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Who: Illyana Rasputin & Manuel de la Rocha
When: May 14th
Where: The Music Room
What: Illyana and Manuel catch up after his brief time away.
Warnings: Gentle dragging of Scott Summers. ♥
Illyana has not been very productive these last few days. Not that she has much in the way of responsibilities around here — just taking out the garbage and creating a barrier spell for the school. To her credit, she did take the trash out this morning. The magic barrier has been largely neglected since her return from Phoenix, although she has made a show of pretending to be very busy so people won’t ask her about it.
In reality, she’s been spending most of her time thinking about her alternate self. She’d also spent a lot of time thinking about her dream when they’d been stranded in the Savage Land, but the things they’ve learned from Ambrose in the interim cast a new light on the whole situation. Part of her had been intrigued by the mundanity and intimacy of being stepsiblings with Scott or roommates with Kitty. Now, she thinks she couldn’t live in Ordinary New York for more than a month without going insane.
A handful of times in the days since Manuel has been gone for his final exams, Illyana has found herself wistfully drifting past the music classroom when she doesn’t strictly need to, thinking about the piano inside. She always ends up walking past the door (it’s not like she could play the instrument, anyway), but this time when she finds herself in the hallway she remembers that Manuel is due back today, and he may in fact be in there right now.
After a moment of deliberation, she pushes the door open to peer inside.
Manuel is in the music room, though he isn't seated at the piano. Instead, he's behind the desk at the front of the classroom, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded and his eyes closed. The surface of the desk is cluttered but organized, with a stack of papers lined up for review and a smaller stack of finished work off to one side. These are accompanied by an open folder, a line of pens, an empty cup of coffee and his phone, which is turned facedown but playing Gymnopedie No. 1 at a modest volume.
No rest for the wicked, it seems. Except for perhaps a tiny late-afternoon doze as he attempts to catch up on the work that piled up amidst his brief arrest, the fallout, and his own academic obligations.
Regardless, he snaps out of his stillness almost immediately at the sound of her arrival and straightens and glances toward the door. He's visibly surprised to see Illyana there, then relaxes a little. It's certainly better to be caught resting his eyes -- because that's all he was doing! -- by a peer than a student.
And, anyway, it’s not an unwelcome surprise. He blinks a few times, trying to shake off the last grip of sleep, before offering her a faint smile.
"...Illyana. What are you doing here?"
For half a moment, when she sees him asleep at his desk, she considers backing out of the room without bothering him. It seems like everyone in the mansion is short on sleep lately, not just her. But he’s awake before she can even take her hand off the door, so she enters the room instead, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Just bored I guess,” she says after a moment of deliberation, as if her motivations are unknowable to even her. She crosses the room to stand at one corner of his desk. Her eyes sweep over the schoolwork there with a brazen curiosity she doesn’t bother to hide. Schooling is more or less a foreign concept to her, and she’s never taken a written exam in her life. She wonders what a test on music would even constitute, and though she is generally well-behaved enough to not touch other people’s things while they’re observing her, she rotates the stack of graded work towards her so she can read it.
“Do you ever listen to like, the Beatles? Or only this?” she asks as she looks the papers over, nudging his phone on the desk with her pinky finger as she says it.
Illyana's emotions are as elusive to Manuel as ever and his tired mind can't immediately discern another meaning in that prolonged pause, so he accepts the answer she provides with a small nod and watches as the woman makes herself at home on the edge of his desk. Almost as soon as she has the papers oriented toward her, though, he reaches out and turns them back around. Those aren't for her to peruse. Though, in her brief time seeing the top sheet right-side up, she can see that this seems to be a stack of essays and that the top one has achieved a mediocre eighty percent from the demanding empath. If this top one is anything to go by, he's had them use various elements of music theory to analyze a selected piece of music. Riveting.
He gives her a faintly pointed look with uplifted eyebrows, but otherwise lets the faux pas slide. Then he shrugs.
"I listen to all sorts of things, as long as they're compelling, but I can admit that I have a bias," he answers easily, picking up his phone and clicking through a few menus. When he offers it to her, there's an extensive number of meticulously organized playlists on the screen spanning many genres and eras and languages. If she feels compelled to dig, better through his music preferences than his students' assignments.
Then he leans back in the chair and looks at her, "...So. How was your week?"
During his week away, he hadn't contacted anyone but Emma with any regularity. And since Illyana had reached out to him before his departure, seeking a bit of solace, that had left him...thinking about her. Wondering how she's been.
