Archive of Our Own

Eggsy woke up, and it took him a few moments to realize where he was and why. 

He, Merlin and Roxy had arrived back at Kingsman HQ so late the night before it was technically morning.  He had received texts from his mum and Jamal and Ryan- all from after he turned off the SIM cards for good, so at least they were all safe.  He had fired off a few texts of his own, letting them know that he was fine too.  He was aching and exhausted and he had known that he should go home and see them, but when Merlin finally released him Eggsy had returned to Harry’s place instead.  He had pulled the curtains in Harry’s bedroom shut and climbed into his bed still wearing the suit that Harry had had made for him.  He had buried his face in the pillows and got only the slightest hint of a smell that he hadn’t known anywhere near as well as he would have liked.  Harry.  That was how he had fallen asleep.

It took Eggsy a few moments more to realize what exactly had actually woken him: a beeping sound, not unpleasantly loud but still insistent, each beep spaced about five seconds from the one before it. 

Eggsy blinked at the clock on Harry’s bedside table, groggily confirming that it was late afternoon and that the clock itself was not the source of the noise.  Then he turned over and just stared up at the ceiling for a while.  Beep.

He rolled out of bed.  Beep.

Eggsy felt like he was a single walking bruise.  Merlin had tutted over every place where a bullet had impacted the suit, telling Eggsy that he would regret having been so reckless in the morning.  He was right.  Eggsy was glad to be alive, of course he was, but he supposed that there had always been a part of him that had never expected to make it out of Valentine’s base at all, never expected to have to live with the consequences of anything he had done there.

Beep.

He followed the sound to Harry’s office, and hesitated at the door.  Beep.  In the back of his mind- not quite buried underneath everything that had happened after- Eggsy could still hear the gunshot that killed Harry.  Beep.  He didn’t want to go back into the room where he’d heard it for the first time, not ever again if he could help it.  Beep.  Apparently, he couldn’t.  

Harry’s laptop- still sitting on the desk where Eggsy had left it- appeared to be the source of the noise.  Eggsy sat down and lifted the screen.  A video file immediately opened.

“Hello, Eggsy.”

“Harry?” Eggsy choked out.  It felt like there was broken glass in his throat.

The Harry on the laptop screen didn’t react, but of course he didn't.  The video was prerecorded.  For a second, it felt like that broken glass had migrated downward and started tearing up Eggsy’s heart.  Eggsy sat there, frozen, and thought miserably about Harry- Harry who was dead now- having recorded a message for him.  When?  Why?  What had he-

But then Eggsy realized that Harry looked… as Eggsy had never seen him.  His hair was wild, matted and curly.  His face was pale but darkened with stubble.  His forehead was wrapped in a bandage.  He’d clearly done his best to clean himself up- so vain, Eggsy thought with a fondness that hurt- but his suit was still dusty and stained with blood.

“I hope you’ll forgive the dramatics,” Harry said, his lips drawn into a line, and Eggsy laughed.  He felt giddy, strange, and crazy laughter was the only response that made the least bit of sense to him at the moment.  “I’ve remotely set my hard drive to self-destruct twenty minutes after you view this.”  Harry paused for a moment and then lifted up a newspaper.  “Here’s this morning’s headline.”  It read: The President and His Cabinet Dead, Nation Reeling.  “Not the cheeriest I’ve seen, but at least we’re all around to read it.  So.  As you have probably guessed, I’m quite alive- if a little worse for wear.” 

Eggsy’s laughter faded as what Harry was saying sank in.  He was still exhausted, still sore, still a little more jaded about humanity in general than he had been when all of this started- but he also felt lighter, better, as if he was getting air properly for the first time since he heard Valentine say this ain’t that kind of movie. 

Apparently Valentine had been wrong about what kind of movie this was- and Eggsy almost started laughing again- because there was Harry on the laptop screen, large as life, leaning closer to whatever recording device he was using with a grave expression.  Forgive the dramatics indeed.  “No one can know this, Eggsy.  Not Merlin, not anyone at Kingsman, not anyone at all.  Things are… well, they’re complicated right now.  There are going to be power vacuums the likes of which we’ve never seen and I’ve been given a very secret assignment by higher ups I half thought were myths.  Obviously I wasn’t supposed to contact you, but… I simply couldn’t leave things as we did.”

Eggsy’s mouth shaped, “Harry,” again without permission from his brain.  It was so much to take in, and Eggsy wasn’t ready for this, but he was starting to accept that that was just what Harry did- he crashed into Eggsy’s world and rewrote everything he thought he knew about it.   

“I am so proud of you, Eggsy- and so glad to have had you in my life.  Never doubt that.  I… I heard about what happened with Arthur and I wish I could have contacted you sooner.”  Harry hung his head briefly.

Eggsy wanted so much to be able to actually talk to Harry- to tell him that this, this was more than enough for him. 

When Harry looked up again he somehow unerringly met Eggsy’s eyes.  “Kingsman is going to need you, Eggsy, now more than ever.  After everything that happened, Merlin is going to give you a position, I’m sure of it.  It’ll probably be mine and I couldn’t imagine a better successor.  But some of the others won’t like it.  Don’t listen to them, all right?  And don’t ever give up.”  Harry swallowed and fell silent for a few moments.  “Eggsy,” he continued at last, “if you find that knowing this and having to keep it from everyone is… too heavy a burden, there’s always an amnesia dart.  About a half hour should do the trick.”  Harry’s smile was tight but beautiful.  “Goodbye for now, Eggsy.  And good luck.”

Eggsy’s hand rose without his meaning for it to.  His fingertips traced the line of Harry’s face in the moment before Harry ended the recording and disappeared.

Eggsy replayed Harry’s recording as many times as he could in the next twenty minutes, until he felt like Harry saying I am so proud of you, Eggsy- and so glad to have had you in my life was written on the inside of his skull.  And then he wrapped his arms around himself and backed away as Harry’s hard drive fried itself.   

After that, Eggsy went downstairs, made a pot of coffee, and seriously considered the amnesia dart. 

He was going to have to watch Merlin- who he cared a lot about after everything they had been through together- mourn a friend and pretend to be doing the same.  He was going have to lie to Roxy about the loss of his mentor, lie to his new colleagues- whoever they were- about the death of a man they’d worked with for years.

Worse, there was the fact that everyone was supposed to think that Harry was dead and that his ultra-top-secret mission- whatever it even was- was non-existent for a reason.  If Eggsy ever let the truth slip there was a chance that he could get people- Harry- killed.

And worse even than all that would be knowing that Harry was alive but not when or even if he was coming back, and having no reason to believe that Harry would ever contact him again.  And Harry was supposed to be already dead, which meant that if something happened to him Eggsy would probably never know it.  Wasn’t it almost better to be sure Harry had died in that parking lot than to spend months or even years in limbo, wondering when- or if- he would ever see Harry again?

But in the end, Eggsy couldn’t use the dart.  Harry had gone against orders just to tell Eggsy how much he cared.  Eggsy thought he could handle almost anything if it meant he got to keep that. 

He just wished he’d had the chance to tell Harry how sorry he was in return.   

*   *   *

Merlin gave Eggsy Harry’s title and his house.  He was so matter of fact about all of it that Eggsy half wondered if he hadn’t gotten a message from Harry of his own. 

Eggsy felt the most bizarre surge of jealousy at that thought, and he kind of hated himself for it.  It wasn’t as if Merlin didn’t deserve to know that Harry was all right as much as Eggsy did- more, really, since they had known each other far longer.  And it wasn’t as though having a partner in this secret wouldn’t make it easier to bear.

But Eggsy didn’t think that Harry would have so stressed keeping the truth from Merlin unless there was a concrete reason that he couldn’t know that Harry himself was unwilling- or unable- to go against.  He had put his faith in Eggsy’s proven ability to keep a secret- and probably also relied on Eggsy not being important enough for whatever higher ups he had spoken of to look into too deeply.  Merlin would be another question altogether.  If Harry said he couldn’t know, he couldn’t know. 

At any rate, about the extent of Merlin’s sentimentalism on the subject was fitting Eggsy for his new suit himself.  Like the one Eggsy had ruined in Valentine’s base, it looked very similar to one of Harry’s, and right at the end, Eggsy heard him murmur, “God damn it, Harry.  You should be here.”  Merlin had been made interim Arthur, which as far as Eggsy could tell meant that he was doing his own job as well as Chester King’s, so he probably also wished Harry was there to take some of the pressure off him.  As Harry had predicted, many of the senior knights didn’t like Eggsy becoming Galahad, but since they were also alive because of him they couldn’t fight Merlin’s decision either.  Eggsy didn’t really care what they thought.  Him and Merlin and Lancelot against the world had worked out pretty well so far.

The week Eggsy became Galahad was characterized by a lot of kicking Dean’s arse until he finally got the message, moving his and his mum and sister’s stuff into Harry’s place and moving Harry’s things up to the attic, and trying to work out his place in Kingsman when the world wasn’t ending. 

Eggsy spent a lot of that time thinking about the little things he’d say to Harry if he could.

I don’t think I was quite as cool as you in the pub.  Work in progress, yeah?

My mum nearly fainted the first time she saw your weird fucking stuffed dog.  What’ve you got to say for yourself?

Did you have to put up with all those virgin jokes over being Galahad or is it just me?

Seriously, what is with all the butterflies?

Merlin’s right, Harry.  You should be here.

*   *   *

The other thing that Eggsy would tell Harry if he could was that his job was fucking terrifying.  That wasn’t to say that Eggsy didn’t love it- he wouldn’t quit if they paid him to and he was pretty sure that Kay at least would do that if he thought it would work.  Being a Kingsman was awesome- but it was also scary as hell. 

Eggsy had his first major close call about a month in, in Cairo- and by close call Eggsy meant almost died.

He was captured and interrogated- that part hadn’t been so bad, Eggsy had had worse in training- but around the time they figured out that they weren’t going to get the information they wanted out of him things started to get fuzzy for Eggsy.  He did remember being only half-conscious as he overheard them discussing how to dispose of his body.  He did remember fully expecting to never wake up again. 

But Eggsy did wake up again.  He opened his eyes and found himself lying on a bed.  He sat up as quickly as he could and swore, trying to figure out what the fuck had happened.  He recognized all the hallmarks of a safe house, but he had no idea how he’d ended up there.  He was aching, confused, and very much alone.

Well, mostly alone.  On the otherwise empty bedside table Eggsy saw a cellphone that he didn’t recognize.  He reached for it and did a little poking around, finding just one unidentified number in the contacts and absolutely nothing else.  Since it seemed like the only way to get some answers, Eggsy called the number. 

Someone picked up the phone almost immediately, but didn’t speak at first. 

Something- Eggsy didn’t immediately identify it as hope- clenched in his chest as he waited another beat.

“Hello, Eggsy,” Harry said at last.

“Are you-”are you close, are you safe, are you coming back soon?  “I mean, is this okay?”

“Calls from that phone are untraceable,” Harry said a little hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure that Eggsy would believe him.  Of course Eggsy did, though- it was Harry’s mission on the line if he got it wrong, after all, and anyway Harry was the guy who had had his server so well secured that Merlin couldn’t hack into it but it let Eggsy in without a fuss. 

