"How long is James gonna be stuck on zero-contact missions? Think he's starting to go bonkers." He and Alistair both, since the sniping incident. Bonkers is relative around the Kingsman base now to Eggsy, though, because it seems like the whole of the agency is gunning for his arse. All of the fourteen semi-immortal agents have had a go at him since he became a minted Kingsman, and even he's not sure how he's dodged getting shagged at this point.

All fourteen, excluding Harry.

"Probably for the remainder of his current life," Harry replies. "It wouldn't do to have someone from an old mission recognize him in the field and start asking questions."

"Heaven help us."

"Quite."

Eggsy reclines in the chair he's affectionately dubbed his in Harry's office and lets the martini warm his throat. They're ensconced under the soft yellow lighting of Harry's desk lamp, and the crimson walls have long since begun to draw feelings of safety and contentment from Eggsy when he's inside them.

He's gotten used to looking at Harry and seeing a man his own age, but really seeing Harry, slipping around through time, or just age, by the power of a rich families' vengeance.

He's absolutely thinner, though still not thinner than Eggsy. Harry at any age is built like a brick house, but he's managing to toe the line between that and twink at twenty. It's not really fair, but Eggsy's light-footed approach to fighting would fail spectacularly if he was as solid as Harry.

"Is there an Excel sheet someplace with revival counts?" he hedges after a stretch of comfortable silence. The question gets him a raised eyebrow.

"They don't hide it."

"Yeah, but I feel bad for askin'."

Harry sips his own martini with a small smile. "Yourself and Roxanne are too new to have a count, Charlie, of course, has one," he went on, listing the others in ascending order. None had less than three, none more than seven. "Chester was at six. A bit high, so we'd benched him for a bit. Merlin took care of the remaining two, plus one for luck."

There's a notable absence in Harry's list, and Eggsy cocks his head. "What about you, Harry? What's your count."

Harry's lips twitch a bit. "I've nearly lost my lead. Valentine was my second death to date."

Eggsy whistles. "Just two? They ain't kiddin' when they say you're good. Who popped your cherry?"

"I did." Harry says, smirking at the inuendo but looking strangely into the middle distance. "It was in the eighties. I was fourteen when the first World War ended, the bastard child of an earl who would have sooner bequeathed his fortune on Kingsman than me. So I was quite old and decrepit by then. I went for a walk on the back trails, found a nice spot, and shot myself in the head."

"Jesus, Harry." Eggsy finishes the rest of his martini. If he really thinks about it, that sounds like a very Harry thing to do. Shedding his skin, offing himself because no one was good enough to do it for him even in his seventies.

"Don't worry, Merlin made me promise not to do it again. If I die, I die because there is no other option. Unreasonable," he finishes his martini as well "but it has made me a rather good agent."

Good enough, Eggsy knows, that even as Arthur he's allowed on missions almost as often as the knights. If anything, he's just become the Kingsman's model of the nuclear option.

"May I ask why you wanted to know?"

"Curious, I guess. Well, that and..." Eggsy pushes himself up, the rustling of his clothes a whisper swallowed by the atmosphere, the padding of his socked feet gently audible on the carpet. He stops in front of the desk, sets his hands on it to lean closer to Harry. "Offin' yourself aside, it's good to hear you're only at two," Eggsy says eventually. "Kind of a shitty thought, that me an' Rox would be the last ones standing out of everyone we know now. And," he flexes his fingers "I'd really rather not find out what it's like to lose you for real for a while."

Harry spends a good long minute looking at him, his gaze searching, contemplating. Eggsy knows that look, lets himself be studied. He does this when he's deciding how to proceed, weighing the risks and benefits before he inevitably goes through with whatever idea he has anyway.

Slowly, Harry rises from his chair. He comes around to stand before Eggsy, and Eggsy looks up at him, waiting.

"Having additional lives doesn't change how little we know about when we'll die or who we'll outlive. Anything could still happen. It just gives us more time to wonder." Harry's close, so close now, the instep of one foot brushing the blade of Eggsy's as he hovers just a breath away. "Best not to worry about it." his words are barely a whisper, but a whisper that brushes Eggsy's lips.

Eggsy's one of their best agents, but, and he's said this out loud before, embarrassingly enough, a Kingsman is only as good as their king. Harry as Galahad had gotten him wrong a few times, most notably when, immediately after bailing Eggsy out of an eighteen month sentence he'd only been caught for because he hadn't wanted to kill a wild fox, Harry had proposed him for a job interview that had a shoot-a-dog portion.

Harry as Arthur knows him inside and out. He'd never ask Eggsy to do something he couldn't do. He's stacked impossible mission upon impossible mission on Eggsy, and Eggsy's always come back because he knows exactly what Eggsy's capable of, how much he can handle. It's that surety that carries him through the hardest missions, and it's why, if Harry kisses him right then, he won't panic. There won't be even a split second's doubt in his mind that he isn't good enough, that they can't work, that Harry won't want him once he really knows who Eggsy is, because Harry already knows him and would never think those things and still kiss him.

He closes his eyes. For a long moment, hesitation hangs in the air so thick it's like a tangible presence, a third person, a voyeur to their private world.

Then Harry lets out a long breath and slips the empty martini glass from his fingers. Eggsy opens his eyes again as Harry draws back.

"I think we could use another drink," Harry says without looking at him, and is gone a moment later.

Eggsy sets his hands on the desk for balance as his knees go weak.