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shortyimmapartytilthesundown · 7 years

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ACT III - Kiss Me Before You Go (A Minseok One-Shot)

Pairings: You X Minseok

Rated: 15+ for Adult Situations, Sexually Suggestive Themes

Genre: Romance, Angst, Past-life AU

Prompt: You meet Minseok in a bar and swear that you know him from somewhere. You have no idea where you know him from, but now you have to do something about it.

Soundtrack:

Hyolin - Each Other’s Tears

Sam Kim - Who Are You

Soyou - I love You

Warnings: Adultery, Multiple Major Character Deaths, A rollercoaster of emotions.

ACT I

ACT II

**ACT III**

23 August 2017

The rumors were flying at work. The office buzzed with them as the worried men and women hunched closely together at their desks, whispering about the state of the company…or more so, the current state of the acting CEO of the company and how the recent upheaval might affect their jobs. You were a temp, so the threat of impending unemployment was more of a steady countdown with and end date, rather than the swift and surprising chop of the guillotine. Your contract would be up in six months, so while you secretly hoped the supervisors who fed you busy work would see the enormous potential in you and some day make you a permanent employee, you weren’t exactly holding your breath for it to happen. This was a big company with an enormous work force and one somewhat competent temp amongst the dozens of other contract workers scattered throughout the building didn’t exactly stand out.

“I hear his wife is leaving him.” Jangmi from accounting’s thoroughly scandalized voice broke through the steady din of your floor.

“I heard that the reason he has been gone so much is because he checked himself into a mental hospital.” Alba, the woman who sat directly behind you peeked her head over the partition to share the rumors she heard. “He’s suffering from delusions and has been spending thousands of dollars on private detectives.”

“No no, the real reason he was gone was because he’s a model and was doing a photoshoot in Bali, and he was so handsome in all of the pictures that the director begged him to stay on as a permanent fashion model but he declined.” Jangmi countered and you sighed into your computer screen as quietly as you could, not wanting to let on that you were eavesdropping on their conversation and found their gossip just bothersome enough to distract you from sorting your morning emails.

Your inbox was mostly full of memos from the subject of their discussion. The acting CEO of XiuUnlimited, Director Kim Minseok, who it seemed, had spent the last 12 hours filling the inboxes of his subordinates with reminders on policies that, given the numerous times you had read through these policy reminder emails over and over again, not a single person in this building was likely to forget any time soon.

“Is he really that handsome?” Alba dropped her voice some, as if the rumors of his good looks were supposedly a secret. Hell, even you had heard the tales of his good looks.

Reminder to all staff: The microwaves in the break rooms are to be wiped down with the antibacterial cleaning wipes provided free of charge by the company. Wipe what sticks, don’t get sick!

Jangmi shrugged into her morning latte, “I’ve never seen him. Lana from my department saw him once and she went on for days about how handsome he is.”

Reminder to all staff: Used paper towels in the bathrooms belong in the trash can, not on the floor. Excess mess leads to excess stress!

You scrolled through to the bottom of each email, searching for the delete icon at the bottom of the page. It was quite easy to see that the man had some issues if he spent his entire evening thinking of lame rhymes to use to micromanage his employees instead of figuring out how to fix the problems he had in his relationship with his wife.

“I heard,” Alba dropped her voice even further this time and your ears caught the sudden change as you tried not to make it obvious that you tilted your head ever so slightly to catch what she was about to drop. “That when the divorce is final, the temps are getting –” you heard the clicking sound she made with her tongue and you turned to see her making an ax motion across her neck.

This one sent your heart racing just a touch faster and you quickly turned away to look at your computer screen when she looked back at you, not wanting her to know you had heard what she said, although you knew, you just knew it had to be baseless. There was no way your contract would be terminated early just because of a little turmoil in a marriage up at the top.

The man couldn’t be that insensitive to his employees could he? There had to be a hundred temps in this place. Surely the company couldn’t survive losing such a huge amount of support staff suddenly and not suffer at least their bottom line, right? It just didn’t make sense.

