ax_main | Nott and Gilmore (Backdated to June)

Nott goes to meet the guy who made her flask. She brings him a puzzle and, yo, they solve it.

The way Nott figured it, she and Gilmore were almost TOTAL opposites. He was tall and pretty and everyone seemed to like him. She was - well, you get chased out of a few dumpsters with a whole lot of yelling and objects thrown at your head, you start to think people don't like you. He was a successful small business owner, and he had a super-successful-hottie-genius-boyfriend, and he dressed like he had a personal stylist or something (maybe he DID), and his hair always looked soft and glowing and flowy like a fucking shampoo commercial. Meanwhile, Nott was... Ugh.

They were different, you get the idea.

But Gilmore made nice things for everybody, and he'd made something especially extra nice for Nott from Caleb. And Jester was his unicorn-soul-sister or something. So he was basically a saint. And could probably find it in his heart to help her.

Which was everything that flashed through her head as she stood staring at the door of the room he shared with Molly, the object(s?) heavy in the front pouch of her hoodie faintly clinking and scraping as she finally reached up and pounded her tiny fist to knock.

The door swung open swiftly, with the warm scent of amber-vanilla swirling lightly on the air. Gilmore stood there framed in the doorway, having flung the door open enthusiastically, wearing fashionably distressed jeans and a David Bowie t-shirt. His attention was focused about a foot above Nott's head, some bright greeting already on his lips. Whatever he meant to say never came, though, since the space he expected to be occupied by a friend's face showed him nothing but Nolan and Shinobi's door across the hall. Confused, he scrunched his brows together, and then slowly tilted his head down to meet the bright yellow eyes of the small green figure waiting outside his door. He blinked. And then, for good measure, he blinked again, before remembering that any stranger was just a potential customer he'd never met.

"Why, hello there," said Gilmore, rich and brassy with a broad white grin. "And what can I do for you?"

Yep. There he went again. Frankly it looked exhausting to Nott, but she'd got the idea that this was just Gilmore being Gilmore.

She found herself twitching a smile up at him anyway. "Hello Mister Gilmore," the girl's voice came out with a slight singsong quality, words ranging between a screech and a dull croak. "I'm Nott. My friend Caleb said you made this flask?" She tugged it out from under her hoodie to show him. (The thing(s?) in her pouch scraped gently.)

Gilmore recognized it immediately, and he spread his hands in an open, welcoming gesture now that he knew to whom he was speaking. Of course he remembered the flask; Caleb had burned through a sizable chunk of his credit having it made. Something a girl would like, he'd said. Something that small hands could hold. Now Gilmore understood much better. Nott must be terribly important to Caleb, then.

"Of course I did!" he exclaimed, stepping back and waving her in to his dorm room, which was its usual sumptuous, if somewhat tousled, panoply of color. "It is glorious, isn't it? Naturally it came from me. It is a delight to meet you, Nott. Caleb plays things so very close to the vest, I barely knew a thing about you except that you liked pretty things. I do hope it turned out pretty enough for you?" For all his pomp and florid speech, Gilmore did appear honestly attentive, like he really wanted to know that Nott was pleased with the flask.

She had actually been in here once before, when Caleb introduced her to Molly. Was it more or less weird now that she'd met both of them in their dorm? She had no idea, so maybe she shouldn't bother mentioning it.

Nott headed into the room as waved, but her attention was more on the flask that so neatly fit her small hand than the place. "It's beautiful," Not agreed, thumbing the whorls of the metal protecting the glass. She trailed her claw gently over the engraved N. Then she looked back up at Gilmore, trying to figure out how to say what it had meant to her to someone who didn't know her or Caleb super well. "It's the most beautiful gift anybody ever gave me. It really is."

"I think he'd disagree with me, but Caleb is a wonderful friend," Gilmore observed, letting the door hang half-open because it wasn't cool to shut a stranger in a room with you, especially one about half your size. "Of all the things he's asked me to make, fully three-quarters of them have been for other people. He has a real talent for identifying just the right thing, doesn't he?"

Despite the small size of the room, Gilmore swept and swirled through it, picking up a few discarded bits of clothing in a half-assed effort to tidy up for his unexpected guest. "You and Caleb were friends before the school, right?" he asked, innocuously, having no idea that he was probing into things Nott and Caleb might not want to talk about.

"Yeah," Nott agreed carefully, wondering how much Gilmore or some of the other students knew about the Right. Should she say anything? She didn't want to scare anyone or out Caleb if he was keeping all of that secret...

