Chapter Three - Death Squad
"He's taken an interest in your careers. He's put a price on your heads and I sure ain't the last you'll have to defend against. I'm just one of many. They're all about here." The man smiled a sinister smile as his eyes looked around.
Roxy knocked the man out before he could continue on. She was sickened by his cynicism and acclimation. "I hated his smile."
Eggsy and Roxy shot around as gunfire irrupted from another direction. They left the man and ran into the closest alley, fire back as they went.
"Well that didn't take long." Roxy smiled, although always unconventional, she was always excited at gunfire coming towards her. It really got the adrenaline pumping.
Eggsy smirked. "Darling, I'm going to go for a stroll, care to join?" He lent out his arm, as gunfire it the wall right near them. Roxy took the arm, and Eggsy opened up his umbrella, and they strolled towards the gunfire as leisurely as anyone on a walk in a park. They got to the mercenaries and utilized their close quarters combat skills. Knocking out the three men dressed in black from head to toe. They were able to find a slight ID off of one of them, that they quickly sent through their system to identify the origins of. They were perturbed to find no results of any kind.
"We'll find another lead. Don't worry."
"You sure about that Eggs?"
Eggsy let out a curse as he looked to his watch. "We've got to go."
Roxy took a look around them. "Eggsy. There's no one here."
"But there could be, and we promised we'd get to dinner."
Roxy rolled her eyes, she could not believe that Eggsy was still set on dinner at the Wenovich's. People they hardly knew, and could barely trust. A lesson learned long ago was that aged folks are not always so sweet. Assassins and agents had to grow old sometime.
Eggsy grabbed Roxy's unwilling hand and rushed to an apartment that sat atop a pub. They were welcomed in with smiles by the elderly couple.
"So Ritchie," Eggsy asked after taking a mouthful of the Carbonadeflamandeor stooflees, and giving a approved looked to his 'wife'. "A beautiful home you have here. How long have you lived in this town?"
The old man shook his head, and looked to his wife, Galiana or Gal. "I don't know. Ten, twenty years perhaps. Where does the time go when you're with the love of your life?"
"How long have you two been married?" Galiana asked kindly.
At this Roxy squeezed Eggsy's hand to get the point across that they should've come up with a synchronized cover for this story hours ago. They should be overly prepared instead of under prepared.
"Well, we met at a training. Tailor training, about I don't know two years ago." Eggsy Lied convincingly, but both him and Roxy knew there was truth to the story. "I remember when we both met, she had a firm hand shake about her and was tougher than the fellows. Though she was nice to me. We fell in love soon after and got married even sooner."
"I guess I just knew he was the one, after he risked everything to save my life of course." Roxy tilted her head at Eggsy, he was smiling a little to real in this moment. Yet they both knew the memory. So many feet in the air. They both could never stop laughing about the incident after it had happened and Eggsy told her he actually had a parachute in his pack. They stayed up all that night laughing at themselves and celebrating their victory.
Galiana caught the glance, and inquired about it's origins further. "What a gentleman. A life saver. Tell us about it dear."
"Saved her from the clutches of death, good man. What tailor devise posed a deadly threat?" Ritchie took a swig of his ale.
"Well," Eggsy cleared his throat and prepared to tale the most outrageous tale, hand motions and all. His comically over dramatized story of him taking Roxy out, then watching her walk away from him after their 'dinner', and being so caught up with his good looks that she was nearly run over by a car. That was when Eggsy explained his heroic act of running onto the street to grab her out of the way. He finished his tale with them on the wet pavement floor, kissing as onlookers walked by, confused as to why two people were on the pavement floor snogging.
Everyone at the table was laughing, and Roxy cut in through her teary eyed laughs. "Bunny, I don't recall that being so..."
"Dull?" Eggsy asked sarcastically.
"No, I was going to say drastic. If I recall correctly, you simply pulled at my arm so I wouldn't walk in front of a cab. There was no tackle, or floor snogging. Though the snog was good."
Eggsy shook his head, she wouldn't let him have it. Not even a over dramatized story of two young people scraping death and making out. But he didn't really care. He was just happy to have made her laugh so much. He had missed her smile.
"Well let's see it then." The old man smirked.
"Go on." His wife added.
"What?" Eggsy scratched his head.
"A snog."
Roxy and Eggsy looked to each other with raised eyebrows. They had never kissed each other before. It struck them as bizarre when they thought about it. They had been cover lovers so many times before, but no kisses were needed in those specific instances.
"It can't be such a pain to kiss your wife, boy. Especially when she looks like that."
