Oh, very amusing, Ripper.
Ah, well, it was his chance and he wasn't wasting it. He neatly twisted his small, new body around and lunged and the grasping arms of the soldiers missed him entirely and before they could do anything, he was safely darting through an alley and far away.
Ethan stalked down the streets of Sunnydale with his newly acquired tail twitching irritably behind him. Ripper knew he was more of a dog person. Clearly, this was his idea of a joke.
With probably more than a little vengeance mixed it.
He passed an old discarded mirror propped against a brick wall and stopped in front of it.
Yes, he was a cat. Black, with oddly un-feline brown eyes. Medium-long fur and scruffy. His ears were laid flat, and he looked quite as annoyed as he felt.
He sighed and walked on.
Ethan had arrived as Giles expected, sitting on his doorstep and looking up at him with narrowed eyes and back-turned ears.
"Hello, Ethan," he said, and unlocked his door and let the cat precede him in.
Ethan promptly settled himself in front of Giles's chest of spell components and stared pointedly. Giles chuckled.
"Oh, no, I don't think so."
He headed up the stairs to his bedroom to change, and more sensed than heard Ethan following him. He stripped off Ethan's gaudy shirt as Ethan himself hopped up onto the bed and then sat there, glaring.
"The way I see it," Giles said, opening a drawer and pulling out a white T-shirt. "I was a demon for about... eighteen hours. Add to that a few more for interest, and for the fact that my life was in peril whereas yours, here, is not, and let's say perhaps... thirty-six hours?"
Ethan reared back a bit in shock, and then hissed, which was probably that form's interpretation of a colorful curse word.
Giles grinned broadly, feeling suddenly more lighthearted than he had in weeks, maybe months. Most likely it was partly adrenaline from the change and the fight, but... if he were honest with himself, this little game with Ethan did have a certain enjoyable familiarity to it.
He put on the T-shirt and headed back downstairs, his stomach growling after the day of not eating, since all he'd had an appetite for as a demon was, well, kittens... and really, he hadn't been that far gone, yet.
On that note, he supposed that he should go out at some point and buy cat food.
No point in following Giles downstairs. He knew Ripper well enough to know that the imposed sentence of thirty-six hours would be seen through to the end. So, instead, he padded up along Ripper's suddenly vast-seeming bed to the pillows. He considered, briefly, marking his territory and in fact, the biological imperative was rather insistent, but then he decided against it at the last moment and instead simply rolled around on Rupert's pillow and willed himself to shed. A lot.
The fact that this also happened to get him covered in Giles-scent was merely a pleasant side effect.
In fact, he noted, as he lay there on his side, surveying the mess of unmade sheets, the whole bed, to his cat senses, smelled deeply of Ripper. And of himself. Come and sweat.
Feline arousal felt... exceedingly strange.
Giles was just settling down to eat when Ethan finally came strolling back down the stairs, crouched, and then leapt up onto the counter.
It would have been graceful if he hadn't skidded on landing and knocked over Giles's water glass and the nearest bottle of Scotch. Ethan surveyed the damage and then sat, daintily, on the nearest dry spot and licked the water off his front paw, clearly pleased with himself.
By the time Giles got back with paper towels to soak up the mess, Ethan had absconded with his chicken.
Mentally, he crossed "cat food" off of his shopping list.
He then noted that the battle was on.
This was not the first time Ethan had been four-legged as a result of a spell. In those younger days of theirs, they had, now and then, played with transmogrification. They'd been partial to dogs, in fact. Ripper had always manifested as a well-bred border collie while Ethan ended up a rather eclectic mutt.
It had been so freeing, roaming the streets in those forms, utterly ignored by humanity. Not to mention the fact that it gave Ripper plenty of opportunity to engage in his beloved exhibitionist thing without fear of censure. Ethan personally felt that voyeurism was a much more appropriate kink for a meant-to-be Watcher, but then, Rupert was, of course, trying to get away from that particular destiny...
In any case, he was finding that the whole situation was far less amusing when one was on one's own in the change. Ethan lay beneath Giles's desk after polishing off his ill-gotten meal and sulked, tapping his tail in time with his irritation.
He tracked Giles's movements by sound; eating, washing up, and then showering and heading up the stairs again. It was late by then, but demon-hunters and demons and sorcerers kept late hours, so this was probably something like Rupert's normal schedule, Ethan supposed.
The house grew very still and quiet after Giles shut off the lights.
Ethan prowled a couple of circuits around the apartment, gnawed the leaves off Rupert's houseplants, clawed the couches, and then climbed up the stairs.
