Chapter 60

"Is Marcus gone already?" Hope said as she sat up on the sofa, wincing slightly at the bright light coming in through the window. Shawna, having just opened the curtains, nodded and headed back towards the kitchen.

"Are you making tea?" Hope asked, rising slowly to her feet, easing the kinks out of the muscles in her legs.

"Hmm-hmm," Shawna confirmed.

"Are you alright?" Hope asked, trailing after her into the kitchen.

"Yeah," Shawna said, with a strange smile, and reached up to rub her jaw line as she turned away.

"Are you sure? What's up?"

"Just... My jaw aches a little, that's all."

"Toothache?"

Shawna turned to stare at her for a moment, her expression moving from suspicion to amusement.

"No, my teeth are fine. Just... You know how your jaw aches when you've had your mouth open for too long?"

"Like at the dentist?"

"Yeah, like that."

"But it's Sunday?"

"So?"

"So... The dentists are closed. And it's barely nine o'clock, too."

"Do I really have to spell this out?" Shawna put a cup on the table for her and then brought her own cup over to take a seat opposite her. "Can you think of any reason, apart from the dentist, why I might have my mouth open that long this morning?"

"No, not..." Hope trailed off as she caught the smirk on Shawna's face, and realisation dawned. "You didn't... how..." She blushed, then thought back to Marcus' nervous, unsettled attitude of the past few days and their conversation of the previous afternoon.

"How is he today?"

"Well, he's not as tense as he was." Shawna giggled, and Hope couldn't help but join in, even as she wondered what it would be like.

"You two seem happy this morning," Yvonne said shuffling into the room nervously, eying them both warily as she approached the kettle. "Do you mind if I..."

"Go ahead," Hope said, turning to Shawna. "She slept on my floor. She didn't want to go home alone."

"So you slept on the sofa? How does that work?" Shawna asked.

"I told her I could sleep on the sofa," Yvonne pointed out.

"You don't have a guest and make them sleep on the couch," Hope shrugged it off and Yvonne turned back to the kettle.

Shawna considered that for a minute, her look checking everything was alright, which Hope just gave an assured nod in answer to.

"I'm fine, really. You?" Hope asked, as the kettle finished boiling.

"Things... Things that could have gone wrong in the past few days have turned out OK," Shawna finally answered, rubbing at her jaw again. "I am happy, on the whole."

"Yeah, I can see why you're happy." Yvonne smirked as she took a seat, and Hope and Shawna both stared at her.

"Oh, come on, neither of you are the first to get a sore jaw from giving a blow-job, and neither of you'll be the last either."

"Hey, I know that," Shawna admitted, "but Hope here doesn't appear to have had the pleasure."

"Really?" Yvonne stared at her for a moment. "I figured... oh, well, never mind. We all started off virgins at some point, right?" There was a slightly wistful note to her voice that neither of the other girls felt like exploring, and Hope hurriedly filled in the gap in the conversation.

"I just... it sounds horrible."

"It's... When you think about the mechanics, pretty much everything about sex is pretty unpalatable," Shawna pointed out.

"There's something raw, primitive about it," Yvonne took up the explanation. "It's... primal. Fundamental urges take over."

"There can be more to it than that," Shawna assured her, though Yvonne didn't look like she believed it.

"And there can be less to it, too," Yvonne pointed out.

"Well, I think I'll be steering clear of it," Hope declared, finishing her tea.

"You'll change your mind," Yvonne assured her, and then paused when the other two stared at her. "Oh, come on. When he's got his dick in your mouth you can do anything and he's yours. It's a power kick, and that's what Hope's into."

"I am NOT!" Hope spluttered indignantly.

"You so are. You and Shawna were constantly trying to outdo the other, constantly trying to be in charge. And we... well..." she slowed down, suddenly self-conscious as she realised what she was talking about. "When I pushed... You just reacted, that's all."

"It's alright," Hope said, taking one of Yvonne's hands. "Water under the bridge."

"It's true, though, isn't it?" Shawna tilted her head as she stared at Hope. "I didn't realise it at the time, but it's true."

"I... I don't know," Hope said with a shrug. "I mean, there are... the guy... the few guys I like are fairly... I don't know. They're not dominant, but they're... focussed, single-minded. They're in charge, in their way. Confident, I suppose. Some of the time. I don't know, really."

"You like guys?" Yvonne seemed surprised.

"I'm still not convinced, either," Shawna agreed, both of them smirking at Hope's indignant stare.

"Just because I'm taking my time doesn't mean I don't like men."

"But they intimidate you," Yvonne said, not really asking.

"I guess. There were so many cautionary tales in my childhood — my Dad, school, church, all about the deviltry of young men and saving things until after marriage."

"They didn't tell you about the wonder of young women, though, did they?" Shawna chuckled.

"No," Hope admitted with a wry grin.

They both turned to look at Yvonne who seemed suddenly tense until she realised they were looking at her.

"Oh, yeah, girls. You know..."

"Oh, my god." Shawna sat up, shocked. "You don't really like girls, do you?"

