Fianchetto: Mingling at the Hellfire Club (backdated)

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Backdated to Nov 27th. Doug brings Tabitha to a casual Hellfire Club mixer. Someone notices them, and is noticed in turn.


Not every function at the Hellfire Club was a bacchanalia, or the serious business of the wheels-within-wheels chess game that the White and Black courts played against each other. Sometimes it was just as simple as a social gathering. Well, as simple as a social gathering with a ridiculously exclusive guest list could be, anyway. But the low-key by high society standards evening did provide an excellent chance to rehabilitate the image of the Hellfire Club as perceived by Tabitha Smith. Doug wasn't entirely sure why he was so intent on showing her that the club wasn't all the negative sorts of people she'd run into. Maybe it was the fact that too many of his teammates didn't trust him for his standing by the Club and Emma. Maybe it was a need for companionship since Marie-Ange had left New York. Whatever the reason, he'd managed to convince Emma to let him bring Tabitha as a guest. "So, what do you think?" he asked his companion.

She glared at him through a pasty smile. "If these heels were any higher, I could see Long Island from here," she said. "And underwear really don't belong there." Her knuckles were white on her clutch. She was too worked up to focus on her surroundings.

Doug put a hand over Tabitha's white-knuckled one. "Relax," he said soothingly. "You look great." He could see that she felt out of place, but she really didn't look that way to the outside eye.

Emma had caught Tabitha's comments as she was passing by and stopped by her White Knight and his erstwhile companion. "It's all about the attitude, Tabitha," she said. "Fashion will always hurt but it's your choice about whether you concentrate on the pain or you can concentrate on saying fuck you to the pain. And if you can still say fuck you after six hours in five-inch stilettos, you can rule the world." Emma smiled. "Quite literally, for some of us."

Tabitha settled into a more comfortable balance on her heels. "I don't want to rule the world, but if I get what I want, I can deal with this." She forced her attention outward, to the people around her, rather than her own discomforts. "My, there really are quite a lot of beautiful people here, aren't there?"

"Beautiful, rich and powerful. Any combination of the three will do, but at least one is compulsory," replied Emma. She turned and surveyed the crowd for a moment, then turned back to Tabitha. "It generally helps to have, shall we say, relaxed moral standards, as well. It's always so tedious when people get offended by the naked butlers."

"And then there's dear old Auntie Em, who manages all three," Doug said with a grin. Not that Emma needed the flattery, but it was fun to break out the 'Auntie Em' nickname every now and again. He turned to Tabitha. "She's teasing about the naked butlers. Well, mostly." Public nudity was under particular circumstances for particular people, definitely not for a mostly public mixer.

He sketched the hint of a gallant bow to Emma, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "By your leave, my liege, I think I'll take Tabitha and go mingle a bit." He offered his arm to his date.

"Just so long as I'm not expected to be a naked butler," she murmured through a smile. "What do you do at these things?"

"Mostly just mingle, be young and good-looking, and enjoy the amazing food and drink." There were always wheels within wheels for the Courts, but he wasn't about to involve Tabitha in any of that. As far as she was concerned, it was a chance to rub elbows with the glitterati, and hopefully improve her opinion of the Club (or at least his and Emma's little piece of it) in the process.

The suit fit Porter, in the way that a collar fit a coyote. It had been tailored for him and it had cost him a fair dollar and he didn't get a second glance from anyone who might not know he didn't quite belong. Unless you could see the tobacco-stains that even the best manicurist couldn't quite remove. Unless you would notice that his eyes lingered just a touch too long on a bare shoulder or leg. Unless you might catch that the man moved through a crowd of people too smoothly, as though he still thought someone might just catch him with a hand in a pocket or with a wallet that had just managed to find it's way into his hands.

And he hadn't done the pinch work himself in years. But some habits were impossible to break.

He still had not managed to meet anyone of any use to him, not in the Black Court. Not Shaw, certainly. Porter thought it would be a productive night if he had managed to get in past the first layer of ... what he supposed was a protective fortress of people. People to keep the Black King from being seen anywhere near lowlife criminals like himself, people to keep those people from being seen with people like him, and people to keep those people from being seen with people like him.

