Quid Pro Quo Ch. 03

"You didn't come?"

In the past I've had partners take this personally so I wanted to put her mind at rest. Fact is, for me at least, it just takes longer as I get older. The fact that lately there's usually a fairly strong analgesic wandering around my circulatory system, definitely makes a difference. Whatever. The fact is it takes me quite a while to finish these days, which is a bit of a two edged sword. To be honest I've come to believe that the need to spurt jism into, or onto a partner is as much a socialised thing as a biological imperative. Fucking feels good in so many ways. Orgasm is the cherry on the cake, but it's still good to eat the cake, even if you set the cherry aside, right? How to say all this and more to the girl looking at me now?

"Old age I think. It doesn't matter as much as it did when I was seventeen - I had a great time."

A shout down to Nicola gave us five minutes grace to shower, which we did together, and it seems a shame to condense all of the fun we had doing it into one short sentence, but five wet, laughing, slippery minutes later, we were back in our clothes and through the bedroom door. The unmistakeable aroma of Italian food was waiting on the other side and suddenly I was aware of how hungry I was.

Nicola had made an effort with the presentation. She'd left the worktop lights on in the kitchen area and turned the main lights off. The lower floor was open plan, with a kitchen area at the far end, partitioned off from the living area by a breakfast bar. Between the two, in a pool of candlelight, a circular table was set for a meal. Alison and I walked past the sofabed and armchairs that denoted the living area. At the far end of the room, on the breakfast bar a folded tea towel lay next to a large bowl of salad and a stack of plates. Nicola sat on a stool, behind the breakfast bar, facing us, a glass of wine in her hand which she raised in a salute as we approached.

"How are you feeling guys? Nice and relaxed Ali?"

"Mmmmmm, very. But suddenly I feel hungry for some reason."

"Yeah, that relaxing works up an appetite doesn't it?" returned Nic with a knowing look.

"Well, as the most "relaxed" lady in the Golden state, I guess you'd know about that." returned Alison, somewhat archly.

"Aaah, don't sell yourself short mate, that's a joint title and you know it!"

"That sounds like a story I want to hear." I responded as the girls grinned at each other.

"Yeah, I bet you do." replied Nic, draining her wine. "And sparing my poor bruised ankle by grabbing the Lasagne out of the oven will earn you points towards that. Put the dish on the tea towel..."

Soon we were sitting down to eat and for a while conversation stopped as we applied ourselves to the food in front of us. The lasagne was delicious and the salad spoke to my tastebuds of the inventive mind of its creator. I'm not going to try to analyse it. I caught a hint of garlic and tabasco in the dressing, and the roasted pine nuts were a nice touch. The point is, it was put together by someone who cared. Nicola basked in her well earned compliments. Even Alison, presumably more familiar with her friend's culinary skills, seemed to think she'd outdone herself.

But soon the edge was taken off our hunger and conversation resumed. The girls told me their story: They were from Perth and were spending a year travelling and working their way around the UK, with a vague intention to go further afield. Nicola's grandfather was originally from Kent and Nicola had always wanted to go there. Nic idolised her grandfather. He was fifteen at the outbreak of the Second World War and he'd joined the army as soon as he was old enough. He'd have joined sooner, but his father, a veteran of the trenches, had taken him for a long walk during which he broke his twenty-year silence on the subject, to tell his son of boys, himself one of them, who had rushed off in patriotic fervour, many of them lying about their age in their eagerness to join the great adventure. The war he described was a terrible thing. A machine that ate youth and vitality. Those it didn't destroy it spat back out as old men in young bodies, the boys they'd once been, lost forever. The message wasn't lost on Nic's grandfather. He joined up on his eighteenth birthday, and in the two and a half years preceding that, he did his best to never miss an opportunity to have fun, regardless of the consequences. He'd survived the war, but on his return had been completely unable to settle back into the life he'd known before, and so he'd left it behind, emigrating to Australia, where he'd spent the next twelve years drifting across the continent. Eventually he'd met Nic's Grandma in Perth and settled there. Nic had loved the old man fiercely. The light in her eyes said it so eloquently that she didn't need to say the words. Hell. I'd never met the guy and in ten minutes Nic had me in love with him too. I want someone to remember me like that.

