Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eggsy figures he can live with it.

This is his fourth thought.

The first time he sees it, though, sees him, his first thought is fuck, fuck, I've gone mental, I've gone properly fucking mental, and I can't be a Kingsman if I'm crazy and I can't make him proud if I'm not a Kingsman, I can't make it up to him if I'm not a Kingsman oh fuck, fuck, can a broken heart right fuck up your mind because he's gorgeous, isn't he, and my chest fucking hurts and he looks real as anything, don’t he, and ghosts ain't supposed to look real, they never look real and he's dead, I watched him die and he's dead and I never told him, and he never told me and he wasn't ever gonna ‘cause I fucked up and I, just, I'm nothin’ compared with him and I never was and it don't matter if I put on the accents and the tones and I slip on the suit and don’t wear the brogues and I shoot straight and never miss, it don't matter a goddamn bit, it don’t do a goddamn thing because Harry Hart is dead and he's standing right in front of me.

That's the first thought.

The second thought is a laugh, hysterical; all in his head, thank fuck, but whispered like that M-fuck-Shambala film: I see dead people.

Bloody fuckin’ Christ.

Third thought comes with an admirable bit of rationalization that Eggsy himself’d been kinda proud of, because if he was really off the deep end, right, he wouldn’t know, he wouldn’t be able to look and say right, yep, fucking off my goddamn rocker, which is what he’s doing right now, so that in itself means if he is a bit fucked, it’s not a done deal, not a full-on sort of shift, yeah? He’s mental but not mental, and maybe it’s grief or some such, maybe it is the fact that he was in bloody fuckin’ love with his mentor and only realized it after, too fucking long after it was too fucking late to even tell his heart to hurt, because like he said, he’s a bit of a fuck-up, and that’s not something Kingsman can wipe away and gloss over full and proper, naw, that’s a thing that’s in his DNA, that’s in the way his world and his life moulded him up and made him a person. But for all that he is and all that he isn't, fuck all: he’s not totally lost it. Just, a little bit. A lot. Mostly.

But not totally.

He wouldn’t know it, wouldn’t be able to worry on it, if he was really, irredeemably crazy. Third thought.

Which leads him to watching the spectre, the solid body of Harry Hart that seems to take up space in the world, with shoulders that lift and fall with the flow of breath, with a smile that’s tight but almost close to yearning when it lands on Eggsy, and maybe it’d been too late for Eggsy to tell his heart to hurt, when he knew it first off, when he figured out what Harry meant, what all the unsaid, unspeakable things added up to be: maybe it was too late to tell, but Eggsy’d never had to tell himself—heart or head or anything else—to do a thing. He’d always known, always had that instinct, and he’d done before he could rightly think about the doing. Helped him leap and twist on the bars in the gym; led him straight across rooftops; put his bullets in the right bodies.

His heart was already hurting, because it already knew, and when Harry’s smile—small and stiff but hopeful, almost, in a way Eggsy doesn’t understand—when that smile lands on Eggsy, his heart twists and he thinks he might choke, thinks he might sob, thinks he might vomit, or die on the spot, except no. No.

Real or not, Harry’s beautiful. And Eggsy’s heart fucking hurts for it, but he prefers feeling to not feeling, any day of the week.

So yeah. Fourth thought.

I can live with this.

_________________________________

Fun fact: Eggsy cannot, for the life of him, look Harry in the eyes.

He tried, once. Like, really fucking tried. Missed the shade of that fucking gaze like a skip in his pulse—so goddamn, did he try.

But the timing had been utter shit, right? Complete and utter fucking shit, the absolute, quintessential example of what it means to be at the end of your goddamn rope, to be physically beyond the ability to hold back, to keep calm, to maintain any sort of composure at all: and beyond all that, it’d been at the Round Table.

Which, for fuck’s sake, isn’t even round. He still cannot get over that shit.

But it’d been at the Table, and everyone left had been present, and Eggsy’d got used to hearing Harry’s voice from their new Arthur, now that they had one. And Eggsy hadn’t yet been called out for never making eye contact with said new-Arthur since new-Arthur’s appointment, because it’d been just too damn weird—or else, too much of a temptation, but Eggsy’s not quite brave enough to dig deep and figure which—but yeah. It’d been at the Table, and Eggsy’d long since accepted that new-Arthur’s voice would, in his own head, always be Harry’s.

Because if there was a Harry Hart in this world, then he is Galahad. And if Eggsy is now Galahad—which he is in name but nothing else, nothing else at all—but if Eggsy is Galahad then Harry isn’t. And if Harry isn't Galahad, then he's Arthur. Obviously.

And sure: in Eggsy’s mind there is a memory of a bullet and the blood, the brain matter that would have comingled—in his mind, there is a memory, and there is the knowledge of the truth.

In his heart, though, in his soul: there is no world without Harry Hart.

And he’s at the end of his tether, his hangman’s rope—it’s kill or be killed, maybe, or sumfin’—but he hears that voice, this time, and it says his name just so, just right, and he can’t help it: his neck feeling the pressure of the noose and moving for him, doing again before he can think better to do.

He looks. And he blinks.

The vision, the spectre, the ghost of Harry Hart sits at the head of the table, gaze expectant, the deep, proud winterwood of those eyes on him. Waiting.

He can’t remember what he does, if he does anything. The meeting moves on without incident, after, even if his heart feels set on exploding in his chest, all fireworks and bloodburn like a million heads at once, fuck.

The point is, he tried. He tried, and he can’t, but It’s not his fault; he's just filling in the gaps, really. It's not even his fault.

For this slip, for all the slips that follow: no one could even blame him

No one could so much as criticize—if they ever knew.

_________________________________

There are plenty of reasons Eggsy started living in the house. Honest. Plenty of good, logical reasons. Like how the hell to explain to his mum and Daise when he's got a black eye and broken ribs and bullet holes that still bleed on a bad stretch at the space where his suit rides up when he turns just so. Or how he's a fucking adult and he should live on his fucking own besides. Or, even, how while it’s customary for a proposal to take over their formal namesake’s lodgings upon knighting, Eggsy needed a place to crash long before anything had been made official, and so maybe his swift fingers had done him one extra favor that horrible, horrible day and swiped Harry’s keys near the door on his way out, just in case.

