Manuel and Tabitha, still on the island.

[x-plosive.livejournal.com]

After dinner, Tabitha returns to her room, but doesn't stay there.



It might have been too much to ask to have one day where he could simply have sometime to himself without a specific signature sticking out to him. Naturally, he had to follow it, if only because that signature was pleasantly humming with emotions that were very much unlike the girl they were attached to.

She could only blink up at him, not quite certain he was really there. She could be dreaming, after all. "Perhaps because you've driven me to drink. I'm trying to decide if that was on purpose or just part of your charming personality."

"It was part of my devious plan to belittle you," he replied in a condesending tone. "Can you stand or am I going to have to drag you to your feet. You are very heavy, you know and I am not able to drag you with a cane."

"I have a LOVELY idea," she sighed, turning on her side and curling up in the still-warm sand. "Why don't you quit blowing hot and cold and leave me the hell alone for a while. We can go back to playing your games at home."

"Because as lucky as I am to find you in this stage, I am very unlucky because if I leave you, some part of me will be severed off when I get home." Manuel leaned down, pressing his cane into the sand and taking her by the wrist. "You are not sleeping here."

Tabitha rolled to her knees, led by Manuel's hand on her wrist. Sand had made its way to uncomfortable places inside her linen summer dress. She frowned at it and flapped the material to try to dislodge it. She pulled the neck-line up over her face and blew at the sand. She looked around and spotted the beach shower at the foot of the resort's stairs. Her eyes lit up and she staggered to her feet.

Manuel sighed, helping her to her feet but her curious stare drew his gaze to the direction she was looking. "Don't even think about it."

"What now? The sand itches, I am going to wash it off. Get over it." She stomped purposefully toward the stairs, slower than normal because falling over right now would just be salt in the wound.

He sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose. This could go all wrong and be taken wrong. Just like Adrienne when she was drunk, except Adrienne was not one to act like a victim. Patience.

"Tabitha." Of course he was going to follow.

She turned carefully on her heel, crossed her arms over her chest. "Manuel, I am not dangerous levels of drunk. I am think entirely too much levels of drunk. Probably not about anything I should be thinking about, but that is drunk logic."

"I should not have been able to understand that," he said and though he was completely sober, Manuel reached for her, "Come, you are too drunk to leave out here. Too drunk and too beautiful." Not the right thing to say to her, he knew, but he also knew she would put up a fight if he tried anyother way.

They were close enough to hear that the shower was indeed on day and night, as advertised. She acted as the thought, so he couldn't read her intentions.

Tabitha used his grip on her to propel him forward, into the fall of fresh water and against the stone wall. She couldn't help but follow her arm, reached out to brace herself so she wouldn't hit him full force. "Gotcha." She grinned.

"Woman--" Manuel protested but allowed himself to be pulled under the rain of water, turned and pinned between her and the rock against his back. He closed his eyes under the spray, brushing any stray hairs from his face and reopened them only to catch her grin. "That was not necessary," he said to her, taking a deep breath. She was being incredibly impossible today.

"Nope, but it was fun." She slicked her hair back and turned her face into the spray. She stepped away from Manny and held her hands up, letting the water reach all those spots made itchy by the sand. She turned to walk up the steps and sighed in relief. "You coming?" she asked.

"Yes, if only to get dry," Manuel said, stepping out of the rain of water and following. At least she was able to walk and he? Well he was soaked, no thanks to her and where one might have expected the glare of a grouchy empath, he only had a faint smile for her.

Tabitha skipped to the top of the stairs and pulled two towels out of a wicker basket. She left Manny's on the wall.


Manuel was slow to climb after her but he made it to the top and paused, reminding himself that he should not skip certain days in the gym, especially if he wanted to fix his problems. He shed his shirt, the angry scar of the accident dominated most of his right side and he rung the shirt out before fetching the towel to dry off his upper body.


Oh, unfair! Tabitha ground her teeth and briefly thought about closing her eyes. She discarded the notion immediately, knowing her willpower was as drunk as she was. Instead she oggled.

Shaking the shirt out, she caught his eye with her blatant stare (along with her rampant emotions) and he drapped it over his free arm, walking towards her. "Are you ready?" he asked.

. She squeezed her eyes shut. "That is such a loaded question." Ready to throttle him? Sure. Ready to just sit there and stare? That too. Ready to jump him on the terrace? ..... She shoved the answer to that way down in her psyche.

That was a loaded emotion and for a second, Manuel was convinced he had not gotten a full dose of desire from her but that it was from someone else with the same emotiona signature but of course, his eyes only confirmed it - the colours radiated off her like a target and he was by her side in an instant.

"Come. Here is not the time," he merely stated and gestured for her to lead.


Tabitha rolled her eyes as she walked ahead with only the slightest wobble to her steps. She tapped her foot waiting for the elevator, then threw herself against the opposite wall to wait for it to rise.

"Care to indulge me as to why I've found you out here and not with the girls?" he asked.

"Mmm," she stretched lazily with her eyes closed. "We had dinner, went for a walk, oggled cabana boys, talked about uncomfortable things, and called it a night. Well, sort of. A bottle of wine and I decided I wanted to see the stars from the beach."

"From the beach or from your back to the beach with a young man over you?" Manuel asked drily.

Raw from her confession earlier, Tabitha's jaw clenched in anger. "Did you see anybody out there, douche-bag?"

"From the way you were lying on your back, I do not think you cared," he quipped back and waited for her to exit the elevator, holding the doors open.

She didn't look at him as she walked past. The irony of his accusations would have made her laugh if she weren't so damned mad. When she reached her door, she turned back to him. "You have absolutely no idea about me. Stop making assumptions," she hissed.

"Tell me then, if you think I know so little. Tell me what you are so that I can affirm how much you are in denial and counter it with emotions that betray you."

It took her a moment to remember that her keycard was stuffed into her bra. There was no way she was going to fish it out in front of him. She made a shooing motion with her hands, wound tight as a drum and unable to tell what she was feeling. "No analasys tonight, Freud. I just want you to go away. I'm safely at my room, you can go with a clear conscience."

Manuel was impatient to see her inside her room but she was going to refuse and thus, he left her. "Have a good night," he said, making his way down the hallway. Women were all the same.

Tabitha groped for her key and nearly dropped it twice before she managed to get the door unlocked. Once inside, she sagged against the door in relief. "There's a slim chance that could have gone worse," she mumbled to herself before she fell over on the bed.

It was still a long time before she slept.