"Home."
Fenced, and more withered than what Jimin might have preferred.
He looked down from the fencing, finding the rabbit hopped behind the house.
It was no longer running.
Jimin winced, holding onto his thigh to pursue his motion towards the front door, knocking for it to push open.
He stepped in, a divine tinker of porcelain being set on a marble counter.
Looking up from the tea cup, Jimin found Taehyung holding a kettle.
The blue haired man sat at the counter of the kitchen as well, eased.
"Quite the scene wasn't it?" Taehyung smiled.
Jimin stood stunned by how alleviated Taehyung appeared.
He didn't seem tempted by sadism, but rather, he simply savored how overdone the entire situation was.
And how it seemed to be intentional.
Namjoon flicked another match, Jimin leaning towards the sound to look at him.
"Oh, sir-"
"No formalities please, we are friends. Namjoon, remember? Hadn't even been too long." His hand, clean and dainty, pointed flat for Jimin to shake the welcoming from him again.
Jimin did, gradually with a dazed attitude.
"Tae?" Jimin let go, tipping his steps to near the other.
"Ah! Yes, I remember you enjoyed the thrill, so I toyed along. No worries, I bare no grudge." Taehyung blew over his tea, setting it back down to add sugar.
"You remember?" Jimin plucked a smile to veil his worry.
"Hm?" Taehyung stirred his drink.
"Whe-When... Was I was last here? Before?" Jimin held something serene when he asked. A timbre that gave Taehyung the idea that Jimin missed something.
"...No?" Taehyung shook his head, a varied grin still on his face.
"Take me seriously please." Jimin frowned, paused to plead his expression for honesty.
"I am." Taehyung looked perturbed and undenied, wary of Jimin's concern.
Namjoon too.
"I wasn't here?" Jimin lost that tender feeling.
He guessed that he had nothing to pine for. A minimal faint of his recollection.
His supposed loss of memory.
Something he may have been punished for. Maybe he has... Before.
"No-? We've waited here for some time for you. You were sent away after claiming to have done harm to us." Taehyung now had the tea cup's handle between his fingers, filtering nothing to try to blind Jimin's current perception.
Jimin stared, appalled by the apparent mishap in his demeanor and belief of occurrence.
"But I did- I killed you out of resent." He began to maneuver around for something sharp. Something to cut with to wake him.
He often felt like this, cornered into a place prone to deception, one that continued to diminish his rationality and upkeep.
A place he often came to once he was asleep.
"We're very alive, no?" Taehyung sipped the tea.
His tea.
"But you look different! Your hair and eyes have changed!" Jimin couldn't have been any more panicked-stricken to not lead Taehyung to snicker.
Jimin leered, finding invasion from the laughter to which he found nothing to be humorous.
"Quite some has passed Jimin." Taehyung gestured towards the counter, leaning at its edge to waver his eyes around Jimin's frantic mannerisms.
"How long?" Jimin stopped, hands stuck even at his sides.
"...Ten years."
Ten...
Years.
"But I remember it!" Jimin shook his head through his hollering, peering over to find Namjoon with an irritable wipe between his brows.
Taehyung sighed, setting his tea aside to poise himself in front of Jimin, a vexed Namjoon still sat behind them.
"Jimin, how often have you been sleeping?"
Jimin sulked, passioned by the brimming hope to have already been in a dream.
"Often, it helps me get away." He looked down, resting his hands to lose his attempt of finding something to bring him awareness.
He'd be attentive with his surroundings, validating whether or not his insight fed him truth.
"You've always had dreams that would delude you. It drove you into hysteria." Taehyung floated his phrasing very thoughtfully to bring Jimin a sense of comfort.
"No..." Jimin found himself remaining tense.
He was saddened with his waste of appeal for where he was and how he remembered it. He was the only one that had.
Things were different last time.
"Hey, look at me." An enamored finger lifted Jimin's head for him to look at Taehyung.
Taehyung, again,
Smiled.
This one he meant. It wasn't a taunt.
This wasn't Jimin's Taehyung.
His Taehyung never smiled for humble luxury.
"You're not the men I know. I know it."
Taehyung sighed.
"You're very stubborn Jimin." Taehyung stepped away, opening the pantry to take out a box.
