Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-KM-

It seems like everyone has a story to tell him about Harry Hart.

It begins in medical, with the nurse in charge of overseeing Harry’s recovery. A week has passed since V-day, and Eggsy has only just been allowed into the infirmary to sit with Harry, who has been put in a medically-induced coma. He lies so still, and Eggsy finds himself watching for signs of breathing, as if the man is suddenly going to stop.

“Don’t you fret, love. This one’s been in here with all sorts of injuries.” Eggsy looks up to see a nurse walking in, dressed in scrubs and carrying a clip board. Eggsy watches as she bends over Harry to check on the dressing around his headwound, the one that Valentine put there, the one thatshould have killed him.

She clucks her tongue. She is young, mid-thirties perhaps, but has a matronly bustle that makes her seem older.

“Yes sir, all sorts. Head-wounds, dislocated joints, broken bones, poisoning, missing fingernails, gunshot wounds, cuts that need stitches like you wouldn’t believe,” she ticks off her mental list. “Mind, this is one of the nastier head-injuries I’ve seen, but there’s no intracranial damage. Docs are pretty confident that he’ll be right as rain when he wakes.” She looks over Harry’s prone form and smiles at Eggsy kindly.

Eggsy returns her smile half-heartedly; he didn’t find out Harry Hart was will alive until a day or two ago, and he is still getting used the idea being true. “Good t’know,” he says. Even to his own ears, he doesn’t sound quite convinced.

The nurse gives him a knowing look, and smooths a hand gently over the wrappings that she disturbed. “It’ll take a lot more to kill this old buzzard. He’s a tough one. Did y’know, once he came in here with three and a half serrated arrows sticking out of him? Just walked in here like nothing was amiss, bleedin’ and all, and asked ‘Nurse Harper, would you be so kind as to assist me with these’?”

Eggsy snorts at her attempt to imitate Harry’s accent and manner of speaking; it was pretty spot on.

The nurse grins, slightly triumphant that she managed to surprise a smile and a laugh from the anxious young man. “Sure,” she continues, “and I asked him, I says: ‘Where the fresh hell is your jacket?’ Bullet proof, you know, so theoretically arrow proof. And he says, ‘I was obliged to lend it to someone’. Wot a gent,” she rolls her eyes, but then her expression softens. “Actually, by Merlin—the old Merlin, not Owen— he was using it to shield a civilian. Somewhere in Sri Lanka, there’s a little girl who owns a very expensive navy-blue jacket.”

-KM-

The story—which is sort of silly, in a very Harry Hart kind of way— sticks with Eggsy all day, so that when he finally leaves the infirmary to check in with Merlin (who is acting both as Merlin and the Interim Arthur and hating every minute), he finds himself asking the older agent about it.

Merlin frowns just slightly, brows creasing. “I’m familiar with that story,” he says slowly, “although the way I heard it, it was Pamplona, not Sri Lanka, and he lost it in a fight with a bull.”

Eggsy frowns too. “But I thought bull fighters used red capes?” And that still didn’t explain the arrows.

To his question, Merlin simply shrugs and continues to tinker with the gun in his hands. “It’s just what I heard. You’ll find, Eggsy, that, for a top-notch spy agency, this place is rife with cock-and-bull. Particularly about Harry Hart.”

Eggsy looks at him curiously. “They true, any of ‘em?”

There is a click, and Merlin makes a noise of approval. He hands the gun to Eggsy, butt first. “That,” he says dryly as Eggsy accepts the weapon, “is the real mystery.”

-KM-

At the insistence of Merlin and Nurse Harper (who likes Eggsy, thinks he’s a dear and a riot, but that he spends far too much time sitting around in the infirmary), Eggsy starts limiting his visits to medical to an hour or two a day. It’s imperative that he continue training, and he is sent out on a few assignments, part of the clean-up from V-day, which seems never-ending. It’s also important that he formally meet the other Knights; despite their allegiance to Chester as Arthur, none of them were actually in on the plan for Valentine’s great purge, so most of them survived the fiasco.

By coincidence, he meets Ector first. Ector is caucasian and older, probably about Harry’s age, with distinguished grey streaks in his hair but a smirk and a bouncing sort of energy that makes him appear a much spryer man. His demeanor is gamely and robust, and not at all what Eggsy expected of the other knights.

When he meets Eggsy, Ector shakes hands vigorously and looks at him with a twinkle in his hazel eyes. “You’re Galahad’s kid, then?”

