oh my gosh oh my gosh harry and eggsy but like ummm hm. artist/model au?
This is… not that? But I hope you like it, dearest!
Eggsy makes it outside for his smoke break with only moments to spare. He tears off his apron, rips his notebook from his back pocket, drops onto the pallet of crates from last night’s shipment of tinned tomatoes, and waits, peering out from his perch in the alley. There are always a few minutes of anticipation - Hart shows up at Darling Street Coffee at exactly the same time, except for the days he doesn’t show up at all. Sometimes he’d be missing for a day or two, but once it was nearly three weeks - long enough that Eggsy’d worried he’d found a new posh place to get his girly lattes closer to wherever home was. But then Hart had re-emerged with his sly smile and his long legs, leaning a little heavier on his ever-present umbrella. There was the greenish tint of what had certainly been an impressive shiner still visible on his cheekbone.
Eggsy managed a rough sketch of his face that day, brought it home and fleshed it out with some colored pencils. He wonders if it’d been an accident, a trip down some steps, but Hart was always so agile, always knew how much space he took up. If it wasn’t an accident, Eggsy wonders if it was a mugging, maybe. If someone had hit Hart and knocked him down. It makes him angry to think about, even though Hart is exactly the kind of tosser that Dean’s goons would shake down - almost carelessly rich, with his fine suits and gold ring, and the watch Eggsy’d discovered by googling was worth more than Dean’s car. He’d asked around, quiet-like, but no one had heard anything about a robbery, and Hart still had that watch on his wrist.
Always a mystery, was Mr. Hart.
Hart was at Darling Street yesterday, and the day before, so Eggsy is hopeful he’ll show up again. He opens his notebook to the most recent page, and scribbles a few lines in the corner, sharpening up the edge of his pencil. He’d managed to get a good outline sketch of the man’s hands yesterday - long fingers, wide knuckles, the ring on his right hand. He hopes Hart will be wearing the grey suit today, though the dark blue seems to be his favorite. But the grey has a vest with a subtle embroidery that shimmers with some sort of pattern. Eggsy’s never been able to make it out from across the street, but he desperately wants to.
A minute passes, and then another. Eggsy starts getting antsy - he only has fifteen minutes at a clip for his break, though he could usually sweet-talk Donna into stretching it to twenty. But if Hart doesn’t show up soon, Eggsy will be hard-pressed to get more than a few sad lines on his paper. He looks down at his notebook again, flipping back through a few pages, all the memorized lines of Hart’s face, his body in those smart suits, tucked between sketches of birds in the park, of the skyline of the council flats from his bedroom window, of Daisy stuffing her mouth with cereal. He’s smiling at that one when a shadow falls over his notebook from behind.
“I’ll advise you not to turn around,” a low voice says in his ear. “Or else things may have to get unpleasant, and it’s really far too early in the day for that.”
Eggsy’s heartbeat spikes. He can see the shadow of the man on the ground - tall and lean, the cuffs of his suited sleeves, and in his hand - an umbrella. “Well, shit,” Eggsy mutters.
“Quite,” the voice in his ear - Hart - replies, and Eggsy would swear he sounds amused. “Now, if you’ll kindly tell me who you work for…”
He trails off and Eggsy frowns in confusion. “I work in the pub,” he says, gesturing to the brick wall to his left. “I’m a short-order cook.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Hart’s voice drips with annoyance, “but I think you know I’m referring to your other employer - the one who sent you here to watch me.”
“No one - what?” Eggsy stutters, and flushes pink to his toes. He can feel Hart close behind him, the warmth of his body behind Eggsy’s.
“You sit here every day, and you watch me, and you take notes. Who are they for?” Eggsy sits in silence, completely unsure how to explain that he wasn’t spying, he was just… creeping? Drawing him over and over? Going home and thinking up weird stories about where he goes with his daily coffee, about his life, about what Eggsy might say if they ran into each other someday? “Very well.” Hart sighs. “Your notebook, please.”
Hart reaches for the book and Eggsy unconsciously grips it tighter. “No,” he manages, his embarrassment so strong he can feel it stinging his skin. Hart’s long fingers close around the notebook and Eggsy yanks it back, his fight-or-flight instincts finally kicking in. He bolts up from the pallets but Hart grabs his elbow, and before he can figure out how, Eggsy is pinned against the wall of the pub, his arm twisted painfully above his head. Hart is standing close, and Eggsy knew he was tall, but it’s amazing to realize just how much. His eyes are a warm honey brown behind his thick-rimmed glasses. This close, Eggsy can see a million details that he’d never seen before - the laugh lines, the shape of his ear, the faded scar above one eyebrow. He’s gorgeous in all his perfect imperfections.
“The notebook,” Hart says again, all traces of humor gone from his voice. “If you please. Else I may have to break your wrist.”
Eggsy doesn’t doubt he could do it, at this angle. He lets the notebook drop to the ground between their feet, and closes his eyes in resignation when it flutters open to a page from a month ago, a detailed sketch of Hart’s profile as he sat drinking his coffee on the bench outside Darling Street, his face tipped up toward the sun. The only words on the page are “Hart, sunshine, April 13.” He feels Hart go perfectly still.
“What is this?” he asks, his voice suddenly unsure.
“You can see what the fuck it is,” Eggsy says, but it’s more pleading than cutting.
“You’re drawing me,” Hart murmurs, and when Eggsy finally opens his eyes, Hart is studying him like he’s a puzzle. “You work at the pub.” Eggsy nods. “And you come out in the afternoons, and you sit in his alley, and you… what? Hide in the shadows and wait for me to come by so you can do… this?”
Well, when he puts it that way, it sounds bad. “Not for, like, stalking reasons,” Eggsy assures him. “Just because…”
“Because you’re beautiful,” Eggsy says, his gaze skittering down past Hart’s shocked expression to land on his chest. He’s wearing the vest, the grey one, and up close Eggsy can see that the pattern is circle with a line in it, and wings like a bird. At least he found that out before he has to give up drawing Hart forever.
He feels the grip on his wrist loosen. “But how… do you know my name?” Hart asks.
“Sometimes you get your drinks to go, guv,” he grins despite himself. Hart just blinks down at him in confusion. “And they write your name on the cup.”
“Well, fuck,” Hart says, and all Eggsy can do is laugh.
