FTHartwin

The view from Eggsy’s glasses went still again, as if Merlin’s voice had jarred him back to reality — an effect Merlin was normally proud of having. In this case Eggsy curled inward a little, crumpled, in a way Merlin hated, though he would never admit that out loud either. “Merlin. Fuck,” Eggsy breathed. He squirmed a little and Merlin could see his hands cuffed behind his back. “They got H — Arthur, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” The stumble over codenames made it clear to Merlin that Eggsy, too, was more off-balance than usual — and things had already gone rather to hell anyway. “He’s fine, lad.”

“You can — see him?”

“I cracked their security system while you were… indisposed. He’s in the main office.” That Merlin had done so only after Harry’s glasses were knocked off by an overzealous blow to the face, leaving Merlin with a terrible view of nothing but floor and a few boxes, he elected to keep to himself for now.

An old contact of Galahad's — Galahad here meaning Harry — had reached out, so Arthur had gone into the field with Eggsy — but it had been a trap, obviously. The knockout gas, Harry coming to surrounded by three bruisers just in time to take a punch… those were the first two shocks of the day.

Worrying for a moment that he might have lost eyes on Eggsy too was, of course, the third. "I can't find where you are," Merlin admitted. There were security cameras littered throughout the complex. But just where Eggsy had had been dragged, unconscious or merely playing at it, Merlin wasn't quite sure.

“No cameras,” Eggsy agreed, sounding a little dazed. “Looks like a storeroom.” His head was moving around too quickly — not the slow deliberate pan of an agent giving Merlin a good picture of his environment — something panicked, wild.

The men who had taken them prisoner had concluded — based on Harry’s age and certain vestiges of class neither man was entirely able to shed — that Harry was the higher ranking of the two. This was both factually accurate and a dangerous mistake — because they had dismissed Eggsy as unimportant. And Eggsy was smart, creative, and just on the right side of reckless. He was one of Kingsman’s best. He wouldn’t panic over a little knockout gas, and those cuffs should be child’s play for him. But, well — it was one thing to face danger alone. It was another altogether to have Harry Hart’s life in one’s hands. Merlin should know — he had been carrying it off and on for more than half his life.

“You’re all right, Galahad,” he said. “That means you’ll both be all right.”

There was a reason Merlin elected to run the trials when he had more than enough to be getting on with. By the time they were over a prospective agent had an almost automatic reaction to his voice. It wasn’t… trust, precisely — he lied to them too often for that — but perhaps… clarity. Of thought, of purpose. Certainty that they were alive, if not safe, and that as long as they remained so they had best keep moving forward.

His mistake with the recent Lancelot batch had been allowing the former Arthur to talk him into letting him run Eggsy’s final test.

Then again, perhaps things had turned out for the best — Roxy Morton was a brilliant Lancelot and Eggsy — Eggsy was Galahad, and Galahad was… special.

Eggsy rubbed his face quickly with his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Yeah.” He maneuvered the cuffs in front of him in a single smooth motion and eased a slender metal pick from his sleeve.

“That’s more like it,” Merlin said.

The cuffs were off in a flash and Eggsy rose to inspect the card reader. He used his pick to pry it open. “Your show from here,” he told Merlin.

A good agent could follow Merlin’s instructions so seamlessly it was like his hands were Merlin’s hands — and Eggsy was a good agent.

The door was open in moments, and Eggsy poked his head into an empty hallway.

Eggsy slipped along the hallway and a moment later — “Yes, I see you, Galahad,” Merlin said. With a few keystrokes, he plotted out a course to where Harry was being held. “Take your next left.”

“Who the fuck are these people anyway?” Eggsy asked quietly as he obeyed.

“They haven’t been anywhere on our radar,” Merlin admitted. “And oversight I will repair shortly.” Once the two of you are safe didn’t need saying.

Merlin flicked his eyes back to Harry's screen. He was picking his own handcuffs behind his back. His arms hung loose, his shoulders relaxed, something of a hunter’s grace in his posture even as he took another blow. Merlin winced in sympathy. Unfortunately, while he was separated from his glasses, Merlin couldn’t tell Harry that Eggsy was coming for him. He would have to rely on the near-preternatural awareness that sometimes existed between the two of them — Arthur and Galahad. Harry and Eggsy.

The men were asking who Harry worked for and how much they would pay for his safe return. Harry was professing to be a tailor, just a tailor, wearing a look of innocent horror. Now, Harry’s horrified face was no more convincing than his innocent one — but these people’s ingenuity apparently began and ended with their rather special knockout gas. Even Harry could probably conceal just how dangerous he really was from them for a bit longer.

Probably.

“There’s a guard coming up on your right,” he told Eggsy.

They had relieved him of any obvious weapons, of course, but it took a lot more than that for a Kingsman to be unarmed. The guard was dispatched quickly and silently.

“Another left. And — there."

Eggsy fitted his back to the wall just outside the office, easing towards the open door. “I count three men in there. Besides Arthur, obviously.”

Eggsy’s head bobbed in silent acknowledgment as he clocked each of them in turn. His gaze lingered an extra moment on Harry, on his face. He had a split lip and the beginnings of a black eye, and he looked as stunning as ever.

“Let’s get our boy,” Merlin said. There was just something about working with Eggsy that brought him back to the days when that word described Harry rather better than it did now.

Eggsy whipped through the door. At precisely the same moment, Harry's attacker swung his fist and Harry rocked away from it, crashing to the floor chair and all, leaving the other men open for the darts Eggsy shot at them from his watch.

Eggsy reached the third man, still off-balance from the failed swing at Harry, before the other two even hit the ground. Eggsy yanked him the floor, hard, before hitting him, too, with a dart — this one right between the eyes.

Harry rolled smoothly up to his knees, a pilfered gun in his hand. “You might have left him for me,” he said, something exhilarated and luminous in his face despite the reproof. Eggsy probably couldn’t have taken his eyes off Harry if he wanted to. It was a shame, Merlin caught himself thinking, that he couldn’t also see the look of adoration that Eggsy normally wore at times like this. But then Harry retrieved his fallen glasses, and —

There it was.

“Lancelot is en route,” Merlin told both of them. “If you should happen to clear the rest of the building before she gets there…”

“Yes, Merlin.” Eggsy was grinning at Harry, but Merlin could see that he was — a bit — grinning at him too. “But later, we got something to discuss, you and me,” Eggsy added lowly.

Harry, at his side, raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask.

Let’s get our boy, Merlin remembered saying. He flushed, just a little, glad no one was there to see it. “When you get back,” he agreed at last.