Taking her chances and got lucky, huh? Ben couldn't help but grin. "Maybe we both did," he said. She had leaned forward even farther, to the point where Ben didn't really have any more distance to close without bringing the two of them into contact. She wanted to be kissed, that much was clear. Her body language could be saying nothing else. She may not have even realized what she was asking for, if she was as inexperienced and naive about these things as most girls in her position, but she was sending the signals loud and clear all the same. Regardless, he wasn't going to kiss her here — he wasn't drunk enough to go kissing girls in full view of the public, even if that public was a gang of random Irish Muggles.

"Let's get some air," he suggested with a smile, changing the position of his left hand so that it was a gentle tap on her arm — as though he were trying to get her attention at a busy party, not as though he'd been softly feeling her up for the past ten minutes and was only changing tact now. He finished the rest of his drink, which wasn't difficult to do. Somehow he'd gotten down to only an eighth of a glass or so remaining, though he didn't really remember having gone through that much. He must have been too focused on her, he supposed, because he certainly hadn't had enough to drink to consider himself intoxicated. Though he had started to notice those telltale signs in her, particularly in her articulation (or lack thereof), he still didn't think either of them qualified as properly drunk or even tipsy — certainly not so much so that either of them would regret this tomorrow morning.

  

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MJ made this <3

Bella suddenly snapped out of whatever momentary daze she was in, but was by no means back to her senses, as she mirrored Mr. Crouch's movements. She slowly rose from her seat as if she half-expected to fall over — and was incredibly pleased when she didn't — and downed the rest of her almost-empty drink. She hadn't really paid much attention to the scenery outside the pub when she'd first arrived, her insecurities having urged her to get inside the pub. Perhaps she'd finally be able to look around (or maybe she'd just continue staring at Mr. Crouch, who knew?).

She nodded silently, allowing him to lead her outside where the sun had already begun to fall from the sky. She wondered where they would go from here, or if they would just find a bench somewhere in the lonely silence to talk or whatever he had planned. "I never thought it would be this chilly in April," she commented casually, finding herself standing beside him far too closely to be considered proper. She didn't lie, though; it was cold for a mid-spring evening.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

The air outside was a bit brisk, but nothing he would think of as particularly unusual for an April in Ireland. Then again, Ben had traveled, and so had experienced much greater extremes of temperatures than the average Brit. He'd just gotten back from an autumn in Canada, and this was nothing compared to that. It was, however, convenient weather for a flirtatious stroll. Ben moved his hand from her elbow, where it had been as he lead her out of the pub, to the small of her back, bringing them a bit closer together as the two turned away from the entrance of the bar and into the deserted street nearby. "Stay close to me, then," he told her with a grin. "I can keep you warm."

  

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MJ made this <3

Whatever thoughts of "predictability" she'd been having vanished immediately as he begun leading her away from the pub, yet she was in a good enough mood to follow without complaining or questioning. Besides, Mr. Crouch seemed really nice, even compared to other men she considered likable; it wasn't like he would hurt her if they wandered off alone. Thus, Bella allowed Mr. Crouch to lead her onto the deserted street and into the shadows — which, fortunately, seemed to have a little bit of light thanks to a gas lamp that hung above — before doing a 180 to face him.

His constant touches over the past few minutes had emboldened her when it came to contact, so she didn't even think when she reached out to straighten out his coat. "Do tell me, Mr. Crouch," she prompted, her teeth tugging on her bottom lip as she looked back into his eyes. "What are you thinking about right now?"

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Reuben felt her back slip away from his hand, and almost thought he'd misjudged the situation and she was taking a step to increase the distance between them. It turned out to be just the opposite, and he felt immediately reassured. It wasn't as though the signals she'd been sending him tonight could be misinterpreted, and now she'd come right out and more or less asked him to proposition her. That was how he took her question, at any rate. It was quite obvious to both of them what was on his mind; they'd been thinking the same thing for at least the last ten minutes.

"I'm thinking," Ben started in a playful tone, drawing out the syllables as though he needed to reach around in his head and see what he could come up with. He was, in fact, considering his responses, but only the specific verbiage, really. He already knew the gist of what he was going to say. "That your eyes are the clearest, brightest blue I've ever seen."

(Step one: hyperbolic flattery).

"And I'm thinking," he continued, moving his hands up towards her face and resting them lightly on the edge of her jaw. "That that thing you're doing with your lip right now," — he bit his own lower lip lightly to mimic her — "Is really, really cute."

