Now, Harry's always polite. To little old ladies and to rude men on the tube and to little girls with chocolate ice cream on their fingers who absolutely won't rest until they get their hands on his tie (thanks, Daisy). So it's not that weird to see him talking in concerned tones to the frankly zombie-esque woman who'd wandered up to him near the estates in the dead of night asking if he knew where her child was. Or maybe Eggsy's just desensitized to weird shit by now, two years into his tenure in a secret spy organization where lighters blow up and umbrellas are small tanks and people walk back into headquarters after being shot in the head.

Either way, the woman at least seems somewhat lost by the whole exchange, even as Harry leads her limping off somewhere or other with a hand on her shoulder, saying something about 'searching the local archives' and 'finding her home'. Eggsy spots her picture on Merlin's desk in the morning when he's getting briefed for his next mission, on top of what is clearly an old coroner's report, and that registers on his weird-o-meter, but he's got no frame of reference for it, so he forgets it after a while.

Every agent has their little quirks. Harry's is that he sees and handles things that are mostly dead. James was a magician in a more literal sense than most. Percival spends a bit of time in the sea every year visiting his family and policing whatever needs policing in Marianas Trench, and so on. Kingsman rests between the cracks of normality, and as there's only so much space they by default share it with all manner of odd things. It's only natural that they run into it all more often than most.

How Eggsy has managed to stay oblivious to it is something Harry can't help but wonder at.

Of course, Eggsy knows now, Harry supposes as he breaks into a run.

"Harry what the fuck is this thing?!" Eggsy shouts. The cephalopod, nothing but it's six beady eyes and two ugly rows of short, fat teeth visible under the writhing mass of its tentacles, has Eggsy well tangled up in itself. What a cephalopod of this kind is doing in the cave lair of a bland and uncreative trust fund millionaire Harry would rather not like to know, but poor Eggsy's got no idea how to fight something that doesn't die like any creature he's familiar with.

Harry sees a flash by Eggsy's feet and figures he's probably already tried most of his weapons if he's down to the neurotoxin, which also won't do much more than make the thing somewhat angry. Harry shoots it a few times as a hello and gets an outraged roar in response.

Well. They're not usually that grumpy. He gives it another look and spots the discoloration on its larger limbs and-

Oh.

Oh no.

There's a fucking tentacle monster clawing its way up his legs that won't fucking die and isn't that just peachy; he's seen enough porn to know where this is going. He hopes Harry gave that white-bread boring oxford boy hell, because anyone who keeps a hellbeast like this trapped in an aquarium deserves far worse than what Kingsman will do to them. The thing is thankfully trapped by the small size of the hole in the glass wall, but the more it flails around the more the hairline cracks spread, so he's not holding much hope that it'll stay that way.

"Aim for its eyes!" Harry shouts, to which Eggsy yells "I shot its eyes!"

"They're non-Newtonian!" Harry says like that means something "Hit them gently!"

"Gently poke out its eyes, Eggsy." Eggsy mutters "Oh yeah Harry, in a jiff."

He's shut up when one of the tentacles rudely invades his mouth, which is not a good omen for his other orifices. He bites it and the thing withdraws, howling. Then the whole of the tentacles descend on him, wrapping around his arms and legs to hold him still, and he starts to feel weird.

"Harry!" he calls through the strangely muddled feeling in his head "Harry, it's doin' something to me, I don't really know what-"

Suddenly about half of the tentacles are gone. Eggsy's brain seems to have been drowned in molasses, so he doesn't react much even when those tentacles are replaced by the strong band of Harry's gun arm. The thing still won't let go of him, but now something's glowing over his shoulder and he can only hope it's something that will actually work.

Eggsy's pretty out of it because he swears he hears Harry growl "He's mine." over the creature's indignant scream and the sudden heat in his shoulder. It's the kind of warmth that's perfectly shy of hurting, like beach sand through a towel on a sunny day, and it spreads and spreads until his whole body is loose with it.

The monster falls away while he's not looking.

Eggsy wakes up a few minutes later, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't feel like he's just been fucked.

"Eggsy." Harry says, and Eggsy feels himself start to grin a bit stupidly.