"Rubbish," Yvonne exclaimed, pulling her hand away from Hope's, but she wasn't convincing.

"Wow..." Shawna shook her head. "I mean, I can't understand Corrine and Lorraine and the like not liking girls, but at least they admit it. I can't understand Elspeth, for that matter, not liking guys, but... if you don't like girls..."

"Why do I go with them?" Yvonne slumped a little, resting her head on her hands, her tea forgotten. "I don't know. He expected it, I suppose. Or, rather... he wanted it."

"And you did what he wanted," Shawna said sympathetically.

"Well, you do, don't you," Yvonne pointed out, obviously hoping for agreement.

"I... I still get a sort of a thing for girls," Shawna admitted. "I mean, Marcus is great, and I'm not going to go behind his back, but... it's different with girls, and I miss that sometimes. So, yeah, sometimes you do it because they want it."

"If you don't do it because you want them to be happy, that's one thing, that's sacrifice," Hope said looking at Shawna with a smile, before turning to Yvonne. "If you are doing something because you're scared of him being unhappy, that's a whole different thing."

Neither of them replied, and Hope stood up, gathering the cups and putting them on the side by the sink.

"Right, come on. We need to work on this, and I have just the thing. We've probably got time, but you'll need to get changed into something you can sweat into," she said, stopping at the kitchen door.

"What are you talking about?" Shawna asked.

"Both of you, amongst other things, are scared. Physically scared. Scared from past experience."

"And you aren't?" Shawna crossed her arms defiantly, leaning back in her chair.

"A little," Hope acknowledged. "Not like the pair of you, though. You both need confidence, and some idea of how to defend yourselves. Come on."

"Where are we going?" Yvonne asked.

"You'll see."

"Here?" Yvonne looked up at the sports centre for a moment, confused.

"Yep," Hope smiled a little nervously, turning to face Shawna.

"Marcus' class?" the redhead asked, and Hope nodded.

"It's... You trust him. You have friends here. You can learn safely."

"I'm never going to be able to fight like Marcus, Hope."

"Maybe not, but Lorraine seemed to do well enough, and she's only been here six months or so."

"I've tried this before."

"We tried it for fitness, before. Now we're here for self-defence."

"Maybe... Maybe there's another course?" Shawna moved over towards the board with the list of events on it, but Yvonne stepped in front of it.

"Do you think he's going to look down on you because you're not very good?" she asked, but it was Hope that answered.

"No, she's worried that Marcus will find out why it's so ingrained in her that she can't fight."

"He can't find out," Shawna said, turning to look at Hope, her face pale.

"I won't tell him," Hope assured her. "I can't tell him much, because you won't tell me, but I won't let on unless you tell me, I promise. You have to promise me you'll give this a go, though."

"Alright," Shawna said, and Yvonne joined her when Hope turned the same look on her.

"Come on then."

They pushed through the doors, showed their student union cards at the desk, and then headed over to the large directory board to find where they were headed.

"Hey, guys," Lorraine said bustling through the turnstile with a large bag slung over her shoulder. "What brings you down here?"

"We thought we'd join you," Hope said with a smile.

"Seriously?"

"Apparently," Shawna said. She obviously didn't share Hope's enthusiasm. Yvonne nudged her gently.

"Well, OK. We're downstairs, room four, under the pool."

"Under the pool?" Yvonne looked through the glass wall separating the corridor from the swimming area.

"Yeah, freaky design to the place." Lorraine smiled. "We came here as part of our structural engineering course to look at the way it was put together. Someone was throwing a total mental when they laid this place out, I tell you."

Shawna and Hope shared a slightly bemused look, and Lorraine caught it.

"What?"

"We were just wondering what's happened to Lorraine," Shawna said.

"You do seem a little more chirpy than usual," Hope pointed out.

"Well, why not?" she smiled. "I actually got to use this stuff this week, for real. I want to go tell everyone."

"Don't!" Yvonne blurted, grabbing her shoulder. Lorraine shook her hand off, not particularly gently.

"You still have to earn the right to ask favours of me," she pointed out.

"Do I?" Hope asked quietly.

"I'm not going to give any background. It doesn't work like that. It's only happened twice this year, and both times it's been about tactics and positioning and what moves you chose to do. Marcus was the first, actually, talking about Bleak Hill."

"He..." Shawna started to say as they started down the stairs, but thought better of it.

"When you listen to the decisions he makes," Lorraine continued, "he's incredible. He just works so quick."

"Worked slowly enough to make her jaw ache this morning," Yvonne muttered, pointing at Shawna.

"Wow! Shawna's blushing," Lorraine observed as they pushed through the swing doors into the training hall. "I didn't think I'd see that in this lifetime."

"Last time we did this I ached like I'd been run over by a bus," Shawna said as she settled into one of the seats on the sofa, wrapping a towel around her head.

"Well, last time we told them we wanted to get fit," Hope said. "This time we told them it was about self-defence..."

"I kind of thought Marcus would be teaching us."

"Well, under the circumstances, I can understand them giving us a woman teacher."