rickitikitarr | 4. voice

It's not just me, then.

[Alarmed to hear this.]

That can't be a good sign, can it?

Can't tell. Does it matter if we're goin' in circles? Don't know if we was headed anywhere to begin with.

Now I'm imagining the listing getting worse. I'll be very, very irate if we flip.

You an' everyone else. Don't see any lifeboats on this fuckin' thing.

Christ. Christ. I could almost use a monster right now.

[With the full knowledge that he's going to get his ass kicked;]

Fancy a spar?

...yeah. Yeah, alright. Gym, ten minutes?

See you there.

[Honestly, throwing down with something that isn't just a bag of claws and teeth sounds just perfect to him. He strolls into the gym in joggers and a T-shirt roughly when he said he'd be there; something long-sleeved would probably help shield him from defensive bruising, but after dying repeatedly and coming up without a trace, he'd kind of like something normal like a couple of marks that actually need time to heal.

Which is probably fucked up, but that's in common with literally everything else he's encountered on the Barge so far. His sparring partner's beaten him there, anyway, and he lifts his chin in greeting.]

Alright, Ricki?

[He makes the universal noise in the back of his throat that stands in for 'no not at all but it's too fucking irritating to even talk about.' He's dressed pretty much the same. He offers him a similar nod, and then jerks his head at one of the mats.

Down to it? He'll be chattier when some of the energy is burnt off.]

[Yeah, Eggsy is well-versed enough in 'fuck everything about today' that he knows that noise.

(Also, hell yes crash mats. Kingsman combat training is pretty rough; Merlin's rationale is that real life doesn't have mats, so training doesn't either. Dick. Fortunately, real life also has arnica.)

He goes to the mat, rolling his shoulders and cricking his neck in the equally universal 'shit's about to go down' gesture, then falls into a loose defensive stance. Down to it, Ricki; make a move.]

I'm giving you this one.

[Ricki tells him, because he knows starting first is the same thing as fucking up, but honestly he doesn't really care.

To his credit, he is about ten times more competent than the average stock-goon that Eggsy deals with on the day to day. He comes in hard and fast and with one glorious feint that may very well get him a single hit, if he's lucky. And then it's just all going to go to shit from there, because Ricki isn't in that kind of spy movie.]

[He gets his hit in. In fact, he gets a couple, the second because Eggsy actually isn't eager to punch anybody he (cautiously) considers a friend, and he doesn't have Ricki's wound-up anger to fuel him. That second blow, though, sparks something - a sharp shock of pain bringing him into the moment - and after that? Yeah.

Ricki's giving it, Eggsy takes it, and it becomes an exercise on the knife's edge: it's barely sparring as he knows it, more solid than that, but he's not actually trying to put him in the Infirmary either. And there's an element of restraint beyond that. He's using as much as he learnt in half-drunk pub brawls as he did getting beat up in an eighteenth-century manor house. It means he takes a few more lumps than he would otherwise, but he doesn't mind; it's not like Ricki's ever really seen him fight hand-to-hand, he reasons, and it's not blowing off steam unless you can actually get a few hits in.

On the other hand, Kingsman didn't teach him a lightness on his feet or a good eye for the cracks in an opponent's armour. And he's a competitive little shit when given the opportunity.]

[Ricki had seen him take the golem on. He knows Eggsy can move like a nightmare when he puts his mind to it, it's a large part of why he asked him here. So the second time he manages to give him a really good clip, he dances back and gives him permission;]

Don't hold back on my account. Or do you think you can't drop a fellow my size?

[And when he reaches in again it's with a little too much reach, leaves him slightly, slightly off balance.]

[Eggsy rubs his jaw - that's definitely going to bruise - and smirks. Why yes, he does respond to baiting with a lot more energy when his blood's up.

And yeah, maybe he's a bit of a showoff.

Ricki moves in, leaves his left side hanging just a little, and Eggsy just goes for it. Moves like a nightmare. Drops his weight down and throws it into a swift pouncing tackle that leaves him on top of the other man's chest. One hand slamming down Ricki's wrist, other arm pinned under his knee, leaving Eggsy with one arm free to swing a hammer blow of a punch right down at his face.

It's the kind of hit that could kill a person - drive his nose right back into his head - if he let it connect, instead of stopping half an inch from skin.]

How's that for holdin' back?

[He hits the ground well, to his credit, knows how to let out all his breath and absorb a fall. Only, then, Eggsy lands on top of him and he's will and truly winded, flinching badly to jerk away from a blow that never connects.

He goes limp, as soon as his brain catches up that he hasn't been hit, that nothing is fractured. It helps, it cracks something loose in him, even though for the moment that's just a sense of exhaustion and terrible defeat.

He's still fighting that whole 'breathing normally' thing, so when he speaks it comes out a little ragged;]

I got assigned a temporary warden today.

