LOG: Manuel and Paige - Gossip

[x-empath.livejournal.com]

Manuel happens to catch Paige as she makes a clean-laundry run. They talk about his recent difficulty with Amanda and about Forge.



Manuel knocked on the door to Paige's suite only after he sensed that nobody
but her was in residence. She tended to be the Mansion's golden-haired girl
(he thought with a snicker) and he didn't want to taint her by associating
with him. "Paige? Come on, chica, answer the door." he muttered under his
breath.

Under any other circumstance, Paige would ignore the knock. She'd snuck up
to her suite when she knew for a fact that no one would be around, just so
that she could pick up a few extra things from her room without having to
meet all the questions. 'How are you doing?' 'When are you coming back to
your room?' 'Is there anything I do?' She knew they meant well, but it
just got so exhausting sometimes. But, she also hadn't been expecting
anyone to knock on the door, and so found herself opening it before she
could even think not to, cursing rather long and loudly inside her head as
the door swung open.

Manuel winced as he got a brainfull of her irritation and exasperation.
"Hola." he said with a tentative wave of his fingers at her. Some things in
her head were screaming, so he discarded the first thing he thought of to
say and tried something else. "You look well." he said with a smile. "Good
to see you up and about."

"Oh, are you a sight for very sore eyes," Paige practically moaned, falling
into his shoulder before dragging him into the room. "Kick the door closed
before someone else figures out I'm up here. I just came to get some more
clothes – it seems that even I, country bumpkin 2005, get bored with wearing
the same two pairs of jeans and the same two t-shirts for several days in a
row – and am hoping to not have to do with... well. I suppose you
already know."

Manuel nodded, and did as she asked, closing the door behind him. "Nice to
feel that _somebody_ likes to see me from time to time." he said with a
smile on his face. "Take a few minutes, rest. I'd like to talk, if you don't
mind, and Medlab does horrible things to my peace of mind."

Weighing her options, Paige finally nodded, if not a little mournfully and
on the edge of a whine. "Only for you, sugar. Let's hide in my room and
hope my roomies are being typically teenaged and staying out way past their
curfew on a Friday night, hm?" Raising herself up off of him, another
disappointment, Paige made her way to the room she shared with Jubilee,
throwing open a set of drawers and digging to the bottom in search of a
certain article of clothing. "So, got anything on your mind, or are we
doing the friendly banter thing?"

"I have something on my mind, and since you are one of the two female people
on the planet right now who will speak to me, I thought I'd discuss it with
you. As will probably come as no surprise whatsoever, I am apparently a very
lousy boyfriend. I keep fucking up." he said miserably. "And I don't know
how to fix it the deadhead way."

"Sit down, sit down..." she coddled, pushing him towards her bed before
quickly going back to throwing articles of clothing into a pile. "My brain
is yours to pick. Figuratively speaking, you of course understand. Keep
talking, I'll keep packing, and when we figure this whole thing out, I can
run like a bunny." She turned around, giving him a brilliant smile, adding
confidence to what she considered a genius plan, and, if nothing else,
poking him to continue.

Manuel smiled back at Paige's smile. "I do not respond appropriately when I
am angered or challenged." he said. "I've stopped lashing out psionically,
so instead now I use words. And I don't know if you're keeping up while
you're in your dungeon..." he said with a slight smile "but I hurt her
fairly badly when I responded to her turning me green."

"Yes. You did. Even I could see that," Paige answered bluntly, finding a
pair of shorts that a few days ago she would have literally killed for, and
tossed them behind her head. "And why did you? Angry at her, or angry in
general and taking it out on her?"

"Angry at her. I had an important test today, and showing up for it bright
fucking green was Not On." he said, getting angry all over again as he
remembered it. "But apparently I did not represent my anger well, and she
got all bent out of shape about it."

"It was an accident, Manuel. A stupid accident, but an accident none the
less." Paige sighed, and decided that perhaps bringing the entire third
drawer would be easier. At least she could really sit down and give Manuel
her full attention this way; she had a sneaky suspicion she was going to
need it. Settling onto her mattress, she began to fold a t-shirt, putting
it in a duffel bag. "She did not do it out of spite or to be hurtful."

"I had a major exam the next day." he said stubbornly. "Showing up for that
exam looking like I bathed in Lucky Charms was Not On. I needed every scrap
of concentration to study, to know the material. I'm not like you, it
doesn't come easy to me. I have to work for it."