Eggsy flushes at that and mumbles “not his kid” and “I am Galahad” to which Ector makes a blithe apology. “Of course, of course!”

For all his experience with his mentor’s tastes (which isn’t honestly that extensive), to Eggsy, Ector seems like just the sort of person Harry Hart wouldn’t like. Thus, he is more than a little leery when Ector claps him on the shoulder and jostles him, grinning mischievously.

“Oh, I could tell you stories,” he says conspiratorially, squeezing Eggsy’s shoulder. “You want the juicy, inside-scoop on Harry Hart, look no further.”

Despite himself, Eggsy finds his interest piqued. “Yeah?” he asks cautiously.

“Oh, yeah,” Ector nods emphatically. “Got himself shot in the head? Not by far the craziest thing he’s done. Not by far. Did anyone tell you about the time he jumped out of a plane with no parachute?”

Eggsy snorts. Yeah right. “You’re taking the fucking piss.”

Ector does an overwrought impression of looking affronted. “I am not. I was on that assignment with him. We were chasing a mark, see. We boarded his personal jet secretly, hoping to get the jump on him once the thing was airborne—except that he was wise to us. He jumped out of the plane just as we were coming up on the cockpit. And so I start looking around for another chute because fuck if we’re going to lose this guy, he was a bloody pain to find in the first place—and as I turn around, Hart is jumping out of the plane after him, no chute, nothing. Just swan dives into the air.”

Though he’s trying to remain skeptical, Eggsy can feel that his mouth is hanging open just slightly. “What then?”

Ector plucks at his suit. “These things? Works of wonder. Not only are they bullet proof, they’re pretty aerodynamic. Harry caught up to the guy, incapacitated him, and stole his chute. Landed safely in a wheat field outside of Kostonay.”

It’s too fantastical. It’s not even in the same league as the arrow story. “No way.”

Ector lets go of his shoulder and rolls his eyes. “Ah, ye of little faith.” He brings his wrist up and checks his watch. “Sorry, Eggs, got to dash. Lovely meeting you though. Give my regards to Harry.” He gives a little mock-salute and marches off in the direction of Merlin’s temporary office.

Eggsy stares after him for a moment, then looks down at JB, who has been dutifully (if oddly) silent throughout the whole exchange. JB tilts his head, looking at Eggsy with large, watery, adoring doggy eyes.

“What d’you think?”

JB yips. Eggsy sighs.

-KM-

Needing a second opinion and unwilling to bother Merlin again so soon (who is up to his ears in literally everything), Eggsy brings the story to Roxy over beer and pizza.

Roxy listens carefully, and takes a thoughtful bite of her Hawaiian. “I’ve not heard that one,” she admits, “but there are quite a few stories I’ve been told about Gal—Harry.” She gives him an apologetic look. “Sorry. Still getting used to it.”

Eggsy waves the hand that isn’t holding his beer. “Like what?” he asks, not to be distracted.

Roxy licks her lips and sets her pizza down. She picks up her own beer and takes a sip. “Tristan—you met her yet?”

Eggsy shakes his head. He hasn’t made Tristan’s acquaintance, but he’s heard of her plenty. Tristan was what everyone of the other knights referred to as “a good girl” in a manner that was somehow very Welsh, and could have been flippant or condescending; what it actually meant was that she could be nice, sweet even, but would take out your eyes without blinking if she thought you might compromise her mission. Roxy has apparently been spending a good deal of time with Tristan, and Eggsy suspects that Roxy might fancy her—in a professional way, at the very least, them being the only girls and all.

“Well, I was talking to Tristan, and apparently Harry has the highest kill record in the Knighthood. He and he old Gwain were neck-and-neck, but the Church Incident tipped the balance, and then Gwain died in a fight during the V-day fiasco, so. . . .” she shrugs, takes another sip.

Eggsy thinks about Harry, lying comatose in the infirmary, very much alive but still as death. He thinks about Harry, the machine who had slaughtered the entirety of a rural Kentucky church. 

“The highest?” is all he can come up with for a response.

Roxy nods. She reaches for another slice of pizza. “Yeah. But you might want to check that with Merlin. Even Tristan wasn’t quite sure. Just said it was something she heard. Wouldn’t surprise me, though.”

Eggsy shakes his head, staring into the mess of cheese and marinara before the both of them. “Me neither.”

-KM-

“True,” Merlin says when Eggsy comes in for his next assignment. “And false. Juliana— Gwain the sixth—still has the highest kill record by a long shot. She even has the highest record for fatalities in one setting.”

