On the Prowl

It was already dark when Remy Devaul walked down the steps of the brownstone she had been staying at, not bothering to lock the door behind her. The young man she had been staying with – or was taking advantage of a better way of putting it? - was still inside on the couch, probably dumbfounded by the way the lithe brunette had just expertly extracted herself from him.

He had been simple enough to con, being as young as he was. The man could have been no more than 22 or 23, but wealthy beyond imagining due to a trust fund set up by his parents, who had obviously overlooked the part of parenting that instructed their sons to stay away from women like Remy. Or perhaps it was that the boy had failed to see through Remy’s guise of someone who was interested in him for who he was, rather than what he could buy. Young men of wealth were usually looking for that imbecilic and unattainable woman – one who loved them for their personalities rather than their pocketbooks. Although few would admit it, all women – and people, when you get right down to it – are superficial to a fault. They want someone who is good looking and who can give them the things they want and need.

Though the man Remy had been charming more than fulfilled the second requirement, there had been much left to desire when it came to the first, which was probably why the man had responded so easily to Remy’s flirtation. He was plain and easily overlooked, though Remy had not turned a blind eye to his ordering of a 12 galleon glass of scotch at the Leaky Cauldron the night she had picked him as her prey. A few well-chosen words, expertly applied flattery, and yet another lie about who she was and where she came from was all it had taken to charm him into wanting Remy. And when a man wants you, he will give you what you want.

But after only three days, Remy had grown bored with her captor. He had already taken it upon himself to buy Remy clothing, jewelry, and trinkets, not to mention putting her up in the guest room of his home – accommodations which were much finer than anything Remy could have afforded on her own. But this outpouring of riches lavishing of gifts had come so quickly and willingly that after 24 hours, Remy had failed to see what more she could gain from poor whatever-his-name-was, which had promptly led to Remy’s perhaps brutal and definitely abrupt departure.

Having left the house and its occupant behind her without a backward glance, Remy now walked briskly down the street. The dress she wore was one her most recent victim had purchased for her, as were the black four-inch heels that she had no trouble walking in. Surely this outfit had made it that much harder for him to let her go, but it would make finding another piggy-bank – perhaps a more powerful, and less clingy one this time – that much easier. The bag she carried over her shoulder was stuffed with the other wares she had garnered from her past endeavor, along with the money she had been carrying when she met him. She had thrown out most of her old clothes and things in favour of the new and improved models which had come free of charge.

Having reached the heart of Diagon Alley, Remy made a split-second decision on tonight’s venue, veering confidently toward one of her favorite haunts, The Blue Moon Nightclub. As she pushed open the door, she felt the thrum of music pulsing around her, the bass drowning out any lingering thoughts she had had of the place she had just left. Without hesitation, Remy slunk through the crowd, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder as she passed a particularly handsome stranger. Of course, appearances were not her first priority when seeking out fresh blood, but after the last three days with someone a head shorter – and far less likely to turn heads – Remy could not pretend she was not slightly preoccupied by the prospect of someone a bit more desirable.

Reaching the bar, Remy slid onto a vacant stool and ordered a dragon fire cocktail, the cost of which was picked up by a mousy looking man at the other end of the bar who leered unattractively at Remy, who didn’t bother to return his exited wave lest he get the impression that he should come over. Turning away from him and the bar itself, Remy sat on her stool facing the room at large, her dark eyes scanning for fresh meat as she took the first sip of her drink.

((This is what Remy is wearing:

Spoiler:

))

Skeeter Hudson had just suffered through a rather boring day full of paperwork, files, forms, busy work, and other menial tasks that he was sure had been created for the sole purpose of boring him to death...or at least stupor. He had thought becoming an Auror would mean constant action. But as one of the newest people on the force, that also meant her had a lot of desk work sent his way. They sure knew how to keep people interested...

Before getting a steady job, Skeeter had never been one to drink nor to go to clubs or anything that most people his age thought were must-do sort of activities. He had soon learned, though, that such activities were necessary to remind himself that he was still alive, and there was more behind forms on wizard's who really needed to find a hobby instead of doing useless things like cursing muggle items and making fake threats.