Harry's dark eyes are bottomless, Eggsy realizes for the umpteenth time that week, and are looking at him with a vulnerable sort of regret. Eggsy figures he feels bad that he almost became a star in bad Japanese cartoon porn. He wonders if he should be more concerned with that, himself, but doesn't feel like forcing it.

"Hey Harry."

Harry looks at him for a long moment and sighs heavily, disturbing his glasses as he pinches the bridge of his nose. "Come on, let's head back."

Harry spends weeks ensconced in the archives of the Kingsman library looking for a way to undo a claiming.

In that time, Eggsy flourishes. It's bewildering to Harry, because normally those under an unwanted marking spell do the opposite and wither. It's why he'd taken such drastic measures in the first place - the beast had been half a second from leaving its own mark, and in stealing Eggsy Harry hoped he could slow the progression until he figured something else out.

Yet every time he comes up for air from the dusty shelves, there's Eggsy, shining like the goddamn sun, confident, brilliant, resplendent, or there's Merlin, baffled by how in god's name Eggsy pulled off some impossible stroke of luck or awe-inspiring maneuver, or there's one of the other Kingsmen to grudgingly congratulate him on a candidate well chosen.

He tacks it onto his list of things to research, but then the whole thing gets taken out of his hands by a supremacist terror cell in the heart of London.

It's Eggsy's mission, because he's young and they'll trust locals and not because Harry's trying to keep him close in case the other shoe decides to drop. He's been on mandatory communications blackout since the Friday before, and now it's Wednesday and Harry almost collapses in the halls of Kingsman as the floor disappears under his feet. Oddly enough it's still there when he looks, even though the sickening sensation of falling remains.

Eggsy.

The next thing that registers in his mind is the sound of his own voice shouting "Abort mission Homefront," rather louder than necessary in Merlin's lair. How he got there he doesn't remember, but it hardly matters when the falling has turned into a watery sort of sinking that he can only assume means that things have gotten worse. "Restore full contact with agent Galahad and activate trackers now."

Merlin, who had been given a nasty start at Harry's explosive entrance, stops trying to mop the spilled coffee off his collar and gives Harry a disbelieving look.

"What? Harry, don't be daft. If we restore contact now we could blow the mission and lord knows what else when these terrorists get away."

"If we don't find him right now we won't get anything out of this mission but a dead agent!" Harry has to fight the urge to clutch at his head. The claiming isn't even complete and he feels like he's about to tip off the mortal coil. How had Percival survived losing James?

"There's no way you could know that, Harry. He's not made contact and there's not a peep on any of our sensors." Merlin persists. On a normal day Harry would appreciate Merlin's bullishness about mission procedure, but this is not a normal day.

"I know, Merlin. Restore contact now, that is an order."

Merlin is clearly unhappy with this turn of events, but he purses his lips and turns back to the computers anyhow.

A second later the consoles all start screaming at him at once.

"Bloody fuck! Vitals dropping, all com lines down," he can't seem to tap the keys fast enough.

Harry doesn't need this information because he is very aware already of the state Eggsy is in.

"Where is he?"

A few more seconds of frantic key clicking later Merlin replies "The corner of Maddox and Mill-"

Harry is out the door before Merlin can get another word in, racing through the empty late-night streets of London to the nearby corner. Thank god, he thinks, thank god he made it this close.

It takes him an agonizingly long few minutes once he reaches the designated corner to spot the parked Prius with its back door slightly ajar, but once he does he flies to it and there's Eggsy, looking wretched on the back seat, curled up in his perfectly tailored suit. There are no obvious bloodstains anywhere on his person, which, considering they're dealing with a sophisticated band of engineers hell-bent on detonating a neutron bomb in the heart of London, is distinctly worrying. Eggsy cracks his eyes open at the cool air that rustles across his clothes and hair with the door opened and tries to smile.

"Harry," he greets, though there seems to be little thought behind it "you found me."

"Of course." Harry finds himself saying with no more attention to the words than Eggsy had given to his own. He leans into the car, knees on the seat, and gathers Eggsy into his arms. Once he's got a good grip he lifts him out of the back, and Eggsy puts a hand up to hold on to Harry's shoulder.

"My Harry."