She genuinely doesn’t understand what might be sensitive or private about a high school essay, and she rolls her eyes as he pulls the papers away from her again, although she doesn’t protest. She’s not a very strong reader and theoretical discussions on any topic are beyond her meager attention span anyway, even at the tenth grade level.
Besides, if her reward for this intrusion is getting to look through his playlists, she certainly won’t learn her lesson. Immediately she starts scrolling. The task has her rapt attention, although her eyes flit up to meet his momentarily when he speaks again.
“It was not so bad,” she offers with a small shrug of her shoulders. “But I’ve been mostly goofing off. How were your exams?”
Manuel is private about many things but his music is not one of them. He has impeccable taste. So he doesn't give Illyana's eager focus on his playlists much consideration, folding his arms and taking in her words instead. The tone of them. The ease of the accompanying shrug. She seems to be in a better headspace now than she had been, but it shouldn't surprise him that she's resilient.
One doesn't endure Limbo without developing a thick skin, he supposes.
"That's why you're bored," he points out dryly and with the faintest hint of a smirk, before shaking his head, "But...I suppose there are worse things to be."
He pauses, though, when the focus is turned back on him. The exams had been difficult but the sort of difficult that he knows how to handle. He'd studied rigorously and done well, leaving each exam exhausted but confident. The new social stigma of being a known mutant out in public, however, had weighed on him more. Many of his peers had avoided him altogether, while others had been full of questions or accusations. Even some strangers on the street had recognized him with varying levels of clarity. And, unfortunately, his empathic sense had made him keenly aware of all of it. The world's vitriol and distrust and curiosity can be so loud. It will take some getting used to.
"I aced them, obviamente," he responds finally and shrugs, "It would be embarrassing to do anything else after taking time away for them, no?"
She laughs — there are much worse things to be than bored, that is true, and she isn’t even that anymore. She’s not well-versed enough in classical or contemporary music to really make a judgement on his taste in music, but the vast number of playlists and the care that has been put into their curation is apparent to her regardless.
“Obviamente,” Illyana echoes, just to repeat the word and not actually to agree with him. Not that it surprises her that he’s a good student, particularly. That makes sense. But as she takes a moment to really think about his question, she looks up to appraise his posture, somewhere at the midway point between closed-off and relaxed. His expression she also finds to be impassive and hard to read, something she suspects he puts effort into.
She quirks an eyebrow at him as she offers her final assessment, amused but not unkind in tone. “You are embarrassed by the most random things.”
Manuel hadn't expected Illyana to be impressed, per se, but he had expected her to acknowledge his success somehow. What she offers instead prompts him to tilt his head and frown briefly before exhaling a small huff of breath. She must be feeling better; she's back to being exasperating.
"...Failure should be embarrassing," he returns after a beat, his tone flat and matter-of-fact, "It's a motivator."
“You sound like Scott,” Illyana informs him solemnly.
Immediately, Manuel's features twist and he looks taken aback. Under most circumstances, he would be the first to admit that he shares certain qualities with Scott Summers, but having this accusation lobbed at him is...different. Somehow pointed.
"...I do not."
Drawing comparisons between Manuel and Scott might be akin to plucking at low-hanging fruit, but Illyana still has to visibly fight down a smile at his affronted response. She’s always enjoyed riling him up, as easy as it is to do, and finds it no less gratifying now that they’re on friendly terms.
“Do not grumble about it,” she says, handing him his phone back. “You’ll only prove my point.”
While he remains indignant, Manuel can see that additional protests aren't going to get him anywhere and so just takes his phone before leaning back in his chair with another huff. He can see the smile trying to take shape on her lips, though. At least she's having fun.
"...The point is," he returns flatly, "That my exams went well. Which means I'll be graduating with honors. Alternate realities and prehistoric jungles and everything else be damned." All of this occurring during his final undergraduate semester has been trying, but it's hardly the first time his academic career has been interrupted by the chaotic absurdity that defines all of their lives.
During the time they’d been stranded in the Savage Land, Illyana had been vaguely aware of the others missing their obligations. She has none of her own, which is how she prefers to conduct her business most of the time. When they’d returned to New York, she hadn’t even had that many text messages from people checking in on her — everyone she knows in Genosha is used to her dropping out of contact for months at a time.
“What does honors get you?” she asks. Everything she knows about college, she learned from television shows, and her brow creases as she tries to remember. “A special outfit at graduation?”
Given Illyana's life experience, this isn't a completely unreasonable question, but Manuel still bristles all the same. Her lack of understanding means that he has to explain the significance of the accomplishment and it feels like begging for recognition that his work has already entitled him to. It makes the whole endeavor feel...arbitrary.
Perhaps a little pathetic.
