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Chapter Text

Before he even grasps the concept of words, his parents have impressed upon him how precious the tiny lines on his wrist are. They are a deep, comforting shade of blue—different from his mother’s and father’s cheerful yellow—and pulse along with every beat of his heart. When he feels alone in his crib, he watches the rapid up and down of his blue lines until his eyes drift close.

The moment the squiggles of blue lines under his skin begin to untangle and give the first hint of forming into legible words, his parents bring him over to the nearest watch shop to get a tiny little watch for him to wear over it. He is three.

“It’s your secret to keep,” they say. “No one’s allowed to see it unless you let them.”

Eggsy nods his head even though he doesn’t understand why. He allows himself to be distracted by the shine of his mother’s yellow hair and the gleam of his father’s smile as they hold his hands while walking back from the shop. The strap of the watch itches. He wants to take it off, but his parents look so proud of him so he keeps it on for them.

The second hand moves so much more slowly than he is used to seeing his blue lines pulse. He takes the watch off each night after so that the pulse of his blue lines can lull him to sleep.

---

Eggsy is six, going on seven, when a strange man in a suit turns up at the door. His mother invites the man in, and they chat for a bit while Eggsy plays with a snow globe on the floor.

All of a sudden, his mother starts crying, and Eggsy wants to be angry at the man but the man in the suit looks sad, too. He walks over to Eggsy and crouches down in front of him.

“What’s your name, young man?” the man asks, and looks at him with eyes like hot chocolate.

“Eggsy.”

The man hands him a round metal trinket on a piece of black, blue, and pink ribbon, and tells him to take care of his mother. He gives Eggsy’s shoulder a firm squeeze before walking off without another word.

Eggsy remembers this day as the Christmas when his father stops coming home.

He remembers the man as the person who somehow knew the secret on Eggsy’s wrist even though he was wearing his watch the whole time.

‘What’s your name, young man?’

---

Some years later Eggsy learns, while watching primetime telly, that the words on his wrist—his secret—are the first words that he will ever hear from his soulmate, the first words that his soulmate will say to him. He thinks of the man in the suit who knew his secret words and asks his mother if soulmates are supposed to be adults, if they’re meant to replace his father.

She looks at him with large, frightened eyes and asks him why he wants to know.

Eggsy understands immediately that something is wrong, that soulmates aren’t supposed to be men in suits who look older than his mother, so he tells her instead that he doesn’t want a soulmate if he doesn’t have a father. He tells her that if a soulmate is supposed to be somebody that is exactly what he needs, then shouldn’t they appear after his father stopped coming home?

His mother hugs him to her side and smothers his hair with soft, butterfly kisses. He obediently wraps his short arms around her waist and ignores the fact that his hair grows damper with every passing second.

The words on his wrist are generic enough. It’s probably just luck that the man in the suit knew what to say. He will keep an eye out for other people who ask his name. He knows that the man in the suit won’t be the last person to say the words on his wrist.

He feels the medal acutely under the fabric of his shirt.

---

He meets a lot of new people who ask for his name, but nobody says it the right way or calls him ‘young man’ again. He goes through a number of watches as he grows older until he settles on one with a large, round face and soft, worn leather straps that he bought from a travelling salesman that had just returned from Asia. He’s not sure why he bought it, but there was something very compelling about how it says ‘Gary’ on the back, so he forked out what’s left of his allowance for the month.

It’s one of his more expensive purchases that he never once regretted, somehow.

---

Holborn Police Station is a rather familiar building—Eggsy can navigate it blindfolded. He’s been in and out for a number of petty crimes, but this is the first time he’s been detained with the prospect of imprisonment. So he takes out the medal from under his collar and dials the number on the back, stubbornly fending off thoughts about the man in the suit who’s been the only one to ever say the words on his wrist.

Less than half an hour later, Eggsy walks out of the police station.

He meets the man in the suit—who stares for a second at Eggsy like he’s seen a ghost but then swiftly introduces himself as Harry Hart as if he hasn't just been freaked out by Eggsy earlier for whatever reason—for the second time on the steps of the station, and, before he knows it, he’s seated in a capsule underground and speeding off to god knows where. He ignores the fact that the man’s eyes seem to linger a little too long on the worn leather watch around his wrist with something akin to curiosity. He’s probably wondering where somebody like Eggsy got something like that that looks like it ought to be an inheritance in a family with old money.

He also ignores the fact that Harry Hart is, for some godforsaken reason, incredibly attractive for a middle-aged man, and resolutely does not think about the blue lines on his wrist for the thirty-ninth time that day.

They talk about Daisy as the capsule hurtles them through London despite the fact that babies are generally uninteresting little terrors that are only adorable about one per cent of the time unless one was related, in which case it bumps the statistic up to 400 per cent. It’s why his mates tend to leave him alone when Eggsy gets into one of his moods and starts ranting about Daisy’s apple cheeks. Harry’s eyes flicker to his as he asks another question about Daisy, looking genuinely interested about Eggsy’s baby sister anyway.

Fuck. Make that forty times.

Chapter Text

Eggsy is “about to embark on what is probably the most dangerous job interview in the world.”

Holy fuck.

The rest of the candidates are a bunch of classist toffs, and the only decent people are the only two females in the room. Eggsy may not have been to Oxbridge, but he’s pretty sure that that’s some pretty skewed statistics. You can tell a lot about a person from the watches they wear, and Charlie’s brand new, shiny watch with extravagant alligator leather for straps speaks volumes about his privileged upbringing.

He takes an immediate liking to Roxy even though she messes his name up on her first try, and even though he barely knows her he trusts his gut when it tells him that they’ll be spending many, many hours in the near future commiserating about how unfortunate it is that they aren’t allowed to acquaint Charlie’s face with a closed fist. Repeatedly.

---

He’s so very right.

However, while they do spend many hours coming up with hypothetical scenarios where Charlie’s face meets with numerous surfaces, they also spend a lot of time massaging the knots out of each other’s backs and calves. Roxy is quickly becoming Eggsy’s favourite person.

When he tells her as much, she just gives him a look that Eggsy interprets as being downright patronising, so he digs his thumbs harder than necessary into her back until she flips him over and pins him to the bed to make him stop. Charlie and his sidekicks hoot at them from across the room, but Eggsy can’t be bothered to do more than flash them a two-fingered salute. He pushes her off and she lets him.

“I’m not blind, you know,” Roxy says as they settle cross-legged across each other on her bed. When she smiles at him her cheeks bunch up and her eyes glint brightly and Eggsy never wants to get on her bad side.

“Yeah, well, if you was you won’t be ‘ere,” Eggsy tells her. “What’re you tryin’ to say?”

She arches her eyebrows and looks pointedly at Eggsy’s wrist, where his blue lines are being covered by a Kingsman issue black band. The watch that has ‘Gary’ etched on the back is tucked away in his locker along with the rest of his civilian clothes. “You stare at it a lot. You’ve met your soulmate, then? Are they waiting for you back home?”

Eggsy blinks. “I ain’t got nobody but my baby sister and my mum, Rox. ‘Sides, this sort of job’ll be difficult if I’ve got someone, won’t it?” He emphatically does not think at all of Harry. Harry, who’s said the words on his wrist and gives him tips to get mud out of his clothes.

Roxy looks at him contemplatively, and then shrugs. “Well, then I graciously accept my status as your favourite person without objections.”

“Great. Now get your arse over here ‘cause I’ve got a blasted knot in my lower back that ain’t goin’ away on its own.”

---

Eggsy picks a dog that’s small and looks vaguely like a bulldog.

While he's not actually disappointed when Roxy reveals that he’s gone and chosen a pug that won’t grow much bigger than his forearm, it still stings when Charlie gives him the most conceited smirk he’s ever been on the receiving end of. Seeing the pug being looked over in favour of other larger dogs rubbed him the wrong way—he’ll still choose it all over again even though he knows now that it’s pretty much useless as a guard dog. Perhaps he’ll also ask if he could take the other pug with him.

It’s just not done, glossing over the less privileged because of the circumstances of their birth. He comforts himself with the thought that Harry would probably approve of his choice.

What Charlie thinks doesn’t matter. Fuck Charlie.

---

Harry goes and gets himself into a coma the day Merlin makes them pick a dog so Eggsy doesn’t get his chance to ask his opinion on the pug.

Eggsy leaves J.B. with Roxy and her new poodle in case pets aren’t allowed in the infirmary. He finds Merlin and Arthur standing at the foot of Harry’s bed, faces drawn, and asks if Harry’s going to be all right.

Merlin assures him that “there’s hope,” which doesn’t exactly inspire any sort of confidence in Eggsy. If a man like Merlin hasn't got anything concrete and positive to say about Harry’s prognosis he’s pretty much fucked for the foreseeable future. Eggsy tries not to let the sinking feeling in his gut overwhelm him. Merlin tells him to focus on his training because that’s what Harry would’ve wanted.

They leave him alone in Harry’s room since there are obviously other—better—things for the head of an international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion and his trusty tech genius to do than stand vigil over a comatose agent.

Eggsy pulls up a chair from the utilitarian vanity at the side of the room and parks himself next to Harry’s bed. He stares for a long while at the tube that’s coming out from Harry’s mouth and the neck brace around his throat until reality has sufficiently settled into his bones and he averts his eyes because it’s all too much. He's too quiet. He's never quiet. He always has a piece of advice ready for Eggsy and, right now, Eggsy half expects him to wake up and tell him that he's wasting his time in the infirmary waiting for a person whose condition is in no way affected by his presence.

Harry’s supposed to be invincible. Even though a part of him knows that of course Harry’s as mortal as the next person, it’s all too easy to ignore it when Harry’s served as a secret agent for nearly 30 years and even managed to bail Eggsy out of 18 months of incarceration. Growing up on the wrong side of town tends to put a quick end to any idealistic notions, but that apparently hasn't been enough to convince Eggsy that Harry Hart is anything less than perfect.

Well. He’s got hard evidence now that Harry’s fallible. (Though that doesn’t mean he's any less perfect.)

He gingerly picks up one of Harry’s hands and tries to feel for a pulse. There’s a machine tracking Harry’s vital signs but Eggsy needs tangible reassurance.

Harry’s watch—the gold-plated (or maybe just plain gold, full stop) Kingsman issue one with brown straps that shoots darts from the knob—has been removed and replaced with a broad black band held in place with Velcro similar to the ones issued to all the Lancelot candidates. There’s a tiny screen that reads his name, age, sex, and a scrolling list of medical terms that Eggsy’s recruit training will probably never cover.

Eggsy wonders what’s under the band, wonders about the words (or word, as he’s coming to hope) pulsing to Harry’s slow heartbeat, wonders what colour they are (it is).

But it’s Harry’s secret to keep, just as Harry’s first words to Eggsy are his, so Eggsy just holds his hand—holds it for a fucking long time because Eggsy’s half hoping that if he squeezes hard enough Harry will wake up to tell him that gentlemen don’t abuse their mentors’ hands—until Merlin comes in to tell him that visiting hours are over.

Eggsy’s certain that there’s nothing as pedantic as visiting hours in the Kingsman infirmary, but he allows Merlin to nudge him to the bunker anyway because Merlin’s right.

Harry probably cares less for his constant worrying than his performance in the recruitment trials.

So Eggsy does the practical thing—he’s so used to doing the practical thing to keep his mother off the streets, to keep Daisy safe, to keep their pathetic fridge stocked with bare necessities and too much beer, that it’s almost second nature to deny himself anything that he wants—and goes to bed. If he curls around J.B. only to get some piss poor quality sleep, well, his pug is tiny and needs all the warmth he can get, especially when the bunker is so poorly heated.

---

He dreams that he’s still waiting for his soulmate, still waiting for the next person whose first words to him will be, “What’s your name, young man?”

When he wakes up, he waits instead for Harry to open his fucking eyes.

---

Eggsy spends an awful lot of time by Harry’s bed even though he knows better than to expect that it will have any effect on when Harry wakes. It’s ridiculous how much he allows himself to be affected by this man who, in all likelihood, doesn’t have the word Eggsy’s hoping for on his wrist.

This is Harry fucking Hart, secret agent extraordinaire. He’s pushing fifty and has probably met a whole lot of people who are much better suited to his posh mannerisms and high-class niceties than Eggsy. Guy like him, not yet met his soulmate? Eggsy doesn’t think so.

It’s rare enough that people meet their soulmates so late in life. It’s probably a whole lot rarer that somebody like Harry isn’t good enough to not be compatible with one of the many people he’s met over the years, that life would make Harry wait so long. Harry’s the epitome of a timeless sort of suave, gentlemanly charm, and if he doesn’t have a soulmate now it’s probably because he or she was also some sort of super-secret intelligence agent and died in the field or something.

Harry wouldn’t want a fucked up brat like him with a list of offences longer than he is tall for a soulmate.

But Eggsy tries to prove himself anyway because he knows—and Harry knows—that he is better than a life of petty crime. So when he isn’t reading up on fighting techniques at Harry’s bedside with J.B. sprawled on his lap he’s sparring in the gym with Roxy and trying—very successfully—to outrun Charlie and his henchmen on the treadmills. (The back end of London has taught him how to run even when his lungs are burning because jogging just isn’t going to cut it when Dean’s goons are after him.)

He may not be Harry’s soulmate, but that’s not an excuse to disappoint him.

---

Sometime after Harry falls into a coma, Eggsy stops dreaming of a faceless person saying the same first words to him as Harry. He stops wishing because who the fuck is he kidding but himself? Harry, who looks as harmless as a kitten, who wears fully equipped shoulder holsters everywhere, is fucking it for Eggsy. Harry’s gone and ruined any other person for him no matter what the colour the words on Harry’s wrist are, no matter what they say.

For fuck’s sake Eggsy knows exactly how Harry loops his letters when writing with a fountain pen and it is undoubtedly the same cursive script that's curling across Eggsy’s wrist. He can pretend all he wants but that, right there, stops Eggsy from lying to himself for the rest of his life.