For the second time in as many tens of minutes, Harry's knees almost give out on him. This time it's because, mixed in with the feeling of Eggsy slipping away, indefinable warmth is flooding his nervous system. He wastes precious seconds bracing himself against the Prius trying to remember how to breathe.

"fzzzzt...rry. Harry!" Merlin's voice breaks into his reprieve "What are you doing?! Get him back here now - I've found the problem with the com lines and it's not good."

"I'm trying," Harry grits out. With a great heaving motion, he pushes himself off the car and starts running back the way he'd come.

"Harry."

Merlin's voice is subdued. He's in the doorway to the treatment room, and Harry doesn't have to look at him to know his expression is grim. A flash of irritation runs through him, and he responds to what he knows Merlin is about to say preemptively by holding Eggsy's hand just a bit tighter.

He's about to say that Eggsy's dying. No amount of speed would have gotten them there in time to stop the radiation from permeating his body. He'll be dead by morning and there's nothing they can do about it. Merlin seems to sense that he's already hashed out this conversation, however, and instead says "You can't keep doing what you're doing, Harry. You know what will happen."

Harry is not, actually, entirely sure what will happen if he keeps pouring himself into Eggsy through the now-complete claiming bond. Or at least, he doesn't know what it will mean for Eggsy at this stage. He knows what it could do to him - drain his powers, trade his life, kill them both together, possibly. He also knows all of those are more acceptable than the current outlook: Eggsy dies, and he does not.

"You need to let him go."

"Sod off."

It's perhaps harsher than Merlin deserves, considering, but he sighs and leaves all the same.

Eggsy wakes up.

Harry's in the chair next to him, and all is good and right in the world. But then, he's still a few feet away, and humanity didn't get to where it is today by being content with well enough.

"Harry." Eggsy calls, squeezing the hand already in his.

Harry wakes with a start and looks at him for a long moment, searching his face and then, oddly, seems to gaze at the wall for a moment to take stock of things. Then he comes back to himself and smiles tightly at Eggsy.

"Good morning, Eggsy."

He still has his magic, if you want to call it that. He's even still alive, and so is Eggsy.

Their good fortune ends there.

The doctors declare Eggsy's recovery a miracle with more bland resignation than Harry thinks is warranted and let him out about a day after he'd received a dose of radiation strong enough to kill several decently-sized whales. And no one seems the wiser that Harry has somehow managed to bind their lives together so completely that he'd brought Eggsy back from the brink of death.

Which is a pity, because he would rather like to talk to someone about it. There's no undoing the claiming now, that's for certain. The day Eggsy is released is also the day Harry finally goes home and gets a good look at what's seared onto the back of his left shoulder in brilliant gold. It's really quite elaborate, given how little experience Eggsy has with the other side of their work and what terrible shape he'd been in when he did it. The outline is basic, but a full hand print is a compliment to Harry as much as a testament to Eggsy's inexperience, though that testament ends as the designs that fill that outline become noticeable. Lines, sweeping and broad, run along each other in the fingers like a circuit board drawn by a graffiti artist and give way to a sharp, unidentifiable burst of shapes in the palm. He'd spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at the thing, and had thought more than once with humor that he'd been tagged.

His own mark on Eggsy's shoulder is only the size of his thumb, as he'd put it there so deliberately when the monster attacked. It's hardly simple, but far less creative - his family crest, with his initials put obstinately on either side. It doesn't show itself often, and even if it tried he'd put it in a place where Eggsy is sure to have trouble noticing it.

"How'd you know?" Eggsy asks him later, sitting on his couch while Nikita's color palate washes out the room "That the mission went south, I mean. I never got a message out."

Harry avoids his eyes "A spy must have good intuition."

Things go back to normal. It bothers Harry quite a lot. Eggsy is, if anything, even better at his job now, which drives Merlin to distraction since Eggsy is starting to notice and act reckless. But is it recklessness if you know you can succeed? Such is Eggsy's argument.

Harry tries not to notice how every morning when he looks in the mirror his wrinkles have become less distinct.

Eventually, he goes to Merlin about it.

"What have I done to him, Merlin." Harry asks without so much as a hello.

Merlin looks at him pityingly. Harry would be annoyed if that hadn't become one of the most reassuring constants in his life over the past twenty years.

