"Hey, Stephen. It's me." Noel hadn't bothered Stephen too much in the last few weeks. A text here here or there to keep in touch, but this was her first time actually calling him since the last time (and first time) they had met. "Uh. Noel." She threw that last bit in for his benefit.

"I was wondering if you wanted to go get some gelato. I kinda wanted to talk to someone about... stuff. And stuff. You know?" He didn't know. Yet. But he would know as soon as he let her explain. After all, they were sort of like childhood friends and one of the only friends Noel had that wasn't directly involved to anything she wanted to talk about. She wanted an outside opinion.

They settled on a time and place.

Il Laboratorio del Gelato was a shop so clean and white it could have passed for a chemical laboratory or an Apple store. They had a list of flavors long enough that picking just one was going to take some serious thought or some serious return visits.

Noel took a seat on the patio and propped her feet up on the wrought iron fence that kept the Il Laboratorio customers separated from the normal street riffraff. With her hair so long now, when she sat, the end of her braid soiled on the ground behind her chair. Princess hair, Rebecca the child hair-mancer had said in her lisp.

The brunette kept it even though the cost of shampoo and conditioner was starting to out-weigh the benefit that she could hide an entire sword down the length of her back and the hair made casual passers by none the wiser. She had kept it because a certain someone had said that they liked it.

That was the problem and the main reason she needed an outsider's opinion. The hair. And the boy that maybe possibly had enough influence to make her keep it.

Noel's green converse tapped out an uneven beat in mid air as she waited. The combination of a lingering chill and the fact that this place served ice cold gelato meant that she had the patio to herself. She zipped up her canvas jacket, laced her hands behind her head and watched a bird in the tree above her with some suspicion. That little robin had better not be planning a bomb run.

Nate was surprised to see Noel's name pop up on his phone's screen, considering their friendship more often consisted of occasional text messages. Despite this, he had no issues with the call; Noel treated him like an old friend, and he had very few of those in reality.

The idea of going out for gelato and catching up sounded fine enough to him, even if her goals seemed vague. Something was up with her, and it was his place as an "old friend" to be there to talk about things. "Sounds great to me, Noel. But do me a favor and remember to call me Nate in public, alright?" The fact that she knew him by his original identity was a source of constant mental stress, but at the very least, she was trustworthy.

Nate had business at the Mansion to attend to before his meeting, so he arrived at the gelato shop in a buttondown, blue tie and matching converse. It was cold for a country boy like him, so he wore a thick tan coat.

The outdoor patio of the shop was pretty unpopulated, so it was easy to identify which girl with hair hanging to the floor he was looking for. He approached her from behind, placing two hands on her shoulder, grinning. "You know, until you get a hair cut, you're gonna stick out like a sore thumb these days."

She blinked up at Steph- Nate. Call him Nate in public. "Is it that bad?" Noel had almost talked herself into cutting it half a million times. Now that she was looking upside down at her pal with her feet up on the table she was feeling a little silly. She valued his opinion.

"A pre-pubescent hair-mancer gave me princess hair. I need your professional opinion. Horrible? Does it hide my sword?" Noel rocked forward and then out of the chair and onto her feet before she gave a little spin for St-Nate's benefit. Of course that wasn't really the reason why she had kept it. But it was a bonus. The only thing pocking up out of the collar of her jacket was a dark colored sword hilt that melded wonderfully with her hair. The only drawback being the lack of an easy draw and the stiffness of the long blade keeping her from bending her spine.

"Gelato?" Noel motioned with her thumb back toward the entrance she had spied during her twirl. "And uh, how have you been?" Should they hug or something? Or would that just be weird?

Now looking into his friend's upsidedown face, framed with side bangs melting into her long hair, Nate shook his head. "Not bad, no. Just as long as you don't have to do anything stealthy or inconspicuous."

Noel jerked herself out of the chair, giving a little twirl and asking his opinions in hairstyling and weapon concealation. It was not until she spun that her hair whipped around like a ribbon and he noticed the hilt of her sword emerging from her jacket. "It certainly hides the sword, I'll give you that. And honestly, you look gorgeous with 'princess hair,' so my professional opinion is that it works for you." A hair-mancer? Some mutants had bizzare talents; not that a conman would not benefit from being able to change his hair rapidly.