He apparated easily to Diagon Alley and walked down the street towards the Blue Moon Nightclub; he had only been there a few times, but he knew well enough that he could find some company and distractions there better than anywhere else. He turned towards its direction and slipped into the club, which seemed to be in full swing.

He strode over to the bar, running a hand through his hair to muse it a little more, though that really only added to his charm. He placed a hand on the beer and called to the bartender over the music, “Uh, a Firewhiskey, please?” He turned his body so his side was touching the bar and saw a creepy looking man waving at someone over Skeeter's shoulder. Skeeter turned around and saw a woman give the man a snide look.

The woman was beautiful and Skeeter could not help but feel his eyebrows raise in appreciation. He stared at her even when her eyes had flicked away, taking in her beauty. He heard someone talking to him almost from a distance. Suddenly, the disgruntled voice of the bartender wafted towards him. “Hey, mate, you want yer drink or not?”

Skeeter turned and his eyes widened in surprise. “Wha- Oh, right. Sorry about that.” He wrapped one of his large hands around the glass and pulled it towards him. The man flicked an eyebrow and scowled at him. “Oh, yeah! Right.” He fished out the coins he needed to pay for the drink and pushed them towards the man, adding a generous tip for his sheer obliviousness. “Sorry, again.” He chuckled.

He turned again and raised the glass to his lips, drinking from the glass, looking at the woman over the brim of the glass. He swallowed, feeling warmth spread from the liquid. He lowered the glass and sighed contentedly. He quickly made a decision and smiled to himself, tightening his hold on the glass as he pushed himself from the bar.

He weaved between people, ignoring women who glanced his way and men who hailed him as a friend, if only from vague association. His eyes stayed on the woman at the bar and he joined here, leaning against the bar so he could face her. He jerked his head towards the creepy man who was still trying to catch her eye. “Tough luck. Sometimes these places can be great to meet cool people, but you do find there are some duds out there.” He grinned his lopsided smile and held out a hand, moving to set his glass down. “Hi, I'm Skeeter Hudson. You looked like you might enjoy some company.”

The drink Remy was sipping was not a strong one, which was probably just as well because she rarely drank herself to excess. Her wit and self-awareness were some of the best tools she had in her bag of tricks, and being drunk did not exactly put her in the right mindset to be making the best of those artifices. She had a soft spot for tequila, though, which is why she avoided it on nights like tonight, when she was here strictly on a business venture.

The club was already busy, with bodies sliding past one another both on the dance floor and off. Her dark, perceptive eyes darted from place to place, observing the controlled chaos around her. Here and there, a man caught her eye, either for his appearance or the noticeable expense of his attire, and Remy flagged them as she continued to search the room for some combination of both. Although she was rarely in a position to be all that picky, Remy did have standards; there was no use exerting her not unimpressive skills on someone who could give her nothing in return. If that something happened to be a good partner in bed or a few hundred galleons depended on the situation and her mood, but tonight she was open to the possibilities.

Sipping slowly, Remy’s eyes were scanning mostly for men, but it was impossible not to notice the women around them. It was pitiful, really, watching the desperation written across the faces of some of the women in the club. Their facial expressions, the way they hung close to their men, the sheer amount of cleavage spilling out of their too-tight dresses; all of it reeked of neediness. One woman had even taken it upon herself to sit on the lap of one particularly distracted looking gentleman, whose wandering eyes showed just how ineffective the woman’s tactics were.

They were going about it all the wrong way, Remy knew, but she wasn’t about to inform them of this and increase her competition. They weren’t likely to listen to her tactics anyway, because they were likely the type of women that still believed that men loved them for their souls and their personalities and all of that nonsense. People like other people for what they bring to the table and the bedroom and not much else. Men like to do the chasing; they do not like to be chased.

And, Remy thought with a smirk over her glass at the scene she was still watching with amusement, They most certainly do not like to be sat on in public.

Having had her fill of internally mocking those women less experienced in the art of attracting men, Remy had been ready to find another more interesting scenario to observe – perhaps one with more worthwhile players to watch – but as her eyes went to make another sweep of the dance floor, she heard the voice of the bartender from behind her, calling someone’s attention in a voice loud enough to be heard over the music, and she turned to see who he was addressing.