(Step two: contact, more flattery, and drawing attention to her lips — inviting attention to his own).

He leaned in, as if he was going to kiss her, but stopped shy of actually doing so and met her eyes again (after a rather significant glance down at her lips). "What are you thinking, Little Miss Rebel?"

  

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MJ made this <3

Bella would have never in a million years believed she would be so visibly affected by attention from a gentleman, but then again there had never been one who had been so forward about it. Her cheeks flushed pink and her lip fell from between her teeth and tightened into a bashful, tight smile for the moment. The tension was just too much — and then he'd went and touched her on the face. Oh Merlin, her senses were now completely overloaded.

His efforts seemed to be very intentional, which made her feel even more feminine and weak — in a good way. Despite the fact that she rivaled him in height, she felt utterly small and at his mercy. Mr. Crouch had specifically told her he had no intention of getting himself attached to her, and she'd responded with a similar sentiment. That, however, was the farthest thing from her mind when his breath touched her face and he turned the question on her.

Her impulsive behavior made a stellar appearance in that moment, when the tension between them completely broke. "I'm thinking that you're so short," she breathed. "Which, coincidentally, makes it much easier to do this."

And with that, she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

It was almost like a game of chicken they had been playing, up until this point. Who could come the closest without actually doing it? Who would break first? Once their lips touched, though, it didn't matter who had started the kiss. Ben kissed her fully, using the hands he'd placed on her jawline to encourage her lips to part enough to make way for his tongue. There was some hesitation he thought he detected, but she seemed to pick up on it quickly enough, and once she did she was bolder and more adventurous than Ellory had been. Maybe that was just the alcohol he'd plied her with beforehand, but maybe he had been right about her; maybe she was different than every other rich pureblood girl.

When he broke away he left one hand where it was on her face, but let the other slide down to her back to hug her close to him. "It's not very nice to call me short," he said with a glance at her eyes. "Maybe you're too tall, for a girl."

  

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MJ made this <3

She'd first thought that the alcohol had been affecting her rational thinking and whatever good sense she had to begin with, but when Mr. Crouch pulled away from her, it was apparent that it was the adrenaline — the tension — that had been driving her there. She was still shaking ever so slightly, but she'd just experienced her first kiss and it was wild. She'd never seen a couple do - er - that with their mouths (but then again, she didn't know many couples).

She'd been figuratively holding her breath since he'd pulled away — a breath that was released as a laugh when he spoke. "What, am I too tall for you to handle? Do I intimidate you?" she teased through girlish giggles.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Now it was Ben's turn to laugh. "I don't think you could intimidate anyone," he said with a grin. He lifted his left hand up to push a strand of hair off of her forehead and added flirtatiously, "You're too cute for that."

Mostly it was just the thing to say, because very little of the things Ben said when he flirted with women meant anything, but he did think that her looks were starting to grow on him, a bit. When he'd first met her he hadn't thought much about her one way or another, and when the rumors had started circulating he had definitely thought that she wasn't really much of his type. Here, though, she had a sort of air about her that was delicate and delicious. She was a little disheveled from their kiss (the stray strand of hair on her forehead, for instance) in a way that was endearing. The playfulness in her tone and the enthusiasm in her eyes was alluring. Maybe it wasn't so much her features that were growing on him as it was her mannerisms; her looks were fine, he supposed, but she, as a package, was rather nice.

  

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MJ made this <3

Bella could feel her heart flutter, and that was decidedly Not A Very Good Thing. Then again, this was just one night, and tomorrow morning everything could go back to usual. She was drunk — right? (Probably not. If she was drunk, she wouldn't have even been consciously wondering if she was). It wasn't like kissing could get her pregnant or anything. Plenty of people had kissed each other during the mistletoe scandal back near Christmas, and all of them were still alright.

"I take offense to that. I can be very frightening when I want to," she teased, putting on her obviously-fake 'scary face'. Any woman with good sense would've stopped the flirting after they kissed — well, any woman with good sense would have never met Reuben Crouch in Ireland anyways, but nobody (even Bella) held Bella to such standards.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Ben scoffed with a wide smile and leaned forward to touch the tip of his nose against hers. "Oh, yes, you're very scary," he teased before turning his head to kiss her again. He let the hand he'd just used to push her hair out of the way trail lightly down the edge of her neck to the bottom of the neckline on her dress, lightly teasing the soft skin just at the top of her cleavage. There were a lot of layers of clothing between him and her breasts, which Ben thought was a shame, but he was hardly going to start undressing her in an alleyway — even an alleyway in a Muggle town in what was technically a foreign country. He did have some standards, even if those standards were really just the bare minimum required to keep him off of Aldous and Roman's radars.

