xp_logs | Manuel and M Meet!

Summary: Manuel finally meets M. They snob.
Time: Sometime this week, after Giant Pink Tonkers but before Changing Tide

Dramatis Personae: Manuel de la Rocha, Monet St Croix
Dramatis Noncorporeal Personae: Alphonso de la Rocha, Marius St Croix

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Manuel's in the Lounge again, with his iPod plugged in He's grooving to his music, mouthing the lyrics silently, oblivious to the outside world He's got his feet up on the antique coffee table, displacing Jubilee's copy of Teen Beat and a ragged copy of Cosmo.

So, he is the only person to witness M's arrival Quite an arrive it is too. She flung herself around the door. "People!" she declares "I must know, do these shoes look wrong with my toes this colour?"

Manuel looks at M, presses pause on his iPod, and then quirks both his eyebrows at her "I'm sorry?" he says in English, his Spaniard accent nearly smothering the words

Sighing enormously, Me saunters over, the only work available to someone wearing shoes with heels that high. "Oh, I would get one of the starvation-chic guys. I don't know if you're going to be any use, but." She put one foot up on the coffee table in front of him. "Okay, let's see if anyone here has any taste. Does this look okay?"

Manuel looks at the proferred foot in the six-inch stiletto. "I suppose so, if the look you are going for is "Harlot High School Girl in Trouble"." he says with a smirk. "That's a truly offensive shade of red, and it doesn't suit your coloring in the slightest.

"Oh!" M frowned. "I was more just going for 'slutty'. Of course, I can tell that you are nothing but fabulously fashionable, and incapable of style mistakes. Pity your mother dresses you." She stood up straight again, and frowned at her feet. "Damn, I need to go shoe shopping,"

Manuel blinks at that last bit. He followed _most_ of that. "And you're stealing fashions from the Happy Hooker. This is supposed to impress me?"

Now M looks confused. "Was I impressing you? Also, if you knew anything, you'd know that the cheaper you look, the less people look for ID. Of course, lots of money helps, but." She considered him. "What did you say your name was? And did you know that if relaxed your stupid paranoid brain a little I could understand you better and not get a headache?"

"Manuel Alphonso Rodrigo de la Rocha." he names himself. "No one ever asks me for ID. I don't permit it."

M smiled, suddenly and charmingly. "Oh! You're a de la Rocha. Who'd have thought there was anyone with class here." She held out a hand, nails short, shaped, and painted a shell pink. "My name's Monet Yvette Clarisse Maria Therese St. Croix, but everyone calls me M." She beamed. "I thought you were some street punk with no class, less money and dreams of grandeur. How fabulous that you don't suck."

Manuel stands, and formally bows over M's hand, kissing the back of it like a true gentlemen. "A St. Croix? Here? I never suspected _anyone_ in this place had any breeding or class whatsoever!"

With a flutter of her hand, M dismisses the rest of the people they were living with. "Well, Jake Gavin's around, and there are a few others, but they're all horrible crawling types or trying to be big heros. Hey, I'd heard you were doing mix-ups in clubs? Really?"

Manuel nods. "It amused me." he says, with the sort of natural arrogance that Emma despairs of ever breaking him of. "And who is Jake Gavin?"

"Oh, his Father is The Gavin, but Jake. You've heard of Courier? He was working for their company. Anyway, he's a guidance couselor here, for some reason." Her shrug is immensely disinterested. "Anyway, so now you're here, I know it's going to be more fun."

Manuel looks over M's rather appealing body, and grins back at her. "How could it _not_ be?" he leers.

Shifting her hips and shoulders she smiles at him. "Well, I've got myself a DJ, what more can a girl ask for?"

Manuel just smirks at the assumption. "No, you _know_ a DJ. What do you pay?" he asks in fairly broken English.

M laughs. "It depends entirely what you're worth." Turning, she spots a clock and sighs. "You know, I hate to say this, but if I don't go, I'm gonna miss a class, and I can't do that."

"Why? You're a St Croix, what could they be teaching you that you don't already know?" he asks with some confusion. "All the best, if I remember hearing of your father correctly."

"Probably not what your father considers all the best. All the best in a ridiculous number of best schools," M admits. "Daddy got sick of me being expelled, and sent me here and. After Marius, he doesn't make empty threats, you know?"

Manuel just _laughs_ at this. "Me, I cut and run at 14. It was that or go mad."

M shrugs. "I wouldn't run away from my family. If I ever got any time to spend with them," she adds wryly.

"Well, I didn't have much choice, really. Alphonso was cheating, Mom was cheating, and both of them blamed me for it. Couple that with my power's onset, and ...". He shrugs at that, fighting back bad memories and feelings.

"That sounds very sucky," M offered. "I don't think Mum and Daddy were surprised, really, by me."

"It was." he says, in the Understatement of the Year. "But that was then, and this is now. And outside of that hideous toenail shade, you're really quite a piece of work. Well, maybe a few flaws, but nothing that can't be overcome." he smirks.

M laughs at his smirk. "Well, babe, if you're really really nice I might let think about looking at what you think are flaws." She turned on her heel. "And now, I'm going to class, and you can go and try to pretend not to be a skeleton." Without saying anything more, she sashayed out of the room.

Manuel watches her posterior sashay with great interest. "Now _that_ is how God intended women to be! I wonder if she likes boys..." he muses to himself in Castillian before turning back on his iPod.

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