xp_logs | Manuel and Amanda - Making Some Changes

Backdated to Wednesday evening. Manuel's hurting fairly bad and very hungry, so he asks Amanda to retrieve him some food. He also makes a decision to change, and Amanda promises him her support. Then they settle in for beef stew and British comedy.

Manuel looked at the monitor of his laptop, rereading what he had written before clicking SEND. He'd had a lot of time to think lately, and it was looking like it was time to make some changes in his life. Amanda would get the email soon, he hoped. She was so busy down in Medical that it was anyone's guess when she'd see it and when she'd see fit to respond to it.

Off shift. Finally. Stopping at her room long enough to remind her roomie what she looked like and grab a change of clothes for the next day, Amanda headed for Manuel's suite, intent on curling up next to him and not moving for, oh, a few hours. She would have preferred curling up on him, but the ribs were still tender, and the healing spell couldn't do more than it already had. She tapped on the door of the suite, not sure if Manuel would be in his room proper or in the shared common room. The tapping was because the other night she'd walked in on John stumbling around in his underwear, and as amusing as the boxers had been, she didn't fancy another almost-literal roasting.

Manuel was in his room - sitting at his desk, specifically. ~Come in!~ he called in Castillian, as loudly as his still-sore torso would permit. He didn't try to get up from the desk - just moving from the bed to the desk and sitting down hurt enough. No need to tempt fate, and he had a private bet with himself - if he made it through his recovery without shoving any pain at Amanda or at John, then he was going to go and get blindlingly drunk somewhere by way of a reward.

"Hey, love." Amanda let herself into his room, knowing he probably wouldn't be getting up if he could possibly avoid it. "How're you feelin'? Ribs givin' you trouble?" Desk was better than bed - he was obviously making the attempt to move around a little, even if he hadn't been seen in the halls for a while. "Did you eat today?"

Manuel shook his head. "I had every intention of making it down for lunch, but I couldn't get my shirt on." he said with frustration. "I hurt so much trying that I gave up." he added, then sank back into his chair as much as he could. "On the plus side, I've ripped all my CDs to VBR MP3s and got all the album art and lyrics sorted out." he said. "Which reminds me - I'd like if you could bring yours over so I can rip them as well."

"You should have called me - I've got the phone on me all the time. You need t' eat so you heal up..." There were some frozen meals in the student fridge, not the evil packet stuff but food pre-cooked by Lorna and stashed in various freezers around the place for emergencies such as this. She could go get one of those for him. Then she blinked. "My CDs? What would you want with... um, I mean, yeah, I can do that." He was plotting something it seemed. "You want me t' go now? I can grab you some food on the way."

"Only if you come right back with food and CDs and keep me company for a few hours?" he asked hopefully. He was keeping up a brave front, but he was clearly distracted by something other than by the pain in his body. "I... I want your help with something." he confessed.

"Of course." She indicated the change of clothes still in her arms with a small grin. "Was hopin' I could stay any way..." The preoccupation down the link bothered her, though. "You all right, love? You seem bothered by somethin'."

Manuel smiled. "I'll tell you about it when you come back with food and music." he said, making feeble shooing motions with his hands. "I'm really _very_ hungry." he said with as smouldering a look as he could muster right then.

"Oh, right. Sorry. Back in a jiff." She leaned over and briefly kissed his cheek before turning and leaving, dumping her clothes on the floor near his bed as she went.

As soon as Amanda departed, he marshalled his meager resources and managed to push himself out of his desk chair. He was shaky, but he was standing on his own two feet. He tottered over to his closet, opening it carefully and staring at the wide variety of shirts. Finally, he found the one that he wanted - a simple black T-shirt. No designs, no buttons, nothing complicated. He stared at it as he thought - how could he put this thing _on_ without passing out from the pain? He had to try - he couldn't expect Amanda to dress him every day, after all. Even if she would if he asked her.

There was some beef stew in the student freezer which would do nicely, Amanda decided. Protein was good for rebuilding tissue, and that was what Manuel needed to do. Tossing the Tupperware container in the microwave, she continued back to her room. Marie-Ange had obviously gone to Doug's room in the interim, and Amanda grabbed a couple of handfuls of CDs and dropped them into a shopping bag from one of the mall clothing shops, before heading back to the student kitchen to wait for the food to reheat.

Manuel got the head through the appropriate hole of the shirt, but now he was in trouble. Putting his arms through the appropriate hole required that he lift his arms, and that put strain on his very tender ribs. Gritting his teeth, he got one arm through, but at the cost of nearly losing his control and sending his power running amok. He really hoped Amanda got back soon.

