Chapter Text
He really wasn’t sure how this had happened.
“So, what you’re saying is, you picked up another box of abandoned kittens you found on your way back from the gym today,” Seokjin began, “brought them home, cleaned them and now you have twelve kittens destroying the furniture in your living room, correct?”
“Yes.” Namjoon yelped as he nearly tripped over a kitten that was darting through his legs. He’d given up trying to stop them from running all over the place and decided to call his hyung for help.
“And you’re certain there weren’t twelve of them in the box when you found them?”
“I couldn’t have missed nine whole kittens, one maybe but not nine, there were only three. I have no idea how it happened, even if they accidentally ate something in the zero seconds I wasn’t looking at them, you know none of my potions have that sort of power.” He sighed as he moved two of the kittens away from his television wires and cables. “And tell Jungkook to stop laughing.”
A few of the calmer kittens were lying down peacefully near the sofa, they were his favourite. The same could not be said for the kittens who were trying to push all of Taehyung’s art pieces over. He grabbed his box and continued packing away all the items that they could potentially destroy.
“Your fault for calling the café, hyung, we always put you on speaker,” he heard Jungkook say.
“Wha- always?” It was nice to know the whole café probably heard his ramble about his toxic potion batch last week. Seeing as most of his potions were sold at the café, he couldn’t imagine that conversation was good for business, but that was Seokjin’s issue, not his.
“Yeah, Jin-hyung says I need to learn how to answer the phone professionally as if anything he ever says is professional.”
“Hey! I’m plenty professional,” Seokjin replied.
“Oh really? You think it’s professional to answer the phone and say ‘You’re through to Think and it Shall Tea, where we brew tea to be anything from a hangover cure to a drink that will get you over that guy who cheated on you last month. Are you calling for heartbreak or hangover?’” Namjoon could practically see the unimpressed look on Jungkook’s face.
“Our heartbreak tea is one of our best sellers-”
“Guys, can we maybe focus on the fact that I have cats appearing out of nowhere?” He interrupted.
“Maybe they’re cursed?” Jungkook suggested. “Or maybe you’re cursed? Depends on whether they ruin your life… or you ruin theirs I guess.”
“Well, that’s just great.”
“You’re not going to ruin their lives,” Seokjin said. “You’re great with cats. Don’t you have a whole set-up so you can look after strays overnight until you can take them to the shelter?”
“Yeah, I do but it’s for like a couple of cats for one night only. There’s no way I can look after this many, and who knows how many more are going to appear.”
“Any other day and you know I’d close early to come help you, but we had someone down a tea with a double shot of Dreamers in before leaving the café, despite the fact that two minutes before we had told them to make sure they were in a safe space to fall asleep before they had any, and now they’re passed out in our reading nook. They’re going to be out for at least another eight hours.”
“We thought they’d had a heart attack or something until we checked their to-go cup and found it empty. You should have seen Jin-hyung’s face after realising he’s going to have to stay late tonight because I have plans.”
“I could force you to cancel your date.”
“And I could quit, but then you’d lose your best employee so,” Jungkook said.
Namjoon heard Seokjin scoff and, at that point, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get either of them back on track to help him with his situation.
“My best employee?” Seokjin’s voice was a whole octave higher than usual.
Namjoon sighed and hung up the phone. Guess he was on his own.
He did a quick head count of those he could see and came up short by five. Three kittens, his favourite ones, he found still curled up under the sofa; he left them be. They weren’t doing any harm and he’d rather not have any more awake than absolutely necessary. He was going to have to feed them soon and sleeping kittens would stop him from getting confused over who he’d fed yet or not.
“Uh, Namjoon?”
Ow. “Shit.” He had not expected Taehyung to be home so quickly and in his surprise had bashed his head against the side of their television when coming up from checking behind it. Though he shouldn’t have been so surprised, Taehyung never did make any noise coming home. He walked to the hallway to find his roommate.
“Did you bring home more strays?” Taehyung was crouched in their hallway, petting two kittens who it looked like were using his slippers to sleep in. At least his missing two were safe. How was he even going to explain the kittens?
