Amanda, Manuel - Sunday morning
Oct. 24th, 2004 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_daytripper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsIn the middle of the chaos... some more! Manuel comes to apologise for being a dick. For once, it's not that simple.
Manuel knocked on the door to Amanda's suite. In deference to her wishes, he was dressed simply - a button-down and slacks. Nothing fancy, nothing like his preferred suits. In one hand he clutched a single red rose, and in the other a basket full of goodies. ~Come on, open up.~ he muttered to himself in Castillian.
She'd been napping on the couch - possibly not the best place to sleep, considering she shared a suite with two sugar-hyper little girls, but it hadn't started out that way. She'd been trying to do her Hindi reading for class the next day, and before she knew it she had the book draped over her face and a crick in her next from falling asleep in an awkward position. At the knock, the book fell to the floor with a bang as she jerked away, and for a second she had no idea where she was. "Come in," she called blearily, scrubbing sleep grit out of her eyes - it had been a long night sitting with Marie-Ange, and possibly a longer day - she had a healing spell to give Doug yet.
Manuel opened the door and put the rose behind his back. "Hello." he said quietly. "Have I caught you at a bad time?" he asked, taking in her rumpled appearance, the Hindi textbook, and her own feeling of exhaustion - among other things. Mentally, he winced - he'd earned a lot of her feelings towards him, and he wanted - no needed! - to fix the breach between them.
"When isn't a bad time around here?" she asked, a little irritably. "Did you want something?"
"I did." he said calmly. "I wanted - well, there are lots of things I want. First and foremost is to apologize to you. I ... no, there are no excuses. I was wrong. I reacted badly to your windfall, and I lashed out at you for it. I would like to apologize, and if you're amenable, I brought lunch..." he said, shaking the basket to bring attention to it.
He kept doing this. Being an arse, then making some grand gesture to apologise for it. When it would just be simpler to not be an arse in the first place. Then her stomach growled, reminding her she'd slept through breakfast, and missed dinner the night before. "Lunch would be good," she said tiredly, not touching the bit about the apology just yet. "But not in here. Need some air after bein' down in that bloody medlab all last night. The roof?"
"Done." he said with a smile. He was still getting a confused read off of her, and he wasn't exactly sure why. She was getting distressingly good at concealing her emotional self from him, and if he pushed she'd know, that would make an even bloodier dog's dinner of things. "Before we go - I wanted you to have this. Because despite all of the crap, and my trying and failing to be someone you can be proud to be with, I do still love you." he said, presenting the rose from behind his back for her approval.
For all her protestations and attitude, Amanda was still a teenage girl, and one in love at that. There was the strangest sensation in her chest, like her heart had just flip-flopped, and she took the offered rose carefully. "Thank you," she said quietly, looking down so her hair obscured her face for a moment while she blinked away the tears that had inextricably pricked her eyes. Then she looked up, shielding the link with one of Strange's meditation exercises. "Why?" she asked. "Why d'you keep doin' this, Manny? I needed you t' be proud of me, t' be happy for me, just once, an' you couldn't manage even that."
Manuel sighed. "I'd claim that I'd had a rough week, but that is insufficient to explain things. I ... I'm an idiot." he said, shrugging helplessly. "I should be proud of you. I should be dancing. I should be offering you accolates, laying myself at your feet. Instead, I give you the back of my metaphorical hand. I don't KNOW why I did it. I wish I could take it back, but I can't." he said sadly. "I can only apologize. I wish there was something more I could do."
"You could stop doin' it," Amanda told him sadly, before getting to her feet. "Let me put this in some water an' we'll go eat," she said, heading towards the kitchenette and rummaging in the cupboards for a tall enough glass.
Manuel sighed. "I could." he said simply. "I should. Yet every damned time something like this comes up, I turn into a moron. I wouldn't see your joy, your self-confidence, how _good_ it made you feel. Fuck, I'm beginning to think your human friend is correct. I don't know!" he said, pacing around in a very tight circle. "You complete me. You can make me smile just by walking into a room. You're very sexy. But when you need me the most, when all you want from me is a kind word, all I can do is let you down. Doesn't matter that I kept you together when you were falling apart. I had a chance to give you that step up that you deserve, and I botched it."