He knows that soulmates don’t always have a happy ending—his parents were and still are his first lesson that happily ever after is a thing of fairy tales—but he wants to try and believe that Harry could be his. However, he also knows that sometimes the person you’re meant to belong to isn’t meant to be yours. There are stories in the news of men and women whose soulmates have somebody else’s first words on them and it’s fucking tragic.

But he still can’t help but hope that, under the black band, tattooed across Harry’s wrist in messy handwriting, is ‘Eggsy’ in deep, comforting blue.

He’s accepted, however, that some things—most things—don’t tend to pan out the way he wants them to. If they did he’d still have a father and his mother wouldn’t have married that sorry excuse for a man just so they’d still have a roof over their heads.

Besides, Harry’s soulmate is supposed to be what he needs. What has Eggsy got to offer him that somebody else can’t? Just because Harry is exactly what Eggsy needs—to bail him out of jail, to offer him a job at Kingsman, to make Eggsy believe that he can be more than he's ever thought he could be—doesn’t mean he’s meant to be what Eggsy wants. And, oh, how Eggsy wants so badly it’s starting to feel like a need.

(There are plenty of platonic soulmate out there, though, and, really, even if Eggsy’s name is on Harry’s wrist it’s probably only to give Harry a chance to do Lee right by him and allow him to find closure.)

Every night in his dreams he sees Harry in his pinstripe suit handing him his father’s medal of valour after saying, over and over again, the secret words on Eggsy’s wrist. When he wakes up alone in bed he scoops J.B. up and pretends that the pug is somebody else. (It’s not very effective—J.B.’s way too small.)

He dreams that he hears Harry's voice again.

Chapter Text

Harry wakes up.

(Eggsy absolutely does not grin like a loon. Roxy is a liar.)

Not long after, Eggsy brings J.B. to see him. He doesn’t knock, and finds that Harry’s finally shaved the beard from his face. About time too—it was starting to ruin Harry’s neatly cultivated image of an always put together gentleman. Eggsy’s not sorry at all to see the beard go.

“Ever heard of knocking?” Harry admonishes not unkindly as he turns around.

“Only when I’m casin’ a place to rob,” Eggsy jokes. “Merlin said you wanted to see me?”

Harry enquires about J.B.’s training and Eggsy has a hard time stopping his eyes from lingering on Harry’s dark red robe. It’s certainly not the most handsome piece of clothing but it does wonders to shave a couple of years off Harry, makes him look a little younger, a little more loose-limbed. Eggsy’s a little tickled to notice that it even has proper notched lapels for some reason.

Eggsy keeps his eyes pointedly away from Harry’s hands, which he has tucked in the pockets of his robe. He can’t decide now if he wants to see Harry’s wrist anymore.

They aren’t alone for long before Merlin comes in to brief Harry on his findings. Merlin politely asks Eggsy to leave but Harry insists that he stays. Eggsy’s not entirely sure that he’s got the clearance to know that some professor’s head got blown up by an implant in his neck, but he’ll take whatever time he can get with Harry to assure himself that the man is still very much alive.

At some point Merlin’s high-tech clipboard starts being passed around like a crayon bucket in a kindergarten art class, and when Harry reaches out with his left hand for the thing Eggsy catches a glimpse of a line of blue across his wrist.

His heart stutters and he barely manages to pretend that he’s seen nothing.

The colour matches, but the string of letters is too long to be Eggsy’s name. He can’t read it from where he is on Merlin’s other side, but he’ll bet good money that Harry’s wrist definitely doesn’t bear his name.

The first thing that Harry’s soulmate says to him isn’t, “Eggsy.”

It doesn’t stop Eggsy’s chest from squeezing tightly, doesn’t liberate him from yearning after a man whom he knows now isn’t his for the keeping. The colour is right—Eggsy belongs to Harry, he knows it no matter whose words Harry has because that’s Harry’s fucking handwriting under his skin—but the words are wrong. Harry doesn’t belong to him.

He is at once numb and in absolute pain.

The worst part of it all is that Eggsy wouldn’t change the words on his wrist for the world even if it meant a new soulmate who will be his in return. He’s too far gone for Harry.

Eggsy is so fucked.

---

He throws himself into the rest of training with an intensity that would make the hardest of drill sergeants proud. It even makes himself proud, and Eggsy’s not used to taking pride in his own actions.

Occasionally, Eggsy catches Harry standing beside Merlin and observing their training. He gives him a jaunty wave that Harry always returns with a gentle tilt of his head, and though they’re not supposed to say who proposed them it’s probably pretty obvious that Eggsy is Harry’s candidate. Roxy nudges his side as they jog around the grounds of the estate and flashes him a wide grin every time Harry’s there.

Eggsy gives her an answering grin even though his stomach is perpetually tied in knots lately whenever he’s around Harry.

---

It’s standard procedure to note down a person’s soulmate mark when they die even though it’s not useful for anything at all. Nowadays it’s a lot easier since the exact colour and handwriting can be preserved through a photograph. In the past they used to have to trace the words by hand and get a pigment specialist to mix the exact shade of whatever colour it is before the mark loses its vibrancy as the skin starts to drain of blood. People paid good money to have their loved one’s mark preserved until the government had to step in to prevent the proliferation of a new and very lucrative black market industry.

As the train speeds towards Eggsy, he wonders if Harry will see his words and realise that Eggsy’s one of those poor sods who’s got a one-way soulmate deal. He hopes Harry doesn’t beat himself up over it the same way Eggsy knows he’s still hung up about causing his father’s death—for all that Harry’s capable of cold bloodedly putting a bullet through his target’s heart, he can be surprisingly soft sometimes.

Eggsy can’t scream, “Fuck you!” loud enough at the man with the leery sneer that’s made the mistake of thinking that the prospect of dying—even a painful one where his hands and legs get amputated by the wheels of a train so that he slowly and painfully bleeds to death—could make Eggsy betray Harry.

Harry seems pleased that Eggsy has proven his loyalty to Kingsman so Eggsy doesn’t tell him that it’s really more for Harry’s sake that he kept his mouth shut. Harry’s not wrong anyway—Eggsy is fully prepared to take Kingsman’s secret with him to the grave, but there’s really no competition between Harry and the organisation.

He will choose Harry every time.

---

He chooses Harry when Arthur, the smarmy bastard that he is, makes a half-assed attempt to persuade him to share his vision of culling the world of humans.

Harry may be dead but fuck Arthur if he thinks that that’s enough to make him abandon what Harry’s been fighting for while he was still alive. (And Eggsy can barely wrap his head around that, around the fact that Harry’s gone, for good, that he’s not merely lying in bed comatose but really, truly dead.) Eggsy feels a vicious sense of satisfaction when Arthur activates the poison in the brandy and essentially commits unwitting suicide, and although he has some respect for the dead Eggsy has no qualms at all when he sticks the poison pen in Arthur’s neck and extracts the implant from under his sagging skin.

Harry’s said that a gentleman’s name should appear in the papers only three times: when he’s born, when he marries, and when he dies. Now it will never have the chance to be printed more than twice because of a man Arthur chose to throw his lot behind.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

---

Eggsy ends up spilling his guts to the Swedish princess over champagne. Apparently, Princess Tilde studied for a degree in psychology in university and Eggsy is to be her pet project. It works out in the end because he doesn’t really want to kiss her—nor insert tab A into slot B—and all he really wants to do is bawl his eyes out now that Harry’s death has finally sunk in.

He’s careful to deactivate his glasses before the princess gets him to start talking, and once he starts everything just comes out in a bitter, anguished torrent that he’s having some difficulty stopping.

His fucking soulmate is dead.

Fuck. It’s not like he ever expected a happy ending with Harry but he did anticipate a couple more decades of friendship before the bastard goes and gets himself killed on the job for refusing to come off field work even though he’d be something like 90 by then. Eggsy’s fine with that because at least Harry will have died doing something he likes, and Eggsy will have more than just some fleeting memories of a few months of acquaintance (half of which Harry has the guts to be unconscious for).

But no, Harry has to go and get himself shot in the head after being mind-controlled into massacring a church full of bigots—shot by a fucking haemophobe who’s probably never even touched a fucking gun before putting a fucking bullet through Harry’s fucking head.

And now Harry’s gone. Just like that.

He shouldn’t have said all those things to Harry about his father. That was rash and irrational and Eggsy was only out to draw blood to get back at Harry for having the gall to be disappointed in him. He can’t take his words back now, and he can’t pretend that Harry hadn’t shouted at him that all that he’s done has been about repaying his debt to Eggsy’s father. After all those months and Eggsy’s still only just an obligation.

He wants to scratch the words out of his memory, knock himself out with an amnesia dart so that he can go on believing that Harry, his soulmate, hadn’t been disappointed by him, that to him Eggsy was just simply Eggsy, not just his father’s replacement. But he doesn’t want to lose anything he has left of Harry. All those fleeting memories, they’re so, so precious. Eggsy can’t afford to just forget them so that he can lie to himself about how Harry’s doing all this not for Eggsy but for his dead father because there are so few of them.

If he returns to the plane with puffy red eyes that’s obviously not the result of a good, hard shag, Merlin doesn’t say anything.

---

What’s left of the British Kingsman agents have a proper toast to Harry once they’re all gathered back at the tailor shop. (Arthur lied. Nobody’s had the time to toast to Harry on such short notice.) There are a few missing faces whose heads have been blown up and nobody toasts to those. By a nearly unanimous vote Eggsy is appointed to Galahad’s position because apparently blowing up the heads of half of the world’s leaders (and killing Arthur, the traitorous arse) is, unofficially, an acceptable alternative to shooting his dog, what the fuck.

(What’s that test supposed to prove anyway? That he’s ruthless? That he’s capable of blindly following orders? Harry told him that a Kingsman only condones the taking of a life to save another—Eggsy would very much like to know the name of the bastard whose life depended on whether he shot his dog. It’s a fucking stupid test, is what it is.)

Eggsy doesn’t think that he can do Harry’s codename justice—for fuck’s sake Galahad’s the best knight of the Round Table and Eggsy’s just a lucky nobody that Harry picked up (from a bloody police station, nonetheless)—but he will try. He’s been doing nothing but trying lately, hasn’t he? Trying to keep his mother and Daisy safe, trying to be what Harry thinks he can—should, ought to—be, trying to be what he wants himself to be, trying to ignore the absolute heartache eating at him as he tears through Valentine’s base with a certain single-minded savagery he didn't know he was capable of, trying to hold it all together until Princess Tilde makes him fall apart, trying, trying, trying. Trying so hard. What’s one more to add to the count? Eggsy’s good at trying.

(He’s just not sure he’s good at achieving what he tries to do.)

Merlin advises the remaining Knights that the selection process for the empty positions will begin next week and requests that each person propose a candidate. Roxy and Eggsy are exempted from proposing given that they’re completely fresh, but they’re welcome to if they want.

Arthur’s position is ignored for the time being. They’ll need to get Kingsman in order—take note of the defectors and those who’ve been affected by the SIM cards—before sending any of the agents out on missions anyway. Since Arthur’s job scope is basically to oversee all missions, there’s no need for the King at this time.

Merlin’s doing a swell job coordinating everything in Kingsman anyway, and if the next Arthur is anything like Chester King, Eggsy would rather that position remain unoccupied and leave Merlin to run everything behind the scenes.

The overseas Kingsman branches are also accounting for their losses, though it seems like Valentine hasn’t bothered to sway any agents other than those based in their main headquarters in the U.K., perhaps on the mistaken assumption that influencing Kingsman’s head honcho would win over their entire organisation. Well, tough luck.

When he asks Merlin if there’s going to be a service for Harry, Merlin tells him that they haven’t yet retrieved the body. Eggsy volunteers to go even though there’s a gaping hole where his heart used to be. The Kingsman watch stays on his wrist even as he takes a quick shower before flying to Kentucky because he doesn’t want to see the scar tissue that’ll have replaced the blue of his words.

Maybe, if he ignores it long enough, he can convince himself that the words are still the same dark blue as the tie that goes with the suit Harry commissioned for him.

On the way to Kentucky, he prays to any god he can name—and some he can’t—that if they give him Harry back he’ll stop wanting things he can’t have. He’ll be perfect. He’ll be the Kingsman that his father was meant to be, that Harry expected him to be. No more lingering gazes, no more unending wishes. Please just give him Harry back.

Chapter Text

In a tremendously improbable turn of events that Eggsy’s more than happy to never question, their toast to Harry is discovered to be a little too premature.

Eggsy finds Harry not in the morgue as he expected but cramped in a hospital room with a number of other casualties from V-Day. The hospital has him listed as a John Doe, but the nurses easily point him in the direction of Harry’s ward once Eggsy tells them that he’s looking for somebody who’s been shot in the head.

As it turns out, not a lot of people survive point-blanks to their faces. The sample size is huge and suitably representative after V-Day. Eggsy thanks his lucky stars that Valentine’s such a fucking awful shot and doesn’t push his luck by asking how anyone can fuck up a point-blank so badly.

Eggsy doesn’t really care much for how it’s done—as far as he’s concerned all the Kingsman Knights might as well be the second coming for how often they save the world before their first cup of tea—because there’s Harry, hooked up once again to a noisy collection of machines but alive nevertheless, and Eggsy’s legs almost give out before he even gets to Harry’s bedside. The breathing tube’s back in, but in place of a neck brace Harry’s head is completely swathed in bandages. He’s out of his suit and dressed in an ugly, ill-fitting hospital gown, and a standard white band has replaced his Kingsman watch.

Eggsy’s never seen anything so beautiful.

There aren’t any chairs around so Eggsy just stands there staring down at Harry’s one exposed eye, trying to burn the image into his mind. He slips his hand into Harry’s and squeezes lightly, savouring the warmth of his skin and the rough slide of callouses on his fingers. His eyelids slide shut and Eggsy lets out a breath he hasn’t realised he’s been holding.

Slowly, with shaking fingers, Eggsy removes the watch from his wrist. It slips down his hand and, underneath the strap, are deep, comforting blue lines.

‘What’s your name, young man?’

