Chapter Text
you are my sweetest downfall
i loved you first, i loved you first
beneath the stars came fallin' on our heads
but they're just old light, they're just old light
your hair was long when we first met
At thirty, Gary (Eggsy) Unwin had settled into a routine. When home, he woke up every morning just before dawn, and he would go out running with J.B., who at six-verging-on-seven was still quite robust and energetic, and they would jog around the quiet streets of early morning London in the grey half-light of false dawn until they returned home to the mews, the houses just being lit up cream and gold by the sun cresting the horizon, where Eggsy would go upstairs to wake up his boyfriend.
Harry Hart at sixty was much the same as Harry Hart at fifty-four, plus the addition of migraines, the need for a prescription in his standard Kingsman-issue glasses, and his left knee starting to go shoddy. He was usually up by the time Eggsy climbed the stairs, and while Eggsy stripped his jogging clothes into the laundry basket Harry would shuffle blearily out of bed, tie on his house coat, and then—without fail—turn to go into the loo to wash up before they got into the shower and walk face-first into the door, upon which he would curse “Bloody buggering fuck,” under his breath, and get the knob on the second try.
It was remarkably domestic, for how it had all started. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
This particular morning, a fine crisp one in early September, Harry came down the stairs at half-past seven looking his usual amount of early-morning grumpy and leaned over to brush a kiss across Eggsy’s temple before he settled himself with a quiet oof of effort into his seat at the breakfast table. He stretched his long legs out underneath it, and smiled when Eggsy sat a plate of toast and jam down in front of him.
“This is that horrendous whole grain stuff, isn’t it?” Harry asked, picking up one of the slices of toast and making a po-face, and Eggsy snorted and ignored him, coming over with his extremely grown-up bowl of Coco Pops.
“Merlin’s showed me your cholesterol numbers. The least you can do is eat bloody whole grain, Harry.” The older man made a very unhappy noise in the back of his throat but sadly ate his toast anyway, their ankles pressed together under the table as Eggsy scrolled his news feed on his phone and Harry read the morning paper on his tablet. “Looks like that new Emma Thompson movie is getting good reviews,” Eggsy said, around a spoonful of cereal. “You want to try and see it some evening?”
“Mmm,” Harry said, in assent, and continued reading his paper, focused on far more concrete portions of the news cycle than Eggsy’s entertainment-based news enjoyment. He was so focused, in fact, that as Eggsy continued speaking, he didn’t react the way he usually would have.
“We could go tonight,” the younger man continued, his tone light and conversational. “After we go out to dinner, since I know neither of us has an assignment and Merlin’s Handler for the evening, so you won’t have to sit the chair.”
“Where were you thinking of going?” Harry asked, still not looking up, his freshly-slicked greying brown hair still too stiff from his pomade to be slipping down into his eyes from his neck-bent angle of reading.
“Veeraswamy, if you’re up for it. It’s been a while since we had Indian, yeah?” Harry nodded, absently, and scrolled down his tablet. “My treat.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Harry murmured, tilting his head to the side slightly like he did when very focused. Eggsy took the opportunity while he had it, chasing the opening that would fade as soon as Harry wasn’t engrossed in whatever news story he was studiously reading, and took the metaphorical bull by its horns.
“’Course I do, Harry.” Eggsy smiled. “It’s your birthday, innit? Gotta spot you on your birthday.”
Harry Hart, international gentleman super spy, grown man of sixty years, who could take down forty people in three minutes and knew more languages and ways to kill someone than Eggsy could ever dream of knowing froze, stock-still, like a deer in the headlights of a trolley coming on so fast that the inevitable splattering was going to be horrifying, but quick. He stopped, hand still in mid-scroll, shoulders jumped in surprise, and didn’t breathe.
Then, very slowly, he looked up. Stared at Eggsy with his one good eye, which had the unique ability to be able to make Harry’s stare about ten times as effective for unnerving people because he got across two eyes worth of unimpressed glare out of one, and frowned, the lines around his mouth downturning in a pinch. “Eggsy,” Harry said, in his Arthur voice, which was about as friendly as a set of knives, “How did you know my birthday was today?”
“Funny you ask that,” Eggsy smiled disarmingly, trying to do his best to deflect the intense scrutiny on his boyfriend’s face, “See, you only turn sixty once and Merlin agreed that we didn’t want to let you avoid it this year, had to do something nice—“
“Merlin?” Harry interrupted, his lips pursed so tight they were turning white. “Of course he did, the bastard—“
“Harry, it’s your birthday, ‘course he was gonna fucking tell me, since you kept avoiding the damn question!” Eggsy dropped his spoon into his cereal with a clatter, and now he was scowling too, his voice raising in counterpoint with Harry’s. “We’ve been together nearly three years and living together for two of them—frankly, if I didn’t know you quite as well I’d be insulted you couldn’t tell me yourself!”
“I didn’t want you to know!” Harry’s voice came out higher than usual, indignant. “And he should have bloody well listened to me when I told him that!”
“Why?” Eggsy shook his head slightly, brow furrowed. “What was you afraid of, Harry? That I was going to get you something?”
“Yes,” Harry responded immediately, and then, “Well, no. But that’s not the issue at hand, Eggsy. I didn’t want you to know and Merlin told you anyway and now you’re planning some kind of a celebration and I don’t want that, especially not from you, not this year, not when I’m—“ Harry cut himself off, his voice ending in an abrupt dead line, and Eggsy paused, looking at him, as Harry’s handsome face shifted quickly through several expressions before settling on something closed-off and reluctant.