Eggsy blinks, taking this all in. “Fuck,” he finally breathes out, “you guys hire some scary fuckin’ people.”

Merlin hums, hands Eggsy his field kit, including a gun, a hand grenade, and a pen that, instead poison, contains live Naegleria fowleri. “Your flight leaves tomorrow at 0400.”

-KM-

The day Eggsy meets Bedivere, Ector happens to be around.

Eggsy’s just spent his self-appointed one hour vigil by Harry’s bedside. He chatted with Nurse Harper, who informed him that Harry will be brought out of the coma soon, which is fantastic but also makes him all kinds of nervous. So, to work off some of his energy, Eggsy trods off to the gym to put in a workout.

There’s a tall black man over by the weight benches, and when he sees Eggsy he immediately sits up and stands. Eggsy, just returned from Guatemala and feeling a little jumpy, is about to go into defense mode when the man holds out a broad hand. “You are Galahad,” he says.

Remembering his manners, Eggsy reaches out to shake. “Yes. Eggsy Unwin.”

“Bedivere,” the man replies. “Ephraim Cisse.”

“Eggsy!” the voice that booms across the gymnasium almost makes both of them jump. They turn in unison to see Ector, striding across the floor in workout attire. He beams at both of them. Beside him, Eggsy feels Bedivere stiffen almost imperceptibly.

“Bedivere, nice to see you,” Ector says, greeting the other man in turn and offering him a hand. Bedivere, unmoved, shakes solemnly. “I thought Myanmar would be the end of you.”

“You sound as though you were hopeful.”

“My dear Effie, I’m offended.”

Eggsy detects a barely-constrained eye-roll from Bedivere. He rolls his broad shoulders, as if to compensate. “You’ve met our new Galahad, then?”

Ector turns his attention to Eggsy once more, eyeing him up and down. There is little mistaking his appreciative gaze, and if he didn’t already sort of not like Ector, Eggsy might return it. Older though he may be, the man is very fit.

“Yes, yes. Speaking of,” he slid a glance at Bedivere, “got any tasty stories for our young brother in arms?”

“As in . . . ?”

“Oh, you know. Stories about our very own Sleeping Beauty? Harry Hart stories.”

Bedivere’s expression changes from slightly annoyed to thoughtful. He looks at the back wall, speaking slowly. “I have heard that he received training from Safir the fourth, whose interrogation methods are unparalleled. Well, specifically, his torture methods. There are plenty of stories about Safir the Fourth. But of Galahad the Fifth . . . I heard that he once pulled out all but four of a man’s teeth over the span of twenty-four hours. Imagine. . . .” he shakes his head.

Eggsy doesn’t look but he imagines that Ector, before fairly unflappable and flippant, is wearing the same expression of utter horror that he is.

“That is not what I meant by ‘tasty story’,” he finally chokes out. He clears his throat and gives Bedivere a long look. “Jesus, man. No,” and his verve returns as he looks at Eggsy, familiar mischievous grin creeping back onto his features. “I’m talking fun. Or naughty. Like the incident with the ballistics technician.”

At the uneasy look from Bedivere, Eggsy feels his attention perk up. “What incident?”

“Oh,” Ector preens, and he says it with too much relish, knowing that Eggsy hasn’t heard this story and just reveling in the fact that he gets to tell it anew. “Well, you see, he’s got a temper on him, your mentor. Cool as a cucumber most of the time, but you press the right buttons. . . . A few years ago there was a ballistics tech that used to work under Merlin, didn’t like Harry much—at least, that’s what we all thought. Kid was always mouthing off to him, showing cheek, trying to get a rise out of him, that sort of thing. So, one day, he makes a comment, and I mean real foul. Harry stops, and looks at him. Just looks, almost for a solid minute. Then, he grabs the tech by the collar and hauls him off. Didn’t say nothing to no one. We thought the kid was dead for sure. But later,” and here Ector pauses to all but lick his lips, “later the lad was gloating to some mates, and apparently Harry took him somewhere private and taught him a thing or two about putting that loud, filthy mouth of his to better use.”

Eggsy can only gape. He feels color rising in his cheeks, despite himself.

Ector pauses to take in the damage he’s done, grinning wolfishly. “Oh, yeah. You’re old man is a bad man, Eggsy Unwin.”

And Eggsy knows he should keep his mouth shut, he does, but he can’t help but go to see Merlin after his (short) workout, wanting to know if the story was true.