Muscle memory and whatnot. Stress response. Unconscious little Fitch. Self preservation once the sky starts falling.

Take your fuckin’ pick.

Just don’t fuckin’ comment on the fact that Eggsy only stocks the fridge with what was already there, over and again. Don’t talk about the fact that Eggsy sleeps in the master bed and refuses to wash the linens to the pushing-point of what’s sanitary.

Don’t mention that Eggsy spends half the time he’s meant to be sleeping breathing in the scent of the pillow; don’t.

Don’t ask if he hears Harry’s voice on the edge of sleep, every night.

_________________________________

Darling, you need your rest.

Eggsy doesn’t think anyone’s ever called him darling before. Maybe his mum, way back when, but he was always her little egg, more often than anything.

Harry certainly never called him darling.

Don’t mean that voice at his ear, in his head, doesn’t make his heart race, but all the same, all at once, sets it easy.

Funny, that.

Sleep, my dear.

Eggsy breathes, and it’s all imagination, he knows somewhere deep-down, but fuck if he gives a shit, fuck if he care one toss at all: all he can sense, all he can taste, all he knows is the scent of Harry—not his cologne, or the washing powder he used, or the waft of furniture polish that sometimes clung to his clothes; no.

Harry.

Oh, god.

Close your eyes, my heart. I'm here.

Eggsy reaches blindly, paws at the air, and he’s far enough gone to almost fool himself that there’s a hand in his own hand that he leads to his chest, to his heart, to feel and count the beat.

Sleep.

Almost.

_________________________________

Eggsy gets by when Harry speaks to him—and it’s rare that the ghost itself says much, when it’s not standing in for Arthur in Eggsy’s head or sumfin’ of the like—and Eggsy’s grateful for that; just pours himself a more generous helping of scotch on the off-chance Harry speaks directly to him, says and thing that begs response.

And when Harry does speak to him in the presence of others, Eggsy makes his nod as tight, as much a flinch or a stretch of the neck to work out a kink as it’s anything, and it serves him. Harry is answered, or at least acknowledged, and if Eggsy can’t look the man in the eye then he can fool himself into pretending that he never knew Harry Hart well enough to read his reaction in the rest of his body; never knew him well enough to see that there's hurt there, a disappointment that's less in the mind than lodged in the chest—he can fool himself.

When they’re alone, though; no. No, when Eggsy is alone and the spectre follows him into the house that was the man’s, and that is now inhabited by two ghosts, really, if Eggsy’s honest with the state of his own something-of-a-soul: when Eggsy is alone with the shell of himself that has no one to try and fool, the stiffen his upper lip for—the shell that's so hollow, that's prime real estate for all his wants and regrets and the shake of his mangled heart-pulp for all the could-have-beens that he's too tired to admit would never have been, anyway, well, then.

Then, Eggsy listens. Eggsy listens and drinks it in like fine wine and the breath of life. Good god, does Eggsy listen.

Fucking penance, probably, for how much it damn well hurts.

He can't say anything, can't speak the words that live in his throat and make it perpetually hard to swallow. No—Eggsy can only answer questions with more questions. Eggsy can only say things that mean nothing at all—because why should he have to say more, anyway? Figments of his own imagination and heartache don't need the contents of his head spelled out for them; they're damn well made of that dust.

His own uncertainties, his own loss and lost soul can only perpetuate itself.

_________________________________

“Do you mind?” Harry stretches his arms wide, indicates his presence in the house, in this space the first time he speaks upon following Eggsy through the front door.

“S’your house, ain't it?”

Harry’s smile is tight and sad, though which one more so, Eggsy couldn't say.

“Not quite, though.”

There's no closing of the door—not that a ghost would need to open it—but Eggsy doesn't see Harry again that night.

It is one of the worst nights.

_________________________________

“Do you even like marmite?”

Harry’s head looks blue in glow of the open refrigerator at his back as he sorts for a nibble in the cupboards.

Eggsy snorts, but there's no heart in it. “Do you?”

Harry considers the jar, part of Eggsy’s ongoing vigil, memorial, mourning in the form of an unchanging grocery order, week in and week out. They'd tried to sub out the butter once for another brand. Eggsy’d nearly had a coronary.

Harry’s eyebrow quirks.

“Point.”

Eggsy trudges up the stairs, more exhausted than he's felt maybe ever.

_________________________________

“How do you take your eggs? I find I never learned.”

Harry sounds inquisitive, politely apologetic, too real for Eggsy to dismiss this early in the morning.

Fuck.

“Didn't you?” Eggsy asks, voice carefully blank. He might smell frying, and burning, and butter in his way out the door.

His imagination, and its rapid fucking need, is getting stronger every day.

He should probably see about that, at some point.

There's a line, he knows, and continuing to insist he's only flirting with it isn't a lie even he can continue buying for much longer.
_________________________________

“Would continuing to apologize mean anything?”

Eggsy doesn't mean to slam the book, open pages, down on his chest. He doesn't expect it's spine to creak with the heave of his lungs, or the pages to flutter with the force of his pulse through his ribs.

“Would continuing to apologize change anythin’?” Eggsy finally asks; doesn't look toward the voice, something like the first and last question in the world. “Would sayin’ sorry rewrite how it all went down?”

Because his mind imagines Harry’s own remorse entangled with his own. He envisions so many reconciliations: so much heart and feeling. Skin beneath his hands, so warm. Real breath that catches, tears that taste of salt and feeling but not only his own.

He imagines a lot of things, but it all boils down to the one:

Would sayin’ sorry bring you back to me?

The real first and last of questions in all the world.

Harry sighs, and Eggsy’s heart thumps hard enough to nearly drown out Harry’s own half-breath in response:

“I suppose not.”

_________________________________

Truth is: it takes ages for Eggsy make more than a response, to be anything greater than rhetorical—takes fuckin’ ages for Eggsy to actually speak to it, to him, in kind.