“Hah yeah, about that...” he began.
Taehyung seemed to decide moving the kittens was not worth it and he reached into their shoe cupboard for a spare pair of guest slippers. He yawned as he stood back up. “God, today had just really drained me for some reason.”
“There’s just a little, tiny really, small issue with the cats.”
“What’s the issue?” Taehyung asked, heading for his room as he always did after work. Taehyung’s bedroom was off the hallway before you reached the living room, so he wouldn’t have seen the rest of the kittens yet. Unless they’d followed him into the hallway. There was a reason all the doors were closed from the cats, but it wasn’t until he could see some of his roommate’s art inside his room that he remembered why it was a particularly bad idea to open the doors.
“Wait don’t open the door!” he exclaimed, but it was too late. One of the kittens darted around his legs, Taehyung’s legs, and through the open door.
“Oh, there’s another one who’s more awake.” Taehyung stayed in the doorway whilst he reached in and turned the light on.
“We need to get him out, like right now,” he said, coming closer to the door so he could keep his eyes on the kitten.
Taehyung raised his eyebrow at him, looking between Namjoon and his room. Maybe Namjoon had sounded more panicked than he wanted to but after the day he had had he felt like it warranted being at least a little panicked. “It’s okay, hyung, I don’t need your help I can just get him out.”
Namjoon knew they needed to get the cat out, or at least watch them whilst they were around anything of Taehyung’s that they could damage. It wasn’t the getting the one cat out that he was worried about. Taehyung didn’t know, though, he hadn’t experienced it yet. As he was thinking it, a second cat followed the first, darting between their legs.
Great, here they came.
There was a strange thing about these cats that he hadn’t ever seen before with the strays he brought home. Maybe it was because he’d never had as many strays at once before. Taehyung yelped as two more cats attempted to trip him over as they tried to follow the first one.
Four kittens were more than Namjoon wanted to have to wrangle out of a room, but he wasn’t about to let any more in. And the rest of the hyperactive ones would follow. That much he was sure of. Without thinking, he quickly pushed his roommate inside the bedroom and slammed the door behind them.
Taehyung whirled around to face him, arms crossed and a frown on his face. “Okay, the last time you slammed a door around me was back when we were in uni. What’s going on?”
“Oh, shit sorry, Tae, I wasn’t um-” he began.
In university, Taehyung used to flinch whenever a door got slammed regardless of how loud it actually was, and Namjoon had contributed to the problem for a good six months as his roommate until he noticed. After a good long conversation between the two of them over just how shitty Taehyung’s family truly was, he told himself he’d make every effort to control his door-slamming habits and with time he did. Taehyung was upset… which was not good… but they really needed to get these cats out of his room.
“There’s a thing with the cats, and it’s freaking me out, and we really need to get them out of this room.”
“It’s just four cats, they all look perfectly normal to me,” Taehyung said, his frown still there. Namjoon didn’t like him frowning but he couldn’t concentrate on solving that when the cats needed dealing with. The four explorers were making their way around the room, brushing against any surface they came across. It wouldn’t be long though until they showed their true colours.
“It’s not just four cats, it’s twelve,” he said quickly, reaching down and scooping the nearest one into his arms. As if on cue, he can hear one of the others meowing at the door behind him.
“Twelve?!” Taehyung exclaimed. “You brought home twelve cats? We don’t have room for twelve cats.”
“Hold this one,” he said handing off a kitten to Taehyung so he could get to the others. He was grateful that most of Taehyung’s usual chaos of half-finished projects was packed away. “Of course, I didn’t bring home twelve cats-”
“Then who did?” Taehyung cut him off.
“Well technically me but-” he lunged forward to prevent a kitten from jumping from the bed to the dresser, catching them just before they no doubt knocked Taehyung’s miniature sculpture off of it in their efforts. Phew. Two down, two to go, and then to figure out how to leave without the rest of them coming in. “Look can we just get them out of your room first? before they destroy anything else?”
That at least seemed to prompt Taehyung into helping him. Even if he did it with a frown on his face.