He can’t stop the smile spreading across his face, the shuddering sense of relief coursing through his veins. He stares and stares at the blue words and Harry’s slack face until his vision blurs and he realises that there are tears in his eyes that need to be wiped away before they start tracking down his face and making disgusting wet splotches on Harry’s hospital blanket.

But Eggsy’s really beyond the point of caring now, because Harry fucking Hart is alive.

He takes a few hours to have Harry all alone to himself, relish being able to hold Harry’s hand again, before finally contacting Merlin to inform him of his fucking miraculous discovery when the sun starts to disappear beyond the horizon. Merlin assures Eggsy that his position as Galahad isn’t threatened by this turn of events even though Eggsy’s not even remotely bothered by that and will be more than happy to let Harry have his codename back if it means that Harry’s also alive.

Once he’s done with the call, Eggsy steels himself to stop wishing for the words on Harry’s wrist to change. He’s promised as much.

---

Harry stays at the hospital in Kentucky for a couple of weeks until both the hospital and Kingsman’s own medical professionals clear him for transportation. He’s given the same infirmary room as before and Eggsy visits him whenever he can between wrangling the new candidates with Roxy.

Merlin’s given them the task of conducting all the recruitment trials because he’s too busy sorting out the post-V-Day mess to make time for anything else, and Eggsy and Roxy are the only ones without a candidate in the running to be biased toward. It’s not hard to keep track of the candidates, really, and Eggsy thinks that the clipboard is just fucking neat. He also suspects that the recruits’ opinion of him is a lot less impressive than their opinion of Roxy, since he rarely turns up in anything more formal than a plain white tee and one of his many jeans from before he’s even met Harry. He may be a Kingsman agent now but he’s not quite ready to trade comfort for style just yet.

It’s really quite telling that they come all the way to the infirmary to ask for his permission to hold a small party in their bunkers instead of going to Roxy, who’s taken up a temporary office right next to their sleeping area and who would really be a much more convenient person to ask. Eggsy does the responsible thing and tells them that he’d let them do as they wish for one night so long as there’s no alcohol and they get up an hour earlier the next day to run extra rounds around the estate.

Merlin says that he’s too soft. Eggsy just shrugs. If it’s not outrageous enough to wake Harry up from his second coma in half a year so that he can berate him, then it’s good enough for him. Eggsy’s certainly not hiding anything from Harry, given that he spends most of his waking, non-work, non-training hours reading whatever he can get his hands on to the man. Whatever requests the recruits have they make it in Harry’s presence or not at all.

Merlin also says that he’s spending too much time in Harry’s room, that it’ll give the candidates ideas. (Eggsy has no idea what sort of ideas Merlin’s talking about, and with the way he says it Eggsy doesn’t want to know.) Eggsy tells him to shut up and fuck off and resolutely continues to visit Harry whenever he has time to spare. The recruits haven’t said anything about his choice of recreational activities, so he reckons that that’s just Merlin being nosy. Occupational hazard, that. Being an agent handler’s apparently not just his day job.

---

All too soon it’s time to choose dogs again.

There are a Yorkshire terrier and another pug in the bunch. They don’t get chosen. Since Eggsy’s in charge of the selection process this time, he thinks, “Fuck it,” and takes the two puppies back to his room with him. Roxy just laughs at him. Merlin raises an eyebrow on his way down but doesn’t say anything, so Eggsy takes that as implicit permission to keep them.

J.B.’s pleased as fuck about the new puppies for some reason.

---

Eggsy thinks he must look ridiculous walking down the narrow corridors of the U.K. HQ with three dogs on three separate leashes that get less separate the more the dogs scramble about each other. By the time he gets to Harry’s infirmary room, the leashes have pretty much resolved into one thick, badly braided rope and Eggsy just rolls his eyes and loads the dogs onto Harry’s bed before getting down to the monumental task of untangling the leashes.

Harry hasn’t broken anything; the weight of three dogs, two of them barely old enough to run, shouldn’t be too much for the man to handle. Besides, Eggsy has it on good authority—namely the stuffed dog with a dubious mantle of honour in Harry’s toilet—that the man likes terriers, so there should be no problems there.

The rails of the bed keep the puppies from rolling off it as they excitedly scramble their way across Harry’s body, exploring their new environment with unholy glee. The pug that’s not J.B.—he should really start naming them—licks a long wet stripe across Harry’s face and Eggsy cringes a little before getting a cloth to wipe the saliva off.

“Hello, Harry,” Eggsy says as he always does. “What would you like me to read today?”

There’s no reply from Harry, but Eggsy’s come to expect that and bulldozes on anyway, though it doesn’t mean he’s not disappointed.

“How ‘bout ‘Marley & Me’? I think it’s appropriate, considering the three menaces trampling all over you,” Eggsy grins, and settles himself into the single sofa that he’s dragged into the room when Harry was first transferred back to HQ. He taps the clipboard, pulls up the web browser to find an electronic copy, and starts reading.

---

The puppies and J.B. wreak havoc in Harry’s room. Roxy brings her poodle to join in the fun sometimes and they share a bottle of sparkling juice as they come up with the toughest training menu that they can for the candidates.

---

Harry wakes when Eggsy’s administering the infamous skydiving test.

He gets the notice from Merlin just after the candidates have leapt from the plane and it takes just about every bit of restraint in him to make it through the debriefing with Roxy. Only two candidates are dismissed this time, although one of the recruits that remain has a broken leg from being in the same situation that Eggsy was when he was a candidate. However, the unfortunate sod didn’t make it to the ground before losing his grip.

Roxy waves him off the moment they’re done congratulating the remaining candidates and tells him that she’ll handle the one with the broken leg. Eggsy gives her a thankful smile and takes off sprinting towards Harry’s room.

There’s a veritable crowd of doctors and nurses gathered around Harry’s bed when he arrives. Eggsy heads over to join Merlin, who is standing in a corner observing the proceedings.

“He’ll be all right, yeah?” Eggsy asks just to be sure.

“Of course. He’s a stubborn bastard,” Merlin says, grinning.

The medical staff clears the room after a while, leaving Eggsy and Merlin alone with Harry. Harry looks at them wearily from his perch on the bed. Then, when he speaks to them for the first time in so long, he says, “Is Eggsy is the one responsible for the hideous sofa in this room?”

Eggsy snorts. Like Harry’s one to talk. He’s been in Harry’s house and everything in there would fit perfectly in the home of a 90-year-old.

“He’s also responsible for the dog hair in your sheets,” Merlin volunteers helpfully.

Harry takes a moment to glance down at the bedding, then says articulately, “Ah.”

“Sorry,” Eggsy says unapologetically, struggling to stop the smile that’s threatening to take over his face. It’s not professional, Eggsy reminds himself even as he fails to stop reacting to the way Harry’s voice—hoarse and cracking and breaking gloriously in his ears for the first time in months—makes his heart stutter with relief. “There wasn’t anybody around to take care of the puppies.”

“I believe that there are things that I need to be informed of before this conversation starts to make the least bit of sense,” Harry deadpans.

“You’ve been out for nearly three months, Harry,” Merlin explains. “We’re running the selection process to replace two of our numbers and Eggsy’s taken a shine to the unchosen puppies. The skydive was today.”

“A terrier and a pug,” Eggsy supplements. “I hope you don’t mind that I called the terrier Mrs. Pickle.”

Harry looks surprised, then contemplative. “And the pug?”

“I haven’t named him yet,” Eggsy admits. “I was thinking you could do the honours.”

“What about Professor Higgins?” Harry offers.

Eggsy can’t help the chortle that bubbles from his lips. “Are you kidding, Harry?”

“There’s no need for hysterics,” Harry says with the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “A gentleman always means what he says.”

“I should’ve called the terrier Eliza,” Eggsy manages to say once his lungs stop trying to spasm with laughter.

“Now, gentlemen, while I hate to break up your reunion, rife as it is with touching inside jokes, there are more urgent matters than puppy names to discuss,” Merlin chides them gently. He eyes Harry somewhat appraisingly, “It’s approaching that time of the year again. Will you still insist on taking that trip in the state you’re in?”

Eggsy’s eyebrows shoot up. What’s this about an annual reprieve that Eggsy’s never heard of?

Harry’s eyes flicker from Merlin to Eggsy and then back to Merlin, who only waits patiently for his response. “No,” Harry says slowly, as if choosing his words very carefully. “Not this year, and possibly never again.”

Merlin seems surprised by Harry’s answer. “I take that your mysterious personal business is now concluded for good, then. I don’t suppose you’ll start telling me where you hop off to every year and what for now that you’re not hopping off annually?” Merlin probes, not even trying to hide his curiosity.

Harry gives him a wan smile. “Not a chance.”

Eggsy has a feeling that Merlin’s not a lot better informed about whatever Harry’s doing every year than Eggsy himself.

“Right. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, you need to know that Arthur’s dead,” Merlin says bluntly, and Harry reacts calmly with a stellar impression of a brick wall.

Eggsy collapses into the sofa and allows Merlin to talk. Harry shoots him a single tired smile before turning his attention fully to Merlin, who’s now detailing their current manpower status and asking Harry’s opinion about a structural overhaul. Eggsy just sits there and smiles to himself, more than happy to observe as Harry and Merlin talk shop until Harry’s valiant efforts to stay awake are finally overtaken by his traitorous body’s need for rest.

Harry’s okay now, and yeah, Eggsy feels like he can take on the world.

It’s become a force of habit to ignore the watch on his wrist now, pretend that there’s no such thing as soulmates, pretend that his future is whatever he makes of it. He’d be lying if he says he no longer cares that he’s little more than a debt Harry thinks he needs to repay, but if that’s what makes Harry happy, he’s more than willing to play along.

Chapter Text

If the puppies were a riot when Harry was comatose, they go absolutely fucking nuts once Harry’s finally able to give them belly scratches and throw a ball across the room.

---

It is significantly more difficult to maintain a strictly professional relationship around Harry than Eggsy expected. Harry starts dropping hints about a psychologist less than a week into Eggsy’s very successful attempt at being the epitome of the Kingsman ideal—infallibly polite with just the right accent—and it all comes to a head in the middle of the second week when Harry corners Eggsy—well, not corner, really, since he was still largely confined to bedrest at that time, but Harry’s eyes do have a preternatural ability to pin Eggsy in his place—and tells him that he’s becoming rather alarmed by Eggsy’s reticence.

“Have I done something to make you uncomfortable?” Harry says to him almost haltingly, his usual self-assurance nowhere to be found. He looks tired, slightly confused, and, oddly enough, almost wary.

“Why would you think that?” Eggsy blurts out. “You’ve been doing nothing but sleeping for the last three months.”

“Eggsy. You’re not, for lack of a better description, acting like yourself,” Harry says pointedly. “Let’s not pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about. We’re spies; it’s our job to be observant. Don’t be deliberately difficult.”

“I’m being well-mannered. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Harry sighs. “I wanted you to know how to conduct yourself if the situation calls for it, not be someone you’re not all the time. What’s brought this on so suddenly? You had no problems being insufferably irreverent of class-specific mannerisms before. Or, should I say, you had no problems forgetting your consonants around me before. You’re not acting any differently around Merlin or Lancelot, so why are you so formal with me?”

Eggsy stares at Harry’s shoulder, determinedly not looking at Harry’s face. “You’re doing all this for my father, aren’t you? I’m just trying to make it worth your while. I’m here only because of him, yeah? I don’t want to make it difficult for you by being too friendly if that’s not what you want.”

“Oh, Eggsy,” Harry breathes, and even though Eggsy can’t see it he can tell that Harry’s brows are knitted together, and he itches with a desire to just collapse against Harry and ask for the things he doesn’t dare to hope for anymore.

“So I’ll just carry on being professional, yeah? Make you proud, make up for humiliating you when I couldn’t shoot J.B.,” Eggsy says around the emotions clogging up his throat.

“My boy,” Harry sighs, and puts a hand, warm and familiar, on Eggsy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I said that. It was entirely uncalled for, and I regretted it immediately after. I said things in my anger I didn’t mean. Of course I’m proud of you. I’m so, very proud that you valued the life of an innocent creature over your own ambition even if it meant throwing away all that you’ve worked for over months.”

“But my father—”

“It stopped being about him once I proposed you. I admit that my decision to submit you as my candidate was strongly influenced by the debt I owed him, but everything after that was never once about him. It was you who made your way through training, and it was you and your silly dog that wormed your way into my affections. Nothing about our personal relationship had anything at all to do with Lee or the debt I owe him. You must believe me on this, Eggsy.”

Harry gives Eggsy an awkward hug—the awkwardness was compounded by the fact that he is clearly a man who doesn’t engage in casual contact and that he also can’t get out of bed—and pats his shoulder once before leaning back and waiting for Eggsy to say something.

Eggsy barely believes his ears but he’ll take what he can get.

“‘M sorry I said what I did too,” Eggsy mutters.

Eggsy steals another hug—strictly platonic, he reminds himself, and very staunchly keeps his hands above Harry’s waist—and things get better from there.

---

There are two candidates standing after the loyalty test, so the selection process ends there. Lots are drawn to decide on their positions and they are knighted and sworn in without fuss on the very day itself.

With the Round Table fully filled, there is only one caveat before Merlin clears everybody for missions again, and so the selection process for Arthur begins.

---

The votes are in and Harry really doesn’t stand a chance when every single one of them calls for him to be reinstated as an agent, only this time under a different name.

So Merlin gleefully appoints a reluctant Harry Hart to Arthur’s position, and missions start being handed out to everyone’s immense relief because Lamorak looks like he’s about five seconds from blowing the tailor shop up if they fail to redirect his manic inclinations toward something or someone more deserving.

---

Harry, as Eggsy learns, absolutely detests paperwork. However, out of all the Knights, he’s the person with the greatest tolerance for deskwork, so Eggsy figures that it’s really less an issue of respect and more of self-preservation that led to the unanimous vote for Harry to take his place at the head of the table as Arthur.