Your mind flashed back to when you were hired and the sickening false smile of the woman who sat behind the large mahogany desk as you were shuffled through. It was the only time you had been upstairs and it felt more like a parade of products on a conveyor belt as she chose the ones that caught her eye. You knew she was important by the way she looked down her nose at you, and when you learned later that she was the wife of the CEO you couldn’t find yourself to be the least bit surprised.

“It was an arranged marriage wasn’t it? Rich people really are strange sometimes. What did they think would happen if they marry without even knowing the person.” Jangmi rattled on over your busy mind as you briefly daydreamed about just what it would be like to be thrust into a life like that. Married to a stranger simply because your parents had struck some sort of fortuitous business deal. A life of excess and privilege but with none of the freedom to do what you wanted with it all.

Reminder to all staff: Driving faster than 10MPH in the parking garage leaves unsightly black marks on the floor. Drive slow so it won’t show!

You supposed a life like that would make anyone a little bit crazy.

Your day was suspiciously quiet. You’d caught up with every deadline you had received from the week prior and found yourself searching for menial tasks to fill your day. Yet when you asked your supervisor for some new material to work on she shrugged and passed you a stack of papers that needed copying, or short lists of documents for data entry. Tasks that were easily completed in less than one hour and required almost no brainpower to do.

You tried not to be paranoid.

You tried not to let the rumors from this morning get to you, yet as you completed yet another stack of mindless copies, you couldn’t help but notice how the other employees, the ones who weren’t temps seemed genuinely swamped with work. Things that would last them weeks, while you were handed the short term tasks that had no strings attached. Nothing that would hold you to it, or keep you busy for long enough to be considered a valued asset to the company.

It was within the last ten minutes of the day, when you were sorting through your paperclips, choosing the bent ones to throw into the trash can between your legs (Reminder to all staff: Discard broken or warped paper clips, as they can damage reports and require documents to be reprinted. Untidy supplies are not okay guys!) when you heard a loud gasp from across the office. Followed shortly by the sound of someone cursing at mid volume from a desk behind you. You looked up in alarm at the sudden ruckus that seemed to be breaking out inside the building and when you turned behind you, Alba sat facing you and Jangmi stood with her head over the partition watching, with their mouths open and wide eyes.

It only took a moment for your eyes to zero in on her open computer screen, on the latest email from CEO Kim Minseok, that was opened there for you to see.

Attention all staff, Effective immediately all Temporary Workers will no longer be employees of XiuUnlimited. Contracts that have not yet expired will be terminated and former employees will receive severance pay in their accounts within 3-5 business days. Please remember to take all of your personal belongings with you when you leave. A security officer will escort you out of the building. Things left behind, are no longer mine!

You stared at the email on your screen in disbelief. Well, mild disbelief that was turning into something else. Something like anger that something like this could really be happening to you. Somewhere in the office, a woman was crying and you scrolled down to the bottom of the email and hit delete, watching the animation on your screen as it flew away and vanished for the last time.

There was something dehumanizing about being singled out, watched, and escorted out of the building by a man wearing a uniform that only had a plastic badge and a flashlight. He stood a few feet behind you as you gathered the last bit of Polaroid pictures you had on the corkboard behind your cubicle and tossed them into the paper box Alba had handed you from below her desk.

“We’re really sorry,” Jangmi said softly at your back. “Yeah, sorry,” Alba chimed in agreement and you forced a tense smile that only lasted for a few seconds before you just couldn’t do it any more.

You had just lost your job for seemingly no reason at all and they would just have to forgive you if couldn’t fake being nice.

You had to turn in your ID badge on the sidewalk outside of the building. The one that worked the lock on front door and officially named you as an adult employee who received a paycheck and medical benefits in exchange for you spending 8 hours a day sitting behind a desk doing any and every task they presented you to the best of your ability. And for what? So you could be fired because some rich kid threw a tantrum and didn’t like the wife his parents bought for him?

You wanted to scream. You wanted to cry.

You wanted a drink.

That was something you could probably manage, despite the nagging voice in the back of your mind telling you that an unemployed person should not be wasting money at a bar when she would certainly have to eat again sometime soon.

