Darkness surrounded the police cruiser as it sped swiftly down the highway, passing in and out of the beams cast by intermittent, yellow-tinted lights. Taehyung took a sip of coffee, and scowled at the bitter taste it left behind in his mouth. He glanced at the clock on the glowing dashboard before turning his attention back to the empty road. It was almost morning as he drove along, but he still had a few more hours to get through before his shift was over.

The young man tried and failed to stifle a yawn. The coffee wasn’t working, and he briefly considered pulling over so he could try to get a little shut eye before heading back to the station. Before he had a chance to step on the brakes, however, the radio to Taehyung’s right crackled to life.

“Taehyung, you there?”

“Yeah; hey, Jin,” responded the young officer. “How’s it going?”

“It’s boring as hell out here,” chuckled the older man. “Anything going on out in your neck of the woods?”

Taehyung gazed out over the empty stretch of road. He was traveling just under the posted speed limit, though there was no one around to be setting such a good example for. The highway was void of any other cars, and it had been ages since he’d last seen another vehicle.

“That’s a big, fat negative,” replied Taehyung flatly. He held onto the steering wheel with one hand, and fiddled with the button of the radio transmitter with the other. “It’s totally dead out here. Nothing as far as the eye can see.”

Faster than Jin had a chance to respond, a third voice cut through the static of the radio, snapping at the two officers out on patrol.

“Officers, this is Dispatch. Cut the chatter and get back to work. We’re not getting paid to clutter up the airways with useless small talk, remember?”

“Aw, come on, Yoongi,” chuckled Taehyung. “Have a little fun for once. Doesn’t it get boring sitting behind that desk, looking at the wall all day?”

“No,” barked Yoongi sharply. “Come on, Tae. The radio’s for official police business only. You and Jin both know that.”

“Hey, that’s Officer Kim to you,” teased Taehyung. “My colleague Officer Kim Number Two and I don’t appreciate you referring to us using anything besides our super-official policemen titles.”

“Wait, why do I have to be Officer Kim Number Two?” complained Jin.

❧

Taehyung pressed the “talk” button on his radio to answer the other man’s whiny question, but before he could utter a single word, a pair of bright headlights flashed in his rearview mirror. The car that they belonged to sped up, passing the police car and continuing to accelerate at a rate that was well above the legal limit.

Taehyung tightened his grip on the wheel, and pressed the button on the radio with conviction.

“Gotta go; looks like I’ve finally got some action here,” he informed the other officers.

Taehyung put the transmitter back in its cradle, and his siren as he began to pursue the speeding car. The vehicle in front of him swerved as it traveled, weaving between the lanes of the highway - and Taehyung wondered what the heck the other driver was thinking. Surely they’d known he was a cop even before they shot out in front of him; it was impossible to miss the logos plastered all over his car, and there was an official police sticker that adorned his rear license plate.

Probably some idiotic drunk, or a couple of kids out for a joy ride.

The blue lights on top of Taehyung’s car illuminated the pavement as he chased after the shiny, black car that was hurtling down the empty road. He expected the other driver to put up more of a stubborn fight, but to Taehyung’s surprise, the car pulled over to the side of the road only a few seconds after he started pursuing it. The driver had been going at a rather fast speed, so it took a moment for them to come to a complete stop on the barren shoulder of the highway.

Taehyung unbuckled his tight seatbelt, and took a deep breath as he stepped out of his car. He shined a flashlight on the car in front of him, which was actually quite a pointless exercise, as the headlights of his police cruiser were already fully illuminating the expensive-looking, ebony car. Still, Taehyung wanted to see the face of the reckless driver, so he held his flashlight above the car’s darkened window as he knocked on the thin glass.

❧

The driver’s side window rolled down with a mechanic buzz, and Taehyung’s light fell on the face of a young man. Taehyung found himself wondering if the boy was even old enough to drive, as the latter looked like he was barely out of high school, if that.

“Is there a problem here, Officer?”

The driver’s voice was confident and clear, and he didn’t seem bothered at all by the fact that he had just been going nearly double the speed limit. Taehyung also noticed that the younger man was wearing a large pair of sunglasses, which was odd considering that it was nearly two in the morning and still dark out.

“Do you have any idea how fast you were going?” sighed Taehyung.

He hated to use such a clichéd opening line, but he had to admit that it was one that was often effective. The other man seemed to sense the officer’s annoyance, and a small smirk appeared on his thin, pointed lips.

“Nope,” snickered the mischievous driver. “But if you don’t mind me asking… do you even know, Officer?”

Taehyung felt himself blush. Truthfully, he hadn’t thought to pull out his speed radar, so he had no idea how fast the obsidian car had actually been traveling. After writing more than a few tickets for speeding violation, however, he considered himself a pretty good judge of velocity - and although he didn’t have an exact figure this time, he was sure that the driver in front of him had been going well over the appropriate speed limit.