“Harry?” Eggsy prompted, quietly, all the fight gone out of him. “Love?”
“Nothing,” Harry said, his voice laced with displeasure and his tone brokering no more questions, as he got up and put his empty plate in the sink for later, tossing the remaining crust to J.B. “We’d better go or we’ll be late for the morning meeting.”
“Harry, the meeting can’t start without you and we’re almost always bloody late,” Eggsy put in, half-standing. “What’s going on, you can talk to me, that’s what this whole thing is for—“ them, this relationship, living together, and Harry’s shoulders snapped to a thin, razor-tight line.
“No, I bloody well can’t talk to you about it, because the entire issue is you,” Harry said, and Eggsy froze, staring at him with hurt eyes, bright green and soft at the edges as his mouth twisted and turned in. Harry almost immediately shifted, slightly, his eyes softening with guilt. “Eggsy, I didn’t mean that, I’m—“
“Harry?” Eggsy voice almost cracked. “Harry—You didn’t mean that—“
“No,” the older man said, at last, straightening his coat. “But I don’t want to—we aren’t speaking about it.”
“Harry are you having a fucking domestic with me over your fucking birthday on your fucking birthday?” Eggsy was staring at him with his expression a mix of wordless anger, disappointment, and hurt. Harry’s expression looked, abruptly for a single moment, like he’d just been slapped.
“Yes,” said Harry Hart, Harry Prim Pompous Stuck Up Arsehole Couldn’t Be Happy For Ten Minutes In My Life If I Tried Hart, once he had his traitorous expression back under control. His voice, however, betrayed him—it quavered, shook, shattered. “We bloody well are.” He jerked his chin up slightly, and scowled. “I’ll see you at the office.”
He left the kitchen, and the house, so fast that Eggsy couldn’t even think of anything to say. He just stood there, one hand splayed on the breakfast table, and only after the sounds of their fight had quit ringing against the walls did he realise that Harry had left his tablet on the table.
Here was the upside to working with rather a lot of world-class spies: you always knew that as long as you were on the same side, basically nothing could happen to you.
Here was the downside: they’re fucking silent.
When the door to his office slammed open so hard that it flew wide to hit the wall (and if the wall hadn’t been metal, the door would’ve dented it) with a loud thud and then a wham and the quiet screech of metal on metal, Merlin jumped so suddenly that he almost dropped the disassembled laptop he was holding.
“I am going to fucking kill you,” said Harry Hart, who looked like he had just sprinted there—which wasn’t wrong, actually, as he had left his house, stomped his way to the shop, and then stormed his way straight to the tube out to the estate, where he had raged through the halls and people had gotten out of his way rather than be stepped on, and here he was. Looking like fury incarnate, with his hair mussed, his cheeks slightly flushed in anger, his lips a thin furious line, and his one good eye blazing.
“I haven’t even done anything yet today!” Merlin replied, indignant. “It’s not even bloody nine in the morning!” Harry pointed one finger at him, eyes narrowed, and spat,
“You told Eggsy when my bloody birthday was.” He slammed the door behind him, then, and the noise of it crashing shut was almost deafening as it echoed on the sheer modern metal and concrete room. “I cannot fucking believe you. After all these years and you went behind my back and did this.”
“Harry, you’re acting like I propositioned him to marry me, not that I told your boyfriend of three years when your bloody birthday was!” Merlin paused, then, as he realised the state of Harry’s disarray, and slowly lowered his hands, setting the tablet back out on his desk. “Harry...did you come without Eggsy?”
“Of course I did!” Harry was losing control now, the volume of his voice rising from quiet, controlled conversational toward outright shouting very, very quickly. “He has no business knowing my birthday or being involved in this at all!”
“Harry,” Merlin replied, face deadpan, “Are you listening to any of the words that are coming out of your mouth, because I’m pretty sure you just told me your boyfriend doesn’t need to know your birthday, when he quite frankly, despite you being a complete fucking arsehole, worships the bloody ground that you walk on, and all he wants to do is treat you to a bloody good birthday?” Harry stared at him, cheeks still bright, opened his mouth, closed it again, huffed, crossed his arms, shook his head, opened and closed his mouth a few more times before he finally managed,
“Well...when you put it that way. I. Suppose I may have overreacted at him, considering that Eggsy did nothing wrong aside from love me, but you,” Harry had gotten all of his righteous fury back despite his momentary lapse back into being a normal fucking human being, and he rounded on Merlin, pointing accusatorially at his chest, “You promised me you wouldn’t tell him.”
“I did no such bloody thing. You told me not to tell him and I grunted, Harry. In what court of law has that ever been a verbally binding agreement to the positive?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Harry said, matter-of-factly, and walked straight at Merlin, who did the most logical and intelligent thing he could in that situation: he hopped over his desk and put it between him and Harry.
“I think this is a bit of an overreaction,” Merlin replied, hastily edging around the desk to keep it between him and Harry no matter what. “You’re sixty, isn’t part of that being mature and not brutally murdering your best friend for not being as much of a massive fucking wanker as you are?”
“Not today it bloody isn’t,” Harry replied, and Merlin ducked the other man swiping at him.
“Harry, for Christ’s fucking sake, will you just calm down?”
“No,” Harry swiped again, and this time Merlin blocked the strike and slapped his hand away.