Galiana gave a look to her husband that screamed kill.
Before they could interject, both Eggsy and Roxy leaned over to each other and made their lips meet. Their kiss was short, sweet, and memorable enough to satisfy their hosts. The both of them even separated from it feeling a little more than satisfied with their work. It was good, and felt real, almost too real...
Before either of them could let it show that they felt an inkling of something incredible in that kiss, through their eye language that only they understood, they looked back at Mr. and Mrs. Wenovich.
"Bravo." Ritchie said, standing up. "I think I should get us some celebratory liquor. Darling." The two left the room smiling, leaving Eggsy and Roxy alone for a moment.
They were still holding each others hands when Eggsy smiled at nothing in particular. "That was a damn fine kiss. If I don't say so myself."
Roxy just shook her head. "I don't know what you're on about. It didn't even make it in my top ten."
Eggsy looked to her a little shocked. "Ay, I'm sorry. I'll just have to try better next time Rox." His smirk vanished as he realized that she could have been serious. "I hope you didn't take offense to it." He said sincerely.
Roxy just shook her head in a whatever sort of way. But she knew deep down that she had said the right thing to get him worked up. But she thought it over and realized that Eggsy was number one on her first kiss list. That was the best first kiss she had ever had. It had thrown her off guard for a moment. But that was just Eggsy, just as unpredictable as he was sweet.
"Mr. & Mrs. Morton," The old couple walked out from their kitchen, hands behind their back. "having you over for dinner was... lovely." The elderly duo pulled out from behind their backs large heavy machinery. The automatic machine guns went off in a blaze of light, shooting at the "Mortons" who with very shocked faces, kicked the table and jumped behind it to avid the heavy gunfire.
"We don't have much time!" Roxy screamed as the thick wooden table soon became under question for its lack of thickness.
"Hold on!" Eggsy shouted as he jerked her hand to follow him from the table through the glass window.
Wrapped in each other's arms, Eggsy deployed his sling grapple from under his jacket to prevent them from taking the two story fall. The glass shards were still a consequence, however.
"A hairy situation you've gotten us into." Roxy uttered under her breath, as she tore out thumb sized shards of glass from her thy, then from Eggsy's shoulder.
"Assassins do grow old." Eggsy said baffled. "Bummer." He walked to the middle of the street where the bullets flooded it. Like a cricket pitcher, he threw a lighter through the window, and an explosion took place shortly after. "They were so nice." He shook his head.
"I bet the price on our heads was nicer."
Eggsy nodded his head in agreement. And the two rush to their safe house, underneath a family's old shed, to re-evaluate their current predicament, and stitch up each other's wounds.
"That means we're gonna grow old someday..." Eggsy said, thinking back to the old couple that had resorted to killing them.
"Eggs. We were always gonna grow old. Hate to break it to you." Roxy said as she finished stitching his shoulder's glass shard wound. She handed the needle and gauze to Eggsy.
"I thought we'd die young somewhere. Go out guns blazing. Together of course. I never pictured us together in an old house with old faces." He said as he started to disinfect and stitch her thy wounds.
"Why would you? There isn't an us that grows old together. Unless there's something you should tell me." Roxy subtly hinted, watching him sew her wounds shut with a close eye.
Eggsy stopped for a moment, still focused on the needle, and he hesitated before his response. "Well, I picture us growing old together... as neighbors. You across the street or somethin. Good old friends who's kids grow up on the same streets. I'd go to your house for poker and you'd come to mine for chess."
"I see." Roxy's dissatisfaction with Eggsy's answer to her, was well hidden. "Let's get back on topic." Roxy went over the layout of the small town, and their extraction deadline, and their initial operation.
"Do you figure it's still here? Whatever Radcliffe is trying to keep us from getting."
"I'm not quite sure. But do we really want to put our lives in more unnecessary danger to check?"
The two of them pondered on this point for a mere second before nodding to each other and simultaneously saying, "yes".
"And there's still the question of why. Why does Radcliffe want us dead so badly? Why are we interesting at all to him?"
Roxy shook her head in defeat. "I don't know Eggs. But we've got to get moving if we are to reach our extraction point on time."
As they geared up, Eggsy eyed Roxy, who seemed to be more on edge than before. He wondered what could be bothering her so much. They had been in life and death situations such as this before. Oh how he wished to comfort her of the fact that they'd never failed before. And that he'd always have her back. Always.
Because even though he concealed it well, Eggsy was just as much in love with Roxy as she was in love with him. Yet their joint ignorance of that fact made what was to come all the more difficult.