Eggsy reports directly to Harry, who occasionally manages to push his paperwork to Merlin for long enough to go back to the field for a mission or two before being wrestled back into his office by a murderously disapproving Merlin. He receives his missions from Harry, turns in his reports to Harry, and is thoroughly debriefed and occasionally trained by Harry. It’s actually laughably easy to keep himself in check, and the only allowances he makes for his unrequited affections are split-second glances at Harry’s back while he’s lecturing Eggsy on the finer points of sabotage after a mission gone slightly wrong.

It’s an easy rhythm to fall into.

Harry lets the dogs run wild in his office when Eggsy’s off on a mission because the attention-seeking little buggers ripped the stuffing out of Eggsy’s mattress the last time he tried to leave them alone in his room at HQ for an hour. They tend to behave for Harry, for some reason, so Eggsy just leaves them to it now that Harry’s become Kingsman’s unofficial dog-whisperer. Roxy occasionally foists her poodle off on Harry too when Eggsy can’t watch her dog for her. The newest Knights are too afraid of Harry, with his thick, gnarled scar running down the side of his face and standoffish air, to even try, so they juggle dog-sitting duties between them (and, sometimes, Eggsy gets saddled with their Labrador and spaniel because they’re apparently still irrationally afraid of Roxy too).

While Eggsy likes dogs as much as the next person, five is too many, so he almost always ends up in Harry’s office begging for help because Merlin turned him down the first time before he even opened his mouth. Harry just sighs with that beautiful half-smile of his and gesture at the corner of his office where a number of dog beds (and a gaudy beanbag) have mysteriously turned up overnight sometime between his first and second day as Arthur.

Eggsy can be very efficient when he puts his mind to it.

From then, an ever-growing collection of dog toys starts finding its way into his office until Merlin throws his hands up and brings in a shelf with a very put upon sigh to prevent Harry from being smothered by brightly-coloured balls. Chester King would probably—scratch that, make it definitely—disapprove of how cheerful the room has become, which only makes Eggsy more determined to completely ruin the austerity of the office with a mountain of dog toys.

All they need now is wall full of dead butterflies to make this office feel like an extension of Harry’s person.

Eggsy rubs the strap of his watch absentmindedly as he watches the dogs romp around in the office. Yeah, this is good. He can learn to live with Harry giving him exasperated looks when Mrs. Pickle tries to eat his paperwork again. The paperwork did actually get eaten—once only, mind you, because gentlemen don’t procrastinate, and while Harry enjoys watching Merlin blow a gasket it’s not worth the pile of paperwork that’s needed to explain why a single acquisition form was ripped up by dogs that rightfully shouldn’t be in his office—when Harry got fed up with Merlin cooping him up in HQ and refusing to let him send himself on missions. Merlin learns quickly after that that Harry needs to be regularly set loose upon an unsuspecting target if he doesn’t want his acquisition requests to mysteriously disappear.

Sometimes, like now, Professor Higgins gets it into his head that Harry’s lap is a better resting spot than actual dog beds and refuses to leave unless Eggsy wrestles him away. If anyone else tries to pick him up, he’ll dig his tiny claws into Harry’s bespoke suit and draw deep, jagged tears in the fabric, bulletproof or not. Harry looks to him expectantly for assistance as soon as the pug buries his face into the front of Harry’s suit, and Eggsy gets up obligingly to ease the puppy off Harry’s lap.

“It won’t hurt to leave him there for a while,” Eggsy says as he slips a hand around Professor Higgins’ small body. He feels very acutely the warmth of Harry’s skin through his clothes, though he’s rather certain that that’s mostly his imagination. Whatever the case is, prying the pug off Harry’s legs requires him to lean into Harry’s personal space, which gets Eggsy all shades of flustered but he’s a fucking brilliant secret agent if he says so himself because Harry hasn’t caught on yet.

“I will certainly bear that in mind the next time I’d like my trousers slow washed in dog saliva,” Harry says dryly.

Once Professor Higgins is securely scooped up in his hands, Eggsy gives Harry a jaunty grin and takes the pug back to the dog corner. Harry flashes him a quick, bemused smile before returning to his paperwork.

Nobody’s any the wiser if Eggsy watches Professor Higgins less carefully than Mrs. Pickle or J.B. and nobody says a word when Eggsy has to go over a few more times to retrieve the hyperactive thing before the day is out.

Eggsy fucking loves that pug.

---

Eggsy’s been running missions for Kingsman for almost a year—and being the world’s champion at not moping about his one-sided soulmate mark—when the biennial cross-cultural exchange is conducted. It is traditionally attended by the newest field and support operatives that report to each headquarters, but since their two newest Knights are currently under strict orders to be on complete bedrest for a month following a disastrous undercover mission, Eggsy, who is next in line, gets the dubious honour of being shipped off to one of their overseas branches for a month.

Eggsy doesn’t believe he’s even heard of the name of the country he’s supposed to be sent to before.

Merlin has a bit of a fit when he sees the results of the random draw, though. He shoves a thick folder into Eggsy’s hands early the next morning with manic energy alight in his eyes (that informs Eggsy that Merlin hasn’t slept at all last night, which really shouldn't be as terrifying as it is) and tells him not to set foot in Europe again until every single one of the points in the folder has been addressed.

Apparently, the South East Asian regional HQ is so good at discretion and subterfuge that their existence remains a bit of a myth even within Kingman.

He’s given a crash course in Kingsman history, told that expansion into Asia started soon after the U.K. HQ was established, that the S.E.A. branch was set up under an island that was a crown colony until its independence not long after World War II, at which point they had to stay under the radar for a long time because the new government had and still has insanely strict policies regarding secret societies and national security. Because of this, the biggest threat to the S.E.A. HQ is, unfortunately, not any of their targets but the local government itself.

The branch was initially meant only to provide backup weaponry and technical support, but communist threats in the region kick-started the S.E.A. branch’s initiative to recruit their own agents, and from then on they might as well be a separate organisation altogether for how rarely they updated U.K. HQ about their missions.

The S.E.A. branch was refashioned into a regional headquarters when they came out of hiding in what is now independent Singapore and revealed to U.K. HQ that they’d set up other branches in neighbouring countries because why not. (The Arthur of that time had a fit at that.) Each country now has their local equivalent of a Round Table with cultural-specific codenames that U.K. HQ has difficulty pronouncing, so they leave agent wrangling to their respective countries. Eggsy points out that Merlin has problems with some Scandinavian codenames too, and Merlin shushes him aggressively for his troubles.

When Eggsy finally pitches a sensible question and asks if he’ll have difficulty navigating language barriers and addressing people, Merlin assures him that he will have no trouble at all if he can count to ten in Queen’s English. Eggsy sniffs at the expression on Merlin’s face that clearly implies that Merlin doesn’t think he’s capable of even that much. The regional HQ alone out of all the branches in the area, Merlin informs him with judgement heavy in his eyes, hasn’t bothered with culturally significant codenames because the skins of their agents span the spectrum from snow white to pitch black and nobody wanted to offend anybody by insisting on the folklores of one specific culture, so numbers it is.

Eggsy finds that eminently logical and horridly dull. He asks Merlin if the head of their agents is M, if their best field operative is 007, and if Merlin's counterpart is Q, and Merlin gives him an unimpressed look as if he’s asking all the wrong questions.

(Merlin’s really in no position to judge anybody because just moments ago he was literally fanboying about a bloody cross-cultural exchange programme. Well, Eggsy supposes that even heartless tech geniuses have to get their kicks somewhere.)

Whatever the case is, Merlin promises him that almost everybody in the country is capable of communicating in Queen’s English—he’s read all the reports they’ve ever received from the S.E.A. HQ so of course he knows this for certain—and that Eggsy will have no issues if he keeps from laying on his Cockney accent too thickly.

(Merlin advises him to bring his most breathable suits along because, aside from the rain that pours like the second voyage of Noah’s ark is due anytime, the weather couldn’t be any more different from London.)

Chapter Text

Merlin is a fucking liar.

If the people at the regional HQ can speak English, they’re certainly using a version of it that’s about as obscure as their alleged existence. (But, since he’s here, he has to acknowledge that the HQ definitely does exist, so that’s question one of Merlin’s long list answered.)

Eggsy catches snippets of words he understands from here and there, but everything sounds like a perplexing mix of incomprehensible noises that Eggsy for the life of him cannot imagine having roots in English. Even the Americans are easier to understand than this. His guide, so far the only person who uses actual fucking English words, seems to have no trouble extracting meaning from her colleagues’ babbling, so Eggsy figures that it must be a legitimate language.

Which begs the question of why Merlin’s research was so incomplete as to miss out the fact that this country has miraculously developed a whole new language within only 50 years of its independence. Eggsy’s going to rub this in Merlin’s face for the next hundred years.

When Eggsy asks his guide the name of the local language because Merlin would flay him if he failed to do so, No. 9 cocks her head and frowns. She sounds puzzled when she answers, “But we’re talking in English.”

“I hate to break this to you,” Eggsy says, “but you really aren’t.”

No. 9 scrunches her nose up and bites her bottom lip so hard that it turns white. Then, her eyes widen as if she’s had an epiphany. “Oh!" She goes on to explain that it's a sort of local dialect of English that the government (strongly) disapproves of it so it's not used too much in professional settings, but it really can’t be helped sometimes since they grew up with it. "We throw some borrowed words in here and there, and you’ll find that we have a love affair with acronyms, but most if it is really quite easy to understand once you get past our accent and ignore the fact that proper grammar is for those with too much time." ¹

At Eggsy’s look of utter disbelief, No. 9 offers to ‘translate’ something the next time someone comes to speak with them. As she breaks down the conversation for Eggsy, he makes sure to keep the recording function of his spectacles running because he’s not certain that he’s capable of explaining this ‘Singlish’ to Merlin when he gets back. When No. 9 tells him that their neighbouring country has a very similar variant of English, Eggsy stops her right there. If Merlin wants to know more about the various fascinating dialects of English that have cropped up in this region of the world, he can very well do his field research himself, thank you very much.

Eggsy’s not paid enough for this.

---

Eggsy suspects that his inability to understand the local dialect—which is magnitudes more incomprehensible than No. 9 would like him to believe—is what lands him in the situation that he’s in.

He was just looking for No. 9, honest. He knows that she’s the first agent that gets to try out all the prototypes so he really can’t be blamed if he entered ‘Prototype Testing Laboratory 1’ in search of her. The room was huge, at least three storeys high and half the size of a football field, and there was a giant circular hunk of metal with a large hole in the middle parked at one end and a group of people warbling in the local equivalent of English at the other.

When Eggsy started walking toward the strange contraption somebody barked something at him but nobody really looked up from their discussion so Eggsy shrugged it off as not-a-warning. The contraption looked like a high-tech doughnut with more hole than dough. Once he was certain that No. 9 wasn’t hiding behind the thing he turned to leave but accidentally stepped on something that turned out to be a badly located switch for the machine and a horrendous whirring sound started up.

And now, across the room, a man in a lab coat is yelling something at him while sounding incredibly panicked.

Eggsy strains to catch his words, but, between the deafening roar of the machine and the way Eggsy can’t make out what the man is saying, it’s pretty much a lost cause. He tries to step around the machine but there’s suddenly a suction force pulling him through the hole in the giant metal doughnut.

The next thing Eggsy knows is that he’s no longer in the lab because the howling of the machine has ceased, there’s nobody shouting at him, the sun is shining in his eyes, and, perhaps most pertinently, there are bullets raining down around him.

His agent training kicks in and he quickly takes stock of his surroundings. He is not in immediate danger, but there’s a scuffle at the far end of the rooftop that he’s on. (Bloody hell, he’s heard that the country is very into vertical living because of the premium placed on ground area but he hasn’t quite realised that they’ve built their flats this fucking high.) From what little he knows of the country’s paranoia, the guns that are being wielded on the other end are almost definitely illegal, as is the obvious act of violence against the only person among them that’s not wearing a hideous balaclava.

Eggsy may not know where the fuck he is but he can recognise a Kingsman suit—the kind they don’t make for regular customers—from a mile away, so he’s up and running toward the firefight the moment he manages to get to his feet to help a colleague that’s clearly in need of a lot of assistance given that he hasn’t got any guns out. There are five of those bastards and only one Kingsman, and Eggsy’s all for evening out the odds.

It’s probably those pesky gun control laws and allegedly omnipresent governmental surveillance that’s getting in the man’s way of giving as good as he gets.

“Incoming at your five o’ clock!” Eggsy yells because he’s a trooper like that, and the unknown Kingsman swiftly delivers a beautifully executed elbow strike to his assaulter’s masked face. It’s probably given them a broken nose and likely also a cranial fracture, so Eggsy counts that one as down for good.

The four remaining balaclava-wearing individuals whip around to eye Eggsy when they realise that they’re not alone after all. Their brief lapse in attention is all that’s needed to give the other Kingsman the opportunity to electrocute one of them while twisting another’s arm out of its socket. Eggsy has his umbrella out and fires two stunners in rapid succession at the two that the other Kingsman wasn’t able to reach.

All in all Eggsy considers that a job well done.

He jogs over to the other Kingsman, who is unapologetically pressing his knee into the back of the one whose arm he dislocated. The man’s brown hair is falling over his face in a way that Harry would surely disapprove of, but he is barely out of breath and the rise and fall of his chest is slow and controlled.

“Thank you,” the man says curtly, seemingly intent on breaking the back of the person under him by virtue of his weight alone. It’s odd, but Eggsy’s pretty confident that the man’s accent hails from the same set of posh schools as Harry’s. It’s definitely nothing like the local dialect, that’s for sure, but Eggsy’s the only British Kingsman field agent in this country as far as he knows, so where the fuck did this guy come from?

“You’re welcome,” Eggsy replies instinctively. It seems that some of Harry’s etiquette lessons have paid off after all. “You know, the authorities aren’t going to be pleased by this mess; you should probably move these guys somewhere or at least take their firearms with you if you’re going to leave them here.”

