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He's not too sure how he got here. Mere minutes ago, Jeongguk stepped outside to take out the trash. He vaguely recalls losing his footing on the rain-slick sidewalk when a raccoon or some creature startled him, and then suddenly he was free-falling through what looked like a concrete sewage tunnel - it definitely smelled like one, anyways, debris floating around him as he tumbled.
They say Alice's dress billowed up around her, slowing her descent enough for her to stop the fall, but Jeongguk is dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and his favorite harem pants for dance practice. Not much fabric to use as a parachute. So instead of floating down, Jeongguk wipes out on more concrete, muttering curses at the pain in his tailbone.
"What the fuck," he mutters to himself, scrambling up and grimacing as dirty water seeps into his clothes, bitingly cold. Where is this place?
There isn't much to see down here - oh my god, am I seriously underground right now or is this Jimin playing an excessively cruel joke - besides the play of light from unidentifiable source scattering across the dripping walls. As Jeongguk begins to walk in the only direction he can, he notices that the way the lights and shadows interact is strange, unnatural. Silhouettes rise above his head, forming towering mushroom caps before subsiding into jagged excuses for rolling hills. He still can't tell where the rays of light are coming from, only able to watch out of the corner of his eye as his own shape moves through the bizarre landscape.
It's a labyrinth, Jeongguk realizes as the tunnels begin to split and diverge. He racks his brain for survival tips he picked up over the years, something about only turning in one direction until you reach a dead end? No, that doesn't make sense, and he's not about to put his hand against the wall to follow it when it looks like a sickly mixture of algae and puke. All he can do is just keep walking. You'll get somewhere if you walk long enough.
A rat skitters across the ground and Jeongguk jumps at the sound. It has a forked tail in its shadow, and it's too dark for him to make out the real thing, but he just passes it off as a trick of the mysterious light and keeps going. This can't be Jimin, so maybe he fell asleep and this is all a dream. Yeah, that sure as hell makes more sense than this - he probably answered his mother's call for him to take the trash out but dozed off on his homework before he could actually do it. But then he trips over some protrusion in the ground and skins his elbow against one of the rough walls, which hurts, hot blood dripping between his fingers when he gropes blindly to check it.
"Hmm," a lilting voice says behind him. "Hurt yourself there?"
Jeongguk whirls around, but all he can see is darkness, darkness all around. "Who's there?" he replies loudly, pushing defiance into his voice even though he's kind of freaked out now, the pain in his arm still pulsing as if to drive home the fact that he's awake, he's awake, this is not a dream.
He holds his breath to listen for a response but one is not forthcoming. When his heart rate slows somewhat, and it's obvious he's alone (and cold and frustrated), he turns back around and keeps walking endlessly. Better walk aimlessly instead of stay in this dank tunnel and wallow. Slowly, the tunnel around him is shrinking, closing down around Jeongguk's body, the floor becoming drier with each step until he climbs a few steps and into the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel as it becomes literal. He'd laugh if this wasn't so surreal.
There is a table waiting for him once Jeongguk forces his way into the room; the moment he's completely through, there's a quiet pop! behind him and a glance over his shoulder only affords smooth walls papered with yellow polka dots. Sealed inside with no way back home, no sign of the tunnel in sight. "What the fuck," Jeongguk repeats but at a whisper now, oddly self-conscious.
The table is circled by a spotlight, all illumination now focused on the round, mahogany table placed at the precise center of the room. Jeongguk approaches it warily, but once he steps into the circle of light, the matter is out of his hands, some strange compulsion drawing him up to the table and his hands to the cool bottle upon it.
'DRINK ME.'
"Aw, hell no," Jeongguk says out loud, full volume now, his incredulity giving him his voice back. He snatches his hands back from the innocent vial, filled with a blue liquid and stoppered with a cork; the tag attached to the neck of the bottle is clearly marked with the two words he always believed would stay in fairy tales. "No way. What do you think this is, 'Jeongguk in Wonderland' or something? I know what happens when you drink this stuff."
"Oh yeah? What happens?" The voice is back, and Jeongguk startles and scrambles to find its source, refusing to be misled this time.
He finds its source - this is traceable, at least - in a grin, a Cheshire grin, gleaming at him as its mischievous owner materializes out of thin air. A solid torso, long legs appearing as whole as Jeongguk is, long fingers, dark hair swept over clever eyes set in a handsome face. Gorgeous, even. He's dressed head to toe in pitch black, looking like he's on his way to either a very important party or a very somber funeral. For a moment, the boy's eyes seem to glow green, and his smile only widens. Like there's a joke curled around them right now, settled somewhere around Jeongguk's ankles, and he's the only one who can hear the punch line.
"What do you mean what happens," Jeongguk says defensively, and the boy with the Cheshire grin cocks his head to the side, still grinning. "Don't you know about Alice? She grew and shrank when she drank and ate these - these things. From your world."