"Have you really not been to IT in three years?"

Harry was not expecting to be called out so rudely on that little transgression and sees no link to it from his previous question, but Merlin continues before he can voice any of this.

"You know well enough what you've done, Harry."

"I bloody well don't." Harry snaps "I'm half afraid that he'll pick up a spoon in the cafeteria and use it to scoop out someone's brains for lunch."

"Harry, you daft old fool, he's not a zombie." Merlin sighs "He's got your life force now, is all. Either of you dies, the other goes too. That sort of thing."

Harry had gathered that, actually, and it terrifies him. He may have saved Eggsy's life, but Harry is far further along in his own and even in the best of cases Eggsy would barely live to see fifty.

"Don't look so apoplectic. All it does is sum up the years you both might have lived and split the difference. Did you think beauty sleep was enough to do those kinds of wonders for your skin?"

"But he didn't have any time left." Harry protests.

"He did, only it was about to be lost. Your stunt got him through it, and viola."

Harry frowns hard enough to bring back a few of his wrinkles. Merlin sighs again.

"Go visit IT if you want more detail. I've got work to do."

Even given how very pressing his concern is, a streak once started is difficult to break, and it takes him another two days to trudge down to IT.

It's rather more of a disaster than the last time he dropped in.

There's paper scattered about and pinned up, but none of it seems important - several meme-like drawings of unicorns which he assumes would make more sense in context, at least one turkey drawn from tracing a hand, something that looks suspiciously like continuous stationery unfolded and dragged around the room like particularly strange vines, a poster of Aquaman, and so on. It's broken up by empty cans of Monster, take-out containers, and at least twenty monitors tacked crookedly on the wall. In the center of it all is a dramatic black wing-backed chair that's on rollers.

Harry clears his throat and the chair spins round.

"Harry!" greets the man in the chair.

Harry blinks. Then he blinks again, a few times more for good measure. "James!?" he eventually manages.

Somehow even in all the chaos, James looks the part of a pristine gentleman. If, of course, you ignored the train-track scar that ran down the middle of his face.

"In the flesh. Terrible show, that, at least if you're dead." James replies.

"You look like death."

James smirks "My reflection finally shows who I am inside."

"You were -" Harry makes a vertical slashing motion with his hand and then winces. It's not exactly necessary - the scar is quite prominent "bisected."

"Trisected, actually. If anyone cared to ask me how it's hanging, I'd have to say never the same since."

Harry takes a moment to wonder why, exactly, he's missed this man, before settling into a well-deserved shock. James takes pity on him and unearths another chair from the archaeological minefield that is his office.

"Come on, sit down, let Uncle James tell you all about it."

"You're younger than me." Harry replies, but sits anyway.

"Am I." James says airily, then grins "So yes, the dying thing."

"Percival."

"Quite right."

"How?"

"I think you know."

James is such a shit, all the time. God, he had missed him.

"But Eggsy wasn't-" dead. Ah. Suddenly Merlin's logic makes more sense, but James' situation less.

"Yes, well. Percival isn't human, so he's a bit of an odd case. At least that's what we assume. I remember knowing I'd been cut in half, and then it was like he was there, holding me together. I had to make him let me go."

Harry shivers. Somewhere far away, Eggsy absently reaches out to sooth him. It's been happening more and more often, but Harry suspects that Eggsy has no idea he's doing it.

"But, you know, here I am!" James, who'd fallen into an uncharacteristic silence, bursts back out with a smile "See, Valentine was keeping me frozen in his little base for some reason or another, and Percival did some questionable things to my corpse in a fit of affection that gave me life once again!"

"But you were dead James," Harry protests, "For almost a year. This is..." necromancy. The height of forbidden practices, and Harry had been trying not to think of it for fear he'd committed it himself.

"No, no, I know what you're thinking Harry. But you see, claiming has a way of changing you. I'm quite literally Percy's worse half. It comes out on the balance sheet as a healing, not a violation of nature. He's half a century worse off on life expectancy, but I've actually got more living to look forward to."

"That's all?" Harry presses.

James shrugs "No idea, our situation is unique. We have an agreement. I stay here, and as long as I'm a good zombie I get to live; and if I start snacking on the inters Percival gets to lop my head back in two." He grins, and it's a bit sharp at the edges.