"Open it." The box was balanced in front of the smaller, worn and unattended by Taehyung.
He paid very little to it, for whatever cause.
Jimin glanced at Taehyung, his eyes tearing innocence before his scarred fingered lifted the lid of the box.
He took out a hat.
"It's your hat."
Taehyung nodded.
"I no longer wear this hat. It makes me... Think. I was tired of thinking so much." He grabbed Jimin's face, bending over to speak very, very closely to him.
"And so are you."
Jimin swelled his throat with the presumed misfortuned infatuation.
One he had, for Taehyung.
The infatuation he killed Taehyung for, because he was too impatient to allow him to return it.
"I like to th-think." Jimin leased the intimacy, tipped onto the gesture Taehyung had given.
Because he's wanted it for so long.
And Jimin was to blame for never being able to obtain it.
"Do you?" Taehyung roused his tone to indicate Jimin's submission to remain silent.
He did, finding himself hardly able to speak as he toyed with the wrap around his waist.
"Jimin?" Taehyung tapped a finger at Jimin's chin, luring hope for a response.
"Hmm?" Still, Jimin couldn't talk much through his pressing lips.
And Taehyung wasn't getting any further from him, nearing Jimin's muted devotion.
"Think. Do you like to think?" Taehyung wasn't cold, nor stoned by callousness and detesting.
Jimin didn't know this man. This man didn't come from his dreams.
"Mhm." Jimin muttered.
"I can't understand you."
Yet, maybe this was Taehyung. The one Jimin initially knew, or remembered.
The one that always forged words from him, swore him to provide verbal responses.
"Yes. I do like to think." Jimin began to nod.
"Then what are you thinking?" Taehyung didn't move more than his relentless smirk.
It stimulated Jimin to only doe his eyes up at him. He adored this.
"Mm-mm-mm." Jimin shrugged.
Taehyung sneered, reaching his other hand down,
Before tearing a blade across Jimin's lip.
And Jimin didn't cower.
"Are you asleep?" Taehyung muted his uttering, coercing Jimin to prize his own quietude.
"Hm-mm." Jimin's head merely moved to accept his apprehension of being present where he was.
He continued to stare, his mouth pulled apart with Taehyung's finger as the blood seeped down his upper lip, into his mouth.
His lower lip softened, gratified beneath Taehyung's thumb.
"Talk." Taehyung was closer, his head bent to trail the nigh affection of his lips in front of Jimin's.
"No. I am not asleep." Jimin spoke through his teeth, eyes unmoving from Taehyung's way of analyzing his response.
The purity and adoration Jimin carried from his lip to Taehyung's finger intrigued Taehyung to tease himself further onto Jimin's exhaling.
He baited Jimin, pushing closer to kiss above his lip, sterilizing the blood.
Taehyung stepped away.
Nothing said, let alone acknowledged for Jimin to pull him back and count the moment as something more.
His lips were bare, and so went his obsession.
"You'll need a bandage, I didn't mean to harm you." Taehyung pointed to Jimin's wounded thigh.
Taehyung wasn't inflicted nor enthralled by the brisk sentiment, to which he gave. He meant nothing by it.
As per what Jimin had thought.
So Jimin didn't respond.
He was hurt.
He'd remain fixed with an appalled attitude until Namjoon stood to place a lit cigarette through Jimin's unlatched lips.
"I can grab the bandage." Namjoon walked off, a sly snicker when he did.
Taehyung waved at him, turning back to find Jimin stuck inanimate.
"Close your mouth, the cigarette will burn to solitude if you forget to use it."
Jimin blinked, looking down to take two fingers and drag at the nicotine.
"Y-You-Did I tell you? You knew?" Jimin was asking on his portrayal of longing for the taller.
"Yes. Until you went mad and called on yourself to be sent to that asylum." Taehyung was back to his tea.
Jimin didn't remember living things that way.
"I swore I- So I never hurt anyone? A-And I told you about how I-?"
"Yes Jimin. You told me." Taehyung walked over to thieve the cigarette again, taking his tea into Jimin's hands.
"And I never... Never harmed anyone?" Jimin noticed how Taehyung disengaged himself from the question, even more so with the warm tea cup now at his own fingers.
