Author: Regency
Title: Nor Perseus Be
Pairing: Eggsy/Harry
Contains: pre-slash, permanent injury (Harry is blind), non-graphic canon-typical violence, Eggsy's salty language, and supernatural elements.
Summary: AU. Eggsy Unwin is descended of man and Gorgon, a modern son of Medusa living in London. Harry Hart is merely a man, a kingsman, who cannot see. Nevertheless, he means to repay the Unwins a debt and Eggsy intends to let him.
Author's Notes: For Elletromil from Ao3 and Tumblr who brought up blind Harry when I mentioned Medusa Eggsy. I wrote this in the dead of night so forgive any typos, if you would. 3
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015). They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
Harry can't see a thing. He feels the heat of the sun on his face, he can smell how the asphalt roads cook in the sweltering temperature, but he can't see how the light reflects off coming cars or note the many Londoners fanning themselves with folded newspapers to stave off heatstroke. He knows it's happening, of course, experience has taught him that, but he cannot see it and three years after losing his sight, the loss still rankles.
No matter, Harry has a task to complete today and a favor to repay. The exterior of Holborn Police Station reeks of stale cigarette smoke and piss, vomit and street grime that tries valiantly to stick to his non-stick soles. Heedless, Harry leans against a convenient concrete wall on a landing up what feels like an interminable flight of stairs. Travelling takes more out of him than it used to, the task of remaining oriented alone exhausts him some days.
Dagonet will tut when he returns to the shop tracking muck into his neat and orderly world, though he won't do so too loudly. Harry can't be expected to avoid hazards he's unable to detect. Kingsman bionic enhancements can do much, they cannot do everything. Harry raps the tip of his umbrella on the pavement to activate the assistive artificial intelligence, the AAI, in his glasses.
'Left hand, nine steps ascending, standard height and depth. Right hand, nine steps descending, standard height and depth. Understood?' Harry taps his thumb over the hooked handle of his umbrella once for yes.
Harry's depth perception is shit on flat planes, enhancements be hanged, he's of almost no use on inclines. He tries to be grateful that he's alive to be annoyed. Given the life-altering injury he sustained in Patagonia, he could be dead. James is dead. Percival is forever changed. Merlin is still, even now, furious. Harry could be dead.
For the umpteenth time, he tries to be grateful.
Harry's frames give a leftward chirp. 'Contact acquired. Left hand. 6.096 meters and closing. Contact entering field of vision: Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin. 3.048 meters and closing. Vital signs normal. No hostile action imminent.' Harry taps his thumb before the AAI can inquire. He understands.
"Eggsy, would you like a lift home?"
A tight worried voice, just past him to his right replies, "Who are you?"
Harry turns slightly, allowing the sound of the young man's voice to guide him. At a height of approximately 1.72 meters and a number of steps down, Eggsy's eye line is well below his own. All the better then that he had the foresight to don shades when he left the shop. He can fudge eye contact that much better when nobody can see where he's looking.
"The man who got you released."
"That ain't an answer."
"Some gratitude would be nice," Harry retorts without any real anger. He's much too tired for anger. He could be dead and James is. But Eggsy Unwin lives.
There's hope.
"I'm Harry Hart, I gave you that medal. Your father saved my life."
His AAI sounds, 'Contact vital signs indicate elevated heart rate, dilated pupils, and heightened adrenal response. Potential hostile action detected.' Harry taps a preemptive yes and silences his tech. He doesn't think Eggsy is dangerous at all.
Eggsy Unwin is descended of man and Gorgon, but his ancestor Medusa lived so long ago that most hardly believe in her, much less remember that she sired daughters who married sailors, who sailed the Seven Seas, felled empires and whole peoples, then fucked their way through horrid conquest to centuries later yield a chav with glittering green eyes and temper enough to instantly turn his enemies to into statuettes on horrible nights. Were he the sort of fucknut he grew up around, he'd have ended up living in a stone garden estate well before now. As it is, Eggsy's too kind for his own good. He'd rather take a set of beefy fists to the face than risk killing somebody too stupid to deserve a good death.
For a minute, for just a minute when Harry Hart mouths off about all Eggsy's failings, all the ways he's let his dad down from beyond the grave, he thinks about letting a green-eyed monster rip on Himself in all his finery and his brown eyes, for flushing Eggsy's goodwill down the shitter like it never mattered. Like Eggsy doesn't either. He thinks about it till he sees the tense set of the man's soft, grim mouth and the slump of his shoulders that Eggsy's gonna be seeing in his sleep. Harry ain't mean because he's mean, he's mean because he's grieving. Eggsy knows too much about grief to hold it against him for long.