Harry keeps frowning at him until he sighs and rolls his eyes "Your boy will be fine, Harry. Just look at him!" he rolls away and uncovers a screen on the wall that's apparently hooked up to Eggsy's glasses feed. There's no sound, which seems a shame because he has to expect that the explosions all around the compound he's systematically dismantling are the sort of thunderous that makes your bones hum.

Harry finds himself spellbound for an age, until James laughs at him and tosses the continuous stationery back over the screen.

"The great Harry Hart, gone on the little agent that could. I should make it a book. I do have the time." James looks to be considering that far too seriously for Harry's tastes.

"Don't you dare." Harry says threateningly, and James laughs.

He stays a while to catch up - apparently the majority of Kingsman is aware that the previous Lancelot is still around, and they end up talking about Roxy and Percival and Merlin in a fashion that is definitely not gossiping. Once Harry has contended himself that James is, in fact, alive, and that sureness untangles the knot of worry that had formed in his chest surrounding Eggsy, he re-buries the chair and makes to leave.

"Don't be a stranger, Harry. I hope it's not another three years before I see you again." James says as he goes.

"If someone had had the thought to tell me, it wouldn't have been that long." Harry replies.
He's halfway down the hall when he hears James' voice again.

"Harry," James calls after him, the glibness in his tone betraying his intentions "Touch of Gray is on sale at Walgreens!"

"Eggsy." Harry greets when Eggsy disembarks the jet after yet another wildly successful mission, this time in Mali. He's a bit brown from the sun, and his hair is blonder, and the flight seems to have done nothing to abate his post-mission excitement.

A voice in his head that sounds too much like Merlin's suggests that the blinding grin has nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with him, but he silences it. No point in daydreaming about what he'd like to believe.

"Harry!" Eggsy bounds down the steps and comes to a stop in front of him in a swirl of energy and wind that smells of gunpowder and desert sand. "I didn't know you were back."

"I just got in early this morning," Harry replies. He'd had his own mission in the Maldives over the weekend, a trivial thing with some unplanned fireworks at the end that had played out like a suspenseful vacation. Eggsy's was considerably more adrenaline-inducing, he'd heard, and given the somewhat tattered state of his suit, Harry's sure it will be an interesting tale to hear firsthand. "Mission success."

Eggsy grins at him "Of course it was, Harry. You're like, a spy god or something."

"Says the boy who's racked up the longest mission success streak we've ever had."

Eggsy rubs his cheek, smiling at the praise like he doesn't hear it all the time, as Harry knows he does. "I don't know, Harry, lately everything just sorta makes sense. It's like I can read any situation like one of Daisy's little kid books. The world's never been so clear before. It's like I can see the future sometimes."

An interesting choice of words, Harry would later reflect, but for now he's been caught by the tilt of Eggsy's smile and the almost ethereal way the sunlight streaming in from the windows is lighting up the green in his eyes. Eggsy pauses, something tentative and curious crossing his features. Harry can see the boy's brilliant mind at work.

"Harry..." he says, a touch unsure, and steps close - so close Harry can taste the Sahara dust that still clings to the air around him "Will you let me...it's happening now, yeah?"

Harry's whole world has slowed down, so, when Eggsy's hands settle on his shoulders, it takes him rather longer than it should anyone to realize just what Eggsy's about to do.

Kissing someone you've claimed is the height of sensation. Everything is magnified - the shock, the desire, the satisfaction of finally getting what you want that turns you desperate.

Harry has wanted this for a long time. It's the excuse he allows himself when his resolve snaps like a brittle string pulled taut and he wraps his arms around Eggsy, pulling him in so their bodies are flush together while winding one hand in his hair so he can tip Eggsy's head back and take.

Eggsy makes a needy sound against his lips, but otherwise seems content to give Harry anything, fingertips digging into Harry's suit, his hand either unintentionally or unconsciously over the mark on Harry's shoulder, making it flare to life in a way that's intoxicating.

Harry thinks that if he died right now he'd be at peace with it. It's a lucky thing that the hanger is empty, what with how long Harry lets his indiscretion go on for, drinking Eggsy in, doing his very best to take him apart from a kiss. Harry is very good at the things he puts his mind to.