And when it finally happens, it’s certainly not because Eggsy’d been late in that morning; it's certainly not because Eggsy’d been late that morning because he'd come awake with a start and a rush of blood and the sudden realization that the sheets didn't smell of Harry anymore, nope.

It is certainly not that that broke him, in the end. Fuck no.

But reasons aside: Eggsy does break. He can admit that.

Or more accurate: there's no strength left in him to deny it.

“I know it doesn't matter,” Eggsy tells the absence that's Harry; the hole between two lungs that manifests between some planes of being, some torment he can't escape. “I know you don't care.”

“You don't,” Harry—who's fucking reading The Sun, because of course Harry Hart can't stop that shit, even in death—but Harry says it, soft and idle and off-hand except not at all.He glances up, glasses down on his nose, looking at Eggsy over the rims: “Know.”

Eggsy meets Harry’s eyes, now. They're perfect. At least Eggsy’s crazed and broken mind can get that much right.

“I loved you,” Eggsy whispers. He doesn't mean for it to be a sob.

Eggsy hasn't meant for a lot of things, though.

“I didn't know it at the time, even though it was true,” Eggsy’s eyes drift, now; draw shitting broguing into his shoes.

“Maybe from the very start,” Eggsy muses, breathless, chest on fucking fire, all shards of glass drawing lines of blood then piecing deep. “Maybe it was always growing, maybe you,” Eggsy’s voice breaks—the last thing left for it, probably.

“I love you.”

Eggsy looks up, just to see Harry’s eyes going right again, after squinting, maybe. Or widening. He can't tell.

His own are glassy, suddenly. It's fucking hard to see.

“I miss you more than I can fucking handle,” Eggsy gasps; breathes heavy until he can hold himself together. “Can't fucking breathe through it. Can't stand it, Harry.”

Eggsy doesn't know himself, like this. Eggsy doesn't know himself to beg.

There is so much Eggsy doesn't know.

But love.

Love.

“I'm here,” Harry’s voice is soft, suddenly near. Eggsy can see the folded newspaper, can feel his shadow on Eggsy’s frame. “Eggsy, I'm right here.”

“You're not,” Eggsy shakes his head hard enough to whip free his own tears. “You're not and you're the only thing in my whole fucking heart so what does that make me, what does that leave me now, huh? What am I, what's left…”

“Eggsy,” Harry’s voice is low, a tormented him, and Eggsy feels it intimately, rattling in his bones. “Oh, my Eggsy. Breathe. Breathe, and—”

Harry reaches; Eggsy can feel the displacement of the air. And that's the line. That's where Eggsy can't reach back or stand still and be drawn into the delusion any further, or worse: to feel, and know himself irredeemably gone.

“No, no, I,” Eggsy chokes, turns, and runs.

He trips on more stairs than he doesn't, but it doesn't matter.

Nothing fuckin’ matters.
_________________________________

“You have a mission in the morning.”

It's dark, but Eggsy screws his eyes closed against even that. Harry’s voice is a temptation to breathe in once, and never breathe out. Not to give up, but to give in.

“You need your rest. You cannot afford to give anything less than your top form to the task at hand.”

And where something in Eggsy expects a firm hand in that tone, a command and the edge of displeasure, there's nothing close to that in the words. They're more a plea than anything, constructed from the ground up with concern and honest feeling. Wishful thinking.

Harry here, even outside the flesh, is all a product of Eggsy’s fucking wishful thinking.

Goddamn.

“I cannot afford for you to be distracted. For you to…”

Harry trails off. Not uncertain, and Eggsy’s lost to it, now, as the bedsprings creak, as the mattress shift beneath a weight that isn't real, fuck, fuck: but he watched Harry die.

“You have not forgiven me. I understand that.” Harry’s voice is rough when he speaks, something entirely of Eggsy’s making, something he never knew from Harry in his life. “I understand that you may never find it in yourself, may never…”

Harry shudders. Eggsy feels it in the marrow of his bones. The veins leading to and from his heart shiver and get twisted, fuckin’ bastards. Eggsy’s lightheaded as shit with it, too.

Christ.

“I understand,” Harry’s going on. “There are no apologies I can offer that would take it back, or make it right, try as I might to find them, to conjure them from thin air.”

Eggsy muffles his sobs, his laughs, his disbelief and the hysteria that means there's no going back: he muffles in the pillow that doesn't smell of Harry anymore. That doesn't break him for that fact alone.

“But for whatever comfort, or assurance it can give, know that your loss would undo me tenfold, in kind.” Harry’s hand is a testament, a ghost of his ghost where it hovers just above Eggsy’s spine: electric, but absent.

“And if you ever had a modicum of sentiment for me, of any kind at all, I would ask that you sleep, love, so as to greet what comes tomorrow with both eyes, and all your wits about you.” Harry leans close, and Eggsy freezes. Can do nothing else.

“Please, my darling boy.” Harry’s voice is soft against the skin at Eggsy’s temple, and it's all a dream, really, a hallucination; but Harry’s lips against the line of his hair above the war might be the epitome of all this—the dream within this dream that is a nightmare, because one day he'll wake up.

“Sleep.”

Eggsy isn't sure how long it takes, but he falls into something, eventually.

Sleep, however, might be too generous a word.

_________________________________

Eggsy may not be the most cultured of people in the world—he may still only have the vaguest appreciation for the difference between the £15 bottle of whiskey from Tesco and the Napoleonic whatever they use to toast the Fallen at the Table—but he’s not fucking ignorant.

He remembers sitting in a pew, once, when his dad died. Remembers shit telly or fairy tales or fuck not: maybe just even cultural consciousness, or the pendant his mum wore than Dean once tried to choke her with, completely unaware of the irony.

Eggsy knows about Guardian Angels, though he never believed in them. Eggsy knows about the Reaper, the Ushers of Death: oblique kind of knowings, but knowing nonetheless. Scary stories. Shit at the cinema on Halloween.

But Eggsy’d never believed in super spies. Or Bond villains. So, well.

It does make a lot sense, in a certain twisted, also-crazy-but-different-crazy kind of way.

It should also be noted that Eggsy may also be dying, right now. So there’s that.

