Cammie & Manuel

[x-scorpion.livejournal.com]

After a nightmare, Cammie runs across Manuel in the kitchen.

Manuel's eyes flickered up briefly to the green-haired girl walking inside the brightly lit kitchen. With his back to the warm afternoon sun, he turned the page to his book and dropped his gaze. The tension in his shoulders climbed up his neck and he wasn't sure what was worse, trampling through one of Lillian's emotion dumps, soaking in Forge's very apparent and loudly suppressed emotions, or this one, the pounding against his temples as she raged through her own affairs with a smile plastered to her face.

Cammie was having A Moment. On the outside she looked completely normal. On the inside… she had a nightmare before she had come down to the kitchen so that was seething beneath the surface. Memories of her boyfriend’s death were dancing through her mind. She wasn’t focused on what she was doing and she ended up cutting herself slightly with a knife.

“Damnit!” she put her hand to her mouth and pulled a thing of superglue out of her pocket and then glued the wound shut. “God fucking damnit,” she muttered. She also had the urge to punch what-was-his-name but she repressed that too. Bad mornings made her violent.

“Are there paper towels over there?” she managed.

"Are you going to rip them off the wall," he looked up and nodded towards where the papertowel hung, "or are you deciding whether or not to wrap it around my neck and strangle me?" He could always feel animosity, a feeling he was always quick to assume it was aimed towards him. Though he could only speculate, one tended to draw up their own conclusions on a reoccurring emotion that spiked when he was around.

“It depends, would you rather die from me bleeding all over or living out what ever counts as life and then dropping over dead of your own accord?” Cammie returned, smoothing the glue over the wound.

"The bleeding all over has minimal entertainment, I assure you. However, if the final result is to silence your insufferable fog horn of emotions, then by all means," he gestured with a palm faced up. "Bleed away."

“My blood is a bio-hazard dimwit. I’d like to get it off of the knife,” she said. But she walked over and got the towel herself, “not that you care or anything.”

He picked up his pen, resting his forearm on the edge of the table and glanced back down at his book, calm in his exterior. Pushing the pen through his fingers, he got to the head, brought it up and pressed the rear into the table, repeating the gesture. "Not that I care," he repeated her words. It took a great deal of concentration to not let her emotions flood through his, ocean storm waves smashing against rocks.

She went over and cleaned off the knife the and pocketed the towels. She’d have to take them and have them burned. “Yeah, you seem like a warm fuzzy ball of caring,” she said sarcastically, her mood taking a turn for the worse.

"Would you like me to start crying for you?" he asked sharply. The pen habit continued.

“Knock yourself out. I’ve always wanted a professional mourner,” Cammie returned as she triple checked the knife for spilled blood.

"Tell me something," he started, looking down at his pen briefly before his gaze locked onto hers. "How is it that you walk around, trumpeting your smile when beneath there is a heavy weight of grief, wrapped tightly around fear and soaked in an extra stench of self loathing?" Manuel asked without a hint of sympathy.

She stared him for a long moment, “Fuck you,” she said simply and plainly, “You don’t know the first fucking thing about me. So shut the fuck up.”

Manuel's smile broke across his face with a hearty chuckle to follow. "It is very admirable," he replied.

“I could kill you right now, just tap you on the face and watch you drop dead,” Cammie said. “So why don’t you give it a fucking rest?”

"Please spare me your pissing contest. Threats are not taken lightly here," he remarked.

“Given what I accidentally did to Jean-Paul, it really isn’t a threat. It’s like a warning level I need tattooed across my forehead. ‘Warning: Biohazard,’” Cammie returned.

"Is that what happened to our Quebecois?" Manuel was silent, considering her emotions and set the pen down. "Perhaps I can give some insight into your emotional turmoil through a question. How many bodies will it take until we stop letting our emotions run wild?"

“Three and a half,” she returned sarcastically. “And since you’re so into this? The first one was an accident,” she said, referring to what had her riled up right now. That nightmare always got her.

"The first one is always an accident. The second one is not your fault, yes? The third deserved it, as did the fourth - or half in your case - ask for it. Am I warm?" He did not understand fully where she was coming from, but he knew those emotions. Guilt weighed her down and she braced herself with the facade to keep from tripping over the rest.

“What, you reading my mind or something? Because you should get the hell out,” she said, resting her hands on the table. Her left one green under the bandages, the fingers sticking out. It was a constant reminder of what she was. And what she could do. “The first was an accident, after that I stopped counting.” Her tone was nonchalant.

After the first, nothing mattered.

He noticed her posture but made no move to stand up or shift his position. Instead, he brought a hand up to rub one of his temples. "I am an empath. I read your emotions and I make up the rest as I go along." He offered her a brief, but patient smile. Of course, he still maintained his calm.

“So what, you do this shit for fun?” she snapped back. “This how you get your kicks?”
"Yes, that is exactly what I do," Manuel replied with dry sarcasm. "I am wading through your emotional mess, imagine the 'kicks' I get."

She snorted, “I don’t want to know the kicks you get,” she returned. “I’m not the one who gets off on this stuff.”

"And you say I am dimwitted."

“Retarded, you mean? Yeah,” Cammie said back. “Most people don’t go around poking anyone in open wounds with sharp sticks.”

" I was nice about it. How else would you learn to steel yourself from prodding of others?" he replied back. "I simply did not dance around the truth when it is pounding against my temples."

“Well excuse me for pounding against your temples,” Cammie said. Oh, she wanted to hit him, but she told herself silently it wasn’t worth it. “Once I finish making this damn sandwich I’ll be out of your way.”

"Counseling--" he added hastily,"--would be recommended. Though of course, there is always punching bags." She seemed like a mini green Lillian.

“I’ll take the latter, thanks,” Cammie said, going over and started making her sandwich, her movements violent. “No more poking in the head, thanks.”

'Yes, because violence solves everything," he mused.

“I know violence isn’t the answer,” she said looking back at him, her eyes green slits, “I get it wrong on purpose.”

He picked up his pen, marking something in his book and no longer spared her another glance. "Enjoy your immaturity while it lasts. Some day, it will catch up with you."

“When it does, I’ll kick its ass,” she said, finishing making her food. “Enjoy the rest of your day. I recommend fucking yourself with a kitchen knife sometime before you go to bed.”

"Charmed."

Amusement danced in his eyes as he watched her stalk out of the room. Returning to his book with a faint annoyance, he realized he'd lost his place, not with the words before him but the emotional signature he'd been tracking.