Glow by bluedreaming
Genre/Rating: Angst/PG-13
Warning: implied domestic abuse, injury
Word count: 769 words
Description: Being on call on Christmas is not how Chanyeol expected to be reunited with his childhood friend.
Author's Note: I'm sorry that this is so short but I just got this idea because I was listening to A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay and I'm sorry that it's such a dark Christmas. But everything will be okay in the end. ☆彡

When they were small, Chanyeol promised himself he would never let Yifan get hurt. Because he might be older and tall but he's really a soft teddy bear who lets everyone else go first in line and buys Zitao lunch because he got his lunch stolen by bullies again.

So as he stands in the wreckage, looking at Yifan, broken Christmas colours like bruises decorating the floor and the slender man's pale skin, he balls his fists. I'll fix this. Yifan doesn't say much, he doesn't look surprised to see his childhood friend but he doesn't seem surprised to wake up, bruised and broken why did you let this happen to you? Chanyeol wants to scream and shake him but the thought of his fingers pressing against layers and layers of bruises like Christmas decorations that haven't been taken down and hang around through August until they somehow overlap with the new holiday cheer, a sour note added to the party, sickens him.

But he can't be sick. He has to be enough for Yifan, who never asks and only gives.

He had lost track of his friend after elementary school, not lost track exactly but rather the train they'd both been on had split, another engine hooking onto the back and pulling them apart, shouted promises across the gap but phone numbers changed, parents split, emails got lost, and soon the silence of time swallowed their last echoes across the chasm. So when he'd been roused out of his midnight slumber Hello Park, Dispatcher Byun here regretfully interrupts your midnight holiday cheer but other people's Christmas Eves have not been as safe and uneventful as yours hopefully is, so we'll need you to report at once Chanyeol rolling his eyes because he was on call, after all, it's not like he was expecting anything different, he only groaned slightly before rolling out of bed and into his car and into the ambulance. He'd never told his mother, she didn't need to know anyway, only smiling proudly at her "tall, handsome paramedic son who helps people" but he'd decided to be a paramedic because of Yifan. Because he wanted to help people.

He never expected the first call that Christmas to be him.

Even after he's in the ambulance, pressure being applied to the seeping hole in his side knife-wound Chanyeol notes objectively but he can't be objective, not when it's Yifan Yifan doesn't say who did it. He doesn't say anything. I don't think he recognizes me at all. They spend the drive in silence, broken by the wailing alarm singing a different kind of Christmas carol as red lights flash on the white snow. Chanyeol's hands aren't shaking.

Yifan doesn't say anything at the hospital either, except "Kris" when asked for his name. Yifan, what happened to you? But Chanyeol's already being called away. More broken Christmases...

Later, when he's finally off call, memory full of red and sharp and broken things, he doesn't crawl off to bed because it's great helping people and fixing things but what happens when I need fixing? but instead sneaks a peek at the chart (he may be a paramedic but he studied nursing because he hadn't been sure, at first, how he wanted to help people, and a little nursing never hurt anyone's chances) and walks down the long white hall to room 1200.

He peeks in the narrow window. Yifan Kris? is sitting in bed, festive reindeer hospital gown clashing with the bitter Christmas printed all over his skin, face overlayed by the flashing Christmas lights outside his window as he watches the snow fall. (Chanyeol doesn't think about other Christmases, children playing outside in the snow, stuffing the lacy flakes down the backs of each other's winter parkas, screaming at the cold and running back into the house to drink hot chocolate with marshmallows melting into sweet lumps of sweetness in front of the fire)

The door slides open, silence unbroken, but Yifan still turns his head. A flash of fear flickers through his eyes before he sees Chanyeol's uniform. Chanyeol's heart breaks, but he only lets a sad sigh slip out from between parted lips.

"Yifan?" I wonder how long it's been since you used that name.

Yifan looks surprised, doing a double-take as he stares past the uniform to actually look at the person underneath. And then his face softens.

"Ch-chanyeol?" His voice skips a little, there's a score of years and a million miles parting them and yet, in that moment, amidst the remnants of so many broken Christmases, it's enough.

I'll fix this.