The young officer shifted his weight uncomfortably, and was glad that the driver probably couldn’t see the way he was shaking slightly due to the boy’s ridiculous sunglasses. He chose to ignore the latter’s question, and got on with completing the routine traffic stop.

“License and registration, please,” he mumbled to the young, smiling driver.

The other man complied, and slipped a plastic bag with a few pieces of paper out the open window and into Taehyung’s impatiently waiting hands. The officer accepted the bundle of paperwork, and pulled out the young man’s license as he turned around to face his own familiar car. He glanced over his shoulder at the still-grinning boy before reading the name printed on the little laminated card in his hands.

“Stay right there, Mr… Jeon,” Taehyung commanded as he walked away.

“Call me Jungkook,” insisted the driver, shouting after the officer as he stepped back into his police cruiser.

❧

Inside the car, Taehyung took a moment to collect himself. He couldn’t place his finger exactly on the reason why, but something seemed fundamentally off about Jungkook. The younger man was born in 1997, at least according to his driver’s license, but he seemed way too overly confident to be some regular, random kid out for a late night drive. Taehyung was used to teenagers crying and begging him not to call their parents - despite the fact that he himself was just barely old enough to have graduated from the police academy - but Jungkook had been strangely commanding and in charge of the situation.

Taehyung refocused his attention on processing the documents sitting on the dashboard in front of him. He glanced over the vehicle registration, which seemed to be up to date and in order, and then turned to the young man’s driver’s license. He slid the card through the reader positioned next to his two-way radio, and waited for Jungkook’s information to pop up on-screen.

Error. License does not match system records.

“Well, that’s odd,” Taehyung muttered to himself.

He tried again, but the readout told him the exact same thing; the blocky white letters flashing against the blue screen as they softly illuminated the interior of his car. Taehyung took a closer look at the small, rectangular laminated card. It certainly looked to be legitimate, but he knew the kids were coming up with ever-increasingly sophisticated ways to make fake IDs these days, so that fact didn’t particularly surprise him as he inspected the plastic.

He was more shocked by Jungkook’s outright cocky attitude as the younger man handed an officer of the law a license that he obviously knew was fake.

Taehyung flipped over the phony license, and examined the seal on the back. The colorful swirl of the South Korean flag stared unassumingly back up at him, and by all accounts the license itself looked real. Taehyung decided to give Jungkook the benefit of the doubt, and started typing the identification number on the face of the ID card into the compact keyboard that sat perched next to the computer screen. He thought that perhaps the system was acting up again, and he wanted to ensure that there was no possible chance of malpractice on his part before he went accusing the other man of forgery.

Maybe now I’ll get some real answers.

Error. System failure. Shutting down in 10… 9…

“Stupid piece of ,” mumbled Taehyung as he watched the computer continue to count down, the numbers flashing on-screen one after the next.

7… 6… 6… 6…

“Great; you can’t even shut yourself down, you goddamn idiot machine.”

The screen kept displaying the number six, blinking for a moment as if it was going to finally change to five, but the computer stuck halfway through its countdown.

❧

Taehyung’s hands were starting to sweat, and he almost dropped the radio transmitter as he raised it to his lips. He glanced out the windshield to see Jungkook’s car still idling on the side of the road. At least that troublemaker hadn’t moved.

The fact that his in-car computer was on the fritz only provided more support for Taehyung’s theory that it was the system’s fault that Jungkook’s information wasn’t able to be located, so he planned to have Yoongi look up the boy’s license on the computer back at the station. The older officer’s desktop monitor was sure to be more reliable than whatever crappy console they had stuffed into the dashboard of Taehyung’s cruiser.

“Dispatch? This is Officer Kim. I need you to look up any information we have on Jeon Jungkook. Please and thank you.”

Taehyung released the “talk” button, and awaited the confirmation that his message had been received. There were several seconds of nothing but static, and Taehyung realized that no answer was coming.

“Yoongi?” called Taehyung. “Hey, are you there?”

Still nothing. Taehyung hit the transmitter against the steering wheel, hoping that the problem was nothing more than a loose connection that would tap into place and fix the signal. He held down the “talk” button as he spoke again, murmuring into the radio for a third and slightly exasperated time.

“Dispatch? Taehyung here again. I’m not sure if you heard me, but I’m requesting information on a license that’s not cooperating with the system here in my car. Do you read me?”

Bzzzt.

The radio spit out static for another several seconds before suddenly cutting out completely. The police car was filled with eerie silence, and Taehyung jumped at the sudden absence of white noise. He knocked the transmitter against the steering wheel again, but it was of no use. The radio was completely dead.

