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“So can I?”
“ No .”
“Oh, why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
Cana frowned. “I don’t understand what your problem is, Gray, it’s just a kiss isn’t it?”
That was entirely the problem. Cana was always too carefree with things like these, as if your first kiss wasn’t meant to be a very big deal, something you only did with someone you cared about a lot – at least that is what Macao had said to Gray. He knew Cana didn’t care for him like that, she had just come to him because he was an easy person to ask.
Recently Cana was all over the place, but Macao had told Gray about this too. “Girls lose it a little when they start their teenage years,” he had said. “They will suddenly be very interested in you. You might not want it at first, but you will eventually. Trust me, it will be a good thing.” Right now Gray couldn’t see why that was a good thing, but Macao was married so he must know.
Of all the girls to catch the teenage virus, it did surprise him that it was Cana and it also puzzled him why he had been chosen to be the sacrificial victim. Surely there were loads of better men out there to choose from.
“I don’t want to,” he repeated. “I feel like that should be enough of an explanation.”
It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t: She moved closer to him: “Do you not think I’m pretty enough?” She blinked several times aggressively at him which was probably meant to look flirty, but just looked like she had a fly in her eye.
“What does that matter?” Gray felt a little uneasy with her so close, her chest had grown quite some in the last few months after all, but he was steadfast in his choice. “I don’t want to, because I don’t want to. It has nothing to do with you.”
She pulled away from him and let out a deep breath. Clearly, frustration was setting in that in the half hour she had given him a speech, about how important teenage experiences were and that it was better to do them with friends and not strangers, had not swayed him at all in her direction.
And why would he? It seemed like an odd thing to do, just walk about to a guy and ask him for a kiss. But then again, Cana just was like that.
“I’m super good at it too,” Cana said and shrugged her shoulders. “It is your loss, ultimately.”
Gray raised a brow: “I thought you have never done it before, how would you know that you are super good at it?”
“ Intuition ”, she said without missing a beat. “There is nothing I’m not super good at.”
Sometimes Gray wished he owned her confidence instead of the pile of self-doubt that carried his brainmass. Wouldn’t hurt Cana though to turn it down a notch at least sometimes. “Ask Natsu, I’m sure he doesn’t care.”
“I can’t do that,” Cana gave him a strict look. “Girls don’t kiss the crushes of other girls. Every girl has sworn as much.” Gray doubted every girl had sworn something so impractical and at the same time he wondered who could reasonably have a crush on Natsu. Cana was probably just making it up to have an excuse to use him.
There were quite a few of them in the guild now, kids of Grays age. With Erza, Mirajane, Lisanna, Elfman and Natsu joining him and Cana the guild hall was now pretty busy with young talent going in and out. That was not to count Laxus and his group of teenagers that refused to talk to anyone younger than them.
It was not out of the question that some could develop crushes on others, though Gray didn’t understand why one would want that even. From what Erza told him from her romance books, feelings seemed pretty exhausting. He told himself that he’d stay away from that nonsense.
“I will read you cards,” Cana tried again. “Tell you your future. For free, might I add, something that I usually only do during the festival, otherwise it’s payment time.”
Ah yes, her little party trick. Cana had learned magic with cards and had gotten pretty good at Tarot readings. The inhabitants loved her booth at the Fairy Tail Festival in summer where she would read their futures for them in exchange for a sparkly soda or two. Some would come regularly to the guild hall, where she read their cards too, but then only after a payment in gold. She was one of the richest in their age group because of this.
“It wouldn’t be free, because you’d get something for it,” Gray replied dryly. “Maybe you should look up what “free” means. Besides, all you ever say is nonsense.”
She snapped her tongue, insulted: “I tell you exactly what the cards say. That is the future that is waiting for you.”
Sure, of course, she might think that way, but had she ever listened to herself? She told Natsu that he should “look towards the signs of the stars” and to Erza that “the past is also the future” and to him that “rain would be an important part” of his life. Like, duh, of course rain was an important part of his life. He was an ice mage, water made ice. It was just so stupid.
“Why do you even care about that stupid kiss so much? Can’t you wait until you meet someone that actually wants to kiss you? Or do you want to beg every guy you ever meet just like me?” Gray rolled his eyes. He should have just walked away the moment she had asked him first.
