Chapter Text
How he hasn’t noticed the fox perched up there up until just now, he doesn’t know. The fox’s post isn’t a discreet spot, an unfilled space between the books on the topmost shelf in front of Alfred, and Alfred’s been here for a few hours at least.
It’s surprising he’s only now realised the fox is there since Alfred has been latching on to the slightest of distractions for the past half an hour, when his attention began to dwindle, and the weird fixation of the fox should have done the trick in diverting him from this assignment, yet, apparently not. Man, Alfred never would have succeeded in one of his three childhood career aspirations—becoming a ninja. He’d be dead right now if that familiar was an assassin.
With any luck, he has more success as a software system developer but, in light of his physical repulsion to completing this assignment, maybe he shouldn’t pin all of his hopes on it.
It’s Orion’s giddy outburst of barks that alerts Alfred to the familiar watching him. The wolf doesn’t display any hostility, his enthusiastic greeting isn’t out of the ordinary, much akin to Alfred’s readiness to meet new people and creatures, and he’s up on his feet and pacing in animated circles, pawing at the ground in an effort to lure the fox from his spot on the bookshelf.
The fox is pretty. Actually, it’s so pretty Alfred wonders if it’s a girl—what are girl foxes called, again, vixens?—and Alfred figures that she must be the familiar of an omega. Her delicate face and nimble body, even the poise of her sitting position, strikes Alfred as the softness of an omega. There’s a striking gravitas to her eyes, crystal green, and the autumn red of her coat seems to darken above her eyes, creating the illusion of heavyset eyebrows.
The goofiness of her eyebrows offsets her graceful bearing, as does the way she startles when her gaze flickers between Alfred and Orion and then she’s scrambling, almost toppling over the front of the shelf in her haste to flee. She catches herself and jumps down and out of view, Alfred can’t see her behind the wall of books, though Orion almost claws holes into the carpet as he pushes himself into a sprint, barrelling after her.
Alfred’s intrigued, too, he’s never seen a fox flounder like a fish out of water, then again, he’s not seen that many foxes, he lives in Seattle, so… yeah. There’re probably urban foxes that forage in the trash sometimes, but he doesn’t make a hobby of lurking down allies, and he’s not come across that many people who have them for familiars, but even Alfred knows that foxes are supposed to be agile, or whatever.
It kind of seems as though that familiar hadn’t intended on being discovered, creepily committed to watching Alfred, hence the flailing when Orion busted the fox.
Alfred spares some hope on Orion finding her, but she’s evidently bested him with masterful bolting—it takes a lot to get past Orion, he’s a sharp one, he gets it from Alfred, of course—but Alfred’s familiar mirrors his disappointment when he’s led back to Alfred by a sour-faced librarian.
“No running in the library,” she jabs an accusing finger at the two of them, and Orion plods over to Alfred to flop down at the alpha’s feet with a disgruntled huff.
“I feel ya, buddy, bet that fox didn’t get into trouble,” Alfred consoles his familiar, sending a petulant look to where the librarian had been standing moments ago.
For the life of him, now that Alfred’s trying to concentrate, he can’t, maddened by the mysterious incident with the fox, plagued by curiosity as to whom the familiar belongs to and why they’d want to be watching Alfred.
He’s either on someone’s hit list or he has a secret admirer.
He thinks he prefers the latter.