[R-Holiday] 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky [Suri/Rowan]

[Kolina]

Quote:

Who knew fruit cake could be so good? A local bakery claims to have perfected their recipe and is giving away free samples. The good news? It’s delicious. The bad news? A few hours after ingestion, something strange kicks in. Suddenly, everything seems so colorful and bright. The music sounds so much better, everything tastes so much better—and then, it stops, and everything is an awful blend of everything. Lights are too bright, smells and tastes are overwhelming, music sounds like noise. You’re sick enough to throw up everything in your stomach—which is good, because within a few hours of that you finally start to feel normal again.

It was crunch time. Christmas was nearing fast and the streets and shopping centers were near bursting with the number of people who were out doing their last minute shopping. Vendors of all sorts were out selling their wares along with the usual stores, shops, and bakeries with their doors wide open trying to entice shoppers in with displays of wares or free samples given out at their doors.

Rowan had taken advantage of the free samples of course. He wasn’t above tasting free samples of new products and a few of those products were now being toted about in bags hanging on his arm. Coffee beans, loose leaf tea, some pastries, bread and even a fruitcake, all tasted and all approved, were some of the purchases made. After all, he had finished his gift shopping. Did so long ago. Now it was just extra things to help brighten up the holiday with his family, boyfriend, and friends.

It was, without question, one of his favorite times of the year. The whole atmosphere was uplifting, full of hope, good cheer and it was always lovely to see people he didn’t get to visit often, or only at large social events. Christmas tended to be a bit more of an intimate thing for him. A time to reconnect and just be himself. Of course, that was once he stepped outside of his social obligations and work at the DCBC. But, today was a free day for him and he was utilizing it to the best of his ability.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d spent shopping. Getting caught up in displays, street shows, and just plain enjoying his time out was enough to make time feel unimportant. It wasn’t like when he was with Elex. That time was always precious and always too terribly short for his own liking. Every minute mattered before Elex spirited himself away. No, today was a day of time wasted and…

Golden eyes spotted a familiar looking face in the crowd. Or at least….he thought it was. As quickly as the person appeared she seemed to be lost in the crowd again. Rowan paused for a moment debating with himself before he set off through the crowds in search of the person that tickled something in the back of his brain. Another fleeting glance of her, tawny white hair and amber eyes were so familiar but why?

He followed in pursuit. Excusing himself as he moved around people, sometimes bumping into them with his bads or his own body. He thought he had perhaps lost her in the bustle when the woman appeared in a gap near one of the shops. Rowan wasted no time and beelined for her. “Excuse me, miss. I am terribly sorry, but I wanted to…”

He stopped and stared. Now fully able to get a clear view of the woman that tickling sensation began to manifest itself into something else. The woman he knew. He wasn’t sure how but maybe if he… “Suri?”

Amitotic

 

[AMItotic]

Suri disliked the holidays.

It wasn’t to say that she hated them, which required a certain passion that Suri couldn’t muster for something as simple as the time of the year, but she did mind the number of little inconveniences that came with the season: the long lines, the expectation of festivity, the cold that seeped into the scars in her bones. It was rarely worth the time to go through such efforts to try and please work acquaintances, and her students got lazy for weeks before the actual break began.

As a small consolation, Suri did happen to like peppermint, which was the current flavored tea in her carafe while she did the last of her holiday purchasing. The bustle of a large shopping center meant a number of potential hazards for the small woman, most of them in the form of careless mall-goers and their ill-kept bags, but Suri had long since gotten smart about the way she ambled in public. She kept to herself, to the sides of the walking traffic, and walked with her chin up and her eyes forward, strides carefully planned and deliberate. With most of her leg covered by knee-high boots, she almost passed as normal to the unconcerned eye, but she still felt painfully aware of the awkward lilt to her gait, too stiff to be truly organic. She caught a man's gaze when she thought he was staring, and he looked down and away. Had he actually been staring? It was difficult to say for sure, but resentment coiled around Suri's throat all the same, clutching at her bags. Let him stare, let him be perturbed. The ugliness he felt was only a passing thing, not a fact he would live with for the rest of his days.

Suri forced herself to look away, to walk away, and the further she got from the stranger the less she felt for his judgmental eyes. She focused instead on the cold breath in her lungs, the tinny music of mechanical displays, the sharp smell of a well-roasted coffee drifting from a nearby shop, the lingering taste of a sampled fruitcake from the bakery at the other end of the plaza. In retrospect, Suri mused, it had been sufficiently textured but it wasn't her mother's recipe, so altogether it was nothing particularly special. She wondered if her mother would like to know that she was outcompeting the locals again, and while she was on that train of thought, she stopped so she could slide her phone out from a jacket pocket, thumbing out a slow text. This was successful family communication, wasn't it?

She almost didn't realize she was being addressed, as the din of the crowds had singularly coalesced into a generically pleasant background chatter, but she blinked up from her phone at the sound of her name. She blinked, glancing the man down and up, and when her eyes settled on something familiar in the way his eyes met with the bridge of his nose, she leaned forward.

"...Rowan Cameron?" She said the name slowly, her mind conjuring the image of a boy that had been not quite her height and too talented for his own good. It was one thing to know that the Cameron boys were still in Destiny City, inevitably living their lives and graduating high school and participating in society, but it was another to see one of them in the flesh, nearly half a foot taller than Suri was comfortable with. Of course, she knew mathematically that he had to be in his late teens at this point, but seeing him as an adult made her feel older than the limp did.

"...w-what a surprise," Suri added, lifting her eyebrows and folding her hands to recover some kind of composure. Behind Rowan, it was really such a beautiful day out, how had she only just noticed? "How have you been?"

Kolina

 

[Kolina]

His smile turned into a beam when the woman confirmed who he thought she was, and remembered him in return. It was quite a feat considering the time spent away from one another and Rowan had only been a kid when he'd last seen her.

He had a strong impulse to just want to hug her.

"I am doing well." He replied eagerly. "And you? You seem to be doing alright." since the accident I heard about but he didn't voice those words. That would be utterly rude and tasteless. Why ruin such a good moment and feeling with bad words?

"I am completely surprised I ran into you here let alone recognized you. It's buzzing with people." As if to prove his point a person jostled behind him, bumping into Rowan and pushing him closer to Suri. he tossed the person a glare over his shoulder but didn't say anything to them as they had beelined into the store. "Right. Probably not the best of spots to stop and chat." He laughed.

"Actually..." He paused and fished around in his pocket with a free hand. Withdrawing his phone he flicked the screen to life. "I mean, I know this is abrupt and all, but I'd hate to cut our run in short if it can be helped. After all, it's been years since we've seen each other. I have no plans and I've finished my shopping. If you want, we can head back to my place? Catch up? Get out of this craziness?"

AMItotic