"Aw," the boy with the Cheshire grin says, eyes dancing. "So sure of yourself." He takes a step forward, Jeongguk instinctively bracing himself for some impact, and melts away into the darkness. After a heartbeat, his distinctive smile appears again, on the opposite side of Jeongguk and about level with his shoulder, drifting up as he deigns to reveal himself again, walking casually through the air as if up an invisible staircase.
Jeongguk watches in disbelief as the boy walks in circles and circles over his head before jumping lightly back down from some vantage point, landing on his feet a few centimeters above the ground. "What - what are you?" he asks, the question rising to his lips unbidden.
"Tch, if you know Alice, then you'd know who I am," the boy says, but the question seems to delight him, glee pulling the corners of his lips up again. "Or rather, what I am, hmm? I'm the Cheshire Cat."
"The Cheshire Cat," Jeongguk breathes, and the boy with the Cheshire grin vanishes again only to wink back into sight in three new places, one after another. Showing off a little, Jeongguk guesses, and finds he isn't too unwilling to indulge him. It's not every day you meet the Cheshire Cat, and now he recalls that the Cat was his favorite part of the story whenever his parents read to him about Alice in Wonderland. Never did he expect to be meeting the Cheshire Cat in the flesh, though, especially like this.
"Ah, yes. The one and only," the boy says. He walks down a flight of invisible stairs this time, brushing past Jeongguk fleetingly. The hairs on Jeongguk's arms stand up. "But you can call me Taehyung, if you like."
Taehyung. Something about this name makes Jeongguk a bit afraid to say it out loud, like it's a secret he should be keeping to himself, but the boy - Taehyung winks at him and disappears again, as if he never existed.
Jeongguk looks down and finds that the vial is back in his hand, even though he has no recollection of picking it back up. 'DRINK ME' in bold letters, the glass cool in his hand as if it refuses to be warmed by his touch. "What…" he mutters to himself.
"You aren't going to drink it?" Taehyung asks, popping back into existence over Jeongguk's shoulder and cackling when Jeongguk jumps. "Shouldn't you do what you're told, Jeonggukie?"
"How do you know my name," Jeongguk shoots back defensively, and isn't surprised when Taehyung laughs in reply, because the Cheshire Cat doesn't just respond to your questions with straightforward answers. He racks his brain, trying to remember whether the drink is supposed to shrink you down or grow you into a giant.
"No use depending on something as unreliable as human memory," Taehyung croons. He saunters past a small door Jeongguk hadn't noticed until now, so tiny it only comes up to Jeongguk's shin, the only apparent exit now that the tunnelway has been sealed. Hopefully the drink isn't to grow, Jeongguk thinks to himself, now that the way is clear. Either he drinks this and see whether this concoction will let him get out of here and closer to home, or he stays in this round little room and lets Taehyung drive him insane.
He unstoppers the drink. Taehyung drifts closer, circling Jeongguk again. "What a shame," he says softly. "I would've rather liked to keep you company. Twist your mind around between my fingertips and let you see what I see…"
Whoa, Jeongguk thinks. For a second he's almost swayed by the offer. Taehyung's smiling at him again, beguiling and even a little coy now, and he really is gorgeous. But then he looks at the tiny door and the drink in his hand and recalls how he really doesn't want to stay down here forever, his mom will freak out when she finds him missing.
"I have to get going," he says, and mentally adds and stay sane, because he definitely doesn't doubt Taehyung's ability to change that. He slowly raises the drink to his lips (so he doesn't have to watch Taehyung dissolve away one last time, maybe) and is about to drink when he feels Taehyung's presence again, right beside him.
"But darling," Taehyung whispers, his lips brushing the shell of Jeongguk's ear like a lover's caress. "Most everyone's mad here. You might as well join in the fun."
Jeongguk shudders and swallows a mouthful of the drink almost reluctantly, feeling himself shrink as if he's falling all over again, the ground rushing towards his face alarmingly fast. The potion works as promised, and he's rushing straight towards the door to a foreign world, ignoring the urge to look back.
❣
Some time after he is verbally ambushed by some talking flowers and gets high out of his mind with a sluggish boy with caterpillar antennas protruding from his head, and after Taehyung happens to save him from a tight spot by dropping the 'EAT ME' cookies into his lap so he can grow large enough to scare off some irritated direwolves, Jeongguk finds himself facing a very furious Red King ordering his beheading.
Which is not good.
"What kind of fools play croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs made out of steel and diamond, anyways?" Jeongguk shouts at this messed up Underland world in general as he makes a break for it, sprinting away from the king's soldiers. Flamingo beaks and hedgehog spines aren't that deadly back at home, that's for sure.
He hurls himself into a forest but notices quickly that none of the trees bear true leaves, but rather they're all petrified - every branch, twig, and root becoming one with the boulders. It's painful to try to force his way through them, but as he gets deeper into the forest of stone trees, they provide good cover, slowing down the bloodthirsty soldiers considerably; he doesn't have as much armor and weaponry to carry around, after all. When it's dark all around and the soldiers are only a muted shouting from afar, Jeongguk lets himself take a break to catch his breath, leaning heavily against a cold tree trunk.