"Hey," Nott zagged, offering Gilmore the flask. "Have you seen this since he put the enchantment on it? It's impressive stuff."

Feeling sufficiently tidy, Gilmore made an offering gesture toward a few floor cushions that were piled up near one of the beds. Of course, in the dorm room of two consummate sensualists, there were floor cushions. "I haven't! I think he mentioned he was going to do some enchanting, but that was after it was out of my hands." He melted himself down to the floor, eager to see what Caleb had accomplished. "Is it something you can demonstrate?"

Gilmore sat, and Nott copied, plopping her butt into the pillows adjacent. "Sure I can," she told him after considering it for a beat. ...Huh. Maybe Gilmore didn't drink? Or maybe he had enough sense not to slug back something a stranger gave him before knowing what the stuff was first. It took all kinds.

"But first," she opened up the cap and pointed it in his direction. "Just take a whiff, so you can tell what's in it."

Obligingly, Gilmore leaned for a sniff, and understood instantly. "Potent," he commented, brows raised. Potent especially for someone so small, who seemed so young. Gilmore had been hesitant about the idea of a flask for a child, which was sort of how Caleb had originally described it. He did try not to judge, but he couldn't help but feel some concern. "What does the enchantment do?"

"So this flask is pretty small. It should hold, what, four ounces? Something like that?" That had been Nott's best guess at an eyeball, not that it mattered. "Check THIS out." She put the flask to her lips and tipped it back for a swallow. And then kept swallowing. Three times...four times... And these were not dainty sips, but more like frat boy chugs.

At first, GIlmore was impressed, but then very quickly after that, he was worried. "I see... all right! Hey, hey... I think I understand!" he laughed, a bit breathless and befuddled. It couldn't be good for anyone to drink that much that fast, could it? Gilmore touched his phone in the pocket of his jeans, wondering if he should text Caleb, like, immediately. "Please don't poison yourself just to prove a point?"

Nott left off the flask at that, taking a moment to catch her breath with a fang-toothed grin. She did get a teeny bit of joy out of making people gape. Her powers should be good for something.

"It's okay, really. I can eat or drink almost anything and be fine. It goes with the mutation." Not to say that she couldn't get drunk (which was still kind of the point of the flask), but it took more effort for Nott even at her small size than it would a rather large person. "But you saw, right? You saw how it's enchanted so it won't run out? Isn't that amazing?!"

Truth be told, Gilmore was more than a bit relieved when Nott grinned at him, and he understood that she wasn't actually going to die of alcohol poisoning right there on his floor. He waggled a scolding finger at her for the trick, but he was smiling and shaking his head, and more amused than upset. "That is incredible. I didn't realize Caleb could do such a thing. To make something from nothing? Astounding."

Now, of course, Gilmore was more curious than concerned. "Is it only when you're drinking? Can you pour it into a glass? Is it always the same kind of alcohol? Does it, you know, work? Actually gets you tipsy?"

"I can pour it - but only four ounces or whatever it is as a time. It's always the same stuff. And it definitely does the job of any good hooch: It gets you good and fucked up," Nott answered, as proud as anything. "Caleb is a genius with anything magical."

Gilmore wondered, briefly, if Nott knew about the gold. Caleb had been pretty adamant that Gilmore not tell anyone about it, and a good businessman knew when to keep his mouth shut. "I have seen him do incredible things." Like hand Gilmore a few thousand dollars worth of solid gold that he had had to fence rather than sell (thank the gods for Shinobi's web of connections). "If I knew he was going to do that, I might have asked for one myself."

"He doesn't like to show off too much, but now that he's got somebody to make him nice stuff for enchanting, who knows what he'll come up with?" Nott gave the flask a last fond look, then stuffed it under her hoodie again.

As her front pocket shifted this time, a small triangular piece of porcelain painted a vivid pink on one side tumbled out onto the floor pillows between them.

Gilmore reached for the pink flicker of color without a second thought, because that was the polite thing to do when someone lost track of one of their belongings. "Oops. Looks like you dropped something, Miss Nott."

"...Oh, yeah. That's something else-" She reached to pick up the shard, and several more, similarly broken pieces shook loose of the pocket to clatter and clink onto the pillows. "Uh. Do you have glue here? You make stuff, so I thought maybe you've got glue."

"But of course!" Gilmore scrambled up to his feet, apparently eager to be of service. He stepped over to his desk, which was home to a tall stack of cubbyhole drawers where he kept supplies that didn't require much space. He opened and rummaged through a few of them. "Do you have all the pieces, or do we need to fill in anywhere? Oh, and what are we repairing, here?" he added, peeking back over his shoulder.