She let out another deep breath as if she was as done with his questioning as he was with her insurance. “I mean lately I’ve seen Gildarts do it and it got me thinking that…”
“Gildarts?” Gray said his name as if it was a rare animal species. He gave Cana a questioning look. Personally, he had seen Gildarts make out with so many women that he forgot the number and it had never made him want to kiss others. On the contrary, it rather put him off the concept. Somehow he had just expected the others to be like him, but maybe he had been wrong. “Why that guy? Are you jealous? You into him or what?
Her head shot up and she looked like he had just personally murdered her mother right in front of her. “ No! ”, she said decidedly.
“It’s fine if you were, I mean apparently it’s normal for girls to like older guys,” Gray shrugged and thought back to his conversation with Macao.
She grabbed his arm so tight that he could feel her nails in her arm. “I’m telling you, that is not it.” The frown on her face was so deep that it looked like she was going to throw up any second now.
“Fine, fine , that is not it,” Gray pulled his hand away. He hadn’t expected the question to insult her so deeply. He noted to himself that Cana apparently didn’t like Gildarts too much.
“Seeing him just made me think, like I said.” Cana bit her lower lip: “I just think it is a part of life that I want to experience. You know, when my mother passed, she told me that I should have as many life experiences as possible. To live happily as I am and do things that give me joy. I want to be that person, and now that I am 13 I feel like a first kiss is part of that experience.” She looked like she was holding back tears.
She sniffed a little. “What if I fall down the stairs tomorrow or I go on a mission and never come back? Then I broke my promise to my mother to have a full life. I just want to experience a kiss before it might be too late. I guess that is delusional…” She sniffed again.
Gray’s stomach turned. He didn’t like when girls cried in front of him.“Eh, uh- don’t … don’t cry, alright? You w-won’t die so soon, come on.” She didn’t seem comforted by those words and her eyes continued to look like they were about to rain tears very soon. He grumbled a little, the decision waging a war inside his head.
“Fine, I’ll do it.” He said finally. “We can kiss, if that would make you happy.”
Her eyes shot up and instantly the tears disappeared out of it. “Really? Oh, that would be so nice of you, Gray. You are really the best.”
“Ah, well, uh, I mean if it means so much to you…” he scratched the back of his head.
“It really would,” she clapped her hand and suddenly seemed in high spirits again. “Alright, you look at me,” she pushed him to the side so that she could face him. “And make sure you close your eyes, this is what one does when they kiss.”
Gray grumbled again: “I know that, how old do you think I am?”
“Well, boys are stupid, so I’m just trying to make sure,” she said, her chipper voice not matching the insult at all. Gray wanted to say back that he thought himself to be a very smart boy, actually, but Cana clapped her hands again. “Okay, let's do it.”
He let out another annoyed breath and then closed his eyes as she had instructed. It hadn’t escaped his notice how quickly she had gone from deep sadness to business as usual. Vaguely he asked himself if he had been played, but then decided that Cana just wasn’t the type to do that. Unless it came to card reading of course, she was just making that stuff up.
Before he could think of anything else, he could already feel her lips on his. The feeling of it was really odd. Her lips were small and soft and the taste, though indescribable, wasn’t unpleasant. She pressed a little hard down on him, but Gray supposed that this was how it was meant to be. They just were locked like this for a moment or two and then Cana pulled away.
At first he waited, but she didn’t dive in a second time, so Gray opened his eyes. Cana had already turned away from him, her pointer finger scratching the side of her face. “So, what's the verdict?” Gray asked, but the furrowed brow already told him that it probably wasn’t a good one.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, as if she was still thinking about it. “I thought it would be softer.”
Gray made a questioning gesture: “What do you mean? It was soft.”
She pulled her nose up. “Not in the way I imagined it to be. Your lips are kinda chapped and harsh. I thought it would be more pleasant.”
“Hey, my lips are very pleasant,” Gray replied, now a little insulted. “Maybe you are just not as good of a kisser as you think you are.”
Cana let her hair fall over her shoulders. “Unlikely,” she said without looking at him. “I’m probably amazing.”
Annoyed that his first kiss had suddenly turned into a feedback session, Gray jumped to his feet. “Well, I’m glad that my payment for helping you out is an insult.”
“Oh, sorry, yeah, thanks for helping me try it”, Cana murmured without looking at him, already off in whatever world her head was living in. He let out a deep breath from his nose and started marching away, when he heard her quickly humm to herself.
“Maybe I’ll try kissing a girl next.”