"The thing is, Manny..." Amanda paused in the action of filling the glass she'd found with water and took a breath. "The thing is... I can't keep doin' this. If the only times yer there for me is when 'm fallin' apart... 'M not gunna keep doin' it, fallin' apart. I _can't_. So where does that leave us?" She kept facing the sink, not sure if she could say what she wanted to say if she was looking at him.
Manuel closed his eyes for a long few moments. "I don't know." he admitted. "But it doesn't look good. I ... want another chance. I would beg for another chance, if I thought it would do a damned bit of good." he said. "I need you, Amanda. And I know that's not what you want, and not what you need, but it's true. I _need_ you. You are the one bright spot in my entire life. And now I've darkened that with my thoughtlessness. Can we talk about it more over food? If this is to be the end, I'd at least like to have a sky over my head and a full belly." he asked.
Amanda hesitated, but then her stomach growled again, more insistently. "All right," she said, putting the rose in the glass. She stroked the soft petals lightly, briefly, unable to help herself - it was the first time anyone had ever given her flowers. Then she caught herself, and hardened her resolve, remembering what the Askani had said the day before. She'd already given up too much of her happiness for Manuel's sake, time for it to stop. Grabbing her jacket, she nodded at him. "Let's go."
Manuel led the way up to the roof, and spread out the banket and the food with practiced speed. Which is a good thing, as he could barely see anyway, given the leakage about the eyes. "All right." he said, after the two of them had settled down to begin eating. "You know about Ms Frost, and what she said to me. I have been trying to find a way to train myself. This you also know. This is important to me because it is quite honestly all that I have as a future. It is the _only_ chance I have to develop a future for myself, to bring my family back to the heights that it has fallen from in recent years. I know that family doesn't mean a damn to you, not the way it means to me. You've made your family - Nathan, Angelo, maybe some others I don't know about. I _am_ my family. I am the only one that I have - until you came into my life. And now I am losing you." he said miserably.
"See, that's just it. Yer've spent so much time bein' the only one in yer life that you don't think of anyone else, not unless they're havin' a full on hysterical fit an' destroyin' yer room, or chuckin' their guts up in yer bathroom." Amanda laid down the sandwich she'd been nibbling half-heartedly at, her appetite suddenly gone. "I know yer family is important t' you... but it's not my fault it's not t' me. I didn't ask t' be thrown away by mine. So stop punishin' me for what 'm tryin' t' make instead."
Manuel blinked at Amanda. This was new, and he wasn't sure how to deal with it. "I ... I don't understand." he said helplessly. "That's my real problem here. I just don't understand. I don't know where I fit in, I have abysmal luck at making friends, no one gives a shit about everything that _I_ was raised to hold dear, and the things other people hold dear I know nothing about. Even with you, when we both hold family dear, I manage to alienate you because yours isn't a tie of blood, but of your own making."
"An' when you don't understand somethin' you fall back into thinkin' it ain't worth understandin'!" Amanda retorted. "It's not enough for you t' say, 'I don't get it', you have t' sneer at whatever it is. You just did it then, sayin' I don't give a damn about family. You make it sound like 'm bein' a brat 'cause me allowance got cut off. They _sold_ me, Manny. Gave me t' a fuckin' psycho t' use for nine years. It's a bloody miracle I want anythin' t' do with anyone, after that, an' yet you get yer nose out of joint whenever I spend time with Nate an' Moira, or with Ange. Again, 's all about you."
"Lives get bought and sold all the time!" he finally blurted out, and then immediately flushed as he _knew_ that it was the absolute wrong thing to say. Again. "Sorry, that was unfair of me. Normal people don't have their lives bought and sold. They do in my old world, but I am not _in_ that world anymore. Trying to go back to what I was born to do is what is getting me into so much trouble here." he said after a few long moments of thought. "I have to find a new way. Something to do with my life that has nothing to do with being a de la Rocha. And I don't know what that is. And not knowing terrifies me." he admitted.
"An' knowin' yer tryin' t' get that old world of yers back terrifies me," she said coldly. "'Cause you know what I see when I see that? When you tell me that it was normal for people t' have their lives bought an' sold all the time? I see a world that Rack would've had no trouble fittin' into at all. I see people who would do what he did t' me - an' it's more than the bindin' spell, an' you bloody well know it, or you would if you paid attention t' the nightmares - an' not give a toss for how many lives they ruin." Her composure cracked, and all she was feeling - the fear, the sense of loss, the anger - all poured down the link. "I love you. You have no bloody idea how hard it was for me t' tell you that. An' you just... you..." She couldn't finish, the words jamming behind the lump in her throat.