And Eggsy, well: the life he led in the place he led it, he'd danced on the edge of death his fair share, knew what it felt like at various distances.

“Eggsy, oh Christ.”

It's real close, now, in a way it's never been before.

Which probably says something important.

“Eggsy,” and Harry is falling to his knees, his image unmistakable even as it wavers, even as it darkens and blues around the edges. Harry’s hands flutter for a second, before then land at Eggsy’s neck and press, and Eggsy can feel the beat of his blood on those palms just a little too strong and swollen for comfort, really.

Nicked artery, then. Well, shit.

“Please, please my darling,” and that's Harry’s voice, even if the words are impossible; “hold on.”

There are worse ways, Eggsy thinks, to go. So many worse than this. His heart in Harry’s hands, the only way he'll ever know.

How fitting.

“Stay with me,” Harry’s eyes are big, streaming, and oh: Harry shouldn't look like that.Not ever. Especially not now. “Stay, and give me the chance to make it right, stay so that we'll have a chance.”

Eggsy feels the trip of his feeble, fading pulse under Harry’s touch like he fucking hand of God has to feel to the faithful, he swears it.

“I understand,” he breathes, and it's a gurgle of sorts: internal injuries, then. Damnit.

It won't be long now.

Harry turns those eyes from his neck to his face; his mouth is gaping, his chest is heaving: oh.

Eggsy’s personal escort to the unknown hereafter.

“Understand now,” Eggsy murmurs, eyes fluttering as his lips quirk upward. “You waited for me.”

“I came back for you.” Harry’s voice is sharp, contorted with real pain, with a desperation Eggsy can't parse out, nor stand.

“I see it now, though,” Eggsy forges on, though he tastes bile and blood in the back of his throat. “Why you've been here. Following. Lingering.”

Harry’s brow furrows. “Eggsy?”

“You knew this was comin’. Knew, and you were, waiting for me. To bring me, to...guide me?” Eggsy’s eyes open just a little. The touch of Harry’s hand hurts for how hard it presses into his carotid, but the pain is secondary. It already belongs to a body he doesn't quite claim. “Show me how to, where to…”

Eggsy tried to swallow; can't. Harry sees it, and his eyes widen, deep his heart even as they harden, made of stone.

“So I wouldn't be alone,” Eggsy sighs, heart slowing, ever slowing, and spilling out despite Harry’s efforts, but fuck if Eggsy’s ever felt so full, so warm even as he cooks unto death.

“You didn't leave me alone.”

“Eggsy, what are you—”

“Love you,” Eggsy starts to babble, mindless. “Love you, thank you, you stayed. You didn't have to. Didn't have to but you cared, you cared about me, you, you…”

He paws upward, tries to find Harry's hand. Harry allows one hand to a abandon its post at Eggsy’s neck to twine with Eggsy’s, to grasp, to bring Eggsy’s hand between his own and press life where t belongs against all odds, all inevitability.

Oh Harry. Steadfast; stubborn to the very end.

“You were waiting for me, weren't you?” Eggsy mouths, barely a sound. “You, you, did you, do you…”

“Love. Love, Eggsy, focus.” Harry’s voice is a light in the dark; Eggsy hadn't realized his eyes had slipped shut. “Focus, dearest, please. Hold on.”

“Just wanna be with you,” Eggsy moans, and the air’s so thin. His lungs are too small; he's drowning. “Told him, said so, meant it, Harry. Harry, I meant it more than anything.”

“Then hold on,” Harry voice is firm, but the steel in it, Eggsy somehow knows, is built of terror. “There is still some left to do. And then: always. Then us, then we'll make all right, we'll be everything we should have been, we'll have our chance, just…”

Harry gathers him, pressed his body into warmth unimaginable, the harsh press to Eggsy’s blood, a makeshift graft of vein never faltering as he gathers Eggsy’s limp frame to curl against Harry’s rapid-beating heart, and how strange.

Eggsy still has enough of his wits to imagine a pulse into the ghost that'll carry him hence.

“Hold to me,” Harry commands. “Hold to me, and please, don't let go.”

And that's all that Eggsy wants, yes. He doesn't understand why Harry seems to think it's something to fight for: this pull that wants him, wants to take him to Harry and keep him forever.

“You are the strongest man I've ever known,” Harry hisses, the sound a bite against Eggsy’s cold skin. “Hold to me, darling. Hold, and for all that matters in this world or the next: do not let go.”

He can deny Harry nothing, though he cannot understand, but it's getting dark, now, and Harry’s hands are still around his own, but he can't feel it.

He doesn't think he's got a choice in it, anymore.

Chapter Text

The weight’s fucking heavy. Everywhere, the weight is heavy, and Eggsy can spare the brainspace to figure that’s fuckin’ wrong, now, ain’t it?

Death isn't supposed to fucking hurt.

Every inch of him groans, or else, sure as fuck feels like it, but he doesn’t think he makes a sound. Something in his mouth; his throat—raw. He can’t move, and he can’t be fuckin’ bothered with it, even; his head’s fuzzy. Drugs, he knows. That’s from the drugs.

You don’t get drugs for the pain when you’re fuckin’ dead, and shit, shit it’s all wrong, ain’t it? All wrong, all fuckin’ wrong, and now what, now where’ll he go, what’ll he be, how’ll he do anything and Harry waited but he can’t wait forever, he won’t wait forever, he—

“My boy.”

Eggsy doesn’t think he’s even able to breathe on his own, so it’s strange, to know that he stop breathing all together at the sound of that voice, at the way his heart stumbles in his chest in a way he can trace and parse. It’s probably strange.

It’s relief at a magnitude that ought to blow him straight to bits.

Do dead hearts still beat? Fuck, no, of course they fuckin’ don’t—except, except...

That voice.

“My dear boy, can you hear me?”

It’s only then that Eggsy registers where the weight is heaviest; where the pressure around his lungs is nothing compared to that around his wrist, testing a pulse that’s only in his head, now—can only ever be in his head again because Harry’s voice is everything, that the whorls on the fingertips Eggsy feels against the bones of his hands belong to one man, one touch, one soul long fled of this world.

Thank god.