"I've got most of it I think," Nott reached into her pouch and started pulling out more pieces. This one had what looked like a golden hoof, that might be part of a rainbow...a rainbow mane, or tail? "Maybe we'll need to fill in some bits though. It's one of Jester's unicorns. Do you think we can put it back together so she won't notice?"

One of Jester's? Ouch. Gilmore suppressed a wince. "Ceramics aren't my forte, but I certainly do my very best. I have a variety of tools to do the job, of course, but I wonder if I'm really your best choice?" He offered Nott a self-effacing little smile. "Epoxy is a wonderful substance, but it isn't, well... magic."

Nott had no doubt that Caleb could do anything with magic that he set his mind to if he had long enough to figure it out. But broken unicorns weren't his priority, and it was too much to trouble him with when he could be doing much greater things.

She sighed, long ears skewing thoughtfully. "Is it better to try and have it look like crap, to show some kind of effort went into it? Or am I better off just dumping the broken bits and getting her a new one?"

Gilmore surveyed the damage, and paused to stroke the beard on his chin in deep contemplation. This was for Jester, after all, who was a friend and something of a kindred spirit. He could offer no less than his best. Suddenly, inn a fit of inspiration, he snapped his fingers. "Kintsugi!"

Nott blinked wide eyes at him. "What did you just call me?"

The warm, rich roll of a laugh was more aimed at Gilmore himself than at Nott. "No, no, my apologies. 'Kintsugi' is a practice that comes from Japan, in which ceramics are repaired with resin mixed with precious metals, so the cracks and breaks are are made positively glorious. The idea is to celebrate the life of an object, and turn accidents into beauty. What do you think?"

Welding broken junk back together and pretending it was okay was suddenly a fancy thing? "Anything that would make Jester feel better about it seems like it's worth trying, but... That sounds like it would be expensive," Nott pointed out reluctantly.

Once upon a time, Gilmore would have explained the price very frankly, but Xavier's had changed the way he thought about money. Mutant kids ran the gamut from the stratospherically wealthy to the completely penniless, and not a single one of them was more or less deserving than another. Besides, this hadn't been Nott's idea, it was Shaun's, and he couldn't ask her to pay for his own brilliant idea, could he?

"Not to worry, my dear!" he exclaimed jovially. "Jester is one of my best customers lately, and anyway, I simply can't bear to see a unicorn in pain. We'll have to go downstairs, though, to my workshop. That's where I have all the best materials."

"Okay." Nott climbed the relatively short distance back onto her feet since his enthusiasm made it sound like downstairs was a now thing. Or did Gilmore just sound like that about everything he took an interest in?

"Are you super rich?" There seemed to be a lot of that around here, and it would explain why he was so 'whatever' about payment. "Or is that because of your mutant ability? Can you make -" Gold? Oh, wow. Could he do what Caleb did? (He probably wouldn't be as good at it but maybe.) "Can you make expensive stuff out of thin air? Can you cast magic?"

It was a long beat before she even considered that maybe asking those things was rude. "Oh! Are those questions I'm not supposed to ask?! If so, I'm sorry, Mister Gilmore. I meant no offense."

Gilmore did not laugh, even though it was his natural reaction, because Nott seemed so earnest and eager not to offend. He wouldn't dream of letting her think he was laughing at her. He did grin, though, broad and white and easy. "I think the answer is actually 'No' to all of those questions! I'm not magic, unless you count my brilliant personality," Gilmore joked, spreading his hands with a swirl of both wrists. For him, it was a completely normal gesture, no matter how ridiculous it would have looked on anyone else.

"What I do is, I make things," he went on to explain, gathering up a couple of items from his desk before they could venture downstairs. "My X-gene means that I can make anything work if I put it together, and I know how machines and devices work intuitively. That, though, has only the barest bit to do with Gilmore's Glorious Goods. I've been making and selling things that people love to buy since middle school. I do very well, if I do say so myself -- but I have some way to go before Gilmore is on a level with Worthington or Shaw."

"You know how things work? Without studying or anything? ...That does sound kind of magical, in a way. Just not literally." Nott watched him intently at first, though her attention did stray a bit to the various fascinating bits and bobs and things around the room. Nope, she told herself, trying to stay focused on the task at hand. Nope. I don't feel the itch. What itch? Not that one. "Are those important? Werther's and Shawls?"

"Their families would say yes," Gilmore said with amusement, twirling a ring of keys around one finger before dropping it into his pocket and leading the way out of the room. "Warren Worthington and Shinobi Shaw are sons of incredibly wealthy families -- and dear friends of mine. They are important, to me anyway. Their names, though? Open a lot of doors that I'd like to get my hands on."

