Author: Regency

Title: This Fire Still Burns, But Water Cools

Pairing: eventual Harry Hart/Eggsy Unwin, others implied

Contains: canon-typical violence, canon domestic violence, off-screen minor character death, references to PTSD and child abuse, consent issues including attempted non-con.

Summary: AU. Harry is a firestarter. Eggsy is a landbound siren. One may destroy with a look or a touch, and the other with a song, but maybe they won't destroy each other. Maybe, just maybe, they'll save each other, instead.

Author's Notes: Yes, it's another weird AU. You're welcome.

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.

There wasn't much to know about Harry. He was fifty-three. He was a tailor. He lived alone save for a small dog-albeit a dead one, but one whom he had loved dearly in life, dearly enough to have him stuffed and mounted on a plaque in his bathroom. That was one of the reasons he lived alone, though not the only reason, by far.

The most important thing to understand was that Harry Hart was not real. He was a fabrication, a put-on, an act. Only he had played the part so thoroughly for so long a time that there was very little else to him save that fundamental fact. Ah, and his...knack.

Harry had a worrying ability to make things burn.

Don't misunderstand, Harry wasn't a pyromaniac. He didn't have a proclivity for seeing objects burned to a cinder; they simply tended to go up in flames when he was around. He'd get angry and his skin would grow hot, his fingers hotter still till tongues of fire licked from their tips to set anything close at hand alight. Sometimes, if he stared hard enough and steadily hated without enough of his might, he could ignite distant objects without leaving his chair. On the odd occasion that he was happy, he shot sparks.

They were quite legendary in his mind for their rarity.

In over five decades on Earth, Harry had not had occasion to be happy much.

Eggsy would swear on his life that he'd only gone inside on a dare. Old man Zelazny's tailor shop was close by and he and the lads were dead bored, having already eaten in deference to Eggsy's empty stomach and having exhausted the best routes for free-running on the block by midday. Jamal had himself a date in a few and Ryan had work, which left Eggsy to pick his way home to the same shit show as always. He wanted a distraction first and what better distraction was there than a harmless bit of fun with the locals?

Eggsy knew he was gonna mess with this one bloke soon as he saw him through the display window. He was reed thin but substantial, the type so stiff a stiff wind might take offense at for refusing to bend. Forget that he was fit for a geezer, too; Eggsy was here to play, not get shot down by a public school twat gone to seed. Gotsta be the new owner. Eggsy brushed some dust off his shoulders and checked his reflection in a side mirror attached to a car parked out front. Lookin' good, feelin' good. Eggsy liked to look his best, himself had nothing to do with it.

Eggsy tipped his head toward the tailor's across from the Black Prince. "That's the one." Ryan and Jamal exchanged skeptical looks. "Wot? You think I can't handle 'im? Look at 'im. Bit o' fun might do him some good."

Another dodgy look. Jamal rubbed his hands together and tucked them under his arms. "Ya sure about that, cuz?

"You doubtin' me?" His best mates had a reputation for being up for anything. That's how they'd become friends in primary, daredevil stunts and double dog daring. Twenty years later, they were still trying to top him.

Ryan sucked his teeth, kicking at the concrete. "We just sayin', mate, 'e ain't like ol' man Z that had eyes in back of his head. He's got tech up to his eyeballs and he ain't scared to press charges if he catches you messin' about. You jus' got out clean, no need to be goin' back in so soon. Give the marshies time to miss ya."

"We wouldn't know what to do without ye," Jamal added after an elbow to the ribs from Ryan.

Eggsy leaned on the wall of the Black Prince, one eye on his friends and the other the solitary figure tirelessly wiping greasy fingerprints from the exterior of Marek Zelazny's tailor shop. It had opened its doors well after the second World War, following the death of his parents, a tailor and seamstress who'd brought he and his siblings to England to escape the atrocities occurring in Western Europe. Rumor was they'd been spies for the Allies and they'd been made, leaving a young Marek as the sole breadwinner for his brothers and sisters, equipped with only one real skill of worth: tailoring. He'd turned what should have been an odd job into a seventy-year legacy. Eggsy respected that; this new bloke on the block, though, him he wasn't so keen on.

The Zelazny name might still hang on the shingle, but everyone knew it was someone else running the show these days, not that Eggsy had much reason to visit. The few job interviews he'd ever gone on hadn't required a suit and the jobs that would have wouldn't have him with his record anyhow. He just borrowed his dad's old one for court appearances and that was that. He didn't need a suit any more than he needed another run-in with the pigs. This was a curiosity and a lark, and his life would be DOA without a lark or three a week. His mind was made up.