“Why are you so upset about this anyway?” Merlin asked, skidding around the side of the desk as Harry misjudged his depth perception to try and grab Merlin’s lapels. “I can think of at least eight other things I’ve done this week you should have your knickers in a twist about but this wasn’t one of them!”
“Because!” Harry shouted, finally losing what little tenuous control he had left on his emotions, his lips a thin, white line, “Because I’m sixty fucking years old and Eggsy is thirty and quite frankly, I don’t want to be reminded even more of the fact that if he stays with me, he’s going to end up caring for some mindless gibbering invalid when the rest of my head goes and I end up spending the rest of my fucking life in a nappy. He can’t marry someone like that!” He shouted it, and as soon as he finished speaking, he let out a few quick breaths, his eyes closed, and he pressed one hand to his forehead, shoulders slumping with exhaustion now that he had finally gotten it out.
“Oh, Harry...you and I both know that isn’t going to happen,” Merlin said, quietly, shifting around the desk now that Harry had blown off the worst of his steam, and set a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Harry, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but you’re still yourself. Having a disability doesn’t make you a disability. Everyone forgets things as they get older.” Harry’s dark brown gaze was monocular, disarming, and stony, but Merlin had known him for long enough that Harry glaring at him was about as effective as a kitten trying to bite you—there were teeth, but they weren’t yet very good at being teeth.
“I don’t want him to feel obligated,” Harry said, quietly. Merlin pulled him into a one-armed hug.
“Have you ever known Eggsy Unwin to not make himself completely fucking transparent the minute he was unhappy with something?”
“Put like that,” Harry hesitated, “No.”
“My point precisely. Harry, if he didn’t want to change your damn nappy he’d tell you. Roxy’s already told me the minute I can’t go to the loo by myself anymore she’s putting me in a home, and I think Eggsy’d be just about as honest.”
“You have a fair point,” Harry murmured, and sometimes, Merlin wished for the pre-trauma Harry Hart back—funny, but snide, prickly and difficult but so very well balanced, with the tenacity and the wit and the unbreakable iron-clad will and self control of a god, but that Harry had survived so much to be the Harry they had now, who worried so much about so many things, and was just categorically completely incapable of being happy.
They were all very different people, after V-Day.
“Are you going to stop blubbering on my shoulder now?” Merlin asked, and Harry replied immediately,
“I am not blubbering,” and he pulled away, good eye dry, and took a few deep breaths. “I suppose I’d best apologise to Eggsy before he decides I’m a completely irredeemable tosser.”
“I think he knows that much at this point,” Merlin said, in his best reassuring voice, and Harry stepped on his toe out of nothing but pure spite, and left the office significantly more sedately than he had come into it, pressing his hair back into its immaculate styling, armour and walls returning, going back up, closing back off.
Apologising to Eggsy went...not at all well, as it turned out. Mostly because the younger man avoided him for most of the entire morning and was sent out to accompany their newest agent in the afternoon, and came back in the evening just about at shop closing time.
Harry met him at the top of the stairs up toward Arthur’s office and for a moment they stared at each other in silence before Harry said, very quietly,
“I’m a great big fucking git,” Eggsy’s face turned into a wan smile before Harry reached out and took his hand, rubbed his thumb over his knuckles. “I’m so sorry we had a row like that. You didn’t need me to shout at you. I quite certainly win ‘Daft Arsehole of the Year.’”
“Again,” Eggsy supplied, and Harry sighed.
“Again.” He hesitated, and squeezed Eggsy’s hand. “Your offer of a movie and dinner was lovely, my dear boy. That is, if it’s still standing.”
“Well, I have to feed you somehow,” Eggsy’s smile morphed into a grin, and he squeezed Harry’s hand. “Seeing as you can’t fucking cook.”
“An old dog can’t learn new tricks,” Harry intoned mirthlessly, because if they were going to be honest about it they might as well be honest and he was honest-to-God a sixty year old man who could not fucking cook to save his life, and Eggsy outright laughed at that.
“That’s a fucking lie and you know it.” Harry smiled, pressed their foreheads together, and sighed.
“I suppose I do know it.”
“Come on,” Eggsy tugged on his hand. “It’s your birthday, ain’t it? Can’t work twenty hours on your birthday unless there’s an emergency, and last I checked we’s in the clear.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Harry said, hopelessly, because now they really were going to have one.
They didn’t have an emergency. The film was lovely, Emma Thompson as wonderful as ever, and curry at dinner was frankly perfect—just the right amount of spice and vegetable together, with some lovely jasmine rice. Afterward, as they walked home holding hands, not really saying much of anything, until Harry broke the silence.
“I’m sorry about this morning.”
“It’s fine,” Eggsy replied, squeezing his hand. “I get it, I think.”
“You do?” Harry looked over at him and Eggsy shrugged, spinning his Rainmaker in his hand.
“You’s private, Harry. ‘S part of who you are, and I’ve always known that.” Eggsy squeezed his hand, smiled. “I wasn’t going to even ask Merlin, since I knew you’d want to tell me on your own, but this was one I couldn’t miss, you know? I love that feeling,” Eggsy’s smile turned wistful, and he moved half a step closer so that he could lean his head on Harry’s shoulder, closed his eyes for a moment, took Harry’s hand in both of his. “I love this. Just us, growing old together. It’s fucking lovely, it is.”