❧

Taehyung put the receiver back on its hook. This was all strange, but he could at least write down Jungkook’s information and look it up at the station later. For now, giving the young man a speeding ticket would have to suffice, so Taehyung dug around his car for a pad of paper to scribble down Jungkook’s license number on.

He looked over at the young man’s car, which was strikingly black even against the night sky. Jungkook himself had been oddly quiet throughout the whole endeavor, and Taehyung wondered if the young driver was getting impatient for him to finish processing the license and registration.

Taehyung finished writing down whatever information he could collect from the papers, stuffed the loose sheet he had jotted the notes down on in his ed shirt pocket, and brushed his fingers over the handgun in the holster on his hip. He had never even needed to take the weapon out of its casing - much less actually use it on someone - but having the gun with him always made the young man feel a bit better.

The officer prepared himself to go back to Jungkook’s car as he looked up at the vehicle in front of him once again. What he saw almost made Taehyung drop the pen he was still holding on to in his left hand.

Jungkook’s car was on fire; the entire luxurious vehicle completely enveloped in violent flames. The embers had a blindingly purple, strange, and otherworldly appearance - and Taehyung had to avert his eyes as he stumbled out of the police car, spilling out onto the pavement. The light from the fire danced on the highway, flickering as Taehyung scrambled to his feet while trying to regain his bearings. There was a terrible sulfuric smell that hung heavily in the air, and Taehyung wondered what in the world the young man was doing as he floundered on the ground. He hadn’t seen Jungkook step out of the car; hadn’t heard the sound of anything going up in flames; couldn’t imagine a reason why the other man would want to-

Taehyung stopped. The car was fine. Completely intact and not at all smouldering as it sat exactly where it had been when Taehyung had first left it. He straightened his tie as he stood up and swallowed forcefully.

The young man thought that the caffeine must be having an effect on him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced a truly restful sleep. The late night patrols did nothing to help his ever-present insomnia, and napping for hours during the day wasn’t exactly conducive to developing regular sleeping habits.

Brushing the dirt off the legs of his pants, Taehyung made sure that he still had Jungkook’s license as he walked up to the other’s shiny door, noticing for the first time the bright blue flame decals that ornamented the side of the vehicle.

Must’ve just been my subconscious playing tricks on me.

Taehyung bent over to stick his head through the window, hoping that Jungkook hadn’t been paying him any attention while the former was flailing on the dimly lit pavement.

❧

“What’s up?” asked Jungkook nonchalantly, the sunglasses still perched on the bridge of his round nose.

“Don’t you ‘what’s up’ me, you punk,” snapped Taehyung angrily. “You think it’s funny to give me a fake ID when I just caught you speeding down the highway at two in the goddamn morning, Jungkook?”

“No, but I do think it’s funny watching you fall out of your big, fancy police car, Officer Kim.”

Jungkook’s words had an edge of sarcasm that was impossible to overlook, and Taehyung felt his own face burning up because of the embarrassment of making so many mistakes on the job when this should have just been another normal traffic stop. The officer had his flashlight out, and the beam glinted off of Jungkook’s thick-lensed glasses, providing no hint of the eyes that Taehyung was sure were mocking him on the other side of the frames.

“You gonna arrest me?” questioned Jungkook, the tone of his voice suggesting that he might actually find it amusing if Taehyung did.

“No,” grunted Taehyung, his patience wearing thin. “I am going to let you off with a warning, because it’s obvious that you’re just some stupid, spoiled kid who doesn’t know when to shut his own mouth.”

The real reason was that Taehyung was incredibly nervous, and he wanted nothing more than to climb back into his police car and speed off down the highway - back to the station so he could yell at Yoongi for not picking up his transmission over the radio, and then to his apartment so he could finally get some shut eye. He was attempting to save face in any way that he could at this point, however, and if that meant letting Jungkook off with only a warning and a speeding ticket, then he was willing to overlook the fake driver’s license that he still suspected might just be an error on the police system’s part rather than an actual attempt at forgery.

Although Jungkook’s attitude was testing that gratuitous theory more with each passing second.

“And take off your goddamn sunglasses,” continued Taehyung. “It’s too dark out for those; you’ll crash your fancy car.”

Jungkook chuckled darkly, and raised his eyebrows above the black frames of the glasses.

“I don’t know if you want me to do that,” he teased, peering out from underneath the tops of the barriers so that Taehyung caught only a fleeting glimpse of the young boy’s delicate eyelashes.

The phrasing of that statement bewildered Taehyung, and he was tempted to ask Jungkook what the boy meant before he stopped halfway through opening his slackened mouth, reminding himself that he had to keep up a professional demeanor at least until he got back in the police car.