He flashed a grin at Nott. "Prop them open for all of us, once I do."

"...Oh. That's - that's nice, of you," Nott tried, snapping back to attention and following as he moved to leave. And it was nice of him to say so. But she wasn't sure the kinds of 'doors' he was talking about would still be open if someone like her tried to go through. She pushed her hands into the pouch of her hoodie to help keep the broken pieces of unicorn from falling out.

"It's not about nice, it's about what's right," said Gilmore with a flourish as he headed downstairs, careful to keep his steps relatively short without trying to look like he was doing so. "Don't get me wrong, I admire the hell out of the Professor, but I think we can accomplish mutant rights and acceptance with about a hundred percent less training a para-military force of teenagers. Don't you think?"

Nott frowned some. "It's one thing to talk about acceptance or to convince one person that mutants might be people too. But a lot of folks aren't going to agree, not for a long time. They'll be too scared. Or too mean. I don't wanna die waiting for someone to come around to thinking I should be allowed to live."

Gilmore listened thoughtfully. Nott experienced being a mutant in a way very different from his own experience. "How would you do it, do you think? Accomplish mutant acceptance, I mean, if you could write the script and direct the events. Your dream, to use the Professor's term."

The small green girl shrugged. She didn't have powers for that kind of stuff, and she didn't know anything about politics or what it really took to make things happen. Backwater kids that grew up shooting, skinning and cooking their own meals didn't often get asked their opinions on complicated civics problems. "...All I want is to be treated like anybody else, so I can figure out how I want to live. But it's not easy to convince people that someone who looks or acts different from them is okay. And to be fair, some of us can do really scary things."

"You would think that's all anyone wants," Gilmore mused, winding down the last stairs to the mansion's basement. "I hope someday that it's that simple for the rest of the world, too. But... I think we have a lot of work to do to get there." He opened one of the doors along the hall, releasing a faint scent that mixed carved wood, clean soap, and the slightest tang of metal.

"Shall we get started?"

***

Some while later, Nott admired the finished handiwork that had been 95% Gilmore knowing what to do and 5% her holding things or handing him things when he told her to. But the ten pieces of colorful unicorn were put back together again, some tiny gaps here and there that had been too small to salvage fused whole, fracture lines gleaming proudly in gold lacquer. "It's pretty," Nott had to admit, a note of awe in her tone. "And the shape is right! That's way better than the super glue and desperation approach I was gonna take."

Gilmore pretended to look horrified, pressing a hand to his chest and drawing back dramatically. Almost instantly, though, he grinned. "You'll never need to resort to that, not white I'm around. Not that I'm giving you license to break things, of course." At no point had he questioned Nott about what happened to the unicorn, nor cast even a hint of blame. Accidents did happen. Especially if Jester had as many trinkets and toys as Gilmore suspected she did. "So, it passes approval? Good enough for our Jester?"

"I think that's up to her," Nott shrugged, tracing a claw gingerly along one of the golden seams. She flashed her mouthful of fangs at him in a grin. "But it's really nice. Thank you, Mister Gilmore."

Having now spent more than an hour with Gilmore, perhaps it wasn't a surprise to Nott that he folded himself into an elaborate bow, swirling one hand as he did. Everything with him was a sort of performance, but he seemed to enjoy every second of it. "You are most welcome, Miss Nott. The next time you need something crafted, mended, or tinkered with, I hope you'll remember Gilmore's Glorious Goods."

Nott couldn't help but keep smiling as she very carefully pulled the repaired unicorn into her arms. If anybody else tried to do what he did, it'd be totally corny and cheeseball. But even if Gilmore was having fun with it, it was his sincerity that sold it. He really liked what he did, making things and selling them, doing people favors even. How could you not find that a little endearing? He really was like Jester in that way. "Have you practiced saying that?"

"Every bon mot out of my mouth is specially formulated just for you," Gilmore promised her, straightening up again. He added after a conspiratorial pause, "Some might suggest a formulate fewer, in other words, actually shut my mouth now and then."

"There was definitely a five dollar word in there, and I've got about ninety-nine cents," Nott admitted sheepishly after spending a moment trying to puzzle out what a bawn mow was and why it needed 'formulating.' (Caleb would have got it for sure.) "The patter's cute though, don't let anybody tell you otherwise," she scampered in the direction of the door, both arms wrapped tight around the unicorn. "And next time - I'm sure there will be a next time - I'll bring you something worth your trouble."