Midorima likes patterns. He likes routine. He likes things to be the way that he expects them. Prismatica itself has upset a lot of his routines and patterns, knocked a lot of them right out of the park to borrow another sport's metaphor. But Midorima is decidedly not ready to let this one fall out of balance, even if his moonblessing is threatening to push it.

Midorima has proven multiple times that he'll go to certain lengths to protect the people he cares about at this point, but Takao doesn't know that, so he's going to refuse to admit it. Even if he would do more than moonlace to make sure that Takao stays safe.

"Merlin! Fetch him!"

Merlin, who had been upstairs this whole time, takes some time to figure out how to get down. It is a challenge, after all, or else it wouldn't have been an effective way to stall the dog from getting out the door with Midorima. But he knows how. And in a few moments, the tiny poof is running to attack Takao's shoelaces now. Amazing. His tail is wagging the whole time, he's definitely playing. Exactly why Midorima has trained him to do this is questionable and he will not explain himself.

In reality, he just trained the dog to play tug of war with shoelaces and 'fetch' is for Merlin to run and bring it back. He is absolutely abusing this play command for Takao.