"...Technically. SĂ," he admits begrudgingly, "But more importantly, it demonstrates mastery of the material and consistent, exceptional performance among your peers." There's more that he could say, but the longer he talks the more foolish he feels. And he doesn't need Illyana to be impressed with his academic record, anyway. It speaks for itself.
Illyana’s gaze lingers on him as he finishes speaking, noting his discomfort and tries to decide what it was she did exactly that caused it. She thinks she’s getting better at telling when he’s actually upset with her and when he isn’t, and the natural consequence of testing her limits has to be finding them sometimes. On the other hand, she doesn’t actually think she said anything that bad, and she narrows her eyes at him for a second.
Then, she presses her lips together in a small smile, nods, and looks back down at her hands where they rest on the edge of his desk.
“So how are you going to celebrate, hm?” she asks, and then indicates the stack of ungraded essays without actually touching it this time. “It cannot be with more work.”
Manuel still can't read Illyana. When her bright eyes narrow, he can tell that he's being assessed...but he can't tell what she's trying to determine or what conclusions she's coming to. Then she smiles. It doesn't make him any more certain about what's going on in her head, but it does allow him to relax a little. The tension in his features eases before he shrugs in response.
"...I haven't given it much consideration yet," he admits, lips twitching toward a smirk before he adds, "But no. It will not be more work. I'm not that much like Scott."
“Well if you want pizza, I can go get it from anywhere for you,” she offers. “Even Italy.”
In the last few months, the team has become accustomed to having access to Illyana's powers. To being able to jump anywhere at a moment's notice, no matter how far away. It's an incredible ability. Still, it's not something that Manuel has given much consideration to outside of its practical uses and the offer earns a surprised smile out of him.
Then he considers, pausing for a beat before he responds.
"I hope you will not consider it a lack of gratitude if I offer a counterproposal," he returns lightly, "But...paella in Valencia? My treat, of course. For your time and your indulgence of my nostalgia."
Likewise, as used to jaunting around the world at her every whim Illyana might be, she’s still acclimating to having friends with taste as fine as Emma’s or Manny’s. Still, at this suggestion, her face splits into a wide and genuine smile. She hadn’t fully expected him to take her up on the offer, and to her making his own sentimental suggestion is nearly better than accepting her initial off-the-cuff one.
“It’s your celebration,” she says. “We can do whatever we want.”
When: May 14th
Where: The Music Room
What: Illyana and Manuel catch up after his brief time away.
Warnings: Gentle dragging of Scott Summers. ♥
Illyana has not been very productive these last few days. Not that she has much in the way of responsibilities around here — just taking out the garbage and creating a barrier spell for the school. To her credit, she did take the trash out this morning. The magic barrier has been largely neglected since her return from Phoenix, although she has made a show of pretending to be very busy so people won’t ask her about it.
In reality, she’s been spending most of her time thinking about her alternate self. She’d also spent a lot of time thinking about her dream when they’d been stranded in the Savage Land, but the things they’ve learned from Ambrose in the interim cast a new light on the whole situation. Part of her had been intrigued by the mundanity and intimacy of being stepsiblings with Scott or roommates with Kitty. Now, she thinks she couldn’t live in Ordinary New York for more than a month without going insane.
A handful of times in the days since Manuel has been gone for his final exams, Illyana has found herself wistfully drifting past the music classroom when she doesn’t strictly need to, thinking about the piano inside. She always ends up walking past the door (it’s not like she could play the instrument, anyway), but this time when she finds herself in the hallway she remembers that Manuel is due back today, and he may in fact be in there right now.
After a moment of deliberation, she pushes the door open to peer inside.
Manuel is in the music room, though he isn't seated at the piano. Instead, he's behind the desk at the front of the classroom, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded and his eyes closed. The surface of the desk is cluttered but organized, with a stack of papers lined up for review and a smaller stack of finished work off to one side. These are accompanied by an open folder, a line of pens, an empty cup of coffee and his phone, which is turned facedown but playing Gymnopedie No. 1 at a modest volume.
No rest for the wicked, it seems. Except for perhaps a tiny late-afternoon doze as he attempts to catch up on the work that piled up amidst his brief arrest, the fallout, and his own academic obligations.
Regardless, he snaps out of his stillness almost immediately at the sound of her arrival and straightens and glances toward the door. He's visibly surprised to see Illyana there, then relaxes a little. It's certainly better to be caught resting his eyes -- because that's all he was doing! -- by a peer than a student.
And, anyway, it’s not an unwelcome surprise. He blinks a few times, trying to shake off the last grip of sleep, before offering her a faint smile.
