In hindsight, their first meeting at the police station seems appropriately ironic. Eggsy the accused and Harry the rescuer, despite the fact that he's the one with bloodlust written all over his face. No longer a six-year-old ,merely metaphorically angelic, boy, wondering why his mother is crying in the presence of a strange man, Eggsy realises he may have just made a deal with death himself.
They sit in a dim break room after the end of the world, wrapped in the scent of coffee and the acute awareness of each other's presence. It's too fucking late for this, Eggsy thinks as he leans back in his chair, stiff shoulders aching like hell.
"How'd ya end up at Kingsman?" Eggsy asks, because he doesn't want to talk about Valentine and exploding heads for just one minute. His eyes itch and burn from the exhaustion of saving the world, and he can only imagine the dark circles forming under them. In his own mind he looks demonic, but then he sees Harry Hart: alive and eyes ablaze with fire.
"I killed a man," he says with an eerie calm that's reflected even in the depths of his eyes.
"And ya just kept killin' 'em or what?"
Harry sips his coffee and shrugs ever so slightly, the lines of his shoulders rising by a fraction that registers somewhere in the back of Eggsy's mind. "You might call it luck. Tristan way back when found me at the scene, and, well, I was a lot more feral back then."
Eggsy gives him one of his questioning looks and Harry plows on. "When I saw Tristan that first time, I thought it would be touch and go. I'd just ripped somebody's throat out with my bare hands, after all, and there he was: staring me down as I still held a bloody trachea in my hands. I think I would have killed him too, if it had come down to it. And it was just one of those situations - like you stealing that car - where one ends up being the deer caught in the headlights. I suppose, in that instant, Tristan saw potential in me as I saw it in you."
Eggsy sighs and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, because he's so bloody tired and it's just starting to dawn on him that he and Merlin have murdered half the political prime of the world in cold blood. After the horrific scene in Kentucky, he wasn't surprised at the things Merlin could do in a fit of rage, but Eggsy had single handedly killed so many people without remorse. To think that he's supposed to be an angel.
Not to mention being confronted with a fresh faced, living, and very much demonic Harry Hart at Kingsman HQ at the end of it all. For a single night, it may have been a bit much to handle.
"Kentucky-" he says and then doesn't.
"Valentine wanted me dead. I died. You were there to save the world, after all."
"Save the world? It was a massacre," Eggsy says and his face twists slightly with disgust on the last word.
"Isn't that just survival for all of the human race? A brutal battle played out on a socio-economic playground in the so called sophisticated west." Harry Hart trains his eyes on Eggsy and says, "The world used to be a simpler place." And Eggsy has no doubt about that, because Harry Hart has been around to wreak havoc on the world for centuries.
"I s'pose ya liked it, then," he says and swallows a mouthful of lukewarm coffee with his stomach churning in protest at the assault.
"I'd be lying if-"
"Then fucking lie to me! You've had no problem with it before."
"Eggsy ¬" Harry Hart sets his mug down while Eggsy wraps his hands tighter around his own, "¬ you should go home and get some sleep."
"Are you kiddin' me, bruv?" Eggsy gets a carefully arched eyebrow in response and says, "Don't come patronising me now. I've just killed fucking Arthur for your sake and I can't even get an 'I'm sorry I faked my death like a downright arsehole-'" He snaps his mouth shut when he realises he's yelling and returns to the safety of his coffee cup.
"I'm sorry."
"Try it with some feelin' maybe." Frustrated, Eggsy gets up and rubs a hand over his face. "Okay. Look, we'll do this another time. Otherwise I just might bash your head in."
Harry Hart mutters an indistinct 'as if you could' and Eggsy looks at him in disbelief, because the man's utter audacity should be reason enough to kick him in the face, but Eggsy's done enough damage for one day.
"Right," he says and clenches his fists. "I'm goin' home. Me Mum's waiting and all that."
"Sleep well," Harry tells him, sounding earnest, and Eggsy decides to refrain from snapping 'yeah, you try to pull that stick out of your arse in the meantime', because that would really be uncalled for in polite company. Even if said company faked their own death and happens to be a bloody demon manifested as a paid killer in the human world. After all, Eggsy's working the same job, despite being on the side of the angels.
He wakes up groggy in the early afternoon with the sun glaring at him through the window. Eggsy rolls over with a groan, but forces himself to sit up anyway. Head hanging low, he hears the telly murmur in the living room and for a moment he's back in his life before Kingsman, before Harry Hart and Valentine and everything that's gotten him stuck in such a moral dilemma. He drags himself out of bed and looks at his crumpled suit on the floor with a long suffering sigh. He supposes he'll have to face Kingsman's posh toffs in his own clothes this time around and it does nothing to brighten his mood.