“Oh, Eggsy,” that voice, that perfect voice that Eggsy can feel in his veins, replacing dried-up blood in a way that Eggsy wonders—if the living knew it—if they’d ever fear death again; that voice barely had to breathe his name for Eggsy to fall into the shape it makes of all he is, of who and what and where and why he ever lived, dared to die, and carries on into whatever follows, Harry’s hand in his hand.

Harry, impossibly, at his side.

“Eggsy, if you can hear me,” and it’s just there that Eggsy feels the coolness in that voice that fills his shriveled veins, that beats wardrums and terror, somehow—beyond reason, but isn’t all of this, isn’t everything; “Eggsy, if you can understand, just squeeze my hand, darling. Just a brush of a thumb, love, whatever you can manage, anything—”

Eggsy’s body—what passes for a body, which is maybe more than he gave credit for, even as Harry looked so solid, before the end; Eggsy’s body doesn’t learn much from life to course-correct in death: it moves, it does, before he thinks on it—without instruction.

His thumb twitches, and Harry stills for having felt it.

The breath that serves as blood in this strange afterworld goes warm; flutters like the wings of a fledgling dove, something precious and profound for all that it’s fleeting, and small.

“Eggsy,” Harry sighs out, and maybe it’s his imagination, or the transition from the bright world to the dark, but Eggsy could swear that he feels the brush of something soft, the tickle of a strand of hair from a bowed head, maybe, just so. “Oh, thank god.”

And yeah: that’s a sentiment Eggsy can relate to. That’s a gratitude that Eggsy can’t contain; lets bleed from him in what he can only imagine, could he open his eyes to see it, would be pure, effervescent life.

“Rest, darling,” Harry murmurs, so close to his ear. “You're here, and you're safe, and you need peace and quiet now. Just sleep, dearest,” and maybe those are just words so close to take a shape, or maybe they’re lips; Eggsy cannot tell.

Eggsy thinks they both throw heat through his limbs just the very same.

“I'll be here,” Harry vows, lips at Eggsy knuckles now, hot and pursed and real, somehow, beyond what Eggsy thought it knew to be real, and to be less.

“Nothing in the world could keep me from being right here.”

And Eggsy believes it, for better or worse. He fucking believes it.

So he lets himself drift.

_________________________________

“Eggsy.”

Eggsy’s breath hitches, and he realizes that while his throat is raw, there’s nothing in it. The function of his lungs is his own.

Does he have to breathe, as a ghost? Is it just like, muscle memory?

He bites down a moan, because even through closed lids he can tell the world—or whatever passes for a world, here—is too fucking bright, and apparently he was wrong: you can still hurt, when you’re dead.

Joy of motherfuckin’ joys.

“Eggsy, come now, boy,” and that’s not the voice Eggsy’s really expecting to hear, and it takes him a moment to even think to place it; “you're not fooling anyone.”

He starts to pick up other sounds as he registers the voice as not-Harry, as he seeks out Harry’s sounds and Harry’s scents and Harry’s presence on whatever plane they occupy like the drowning seek surface: there are whirs, and beeps, and he can tell that something’s not right, and the beeping gets louder, shriller, faster, and fuck, fuck, dead hearts don’t beat—

“Galahad..”

The world freezes; Eggsy freezes. The name hits him like a bullet, like a reset. His eyes crack open: make the decision before he does. Rote.

“There he is. Can you open your eyes a bit more for me for me, lad?”

Merlin, of course. Merlin.

But where the fuck is Harry?

The warmth of Harry’s breath and voice and being is gone from Eggsy’s body, no long deigns to course through Eggsy veins and it leaves him empty, hollowed out with dull blades with nothing left to bleed, good god—it’s torture like he’s never known it. He hates it.

If this is death, he wants whatever’s after. If this is life—

Eggsy feels the rise of bile against the already burnt surface of his throat.

“Just a bit,” Merlin urges, and Eggsy snaps back to that conversation only in part: eyes. Right. “We've turned the lights down. I won't lie and say it won't sting but it'll be just a moment, and you're on something a hell of a lot better than paracetamol, I promise you that. I won't ask it again for as long as I can manage, I swear it to you.”

No, Eggsy thinks, and this time the moan is a real thing, it’s a sound that is heard and it’s agony to tear from his lips but it comes, more rumble than whimper, though it feels as if it should emerge the other way-round, because no, no, no, this is the living, this is without-Harry, this is everything wrong in the world and he hurts, except hurt isn’t even a word he can comprehend for just how much everything aches in him, just how much he is drained of what it means to be alive so why is he here, why is he alone—

“Eggsy.”

It’s water on his tongue and a hand around his heart that squeezes, but only tenderly, only enough to make it move heat again, to move that voice again through withered veins: Harry.

Eggsy’s bones fail him as all the pain recedes, as everything recedes to be replaced, held up by all that Harry is: still at his side.

Still here.

“If you can, please,” Harry asks, and Eggsy only gets a a second to appreciate Harry’s touch on his hand once more before it’s moved, before it cups Eggsy’s cheek. “Dear heart, please try.”

“Harry,” Eggsy sighs, moans now in a way that is absolutely more of a whimper, no doubt to it as he leans into that touch. “Oh fuck, Harry.”

“Eggsy, he needs to look,” and Harry’s tone is apologetic in a way that Eggsy doesn’t understand, but he opens his eyes, and yes, it hurts. Fuck all, but it hurts.

But Harry’s hand doesn’t leave him, and Merlin looks only around where Harry’s touch claims him first.

“That's wonderful,” Merlin murmurs, just as soothing as he clasps a hand around Eggsy’s on the bed. “Wonderful, Eggsy. Well done, lad,” he pats a broad palm against Eggsy’s still knuckles. “Go back to sleep.”

And Eggsy will, he will, except none of it makes sense. None of it makes sense, Harry here, and Eggsy, and Merlin too; unless—

Oh.

“How?” Eggsy rasps, eyes rapidly losing the battle to remain open; long forgone on the trial of focusing on anything, making clarity of the sensations and the sights.

“Hmm?” Merlin hums the questions from close to the door.