“Cool,” Eggsy said finally.  He suspected that Harry was once again taking a big risk talking to him at all, and once again it felt like a terribly heavy burden to carry, so he covered it with humor: “You stalking me or something?”

Harry said, “I happened to be in the area.”  The tension in his voice told Eggsy that Harry was telling the truth, that he was in fact painfully aware of how dead Eggsy would probably be if he hadn’t happened to be in the area. 

“Well,” Eggsy said.  “Thanks.”  He finally had Harry there- or at least as there as it was possible for Harry to be under the circumstances- and suddenly he had no idea what to say to him.  “Harry?”

“Yes?”  There was a note of hope in Harry’s voice, like he didn’t know how to do this either and had been praying that Eggsy would direct him.

That, as much as anything, was what gave Eggsy the courage to say what he most wanted to say.  “Can I keep the phone?  I mean-”

Harry was silent for a long moment.  “Yes,” he said at last.  “You can keep it.  But I won’t answer if I can’t talk.  I probably won’t even have one with me.”  And maybe Harry meant it to be a warning, but to Eggsy it sounded like a reassurance.  That a call from Eggsy wouldn’t ever have the chance to get Harry killed. 

“Yeah,” Eggsy said quickly.  “’Course.”

There was another silence.  “Your glasses were already gone when I found you,” Harry said.  It was good to know that Harry hadn’t had to smash them in order to keep his cover.  Eggsy would have had a hell of a time explaining that to Merlin.  “There’s a landline in the next room.  You should use your check in code as soon as you can.”

“Yeah,” Eggsy said again.  He and Harry were running out of things to say to each other; Eggsy could feel it.  He had a mission to complete and probably so did Harry.  And yet Eggsy didn’t want to break the connection and he really didn’t want to say goodbye to Harry.  Eggsy spoke quickly, afraid he would lose his nerve and leave too much unsaid again if he waited even a second longer: “I’m so fucking sorry about the stuff I said last time we talked.”

“Eggsy, you apologized already,” Harry reminded him gently. “Right on the spot, remember?  I’m the one who left things badly.”

“Suppose so,” Eggsy replied.  But he was keenly aware- in a way that he hadn’t been back when he still thought of Harry as invincible- of the possibility that what he said in any given moment could always be the last thing he said to Harry at all.  Suddenly nothing seemed right.  Nothing seemed like enough.  “Take care of yourself, all right?”

“You too,” Harry replied.  There was another silence, and then Harry hung up. 

Eggsy just held the phone to his ear for several moments before he pocketed it, already planning how he would hide it from Merlin when the time came.  Then he made his way to the next room, checked in with Merlin, and went back to work. 

In the following days, Eggsy kept an eye on the Cairo newspapers.  Nothing out of the ordinary was reported, so Eggsy figured that Harry had done whatever he had been there to do. 

*   *   *

A lot of people at Kingsman- including Merlin, interestingly enough- seemed to expect things to change for Eggsy after his first brush with death, but they didn’t.  He returned to London, took the short leave that Merlin offered him, and spent some time with his family.  They visited his mum’s sister Lisa, who lived by the seaside, and then Eggsy came back and reported in to HQ as ordered.  At the next mission briefing Eggsy got the sense that, for the first time, everyone was starting to believe that he really wasn’t going anywhere.  

Eggsy had a busy few months after that.  The fact that he could technically talk to Harry whenever he wanted to always on his periphery, something he thought about often but never acted on.

He dismantled the organizations of a drug kingpin, a human trafficker, and an arms dealer.  Like Harry he never made the papers, and Eggsy thought of him as he collected three new Sun covers, but he didn’t call him. 

He stopped a scientist who had been kidnapping people and then experimenting on them on an island Dr. Moreau-style.  He wanted to ask Harry if he too had had a moment where he realized that his life had become science fiction, but he didn’t call him then either.

He kept a crazed activist from poisoning the champagne of a bunch of millionaires at a gala.  His handler let him off leash, telling him to enjoy the rest of the evening.  No less than five people took an interest in Eggsy, but just one- a tall wine connoisseur with salt and pepper hair and broad shoulders- caught Eggsy’s eye in return.  He seemed only too pleased to educate Eggsy on the subject of wine, and after a couple of glasses he looked so much like Harry Eggsy could cry, and he kissed with all the single-minded fervor Eggsy had never let himself imagine Harry would.

He definitely didn’t call Harry then.    

*   *   *

Given how proud Eggsy was of his self-control thus far, he was a little disappointed in himself for why he did eventually call Harry- or at least he would have been if he been thinking much at the time. 

Eggsy’s mother had pushed him to take the master bedroom, and he hadn’t argued against it too energetically, not when the thought of sleeping in Harry’s bed every night had been so strangely tempting.  Tempting because Eggsy had thought Harry was fucking fit from minute one, and getting to know him had very much compounded that impression.  Strangely because Eggsy had also thought he had put his attraction to Harry behind him when Harry placed himself so firmly in mentor territory that Eggsy had been forced to accept that that was all Harry was interested in being to him.

Harry’s bedroom didn’t smell like Harry anymore by then. Eggsy had allowed himself to keep only a few of the things he found in there: a bottle of Harry's cologne, what was left of his shampoo- Eggsy was getting a little too used to using it and he didn’t know what he’d do when it ran out, since he had no idea where it came from- and that weird red bathrobe.  Eggsy had reminded himself that if he made this place into a shrine, Harry- who was fine and would continue to be so- would think it was pretty fucked up.  So he just went up to the attic once in a while, keeping everything dusted and nice for Harry, and slept in his bed.

And if he sometimes slipped on Harry’s bathrobe after a really long and shitty day, or put on just a touch of Harry's cologne and imagined that Harry was beside him again, Eggsy kept it to himself.  He was all right. 

And he was- except sometimes, when he dreamed that he was once again watching through Harry’s eyes as Valentine shot him in the head. 

Eggsy hadn’t actually had time to have that dream before he found out that Harry was actually alive- Eggsy hadn’t dreamed at all that he could remember the night after V-Day, and the very next day Harry had turned out not to be dead after all- so he couldn’t really explain it to himself, the dawning horror of it, waking up in a cold sweat convinced that Harry was gone.

“He’s not,” Eggsy told himself, lying there in the dark and staring up at Harry’s ceiling.  “He’s not.  He’s not.”

With that bullet still flying in slow motion toward Harry in his mind’s eye, it seemed utterly incomprehensible to Eggsy that Harry could have survived.

“You can call him.”  Eggsy kept his voice quiet so as not to disturb his mum and sister down the hall.  “You can call him.” He fully intended to remind himself of that fact as he had done so many times before and then do nothing at all about it- and yet somehow between that thought and the actual action of dialing, no time whatsoever seemed to pass. 

Eggsy didn’t really think Harry would pick up, and he had no idea if the call would or even could go to voicemail- what would it say if it did?  This is a dead man’s phone, please leave a heavily encoded message after the tone?  Pretty ridiculous, right? 

Eggsy’s hands were shaking as he held the phone to his ear.

It rang once, twice, then, “Eggsy?”

It took Eggsy a second to remember how to speak.  “Hi, Harry,” he managed at last.  He sounded like such an idiot. 

“Are you all right?” Harry asked.  “It’s very late.”

“Oh, fuck, did I wake you?”

“No, Eggsy, it’s the middle of the day where I am.  But it’s 3 AM in London, isn’t it?”  Harry paused for a beat and then repeated himself: “Are you all right?”

Eggsy looked at the clock on Harry’s- his- bedside table. “Yeah, I guess it is.”  Eggsy scrambled against the headboard to sit up, the wood cold against his back.  “Sorry.”  He dug his palm into his forehead.  “I’m fine, Harry.  I really- I shouldn’t’ve disturbed you.  I’ll- I’ll just-”

“Eggsy.”  Harry’s voice was so very even.  “I told you that I wouldn’t pick up if I couldn’t talk.  And I picked up.”    

“Yeah,” Eggsy said finally.  He relaxed slowly, making himself lie flat on the bed again.

“What happened?”

“It’s stupid.”  It took a little while for Eggsy to make himself say more.  “I… I watched Valentine shoot you through your glasses.  You know that, right?”

“I suspected,” Harry replied, his voice drawing tight.  "I’m sorry.  I didn’t want you to see any of that.”

“I just… I keep dreaming about it,” Eggsy admitted.  “You getting shot.”

Harry was silent for a long moment.  “So do I,” he said at last.

“You do?”

“Hmm.  Yes.”  Harry went quiet again.  “I had always accepted that my death would most likely be a violent one,” he told Eggsy slowly. “I had made my peace with it.  I thought I had made my peace with it.  But now… I am afraid of things I was never afraid of before.”

It was hard to imagine Harry in full daylight somewhere, admitting a thing like that.  It was the sort of confession made for the kind of darkness Eggsy was lying in, but Eggsy wasn’t the one talking.  He was the one listening and praying that Harry’s newfound awareness of his own mortality would keep him safe out there and bring him back home soon. 

Eggsy stared up at Harry’s ceiling some more.  “I kind of hate myself for how it stuck with me, him shooting you,” he whispered.  He wanted to give Harry something as profound as what Harry had just given him, but finding the words was even harder than he’d expected it to be.

“Because I didn’t die?”

“Because as much as you mean to me, losing you wasn’t really the worst thing that happened to me that day.  Or at least it shouldn’t have been.”

“Your… family-” Harry started.  He sounded uncertain and a little bit scared, like he had checked long ago, but suddenly he doubted the evidence of his own investigation.

“They’re fine.  Everybody I know is fine.  But Harry, I… well, I killed a lot of people that day.”  Eggsy wasn’t sure how to explain it to Harry, how bad he didn’t feel.  How wrong that seemed to him whenever he let himself think about it. 

It was like everything that mattered had stopped when Harry died and then started again when that recording opened up on Harry’s laptop the next morning.  Eggsy had failed the dog test- as every Kingsman but Merlin, Roxy and Percival never stopped reminding him- but Arthur, the guards in the tunnels, over a hundred world leaders and celebrities and unknown civilians, Gazelle, Valentine… they had gone pretty easy, hadn’t they?  It was the same logic he had accused Valentine of to Arthur- picking and choosing which lives mattered.  Oh, most of it was self-defense, and nobody who had sided with Valentine had had strictly clean hands- but they still hadn’t had a chance to answer for their actions to any authority higher than Eggsy.  They were just dead.  Because Eggsy hadn’t been able to see any other way out.

Eggsy didn’t want it to sit as well as it did. 

“I killed a lot of people too, as you’ll recall,” Harry said.  Eggsy remembered looking through Harry’s eyes, down at all those bodies and at his own bloodstained hands.  He knew how much it had messed Harry up, and in Harry’s voice he could hear how much it still did.  Harry probably had no one to talk about any of that.  He probably had no one to talk to about anything at all.

“You didn’t have a choice, Harry.”  Eggsy doubted that that made it much better, doubted that having had his free will stripped from him was something that Harry took much comfort from looking back on.

“Neither did you, I suspect.”

“Still.”  Eggsy’s throat felt ragged and a little bit sore, and he cleared it.  “It ain’t ever easy, is it?  Killing somebody?”

“No,” Harry agreed after a moment.  “It’s not.  And those were your first, yes?”

“Yeah.”  Eggsy swallowed heavily.  It was overwhelming, how much less overwhelming it all seemed when he could talk to Harry about it.  “I really miss you.”

“And I you, my boy.”  Harry’s voice was rough but kind. 

“You come back, okay?” Eggsy whispered.

“I intend to.”

*   *   *

The phone that Harry had given Eggsy was old- probably that was part of how he kept it untraceable- and ungainly for texting, but during their second late night conversation, two weeks after the first, Harry told Eggsy that he could text him if he wanted to. 

Eggsy only ended up actually sending about half of the texts he thought about, and only half of those ever got replies from Harry- something else Harry had warned him would probably happen.  It didn’t matter all that much to Eggsy; most of his texts didn’t need replies, he simply liked knowing- or even just imagining- that Harry read them.

Over the course of the next month, Eggsy cracked jokes about his fellow Kingsman- some of whom Harry immediately identified as the ones giving Eggsy the most trouble at work and told him little bits of dirt on all of them- and complained a lot about the many utensils in Harry’s kitchen- which Harry patiently explained the uses of- and told stories about some of the craziest things that had happened to him in the field so far- getting a few anecdotes from Harry in return. 

Over the course of the month after that, Harry gave Eggsy more training tips.  He explained some of the things that all the other Kingsman still just assumed any idiot would know.  Lessons from Harry weren’t as nice via text or over the phone as with him there, but Eggsy was willing to take what he could get.

In all that time, Harry never replied to texts about the shenanigans Eggsy got into with Roxy, or about how nice Daisy’s new daycare was, or about Eggsy’s mum getting a job at a hair salon.  Eggsy knew that Harry read those texts because he would sometimes refer to them during a phone conversation, but he never acknowledged them in quite the same way.

Eggsy could tell that Harry was trying to keep himself at a distance.  He just wasn’t sure if that distance was meant to be for Eggsy’s benefit or his own.

And he wasn’t sure it mattered when it was so thoroughly too late.    

*   *   *

“Do you suppose my mum would notice if I skipped that part?” Eggsy asked.

“That’s a question only you can answer, I’m afraid.”  Harry said it in that tone of his that usually meant he disapproved but was too much of a gentleman to say so out loud.  “I should remind you, however, that you are the one who wanted to cook something special for your mother’s birthday in the first place.”  

“Yeah,” Eggsy said.  He was- though he’d at least half come up with idea for the excuse to talk to Harry for a while.  Though they spoke on the phone semi-regularly now, Eggsy always needed an reason, even if it was a vague one.  “No skipping steps then?”  Eggsy frowned into Harry’s cookbook. 

“As I said, it’s entirely up to you.”

Harry sounded amused, which was something.  As much as Harry tried to keep their conversations as Kingsman-oriented as possible, Eggsy didn’t always manage to play along- and he was pretty sure that, for all the distance Harry tried to put between them, he appreciated it deep down.  Eggsy knew next to nothing about what Harry was doing right now, but he was sure that it was isolated and exhausting.  He was sure that Harry was sometimes in danger of forgetting what real life was even like. 

And maybe it hurt, but until Harry asked him to stop Eggsy was going to keep reminding him how people lived. 

Accordingly, Eggsy remarked, “I been thinking about teaching Daisy to cook.”

The amusement in Harry’s tone deepened as he asked, "Do you suppose you're ready for that?" 

Eggsy, still in the midst of chopping up the ingredients he was going to need and laying them out on the counter like a proper TV chef, snorted.  “Like you're ready for this?  I’m willing to bet you’ve used each of your dozen cookbooks maybe once.”

"I have a basic understanding of the mechanics involved."

He said it the same way Eggsy would expect him to say that he could absolutely dismantle that bomb or counteract that toxin- which, being Harry, he probably had more than once.  The comparison made Eggsy laugh out loud.

Harry drew a soft breath in, and for a moment Eggsy could sense… something hovering in the air between them.  He wasn’t sure what it was, but it felt big.  Heavy.  Eggsy opened his mouth without the first idea of what to say, and then he closed it again, letting the silence stretch further and pull taut.

"I'm sure you'll manage very well," Harry said at last, his voice cutting through that quiet like a knife.  “Do you have everything you need?” 

“Yeah, guess so.”  Eggsy wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved that the moment- whatever it had been- was over.  “You gotta go?”  

“I’m afraid so.”

Eggsy got to work on his recipe, primarily to take his mind off the next pause, the one he knew all too well.  Eggsy found himself reluctant to say goodbye to Harry, and Harry seemed to have picked up a similar reluctance from him.  The things Eggsy did say to Harry before one of them hung up ranged from casual- Talk to you soon- to flippant- Try not to die- to painfully earnest- Please come back soon.  He wasn’t proud of any of them, or of his tendency to overthink in that regard, because he knew perfectly well that worrying too much about it wouldn’t do either of them any good.

But today Eggsy wasn’t worrying or overthinking.  His mind was at least half on the task at hand- that was his main excuse for what happened next.  The only other explanation was that besides Harry Eggsy only really talked over the phone to his mum- and sometimes Daisy, now that she was old enough to talk back- and certain things were just... instinct.    

“Love you.  Bye.”

Eggsy hung up and froze when he realized what he’d just said. 

*   *   *

It wasn’t exactly the wrong thing to say.

Preoccupied as he was with the possibility that his last words over the phone to Harry could always be his last, telling Harry that he loved him wasn’t the oddest thing Eggsy could do- not if it was true, which of course it was.  Harry had swept into Eggsy’s life and changed everything about it three times now.  He was so gorgeous, so proper and yet so dangerous, and it was difficult to imagine a world in which Eggsy wouldn’t love him.

The problem was that it was too true.

Eggsy had tried to call what he felt for Harry a crush, hero worship, attraction so completely outside his usual type that it couldn’t possibly last.  Eggsy had been so surprised at the frisson of want that had gone through him when he first saw Harry outside the police station, at the tightness in his jeans when he watched Harry take out Dean’s goons like something out of a fantasy, at the mix of apprehension and anticipation that he had felt when he walked into the tailor’s shop that first day thinking… well, thinking something that turned out to be very wrong about what Harry had in mind for him there.

He had only just been getting to know Harry when Harry went to Kentucky and got himself shot; it would have been awfully early to call it love- not that Eggsy would ever have let himself call it that, not when he’d just lost Harry, and certainly not when he was trying so hard to just be happy that Harry was alive and not resent the fact that he couldn’t touch him.

But Eggsy had cleaned out Harry’s house now, and had dozens of conversations with him.  He knew Harry, knew about his dead animal obsession and his seemingly endless collections of pocket squares and fancy silverware.  His lessons in manners and his multitude of embarrassing stories about his colleagues.  His willingness to go against orders just so Eggsy wouldn’t have to go on thinking that Harry had died disappointed in him.

Eggsy loved Harry, he did.  He just hadn’t really wanted it to come out like that. 

*   *   *

Harry was kept very busy doing… whatever it was he was doing.  It wasn’t unusual for Eggsy not to talk to him at all for a week, even two or three on a stretch.  Eggsy worried about him during those spells of silence, naturally, but he also knew better than to expect anything else.  There was nothing he could do about what was going on with Harry, so there was no point in fussing about it. 

Still.  The period of no contact after the love you bye incident was very possibly the longest of Eggsy’s life.  Suddenly he had other things to worry about than whether Harry was hurt or stranded or sick or dying for real this time- he had to worry that Harry had finally worked out that Eggsy had been stupid enough to fall in love with him and had decided to cut ties between them for good. 

Eggsy was in the middle of dinner when the phone Harry gave him rang. 

He was startled and- frankly- confused at first, because he had never heard it ring before.  Harry answered his phone sometimes and not others, returned texts sometimes and not others- but he never called Eggsy.

“Mum,” Eggsy said, fumbling for the phone the moment he realized what was happening.  “Sorry, I gotta go take this.”

“Of course,” she replied, something very gentle in her eyes.  He knew that she knew there was something going with him and with that phone, just like he knew that she knew he was more than just a tailor.  She never asked questions, even though Eggsy got the feeling that she was always waiting for the other shoe to finally drop.

Eggsy ducked into Harry’s office- his office, now, repainted and decorated with his own headlines despite the fact that he still thought of himself as just keeping Galahad’s chair warm for Harry- and answered the phone with a hesitant “Hello?” on the off chance that it wasn’t Harry calling after all.  He tortured himself, in the few seconds of silence that followed, with thoughts of what could have happened for it to be anyone else.

“Eggsy,” came Harry’s voice.  Eggsy’s relief quickly turned back into apprehension.  Harry didn’t sound quite… right, like he was drunk or drugged- or seriously hurt, the most alarmist part of Eggsy’s mind supplied helpfully.

Whatever the circumstances, the answer to Eggsy’s next question- “Are you all right?”- was relatively obvious.  Either Harry was injured or had been recently, or he had fallen off the wagon.  Eggsy remembered Harry mentioning in an earlier conversation that he had been stone cold sober for the last few months.  Eggsy knew enough about Harry to be sure that that couldn’t have been easy for him.

“Mmm,” was Harry’s only answer.  Then, “I can’t stop thinking about what you said.”

“Harry.”  Eggsy’s voice cracked halfway through.

“I keep telling myself that you didn’t mean it how it sounded,” Harry said.  “Assuming of course you meant it all.”

And Eggsy could have said that it was a slip of the tongue and nothing more, he could have taken the out that Harry was giving him with such uncharacteristic clumsiness, but he didn’t do it.  He wouldn’t do it.  “I meant it.”

“Love you,” Harry murmured.  “I wish you-”

“What d’you wish, Harry?”

Harry was silent for a long, breathless moment, and then he said, “I have to go, Eggsy.”

Eggsy’s mind raced ahead of him for a few moments.  He thought about pushing Harry for some kind of explanation, or making a confession of his own and trusting Harry not to remember it if it didn’t go his way.  He thought about a lot of things.  In the end, he just told Harry he loved him again.

Harry made a strangled noise and hung up. 

*   *   *

Eggsy tried not to think too much about that conversation with Harry or about where Harry was now or if he was in trouble- because if he did think about it he was fairly sure he would never stop. 

But every once in a while he still wondered, and what he wondered was whether he should have been surprised that Harry loved him.  A part of him couldn’t believe that he could possibly have had as much of an impact on Harry over the time that they had known each other as Harry had had on him.  And then he wondered how Harry meant that love you, and he remembered hearing Harry say I keep telling myself that you didn’t mean it how it sounded, and he asked himself if it was possible that Harry felt exactly the same way he did. 

The chances, to Eggsy’s mind, seemed vanishingly small- but even so, just thinking about it made Eggsy feel… warm, strange, lightheaded.  Like all the possibilities in the world were suddenly stretched out in front of him.

That was the effect Harry had, sometimes.  

*   *   *

Harry called him again about a day later- all right, it was 25 hours and 47 minutes later, and yes, Eggsy had been counting.  He had gone to bed early and he was lying with the phone close to hand, praying for it to ring.

“I don’t remember calling you,” Harry said without preamble.  “But I saw that I did.”

He fell silent, and so did Eggsy.  It was clear that Harry wasn’t going to tell him what had been going on behind that last call, and he hated it, hated how little place he had in Harry’s life right now.  He hated to think that it might never change.

Finally Harry added, “If I said anything… untoward, Eggsy, I apologize.”

“What’s untoward?” Eggsy asked, half trying to laugh it off, half curious as hell.

Obviously there was something in his voice that hadn’t been there before, because Harry’s voice pulled tight.  “I think you know.” 

“What if I don’t, Harry?  What if I really need you to spell it out for me?”  Eggsy’s voice went a little plaintive, but he wasn’t ashamed of it, not if it got Harry to speak.  Not if Harry said what Eggsy was so hoping he would.  “Please?”

Harry swallowed so heavily Eggsy could hear it over the phone line.  “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Eggsy hissed in a breath.  Harry sounded so guilty, like he really thought that in this, of all things, they might not be on the same page.  And if Harry truly doubted Eggsy’s feelings, that moment of silence must have seemed to last for a hundred years.  “I really wish I could touch you right now.”

“Oh?”  Harry’s voice carried an extraordinary mix of heat and wariness.  “And what would you do if you could?”

“I’d make sure you know how much I’m definitely falling in love with you.”

Eggsy heard a hitch in Harry’s breathing and not much else.  

“Where are you?” he asked quietly.  Harry kept quiet and Eggsy rushed to correct himself: “I mean, not where are you where are you, but-”

“In bed.”

“Me too,” Eggsy said, wondering if it was late where Harry was. Maybe he had been lying awake in the dark thinking of what to say to Eggsy for a long time before he called.  Or maybe it was early in the morning and there was pale light streaming across Harry’s face, illuminating the spider web of wrinkles around his eyes that Eggsy had never imagined he’d find so gorgeous before he met Harry.  Or maybe he had only just crawled into bed like Eggsy, maybe he was that close.  “Could you…”  Eggsy’s mouth was dry, his voice little more than a whisper.  “Could you maybe touch your lips for me?”

Eggsy raised his own hand as he spoke, fingers trembling as he dragged them over his own mouth, not sure if he was imagining that his fingers were Harry’s lips on his- a terribly poor substitute- or that his lips were Harry’s so he could be the one touching them.  “Yes,” Harry said, and if Eggsy had been worried that Harry was unaffected, those worries faded when he heard Harry’s voice, gravelly and uneven.

“Are you-” Eggsy swallowed.  He’d never been all that good at this kind of thing, and here, now, with Harry as present as he might ever be again, Eggsy was terrified he might do something wrong.  “Are you-are you turned on right now?”

“Yes.”  Harry’s voice was so warm.

“Harry,” Eggsy said.  He wondered if it was too much- the awe in his voice when he thought of Harry- Harry fucking Hart- getting aroused because he was talking to Eggsy.

Eggsy heard something that he identified as the springs of a really crap bed creaking as Harry shifted positions.  “Eggsy,” Harry said a moment later.  “How would you touch me if you could?” 

Eggsy closed his eyes tightly, imaging Harry, letting all the thoughts that he had never allowed to coalesce into real wishes before in.  “I think I’d touch your neck,” he said at last.  He could imagine the soft skin under his fingers, almost feel it even though running shaking fingertips down his own throat was such a poor approximation.  The closest thing that Harry had to a vulnerable spot, normally at least half hidden by a collar and tie, barred for Eggsy’s hands.  “And then after that I’d- I’d touch your hair.”  He had thought so much about just that, sliding his hands up the back of Harry’s neck and pushing his fingers into that perfect hair, messing it up.  But Harry’s hair wouldn’t be like that now, would it?  It would be loose, pillow-mussed, not perfect at all.  But it would still feel so nice to run his fingers through it and graze his nails across Harry’s scalp.  “Is it soft?” 

“Yes.”  Harry gave a quiet laugh.

That was very possibly the most gorgeous sound Eggsy had ever heard.  “Fuck,” he breathed.  He gave a laugh of his own.  He was nervous, but not enough to stop.  “What are you wearing, anyway?”

“T-shirt,” Harry answered, laughing again.  “Boxers.”

“Oh yeah?” Eggsy said.  He could hardly imagine Harry in such an ensemble.  “Almost like a regular person, you are.”  

“Beyond the gun under my pillow, almost exactly.”

They both grew serious at the same time.  Eggsy remembered that wherever he was, whatever he was doing, Harry had to stay hidden all the time.  Harry didn’t have a safety net.  He might sometimes serendipitously be in the area to save Eggsy’s arse, but Eggsy could never do the same for him.  He could never tell Harry he loved him enough times to be ready for the day when he might not be able to say it ever again, but even so he wished that he’d said it from the very start- wished he’d said it since he’d known Harry, because from the second Harry had pushed off that wall outside the police station a little part of Eggsy had known that one day he would. 

“Eggsy,” Harry said, jolting him back into the moment.  “I would very much like it if you would undress me.”

Eggsy made a noise caught somewhere between a moan and a sob, his cock twitching in his pants even as the back of his throat ached.  “I’d take your shirt off,” he said, barely recognizing his own voice.  He heard the rustle of fabric as Harry peeled his shirt over his head, somehow managing to keep the phone to his ear throughout the maneuver- Eggsy knew because he could still hear Harry’s breath for every second of it.  “And then I’d touch your chest.”  Harry was so broad, so fit, and his bare chest was probably something to behold.  And he was probably scarred- Eggsy had snuck a look at Harry’s file while he was in his coma, and that medical history must have been written across his skin.  Eggsy wouldn’t know where to start.  He’d probably overcompensate, running his hands over everything he could reach.  He told Harry as much, finding that he liked imagining Harry’s hands running feverishly over his body more than his own.  Harry’s hands were the most amazing things, big but somehow still delicate, his fingers long and just slender enough.  Eggsy told Harry that too.

“Nonsense,” Harry rumbled.  “Your hands are perfect, my boy.  So tender and soft-looking.”

“Yeah?” Eggsy managed, a flush starting that made it feel like his face was on fire.  “Ain’t they a little small?”  It bore repeating, how mouth-watering Eggsy found the sheer size of Harry’s hands, how easily they would engulf his wrists or even wrap around his waist.  How big those fingers would feel in his mouth or on his skin or pressing into his hole.

“Yes,” Harry hissed out.  “Yes, they are, and I have been imagining them wrapped around my cock for such a long time.  Since I watched you making martinis at least.”

“Fuck,” Eggsy breathed.  He had gotten pretty drunk that night, but he still remembered it, Harry’s longer fingers coming to rest over his around the cocktail shaker as he taught him to hold it just so.  Eggsy had wanted to touch Harry so much, and the thought that Harry had wanted it too was almost too much to take.  And then there was Harry’s voice, all crisp and proper and posh, saying cock like that- it was enough to make Eggsy lose what was left of his shyness.  “It’s big, isn’t it?  Your cock?” 

“A gentleman doesn’t brag,” Harry said, in a way that also said yes and it would wreck you.

“This ain’t exactly a gentlemanly setting, Harry,” Eggsy reminded him.  “Mine’s fucking spectacular.  See?  You wouldna known that if I hadn’t just told you.”

“I believe you,” Harry said warmly.  “Touch yourself for me, Eggsy.”

“Fuck,” Eggsy whined, stuffing his hand into his pajama bottoms.  They were all but soaked with pre-come, that was how much Harry was turning him on right then, and when Eggsy wrapped his fingers around himself he didn’t even need a little lube to smooth the way.  He didn’t bother taking his cock out, he just stroked himself under his pants and listened to Harry talk.  

“Do you know what else I’ve been thinking about for far too long?” Harry asked, and Christ he should run a phone sex line with a voice like that.  Eggsy’s cock got impossibly harder under his hand as Harry spoke.  “Sucking you.  Tasting you.  Making you cry for more of my mouth.”  

Eggsy was thinking about crying now.  Harry sounded so hot like that.  And imagining his cock in Harry’s mouth, Harry’s head bobbing between his legs, handfuls of that gorgeous hair running through his fingers, was unbelievable.  “Harry.  G-god,” he panted.

“You’re so limber, you gorgeous thing, I bet you could suck yourself for me if you tried.  Come in your own mouth like it’s mine.”

Eggsy didn’t say, that’s a nice thought but I think you may be overestimating my abilities, because he would say that to Harry when hell froze over- and it didn’t matter anyway because he was so close to coming.  He stripped along his cock roughly, driven higher and higher by the pictures Harry painted with his words, until he splattered all over his palm with a muffled shout. 

It took Eggsy a few moments to pull himself back together again, and when he did the first thing he heard was, “Are you all right?”  Harry’s voice was soft with laughter but heavy with arousal, and Eggsy couldn’t get over the thought that he'd done that to Harry. 

“Fuck no.  I’m a puddle.  You should see it.”

“I can imagine.” Harry sounded like it was the most beautiful thing he had ever pictured in his life.  Eggsy heard Harry’s breath stutter in a half groan, heard- faintly- the sound of flesh sliding over flesh and bed-springs creaking.  Harry was touching himself too. 

“Want you to come on me, Harry,” Eggsy said.  As nice as the image was, he felt caught between sexy and silly saying it like that- but the noise Harry made took it in the right direction.  He moaned softly once, and then again, voice drawing tight and snapping halfway through.  Eggsy couldn’t care less if he sounded stupid then, not when he got to listen to Harry come. 

Eggsy stripped off his pajama bottoms and tossed them aside while he listened to Harry’s labored breathing as he stroked himself through the aftershocks. 

“You’re kinda kinky, aren’t you Mr. Hart?” Eggsy said, still a little breathless himself.  “Didn’t expect that.”

Harry laughed softly.  “And what did you expect, Mr. Unwin?”

Eggsy didn’t know how to answer that, because- whatever he expected- it certainly hadn’t been Harry.  He could never in his wildest dreams have expected Harry Hart.   

*   *   *

If Eggsy had thought it was hard, Harry being so far away while Eggsy felt the way he did about him, he was in for a rude awakening- because it was so much worse now that he knew Harry felt the same way.

He wanted to really touch Harry, really see him, really have him close by- and the fact that he couldn’t drove Eggsy a little crazy for a while.  He ended up finally buying the vibrator he had never been willing to risk in the same house as Dean, and though Harry certainly seemed happy to talk Eggsy through using it the next time they both had a free night it was hardly a substitute for Harry inside him.  He was so on edge that he snapped at Harry over something stupid at least once a week and everyone else twice that, but even on his worst days he still caught himself daydreaming about Harry at the most awkward times.  He started looking into housing in the area, somewhere nearby where his mum and sister could live when Harry got back. 

That last one Eggsy kept very much to himself.  He figured if Merlin or anyone else noticed what he was doing his excuse would be that he needed his own space and didn’t want them to see him injured after a mission if he could help it, so he wasn’t worried about explaining it- but he knew that Harry would probably tell him it wasn’t a good idea to hope too hard for things that might never happen.

Harry would probably tell him a lot of things.    

For his part, Eggsy spent the next few months taking whatever he could get from Harry.  A part of him was almost glad that their current situation meant certain… limitations.  The phone Harry had given him couldn’t take pictures, for instance, and that was probably for the best.  Eggsy didn’t think the story of how he started sending dick pics to a legally dead ghost operative would be a particularly good one to tell future generations.  Eggsy did tell Harry that one, and Harry laughed, and how beautiful it sounded almost made up for the fact that Eggsy couldn’t kiss the smile off his face. 

Eggsy mostly buried himself in work and got the sense that Harry was doing the same.  Neither of them talked about the close calls they still had from time to time, but Eggsy knew they existed.  They were there in the long silence after a round of phone sex or even just a conversation, the one that came right before I love you, the words getting worn and familiar but never old.

The one that meant please don’t die before I see you again. 

*   *   *

One of Eggsy’s close calls came very close indeed. 

Looking back, Eggsy didn’t remember very much of that mission, just a bomb and the rush to get everyone who might be harmed by it out of the way in time.  Eggsy was pretty sure he had managed that, but the getting himself out part must not have gone quite so well because he woke up in Kingsman medical with Merlin leaning over him, looking the way Eggsy would have expected him to if they’d had to amputate his legs or something. 

Which, if that was the case, Eggsy decided they’d better make him some prosthetics at least as sick as Gazelle’s.

“What happened?” he asked thickly, his brain still fuzzy as hell.  “Am I okay?”

“You have a couple of bruised ribs,” Merlin replied, and that was a relief, sure, because Eggsy had had worse- but Merlin still had that look on his face, and it still had Eggsy a bit worried.  Merlin paused briefly, and then added, “If you needed some time off, Eggsy, you must know I would understand.”

Make that really worried.  “What?” Eggsy asked.  As much as he normally appreciated being put on the good drugs, Eggsy got the feeling that he wasn’t anywhere near lucid enough to be having this conversation- whatever this conversation was actually about.  He had some recuperation time to look forward to, what with his ribs and all, but it had been Merlin’s habit thus far to put him right back into action as soon as he was fit for it.  What had changed?

“We needed you after V-Day-” Merlin was saying- “we needed everyone and I stand by the decision to put you in the field straightaway, but it's been almost a year now and things are different.  With the anniversary coming up-”  

It took Eggsy a moment to realize that it would be one year since V-Day in not too long, and that sucked, but he still didn't get it.  "Seriously, Merlin, what's going on?"

Merlin fell silent for another moment that seemed to last forever.  Eggsy wasn’t thinking clearly enough to run through scenarios in his mind trying to figure out what the fuck Merlin was talking about here, but he was thinking clearly enough to get nebulously scared.  “Lancelot brought you back,” Merlin said slowly.  “And you… spoke.  You said Harry’s name.”

“Did I say anything else?” Eggsy was briefly, horribly afraid that he had blown Harry’s cover without even knowing it.  He told himself that he couldn’t have, that Merlin would be asking him very different questions right now otherwise. 

Merlin swallowed heavily. “That you loved him.”

“Ah.”  Eggsy swallowed too, his throat suddenly feeling parched.  He’d always known that the others would find out how he felt about Harry eventually- but he’d liked to imagine that it would also be when they found out that he was with Harry.  Having it become common knowledge that he loved Harry while Harry was gone and ostensibly dead was uncomfortable- but as long as Harry wasn’t compromised it was a discomfort that Eggsy could live with.  “Right.  Well.”  He cleared his throat.

“Eggsy, I had no idea your feelings for him ran so deep.  If I’d known, I might have-”

“Merlin, don’t worry about it.  You’ve been great.  And I’m… I’m dealing, okay?”  Merlin looked doubtful, so Eggsy repeated himself: “Okay?”

“Okay,” Merlin agreed at last. 

*   *   *

Eggsy took the time off, though, primarily to contemplate a close call much more serious than his relatively minor brush with death- because even though nothing had ultimately happened he had still probably come perilously close to saying something that would have let Merlin know that Harry was still alive after all.

Eggsy trusted Merlin more than he had ever trusted anyone in his life- he suspected that that was a natural byproduct of saving the world together.  He also suspected that Merlin wouldn’t have given any other agent time off because he’d had an- as far as Merlin knew- unrequited crush on his dead mentor and the anniversary of his death was coming up.  That whisper of favoritism went both ways.  If the secret had been Eggsy’s to tell Merlin would have known that Harry wasn’t dead months ago.  But Eggsy trusted Harry too.  He trusted as much today as he had a year ago that if Harry said Merlin couldn’t know then Merlin simply couldn’t know.

Eggsy found that he needed some time to get his head together and stop thinking of himself as a ticking time bomb.  He wanted this to be over, wanted to be able to trust himself and everyone else, wanted to not carry this burden.

More than that- more than anything- he wanted Harry back safe.

The anniversary of V-Day passed largely unremarked on while Eggsy was still on leave.  Plenty of people were taking time off to mourn loved ones, but Michelle went to work and beyond the occasional haunted look she sent Daisy’s way that appeared to be all there was to it for her.  Eggsy decided he might as well take his cue from his mother and get back into it, so that was what he did.

*   *   *

Given how much time Eggsy had spent thinking about it- Harry finally coming back, that was- it was perhaps a little odd that he hadn’t given much thought at all to how it would happen.  In all his fantasies, Harry was just back, no explanation of how or why required.  Perhaps that was because Eggsy really had no idea what would finally bring Harry back, and if he acknowledged that he would have to also acknowledge the possibility that it might never happen at all.

Eggsy returned from a mission- his first since he came back- and made his way to Arthur’s office to report to Merlin.  Eggsy was a bit sore and pretty tired, but it was a job well done and he was in a good mood- right up until he found Roxy sitting outside the office, white-faced and as miserable-looking as Eggsy had ever seen her.    

“Shit,” Eggsy said, suddenly afraid that somebody had gotten killed or something.  Who else had been out in the field?  Suddenly Eggsy couldn’t remember.  Besides Roxy and Merlin none of them were his particular friends, but he still didn’t want any of them to be dead.  “Is everybody okay?”

Roxy didn’t answer.  “I had no idea,” she told him instead, her voice painfully earnest.  She was shaking her head like she thought he was about to accuse her of something terrible, like he already had.  “None of us did, I swear it.”

“Okay, now you’re really starting to scare me.  Seriously, Rox, what the fuck is going on?”

Roxy didn’t answer, but her eyes kept darting towards Arthur’s office and Eggsy concluded that the answers to his questions would be through those doors, so he brushed passed Roxy and opened them.

“Wait, Eggsy, it’s-” Roxy cut herself off, and it didn’t much matter, because Eggsy already had one foot inside the office.  And there was Merlin, obviously pretty angry about something, and standing right there next to him was-

“Harry,” Eggsy breathed.  He stopped short. 

Harry didn’t look much like himself anymore.  He wasn’t in a suit, even- just a heavy jacket over a jumper and jeans, amazingly enough.  His hair was greyer at the temples than it had been, and it fell gorgeously over his forehead.  He even had a full beard on his face and a faint scar on the side of his head where Valentine’s bullet had grazed him.  He looked fucking stunning, not that any sight of Harry wouldn’t have been stunning to Eggsy after so long.  He remembered his last sight of Harry, bandaged and bruised and haggard-looking- and somehow willing to put everything at risk to tell Eggsy that he was proud of him.  Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.  His fingers curled into fists as he forcibly kept himself from reaching for Harry.

To Merlin, that reaction probably looked… like something very different.  “I’ll leave you two alone,” he said, casting a final dirty look in Harry’s direction before sliding out of the room. 

“Eggsy-” Harry started as Eggsy took one unsteady step forward, then another, closing the distance between them. 

When Eggsy’s fingers finally buried themselves in Harry’s jacket lapels, he made a noise that probably wasn’t very dignified.  He tugged Harry towards him and practically ran into Harry’s face lips first.  It wasn’t much of a kiss, clumsy and uncoordinated, and Harry huffed out a laugh against Eggsy's mouth and nuzzled him.  His arms curled up around Eggsy’s back and drew him into a hug instead.  That’s better, Eggsy thought, burying his face in the scarf around Harry’s neck.  “The beard tickles,” he laughed, the beard in question dragging across his skin as Harry pressed a kiss to his temple.

“My apologies,” Harry murmured.

“I could get used to it.”

“Please don’t,” Harry said.  He chuckled softly.  “I assure you I have every intention of shaving it off.”

Eggsy couldn’t rightfully say that he had missed this, not when he had never been in Harry’s arms before, never felt the warm huff of Harry’s breath across his ear or heard the rumble of Harry’s laughter so close that it seemed to resonate in his bones.  But God, it felt so right.

“I think Merlin is hoping you’ll finish me off for him,” Harry said.

“He’ll forgive you when he remembers that you didn’t have a choice.”

“Mmm.”  Harry kissed Eggsy’s temple again and rested his chin on the side of his face.  “I was under strict orders, certainly.  And I was worried about getting him involved.  Unfortunately those are arguments which would hold more water if I hadn’t told you that I was alive from the very beginning.”

“Well.  He’ll forgive you eventually, then.”  Eggsy tightened his grip on Harry.  “You are back, right?  For good?”

“Yes.  There was another traitor, much higher in our organization than this branch’s Arthur.  Having survived V-Day, he had set out to play both sides of the field by getting involved in certain developing criminal organizations.  I was under orders to… find him.”  Something in Harry’s voice suggested that his job had been to do more than ‘find’ the traitor.  “It took some time, but I did.”

“I don’t need details, Harry,” Eggsy said quickly.  Harry didn’t sound entirely happy about whatever he had done and they would probably have to talk about it eventually, but right then only one thing mattered.  “You’re back.  That’s all I need to know.”

Eggsy felt Harry stiffen a little.  “I do have to say this, though.  My superiors sent me back to be Arthur.  That was probably always their intention, though they didn’t tell me as much until they were ready to send me back.”

Harry was right about that.  If it had always been the plan to make Harry Arthur, it explained why Merlin had only ever taken on the job provisionally.  They’d been saving it for Harry all along- which meant that Eggsy got to keep Galahad after all.  He hadn’t realized how much he wanted that until right then.  And Harry as Arthur... it worked.  Eggsy nodded.  “Makes sense.”

Harry paused like he was waiting for something else, and Eggsy got that, he did.  They hadn’t gone into this expecting Harry to end up Eggsy’s boss, after all, and it could make things complicated down the line.  But right now Harry was back, and safe, and Eggsy wasn’t going to let anything keep them from at least trying to make it work.

So he just gave Harry a little smile and said, “Seriously.  It’s okay.  We’ll figure it out together.”

When Eggsy said ‘we’ and then ‘together’ Harry actually looked more uncomfortable rather than less.  “There is one other thing,” he said.  “Something I can’t… not say.”

“Yeah?”

“I need you to know that if you have changed your mind about… anything, it’s all right.  I will not hold you to things that you said while we were-”

“No,” Eggsy said, a little too quickly and far too loudly.  “I mean, uh-uh, Harry, no way.  I didn’t say nothing I didn’t mean.  It mighta been a little bit easier to say those things in the situation that we were in, but I don’t take back a single one of them.  And I still want to be with you.  Unless…”  Eggsy hesitated.  It struck him that, of the two of them, Harry was actually the one who was more likely to regret the things that he had said while he was away.  Having Harry to talk to had meant a lot to Eggsy, but those phone calls could well have been Harry’s only safe harbor.  It wouldn’t be too odd if he had said things that he’d never imagined he might have to live with.  Eggsy swallowed heavily.  “Unless you don’t.”

Harry was silent for a moment and Eggsy was afraid that Harry had changed his mind after all- but then Harry was kissing the top of his head fiercely.  "Of course I want that,” he growled into Eggsy’s hair before kissing him again, softer that time.  "I love you."

“I love your beard,” Eggsy said, laughing.    

Harry made a noise caught between laugh and a groan, and he tightened his grip on Eggsy.  “Nonsense,” he breathed against Eggsy’s ear, something almost indescribably fond in his voice.

“Harry,” Eggsy said, wrapping his arms around Harry’s middle and settling into his embrace.  “Come home with me.  I know things are complicated right now and it’s gonna be weird figuring out who’s going to live where for the next while and everything- but just come home, okay?  Please?”

“Home,” Harry murmured, resting his chin on the top of Eggsy’s head.  He made that word sound as though he wanted his home to be wherever Eggsy was as much as Eggsy did.  “I still have things to do here, I’m afraid, and they can’t wait.  And you’re meant to be heading out as soon as you report in, I know.  But I will come when I can, Eggsy.  I swear I will.”

“Good,” Eggsy said, snuggling up against Harry’s broad chest.

Harry seemed as content to simply hold Eggsy for a while as Eggsy was to be held, and that- Eggsy thought- was just as it should be.

*   *   *

Eggsy had formed the habit of sending his mum and Daisy on a little trip whenever he came back from a major mission.  How long the trip was and where they went depended on what they could fit around his mum’s schedule, but it was a system that worked relatively well for all of them.  Still, Eggsy sometimes found himself reluctant to let them go, torn between his worries that he might scare them after a nightmare- or even a stiff drink- and his fear of being left alone with his thoughts and the often-slim chance of getting a call through to Harry. 

But today he wanted to send them right off to their weekend with Aunt Lisa at the seaside.  Today there was no reluctance whatsoever in his mind to empty the house- and yet it seemed as though they were lingering like never before.  He felt like he had been helping them load the car for hours, and here they still were, producing more bags to take with them and bickering about how much food to bring.  Eggsy couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting or glancing toward the clock.   

“If I didn’t know better I’d think you wanted to get rid of us,” Aunt Lisa teased him from over by the fridge.

“Well,” Eggsy started.   

As if on cue, the doorbell rang.

Before Aunt Lisa could start looking vindicated and curious, both of which Eggsy fully expected her to do, he said, “I’ll just answer that,” and raced to the door.  He threw it open and- “Hi, H- oh.”

Given the opinions that Harry had expressed regarding the beard he had cultivated since V-Day, Eggsy supposed he should have expected Harry to have taken the time to shave it off and generally clean himself up before coming here- but God, he had not been prepared for it.  Harry, back in a perfect suit, with his hair clipped and styled and his cheeks as smooth and gorgeous as ever, was standing in his doorway like no time had passed at all since Eggsy had been his candidate. 

“Shit,” Eggsy said, taking a half stumbling step toward Harry.  “Uh.  Come in.”  He backtracked into the front hall, leading Harry in.  “Sorry about all the…” Changes in the décor.  Children’s toys on the floor.  Suitcases in the hallway.

Harry didn’t say anything, he just looked at Eggsy like he couldn’t get enough of the sight of him.  Eggsy closed the distance between them, resting a hand on Harry’s broad chest, and Harry leaned down, his forehead rubbing against Eggsy’s hairline. 

Eggsy heard a throat being cleared and carefully did not back away from Harry guiltily.  He just turned towards the source of the noise and found his mother, aunt, and sister all staring at him from the doorway to the dining room.

“Uh,” he said again.  “This is-” my friend?  My boyfriend?  My… everything?  Eggsy wasn’t sure.  “This is Harry.”

“Hi, Harry,” Aunt Lisa said, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks.

Eggsy’s mother’s eyes narrowed.  “It’s you,” she said.  “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up.”  Which answered the question of what, exactly, she thought Eggsy’s tailoring job actually was.  It wasn’t really much of a surprise that she’d seen this coming- or that a part of her had already expected Harry to be the other shoe.  “Thought you might’ve been dead.”   

“It was a close thing, a few times,” Harry said.  His face was impassive, but Eggsy had had nothing of Harry but his voice for almost a year and he had learned to read it very well.  Harry was about as rattled as he ever was when no one was armed. 

Michelle nodded, her lips drawn into a thin line.  Harry might have cleaned himself up, but he still looked haggard, exhausted down to his bones.  She had to realize that he was in no condition to fight with her about Eggsy- or worse, about Lee.

“Look, Mum,” Eggsy said.  “Please don’t-”

She held up a hand.  “I been thinking about this, and I have to say it.  My son has seemed much happier over the last year than I think I ever saw him before.  So.  I don’t know if I’ll ever like you, but I’m big enough to thank you for… whatever it is you’ve done.”  She cleared her throat again.  “Now then, we’re gonna get out of here and I’ll see you-” she glanced at Eggsy, then back to Harry- “both later.”  She gave Eggsy a kiss on the cheek and patted Harry awkwardly on the chest, and then she scooped Daisy up and carried her and the last of her bags out the door.

“Right,” Aunt Lisa said awkwardly.  She picked up the final piece of luggage and followed her sister out the door and to the car. 

Eggsy wasn’t sure what to say to Harry once they were finally alone again.  Sorry about that, seemed like the best thing, but when he looked at Harry he noticed that his eyes were glistening.  “You okay?”

Harry swallowed, looking away sharply.  “I suppose that’s as close to your mother’s blessing as I can expect to get.”

No way, Eggsy thought.  I’m gonna make you so much a part of my family it’s gonna make your head spin, Harry Hart.  Because it was suddenly unavoidably clear that every time Harry hadn’t allowed himself to be drawn into Eggsy’s personal life, it had never been because he didn’t want to be a part of it.  It had been because he wanted it too much.  But Eggsy wasn’t sure how to express that yet, wasn’t sure Harry was ready to hear it, so he just said, “Can I get you anything?”

Harry’s eyes had cleared by the time he looked at Eggsy again- but he still looked rather distant.  “I’m quite all right, Eggsy,” he said.  “But you’ve just come back from a mission yourself.  You shouldn’t feel you have to take care of me.”

I wanna take care of you, Eggsy thought.  No one ever has before, have they?  Eggsy didn’t say that either.  He wasn’t sure how Harry would take it, and anyway he thought it might be better to show him.  “I have, haven’t I?” Eggsy said instead.  “Well, I’m hungry and I’m ordering takeaway.”

Harry’s mouth twisted into a soft smile.  “There’s a place not far from here that you might like.”

“I know, Harry.  And I love it.  You already told me about it, remember?”  Harry had mentioned it over the course of one of their earliest phone conversations. 

“Oh.”  Harry stopped, then laughed quietly.  “Yes, I suppose I did.”

From the moment Harry appeared on Eggsy’s doorstep- perhaps from the moment he had returned to HQ and he had just hidden it better then- Harry hadn’t looked like he was really there with Eggsy, at least not completely.  That look just kept getting worse and not better.  “You’re home now,” Eggsy reminded Harry.  He snorted to himself.  “I guess it doesn’t look much like your home, does it?”

“No,” Harry agreed.  “But I do like it, Eggsy.  I’m just-”

“C’mere, sit down.”  Harry let Eggsy tug him to the couch and sit him down with a somewhat bemused expression.  “You can talk to me about it, you know.  Think of all the shit I’ve told you.”  Eggsy was still dealing with a lot of it- the memories of what he’d done in Valentine’s base, the difficulties he was having relating to the other Kingsmen, the habits he’d developed because of Dean that he still couldn’t seem to shake- but talking about it had helped.  He hated to think that he might not be able to do the same for Harry.  He hesitated briefly before reaching out to take Harry’s hand. 

Harry squeezed his fingers.  “I’m just not all here yet,” he admitted quietly.  He let out a long breath.  “I suppose I had to sort of… wall off a bit of myself.  Schedule a little time in a given day that I could spend talking with you.”

It stung, a little, to think of their conversations as just some kind of appointment Harry had felt bound by.  Eggsy tried to keep that reaction off his face, but it must have shown through anyway because Harry’s expression contorted. 

“I don’t mean it like that.  Those calls kept me sane, Eggsy.  Kept me me.  It just wasn’t always easy, making them separate from everything else I was doing.  Which was not… pretty… a lot of the time.  Sometimes the only way was to not let some things through.  And then coming back to this-” Harry’s eyes flicked over the room- “It’s disorienting, yes, but… you’ve never had to come back to an empty house that’s gathering dust because you’ve been away so long.  I thank God for that, because it’s so much worse when you do.  But I don’t know how to explain…”  He fell silent for a moment, then: “No, no, I do.  Because you know, I know you do.  You know exactly what it is to live one way for so long that even when you finally find something else you can’t quite believe that this is your life now rather than a momentary reprieve.  For a while it was like… it was like there were two versions of me.  I haven’t quite remembered how to be just one again yet.”    

Eggsy nodded, tightening his grip on Harry’s hand ever so slightly.  He did know what Harry was talking about- growing up the way he had, of course he did.  And- well, it wasn’t quite comparable, but in some ways there were two versions of Harry in Eggsy’s head too.  The one who had been his mentor, so brilliant and so much larger than life, the one Eggsy hadn’t yet realized he was falling in love with and wouldn’t have dared to reach for even if he had-and the one who loved Eggsy back and needed him back, the one Eggsy could touch but only in his mind because that version of Harry was so far away he hardly seemed real.

It had been easy to just be in Harry’s arms at HQ- perhaps too easy.  Eggsy hadn’t fully realized how dreamlike that reunion had been until this moment, until he was there on his knees if front of Harry and half sure that if he closed his eyes he’d open them to find that Harry was again reduced to a voice over the phone and nothing more. 

And at least Eggsy had been able to hang up and talk to his mother and play with his sister, go to work and train with Roxy and bother the tailors and have Merlin walk him through missions.  How much worse must it be for Harry, who had been so alone this past year?

Eggsy raised Harry’s hand to his lips and kissed his fingers, as he had been dreaming of doing for what felt like forever now.  A breath rattled out of Harry, but he didn’t speak again.  “I’m gonna order us some food, okay?  See if there’s anything you wanna watch on TV.”  He kissed Harry’s knuckles again before releasing his hand and standing up. 

When Eggsy came back from ordering what seemed like half the menu, Harry was watching the news with a somewhat vacant expression. 

“Do you really want to watch this?” Eggsy asked. 

Harry gave a kind of half-shrug. 

“Okay.”  Eggsy went through his small and primarily Disney-oriented DVD cabinet.  He found My Fair Lady, smiled, and put it on instead.  By the time the food arrived, the movie was just warming up and Harry looked a little more present. 

He took the carton and chopsticks Eggsy handed to him without complaint and started eating.  Eggsy sat down next to Harry and felt him slowly relax.  By the time they finished eating, Harry’s jacket was off and his feet were bare and resting beside Eggsy’s on the coffee table, and his arm was slung around Eggsy’s shoulders. 

“Do they fall in love in Pretty Woman too?” Eggsy asked when the movie was over.  It was a bit ambiguous, whether they had properly fallen in love in this one, but Eggsy had always liked to believe that they got together in the end- never more so than when he had referenced it to Harry that first day and seen him light up like Eggsy had given him the most unexpected and wonderful gift. 

“Oh,” Harry murmured, turning his face to kiss the top of Eggsy’s head softly.  “Yes.  Yes, they do.”

Eggsy smiled and leaned up, catching Harry’s lips with his. 

It took him a moment, as their mouths sealed, to realize that this was their first proper kiss.  At least, he wanted to think of it that way since their first had been a bit of a mess- so he kept it soft, sweet.  Harry’s arm around Eggsy’s shoulders tightened and drew him closer as Harry kissed him back, fingers coming up to cradle his neck and card gently through his hair.  Eggsy sighed against Harry’s mouth and after a few more exploring kisses he dipped deeper, tasting the inside of Harry’s mouth and making him groan.

The sound went right to Eggsy’s cock and- pressed flush against Harry’s side as he was by then- Eggsy guessed that Harry could probably feel it.  He broke away from Harry’s kiss swollen lips.  “You know it’d be fine, right?” Eggsy said.

“Hmm?” Harry asked. 

“If you’re not- you know- in the mood.  And not just now.  Any time.” 

He knew Harry wasn’t always.  When Eggsy got horny, Harry had always seemed more than happy to talk to him in that made-for-phone-sex voice, but he didn’t always get into it himself.  Eggsy had learned to hear in Harry’s voice whether he was hard or not.  Under the circumstances- the kind of exhausting, stress filled life Harry had been living- it wasn’t exactly odd, and Eggsy knew the statistics.  At Harry’s age, he just wasn’t going to be ready to go after the right word or look the way Eggsy was, and Eggsy didn’t want Harry to feel he had to fake it- not ever but especially not today. 

Eggsy had had so much time to think about this.  About him and Harry and everything he did and didn’t need.  So many opportunities to play the field over the last year had ended with him going home to call Harry instead.  Eggsy knew what he wanted and it was Harry.  And if that sometimes involved rubbing one out in the shower instead of having sex he was ready for that- more than ready, because he might get to go to Harry after and be in his arms and that was already so much more than he had had to get used to over the last year. 

Harry gave him a long look, and Eggsy wondered if all of it- every doubt Eggsy had ever had and then lost since their fight before Kentucky- was written across his face for Harry to read.  Harry’s smile went soft and he nodded slowly.  “Thank you.  But I am.”  Harry’s voice dropped low.  “If you are, my boy.”

“Fuck,” Eggsy said, and laughed breathlessly.  “If I wasn’t before…”

Harry’s smile broadened.  “Come here.”

Eggsy flushed a little.  In the old t-shirt and loose trousers he had put on when he got home, he didn’t exactly feel worthy of the way Harry was looking at him right then, so heavy and hungry- and with Harry in that suit, looking so gorgeous despite everything he had been through, he felt even less so. 

Like he could read that on Eggsy’s face too, Harry’s expression gentled further.  “Come here,” he said again, softly.  “Please.”

Eggsy swallowed heavily.  “How do you want me?”

Harry’s tongue flicked out over his lips.  “My lap,” he instructed. 

Eggsy nodded, moving to straddle Harry, his knees framing Harry’s thighs.  “Like this?” he asked, leaning over Harry to touch his face.

Harry’s hands came to rest on Eggsy’s thighs, and the sound that he made… Eggsy remembered what Harry had said about liking Eggsy’s size, and he certainly seemed to like the way Eggsy fit on top of him as they kissed.

Eggsy settled against Harry- and yeah, he was hard all right.  Eggsy groaned against his lips, the sound turning into a sigh as Harry’s hands slid up his hips to easily encircle his waist.

Eggsy brushed his fingers over Harry’s jaw and then he traced the same path with his lips.  He liked this, liked leaning down to kiss Harry.  Liked taking in the look of helpless affection on his face as he stared up at Eggsy.  Liked watching his eyes drift rapturously closed as Eggsy dragged his knuckles down his throat.

They kissed for a while longer, until Harry drew back a bit, nuzzling the side of Eggsy’s face and kissing his temple.  “May I-” he started.

“Fuck,” Eggsy breathed as one of Harry’s hands slipped under his shirt and skidded up his back while the other plunged low.  “Anything, Harry.”

Harry spread his hands, fingers splaying out over Eggsy’s bare shoulder blades and cupping Eggsy’s arse. 

“Mmm,” Eggsy managed, then, “Oh shit,” as Harry stood easily with Eggsy in his arms and then laid him back out on the couch, flat on his back.  “Wow,” he breathed.

Harry's eyes gleamed intensely as he bent to kiss Eggsy’s throat.

Eggsy made a noise that wasn’t exactly sexy- it was more like squawk than anything, but Harry didn’t stop what he was doing with his mouth, so Eggsy figured that Harry didn’t mind it.  Harry’s other hand snaked underneath Eggsy’s shirt again and he somehow contrived to peel it over Eggsy’s head in a single smooth moment, his lips coming back down to pepper kisses all over Eggsy’s jaw before they had left him for even a moment.  “Some kind of sex ninja, are you?” Eggsy grumbled.

Harry chuckled, and for a second the huff of his warm breath across Eggsy’s cheek was all Eggsy could feel, the crinkling of the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth was all Eggsy could see, and the cologne he’d patted on before coming here- not his usual as Eggsy remembered it but still nice- was all Eggsy could smell.

But then Harry's smile faded, and he hesitated briefly.  Eggsy wanted to encourage him, but there were only so many ways a man could say, You could do anything and I’d probably thank you for it and none of the more verbose ones were really possible with Harry that close.  Eggsy raised a hand and discovered that it was shaking.  He let it come to rest on Harry’s cheek, thumb sliding over shiny and reddened lips, and didn’t say anything at all.

Somehow, it seemed to be enough- because Harry laid a hand over Eggsy’s hand and pressed a kiss to his palm and then bent to his collarbone.     

Eggsy’s fingers slid into Harry’s hair as he felt Harry settle in for the long haul, kissing with slow purpose down his chest.  Eggsy loved this- Harry’s weight on top of him, how he managed to cover Eggsy entirely, the fucking witchcraft of his mouth as he found Eggsy’s nipple and did things that threatened to make him wail.

Eggsy had gone from interested to hard as a rock the moment he climbed into Harry’s lap, and by the time Harry’s hand dragged down his stomach and dipped into his pants Eggsy felt embarrassingly close to the edge- or he would have been embarrassed, if those weren’t Harry’s fingers wrapping around him, stroking him with a kind of leisurely interest.  Eggsy whined softly and nudged hips up and into Harry’s touch.

He felt Harry’s soft sigh against his chest.  “How many times can you come for me?” he asked quietly.

“Shit,” Eggsy said.  “Tonight?  Probably just the once.”  Being with Harry made it easy enough to forget, but he’d had a rough couple of days and he wasn’t exactly at his best.  But he couldn’t have Harry not knowing that he’d be able to do a lot better under more… optimal circumstances, fuck, whatever Harry wanted.

Harry nodded, kissing Eggsy’s hipbone were it stuck out above his waistband.  “Bed, then?” he asked.

“Yes please,” Eggsy said.  The bed that had been Harry’s, was his, could be theirs at some point in the future.  Oh yes, that was exactly where he wanted to be. 

Harry stood smoothly and pulled Eggsy up after him, tugging him up the stairs.

It was Harry who hit the bed first, landing flat on his back and letting Eggsy crawl over him.  He made such a pleased sound when Eggsy settled on top of him again, one arm twining easily around his waist.  Eggsy found one of Harry’s hands, stretching it out above their heads and threading their fingers together.  Harry’s other hand slid down Eggsy’s back and Eggsy caught and gripped it, pulling it above Harry’s head too.  Harry was still completely dressed and if Eggsy was going to remedy that Harry was going to have to stop touching him for a moment or two.   

Harry froze when Eggsy’s fingers wrapped around his surprisingly fine-boned wrist.  Eggsy watched him carefully, making sure he wasn’t freaking out or even just uncomfortable.  After all, Eggsy didn’t know everything that Harry had been through over the last year and he probably never would.  But Harry’s eyes were as dark and hot as Eggsy had yet seen them.

“Keep still for me, okay?”  Eggsy’s mouth was dry. 

Harry nodded gravely and Eggsy released his hands with a reluctance that only lasted until he had gotten Harry’s shirt off.   

He was as toned and scarred and beautiful as Eggsy had imagined he would be.  Eggsy contented himself with just pressing his lips to one or two of those marks.  There would be time to explore, time to learn Harry’s body as well as his own, time for everything.  For now, though, all Eggsy wanted was to make Harry feel good- as good as he made Eggsy feel.

He slowed, sliding Harry’s belt free and undoing his trousers.  Harry obligingly lifted his hips when Eggsy moved to strip them off- but otherwise he kept still, just like Eggsy had asked. 

Once he had Harry naked Eggsy went still for a moment, just taking him in.  Harry’s cock was long and thick and gorgeous, and after looking his fill Eggsy reached for him again.  Harry’s breath came ragged and he groaned softly as Eggsy touched him, stroked him, but he didn’t speak.  Eggsy could tell from the way Harry’s hips twitched despite his obvious efforts to stay still and the firmness of Harry’s cock under his hand that Harry was enjoying himself- and Eggsy couldn’t be more pleased to savor all the sensations at his disposal for the first time.  But after so long with Harry’s voice being the only thing connecting them, Eggsy didn’t feel quite right when Harry wasn’t talking.  He wanted to draw him out. 

Eggsy flicked his eyes around the room, feeling a teasing grin pull at his lips.  “You didn’t tell me what you thought of how I redecorated in here.”

Harry didn’t take his eyes off Eggsy for even a second, and his voice sounded like he’d swallowed gravel.  “Respectfully, Eggsy, fuck the décor.”

Eggsy laughed- giggled was actually closer to what he did, but Eggsy thought he could probably be forgiven for that, given the giddy relief that had been coursing through him ever since Harry showed up at HQ that morning- and Harry smiled.

He kept smiling as Eggsy bent lower still and nipped at his hip.  “What d’you want, Harry?” Eggsy asked.  He felt like he had a feast in front of him and far too many options to properly know where to start.

“You,” Harry said simply.

Eggsy considered pressing for a better answer, because he knew Harry had one in him- but he remembered what Harry had said about having to divide himself into parts in order to make it all work and decided that it was entirely reasonable if Harry couldn’t do that right now.  And then he remembered how automatically Harry had yielded when Eggsy took over and told him what to do.  Eggsy knew from dozens of phone calls that Harry liked telling Eggsy what to do just as much, but there would be time for that too.  Maybe what Harry actually needed right now was to feel and not think.  Eggsy could do that for him.  He sometimes thought he could do anything for Harry. 

But that brought him back to being at a feast and not knowing what to eat first.  Harry’s cock was right there, gleaming and so hard, and Eggsy’s mouth was fairly watering for it.  His fingers were still encircling it lightly, and Eggsy stroked Harry again, once, slow.  He concentrated on all the things a part of him had never completely believed he’d ever get to have- the silken heat of Harry’s cock between his fingers, the melting look of desire in Harry’s eyes, the heady smell of Harry’s arousal on the air.

He nosed closer, just letting his lips come to rest on Harry’s cock for a moment before he let himself taste, tongue flicking out across the shaft.

Even then the relative quiet persisted- Harry gasping softly and nothing more. 

