Notes:

Oh gosh, I listened to The Theory Of Everything soundtrack while reading through this. I'm not saying you should do it, I'm saying that it was pretty perfect though.

Eggsy's POV

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

The day awoke, groggy and vomiting clouds, and it smelt like it always did. By now everyone had probably lost the ability to actually properly smell anything at all, and while Eggsy was more than a little grateful for that, he was also afraid that maybe when he returned… maybe there wouldn’t be any scents left there anymore either. He certainly couldn’t remember what it had smelt like in England, no matter how hard he tried. Apples, or some shit. Grass. Breezes. Harry. Okay, he knew how he smelt, all he needed to do was rewind the clock and start with his fingertips: Harry's fingertips were… clean, on the first day.

*******

Eggsy had noticed those clean, polished nails and felt suddenly incredibly self-conscious, but he'd covered it up with enough casual flirting to turn the tables. Luckily it had seemed that the flirting had paid off. Not only had he not been fired (or arrested for treason of some sort), he'd been invited to dinner, right then and there, inside the manor itself. Harry had asked him to wait by a tiny side-door as he’d gone inside to tell all the servants that they could go down to the pub. And suddenly the entire space had been empty, but for the two of them and a nicely laid table. Eggsy had spent the entire evening wondering what the charming bastard had wanted from him, and realised that he'd be willing to give it all. At least, what he had to give.

At some point he’d been seated at a solitary grand piano, all alone in an empty, echoing room made of marble or some shit. He hadn’t watched Harry’s reactions to his playing, because this – for now – had been better even than dinner. The sounds so loud and soft, the keys so pliant, the melodies so easy beneath his clever fingers. Harry had told him afterwards that he wanted him to come back and play again. And Eggsy had continued to wonder.

At the end of it, standing outside the door again, Eggsy hadn't quite been able to contain himself. “So how about a kiss then? I've always wanted to kiss a prince.” Said flippantly and with a grin that had hinted at a lack of sincerity.

For a second he'd been sure that he'd gone too far. Harry had looked at him for the longest time, with the most indiscernible look, as though he were waiting for something. And then he had kissed him, moving fast enough that Eggsy hadn't been prepared, and pulling away again before he'd been able to enjoy it. Eggsy had pouted, aware that he'd looked like a sullen child and not caring. Harry had appeared amused, like the royal bugger he was. Kissing people like that without a moment's thought as to how they might want it.

“Well, that was… short,” Eggsy had said, trying to picture what exactly that second of lips had felt like and failing.

Harry had smiled faintly. “I just wanted to be sure that you were being serious.” And he had kissed him again, and this time Eggsy had felt everything.

*******

That time when Harry had helped him dig up weeds from the flowerbeds, there his hands had become covered in dirt, filthy. The cleanliness… how did clean hands smell? Dirt. Dirt he could figure out. After all, he was currently surrounded by dirt. But it was a different dirt from the dirt that had been there then.

That dirt had been filled with worms and insects and it had been soft and a little cool. There had been… roots… and the first layer had crumbled inhis hands, but the second had been firm and slippery, coating him softly and roughly, beneath the nails and in the whorls and whirls of his palms. Forgetting that he'd been covered in dirt, he’d attempted to wipe a smidge from the side of Eggsy’s cheek and only made it worse, and he’d drawn back and actually been apologetic – as if Eggsy wasn’t always covered in some dirt or other – and Eggsy had drawn the palm back and laid it gently in place, inhaling deeply through his nose against the side of that large, soft hand. Now how had that smelled?

Or what about in bed? That had been… also firm, also slippery, and gentle, and rough, depending on when. The smell had been different though. There was an inherent difference in the smell of dirt and the smell of sex, he knew that, of course he knew that. He also knew that some of the other lads mucked about in secret when the officers weren’t around, but not him. Not here. Not with them. The smells would be all wrong.

*******

Another letter arrived for him that day. It was in answer to his last question: He had asked the king when the war would be over. Not so directly of course. He had merely hinted that the sooner it was all bloody over with, the sooner they could forget this pause in who they really were, this stutter in humanity’s heartbeat, and return to good old earth and summer days and the occasional – common – rains. But rain was good. Rain cleansed the earth and made the flowers grow and the dirt hard and wet.

Besides, on the days when it had rained, they had stayed inside from morning until evening. The rushing sounds of the rain beating the grounds, and the un-rhythmical panting and moving, firm, slippery, gentle, rough, sounding like its own little harmony. While all he’d actually heard had been his own heart and Harry’s gasping and the throbbing of the tension in the air, and the violence of the rain outside, his mind had concocted symphonies with great sweeping movements of power, and tiny pulsating arias. He’d saved the pieces that worked for the piano, and concocted long ballads and tiny preludes.

Not now. Here, the rain was discord and disjointed. It was harder to write music here. It was all rather terrible. Still he took what he could get, and if the world was telling him it was terrible, then by god, he was going to write something terrifying.

The letter started with a “darling.” He smiled a little. However, the rest disappointed. How could a four-page letter be so vague in actually providing an answer? He picked up a piece of paper and scribbled: “Harry, is this fucking war going to end??? Soldiers want to know.” He destroyed that immediately and began again, regretting the waste of paper.

He began with “you charming bastard,” and ended in a “my sweet…” he considered prince, because it sounded equally sarcastic and romantic and he wanted Harry to appreciate his sense of humour. But no. if anybody else were to read it… and he’d sworn to be secretive, sworn to keep himself – and the crown – safe. “My sweetest Rose,” he wrote.

“Oh, yes,” he said aloud. Thinking back… palm, sweaty, dirty, faintly musky, placed against his cheek. And in his other hand the rose held towards him. Romantic idiot.

*******

The rose had smelt like his lips had tasted. That’s how it had been. That's what Harry was. Harry was how he remembered home.

*******

He finished the letter and was about to go and post it, when there was a whistling. A call to arms.

“Fuck.”

The letters were both placed beside the ones he had received. There were many “my darlings,” and “my dearests,” and a single one that lay at the top, as a promise to never forget him, or maybe a... a promise. That after the war something between them would be acknowledged, somehow: “My boy.”

He touched it once, for luck. His boy.

Notes: