xp_logs | Monday afternoon: Bobby, Manuel, and Shinobi

x-coldhands.livejournal.com posting in

While ice cream is his specialty, Bobby's not too terrible at building sandwiches, either. He's just cleaning up from his latest creation, the sandwich sitting on the counter as he puts away the ingredients, idly pondering a glass of milk to go with it before he starts working on the stack of assignments awaiting grading up in his room.

Manuel, led by his growling stomach, is headed straight for the kitchen to see what he can scrounge - and to see if the cook is in residence. The steak she had prepared for him that one time was truly excellent.

Bobby moves across the kitchen, carton of milk in hand, to get a glass out. "Oh. Hey." He knows who it is that just entered the kitchen, although they'd managed to not really meet so far--mainly because Bobby had done his best to avoid the empath. His emotions were something he didn't particularly want to share, especially in the last few months. He warily continues toward the cupboard, wondering just what the range of Manuel's power was.

Judging by the scowl on his face, Bobby's well inside of Manuel's range. Manuel stops dead to stare at Bobby. "Excuse me!" he demands in heavily-accented English. "Stop."

Bobby frowns and turns to face him. "What?" He feels edgy, nervous being in the same room with Manuel, but surely that wouldn't have generated the level of ire he appears to be feeling.

Manuel looks scared under his indignation. "Stop ... lusting! I can feel your filthy eyes on me, and I do NOT appreciate it!"

Bobby blinks. Lusting? Sure, he'd had a thought that Manuel is a fairly attractive man, but lusting was taking it a bit far. Really, he hadn't lusted after anyone, since--no, he definitely didn't want his mind going there. "I--I'm not," he stammers, his body temperature dropping a few degrees, fingers growing cold.

Manuel looks again. Yep, definitely the hot red of want, shot through with threads of jet-black and yellow. "Yes you are." he snarls through gritted teeth. "Just keep your nasty feelings to yourself." When Manuel goes to open the refrigerator, his hands are shaking visibly.

Bobby takes a few steps forward, setting the milk carton on the island near his sandwich. "Look, I just...I didn't mean anything by it." Manuel's reaction is confusing, and rather upsetting, especially the use of the word 'nasty' in relation to Bobby, and his supposed 'lust'. He fists his hands at his side, trying vainly to control his thoughts, but it's almost as if Manuel's words flipped a switch in his mind, and all the self-loathing Bobby's felt for actually enjoying his dreams of the man from FoH on some level is rising to the surface of his mind.

Manuel picks up on all of that easily, given the range and the intensity of the emotions. "You ENJOYED it?" he nearly screams before sinking to his knees like his legs will no longer bear his weight. "Damn you, I don't enjoy it, I don't enjoy it, Idon'tenjoyit..."

Bobby backs away quickly, shaking his head, trying to deny it. "No! No, I...oh, God." He runs into the wall, staring at Manuel in fear, waves of cold starting to pour from him, coating all the surfaces near him with a frosty rime of ice.

Manuel's eyes are glowing red, even underneath his closed eyelids. Tears streak down his face as he rocks back and forth in place. "I didn't enjoy it, I didn't, that wasn't me, it was them, I don't like it..." He repeats it like a mantra, and with each repetition, his remembered pain and distress and lust and humiliation swirl through the kitchen.

"No...please," Bobby pleads, and he's not even sure who he's talking to, or what he wants them to do, but he hasn't felt this bad since the day he returned to the mansion. The temperature of the entire room is rapidly dropping as Bobby's power flows from him uncontrolled, coating every available surface with slowly thickening ice.

Manuel shivers as the temperature drops - he's slender at the best of times, and he's from Spain. "N-n-n-n-n-n-not m-m-m-m-m-m-m-me..." he chatters, eyes still blazing red. "Not my f-f-f-f-f-f-f-feeling..."

Now that his classes for the day are through, a snack is in order a snack is in order before retiring to his room to do some grading.. Shinobi wanders into the kitchen, but stops short when he sees the pair, blinking twice. "Uh. Bobby? Manuel?"

Bobby glances over at the new voice, looking anguished and terrified. The ice continues to thicken in the cold kitchen, but all Bobby can do is shake his head, his voice stuck in his throat.

Manuel doesn't even appear to notice - the muttering under his breath in Castillian is accompanied by little frozen white puffs of air.