“Let me hear you, love,” Eggsy instructed softly.  “Don’t have to be poetry, just…”  He didn’t think Harry was naturally reserved in the bedroom any more than he was.  He would have Harry helplessly uttering every thought that came into his head if at all possible; they could work up to that.  Right now he just didn’t want Harry stifled because he wasn’t feeling particularly clever. 

Harry sighed out, “Oh, Eggsy,” and then sucked in another breath.  “Feels good.”  He reached down, trembling fingertips tracing the line of Eggsy’s face.  “Everything about you feels good.”

Eggsy made a noise low in his throat, Harry’s praise settling as warm as ever in his gut.  “We’ll see about that,” he said.

“Will we indeed?"  Harry's voice was warm.  "What precisely did you have in mind?”

“Still thinking about that,” Eggsy replied.  “More of this, to start.”  He returned his attention to Harry’s cock. 

“Christ,” Harry breathed when Eggsy finally wrapped his lips around the head of Harry’s cock and sucked.  “You are so beautiful.”

Such as he could, Eggsy smirked around his mouthful and took Harry further into his mouth.  He had no problem putting on a bit of a show, even though Harry was very distracting.  Eggsy loved of the weight of Harry on his tongue, and the taste of him… Eggsy gave a soft moan, which got one out of Harry in return.

“I have thought about this,” Harry said, tone dark and full of promise. 

I just bet you have, Eggsy thought as he relaxed his throat to get Harry deeper still before backing off again, knowing he made a pretty picture with his lips stretched wide like that.  Worth the wait?  Eggsy didn’t say that either.  He was going to make sure it was. 

Eggsy smoothed his tongue over the underside of Harry’s cock, lavishing his attention on the tip as he worked his fingers over the rest of Harry.  With his free hand, Eggsy fondled Harry’s balls lightly, his spit collecting there and getting them nicely slick.  Eggsy’s fingertips slid back and brushed over Harry’s hole.  Harry parted his legs further and Eggsy realized that Harry would let Eggsy fuck him if that was what he wanted. 

And he did want to, was the thing.  It wasn’t something they had talked about in any real detail, even though Harry had always made it clear that everything was on the table.  That made it all the more attractive, somehow- like it was something that was just for them now, not them thousands of miles apart and quietly terrified that they would never be closer and not admitting it out loud. 

But... that was something Eggsy thought perhaps best saved for later- a gift he wanted Harry to give him when they could both fully appreciate it.  He didn’t want it to be something that just happened because Harry was so desperate to connect that he would let Eggsy do anything. 

So Eggsy just sort of teased at Harry’s hole a bit more, sucking all the while, and then he drew back, pulling off Harry’s cock and letting his hands to come to rest on Harry’s thighs. 

He rubbed gently, body hair prickling faintly under his thumbs.  “Can I ride you?”

Harry’s breath stuttered.  “Y-yes.”  It was impossible to tell if he wanted that more or less than he wanted Eggsy inside him- and that was all right because Eggsy didn’t know either.  What he knew was that he had fingered himself imagining Harry inside him, fucked toys into himself listening to Harry say it was him inside him, and Eggsy felt like he had been waiting for this since he saw Harry outside that police station.

Eggsy let his hands drag up Harry’s body, relishing the way Harry arched faintly into his touch, and he didn’t pause until he had Harry’s face in both hands.  “Let’s see how good I feel then,” he said, and smiled.

“You will be the death of me, my boy,” Harry said warmly.

Eggsy’s smile widened.

He drew back from Harry at last, sitting back on his haunches.  Harry watched avidly, like he was enjoying the show.  Eggsy tried to indulge him, but there was only so sexy he could make wriggling out of the rest of his clothes and kicking them aside.  He got one foot caught his pants and Harry laughed, the look of unmistakable adoration on his face taking any sting out of it.

Eggsy laughed too, laughed and straddled Harry to better kiss him again.   

He kissed the smile right off Harry’s face, at last.  He let out a whine muffled by Harry’s lips when he settled properly and felt Harry’s cock, still a little wet at the tip, bump against him.  “Ready?” he asked Harry.

Harry’s voice was tight when he spoke, but his eyes were no less warm.  “I had… equipment in the bedside table drawer,” he said.  “Unless you got rid of-”

“I didn’t,” Eggsy said, stretching out to retrieve Harry’s lube. 

Harry’s little stash had been rather a mixed discovery for Eggsy- one salvaged primarily by the knowledge that Harry was not dead.  At the time, all Eggsy had known about Harry’s feelings for him was that he had been willing to disobey orders to keep certain things from remaining unsaid between them.  At the time, Eggsy hadn’t even been sure Harry liked other men.  What Harry kept in his bedside table had made it look pretty likely that he did, and even then Eggsy had entertained a few listless fantasies about being the one to utilize the contents of that drawer with Harry, but he hadn’t actually believed it would ever happen. 

“Condoms, Harry?” he asked to avoid getting too caught up in the past.  Eggsy had placed a few there himself, largely on impulse.  He hadn’t ever made a habit of bringing people back here with his mum just down the hall and everything, and once he and Harry had made certain declarations it had been impossible to work up any enthusiasm for anyone else.  At any rate, Eggsy knew he was clean and he was pretty confident that Harry was too.

Sure enough, Harry said, “Not necessary, but it’s entirely your choice.”

Eggsy thought about it and decided to use the condom.  It made cleanup easier.  “Anyway, I gotta save something for later, don’t I?”

“As if I could tire of you,” Harry said warmly, but he took the condom readily enough when Eggsy handed it to him. 

Eggsy started lubing up his fingers and then came back to Harry, kissing him soundly.  He kept kissing Harry as he reached behind himself, pushing one finger in with little ceremony.  It stung, but Eggsy wriggled his finger a bit and kept going.  He knew it didn’t do to rush, but he wanted to get to the main event already.  He added a second finger, trying to make his body relax, and groaned against Harry’s lips. 

“Are you-” Harry started, and he seemed to be able to feel it in how Eggsy’s body fitted against his own.  “Oh.  Let me see.”

Eggsy broke the kiss and nodded weakly.  He moved, changing his angle so Harry could watch him opening himself up.  Having Harry’s eyes on him helped, made touching himself feel better, hotter.

“Beautiful,” Harry said, and Eggsy felt his fingers just sink.  He was still tighter inside than he really ought to be- Harry was not a small man by any means- but he wanted Harry in him right the fuck now.  The sense of having waited for Harry long enough was getting overpowering. 

“Here now,” Harry said quietly.  “Let me-”

But he didn’t do anything.  It took Eggsy a second to realize that though Harry had been far from passive, he’d barely moved since Eggsy had asked him to keep still.  A heat started in Eggsy’s throat, heating him all the way up, and he stretched his fingers out a little to feed that new warmth.  “Yeah, Harry,” he said.  “You can-”

Once he had permission, Harry sat up.  He repositioned himself until one of his fingers could slide into Eggsy beside his own.  Suddenly a vaguely uncomfortable means to an end become awesome in its own right.  “Fuck, Harry,” Eggsy said, his head rolling back.  Harry’s finger was slick.  When had he had found time to lube up?  Did Eggsy even care?  They were pressed so close together, and God, Harry’s hands…

“Want you in me.  I need-”

“Eggsy-” Harry sighed out, kissing the side of his face.

“I’ll go slow, Harry, I-”

“Shh,” Harry whispered, a slight tremor in his voice.  “Whatever you want.”  He kissed Eggsy softly and lay back, his cock arching up against his stomach.  Eggsy rolled the condom on him and slicked his cock before straddling his hips again.  Then Eggsy reached back and lined Harry up, guiding Harry’s cock to his hole and waiting for that give.  When Eggsy finally felt it… it was hard to breathe for the pressure and the heat of Harry inside him, and he was only in to the tip. 

“Oh fuck.”  Eggsy did like he promised and took his time, lowering himself onto Harry’s cock in almost painfully gradual increments.  He felt like he was being split open, like time slowed to a crawl until he was full seated on Harry’s hips. 

Eggsy’s head canted back and he gave himself a moment to adjust, to breathe.

“Hey, Harry,” he said at last.  Harry was motionless underneath him, and he must have been half-crazy for more by then.  Eggsy certainly was.  “Touch me.”

Harry didn't need to be told twice.  His hands alighted on Eggsy’s thighs and then dragged up to encircle his waist again.  Eggsy rocked against Harry.  What pain he’d been feeling faded and then everything was just heat and fullness.  He started to move in earnest, lifting up and bearing back down, but before long even that wasn't enough.   

“You can-” Eggsy started, and tore his eyes open only to see Harry staring up at him, lips slack.  Eggsy doubted that Harry thought he had been celibate over the past year, and indeed he hadn’t- but looking at him now Eggsy could see that Harry had.  He could see, too, that once Harry abandoned the rigid control he was exerting over himself this wouldn’t last much longer- which was all right because Eggsy wasn’t sure he would either once Harry got going.  “You can move,” he said.  “And move me, just- fuck-”

Harry’s grip tightened fractionally around Eggsy’s waist.  It was a little uncertain at first, a little fitful, but everything soon evened out, Harry lifting Eggsy like he weighed nothing, hips snapping up in relentless counterpoint. 

“Fuck,” Eggsy said again.  He bent to kiss Harry but broke off when a particularly deep thrust made him cry out.  His fingers curled into fists around the sheets above Harry’s head and he moaned as Harry kissed his neck and chest and fucked up into him hard.    

Eggsy couldn’t tell if he was getting close, not until he said, “Eggsy, I’m-”

“Yeah?”

“Come with me- come-”

“Oh.”  Eggsy loosened his grip on the sheets and found his cock, jerking himself roughly.  It didn’t take much- just a few frenzied touches and Harry slamming home with bitten off curse- and Eggsy was coming, splashing all over Harry’s stomach and his own hand.  “Fuck,” he breathed, and collapsed on Harry’s chest.

One of Harry’s hands rose up, splaying across Eggsy’s back and holding him close as he pressed up into him a few more times, the aftershocks of his own orgasm working him deep.

Eggsy couldn’t talk for a while, couldn’t do anything but lie against Harry’s chest and try to breathe.

Harry recovered a little quicker, gathering Eggsy in his arms and sitting up.  Eggsy went weakly, meeting Harry’s gaze as Harry touched his face, fingers stroking from temple to chin.  Harry’s expression was so full of affection- and joy- that it was hard to speak.  “Better?” Eggsy managed at last.    

Harry pressed their foreheads together.  “Home now,” he murmured.

Eggsy nodded.  He wrapped his arms around Harry’s shoulders and just let himself cling. 

*   *   *

Later, after they'd both cleaned up and Harry was dozing, Eggsy sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the phone he'd held on to for a year.  He wondered whether he ought to get rid of it.  In the end, he stowed it away in the back of a drawer- something to keep, to look back on more fondly some times than others, to hopefully never use again. 

On his other phone, Eggsy received a message from Roxy:

You two have some explaining to do. 

They certainly did, and not just to Roxy.  They would have to talk to a lot of people about this.  They would have to get at least some idea of who was sleeping where long term for when Eggsy’s mum and Daisy got back.  They would have to figure out a great many things, but those things didn’t matter right then.  What mattered- Eggsy thought as he pressed up against Harry's side and felt Harry's arm curl around his shoulders- was that Harry was right; he was home now.

They both were.