Your mood moved your feet and you found your eyes searching the signs around you for something that would wet your throat and numb your mind for a few hours while you wallowed in a little good old fashioned self pity.

Perhaps on any other day you would have avoided the somewhat shady looking alley way lined with smelly dumpsters and probably a whole assortment of vermin, but today you merely wandered. You found yourself pleasantly surprised to find yourself walking upon what looked to be a hole in the wall bar with a sign above the door that simply read “The Commander.”

The name brought a warmth to your chest and you found yourself smiling for the first time today when you tried the door and found it open. Inside was peaceful, with smooth contemporary music filtering through overhead speakers and a warm decor that smelled clean and inviting.

A bell rang above the door when it closed and a man in a dress shirt, vest and bow tie looked up from his spot at the bar. The glass he was drying shined in the lights overhead and he nodded his head in your direction with a friendly smile.

“Anywhere you like, miss,” the bartender said with a slight accent and you looked around at the empty place. You really could sit anywhere you liked. As you rounded the corner you were surprised to see one other patron sitting on the far end of the bar, not visible from where you entered but you definitely weren’t alone with your very own bartender on the day you were fired.

The man at the bar didn’t look up when you entered, nor did he move at all it seemed, as he hunched over himself with his head angled down and his eyes closed. A drink sat in front of him, mostly gone, a small sliver of brown liquid, probably whiskey from the bottle you could see still left on the bar counter close to him and after a long moment in which you were nearly positive that he was sleeping, the man inhaled a gasping breath and reached for the glass, downed the rest of his drink quickly and tapped on the counter twice as soon as the glass was set down.

The bartender took slow strides toward the man, grabbed the glass and set it into the sink. In seconds a fresh glass with at least two fingers of whiskey sat in front of the man who was simply too enchanting to ignore at this point.

You chose your seat, a booth near the other end of the bar where you could watch him with plenty of cover should your spying be discovered.

This was just the kind of distraction you needed and when the bartender left his post to walk up to your table and retrieve your order, you hoped and prayed that the man at the bar would not notice, not follow the bartender, and not find you watching his every move this way.

The man didn’t move and you had your drink and your distraction still very much intact.

After what felt like much too long for a person to be sitting with his eyes closed at a bar, although who were you to judge what a person should be allowed to do alone at a bar, the man lifted his head, pulled a brown envelope out of a briefcase that rested against his leg and set it down carefully onto the bar in front of him.

His head was lifted now, his eyes were open and focused on the envelope in front of him and you felt a jarring surge of something hit you as you watched him.

He was handsome, this you could tell instantly, but there was something more than just handsome happening on his face. His profile was sharp, his hair was dark and his skin light enough to create a positively luxurious contrast that sent a warmth spreading through your chest as you looked at him.

The longer you looked at him, the more at ease you felt with the voyeur inside of you, although that might just be the second dirty martini in your belly, and you found yourself craning your neck to see more clearly just what he was doing with that mysterious brown envelope in front of of him.

After another long moment, he flipped the parcel over, spun his fine fingertips around, gripping a string that held the flap closed, and opened it. Inside was a stack of papers that you were much too far away to read and you frowned at the idea that you couldn’t sit next to him while he did this.

He lifted a hand to his chest and inhaled a deep breath before angling his head in your direction as he opened his coat and fished through for something and you caught a glimpse of his whole face.

You gasped out loud, and quickly covered your mouth with your hand to hide it while you prayed that he didn’t hear.

Gorgeous. Radiating with beauty really, but more than that something about his face felt downright familiar.

Was he a celebrity? Was he someone you had seen before, maybe on television, or maybe a musician? Had you listened to his songs in your headphones as you fell asleep at night?

The sensation was stronger than anything you’d ever felt in your whole life and you searched your recent memory for an image of someone with a face that would floor you this easily. You swore your mind was playing tricks on you when the images of his shirtless muscular torso floated through your head. And how in the world could you be able to imagine what that face might look like pulled into a crooked smile as he lovingly stroked your face. As if someone like him would ever look at you that way. You found no reasons for the images despite how thoroughly you searched your memory.

