Work Text:
On Tuesday, Eggsy and Harry broke up.
It was a beautiful spring day, as sunny as London could get at that time of the year, and the temperature was agreeable. No hint of trouble on the horizon.
There is a pen lodged into the wooden surface of his desk, slanting up by the metal point. A show of sheer ill-tempered violence. The office is in disarray with papers and stationeries littering the carpet in the aftermath of their argument. Harry stands and listens to the alien, hollow quietness of the house. 10:53 AM. A bit early for a drink, he thinks. He doesn’t care.
It’s strange, how he had spent 30 years alone here and never once noticed how empty it was.
Work goes on as normal. They’re, after all, first and foremost professionals. They discuss work and mundane pleasantries; they exchange stiff friendly nods when passing in the halls of the country estate; they carried on like the mature, functioning adults that they are. Still, Harry gives Eggsy a wide berth, letting Merlin take up briefing and debriefing Eggsy, and opts to sit out of group events where it wasn’t strictly unprofessional for him to not engage (which there wasn’t many, considering he is the leader of said group). Being civil is insufferable. When he can, Harry prefers to retreat to the privacy of his own office quarter.
-
There too, Harry finds the space horribly besmirch. There is a loveseat – plush and comfortable, which modern design awkwardly and awfully clashes with other vintage furniture in the room – that someone had dragged over by the desk. Late at night, Harry’s ribcage aches at the emptiness of it, yet he can’t bring himself to move the damn thing.
Eggsy doesn’t wait quietly in the chair for him to finish up the papers like he used to. Harry relies on the company of a bottle of Macallan to aid his finishing of the mountain of bureaucracy in his stead.
“Are you alright?”
Merlin asks, when he’d dropped by to deliver a stack of documents that needs signing the next morning and caught Harry still in his office. He squints at his wristwatch; it’s past two in the morning. This isn’t the first time Harry pull an all-nighter this week either. Spies are inherently gossipers, and on Wednesday, Percival had told Lancelot, who told him, that he phoned Harry in for an emergency consultation at 5 AM, only to be greeted at arrival by an early Arthur, already impeccably dressed and all. Arthur is never early; you are lucky if he’s even on time.
The yellow banker’s lamp light illuminates Harry’s hunched-over figure at the desk. He hums distractedly and tells Merlin, eyes still chasing the letters on the dotted line of an acquisition form:
“Just leave it on top of the manila pile. I’ll get to it in a minute.”
Merlin eyes the half-drunken single malt bottle on the mahogany surface and the drained ones over on the shelves with great concern.
“Do I need to hide the liquor cabinet keys from ye, lover boy?”
Harry groused:
“Please, Merlin, I’m not a teenager. I think I can quite manage a breakup.”
If he still had a hairline, Merlin thinks, his eyebrows would have disappeared into it.
“Not sure ye liver would agree.” Merlin quips, and to Harry’s surprise, reaches for the Macallan bottle to pour himself a finger too before sinking down to the loveseat. Harry refrains from voicing out loud: it’s not your chair.
“You look like proper shite,” Merlin commented over the brim of Harry’s stolen tumbler.
“Thank you, Merlin. I’m delighted that my dedication to this institution is getting well acknowledged and appreciated.” A dry remark. An easy half-truth. The other half, which Harry suspects Merlin is privy to anyway on the ground of being his mate since wee secondaries, is that he couldn’t bear going to bed alone, got skittish at the idea of an empty house greeting him at the end of the mews, scared to wake up next to nobody. Eggsy isn’t here nagging at him to come home; might as well do the one thing he is still good for.
“The institution would appreciate its leader getting some sleep and not dropping dead in the middle of a meeting.”
“I do. I will.” He promised, “Once this Hong Kong situation is dissolved,” Harry waves the folder between them, the content thick with photos and reports, all of them gruesome, threatening to spill.
“Harry, that file had been on your desk for weeks. It’s not gonna dissolve overnight.”
“Precisely. Which is why we need to accelerate the process of its dissolving, should we not?”
Letting out an exasperated groan, the quartermaster knocks back burning liquor. Harry is one of Kingsman’s most prolific agents in its entirety of operation and is downright genius on his turf, but the man could be such an idiot sometimes. In that way, Eggsy is exactly like him. Both dogged, obstinate to a fault in their own rights. Being friends with both means that he now feels like a child of divorce, unable to disperse advice without being accused of playing for the other camp.