Harry’s throat felt like it was full of lead and cotton and he took several frightened, deep breaths as they reached the front step of their townhouse, and everything from earlier came back to him suddenly and hard like a punch to the stomach, but he locked it up, put it away, and opened the front door with slightly shaking fingers and stepped inside, Eggsy following him. “Harry,” Eggsy said, quietly, as Harry shut the door and leaned against it, breathing, for a moment. “Harry, did I say something wrong—“
“No,” Harry managed, and then, “I.” And “Yes.” He took a few more deep breaths and slowly walked over and sank down to sit on the stairs and pressed his face into his palms and just...breathed, for a moment.
“Harry,” Eggsy sat down next to him, hand on Harry’s bad knee, “This ain’t like you. You hardly seem like yourself.”
“I know,” he said, absolutely miserable. “It’s ridiculous and childish.”
“If something’s wrong, you know you can talk to me about it.” The words his therapist had parroted at him for a year. Harry grunted, and finally uncovered his eyes and sighed and stretched his legs out and looked over at Eggsy, who was watching him, concerned.
“My...darling boy,” Harry said, at last, wetting his lips for a moment as he thought. “That’s the whole problem. That you want to grow old with me. Eggsy, I could not bear to be a burden on you for the rest of your life. Saddling you with someone older, someone who will die long before you do—“
“Not in this line of work, mate,” Eggsy cut in. “You and me both know I could die any fucking time, so don’t pretend otherwise.” Harry sighed, sharply. Eggsy was right, of course.
“Very well. Given that you will live out a happy and healthy live to an appropriate age, I will predecease you significantly. Even should I make it to ninety, which I don’t think is very likely with my health problems, you’ll only be sixty, and still with plenty of life left in you. I don’t want you to spend the golden years of your life, when you should be happy, or raising a family, caring for me. I’m just going to keep getting worse, my love. I’m starting to forget things, and seizures aren’t a good sign. I don’t know how much longer I’ll truly be myself. Even...Merlin thinks that it’s not safe for me to go in the field much longer, with my knee going.” Surgery wasn’t even an option, since it was nerve damage that caused it to be so sluggish. “The thought of you having to care for me, to clean up after me, help me do basic tasks, just...” he trailed off, and reached out to cup Eggsy’s cheek in his hand. “Eggsy, darling, I can’t do that to you. I just can’t. You need to have your own life.”
And Harry wasn’t the only one tying himself in knots about it, either. On Merlin’s birthday, a month earlier, he’d spent the entire afternoon crying helplessly in Harry’s loo, profusely apologising to Mr. Pickle all the while, vomiting into Harry’s toilet while wailing piss-drunk about how he was a horrible boyfriend because here he was sixty years old and now he and Roxy would never have children and even if they did he’d die too damn early for it to be worth it and how soon enough he’d have to take Viagra and he was a horrible boyfriend, and—rinse and repeat. Harry had given him water, occasionally taken away the alcohol, and patted his shoulder and told him he was a good chap.
Harry actually wasn’t sure which one of them was failing at this whole turning-sixty thing more.
“You great daft wanker,” Eggsy said at last in reply, and kissed the bottom of Harry’s palm. “Did you ever think that maybe I don’t mind taking care of you? Yeah, I get tired and cranky sometimes, but so does everyone. And, more importantly—Harry,” Eggsy took both his hands and stared earnestly into his eyes. “Harry, Harry, you cock, did it ever occur to you that, maybe, you are my life? I fucking love you, you disaster, I love you so goddam much. I don’t fucking care, you can’t upset me. I’ve got a sister twenty-three years younger than me, Christ, Harry. Do you know how much bodily refuse I’ve seen? You ain’t gonna upset me if you get old and even more crotchety. I’ll still love your pasty arse anyway, because that’s what love is, Harry. They say in sickness and in health for a reason.” Eggsy squeezed his shoulder, smiled like the sky at daybreak. “Come on, Harry. You done now? You get it?”
“I suppose, but I still don’t understand. I don’t deserve you.” He let Eggsy coax him to his feet and followed the younger man upstairs. “I don’t deserve this. I’ve done nothing today but ruin absolutely bloody everything. Roxy says she’s going to put Merlin in a home and somehow that might be better than you having to take care of me forever. First I completely cocked-up this morning, and now I’ve ruined a perfectly good evening, and you have every right to be furious,”
“I’m not,” Eggsy never was.
“And now I’m rambling and—“
“Harry.” Eggsy turned around on the stairs, still holding tight to Harry’s hand, and he stopped mid-word. “Harry, please. For once in your fucking blessed life will you shut up and come to bed because I have not spent the past three days with my cock in a chastity belt to give you the birthday sex of a fucking lifetime for you to blow it all on you being a prat.”
Harry opened his mouth. Felt his face heat and flush very red.
And closed it again, so hard his teeth clicked. Finally, he managed, “Well, my dear boy, when you put it that way I don’t suppose I can do anything but.”
“Good!” Eggsy grinned. Harry murmured,
“Cheeky.”
They ended up in the bedroom what seemed like an interminably long time later, Eggsy’s fingers knotted into Harry’s hair to try and rip it out of its styling, and Harry just kept making desperate, unconscious noises into his mouth, stripping Eggsy with sure hands that knew just where each button was, just where each place to squeeze was, until Eggsy was pliant and soft and wanting and warm against his mouth.
“This is just what I was talking about,” Eggsy said, breathless against his lips, as Harry finally got his shirt off and pushed both the younger man’s shirt and jacket down onto the floor, where they crumpled in a pile that was badly in need of dry cleaning. Eggsy practically jerked off Harry’s tie, dragged him backwards with it until it slid to the ground and then Eggsy pulled him by his shirt lapels instead, thumbs deftly undoing Harry’s buttons.