The man to whom the bartender had been speaking seemed to have caught on now, and was engaged in what Remy thought seemed like an overly awkward exchange for something as simple as ordering a drink. He was a tall, lanky individual that stood out above the heads of the bar-goers around him. He was definitely not the most attractive man in the room, but he was passably handsome with the type of wide-set eyes and overlarge features that held Remy’s attention, at least until he placed the coins on the counter and pushed them toward the bartender, which was a distraction she could not ignore. The amount a man tips is usually a strong indication of his personal wealth – and willingness to share that wealth – so Remy was mildly pleased to see that the coinage he doled out was far greater than what his firewhiskey would have cost.

Writing him off as a prospect, much the same as she had done for many other men in the room, Remy looked away from the young man, still mildly entertained by the exchange she had just witnessed. She raised her glass to her lips once more and felt the sting of alcohol as it passed down the back of her throat, only to have that sensory input replaced a moment later by a voice beside her. Turning slowly on the stool to face the newcomer, Remy was not altogether disappointed to find it was the man she had just been observing.

Remy followed the man’s gesture as he spoke, leaning around him slightly to see that the creep that had bought her drink hadn’t taken her not-so-subtle hint to bugger off. Having seen what he was referring to, Remy let her eyes slide up the man – Skeeter, he said his name was – until they were connected with his lighter-colored ones. She smirked slightly in response to his overenthusiastic greeting and introduction, though she did not hesitate to take his hand when he offered it.

The size of his hands were proportional to his height, and Remy felt her smaller one disappear in his. His hands were not calloused, which suggested he did not do manual labor for a living, which also boded well for his income level. Now that he was closer, Remy could see that he was dressed well, perhaps not in the most expensive of threads but nicer than average. As she quickly ran his name through her rolodex of people worth knowing she came upon a small note that tied his name somehow to the ministry, but beyond that she had no details. But he was passable in both of her important categories, at least as far as she knew, and obviously interested seeing as he had approached her. Remy really had nothing to lose by sticking around long enough to find out if he was worth pursuing.

“If that is an offer, I would love some,” Remy intoned coyly, looking up at Skeeter from beneath her eyelashes. Though this might have been a flirtatious maneuver Remy would have employed in a multitude of situations, this was really more logistical than coquettish; Skeeter was far taller than she had even anticipated while looking at him from a distance, and though he was leaning on the bar, he was still much higher than her eye level.

“And I’m Remy,” she added, letting her hand slip slowly from his after making her intentionally-surname-less introduction. She found that leaving off her last name allowed her to maintain a certain sense of anonymity, though with all the lying she did about her identity, the people she met rarely made any connection from things they may have heard through the grapevine.

“So what brings you in tonight?” Remy asked conversationally, turning her body subtly to face Skeeter. Remy had found that body language served as a greater attraction to men than most anything she said or did explicitly, and she did not hesitate to use this tactic in Skeeter’s case. From the looks of him and the line he had used in approaching her, Remy guessed that he was rather more awkward with women than she was with men, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Men who had less experience in the realm of women were usually the easiest to take advantage of, as had been the case with poor whatever-his-name-was.

Skeeter smiled pleasantly at her, glad to not have been shot down or sent away. Skeeter was somewhat like a loveable stray, who some people liked to keep around, but others felt it unbecoming and felt too uncomfortable to actually manage to keep him around. He had learned that women enjoyed his company because he was not threatening, though this woman did not seem like one to be threatened. She was much too intimidating. Skeeter had rather surprised himself by even joining her. He had often found women approached him. Maybe that was why she had seemed like appealing company.

He smiled his lopsided grin that revealed the comic, light-hearted nature within him as she took his hand and introduced herself as Remy. She was shorter than him- everyone was shorter than him, it seemed- so she looked up at him and he could not help but smile wider down at her. She had a very charming air about her that was hard to dismiss. Even the casual use of only her first name seemed to add to the aurora she had. He did not mind much. He, really, was only looking for company. He had just happened to find it in the form of the beautiful woman in front of him.

