It is 8:34 in the evening, well past the shop's busy hours. In fact, it's rather quiet. The sounds of a Pop radio station are floating down from the ceiling and settling over the few patrons of the Half-Baked Bean. Workers are hustling and bustling to do nothing behind the counter because everyone has been served, so far. Obviously if someone walks in they'd have something to do again. But no one's walked in yet, so they're idly picking at their nails and cleaning tables over and over again.

It would be very difficult to clean the coffee table near the entrance with all the books strewn across it. And the one Raspberry Mocha coffee sitting next to them. Occasionally, the girl that is pouring over the texts grabs it and takes a sip--only a small one because the drink is still steaming dangerously. Her blue eyes concentrate intensly on what she's doing, she bites at her purple pen while she looks for the answers. She has her blond, highlighted hair pulled back into a messy bun that is more mess than actual bun. She wears a grey, hooded sweatshirt with "Keaton Rowing" across the front in faded letters and matching grey sweatshorts and white running shoes. Aside from her attire, it's very easy to tell that she's the athletic type. While she turns pages back and forth looking for answers, she taps her feet up and down to the rythm of the speakers overhead, her toned muscles are clearly seen bunching and relaxing under her skin.

Sighs escape from her mouth and she shakes her head at the books. It's going to be another long night of studying. Why did she put this off to the last minute?

Alexander hasn't been to the Bean in a while. This is mostly because he's been far too busy to 'waste' time doing something as simple as going out for coffee of an evening, without work in tow.

But tonight, he has firmly decided that he's going to take a break, from Bo, from Keye, from work, from everything.

He's dressed far more casually than he ever does for his classes, in jeans--that could almost be pressed, but still, jeans--and a dark green polo shirt. His hair is as neat as ever, of course, but...

He pauses in the doorway, eyes widening just a hair, but he doesn't stay there long enough to be really noticeable. He heads directly for the counter and doesn't acknowledge the student with her piles of books except for that one brief pause.

Why does he have to deal with this tonight?

Because in their infinite wisdom and love for tortured characters, the authoresses are forcing him to.

Katrina parely lifts her head when someone else walks into the establishment. For a moment she doesn't even recognize him as her professor. After all, no one has ever seen the prim and proper Prof. Barclay in anything other than a suit and tie. No one being the students, of course. The hair, though, she remembers. Looking down at the table, she slowly picks one book up and puts it underneath a different one. Very slyly. She doesn't want it to appear as if she's just now starting on the paper due in his class tomorrow (which she is). She would actually very much like it if her professor thought she began his assignments as soon as he gave them, that his class took a high priority in her studies. In truth, she lumps his class in with everyone else's and almost always starts a day or two before things should be finished.

In order to look less conspicuous, she takes a drink of her coffee and burns her tongue and drops the styrofoam cup on the floor where it splashes up on her ankles.

"Crap!"

Poor Alexander.

He half turns at the sound and is somewhat forced to acknowledge that he's seen her, that he recognizes her, and all that wonderful stuff. He doesn't have to show the weariness that's pressing on him and his vague, undirected anger to whatever chance brought them to the same place tonight.

He reaches absently for the coffee he just bought and nods to Katrina.

"Miss Sullivan."

He does not burn his tongue and drop it when he sips his coffee. Ha ha, so there.

Oh that's so not cool.

"Hi, Professor.."

How degrading. She's shaking her ankles to get the liquid off and tip-toeing over to the counter (so she won't spread it) to get napkins to clean up her mess. Now she's going to have to put her shoes in the washer and she hated doing that. They have coffee all over them and are no longer a pristine white.

In front of him, of all people to make a fool of herself in front of. She raises each leg individually to wipe off her legs and grabs a handful of other napkins to try and clean up the floor. A bus-boy beats her to it, flashes Katrina a smile and tells her not to worry about it. Of course she smiles back and says thanks.

Alexander is watching her, face about as expressive as the blank walls outside.

"I suppose the books for my class are in that pile over there too?"

That's a natural enough question that he doesn't feel like he's prolonging the interaction just because he wants to. (Which he does. Only he doesn't. Only he does. Only... Alexander has a tendency to go in circles.)

Damn, he called her on it.

She's smiling uneasily and her laugh is obviously trying to hide something.

"One or two, maybe. I really just grabbed my books in case." liar. She really does want him to think well of her and can't for the life of her figure out why.

"So you're dressed down, any reason why?" She's mentally hitting herself. If you're going to strike up a conversation about your professor's personal life, Barclay is definately not the one to start on.

Alexander's half smile suggests that he's heard that excuse before. In twenty five or so years of teaching, he probably has.

"I see."