Then, Rottweiler and his troupe show up to stir the shit this pub crawl's turned into. Eggsy is all nerves about it, muscles primed to outrun grunts he can't fight off. They can hurt him, Eggsy knows he can survive, but he ain't about to let them harm a hair on Harry. He knew Eggsy's dad. There aren't many people left who can say that. He had Eggsy's back. There ain't many who ever have.
"We should go."
"Nonsense, we haven't finished our drinks." Harry is a posh idiot about Dean's bruisers, talkin' like they're an inconvenience and not some kind of threat fit to tear him limb from limb and raid the pieces for spare change. He doesn't know that he could die in this place and have his body dumped on a roundabout blocks away with nobody willing to stand as witness.
"You should get outta the way, granddad, or you'll get hurt an' all."
Harry's makes a face, all put upon and just about to dig in his heels till Eggsy's pleads with him. Eggsy don't plead for much. Eggsy pleads for friends and if he survives this, like hell is what he and Harry have gonna end here. He's got questions and classified ain't an answer he'll accept.
Harry puts down his glass and he stands, marching away from the booth they're in like a goddamn major general on the battlefield, the click of his umbrella the third tread in his quicktime cadence. He slices through Rottie's little group, jaw first, eyes and posture unyielding, a knife they don't even know that cut them open. Eggsy has every intention of fighting, but fuck all if he can keep from watching those legs and that man go.
Eggsy's just about to stand when what's his face starts running his mouth.
"You lookin' for another rent boy, they're on the corner of Smith Street."
Harry has an underdeveloped survival instinct and an antipathy for bullies that is decades old. He smells Eggsy's fear before the AAI can note his heightened stress response to the presence of their new guests. The two of them may have gotten off on the wrong foot just now, partially the fault of Harry's notoriously short temper and partly a result of real disappointment on Lee's behalf, but there is no world where he would willingly leave a civilian to be beaten to his death. Kingsman only permits the risking of a life to save another. Eggsy will not be that life.
Harry ambles toward the front entrance of the Black Prince on a wing and a prayer, paying very close attention to the verbal blueprint being rattled off to him at speed. Three locks for one door. Six potential combatants. One potential civilian casualty. An unaccounted for rear entrance. And one Kingsman.
Once those odds would have been nothing but today Harry has only his wits and his luck. Were Merlin here he would say that Harry lacks either. He looks forward to hearing it later.
He stops when the AAI dictates and reaches up above his head. "Manners. Maketh. Man. Do you know that what means?" Harry turns, ears attuned to the echolocating chimes telling him where his assailants are standing right this instant. "Then, let me teach you lesson."
They look at him and overlook him at once. He has three years of those looks to build his knowledge on. He's going to put this matter to bed and then he's going to finish his rather good pint of Guinness and see about making amends to dear Eggsy.
"Are we going to stand around here all day, or are we going to fight?"
With a wide swipe of his brolly, he takes down the leader with a ballistic snifter to the frontal bone, redirects a right hook from a short fellow with a buzzcut, ducks a wild haymaker from another squat one, and all out melee erupts in the Black Prince. Wonderful. Harry still loves a good fight; he's got the rage for it these days.
Eggsy bites back a warning as Beachhead, head bald and shining and empty as an aircraft hangar, makes for Harry's back with a shiv, and then a low hiss as Harry parries his assaulting arm with his umbrella. Catch, twist, disarm. Harry moves like Eggsy's Marine instructors, contained and lethal without a motion wasted, without an ounce of sweat staining his brow. He swears Medusa would have spared Harry Hart if he washed up on her shore and swore fealty to her name.
Eggsy would spare him.
Eggsy will.
He gets up and pushes in before Buzzy can come at Harry with another blade and yanks him out of the fray, slamming him back into the stained wall and pressing a forearm to his gasping throat
"And who do you think you are? Comin' for my friend like that. It wasn't on. It ain't on. Rock on back to Dean an' fuck off."
Buzzy shoots a look over Eggsy's shoulder and grins like the devil he is. "Make us."
Eggsy ducks just short of low enough and takes a clip to the crown from Todrick, swearing and swerving to avoid getting caught in a knucklehead sarnie.
Harry turns at the sound of his voice, like a reflex, and it's the distraction that does the trick, putting Harry on the defense. Suddenly, he's redirecting blows with less finesse and fielding hits that make Eggsy's old fractures ache in sympathy. He's going to get hurt and it'll be Eggsy's fault. He can't let that happen. Harry just doesn't deserve it.
When Poodle pops up like the fucknut he is that won't stay down and goes for his gun, Eggsy's had enough. Harry has had more than enough.
