Everyone is eying up James suspiciously as he pushes the gift towards Harry with a devilish grin. Even Harry is cautious as he starts to tear away the wrapping paper. He kind of regrets agreeing to participate in the Secret Santa exchange this year, but it’s so rare that he’s home around the holiday and not away on a mission. He had wanted to selfishly indulged in the good cheer with his friends. Pretend at a bit of normalcy.
The bland cardboard box that is revealed doesn’t give him any clue as to what the hell is making James giggle maniacally. Even Bors is edging away from him at this point and Bors has never had much survival instincts to speak of, just the most phenomenal luck.
But Harry refuses to show fear in front of all the other Knights. He’s got a reputation to uphold after all.
He slides the thing out of his box and after a moment of puzzlement joins James in his merriment.
“James, my good man, this is absolutely glorious.”
Judging by the groans from all the others, he’s the only one who seems to think so.
Whatever.
They’re probably only jealous not to be in possession of such a distinguished toilet seat.
***
Since it’s the second year in a row that he’s home around Christmas time, Harry had decided to show good manners and host the neighborhood party. And his decision really stemmed from the fact that he thinks community is important and not because he is bored and in need of cheap entertainment, no matter what Merlin said.
Anyway, Merlin really doesn’t have any ground to speak considering he accepted Harry’s invitation. And he’s the one gleefully keeping up a tally of how many children runs out of the loo in tears.
For someone who complains about the Knights’ juvenile behaviour daily, Merlin isn’t showing much maturity himself.
But then again, it’s Christmas. The man deserves a break.
And if he’s in a good mood, it means he’ll probably take Harry on for a little wager.
After all, Harry can’t be the only one interested in knowing which will be mentionned to him more, Mr Pickle taxidermy mount or the butterfly toilet seat.
And if not, well, the poorly disguised horror in everyone’s tone is amusing all on its own.
***
“Is that a dead monkey paw?”
Percival has always been a hard man to read, but after years of friendship, Harry thinks he’s showing genuine curiosity and not shocked disquiet like Mrs Hardwood from two houses down did the last time she had to use his loo.
“It is! My great-grand-uncle died last month and I got this in his will.” He had felt bad that he hadn’t had the time for a visit before the old man kicked the bucket, but George clearly hadn’t hold it against him. Or else he wouldn’t have left him such a cherished item.
“Hmm.” It’s apparently enough to satisfy Percival’s curiosity and he takes his seat back at the table as they continue trying to find a connection in a string of suspicious fires in Bristol.
He’s so used to Percival’s silences that he startles minutely when he speaks again.
“Did anyone ever tell you that your place looks like ‘pawnshop of curios’ meets ‘old lady’s house’?”
“No, never!” Not in those exact terms anyway. And it’s never been meant as the compliment Percival obviously intend it to be. “Thank you!”
The slight upward turn of Percival’s lips can only be called a smile as he nods politely.
***
“We were all very saddened to hear about Harry’s passing,” one of Eggsy’s new neighbours is telling him at the small wake he is holding for the man. The woman he assumes is his wife nods in agreement, but just a bit too fast to be sincere.
Not that they look happy about Harry’s death. Just kind of... relieved.
It’s still enough to make him want to yell at them and kick them out of the house, but like it or not, those people are going to be his neighbours from now on. He doesn’t want to start a fight, especially not today.
“So, what change do you think you’ll bring to the house?” The woman asks and for a moment Eggsy can only stare at her blindly. Changes? She thinks he’s going to change anything?
Why the hell would he do that? This house and everything inside is the only thing he has left of Harry.
Sure most of it is weird and some stuff is even downright creepy, but no. No he’s not changing anything. When his dad died, he only had a crappy medal to hold on to since his mum got rid of everything else in her grief. He’s not making the same kind of mistake.
Before he can say anything however he hears a few gasp and even the tell-tale ‘thump’ a body hitting the floor. He turns toward the entrance and freezes.
Because there, standing in the middle of the living room like he owns the place, is Harry Hart.
“Ha- Harry?”
It’s only when Harry’s eye fell on him and the other man smile with delight that Eggsy realises the meek voice had been his.
“Eggsy,” there are whole worlds of meaning in the way he says his name but their reunion is rather abruptly interrupted when one of the neighbour rudely points at Harry and starts to splutter.