"Give us a bit. I wanna see what he's about."

Jamal tried to call him back. "Egg, bruv, maybe-"

"Jus' wait me for me at the Prince. Drinks on me, I'm good for it."

"Don't 'e always say that, " Ryan asked at his back as Eggsy took advantage of a break in traffic to dart across the street.

"He is, though."

Eggsy jangled his pockets for the flask of river water he carried wherever he went. He wanted to see what this new man was made of and he knew just how to go about it.

Harry torched another panel of muslin he was attempting to fashion into a pattern for a suit and dropped it into a metal trash bin to watch it wither to a pile of blackened soot. Much like the client for whom it was intended, the task of making this suit was beginning to seem impossible. Harry's inability to concentrate wasn't helped by his recollection of last night's prowlers.

He'd been awoken by the sound of laughter, not unfamiliar at all hours in this neighborhood. It was a group of young people-no more than seven, no fewer than four, he'd wager; perhaps even some he knew. He'd been prepared to return to sleep when he heard the distinct sound of shatterproof glass being struck. Most of the other local businesses in the area favored burglar bars in their windows over the more expensive tempered panes. Except for Marek. He'd spared no expense in having them installed on Harry's recommendation and they'd paid dividends during the riots in 2011, and in smaller skirmishes in the interim. There was just the small problem of Harry, or rather Harry's flashbacks, triggered by circumstances.

Harry removed his glasses to grind his palms into his aching eyes, ruthlessly quelling the impulse to take another walk outside. He'd scarcely slept a wink after he came downstairs to check that the retractable security barrier in front of the store was in place, only to find a crowbar and pillow case abandoned on the doorstep. Further inspection had revealed a number of bins stacked in back of the store beneath the flower box of his upper-level flat. Whomever his would-be intruders had been, they had not been without a plan. It wasn't that fact which haunted his sleep till the wee hours ceded to grimy dawn, but the idea that he would have found himself trapped, again, under someone else's power.

Nothing good had ever come of Harry being cornered.

He counted back from ten as the smell of chintz on fire filled his throat. He could taste every color smoldering, each thread that had composed his mother's favorite curtains popping as the hand-stitched seams scorched away to nothing. The floor by then was already awash in flames, the overwhelming stench of wood varnish bubbling under immense heat made his head swim-he'd never be able to forget that smell. He coughed, nasal passages raw to aching in memory of those acrid fumes. He blindly grabbed for a fabric sample, a linen blend it must have been, and he counted once more from ten, breathing deeply at each number, rubbing furiously at the weave of the swatch until he felt only its pattern under his fingers, not the tufted wool fringe of a ruined Persian rug he'd not touched in forty years.

The linen began to wilt in his grasp and it was only the tell-tale sound of the entry bell chiming that stopped Harry turning the delicate lilac swatch a damning coal black. Harry dropped it anyway; it was the wrong fabric for this suit. All wrong, like everything else.

Harry abandoned his pattern-making to tend to his next customer, hoping the smell of wilted linen wouldn't cling too terribly to his person. Burning clothing was unlikely to fill his visitor with confidence.

Unless I've judged too quickly, he thought upon glimpsing the very young man taking stock of the shop's vast array of neckties. He was dressed in baggy jeans (very good knockoffs, by his reckoning), a striped Fred Perry polo, a non-descrip jacket of unimpressive design, and a pair of expensive trainers Harry could scarcely have afforded himself. Of the neighborhood, then. Conspicuous consumption in the Council Estate was the same as it was anywhere: a matter of status.

Harry concluded upon a second glance that the boy was fresh-faced, not baby-faced, so probably not as young as he first appeared. Twenty-five at the most. He had a look of curiosity about him, something Harry appreciated in his customers. Curious minds could be convinced to buy and Harry was in the mood to succeed at something after the morning he'd had.

"Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to Zelazny Tailors."

The young man furrowed his clarion brow and took a conspicuous look around. "Tailors? As in more than one? I thought you was the only one working here."

"I am for the moment. Nonetheless, that is still the name of this establishment." Harry retrieved this morning's coffee from the checkout counter to conceal a subtle eye roll. The last thing he needed was a tedious argument with a charming pedant to cap off this disastrous week.

His visitor made a nonsensical gesture of comprehension, his gaze drawn unerringly to the walls of umbrellas, cuff links, tie pins, briefcases and shoes bookending the showroom. He came over a little starstruck taking it all in, and Harry was reminded of his first visit to the shop as a man of similar age.