The other Kingsman falters a little at Eggsy’s response as if it was not what he expected. It’s a silly thought, of course, because the man doesn’t know him well enough to expect anything from him. He looks at his felled assailants contemplatively for a long time and Eggsy gets the feeling that he’s trying to compose himself for whatever reason. “Yes, you’re quite right. Would you be so kind as to lend me a hand before we carry on with the rest of our day as if none of this ever happened?” He looks up, throwing his head to the side and back a little to toss the hair out of his eyes, and gives Eggsy a polite smile.

And oh. Oh.

This man’s accent definitely hails from the same set of posh schools as Harry’s, because the man, brown eyes bright with youthful energy, is undoubtedly Harry fucking Hart. He looks so young.

Eggsy must be dreaming or something. They must’ve given him the good drugs after he knocked himself out by accidentally activating the metallic doughnut because the Harry Hart that Eggsy knows has just celebrated his fiftieth birthday—Eggsy crashed Harry’s house that evening after work; he’d know—and this man doesn’t look a year older than Eggsy.

“Harry,” he introduces himself, offering his hand for a handshake.

Yup. That’s Harry all right, even if his hair doesn’t seem to ever have been acquainted with either gel or wax. And apparently they’re doing the thing where they exchange first names and pretend that neither of them knows a thing about Kingsman even though Eggsy can tell that Harry has very strong suspicions about the origins of Eggsy’s bespoke suit and weaponised umbrella. It’s not every day a man in a suit appears out of thin air on a rooftop either.

Fuck. What year is this? Why the fuck does the S.E.A. HQ have a bloody time machine in their fucking basement, and how the fuck is he supposed to get back? He doesn’t belong here.

Eggsy takes Harry’s proffered hand numbly and gives it two firm pumps. His hand feels real enough, and the sun beating down his neck is certainly sweltering enough that Eggsy couldn’t have dreamed this torture up even in his deepest, most self-loathing hallucinations. “I’m Eg—Gary.”

“Eggary,” Harry repeats doubtfully, and, okay, yeah, even Daisy would’ve found that slipup suspicious, much less Harry.

“No, Gary,” Eggsy corrects, trying to cover his slip up. Granted, ‘Gary’ isn’t much better than ‘Eggsy’, but it’s a heck of a lot more common.

“I don’t suppose you’ll give me a straightforward answer if I ask you who you are,” Harry says with a tilt of his head that’s been making Eggsy lose his calm since before Eggsy even started realising that everything Harry does is endearing.

“Very astute,” Eggsy says, squinting and trying to shield his eyes from the sun. “I’m not gonna insult your intelligence and tell you I‘m just a passing John Smith, though.”

“No, I didn’t think you would.” Harry’s fingers are on his Kingsman watch, which, if Eggsy remembers correctly, has been equipped with amnesia darts since World War II.

“But I’ll help you with this mess,” Eggsy offers quickly.

Harry eyes him curiously, but Eggsy affects the appearance of complete calm with such conviction that he almost believes it himself. At some point Harry must’ve figured out that Eggsy won’t be saying anything more, because he simply gets up and says, “I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather prefer to get under some shade. Care to lend a hand?” He gestures at his attackers who are sprawled across the roof.

“It’d be my pleasure.”

Harry smiles that half-smile of his, and, oh, Eggsy is so fucked. Again.

Chapter Text

Eggsy is more than willing to drag Harry’s unconscious assaulters through the streets and back to S.E.A. HQ but he’s fairly certain that that’s going to get them both arrested for any number of offences that Eggsy doesn’t know exist. Also, Eggsy doesn’t want to fuck with the timeline or whatever by revealing that he’s a Kingsman agent even though any primary school kid with access to the Kingsman database will be able to discover otherwise.

In the end, Harry manages to assure him without giving details of his mission that his unconscious attackers pose no harm to either Kingsman or national security so long as they’re unarmed and unmasked. They pack the firearms away in Harry’s briefcase, scan the rooftop for any bits of bullets left lying around, and strip the unconscious bunch of their balaclavas before descending down the block of flats.

Harry’s movements are not quite the liquid, lethal grace that Eggsy’s used to, but then again, his suit looks newly tailored so he can’t have been Knighted for more than a couple of months. It feels weird being the more experienced one of the two. He takes the briefcase and gives Harry his umbrella to hold instead just because the sight of Harry without one looks too strange. (Harry gives him a look of complete incomprehension as the briefcase and umbrella exchange hands.) As they pretend to walk aimlessly through the streets, Eggsy stops by a convenience store to browse through the newspapers, noting the year and date and trying to place his position in history.

2 July 1988.

Eggsy does the calculations in his head and comes to the conclusion that Harry’s just under 23. He’s not only more experienced for once, he’s also older. By years. Eggsy pushes his glasses into his hair and scrubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. He asks Harry if he’s got any change to spare him. Harry wordlessly forks out a couple of coins that Eggsy uses to buy the paper.

He should’ve paid more attention to Merlin during his moment of freaking out dressed up as a pre-cross-cultural exchange brief because he has no idea what to expect from this country nearly 30 years in the past.

As they wander about a little longer, Harry keeps shooting him sideways glances as if he’s waiting for Eggsy to do something. He’s not acting as if Eggsy’s dangerous, per se, but he’s certainly holding himself in a manner that suggests that he’s expecting something that’s not happening and that’s putting him on edge.

When they come across a park, they find a bench under a tree and Eggsy all but falls onto it. Harry sits legs crossed like a proper gentleman while Eggsy just focuses on keeping his legs from sprawling apart like they would’ve back in the wrong side of town. Old habits die hard. Eggsy lays the newspaper across his lap despite very much wanting to cover his face with it because if he doesn’t he’s going to get a serious tan pattern in the shape of his spectacles. Harry, on the other hand, doesn’t even look like he notices that the sun is up. Even his bloody hair looks perky.

“You’re not MI6,” Harry finally says after the silence drags on for too long.

“No,” Eggsy agrees. “They think spectacles are liabilities.” Fuck. Is Harry actually making small talk with him? Are they seriously discussing the differing preferences in espionage equipment amongst intelligence agencies in broad daylight in 1988?

“Innovation isn’t their strong suit,” Harry says, skirting around the topic. Harry’s frames are likely already equipped with a rudimentary camera that captures video in black and white and a prototype GPS tracker. It’s a far cry from the version that Eggsy’s wearing with its real-time display, but that’s already more than sufficient to outweigh the disadvantages of wearing the clunky things into battle. Eggsy should also be wary about Harry recording his face since he’s technically not supposed to exist just yet, but really, who’s checking?

“I hope I’m not getting you into any trouble by interfering.”

“I would’ve been in more trouble if you hadn’t. There was only meant to be two of them,” Harry tells him, staring at a row of trees some distance away. “I’m guessing this means you weren’t sent as backup.”

“It’s a long story. All’s well that ends well,” Eggsy shrugs dismissively. He doesn’t quite know how he got on the rooftop anyway.

“Nevertheless, allow me to buy you lunch.”

“You shouldn’t offer,” Eggsy grins, shaking his head. “I will wipe you clean.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Harry challenges good-naturedly with the same tone that he uses when he’s urging Eggsy to test his limits. It makes something in his chest ache for the crow’s feet that’s missing from this version of Harry.

---

Eggsy doesn’t quite manage to empty Harry’s pockets, but that’s only because Harry’s rich as fuck and the food is unreasonably affordable.

They have lunch at a hawker centre where the ventilation leaves something to be desired. Eggsy shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over the back of his chair while Harry remains as impervious to the heat as ever. Between the two of them they buy something from every stall. Eggsy makes good on his promise and devours most of the dishes, although Harry also keeps pace with him easily.

There is something to be said for the monstrous amount of calories needed to fuel two young and virile Kingsman agents.

They chat over their food, Harry between mouthfuls and Eggsy with half-masticated coconut rice still in his mouth. There are so many questions that Eggsy wants to ask that he’s never managed to pose to his Harry, the Harry with a scar running down his temple from his brief flirtation with Valentine’s gun. It’s poor manners to enquire about personal matters so early in their acquaintance, but Eggsy figures that Harry’s more than capable of redirecting the conversation elsewhere if he’s uncomfortable with it.

“Have you met them yet?” Eggsy asks not at all subtly, nodding in the direction of Harry’s wrist.

Harry gives him an odd look that’s just on the side of constipated, and Eggsy definitely remembers this one from looking at himself in the mirror in the days following noticing that Harry’s wrist has a string of letters longer than his name. He doesn’t know what put that on Harry’s face and now he wishes he kept his mouth shut. “In our line of work it is often regarded as a weakness.”

“That’s not a ‘no’,” Eggsy whispers quietly. He shouldn’t have said anything. In all his farfetched imaginations, he’s never once considered that Harry’s soulmate situation could be anything less than perfect. He doesn’t dissuade Harry from his conclusion that their jobs are similar enough to be lumped together.

“No. It’s not.” Harry’s never been one for mincing words, though he can talk circles around a lawyer if he chooses to put his mind to it. He’s just professional like that. Eggsy supposes that, because Harry’s not being deliberately obtuse and particular about semantics, he’s being treated as a personal acquaintance. It’s nice, but he has a feeling that this will make it hard for him to leave Harry when—if—the time comes.

“I’m sorry,” Eggsy says, contrite. He has no idea why Harry would be so torn about having met his soulmate, but he can take a wild guess. It’s often difficult for Kingsman agents to balance work and personal lives. “If it makes you feel any better, my soulmate has someone else’s words,” he offers even as something twists sharply in his gut. He’d do anything to make Harry feel better even if it means pouring salt on his own wounds.

The expression on Harry’s face when he hears that is tragic, like his heart is breaking on Eggsy’s behalf. Eggsy can’t reconcile this man with the one who shot his dog to get a job, but he can certainly see now how Harry could’ve been sentimental enough to get Mr. Pickle stuffed. “It doesn’t make me feel better at all,” Harry tells him, sounding strangled. “I’m so very sorry about your situation.”

“It’s fine. ‘M the one that asked,” Eggsy mumbles into his spoonful of rice, grimacing. “I shouldn’t have poked my nose where it doesn’t belong. We barely even know each other.”

Eggsy looks up when he hears Harry chuckle, soft and low, and say, “I’ve recently also discovered myself in the same situation as you. What a pair we make.” He raises a plastic cup of homemade barley water, looks at Eggsy forlornly, and intones with a humourless smile, “Cheers.”

Eggsy’s heart stops. No. It can’t be. Harry’s supposed to have found his soulmate and have some happy years or even decades with them before he bails Eggsy out of Holborn Police Station. Harry’s not supposed to never have the chance to be happy. Harry doesn’t deserve that. If Harry’s soulmate isn’t meant for him then why isn’t Harry Eggsy’s? Eggsy will care for him and love him and never make him feel unwanted ever again so why won’t the world just give them a fucking chance?

This is so fucked up. If the fucking marks won’t make Harry happy then Eggsy will take it upon himself to ensure that Harry doesn’t want for anything as long as he’s there for him. If his soulmate doesn’t want him—which is absolutely foolish on their part—then all the better for Eggsy. He’ll show Harry that he deserves to be loved with every fibre of his being; Harry shouldn’t have to settle for anything less, should never settle for playing second fiddle to somebody else.

Eggsy bumps his cup of chrysanthemum tea against Harry’s.

“What do you say we forget all of this messy soulmate business? We’re two young men on a tropical island; I’m sure we don’t need them to enjoy this,” Eggsy proposes. If his eyes shine a little too brightly at the prospect of going on a date with Harry—even if Harry doesn’t realise it—well, the sun’s just a little too bright in this part of the world. Eggsy does feel slightly guilty that he’ll get to spend this time with his soulmate while Harry will have to make do with just Eggsy, but he’ll make up for it by ensuring that Harry feels like the most loved man alive, if only for today. (And maybe tomorrow, and the day after that, and fucking forever, really, if Eggsy never manages to find a way back to his proper time period.)

Harry knocks back his drink in one long swallow. He replaces the cup firmly on the table and turns his intense brown eyes on Eggsy. When he speaks, his voice is bittersweet in a way that makes Eggsy want to wrap him up in all the blankets in the world, “Let’s.”

---

Watching Harry ride a bicycle in his suit is rather disorienting. He has never seen Harry on a beach before, much less speeding along beside him with his already flyaway hair coming undone as salty sea breeze whips past their faces. The smile on his face is beatific and the exhilaration in his laughter feels like silk on Eggsy’s skin.

It’s a rather glorious sight, truth be told. Eggsy’s rather glad for the recording function of his glasses right now.

They’re also causing quite a spectacle from the number of turned heads that follow them. Then again, they are two sharply dressed young men weaving at breakneck speeds around other cyclists on a weekday afternoon. They are bound to catch the attentions of somebody.

After they return their bicycles to the rental shop, they walk along the beach while trading horror stories about training their respective dogs. It is not lost on Eggsy that this stroll along the beach would be very romantic if they actually were on a date. Their slightly curved trajectory brings them closer and closer to the ocean with every step, but Eggsy doesn’t realise this until the water starts lapping at his shoes and splashing against his ankle.

Eggsy quickly takes a few frantic steps away from the tide to take off his shoe and pour the seawater out. As he hops on one leg, he hears Harry laughing unfettered at him.

“What?” Eggsy demands, and attempts to look intimidating despite barely being able to keep his balance on the soft sand.

“I’m surprised that you’ve not kitted yourself out with a pair of Brogues,” Harry says, lifting a foot and gesturing at the decorative yet functional perforations in the toecap of his shoe through which seawater enters and drains in ebbing tides. “They’re much better suited for wetter climates like this than Oxfords.” Eggsy can’t contain his surprise at that. A Harry that prefers Brogues over Oxfords? Unthinkable.

Eggsy sniffs indignantly. “I’ll have you know that a dear friend of mine swears by Oxfords. He’ll have me maimed if I so much as dare to consider wearing something as informal as Brogues. It’s Oxfords, not Brogues, or no shoes at all.”

“They’re highly practical for our purpose,” Harry rebuts.