“You! You’re, you’re supposed to be dead!”
Harry barely spares the man a glance before dismissing him, making his way to Eggsy. But, ever the gentleman, he still answer the wild claim.
“I’m afraid that reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
There’s another ‘thump’ as another neighbour faints.
***
Eggsy groans when he notices a new addition in the loo after coming back from his latest mission.
Sure the plaque is very tasteful, something that fits well with the more... ‘traditionnal’ part of the decor, like the pined butterflies. At least until one reads what is says.
“Harry! I thought we agreed to consult each other before adding anything new?”
Harry leans his head out of the kitchen, confusion writ all over his face.
“What are you talking about?” Eggsy narrows his eyes, but this is not Harry trying to be innocent. Mostly because Harry, for all his skills as a spy, is completely incapable of faking innocence. Whenever he tries, he only looks like a little shit.
“The plaque?”
“Oh! Oh that was a ‘welcome-back-from-the dead’ gift from Roxy. I didn’t think you would mind.” Harry looks genuinely sorry there. Which means he looks like a kicked puppy and Eggsy feels any residual frustration evaporates.
Anyway, it’s obviously Roxy’s fault. “It’s okay, I just wasn’t expecting that.” But then again maybe he should have. All of their friends like enabling Harry’s weird decorating taste. “Let’s just make sure Daisy conitnues to use the bathroom upstairs.”
Because his mum definitely won’t appreciate Daisy getting nightmare from the omnious ‘If you complain you will be added to the collection‘ that has been engraved on the plaque.
Eggsy looks up from where he's busy watching the toast toasting. "What is it?"
"Come here, please." Merlin points at the floor next to chair, making it an obvious gesture.
Thankfully the toast takes this second to eject the two slices and Eggsy carries them over to the table. "Want me to butter them for you?" He wriggles his eyebrows suggestively.
"Tempting but I can do that myself. Get on your knees, please." Merlin turns in his seat and points with two fingers down between his knees.
"Is that one of these 'protein for breakfast' bits?" Eggsy grins sheepishly as he assumes the position.
"Not quite. I was thinking more in terms of potassium." Merlin reaches for one of the bananas from the fruit bowl and holds it out to Eggsy, arm resting on his thigh. "Peel it."
Kingman’s Queen is a mortal danger to all.
He does not rely on the King's sword, but carries his own.
Beautiful without knowing it, possesses charms he is not aware of.
Like a trap set by nature, a sweet perfumed rose in whose petals
Cupid lurks in ambush!
Anyone who has seen his smile has known perfection.
[ x ] [ x ]
warning: not gonna be what you want it to be or even close to that.
Major Canon Character Death
After two years of silence a single very Bond themed message came in - Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. It’s more classic Bond dialogue than the recent films and Eggsy can’t help that it rekindles a treacherous hope he’d extinguished. Grief and acceptable couldn’t trump blind hope.
So Eggsy had put on a suit and become Galahad. Merlin in his ear her went to an arranged meeting spot, both pretending not to be hoping for the same thing. Harry Hart being more impossible than he had any right to be, because they missed him dearly. Enough that a ghost of a chance had them both on the more to investigate.
It was a calm day and the gardens their messenger had chosen were fragrant with roses mostly. But Eggsy thought he could spot stalks of lavender as well, among other small, colorful flowers he rightly knew nothing about. It leant a dream-like quality to it all. As if Eggsy was having just another restless night and his mind had conjured up some fantasy for him. But the almost suffocating smell of the roses was hardly something Eggsy appreciated. He’d rather smell a back alley over so much of the flora around him. Beautiful as the roses were they seemed oddly foreboding. Why Eggsy thought of Alice painting the roses red in the Queen of Hearts’s gardens when his eyes round a bush of red petal he wasn’t certain.
None of that mattered a little further on the path, away from the few others scattered about that looked like professional gardeners. It was a privately owned garden so it wasn’t unsurprising to see no one else around. Until Eggsy laid eyes on a man in a suit. Tall and broad across the shoulders with their back to Eggsy.
The niggling little hope caught in Eggsy’s throat and his knees shook until he locked them. Swallowing around the tightness in his throat Eggsy made his way closer until he had to stop due to his suddenly rubbery legs. Merlin was silent in his ear. He didn’t even make a peep when Eggsy forced the name out of his mouth.
“Harry?”
