Chapter Text
The rest of the candidates' ruts follow along the same line as Charlie's, although one idiot gets aggressive and literally tries to kidnap JB so Eggsy will follow him into some sort of Stockholm syndrome situation. It's fine. They find JB and Barker and his dog in a nest he'd somehow managed to construct in the bowels of the facility.
Eggsy was a little impressed by the cunning Barker had shown in gathering ten of his favorite chocolate bar, but he doesn't exactly cry when Merlin gives him the dressing down of the century and kicks him out on his arse.
Roxy's is the best, though, because she spends her four days in lock up, according to Merlin, pacing and muttering to herself, and when she gets out she marches straight up to Eggsy and shrieks, "And what did you do, without me to look after you!" and bursts into tears.
"Awww," says Eggsy, feeling soppily maternal, like he does when Daisy cries and cries and then reaches up for him. "There, there," he croons, petting Roxy's disheveled hair and letting her snuffle angrily into his shoulder.
Because it's Roxy and the fist of her self-control could level small countries, nothing weird happens, even if toward the end of the hug she drags in a suspiciously lengthy inhale against the side of his neck. That seems to snap her out of it: she steps back and rubs a knuckle under her red eyes. Then she punches his arm. Some of Eggy's fondness evaporates as he rubs his smarting bicep.
"Oi!"
"We're never discussing this," she says primly, then her eyebrows draw together. "Oh, but have you eaten?"
Eggsy shoves her away, rolling his eyes.
The other candidates watch enviously, but they've learned a painful lesson in self-control over the past few months and none of them try to start any shit with Roxy.
"Unwin," says Merlin, arriving out of bloody nowhere. Eggsy shifts into something resembling attention. "If I could have a word?"
Merlin never calls him by his last name unless something is really fucking wrong, so Eggsy follows him down the hallway and stops when Merlin does.
"Now, lad," says Merlin, almost gently. For a horrible moment Eggsy thinks of his mum, of Daisy, of the way he left them unprotected with Dean still --
"Harry's been injured, and he's in a coma," says Merlin, and Eggsy's first reaction is sick relief, and then the words really sink in and it takes an effort of will to keep standing.
Just being near Harry, even though he's in a coma like Sleeping Beauty or some shit, calms Eggsy down. Harry smells real good for an alpha, mostly because he has some sort of scent-suppressing cologne that he wears, or something like that. He's never asked. Maybe he's on suppressants. Maybe, Eggsy thinks, he had a beautiful omega mate and they died and so Harry's scent faded. Maybe Eggsy is hormonal and depressing himself.
Anyway, Harry Hart is too fucking class to go around advertising his knot, unlike Dean and his crowd, who had a disgusting habit of expressing their glands and smearing it all over themselves. Eggsy shudders in memory and JB whines.
Eggsy sits down beside Harry's bed. "Hey, bruv," he says. JB puts his feet on Eggsy's calf, so he picks him up. It's a terrible habit, but Eggsy needs something -- someone -- to hold on to right now. That's the worst part of post-heat, maybe the worst part of the entire business: for two days he feels all nervy and clingy and wants to curl up in a ball somewhere and be doted on.
JB is a champ, though, a real champ at being cuddled aggressively and being all soft and warm, although Eggsy could do without his snort-panting in his ear.
"I just got off my heat," Eggsy tells him, and just barely stops himself from offering Harry his wrist to smell, like that will make Harry understand and forgive him. "It wasn't so bad this time. My last one was fucking brutal -- had to go to the safe room in hospital and all."
Harry doesn't respond.
"The doc got real angry," remembers Eggsy. "She wanted to know where my alpha was to leave me alone like that, and then she got madder because I said I didn't have no alpha. She made me run a million fuckin' tests, too."
JB tries to lick Eggsy's nose and mostly smears pugsnot all over his face, but affectionately.
Eggsy stays beside Harry for a while, as JB settles down to snorting in his sleep.
Kingsman nurses have taken to dropping off a lunch tray with Eggsy so he doesn't have to sneak in protein bars and stale biscuits. He eats jelly one-handed as he scrolls through a tablet with the other, reading up on how to properly file reports. Seems like Harry underrepresented the amount of paperwork Eggsy'll have to sort out. Seems like Harry maybe told Eggsy next to nothing about what Kingsman actually do.
Sometimes the nurses look at him sympathetically, as if he's waiting for Harry because he -- because -- Eggsy snaps that line of thought off real sharp. It's just that he only jives with less than a handful of people here. Rox is great, and Merlin's all right but he keeps things all business. Eggy's invested, right, and if you want to get technical, Eggsy's known him since he was a wee sprog. It's natural he'd want to make sure Harry were taken care of, and anyway it's quiet, minus the beeping monitors or the bustling when the staff need to adjust tubes and whatnot.
The excuse sounds so weak that he doesn't dare offer it to the nurses. It just feels right. Waiting with Harry and all. Plus no one'll come looking, 'cept maybe Rox or Merlin.
He's smuggled JB in, or the staff has pretended not to see JB's half-grown muzzle sticking out of his jacket. He's almost too big to be carried around like this.