Oh, hell. "Not again," Shinobi mumbles under his breath, eyes darting between the two as he all but ignores the room's temperature, save for rolling his sleeves back down.

"I didn't enjoy it...really," Bobby chokes out, looking back at Manuel again. Somehow, it seems of paramount importance to convince him of this. Althought the fact that he knows he did, knows he must have, he reacted to it, makes the task more daunting.

Manuel rocks back and forth, still muttering to himself in Castillian. Tears stream down his face, and all color has drained from his face. He's projecting humiliation, pain, violation, and lust in a very unhealthy combination.

Shinobi manages not to lose his balance as the projected emotions reach him, squeezing his eyes closed and grabbing the doorway for balance. It takes some doing, but he forces himself to focus on calming himself down, in hopes of Manuel picking up on it and breaking the obvious loop.

Manuel is lost in his own little remembered corner of Hell, and doesn't seem to be paying much attention to Shinobi or anyone else. "Help me..." he whispers in heavily fractured English.

Taking a deep breath to help keep himself calm, Shinobi quickly - though unsteadily - makes his way towards Manuel, snapping his fingers to try getting his attention. "Focus, Manuel," he states firmly, raising his voice to try and make himself heard. "You're stuck. You can break out of it. You're a de la Rocha."

Manuel turned his head up towards Shinobi. "It wasn't me. I didn't enjoy it." he sobbed, staring through Shinobi.

"Then don't enjoy it," Shinobi replies, focusing on Manuel for the time being and crouching down in front of him, loosely curling his arms around himself at the chill. "Make yourself feel better, Manuel. You can. Make yourself calm."

"Stop...please," Bobby whimpers. He knows that the emotions are ricocheting back and forth, between himself and Manuel, but that doesn't make it any easier to fight them off, and now he's got a growing fear of his own power. What if he can't stop, even after the negative emotions do? He's never done anything like this before--the ice wall during Stryker's attack is the nearest, and then he was in fight-or-flight mode, with full control of his mutation, no less.

Manuel looks at Shinobi, as opposed to past him. "Shinobi?" he whispered. "I can't stop feeling it all. I don't want to feel it. It wasn't me, it was them ... make them stop?"

Briefly glancing back to Bobby, Shinobi flashes a quick, reassuring smile up at him as he fights tooth and nail to hang onto his own calm, before he turns back to Manuel. He hesitates a moment, and steels himself, setting his jaw. "Can you focus on me, Manuel?"

Manuel blinks his eyes clear, and nods shakily. "I am trying." he whimpers. "It's not me, I didn't do it, I don't enjoy it, it's not me, it's him, it's Bobby, focus on Shinobi, he doesn't like it, he doesn't do it..."

"Focus on me," Shinobi repeats, slowly twisting around to look up towards Bobby again. "That goes for you too. Can you focus on me, Bobby?"

Bobby nods, although he's not sure exactly what he's supposed to be focusing on. Shinobi. Push the other thoughts away, the memories, the emotions, just focus on Shinobi.

Manuel's eyes are still glowing scarlet, but it seems that the intensity has died down a notch. "Focus - have to focus." he mutters in English.

Fortunately, the cold gives Shinobi something to focus on other than the waves of emotion slamming against the calm he's fighting to keep hold of. Teeth chattering, he nods encouragingly, rubbing his arms through his sleeves. "That's it.. you're doing well. Just a bit more, now.."

Manuel finally breaks through the loop and latches onto Shinobi's emotions like a raft in a storm. The hellish glow from his eyes finally fades away to nothing, and Manuel collapses onto the floor, sobbing his brains out.

As the onslaught of negative emotions dies out, Bobby takes a gasping, shuddering breath and starts edging toward the door, watching Manuel fearfully, the waves of cold radiating from him lessening, but still coming.

Quickly planting one hand against the floor to catch himself as the torrent stops as suddenly as it began, Shinobi lets out a sigh of relief. He glances after Bobby, considering for a moment before offering him a quiet "My door's open if you need anything," before slowly turning back to Manuel, with a worried frown.

"I--thanks," Bobby replies in a weak voice, before escaping the kitchen, leaving a wake of frost on the floor as he runs directly for the safety of his own room.