"...Illyana. What are you doing here?"
For half a moment, when she sees him asleep at his desk, she considers backing out of the room without bothering him. It seems like everyone in the mansion is short on sleep lately, not just her. But he’s awake before she can even take her hand off the door, so she enters the room instead, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Just bored I guess,” she says after a moment of deliberation, as if her motivations are unknowable to even her. She crosses the room to stand at one corner of his desk. Her eyes sweep over the schoolwork there with a brazen curiosity she doesn’t bother to hide. Schooling is more or less a foreign concept to her, and she’s never taken a written exam in her life. She wonders what a test on music would even constitute, and though she is generally well-behaved enough to not touch other people’s things while they’re observing her, she rotates the stack of graded work towards her so she can read it.
“Do you ever listen to like, the Beatles? Or only this?” she asks as she looks the papers over, nudging his phone on the desk with her pinky finger as she says it.
Illyana's emotions are as elusive to Manuel as ever and his tired mind can't immediately discern another meaning in that prolonged pause, so he accepts the answer she provides with a small nod and watches as the woman makes herself at home on the edge of his desk. Almost as soon as she has the papers oriented toward her, though, he reaches out and turns them back around. Those aren't for her to peruse. Though, in her brief time seeing the top sheet right-side up, she can see that this seems to be a stack of essays and that the top one has achieved a mediocre eighty percent from the demanding empath. If this top one is anything to go by, he's had them use various elements of music theory to analyze a selected piece of music. Riveting.
He gives her a faintly pointed look with uplifted eyebrows, but otherwise lets the faux pas slide. Then he shrugs.
"I listen to all sorts of things, as long as they're compelling, but I can admit that I have a bias," he answers easily, picking up his phone and clicking through a few menus. When he offers it to her, there's an extensive number of meticulously organized playlists on the screen spanning many genres and eras and languages. If she feels compelled to dig, better through his music preferences than his students' assignments.
Then he leans back in the chair and looks at her, "...So. How was your week?"
During his week away, he hadn't contacted anyone but Emma with any regularity. And since Illyana had reached out to him before his departure, seeking a bit of solace, that had left him...thinking about her. Wondering how she's been.
She genuinely doesn’t understand what might be sensitive or private about a high school essay, and she rolls her eyes as he pulls the papers away from her again, although she doesn’t protest. She’s not a very strong reader and theoretical discussions on any topic are beyond her meager attention span anyway, even at the tenth grade level.
Besides, if her reward for this intrusion is getting to look through his playlists, she certainly won’t learn her lesson. Immediately she starts scrolling. The task has her rapt attention, although her eyes flit up to meet his momentarily when he speaks again.
“It was not so bad,” she offers with a small shrug of her shoulders. “But I’ve been mostly goofing off. How were your exams?”
Manuel is private about many things but his music is not one of them. He has impeccable taste. So he doesn't give Illyana's eager focus on his playlists much consideration, folding his arms and taking in her words instead. The tone of them. The ease of the accompanying shrug. She seems to be in a better headspace now than she had been, but it shouldn't surprise him that she's resilient.
One doesn't endure Limbo without developing a thick skin, he supposes.
"That's why you're bored," he points out dryly and with the faintest hint of a smirk, before shaking his head, "But...I suppose there are worse things to be."
He pauses, though, when the focus is turned back on him. The exams had been difficult but the sort of difficult that he knows how to handle. He'd studied rigorously and done well, leaving each exam exhausted but confident. The new social stigma of being a known mutant out in public, however, had weighed on him more. Many of his peers had avoided him altogether, while others had been full of questions or accusations. Even some strangers on the street had recognized him with varying levels of clarity. And, unfortunately, his empathic sense had made him keenly aware of all of it. The world's vitriol and distrust and curiosity can be so loud. It will take some getting used to.
"I aced them, obviamente," he responds finally and shrugs, "It would be embarrassing to do anything else after taking time away for them, no?"
She laughs — there are much worse things to be than bored, that is true, and she isn’t even that anymore. She’s not well-versed enough in classical or contemporary music to really make a judgement on his taste in music, but the vast number of playlists and the care that has been put into their curation is apparent to her regardless.
“Obviamente,” Illyana echoes, just to repeat the word and not actually to agree with him. Not that it surprises her that he’s a good student, particularly. That makes sense. But as she takes a moment to really think about his question, she looks up to appraise his posture, somewhere at the midway point between closed-off and relaxed. His expression she also finds to be impassive and hard to read, something she suspects he puts effort into.
She quirks an eyebrow at him as she offers her final assessment, amused but not unkind in tone. “You are embarrassed by the most random things.”