No Jimin," Taehyung took himself to nurture a smoke from the cigarette before caressing his other hand to Jimin's cheek.
"You never did." A smile, warranted with promise.
"Oh." Jimin moved the tea around, finding it to be
Well, just tea.
He laughed.
"Everything okay?" Taehyung worried himself on the false accusation of Jimin's supposed remedy.
One he believed he managed to submit out of Jimin.
"Sorry- I just- I just remembered a dream where you gave me this tea and it filled with blood instead." Jimin nuzzled himself to the tea's aroma, finding a fine rose scent to it.
Just like Taehyung.
"That's, rather morbid." Taehyung took his hand away.
Jimin followed it as it swung at his side.
"Well you did just cut my face."
"I was inquired to do so by your doctors. They said that they noticed you did it often, and if it came to it, I'd have to do it myself." Jimin found the hastened reply forbidding.
As if Taehyung needed to wane on a defense.
"Oh. But if I- If I never did anything, then who were the men that came to see me? One said I took his clock!" Taehyung had to reach over to straighten Jimin's hand to prohibit a broken tea cup and a wet tiled floor.
"You mean Jungkook? He's been obsessed with clocks ever since his OCD grew severe, they calm him down. He freaks out if he doesn't have that exact one. He's been that way, until they finally allowed him to see you." Taehyung had strained his tone, now aggravated by Jimin's persistent false accusations and assumptions.
"How come none of you ever came to see me before."
Taehyung faltered, gracing his posture to broaden his chest and huff before he went to answer.
"We were never allowed. They said they had to condition you to forget to begin with. That's why we all came to you as strangers. They said you'd never remember until-"
"I was as vulnerable enough?" Jimin finally took to try the tea.
It was sweet. With sugar, finally.
"...What?" Taehyung scowled, muddled by Jimin's lack of sensibility.
"That's, that's what The Hatter said..." Though the tea was sweet, it was cold.
The steam had gone, and Jimin now had nothing else to stray his emphasis on rattled premises.
"Who is The Hatter?" Taehyung's arms flew.
Jimin pointed to the box with Taehyung's renounced hat.
"The Hatte- Me? Because of this hat?" Taehyung pointed to the box.
"You loved that hat." Jimin grew despondent towards the collection that Taehyung no longer cherished the gift he'd given him. Even if it was just a hat.
"Because you made it, right before you went horridly insane. It hurt me when you did. It drove me mad too! But I never wore it, not even when you left, so what brings you to believe that I loved it?" Taehyung was worn, becoming harsh towards Jimin.
He wasn't going to continuously cater to him, because it seemed to only lead Jimin onto further fiction.
Jimin mirrored his eyes from the hat, sadden with his view on Taehyung.
"You don't?"
Taehyung groaned, pacing around the counter.
"No Jimin, I do! I do! It just... Makes me behave... Mad? You know?"
"The Mad Hatter!"
"No, Taehyung! Kim Taehyung!" Taehyung's hands narrowed to aim at himself.
"Nono, I know, I know, just- My dreams, I made you a Mad Hatter. I made all of you because... I don't know really. I didn't know who you were. Not even when I saw Jungkook. I had made you, but never remembered that I did. Just a feeling. U-Until now. Am I vulnerable now?" Jimin's tea kept tipping over, and Taehyung would have to mind it after he'd managed to pacify Jimin's hysteria.
"You are always vulnerable, but I'm here now to guide you. We all are, okay? Just- Let this go for now. Let's get you to Namjoon, get your thigh wrapped and then- Let's slee-"
"No." Jimin shook his head, stepping away.
Taehyung frowned, pained by Jimin's fear. Fear he didn't need anymore, not with him. Not with any of them.
"I will be right beside you." Taehyung would ensure Jimin that he was safe here.
"...You will have to cut me when I wake." Jimin reached out to grab Taehyung's hand, leaving the tea at the counter.
"...I can do that."
"Okay..."
"Come."
"Welcome home."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Can you guys see an image at the top above the animated artwork? I've managed to create images that fit the setting of the chapter for you guys to have even more of a visionary, but I can't see it when I go to read as a reader. Please let me know if you see an image at the very top! (Not the gif)