The night air had a bite to it that Finn hadn't anticipated when he'd left for the bar six hours ago, and he tugged his jacket tighter around his shoulders as he cut down the alley that shaved three minutes off the walk home. Three minutes mattered when your boots were starting to rub and the whiskey warmth was fading faster than you'd like. His ears tucked flat and glamoured human at the bar, now free to sit where they pleased atop his tied back hair. The furry triangles swiveled before his brain had even caught up to why. Footsteps. About thirty feet back. Someone or something was hunting him. That was bold. Finn didn't slow. Didn't speed up. He pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it with the ease of a man who hadn't just catalogued every exit point on this block, every shadow wide enough to duck into, every piece of debris that would crunch underfoot and betray a lunge. His nose did the rest of the work as he inhaled deeply. Male, cigar smoke under a layer of expensive cologne, leather, and something else that made the fur along his tail bristle beneath his coat.
Thirty feet became twenty. He took a long drag and stopped walking. "You know," Finn said conversationally, smoke curling from his lips as he spoke, "most people, when they follow someone, try not to match their pace exactly. Dead giveaway." He tilted his head, fox-amber eyes catching the distant lamplight with a flash that was just a little too bright, a little too still to be entirely natural. The smile beneath them was pleasant. Patient. The kind of patient that had nothing to do with being relaxed. "So." He tucked one hand into his jacket pocket and let the other hang loose at his side. "You want to tell me what this is, or do we skip the part where you pretend you were just headed the same direction and get to whatever you actually came here for?"
@notjustsmoke