"Oi, twats, seems like we 'ad enough fun for one day. 'S done now."
Poodle wheels around and the last of the dumbasses about to keep wailing on Harry turn to Eggsy and Eggsy does what he never does. Praying that Harry will look the other way, Eggsy opens his eyes and looks.
He reaches for the curse that turned a priestess into a Gorgon, an innocent into a horror, and a victim into her own personal monster, and he turns that curse onto his tormentors. Not enough to kill, not for them, but enough for them to STOP.
Todrick slams into the wall, petrified, back arched in a scream nobody's gonna ever hear. Poodle never gets to pull the trigger, eyes wide in terror he can't possibly understand. Beachhead topples and it's a miracle he doesn't shatter, body bent over as it is; he could've lost his head. Each one of them falls still as marble right in the middle of the pub. Even the barkeep is paralyzed, phone in hand, agog in the face of an image that lives only in their minds because Eggsy himself put it there.
He lets them live because he isn't a monster, but he'll be damned if it takes less than an act of god or something like it to wake them without him. It'll take him leaving.
That's when Eggsy notices Harry. Harry who looks around like he no longer knows where he is near the door where this all started.
"I"m missing something," he says to himself. "Eggsy…Eggsy, are you there?" He sounds anxious and his hands twitch like he's just realized he dropped his umbrella. Coming round his back,Eggsy ducks down next to Rottie's crouched form to retrieve it and folds it back into Harry's hands. Harry misses catching it the first time and Eggsy worries.
"Yeah, I'm here." He wants to tell Harry not to be scared, but he doesn't wanna patronize the man. He just laid waste to half a pack of wankers on his own, he doesn't need Eggsy talking down to him.
"Did you do something?" He turns slowly to face Eggsy, but Eggsy's quick to redirect his gaze. He's never had that anger down to a science. He could hurt someone he loves one day or even just somebody he's getting to like.
"Did the same thing I always do, bruv. Looked out for them that look out for me." He grabs Harry's arm to steady him, but it's stronger even than it looks in his thousand-pound suit. He thinks Harry could've taken Poodle and Rottie and all on his own given a shot and no loud mouth chavs breaking his focus. "Whaddya say, let's get out o' here and you can keep on tellin' me fuck all about my dad." He laughs like Harry won't tell on him and ruin it all, because he wants Harry to be different.
Harry smiles, a small thing twisting up the corners of his mouth. "I suppose I could cough up a story or two that isn't classified if you'd like."
Eggsy grins at the side of Harry's face. "Yeah? I'd like that."
Harry's smile grows but he never turns his head quite enough to look directly at Eggsy again and Eggsy's suspicions are confirmed. He knows why Harry's the only person in the pub not petrified when Eggsy got upset.
His heart sinks without breaking. Harry's amazing, full stop, and he won't take that away from him.
Eggsy and Harry walk out of the bar single file 'cause fuckin' hell Harry Hart 's shoulders weren't meant to share doorways with mere mortals. For a second his outline blocks out daylight and Eggsy sees what others have to when an Unwin casts their gaze at them. He sees the worst: For him, it's Harry leaving him. But then the world tilts on its axis and Harry turns back, for Eggsy.
He tips his head toward the street outside. "Shall we?"
Eggsy nudges Harry's shoulder with his own in response as he steps out and they take to the pavement in search of that fancy black cab Harry brought him in. The man doesn't so much as falter on the sidewalk, he walks like he knows the area and trusts the ground. He's the most terrifying thing Eggsy's ever seen and he's stared into mirrors wondering if he could turn himself to stone to stop hurting.
Then, his stepdad's goons come pouring out of the shadows like ants at a picnic and Eggsy glares at every one he sees. It ain't enough to put 'em off forever, but some of them freeze in place–not stone, just scared as. Eggsy ain't never been right to them, he feels wrong as an ostrich dropped in a hen house and left to grow. He smells off and when his back's up like it is now and protecting what he loves is on his mind, he looks the part.
"Want sssomefin', you lot?" The serpents weren't just a pretty bit of exaggeration for the artwork. They're in there, all mixed in with the darkness, and as venomous as fury itself. They never had to bite to kill.
"Nah, mate, we just seein' to the situation is all. We got orders to take you back," says Tosspot the fucker with the worst nickname and a worse disposition in a snit. He plays nice till he don't. Eggsy doesn't feel much like playing nice either.
"That ain't nevah happenin'." Eggsy shoves back one handsy wanker stupid enough to try physically restraining Harry who looks about ready to put him to the ground himself. "And don' touch 'im. He ain't yoursss to touch."