He felt his eyes look out across the club briefly as the door opened but but his eyes quickly came back to Remy when she spoke. She had a way of demanding attention, simply with her casual words and the openness of her body language as she turned to face him. He straightened up slightly and ran one of his hands through his hair, destroying any neatness it may have had, yet this only made him appear more handsome. The carelessness in the way he looked was not a slobbish carelessness but more one that indicated individuality, freedom, and a pleasant air of casualness.

That was the thing about Skeeter. In a lot of ways, he was like an overgrown teenaged boy, minus the crackling voice, awkward body changes, and level of immaturity that was comparable only with fruit flies. He had an innocent air about him, someone who reveled in jokes and conversation, and was almost unaware of any of the things people may see in him that may make him useful to them. He was earnest in most the things he did, and pleasantly unambitious in most areas of his life. Basically, he was the type of guy who was content just to be alive and well, and everything else just came as added bonuses, such as company on a busy night in a nightclub.

He shrugged, dropping his hand to his side and returning to lean against the bar. "Ah, the usual really. I bored my mind out for the past eight hours, for the past five days, and I'm ready for a pick-me-up, relaxation, and some nice conversation." He grinned. "And it looks like a lucked out." He chuckled softly, his eyes shining with an innocent happiness, glad to be rid of the office environment. He drank some of his Firewhisky and asked her. "And yourself?"

The man’s response to her words only solidified her belief that he fell quite distinctly into the realm of individuals she could easily take advantage of. That easy smile could not have been faked, for as good as Remy’s replication of that emotion was, it was nothing like the genuine happiness that seemed so at home on Skeeter’s face. It actually seemed to be one of the only emotions he was capable of in his current environment, which could only bode well for Remy’s ability to charm him. It seemed she was doing it almost without intention, judging from the way she held his attention even amid all the distractions of the club.

He was fidgety, that much was made clear from the way he alternated between standing up straight and leaning on the bar. He also had a tendency to run his hands carelessly through his hair, which Remy guessed to be more of a nervous habit than a method for making himself more attractive, though it accomplished the latter as well. He was not attractive so much in the way Remy was usually attracted to men – blatantly powerful, self-absorbed men with a penchant for younger women who were not their wives – but more in the lost boy kind of way.

Skeeter didn’t seem to have a distinct plan of action in coming up to her, but he was doing okay at faking it, especially when Remy gave him a look to suggest that she understood his feelings on working a 40 hours week and needing a break from the grindstone. She had not, obviously, worked at all this week – unless you counted the work she did in the bedroom with whats-his-name, and with him, it had certainly been a chore - but men tended to relate better to women they thought could understand them. Luckily, Remy was adept at faking just about all experiences and interest in the type of drivel businessmen usually wanted to talk about, at least until they got to the point where talking was no longer necessary.

Remy smiled and feigned embarrassment at Skeeter’s quasi-compliment of his current conversation partner, turning her head slightly away and dropping her eyes behind a curtain of hair that she threw back a moment later. Of course, Remy was not actually embarrassed by his flattery, nor was she in any way opposed to it, but it was pertinent in these types of situations to respond in such a way that did not suggest she was methodically manipulating his thought process to fit her needs and fulfill her wants. That, she knew, would not go over well.

When Skeeter turned the question on Remy, she was mid-sip, which luckily gave her a perfect excuse to stall for a moment and think of an appropriate and vague response to his question. Remy was as slippery as possible when it came to giving direct answers to the people she was trying to manipulate, and she was usually successful in distracting them from the fact that she hadn’t really given them any sort of tangible information. The words which were poised on her lips as she pulled the glass away were no different.

“Just waiting for the fulfillment of my other two wishes, I suppose,” she responded a bit saucily, though she accompanied her words with a sly smile that both helped to highlight the meaning of her comment and distract from any over-analysis of the lack of actual content in the answer. Skeeter, though, seemed to be fairly distracted as it was, which made Remy quick to follow this up with another question of her own.

