Life After Near Death

An Unlikely Advisor

"Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind."
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Gray and Rei walked together into a hallway adjacent to the main showroom of the strip club. There were small private rooms with mirrors on the walls and colored lights flashing. She brought Gray to the back, a bigger room than the others, with a wide couch and a spacious platform where she could dance, surrounded on all sides by mirrors like some sensual fun-house. Instead, she sat on the couch with Gray, not too close, and brought forward a bowl of grapes for him to eat. He turned her down, but he did accept a glass of ice wine she poured for them both.

"All right, we're alone," he said sternly. "I want to know what you and Natsu did."

"No you don't," she said, calmly sipping her wine.

"Yes, I—"

"No. You don't," she said again. She set the wineglass down and looked straight at him. "What you truly want to know is what he hasn't done."

Gray's brow pinched together.

"Unless anything has changed since his last visit with me, he's a virgin," she said passively.

Gray was amazed that this little fact was what he had truly been wondering about. The details ... she was right, he did not really want to hear about all that. What Natsu did with this woman was no different than what he had done with women in the past. What truly made Gray curious was not what things Natsu did with Rei-chan, but what ways he could surprise Natsu, things he had never experienced, pleasures the Dragon Slayer did not yet know. He wanted to be able to do something, anything, that would be a first for Natsu.

"He's your first love, isn't he?" Rei-chan asked.

Seriously, this woman was uncanny! How did she do that? Mind-reading?

"I'm not psychic," she said. "I make it my profession to read body language, and you, Gray-dear, are a novel. So, first love?"

Softly, Gray answered, "I'm not sure if it's love."

She looked like she did not believe him. "If you say so. What did I teach him?" she asked, segueing into the subject. "That's what you think you want to know, right? Well, he came here with Loke-dear, downcast and heartbroken. It seems the person he loved," she said, staring hard at Gray, "said he saw Natsu-dear as nothing more than a brother."

"I didn't say nothing more!" Gray protested. "I said he was like a brother. It was a compliment, letting him know he was closer than just a friend. I ... I never meant it bad."

"He took it hard," Rei-chan told him. "He was in love with you even back then, and for much longer than that. He really, truly loves you." She smiled wistfully. "I'm envious. I've never had a man love me like he loves you."

"So he came here, huh?"

"Yes."

"And you taught him kissing?"

"That was his initial concern. He had not kissed many times in the past and wanted to learn how to give the most amazing first kiss in the world. I hope he succeeded."

Gray blushed as he thought about those nervous kisses on the hill. Natsu had said later that he pulled away in disgust because he kissed Gray wrong. He wondered what Natsu wanted as a first kiss. Then he thought about how amazingly he had kissed the next time, making out on top of the souvenir stand, and the raw passion of those fiery lips.