“You’re a stubborn bastard is what you are.” Merlin’s Scottish accent is getting thicker by the worn-out minute. Both Harry and Eggsy are grown-ups, they can deal with their own problems. He stands, stretches the muscles and tendons of his back and shoulders, and told Harry, “Go home. Sleep. Take a shower. God knows you stank like someone had shot up a pub downtown.” At this, Harry has the audacity to look offended. Merlin cuts him off with a hand before he could whine: “And next time, call me if ye want to get wasted. Drinking alone is pathetic.”
Merlin made for the door in long strides, cracked it open, then hesitated. When Harry looked at him questioningly. He said:
“Eggsy just got back from his mission in Kathmandu two hours ago. Thought you’d like to know. No injuries.”
It takes a while before Harry could respond; he croaked a dry “Good,” before Merlin is dismissed for finality this time.
It’s ridiculous. Since when has Eggsy become a taboo topic around him? Just because they are no longer together doesn’t mean he has lost all right to care about Eggsy, does it? He is still his boss, his mentor. And yet, he couldn’t deny the surge of nausea that floods his gut whenever Eggsy is mentioned. Oh, the stricken feeling his face must have betrayed. It's worst than PTSD, worst than all the times he has brushed death too close and ended up jumpy around stupid, mundane objects.
Harry pours himself another drink and doesn’t go home.
Breaking up means there’s the matter of moving out.
It is a weird thing, this whole bollocks, once you’ve reaches a certain point in life and relationship. Books, cufflinks, ties, and underwear… Do you sit down together and account for each item? Trying to discern where one ends and the other begins? And what of shared possessions? Things that you bought each other? Sounds bloody dreadful and tedious is what it is.
Eggsy brought nothing but a single duffle back of his clothes back to his own residence, down the street, a 20-minute walk from the mews. The house bears no trace of Eggsy. It stands to reason: he has never lived here.
Daisy is elated to have her busy big brother (and mostly JB) around so much more, running around tugging at him by the sleeve and showing him her drawings. Michelle hugs him often and doesn’t ask. She might have blamed Harry a little. A lot. Something like ‘I knew that old man wasn’t good for you’ or ‘That’s what you get for fooling around with a man twice your age, baby’ was not spoken, but interpreted. Eggsy feels still an inherent need to defend Harry’s honor. He just couldn’t do so if all Michelle technically did was brought him dinner and ask if he wanted an attentive ear.
He doesn’t.
It’s been three months since their breakup. It’s hard to breathe, that quiet pity and the tip-toeing around the subject. He tried to spend most nights out.
Except… Eggsy doesn’t know what to do with his nights now that he doesn’t waste away contently counting the lines of Harry’s face as he works, or tangle in a heap of blanket and pillows and limbs lazily reading a book. He hit the pub with Ryan and Jamal regularly enough, and on occasions even brings out Roxy, but they’ve got their own lives to live and would largely appreciate his not turning them into alcoholics like Eggsy. It stung a little, but understandable. Fuck, what did he even do before Harry came along?
(Nothing. He was no one and had nothing before Harry.)
He knows he should use these empty nights to sort out his and Harry’s stuff – the moving out process has stagnated - but drags his feet in doing so. If he goes to Harry’s place and found his life there already neatly packed into a corner of the living room, that makes it real. If he could reach over and reasonably find all of his belongings in the house he lives with Mum and Daisy, that makes it real. At least with this nebulous, deliberate indecision, reality is a Schrödinger equation.
-
He tried, once, to score it with some bird in a nightclub he can’t bother to remember the name of (both the bird’s and the club’s), but got cold feet in the last minute. Afterward, he had an anxiety attack out on the curb of SOHO, outside said club – a sudden, overwhelming feeling of being disgusted, sickened with himself, like he was cheating on Harry somehow. It was outrageous and utterly unfair how he still feel that way because, by all meaning and purpose, he is not cheating on anyone. And that he is not, that he could no longer be cheating on Harry because he is no longer with Harry made him cry some more. Harry prolly is adapting just fine, taking changes by the reign. He always does. He hadn’t seemed to mind that much when their relationship ended.