"I know." he said softly. "I know how hard that was for you to say. It was no picnic for me to say and mean -either-." he added. "But it's _all that I know_. What else am I supposed to do? How can I give you, give _us_, any kind of a life together without the position as White Knight? What else can I do with my life? How am I supposed to give you _anything_ if I am penniless and destitute? What kind of a life would we have then?" he asked her.
"I don't want anythin', 'cept you," she said in that half-choked voice. "You don't see that, but I love you, not what you can give me." His fear, coming down the link was almost overwhelming, and she managed to block it off a little. She couldn't ask him to give it up - it was too important to him. "An' the Hellfire stuff, it wasn't a problem until bloody Frost started in on you."
"I dance to her tune." he admitted. "She is my patron. I cannot risk offending her, not openly, not right now. If she withdraws her support, I have _nothing_. It would be like if Strange asked you to do something, and left it unsaid that a refusal to do so would mean a termination of your arrangement? Now do you understand?"
"I do," she said, sighing heavily. She looked up at him, face pinched and miserable. "So, what now? We go back t' the same old dance, me offendin' yer sense of pride, you takin' the stuff I do as a personal insult, you makin' some romantic gesture an' me forgivin' you? 'Cause I don't think I can keep doin' this, love. 'M too bloody tired."
"I wish I knew." Manuel said, just as miserable as Amanda was. "Can I have another try? To make things work, to be the man you want me to be?" he asked her, heart in his throat.
"Yer've said that before," she pointed out, but it was her head and not her heart saying it. Her heart was wanting him to mean it this time, to stop making her so miserable and hug her now already, please. And that was what was coming across the link.
"I know I have." Manuel said, and then leaned forward to wrap Amanda up in a hug. "I just want another try. Just one more. Please?" he blubbered at her, finally losing the last shards of his composure.
Nathan would be disappointed with her, but she didn't have it in her to end it. Not when she needed him just as much as he needed her. "'S all right, love, don't cry, please. 'M not goin' any where..." she murmured, clinging to him a little. It probably was a weakness or something, but she always felt better when he was holding her. "We'll both try, okay?"
Manuel clung to Amanda for about five minutes before getting himself under control enough to pull away just a bit. "We will." he said firmly. "I have training options now. Which reminds me - the more training I get, the quicker I can get Miz Frost satisfied and remove all of this stress. Would you be willing to act as a spotter and a shield for me? Jubilation has consented to allow me to practice on her, if you are there to shield and to make sure things do not get out of hand."
Amanda bit her lip. She'd agreed to Manuel seeing Jubilee, she knew fully well he was still fucking the other girl... but all of that worked with a large dose of denial. Seeing the two of them together, even in a training situation... it was going to be hard. But this was important to him, and she had offered to help any way she could. And yes, the obligation to Ms Frost was best satisfied as quickly as possible. "All right," she said briefly. "But... do me a favour? Keep the flirtin' with her down t' a dull roar? I need t' concentrate for the shieldin' spell, an' that'll be hard if you an' her are all googly eyes at each other." She gave him a hard, wry smile. "There's limits."
"No flirting whatsoever." he promised. "Anything you want." he followed quickly. "All business. And I'm not going to give her the lust. Only the positive emotions. Happiness, contentment, all of that. If I am going to learn how to project better, it cannot just be the negative emotions, right?"
Amanda nodded. "Nothin' wrong with that. Nothin' at all - yer right, positive emotions'd be good." She poked at the sandwich again, still not hungry. Not with the knots still in her stomach. "Does one of the teachers know? 'Bout you practicin' with Lee?"
Manuel nodded. "Yes." he said simply. "They know everything. No secrets." Manuel said. "Secrets always get out." he said, possibly prophetically. "I have learned that."
"At least yer've learned somethin'," she said under her breath. Unfair, but she was still deathly tired. And she still had a Healing to do. "'M sorry, love, looks like I ain't hungry after all. I need t' kip - mind bein' me pillow for an hour or so?"
"For as long as you'd like." he said. He wasn't sure what a kip was, but it didn't matter. Not in the slightest. He had to find a way. He _had to_. Losing Amanda was unacceptable. Altering Amanda was unacceptable. Losing his position as White Knight, with the attendant income, was also unacceptable.
She got the thread of confusion down the link, and smiled, far more naturally this time. "Kip means sleep," she told him. "I was up half the night with Angie, an' 'm gunna be Healin' Doug later. Can we got back t' yer room? No-one'll bother me there."
Manuel ah'ed. "I was wondering." he confessed. He then started packing up the barely-touched remnants of his picnic lunch, and once he was all done, he gestured for Amanda to lead the way. "I love you." he said spontaneously. "Especially for kicking my ass for being such a colossal jerk. I really needed it this time."
"It'd be easier if you did the kickin' yerself, y'know," she told him, reaching for his free hand. "Yer a plonker sometimes, Manny, but you know what? Yer _my_ plonker. So that's somethin' ain't it?"
"I have proven resistant to self-kicking." he admitted with a shaky smile. He took her free hand and clutched at it tightly. "Not one of my more stellar traits."
"I could always poke you down the link when it's the right time t' kick yerself?" she suggested, but not harshly. Having his hand in hers made a lot of things better. "An' I do love you. Even when you need kickin'. 'S why it's so bloody hard - it'd be easy if I hated you."
"Do that." he said, quite seriously. "Since I am quite bad at determining when I should do it, poke me mentally when I need to shut up or when I've said the wrong thing. Maybe then I'll learn."
"You might regret sayin' that," she told him, with a hint of her usual wicked grin breaking through the tiredness. "Now, since yer in that whole makin' up for bein' a prick phase, 'm bein' demandin'. There's a Buffy episode I want you t' watch for this Halloween business, an' you get t' be my pillow when I pass out in the middle of it. Deal?"
"I might, but it needs doing." he said. "And I will watch this program with you. I promise." he said softly, wondering what it was that he'd gotten himself into. She was being quite different than usual with him, firmer, less spineless, and he found that he _liked_ it.
Amanda stretched up to kiss his cheek. It felt good, standing up for herself. Somewhere along the way she'd forgotten how, falling into old patterns she'd learned with Rack. Well, time to stop that. Time to stop a lot of things to do with Rack. "New start, eh? For both of us," she said, before leading him back downstairs.
"A new beginning." he agreed, following her and that damned posterior of hers down the stairs. He could watch it move for hours.
Manuel knocked on the door to Amanda's suite. In deference to her wishes, he was dressed simply - a button-down and slacks. Nothing fancy, nothing like his preferred suits. In one hand he clutched a single red rose, and in the other a basket full of goodies. ~Come on, open up.~ he muttered to himself in Castillian.
She'd been napping on the couch - possibly not the best place to sleep, considering she shared a suite with two sugar-hyper little girls, but it hadn't started out that way. She'd been trying to do her Hindi reading for class the next day, and before she knew it she had the book draped over her face and a crick in her next from falling asleep in an awkward position. At the knock, the book fell to the floor with a bang as she jerked away, and for a second she had no idea where she was. "Come in," she called blearily, scrubbing sleep grit out of her eyes - it had been a long night sitting with Marie-Ange, and possibly a longer day - she had a healing spell to give Doug yet.
Manuel opened the door and put the rose behind his back. "Hello." he said quietly. "Have I caught you at a bad time?" he asked, taking in her rumpled appearance, the Hindi textbook, and her own feeling of exhaustion - among other things. Mentally, he winced - he'd earned a lot of her feelings towards him, and he wanted - no needed! - to fix the breach between them.
"When isn't a bad time around here?" she asked, a little irritably. "Did you want something?"
"I did." he said calmly. "I wanted - well, there are lots of things I want. First and foremost is to apologize to you. I ... no, there are no excuses. I was wrong. I reacted badly to your windfall, and I lashed out at you for it. I would like to apologize, and if you're amenable, I brought lunch..." he said, shaking the basket to bring attention to it.
He kept doing this. Being an arse, then making some grand gesture to apologise for it. When it would just be simpler to not be an arse in the first place. Then her stomach growled, reminding her she'd slept through breakfast, and missed dinner the night before. "Lunch would be good," she said tiredly, not touching the bit about the apology just yet. "But not in here. Need some air after bein' down in that bloody medlab all last night. The roof?"