Nate turned his attention into the gelato shop and grinned. ”Well, if we’re gonna be meeting in front of a gelato shop, yeah, I think I was hoping for some gelato,” he teased.

The former conman reflected on his life since his first encounter with Noel. ”I’ve been… busy. Things with Quin have been going better than I hoped, plus…” he thought for a second, not wanting to jinx himself, ”It’s not set in stone yet, but I think I’ve got a legit teaching job lined up at a school for mutants.” Come to think about it, he was really having an eventful winter. ”How have things been for my favorite memory taster?”

Noel had a laugh in her voice when she answered. "I don't really have the opportunity or reason to sneak up on people. Protocol is to give a verbal warning in security work so stealth really isn't my thing. It's just easier to avoid questions about carrying around a weapon in broad daylight." Especially from police people, but that was something Nate would understand.

The brunette followed him into the shop and scratched at her neck in a self conscious kind of way. "Besides. I get... compliments. So I think I like it." How she looked was not a bother to her before. Now...? Maybe she was starting to understand why some girls colored their hair and put lipstick on.

"The school. That's the special one for mutant delinquents, right?" Nate would fit right in, being a delinquent and all. "You gonna teach them slight of hand?" It was her turn to tease. Besides. It was easier to just gloss over the Quin parts. Noel had very little advice to give there... in fact...

"Look, you know me calling you was a thinly veiled attempt to solicit advice so I'm just gonna have to come out and say it." Of course that would require courage and it was easier to place an order for lavender honey gelato. She paid for hers in cash, as always and offered to cover Nate's as well.

"There's a boy. That I sometimes kiss." That was a start and the awkwardness of the sentence just about summed up the whole thing. She accepted her gelato with a smile and rereated back out to the cold.

Noel seemed happy with her hair in terms of both functionality and appearance. Function was very much like Noel, but an interest in garnering compliments was new, but certainly a welcome change. "Glad you're accepting compliments on occasion. If you ever need a change, feel free to ask. One benefit of a checkered past is a knack for changing appearances." Nate took pride in any craft he took on, including hair cutting.

"The kids aren't delinquents!" He reviewed the students he had already met from Xaviers. "Well, they aren't all delinquents. And I'm not forming a guild of kid thieves! I'm teaching art, thank you very much." Maybe with a minor in pickpocketing.

Inside the shop, Noel explained her motives behind the meeting, which did not surprise Nate. He declined her offer to pay, and placed an order for his own mango gelato. With that out of the way, he turned his attention to her interesting predicament. "Ah boy, eh?" Noel was not the intimate type, so kissing was a surprising development. "So how often do you find yourself kissing this boy?" She certainly picked a good person to come to with this situation; Nate had done his fair share of kissing to various degrees of commitment and emotion.

The best way to describe the sound that came from Noel's mouth in reaction to what Nate would be teaching children was a laughing sporfle. She was glad that hadn't been too big a bite of her gelato —which tasted of spring and sunshine and wasn't too sweet— because she had to wipe some of that gelato off of her lips with the back of her hand.

"Art uhh... yeah art's totally important." She was trying to save face, but the damage was probably already done. The back of her hand, she wiped onto her pants rather than bother getting a napkin.

> "So how often do you find yourself kissing this boy?"

"Whenever I want information out of him." She was absolutely serious too. "He gave me a free pass to his past sort of like you did." And after a bit of hesitation, "He cooks good too."

>> "Art uhh... yeah art's totally important."

Nate arched a brow at the obvious shot at his craft, but could not be surprised based on what she had shown him. "Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in." It was a little quote he picked up from a Canadian Novelist that he enjoyed justifying art with. "Art is the memory of society. The only memories a mutant can't erase," he added teasingly, knowing the nature of Noel's mutation.

>> "Whenever I want information out of him. He gave me a free pass to his past sort of like you did. He cooks good too."

Interessante... Nate thought to himself, enjoying a sweet mouthful of mango gelato. "My free pass didn't involve my tongue," he teased. She would not be "gathering information" like that without reason. "So how do you feel 'bout him? Is he just a nice guy to keep 'round for some cooking and casual kissing? Or do you kiss him for other reasons?"