Eggsy pulls on a pair of jeans and stalks into the bathroom with the blasted out door to spy his reflection in the mirror. He looks like hell. Two lovebites are forming at his neck from his victory fuck with Tilde, he still looks like death warmed over, and the amount of bruises on his torso is unsettling. So as not to worry his mum, he covers himself up before popping down on the couch with a bowl of cereal.
She's cradling Daisy to her chest and the little girl looks at Eggsy like she's about to drift off to sleep against her will. On the telly, the news run non-stop with new information on the Valentine ordeal and Eggsy blinks lamely at the anchorman because they don't even have half the story.
"How'd ya know 'bout this, Eggsy?" she asks him after a while with the sort of stern voice he hasn't heard in years.
"Doesn't matter Mum," Eggsy mutters, shoveling the last of the cereal into his mouth.
Michelle Unwin grabs him by the wrist as he gets up and says, "Eggsy, I don't like this on ebit: the secrecy an' all. You're gettin' mixed up with that Harry Hart. Remember, your father died-"
He snaps an irritated 'I know what I'm doing, Mum' and it may be a blatant lie, but Eggsy's certainly got a better grip on the situation than his mother does. He shrugs on his coat while his mum stubbornly keeps her eyes on the telly, grabs his keys and phone, and rushes out the door into the warm embrace of the sun.
Bright days, Eggsy muses, are his sort of battlefield. How much easier it'll be to face Harry in broad in the light with his halo glowing as bright as the sun, armours up, and wings out in the ether in their full glory. He walks among all of humanity in his angelic form and they see nothing. Eggsy thinks it's like sharing an alternate dimension with Harry Hart alone.
Stepping inside the Kingsman shop is like coming home, even if he looks utterly out of place. The man behind the counter nods in greeting and Eggsy makes his way underground through one of the dressing rooms. Alone on the bullet train, he grows fussy thinking about what he's gotten himself into, protegé of a well seasoned demon at an international Secret Service. Speaking of the devil, he thinks, as he runs into Harry Hart on the HQ platform.
They both utter each other's names and Eggsy feels like he's been burned somehow. "Came to see Merlin," he says evasively, "He's in charge now, right?"
"Until a new Arthur is appointed, yes." Harry switches his umbrella from one hand to another and says, "He is having a brief with Bedivere at the moment. I was wondering, if you would like to go for a walk until he's free. I owe you an explanation… about quite a few things."
Eggsy, shifty and yet curious, mutters a dumbfounded 'I guess so'.
"Shall we then?" he asks, letting Eggsy take the lead. For being so undeniably bad at heart, Harry Hart is unbearably polite.
They walk over the green grounds of the Kingsman manor. Like everything else in the organisation, the grass is cut immaculately, the hedges trimmed to the centimetre, and Eggsy finds himself at peace strolling side by side with Harry Hart in complete silence. The sun warms him pleasantly like a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
In the human world, they're sitting on a bench, only inches apart, when Harry says, "You must wonder why I've dragged you into all of this."
In their own world, they sit on the horizon with their wings stretched out into the ether and Eggsy shrugs. "It's crossed my mind, yeah." He turns to look at Harry Hart in his pure form, flaky skin and sleek wings the colour of ash and charred wood. Even in the wind he reeks of smoke and destruction, blood still dripping off his claws from his last murder.
"I saw the same potential in you I once saw in your father."
"Ya knew I wasn't like him, when ya saw me at the police station; you recognized that I wasn't human. And yet-"
"What does it matter in the end that you're an angel? Or that I am a demon? We have both been banished to a life on earth."
"Doesn't seem to bother ya with the amount of people ya kill without a second thought."
Harry Hart stops brushing loose feathers out of his wings and levels Eggsy with his crimson gaze. "I'm doing it for a greater good."
"I s'pose that's why they ain't letting you go back to Hell."
Harry says nothing and pulls his wings back in. Eggsy uses the opportunity to stretch his own out to their full potential and Harry casts a glance at the clean, white glow of them in the sunlight.
"And you," he asks eventually, "what made you fall from Heaven?"
"I saw her eat the apple," Eggsy says nonchalantly and thinks of the day long ago, when he leaned over the edge of the clouds of Heaven to peer into Eden, where Eve bit into the apple that ended up cursing her, and him by proxy.
"Why are you so hellbound - pardon my expression - on following the rules then?" Harry asks, lips twitching and Eggsy can see his little dagger-like teeth against his lip.