Giles was asleep already, a small mountain under the covers to Ethan's eyes. Ethan hopped up on the bed and walked up to where he could see him, sleeping with one arm curled under the pillow and his body relaxed. Ethan curled up on the pillow beside his, and dropped off to sleep, thinking again about... shedding...
The next morning was like most mornings. Quiet and empty. None of the children came by to see how he was recovering from his ordeal.
He wasn't really surprised by this, but... well, it would have been nice to have someone to talk to, at least. Someone who wasn't... Ethan.
He'd underestimated the damage one small feline could do to an apartment. He'd rather miss those plants. He'd had that spider plant for almost five years. Not to mention the annoyance of the slightly shredded upholstery.
He sighed over his morning coffee as he surveyed the damage. The culprit was nowhere to be seen. Most likely he was off somewhere hiding and laughing over his own destructive powers.
In fact, he didn't turn up again until Giles returned from his morning jog. He was sitting on Giles' desk, looking frighteningly proud of himself.
And the house was even more of a disaster area than before.
Ethan watched him take in the chaos of books and papers everywhere, and then cocked his head to the side, a feline smirk, and then turned and walked away, tail held proudly high, cheerfully displaying his fuzzy kitty balls for all the world to see.
"You know, I could have you neutered. I hear that curbs the destructive impulses."
Ethan snapped a look over his shoulder and sat down again, delicately curling his tail around his paws. The bored defiance in his eyes clearly said, "You wouldn't."
He sighed and began to pick up the shredded papers. Then remembered he still had the cage he'd used to catch that undead cat. Yes... that would be good.
Generally, he knew how far he could push Ripper without provoking serious consequences. Clearly, this time around he had misjudged.
He flopped down on his side and wriggled his arm... front leg... around a little more through the bars of this damned... cage... thing... trying to get at the latch. And failing miserably. Well, at least growling was proving to be just as viscerally satisfying as cursing. He could cling to that.
He squirmed back away from the bars and paced, back and forth, back and forth. Sighed. Looked at the front door. Willed it to open.
It didn't.
Ripper was still out galavanting about, leaving him here. In a cage.
Honestly, this was extreme even for them. And where was he, anyway? Could have at least left the TV on. Something to alleviate this mind-numbing boredom.
He dropped down on his side and watched his own tail flick.
Strange thing, that. His tail. It really did rather seem to have a mind of its own. He watched it for a few more minutes, and then, with a quick lunge reached out and slapped his paw down over it.
It twitched under the restraint. Then twitched again, hard enough to flick out from under his paw. He reared back slightly. Watched it again, lying straight out away from him, and slowly curling and uncurling.
Surely it didn't really have a mind of its own...
He tried to switch it back over towards him, but all it did was flop around a little. Perhaps he was just... inept? After all, it wasn't a body part he'd exactly learned to use... It flopped around a bit more, and he reached for it with his paw again.
Too far away.
Focused in on the twitchy little tip, he carefully scooted the front of his body around... closer, closer.
He slapped his paw down.
His tail flipped off in a different direction.
Damn.
He waited a few moments, as though it were actually possible to catch a part of himself unawares, and then...
Pounced!
And missed. Turned around suddenly and snapped at it, very, very nearly catching the fur at the tip in his teeth. But not quite.
It fluttered, teasingly, just out of reach. For a moment, he was perfectly still. And it was still.
All was quiet. Then he made his move.
Giles really very nearly had to bite his own hand to keep from laughing. As it was, he had his palm pressed over his lips, firmly, holding back the chuckles that would betray his presence to the cat in the cage on the desk.
Who was now holding his tail with both front paws and regarding it with great, intense concentration.
He managed to keep quiet... right up until Ethan's tail spasmed out of his grip, and Ethan flopped over on his back and hissed, the very picture of complete frustration.
Giles hadn't laughed so hard in years.
The look on Ethan's face, half-chagrined, half-annoyed, almost made up for the mess he'd made of the apartment. Giles took a deep breath, steadied himself, and opened the cage door.
Ethan darted immediately up the stairs, and Giles decided he didn't even want to think about what he might do up there.
"Just so you know," he called upwards, "If I find anything out of place, I think we'll find out just how many ways there are to skin a cat."
He waited, with his head cocked to the side.
Blessed silence greeted his ears, so he smiled, nodded, and went to put away his groceries.