“They originated in the working class—they’re hardly gentlemanly,” Eggsy counters. Harry looks so appalled by that that Eggsy loses his balance completely and falls backwards into the sand because he’s laughing too hard. “My god,” Eggsy says between gasps, “your face!”

Harry doesn’t do anything as undignified as scowl, but he comes pretty fucking close when Eggsy simply leans back into the sand and props himself up on his elbows in order to continue laughing without collapsing in a heap. He does his best to keep his glasses focused on Harry, though, because his expression is priceless and he is so recording this for posterity.

Harry stares for a bit at Eggsy, who is reclining against the sand with his chest heaving slightly breathlessly, and then his face shuts down and he proceeds to sit next to Eggsy, lying back with his head on the sand. Eggsy blinks. Whatever he expected, it was not this sudden lack of propriety or the sombreness that has abruptly washed over their conversation.

“Sometimes I wonder why one-sided soulmate marks even exist,” Harry whispers apropos of absolutely nothing as he squints against bright sunlight. “What’s the point of assigning people like us somebody that’s obviously not meant for us? We would be better off without these marks.” Harry turns his head gently to look at Eggsy in the eye. “It’s been a while for you, hasn’t it? Will it hurt forever?”

Eggsy sighs heavily and lays his head beside Harry’s. He doesn’t think he’s qualified to talk about forever, but he can certainly try. “It’s all a matter of perspective. It’s enough if he’s happy, but feeling happy for somebody and being happy yourself can be mutually exclusive. It still hurts to be reminded that he’s never going to be mine, but y’know what, if I really love him, then all I ever really want is his happiness. Whether he finds that with me or not is secondary. So really, as long as he’s happy I’m at the very least contented.

“But then I go and find out that the bastard’s not even with his bloody soulmate and isn’t that just the biggest fuck you from the universe,” Eggsy adds humourlessly. He tilts his head and his gaze lands on Harry who’s doing that thing where he feels sad for Eggsy again. “The universe should’ve paired us up together since our respective soulmates don’t want us,” Eggsy says, and the irony of his words is not lost on him because while Eggsy is actually matched up to Harry, Harry is in turn meant for some other mystery person who so happens to have yet another person’s words on their wrist.

It’s a fucking cock up, is what it is. Whoever assigns these stupid things ought to be fired.

Harry flashes Eggsy a sad, wistful smile that only serves to make Eggsy feel worse. “Yes, it should have.”

Eggsy sits up abruptly and starts tugging on Harry’s hand. “Come on. Fuck soulmate marks. We’re here and we obviously like each other, so let’s do the whole courtship thing good and proper like in those soap operas where the fucking marks don’t exist and people get to choose who they like best. So I choose you, yeah? We’ll write our own happy ending.”

Harry looks cautiously optimistic as he brushes sand out of his hair. “Are you sure about this? There’s a reason why those things only happen in dramas.”

“I’m as sure as this beach is hot, so let’s get out of here and go catch a movie or whatever it is that sickeningly sweet couples do.” Eggsy will choose Harry every time even if the universe hasn’t already done that for him.

Chapter Text

Eggsy finds out that he likes this version of Harry about as much as he likes the other Harry. There are some things that differ, like their opinions on footwear, but he chalks all of this up to age. At heart, Harry Hart remains the same slightly awkward gentleman that he’s always been and probably always will be. (Although this Harry’s version of an awkward gentleman has more to do with being so young and less with knocking out six thugs in a pub because one of them has a foul mouth and zero respect for Eggsy.) He opens all the doors for Eggsy and pays for their dinner even though Eggsy protests.

(But when Eggsy checks his wallet all he finds is a measly two-dollar note, and Harry’s whole body shivers with laughter that he’s too much of a gentleman to let explode out of him before footing the bill. He then pulls Eggsy away to a more private corner so that he can press his face into Eggsy’s neck and hold him until he manages to stop himself from silently laughing against Eggsy’s skin. By then, Eggsy’s not even angry anymore and is more than contented to wrap his arms around Harry and bask in his reassuring presence.)

They exchange numbers—or, rather, Harry gives him his number and Eggsy tells him that he doesn’t have a phone, to which Harry raises a disbelieving eyebrow and then proceeds to drag Eggsy to the nearest phone shop where he gets Eggsy one of those Nokia phones which structural integrity after being dropped from the fiftieth storey is the stuff of legends such that even the collective technological genius of Kingsman’s Merlin division has problems replicating it reliably—and Harry promises to call whenever he manages to find time in his busy schedule for Eggsy.

Eggsy takes up residence in one of the safe houses that night and is more than delighted to find a couple of credit cards and a backup stash of cash inside. It is more than enough to buy him another suit, but Eggsy thinks of the weather and the humidity and decides that t-shirts and shorts would be much more practical. Harry doesn’t explicitly approve of his wardrobe change when they meet for breakfast the next day, but Eggsy knows what it feels like to have eyes on him.

---

“Why are you here anyway?” Eggsy asks Harry one week into their acquaintance. They are huddled under Eggsy’s umbrella—for once actually fulfilling its proper function of deflecting rain, not bullets—and marching swiftly from the bus stop to a red-bricked library.

“Cross-cultural exchange,” Harry informs him shortly.

The same as Eggsy, then, except Harry probably didn’t mean that he found himself a time machine and got thrown into the past. “Me too,” Eggsy hums.

The library smells like musty old books. Harry breathes it in like it’s the freshest country air. They immediately dive into the literary works of some obscure author Eggsy half-believes that Harry made up. Harry doesn’t ask about his work and Eggsy doesn’t offer, and if they know nothing more about each other than their first names, the fact that neither of them are obviously normal businessmen, and a collection of personality traits, well, ignorance is bliss.

While Eggsy wants to go back to his time, go back to the Harry that taught him everything he knows about espionage, this version of him is so equally compelling that Eggsy lets himself consider the idea that it would be all right even if he never makes it back. He’ll see Harry again when this time catches up.

He doesn’t know how to face his Harry the next time they’re face-to-face anyway. “You dated me once almost 30 years ago and I like it. Let’s relive your misspent youth again,” doesn’t seem especially appropriate. Harry would probably turn him down politely by admitting him to the nearest mental hospital all gentleman like.

---

On their two-week anniversary, Eggsy buys a cake and has Harry make a wish as he blows out two winding candles. Eggsy doesn’t bother with wishing because he’s already used up his lifetime-quota of wishes when he asked for Harry back after V-Day without any real expectations and it came true anyway. It’s also more than he’s ever hope for to be sharing these stolen moments with Harry-the-Younger, so he figures that the universe has finally made up for its terrible assignment of soulmate marks.

They share their first kiss over the cake as dark smoke rises lazily from blackened candlewicks and curls around their faces like a caress.

---

Eggsy’s eyes linger on an oddly familiar watch in a display cabinet as they’re strolling aimlessly in a shopping centre. It has a large round face and dark brown leather straps that look like the sort of thing that would suit Harry very well. Harry notices and pulls Eggsy into the store and asks to see it.

They leave the shop with far lighter pockets and a pair of identical watches because it appears that Harry’s aces at sweet talking Eggsy into allowing Harry to splurge on him, and Eggsy insists on returning the favour. They get each other’s names engraved on the back of their watches, and it’s only when Eggsy’s taking his time replacing Harry’s Kingsman watch with the one they bought that he remembers a watch back in his time with ‘Gary’ etched on the back.

He tries not to let his imaginations convince him that he and Harry eventually have a fall out that leads to Harry throwing the watch away only for a passing peddler to pick it up and eventually sell it to Eggsy decades later for a fraction of what it’s truly worth. (The value of something this imbued with meaning can only be priceless anyway.)

As Harry gently secures Eggsy’s new watch to his wrist with a self-satisfied smile, Eggsy concludes that, given Harry’s preference for hoarding as evidenced by his walls, Harry wouldn’t have thrown it away even if he didn’t want it any longer. It must have gotten loose somehow.

Eggsy makes Harry promise to keep the watch with him forever even though he knows that it’s a promise Harry can’t help but break. Harry agrees in a heartbeat on the condition that Eggsy does the same. Eggsy doesn’t even need to be prompted to know that the watch will accompany him to his deathbed.

---

Not long after that they get roaring drunk—Eggsy teaches Harry how to make a proper Martini, stirred not shaken, because James Bond doesn’t know fuck all about Martinis and Harry should never ever take any sort of advice from Bond—and have to put up at a motel because neither of them can remember how to get home. It turns out that Harry’s a very affectionate drunk.

When Eggsy wakes up the next morning to Harry smiling softly at him with his hair wild and messy from a night of doing unspeakable things to Eggsy’s arse, he feels like the sun is shining in his face and that for once his love life is no longer limited to judicious self-loving. Harry’s breath smells like stale beer but Eggsy just grins when Harry presses closer, tightens his arms around Eggsy’s waist, and pulls him in for the filthiest morning after kiss to match the filthiest night of his life.

Eggsy pushes his hands into Harry’s hair and strokes the skin behind his ears as Harry draws needy, keening sounds from Eggsy’s throat and rubs a hand down his back. He likes the feel of Harry pliant against him, enjoys the novelty of being wanted both physically and emotionally by a man whom he’s long ago given up as a lost cause. When they finally break apart, Eggsy presses their foreheads together and doesn’t bother hiding the big, dopey grin that’s spreading across his face. He’s more than willing to let Harry know how happy he’s made him.

“Gary whatever-your-last-name-is, I fucking love you,” Harry declares breathlessly.

Eggsy beams. “Harry you-never-told-me-your-last-name-either, I fucking love you too.”

“Good,” Harry says, smiling, and all sorts of warm, fluttery feelings start blooming in Eggsy’s chest. Even the sight of their brand new watches, still looped securely around both their wrists and hiding a set of damning words beneath their straps, fails to ruin his mood. Fuck Harry’s soulmate. If they don’t want him, Eggsy is more than happy to show them what they’re missing out on.

“Even if you don’t want me you’re stuck with me forever,” Eggsy whispers, and then Harry kisses him again, hard and furious and desperate as if they’re living on borrowed time.

---

Then one day, just as Eggsy is beginning to entertain the happy notion that he’s stuck in this time period for good, No. 9, the one that Eggsy remembers from his time, turns up at the restaurant they’re dining at, has the maître d’ call Eggsy out, and drops him the bomb when he’s barely processed that she’s here.

“Galahad, I’m here to take you back.”

Eggsy pales and his blood turns to ice in his veins. Inside Harry waits for him to return with a live orchestra playing in the background.

“You can’t. Not now.”

---

Eggsy returns to the restaurant to finish up dinner, trying to drag it out for as long as he can. He might never share this intimacy with Harry ever again, so nobody can blame him for not wanting to leave. No. 9 lingers outside the restaurant like an intimidating reminder that this must end, here and now, before he messes the timeline up any further. She’s told him that while there is evidence of Eggsy’s presence in 1988 for almost a month, he disappears without a trace around this time so they must take him back tonight.

He’s never seen her so stern before and it serves as a sudden reminder that No. 9 is, despite her innocuous smiles, a seasoned Kingsman agent authorised to kill.

The dessert comes last, a warm, creamy yam paste that nevertheless feels like ice in Eggsy’s throat. He can tell that Harry’s noticed that something’s off, but also that Eggsy would rather not talk about it, so he fills their conversations with discussions about the tailoring of Eggsy’s suit.

When they finally step out of the restaurant, Eggsy pulls Harry over to a pillar and braces himself for the worst talk of his life. Harry’s floppy, relaxed smile turns wary when he spots No. 9 eyeing them intently from where she's leaning against the lamppost nearest to them, and Eggsy really hates to be the bearer of bad news but he can’t run from this one. He gives Eggsy a hug that lingers anyway before pulling away so they don’t get charged with public indecency.

Eggsy’s throat spasms when he opens his mouth. It feels so much worse when Harry gives him an encouraging look because Eggsy’s world is crashing down around his ears and he’s taking Harry down with him whether he likes it or not. He really doesn’t want to do this but he can’t not do it. No. 9 will find a way somehow to send him back to his time no matter what so the least he could do is give Harry some sort of closure.

His lips part again, and this time the words fall out in a desperate, nervous babble, “I’m really sorry, Harry, but I need to go. I never meant to, believe me. It’s…it’s super-secret and oh, god, Harry, I’m so fucking sorry for making you fall in love with me even though I’m not your soulmate and going away even though I promised you forever. Fuck! I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I love you so fucking much, Harry, and I’m sorry I fucked up. I want that happy ending with you so fucking badly. I promise you’ll find me again, but it’ll be a long time later so don’t you wait for me, all right? Just promise me that you’ll be happy, please.”

Harry just stands there, stunned, until a heart-breaking look of anguish washes over his features and Eggsy wants to do himself in for putting that look on his face.

“I can’t,” Harry tells him, voice broken, as if he’s just been told to shoot Mr. Pickle with a loaded automatic. “Gary, you’re the only one for me. Even if the universe tells me that you’re not supposed to be mine, I’m always going to be yours. It knows what it’s doing, after all, when it handed out our soulmate marks. These last few days have been the happiest of my life and I don’t regret a single moment even if it breaks my heart now to watch you go. So find whoever it is that says the words here and promise me you’ll find your happiness with them, no matter how short it may be, all right? Promise me, love.”

“What?”

Harry loosens the watch around his wrist and Eggsy sees, in deep, comforting blue and a horribly familiar scrawl, “Incoming at your five o’ clock!” Everything clicks into place.

The first words that you say to your soulmate may not be the first that they hear from you.

‘What’s your name, young man?’

‘Incoming at your five o’ clock!’

“I really do love you, even if I’ve only known you for a few weeks,” Harry says, eyes bright with tears that he’s too stoic to shed. “I don’t even know who the fuck you really are but, oh, god, Gary, I wouldn’t change this for the world.”

“Harry,” Eggsy gasps. “Oh my god, Harry, all this time…”

“It seems that you’ve pulled the short end of the stick in our deal. You’ve been my soulmate the whole time, but I’m just somebody you met on a rooftop,” Harry says bitterly, shaking his head. “But I’m glad it’s you. I can’t imagine anyone else for whom I’d rather hold a torch for the rest of my life. I’m glad that you loved me, at least for a while, and I’ll never forget you.”

