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 Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 2:20 pm
If there was one thing about being a lab instructor that Suri positively stand, it was grading the weekly lab reports. It seemed like the piles never ended, paper after paper of poor science and shoddy math. It had become something of a routine for Suri, to sit on her couch next to her grumpy Siberian cat and a wine cooler, feeling the edges of her mind go numb by reading the overall idiotic assessments of her students. Crystal Academy was many things, but with the pull of other academic institutions, it seemed that with every passing year the school's roster became increasingly less interested in actual intellectual pursuits. And yet Suri was still determined. She was going to train proper scientists, not trophy wives, and whether their powdered little noses upturned at the idea, she was going to grade them as such.
The teacher was restless of late, though, and it brought her no comfort to sit in her apartment for hours on end reading the same droll responses. More often than not, she left her work to pace, or start a baking project, or to delete all of her newest voicemails. Again. At first, she gave herself the benefit of the doubt that her strange new habits were simply a phase she found herself in, a simple funk, though by the third thoroughly burnt batch of chocolate drop cookies she had to admit some measure of insanity.
Perhaps she simply needed a little space, a change of scenery that wasn't anywhere close to her apartment. Any other time, she would have gone to the library, but there was always the possibility...no. The library was not an option, nor would it be for a while. Shufflepucks was nice and quiet, but the tendency for teenage squabblers to swarm the place meant she might actually have to deal with one of her students, which was unacceptable while she was grading.
In terms of her local haunts, that pretty much left the bar.
It was a Wednesday night, which meant that the crowds were relatively slow. Dressed more in comfort clothes than anything suggesting she was looking for a hookup, she brooded silently at one end of the counter, the space around her littered with loose sheets of lined paper littered with blood red annotations. Twenty reports in, and she still hadn't given an A, which was fairly standard. With a blue fruity drink in hand, she pored over her current evisceration, humming to herself and occasionally writing a comment in between the margins.
Check your numbers--pH could not possibly be 17.5.
At least she was being fairly productive.
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Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 2:47 pm
A chilly night like this called for coffee and kahlua. Iouri was as much as a regular at this bar as he was anywhere, and mug in hand, he was making his rounds. It seemed like everyone was feeling the January blahs, that point in time when the snow was no longer pristine but refused to melt, and the sky was a uniformly threatening, dreary shade of gray. He sipped his drink, savoring the warmth, and glanced around the bar. It was a night for commiseration, not prowling. A day spent filling out grant applications had left him craving human interaction of a decidedly platonic nature.
On any other night, laying eyes on the blonde woman at the nearest table would have made his heart skip a beat.Old flames didn't extinguish easily, and part of Iouri still carried a torch for Suri Ellis, slowly smoldering from their time together at DCU. Tonight, however, Iouri was feeling more friendly than amorous. A slight smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, highlighting the chickenpox scar. He pulled out the chair opposite Suri.
"Would you like some help with those?" he asked, setting his drink down and taking a seat, not even waiting to be invited. He just sort of assumed that she would have invited him if he'd given her a chance. "I've got an advanced degree in science, I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to grade high school lab reports."
He reached for the stack of finished reports and flipped through it, nodding at the abundance of red ink. Brutal, but then, he expected nothing less from her. "It's been a while, Zvezdochka," he nodded to her. "I hope you're not avoiding me."
If Suri felt any residual weirdness, Iouri didn't pick up on it. They had, after all, dated for a single semester several years ago and on an unofficial basis. Surely they could interact like friendly adults now, couldn't they?
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Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:48 pm
His voice was something out of an old memory, the smell of whiteboard cleaner and musty suits and something else for when the lights were out. It was surreal to hear his dusky accent again, but if she was actually surprised she didn't seem to show it. Her eyelids tilted to the side in acknowledgement, and then she went back down to her work, her writing hand still working at a steady pace despite the thin black brace covering her knuckles.
"Oh," she said, surmising him for only a moment before returning to business, "I think I can handle it myself." She wrote one last comment on the page before flipping it over, shuffling a few sheets back into the annotated folder from whence they'd came. Once she was suitably organized, she closed her book for the night with a resigned sigh and a gentle readjustment of her bangs. And just when she was starting to get productive.
"It's been a while," said the woman when she finally met his gaze again. She smiled, but it was hard to discern whether or not she was generally happy to see him or just trying to put on appearances. Suri hadn't been the put on appearances type of girl three years ago. Then again, she hadn't been the bar type three years ago, either, though she did seem to still carry herself with that same air of cold dignity, even seated on a raggedy old bar stool.
"Still seducing naive college girls?" asked the woman, with a nod and a sip from her glass. "The ones I've seen graduate from Crystal, they'd need all the extra credit they can get."
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Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:24 pm
Iouri titled his head to the side, smile quirking wider. "You really think so little of me?" he asked. If he'd been of a questionable age to be dating undergrads when he and Suri were a thing, then now it would be completely inappropriate. Destiny City University was no longer his stalking grounds - he'd outgrown that pursuit entirely, even if his fate was steeped deeply in academia. "I've outgrown that."
"Besides. You were the only one I ever had eyes for," he added, sipping his drink. Suri had always reminded him of some kind of wildcat, with her white-blonde hair and her cunning eyes. Certainly she was only feigning domestication - a teaching job couldn't have cooled her spark or her verve. A spitfire packed into a petite frame, that was how he'd always thought of her.
"A pity," frowned Iouri, shrugging at her. He supposed she'd know best - she was, after all, their teacher. He didn't doubt her abilities as an instructor, but rather the school as a whole. "But Crystal has always been more of a finishing school than a a college preparatory, hasn't it?" he added. At least, this was as much as he recalled from having attended Azure Valley on scholarship. The Crystal girls were pretty, but you didn't go chasing skirt around their campus if you were looking for a particularly brainy date most of the time.
"It's not helped by the opening of that new science and tech magnet, though, is it?" he added, brow creasing. He'd be interested to know how Suri, as a scientist, felt about the new charter school, even if he was sketchy on the events surrounding its creation. Iouri had better things to worry about than domestic terrorism and gang wars. So long as it stayed out of his museum then what did he care?
He looked her over more closely, trying to see how she'd changed since they last parted. Was she wearing her hair differently? He didn't recall, having always been more interested in the color than the style. Was there a change in her face? He couldn't tell, perhaps her expression was more cynical. The wrist brace was certainly new - his eyes paused there. Iouri frowned. "What have you done to yourself?" he asked in concern.
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Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 6:27 pm
"Buh," Suri growled into her drink, eyes narrowing, "Don't even get me started on that mess." Horizon Institute had taken all of her best and her brightest students, leaving her with the most spoiled and unscientific class of girls Destiny City had to offer. Part of her particular enmity might have stemmed from envy, from wishing the school had been open when she'd been in secondary school, but the vast majority of her ire stemmed from all the cleanup work she'd had to do in the interim, dumbing down her curriculum for the few who remained.
The sip she took from her drink was a bit longer than usual, and when she returned the glass to its place on the counter the look she gave Iouri was disdainful and utterly tired. She supposed she must have been a mess, her hair tousled by the long day at work, the bags under her eyes, but it was probably the closest she looked to her undergrad image in months. Her hair was even beginning to grow out again after cutting it into that bob: Iouri would have remembered her hair being just past shoulder length, but as it was it wasn't too much shorter anyway.
Suri followed the direction of his gaze down to her wrist brace, then slid her hand away, as if slowly moving out of his sight would somehow keep his attention away. "The doctor says I can take the brace off in a few days," she said off-hand, as the vague response sounded a little more reasonable than 'I punched a man dressed in armor right in the shield'. No, the quiet, calculating Suri would never deign to stoop so low as to violence, and she intended her reputation to stay that way.
"But how are you? Still reaching for the stars?" Deflection at its finest, she shifted her posture to put the injured hand out of view and leaned in, taking in his image. She wasn't sure if he'd heard the particulars involving her rejection into the Air Force, but the fact that she was alone in a bar grading papers spoke volumes on its own.
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Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 7:17 pm
Iouri could only hope Suri recalled the rejection letter he'd received. They'd still been together then, and Iouri's world had come crashing down around his ears. He could only imagine something similar had happened to her - it was the only explanation for why she was teaching and not flying fighter jets. He tapped his thick, Buddy Holly frames. "Didn't you hear?" he asked. "NASA doesn't want any blind astronauts. Roscosmos feels about the same."
Lasik was an option, but not on his salary or his insurance. This left Iouri Spekter mouldering away in Destiny City, dreaming of the cosmos and with no way to get there. "I've been running the earth and space museum," he said, changing the subject slightly. "We just re-opened the planetarium. It's brand new in there! Have you managed to see it yet? I could arrange a special rate if you wanted to bring your students-"
He stopped himself there, because he was not on the clock, and this was not some potential investor - this was Suri. Also, she worked at Crystal Academy. Crystal Academy didn't need a special rate. Girls' parents paid as much in tuition per semester as he'd paid for his entire college education.
"In short, no," he sighed, consulting his coffee and kahlua like a magic eight ball that might hold the secret of life. He took a sip and set it back down, wiping foam from his lip. "But I have a wonderful machine that paints stars all over the ceiling and some days I can convince myself it's almost a fair trade. Almost."
But not quite. He gave her a sheepish smile.
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