Something had to motivate her into kissing this mystery man, and that motivation would help him give her whatever advice she was looking for. "Either way is perfectly fine, speaking from experience." It could be that she liked the boy, or she might just be changing. When people grow, they like things they used to have no interest in. For some people, that is food, and for others, that is kissing.

She wrinkled her nose at the erased memory comment. Noel had never done that to him... that she could remember. Also, Noel was pretty sure that paintings and books burned just fine, but that was besides the point. She wasn't going out of her way to destroy art. She had no issue with art.

> "My free pass didn't involve my tongue,"

"Hey, I didn't know at first that I didn't have to mouth to mouth for memory transfer." Though, really she could have figured it out if she had thought it through. "Had I met you a couple weeks earlier, it might have. And then we wouldn't be friends because you have a girlfriend and you wouldn't have gone for that." At least he shouldn't have gone for that. If memory served her right, fidelity had never really been his strong suit.

As for how she felt about him... "Mmm. I don't know. I like his parents. I feel like they're my parents after all I've seen from them. And... I like the cooking." And she liked him. But did she like him, like him? "How do you know? If you like someone for real?" Recently she had kissed quite a few people... and she could remember vicariously kissing many, many more. But not a lot of them came with the same feeling or reasons or... even gender.

"Also, isn't it weird for someone to kiss someone else that's the same gender?"

Nate chuckled as Noel explained why they did not kiss for information, realizing she missed the point he was making. "I don't mind that our transfer wasn't mouth-to-mouth; it would have made things awkward because I am trying my best not to screw up my relationship." He placed his gelato down on the table for a moment, speaking with his hands for emphasis. "My point is this: there must have been a reason for you choosing to transfer with his lips."

And there it came: how do you know if you like someone? He was still figuring out his own situation, but Noel's deal was unique. How do you tell the difference between a real romantic interest and the connection developed from stealing memories. "Well... for me, I felt like I could be myself around Quin-- well, myself with a new name. Being with her made me happier than being with other people." She liked his parents and his cooking, and it seemed like she enjoyed spending time with him... it had all the ingredients of a boy she likes... or a friend she enjoys kissing, but the latter did not seem like Noel's M.O. "Does seeing him compare to spending time with a friend, or is it more than that?"

Nate ventured another bite of his gelato, but came up choking and coughing at her last question. "Um, well, it's not my thing, but for some people, it's totally normal to kiss someone of the same gender." He hesitated to ask the inevitable question, but his curiosity always won out against his better judgment. "Why do you ask?"

He put his gelato down because he needed his hands to help illustrate the fact that Noel had, in his opinion, on some level wanted to put her lips on Aedus'. Noel kept her gelato in front of her like a shield. "Wait. I didn't know it didn't have to work that way. And now... if I it switched up... that would be weird." There wasn't a body part that seemed safer than the lips.

Aedus had clearly demonstrated his willingness to think about baseball for so long as she wanted to kiss him. At least, the last time she'd insisted on it, that was what he was thinking about. Noel could kid herself into thinking that he didn't even like it, but she didn't even have to say it out loud to figure out that wasn't a whole truth. "It's not... we don't snuggle or anything." Her eyes widened a touch on the word snuggle. Like it was sacred or sacrilege and she wasn't sure which one.

Stephen's admission that he could be himself with Quin seemed a bit silly. "I don't have enough experience to know how to not be myself. This is all I got." As for Quin... Noel really hated to go there, but... "How can you say you are being yourself?" The look she gave him made it clear that Noel was talking about more than just the name. She was talking about the change of behavior.

"I guess, when you like someone, you're supposed to do abnormal things." She threw out the lifeline to him because with her hair long enough to step on, she couldn't exactly throw the first stone. Noel didn't even disprove of the changes in Nate. Not really. What made her feel icky was the fact that it felt like a lie somehow. But he sounded happy.

Noel mashed her gelato into the bottom of its cup because that was a better way to funnel her frustration.

> "Does seeing him compare to spending time with a friend, or is it more than that?"

"I don't know." Noel sounded about ready to ditch the whole subject for something ... not this. But this was why she had come to Nate. So there was no reason to back out now. "We work together, but in vastly different departments. He's got brains. I like eating lunch with him, but he's one of the only people that isn't..." Scared of her? Looking down on her? Missing seeing her at all? "Well he isn't a jerk."