"Here's to your Grandad Nic. He sounds like one in a million." We clinked glasses...

Alison smiled fondly at her friend as she told the story of her Grandfather and how he'd made his way from a village just outside Gravesend, to Perth. She'd heard the stories many times before, but she never tired of watching her tell them. Then as they lowered their glasses after toasting the old man's memory, Nic asked their guest for his story...

Phil's family wasn't a close one. He'd joined the army after leaving school early, as much to get away from his parents as any other reason. Lifelong issues with authority had meant it wasn't the best environment for him. and after not quite nine years he'd been medically discharged, when it was discovered he was virtually deaf in one ear.

"I'd love to tell you a story with bullets and bombs in, but it was probably firing a rifle without ear protection that did it. Mind you, after the Andytown bomb everyone's ears were ringing for a week. My mistake was telling someone about it."

He'd left the army with no trade, and a skillset that was of no real use in civilian life. He'd spent some of his discharge money on a trip to India. He'd meant to stay three months but ended up spending a year there. That's what saved him, he tells them with a grin.

"Is that where you learned to give those *wonderful* backrubs?" asked Nic with a theatrical sigh, drawing out the word "Wonderful" and gazing longingly into the distance as if remembering a lost love. Phil laughed and Alison shook her head, grinning.

"last time I saw ham like that, it was on offer in Waitrose. A fan of the Shatner school of acting I see."

"Well, *I* thought it was nice, and I know Alison agrees because I heard her agreeing quite loudly while I was making the salad." she replied teasingly. "So is that where you learned? In India?"

"That's where I realised that everything I knew about the human body was about either damaging it or fixing the damage someone else had done. I decided to learn how to do something nice." replied Phil. "So what prompted you to leave Perth? Or was it just time to go?"

"I guess Fran's wedding is what really did it." Said Alison. She was speaking to Nicola. "The wedding, and bloody Lyndsey Nolan and her friends."

"Yeah. Nasty Nolan." added Nic'. "Still, she did do us a favour in one way, I mean she brought us together in the way only a common enemy can."

"Well there's that." agreed Alison, "But honestly, what is it about people who need someone else to be miserable so they can be happy? Fuck her."

"So what did she do to drive you away from your hometown?" I asked as she refilled our glasses. "It sounds like she made an impression."

Alison told the story. She was a bridesmaid at a cousin's wedding. Nicola was there as a guest. They were friends at this point, but not especially close friends. Anyway outside the church, after the ceremony, the bride had tossed the bouquet and Alison had been horrified to see it descending towards her. Without thinking, she'd stepped away. This didn't go unnoticed and later at the reception she was the butt of some teasing about it. Nicola had sought her out to talk to her about her reasons why. They'd found themselves on the hotel verandah talking about their shared desire to see something of the world and their mutual horror of marrying young and tying themselves to one person and one place for the remainder of their lives. And then...

"Lyndsey fucking Nolan." said Nicola with feeling. "She wandered out looking for someone else's business to stick her nose into and took exception to being told to keep it out of ours."

"Yeah." Added Alison. "So she decided to go back inside and tell her friends how she'd caught us making out. I mean why else would a girl not want to catch the bridal bouquet? She had me bang to rights."

"We thought it would blow over, but it didn't. Not that either of us was bothered at first, but after a while getting sniggered at by arseholes makes you want to do bad things. Really *really* bad things." said Nicola darkly.

"So we did bad things." giggled Alison. "It was my Mother's idea. I was moaning to her about how I was on the verge of going out and snaring some random bloke just to shut that venomous bunch of harpies up, and my Mother said if I was going to lead a guy on for no other reason than what Nolans nutjobs were saying about me, then it might as well be one of their blokes. I think she was trying to put me off the idea."

"Which it didn't." Interjected Nicola. "Quite the opposite - Don't get me wrong, we didn't shag them all. We're not complete sluts - We only went for the hot ones." she grinned. It was pure poetic justice that Lyndsey walked in on me and her fiancee at her engagement party. Who says there's no God?"

I shook my head and laughed. "I bet you two are scary when you decide to be."