It's only an hour or so of bone-dry reading until Eggsy starts to slump in his chair like always. It's murder on his neck, sleeping in the chair, but it's a universal rule that recruits drop where they can, when they can. Roxy's been found napping under desks and in closets, once or twice. Eggsy ain't been this tired all the time since Marine training in Devon.
JB's snoring on his boots, and the cozy weight of it follows him down into a nap.
There's a strange half-awareness that comes with him. Eggsy knows he's sprawled in the chair next to Harry in his hospital bed, and for a while that's exactly what he dreams. The hospital sounds are a distant lull, but then he's dreaming about his Gran dying of pneumonia, hooked up to tubes and such, watching him with rheumy eyes over the edge of her oxygen mask. He's ten, and his mum's in the corner crying into crumpled tissues. Dean nudges him toward the bed until Eggsy's knees knock against the plastic sides.
"Hi, Gran," he says.
"Hello, Eggsy," say Harry Hart, sitting upright in the bed dressed full out in his tailored suit and specs. He could use a shave and a haircut. Eggsy's thought about just giving him a haircut sometimes. Smuggling in scissors with JB. They'd let him, maybe. Omega caregiving instincts, omega grooming urges, whatever the fuck would let him make Harry look posh and polished like he's supposed to.
Then he's kneeling next to Eggsy, who's so young he ain't really sure what dead means. He keeps expecting his da to come back when his training's over, but his mum says he's gone away somewhere else. Eggsy feels sad about it, and he keeps sneaking into the closet to smell his dad's shirts, but the man holding the medal, he smells good too, spicy and warm in a way that cuts through all the pine-scented Christmas decorations he helped his mum put up. Eggsy could curl up and sleep.
"Hello, Eggsy," he says again. He takes Eggsy's favorite snowglobe but gives Eggsy that medal instead. "Take care of your mum."
Eggsy nods, but he ain't need to be told. The man with the medal reaches out and squeezes Eggsy's shoulder. Eggsy feels even sleepier; he might drop off right where he is. But he's already asleep, ain't he, right by Harry's side. He's taking care of Harry like he was supposed to take care of his mum, the way he'd take care of Daisy or Rox.
His arm still feels Harry's hand on it, broad and real comforting. He wakes up like that, blinking back memory. He hasn't thought about meeting Harry in a long time, and on purpose, too: it ain't a happy memory. Christmas and his da's dead, some man in a fancy suit gave Eggsy a medal. Eggsy cracks a yawn, and he still feels that weight on his arm.
When he looks over at Harry, he meets his eyes. They're open. They're staring straight at Eggsy. Eggsy looks dumbly from Harry to Harry's arm, outstretched and trembling, before it slips away. Harry's eyes flutter closed in the same breath.
It takes him a second -- several seconds -- but then he's scrambling up so fast JB gives a surprised and unhappy yip and Eggsy's tablet clatters to the floor.
"Oi," he yells, fumbling for the call button on the remote near Harry's side. His eyes are glued to Harry's face, which is as lax as it was before. He wants to shake him, see if his eyes'll spring open again, but he feels bad just thinking about it. "Hey," he tries again.
Two nurses come running in, and they immediately start checking Harry's vitals. Eggsy refuses to be moved from where he is, so they have to work around him. He gets an elbow to his side at one point, but he can't make himself stop hovering.
"He's awake. I swear he was, he opened his eyes, he was lookin' at me, I --"
The nurses keep working, trying the same tricks they always do to measure Harry's responsiveness. Desperation fills his chest as Harry keeps on lying there, totally inert.
"He touched me," he says.
"Still comatose, but maybe up a level," one of them says to the other, and then she finally looks at Eggsy. "I'm sorry, Mr. Unwin, but this is typical of coma patients. They slip in and out a lot. It's promising, though --"
"I know that," he says, snappish, and then rubs his hands over his face so he'll calm down and stop acting like a prat. "Ain't there something you can do for him?"
"He's got to do it on his own, Mr. Unwin," the other one says, adjusting something on Harry's IV setup. "I'm sure he appreciates the company, though." She gives Eggsy a sedate little smile that flashes cheeky in her eyes and pats Harry's hand on the way out.
"Yeah," Eggsy says to the room. He slowly sits back into his chair, heart pounding, unresolved.
It's not a week before Harry wakes up for real.
Harry wakes up, and he looks at Eggsy and gives him a small smile, like he's proud of him, like he's happy to see Eggsy still here. His eyes are warm even if his voice is as cool and composed as always. If Eggsy can ignore his urge to preen and offer his neck. Something about the vanished barrier of his glasses -- of course Eggsy's seen him without them, but it ain't like Harry's eyes were open much in the last several months -- makes the weight of his attention sharper. Eggsy has a hard time standing still under it.
Things are going too well to last, of course.
"Hmm," Merlin says, using gloved fingers to tilt Eggy's chin upwards. Eggsy obediently lets him prod, and it's pretty much the gentlest anyone's been with him during an exam, though Merlin is about as inviting as a cactus, both in scent and bearing. "It is quite… engorged."