🐈⬛🐈🐈⬛
From what he’d seen, there were seven hyperactive cats. The three under the sofa and the two by the front door had all stayed put whilst those seven planned an attack on Taehyung’s bedroom. And it was those that had stayed climbing all over Taehyung as he sat on the sofa.
Taehyung was still frowning. Namjoon winced thinking of the way he’d slammed the door earlier. It would take him a while to make up for that one. He automatically put himself on cooking duty until Taehyung left for the summer which usually helped any apologies he needed to make. The two of them were the same in the fact that they both hated cooking so any relief from that duty was welcomed.
“Here you go,” he said, handing Taehyung a mug of hot chocolate and sitting down next to him. They could both do with something to calm them down and nothing was better than Namjoon’s Still Life hot chocolate. He was never more grateful for the endless hours he’d spent perfecting his craft than after he’d nailed the formula for that particular potion.
How does he even begin to describe what brought about all the kittens? He doesn’t know. But maybe Taehyung could help him figure it out. Or at least they could panic about it together.
“Okay, so I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m not entirely sure how this happened. I’ll tell you as much as I know and I’ll answer any questions you have, okay?”
At receiving a nod, he began.
He told Taehyung how he’d found the cats on his way home from the gym, tucked away in a box exactly where plenty of others seemed to abandon their cats given his track record of finding them. When he found them there were only three little guys there. They were soaked to the bone from the storm that had been going on and as much as Namjoon loved the rain, he couldn’t just leave them there knowing they were suffering. So he brought them home, like he always did.
He explained how he’d just begun to clean them up when the rest began to appear. At first, he’d just cleaned the three but when he looked down there were six not three, and however the other three had appeared they were also dirty. He had cleaned them too. And then there were twelve and three were still dirty.
He didn’t know how it had happened, he couldn’t think of a potion or spell he cast that could have caused this. He didn’t have that kind of magic.
“They’re all clean now thankfully, well mostly. I managed to rinse the majority of the dirty water off them in the kitchen sink,” he said. The kitten that had found their way onto his lap still had some dirt behind their ears, but he’d try again later to clean it off. “It took a while to take the ones that still needed cleaning into the kitchen, as the clean ones very quickly realised they had a new place to explore.”
“Weren’t you cleaning them in the sink in the first place? In fact, why weren’t you cleaning them in the bath?” Taehyung asked.
“Because there was a cleaning cloth on the coffee table, so I used that. And well the lilies are in there.”
Usually, their bathroom had a handful of plants there that needed to be kept more humid than his workshop could offer or needed to soak, it just so happened that today a few of his lilies had decided they needed to soak. He was going to have to bargain with them later to get them out of the bathroom without getting their pollen anywhere the cats could reach. They’d agree if they got to be next to the lavender for a while. Both were natural gossips so he usually placed them apart, but he could make do for a few days.
Next time he was just going to make them sit in buckets in his workshop to soak and save himself the hassle of potentially poisoning cats.
Taehyung suddenly sat up straight and grabbed Namjoon’s arm. How it didn’t disturb the kittens in Taehyung’s lap, Namjoon didn’t know, but they seemed content despite the jostling. “Wait, what cleaning cloth?” He sounded as panicked as Namjoon had earlier.
“Um, the magic one? You know the one that cleaned the wine stain off the couch like two days ago.” He fished the cloth from his back pocket. “This one.”
“Oh my god,” Taehyung said, his face pale. He put his mug down on the coffee table and grabbed the cloth from Namjoon.
“What? Taehyung, ‘oh my god’ what?”
“This is mine.”
“I’m sorry I used your cloth without asking… I’ll go buy my own next time?” He tried, though he was confused.
“No, hyung,” Taehyung said. “You don’t understand, this is literally mine. You can’t buy another one because I made this, it’s my magic.”
Shit.
There was a thing about Taehyung’s magic. It was the reason why Taehyung had a shot of Namjoon’s calming potion in every drink he consumed at home. It was the reason why he spent every summer since his first year at university at his aunt’s. It was the reason Namjoon and Taehyung weren’t as close as they were during university.