“How did it happen?,” Eggsy’s voice is nearly spent, so he goes for direct. It may be his only chance, and he’d rather know and set that beast to rest than wonder. “How'd we lose you?”

There is a pause, a great silence, and if not for his knowledge of Harry’s touch against his skin, Eggsy would have thought that he’s already drifted, but no.

No, a response comes in time.

“I,” Merlin’s swallow is audible, and his concern is palpable across the way. “I don't understand.”

Harry’s touch is closer, warmer somehow, and Eggsy falls into it, ready to surrender to the dark.

“I think I do,” Harry breathes, voice cracking. “God.”

“Merlin,” Eggsy slurs, feeling compelled to say at least this much, just in case. He doesn’t know what happens, where they all end up in the end.

“I'm sorry,” he manages, soft and almost lost. “Whatever it was, I,” his breath is growing laboured, now; he’s so fuckin’ tired.

“Whatever it was, probably you deserved better.”

He loses himself for a moment, for the cost of so many words at once, but surfaces briefly to the steady stroking of Harry’s hand against the light hairs on his skin.

“Sorry, Harry,” Eggsy breathes; he doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, precisely, but he does know that he means it.

“You've exhausted yourself, sweetheart,” Harry breathes out, gentle and rhythmic and more of a heartbeat, more life-giving in this afterlife than anything Eggsy’s every known.

“Sleep now,” he murmurs; “I will not leave your side.”

Eggsy doesn’t have to be told twice.

_________________________________

Eggsy feels eyes on him as he comes to. He doesn’t bother sussing out what it means to come to—where or what he comes to, like this, here.

So really, he just feels eyes on him, and the softness in his veins, the fullness where he’s known what nothing felt like for far too long—and he almost smiles.

He smiles as much as he can before it hurts, which in his book is good e-fucking-nough.

“Harry,” he sighs—spent and sore and heartbroken and ready to be fixed by the only man who was ever gonna manage. “Fuck, Harry.”

He eases his eyes open; it’s dark, and he’s grateful. Harry’s eyes glint, and he’s exquisite.

“You stayed.”

Harry’s smile is tight, and the glint in Harry’s eyes, Eggsy starts to see now, is more than just a trick of the light as he rasps:

“Of course I did, you magnificent fool.”

“No, I,” Eggsy looks away, stares at their entwined hands in wonder, not just at the fact of them, but the rightness. A question to world about how the hell it could turn before this, right here, just them.

“Not just now,” Eggsy starts to protest, his voice showing more staying power, even if it’s small. “I mean…”

“Eggsy,” Harry’s hand twines to the back of Eggsy’s neck, so gentle, and it’s only then that Eggsy remembered: the neck was where Harry held him, before. Kept his blood in him, before: blood that didn’t mean a thing, compared to Harry.

If Eggsy’s real goddamn honest, he’d take Harry in his veins any day. No content.

“Eggsy, would you permit me…” and Harry gestures more than asks, and Eggsy doesn’t quite understand save for the truth that Harry could ask him to slit his own throat and he might only think twice of it, now, because he knows what it means to lose, and he knows what it means to live past it, and his views on the two states of being are much different, now, having felt their cost in the flesh.

So when Harry gently raises himself, positions himself behind Eggsy and eases Eggsy back against him, a pillow and a safety and a given and a balm all at once: when Harry places himself against Eggsy, his heart pressed up to Eggsy’s spine, it is the world.

No, fuck: it’s more’n the fuckin’ world ever dared to try an’ be.

“Harry. God. You're…”

“Shh,” Harry’s voice, Harry’s breath in his hair is something Eggsy doesn’t have words for. Even posh people with their fancy vocabularies don’t have words, not for this. Words don’t exist for this. “Have I hurt you?”

It’s only them that Eggsy realises the noises he’s making for the solid comfort of Harry at his back; he leans in further, because shame’s a wasted thing in life, and after, he figures, it’s even more useless.

“No,” he breathes out, and it feels like maybe that single exhale holds the world entire; let’s it go, and gladly, too. “No.”

“I realise, now,” Harry whispers to him, after a silence; after long moments where Eggsy lets his body ride the waves of Harry’s chest rising, and falling beneath him. “I understand.”

Harry’s voice is sad, and it hurts where Eggsy thought maybe the hurt would fade, but it’s not.

Maybe it just doesn’t.

Eggsy can be okay with that, though. Even this hurt, all through his body, and even in his heart for the hurt in Harry’s own, evident, so fuckin’ clear in his voice: even that, Eggsy can handle and hold.

It’s better, it’s so much better, because Harry’s here, and that’s all he wants.

“Do you know who I am?”

The question shakes Eggsy from his own head, out of fuck knows where it comes.

“Of course I know who y’are.”

The hell kind of question—

“Allow me to rephrase,” Harry’s voice is low and steady, and it rumbles through through Eggsy’s body, and somehow, despite everything, speaks ease to him. Speaks solid and unwavering support.

"Do you know what I am?

Eggsy sighs. If Harry’ll stay, and hold him up, he thinks he can say it all: god’s-honest truth and that shit.

“I thought a ghost, at first,” he confesses, tiny and foolish for it. “But,” he swallows, because maybe it’s no less absurd to say any more.

“An angel, maybe,” he finally settles with, because that’s the closest he can say. “A blessing when I didn't think blessings really existed. A hand to hold,” he doesn’t have to reach for Harry’s hand to find his own, to prove those words with skin on skin, with Eggsy lifting that hand this time to his lips, and breathing through the gaps in the knuckles like the world’s ending, and that’s all there is.

“A soul, that was yours and mine at once?” Eggsy doesn’t mean to ask, except he does, because nothing makes sense, but everything makes sense because there is Harry, and he can feel him, can feel his heartbeat at his back, and it’s stronger than Eggsy’s ever felt a thing to be, and faster even than Eggsy’s own, and Eggsy doesn’t understand but Harry’s hand is close enough to kiss and, and, and—

“Fuck,” Eggsy hisses, doesn’t know where the words came from. Doesn’t know how to close himself back up after breaking wide open. “Fuck, I…”

“The painkillers are very effective,” Harry soothes, low enough to be almost toneless. “Don't fret.”