Eggsy's silent chortle is seen only by the ceiling and whatever cameras are trained on him. Merlin has crinkled his placid face into a squint and is pressing his fingers to the edges of Eggy's swollen gland. The swollen part is new, but not the expression; Eggy's been felt up by specialists and doctors and even Merlin before, and all of them look mystified or outright annoyed by his freak biology. Eggy's used to it. It'll take a lot more than a swollen gland to fuck up his day. Maybe like a full-scale apocalypse would do it, but Eggy's downright chuffed: he has yet to fail out of the Kingsman trials, and Harry's awake with unscrambled brains.
"Maybe I've got a cold," he suggests. "That can cause, what, inflammation?"
Merlin flicks a look at him and touches Eggy's shoulder to let him know they're done. "Not of the bonding gland. What do they teach them at these schools these days?" He snaps off the latex gloves like someone who has a lot of practice at it, and bins them without looking at the can.
"Nothin' like medicine," Eggsy says, knowing perfectly well he hasn't got a cold.
As far as Eggsy knows, Roxy was the last of them to go into rut, and if he were going to swell up for anyone out of that lot, it'd have been her. But it's been at least a month since the last time he was around Roxy or any other alpha in prerut, and he only woke up with it tender that morning. He's never really lost sleep over his biological quirks, but he figures doing his due diligence this time will save him trouble later, in case they try and throw him out on his arse for not disclosing or summat. Maybe Merlin can do something to the gland to get it to go down, spare Eggsy from having to pop his collar every time he's in the same room as Charlie.
"So what's the verdict?" he asks, pushing at the gland with his fingertips like he'd worry a sore tooth with his tongue. It doesn't hurt, exactly, but fussing with it makes it tingle. It's always been a little hard lump on his throat, and it feels strange and rather squishy. "Are there prerut alphas wandering around and no one told you?" Eggsy clucks. "Ain't very professional, not when there's an unbonded, helpless omega to account for."
"There's always alphas around," says Merlin, frowning at him. "You know that."
Eggsy does know that. Most of the actual agents are alphas -- probably because they're all adrenaline junkies -- but a lot of the support staff are betas. There's maybe two or three omegas besides Eggsy that he's seen around, and most of them are in Merlin's division. Eggsy is always passing by alphas in the hall and in the training rooms, and they all sniff in his direction and then politely ignore his status. "But not in rut," he says.
"No," says Merlin. "Most of the agents choose to be put on suppressants in the field."
"Don't you have to get off those at least once a year?" says Eggsy. "What if --"
"Fertility," says Merlin, very dry, "is not a primary concern of the typical Kingsman agent." He sighs heavily, like it's Eggsy's fault he's standing here trying to figure out why Eggsy's body seems to be vaguely interested in an alpha for the first time ever. "Look, are you absolutely sure you've never contracted a latent bond?"
"With who?" says Eggsy.
"It wouldn't have to be consummated," says Merlin. "Even a scent bond would go a lot to explain this bloody thing acting up."
"Bruv," says Eggsy, "if I smell an alpha I sneezes or I get real mad about it. Where was I supposed to smell one and decide I liked it?"
Merlin sighs.
"Besides," Eggsy says, rolling his shoulders to let out some tension, "you really think there's some alpha out there who got a whiff of this and said 'Ta, I'd rather not?'"
"Please, alphas would always rather knot," says Merlin. "Well, lad, unless you've run across the one alpha in all the world for you, I don't know what your beastly biology is doing now. It might be a stress reaction. I can put you on bond suppressants in case it's living with all those alphas that's doing something."
Eggsy groans but laughs too. Then he makes a face and shakes his head. Heat suppressants are bad enough: he can't imagine what taking bond suppressants must be like. His mum had to take them after his dad passed and it was a misery that he still remembers. He thinks in part she shacked up with Dean to get some relief from their numbing qualities. "Are we done, bruv? Only I got to walk JB."
"Go away, you wretched beast," says Merlin, pointing to the door. As Eggsy slips off the table and toward the door, Merlin adds, "Come in, Harry, we're done."
Harry opens the door and steps courteously aside for Eggsy.
"That's fucking creepy, it is," says Eggsy, eyebrows up. "When do I get a pair of them glasses?"
"Soon enough," says Harry. He smiles at Eggsy, and as Eggsy heads out he hears Merlin say, "You're not due for your shot yet, Galahad."
If Eggsy's any judge -- and he is -- usually this con gets played out with one of each, alpha, beta, and omega, to see what the mark reacts to. As it is, they're making do with male alpha, female alpha and male omega. It's no difference to him, as long as he wins the contest.
Eggsy's picked up a few betas here and there, but this one puzzles him: she doesn't seem like she wants to be picked up at all but at the same time, she's listening them with every appearance of attention and attraction. It's weird, is all.
Also, is champagne supposed to taste this rank? Cos Eggsy's had better champagne back home, lifted from a shop and drunk with his mates. There's a funny taste to it, bitter.
"Does this champagne taste rank?" he says, and the next thing he remembers he's slumping up against Roxy, smelling vanilla and anise and gunpowder all at once, and Roxy's hair sliding against his face before he --
-- wakes up, tied to a train track of all the fucking things.
Eggsy's fuckin life.