"Well, during the screaming match that followed, all the other stuff we'd been up to with their boyfriends came to light - Not that we named names - better to let them guess, but we went from being lesbians to sluts in as much time as it takes to say it. After that... we were always talking about getting away from there. It seemed the perfect time to do it."

"And the thing about moving away from Perth," Continued Alison, "is that you have to move about a thousand miles to get anywhere with any nightlife, and once you've made that move once, it's easier to do again, so we became proper little nomads for a year or so. Then Nic had the idea of coming over here and sweet talked her Dad into paying half for a return ticket, provided she raised the cash for the other half and some spending money. Once he'd agreed, my Dad was a pushover, and here we are..."

Alison looked across at Nicola as her mind travelled back to Fran's wedding three years previously. At the reception that evening, Nic had teased her about dodging the bullet and she'd laughed, but somehow as they chatted and joked, they'd gradually seemed to drift away from the main body of the party until they ended up outside, on the verandah off to one side in the shadows. There Nic had spoken of how she'd felt, seeing Alison step aside from the thrown bouquet and as she spoke of the dread that sat like a stone in her stomach when she thought of her life as a checklist of someone else's expectations, Alison felt like for the first time ever, someone understood. Impulsively she reached out and took Nic's hand, but the words she was going to say dissolved like morning mist as her eyes dropped to Nicola's mouth.

They sat like that for what could have been a minute, or a second, or anything in between. A warm breeze washed over Alison carrying her friend's scent, a mix of apples and freshly washed hair. Nicola's lips were parted expectantly, her breath shallow. Alison realised her mouth was dry and she was suddenly afraid, as if she'd wandered into danger, unseen until now...

"Well well. Isn't this romantic!"

The two girls jerked apart, startled.

"Sorry - Am I interrupting something?" In a decidedly unapologetic tone.

"Yeah - A private fucking conversation. You mind?"

"Well I *beg* your pardon!" The interloper turned and strode gleefully away.

And that had been the start of everything that followed...

Later, as they sat in the living area, Nicola asked their guest why he chose to climb solo. He'd told them of losing touch with climbing partners and the arthritis in his leg that had suddenly become much worse. The only alternative to giving up climbing was to climb without a partner, and giving up was unthinkable.

So what had made him a hermit? Alison had asked, and he'd told them of the breakup with his partner, the fights leading up to it and the aftermath when she'd cut him off from the children and moved his best friend in with her. His ex best friend, he corrects himself with a wry smile. With Susan and the kids gone, he'd thrown himself into climbing to the exclusion of all else. He'd been in a very dark place and what had snapped him out of it had been an epic retreat from a climb on the North side of Ben Nevis. Tower ridge. It had been beyond the capabilites and experience of Phil and his partner and they'd been overtaken by night high up on the route. It had taken them about fifteen hours to get back down and they'd been forced to hack out a seat from the snow and wait for daylight when they'd been unable to retrieve the rope after an abseil down a steep snow-filled runnel. Afterwards, exhausted and aching, he'd realised he hadn't thought about Susan or the children in all the time he'd been struggling to get off the hill.

Outside of climbing, he'd become more and more withdrawn. Eventually he'd lost his job, when he'd taken one too many days off to climb. He's not sure how his climbing acquaintances fell by the wayside, but one by one they did and as they'd done so, he'd started climbing more and more on his own. Eventually he'd come to prefer it.

Phil excused himself to visit the bathroom. When he came back he thought he sensed an uneasiness about the girls.

How well did he know Fort William? Alison asked. He'd replied that he knew it pretty well and she'd said apologetically that they were out of wine. Would he mind...? Of course he wouldn't. He grabbed his coat and put his boots on....

Once the door closed behind him Alison turned to Nicola, unsure how to say what was on her mind. Nicola waited, wondering if what was on Alison's mind was the same as what was on hers...

"I heard your backrub..."

"I heard yours..."

"Where's this going do you think?"

"You mean are we sharing, or flipping a coin?"

Alison paused for a moment "Yeah..."

"Have you ever done that? - Shared a bloke before?"

"No. - Have you?"

"Once. It didn't go too well."

"What went wrong?"

"The guy thought he was getting a private girl on girl sex show. His girlfriend - the other girl - I don't think her heart was really in it. It felt forced. It kind of killed the mood."