Those too long deprived of beautiful things will covet them at first sight. Marek's words.

Harry suppressed a nascent sigh and turned to reconciling the week's receipts at the till, pen in hand and coffee at the ready. His customer would surely summon him if he were needed.

Eggsy was definitely coveting some flash accessories at the moment. That Bremont dupe on the high shelf was calling his name. He spied the tailor working at the counter like he hadn't a care in the world, even if his face didn't agree. He had one of those bullish faces at rest, always in a dither at his best. Suits him, though, he thought, and put the thought to bed, one hand testing the sleekness of a Hufflepuff yellow-and-black striped tie whilst the other slipped a pair of camel-skin driving gloves into his jacket.

Up at the counter, the older man took a sip of his cuppa and made a face. Must've gone cold, Eggsy reckoned, between glances at the neatly stacked button-up shirts and cardigans lining the display tables. He had to admit the inventory had improved since he'd come with his mum to buy a suit for his dad's memorial service. The shirt and trousers had been starched to hospital corners and they had smelled of floral air freshener so strongly Eggsy thought his suit must have been soaked in it. The negative association put him off suits and Zelazny's to this day. But the stock out now was nice, supple to the touch; every bit smelled clean, like bed linen right after wash day. Eggsy could see himself wearing some of this, provided he had a good enough reason to bother.

Eggsy heard a sigh and turned to see the tailor sipping peaceably from his cup, his coffee steaming. Eggsy frowned a bit. He hadn't even heard the man go.

"Say, ain't you the one that took over from old man Zelazny?"

"Yes, Harry Hart, that's me. And you are?" He seemed more than a bit interested to know.

Eggsy demurred, "Just looking. I was curious, is all."

"Very well." Hart waved toward the modest showroom. "Look your fill. I'll be here at the counter should you need anything."

"Cheers, bruv."

Humming, Eggsy examined the wall of shelves stacked high with bolts of fabric. Each one was eye-catching for its luxury, the makes sumptuous and the colors bold. Eggsy braved touching one, something deep blue with a subtle golden thread running through. Some kind of wool, he thought. It was fine, thick and not quite coarse, substantial in a way he didn't have words for. He could see it making a suit that combated the need for a coat until the cold really set in, in August. Not like Eggsy's threads that he wore in layers, and not just to stave off the blows that kept coming. Eggsy didn't know why he'd let himself look; it wasn't as if he could shove a bolt of fabric down the back of his jeans and run for it

Came here with a purpose. Let's see about it. He took a deep breath and envisioned salt till it washed over the walls of his mouth, scraping over his taste buds with the tide. He felt the tide roll in and out again. Reaching past the gloves, he took hold of the flask he'd kept hidden.

He didn't plan to hurt him, just to see what he was made of. Old man Z had taken one look at Eggsy on the threshold of his store the one time he'd thought of coming back, and turned him right out. Eggsy'd faced his share of prejudice, dressing like he did and talking like he did, but Old Z had never seemed the type. When Jamal and Ryan had gone in, they'd done their business without a single snide remark. Turned out, it wasn't Eggsy's type he didn't trust, it was Eggsy. Were Eggsy in an honest mood, he'd admit that the old man had had the right of it. He'd been spitting mad and up to no good that day, fresh off a fight with Dean over Daisy's special formula, just wanting somebody to take all that helpless rage out on. He wanted an excuse to mess with someone.

Maybe he still did.

His mum was always telling him, "Never act in anger," with her fingers crossed behind her back. For people who were used to catching it on the chin, they did it all the time.

It would be fine, though. Eggsy wouldn't do any harm. It wasn't personal, he was just...curious.

He twisted open the flask, and the storm descended.

Harry trembled.

There was this smell. Raw as sewage yet earthier somehow. It was everywhere. There was a texture to it, flowing into his mouth to grab hold of him from within. He knew this feeling; he fought for dear life against it.

"Do not touch me again," he told the figure gasping through pained tears on the floor of the abandoned brewery. They whimpered-he did, Harry didn't care to think about him, or his grotty hands in Harry's hair, on his skin, forcing his jaw wide. "Never touch me. Next time, I'll burn it off."

He grabbed what he could see of his possessions, leaving aside his dinner and a tidy sum of bank notes he'd earned that day, and he retreated to the one place that promised to be as vile as it could be kind: London's streets.