The pinging of the microwave coincided with the stab of pain down the link - Manuel wasn't projecting, but his discomfort was plain. Grabbing some cutlery and the container (only to yelp at the heat of it, and resort to a bit of a cheat with the telekinetic spell), Amanda hurried back.

"You all righ..." she began as she came in, only to stop and roll her eyes slightly at the sight of him trying to get dressed. "Love, you should've said before I went." Dumping the bag of CDs on the floor and floating the container of food over to his desk, she came forward and carefully eased his arm into the sleeve, her fingertips glowing slightly as she used the healing spell to cut the pain. "Now the other one..." she encouraged, getting that arm to where it should be before carefully pulling the shirt down over the impressive black and blue collection of bruises that stubbornly resisted her healing.

"I wanted to do it myself." he said as soon as the tears were wiped away. "I can't expect you to come up here each morning and do it for me. You have things to do, important things." he protested. "I'll manage somehow." Just them his stomach rumbled embarrassingly. "Is that stew I smell?" he asked her hopefully.

"It is. Go, eat. You must be starvin'." Amanda was careful not to help him back to the desk - she knew his dignity was smarting with this helplessness he'd had pushed on him, and she couldn't blame him. She'd been much the same after Columbia. "Hopefully they won't need me so much down there soon," she offered, perching on the end of the bed to watch him eat. "Alison's gettin' better - she's still out, but she's not doin' the light thing as much as she was."

Manuel nodded as he, in a rare breach of etiquette, was shovelling in the beef stew as fast as he could, risking turning his mouth into the aftermath of Nagasaki from the heat of the food. Clearly, the man was _hungry_. Once he finished with the stew, he looked at Amanda and quirked an eyebrow. "Thanks." he said, placing the now-empty bowl on his desk. "Are those the CDs you were going to bring over?" he asked her, referring to the Warm Subject bag on the floor of his room next to her clothes.

She nodded. "Yeah. Didn't know what you wanted 'em for exactly, so I just grabbed a bunch at random." Okay, he'd eaten, so now she could try and find out what the hell was going on. It was all very perplexing. "Care t' let me in on the mystery, Manny? Yer've been actin' odd, an' the link's all..." She waved a hand vaguely. "Muddled."

"At some point, I'll want them _all_." Manuel said. "I've been doing a lot of thinking. I need to broaden my horizons - find something that I have in common with the others besides an accident of genetics. I'm not doing well here, and being me is just making me miserable. I need to be someone else."

Amanda nodded, a little surprised, but pleased that there seemed to be some kind of actual plan here, rather than just Manuel bemoaning the state of his life. Then the rest sank him, the part about not being him any more. "Someone else how exactly?" she asked carefully, not sure of what he meant and wanting to be clear. This sounded important.

Manuel gestured, indicating himself and most everything in the room. "I have no real friends besides you and Jubilation. I do not fit in, I don't understand American culture, and I'm suffering for it." he said plainly. "This needs to change. Standing on honor, tradition, the old ways, the old rules - they don't apply here. I have to learn a new way if I'm going to avoid going mad or turning into some sort of monster." he said, gripping the back of his chair tightly to make his point. "Have you heard the old tale about the hurricane and the tree?" he asked Amanda suddenly.

She shook her head. "Don't think so. Tell me?"

Manuel hrmmed. "I would have thought Strange would have told you. Trees stand tall. They resist every effort to move them. But in a hurricane, the wind is stronger than the tree. So the tree breaks. But the humble blade of grass, it bends when force is placed upon it. When the winds come, the grass is unharmed. I'm explaining this badly, but you get the idea, right? I have to learn how to bend. And there's so much I don't know - but whining about it will do me no good. I have to learn, and learn soon. Which leads me to you - I want your help."

"Strange's stories tend t' be a bit more on the side of 'don't fuck around with forces too big for you'," Amanda said, pulling a face. "But I get you. What d'you need me t' do?" There was no question of whether she'd help or not, only what he required.

"I need to know how." he said helplessly. "What to do, how to start _connecting_ with the others here." He then laughed mirthlessly before wincing as his ribs protested. "I am not doing a wonderful job of it on my own."

"Yeah, well, the fact half the place are bloody hypocrites don't make it any easier..." Amanda muttered darkly, before giving his request some thought. "People like t' be listened to," she said slowly. "T' have the person they're talkin' to pay attention t' what they're sayin', not just wait for a gap so they can talk. If they think yer actually interested in them, in what they do, they tend t' be a lot more willin' t' return the favour." She started biting lightly at her thumbnail, trying to think it through. "There's some that'll never come 'round - Lorna, for one." She bit down harder, remembering the conversation with Remy on the dock. "But I think if you approached some of the others - like Kitty or Rahne - an' asked for help, they'd consider it." Her look turned apologetic. "'M afraid yer gunna have t' do more than swallow that pride of yers, love. Yer gunna have t' stomp on it an' lock it in a box for a while."

