estirose

I rather botched uploading this onto AO3 for a Yuletide Treat, so here’s a holiday present for my Kamen Rider Double/W readers!

(Yuletiders on my flist: don’t make the mistake I did, make sure it says “Anonymous [yourname]” before approving it, or use the “post to collection” and double-check.)

Summary: Shoutarou ends up in Mick’s body.

A Little More Out of the Ordinary
by Estirose
c 2010

All Shoutarou wanted to do was have coffee, like any good hard-boiled detective. It was near impossible to do when one was stuck in the body of his partner’s cat.

He’d woken up that morning with no sheets, no clothes, no anything, and the first word that he’d managed to say was “Mrrr?”, instead of “Where are my clothes?”, like he’d wanted to say. To make things worse, he was about a foot long, had fur, and had an inescapable craving for tuna. Plus, he was curled up. With Philip. In Philip’s bed. And Shoutarou, like all good detectives, was most definitely into girls and not guys.

Leaping down from Philip’s bed, he prowled around, looking for a way back into human form, and wondering if Mick was now prowling around in his apartment, making growling sounds, being very confused, and making a mess of Shoutarou’s spartan apartment. At least he probably couldn’t make more of a mess than Philip had their first few days after Begins Night.

Which still left him unable to communicate with his partner. There was a bond, but that required him to be able to put on the belt, and that was not possible at the moment. Belts did not fit on cats. At least not normally, though the belt that Mick had worn was an exception. But he still had to put it on, and no matter how much he wished he had them, opposable thumbs did not come standard on cats.

“Mick?” Philip was up, stretching as if there was nothing interesting going on. Of course, nothing of interest was going on; his partner was only a cat, after all. He watched as Philip fetched the cat food and put it down. Shoutarou remained standing there, and thought how weird it was to have four legs. He really wanted the tuna, his stomach was growling, but he had to make Philip realize that Something was Wrong. Hopefully his partner had observed Mick enough that he would figure out something was wrong, because Shoutarou was not going to spend the next few hours – or however long it took someone to realize that their partner hadn’t shown up yet – as a cat.

It was too bad that Akiko was off on her honeymoon with her husband Ryu, or at least there would be two more people there to get the idea.

“Come on, Mick,” Philip said, walking over and picking Shoutarou up. It was a disconcerting feeling, to be picked up by one’s chest, and less to be cuddled by someone considerably bigger than you. Except when it was one’s parents, of course, but Philip was not Shoutarou’s dad and right now, he wanted to get down. He fought against Philip’s hold, knowing Mick would almost never do so, hoping his partner didn’t drop him. Because, of course, Shoutarou was not a cat and he didn’t know if he’d land on all four feet. “What’s the matter?”

But Philip let him go, and Shoutarou trotted towards the door, hoping that Philip might be intrigued enough to follow him. Of course, there still was the small matter of getting out; he still couldn’t work a door in the shape he was in.

“I think Shoutarou would be unhappy if you got out again,” Philip said from above, having followed him to the door.

He was picked up once more, and deposited back at his food dish. His sorrowful “Mrrr?” didn’t do anything, either, so he just looked at Philip as his partner worked on his own breakfast.

Getting out of the room was out. He could have tried to get out by the way of Philip’s workroom, but Philip wasn’t exactly a slouch, and chances were, he’d be caught before he hit the tunnel. Besides, he didn’t really want to be out in the world without Philip with him; he didn’t know really how to defend himself in this new form.

So, how was he supposed to get out?

Somehow, then, he had to let Philip know that something was going on. He really didn’t want to wait until Philip got too curious about the fact that his partner hadn’t shown up for work and go to investigate; besides, his apartment really needed some cleaning.

He looked up, wondering how he’d get out of this one, and spotted Fang sitting on his desk. Normally, he would have been annoyed, given the mess that Fang made, knocking over his coffee, playing with his typewriter, and screwing up his paperwork, but he had more urgent things to worry about.

Wait – his typewriter. There was paper in his typewriter. If he could just hit the keys without making too much of a mess….

Jumping up to his chair, and then bounding up to his desk, he shooed Fang away by batting at the device. Philip didn’t comment at this, since Mick had done this before, with Fang; but Shoutarou hoped that what he was doing was a little more out of the ordinary. He reached out a paw and hit the first key, as best he could. Of course, this meant that he also hit the keys next to the one he intended, causing a jam, and he was forced to pry the keys back with his claws and try again.

Maybe if he angled his paw a little – yes! He hit his first key, then a second, third and fourth, fifth, and sixth, before Philip decided to check on “Mick”, lifting him up. But Philip paused, still holding Shoutarou in midair, as he read the message. “I am….” He put Shoutarou down on the desk. “Fascinating.”

With renewed hope, Shoutarou started gingerly typing out his message. “I am Shoutarou. Mick is in me.” At least Philip let him complete it, this time.

It took Philip quite a few hours to figure out what had happened, including a trip to Shoutarou’s to retrieve Mick, and figuring how to get the Double Driver on Shoutarou’s cat form so that Shoutarou could talk. But at long last, both he and Mick were back in their normal forms, and Shoutarou stretched, glad to have his hands and the rest of him back. As he watched Mick jog around the room, apparently just as happy to be back in his own form, he knew that he never, ever wanted to be stuck as a cat again.

Crossposted from Ramblings Yet Once More here.