Harry swallowed a grotesque whimper. A public display of vulnerability was the quickest way to find oneself belonging to another, in debt to them for protection and owing them any pound of flesh they might ask in exchange for their continued compassion.

His vision swam. A song of the sea played, seagulls sounding, water crashing against outcroppings of rocks. A trickle of notes in a young man's voice moved him. Made him think of love and home, a honeysuckle sweetness tempting him onward. Because love wouldn't lead him wrong. Love never could.

...if it were really love.

Hart stopped.

Eggsy maintained his grip on the flask, damp fingers slipping on the steel casing the more nervous he got. Eggsy usually went a bit chilly under the skin when he worked his magic, so this was a change.

Hart's polished shoes creaked in evident distress. His feet wanted to move, Hart did not. Hart was resisting.

Eggsy frowned. He'd never seen someone resist successfully. Some had tried, but Eggsy had siren blood going back millenia; most had failed.

Fear and yearning and anger played across the man's face, past the distance in his eyes. His hands twisted into veiny, mottled fists. He was half in a trance unlike Eggsy had ever seen. He had skipped wariness and gone to fury.

Eggsy kept going because Eggsy always saw his commitments through. Because he was scared of what other surprises might come if he stopped too soon. There was a method to his madness-there used to be.

"Come now."

Hart came. One struggling step after another, joints uncooperative and teeth ground to groaning, he came to Eggsy. And Eggsy had to let him. Theirs was a curse that went both ways.

Hart reached him and his fingers drew just short of Eggsy's cheek, far too close for comfort to Eggsy's neck. Close as he deserved. Hart drew a finger along his jaw. It was Eggsy's turn to tremble and tremble he did. He hadn't expected Hart's skin to be so warm.

Eggsy's chest began to ache in time to his vocal chords; his voice cracked. He'd never struggled to sing before.

Eggsy was a natural singer, untrained, perfect pitch, a seven octave range. He'd been in school choir when he was a kid and had only quit when his mum made him at age nine. She said it didn't do to dream too much as it gave you so much more to lose. He'd sung anyway, here and there, doing talent shows and karaoke nights, even thought about applying to X Factor till Dean showed up and ruined everything. According to him, boys don't sing, fairies do, and wasn't no son of Dean's gonna be a fairy. Never mind that Eggsy wasn't any son of his. Dean paid the bills, Dean's brutes manned the doors and ate the baby's food, Dean half-brought Daisy into the world. Dean stayed and when Dean was around, Eggsy shut his gob.

But not on his own time. Eggsy could set himself against the world that vexed him when he only had himself to answer to. People like Harry had longstanding traditions of looking down on people like Eggsy. Some thought he was a crime waiting to be committed while others considered him one more charity case for their do-gooder life story. When they looked at him, they never saw a person, just a statistic. When he needed their help, he was someone else's problem.

Despite the tenderness of his touch, the man's gaze skewered Eggsy. His forbidding expression belied the strange trust in his eyes. He was trusting Eggsy. Which was the point, he supposed. Sailors trusted sirens to lead them to paradise in their waiting arms and they died for their faith, for their wrong-headed lust. Why shouldn't Harry Hart?

But why should he?

"Bet we could have some fun times, old man." His bravado wavered as Hart's eyes darkened, pupils blown wide enough to swallow Eggsy. There'd be nothing left of him. I'd deserve that, wouldn't I?

Much as he talked a good talk, Eggsy knew he was going to let the man go. He'd known that before he'd come. He was going to do it because he wasn't Dean, because Harry was a stranger who'd demanded nothing. Because Eggsy wanted to go home and see tomorrow. Because he wanted to be able to live with himself. Because there were rules about what could be taken without offer, and Eggsy never broke them.

Hart smiled at him, handsome dimples indenting his cheeks. "Be careful what you wish for." Words that might have been an invitation in another tone became a very soft-spoken warning.

A sulfuric odor suffused the air and Eggsy recoiled, knowing at once from where it had come.

Hart's eyes blazed coal black, dilated wide, the irises shimmering a shade or two off from brassish-gold around the rim. Eggsy told himself it must have been the sun's reflection in Hart's eyes, told himself that brown eyes were more interesting than they looked, just not as interesting as all that. He told himself to breathe and look away. Break the bond. Break it. Stop singing. The game's over.