“Well, if you’re not going to arrest me, Officer Kim, then how ’bout we make a little deal?”

Taehyung didn’t know how to respond to that. Was this kid really trying to bribe him after all the trouble the former had already gotten himself into? The boy had to be smart enough to realize that it was extremely illegal to make any sort of “deal” with a police officer - not to mention, Taehyung didn’t know what the young man hoped to accomplish by trying to weasel his way out of an already very light punishment.

“Excuse me?” the officer blubbered, still totally flabbergasted. “What kind of deal do you think I could possibly be interested in making with you?”

“Oh, I think you’ll be very interested,” tittered Jungkook, a sickening grin creeping back onto his lips.

❧

Taehyung didn’t respond for several dozen seconds, instead choosing to stare open-mouthed at Jungkook as the younger looked up at him expectantly from behind his sunglasses.

“Come on, Taehyung; don’t be so difficult,” pouted Jungkook.

“Wh-what? No,” stuttered Taehyung. “And how do you know my name, you dumb kid?”

Jungkook waved his hand in the air as if to suggest that the how was unimportant compared to their present business, and smiled sweetly at Taehyung as he leaned toward the officer.

“How’s this for a deal, Tae?” proposed the young man. “I’ll take off the sunglasses if you give me something important of yours.”

Again, Taehyung was at a loss for words. What kind of a deal was that to make with a random stranger? Especially one you had just met at night on the side of the road. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what such thing he had to give Jungkook in exchange for such a seemingly meaningless prize, nor did he want to make the apparently useless trade when he should be out working, patrolling the empty streets to keep them free of crime. Jungkook had succeeded in seriously weirding Taehyung out, but the former’s soft features and boyish appearance made it impossible for the young officer to view him as anything more than a strange kid taking an ill-advised prank too far. At the same time, however, something in the pit of Taehyung’s stomach told him he should take his leave, and refuse Jungkook’s bizarre deal.

“What would you consider to be ‘important?’” queried Taehyung, curious despite his apprehension.

“Aha, so you are interested,” taunted Jungkook. He played with the arms of his carefully positioned sunglasses, fiddling at them with the tips of his fingers. “Nothing much, really. In fact, it’s something that you really can’t even help but give me.”

Taehyung furrowed his brows in confusion. He didn’t know what Jungkook was talking about, and the younger man had lost him completely with his reference to involuntary exchanges and ill-defined commodities.

“You might say,” continued Jungkook, “that you’ve been giving it to me since you first walked up to my window.”

Taehyung was about to ask what the young man meant by this whole inane guessing game, but before he could speak, Jungkook ripped off his sunglasses to reveal his large, circular eyes. The entire lens was a cloudy light blue, but underneath the outermost layer swirled of lavender flames where Jungkook’s pupils should have been. He smiled at Taehyung’s obvious shock, and without taking his piercing dead eyes off the terrified police officer, he turned the key in its ignition, starting the car with a plume of foul-smelling smoke.

“Thank you for your time, Officer Kim,” appreciated Jungkook. “But I really do have to be going now.”

Taehyung exhaled sharply, trying to push the suffocating scent of sulfur out of his burning nostrils.

“Oh, and don’t think our deal is finished here,” Jungkook hummed as the engine purred. “You and I both know that I’ll be back for the rest of the time you have to give before very long…”

With a short snicker, Jungkook replaced his sunglasses, and floored the gas pedal forcefully, sending the car reeling off in another puff of choking dust as the wheels squealed against the rough pavement. The skidmarks were accented by violet flames as the car hurtled off into the distance, leaving behind a very shaken-up Officer Kim.

Just before the car disappeared completely out of sight, Taehyung thought to read its license plate - something he had completely neglected to do in the first place when pulling it over for speeding past him. The irony practically dripped off the metal as he read the letters printed there, the slightly raised, embossed material glimmering in the light of the purple fire below them. Taehyung almost could have laughed out loud if he could only manage to find his breath. He read the license plate inscription to himself as the stinging smoke swirled up and filled his lungs.

SPEED DEMON

Taehyung choked as he passed out.

Let this be a warning to all of you: you’re living on nothing but borrowed time from Devil Jungkook, and he’s setting out to take it back in a fancy car that bursts into flames and then magically regenerates. These are the kinds of thoughts that fill my head as I try to get to sleep at night, haha; no wonder I stay up until all ungodly hours…

I’ve heard police officers say that conducting traffic stops is actually the scariest part of their jobs, because you can truthfully never know who - or what - is waiting for you when you tap on the window after pulling someone over. I wanted to take that idea to the extreme in this story by having Taehyung experience a run-in with the Devil (in the form of a trickster-like teenage boy). Be careful driving, everyone, because you’re never sure about who else is behind the wheel of the other cars!