You came up empty.

You didn’t have a name to this face, you definitely didn’t have a voice, or direct interaction to him and you shook your head in confusion as you watched him take a deep breath, turn to the back of the document with a pen in his hand and sign with a flourish and two dots.

The force of those two dots seemed strong enough to poke two holes in the paper and the pen thudded on the counter as he tossed the pen down in a huff, stuffed the stack of documents back inside the envelope and returned the whole mess to the crisp clean briefcase by his feet.

He then, grabbed the drink and downed it in a single go, coughing and sputtering (adorably) as it went down too hard. Why did he have to be so enticing? He wiped hastily at his lips with the back of his hand and pulled off a ring from his finger, holding it a good six inches from the countertop for ten second before opening his hand and letting the ring fall.

It fell with a clatter that rang out over the sound of the music and your mind showed you the image of the ring falling to the floor and rolling under a bed. These drinks were pretty strong. You liked this place. You liked that bartenders heavy hand and you really liked the name of this bar.

And to say you liked the handsome man sitting at the bar was an understatement. You were enchanted by him. Enthralled and enraptured and bewitched by his every movement as he stood up from the seat and turned swiftly away from you. His steps weren’t as steady as the bartender who walked in the opposite direction as him and reached for the wad of cash he had left on the counter as he left and your mind scrambled and screamed very suddenly at you.

He was leaving. He was leaving? Just like that? Why was he leaving when you had only just found him?

But you didn’t want him to leave. You jumped to your feet, wide eyed and probably drunk and caught the sight of a his crisp clean briefcase still leaning beside the barstool and your mind whirled in a panic.

In his drunken confusion he had left this important attaché behind and you had to, HAD to return it to him.

You had to witness his eyes on yours just once and that sweet crooked smile that showed an adorable amount of gums and he had to look into your face and say your name as you held on too tightly to the case and didn’t want to let go. Oh how affected you would surely be. You craved everything about his face.

These drinks must really be strong. Yet, strangely the room wasn’t spinning and you easily grasped the case in your hands without much trouble at all. But the strange feeling in your chest with the thought of seeing him again was overpowering you.

You bypassed the forgotten wedding ring on the bar. Even the bartender didn’t touch it when he grabbed the cash and he knowingly watched as you picked up the case and followed the same path he had taken when he left with determination written all over your body.

Maybe he remained just outside, searching his pockets for his phone so he could call a driver or his mom to let her know that he had just seen the love of his life and she stole his briefcase.

The street just outside was dark now, and a light drizzle fell along the pavement as you peered through the opened door for any signs of him.

You knew the size of him, the shape of him, the look of his black hair as it fell just along his temples and the way he ticked his fingertips along his sharp cheekbones as he contemplated life.

Never in your life had you been this observant, but your memory was flooded with him now. You must have picked up quite a bit about his body language while you watched him having his drink and having his divorce party for one.

“Am I imagining things or did you just steal my briefcase?”

A voice, no, his voice, you were certain, reverberated against your ear drums and sent a jolt of something strange through your chest and you slowly turned around to face the man who stood in the dimly lit hallway at the entrance to this bar.

Once he spoke, you realized what must have happened. He had gone to the bathroom which must be just around the corner past the exit and you, being the rash, anxious, quick to act, slow to think, especially when drinking, you, that you are, had made a mistake.

You closed your eyes, inhaled a deep breath to settle the strange storm that was brewing inside of your chest, and opened your eyes to look at him head on, and mere feet away from you.

You turned to look into his face, with an apology and an excuse ready to fire off on the tip of your tongue.

You turned to look into his face, ready to speak. Ready to act. Ready to be normal and do the right thing.

Only that isn’t what happened, because you turned to look into his face and the logical thinking part of your brain ceased to function in the way you had become accustomed to in all of your years of living on this earth.

His face.

His eyes.

His face, and his lips… and there was a strange stillness that washed over you where you stood in the entryway of that bar. It was an all consuming stillness that seized your heart inside of your chest and made it difficult to breath.