“Don’t wrinkle my shirt,” Harry said, and Eggsy laughed into his mouth.
“But mine’s fair game, eh?”
“Of course,” Harry sniffed, shifting to shed his shirt and tossing it, folded in half along with his suit jacket, onto the armchair in the corner of his bedroom before he returned to kissing Eggsy, backed him up the rest of the way against the mattress like he clearly wanted, and slid his hands down the front of Eggsy’s slacks, thumbs rubbing against his hipbones, and the younger man made a quiet, breathy noise into Harry’s mouth, and bit at his lower lip.
“Cheeky,” Eggsy was out of breath, and it was Harry’s turn to laugh, all the stress from earlier not forgotten, and their argument not put aside, but left to lie for a while, and perhaps that was for the best.
It was so rare, for Harry to actually let something go even for just an evening, that there was no doubt in his mind that he needed this.
“Come on, gorgeous,” Eggsy said, sinking back to sit down on the edge of the bed, wrapping his strong hands around Harry’s hipbones. “Let me get that for you, eh?” Harry didn’t stop him, just let the younger man lean forward and undo his button fly with his teeth, Harry’s breath catching in his lungs at the look of it, his heart pounding in his throat. After he did that, Eggsy paused before undoing his belt and pushing his slacks down to add, “Shoes, Harry,” and belatedly, the both of them bent down to take off their shoes, Harry lining his up by the bedside table and Eggsy kicking his somewhere off in the corner, prompting Harry to add, chiding,
“Those are very expensive shoes, Eggsy,” and earned,
“A bit of bouncing ain’t going to harm them,” in return, cheeky as ever, and Harry leaned down and in retribution shoved the younger man down onto the bedspread, flicking his belt open with a clack and then deftly pulling his flies open and sliding his slacks and pants down until they were trapped around Eggsy’s thighs, and he moaned quietly, rocking up against Harry, and Harry gasped in surprise when Eggsy’s cock bumped against his own.
“Christ,” he murmured, shifting back, slid between Eggsy’s legs, and he ran his hands down the inside of the younger man’s thighs, over smooth skin peppered with freckles and moles and, here and there, scars. His lover’s cock was bright red and locked up in a plastic cage and—how had Eggsy remembered his one-time offhand comment, years before?—drooling slightly from the tip. His balls were huge and engorged, and Eggsy was watching him with wide, bright green eyes that were so deep Harry could have fallen into them. “You look...” his mouth was dry, and in lieu of being able to find the proper words for something he was utterly at a loss with, Harry just ran the backs of his fingers over the base of Eggsy’s stomach, to the thick curls at the base of his cock. “Absolutely stunning.”
Eggsy laughed, breathless, and Harry was just utterly transfixed by the sight of him, his cock so red and wanting and denied the very thing it wanted most. “Three days,” Eggsy said, quietly, looking up at Harry from beneath his thick lashes, pink lips damp from their kissing. “Had this on three days for you.” Harry’s fingers at his base shook. They’d last had sex three days prior, and usually, Eggsy had a libido that basically could not be satisfied with anything but constantly rubbing one out in the loo. “It’s been fucking torture, Harry.”
“I can imagine,” his voice came out of his throat tight and deep, and Harry could see the effect that it had on Eggsy, his eyes dilating. “Oh, my darling boy...you were so patient for me, weren’t you?” Eggsy nodded, eyes wide. “What did you do, all that time?”
Eggsy smiled, and it was almost all teeth, and Harry paused and narrowed his eyes slightly because after five years, he knew that look. That was a look that said many things, but it mostly said this: Eggsy was being a pert twat, and he shimmied out of his slacks and pants, soft cock locked up and bouncing against his thighs, and then turned over, and Harry was pretty sure if he’d been a few years older, the sudden rush of blood from his head to his cock would have been enough to possibly cause him a heart attack, because Eggsy had a plug up his arse, black plastic widening his cheeks, and Harry’s low, emphatic murmur of “Fuck,” said worlds for what that did to him. Eggsy looked at him over his shoulder, smiled, and wiggled his arse.
“Had to come up with something, what with my cock off limits. The key’s in your bedstand, by the by, whenever you decide you want me out of it.” Harry’s breath came out of his throat a choked-off whine, and he had to lean over slightly, press his body in a long, hard line up against Eggsy’s, and the younger man made a quiet noise of contentment, before adding,
“Yes, Harry.”
There was a murmur of desperation under Harry’s skin that didn’t seem willing to silence no matter what he did, like all the anxiety and fear and the desperation focused and tangled was just buzzing in his veins, finally quieting and calming into a hum that breathed when he breathed, that moved with him, and that—like him—opened up to Eggsy like a flower to the sun.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Harry murmured reverently, not for the first time, when he pulled the plug out of where it was nestled between Eggsy’s cheeks with a wet pop and the younger man breathed quick and high at the feeling, his fingers clenching tight in Harry’s hair. “Look at you, you gorgeous thing. All wet and open for me.” Eggsy keened, quietly, and nodded, his hair sweat-slicked over his face.
“You fucking bet, fuck, I was so mad at you this morning when we had the row because I went to all this fucking effort and you was too mad to enjoy your birthday,”
“I am enjoying it immensely now,” Harry put in, sliding his fingers up inside Eggsy, who was wide open, and damn, and crooked them to press up against his prostate. He swore, gasped, and clenched his fingers in Harry’s hair. “You fucking gorgeous thing.”