Eggsy breathes deep, and damn well tries.

“But Eggsy,” Harry speaks, and Eggsy stumbles in his own breath, his own chest when Harry voice comes out thick with hate, with failing: all aimed at Harry’s own self.

It blindsides Eggsy entirely, and for all that Harry’s chest rises and falls under him, Eggsy cannot breathe for it. Cannot fucking breathe through the way it presses down.

“Oh, my dear, dear Eggsy. You possess a strength beyond my ken,” Harry presses a kiss to the top of Eggsy’s head. “You were born for this, perhaps too well. Your heart, this beautiful marvel,” and a hand slides to rest over it where it trembles, reaching and racing and aching for the way that Harry’s voice just sears.

“And you feel deeper than is wise or reasonable, and yet you hide it so well. You keep it so close, and when it hurts, oh, my dear,” Harry bows his head into the crook of Eggsy’s neck; “you show the world not a hint, and so the poison leeches inward. You suffer, and no one sees. And where you do trust, so sparingly, where you've been taught that trusting is a gamble so rarely worth risking, you had no one.”

And there, Harry’s voice breaks entirely. Harry’s voice is drowned in a sorrow that falls wet against Eggsy’s shoulder:

“You thought you were alone.”

And the hate, the oppressive hate too big and full of rage: it’s too much. It’s too much to watch Harry wade through, and Eggsy won’t have it.

He can’t stand it.

“But,” he protests, shakes his head gently, mindful of the still-tender, inexplicable pull of skin where his carotid had claimed his life where it sliced open like paper under pressure; but shakes his head nonetheless to catch Harry’s cheek at an awkward angle, to press lips there like a promise.

“But I wasn't. You was here. You didn't leave. You, you,” Eggsy falters, because the fact still takes him, and shakes him, and leaves him unsteady:

“You didn't leave.”

Harry says nothing, nothing at all, but Eggsy feels him tremble; feels his skin grow ever more slick with the salt of Harry’s silent grief.

“Harry, what,” Eggsy tries to turn, but it burns in his neck, and besides: Harry grip upon him tightens, keeps his still as he grates out: “what is it?”

“I'm,” Harry starts, stammers, and that’s maybe the first clue that the world, this world, this other-place is crumbling: because Harry Hart stammers.

“I’m so sorry, love,” he breathes, pressed, buried in the wrinkles at the crease of Eggsy’s skin. “That I didn't see. That I wasn't here, I wasn't here for you.” Harry’s breath, Harry’s voice catches, rips open at the seams.

“I thought I was giving you space,” he says, fast, frantic—disarrayed in a way that frightens Eggsy, if he’s honest: it’s so goddamn raw.

“You had every right to be angry,” Harry confesses, reasons. “To dismiss me, to ignore me. You followed orders, carried out missions without fail—the quintessential agent,” the smile in Harry's voice is a bitter thing that makes Eggsy wonder is the after took them downward, rather than upward, if he believes in either direction, of the destinations whence they lead.

“A credit to the name,” Harry whispers, rungs fingers through Eggsy’s hair and kisses the place behind his ear more as an accident of words than a motion of intent. “More than I dreamed for you, let alone ever managed for myself.”

He shakes his head again, smears tears and the open wet line of his parted lips, gasping, into Eggsy skin anew.

“On the outside, you had detached,” Harry exhales, shudders. “And while it broke my heart, how could I come to you, push you before you were ready, if you were ever going to be, if I'd ever be lucky to so much as speak to you in candor, in friendship again, if nothing else, I…”

Harry trails, and Eggsy finds that he’s breathing as heavy, now, as Harry is, and he lets himself calm as Harry does in the quiet that is only broken by the work of lungs, by the trying and the failing and the trying anew to find solid ground between them, and Eggsy doesn’t understand anything, really. Maybe he never did.

“I deserved the cold shoulder,” Harry finally starts again, voice hoarse. “Your disdain.” And Eggsy wants to tell him no, not ever, but his own voice fails him.

“I'd more than earned it,” Harry nods into Eggsy’s shoulder; “and you more than deserved whatever it was you needed to process it. To whatever end. And I was, I was trying to be sure I didn't push, didn't let all that I wished, that I wanted and felt stain you any further, hurt you any deeper than I'd already done, than I'd already managed to break beyond repairing, I—”

Harry’s breathing falters, and he chokes on his words, and Eggsy doesn’t know this Harry, doesn’t know this breaking in him: never wants to learn it close enough to say he knows.

No.

“Harry?”

And the question in Eggsy’s voice, or maybe the horror, or the fear: it cracks something between them, almost audible, violent—Harry’s hands gather Eggy’s and bends one a touch awkward back to press to Harry’s chest, guides the other to rest on Eggsy’s own, and he leads them as they breathe, and breathe, and breathe.

And then he speaks.

“Real, Eggsy,” he murmurs against Eggsy temple, into Eggsy’s heart beneath their hands. “Real, and here, and alive. The both of us.”

And the world breaks open all over again, while Eggsy teeters, only just threatening to follow suit.

“Listen,” Harry instructus it, begs it, commands just as he pleads. “Feel it. Believe it, Eggsy,” he leans, and presses gently lips to the corner of Eggsy’s mouth as he forms the words:

“Oh, my Eggsy. Believe it.”

And there is a part of Eggsy that wants to, because it makes sense. It takes the hurt, and the way everything is full of solid, inescapable feeling and puts it to rights; and Eggsy only ever wanted to be with Harry, wanted to be where Harry was because Harry was purpose, and potential, and all that Eggsy could be and have and know—Harry had shown him what it meant to feel in his heart, rather than just to note its beat for the run, or the chase, or the fear. Harry made him feel heat inside that muscle sweeter than any burn in his legs. Harry made him want, and believe that maybe he could grown into a person, a thing deserving of being wanted in return, and it was Harry, always. Harry was what love was about, more likely than anything else.

And Eggsy wants to believe, with that heart under his hand. He wants.

But Harry.