"All the same," he said when he pulled away from the most recent kiss. "I think I ought to walk you to the nearest floo. I can't let you apparate like this." Ben was a firm believer that no one should apparate under the influence, because Aldous had managed to permanently cripple himself while apparating sober and that was just needlessly reckless — particularly when Ben knew where the nearest floo was. It only cost a knut to use a public floo in most places, and in a real pinch there was always still the Knight Bus. The latter was hardly ideal for two people who were taking pains not to be seen together, but rumors were preferred over losing a finger any day.

"The floo's not far — maybe a twenty minute walk," he explained. "But you never know who you might meet on the way. And not everyone is as much as a gentleman as I am," he teased boastfully. "Some men might see a beautiful girl like you walking alone and try to take advantage."

Ben let his hand wander over her breast momentarily before moving back down to her waist; the unspoken invitation was that twenty minutes of walking time was plenty of time and space to find a convenient location to take advantage, if she was feeling it.

  

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MJ made this <3

The brisk air had been enough to cause her cheeks, the tip of her nose, and various other visible and non-visible parts of her body to flush red, and Mr. Crouch was not at all helping her skin return to its normal coloring by the way he was touching — and kissing — her. Letting his hands and lips wander was wrong; she was acting like a no-good harlot, and she knew that, yet her brain was capable of coming up with a million excuses in the moment.

She'd never received real affection from anyone, not since she was a child. The Scrimgeours never praised her, and even her identical twin conformed to the upper class' idea of what an "affectionate" sibling was (which was, in her opinion, not a very affectionate one). She just wanted to be loved, even if it was only for a night—was that really so bad? It wasn't like wizards flocked to rural muggle villages, so they wouldn't be caught. It's not like she was losing her virtue!

Except Mr. Crouch didn't seem to be on the same page about that, especially with how he was touching her bosom.

Perhaps it was embarrassment, or perhaps it the fear of what would happen if she rejected him, but she didn't slap his hand away as she would have normally. Instead, a nervous giggle escaped her lips, but it didn't sound nervous. He was joking, she reassured herself, noting that his tone was still teasing even as he explained why it wouldn't be safe for her to walk home alone. He was a gentleman... even if he was a gentleman who kissed his lady acquaintances.

"I ought not to floo directly home," she explained, chewing on her lower lip. "Knowing my aunt—" Or worse, her father if he were to find out. "—she'd find a way to trace my steps back to here," she continued, taking hold of his arm. She motioned for him to lead her towards the nearest floo with a nod of her head before gently smiling.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Ben assumed she was being coy with her excuse for not flooing directly home. His own family, while a bit overbearing, was not outright crazy, and even after his experiences with the Lestrange/Pendergast conglomerate he had a hard time believing that all (or at least most) wealthy pureblood families were not more or less the same as the Crouches. His own brothers or his late parents wouldn't have gone so far as to trace his whereabouts on a given night, and he thought it unlikely that even a young lady's guardians would go much further than asking a series of disgruntled questions. Rather than a necessary safety precaution, Ben assumed that Miss Scrimgeour was just finding creative ways of saying she wasn't ready to go home just yet. Which was fine by him — based on all of the other rather positive signals she was giving him, he thought they'd have no trouble at all finding a way to kill time.

Her taking his arm did, unfortunately, have the effect of preventing his hand from continuing to wander as they walked. Had she done that on purpose to draw the matter out, or out of habit since proper young ladies didn't typically walk down the street with the arms of acquaintances wrapped around their shoulders? Either way, his advances were momentarily paused as he steered her towards the edge of the Muggle town they were in. There was an uninhabited stretch of about ten or fifteen minutes before they hit the next little cluster of buildings, in which the back-room floo was located. There'd be plenty of time for wandering hands once they were out of the meager lights of this little village. Maybe Miss Scrimgeour had realized that, too, and was purposefully waiting to be somewhere a little more private before she allowed him to get his hands on her again.

"Did you have somewhere in mind? As a stop-off?" he said, inclining his head towards hers slightly and speaking quietly so that she would be forced to do the same. He didn't want to lose the intimacy they'd established by just traipsing down the lane like respectable strangers. "I don't think it'd be any less suspicious if you popped into a gentleman's club for half an hour," he added teasingly. The one downside to his current accommodations; he had no way to sneak anyone or anything into his rooms without going through the common area of the club, and it wasn't as though night-time lady visitors were encouraged.