“Harry, Harry, fuck,” Eggsy was edging on toward babbling remarkably quick, his legs drawing up off of the sheets as he shifted his hips up against Harry’s fingers, biting his lower lip into rawness. “Please, Harry, I need you so fucking bad I’ve needed you so bad for days, haven’t come with my cock once, Harry,” it was like every touch was magnified a thousand times for his gorgeous boy, and Harry pressed a kiss against the skin at the juncture of Eggsy’s thigh and hip and worked him open steadily with his fingers. Fingering Eggsy was a pleasure, his boy gloriously gorgeously responsive, and this just made it better, his soft cock flopped up over his stomach and leaking everywhere. “Harry, please, I need, you gotta go harder Harry please Harry,” he was shaking, and Harry shifted slightly, three fingers inside Eggsy to the knuckle, and he pinched Eggsy’s prostate between his fingers and squeezed.
Eggsy shouted when he came, shaking, legs tensed like iron and fingers white-knuckled in Harry’s hair as he licked through the slit of plastic on the chastity belt onto Eggsy’s dripping cockhead, the younger man pulling him closer and desperately crying out, shaking and arching off the bed and vibrating like he was fit to burst out of his skin.
“Harry,” he kept saying the whole time, begging, a litany, a prayer, and Harry proved he was worth that, worth that promise, fingers still squeezing and milking Eggsy through it until he was crying, desperate, shaking, and coming down off of his high, his green eyes wide and wet, and he said, in a voice hoarse from moaning and crying,
“Harry, if you’s going to fuck me like that all night, I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner.”
Harry felt his cheeks heat slightly, and laughed, sheepish, and pressed his face into Eggsy’s thighs, smudging his glasses.
“Couldn’t help myself.”
Eggsy was breathless and wide-open with laughter, and Harry couldn’t begin to think of all the things he wanted to do to him.
Later—after Harry had rimmed Eggsy until he came, crying again—he slid into the younger man with a long, slow breath and they stayed very still for a moment. Eggsy was crouched, pliant and loose-limbed above Harry, his head pressed bonelessly against Harry’s shoulder.
“How’s that?” he asked, quietly, and Eggsy made a quiet noise. He was tired, but so lovely for it, and his balls were drawn up tight and red and wanting. “Good?”
“Yeah,” Eggsy managed, hoarse, one hand fisted white-knuckled in the sheets by Harry’s thigh, the other splayed on the base of the older man’s stomach. “Yeah, ‘s good.” He shifted side to side, his puffy, abused arsehole clenching down on Harry, and a choked-off noise fell out of his mouth, to which Eggsy laughed, breathless. “You just love it when my arse is all sore on you.”
“I can’t deny that,” Harry replied, voice low and strained. “Not at all.” Eggsy was still shifting side to side, but he finally settled himself, comfortable, and Harry leaned forward, kissed his cheek, avoiding his mouth given what his own had been doing recently. “I’m going to take it off,” he murmured into the skin of Eggsy’s jaw, and the younger man nodded, held very still as Harry got the key out of his bedside table and unlocked the band of the belt on Eggsy’s cock, and slowly drew him out, the lovely length of him glistening, wet and wanting. “Oh, Eggsy, look at how lovely you are, my boy. You’re so beautiful, Eggsy.”
“Fuck,” Eggsy replied, eloquently, when his cock fell soft down against the skin of Harry’s stomach. “Oh, fuck,” he shook all over, moaning, and Harry got to watch the singularly gorgeous sight of Eggsy’s cock finally catching up to what it had wanted all evening, burgeoning quickly and going from soft and so beautifully wet to hard and hot, bright red and leaking from the tip, bent back against his stomach. He’d been coming wet all night, but it was milky and sticky. He hadn’t ejaculated in three days, and Harry reached forward to run the palm of his hand gently over the head of Eggsy’s cock.
Eggsy yelped, bucking up into his hand, and for the third time added, “Fuck!” as he grinned at Harry, green eyes bright and cheeks flushed. “Oh, fuckin’ ‘ell, Harry. Oh, Harry, fuck me, fucking please.” Harry laughed, and gently stroked him a few times until Eggsy was loudly moaning his usual litany of vulgar approval, bucking up into his hand and then back to dig Harry’s cock further into him.
“Good?” Harry asked, wrapping his free hand under Eggsy’s arse, fingers pressed against the wet, swollen rim of his arsehole (Eggsy rewarding him for the touch by practically hissing with pleasure), shifting his legs up so that Eggsy could lean back against his knees. “More?”
“Na,” Eggsy murmured, thighs tensing as he started grinding and shifting down on Harry’s cock like he liked to, taking his slow damn time, using Harry for his pleasure (and, oh, what a blessed fucking sight that was) until he had a pace going, thighs trembling with the effort post-orgasm. “’S good, so fucking good, Harry. God, you’re so fucking good on me, you feel so good,” Harry couldn’t kiss him from this angle, so he just leaned forward to press his face against Eggsy’s chest, breath uneven.
Harry had never professed to have the patience of a saint. What he sure didn’t have was the ability to watch his partner come apart twice, gorgeous and so damn needy, and then to not fuck wildly into him. His hips were already shifting up off of the bed, fucking deep into Eggsy’s body with small, steady thrusts, and Eggsy kept shushing him, doing something with his muscles that made Harry tremble.