"Done." he said with a smile. He was still getting a confused read off of her, and he wasn't exactly sure why. She was getting distressingly good at concealing her emotional self from him, and if he pushed she'd know, that would make an even bloodier dog's dinner of things. "Before we go - I wanted you to have this. Because despite all of the crap, and my trying and failing to be someone you can be proud to be with, I do still love you." he said, presenting the rose from behind his back for her approval.
For all her protestations and attitude, Amanda was still a teenage girl, and one in love at that. There was the strangest sensation in her chest, like her heart had just flip-flopped, and she took the offered rose carefully. "Thank you," she said quietly, looking down so her hair obscured her face for a moment while she blinked away the tears that had inextricably pricked her eyes. Then she looked up, shielding the link with one of Strange's meditation exercises. "Why?" she asked. "Why d'you keep doin' this, Manny? I needed you t' be proud of me, t' be happy for me, just once, an' you couldn't manage even that."
Manuel sighed. "I'd claim that I'd had a rough week, but that is insufficient to explain things. I ... I'm an idiot." he said, shrugging helplessly. "I should be proud of you. I should be dancing. I should be offering you accolates, laying myself at your feet. Instead, I give you the back of my metaphorical hand. I don't KNOW why I did it. I wish I could take it back, but I can't." he said sadly. "I can only apologize. I wish there was something more I could do."
"You could stop doin' it," Amanda told him sadly, before getting to her feet. "Let me put this in some water an' we'll go eat," she said, heading towards the kitchenette and rummaging in the cupboards for a tall enough glass.
Manuel sighed. "I could." he said simply. "I should. Yet every damned time something like this comes up, I turn into a moron. I wouldn't see your joy, your self-confidence, how _good_ it made you feel. Fuck, I'm beginning to think your human friend is correct. I don't know!" he said, pacing around in a very tight circle. "You complete me. You can make me smile just by walking into a room. You're very sexy. But when you need me the most, when all you want from me is a kind word, all I can do is let you down. Doesn't matter that I kept you together when you were falling apart. I had a chance to give you that step up that you deserve, and I botched it."
"The thing is, Manny..." Amanda paused in the action of filling the glass she'd found with water and took a breath. "The thing is... I can't keep doin' this. If the only times yer there for me is when 'm fallin' apart... 'M not gunna keep doin' it, fallin' apart. I _can't_. So where does that leave us?" She kept facing the sink, not sure if she could say what she wanted to say if she was looking at him.
Manuel closed his eyes for a long few moments. "I don't know." he admitted. "But it doesn't look good. I ... want another chance. I would beg for another chance, if I thought it would do a damned bit of good." he said. "I need you, Amanda. And I know that's not what you want, and not what you need, but it's true. I _need_ you. You are the one bright spot in my entire life. And now I've darkened that with my thoughtlessness. Can we talk about it more over food? If this is to be the end, I'd at least like to have a sky over my head and a full belly." he asked.
Amanda hesitated, but then her stomach growled again, more insistently. "All right," she said, putting the rose in the glass. She stroked the soft petals lightly, briefly, unable to help herself - it was the first time anyone had ever given her flowers. Then she caught herself, and hardened her resolve, remembering what the Askani had said the day before. She'd already given up too much of her happiness for Manuel's sake, time for it to stop. Grabbing her jacket, she nodded at him. "Let's go."
Manuel led the way up to the roof, and spread out the banket and the food with practiced speed. Which is a good thing, as he could barely see anyway, given the leakage about the eyes. "All right." he said, after the two of them had settled down to begin eating. "You know about Ms Frost, and what she said to me. I have been trying to find a way to train myself. This you also know. This is important to me because it is quite honestly all that I have as a future. It is the _only_ chance I have to develop a future for myself, to bring my family back to the heights that it has fallen from in recent years. I know that family doesn't mean a damn to you, not the way it means to me. You've made your family - Nathan, Angelo, maybe some others I don't know about. I _am_ my family. I am the only one that I have - until you came into my life. And now I am losing you." he said miserably.
"See, that's just it. Yer've spent so much time bein' the only one in yer life that you don't think of anyone else, not unless they're havin' a full on hysterical fit an' destroyin' yer room, or chuckin' their guts up in yer bathroom." Amanda laid down the sandwich she'd been nibbling half-heartedly at, her appetite suddenly gone. "I know yer family is important t' you... but it's not my fault it's not t' me. I didn't ask t' be thrown away by mine. So stop punishin' me for what 'm tryin' t' make instead."
