Chapter 12:
"Ohh…" Avery groaned, gasping for breath as she nearly fell off the treadmill. She flopped onto the mat with her arms and legs splayed out. "I can't feel my legs. They're throbbing and…" She lifted her head, glancing at her calves. "All blue and webby," she continued, noticing all the veins.
"Yeah, that happens when you run for a really long time," Eggsy replied, making a mental note to get Avery to sprint every day from now on for at least a half hour. If he were being completely honest, her endurance was a tad bit pathetic.
"Was I okay?" she moaned, still panting.
"Er… yeah, I guess," he lied. He threw her a water bottle and she drank from it greedily.
"Are we done yet?"
"Caradoc," he answered sternly. "We've barely started."
Eggsy hid a grin as she swore colourfully.
"Well, this is certainly more fun than running on a treadmill for an hour," Avery noted, daintily picking up a fancy looking spoon and examining it.
"This is a typical table setting," Harry said. Eggsy sat sullenly across from Avery, on Harry's left, who sat at the head of the table.
"I can never remember this crap," Eggsy muttered.
"A basic rule, as I've told Eggsy multiple times," Harry continued, shooting Eggsy a withering glare, which the young man ignored, choosing instead to sigh dramatically, "is to work your way in with the utensils. For example, if you are served a soup, use the spoon on your far left. For a salad, use the fork on the edge."
"Can we just eat now?" Eggsy whined. Avery had to agree. She hadn't eaten for hours, and the food laid out before them smelled so good that she barely managed to keep from drooling.
"You should not eat until the host either indicates that you may begin eating or begins eating him or herself." Harry picked a loaf of bread off the table. "Break bread and rolls with your fingers, not your knife, and only a small portion, unless you are dipping it in sauce or gravy, in which you always use a fork." The second Harry's fingers touched the loaf, Eggsy leaped forward, piling his plate high with food. Avery bit back a giggle when Harry very visibly rolled his eyes.
"Hey," Eggsy said defensively. "I can be posh 'n proper when I feel like it, okay?"
"Fair enough," Harry said with a shrug, eyes glinting with amusement. "As I was saying…" He stopped suddenly when the sounds of Eggsy stuffing himself evaded the calm silence.
"What?" he exclaimed. "I'm hungry, okay?"
Avery burst out laughing at Harry's expression and the absurdity of the situation.
"Oh, Eggsy," Harry sighed. "What am I to do with you?" He turned to Avery, smiling. "He's a lost cause. I pray that you'll prove more polite than this sorry excuse for a gentleman," he remarked. "As I was saying," he continued, narrowing his brown eyes when Eggsy made the point to chew extra loud. "We can observe Eggsy breaking a whopping five rules in one go." Eggsy glared. "First," Harry began, ticking it off on his fingers. "Never chew with your mouth open." Eggsy stuck his tongue out, shoving a piece of roast beef into his mouth, along with a half-smashed piece of potato that he had skewered on top of it. "Next, never mix or mash food on your plate. Third, never put too much food in your mouth," Harry said with a pointed stare at his protégé. "Fourth, never blow on hot foods or drinks." Eggsy made a show of waving a piece of steaming chicken in the air as an alternative. "Or wave hot food around. Or any food, for that matter. And finally, never talk with food in your mouth."
Avery nodded.
Harry continued to coach her as Eggsy kept eating, demonstrating how to fold a large serviette in her lap properly, how to always pass dishes to the right, how to deal with the rather complicated table set up… in addition to the proper etiquette one must demonstrate after one was finished eating, what with the placing the knife and fork in the 'twenty-past-four' position, with the knife on the outside and the fork on the inside… or was it the opposite? God knew. Avery simply tried to absorb it all, mind whirring.
Finally, Harry finished speaking and gave a wry grin in Avery's direction as she blinked rather stupidly, trying to remember everything that he had just said.
"Now we can actually begin eating," Harry said.
"I think I've lost my appetite," she replied, pushing her plate away.
"Caradoc, I do believe I just told you that you aren't to push your plate away," Harry scolded.
"Darnit," she muttered, smacking her face on the table.
Eggsy snorted.
"You mentioned that you've had a bit of experience with tech?" Merlin asked interestedly, arms folded over his chest. He sat in front of the large wall of adjoined monitors in his office, facing her.
"Yeah. I hacked into my stepdad's email and stuff for fun. Did some coding here and there, but not much," she replied. Merlin nodded thoughtfully. A moment later he handed Avery the tablet in his hands. On it were lines and lines of complicated looking green text.
"Give it a shot. There's exactly one problem with each command. Try to fix as many as you can, and we'll go from there."
"Wha..." she trailed off, glancing from the screen to the Scottish man. And back again. "I don't..." She had meant to say she didn't understand any of it, but with a start, she realized some of it did look familiar.
A half hour later, rubbing her stinging eyes with one hand and thrusting the tablet to Merlin with the other, she slumped into her seat. She'd done as much as she could.
He looked up from where he had been working, taking the tablet. His eyes skimmed over it, no doubt assessing all her mistakes.
He opened his mouth, probably to comment on how goddamn awful it was, before closing it again. Avery waited in tense anticipation, ready to make an excuse about how she hadn't done any real work with code for a solid two years.
But, to her utter astonishment, all he did was give her a rather impressed smile and pat her on the shoulder and say, "Good work," before tapping away at it for a moment and handing it back to her. A new set of code awaited her.
Avery groaned.
-agent galahad