To this, Merlin sighs. He looks to be very tired. “Don’t trust what Ector says, especially not about Harry. They were candidates together. And Ector’s a brilliant agent, but he’s a filthy fucking liar when it comes to office gossip. Needless to say, that tidbit he told you is nothing more than a nasty rumor. Probably started by Ector himself, just to piss Harry off.”

Eggsy wanders away from that meeting feeling relieved; there is, however, a part of him that is secretly disappointed. The part of him that was oddly hoping the rumor might be true.

 He totally forgets to ask about the teeth thing.   

-KM-

It is around this point that Eggsy begins actively collecting stories about Harry Hart, true or not.

It’s become something of an ice-breaker between him and the other knights he meets: what is a crazy (the craziest?) story you’ve heard about the previous Galahad?

The answers are varied and not the least disappointing in how outlandish they are. Apparently, Harry Hart has dug a bullet out of his own shoulder using only a sharpened spoon; passed a polygraph while lying out his arse; helped deliver a set of triplets in a war zone, while returning heavy fire; let himself be taken into, and then proceeded to bust himself out of the Kremlin single-handedly; drank a Slavic princess under the table; he even, apparently, knew Merlin when Merlin had hair.

(There are, of course, much more lascivious tales. Most of them are related by, or appear to have originated with Ector, so Eggsy takes these with more than a grain of salt. But he takes them, none the less.)

The day Harry wakes up, Eggsy finally meets Percial, Roxy’s mentor. Percival gives him a curious look when Eggsy asks his question, and tells him only that there are three whole years in Harry’s record that have been blacked out.

“There are,” Merlin says carefully, when Eggsy asks about this. “I blacked them out. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

Eggsy considers this, and resolvedly does not think about the man who is being roused by doctors down in medical for the first time in months. “Huh. How many of these . . . stories I’m hearing are real?”

Merlin narrows his eyes slightly. “Why don’t you ask Harry yourself? He’s just woken up.”

-KM-

Since he has all but been given a directive to do so, Eggsy goes down to the infirmary. He feels his heart thudding loudly in time with his footsteps as he strides quickly down the hallway, and he is rather light-headed; but he does not let this stop him from pushing open the door to the medical ward and stepping through.

The sight nearly knocks the breath out of him.

It’s like déjà vu. Harry Hart is standing—standing, of his own strength— at the small sink, holding a razor to his shaving cream-covered face and looking at Eggsy with something like mock-disapproval in the mirror.

Except, this time, he’s wearing nothing but a towel.  

“Gentlemen knock, Eggsy.”

Eggsy blushes at the same time he spots Nurse Harper, who is taking up the bedclothes. She sees Eggsy and smiles—then takes notice of the expression on his face and grins, just a little catlike.

“They also bring flowers, luv,” she says.

Eggsy blushes hard.

Harry, for his part, ignores both of them and continues shaving. Eggsy can only stand there and watch him, like an idiot, completely transfixed and giddy and slightly terrified. He eyes Harry’s form, slightly thinner from the two months in bed but no small amount of muscles still evident; his back is a smooth expanse of skin, save for a criss-cross of white scars near one shoulder, and a few distinctly star-shaped marks.

Harper gathers the bedclothes in her arms and bustles over near Eggsy, where there is a hamper. With an eerie canniness, she murmurs discreetly to Eggsy, “You know, he’s got the record for lowest number of gunshot wounds in the service?”

Eggsy wonders for a moment if this is simply another rumor—though she is on the medical staff, so she would know. A part of him is too distracted to care. Harry is bending over the sink to wash the shaving cream off of his face, and it makes the wiry muscles in his back ripple. “All time record?”

Harper nods. “All time. Very good at being dodgy, that man.” She winks, chuckles silently at her own pun.

At the sink, Harry straightens up and turns around. He wipes his face and hands with a towel and Eggsy refuses to look anywhere but his face (because really).

“Gossiping, Michelle?” he asks, though his brown eyes keep locked on Eggsy. His expression is professionally calm, but his gaze is soft, kind.

“Only good things,” Nurse Harper replies.

Not looking as though he quite believes her, Harry turns away from them both again. He steps out of sight behind the opaque curtain on the other side of his hospital bed and throws the towel over the curtain rod as he gets dressed.

Because Eggsy is a spy, he notices that if he looks in the mirror he can see a sliver of naked Harry Hart shimmying into clothing. Because he is a gentleman, and not without a sense of self-preservation, he refuses to look.