Sip. Keep your mind on the conversation and the coffee, Alexander, not on with whom you're having the conversation. He can survive this. Really, honestly, he can.

"Need I dress professionally for a casual evening?"

She liked it when he smiled. Even though it gave him a few more wrinkles.

"Uh..well no," she tried to cover up her blunder and actually blushed out of embarrassment, "I just never see you outside of class, is all," well duh, "I was just wondering..."

The bus-boy is finished, she can go back to her couch and coffee table now. Would she like another drink? Yes, thank you. That would be nice.

She absently tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and shifts from foot to foot.

"Most of my students don't." He shrugs, and that half-smile disappears into his usual lack-of-expression when dealing with people who evoke emotions that he can't handle.

"It's probably better that way."

Wouldn't want to get into legal trouble by hanging out with a student outside of class or something.

... in this case, he could so easily deserve that trouble. If she weren't so hard to read, and if she weren't so young and his student and...

He snapped his thoughts roughly away from that particular path.

"Why?" is her automatic reaction, "What's wrong with knowing your professor has a personal life?" Katrina's head is tilted to the side, genuine curiosity present in her face.

She thinks that that's slightly unfair. Professors are people, too. Mostly evil people but people nonetheless. After all, they must have some hidden agenda when assigning so many things to be done.

Eyebrow.

"The problems come in when the student tries to be involved in that personal life. And, as you have just said, it's usually personal."

For example, for him, there's Keye and Bo, and that would really make for some awkward explaining to other students of his.

... he wonders vaguely if knowing he had a lover--he does?--would cut down on the students with crushes...

Probably not. Girls will always have their infatuations. It would just turn the good man into a heartbreaker.

"Sorry," not really. Then again, it wasn't meant to sound sorry. It wasn't meant to sound rude, either. It didn't sound like either of those things, thankfully, and thus conveyed the correct emotion.

She gratefully accepted her new drink from the worker across the counter and leaned against it to look at her teacher.

Alexander shrugged.

"It hardly matters."

It does too matter!

And, for the record? If Katrina were to make overtures, Alexander would have a very difficult time resisting. It involves old flames and Katrina's father, but that doesn't change the results.

Oh no, she'd be too shy to make overtures. She doesn't even know how to properly make them.

"Sure it does! There's nothing wrong with a healthy relationship with your students," and she meant that in the cleanest way possible, "or at the very least letting them know you're human. You're like a machine sometimes, it's weird."

There's that much that's fortunate for Alexander.

He shrugged again.

"Who says I'm human?"

He is, of course, and even to someone innish, that would (hopefully) sound like a joke.

"Maybe I am a machine."

Heh. Machines have it a lot simpler.

It's strange, Katrina doesn't know how to respond and she's had little enough interaction with the opposite sex that his joke made a blush rise to her cheeks. She understands that it was a joke, though, and smiled with a small laugh. It isn't long before it turns genuine, less than a second, even. He did joke, after all.

"That's good, that's funny. A real jokester, aren't you?" Oh look, she even added a little shoulder nudge.

"Only when the situation demands it."

This said perfectly deadpan. Alexander is pretending that he's talking to himself and that Katrina doesn't exist.

This is not helped when she touches him. It would have been a less effective shock to zap him with a few hundred volts of electricity.

He doesn't really move, though. Actually, he freezes, but considering he was about motionless anyway, it's not obvious.

That's too bad for Alexander, because when Katrina gets comfortable with a person, she tends to touch without realizing it. It's all innocent, she just grew up with a touchy family. Lots of hugs, lots of shoves, lots of contact. But he shouldn't worry too much yet. She's not on a really comfortable basis with him just yet.

"Look, I'm sure the couch is a lot more comfortable than this counter..."

No. She doesn't realize how that might sound. She's suggesting that they should sit down.

He starts almost invisibly, and has to remind himself that while, say, Bo might mean something entirely different by that suggestion, Katrina probably meant it in the most innocent of lights.

"Perhaps. But there's still the problem of my fraternizing with a student outside of class or class-related activities."

Not that professors can't talk to their students, but he's leery of getting to familiar with them, off campus.

"Oh we're fraternizing now, are we? You do realize that that literally means we're behaving like brothers?" She does realize that she's correcting her professor, doesn't she? "And it's only a problem if you make it a problem, Professor Barclay."

The look she gives him clearly says she thinks he's making too much out of a simple conversation, let alone sitting down.

Alexander actually chuckles. (This is because to him, 'brothers' brings to mind images of Keye and Bo and throwing each other into walls. He doesn't have much other experience of brothers.)

"It literally means that, yes, but it has come to mean association in general. Many companies have a no-fraternization policy among their employees, for instance."

Brief pause. The no-fraternization policies often mean romantic interaction between management and those lower in the hierarchy.