In the end, he spent the night drunkenly weeping to a Bridget Jones Diary rerun on the telly. Jesus Fuck, he's fucking pathetic.
It happens once, after a mission.
Eggsy is done-in, bruising all over, and stumbled back home to find he had lost his key somewhere in Turkey. Cursing, he takes out the Kingsman watch and fiddles with its settings. Hey, who fucking cares if he hacked into his own house security system, yeah? It is a wonder he manages to undress and wash himself at all before collapsing face-first onto the bed, bare as a newborn babe.
In the morning, he is woken by a hand coursing through his hair and brushing the short golden strains of his bang back gently. Eggsy moans and purrs at the feeling of fingers on his scalp. He knows these hands like his own, maybe even better, aches for its familiarity, and isn’t the least bit alarmed. The sound of Harry’s chuckle vibrates straight to his core.
“Morning.”
“Morning.” Eggsy slurs, refusing to exit this cotton-edged, dreamlike state. He is so tired and has not felt so good for so long.
“What are you doing here?”
“Hmm…?”
Eggsy lazily cracks one eye open, just a slit, to take stock of his surroundings. Nothing is out of place at first glance. The familiar digital clock reads 6:21 AM on the nightstand, Harry is still in his suit perching on the edge of the bed, looking like he'd just got home from the shop, and he is in their bed… Then the hazy smog of sleep lifts.
Oh.
Oh. Right.
Fuck. He is in Harry’s bedroom.
Returning to the mews has become a habit. He just forgot he doesn’t live here anymore. Eggsy shoots right up in bed:
“Shit, Harry, sorry. I forgot…” He stutters and flips over the blanket, intending to beat a hasty retreat.
Harry’s palm is immediately on Eggsy’s naked chest, pushing him back down. Eggsy’s back hit the bed with a surprised “oof”, and the next thing he knows, Harry was kissing him lushly. And like a habit, Eggsy opened up for him eagerly, gasping and with both arms thrown around broad shoulders. Harry tastes like alcohol. Harry tastes like misery.
Reacting to the enthusiasm, Harry pressed in, sucking on the tip of his tongue and licking the cave of his mouth. Eggsy keens and moans and pulls him in closer. One of Eggsy’s hands slides from Harry’s square shoulder blade, down to his defined bicep, to his forearm, to take hold of his hand then guides it over the nipple, toward his torso. Harry clasps the possessive palm on the small of his waist, rubbing mini circles onto the skin there before gliding it southward, coping a handful of Eggsy’s cheek, kneading the firm muscle.
When Harry finally releases his mouth to move down to his neck, Eggsy huffs in precious air, feeling light-headed. The tingling sensation left on his mouth is a drug. Callous fingers brush the back of his thigh and he again, without hesitation, opens up readily. Bad habit. His member already stood flag by then, pink for attention. Eggsy snakes his other hand from Harry’s shoulder to touch himself. Before he could though, Harry growled and pinned both of his hands above his head by the wrists, whilst simultaneously biting down on his throat. Hard. Eggsy yelps in surprise. His cock twitches and leaks pre-come.
Holding both of his wrists in one hand, Harry travels the free one downward, caressing the plane of Eggsy’s body. It gives his aching cock one firm, teasing jerk before toys at Eggsy’s entrance. His hole spasms with gaping desire. Harry fucked into it with one finger, dry. It is tight, so tight from the 4 months they had been apart and without the aid of slick. Eggsy sobs at the uncomfortable burn, but a masochistic part of him can’t help but like it, revel in the bodily shudder it gives Harry. The older man prods around momentarily then decided to show Eggsy mercy by reaching for the bottle of lube in the drawer. He pours a copious amount over Eggsy’s hole and works the liquid in with 2 fingers. It’s Eggsy’s turn to shiver.
“Harry,” he urged, when Harry is three fingers deep inside of him, his voice low and pupil blown almost black. He is impossibly hard, but he can’t come just yet, needing that little something to tip him over the edge. He hooks one leg around Harry, encouraging.