"Kind demons and evil angels, 's that what you're suggesting we oughta be now?"
"Well, you did say posh boys like a bit of rough."
"An' angels like a bit o' demonic, or what?"
Harry Hart shrugs. "Think about it." He brushes Eggsy's wing with the tip of his own and it's almost invasively intimate.
He gets up and leaves Eggsy sitting on the bench, as he stalks off, cocooned in his tweed coat with the collar turned up. Between saving the world and falling for a demon, Eggsy knows he's utterly fucked and surprisingly not bothered by it.
They slip past each other at Kingsman after that for weeks on end like two clashing forces just waiting for a storm to brew. The ocean and the sky brushing each other's shoulders every once in a while as they're trying to stitch the world back together. And boy, is it broken.
"Their entire political sphere got wiped out and they honestly have the nerve to pester us about it. There used to be a time you received neither praise nor a beating for doing this job. Whatever happened to the good old days?" Merlin grumbles irritatedly into Eggsy's ear on a mission in Austria.
"Well, we did only save the world from a psychotic eco terrorist," Roxy says and cracks open a lock. Her and Eggsy slip into the office, Roxy looking for the files they need while Eggsy guards the door.
"I rather liked him," Merlin says, "He had principles."
"I really don't miss that chick with the knives for legs though," Eggsy grumbles, "What the heck was that about anyways?"
"If I got my legs chopped off by someone, I too would chop heads off with my new legs," Roxy says.
"You're fuckin' scary sometimes, Rox."
She stuffs a file into her briefcase and gives him a wry smile. "My pleasure."
It's easy after that: sneaking out and driving back to town in an inconspicuous little Opel with the windows down and the radio turned up. Merlin signs off the comms, muttering a complaint about their taste in music as he goes.
"So," Roxy says, turning down the volume and focusing her full attention on Eggsy, "Harry Hart gave his spot as Galahad up for you. Care to tell me what that is all about?"
"Nothin'." Eggsy shrugs innocently. "He upgraded to Arthur."
"Come on, Eggsy. I'm not daft. Harry Hart hates even the idea of a desk job."
"If you know everythin', why are ya botherin' me 'bout it? I don't know why he did it, honest. Why don't you ask him instead?" Eggsy keeps his eyes on the road and grips the steering wheel with white knuckled fingers. "He's such a pretentiously polite prick anyway. What makes you think he isn't perfectly content sitting on his arse all day?"
Roxy's lips curve upwards into a smile he's only ever seen on a temptress. It's a terrifying sort. Eggsy remembers the first time he ever saw it on her, hitting him like a tidal wave, and he just knew there was more to Roxy than she let on. "I swear I'll throw ya outta the car, if you keep that up."
"Shh, don't get riled up," she laughs, bright and crystal clear like the ding of someone knocking their knife against a champagne glass right before a speech. And Eggsy thinks of himself in this tailored suit, of Roxy with a gun tucked under her arm, in higher society with a death count clicking up somewhere in Merlin's databases every time they shoot someone.
"Oh god," he says. "Roxy, what the hell am I doing with my life?"
"Living it on your own terms, I hope. Don't be intimidated by Harry Hart. He's as human as you are," she says, and Eggsy tries to repress a hysterical laugh, because they are most certainly not human. Him and Harry Hart are two supernatural beings on opposite ends of the spectrum, trapped in the same world, and now they're dancing around each other like mad men.
As if working with the man every day isn't bad enough, Harry Hart worms his way into Eggsy's subconscious and into his dreams. In his sleep, Eggsy wanders the church in Kentucky, empty and blood stained. It reeks of death and Eggsy remembers Merlin's footage of the day Harry died. Yet, there he is, kneeling at the altar with his wings out and his hands clasped in prayer like a common sinner.
"Who do you pray to?" Eggsy wants to ask, but his body refuses to produce the necessary sounds. Behind the altar, Richmond Valentine appears dressed as a priest. He carries a grail and piece of bread, reading out at verdict of death with his hands raised towards the sky as though he's talking to God himself.
Eggsy approaches them slowly, footsteps echoing in the empty church, but neither man pays him any attention. He checks for his gun, sweaty palm gripping it tight. Valentine sings a satanic prayer with his lisp riling Eggsy up like the hiss of a venomous snake. Heart thrumming in his chest, he takes the gun by the muzzle and strikes. The butt of the gun smacks hollowly against Valentine's temple and he collapses with the wine spilling everywhere like fresh blood.