Ethan behaved himself for the rest of the day. Whimsical though Rupert's threats were, after that incident with the cage, he knew that there was something real behind them, and, since being a cat was quite bad enough, he actually wasn't really feeling like provoking him. At the moment.
So instead, he stalked around the house and took full advantage of his smaller size, wriggling into closets and under Rupert's bed, just to see what he might find.
Tragically, he did not find much. Poor Giles had very few skeletons in his closets or anywhere else at the moment, which was quite the disappointment. Also made him wonder how the poor man got through a day without dying from tedium.
Watching Giles go about his routine did not help him figure that out.
Apparently his former violent, fiery lover spent most of the day cleaning, reading, and, most vicariously humiliating of all,watching game shows--complete with the requisite shouting of answers at the screen--and, inexplicably, some soap opera called Passions.
Ethan paused at the threshold of the living room, on what had to be his two-hundredth circuit of the seemingly rapidly shrinking apartment, and stared at the television screen. A woman was speaking with the standard melodramatic tones of the genre. He looked over at the sofa. Giles had looked up from his reading and was taking in her soliloquy with a look of concentration akin to the one he'd once worn while casting.
Oh, Ripper, Ethan thought, and his heart sank. How the mighty had fallen.
He hopped up onto the couch, and Giles flinched, as though he'd forgotten he was there.
"Ethan," he said, looking down at the book and blushing.
Ethan looked up at him smugly and settled himself down on one of the open notebooks on the couch. He'd found that, for some reason, his feline form much preferred to be sitting on something.
"It isn't my fault," Rupert said.
Ethan tilted his ears skeptically.
"It's that idiot Spike. Watched this stupid thing every day... And, and... well."
Ethan's attention was suddenly riveted to the screen. Wonderful. A character in an insipid TV show with his name.
"It-- it has. A library," Rupert said. Evasively. A lightbulb went on.
It had a character named Ethan.
Suddenly not feeling quite as disgusted, Ethan made himself comfortable on the notebook and watched Ripper watch the show.
At least until Giles got too self-conscious and switched it off.
"Shoo," he said, waving a hand at Ethan, obviously going for the notebook.
Ethan didn't shoo. Giles pushed on him a bit. Ethan glared. Giles pushed.
Ethan flipped around and sank his claws and teeth into Giles' hand.
Very satisfy yelp, that was. He cuddled back down on the notebook, smirking as much as he could.
"Ow, you bloody pillock," Rupert muttered, gripping his wounded hand. But he didn't try to reach for the notebook again. Victory, then, even if it was a small one. Ethan would take what he could get at this point.
After that, they both were quiet for a while. Ethan napped on the notebook, half-an-ear tuned to the scritch of Rupert's pencil. At some point, though, he must have drifted into a deeper sleep, because he awoke.
Fingers, touching his skull. Gliding down his neck, and then a whole hand settling over his spine, sliding down, warm and with just enough pressure to be... comforting. The hand stopped and lifted away at the base of his tail, and he had a moment to be disappointed before it returned to his shoulders and repeated the motion.
Ethan didn't move. He hardly breathed. One hint he was awake and this would surely end.
A few more long strokes down his back, and then Rupert's fingers pressed into the fur just behind his ear. Scratched there, gently.
And... shit. He was purring. That was... more involuntary than he would have expected.
He waited a bit longer, enjoying the caress, then he risked cracking one eye just slightly open.
Rupert was looking down, watching his own hand, with a look of concentration and deep thought. His fingers drifted down a bit, finding their way into the fur at Ethan's throat, and... damn, he couldn't just sit there anymore.
Trying not to think about it too much, he rolled over on his back, tilting his head back to give Ripper access to his chin. Didn't look at him. Knew eye-contact would never be conducive to this kind of... whatever this was.
Tenderness.
It wasn't even sexual. It was simply... nice.
He waited. Rupert's fingers had stopped, pulled away, but only so far he could still feel them, in the ghostly pressure on the tips of his fur.
Then they settled again, massaging into the fur on his chest. Ethan squeezed his eyes shut and reveled.
Perhaps being feline had its perks after all.
It ended the next morning, as he'd been promised.
Rupert wouldn't meet his eyes as he said, "Go. Probably best you leave the country."
Yes, that it was. What with the American military after him and all. Fortunately, he doubted they'd have an easy time extraditing him from England for committing magical crimes.
So there was nothing for him to do but walked out the door, feeling ungainly and gigantic, his hands clumsy on doorknobs, and Rupert's clothes too large on him.
After he'd teleported, he regretted his muted senses that couldn't even catch the scent of Ripper on his shirt.