Chapter Text
Bai Shun hates his roommate.
It’s cruel to think it, and it isn’t even true, but he can’t stand her sometimes! Like now, when her insistence on getting a ‘real wood-fire taste’ on their steaks turned into her starting a fire on their balcony and nearly burning down the entire condo.
Bai Shun can’t stand looking stupid. He hates the eyes of all their neighbors on his back. He hates listening to Xiao Yueqing scream at him like it’s his fault that her makeshift fire pit licked flames up the side of their balcony.
If it weren’t for Bai Shun throwing a pot of water over it, they would be out of a home, which, in his opinion, is worse than being out of a dinner.
“They would have been fine! You’re such a control freak, it’s like you’ve never seen a fire before, it wasn’t even crazy!” Yueqing screams, smacking against his arms until a neighbor snatches under her grasp and yanks her back. “I can’t believe you, I spent an entire paycheck on those groceries and you just drowned it, all because you had a little panic over some smoke!”
“The flames were two feet high, you maniac!” Bai Shun snapped back. “If anyone here’s crazy, it’s you!”
The sirens drown out their shouting match. Bai Shun nurses his arm, and Yueqing groans against her loaned ice pack.
The firetruck pulls up. An ambulance follows with it.
Bai Shun’s embarrassment burns worse than his forearm, and he sinks to the sidewalk, crouching in shame. He keeps his head down as the fire crew unloads. He tries to pretend it wasn’t his unit when the captain asks whose condo was the origin point.
“Alright, Budao and Cheng, you run up and look over unit 1015. Xiang, Li, start clearing the other floors for me,” the fire captain orders, separating out his crew into the condo building. He waves an arm to his EMS crew, unloading out of their ambulance, and instructs, “Song, get your guys to make sure everyone’s okay. I’ll loop around back and start clearing alarm signals.”
“On it,” the EMS captain agrees. They point one paramedic to the left side of the amassed crowd, and their other to the right. “Alright. Anyone from floors ten or eleven, step toward the curb for us?”
Yueqing pulls herself free of their neighbor’s grasp and sidles up to Bai Shun. She knocks him with her foot, and pulls his other arm to yank him back up to stand.
Their neighbors get the general once-over. “This is so stupid. It wasn’t a big deal,” Yueqing groans. “It’s not like anyone has, like, smoke inhalation. It’s fine. It was the balcony, like, c’mon.”
“Shut up. Shut up,” Bai Shun hisses back. “I don’t want to talk to you for, like. A week and a half. Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“Safe to assume you’re the tenants, then?” The paramedic says, setting his bag down on the curb beside them. “Bickering like that, at least I know your lungs are okay.”
Bai Shun looks up, ready to spit acid at the idiot who thinks it’s acceptable, in a professional environment, to talk to a patient like that. Instead, his mouth goes dry and the words dissolve on his tongue as he stares at the most handsome man he’s ever seen.
He stops paying attention to anything else. All Bai Shun can focus on is the warm smirk on this paramedic’s face. He peels off his gloves and replaces them with a fresh pair.
It’s one of the hottest things Bai Shun has ever seen.
Fresh sterile gloves for every single patient. It’s so wasteful, but so clean. He assesses Yueqing, saying something that makes his full lips form shapes that Bai Shun tries to memorize for a later fantasy. His dark hair is tied back, but his bangs still fall forward and one curl in particular tickles a mole on his left cheek.
He’s so handsome.
He’s so handsome, and so close.
He’s so handsome, and so close, and he’s talking to Bai Shun.
“Hmm?”
The paramedic laughs. It crinkles his dark eyes. He has beautifully long lashes, and Bai Shun imagines them clinging together, wet with tears—
“I said, your heart rate’s a little elevated. That normal, for you?”
“Yes,” Bai Shun says, fast, in the same moment that Yueqing drolls the same answer.
“He’s a control freak,” she explains. “He’s always strung out.”
The paramedic glances between them. He’s diagnosing something in his head, Bai Shun can see the gears turning. “Well, he looks fine to me.”
“Well, that can’t be right,” Yueqing snorts.
Bai Shun elbows her, then winces at the pain. The paramedic takes Bai Shun’s wrist gingerly. He turns his arm over, leans a little closer to examine the burn. “It’s not that bad, really. I, um… She’s right, I’m being dramatic. I’m sorry to take your time from real emergencies.”
“Everybody needs someone to look after them every now and again,” he replies, bending over his knee to rummage in his supply bag. He pulls out a tube of burn cream and dabs it onto his finger. “Looks superficial. Should be fine, but I wanna make sure this gets cleaned up right. This might sting, but it’ll help.”
Bai Shun bites his bottom lip as the paramedic swipes his gloved finger along the burn.
He’s methodical. Tender. He’s gentle.
Bai Shun feels static in his fingertips.
With a bright grin, the paramedic looks back up and catches his stare. Their eyes meet; Bai Shun’s glittering blue to his kind slate. “And there you go. Good as new.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t go burning the building down, okay?” He says with a chuckle, peeling his gloves off again.
Bai Shun nods, too floaty to think about leaning over to look at the name stitched onto his uniform.
He’s so distracted that he misses every opportunity to say something witty or cute or alluring. He stands there in awed silence and watches, helpless, as his handsome paramedic moves on to looking over the next neighbor, and eventually packs up the ambulance and drives away.
Somehow, it is Xiao Yueqing’s fault.
He doesn't know what that new boyfriend of hers sees in her, but he hopes with all his heart they go the distance, because Bai Shun can't wait for her to move out.