ix. HAVE A BLAST

NINE.

HAVE A BLAST

After almost getting blown up by a land mine for the sixth time that day, Bex was starting to get really tired of Merlin's shit.

"Oh, fuck me sideways-!"

She threw herself forward, tucking her knees into a roll as she dove. Her hands barely had time to graze the damp, dark earth before the trees behind her erupted into flames. Bex hit the ground hard, knocked flat by the explosion. She allowed herself to lay flat on the ground for four seconds, her shoulder aching from where it had absorbed the impact of her fall, and her ears ringing, before she made herself get up. Bex stumbled to her feet, swinging her gun up to her face. She peered through the scope, scanning the surrounding woods for attackers.

Clear.

She was already on her sixth month of training, countless days spent in the complex and the shooting range, but she still hadn't quite gotten used to Merlin's flair for the dramatic.

Bex let out a sigh, rubbing her shoulder and rolling her eyes. God forbid they just learn how to shoot a gun. Oh, no, that would be much too simple. Apparently they needed forty acres of death traps to run around in, shooting each other while Merlin sipped freaking espresso from the safety of the mansion. He was a big fan of the exercises that pitted each other against each other, and Bex knew for a fact the guys in the tech department had bets running with him on who would make it longest. Jim from IT only had three pounds riding on her, which she found kind of offensive.

But even Bex had to admit she liked the competition. Even before, she always liked beating her opponent, whether it be a thug reaching for her in an alley or a bratty classmate. Bex loved winning. Board games, fist fights, exams, and even Merlin's exercises.

They were currently running Dante's Project. Merlin had taken inspiration from Dante's Inferno and his circles of Hell, creating a maze of concentric rings like a target in the middle of the woods. He liked to name their exercises after pretentious shit. Each sector had a different threat, and the goal was to reach the center without being taken down by any of your opponents or the obstacles that lay in the way. The bullets in their guns had been replaced with darts that only rendered the victim unconscious, but the land mines Bex was picking her way through were very, very real.

She had made it past the trees filled with snipers, the electrified creek that ran heart-stopping shocks through every patch of damp earth, and the acid fog, but the land mines were giving her hell. Bex may have been quick on her feet, but she didn't walk with any sort of grace. Between her natural clumsiness and the sharp rocks and twigs poking up from the forest floor, she'd spent more time tripping than walking. Bex had triggered so many bombs the ground was riddled with smoking craters like bullet holes.

Suddenly there was a whoosh and a flash of neon green, and Bex felt something fly past her cheek. A dart had landed on the black earth next to her. She was swinging her gun up out of instinct and firing at the tree it had come from before she had even registered the threat. A shape fell out of the pine tree with an unceremonious thud and a wail.

"You shot me!" the figure cried.

The person lifted their head, and Bex's finger tightened around the trigger until she saw who it was. The tension left her shoulders and she lowered her gun. "Eggsy?"

He poked his head up, and she caught a flash of blond hair peeking out from under his hood before he slumped back down dramatically. He was clutching his leg and pouting.

"I can't believe you would shoot me, you-you heartless fiend! I can already feel the paralysis working its way up my-"

Bex poked him with the tip of her gun and he swatted it away. "You shot me first, you ass. And the darts knock you unconscious, not paralyze you."

"I missed," Eggsy said dismissively. "Doesn't count."

"Wha- Am I supposed to apologize for my better aim and general superiority to you?"

"It would be nice," he grumbled. He craned his neck to look down at the fuzzy green dart sticking out of his leg. "I think my toes are going numb."

"So is your brain." Bex checked her watch.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She peered down at him. "The darts take a hundred and fifty seconds to knock the victim completely unconscious. That means I only have to deal with this conversation for another thirty seconds."

Eggsy placed a hand on his chest. "I'm wounded you think so little of our friendship."

He paused as a grin starched across his face. "Get it? Wounded? Because you betrayed me and fucking shot me?"

She waved a hand dismissively. "Don't be so dramatic."

"I am not dramatic!" Eggsy cried indignantly, putting a hand to his chest. Dramatically.

"You know, it's moments like these where I wish I had gotten my diploma to be a doctor. Then I could write you a prescription for two testicles."

Eggsy pretended to look hurt for a second before he grinned, forgetting that he was supposed to be angry at her.

"Wait, wait! I had a ground-breaking thought I wanted to share with you. Okay, so I was thinking about this the other day when we were learning how to disable grenades, right?-"

"Because handling dangerous explosives isn't enough to keep you occupied. Of course. What token of wisdom have you procured for me today?"

"Okay, get this. If you put a chameleon on a mirror, what color would it turn?"

He paused, as if waiting for applause. She thought long and hard about shooting herself with the tranquilizer gun instead.

Then, from behind her there was a low, rumbling noise that sent tremors through the floor beneath her combat boots. She turned to see the huge stone gates that divided this sector from the center of the maze slowing sliding apart, grinding against each other. Bex smirked and turned back to Eggsy.

"And that is my cue to leave. Sorry, but I have to go win this thing."

"What? You can't just leave me here partially unconscious in the land mines!" he said incredulously.

Bex crouched down until their faces were level. "You're right." She raised her gun. "I'm going to leave you here, fully unconscious in the land mines."

She took step back and raised the gun to her eye. She smiled sweetly.

Eggsy opened his mouth, but his sentence was cut short as one of her own darts flew out and struck him the side of the neck. Perfect shot. He slumped back immediately, the sedative coursing through his main artery. Bex knew he would be fine as long as he was knocked out. The bombs were only triggered by movement.