Dean's bruisers call out like crows. "Oooh. 'E your daddy, then? Smith Street must be payin' off, Eggsy lad. Give us a bit."
"Gentlemen," Harry interrupts, and Eggsy listens, "I'm afraid Eggsy and I had have had a rather…tiring encounter and we'd like to adjourn for the night–the evening, that is. We don't want any trouble." Words that make Eggsy choke and his skin hot. He'd go anywhere Harry asked by now.
"Ain't no trouble, granddad. Jus' let us see what's in those thick pockets o' yours 'fore you go."
Harry tips his head like a condescending old god, the ones grandma Unwin talked about like cousins instead of myths. She'd had gold teeth and strange eyes and Zeus never bothered her whereas a mention of Poseidon could send her into fits that scared his grandfather and all her doctors. Poseidon was the devil and the rain his brimstone and ire. Eggsy never learned to like the rain, as such. But Harry ain't the devil at all.
"Why don't you lot leave 'im be. Y' heard 'im. It's been a rough 'un. Let us go and you can be on your way."
Toad, the interchangeable toady leaving marks on Harry's suit, pipes up, "We ain't heard from Rottie in a tick. You did some of yer freaky shit to 'im, Unwin? I'll bash of yer 'ead if you did 'im one, swear on it!"
Harry steps forward and Eggsy gets pushed back, and suddenly it's his heart in his throat and warmth in his chest, and Harry without eyes that kill, without even eyes that see, standing between Eggsy and danger knowingly.
Eggsy is frozen.
Harry doesn't have to be Perseus and slay him. Eggsy would do almost anything for him anyway.
Harry shuts his eyes instinctively at the wave of something that passes in front of his face. He felt it at his back in the pub and knows it to be a weapon of some sort, but he doesn't know what. Eggsy is the only common factor, so Eggsy it must be, but he can't discern the source or type and his AAI is of no help. He's helpless, yet he can't say he's afraid. He isn't. His instincts have told him he's safe with Lee Unwin's son and he believes them.
Hope, indeed.
'Seven assailants, eliminated. No hostile action imminent. Understood?'
Harry hesitates. He doesn't understand completely. Tired as he is, he'd been prepared to take on another set of brutes and win. To protect Eggsy as he hadn't protected Lee, to be sure. To protect the boy who was only too willing to be harmed in protecting him, without question.
He taps his thumb once. Yes.
For now, he understands enough.
Eggsy circles Harry very quietly, sure that the man knows what he's doing and is letting him get away with it all. Harry's got his head cocked just enough to hear his tread on the pavement. He finally stops right under Harry's nose and looks up into the lenses of his sunglasses. They're dark as pitch but if Eggsy squints at an angle he can see the eyes behind them. He was right on the brown. What he didn't catch was the faint scarring etched from one temple to the other, crossing the bridge of his nose, cutting across his eyelids like vines. Though what he can see of Harry's eyes looks fine, he doubts that's all the real damage.
Harry allows the close examination. He's so still under Eggsy's gaze that it almost scares him. He leans in. "You there?"
Harry's mouth twitches and even his thousand-mile stare is fond when it touches on Eggsy by chance.
"Quite. Looked your fill?"
Eggsy carefully pushes Harry's frames up the bridge of his nose where they've slid. "You can't see me or nothin', can ya?"
Harry blinks, his smile fades. "After a fashion, but no, not in the way that you see."
"That's good. Means you're safe from me. I never had anybody that was safe from me before, not even mum." Not even Daisy who had none of the Unwin blood to protect her like it protected his dad and grandma and cousins on da's side. Like it protected Eggsy who'd often rather have been a worthless statute than a useless son.
Harry looks at him, toward him. "Do you know what I see when I look at you?"
Eggsy shrugs. It seems rhetorical. "Couldn't guess."
"A young man I'd like to know more about."
Eggsy's heart beats just a little bit faster, like just before he swings a punch but better.
"I wanna get to know you, too."
Harry takes Eggsy's hand and loops it around his elbow. "Look around, Eggsy. You've been blessed with the gift of sight. What do you see?"
Eggsy does the leading, guiding Harry around frozen forms that will shatter into breath the minute Eggsy is out of range and the two of them are out of danger.
"A fit bloke in a thousand-pound suit." His wink is lost on Harry, but he doesn't regret it.
Harry pretends to crane around for a gander while Eggsy beams up at the weirdest, poshest, maddest man he's ever met.
"Could he be my type?" Harry asks in a stage whisper, his eyebrows raised teasingly.
"I dunno about that, but I think he might be mine."
Harry squeezes his hand as his fancy cab appears at last and murmurs, soft, "He very well could be."