Manuel blinked at Amanda. This was new, and he wasn't sure how to deal with it. "I ... I don't understand." he said helplessly. "That's my real problem here. I just don't understand. I don't know where I fit in, I have abysmal luck at making friends, no one gives a shit about everything that _I_ was raised to hold dear, and the things other people hold dear I know nothing about. Even with you, when we both hold family dear, I manage to alienate you because yours isn't a tie of blood, but of your own making."
"An' when you don't understand somethin' you fall back into thinkin' it ain't worth understandin'!" Amanda retorted. "It's not enough for you t' say, 'I don't get it', you have t' sneer at whatever it is. You just did it then, sayin' I don't give a damn about family. You make it sound like 'm bein' a brat 'cause me allowance got cut off. They _sold_ me, Manny. Gave me t' a fuckin' psycho t' use for nine years. It's a bloody miracle I want anythin' t' do with anyone, after that, an' yet you get yer nose out of joint whenever I spend time with Nate an' Moira, or with Ange. Again, 's all about you."
"Lives get bought and sold all the time!" he finally blurted out, and then immediately flushed as he _knew_ that it was the absolute wrong thing to say. Again. "Sorry, that was unfair of me. Normal people don't have their lives bought and sold. They do in my old world, but I am not _in_ that world anymore. Trying to go back to what I was born to do is what is getting me into so much trouble here." he said after a few long moments of thought. "I have to find a new way. Something to do with my life that has nothing to do with being a de la Rocha. And I don't know what that is. And not knowing terrifies me." he admitted.
"An' knowin' yer tryin' t' get that old world of yers back terrifies me," she said coldly. "'Cause you know what I see when I see that? When you tell me that it was normal for people t' have their lives bought an' sold all the time? I see a world that Rack would've had no trouble fittin' into at all. I see people who would do what he did t' me - an' it's more than the bindin' spell, an' you bloody well know it, or you would if you paid attention t' the nightmares - an' not give a toss for how many lives they ruin." Her composure cracked, and all she was feeling - the fear, the sense of loss, the anger - all poured down the link. "I love you. You have no bloody idea how hard it was for me t' tell you that. An' you just... you..." She couldn't finish, the words jamming behind the lump in her throat.
"I know." he said softly. "I know how hard that was for you to say. It was no picnic for me to say and mean -either-." he added. "But it's _all that I know_. What else am I supposed to do? How can I give you, give _us_, any kind of a life together without the position as White Knight? What else can I do with my life? How am I supposed to give you _anything_ if I am penniless and destitute? What kind of a life would we have then?" he asked her.
"I don't want anythin', 'cept you," she said in that half-choked voice. "You don't see that, but I love you, not what you can give me." His fear, coming down the link was almost overwhelming, and she managed to block it off a little. She couldn't ask him to give it up - it was too important to him. "An' the Hellfire stuff, it wasn't a problem until bloody Frost started in on you."
"I dance to her tune." he admitted. "She is my patron. I cannot risk offending her, not openly, not right now. If she withdraws her support, I have _nothing_. It would be like if Strange asked you to do something, and left it unsaid that a refusal to do so would mean a termination of your arrangement? Now do you understand?"
"I do," she said, sighing heavily. She looked up at him, face pinched and miserable. "So, what now? We go back t' the same old dance, me offendin' yer sense of pride, you takin' the stuff I do as a personal insult, you makin' some romantic gesture an' me forgivin' you? 'Cause I don't think I can keep doin' this, love. 'M too bloody tired."
"I wish I knew." Manuel said, just as miserable as Amanda was. "Can I have another try? To make things work, to be the man you want me to be?" he asked her, heart in his throat.
"Yer've said that before," she pointed out, but it was her head and not her heart saying it. Her heart was wanting him to mean it this time, to stop making her so miserable and hug her now already, please. And that was what was coming across the link.
"I know I have." Manuel said, and then leaned forward to wrap Amanda up in a hug. "I just want another try. Just one more. Please?" he blubbered at her, finally losing the last shards of his composure.
Nathan would be disappointed with her, but she didn't have it in her to end it. Not when she needed him just as much as he needed her. "'S all right, love, don't cry, please. 'M not goin' any where..." she murmured, clinging to him a little. It probably was a weakness or something, but she always felt better when he was holding her. "We'll both try, okay?"