If Nurse Harper notices him not looking, she is kind enough not to make a show of it. She simply bustles around, collecting stray tubing and removing Harry’s saline IV bag from the stand. Plastic tubing under one arm, she bustles towards the door, calling over her shoulder. “I am out, Mr. Hart. If you make a trip to the infirmary in the next six months, it had better be for a social visit.”

“I don’t make social visits,” comes the reply from behind the curtain.

“More’s the pity. Don’t forget your weekly check-ups with the neurologist!” is the last thing she says before stepping past Eggsy with a smile and striding off.       

It’s only a moment later that Harry steps out from behind the curtain, buttoning up his white dress shirt. He looks, for all the world, like a new man save for the wound at his right temple, stitched and taped to cover the stark red scar. Eggsy stares at it, unable to help himself.

Harry watches him silently, indulgently as he finishes the buttons on his shirt. He then plucks up his jacket from where Nurse Harper had carefully laid it over the rail of the bed. He slips into it somewhat stiffly; Eggsy’s fingers twitch. He thinks about all the time that has passed, all the time that he spent here, sitting in this ward next to Harry’s bed, watching him breathe, fighting the urge to take his hand. And now, here he is: Harry Hart, the man, the myth, the legend, standing on his own two feet, directing all of his available attention to Eggsy.

The urge to touch now is overwhelming. Eggsy shoves his hands into his pockets.

Harry smiles suddenly, a wan, tired smile that accentuates the crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes. He looks every bit his age; it’s stupidly attractive.

Eggsy swallows hard.

Carefully, as though he knows how sensitive the ground he is treading, Harry steps forward. He steps again and again, until he is just outside of Eggsy’s personal space.

“So,” and his voice is low, rough from disuse, but warm like melted chocolate, warm like brandy. “I hear you have saved the world.”

Eggsy cracks a grin. It’s crooked. It lets him twist up his face so that if he is about to cry— which he’s not— it’s less noticeable. This grin is all he has at the moment. It’s his last line of defense. He hopes it works.

(He hopes it doesn’t.)

“Who’s been telling you tall tales?”

Chapter Text

Wouldn’t you know, it is the story he discovers for himself that is his favorite.

Eggsy has been sent to the Kingsman storage facility D, which is reserved for archival material pertaining to each individual knight. And when he says “sent”, he does indeed mean goaded by Ector.

It’s been three weeks since Harry took over as Arthur, and Kingsman finally seems to be finding its proper footing in the post V-Day world.

Eggsy sits at the long table with the other knights, some real and some holographic, and listens to the decrees of their king and commander. He thinks, after these three weeks, he has found a way to look at Harry that suggests nothing more than the respect and fond regard that everyone else seems to have for Harry.

But, by the way Ector keeps sliding glances his way, mouth curling around the edges like burning paper, Eggsy thinks he might have given himself away somehow.

“You should have seen him when he was young,” Ector says to him in a low, excited voice after they’ve adjourned their meeting. “He was a strapping, gorgeous thing. Never would give me the time of day . . .” he trails off and somehow, coming from him, even that is prurient. “Well, we can’t all be equal opportunity sluts off the clock. Anyway. He’s a dish now, sure. But you really ought to skip on down to the archives storage and ask for one of his trunks. Ask for . . .” Ector thinks for a moment, “ask for 1988. A very good year.” He squeezes Eggsy on the shoulder and saunters off, catching up with Bedivere and striking up another lively one-sided conversation.

And though he remembered what Merlin said about Ector, Eggsy couldn’t help his curiosity. And it wasn’t as if Ector had actually said anything this time; he just suggested Eggsy take a look.

So, here he finds himself, trudging down the last long hallway towards the door above which is a gold-gilded sign that simply reads “Knighthood Archives”.

Except, when he asks the attendant for Galahad the 5^th, 1988, the man frowns and shakes his head. “That unit is out for maintenance,” he replied somewhat apologetically. “But you are welcome to peruse the years around it. Might I suggest 1987?”

Eggsy shrugs, trying not to feel strange about all this. He was curious. That was all. “Yeah, sure.”

The young man brings him the trunk, rolling it in on a large cart. He tells Eggsy any trunk can be checked out for 48 hours, but must be kept on Kingsman premises, and must be returned with all original items. Eggsy nods, signs papers, and hauls the trunk off.