Then, some indeterminate amount of time later, Eggsy nips his lower lip just hard enough that his brain comes back online.

He draws back panting, sees gold shining through Eggsy's suit where his mark is and Eggsy's red lips and has to use every single ounce of his trained upper-class British propriety to stay exactly a hair away from kissing him again.

"I'm sorry."

"'S alright love, we all need to breathe, I'll forgive you if you get back to it."

"No," Harry has to make a conscious effort to let Eggsy go. He thinks he deserves a medal. "It's not alright, Eggsy. I've done something to you."

"Yes, Harry," Eggsy looks frustrated now "you kissed me, and I'd like it very much if you did it again."

"No, I've-" Harry sighs. How can he even explain? "You remember the Cephalopod."

"I sure as shit don't." Eggsy replies with his eyebrows rising.

"The monster, Eggsy, a few months ago. The one that was difficult to kill?"

"Oh, the porno fish."

"The-" Harry lets out a sound too close to a laugh "Whatever you would like to call it, yes. It - it was trying to..."

"Fuck me, yeah. What's that got to do with anything?"

"It was not only trying to 'fuck you'." he says at length "Please tell me you at least realize it wasn't a common ocean dweller."

Eggsy frowns "Not like anyone told me or nothin', but I figured it out. And you're Galahad the ghost whisperer, and Percy's a mermaid, and James in IT is dead."

Harry clears his throat "Yes, well. You see. There were extenuating circumstances." like how it was almost nice to have someone so normal in their ranks "And if it makes you feel any better, no one told me about James until two weeks ago. But more to the point. It was trying to mark you."

Eggsy has, by now, realized that this talk is probably going to outlast his semi, and settles more firmly into being annoyed.

"What, like, make me its wife or somethin'?"

"Considerably more permanent." Harry replies "Luckily I managed to prevent it from doing so."

"Well thank god for that."

"By claiming you myself."

Eggsy blinks at him for a moment while the words find purchase in his brain. It's quite obvious once they have - his whole posture melts from tense to frozen disbelief.

"You wot."

"It was the only way. I thought that if I marked you I could find a way to break the connection in time, but...I'm afraid even that's not possible now. You asked how I knew when your mission here went tits up - it was because I could feel you slipping away. Then when I found you...you must have done it by instinct, and I'm afraid I used that instinct rather selfishly to keep you alive. There's no way to undo it all."

Eggsy is looking at him with a sort of puzzled awe, which is wrong isn't it? He should be furious.

"I'm afraid what you're feeling is only an echo of the claiming, or possibly a projection of my own desires."

Eggsy stays quiet for an age when Harry finishes, blinking like he can't really believe what he's heard. Then, suddenly, he pulls himself up straight.

"Right then, one thing. What did I do, exactly, when you found me?"

Harry hesitates. Then he shrugs off his blazer and undoes the top five buttons on his shirt so he can pull it off his shoulder. He doesn't need to glance at it to know it's revealed, he's spent enough time already staring love-struck at the thing in the mirror.

"You claimed me as well."

Eggsy goes back to staring for a moment. He makes an aborted movement to look at his own shoulder, but stops and laughs quietly.

"Eggsy?"

"Yeah, I bet I did. You wanna know why, you secretive wanker?" he marches up into Harry's space again and takes hold of the loose collar of his shirt "Because I've wanted you since your over-dramatic arse showed up outside the police station. Now stop feeling sorry for yourself and kiss me again."

When Harry just stands there like a particularly confused woodland creature Eggsy takes the situation into his own hands and draws him back in.

"Eggsy, there's more." Harry tries, grasping for a decent reason not to give in more out of habit than desire.

"It can wait, Harry." Eggsy insists.

Had Harry started that third kiss? My, how strange. "Our lives are tied together." he says against Eggsy's lips.

"What, really? That's fuckin' wonderful. I wanna hear all about it later."

Harry finally gives in and agrees.

A few months later Harry receives two signed copies of a romance novel titled 'Hart Breaker' in the mail with a note to give one to Eggsy. Eggsy, of course, loves it.

Harry ships James a pig's brain.