You felt frozen in your tracks because there was something strange happening inside of your fuzzy mind when you looked at his face.

“I’m sorry, I–” your own words were forcefully pulled from your lips as the logical part of your brain screamed at you to speak, to come up with an excuse for this situation but the pulsing inside of your chest burned when you breathed in and he was…

He was frozen. His lips were parted, hung open as if he had been poised to speak and interrupted by something that was profound enough to stop him in his tracks. To interrupt him so completely that he didn’t even bother to snap his jaw back shut, but instead stood there, mouth gaping and eyes wide on your face as if some wizard had cast a spell on him and frozen him mid-thought.

“I’m sorry,” My Lord, you tried again but your own intrusive thoughts seemed to be pressing hard against you, nagging at you, trying to coax something from deep within your soul now and you shook your head at the absurdity of this feeling.

“I drank too much.” You finally heard him speak. It came out as the softest whisper, designed only for his own ears, “I must have drank too much this time. This is impossible.”

“I’m sorry?” You asked softly as your fingers wrapped tighter around the handle of his fancy briefcase. It felt like a lifeline, a small token from this world that served to keep you grounded and remind you of where you were and who you were. Keeping you from falling too deeply into those eyes that felt so tempting and easy to become lost in.

My Lord.

There was a wetness in his eyes as he stared at your face, positively transfixed, his pretty eyes held onto yours with a desperation that you couldn’t quite place. Yet the longer you looked at him the stronger the pulsing inside of your own chest grew. It burned like indigestion now and you rubbed a hand lightly over your breastplate, willing it to subside and give you some peace.

“Or I’ve finally lost my mind for real,” he added and he lifted a trembling hand to rub roughly over his face once, before slipping his fingers through his black hair, combing it back in a single pass, it bounced effortlessly back into place and your fingers itched to feel the strands rushing through your own hands again.

Again.

It was too strong. You had to close your eyes and so you did, for just a moment you had to look away from his face that was watching you with those wide pleading eyes. You sighed into the darkness your eyelids provided and leaned against the door frame for support.

My Love.

It was his face again, only this time the words coming from his mouth sounded ancient. The love though, it was timeless. It was the same love you’d shown again and again through your words, your touches and your actions. It was the love for the commander. The brave soldier who led his men into battle time and time again, returning with scars and traumas that would keep him up at night.

It was the softness of his lips against yours, and the warmth of fingertips sliding along your skin. Unlike the fantastical shifting sands of a dreamland, this felt solid enough to build a foundation on. This felt like a memory woven so deeply into your soul the mere glimpse of his face created a bond tight enough to hold ten thousand tons.

If a glimpse of his face had this strong of an effect what would a touch do?

Your eyes must have only been closed for a second. A fool could see that you could not keep from looking at his face for very long, not when he was there right in front of you, still frozen in place under some spell.

Your chest felt too heavy, the breaths you took in and out took more effort than you could comprehend, but the pulsing inside of your chest was engulfing you now. How long until you were swallowed up entirely?

You knew him.

You knew this man who stood in front of you and you felt like you might possibly suffocate inside this doorway with two dirty martinis in your belly, a stolen briefcase in your hands and a tear running down your cheek.

You heard a soft exhale of breath from him, and he swayed on his feet as his eyes blinked quickly. Whatever conclusions he had been working out inside his mind seemed to have been reached and you could feel something changing in the way he was looking at you.

He let out a shuddering sigh before he crumbled, covering his open mouth with an open palm, he sagged against the wall of the hallway, opposite of your doorway and he closed his eyes.

You took a step forward and the briefcase thudded to the floor at your feet, forgotten and unnecessary. The confusion and distress on his face called to you and your feet moved on their own.

His breathing was labored, his hand moved from his face to his chest where he rubbed roughly, gasping in and out for breath you could see the wetness spill over his lashes and fall onto his cheeks. His eyes were frantic, searching for meaning in this, searching for something that made some fucking sense, yet the pull to him was strong and undeniable. You moved closer, with hands outstretched, you had to touch him.