“Please,” Harry murmured, the words pressed into the sweat-slicked skin of Eggsy’s pectorals, Harry’s lips catching on one pink nipple. “Fuck, Eggsy, please, you’re killing me.” Eggsy laughed.
“I’m killing you, Harry? Seems to me it’s the other way around, love. I don’t think I can do thrice in a night easy anymore.” Harry grunted, because it was true—Harry himself might be getting older, but Eggsy certainly wasn’t getting any younger, either.
“Can you, or should we stop?” Harry asked, breathless, looking up at Eggsy’s flushed face, and he shook his head.
“This time, I can.” He smiled, widely, one cheek dimpling, and Harry shook for a moment, affection swelling with arousal inside him, before he finally broke and thrust his hips up off of the bed, catching Eggsy mid-roll, and they moaned in time, holding tight to each other as Harry did it again, and Eggsy caught him, thrust back down, cock bobbing.
“You feel like heaven,” Harry panted, watching Eggsy like if he took his eyes away the younger man would disappear. “Eggsy, you’re so good, you’re so fucking good, I love you, you darling boy,” and Eggsy moaned,
“Harry, my cock, Harry I’m so fucking close, Harry, please, I need you so damn bad—“ Harry reached forward, took the younger man’s bobbing erection in hand, and stroked him twice before Eggsy came hard, moaning with his voice high and unbroken, splattering Harry’s stomach in thick, wet ropes of semen (three days, good Christ), his whole body clenching down as his hips snapped forward, and that was enough for Harry to come, holding tight onto the younger man as he shook through the aftershocks, jerking into him and filling him up, Eggsy’s name on his lips.
With all the tension in his body gone, Eggsy practically collapsed down into Harry’s arms, and he caught the younger man gently, pressed open-mouthed kisses to his shoulder while Eggsy made quiet noises. “Tha’s lovely, tha’ is,” Eggsy murmured, patting Harry’s side, not making it clear what in particular he was talking about. “Jus’ lovely.” They sat there, tangled together, Harry’s face buried in Eggsy’s shoulder and Eggsy’s in Harry’s hair, and neither of them said anything, they just curled closer together.
Some time later, Eggsy sighed and shifted, Harry sliding limp and wet out of him, and then they settled back down again, Eggsy’s fingers tracing over the scars on Harry’s torso, including a fairly recent one—still pink and unhappy looking—from Latvia, six months before.
“I can hear you thinking,” Eggsy said, eventually, fingers still soft on Harry’s skin.
“’M not thinking,” Harry replied, not bothering to open his eye, slumped back against the pillows, one hand wrapped around Eggsy’s waist, the other plucking at a loose string on the duvet below them.
“Yes you are.” Harry grunted. The truth was, he actually hadn’t been thinking, at least when Eggsy had spoken.
“You’ve fucked the thoughts right out of me,” he replied, and Eggsy snorted into his chest, pinched the sensitive skin to the right of his nipple, making Harry grunt unhappily. “Uncalled for, my dear boy.”
“Something’s still bothering you.” Eggsy shifted, until Harry knew he was sitting up, and he opened his good eye to look up at the younger man, propped on his elbow, watching him. Post-fuck, Eggsy’s hair was a complete mess, and his skin practically glowed, sweat drying in the dip of his clavicle. Harry hesitated, and then reached out to trace the other man’s own eclectic set of scars—scattered across his torso. Less than Harry had, but not by much. Eggsy was reckless.
“I feel...guilty,” Harry began, at last, watching Eggsy’s expressive face and looking for the right words. He reached up one-handed and tugged on a lock of the younger man’s hair—at the top of his head, where his first few grey hairs had started to come in. Eggsy was already opening his mouth to cut him off, and Harry gently pressed his finger over the younger man’s lips. “No, love. Please, just hear me out.”
“Is it going to be the same bullshit you was spewing earlier?” Eggsy asked, eyebrows raised, and Harry opened his mouth, and closed it again.
“Well, yes, but—“ Eggsy cut him off with a huff and a roll of his eyes, Harry for once not admonishing him about doing that at his age.
“Then you hear me out, love.” Eggsy shifted more, sitting up with a wince as he put his weight on his well-abused arse. “You’re feeling guilty because first,” Eggsy ticked off one finger, “You’re going to get old, and shit yourself or something, and you don’t want to saddle me with some old tosser who doesn’t remember who I am. And, second,” he ticked off another finger, “Because you’re afraid you’re feeling selfish that you’re going to get me killed because of the ‘being my boss’ thing, and that you feel like you shouldn’t be worried you’re going to lose me young because then you’ll be alone.”
Harry hesitated, but Eggsy was as always spot on, so he just wilted slightly, and Eggsy sighed, running his fingers through Harry’s utterly ruined hair, pulling on the strands, already bunching back to being curly because of his sweat. “Harry, please. You love me, yeah?”
“Of course I love you,” Harry said, rather miserably. “I don’t know if it would be better if I didn’t, but I do love you. I adore you, my dear boy, and I know that if we didn’t have each other I would likely be dead, and if not, we’d both be utterly miserable.”
“You got that fucking right.” Harry sighed, and squeezed Eggsy’s thigh as the younger man shifted more to lean into him.