What he finds is not what he expects. It’s a bit boring, actually. Whatever was in 1988, 1987 was mostly full of clothes. Suits that were folded over cardboard, stiff as if they had been freshly starched; pocket squares and handkerchiefs were folded pristinely in a single pile. There was a bundle of photographs, mostly of landscapes, a lot of mountains.

There were only two of Harry Hart himself, but the photos made Eggsy’s heart skip a few beats. God. He had been so young. And fucking hot. There was a photograph of Harry Hart getting out of a dark vehicle, all of 26 years old, sleek suit and unimpressed mouth and no wrinkles around the eyes but that same cool confidence. And then another of him leaning against a doorway, dressed to the nines and holding a martini, a sly, sinful smirk on his wetted lips.

Christ. Young Harry Hart had probably made all the knickers drop.

(Not that he has problems with that now, Eggsy was sure.)

It is only as Eggsy is tucking the photographs back into the inside compartment of the trunk that his fingers brush some unfamiliar texture.

Curious, he drags a finger along the material. Makes a noise to himself. He carefully removes the folded suits until he’s found what lies beneath.

He holds the thing up. Stares.

“Well fuck.”

-KM-

“Care to explain these?”

This is how he announces himself when he walks into Harry’s office, where Merlin and (good fucking lord) Ector are standing on either side of Harry, who is seated at his large cherrywood desk.

Merlin, who had been talking heatedly with Ector, raises and eyebrow. Harry, for his part, manages not to change expressions at all, which is quite a mean feat.

Ector, who had been leaning casually with one hand on Harry’s desk and the other on his hip, perks up and positively beams. “Oh. Oh. You found 1987.”

Eggsy mostly ignores Ector. He holds up the trousers, as if they can’t be seen in all their sinewy, tight, black leather glory. He looks directly at Harry. “What happed in 1987?”

Ector flashes a wicked grin and straightens from where he’s been practically throwing himself over the desk. “Table dancing,” he says gleefully. He walks up to Eggsy, and stands just inches from him so that he can lean into his ear and whisper, “Wank fantasies for days, eh?”

Eggsy very nearly splutters, and it’s enough to make Ector bark out a laugh. He claps Eggsy once on the shoulder (his trademark gesture with Eggsy, apparently), salutes Merlin and Harry, and walks off through the open door.

It takes Eggsy a moment to recollect himself and snap out of his stunned state to look again at Harry. “Is that true?”

The look that Harry fixes him with is cool. In the weeks since his reawakening, he has made leaps and bounds in his recovery; he is strong and regal, and it’s another reminder to Eggsy how far apart they are. This Harry, the Harry that is Arthur—he is cold, aloof, all ruthlessness and business. And Eggsy has nothing but respect for him but. . . .  

Oh my god.

Harry is laughing at him.

His mouth does not open, nor does he make any sound. But his lips curl themselves in a way that is positively devilish, and his eyes are flashing like knives, merry and dangerous.

And this, Eggsy thinks, is the Harry Hart he is familiar with. This is the Harry Hart he wants: he wants the dry sarcasm, the playful glances, the throaty noises of appreciation when Eggsy does well. He wants the Harry Hart with a stuffed dog in the bathroom, the Harry Hart who delights in showing Eggsy everything about Kingsman and teaching him how to be an agent. He wants Harry Hart in sharp suits and lethal shoes, but also in soft cardigans and house slippers.

He wants this Harry Hart, who can pierce him with a single look and make him enjoy being speared. 

But then Harry blinks, and the spell his broken. His expression returns almost completely to its neutral state; the only traces is the telltale, microscopic smirk that lingers at one corner of his mouth.

Harry pushes himself to his feet, plucks up the tablet at his right, and walks around his desk so that he is also crossing the room. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says smoothly as he passes Eggsy and follows in Ector’s footsteps out the door.

His departure feels abrupt, but not cold. Just . . . odd. Off. Almost calculated. Eggsy looks at Merlin uncertainly, who is the only other person still left in the room.

Merlin understands his question without him having to ask it. He tucks his clipboard to his chest and straightens his glasses. “Remnant from what has been dubbed the ‘Rick Derringer Incident’. To my knowledge, Harry Hart has never danced upon a table.”

He can feel the pout of abject disappointment beginning to form on his lips, when Merlin clears his throat and presses on tentatively.

“However . . . I have got footage somewhere of him prancing around in those,” he nods at the leather trousers, “to ‘Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo’. I imagine you’ll want to see that.”

Eggsy’s grin feels like it’s going to split his face in two. He gestures with the arm holding up the trousers, pointing towards the door.

“Lead the way.”

fin.