His face was real, he was real, he was really here, leaning against the wall in this bar being consumed by something you couldn’t comprehend and you had to help him.

The first contact of your fingertips along his cheek sent an electric buzz through your body and you pushed through it, moving in closer, you cupped his cheek with one hand, joining with your other on the other side and he swayed within your touch, eyes focusing again on you with furrowed brows, he breathed heavily through his parted lips.

The wetness you felt along his face was warm.

Sticky and warm, different from tears and when you pulled a hand away you saw red. So much red, coating your hand blood red and raw. You gasped into it, closing your eyes you shook your head to rid yourself of it, but it returned again and again, stronger and more painful. The pain wanted to destroy. It wanted to rob your love and your laughter and your hope. The pain was as powerful as a tsunami yet moved through your body like an unstoppable shadow spread slowly over the forest floor.

His eyes were held in yours, and you watched as their light faded. Your own tears clouded your vision and you blinked faster, trying to focus on his face, on his lips that spoke to you as the pain of losing this man you loved so completely surged through your chest and broke your heart into two jagged pieces that would never fit together the same again. No matter how many times your tried to mend it, no matter how many experts you saw, no matter how many therapies you attended, the shattered pieces of your heart sat crooked, cracked, and surely would leak with every meager pump of blood through your veins the organ tried to make.

The soldier was motionless. The light in his eyes had faded and he was taken from you and you sobbed and you begged and you pleaded as you cradled his face in your arms, but no one would listen. No one would bring him back to you. The medic never came and the strongest and bravest man you knew was gone from your life forever.

“Shhh…don’t cry, my love,” he said. The man in front of you, in this bar, spoke softly with his eyes closed and you felt the warmth from his face through the palms of your hands.

He was here. It was him. It was the commander, and he was here.

He was real and he was here and whatever twists of fate that happened to lead you into this bar on this day had found it in it’s cards to return him to you. You had your commander back. You had your king. And he was here.

“I told you we would meet again one day,” you said and when you opened your eyes again the blood was gone. Replaced by his face, cleaned with the tears on his skin and his ears caught your words and his heavy eyelids shoved open.

He watched you for a moment before he shifted, straightening his posture, he stood stronger onto his own two legs again, using the strength in his body and perhaps borrowing a little from your words.

“Do you remember me?” The question was more hopeful than any you had ever heard before and you wanted to laugh. You wanted to shout and dance and scream your response because yes. Yes! Yes of course you did! The heavens had given him back to you, the least you could do was remember the greatest love your soul had ever known.

“Yes,” You said. The exhale of relief from his chest pulled at eyelids down and pulled the corners of his lips up.

“It’s been a long time,” He said, his eyes full of wonder with each look, yet thick with the emotion he was now trying to reign in.

A long time indeed. His words felt like gospel yet completely absurd at the same time. This man was a stranger to you mere moments ago, yet your heart had given you lifetimes of him and all you had to do was listen and believe it.

The longer you looked at his face, the stronger the memories became. The more the memories began to overwhelm you all over again you watched him pull his bottom lip in between his teeth and bite down lightly as he rocked on his heels, his focus never once leaving your face for a second as the two of you seemed to settle into a strange silence where you just watched each other.

“Were you going to go back in?” It wasn’t that the silence was uncomfortable, or even standing in this hallway watching ghosts fly through your mind as you stared across small space of the hallway in awe, but there was only so much time you two could spend here before the place closed for the night.

Your question broke him out of his quiet reverie and his eyes widened and focused again. The small smile on his lips persisted.

“I don’t know,” he said through that crooked grin and there was something juvenile about the way he lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t done looking at you yet.”

The quiet way he spoke felt like the warmth and comfort of coming home and you felt that warmth spread through your chest with each breath you took. Your heart thumped, strong and steady and each beat seemed to grow stronger, making your mood feel nearly manic with how well it worked. The cracks and missing pieces that had once weighed you down so seemed to be fitting into place better.

“Do you think, I could hug you?” Your own voice surprised you. How easily the words flew from your lips. How natural it felt to ask him such a question and how satisfying the look of surprise on his face was to hear it.