The following 1 user Likes Reuben Crouch's post:1 user Likes Reuben Crouch's post
   Bella Scrimgeour

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MJ made this <3

As she clung to his arm, Bella took the time to actually look around them. The skies had already decided to darken, but it might have seemed darker than it really was because of the scarcity of light compared to the magically-lit street of Hogsmeade or her Aunt Laverna's Dorset home. She wobbled as she walked, which to some was a sign of drunkness, but was to Bella just a reminder that she'd disconnected from the world and was deep in her own thoughts.

There really weren't many people about, save for the few groups of men who seemed to bark out laughing every few minutes from the direction they'd come from. She didn't remember the last time she'd been in a small village; her travels usually included going to and from London from the inside of Aunt Laverna's home. While some people might have considered wandering London "getting out", it was places like this that Bella considered an adventure.

When Mr. Crouch started talking to her, Bella had enough sense to stop... at least before realizing where they'd stopped. They were all alone, the distant laughter gone and their quiet voices echoing in the nearby alleyway.

"O-Oh," she cooed, realizing she hadn't exactly thoroughly planned her return home. "I suppose a gentleman's club isn't— wait, do you live in a gentleman's club?" she asked, unsure of whether she'd come off as curious or judgmental. She hadn't imagined many gentleman of Mr. Crouch's status living anywhere other than a lavish home or decorated flat. She guess it didn't really matter; flooing to his house, no matter where it was, didn't seem ideal.

"Nevermind that; I suppose you're right," she pondered, her hand mindlessly wandering to his buttons on his coat. She'd always been the type of person who needed to keep her hands busy, but she supposed there were other, more appropriate places she could have put them — her dress, her hair, anywhere that was not Mr. Crouch.

"I don't suppose you have any suggestions?" she asked quietly with glance up towards him.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Ben didn't feel at all embarrassed about living in a club, and could easily have defended the decision, but it didn't seem as though she was too bothered by it. Living somewhere that wasn't home gave him much more freedom, and he would have been playing club dues anyway, which made it the most fiscally sound choice. There wasn't any point in squandering his money on a furnished house or flat with a small hoard of servants he didn't care about, when he could just rely on the house elves at Excalibur and funnel all of his spare change into travel, drugs, and booze.

Her hand was on his chest, though, playing with the buttons on his jacket, which was a much more pressing matter than where he lived. "Oh, we can pop into London somewhere," he suggested vaguely, moving his hands down to her hips and taking a half step closer to her, which brought them into contact (albeit through many layers of clothing, still) on the far edge of the road they'd been walking along. He returned her look with a smirk, because as far as Ben was concerned this was a charade they were both in on; she obviously didn't actually have any pressing desire to make it back to her aunt's any time soon, or else she wouldn't have stopped to mess around with his buttons. Leaning in, Ben brushed her hair back with one hand and planted a light kiss on the top of her jawbone, just where it disappeared into her neck. This left his lips very near her ear, and he muttered quietly, "It's not as though we're in any rush to decide, though, are we?" as his free hand slid down to the clasps at the front of her dress and deftly undid the first.

  

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MJ made this <3

Bella would have squeaked if she was capable of finding the air in her lungs to make that noise, but she was instead left staring over Mr. Crouch's shoulder with wide, alarmed eyes as their bodies came in contact and Mr. Crouch's lips went to her jaw. She'd thought she knew what she was signing up for when she decided to take the night off from her stuffy family to visit Ireland with Mr. Crouch, but apparently he'd had other plans for her.

If there had been any more light in the area, the redness on her cheeks, neck, everywhere really, would have been visible, though she was confident that Mr. Crouch could at least feel the heat emitting from her body. Her decision to come with him was a big enough mistake — certainly one that would automatically solidify her as a harlot in the media if it were to become public knowledge — but she'd managed to make it worse by allowing him to use her as his plaything.

His whispering prompted her breathing to quicken and knees to wobble under her weight, but she wasn't sure whether it was fear, confusion or even the faintest bit of arousal that caused her body to act on its own accord.

Fortunately, his hand moving to undo one of the clasps on her dress prompted her hand to snap to his wrist, weakly holding it in place. "... Please," she just barely managed to get out in a gasp. She knew what that please meant: she wanted to go home. At least she thought that's what she meant; her body language wasn't helping get that message across.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —