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When Eggsy moves in, a lot of stuff has to move out to make room. The attic space has boxes that have been collecting dust since the 1990s. Sneaky, Eggsy takes a peek, here and there. Somethings are what you'd expect- a rugby shirt from Eton, a chipped mug that has King George the Sixth's face on it, the kind of crap an international spy would pick up on travels, more crap (of the generic, homeland variety), and then something curious. “What's this?” Eggsy sticks his head out of the attic and holds out his arm, passing something to Harry, who is drinking tea in his housecoat, slightly worried about the goings-on in his crawl space.
Harry takes the thing and flips it around a few times, contemplating the plastic object. “A cassette tape. I know you've seen them before. You aren't that young.”
“I am!” Eggsy pouts. He'd rather be young than ignorant. “But why does your cassie tape say Guilty Pleasures in Merlin's handwriting?”
“How do you know what Merlin's handwriting looks like?”
“I'm a spy. I'm very attentive.” The blood is rushing to Eggsy's head. Maybe he should come down and goad an answer out of Harry face to face.
“Go find the thing that this fits into and you'll have your answer.” Harry smirks in a gentlemanly way that is not a smirk. It is a pleasant smile that slants sideways. And makes him look stupidly handsome.
Jerk.
A bit more digging and Eggsy unearths a mountain of cassie tapes and big, black rectangle that says Sony Walkman. Triumphant, he jumps out of the attic and goes to find Harry, who is in the drawing room, sipping tea with one hand and holding his pair of platinum Bose headphones in the other. “Come here, dear boy.” He gestures to the armchair with the floral print. It's Regency, Harry explained, not hideous. Sure, Harry.
Eggsy sits and they trade the clunky Walkman for the headphones. Harry puts the headphone tip into the Walkman, hits a button that makes the Walkman open like a muppet mouth, and then slots the Pleasure tape in. He snaps it shut and hits another button.
“Don't you! Forget about me!” The Walkman sings, scratchy and warped and amazing, “I'll be alone! Dancing, you know it, baby!” Harry presses something that makes the song revolt into a dinosaur screech before it starts again: “Will you stand above me?” Eggsy looks up at Harry, happy to be here with him, sharing something stupid, “Look my way? Never love me?” Eggsy frowns.
Harry turns it off. “Awful, I know.” Harry wraps up the cord of the headphones and unplugs them from the Walkman.
Eggsy watches Harry put the headphones away and come back with the Walkman and cassie tape and before Harry can ask Eggsy to put them back in the attic, Eggsy blurts out: “So, that's Merlin's sex music?”
Impeccable, unflappable Harry sputters. “Pardon me? No, it is not.”
“Then why does he call it his Guilty Pleasure?” Eggsy grins. He has something to hold over Merlin now. Eggsy is going to get his pick of missions- he's already forming a plan to take Roxy to Canada and daring her to stay in an ice bed in an ice hotel.
“Because, my sweet, tone deaf darling, the songs on this tape are pop songs. In the eighties Merlin was very pretentious and would only listen to the classics. Beethoven, Faure, Debussy-”
“Beatles, Rolling Stones, classics, gotcha.” Eggsy winks.
Harry is a gentleman so he doesn't roll his eyes, but it's a very near thing. “The eighties, sweetheart, not the sixties.” Eggsy looks like he's going to ask the difference, so Harry goes on: “I used to make mix tapes; this is a mix tape,” he holds up Merlin's Guilty cassie tape, “and so my best friends would make them for me in return. I used to put movie quotes on them. This Walkman is the best on the market, see? It has a record button-”
“Because you didn't have phones.” Eggsy totally gets it know.
Harry sighs. “Yes. Our music and telephones were separate entities. And because it was fun. When the Chunnel opened we drove to Provence to buy wine, well, that was our cover anyway, and I had a whole box of mix tapes saved up. Including one your mother and father made, thanking me.” Now Harry is the one grinning.
Eggsy takes the bait. “For what?”
“Well, it would be unbecoming and inappropriate to share the full details, but I did make a tape for your father to play for your mother and the result is sitting right before me.” Oh, he looks so proud of himself.
“You made my dad a sex tape.”
“Language, Gary Unwin!” Harry grimaces. Eggsy tries not to laugh.
“I mean a guilty pleasure cassie tape, Harry.”
“Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. A gentleman never tell about conquests, private matters, or dealings.” Harry sniffs. “But yes.”
“Will you make me a sex tape?” Eggsy jumps up and wraps his arms around Harry's waist and gives Harry his very best puppy eyes.
Harry kisses his nose and then his lips. “Of every variety, my dear.”
((Every time Harry is away, Eggsy goes into the attic and listens through a new tape. He's found them labeled with all sorts of funny titles and in all sorts of handwritings- Percival's (though he has to ask about his one because they've never met), many from Merlin, various Kingsmen, and the real treasures are the ones that say From Lee. His dad had pretty great taste in music. Terrible, but great. Bopping along to dad's mix tapes, dancing a bit without hitting his head on the roof beams, that becomes Eggsy's guilty pleasure.))
((Harry finds an Ipod, rose gold and engraved From Eggsy in his coat pocket as he settles into a private flight to a mission in South America. Turning it on, it's filled with playlists, each with a title more ridiculous than the last. Until he gets to the very bottom where there are two, in this order: Come Home Safe or Else and more classically Eggsy: I<3U. He plays that one first.))