“Harry, I,” Eggsy rasps, doesn’t bother to try and halt the stream of tears from his eyes. “I watched you, you…”

“You watched,” Harry nods again, aggrieved to the very soul, Eggsy can hear it, can damn near taste it at the back of his tongue. “And god, Eggsy. I would give anything to take those memories, those images from you, the stain of that kind of horror from him, and I can never apologise enough to wash it clean.”

“No, Harry,” Eggsy shakes his head, back and forth to try and find a rut he can settle into, can hide in, because fuck what he saw in the Church, it was after, it was after—

“You,” Eggsy swallows, because words are failing him, and his voice is thin like smoke, like haze before dawn when no dawn will ever come, was never going to come again because there was so much red and there was so much loss and his heart send agony through his body for every second he lived where Harry didn’t, and there was only so much ignoring a body could do, only so much...

“How? I don't, you weren't, the gun—”

Harry’s lips are at the nape of Eggsy’s neck, now, when he asks without a hint of irony, or humor, or wit:

“Would you buy the line that, well, damn it all, it's just not that kind of movie?”

Eggsy gasps around not a laugh, but a sob, and it’s fitting; Harry’s hold around him wraps so that both of Harry’s hands rest upon his chest, now, and pull him in close.

“The glass in the lenses is bulletproof. The frames are similarly impact-resistant,” Harry intones, before he sighs. “However, at that proximity, it was the fact that the actual trajectory was a mathematical anomaly.”

“So,” Eggsy breathes out, slow so as not to fall apart. “Bona fide miracle.” He ducks his chin so that he can feel Harry’s skin, warm, against his mouth.

“Bona fide fucking miracle.”

“I reserve that term for the truly inexplicable.” And oh, there’s his Harry. The dry tone, the pedantic fuckery: oh, but if anything could bring Eggsy back to life, it’s this

“In this case, however,” Harry carries on, while Eggsy’s quiet remembering what it means to taste the air; “Valentine was debilitatingly hemophobic and a shit shot, all at once. A combination that worked rather improbably in my favour.”

They’re quiet, for a second. Many seconds. Eggsy countr Harry’s heartbeats—faster, then slower, then faster again; unpredictable. So human. So...

“You're,” Eggsy breathes, shaky. “You're real.”

“I am,” Harry says it, like the revelation of the universe itself. “A fact I feel compelled to ensure you understand, through and utterly through,” he says, hesitance seeping into that certainty, now, in a way Eggsy doesn’t approve of, not one bit; “before you say a thing that you may not have wished to say, considering the consequen—”

“I love you.”

Eggsy’s still counting Harry’s heartbeat when he says it, too; he loses count fast as fuck, after the words sink in.

“God, oh fuck, fuck Harry,” Eggsy trembles, stumbles over words that he’s wanted to say, needed to say for what feels like forever, for how big it is, how much of himself is wrapped up in those simple, perfect words, the only words.

“I love you. I'm in fucking love with you, arse over tits, and it's fucking useless, ain't it, cause you don't know what you've got til it's gone and then you were gone and I felt like I was dying a little more every day and I, I couldn't show it, couldn't help it, couldn't do nothin’, and I, I—”

“But I'm not gone,” Harry voice is a soft breeze, a bastion of what it means to be put to rights, to be pieced together with a care unimaginable, made better after breaking, somehow: impossibility incarnate. “I'm not gone, darling.”

And oh. Oh. Harry.

Harry. Darling.

“What is it?” Harry’s tone shifts on the head of a fucking pin, all concern, and it’s only then that Eggsy realises that he’s shaking. “Are you alright, what hurts—”

“Nothing,” Eggsy huffs, a laugh now, even as he does sob. “Nothing, you,” he hiccoughs, just a little as he exhales, breathless: “darling.”

He can feel the question in Harry’s gaze upon him, even before he turns to look.

“You called me darling.”

Harry frowns, just a bit. “Do you object? I'll stop, I—”

“Please,” Eggsy interrupts, reaches; cups Harry’s face and looks him straight on in a way that he hasn’t allowed himself, hasn’t trusted himself, wouldn’t have survived.

“Don't stop,” he breathes. “Don't ever stop.”

Harry’s eyes bore into him, flick down to his mouth before he stare straight into all the things in Eggsy eyes he cannot say; all the places those eyes lead that don’t have names, that don’t fit words.

“Will you?”

Harry’s face is slack, perhaps with wonder; Eggsy hopes that’s what it is. “Will I?”

Eggsy looks down, a bit embarrassed when he answers: “Ever stop.”

Harry’s fingertips nudge Eggsy’s eyes back to his own from the tip of Eggsy’s chin. “Not until you wish me to.”

And somehow, that’s precisely when it hits him. All these months. All this time. All this pain.

“You're alive.” Eggsy says it, tastes it, tests it against the air. “You, you're alive. You're here. Oh god.”

The tears fall, still unbidden, but now unceasing.

“You're here,” Eggsy marvels, as Harry slowly manuevers them to lean, face to face as Eggsy’s hands on Harry’s cheeks frame him, hold him, keep him: “Don't you ever fucking stop.”

And Eggsy’s pretty sure he leans in first, but he doesn’t give a damn either way, because they taste of tears and hope between them, and that flavour between might be what people mean when they say heaven, or bliss,.

“I love you,” Eggsy breathes in between their not-quite-parted lips, and so he feels Harry’s smile as it grows, and he exhales in kind:

“A miracle.”

Eggsy raises an eyebrow, though the question in it, the sharpness of it is undoubtedly damped by the sniffle that follows.

“You love me,” Harry answers, lost a little to the revelation of that simple fact. “That is a miracle worthy of the name.”

And Eggsy, then, takes the moment to marvel in kind: where surviving beyond all possibility and prayer, where tell the reaper to fuck right off today doesn’t merit, love—Eggsy’s love—fits the bill.

Goddamn.

“Close your eyes,” Harry whispers, curls Eggsy’s body into his own. “You still need rest.”

Eggsy grasps, clings though there’s no imminent threat. “Stay.”

“I will,” Harry vows without complaint, without a second thought. “Oh, dear, dear heart of mine, I will.”

And yeah, okay. Eggsy sees it, now. He gets it.

That—this, here—really is the miracle.

Full stop.