But the face that looked back at Eggsy was not the one he hoped to see.
Charlie grinned at him in his bespoke pinstriped suit. Hair carefully styled just as Harry used to, and now Eggsy did. It was worse than the ghost Eggsy saw stare back at him from the mirror.
Two years Eggsy had grieved, had went on his way from a man who wouldn’t be returning. Shed his tears and vented his anger at an empty grave vainly thinking it meant he’d moved on. That he’d hoped, that he’d come here expecting to see Harry revealed the ugly truth - Eggsy hadn’t let him go.
“Don’t look so disappointed, Eggy. You’ll have your reunion.” Charlie said smirking and drawing a pistol from a shoulder holster under his suit jacket.
Merlin roused from his shock and shouted at Eggsy to find cover or curl up to let the suit take the shot.
Instead Eggsy looked down at the barrel and heard himself get out before the shot only a few words.
“This ain’t that kinda movie.”
Two week later Merlin found a message on his personal server - Eggsy, where the devil are my slippers?
Harry Hart had just missed his successor’s funeral.
Here’s some demon!Eggsy because there needs to be some of it out there. There is some violent that is typical to the canon content. And you know some language.
Out in the Kentucky sun Harry Hart bleeds and drifts somewhere between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Trapped between his slanted view of pavement and memories of days long past. All thoughts of Valentine gone from his mind.
After many years of service Harry’s stared death in the face more often than most. Each time he’s come away intact. Merlin’s accused him of being the luckiest bastard to walk the planet but his old friend doesn’t know one of the oldest secrets Harry has guarded since his knighting. Harry doesn’t have incomprehensible luck but he does have a secret weapon as it were. One that should be along shortly if their history has any dependability to it.
Sure enough the ghastly trainers appear in his line of blurred half-vision.
“Half a mind to let ya die one of these days Hart.” Eggsy growls, sounding upset as he kneels beside his mortal charge. “You know what you need to do.”
Harry can’t be certain if his imagination is at work or if Eggsy is grazing his claws through his hair, certain to come back bloody. The implied demand for Harry to seek his help clear in the way Eggsy’s brand burned onto Harry’s body flared with uncomfortable heat. They had both been here before many times. Eggsy distemper for such things only worsened with each instance, his distaste for humanity worsening to see what they continued to do to his mortal.
“...E..ggsy...” Harry managed breathing it out more than saying it. His head throbbing in agony for even that much.
“You don’t get to die, Hart. Remember that.” Eggsy said as his brand became a white-hot point against Harry’s skin that would have caused him to scream had he the breath or strength to.
Blessedly the world fell away to darkness for Harry after that.
Eggsy comes from a shadow and takes Galahad’s seat at the table startling Chester King nearly into arrhythmia. Eyes dark as he takes in the fright of a man who plays with the world like a chessboard. It’s disappointing how woefully plain King is, just one more mortal for the pile.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” King demands in a means that reveals his history of obedient followers.
“Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.” Eggsy replies honestly. For years he’s endured Harry subjected to this man’s whims and temper. Watched him send Harry to places he shouldn’t be for Eggsy to mend back together again. Were it not for Merlin, Eggsy very well might have burned the whole thing to the ground for the transgressions against his property.
Of course King pulls a gun on him not that it does anything. The man’s wrinkled face hardens.
Eggsy only laughed at the weapon pointed at him.
“You’re mad aren’t you?” King question but waits for no answers. Rhetorical, no doubt. “I don’t care what you want.”
Eggsy doesn’t even so much as twitch when King pulls the trigger. His body goes limp in the seat and his blood spatters onto the dining room carpet. Creates thin rivulets on the back of the chair and the seat as he bleeds from the gunshot wound.
Chester King only lays the weapon down and reaches to pour himself a drink. Napoleonic brandy meant to toast the fallen knights. Propriety rather than sentiment makes him toast.
“To Galahad.” King mutters to the dining room. Hardly sparing the body in Galahad’s seat any mind.
A grave mistake on Chester’s part.
The chuckle begins when King rests his glass against the table. When he looks Eggsy is staring back at him eyes impossibly dark and deep. It raises hairs - sheer human instinct at work - like the chill of someone walking across your grave.
“Like you didn’t send Harry to his death back there.” Eggsy accuses as his wounds stitch closed. “Saw it myself.”