Taehyung had a magic that was a little bit volatile and a lot dangerous if used incorrectly. Chaotic was probably the word. And Taehyung was still learning.
“Do you think…” he trailed off, gesturing to the kittens around them.
Taehyung nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe. It’s likely, right?”
“What- uh- what’s the spell say again?”
Taehyung flipped the cloth over until he found the tag. “It says ‘to make this thing look pristine, divide the dirty from the clean’, fuck if I know how that creates living animals but I guess it does.”
Both of them stared at the cloth. Namjoon could barely process how Taehyung’s magic had managed this. Hardly anyone could conjure up living beings with their magic, it took literal years of training. And yet Taehyung had managed it.
Taehyung snorted. “This is crazy.”
It was crazy. So crazy. “Do you think there’s any way we can reverse it?” he asked.
“I have no idea what part of the spell even caused this, assuming it is this spell. They could have been spelled before you picked them up? We’ll have to keep an eye out for any new ones.”
“Let’s not use that on the cats again and hopefully no more will appear from thin air?” Namjoon suggested.
“Yeah, yeah, that sounds-” Taehyung cut himself off with a yawn. The two kittens who’d been resting in his lap copied the yawn. Cute. “I’m so tired, hyung.”
Namjoon could see that Taehyung was struggling to keep himself awake all of a sudden. His body slouched back into the sofa and his eyes were drifting closed. Another kitten came to rest by his head on the back of the sofa, nudging softly at his hair. “Were the students extra tiring today?”
“No- no they were fine, jus’ really drained after classes ended. I was fine this afternoon though, s’weird,” Taehyung mumbled.
“Like all your energy got used up really quickly?” he suggested.
Taehyung sleepily nodded.
It would make sense. If it was the cloth that created the extra kittens, then Taehyung used his magic for it. Even if Namjoon used the cloth, the magic had to come from somewhere and Namjoon definitely didn’t have the power to create them. It made sense.
And then with the Still Life shot too, it wasn’t quite a Dreamers, but Taehyung was already tired when he came home so it probably tipped him over the edge. He probably should have thought of that before he gave Taehyung his hot chocolate. Guess that was another thing to apologise for later.
Taehyung seemed to have fallen asleep next to him. He must have used all his energy creating the kittens.
There was still so much they needed to figure out.
They didn’t know how, or if, they could reverse it. They didn’t know what part of the spell even caused it. And until they figured it out, they had twelve cats to deal with. It wasn’t like they could just take magic cats to the shelter, who knew if there were any side effects of being spontaneously created.
He was going to have to look after twelve kittens. He didn’t have enough hands for that, even with Taehyung helping in the evenings that was still a lot of work. It was a lot of time that he didn’t have to dedicate to caring for them. Maybe he should ring Seokjin again, preferably without Jungkook around, ask them to turn their café into a cat café. Make it a summer theme or something whilst they figure out the magic.
Oh god.
Summer. Taehyung was leaving as soon as the break started. He jumped up and ran to the calendar in the kitchen. Thankfully all the kittens seemed to prefer sleeping on top of Taehyung than him so he didn’t even disturb them.
He had a week. Taehyung had already been packing, he knew that, but he literally had until next Monday and Taehyung would be off to his aunt’s in Japan for the summer. He had to go. Namjoon couldn’t stop him, he tried before and it didn’t work.
Maybe he could even ask his aunt about the spell whilst he was there and share with Namjoon anything that would be helpful.
He walked back into the living room in time to see the two kittens that had been sleeping in the hallway slowly make their way towards Taehyung’s feet. Before Taehyung had returned home, Namjoon had had a hard time getting them to stay near him. Perhaps his roommate was less threatening to them or something.
He was pretty sure if he counted, he’d find all twelve of them somewhere around Taehyung. It was really cute.
They needed to talk about so much, but Namjoon figured Taehyung could sleep for a bit. It wasn’t like the kittens were going anywhere anytime soon.
He moved Taehyung's head so that he wasn’t at an awkward angle and decided to continue trying to kitten-proof the room in the time he had that they were all resting. They could figure out the details later.