“No, Eggsy, I don’t want this—I don’t want us—to end. I don’t want to let you go, Eggsy. Now, or ever. You’re the absolute best thing that has ever happened to me, although Merlin might fight you on it if you ever mentioned it to him.” Eggsy smiled, cheeky. “That doesn’t mean I’m not afraid of what the future holds. Frankly speaking, I’m scared shitless that someday I’m going to wake up one day in ten years, and not remember who you are. Or not remember...who I am.” He didn’t say it aloud, but he thought it—he didn’t know which one of those was worse.
“So what?” Eggsy said at last, shrugging. “Harry, I said it earlier. Either one of us could die any day. Or we could both live to ripe old age. There are plenty of people who’ve been shot in the head and had almost no brain damage, and there will be plenty more in the future. Merlin’s right, bruv, I think the loss you’ve had can be explained away by you just getting fucking old.” Harry groaned.
“What are we going to do when I can’t get it up any more, Eggsy? What then?”
“I’ll just fuck you more often, ‘s all.” Eggsy brightened. “Plus, like, Viagra and such. I think we can find ways around that problem.”
“What about if I break my hip and you become my full-time caretaker and you can’t go in the field any more—“
“Now you’s just looking for excuses,” Eggsy accused, and he was right. Harry deflated into the bed, and folded his hands on his chest, watched the younger man while Eggsy rubbed his thumb over Harry’s hipbones.
“I suppose I am,” he said at last, closing his good eye. Harry sighed, and finally, finally, after everything else, got to the heart of the matter.
“I’m scared,” he said, at last. “I always assumed I would die in the field. Young, hale and hearty. Every other Galahad before me did, it’s always been a position not exactly made to hold up. I lasted thirty years, I figured that was good enough. Only I survived, and now I’m going to work a desk job until I die of constipation or something ludicrous at ninety, and I’m honestly scared of growing old. I don’t know what to do with it—I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Nobody does, Har.” Eggsy sighed, squeezing Harry’s waist—which had expanded slightly, to his consternation, in the past year. Harry was still in very good shape, but he was starting to go a bit to seed round the middle as he aged. “You think I have any idea what I’m doing? I’m lucky enough I’ve got you around, to look up to, or I’d still probably be about twenty in my head. That’s part of growing up—you’re confused, you’re scared, whatever.” Eggsy hesitated, and then added, “I know I’d rather do it with you, than do it alone.”
Harry let out a slow, wet breath and opened his eye again, looking at Eggsy, who smiled sadly at him. “Do you really want to?” he asked, quietly, voice cracking. “Spend the rest of your life with me, even as I get worse? No matter what happens?”
“’Course I do, arsehole.” Harry laughed slightly, and he sat up to wrap an arm around Eggsy’s shoulders, pulled the younger man over until he could bury his face in Eggsy’s hair.
“There’s nothing I would love more,” Harry murmured into the soft skin behind his ear, and Eggsy squeezed him.
“Then you’re stuck with me come hell or high water, mate.” Eggsy laughed, and then added, “Does this mean you just asked me to marry you in the most roundabout, fucking useless way?”
Harry hesitated, and then started laughing too, pressing their heads together. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I did.”
“Only you, Harry,” Eggsy said, smiling up at him brilliantly. “Only you. God fucking knows what you’d do without me anyway.”
“I would be a terrible mess,” Harry agreed, and then, because it was called for, leaned over and kissed Eggsy, despite the state of his mouth.
Eggsy kissed him back, and then and there, naked, covered in sweat and spunk, filthy beyond imagining, on a bedspread that very badly needed to be washed, on his sixtieth birthday, Harry decided that maybe, just maybe, growing old wasn’t all that bad after all.
The Telegraph
September 20, 2020
Gary Unwin of London and Earl Harrison H. Hart of Strathmore and Kinghorne, were married in a private ceremony on the King Estate Grounds, with the attendance of their families and friends. They wish to ask that all gifts be donated to the V-Day International Fund in their names, or in the name of James Trevelyan.
( epilogue )
your hair was long when we first met
i loved you first
i loved you first.
Harry Hart awoke in the middle of the night, groggy, to the insistent press of his bladder. He slid out of bed, despite Eggsy’s protests, and nudged J.B. away from his feet as he shuffled into the loo, did his business, washed his hands, and stepped back into the master bedroom, the light of the restroom illuminating the bed for a moment.
There are occasions when one feels utterly suspended in time, nothing going forward, nothing going back, and Harry felt he was in one now. The curtains across from the bed were half-open, and the yellow light of the streetlamp along with the silver of the moon left the bed aglow. J.B. snuffled, twisting around on the foot of the bed until he flopped over, and he stared at Harry with large, soft eyes.
Eggsy’s blond hair was lit by the light of the loo light and from the street, giving it a soft, ethereal golden glow, and he yawned, face mashed into Harry’s pillow, back to the older man, the strong lines of his shoulder blades and spine vanishing down into the sheets, draped around his waist. His hand was curled into a fist into the cloth of Harry’s pillow, and Harry had to just stand for a moment, watch him.
“Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion,” Harry whispered, his voice hoarse with sleep, hanging warm in the air. “His relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.” He stopped, paused, heart in his throat, and pressed his good eye against his hand on the doorframe for a moment to stave off tears.
“Harry, you fuck,” said the pillow, Eggsy’s voice slurred and his accent nearly unintelligible with sleep, “Come back to bed.”
Harry smiled to himself, small and secret, cheeks dimpling.
It seemed that, just this once, Galatea had consented, and stepped off his pedestal, and into Pygmalion’s waiting arms—and, oh, was Pygmalion all the happier for it.