"Now what have you gotten yourself into?" a voice inquires from the darkness, laughter obvious in the now-familiar lilt of his words.
"Taehyung," Jeongguk says, panting, and Taehyung himself appears before him, smiling as always, unchanged from the last two times Jeongguk saw him. "I'm going to die. For real this time, I'm not talking about some wolves."
Taehyung laughs again, making one of those little circles around Jeongguk before rising to rest in the cradle of the dead tree branches. He settles in, and Jeongguk swears that if Taehyung had a tail like his namesake he'd be curling it around his body right now. "Are you? The king tried to behead me once, too. But…"
Jeongguk watches as Taehyung makes every part of his body vanish beside his head, which floats strangely in the air with no apparent support. His smile is broader than ever.
"You can't exactly behead someone without a body, right?" Taehyung asks, entirely too pleased with himself. "The debate went on for days, it was glorious."
"That's nice and all," Jeongguk says flatly, "but, as a human being, I don't quite have the ability to do that with my body."
"That is indeed a problem." Taehyung appears completely again and peers at Jeongguk as he slowly drifts down to eye level. Up close like this, Jeongguk is once again taken aback by how pretty the other boy is, features sweet if it weren't for the way he looks at people like he's planning how to trick them out of their treasures, their happiness.
A muffled bang from the direction of the soldiers has Jeongguk jumping and scrambling away, but Taehyung restrains him with a hand on his shoulder and Jeongguk freezes, stunned that Taehyung even touched him at all. He wasn't expecting any physical contact from the Cheshire Cat. "W-What is it?"
"You know, if you took me up on my offer, you wouldn't have to run. I know ways to make you disappear just like I can," Taehyung says, his voice a near-purr. "You'd never have to worry about His Highness the Red King for a single day of your pretty little life." He drifts even closer to Jeongguk, but his body lacks the warmth of another human being, his fingers cool like the petrified trees around them as he trails them down the side of Jeongguk's face.
Jeongguk doesn't dare to move a muscle, allowing Taehyung to trace down his face and neck. Somewhere in his adventures - if you could even call them that - his shirt got torn and he lost most of a sleeve, some fabric around the collar area, and Taehyung doesn't hesitate to exploit the exposed skin. "Taehyung," he whispers, lips numb.
"Jeongguk," Taehyung says back, his voice curling around Jeongguk's name expectantly.
"I - I can't," Jeongguk gasps out as Taehyung circles him again as if to cage him in and then dips in to follow the same path his fingers took with his lips, a hint of tooth. Is he being seduced? "I need to get back. I really need to get back home."
"You'll never find someone like me back home," Taehyung murmurs, and presses his mouth to Jeongguk's, breathing him in.
That's true, Jeongguk knows it. Taehyung is the Cheshire Cat, after all, and he walks the pages of story books - though this one would rather stalk through the darkness, invisible until he chooses to reveal himself to hapless, lost people like Jeongguk. He lets Taehyung kiss him but he knows he can't stay. He can't stay here, under the ridiculous rule of the Red King, feeling like everyone in Underland wants his blood. He does need to get home, to his mother and father and older brother and friends and a world where he doesn't have to worry about being torn from limb to limb by this assortment of creatures because up there, they don't even exist at all.
When Jeongguk doesn't respond to his efforts, Taehyung scowls, losing the trademark grin for a second before he fades out of sight, exit scene. But then he blinks right back into view, taking Jeongguk by surprise. He'd thought Taehyung would be gone for good. "Taehyung?" he asks as the Cheshire Cat comes closer and closer.
"You know, it takes quite a man to refuse me," Taehyung says archly and reaches for Jeongguk's throat.
"But so be it! I'll see you on the other side, Jeonggukie."
❣
Jeongguk wakes with a sputter and gasp, his throat burning from the harsh pull of air. He's at his desk, in his bedroom, having drooled all over his math textbook and his mother is shouting from downstairs for him to take out the trash already.
"Coming," he shouts and scrambles to pull on another layer - over his long-sleeved shirt, which is untorn, not even dirtied - just in case. For air resistance. He hurries down the stairs half-expecting the burn of a long trek in his thigh muscles, and is extra paranoid about watching his step as he throws the trash out. Only when he gets back to his bedroom can he rest easy.
But strangely, strangely, as Jeongguk brushes his teeth that night before going to bed, he notices a faint ring of bruises around his neck, in the shape of long fingers. They don't hurt much when he presses his own to the marks, but when he does, he notices a flash of a grin in the mirror behind him. He whirls around, a movement his body knows well by now, but sees nothing even in the brightness of the bathroom. He's alone.
Outside, one of the street cats that hangs around the neighborhood yowls. And it's like Alice said: you often see a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat.
How curious.