"You can say that as many times as you want. It's not going to excuse the
fact that you were absurdly rude to Amanda over something that was beyond
her control. She did everything in her power to make things better, and you
know what you did? Bitched. Bitched and whined." Paige had learned a long
time ago that the only want to get to Manuel was the straightforward
approach; sometimes that involved a little bit of language it seemed. She'd
deal with it later. "You could have been offering to help her figure out
what went wrong. Offering to find a new place for her to study, so this
wouldn't happen again. Ease her mind a little, and instead you chose to be
a jackass. You decided to prove all those people who you say don't like you
right."

"It wasn't enough!" he finally snapped. "I wanted more out of her than just
restitution, OK? I was angry, I was frustrated, and I wanted to do something
about it."

"And you could of. You could of even done something constructive.
You just chose not to." Raising an eyebrow, Paige folded up a few pairs of
underwear, tossing them into the bag as well. "What would have been enough,
hm?"

"I don't know." he muttered. "I really don't." He did, however, grin at what
Paige was packing up. "It wasn't like I was thinking clearly."

Paige recognised that grin, and tossed a shirt at his head, rolling her eyes
in amusement. "Well, if you don't know now, when you are
assumedly thinking clearly, don't you think it's entirely possible that
there was nothing more that she could do?"

"All I knew is that someone had to pay for what happened. I wasn't going to
stand for being treated that way. And since I can't use my ability to just
fucking well fix it, I had to use words."

"It wasn't something you could have fixed with your mutation anyway,
Manuel," Paige replied calmly. "Can you hear yourself? You want someone to
pay for an accident that was tended to, in my opinion, really quite well.
What else is there to do? No one treated you any way. Accidents aren't
directed at people."

"Unless you are Jamie Madrox, in which case you call them pranks and
everyone laughs along with you." he muttered. Jamie was still far from his
favorite person in the Mansion. "Why do my feelings not matter? I am harmed,
I am discolored, and I have to forgive it."

Deciding to ignore the comment about Jamie – that was another conversation
all in itself, and they were on some kind of clock here – Paige held a
t-shirt up, turning it around and trying to decide if she should take it
downstairs with her. "You don't have to. But, considering Amanda
didn't mean to do it and she apologised and the part where you're supposed
to, you know, love each other, I personally think that's more than enough
reason to."

"Leave that one behind." he told her, nodding towards the T-shirt. "The
color doesn't suit you. And I do care for her, but why should I accept that
sort of an insult from someone who cares for me, rather than some stranger?"
he asked.

"Well. I'm trying to give you reasons to forgive Amanda specifically. I
myself would forgive a stranger, but I suppose some people wouldn't. It's a
choice, a choice of whether or not you want to believe them." Paige
squinted at the shirt and nodded, balling it up and throwing it in the
general direction of her set of drawers that were still open. She could cut
it up for hankies, maybe. Shrugging, Paige returned her attention back to
Manuel. "You have an advantage. You can see if they really mean it. I
just go on optimism. And sure, I get burned, but. I think people deserve
the benefit of the doubt. It's what I did for you, isn't it?"

Manuel waved a hand in irritation. "I have already forgiven her for turning
me green." he said. "Been thinking a lot about that. If it was not for the
exam, I would have just laughed it off, especially when she produced the
cure. But I refuse to apologize for feeling angry."

Paige looked away, pursing her lips in thought at that one, her eyebrows
drawing. "I'm not sure how to answer that one, honestly," she finally
replied, flickering her gaze back to him, but without the smoothing out of
the wrinkles of concentration. "You have every right to be angry, given the
situation, but on the other hand... well, everything that I've been saying.
Perhaps, you had the right to your initial anger, but as the situation
continued, you had less reason for it? I fully admit, this kind of
thing is usually not what I study, I might not be right, but it sounds
logical."

Manuel hrmmed. "So it's a question of appropriateness of the depth of the
response, not appropriateness of the response at all. I can live with that."
he said with a weary grin. "That helps. Thanks."

"Maybe," she said carefully, not willing to even possibly lie to him, before
placing a hand on his shoulder and giving it a little squeeze. "No problem.
I... like doing this. Being someone that people can go to. Solving
puzzles, or at least trying. And hey, if nothing else, it makes me feel
like less of a basketcase." Paige grinned, releasing him to tweak his nose.