"Besides, it's a habit of mine to avoid things that could cause lawsuits."

But he doesn't mind doing things that could send him to prison. Go figure.

Well duh, lawsuits are expensive. Prison is just inconvenient.

Katrina gives him another look. This one conveys a sense of humorous disbelief.

"What exactly do you think we'll be doing?"

Not that she'd really mind anything that might be crossing his head, but it would be very unusual for her to do any of them, and extremely awkward for her.

Alexander gives her a Look.

"Miss Sullivan, if you had any idea how many students have attempted to come on to me in twenty-five years of teaching, you would not be surprised at my reluctance."

Ahem.

Twenty-five years of teaching? That had to make him like...fifty or something, right? Oh God, she has a crush on a fifty-year-old man. It hasn't hit her before. He doesn't look fifty. He should have more grey hair, stop leading innocent girls like herself on.

"A-And that means you can't even have friends?" Weak. Very weak, but a commendable effort in being strong.

He doesn't lead them on. (Except the ones he's going to use as magical sources. But that's different. Worse, really.)

A tiny smile.

"Not exactly. It means I prefer to be careful how much interaction I have with my students outside class."

He generally sticks to tutoring.

Actually, he's forty-nine.

"So that means that you can't sit down and have a pleasant conversation and cup of coffee?"

Her heart feels like it's sinking in her chest. She hasn't gotten that attatched to him yet, but it really effects her when she thinks people don't want to be around her or they find her strange or if they don't like her. Katrina cares a lot about what people think and she hurts when they think badly of her. When she assumes they think badly of her. Way to let down a girl's spirits, Alexander.

The reason he doesn't want to sit down with her and have a 'pleasant conversation and a cup of coffee' is much more personal, Katrina.

He pauses before answering. (Dammit, she has Kevin's eyes. It gets to him.)

"... I suppose once wouldn't hurt."

He almost said 'once or twice' but that would just invite problems.

If only her eyes give him problems, Alex really won't be prepared for her smile. It's bright, cheerful, definitely happy and a perfectly feminine version of her father's. Her features have always favoured him.

"Great! Um..after you?"

He has quite possibly just made her day.

He would swear to a doctor that his heartbeat did something very strange when she smiled. And then he would take it back, because it would be embarrassing, and possibly incriminating.

He shrugged.

"Ladies first."

Manners, you know.

He's going to regret this later. He's already having to tell himself not to manipulate her, even though it would be so easy, and if he could make her want... Bad Alexander.

Yes, but it probably wouldn't take very much to manipulate her. She trusts very easily and likes to think the best of people.

"Alright, thanks," another brief smile and she goes over to sit on the couch, not bothering with closing the books, she'll only have to get them all back out again. And there are at least six of them. Different subjects and all open to something.

Oh dear.

Alexander followed her, lacking anything better to do and the will to come up with another reason for him to go somewhere else. (He's feeling slightly ill, but that's not something he wants to explain.)

He glances at the books and quirks his lips.

"It usually works better to study one thing at a time, Miss Sullivan."

"Oh, heh, yeah, so I've been told," I really feel that this XD is the most appropriate description of her face. It's happy, you know?

"S'not really a good idea to cram it all at once, is it?"

His heart is speeding up to a rate that is probably not healthy for a man his age. Stop doing that, Katrina.

He managed a sardonic nod.

"You hardly retain any of it, doing it that way."

He reached over and slid a book out from under another with a mildly amused and mildly annoyed expression.

"Well when you consider that a lot of them are classes that are requirements, anyway..." But her professor's right. She doesn't even know what she wants her major to be. She is undecided.

Her eyes catch sight of the book he's pulled, "And then there's the book I brought to take a break from cramming. You picked a good one, Professor. Very interesting." Good save?

He scans it, briefly.

"Mm. Study before pleasure, Miss Sullivan. The regrets are fewer."

... shut up.

Dirty minds, all of you!

Yes! The save was a success!

"What can I say? I get distracted easily," shrug.

Is it just Katrina, or is he becoming more relaxed? She likes to think so. He's at least talking to her, right?

Actually, no, he's not becoming more relaxed. He's becoming more resigned to the fact that he can't get out of this situation. (He's actually extremely tense. In a he-wishes-Bo-were-here kind of way.)

"You should work on that."

Oh, Alex would hurt her feelings if she knew that. When I say she cares about what people think, I mean it down to she feels really bad if they're late to something.

Another laugh, "I really should, shouldn't I?" Just don't remind her that she's getting distracted right now. She likes talking with him.

"Yes. And I should remove myself and leave you to your studying. Especially considering that you owe me an assignment."

He stands. He can't handle this anymore.

"Good evening, Miss Sullivan. See you in class."