Hart smoldered from pupil to eyelid. Eggsy had not once in his years of living wild known eyes to smolder so hot the steam was seemed visible. Harry Hart burned and Eggsy sucked in a shuddering breath, trying to find the right note of the right melody that might free him from Harry's heat. Sirens were creatures of water, but for the first time Eggsy was too aware of standing on gasping land. Shuddering, he toppled his flask from his pocket and Thames water doused his trouser leg and Adidas. He was altogether too afraid to avert his eyes to retrieve it.

The older man lowered his foot to the ground as though he'd only missed a step and not been about to follow Eggsy into peak hour traffic for a snog.

"I think you should go."

Eggsy swallowed, loud in the deathly quiet shop. There wasn't a soul in sight save for Eggsy and the tailor. His boys were no closer than the opposite side of the street watching from a pub and none of the people milling out on the pavement seemed interested in suits today. Eggsy was on his own and, for whatever reason, his 'invisible' power wasn't so invisible to Mr. Hart. Hart could see him like others hadn't and hear him like no one else could. That made him dangerous, and the embers clinging to his lashes even more so. There was nothing forgettable about this dotty tailor now.

Harry had a perfect vision of immolating the boy where he stood. Harry could do it it from afar, easily. That way it would be impossible for witnesses to place him at the scene. But this offense had been personal; so should its answer be. He could grab his assailant by his generic, surely flammable lapels and set him off like fireworks in his hands. Harry could do that; he'd done it before. Ash and bone, the boy would blow away on the wind and Harry would be fine.

Fire could not burn a firestarter, after all. They were the human equivalent of dragons with neither the wings nor claws or scales and hide. They had only fire, and fire burns all but itself, without mercy or bias to sway its divine judgment.

Harry was the perfect firestarter in that sense. He was unaccustomed to mercy, having suffered little of it, and he had no use for prejudice. He could be called in every way divine were Merlin to be believed. But Merlin lied and so did Harry.

Murderers weren't divine.

Harry's family had perished in a house fire when he was ten and, certain it was he that caused the blaze, he fled the scene in the dark of night and was presumed dead with all the rest. He grew up rough in the years that followed, living under bridges and inside abandoned warehouses between shelters, having found that life in placement could be its own special hell for sweet-faced boys with no one to account for them. He had little in the way of formal education, save what he could teach himself, and it was only through his unlikely friendship with technological wunderkind Merlin that he attained a modern identity that allowed him to move about in polite society. Due in part to Merlin's intervention, he was able to secure an apprenticeship in a family-run tailor shop in south London at the age of twenty-two, and there he had remained in service ever since.

Contrary to Merlin's endless complaints, Harry rarely sought trouble, he was simply flypaper for mishaps the same as he was a magnet for nascent sparks of flame. Trouble, in recent years, however, had found him in the form of Dean Baker and his gang of brutes. Baker had collected protection money from the Zelazny patriarch for the past fifteen years, starting when he gouged out the eyes of the cretin that came before him and named himself successor to his criminal throne. Harry had hated the man since he was thirty-three and much faster to loathe strangers.

How he could have loathed anyone more than when he was a homeless adolescent was a wonder to him this many years hence. Being transient had taught Harry to lie in the face of the ignorantly well-meaning and to scowl mulishly in the face of bullying threats. In the gawping face of the boy in his shop, he had found what could only be the latter.

"You should go," he repeated to the bewildered, bewitching young man. Harry knew his reckless mind too well, he had not chosen to move.

"I-"

"I won't repeat myself." Harry coloured the words in banked fury he could not otherwise show. He'd burn his livelihood to the ground if he tried. "Leave now, or I call the police and they can assist you."

Upon realizing that Harry would not yield, the younger man raised his hands and conceded, "I was goin' anyway."

"I'm happy to see we're in agreement. Have a pleasant day."

"Right back at ya, bruv."

To his credit, he only stumbled once in running away. Harry contented himself with the stink of bubbling rubber his egregious winged trainers left behind.

Eggy's lunch churned in his gut as he skipped out of Zelazny's and tried not to peer back over his shoulder, disbelieving that the owner would let him go when Eggsy had obviously been leading him by a string. A mythical string. What was he's supposed to do, ask if I abracadabra'd 'im? Sirens were the stuff of legend because they were old, not because they weren't real, but most people nowadays didn't know the difference. Eggsy wasn't sure Harry Hart was most people.

His mates met him at the door to the dodgy pub they'd been waiting for him at.

Jamal stopped him walking into the nearest brick wall staring back the way he'd come. The store was dark all of a sudden and there wasn't a hint of sun out. Typical London.

"All right, bruv? Saw you lookin' spooked in there, but we wasn't sure if you wanted us comin' after ya."

