Unmatched

Part 3

"Been a long time, kitten."

You unwittingly come to recognise the impossibly plush lips, the deep brown eyes. The sharp slope of a jaw line, the lean frame that made you so weak once upon a time.

"Hyunjin..."

His name is a breath, a statement intended to confirm his presence here at all, because you're still not sure this isn't a product of your imagination; a result of the adrenaline, the stress, perhaps a real-life fever dream or hallucinatory experience.

Yet he smiles on hearing it, rakes a languorous gaze from your head to toe, assessing, admiring. Like you're his favourite long lost piece of art.

"How have you been?" he purrs.

The ability to string coherent sentences together appears to elude you, yet you suppose that even if you were capable, you wouldn't quite know where to start. The ups and downs of the last twelve hours can't quite be put into order, and you're not entirely sure Hyunjin would even want to know. Not really.

And so, you blurt out the only thing that manages to wholly manifest.

"Why are you here?"

Hyunjin raises a perfect brow, bites back a smirk. Raking loose locks from his face, it strikes you that he's not exactly as you remembered. Gaunt would be something of an exaggeration, but he's assuredly slimmer, and that only raises questions as to where he's been the last few months.

"Straight to the point." He shrugs. "Fine. I won't waste your time then. I want my job back."

You balk at the request, taken entirely off guard.

"Wh— Your job? You want to come back to the club?"

Hyunjin nods, expression somewhat vacant as he approaches you. You debate pulling away when he reaches out to take your hand, though find the cool of his touch to be surprisingly grounding. Long, slender fingers, wrap around your own; the very same fingers that took you to rabid highs not all that long ago. The mere recollection flushes prickling warmth up your nape. The proximity is inherently heated, as it always was between you. You draw it up to simple history; it means nothing that it's still patently present.

You swallow as he turns your linked hands over absently.

"I missed this place. I know that might be hard to believe but... I do. I've had nothing but time to think lately, and I know now that there's nowhere else I'll ever belong."

"Hyunjin, I—"

A sharp vibration from the pocket of your blazer draws your attention, gives you the excuse to withdraw your hand from Hyunjin's as you fumble for your phone.

Minho's name displays clear and bright on the screen; on cue, your stomach churns.

"Uh, listen, I'm so sorry but there's really somewhere else I need to be right now." You explain quickly. "Why don't you come by the club tomorrow morning? You can meet with Chan, talk to him about it, I'm sure he'll—"

"No," he interrupts sharply, "this can't wait, Y/N."

"O— Okay, well, I appreciate that, but you know I can't make these kinds of calls by myself, and I'm pretty sure Chan's probably gone home already, so there's not much I can do right now."

Appealing to his reason might be fruitless, you realise, for the urgency in his eyes is a kind you've never seen from him before.

"Just come to my place," he shrugs. "We can talk about it there. I'm back in the old apartment."