“It’s time to go,” No. 9 hisses in his ear. “We haven’t got time to lose.”

Eggsy darts forward to give Harry a tight hug, and the tears he tried so hard to keep at bay roll down his cheek to stain Harry’s shoulder. “Fuck you, Harry Hart. You can’t tell me this now. You fucking can’t!” He presses a hard, desperate kiss to Harry’s lips. Fuck public indecency laws too. “I can’t explain things now ‘cause you won’t understand it yet, but just wait for me, all right? It’s going to be a fucking long wait, but I promise you that I’ll be back, we’ll talk, and after that we’re going to spend the rest of our mortal lives being so sickeningly sweet together that we’ll give Merlin cavities until one of us gets blown up in the field. I’m not taking no for an answer, Harry. Fucking promise me you’ll wait.”

“I promise,” Harry says, seemingly at a loss for words. “I don’t know how the fuck you know my last name or who the fuck Merlin is but I’ll wait however long I have to.”

“Good,” Eggsy says savagely into Harry’s shoulder, choking back a fresh wave of tears, “because this might take decades before you understand that you and I, Harry fucking Hart, we’re written in the stars. Fuck. I’m so sorry for leaving you so abruptly at this point without a proper explanation, but just know that I fucking love you and I wouldn’t change this for the world either.”

With that, Eggsy breaks himself out of Harry’s arms and dashes into the waiting car, fixing his eyes resolutely on the road ahead to stop himself from throwing himself back in Harry’s arms because every muscle in his body his telling him to do just that. He’ll be the cause of Harry’s decades of loneliness, but fuck if he doesn’t fix this when he gets back.

Chapter Text

No. 9 gives him a pitying look as they step through the hastily thrown together portal at S.E.A. HQ.

Eggsy swallows heavily and refuses to let himself second guess his decision to return to his time. His watch feels like a noose around his neck.

---

When Eggsy’s returned to his time he finds that only a week has passed. They make him sign a mountain of confidentiality forms regarding the time machine before letting him out of the lab.

No. 9 takes him sightseeing in an effort to raise his spirits, but the country feels a lot less exciting than it did when Harry was walking the streets with him. None of their usual haunts exist anymore when he looks them up using Google’s street view, and even the shop that sold them their watches has been put out of business.

The city in which Harry and Eggsy courted each other in 1988 and shared their first kiss, among other things, no longer exists.

Eggsy refuses any subsequent offers to show him the sights, instead taking as many missions as he, as an overseas agent, is cleared for. When they stop giving him missions because No. 9 became concerned about his state of mind, he escapes to a random rooftop every day and only returns to the HQ if they send somebody after him.

Alone, he watches and rewatches the videos of Harry that his glasses have recorded, watches and rewatches, watches and rewatches.

It’s like his world has drained of colour. He wears the watch with Harry’s name everyday even before they revoked his access to mission files because he’s always tempted to self-inject with an amnesia dart when he gets within arm’s length of a Kingsman watch. Less practically and more sentimentally, he does so because it’s the only thing of Harry that he has left aside from his memories.

Oh, sure he’s got the suit that Harry commissioned for him before V-Day, but that’s not the Harry he snogged over a cake.

But it is. Eggsy’s thoughts grind to a halt.

Back in the past he told Harry to wait for him, and it’s so laughably foolish of him to suddenly forget that the Harry that prefers Oxfords and the one that argued for Brogues are not completely different individuals.

Eggsy startles to acute awareness when he remembers that the Harry from his time is just an older version of the one he promised forever to. The wind on his face is sharper, the sounds of cars rumbling from far below his perch on the rooftop louder, and the burn of hot cement under his palms makes him feel terrifyingly alert and alive.

But it’s been over two decades. What are the chances that Harry’s still waiting for his answers?

---

Eggsy is allowed back on field missions once he stops manically burning himself out.

---

No. 9 hugs him before he goes. She’s not as sturdy as Harry, doesn’t have his solid build and towering height, but it’s a memorable moment nonetheless. “You know, Arthur used to visit us every year around July until you signed up,” she says to him expectantly while stepping back as if it should mean something.

Eggsy stares at her like she’s grown a second head. What the fuck has Chester King got to do with anything?

She refuses to say anything more and simply waves him into the car that will take him to the airport with a much put upon sigh. It’s an awfully familiar look. Roxy used to make the same expression all the time whenever she found him in Harry’s office looking after the dogs. Eggsy doesn’t understand why the women around him are so fond of sighing at him.

---

On the flight to Heathrow, Eggsy drowns out the crying baby behind him with the in-flight selection of ballads turned up so loud that the girl sitting next to him glares at him the whole time. When the plane touches down, Eggsy’s glasses flash, “Welcome home, Galahad,” and Eggsy wonders why he thinks of hawker centres and seawater in his Oxfords when he thinks of home.

He hails a cab—a regular one—at the airport and falls asleep in the backseat on his way back home. He is awoken by the cabbie tapping his knee and asking for payment, which Eggsy dutifully counts and places in the man’s wrinkly hand before retrieving his luggage from the boot. His mother is there to help him with his bags when he opens the door. He gives her a kiss on the cheek and wraps his arms around her because these past months have been too much and he needs to slow down.

He feels like a child all over again as his mother hugs him back, but that’s okay, because he feels safe here.

“You look exhausted,” his mother says, patting his cheek and giving him a once over.

“I feel exhausted,” Eggsy admits, giving her a brittle smile. “Nasty business, learning to tailor for picky Chinese customers.”

“I’m sure,” Michelle says quietly and non-intrusively. Eggsy’s rather certain that she knows a lot more about what he actually does than she lets on. “Come on. Let’s get you situated back in your room.”

They trudge upstairs, his mother filling him in on all of Daisy’s developmental milestones that he’s missed. Eggsy makes a mental note to tell Harry that Daisy’s starting to stack stuff now so that Harry can overreact again and spoil her with boxes of LEGO to celebrate. Eggsy is not looking forward to stepping on the blasted things, but he can endure just about anything for Daisy.

(When Eggsy offhandedly mentioned that Daisy said her first word nearly one year ago, Harry greeted him the next morning with a paper bag full of Enid Blyton books for Eggsy to read to her. Then there’s the time when Daisy started taking stumbling steps and Harry bought her a tricycle. And when Daisy scribbled over Eggsy’s suit Harry sent him home with an artist easel. Daisy’s bedroom is overflowing with stuff she won’t be able to use for a few more years.)

Maybe Harry won’t make a big deal of it this time if Eggsy—oh.

Fuck. He needs to talk to Harry about what happened in 1988. Harry’s waited for an answer for nearly 30 years. Eggsy can’t make the man wait any longer.

He gives his mother a goodnight kiss on her cheek and closes the bedroom door behind him. His legs take him to his bedside table, where he pulls open the drawer and takes out the watch with the large, round face and soft, leather straps that he bought from a travelling salesman. He turns it around and ‘Gary’ stares back at him.

It’s Harry’s watch. It’s the one Eggsy bought for him in 1988.

Eggsy closes the drawer and lays the watch on the table. For the first time in a while, he unbuckles the watch around his wrist—the one that says ‘Harry’—and stares at the blue lines throbbing under his skin to his pounding heart.

‘What’s your name, young man?’

‘Incoming at your five o’ clock!’

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and refastens the watch to his wrist. He will resolve this tomorrow. His eyes drift to his luggage. He will sort that out tomorrow as well. Tonight, he sleeps.

He learns that sleep does not come easy to those who seek it.

---

He pockets the watch that says ‘Gary’ in his suit jacket when he dresses to leave for U.K. HQ the next morning.

His Kingsman watch is somewhere in his luggage.

---

Eggsy goes to Merlin’s office first to drop off the thick folder of questions Merlin wanted him to answer. He hopes Merlin doesn’t ask him why the historical notes on everywhere but S.E.A. HQ are so thick while every other question is sparsely furnished with half-hearted answers.

He drags his feet to Harry’s office. Even from a distance away, he can hear the dogs barking excitedly at something, and when the doors of Harry’s office suddenly burst open Eggsy is forced to the ground by something slobbering and stomping all over him. Eggsy groans, shutting his eyes tight to stop eager tongues from poking his eyes. He doesn’t remember any of his dogs being so heavy.

There are three dogs on him. J.B. is occupied with trying to nose Eggsy’s hand so that he can slip under it and demand ear scratches, while Mrs. Pickle and Professor Higgins are excitedly romping around on his chest and giving him the facial treatment he never asked for. Harry stands in the distance, looking slightly contrite, but otherwise leaves the dogs to show Eggsy just how much they missed him.

Eggsy uses his free hand to pick the dogs off his chest one by one, then gathers all of their leashes in one hand and pushes himself off the ground. When he navigates his way to Harry through slobber-covered spectacles with three very happy dogs trying to trip him up by rubbing themselves all over his legs, Harry offers him a handkerchief that Eggsy accepts gratefully. He wipes his glasses clean before offering the handkerchief back to Harry.

Harry raises an eyebrow that Eggsy takes to mean that he ought to get the cloth washed and dried before giving it back. He gestures toward his office’s open doors and Eggsy steps inside to take a seat in front of Harry’s desk, releasing the dogs to take an early afternoon nap in their corner. Harry walks behind the table and settles himself into his office chair.

As Eggsy tucks the handkerchief into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, his fingers brush across soft leather and he remembers why he is here. He glances up at Harry, and instead of the exasperated yet fond expression that Eggsy is used to seeing Harry looks like a man sentenced to the gallows, tired and beaten and resigned.

Gingerly, Eggsy retrieves the watch etched with his name and places it on Harry’s desk. Golden rays reflect off its old, scratched surface, and it gleams glaringly like a second sun while brightly lit motes of dust waft lazily above it.

Harry averts his eyes from the watch and all the fight drains out of him, his countenance resigned and defeated.

“I’m glad you found it. I lost that watch some years ago,” Harry says as if stalling for time. He pauses. “This very much explains how you knew about my name and Merlin.”

“I forgot that the Merlin position wasn’t set up until 1990,” Eggsy says, but his heart isn’t in this exchange.

“Evidently.” Harry pauses. “Do you want to start, or should I?”

So they aren’t beating around the bush, then.

 “You waited, all these years,” Eggsy says, and it’s not a question, because he’s seen the looks Harry gives this watch when Eggsy was still wearing it. He wants answers.

“Foolishly, yes,” Harry utters to the window.

“Why?”

“I was young and in love,” Harry says, and it should make Eggsy the happiest person in the world because Harry’s just told him that he loved him, but all Eggsy hears is ‘was’.

“…and now?” Eggsy ventures hesitantly.

Harry takes his spectacles off and kneads the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Now I’m an old man. You must understand, Eggsy, that I’ve had time—too much, even—to think. What I did back then was both irrational and stupid. You’re half my age.”

Eggsy’s blood runs cold. Is this what Harry now thinks of their one month in 1988? A product of irrationality and stupidity? He shrinks in his seat. “Oh,” Eggsy says, voice small, and he feels like he’s suffocating. “But what does age matter? Are you telling me you’d rather have one month than the rest of your life?” he protests weakly.

“Perhaps it’s not that. Not exactly,” Harry admits, as if he’s been actively finding flimsy reasons to stop things before they are set in motion. Harry puts his glasses back on and it acts like a mask to shutter off his eyes from Eggsy’s scrutiny. “I shouldn’t have imposed myself upon you like that. Forcing you to accept my affections was most ungentlemanly.”

“Force?” Eggsy gapes. “If anybody’s forcing anybody it’s me, innit? I started it and I’m going to finish this right.” Finish the affair in 1988 and start all over again with the Harry that picked him out of a police station.

“So it ends now? After 28 years, you’re finally breaking up with me?” Harry mutters, eyes finally finding Eggsy’s. He smiles at Eggsy sadly as if he knows how this story is going to end, how this tragedy will play out. Fuck. Eggsy doesn’t want this to be a tragedy. (Besides, why the fuck should Harry feel sad if he thinks that 1988 was a mistake? He should look happier now that he’s about to rectify it. Fuck you, Harry, you’re a better actor than this. You’re a fucking spy.) He’s supposed to be scooped up in Harry’s arms and ravaged thoroughly the moment he sets foot into Harry’s office, not be told that Harry’s stopped wanting him.

“You’re obviously over me now, so there’s no reason for me to make you stay, yeah?” Eggsy says, trying not to show how hard this is for him. Fuck soulmate marks. It’s making his bones ache to hear that now that Eggsy knows they’ve got a matching pair, Harry has to go and fall out of love (fall out of irrationality and stupidity) with him. What’s the point of those bloody things then if the person he needs most isn’t going to be there for what he needs them for? He can’t pretend to understand why Harry looks halfway devastated, but then he doesn’t feel like he understands anything anymore.

“No, not exactly,” Harry says wearily, as if it’s important for Eggsy to make the clear distinction between Harry not wanting him anymore and Harry not wanting him anymore. He looks pale, like he’s barely holding himself together, and Eggsy wants to go over and wrap his arms around him if only Harry would let him. “I’m doing the responsible thing and letting you go.”

“What?” It’s only been a few weeks for Eggsy since 1988. Surely Harry remembers how madly in love Eggsy was with him, so why the fuck would he think that Eggsy, who hasn’t had the luxury of time to reconsider like Harry did, wants to be let go of?

“Do you remember what you told me about being happy so long as your soulmate is happy?” Harry asks with a wistful smile. “I once told you that those weeks with you are the happiest I have ever been, and that’s still true. I don’t regret a single moment. So, as somebody who knows what it’s like to want for nothing more, I’m encouraging you to forget about me and find that person on your wrist. You deserve the chance to be as happy as you’ve made me.”