"He was onto me, cuz, and 'e was well vexed when 'e came out of it. I ain't goin' back no time soon. He just about wrung my neck when he caught me croonin' in his ear."

"His loss, mate. Let's go try out the skate park, see if we can get in round back. Sheila might leave the gate open for us."

"Your girl's aces, I tell you that?"

"Long as you remember who she comes home to, I ain't worried about it, but I'll tell her you said so."

Eggsy glanced one last time at the desolate shop and laughed, but his heart wasn't in it.

Harry shut down the shop until four when he had a standing appointment with a long-time customer and then Merlin was due for their weekly meal. He maintained a steady watch over the front door in case his visitor should deign to visit again. He would be ready next time. It only ever took him once to learn to beware.

He sat nursing an early glass of scotch when the front bell tolled once more to herald someone's entry. One hand remained in the worthy employ of getting Harry as soused as all hell while the other worked up a handful of fire.

"I'd suggest you put that way unless you'd like a head of sodium bicarbonate to go with that drink you're having..." Merlin checked his watch. "...Very early in the evening," he finished with a flick of his dark brows. "Something the matter?"

He extinguished his flame. "I'm not sure I can explain it in a way you'll believe."

Merlin took the liberty of flipping the sign on the front door and bolting the lock. "I'll bring down the barrier on me way out. Pour us a glass before you inhale it all." Eighteen-year-old Lagavulin. Time had given Harry expensive taste and means enough to indulge.

Merlin joined him at the till and made himself at home on the counter with his drink. "What's this about me disbelieving the unbelievable? You produce and control fire, Harry. If my worldview was going to be irrevocably shattered, I wager that would have done it."

"There's a boy."

"That's not at all new," Merlin muttered into his Lagavulin.

"He can...he made me do something I'd not otherwise have done."

Merlin lowered his glass. "What exactly do you mean?"

Harry knew Merlin often worried for his sanity, for his self-control. No one could remain in control forever. Something would break, that was how people were designed, to bend at considerable force and then break when all tolerable limits were exceeded. But Harry never had. Wasn't it time?

"I don't know, precisely. One moment I was here, behind the till, balancing the books, and the next I was approaching him. He was standing at the door, watching me. There was this smile on his face, smug, like he had planned it."

"Did you touch him in any way?"

"His face, right before I told him to run for his life. He nearly pissed himself." He was as pleased as he was dismayed by the recollection.

"Did he give you anything?"

"No, not that I know of."

"Did you have an open drink nearby?"

"No-wait, yes. There was my coffee. I'd left it out from the morning crowd. It was cold, I had to warm it to finish it. It was just there." He gestured to where Merlin was perched.

"Could he have reached it without you knowing? Did you have eyes on him at all times?"

"No, I was working on a suit. One for another of Baker's lackeys. It wasn't...I was having trouble with it. I only came to the front when I heard the bell."

"Meaning he could have dosed you."

"If he did, it wasn't foolproof."

"Enough to coerce you a little. With a proper dosage he may have more luck." Merlin downed the full glass of his ridiculously expensive Scotch and dropped down from the counter. "I'm going to check the security cameras. I don't like this."

Harry massaged his brow. "I'm not wild about it myself." He grabbed the decanter and his glass to follow his best friend to the rear of the shop where the security monitors were kept. "But I'm not sure he meant any real harm."

Merlin only walked faster. "You were drugged and you think he was having a giggle at your expense?" He grunted in annoyance. "You could not possibly be so lonely as to take that as a come-on."

Harry ignored that last remark, scowling. "Not that, you paranoid nursemaid. What I mean is that he expected it to work, not for me to fight him. It got worse when I fought him."

Merlin stopped. "He...if he did something, you need to tell me."

"You can stop pretending to be my guardian angel any time you like."

Merlin grunted, "Never. If I find out later on he did anything but run away leaving a trailing of blazing smoke behind him, I'll wipe him from the face of the Earth and not just electronically."

"Charming."

"You'd do it for me."

That went without saying.

Harry had been on his own for a long time before Merlin came along, but he'd adapted quickly to having someone else to protect. Merlin was the only family he had left. Sadly, Harry's methods of defense left a bit more evidence than Merlin's characteristic mother henning. Enemies in the know cowered before Harry, ignorant that it was Merlin they should truly fear. Harry could end lives if he had to, but Merlin, by his technological expertise, system by government system, ensured that they had never been. They made for a heady team. Think how much more dangerous we'd be if I existed.

Finally, something to laugh about.