Her question about same sex kissing had Nate sputtering in his gelato. "Because my swordmaster is one of those people, but he kisses both kinds. And he obviously doesn't care about his wife otherwise he wouldn't be living with me." So did that mean that she got her apprehension on the subject from him?

Nate tried not to chuckle at Noel; from what he could tell, she might be interested in this man but had no idea how to understand it, let alone deal with it. The way she spoke the word "cuddle" as though it was something sexual and forbidden made it clear that she was still the same Noel, unprepared for intimacy and passion.

The shot she took at him for the constant lie he was treating Quin to hit him harder than she probably intended. There were still nights when guilt kept him awake, so he became slightly defensive. "I want to be clear about this. I've done things in my past, but the things I've done are not who I am." He took a deep breath, slowing himself down. "She makes me feel like a better me. I may be Nate and I may have a new job, but who I am has never felt more like me." Maybe that was how he defined love: being with someone who made you want to be the best version of you.

"As for this guy you work with," getting back on target, "we are all looking for different things. Maybe you're looking for a guy you like spending time with who isn't a jerk. Maybe not. Only you can figure out what you want." So for all my pretty words and ideas, I'm useless. You're welcome.

Nate regained his composure regarding the same-sex kiss topic. "As for your swordmaster, some people don't care much about gen... wait."

It took a moment for Nate to catch up to what she said; crazy things were harder to process. "You are living with a married man?"

Where to begin with this topic?

"Does his wife know?"

Did Aedus make Noel feel like a better Noel? Hmm. He helped her re-learn how to read. That was a positive. But Noel was Noel. She didn't pull her punches just because Aedus was nearby. Or ever. She nibbled thoughtfully at her gelato.

"Sorry." She really hated touching on the Quin thing and it was clear that pointing it out made him upset. "I don't think the changes you've made are bad ones. Just that they're changes." Changing for himself was one thing. For a girl? Not so much. Maybe Noel should cut her hair.

> "You are living with a married man?"

"Tch. No." She scoffed at him. Living with a married man? Now that was just stupid. "He lives with me."

> "Does his wife know?"

"I dunno. I've never seen her around and Sebastian doesn't seem to think about her much at all." But he still wore his ring. Even after she had pointed out to the man that his wife wouldn't like him kissing her, he still wore his wedding band. "It's not like we do anything, he just needed a bed to sleep in."

>> "Sorry. I don't think the changes you've made are bad ones. Just that they're changes."

It was obvious that Noel and Nate did not see eye to eye regarding the topic of changing; he saw him bettering himself while Noel saw a man changing who he was. Maybe they were both right, but perception is truly the lens with which we see the world. "Fair enough." Maybe it was best to venture away from the topic for now.

Speaking of perception, it seemed the two were at opposite ends on some topics such as extramarital activities. Not that Nate was taking a moral high-ground, but there was not a giant difference in his mind whether he was living with her or vice versa. The whole situation sounded odd, but it was not his job to judge. He wanted to ask if the bed Sebastian was borrowing was her bed, but he held his tongue.

"So the swordmaster you live with is a platonic thing; would that cause a problem if you decide you do like the other guy?" Traditional swordmasters had stricter social rules for pupils, but the idea was not completely extinct in modern times.

"Uhm. I guess Platonic sounds about right. I don't think he would have an issue except that personal attachments can cloud judgement." And here she was. All cloudy anyway.

Sebastian relied on her, but not in any kind of romantic way. That would be weird. She knew they had transferred memories before, but didn't actually remember doing it. So it probably wasn't a mouth-to-mouth-er. Also, it was best not to dwell on such things. Sebastian was not the reason why she had called Nate.

"It might be too late for me." She was spending time on the subject already, as it was. Wasn't that an indicator of attachment? Or something? Hmm. She wasn't sure about that part either. "But I guess I could decide to cut all ties with Aedus right here and now. I could forget him and his parents and go on... going on." That didn't sound too bad.

"Do you kiss people casually? Or... would you if you didn't have a main squeeze?" He had mentioned an option about casual kissing. She wanted the brochure on that.