Manuel hadn't expected Illyana to be impressed, per se, but he had expected her to acknowledge his success somehow. What she offers instead prompts him to tilt his head and frown briefly before exhaling a small huff of breath. She must be feeling better; she's back to being exasperating.
"...Failure should be embarrassing," he returns after a beat, his tone flat and matter-of-fact, "It's a motivator."
“You sound like Scott,” Illyana informs him solemnly.
Immediately, Manuel's features twist and he looks taken aback. Under most circumstances, he would be the first to admit that he shares certain qualities with Scott Summers, but having this accusation lobbed at him is...different. Somehow pointed.
"...I do not."
Drawing comparisons between Manuel and Scott might be akin to plucking at low-hanging fruit, but Illyana still has to visibly fight down a smile at his affronted response. She’s always enjoyed riling him up, as easy as it is to do, and finds it no less gratifying now that they’re on friendly terms.
“Do not grumble about it,” she says, handing him his phone back. “You’ll only prove my point.”
While he remains indignant, Manuel can see that additional protests aren't going to get him anywhere and so just takes his phone before leaning back in his chair with another huff. He can see the smile trying to take shape on her lips, though. At least she's having fun.
"...The point is," he returns flatly, "That my exams went well. Which means I'll be graduating with honors. Alternate realities and prehistoric jungles and everything else be damned." All of this occurring during his final undergraduate semester has been trying, but it's hardly the first time his academic career has been interrupted by the chaotic absurdity that defines all of their lives.
During the time they’d been stranded in the Savage Land, Illyana had been vaguely aware of the others missing their obligations. She has none of her own, which is how she prefers to conduct her business most of the time. When they’d returned to New York, she hadn’t even had that many text messages from people checking in on her — everyone she knows in Genosha is used to her dropping out of contact for months at a time.
“What does honors get you?” she asks. Everything she knows about college, she learned from television shows, and her brow creases as she tries to remember. “A special outfit at graduation?”
Given Illyana's life experience, this isn't a completely unreasonable question, but Manuel still bristles all the same. Her lack of understanding means that he has to explain the significance of the accomplishment and it feels like begging for recognition that his work has already entitled him to. It makes the whole endeavor feel...arbitrary.
Perhaps a little pathetic.
"...Technically. SĂ," he admits begrudgingly, "But more importantly, it demonstrates mastery of the material and consistent, exceptional performance among your peers." There's more that he could say, but the longer he talks the more foolish he feels. And he doesn't need Illyana to be impressed with his academic record, anyway. It speaks for itself.
Illyana’s gaze lingers on him as he finishes speaking, noting his discomfort and tries to decide what it was she did exactly that caused it. She thinks she’s getting better at telling when he’s actually upset with her and when he isn’t, and the natural consequence of testing her limits has to be finding them sometimes. On the other hand, she doesn’t actually think she said anything that bad, and she narrows her eyes at him for a second.
Then, she presses her lips together in a small smile, nods, and looks back down at her hands where they rest on the edge of his desk.
“So how are you going to celebrate, hm?” she asks, and then indicates the stack of ungraded essays without actually touching it this time. “It cannot be with more work.”
Manuel still can't read Illyana. When her bright eyes narrow, he can tell that he's being assessed...but he can't tell what she's trying to determine or what conclusions she's coming to. Then she smiles. It doesn't make him any more certain about what's going on in her head, but it does allow him to relax a little. The tension in his features eases before he shrugs in response.
"...I haven't given it much consideration yet," he admits, lips twitching toward a smirk before he adds, "But no. It will not be more work. I'm not that much like Scott."
“Well if you want pizza, I can go get it from anywhere for you,” she offers. “Even Italy.”
In the last few months, the team has become accustomed to having access to Illyana's powers. To being able to jump anywhere at a moment's notice, no matter how far away. It's an incredible ability. Still, it's not something that Manuel has given much consideration to outside of its practical uses and the offer earns a surprised smile out of him.
Then he considers, pausing for a beat before he responds.
"I hope you will not consider it a lack of gratitude if I offer a counterproposal," he returns lightly, "But...paella in Valencia? My treat, of course. For your time and your indulgence of my nostalgia."
Likewise, as used to jaunting around the world at her every whim Illyana might be, she’s still acclimating to having friends with taste as fine as Emma’s or Manny’s. Still, at this suggestion, her face splits into a wide and genuine smile. She hadn’t fully expected him to take her up on the offer, and to her making his own sentimental suggestion is nearly better than accepting her initial off-the-cuff one.
“It’s your celebration,” she says. “We can do whatever we want.”