Manuel is curled into a fetal ball right now. "I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't me." he repeats, sometimes in English, sometimes in Castillian, sometimes in a mix of the two.

No jumping to conclusions, Shinobi chides himself, frowning and tentatively reaching out to offer Manuel a hand. "Let's get you to your room.."

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" he screams, curling even tighter into his fetal ball.

"Yeah, I expected that," Shinobi mumbles to himself, drawing his hand back with a wince. So much for not jumping to conclusions.

"He enjoyed it." Manuel whimpers. "So I enjoyed it. I liked being violated. I don't want to feel anymore, I don't, make it _stop_..." he babbles, nearly incoherently.

"You're alright now, Manuel," Shinobi says quietly, trying to project as much calm as he can without being an empath as well. "Just focus on being okay, and we can figure it all out later."

He slowly uncurls from his fetal ball, his normal slightly disdainful look replaced by ashen fear and the horrors of memory. "Tell no one of this." he hisses at Shinobi.

"I don't even know what I saw, Manuel," Shinobi replies calmly, regarding Manuel with more than a little concern. "Relax." There's no promise there, is there? But he isn't running to tattle, either.

It's almost impossible to lie to an empath, even on an empath's really bad day. "I mean it." he says, angrily drying his eyes and nose on his shirtsleeve with none of his usual graces.

"I won't say a word, provided you get yourself help if you need it," Shinobi counters, pushing himself back up to his feet with a brief shiver. "Fair?"

"I don't need any help. I need that assraper to stay out of MY MIND!" he screams. "I don't FEEL this way unless him or the Russian are around! Why do you think I avoid them?"

"Yeah, I understand," Shinobi replies slowly, blinking twice and shoving his hands into his pockets. "Okay.. my lips are sealed. You need anything, besides that?"

"I'm hungry." he whines. "All I wanted was a sandwich. Where's the cook, anyway? And why is it so fucking cold in here?"

"They don't call Bobby 'Iceman' for nothing. And there isn't a cook. We're to cook for ourselves, or ask for help from someone who can." Shinobi shrugged, turning towards the cabinet to retrieve a bottle of soda.

"There is too. She was here a week or so ago. Cute girl, green hair. She needed to get happy. Made me dinner. It was good." he says, finally drawing up the shattered tatters of his dignity.

Shinobi stops with his hand on the cabinet door, slowly arching an eyebrow and looking back towards Manuel. "Lorna isn't the cook. She knows how, but it isn't her job here."

Manuel manages a shrug as he slowly rises to his feet. "She likes it well enough. And she said she was." He then turns and finally opens the fridge door to scrounge something to eat.

"She does need to get happy, though," Shinobi reluctantly agreed, frowning to himself as he pulled a soda from the cabinet. "But she'll get there on her own okay."

Manuel diplomatically doesn't say anything to that idea. He then grabs someone's remnants of a sandwich and a bottle of now-iced tea.

Shinobi frowns at the silence that greets his observation, firmly stamping down his head's need to jump to conclusions for the second time since entering the kitchen. "I'm heading back up," he says after a moment, lifting his bottle in a salute as he starts for the door. "If you need me, check Marie's suite if I'm not in with Sarah."

Manuel just nods to that, and takes a huge bite of his pilfered sandwich. "Perhaps." he mumbles with his mouth full.

Current Mood: distressed

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

x-foliate.livejournal.com

Oh yes, it IS a good thing that Paige doesn't have any inkling that Manuel might have hurt her Bobby.

Don't call her Frappe for nothing, you know.

From:

x-empath.livejournal.com

From Manuel's POV Bobby's the one who went out and hurt _him_.

It's all about perspective. But I'm not shy about repurcussions, so if you have something in mind ...

Manuel

From:

x-foliate.livejournal.com

I with you on that one. But it's her Bobby and she's already frightfully on edge these days.

Care to banter?

From:

x-polarisstar.livejournal.com

Item the first: I was quite clear about not being the cook, oh ye of selective memory!

Item the second: Sure, just tell the whole world, why don't you?

From:

x-empath.livejournal.com

Things that reinforce what he wants get firmly planted in the memory.

Things that don't get glossed over.

OOCly, I know that you're not, and never have been, etc etc etc.

ICly, it's the role he's mentally assigned to you.

Redhawk / Manuel