Kneeling right in front of him, Harry Hart looks up and smiles with the image of his pointy little teeth edging itself into Eggsy's memory. Somehow, Eggsy thinks, he looks distant, as though Harry's galaxies away. Until he realises it's actually him who's disappearing, sucked into outer space that feels suspiciously like the worn out sheets in his own bed.
"You like him," Roxy whispers in his ear, as breathy and all encompassing as a deity, and her eyes are made of stars. He turns to look at her, perched on orion's belt as she takes a big bite out of luscious apple. She smiles at him wickedly and gives him a peck on the cheek with bloodstained lips.
Eggsy wakes in his bed, alone and sweat drenched in the human world, where his blankets are made of cotton instead of stardust. It's dark outside, or at least as dark as London nights get, and the distant cry of an ambulance fades a few blocks away. He takes a deep breath and goes to throw the window open, get a bit of fresh air. As the sweat dries on the back of his neck, he decides to go on a rare excursion on the roof, sneaking out in just his pjs to look at the stars.
He used to do this a lot more as a kid: sit up on the gravelly roof and watch the night sky unfold for all eternity in the ether and diminish the size of his own problems. The winds are still cold for the time of year, so he pulls his wings down around himself for shelter, the feathers shimmering pearly white under the moon. He remembers the pack of cigarettes he stashed up there the last time he came out here some months earlier. Eggsy pulls it out from a slit in a ventilation channel and lights himself one.
Barely managing two drags, his peace is disturbed by the ping of his phone. Eggsy glances at the blinding screen with a new text from Harry.
What are you doing up at this time? HH
R u stalkin me? -E
Don't be ridiculous. I just happen to enjoy stargazing. HH
Yeah, right -E
Look up. HH
Eggsy rolls his eyes, but sits back and runs his gaze over the horizon, looking for Harry. He appears like hell's angel, silhouette cast black against the moon and Eggsy texts him 'Ya also seem to like drama -E'.
Harry vanishes again, dipping into the dusty dark of the night, until he reappears just above Eggsy. "The fucking nerve you have," Eggsy mutters and coaxes a wicked smile out of Harry.
"Oh, you love it."
"No, I luv havin' me peace."
Harry sits down next to him, still clad in a suit in his human form, not that it matters with their true forms laid out like this. Eggsy lies on his back in the gravel and takes a long drag from his cigarette.
Harry takes it from him wordlessly, eyes trained on the stars. Eggsy watches him smoke it, the tip glowing bright in turns with Harry breathing the smoke from his lungs. He reminds Eggsy of a slumbering dragon, waiting to descend upon as a messenger of death.
"Are we just gonna keep circling each other like vultures or are ya gonna do something already?"
"Depends on what you want me to do," Harry says, voice smooth in the night air. He comes to lie on his side next to Eggsy, and the boy takes the opportunity to snatch his cigarette back. Harry frowns. "Those things are going to kill you, you know."
"Might say the same 'bout being shot in the head."
"Mmh."
Eggsy doesn't notice until then that Harry isn't wearing his glasses tonight. In the dark his eyes are almost black, but the demonic red glint still shines through, vulgar without a barrier between them. Eggsy licks his lips and stubs the cigarette out. With nothing to say, they lie in the dark for a while, Eggsy staring at the sky and Harry Hart staring at him.
There's the faint brush of wing against wing again, and Eggsy turns to look at Harry. "Why?" Eggsy asks and Harry knows exactly what he means.
"Because you make being stuck on earth bearable. Almost interesting."
"Gee, what a compliment."
"I would say so," Harry mutters, mouth almost against his ear and Eggsy thinks of Roxy in his dream. You like him. He swallows and glances sideways to see Harry staring at him with repressed hunger shining through his demon eyes.
Eggsy, sleepy and cold, with fuck all on his mind apart from Harry Hart, tilts his head and seals their mouths together. It's an extremely awkwardly angled kiss and he breaks away from Harry with his neck protesting the position. He reckons the taste of death lingers on his tongue, or perhaps that's just smoke, after all.
"Definitely going to Hell now," Eggsy mutters.
Pushing him down onto the ground Harry growls, "We better at least make it worth your while then."
They make out under the starry sky like two feral creatures, until Harry bites Eggsy's lip open and the taste of iron stains their mouths. Eggsy shoves Harry off himself and brushes a finger over his bleeding lip. "Bastard," he gasps and smiles despite himself. He's got gravel under his shirt by now, digging into his skin, and he's stuck between pleasure and pain, staring into Harry Hart's blood red eyes, trying to stop the world from spinning out of control.
They watch the sunrise out in the ether where the azure sky bleeds into the eternal darkness of space: night and day coming together as the sun and the moon share the sky upon the earth.