"Oh..." A pause. She continued hesitantly: "What about tonight?"

"Do you want to? Share, I mean?"

Alison's voice was almost a whisper. "Yes."

Nicola leaned across and planted a soft kiss on her friend's forehead. "Good."

It didn't, as we used to say, take the brains of an Archbishop to see that Ali and Nic had something they wanted to discuss in private, so I took the hint and went out to an off-licence in the town centre, that I estimated would take me about ten minutes to walk to. When I got back, about twenty-five minutes later, it looked as if whatever tension there had been between them had disappeared.

"So looks like you guys worked things out?"

"What?"

"You seemed a bit apprehensive before I left, and when Nic and I were walking down the stairs after her backrub, you hadn't put the shopping away and there were four bottles of wine on the kitchen top, so my guess is you had something to talk about that needed me to be out of earshot." I smiled aplogetically. "Don't be afraid to say it's none of my business."

"Well This isn't something that happens every day." Returned Nicola. "It would be strange if we didn't have things to talk about, don't you think?"

I gave a chuckle. "You mean the fact that there's two of you and only one of me, or the fact that your relationship just went to a new level?"

"What?"

"Well this isn't the first time I've been a situation like this, and my experience is that unless you do it a lot, it can be a bit awkward, the sort of awkward that might mean a word in private? Plus," I added, "there's the fact that when you go through an experience with another person, like the one you went through on the hill last night, it's going to affect the way you see them. There's no way it can't. I bet your feelings towards each other are giving you pause for thought about now."

"Yeah - You wish!" laughed Nic' "You guys and your one track minds!"

"No - nothing like." I palmed my forehead, drumming my fingers on my crown, searching for the words...

"Ok there's this guy I know. His name is Duncan. I spent about thirty-six hours in his company about three years ago and I haven't seen him since, but I'd trust him with my life, and if it came to it I'd put my life on the line for him. Why would I? Because we were climbing together and I had a bad fall - it could have been a lot worse, but I dislocated my knee, I broke my arm and three ribs and as it turns out, punctured a lung. Duncan, who was by no means an experienced climber, kept his head together, put his waterproof on me, lay to windward of me all night, and in the morning he finished the climb and went for help. Anyway, I hardly knew the guy, but I'd do anything for him. Every guy I've ever been through an epic with is special in a way that other people aren't - It means something. I'm not saying you're going down on each other at the first opportunity, I'm saying that you've got something between you that most people don't, and it changes things. It can't not do....

There was a long pause.

"So you've been in a situation like this one before?" This from Alison.

"A few times, a long time ago, but yes."

"Tell us about it?"

"The short version is I had a couple of ex-girlfriends who'd morphed into friends with benefits over the years. They knew each other quite well. Anyway one of them, Teri, was house-sitting for a friend and she invited me to keep her company. When I got there, the other one, Lisa, had turned up. Anyway Teri obviously had sex on her mind when she asked me over and Lisa - well - sex was never far from her mind. So we sat around drinking wine and chatting, all the while I guess we were all thinking about how we wanted the situation to progress and how to make it happen. I guess Teri was probably thinking of how to get Lisa to politely leave, but Lisa preempted her." I grinned at the memory.

Nic leaned forward. "How did she do that?"

"She asked me for a backrub. After a while I saw Teri looking rather left out, so I told her to come and help. It just kind of snowballed from there."

"Were you together a lot after that?"

"We never arranged anything, but whenever we were together, something usually happened. It was probably the most successful relationship I've ever been in"

"How did it end?"

"I met Susan."

"Ah."

"So what do you mean, me and Nic are on a new level?" Changing the subject.

Once again I paused to gather my thoughts before continuing:

"Well I may be wrong, but you two went through a pretty intense experience last night, but you held it together - and Alison - did it occur to you to leave Nic and try to get down alone?"

"No. Of course not!"

"Lots would have. - They'd have rationalised it as going for help, but self-preservation would have had them leaving Nicola on the first pretext they could come up with. Believe me, whatever connects people, gets tested to destruction in a situation like that. You stuck by each other, for better or worse. You can call it whatever you feel happy with, but Love's as good a word as any."