Manuel sighed, and then nodded. "That was more or less what I thought was going to have to happen, but I wanted to talk to you before I did anything." he said. "It has not been an easy process - letting go of all that I was to remake myself anew in this place." he groused. "But I can't do it alone. I've tried - you know that! - and it has not worked out for me. But I can listen to people, hear the words they speak. I'll have to sit on my initial reactions, but I should be good at that by now." he said bitterly. "Katherine is a good choice of confidant." he said after a moment's pause. "Rahne as well. I will have to spend some time with them, hear what they say. And I also need a crash-course in the things everyone is supposed to know. Jubilation has been helping me with that, but I will need more, and quickly. Since I hurt so much, I can sit in my bed and watch films - _movies_ - to catch up. Want to join me?" he asked.

She nodded. "Sounds 'bout right. An' there's possibly one more name t' add to that list - Lee. I don't know if yer've read the journals an' know what she did but..." With a deep breath, she blurted it out. "I won't stand in the way if you want t' keep bein' friends with her. I can't be any where near her, but she's good for you, an' she can help you more than I can with that sort of stuff." That said, she gave him a small smile. "An' I'd love t' watch somethin' with you. Curlin' up in bed not doin' much was pretty much what I'd planned for the evenin'."

Manuel sighed again. "I read that." he said quietly. "I am extremely displeased - no, I am angry with Jubilation for what she did. She is a very great fool, and she could have cost me your life!" he said with a snarl, which brought a wince as his body protested the movements. "I will need to talk to her, hear her side of things. I suspect she was a catspaw, a tool, but I want to make sure for myself. And if she did do this maliciously, if she did aim to hurt you, then there will be little on this Earth that will save her from my wrath. I know her, I know how she feels. I can hurt her the way no one else can." he said calmly.

"She was played," she told him, not hiding the disquiet she felt at the calm threat. "The bloke who gave her the information was my dealer. My ex-dealer," she corrected. "Back when Nate got shot on Muir, I needed a power source, an' went back to him. Things got a bit nasty, I threw him around a bit, an' he obviously had a grudge. When Jubilee went sniffin' 'round the occult websites askin' questions 'bout the scars, he saw a chance t' get back at me." Getting up and crouching by his chair, she lay her hand on his arm. "I know you want t' protect me, love, but you can't go 'round making threats like that. 'S one of the reasons why people're scared of you. I don't know why Lee did what she did, an' I ain't gunna be gettin' all up close an' personal t' ask her, but I don't think she meant what happened. She's stupid, an' arrogant, but she's not much more then a scared kid - you'd know that, knowin' her as well as you do."

Manuel forced himself to relax, to blow out the breath he didn't even realize he was holding. "You're right, of course. A sign that I need to work harder at blending in here. All I wanted to do was protect you. You know that, right?" he told her with a worried look. "Jubilation is my best chance to get up to speed on American culture _quickly_. I would prefer not to have to destroy her." he said with a wry grin. "And yes, I was kidding. I do have a sense of humor, you know."

"Well, there's part of me that would like t' see the stupid bint suffer a bit for what she's puttin' you through, but that part's not callin' the shots. I can't let it. An' neither can you." Laying her cheek briefly against his hand, she stood and held out her hand to help him to his feet. "You do have a sense of humour. 'S just a very Spanish one." A mischievous grin crossed her face. "Would this re-education of yers include comedy? 'Cause I think I left some Monty Python movies in here from when I was withdrawin' last time."

"I'll take anything I can get." he said with an answering grin. "Go ahead and put it in - and then before we start, maybe some snacks would be in order?" he said with a mischievous look. "I'm really still very hungry." he mock-pouted.

"See, this is why you need t' talk t' Rahne more - she wouldn't let you get away with this not-eatin' thing," Amnada mock-scolded, but more irritated at herself than him. She should have made sure he had something for lunch. "All right, I'll go down an' raid the kitchen, as long as you promise t' stay put an' wait until I get back before doin' anythin' that'll hurt?" Grabbing the bag of CDs she set it down on his desk, and picked up the empty bowl. "'M sorry, love. I wish I had the power t' fix you completely, but..." She shrugged helplessly. "I hate seein' you in pain like this."

"I went looking for her earlier. She's been quite busy down in Medical - she doesn't exactly have the time to babysit me." His voice was completely free from venom as he said this. "So go on, bring back copious snacks. Or just take some cash, order us something? I should have some money left from Halloween. Get whatever you want." he said with a smile. "We'll make a night of it."

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Current Music: The Who - Behind Blue Eyes