Eggsy probably wouldn't have realized it was his birthday had it not been his eighteenth. Everyone seemed to have this idea that the instant you woke up on your eighteenth birthday your whole life would light up with freedom and prosperity and any terrible shit you'd been dealing with the day before would vanish when the sun rose. While Eggsy hadn't necessarily believed any of this, he found that there had been a tiny flagging hope that it was true deep in his heart when it died a small, quiet death.

Because in Eggsy's case, it all only got a bit worse.

"Happy birthday, Eggsy," his mother demurred when he emerged from his room, and before he could reply Dean cut in over her.

"Look who finally dragged his lazy ass out of bed," Dean drawled "That shit ain't gonna fly no more, Muggsy. You're going to start pulling your weight around here."

And so the morning erupted into something of an epic blow-out.

"I ain't gonna fuckin' run your drugs anymore, Dean!" Eggsy eventually found himself shouting, though he wasn't sure how he'd gotten to that point or what his alternative was. If the world wasn't going to change on its own, he'd have to be able to change it himself. It couldn't be so cruel as to keep him where he was.

Dean shoved a dusty bag into his hands, his face red with anger "You either deliver this or you spend the night on the corner of Smith, Muggsy. I ain't paying a cent for your keep no more."

Eggsy blanched and threw the bag back, feeling the sting of what he assumed was poorly handled cocaine stay on his fingers.

"Dean!" his mother shouted, finally upset enough to intervene, but Eggsy was already marching to the door and wrenching it open.

"You can go fuck yourself, mate!"

The only reason Dean landed a punch at all was because something out of the corner of Eggsy's eye was thoroughly and completely distracting him.

Then he fell into that something and everything was sunshine and fucking roses and he had to root around in his mind to remember how to breathe, then was immensely glad he did when a host of unidentifiable but wholly wondrous scents invaded his nose.

The throbbing in his cheek barely had time to register before it was gone, vanished like smoke on the wind along with the misery and self-loathing that had been crawling into his heart. He was wrapped up in someone's arms, someone whose warm voice was vibrating through his solid chest. Eggsy couldn't have stopped himself from looking up if it would have saved his life.

Oh, he thought on seeing the man.

Had he not been frozen in place he might have clumsily made the man look at him, dragged his face down to burn every contour and color into his mind, every delicate band of his irises, every strand of graying hair. But he was frozen, so all he did was stare and think oh again.

If this wasn't his soul mate, Eggsy figured he should just give up on life right then because nothing was ever going to compare.

It occurred to him brutally that he didn't know anything about him. The brown of his eyes was new, the words he was so carefully enunciating were new, he didn't know when he went to bed or what he looked like in the morning and he was instantly so desperate to know all of it and more than it hurt.

So when the man looked down, the steel in his tone turning honey-sweet, his features softening so much that Eggsy wondered if this was some whole other person who he was going to love even more, and drew him in and asked him what he wanted like if Eggsy's answer was the moon he'd have dragged it back to earth for him, it only made sense to plead for a name.

"Harry Hart."

He repeated it, enraptured, amused, happier than he could ever remember being, and wanted to say his own back but was a bit too overwhelmed to try. A distant thought flitted about his mind that somebody ought to have warned him how maddening this would be.

His mother's voice cut in, then, and doused the edges of the wildfire in his heart.

He was Eggsy Unwin, and Harry Hart was his soulmate - but his coke-stained hands were resting on what had to be the most expensive piece of clothing he'd ever encountered, he was eighteen with no prospects in life, he was a criminal from the estates, he was everything Dean called him and worse-

He tried to draw away, let Harry escape before he was tarnished by Eggsy's world, but Harry was made of iron, apparently, and tucked so close Eggsy a strong wind would have had them kissing as he spoke, fierce and immovable with conviction.

"To hell with them."

Oh no, Eggsy thought, then, over the roaring in his veins and the angelic chorus in his soul, his rational brain taking point for a moment of clarity, I'm going to love him.

Dean was shouting. He realized this when the sound became muffled, and also that there was another man present, dressed just as nicely, who he'd somehow failed to notice.

