Guardian

6

They walked the rest of the way to Jimin's house in silence. Namjoon avoided stopping to look at Taehyung, and Taehyung didn't attempt to talk to him. Normally Namjoon would have let himself be sidetracked, trailed off into the brush after a butterfly and left Taehyung to deal with himself. But he felt guilty. It had been a long, long time since he clawed someone, and now Taehyung's face was bleeding.

What a pain.

Taehyung rang the doorbell when they reached Jimin's house, and Jimin answered within a few minutes, frowning, eyes half open. His hair was still rumpled and his clothes askew.

Namjoon felt another jolt of guilt. Jimin's eyes flicked from Taehyung, to him, to the scratch on his face. Then, to Namjoon's surprise, Jimin laughed.

"He really doesn't like you, does he?"

"I think I can change that," Taehyung said, a little grumpily. Oh, Namjoon missed his eyebrows. How nice it would be to raise them silently at Taehyung. He had to settle for looking away, sweeping his tail over the ground while Jimin struggled to smother his laughter and open the screen door.

"Come on in," he said. "You can help me wash his paws after we clean your face up."

Namjoon trailed in quietly, hopping up on the counter and going to the sink. He waited until Taehyung and Jimin had disappeared into the bathroom to bat the handle with his 'clean'(were any of his paws clean?) paw and stick the dirty one underneath it. The feeling sent shivers up his spine, but it was much better than the idea of making Jimin do it. He knew how to turn on a sink, he would clean the blood off his claws in a way that didn't disgust Jimin.

Though it might be fun to gross Taehyung out.

He turned the sink off and shook his paw, staring at it in disgust before looking around for a towel. Jimin had hooked one on the oven handle, as always, but that was halfway across the room. He could try for a paper towel, but the last try had been a disaster(Jimin had never shouted 'no' so loudly in their time together, and besides, Namjoon had shreds of paper stuck in his claws for weeks after).

Namjoon sighed. Footprints on the kitchen floor it was, then. He hopped down from the counter, padding across the floor, and looked up at the hanging towel with narrowed eyes. It was a disaster waiting to happen, but so was walking to the bathroom with a wet paw. He crouched down, fixing his gaze, and leapt.

Taehyung swore in the other room. Namjoon didn't care. His claws hooked on the towel, and the towel came down-- the only problem was he came down with it, and his paws were stuck. He landed awkwardly, back paws skittering across the floor, and made an attempt to remove them that ended in him scrubbing the towel across the floor and straight into a cabinet.

Ow.

"What--" Jimin said.

Taehyung came crashing around the corner, phone in hand, then stopped, sighing. "Missed it," he called back, "he's got his claws stuck in the towel."

I will end you, Namjoon thought, but the threat had almost no effect when he attempted to lift a front paw and the towel came with it.

"Nevermind," Taehyung said. "The video is funny enough as it--"

Namjoon leapt at him. A terrible mistake, since it led to his scrambling across the floor exactly as he had before, paws trapped in front of him. Taehyung broke down laughing, and Jimin appeared in the doorway behind him, lips twitching.

This is not funny, Namjoon thought, laying his ears back against his head, but Jimin collapsed laughing anyway, crouching next to Taehyung and hiding his face in his shoulder. Namjoon tried to remove his claws from the towel, scrambled around a little more, and made the idiotic decision to roll onto his back and kick at it, which sent Taehyung and Jimin into hysterics.