His dark eyebrows danced a quick two step, and he nodded his head. You leapt into him before he could change his mind. Before you had a chance to listen to the voice in your head that confirmed that you had lost whatever bit of sanity you had left in you.

Your arms flew around his waist. His arms wrapped tightly around your shoulders and he was warm and he was real.

The heat from his body surrounded you. The crisp clean smell that reached your nostrils filled you up to capacity and sent your brain into a tizzy. And when he squeezed down tighter and ducked his head down to rest his chin over your shoulder, you let your eyes drift closed.

“My name is Minseok, by the way. Kim Minseok.” He spoke softly beside your ear and his arms squeezed so tightly you wondered how you had an inch of space to breath in. You didn’t care. He held onto you with a kind of soul altering desperation that mirrored the inflexible way you adhered to him. You smiled into the warmth of his chest and said your own name softly enough for the words to tickle against his neck.

He shifted his face suddenly and you could feel the warmth of his cheek as it brushed against your face. Your breath, fueled entirely by the smell of him, caught in your throat when you felt his lips against your earlobe. The warmth in your chest was changing, into a tickling hot heat that trailed its sinews down the back of your neck, between your shoulder blades and took a path along your spine. Positively affecting every inch of your skin and bringing a different kind of need along with it.

He said your name, ghosting its syllables within a low breath against your ear. It was unfair how glorious your name sounded on his lips and you were suddenly eternally grateful for the steadfast embrace that held you up.

He moved again, pulling up against the small of your back, his arms felt strong enough to lift you easily off your feet and the action made your grip around his shoulders tighten.

This was not a hug. This was a desperate embrace. You clung to him just as tightly as he did to you, suddenly physically unable to separate from this man whom you had already been away from for so many lifetimes.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” he said against your ear and you felt the tip of his nose as he nuzzled against your neck, tickling your face with his clean black hair and making it damn near impossible to stop the small sound that escaped from the back of your throat as everything about him overwhelmed you.

Everything except for the nagging in the back of your mind…something downright humorous jumped out at you and a giggle rose up inside your chest that made him stiffen and pull his face away from your neck with curious eyes.

“Kim Minseok?” You said through your smiling lips and his lips pulled into a tiny pout as he nodded his head.

“Hmm?” Obviously he wouldn’t find the humor, he didn’t know a single thing about your life.

“My boss has the same name as you,” you said and you tried to ignore the way his hands around your waist relaxed some and trailed lightly over your back as he loosened his hold around you. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open in surprise at the coincidence.

“Or, I should say ‘my ex boss’ I suppose. I was fired today.”

You felt the cool air at your back as his hands fell and his shoulders pulled back straighter. His eyes were on still yours, only the smile was shrinking as he blinked slowly with your news.

A small pout eventually grew on his lips and you watched his face transform for a moment before you shook your head, ridding yourself of the dark cloud you had called back over your head.

“It’s okay, I was only a temp. I was going to be let go in six months anyway. I got a pretty sweet severance.”

You still stood against his body, and you definitely felt a stiffening in his muscles when you spoke.

He had always had an expressive face. You remember from the nights spent in the king’s bed as he complained about the stress in his life, opening up honestly to you in ways that he wasn’t able to with anyone else. You were still in tune with his moods, even centuries and lifetimes later.

It started with a tiny step back and a hand run swiftly through his straight hair. He cleared his throat softly and his eyes were blinking too quickly.

“T-Temp?” His lips hung open when he said the word and you watched as his lips pulled wide into a grimace that showed his white teeth. He inhaled sharply through those teeth before he spoke again.

But it had already been set into motion. The wheels turned frantically in your head as you put together the clues you had witnessed, along with the rumors that had followed your boss around. The good looks, which, experiencing this man’s face up close, you could not deny that Minseok had one of, if not the most handsome face you had ever had the privilege of seeing up close and in person.

The wealth, which as you looked at the brand name clothing he wore, much more than something you could even buy off the rack at a high end department store, these were the kinds of clothes that were fitted and custom made. The watch itself must be close to $15k itself, not to mention the well manicured eyebrows that sat handsomely on his forehead just below the expert haircut that probably cost half of your monthly rent.