Mind trying to make sense of something so impossible King starts to stand and snatches for the pistol on the table. Only to halt before pulling the trigger to see a Kingsman issued pen in the little beast’s fingers.
Turning it between his fingers Eggsy regards the old man. “He ain’t your little straw doll, King. He’s mine.” Possession snarled across the glossy table top Eggsy depresses the pen.
Chester King looks truly shocked even before he feels the toxin start to do its work. Doubling at the waist and tumbling back into his seat. Looking more frail and depressing than ever. Huffing around his shock and the pain as the poison eats away at him.
“You little prick...” King groans out.
Eggsy stands and stares down at the man. “Be happy I did it quick. I got a world to save for Harry.”
When Harry awake in medical he only closed his eyes again and reached for the button in his lap. Something that was unnecessary with the two guests in his room.
“Easy Harry.” Merlin said and reached to hit the call button on the wall as well before pulling the handheld away to not get in the staff’s way. “You’re safe.”
But when Harry opened his eyes he was looking for the other room’s occupant. Sure enough Eggsy was at the foot of the bed smirking down at him from beneath one of those dreadful snapbacks he enjoyed. Eggsy always claimed the sun hurt his eyes. Still Harry missed the newsboy’s cap he used to favor more each day.
“I know.” Harry said around his parched throat.
Merlin didn’t react when Eggsy curled his fingers around Harry’s ankle in an iron grip. It ached but Harry appreciated the tether to the living world at the moment. When he walked the line it was always difficult to hold his bearings at first.
Merlin was going to usher the nurses in to see to his friend not able to see the demon keeping his position at the foot of the bed.
“You’re mine Hart. Never forget that.”
Harry would have laughed if he could have around the dryness of his throat and mouth. He’d be hard pressed to forget his owner with the literal brand burned into his hip. The tattoo that Merlin still complained about.
Yet despite it all Harry always slept more soundly once he got the damn thing. Maybe because he didn’t need to worry what eyes watched him in the dark.
Okay, first Kingsman fic ever so I’m so sorry if it’s bad. I wanted to give it a whirl and see what I could do. :D Hope you enjoy it.
“No.”
“Harry, if you would just listen to me?”
“Fine, I’m waiting.”
Merlin sighed as he resisted the urge to rub at his temples, the headache that resided in his head was already beating harder against his skull. He knew that Harry wouldn’t have agreed to such a thing but he genuinely thought that Eggsy would be excellent for this mission.
Not because of the nature of this mission.
But because he was an excellent spy. He had really proved himself over these past few years and he really felt like he could handle this.
And Merlin knew that he could.
Merlin lifted his gaze towards Harry once again and the male was sitting in his armchair, legs crossed as his arms rested on the plushy chair handles. He was dressed smartly in a classic grey suit with the usual black Oxfords and his hair was slicked back and neat as always. He may have looked calm and collected to the normal eye but Merlin could see that there were a bit of tension in Harry’s broad shoulders.
He really didn’t like the idea.
“I’m waiting.” Harry voiced, voice smooth as he kept his brown eyed gaze firmly on Merlin and the Scotsman sighed.
He knew Harry wasn’t going to give in so easily and that would mean about an hour of levelheaded arguing before Merlin would get annoyed and tell him to be on his way which was really a way of ‘fine, you’ve won this round’.
“I...We’ll talk about this later.” Merlin simply said and Harry nodded before getting out of his seat and walking towards Merlin’s desk. With a raised eyebrow, the Scotsman looked up at him in questioning.
“Just so you know, Merlin, I’d really prefer if you didn’t send him on this mission.” Harry said softly as he tucked a hand into his trouser pocket. “I know you’re going to ask him anyway but if he refuses and feels uncertain, don’t force him into it, alright?”
It wasn’t a command or even a plea, it was more of a request.
And at that, Merlin simply nodded his head before saying, “I’ll see if there’s anyone else available. You’re really protective of this boy, aren’t you?”
Harry simply smiled before tapping the end of his umbrella on the hard wood of the desk. “Still meeting me in my office for some late afternoon scotch?” He asked, avoiding the question entirely even though Merlin already knew the answer.
Smiling lightly at his friend, he nodded and watched silently as Harry left his office in order to attend to the rest of his matters.
“Lovesick bastard.” Merlin muttered as he went back to his work.
