Serendipity • taekook

Part One

What can you do in twenty minutes?

Check your emails.

Make a phone call.

Do nothing.

Get married.

Crash your car.

End a life.

What about love.

Some love takes decades to blossom and be understood, some happens in the blink of your eye.

The first time Jeongguk finally meets the love of his life, they spend twenty minutes together, the twenty minutes that he will keep replaying on his mind until the day they meet again.

The air inside is stagnant and overwhelming, filled with the smoke of gunpowder and the ferrous stench of stale blood. There are eight fatalities by the time he arrives on site, after the gang shootout has finally ended. The inspector assigns him to the injured bystander in the back, so he walks, into the depth of the dark bar. Beyond the corpses and the debris, he spots the limp body lying quietly by the edge of the back wall.

The first thing that draws him in is the eyes, amber and with life fading in and out, but almost blindingly bright and refusing to go into the dark without one last acknowledgement.

Then those lips, stained with blood and curled up into a nonchalant smile, amongst shards of broken glass and empty shells glistening like lost stars on the floor.

"Hi, I'm officer Jeon Jeongguk, you are safe now, an ambulance is arriving right away." Jeongguk tries to sound as convincing as possible, steadying his hands as he opens the first aid kit that the inspector handed to him earlier.

Gauzes, fabric tape, bandages, he's done this countless times in training, always perfect even when timed. But now stubbornly, his hands refuse to stop shaking, for all he sees is blood, bright scarlet puddles and splatters, like poppy flowers that bloom and spread with a life of its own. At least two visible penetrations to the abdominal, and another nasty open gash by the neck, where blood is trickling down.

"Don't waste your time. I probably won't make it, right? I can feel it." The person on the floor gives a dry chuckle and a silly eye roll. "Just my luck, picking up my paycheck at the worst time possible."

Jeongguk's throat dries and all his trained key messages for comforting victims turn into blank. He's never been good at lying. So he keeps his hands busy, cutting up the gauzes and pressing onto the wounds with just enough pressure to reduce blood flow, working as fast as he could. "The inspector said you work here?"

"Mostly on the weekend, only because the owner knows my dad and thinks mobsters all love Sinatra. Usual they are all too drunk to even notice me." Another wry chuckle, although this time it comes out a bit more shaken. Jeongguk can feel the body tremble under his hands.

"Kim Taehyung, most underappreciated jazz piano player in the city, nice to finally meet you, officer." Those eyes, expressive and bright, daring for Jeongguk to get lost in them. Taehyung lifts his hand and tries to reach for a shake but the slender fingers never quite get high enough, they pause mid-air, as he winces in pain and gasps for air, then suddenly drained of his remaining energy, drop to his side.

Jeongguk looks up in surprise, "you are the piano player? You are the one that plays Bill Evans and Duke Ellington on weekend nights?"

Taehyung's eyes open wide, "You've heard me play?"

Jeongguk feels his ears burn a little, a peculiar sensation while kneeling in a thick puddle of blood next to a wounded stranger, "yeah, a few times."