The rumors of trouble with his wife? What kind of husband sat alone at a bar doing things like drinking himself silly and dramatically pulling off his wedding ring, long after he should be home having dinner with his family?

“Please tell me it wasn’t a mass termination of all temporary workers.” He softly begged and you felt a slight tugging against the hem of your shirt where his fingers played with the fabric there. The sheepish look in his eyes caught yours just once before he looked back down at his hand pulling at a lose thread.

Your eyes narrowed on him while the grimace on his face changed into another pout. Deeper and intentional this time he zipped his lips shut, puffed his cheeks with air and pushed his bottom lip way out, creating an expression so irresistibly adorable, and in a single play, that you scoffed right out loud, rolling your eyes so far into your head you felt the eye strain. How could his face hold so much power over you?

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“If I had known it was you–”

“You’re that Kim Minseok?” The pout had served to calm the incredulity in your voice some. He looked back at you, biting down on his lip as he watched you process the information you had just received.

“My boss?” You asked.

“Ex-boss,” he answered.

“You have a wife.” This didn’t quite come out as a question because everything you know about Director Kim Minseok, Acting CEO of XiuUnlimited was flooding through your mind now.

“Ex-wife,” he supplied with a glance down at his unadorned left hand.

“You… went missing last year and lost your mind and checked into a mental hospital and hired private investigators … all to try and find–”

“I found her,” he interrupted where you were going with the rumors you had heard about him. Rumors that you thought were just the ramblings of people who had too much time on their hands and had seen way too many dramas.

“I found her, she showed up right in front of me. She tried to steal my briefcase.” You wanted to correct him, but he was talking now and something about the fiery look in his eyes stopped you.

“I found you. And I didn’t lose my mind after all. I only thought I had. But I found you or you found me or maybe we were always meant to find each other, I don’t know. But right now I’m looking into the eyes of the human being that I know better than the stranger that I had called my wife for three years, and I finally feel like I can breathe again.”

“And you are real.” A thickness was building in his voice as he spoke. “And that love was real. I wasn’t crazy, or imagining it, or –” he swallowed hard as he blinked his eyes faster and the distance between you seemed too great.

He must have felt the same because he took a step closer to you, his hands reached forward, fingertips light along your cheek until you felt the warmth of his palms on your face.

The year might have changed outside. The countries, the settings, even the small details about your life. But as you looked into his eyes in this dark hallway of an empty bar, you knew, with absolution that the man who stood in front of you was the same man who your heart had loved.

He had stopped speaking, with his thumbs rubbing delicate circles along your jawline and his eyes half closing as his eyelids trembled. Emotion or maybe the sheer gravity of your history together pulling at them and he fought through to get a glimpse of you. Your own focus had drifted from his striking eyes, down his straight nose, to the curve of his upper lip that sat plump, pink, perfectly moisturized despite the desperate way he breathed through his parted lips and the light touches the tip of his tongue made against the flesh.

“Will you come with me?” He whispered against your skin now. The gravity between your hearts was too strong and had unknowingly pulled you closer to him. You only noticed the change when the warmth of his chest against yours made you want to wrap your arms around him again.

“Well, we can’t stay here,” you agreed with a shrug because you’d be damned if you were going to let him walk out that door without you by his side. Not after it took so long for you to finally find him again.

“I don’t just mean right now,” he said, “I mean, tonight, tomorrow, next month and next year, and forever.”

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving you ever again, Kim Minseok.” The sight of his lips, close up and moving closer to you blurred as your eyes lost sight of them and gave up the view as you closed your eyes and felt the first softness of his kiss. A kiss that brought with it a flood of muscle memory, desire, and need. A kiss that brought with it years of love and longing. A kiss that soothed every ache you had inside of your chest where the wounded and scarred heart muscle struggled to heal from the wounds of the past.

The relief was instantaneous and complete.

When you finally left that bar, it was hand in hand with the man your soul had been destined to love forever.

And it was with a promise to do just that for the rest of time.

THE END

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