Harry frees the grip on Eggsy’s wrist and hastily undid his zipper, pulling out his thick, glistening cock. It seems he has no intention to strip, and at this point, the fact fails to bother Eggsy one bit. Harry climbs on top of Eggsy, hooks both legs over his shoulders, and aligned himself. A flash of uncertainty flashes on his handsome face, but Eggsy distracted him with “Please…” and “I need it,” "Harry," and other incoherent wanton, pleading noises. The bulbous head of Harry’s cock catches on his rim, and Harry presses in, filling him to the hilt in one go.
Eggsy cried out from both the pain and the pleasure of the intrusion. Harry is big and Eggsy’s inside struggles to accommodate him, but that also makes sure Harry touches every path of his inner wall. Every time he pulls out, the shaft drags against his prostate and Eggsy has to bite his lower lip just to stop himself from screaming. In, out, in out. He felt crazy and feverish. Harry put a fist on Eggsy’s reddened cock and Eggsy stilts, bracing himself for release. Instead, Harry held it at the base and Eggsy choked out a strangled grunt.
“No, no, no. Let me come… please! Please!” He begged. Harry snaps his hip in quick succession, incentivized by Eggsy's neediness, hitting his sweet spot every time. And it feels so good at the same time excruciating. It makes him want to die because he can’t come. Eggsy cries real tears this time.
“Eggsy,” Harry leans up to kiss watery droplets away, jerking his hip one more time, “we come together, okay?”
Eggsy nods.
Harry resumes fucking into his hole with animalistic violence. Eggsy could feel his balls slap against his buttock in obscene, wet sounds with every thrust. His member went numb and a little painful from the denied orgasm. Soon, Harry’s rhythm became wild and uncoordinated, and finally, finally, he turn his dead grip on Eggsy’s cock into a firm tug.
“Come for me, boy,” Harry commands. And Eggsy doesn’t need to be told twice. He let go and spills all over Harry’s stomach and chest with a high-pitched moan; his inside tightens responsively.
“Eggsy, I lo-” Harry starts to say before clamping his mouth shut, biting his lip enough it makes a bloody mess. Eggsy feels Harry’s stilted grinds inside of him before warm liquid fills him up.
“This was a mistake,” Harry pants into Eggsy's sweaty neck after they were spent and finished. Harry's still fully clothed but his suit is ruined. The sun is higher now, but the thick curtains are drawn, enveloping them in the shadow of their own personal hell.
Eggsy swallows around the lump in his throat and nods, then peels himself from under Harry’s skin because it burns wherever they touch. This is madness. He is suffocating without Harry, choking on the strangeness of existence without him, of his own bed - where he tosses and turns until he passes out from exhaustion, the only way he could sleep. Yet, being close to him hurts, like cutting open the stitches of his still-bleeding wound and spilling out vital organs. Raw and nasty.
Eggsy can’t live with Harry; can’t live without him.
They don’t converse, not even in social settings. They are never in the same room at the same time.
There is an open mission in Hong Kong: deep cover, highly dangerous, something about a bioweapon farm masquerading as a pharmaceutical research center. It will take around a year just to crawl down there and gain their trust, then another to disintegrate the organization from the inside and get all the important names. Good. Eggsy needs to be away, needs the distraction.
The day before take-off, Eggsy is informed that Arthur has taken him off the mission.
“You can’t fucking do that!”
Eggsy badges into the office, slamming the double doors so hard they bounce off of their hinge.
“Language,” Harry remarks. He is at his desk, like always, studiously reviewing a mission report. The chair next to the desk is buried under a stack of colorful folders.
“You can’t fucking do that to me!” Eggsy bellows, throwing the dossier of his now discarded mission onto the desk, “Put me back on the mission.” Harry sits back and closes the cap to his fountain pen, sighing.
“As your superior, Galahad, I assure you I can. This mission isn't a good fit for your skillset. Someone with a background in biochemistry like Kay would…”
Eggsy let out a throaty frustrated noise, takes the stylograph from Harry’s grip, and throws it across the room with a satisfying CLANK. He turns his back and marches toward the door with a very mature stomp in his steps. Fuck Harry. Fucking this control freak!
Harry’s anger is at once silent and thunderous. He hums, his voice deceptively smooth and airy:
“Of course, walk away, Galahad, that’s all you seem to do these days.”
“What the fuck did you say?” Eggsy halts, seeing red and grits teeth.
“Throw a tantrum like a baby, why don’t you? Stomping your feet because you don’t get what you want.”
