That was what she called it too. It was important for them to understand this wasn't some class, it wasn't a fun way to spend an afternoon, it was tools to use in real life scenarios. Like a rape that one out of every five women would face in their lifetimes. That meant three girls in that class alone. They needed to take what they were learning seriously.
"Faith?" Danny asked, motioning to the ground.
"Trey and I usually..."
"I'm good watching," Trey said, trying and failing to hold back the amused smile he had. He wasn't stupid. He knew something was going on between the two of them.
Danny waved to the ground again and Faith exhaled hard and lay down on her back. Danny moved down, knees on either side of her waist, pelvis pressed into hers, hands going to grab her arms and pin them to the ground above her head.
"This is rape position," Danny explained, but was looking down at Faith. "Now Faith is going to show you what most women will immediately do in this position," he said and Faith yanked her arms free and turned so that her stomach was on the ground, her ass pressed into his pelvis. "This is literally the worst position to get yourself into. In self-defense terms, we call this 'giving up your back'. You never want to give up your back."
"Because from here," Faith said, swiveling her head to face the girls, "he can drag down your pants and rape you and you will be powerless to fight him off."
"Exactly. Now what you want to do," he said as Faith rolled back onto her back and put her arms up for him to pin, "is plant your feet and buck up with everything in you. If it doesn't immediately throw him to the side, it will at least give you space to move. Like this," he said as Faith planted her feet and bucked her hips up to his. His body jolted and one arm released to instinctively brace a possible fall, freeing her one arm that she used to slam into his face as they rolled, putting her on top.
"Now from here," she said, looking down at him, "you slam your palms into his eye sockets and nose until you think he's down and you get up and run." She demonstrated the beating.
"Me, Faith, and..." Trey added, motioning to Danny.
"Danny," Faith supplied.
"Danny," he said as the two got off the floor, "are going to put on head gear and you are going to beat the shit out of us."
With that, they did.
The class ended with a recap of the five moves they learned and Faith watched in silent satisfaction as the girls seemed to leave with a bit more confidence in their gait, in the lift of their chins, in their squared shoulders than they had when they came in.
"So, we got ourselves a new team member?" Trey asked after having downed half of his water bottle. Despite his head gear, he had a nasty bruise to his jaw which, when he received it and the girl who caused it had a near heart attack trying to apologize, he had simply beamed at her and offered her a high five.
"Yeah, no," Faith said, twisting the top off her bottle and avoiding eye contact with Danny.
If she was being perfectly honest, she would say that she was more than a little affected by the grappling with Danny. She couldn't help it. To her, the fighting was as good as foreplay.
"Aw why not?" Danny asked and when she looked, she saw humor pulling at his lips. "I think I proved my worth here today."
"First, because it's a terrible idea. Second, most of the jobs aren't paying gigs. We do it out of the goodness of our hearts."
His head tilted to the side at that. "You don't think I have it in the goodness of my heart?" he asked and, if she wasn't mistaken, there was almost a hint of offense in his tone.
"I honestly don't know you well enough to make that conclusion."
"Alright well," Trey said, smiling big, "I will leave you guys to the fake fight foreplay. Faith, shrimp, I will see you tomorrow. I will probably owe Vin some money after..." he said, waving over his shoulder as he grabbed his gym bag and walked out the door.
"Owe Vin money for what?" Danny asked, his tone serious.
"Oh," Faith said with a smirk. "So... right after I started working at Lam, I was still doing grappling and we go full force. They don't hold off 'just because' I'm a girl. So I was always coming in with bruises. And Vin showed up at the gym one afternoon and informed the guys that for every visible bruise I had, they owed him a hundred bucks. You know, because bruised female bartenders don't exactly help business. They took the deal and have been paying him ever since."