“So do you dance, Mr. Hudson?” Remy asked boldly and not without suggestion, though she hadn’t specifically asked him to dance. That she would leave for him to do, because men liked to believe that all the best ideas were theirs, and if the way Skeeter’s eyes were raking her body at every other interval, her dark-haired companion was bound to think this was a very, very good idea – that is, if he knew how to dance at all. With those long limbs, it was equally likely that he had never even attempted. They looked potentially dangerous if he didn’t know how to use them correctly.

Skeeter felt the corner of his mouth creep upwards on his face into a pleased, lopsided grin at her answer as to why she was there. He had been sure he had merely succeeded in embarrassing himself rather than proving he was worthy of her attention and company. He had always been pretty lucky at charming people, but it had usually been by accident and never his intention. And he had always been the one to be approached...

That was why he felt so awkward in this situation. He had never been on the opposite side really. Not to say he was some untouchable person. He had always been rather modest and down to earth. He just happened to luck out and have some sort of aura that women flocked to. He was just above average, as were they.

But this... First off this woman was gorgeous. He knew pretty women, but Remy was almost pretty to a fault. Skeeter felt small in her presence, a feat for the six foot plus man, but he also knew if he could win her favor, he would feel ten feet tall. And then there was the strange feeling of having to approach her. Never an overly ambitious man, it was an ambitious move for Skeeter to approach her.

Then there was that seductiveness about her that intimidated and exhilarated him at the same time. The way her eyes pierced his, acting as though they saw through everything. Her body language which said everything it needed too, holding back everything he wanted to know. Her words, enough to make him interested, vague enough to keep him asking for more. Skeeter was sort of innocent, and to be thrown into such a new situation... He was scared. Yet, he sort of like it too.

She asked if he could dance and he laughed, though his heart hammered a little harder against his ribcage. He was a lanky fellow, and he could be graceful as equally as he could be clumsy, and the latter was rather common. If he lucked out, he could dance without serious injury. And well, he had been lucky so far. "It depends on what you mean by dancing? If you mean do I dance well, well I'd rather not say." He let out a quiet chuckle to signify he was just being playful, rather than serious about not being a great dancer.

The laughter which served as the first response to her question was, she had to admit, a bit unexpected, but then Remy had to admit that laughter was one of the outward signs of nervousness that many people showed. Remy herself rarely got nervous, and if she did get that panging feeling that things were about to go wrong – which is about as close to nervousness as she typically got – she usually left the situation as quickly and discreetly as possible.

Going along with his lead, though, Remy smiled and feigned a laugh along with him, taking a sip of her drink quickly afterward so that her false laughter would not go on long enough to be detected. Remy had carefully practiced the art of feigning emotions for the benefit of her “craft”, but she knew that some of her facades were more easily seen through than others. Laughter was a difficult thing to pull off, because it required both vocalization and action to be completely believable. A coy smile or a smirk usually worked equally well in place of laughter, but in this case, Remy had known that putting Skeeter at ease meant laughing along, and so she did.

Whatever it takes… Remy thought to herself as she lowered her glass, already developing a hunger that she often felt when she was mid-hunt. It was at the point where she knew she had a man interested, and now all she had to do was hold his interest long enough to fully reel him in. Skeeter’s body language and expressions read nothing but interest – aside from a few nerves, but she already knew that – and his flirtatious response was further indication. Remy was honestly surprised that the man had managed to pull off such a subtle flirtation, for she had not given him so much credit when he first approached her with him impromptu greeting, but he seemed to be falling into a rhythm that was only helped along by Remy.

“Well if you’d rather not say…” Remy said slowly, setting her drink down. The fingertips of her right hand moved toward Skeeter’s hand, which was resting at his side, and she let her hand linger for a few seconds at the junction of his wrist to his leg, her eyes following her own movements.

“…then perhaps you’d like to show me?” she asked seductively, only then raising her eyes back to meet Skeeter’s, although she had not moved her hand away from his personal space. It was a double entendre, a question that could easily translate to another, far more intimate situation, and she thought perhaps this would not be missed on Skeeter. She knew that such an act could be considered too bold by some, but Skeeter was clearly interested and hadn’t seemed overly skittish up to this point, so it was a carefully calculated risk she was willing to take.