“I’m throwing a tantrum?” He screams, incredulous, “You’re the one forbidding me to go on this god-forsaken job because of your rank, perverse need to lord over me and control my life! We are not together anymore; you don’t get to have a say in what mission I take.”
Harry doesn’t raise his voice but he did rise from his seat to a full, intimidating height to match Eggsy’s temper.
“As a matter of fact, I do. As your boss. You are Kingsman's asset. I am not keeping you here because of some shitty personal reasons, Eggsy. I said the mission isn’t a good match,” then he presses his lips together; his voice becomes hard, “And for the record, it was you who left. You may not care to get yourself killed or hurt out there but I do.”
“Care?” Eggsy seethes between his teeth, getting exponentially louder, “But you don’t! You don’t care and you never fucking did! That day I stood at your door, all hurt and begging you to come and comfort me, and all you did was pour yet another drink and told me to leave if I didn’t think we could work out.”
Harry dislodges his glasses to rub at the bridge between his eyes, hard, so hard he felt his callus bites onto his skull underneath. The memory of that morning replays a hundredth time inside his mind theater: the argument taken from the breakfast table into his home office, Eggsy saying ‘I can’t do this anymore,” the numbness as he reached for the Chivas bottle, listening to Eggsy packing up his things in the other room but dared not look. Coward.
“What would you have me do, Eggsy?” Harry says, weary and old all of sudden, feeling his bones aged at least another two decades. The vulnerability that shoots through his expression is one wounded. He shows Eggsy his open palms, empty of answers the other man must be looking for, “Did you want me to keep you there against your will? Let us have at each other throat? A shouting match? I’m not twenty-something anymore. I know those fights achieve nothing but prolong the miserable, inevitable bitter end.”
“Fuck you!” Eggsy exclaims and angrily crosses the room. Harry reels back with instinctual defensiveness. Those wild eyes pierce through him, pin him. Danger. “I wanted you to at least fight for us.”
With outstretched hands, Eggsy reaches across the desk and pulls Harry in for a crushing open-mouth kiss. Teeth and lips crash sharply against each other. He wants to fight Harry, gets bloody knuckles; he wants to kiss him, to simultaneously dig his knife in and comfort.
Harry… pushed Eggsy away. Eggsy hasn’t expected that. There was hope, and then there is nothing. His gut feels as heavy as lead.
“Harry…” he whined, suddenly terrified. Terrified that that was it. It’s too late to salvage. This was confirmation, was the reality that from now on, Eggsy will forevermore live on his own, in his own fancy house he had wished for a lifetime ago. Because Harry has ruined him forever, for anyone else. Because he might just be a pretty young thing to Harry, but to Eggsy, Harry is everything. For that, Eggsy is not above begging. “Harry, please!”
“Eggsy, we… I need to think.”
It is Harry who takes a step back this time. It is Harry that walked away.
The next morning, Merlin informs him that he is back on the mission.
Except, Harry was right, that the mission isn’t a good fit.
Eggsy saw life flashes before his eyes when the chemical lab blew up. He survived with two legs broken in different places and a nearly fucked-up spine.
Harry takes him home. Takes care of him. Takes days off of work and takes essential meetings from the office. It drives Eggsy mad.
Once, when Harry tries to spoon-feed him because it'd put too much pressure on his spine just to ladle food into his mouth that day, Eggsy hurls the bowl of soup onto the floor. Just because.
“Don’t confuse your guilt with love for me. I’ve got enough of guilt from you, Harry.” He told him. The hurt and uneasiness inside of him have grown resentful. “I asked for the mission you’ve already vetoed. I’m not your responsibility.”
Ever patiently, Harry rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and bends down to start cleaning up after Eggsy’s mess. He speaks without looking at Eggsy:
“I’m not. I knew then, I knew always, what part of me is made of guilt and love for you. Hard to get confused when I never stop loving you.”
“Then why…”
The effort to clean up the floor suddenly seems insurmountable. Harry abandons the work just to look at Eggsy, earnestness bleeding from his tone.
“I just can’t bear to go through that again. God knows it’d kill me, Eggsy. I can’t survive it. I can’t survive you walking away from me again.”
They hold eye contact.
