Yifan watches Chanyeol listen, shoulders heaving still with the exertion of running at the speed of light. “Yep. Yep, yep, yep. He’s got it. He says very loudly, by the way, thank you.”

 

“Good,” Yifan mumbles, tugging at the hand covering his mouth. “Now let’s go home.”

 

 

 

 

Christmas is, at the end of the day, not quite about snow, or food, or shopping. Chanyeol stares at the Grinch slithering his way across Whoville with interest, the television carefully instructed to avoid Rockefeller Plaza at all costs. “He reminds me of someone I know,” Chanyeol says cheerfully, pointing at the green cartoon figure lying his face off to little Cindy-Lou Who.

 

Yifan wonders who it is, and pours Chanyeol another glass of cocoa. “Merry Christmas,” Chanyeol toasts, and Yifan raises his mug in acknowledgement.

 

“You really ended up liking the holiday. I’m surprised.” Curled up against each other on the couch, watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a strange sense of peace steals over Yifan’s body.

 

“It should be Christmas every day!” Chanyeol bubbles. Yifan reconsiders how much chocolate he’s been consuming, and wonders if all the hours he’d spent watching Star Trek as a kid would actually pay off like this. “And besides, good will, right?”

 

Chanyeol puts down his cocoa and settles near Yifan again; body heat and brown eyes. “I got something for you,” he admits shyly, teeth catching at his lip again.

 

“So did I. It was a record player, remember? It’s right there.” Yifan points at the unboxed machine in the corner, underneath the paper diagram of a Christmas tree that Chanyeol had sketched out early in the morning. “If you bought me one too, that’d be pretty awkward--”

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol’s mouth is as warm as the rest of him. Yifan wonders where he’d learned how to kiss, because it’s something decidedly human that doesn’t have a single alien quirk whatsoever. He’s barely mindful of the full mug in his hands, detaching one hand to press his cocoa-warmed palm to Chanyeol’s cheek.

 

“Merry Christmas,” Chanyeol says gently, with eyes like stars.

 

Yifan makes a garbled noise halfway between agreement and contentment, tugging Chanyeol in close for a deeper one. The television turns itself down in acquiescence, the Grinch’s heart growing three times its size in the background as Chanyeol groans, open-mouthed, into the kiss. “Did I do it right?” Chanyeol manages, and Yifan clicks the television off with the remote.

 

“Merry Christmas,” he agrees, warmth blossoming up from the inside. “You did great.”