His night was productive in ways he had not even imagined when he had put on the very expensive suit. There was his Tabby, all dressed to the nines and tens, on the arm of a man who wore his suit like it had been sewn for him by hand.

He took a flute of champagne from a passing waiter, and slipped a folded bill into the man's pocket. Some habits were impossible to break and too useful to try anyway. "Who is that? I don't recognize him?"

"One of the VIPs. He works with Ms. Frost, we got told anything they want, they get." The waiter said, with that tone of voice that said just how much he did not want to be talking to Porter, even with the crisp fifty in his pocket. He would make more if one of those VIPs asked for something and he could deliver it.

Indeed, a word in the right ear made it to another ear, and another, until eventually one of the staff spoke a quiet word to Doug under the guise of bringing him something he'd 'asked' for, when he had really not done so. Casual and surreptitious observation was the play from there. Asking the man why exactly he was snooping around could lead to a potential confrontation on the floor, which would probably earn him a lecture from Emma about how tactlessness and tackiness were essentially the same thing.

So instead, Doug carefully plotted his movements through the crowd with Tabitha, hopefully subtly enough that she wouldn't notice that was what he was doing. He kept watch on the man out of the corner of his eye, trying to see who the mystery snoop might be in contact with.

Just a glimpse of a familiar face, clean-shaved and atop an expensive suit, made her catch her breath. A second glance tightened her grip on Doug's arm. Anger, long dormant, sprang to life in her gut.

Doug felt the tension in Tabitha's body, and steered her off out of the main throng of socialites. "What is it?" he asked her quietly, his face not betraying the seriousness of his tone to an outside observer. He was all too good at masking his reactions these days.

She swallowed, keeping her eyes in the same vague direction as his but not really seeing anything. "I don't remember your exact words, but you said something about these people not associating with people like Porter," she said in a low, angry voice.

Doug winced minutely. "Where?" he asked quietly. Except his brain was already working overtime, adding up the numbers. A guest asking about him. That suggested they didn't know who he was, which was rare even for one of these casual mixers. And if someone who didn't know him was curious about who he was, that suggested they'd recognized someone else with him. Like his date.

"That's him right over there, isn't it," he said with the hint of a protective angry growl underneath, indicating the man who'd been asking him with a casual toss of his head. He certainly wasn't about to point at the man and give away that they were talking about him.

It was a struggle to keep her eyes moving. All she really wanted to do was go over and shove a bomb down his smarmy throat. It didn't help that more than a little bit of that anger was self-directed. She looked up at Doug and gave a short nod.

Doug grunted. ~Emma, we may have a problem,~ he sent on a very tight mental 'channel'. The sending was followed by a quick and concise summation of Tabitha's approaching him, what he knew of her history with Porter, and the fact that the man had somehow finagled an invitation to this event, and asked one of the servers about him. In the meantime, he placed a hand over Tabitha's, trying to convey comfort as he communicated with Emma.

Emma allowed the slightest frown to crease her porcelain brow and then erased it. She sent a delicate tendril out to the staff member whose job could approximately be described as function organiser and asked a number of brief, pertinent questions, answered instantly.

~He's the guest of a guest,~ Emma sent back to Doug. ~Some minor Black Court functionary brought him along. No connections to anyone ranked higher than flunkey.~ Emma let her amused disdain drift down the link to Doug. ~The joys of public soirees; no matter how hard you try, you always get the wrong kind of riff-raff turning up.~ Emma dropped the connection down to a mere thread; she knew Doug wouldn't be looking to take the matter further in public unless Porter decided to attempt something outrageous. Further investigation of Porter could, and would, take place later. Tabitha, she was sure, would be apprised of the situation.

"He got some idiot flunky to get him in the door," Doug murmured to Tabitha. "He's just hoping to suck up to someone, I'm sure." He did indeed make a note to speak to Vanessa about turning up the search into Porter's background and activities. With this latest development, he was even fairly sure he could get Emma to reimburse him for the expense.