“Well, I can’t walk away now,” Eggsy offers, half joking and indicating his broken legs. Harry just grimaces.
Eggsy let himself be taken care of.
By their third monthly doctor check-up, his physician has determined that Eggsy will, miraculously, make a full recovery accompanied by a strict schedule of physiotherapy. Eggsy puffs out a breath, relieved, and for it feels a thousand times lighter. He bounces merrily as he is wheeled out the parking lot. Whilst folding up Eggsy’s wheelchair and getting him into the Bently, Harry tells him:
“That’s good. Now we can start thinking about getting you settled into your place.”
And just like that, the bubbly feeling in his stomach deflates.
That night, Eggsy declines dinner, claiming nausea from the newly prescribed meds, and hides in the guest bedroom, where he has made a nest out of the last few months. Eggsy contemplates pushing himself off of the chair and dislocating his shoulder, just so he could stay with Harry a bit longer, before realizing how demented that sounds. Instead, he goes to sleep, because the new medication really does make him drowsy.
When he finally wakes at 1 AM, it is to his rumbling stomach. Knowing full well Harry would have saved him a dish from dinner, Eggsy struggles to get himself into the wheelchair and rolls out of his room into the darkened hall, fully intending to rummage the kitchen. That’s when the yellow slit of light peaking from Harry’s office catches his eyes.
Harry is asleep, slumped on the desk next to a mount of papers and a bottle of Scotch. He must have been dog-tired, because Harry doesn’t even stir when Eggsy pushed the door open and wheels himself in, and Harry is normally a paranoid light sleeper. Eggsy picks up the few pieces of paper scattered about and brings them to the desk.
Harry Hart doesn’t drool in his sleep. And it annoys Eggsy to no end because maybe if he had drooled, Harry would have looked less perfect. As it is, even the worn-out wrinkles of his mouth, the crowfeet by his eyes remain dastardly handsome. Square masculine jawline. Glorious brunette curls. Eggsy would be lucky if he reaches that age and still has a hairline. Eggsy would be lucky if he reaches that age at all.
With ginger fingers, Eggsy ghosts his knuckles over the tired lines under Harry’s eyes. No glasses. He misses him so much. How could you live next to someone every day, see each other almost every moment awake, and still hunger for them?
“Harry, I need you. Don’t leave me.” He whispers.
Fingers abruptly circle around his wrist. Harry’s lashes flutter in waking.
“Eggsy,” He mutters.
“Harry,” Eggsy choked out, “I love you. You can’t let me go.” He doesn’t care if it sounds desperate, too much like begging. If Harry doesn’t know how to fight for them then Eggsy has enough fights in him for them both. He just needs Harry to be there.
Bringing Eggsy’s caught hand to his lips, Harry lazily pressed a tender kiss onto his knuckles.
“I can’t keep you if you don’t want to be kept, dear boy.”
“But I do. Harry, Harry, I just wanted to know that you care. You are so stoic all the time, I don’t know if you really feel anything underneath. And you always shut me out, stonewall me when you’re hurt. It scares me to think that you don’t trust me, or that I don’t matter.”
Harry let out a pained noise like it physically guts him to hear that.
“I’m sorry for being such a prideful fool. You know I always have such disdain for being in need of help. I hate being so vulnerable in front of you; I hate losing control… like I’ve lost my ability to take care of you.”
“Well, look at where we are,” Eggsy said, daring to slide his wheelchair closer, “You clearly haven’t lost your touch, and I clearly need a lot of taken care of, yeah?”
The corners of Harry’s lips curl into a faint smile, and he squeezes Eggsy’s hand, once before letting go of him: “Your humor is appalling.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Eggsy makes a show of rolling his eyes, “Now let's get you to bed old man; it’s late. And I’m hungry. You did save me some Chinese, yeah?”
“Of course,” Harry blinks, then follows Eggsy out into the hallway, “Can I join you?”
Eggsy grinned back at him and arches an eyebrow.
“Only if you carry me upstairs later.”
Harry did carry Eggsy up to the second story afterward, straight into their bedroom. In the morning, he calls in sick. It was a Tuesday.
Eggsy’s leg and back healed completely, and he gets back up and running, gun blazing and terrorizing terrorists in a scant 6 months. Eggsy never moved out.
Merlin ceases being a child of divorce.