She turned back to the gates, which were the only thing standing between her and the glade at the center of the maze. Bex slung her gun over her shoulder and ran through them just as they began to grind shut again. She landed in the path of green grass with the Kingsman logo in white. And she was the only one. Bex grinned, energy sparking in her blood with the giddy feeling of victory.

☂

Eggsy woke up to a mouthful of dirt and a splitting headache. He blinked several times to clear to haze from his vision and spat out the bitter taste of pine needles in his mouth with a grimace. He rubbed his forehead in a weak attempt to ward off his headache, which felt like the time Bex had smacked him with the side of a pistol after he had tried to steal her waffle. She was scarily protective of breakfast food.

Eggsy pulled himself to a sitting position, groaning. Then he froze. He'd forgotten for a minute that he was sitting on a patch of ground surrounded by enough explosives to make Mount Vesuvius look like some kid's science fair project. He shifted carefully. He liked his butt cheeks and he very much wanted them attached to his body.

He was going to kill Bex Alden.

Carefully, so as not to disturb the minefield underneath him, he slipped his sat-phone out of his back pocket. He squinted at the screen, which was emitting bluish light that only increased the throbbing pain in his head. Eggsy scrolled through the tiny contacts until he reached Bex's, then pressed his thumb against her ID number. Within seconds her tanned face, stretched into a smug grin, appeared on his screen.

"That was fast."

"Said the last girl you were in bed with," Bex smirked.

She was sitting on her cot cross legged, Percy curled up at her feet. She had her arms wrapped around her legs and was looking incredibly smug.

"Oh, ha ha, good one. Just calling to say thank you for leaving me behind in this forest of death. Also, when my limbs get blown off, I'm going to mail them to you. Individually. In One Direction wrapping paper."

"Sounds expensive."

"Fuck you. My body feels like the plane crash from Lost. Why does this always happen when I spend time with you?"

"Don't be absurd, Eggsy. We have fun together."

"Like that time you started a war with that Mexican restaurant when we were supposed to be doing reconnaissance on the arms dealership across the street?"

"The Battle of Paco's Tacos!"

"Or when you told me I had to seduce that French diplomat so you could grab intel but you actually just stole his waffle breakfast?"

"Suce à sucer."

"That is not French."

"Hey, fine, I'll make it up to you. I'll make you cookies or something."

"Last time you baked I had to have my stomach pumped."

"Don't be such a whiner. Merlin totally overreacted. Those snickerdoodles had ten percent less than a lethal dose of salt."

"Yeah, okay. I'm hanging up now. Again, thanks for the explosives."

Bex's face broke out in an impish smile and her lips pursed in a way that Eggsy knew meant some awful joke was coming.

"Have a blast."

Eggsy groaned as she threw her head back and laughed at her own joke. He opened his mouth to retort, but she ended the call before he could. The screen froze when she did. Eggsy held his sat-phone in his palm, watching her laugh frozen in time.

He liked her laugh. Not even the sound of it, just the way she laughed. Bex laughed with her whole body, shoulders shaking and eyes crinkled shut, like she had given up control of her body to her emotions. Like she didn't care if anyone was watching. He especially liked the way she opened her mouth all the way so he could see her tooth on the bottom that was just the tiniest bit crooked. It reminded him that she wasn't perfect, and that helped him breathe.

Because sometimes it felt like Bex was empire. She was beautiful and fierce and utterly unattainable. And as much as he knew that he shouldn't even be trying to attain her, his chest still felt tight every time he watched her. As much as he told himself that they were friends and nothing more, a tiny piece of his heart ached like a bruise whenever they were together.

The problem was that he never saw her coming.

He'd never seen her as anything other than his target practice partner until recently, when he started noticing that maybe his rapid heartbeat and sweaty palms had nothing to do with adrenaline and everything to do with Bex. He started to notice that the wild, frizzy hairs the escaped her ponytail looked like a halo around her face, and that she had a tiny, faint constellation of freckles across her nose, and that her eyes weren't brown after all. They were the color of copper and his mother's hot chocolate and the damp earth outside after it had rained.

When Bex was around it seemed like everything came into focus. Things got brighter and louder and warmer.

But she wasn't indestructible. He could see past her warm smile and stupid jokes to the flat look in her eyes and the scars on her hands that she tried to hard to cover with her sleeves. They were ghosts in her past, and she was still running from them. She had war inside her, and while sometimes it kept her alive, sometimes it threatened to destroy her.

One night she had woken up screaming. He didn't know what she had dreamed, but she had woken up with a terrified look on her face, covered in cold sweat and hot tears. She had thrashed around, trapped by her sheets, and he had jumped out of his own bed. He had wrapped his arms around her until she stopped shaking and had slumped against him. She cried into his shoulder. Eggsy had leaned his cheek against the top of her head as she had wrapped her fingers around his wrist. He had made soothing sounds as her fists clenched and unclenched around the neck of his t-shirt. When he thought she was asleep and he had begun to climb out of her bed, her eyes had suddenly opened.

"Eggsy."

"Yeah?"

"Don't leave," she had said in a shaky voice.

He had sat back down and let her wrap her hands in his shirt again.

"If you want me to stay, I'll stay. Always," he had told her quietly. "I won't leave you, Bex. I promise."

She had laid her head back, her eyes meeting his once more before fluttering shut. He pulled the blankets up over her, smoothing back a piece of hair and trying to ignore the constant flutter in his stomach.

He would be there. He would be there when she fell asleep and he would be there when she woke up and he would be there whenever she needed him.

He had promised, and he always kept his promises.

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a quick note:

the working title for this chapter is actually "steaming pile of garbage". this is so short and makes no sense and i really only published bc of aldwin. excuse me while i go find a utensil to stick in my eye!