Yeah, I know.

[Eggsy shifts his hands onto the mat, then his weight onto his hands, so he can hop up off Ricki without crushing him. Any more. He offers a hand down to help haul him up.]

[He hesitates, like he just wants to lie there and be miserable at the ceiling, but takes his hand instead-

and then when they're up throws into him with his shoulder, a warning shove to let him know they're back on.]

[And so it goes.

Eggsy forgets about restraint, forgets about keeping his snappier moves to himself. He uses the room, bounces off the walls, makes the environment work for him. He's needed an opportunity to blow off steam for weeks, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Barge and everything to do with what he's left behind. What he's going home to.

What he's not going home to, if he fucks this up, more to the point. It's not like he came on board with any real expectations and yet somehow the Barge has utterly fucking blindsided him. All he can do is cling to the hints of familiarity he can find, the friends he can make, the people who feel like they'll have his back or need him to have theirs.

And then there's Ricki, who he's already told too much, who's probably the closest thing he'll ever have around here to a colleague and probably thinks he's a stupid punk kid (which he is, but he's a lot of other things on top of that) and that it's only a matter of time before he compromises all sense of integrity and maybe that frustrates him. Enough, definitely, that he'll keep fighting for as long as Ricki keeps fighting back.]

Edited 2015-05-02 13:28 (UTC)

[Ricki watches him as they fight. He continues to lose, even handily once Eggsy finally puts the real horsepower into it. He goes down, gets up, goes down, gets up, takes him down once for a few minutes and does a little better on a floor grapple, but only because Eggsy doesn't want to actually kill him and it's difficult to incapacitate temporarily and safely.

So, by the time they roll back from one another, Ricki is sweating and worn out, and laughing.]

I give, I give.

[They'd each be dead at least once over, and Ricki more than once, and he feels about a million times better.]

[Eggsy slumps back onto the mat with a laughing exhalation of his own, breathing hard and bruised and pleased with himself. He's exercised and sore but not exhausted; the adrenaline is still keeping him lively, though later he'll crash through that. He'll sleep well tonight, and that'll be a bit of a rarity.

For the time being he's just relieved. Exchanging blows with another human being? Yeah. He's been missing something this fucking straightforward.]

Good game, mate, good game.

We ought to do this more regularly.

[Deciding, just because of that same sense of pure relief.]

I've been thinking, you ought to know how to run an old-fashioned game.

[And if Eggsy will spar with him, Ricki will teach him how to be a spy with nothing but shoestring technological support.]

[Eggsy sits up, propped up on his hands, and looks at him.]

Yeah?

[He really likes his toys and he gets the idea that not much in the twenty-first century spy game gets done without twenty-first century tech support, but that's not where they are right now. His training has touched on what happens in the event of a catastrophic network outage but that's considered the exception, the crisis situation. Here and now, he doesn't have that kind of support at his back and he's not proud enough to deny a gap in his knowledge that needs filling.]

Yeah, I'm up for that. Deal.

[He grins, and then drops his head back down to the mat, eyes shutting as something pent up in him finally relaxes.]

If my new warden decides to put me in solitary for brawling, you're going to need to know how to sneak me books.

[Is is other stipulation for the day, as his fingers lift up to touch a tender spot on his cheek. He's kidding. Except he isn't. Except he's too tired for there to be any real rancour in it. Anyways;]

You've had the physical training, and I'm not up for teaching you most of the interrogation stuff. But I do know people. How to apply the proper emotional pressure for an effective bit of blackmail, how to string together a slow pass to get a piece of paper untraced from the wrong side of the Berlin wall all the way to hands in London. How to thoroughly disappear into a local slum with nothing but the clothes on your back if you need to move out in a hurry.

[A quick, reflexive aside:] Fuck your new warden, this ain't brawling.

[In Eggsy's opinion it's only brawling if you're actually, maliciously trying to hurt the other person. Anything up to that is just fun and games.

But Ricki talks, and he's fascinated. This isn't the stuff of Bond movies, and maybe it's not even the stuff of Kingsman; as far as he can tell they tend to go in fast and hard (and, where possible, quiet) when the slower, more ponderous work of the 'official' agencies isn't working. But it's stuff he wants to know, wants to understand, and there's only so long he can spend on solo study in the library when what he'd like a lot better is someone to teach him. If the last year has done anything, it's forced him acknowledge that he's got a capacity to take things on board and synthesise and apply them and he's spent too long just letting that go to waste. Or to sum that up into a single brisk nod and four words:]

I'm a quick study.

[He grins at him; bless his loyal heart. For the most part Ricki is deeply suspicious of wardens, but Eggsy is okay.]

I can tell you are. Wouldn't offer if you weren't.

[He would have recruited Eggsy in a heartbeat back in his own world, if the timing had lined up.]

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