Blend
Remy noticed her right away. A bit more well-dressed than was normal for a downtown bar, but then there were some women who breezed through a few beers and shrugged off their corporate selves along the way. She wasn't one of those, he could tell the moment she glanced around at the people nursing drinks and trying to find a way out.
Nice girls didn't look at folks like that; as if sorting through one's mental files, checking up on them, and then re-filing what she considered out of order. It was a look of the Known. She'd read all the books, cross-referenced everything, and then decided to write her own paper on the subject.
There was no denying that she was attractive. Hair gathered at the nape of her neck so casually that it was plainly 'just kept out of the way.' No jewelry whatsoever. Pretty, in a way that was creep up and ambush you with teeth lovely. Her coat was piled on the counter, a pummeled cloud of wool unobtrusiveness. She was already darkened and not by the running dyes of fabric.
He recognized the look of a woman who didn't make an impression, she sluiced it. All soft and malleable, but blended with the smarts of a being capable of living through more than normal unpleasantness.
Such individuals were usually scare, and tended to enter any situation with an exit already planned. Still, it did not harm to take in the view for a bit, he knew how to appreciate a fellow survivor.
Fred pushed her jacket further away from her as though distance would help her forget what it symbolized. Her lab coat was whiter than clouds pushed aside by celestial fingers. It was important to maintain some sort of standard, even if she only kept it to herself.
She had the lab every burgeoning scientist only dreamed of. With an entire staff at her disposal. At her fingertips were the resources to allow her whims to take form. Space enough for thoughts to warp and reform as if the imaginary was solid. It wasn't worthwhile to be anything other than ferociously inquisitive.
The firm offered her a place to be freely wondering. The ready supply of materials and subjects were enough to make her accept that there were enough rooms accessible that a few closed doors were forgivable.
She had decided that heels were alright, she could dress in pretty things, but wouldn't all the time. Maintaining such uniform beauty constantly might begin to make her forget that she was essentially not like that. That was part of what made her very happy, that she didn't need to depend on the the lines and boundaries of the normal people in order to make herself feel good. Knowing that she would survive most things better than those around her was as good as a comforting touch, most of the time.
Knox tried, but he was still sufficiently curled into the structure of Wolfram and Hart to be little more than sweet and suspicious. Every so often she had to get away to someplace where she wasn't on speed dial or going to trip over lackeys that were all the same, even with nametags.
If Charles, or Knox, or Wesley and his looks knew that she 'took her life into her hands' by getting out of their reach she'd get a lecture of such suffocating concern that striking out would be the polite thing to do. It was so tiresome to be in the middle of little boys fighting over property, she'd left a place where being owned was a given. Easier to let them think that if their lives had been consumed by greater responsibility, she was no different.
She'd seen some of the men in the bar glance around them for the 'project' of the evening, and had ignored them all. But there was one who hadn't stopped looking stealthy interest and a caution that she could appreciate.
Another cog in the machine would have bored her, but he looked as though LA was just another stop on a longer journey. A bit ruffled, skin with the tan of heated days. He moved with a smooth care that came with living at night for more than the purposes of 'helping out.'
There were advantages to being in a town where differences like red-on-black eyes were nothing to hide. For her, the sight was a glimpse of New and Out of the Ordinary nearly within touching distance just startling enough to be a wake-up.
Beckoning would have only worked if she was royalty, and blushing was too trite. A smile that said yes, and I don't mind was easier and more honest
As he took a seat next to her she thought about redefining 'adventure' on her own terms.