Manuel clung to Amanda for about five minutes before getting himself under control enough to pull away just a bit. "We will." he said firmly. "I have training options now. Which reminds me - the more training I get, the quicker I can get Miz Frost satisfied and remove all of this stress. Would you be willing to act as a spotter and a shield for me? Jubilation has consented to allow me to practice on her, if you are there to shield and to make sure things do not get out of hand."
Amanda bit her lip. She'd agreed to Manuel seeing Jubilee, she knew fully well he was still fucking the other girl... but all of that worked with a large dose of denial. Seeing the two of them together, even in a training situation... it was going to be hard. But this was important to him, and she had offered to help any way she could. And yes, the obligation to Ms Frost was best satisfied as quickly as possible. "All right," she said briefly. "But... do me a favour? Keep the flirtin' with her down t' a dull roar? I need t' concentrate for the shieldin' spell, an' that'll be hard if you an' her are all googly eyes at each other." She gave him a hard, wry smile. "There's limits."
"No flirting whatsoever." he promised. "Anything you want." he followed quickly. "All business. And I'm not going to give her the lust. Only the positive emotions. Happiness, contentment, all of that. If I am going to learn how to project better, it cannot just be the negative emotions, right?"
Amanda nodded. "Nothin' wrong with that. Nothin' at all - yer right, positive emotions'd be good." She poked at the sandwich again, still not hungry. Not with the knots still in her stomach. "Does one of the teachers know? 'Bout you practicin' with Lee?"
Manuel nodded. "Yes." he said simply. "They know everything. No secrets." Manuel said. "Secrets always get out." he said, possibly prophetically. "I have learned that."
"At least yer've learned somethin'," she said under her breath. Unfair, but she was still deathly tired. And she still had a Healing to do. "'M sorry, love, looks like I ain't hungry after all. I need t' kip - mind bein' me pillow for an hour or so?"
"For as long as you'd like." he said. He wasn't sure what a kip was, but it didn't matter. Not in the slightest. He had to find a way. He _had to_. Losing Amanda was unacceptable. Altering Amanda was unacceptable. Losing his position as White Knight, with the attendant income, was also unacceptable.
She got the thread of confusion down the link, and smiled, far more naturally this time. "Kip means sleep," she told him. "I was up half the night with Angie, an' 'm gunna be Healin' Doug later. Can we got back t' yer room? No-one'll bother me there."
Manuel ah'ed. "I was wondering." he confessed. He then started packing up the barely-touched remnants of his picnic lunch, and once he was all done, he gestured for Amanda to lead the way. "I love you." he said spontaneously. "Especially for kicking my ass for being such a colossal jerk. I really needed it this time."
"It'd be easier if you did the kickin' yerself, y'know," she told him, reaching for his free hand. "Yer a plonker sometimes, Manny, but you know what? Yer _my_ plonker. So that's somethin' ain't it?"
"I have proven resistant to self-kicking." he admitted with a shaky smile. He took her free hand and clutched at it tightly. "Not one of my more stellar traits."
"I could always poke you down the link when it's the right time t' kick yerself?" she suggested, but not harshly. Having his hand in hers made a lot of things better. "An' I do love you. Even when you need kickin'. 'S why it's so bloody hard - it'd be easy if I hated you."
"Do that." he said, quite seriously. "Since I am quite bad at determining when I should do it, poke me mentally when I need to shut up or when I've said the wrong thing. Maybe then I'll learn."
"You might regret sayin' that," she told him, with a hint of her usual wicked grin breaking through the tiredness. "Now, since yer in that whole makin' up for bein' a prick phase, 'm bein' demandin'. There's a Buffy episode I want you t' watch for this Halloween business, an' you get t' be my pillow when I pass out in the middle of it. Deal?"
"I might, but it needs doing." he said. "And I will watch this program with you. I promise." he said softly, wondering what it was that he'd gotten himself into. She was being quite different than usual with him, firmer, less spineless, and he found that he _liked_ it.
Amanda stretched up to kiss his cheek. It felt good, standing up for herself. Somewhere along the way she'd forgotten how, falling into old patterns she'd learned with Rack. Well, time to stop that. Time to stop a lot of things to do with Rack. "New start, eh? For both of us," she said, before leading him back downstairs.
"A new beginning." he agreed, following her and that damned posterior of hers down the stairs. He could watch it move for hours.