Oh. Oh. Harry’s playing the martyr, styling himself as the sacrificial lamb. He thinks that Eggsy’s not his (Eggsy snorts inwardly because he’s been Harry’s for as long as he’s known his name, and what kind of super spy is Harry if he still hasn’t figured this out?), thinks that Eggsy ought to act as if 1988 never happened, thinks that Eggsy could be happier than 1988 with someone who’s not Harry. Eggsy stares at Harry incredulously. “Fuck. You don’t get it, do you, Harry? I told you we’re written in the stars.”

“Yes, well, for all I know you could have a birthmark in the shape of my name,” Harry says dismissively, like he wants the conversation to end right here, right now. Eggsy won’t allow that.

“You know I don’t.”

Harry coughs and his neck flushes a rather familiar shade of red. “Yes, of course.”

Fuck. Now they’re both thinking about the motel and acting like awkward, hormonal teenagers. Eggsy struggles to pull his mind away from the memories of Harry sliding against him, face red and mouth swollen, as he takes Eggsy apart with his hands and his words, searing Eggsy both inside and out, swallowing all the sounds Eggsy makes while he takes all Eggsy has to offer (which is and always will be everything).

“You know, Harry, for a spy you can be incredibly daft,” Eggsy finally says.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because, Harry, I don’t want anybody but you.” Eggsy fixes Harry with his eyes and slowly unbuckles the strap of his watch. He sees Harry’s eyes dart to his hands.

“Eggsy, please, don’t,” Harry says quietly. It is barely there, but Eggsy catches a quiver in his voice, a break of emotion through his usually impenetrable ability to pretend, and it sounds like a plea for Eggsy to put him out of his misery.

“No. You need to see this, and then maybe you’ll finally put two and two together,” Eggsy insists. The buckle comes undone under his fingers and he slips the strap through it. Slowly, he lays the watch on Harry’s desk and extends his forearm toward Harry, turning his wrist so that the nervous rise and fall of his pulse threading through deep, comforting blue words catches the sunlight streaming in from the windows.

“What are you doing?” Harry demands, sounding slightly panicked, his eyes darting up to Eggsy’s and refusing to look down at Eggsy’s exposed wrist, look down and see for himself that Eggsy’s been branded with his words from the beginning. That Eggsy’s been his all along.

“This is me, finding the person on my wrist, and askin’ ‘im,” Eggsy chokes back a strangled sound, rapidly devolving back to his Cockney accent as his heart leaps high in his throat and hoping that this will be enough, “if ‘e will make me as happy as I once made ‘im.”

Harry’s gaze drops briefly to Eggsy’s wrist, bared as an offering, and then does a double take.

‘What’s your name, young man?’

His eyes are large and disbelieving and—best of all—hopeful as he looks directly at Eggsy and asks, “You don’t mean to say…?”

“I thought that, if you was mine, you’d ‘ave my name because that’s the first thing I ever said to you,” Eggsy admits, and it feels like a humongous weight has lifted off his shoulders when Harry gives him the beginnings of a tentative smile. “Then I accidentally saw that your mark’s too long to be my name by any stretch of imagination, so I thought it only went one way.”

“And when you told me you’ve met your soulmate I assumed that it couldn’t be me because 1988 was the first time I saw you,” Harry finishes breathlessly. He quickly unfastens his watch and takes Eggsy’s hand in his, lining up their marks. Something warm and whole unfurls in Eggsy’s chest as he takes in the sight of their wrists, words the exact same shade, and, now that they understand, full of promises for the future. “All this time I never dared to hope…”

“You should’ve,” Eggsy grins. Everything starts getting a little blurry, and it’s only when Harry brushes his thumb over Eggsy’s eyes that he realises that he’s crying. It’s such a novel thing to be crying of happiness outside of a hospital room. (Harry gets himself knocked out too frequently—Eggsy has no doubt that he will be doing a lot more relief crying in hospital rooms in the future.)

Harry steps around the table without letting go of Eggsy’s hand and presses soft, slow kisses to the corners of Eggsy’s eyes once they’re firmly in each other’s personal space. Eggsy closes the space left between them by looping an arm around Harry’s waist and pressing closer, angling his face so that Harry’s lips never leave his skin. Eggsy’s missed this, missed being able to hold Harry close to him and curl his fingers into the fabric of his suit.

But Harry, who’s been carrying the memory of Eggsy with him for longer than he hasn’t, must miss it so much more.

Eggsy's heart aches for him, for this lovely, lonely man who was willing to wait almost three decades for him. When Harry pauses for breath, lips grazing the skin of his cheek and breath fanning out over the shell of his ear, Eggsy tilts his head and their first kiss in 28 years is absolutely perfect.

Thank you for waiting for me.

Chapter Text

Merlin, the bastard, cracks a wiseass joke about how they ought to have given Eggsy the codename ‘Guinevere’ instead of ‘Galahad’ when he enters Harry’s office a bit later to find them with their arms still wrapped around each other.

“I could technically fire you,” Harry muses as they untangle their limbs. He leaves a hand on the small of Eggsy’s back that sears a brand into Eggsy’s skin.

“You wouldn’t want to go through the troubles of replacing me,” Merlin responds dismissively.

“A regretful shortcoming on my part that I will rectify at the soonest possible moment,” Harry assures him. “What do you want me for?”

“I’m actually looking for Galahad,” Merlin says. “I have a few points about your notes that I’d like to go through with you.” He raises the thick file of notes that Eggsy just deposited on his table not too long ago.

“Let’s have it, then,” Eggsy shrugs, and leads them all over to the cosy sitting area in a corner of the office. He pulls Harry down next to him and makes sure that Harry’s hand on his back stays exactly where it is. It’s been a while since he last had the luxury of being touched by Harry, and fuck if he’s going to let Merlin ruin the little pleasures in life.

“You know, once we’re done, I have some questions of a different nature to ask too,” Merlin tells them, raising an eyebrow at the space—or lack thereof—between their bodies.

“Oh, this?” Eggsy says cheerfully. “We’ve been dating for 28 years. Nice of you to notice only now, Merlin.”

“Eggsy, I may not remember everything I read, but I’m willing to bet my finest bottle of scotch that you weren’t even born yet 28 years ago,” Merlin deadpans.

“It’s a long story,” Harry admits somewhat reluctantly.

“I’d really like to hear that later,” Merlin says brusquely, “but what the fuck is this about Chester King visiting the country every year? As far as I know he’s not left London even once since his promotion to Arthur’s position.”

Eggsy cocks his head, brows furrowing. “Really? I could’ve sworn that No. 9 told me that Arthur’s been visiting them every July until I came into the picture. Do you know anything about this, Harry? You’re Arthur now; you must have access to Chester King’s travel logs.”

Harry gives a very fake cough. The wanker isn’t even trying. “I might know a thing or two.

Eggsy continues staring at Harry until it became clear that he’s not about to give them the information that they want. All of a sudden, Merlin exclaims, “You bastard!”

“What? What’s going on?” Eggsy demands.

“Our dear friend Harry,” Merlin says, gesturing expansively at Harry and looking like he’s sucking on a lemon, “our new Arthur, is the one that’s been popping by S.E.A. HQ, not Chester King. Remember those annual trips he used to take that nobody knew anything about?”

Eggsy raises an eyebrow at Merlin, then turns to Harry. “I told you to wait, not come after me.”

“You told me to wait for decades,” Harry points out.

“You knew about this?” Merlin asks Eggsy flatly, looking distinctly betrayed.

“Not exactly. This actually ties in very well with that 28-year-old story. Do you want to hear it now?” Eggsy says, trying to placate Merlin before he sabotages one of the equipment for his next mission. He learnt very early on that it’s all fun and games until Merlin, more than anyone else in the entire organisation, starts putting you on his blacklist.

“Does it have anything to do with the fact that you’re both not wearing your watches?”

“Oh, it has everything to do with that,” Eggsy assures him, grinning madly.

It takes a long time to finish the story mostly because Merlin spends the better part of the afternoon getting side-tracked by the existence of a time machine and muttering scientific theories under his breath. Eggsy has a feeling that Merlin will be taking a private jet to Singapore the moment they’re done. They leave out many things, for which Merlin is absolutely grateful.

(Merlin has no business knowing about their first kiss or the events that led up to Eggsy being thoroughly fucked by Harry or how adorably rumpled Harry looks the morning after. Those are just for the two of them.)

Merlin whistles, long and low, when they’re done. “I don’t know what you did in your past lives to get the universe to hate you so much, but colour me impressed by how much pining you’re willing to put up with for each other.”

“A simple ‘congratulations’ would suffice,” Harry tells him.

“No, it really wouldn’t,” Merlin disagrees. “So, when do I need to get myself fitted for a tuxedo by?”

“What makes you think we’re making you best man?” Eggsy snorts.

“Please, I’m Harry’s only friend. He has no choice.”

“I believe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Nobody’s getting married quite yet,” Harry interrupts.

“Are you saying that you don’t want to make an honest man of me?” Eggsy asks, mock scandalised.

Harry gives Eggsy a very pointed look. “I’m saying that I’m going to wait for an appropriate day, book us a table at a restaurant, dine and wine you, take you home, do things to you not fit for polite company, and then ask you to marry me. I’ve waited 28 years—I can wait a few more months.”

“Or we could just give the wining and dining a miss and skip straight ahead to the part where you shag me,” Eggsy shrugs, lips stretching into a devious grin. “There’s less waiting that way. I’m not too picky.”

“No, just easy,” Harry says, rolling his eyes, but his face is shining with affection.

“I’ll take this as my cue to leave,” Merlin mutters more to himself than either Eggsy or Harry, and the doors to Harry’s office slam shut behind him as he goes, the sounds of his Oxfords clicking against the floor furious and determined and steadily retreating into the distance.

“Did you mean it?” Eggsy asks somewhat quietly now that Merlin’s gone. “Wanting to put a ring on it? On me?”

“I was actually going to wait until I’d bought a ring before getting down on one knee, but I wouldn’t mind if you say yes now either. I find that I’m not willing to wait very much longer than 28 years,” Harry tells him, tucking his face into Eggsy’s neck. Then, more hesitantly, he says against his collar, “You will marry me, won’t you?”

“Only if you’ll marry me,” Eggsy says, voice shaking. “And if my name isn’t printed next to yours the when they appear in the papers for that second time, I’m gonna finish what Valentine started.”

“Then we are in agreement.” Harry’s lips spread into a smile against Eggsy’s skin, and it burns like the sun of 1988.

---

The S.E.A. HQ gets a sum of money from a mysterious benefactor. It is, suspiciously, exactly the same figure that has been missing from one of their safe houses since 1988 that nobody could account for.

In other news, the HQ’s R&D department also gets a boost in funding from U.K. HQ as an apology for letting Merlin loose on them.

---

Harry (sort of) properly pops the question half a year later when they’re running away from the goons of a drug cartel in Holborn. Eggsy screams, “Yes, you absolute wanker! Ruddy good timing you have!” at him over the heavy thudding of boots behind them and shoots somebody in the leg immediately after. They make it through Eggsy’s old neighbourhood and round the corner of Holborn Police Station before Eggsy pulls Harry into an alleyway and presses a hard kiss to his lips.

“You got a ring for me this time?” Eggsy gasps into Harry’s mouth as he holds Harry’s face in his hands. His sleeves drag against the skin of his wrist as he bends his arms to pull himself up to Harry’s height (or Harry down to his, it really doesn’t matter) and, from the corner of his eyes, he catches the deep, comforting blue words on his wrist in Harry’s looping handwriting, proudly exposed on his bare skin. (They opt to wear their watches on their right wrists these days. Merlin doesn’t believe them at all when they say that they have better aim like this, but their exhibitionist tendencies are none of his concern so long as they cover them up for risky missions.)

Harry reaches to smooth Eggsy’s hair away from his eyes, and the adrenaline of the chase gives way to a softer, mellower touch of lips when Eggsy kisses him again. “Do you have to ask?” Harry murmurs, breath hot on Eggsy’s lips, and slips a ring onto Eggsy’s finger before pushing Eggsy against the wall and slipping his tongue into Eggsy’s mouth, drawing a long, breathy moan from him.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Merlin yells in their ears, and then proceeds to terminate the connection before inevitably devolving into an angry Scottish tirade.

---

Their wedding rings deliver 50,000 Volts. They stop wearing Kingsman signet rings.

(The rings are worn on their left ring finger and Merlin practically dares them to tell him that they have better aim with their non-dominant hands. Which part of "secret intelligence agency" don't these idiots understand?)

They frame the announcement of their marriage in Harry’s office.

---

Some years and several position turnovers later, the new Knights wonder about Arthur and Galahad and their oddly mismatched soulmate marks that nobody can imagine as being from the same conversation. They whisper about choosing and being chosen, about loving the one you’re with if you can’t be with the one you love. Kay calls it romantic, Tristan just wants to be left alone to do her nails, and Lancelot—who is still Roxy—affectionately dubs them the ‘it’ couple of Kingsman.

They complete their missions with devastating efficiency. Galahad occasionally pops by the recruitment trials (and suspiciously acquires one or two new puppies every time it’s time for the candidates to choose their dogs) while Arthur prefers to personally design and oversee training menus after a position has been successfully filled (and manages to command respect despite being suspiciously covered in dog hair). They are never inappropriate at work. However, the same cannot be said for the period of time immediately following a successful mission.

Merlin has to remind himself that he can’t technically fire his boss and his husband, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

---

“Eggsy, darling, we have too many dogs,” Harry will say one day.

“Nonsense,” Eggsy will reply, as he brings back another two more dogs from the Bedivere recruitment trials. “24 is not too many.”

---

Kingsman stops holding the dog test during recruitment trials after the Bedivere selections are concluded, and by extension no longer have potential recruits raise said dogs. Officially, this decision was reached after a meeting attended by every field and non-field operative determined that the test fails to assess the ability of a candidate to take the life of an innocent only in the event that a mission could be compromised, instead simply proving that they are able to pull a trigger regardless of the circumstance and without sufficiently compelling reason merely because they are ordered to do so. Kingsman has no need for puppet agents.

Unofficially, Harry Hart’s house is overrun by pugs, terriers, and the occasional Chihuahua.