Manuel laughed as he got his nose beeped. "So, have you figured out what
you're going to do about Forge yet?" he asked her, still laughing.

Paige's grin died instantly, frozen in post-mortem in an eerie kind of way.
"What? There's something going- is he all right?"

"You could say he's got something going on, yes." he said with a wide grin.
"Haven't you noticed it yet? It's obvious to me."

Giving him a long look, Paige waited, before blinking and shaking her head,
hands out. "Obviously I don't, chickpea, or I would have said. Is he
scaring NASA but sending upgraded plans to them again, because I swear, as
funny as it is..."

Manuel shook his head. "No, nothing quite that simple." he said with a grin.
"He's crazy about you, and he can't seem to figure out what to do about it."

"Hon, we're friends," Paige explained casually. "I just happen to be a girl
and he's sixteen. I really don't consider that earth shattering news here;
a hormonal boy every now and again going, 'huh, I wonder what she looks like
with her shirt off?'. You of all people, really."

"I don't mean to blow my own horn too much here, but I am an empath. I do
see these things." he smirked. "And I think it goes a little further than
"Wow, nice tits." As splendid as they are." he said with a smirk. One thing
he regretted about Amanda - for all of her skills in bed, all of her
adventurous nature, she was rather ... flat.

"Okay, fine. 'Wow, nice... tits and hey, you happen to like the same things
I do!'. If there's anything at all, it's just a crush that I'm sure he gets
over as soon as one of us exits the room." Paige brushed at her knee, much
like she was brushing off Manuel's comments; there was no way. There were
plenty of girls here for Forge to fall madly in love with and no reason
whatsoever why he would pick her. Why was it that two people of the
opposite sex were never friends and always had to be guilty of something?
"We see a lot of each other. We're really close, chickpea, it's a special
kind of bond with lab partners, that kind of trust."

Manuel rolled his eyes. "You can believe that if you want to. And lab
partners or no, there's a closeness I'm sure he'd pay quite dearly to have."

"I... there's no reason for him to, all right?" Paige said forcefully, her
smile gone thin and forced. She was so brittle these days about such stupid
things, and she hated it. "But we're not here to talk about my somewhat
crazy nature. That would need several hours and a chase lounge."

Manuel could sense the fragility, seeing as how it was primarily emotional.
"All right, all right, I'll let it go. But I thought you might like to
know."

"Thank you," she replied, a little more quiet than she would have liked.
"Guess this is what happens when one is still pining over a pixie in the
basement. Makes things interesting, but I'm sorry for almost dragging you
into it."

"The pixie, eh?" he said with a grin. "How deliciously outre of you. Does
Shiro know?" he asked, leaning back for a really juicy gossip session.
"Inquiring minds want to know!"

"You are going to the special hell," she laughed, shifting until she could
reach over and kick him, nearly sending him tumbling off the bed. "I'll be
sure to save you a seat."

Manuel quirked his face in confusion, but chose to let the unknown reference
go. "And watch it with those!" he said, rubbing his shin. "That hurt!"

Paige's face crumpled, crawling over to him and lifting the trouser leg,
inspecting his injury. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to, I was just playing,
are you okay? Is it bruising? Do you need some ice, I could get you some
ice."

Manuel rolled his eyes. "It hurt. It's not a crippling injury." he said, and
then to show that there were no hard feelings - he beeped her nose.

Comments

[xp_daytripper]

One thing he regretted about Amanda - for all of her skills in bed, all of her adventurous nature, she was rather ... flat.

*rolls eyes* It's called being realistically proportioned for my height and weight, doofus.

Like I said...

[x-empath.livejournal.com]

Flat.

It's OK, though.

Manuel

Re: Like I said...

[xp_daytripper]

*phbbts* You'd prefer someone who, if she was _real_, would fall over forwards every time she stood up? Women are not Barbie dolls.

[xp_daytripper]

Oh, and Paige?

Thank you.

[x-foliate.livejournal.com]

Paige: She might set me on edge, but that didn't make Manuel any less of a moron. *smiles*

She's also sorry about the uh, assets comment, and would like to mention that without proper, uh, support, they make running somewhat uncomfortable? Then again, at the moment, as she is so damn skinny (GO EAT SOMETHING PAIGE) I am unsure how much of a difference there really is between the two of them. heh.

Seriously. Being logical with Manuel. People need to get medals and trophies and big cash prizes for this sort of thing.

Glad you enjoyed the log. *purrs, hugs*