For the umpteenth time so far tonight, Eggsy looks tiredly at the clock on the nightstand. Another precious few minutes have evaporated. It tells him he'll be expected to be up in five hours and eighteen minutes. He makes an effort to shut his eyes again for a moment, then, conceding defeat, sits up and surveys what little he can see in the darkened room around him. Another ordinary, lifeless hotel suite, another city he won't get the chance to see properly before he leaves. Just part of being a Kingsman sometimes.
Eggsy seldom sleeps well in an unfamiliar bed. Which given his globetrotting occupation is quite the handicap. It's one of many things that make being a Kingsman the permanent challenge that it is. Sitting up now in the darkness, he thinks momentarily of home. His mother, and Daisy, who was about to start nursery. He tries to imagine her familiar weight beside him where he used to hold her against his knee, or Michelle's smile that hasn't changed from his childhood, but the images won't stick in his head. He'd missed her birthday this year. The first time in twenty-odd years that he'd been able to afford to buy her the kind of present she deserved and he hadn't been there to hand it over on the day. He'd been in Marseille, combatting a terrorist cell planning an attack on a football match. He recalls the last time he'd missed his mother's birthday- and the last time he'd had a credible gift. A necklace, real sapphires, suited her perfectly, in fact. Just a shame it had been stolen. He'd spent that night on another unfamiliar bed less comfortable than this one, at the local police station. In the end, the jeweller had opted not to press charges, out of some charitable spirit that Eggsy's circumstances hadn't been the best.
That's where he'd be, still, if he hadn't become a spy. His problems would be too pressing to leave him with time to be contemplative like this, problems like where next month's rent was going to come from. Eggsy sighs. Sometimes he wishes his brain would just shut up and let him rest.
Then he feels a movement beside him, and starts in surprise. But it's only Roxy, turning over in her sleep. They're sharing a bed for strictly professional purposes- Kingsman has a habit of pairing them on missions when two heads are needed, perhaps figuring their two youngest operatives would look least suspicious in one another's company. This time they're playing a couple, and naturally, have been booked a couple's room. Sharing a bed with Roxy isn't strange, though. Almost natural.
Eggsy looks at her now, what little he can see in the darkness. A band of streetlight from between a gap in the curtains falls on her face; her eyelashes just brush the tops of her cheeks, and a single strand of hair falls lazily over her forehead. Roxy understands, of course. She faces everything just the same as he does. They're the only two people that could understand one another at times these days. Perhaps that's what's brought them so close together of late.
Would he trade it all for anything else? For a ho-hum job with nice hours, a predictable routine from dawn to dusk, a modest mortgage and eight hours of sleep a night? In exchange for the sharp, sweet taste of adrenaline, the frantic beat of his own heart in the heat of battle. The singularly unusual calm of life and death situations. And satisfaction, and fulfilment at his accomplishments, and knowing that somewhere out there, someone was safe where they hadn't been before because of him.
And Roxy. His best friend. Theirs was a friendship bred from adversity. At being the outsiders even within their organisation of outsiders- the girl and the down-and-out who'd made it into the posh boys' club. They'd made it through every trial along the way, stuck together, supported one another. Some of them had been hard. But it was worth it, for the grin they'd share at the end, for sitting in the infirmary afterwards and laughing as they recalled the events that had transpired. For feeling proud of her at all he'd watched her achieve. For her making him feel proud of himself.
Roxy is cute in sleep, he notices. He often thinks she's beautiful in motion, in combat or across the sparring room floor, balletic, almost feline, like a lioness sidling up silently to its prey. But sleep brings out the softness in her, the gentle set to her features that tells him all is well. He surveys her for just a moment, and a small smile tugs around the corners of his mouth. He is lucky, after all. So wonderfully lucky.
Roxy stirs then once more. Her brown eyes open blearily, and she looks at him with curiosity. "Eggsy?" She half-raises her head from the pillow. "You okay?"
Eggsy nods, still smiling just a little. "Fine, Rox. You can go back to sleep. Up early tomorrow, yeah?"
Roxy mumbles a sleepy assent before she lowers her head once more. Eggsy lies back down beside her. The closer they get, the less unfamiliar the bed feels. Roxy snuggles nearer to him, stealing more than her fair share of duvet, it has to be said, but making up for it as she slips an arm affectionately across his chest. Eggsy lets her fill the space left by the crook of his arm, and holds her close enough that a sideways tilt of his head suffices to kiss her on the brow. That's how he finally falls asleep, in another bed in another city in another country. He is a Kingsman, and he wouldn't change it for the world.