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“Eggsy, talk to me,” Harry ordered into the mic, his grip on Merlin’s shoulder tightening. They were watching from the Kingsman headquarters’ handler department as Eggsy sprinted down hallways and bashed through doors, desperately trying to evade the mafia members chasing him. He was in one of their warehouses investigating where their illegal guns came from, but was discovered while trying to make an inconspicuous exit. His exit was now less that quiet, with machine guns rattling behind him and the yells and screams of mob gangsters behind him. He was limping badly, a bullet having gone through the seam of his trousers and into his quad muscle, blood leaking everywhere.
“They’re catchin’ up, Arthur,” Eggsy bit out, his teeth gritted together. He turned to fire a few shots down the hallway behind him before tugging open another door and throwing himself into the next room, trying to gain distance between him and the trigger-happy assholes at his back.
“You’ve got the intel we need, Galahad,” Merlin said calmly. “Rescue chopper is sixty seconds out, ready to grab you from the second floor. Can you make it to the north side of the building?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Eggsy replied. His glasses relayed feedback to the HQ, and Harry and Merlin watched their youngest agent glance down at his bloodstained left thigh and groan, whipping off his silk tie to wrap tightly around the wound. “Sixty seconds, you said? Everything’s getting a little blurry.”
“Well, a concussion and severe blood loss will do that to you, lad,” Merlin said. Harry’s hand was now so tight his knuckles were white. “Almost there. Through the next door should be a set of windows the chopper can get you from.”
Eggsy kicked open the door and shot the man hiding inside, barely sparing the body a glance before moving to the wide windows that ran the length of one wall, showing the desert-like terrain outside. He could see the helicopter in the distance, a small black speck that grew larger with each second, but he could also hear the men behind him getting closer.
“Shoot out the glass, Galahad,” Merlin ordered, and Eggsy followed the command on autopilot, splinters of clear glass flying everywhere. “You’ll have to jump to the deck of the chopper. We weren’t able to get the location of all the mines they planted on the ground outside the warehouse, so don’t do anything stupid like fall, okay, lad?”
“Yeah, don’t die, got it,” Eggsy mumbled, shaking his head and making the video feed spin. Or maybe that was his head? It was hard to see straight anymore, and the blood on his leg was itchy. The helicopter was close now, only a few more seconds before he could leap from the windows and into the waiting arms of the rescue squad.
Eggsy heard a thump from behind him and turned around just in time for a line of fire to rip up his jaw and cheek, the reverberating echo of a rifle pounding into his ears. He felt his body tipping backwards, and Harry and Merlin watched as the blood-spattered glasses flipped up to show the ceiling, then the window, then the sky.
Then a deafening explosion and a cloud of black smoke, then nothing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eggsy woke up slowly.
He’d regained consciousness in the Kingsman medical bay dozens of times before, so the white ceiling and walls were familiar. The scratch of cotton sheets and the smell of antibacterial soap was a constant in any hospital, and so was the call button placed loosely in Eggsy’s hand. The soft, constant beeping coming from his left side was also unfortunately a familiar sound, and Eggsy wasted no time in fully opening his eyes and turning his head.
Only to have the left side of his face erupt into fiery pain, and his hand clamped down on the call button reflexively. He tried to muffle his shout of pain, but he must not have succeeded because both a nurse and Harry came running into the room, the latter dressed down in only a shirt and trousers.
“Eggsy, my boy, calm down,” his boyfriend murmured, capturing the younger man’s hand and holding it tightly. “Your pain medication wore off, she’s administering you some more right now.”
Eggsy grunted in pain as the nurse fiddled with his IV, and within a few moments he could feel the pain easing up. He released his death grip on Harry’s fingers and sighed, slumping back into the fluffy pillows.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse and scratchy. Harry held a glass of water with a slim straw up to his lips in lieu of answering, and Eggsy obediently sipped the cool liquid before asking again. “Did you get the intel okay?”
“Yes, the drive was safe in your breast pocket,” Harry assured him as he dismissed the nurse and took a seat on the edge of the mattress, hooking his fingers into Eggsy’s. “We were able to give the information to the correct authorities, and the mafia ring is falling apart as we speak.”
“Good,” Eggsy sighed again, his eyes flickering down to the IV in his arm. “What happened to me?”
“You were about to jump into the helicopter when a gangster came into the room behind you,” Harry explained, and maybe it was the drugs but was his tone softer? Were his eyes filled with relief or guilt? “You moved just in time to avoid getting a bullet in the head--”
“Like you,” Eggsy interrupted, and yep, the drugs were definitely kicking in. Harry ran his thumb across his boyfriend’s scraped knuckles.
“Yes, like me,” Harry echoed. “But the bullet caught you in the cheek instead, thankfully missing your jawbone but tearing up your cheek,” He leaned forward and gently traced the heavy bandages that Eggsy hadn’t even noticed on his face. “The force of the impact knocked you out of the window.”
“Merlin said not to fall,” Eggsy said, his words just a bit slurred. Harry nodded, and that was definitely sadness in his eyes, Eggsy was sure of it.
“You landed on one of the mines the mob had buried around their compound,” Harry told him softly. “Eggsy, you’ve lost your left leg.”
Time cut out for Eggsy after that, everything becoming a smear of bright colors and hazy sounds. He let himself drift, and it wasn’t until several hours later that he fully came back to himself. By then, the lights had been dimmed and the door shut, leaving just a line of light underneath the door. The call button in his hand had been replaced by Harry’s fingers, but the man was asleep in the chair next to the hospital bed, slumped across the sheets so he could hold his boyfriend’s hand while he slept. Eggsy turned his head to see Merlin in the other chair on the opposite side of the bed, tapping away at his tablet-clipboard thing.
“How’re you feeling, lad?” the Scot asked, and Eggsy could only blink in response. “Harry said you fainted once he told you. You’ve been in and out of it for a few hours now, but the old bastard refused to leave your side.”
“Can...can you show me?” Eggsy asked hoarsely, and the handler set his tablet onto the bedside table, considering. He actually bit his lip, and the unusual display of uncertainty only made Eggsy want to see more. “Please, Merlin.”
“Okay, boyo,” he said quietly. He stood up and untucked the blanket from the foot of the bed and tossed the sheets back so that the lower half of Eggsy’s body was exposed. Eggsy’s leg ended just above the knee, his stump covered in a swathe of bandages and carefully laid on a clean towel over the mattress. There wasn’t a trace of blood or anything, just the clean white bandages, and Eggsy was actually a little disappointed. He’d expected a bloody mess, to see the remains of his leg covered in sand and ash. Or maybe more of his leg, as if he’d only lost a few toes or the whole foot.
“I can still feel it,” he said faintly. “I’m wiggling my toes, Merlin…”
“Ay, lad, it can happen when you lose a limb,” his friend affirmed, then tutted and pulled a pocket square from nowhere and wiped up the tears that had begun to drip down Eggsy’s face. He leaned down to kiss Eggsy on the forehead, mindful of the bandages on his cheek, and Eggsy pushed up into the contact. They’d been lovers once or twice, once Eggsy found out that Harry and Merlin had been an on-and-off couple for decades. There had been some happy threesomes, but Merlin was fine being the third wheel, and Harry and Eggsy were content together.
Now, though, the lips that had brought Eggsy pleasure in the past gave only sadness, and he began to sob, his cheek throbbing angrily through the medication as he curled in on himself, letting Merlin drape heavy arms around him in a hug. A second later, Harry’s hand twitched, and two sets of arms were cradling him from each side, bracketing him in warmth and comfort even if all he could feel was pain and despair.