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"I'd like to remind you, you're turning fifty in less than a month and the boy is hardly out of primary school." Merlin adjusted his glasses and looked down at Harry. "And also, but most importantly, I hate pizza."
"Nonsense." Harry smoothed his hair back, deciding on whether or not to wear his glasses. They do add a certain modern air to his face, he supposed. "Everyone loves pizza. You're not that much of a snob."
"You're missing the point."
Harry briefly stopped his primping and glanced back at him. “Have you become lactose intolerant? Should I prepare to be concerned?"
"We've ordered from that damn restaurant every night this week--“
“--It's called being a loyal customer."
"And what exactly is mooning over their delivery boy called?"
"I don't know what you're going on about and I don't appreciate what it is you’re insinuating.” Harry turned to meet Merlin's unfairly harsh glare and greeted it with one of his own much more superior looks. "And I did a background check. He's twenty-five."
Merlin didn't look as impressed as he should have. "He's been arrested."
Harry should have known Merlin's obsessive need to know everything about everyone would extend to the world outside of Kingsman. The temptation to ask if Merlin checked on the chef as well was knee buckling.
"He's never been tried." He dismissed the allegation easily. Petty crimes. Hardly serious.
Merlin groaned loudly, crumpling as only a man like Merlin could, which was to say very little. Inside, though, Harry knew Merlin was clutching at his once luxurious dark hair that had sadly passed many years prior.
"If I have to eat one more slice of grease soaked pepperoni pizza because you're enamored with a pretty face," Merlin said slowly, eyes clenched shut in what Harry assumed to be a motion related to gathering what little humanity he had left. "I will shoot you in your hopeless head and no one will ever look for your corpse, let alone find it."
"I think you're overreacting."
"I've gained a quarter of a stone, Harry." Merlin looked down at his waist in despair, gently touching his stomach. "I'm disgusting."
"All that sitting behind a computer will do that to a body."
Harry smoothed his lapels than thought better of it and shrugged off his suit jacket instead. He started undoing his cuffs.
Bared forearms were known to be quite alluring.
Merlin folded his arms in front of his chest. "You're a good friend."
"As are you, dear."
There was a knock at the door. The familiar two then three pattern knocks. Harry's pulse sped up. He looked one last time in the mirror and then flashed a grin at Merlin before making his way to the first floor.
"And for the love of God," Merlin shouted down the stairs, Harry horribly relieved that the shop was well passed closing and no other agent had been assigned to this mission. "If you don't make a move on him, I will. And I'll send you all the filthy pictures possible for your head to implode from jealousy."
Harry tried to remember if the glass of the tailor shop was sound proof.
Harry paused before opening the doors. He took a deep breath and tried to settle his nerves. He was nervous. A month ago he was undercover in a Russian prison and had hardly batted an eye.
Now his palms were sweating.
Awful. Just awful.
Harry cleared his throat and swung the door open.
"You come here often, bruv?" Eggsy leaned against the doorframe, pizza in one hand and a sly grin showcasing the most adorable dimples Harry had ever been witnessed to. He felt himself swoon and by some magical force beyond his control, Harry managed to stay upright while also holding onto his dignity.
Eggsy's eyes slowly ran along the length of Harry, starting from his shoes, which he'd shined merely an hour ago, and pausing on Harry's arms before meeting his eyes.
Oh yes. Alluring indeed.
Harry fought the ridiculous urge to preen.
"Only when I know you'll be here." Harry smirked, truly smirked. The kind of smirk he used on a certain prince to convince him to take him back to his room and not shoot him in the head with a .45 Smith & Wesson. All faux-swagger and the bleeding hope it would work.
Eggsy blushed, shifting the box in his hands.
Harry felt himself fall a little deeper into the hole he'd dug for himself.
Cute. Stunningly cute. He wanted to squeeze this boy in his hands and ruin him in filthy ways. Horrible, filthy, cock tingling ways that would leave both of them in need of a hot shower.
He could practically hear Merlin's impatience through the ceiling.
"You order a lot of pizza for working in a place like this." Eggsy said lightly, eyes idly searching the dark showroom of the shop behind Harry, dimly lit by the lights upstairs.
"Measuring the waistline of the aristocracy is awfully strenuous."
Eggsy laughed. His eyes sparkled and Harry hated himself for comparing them to stars. Truly despised himself.
"You're fucking funny for a tailor." Eggsy stepped closer until there was only one step separating them. "Fit too."
"You're quite the flatterer." Harry did not blush no matter how hot his face abruptly was. It was lying of course. "Thank you though."
Eggsy shrugged. "Just speakin' the truth, mate."
"Do you often compliment your customers like this?" Harry asked, blurting it as if he was not an expert in being suave and understated and a master of what he had previously thought all social aspects of life and was instead a flustered virgin speaking to the first boy he'd ever liked. He hadn't been that since he was sixteen and he was not about to go back to it.
He wanted to hide his face from society. Perhaps die in a cave somewhere. Or even worse, never order pizza again.
Eggsy smiled up at him, melting a little. Less the snarky young confident man and shifting into someone softer.
"Nah. Not all of them."
"Oh." Harry said. Intelligent as always.
Eggsy, the sweet boy that he was, laughed softly. Breathy, even. Harry will undoubtedly replay the sound in his mind until he dies of old age.
Eggsy handed the pizza to him. Extra large. Pepperoni and half with anchovies.
Harry paid him, giving what he knew to be an eyebrow raising tip. As if reading his mind, which Harry could only hope the boy wasn't capable of or else Eggsy might refuse to take Harry's orders--perhaps justifiably slap him a few times too--Eggsy looked at the money and arched one fine eyebrow.
"Bit much, yeah?"
Harry refused to blush again and willed his traitorous body to obey him. "Nonsense. You were prompt and cordial. I couldn't ask for more."
Eggsy looked at Harry as if he knew that wasn’t completely true. “You sure about that?"
Harry swallowed. A silence full of promise and ‘almost’s swelled between them, the box in Harry's hands a steadying heat and keeping him warm from the night chill. His tongue awkward in his mouth for perhaps the first time in his life.
Eggsy nodded. A small little smile playfully dancing on his lips. Harry wanted to bite him.
Eggsy moved, walking backwards down the steps of the shop. "See you tomorrow night, yeah?"
"With anchovies and all." Harry managed.
"Funny, Harry." He was grinning with his hands behind his head.
Before Harry could close the door, Eggsy called out to him.
"You might want to tell the bloke upstairs I got my eye on someone else.” Eggsy winked. “Don't want to get his hopes up or nothin'."