"Harry," the man scolded, and Harry seemed about as rational as Eggsy just then. Eggsy wondered how he normally was. He decided he had to see it at the first opportunity.

Then he was hoisted into the air and he came down another notch with a shout.

"Oi, oi! Harry, for fuck's sake I can walk just fine!" And how the fuck are you this fucking strong, Eggsy wondered. He wasn't exactly tall, but he was solid enough, and Harry was hefting him like he weighed as much as a kitten. All the same, even as the shouting had drawn peering eyes from half the windows down the block and he could hear Ms. Cooper's locks coming undone one by one, he couldn't find it in himself to mind all that much.

So of course, when those deep brown eyes turned to him and asked if he wanted to be set back down all he could do was hide his face and decide to live with it.

It was a full week on when his mum stepped hesitantly into the tailor shop. Eggsy liked to think the initial soulmate madness between himself and Harry had calmed down, but Merlin - a mysterious friend of Harry's - never failed to raise his eyebrows when Eggsy expressed the thought.

He still wasn't quite sure what it was Harry did for real (but he was sharp and there was no doubt in his mind it wasn't tailoring), but for now he seemed to be on leave from it while they tried to get settled. There was a silent argument in the air whenever Merlin and Harry were in the same room with Eggsy, and from the week of their acquaintance Eggsy gathered that Harry was being bullish about something and Merlin was losing ground in his resistance. Eggsy figured Harry would get his way in a few days.

The tailor shop was, until then, where Eggsy spent his time after he'd muttered to Harry that he might be interested in learning so he wasn't just a kept boy (not that Harry had seemed to mind either idea, but he'd established that, while his initial infatuation had simmered down, Eggsy's happiness was his top priority).

His mum fidgeted by the door, feeling about as out of place as Eggsy still did when Harry wasn't in sight, thought it was getting easier. "Mum!" he greeted, and started over smiling. He slowed when Dean, his arm bound in a thick white cast and hung in a blue sling, shouldered in after her. He glared around in distaste, like the upper echelon of society was a personal enemy of his. If Eggsy was being honest, he might have perceived it the same way not two weeks before, but with more of an inferiority complex than a haughty, unearned superiority.

"Eggsy," his mum tried, looking him over "You look...good."

He did, too - Harry really was rich, and when he returned to sense enough to realize that Eggsy had left with nothing but the clothes on his back he'd taken Eggsy to half the shops in town to furnish him with a new wardrobe, not accepting a single word of protest. Eggsy was only more determined to reach equal footing for it.

"Thanks."

Michelle looked around again curiously "Is that man-"

"Harry's in the back."

"Ah," she fidgeted, and Dean seemed to impose slightly more into the air "is he...are you happy? With him?"

"Yeah." Eggsy flushed just a bit and felt himself start to grin a little stupidly. Michelle saw this and some of the tension in her shoulders drained. This Dean took as his cue to ruin the moment.

"So Muggsy, your soulmate is an old man. Should have known you was a sick pervert."

Just as the last syllable left his lips Dean's expression broke into a fearful grimace, and Eggsy sighed when Harry's arm snaked around his shoulders.

"Hey Harry." Eggsy greeted, leaning back against Harry's chest.

"I believe Alistair suggested this individual be left at home."

"I want compensation for this-" Dean waived his cast "Doctors say I might not ever be able to use it again. Can't provide for my family."

"That's a load 'o shite-" Eggsy started.

"I assure you, your physician states in his report that he expects you to make a full recovery. But I suppose ten thousand pounds to make up for the damages is owed," Harry drawled, his breath ghosting over Eggsy's hair. Eggsy turned his head to look at Harry incredulously.

"Harry, what the fuck."

"I did break his arm, darling, though it was quite deserved." Harry shrugged, settling their foreheads together as he spoke. Maybe Merlin had a point, Eggsy thought as he nuzzled closer, but it wasn't a compulsion to touch Harry anymore - he just liked it.

"Yeah, but that's a lot, innit?"

"You misunderstand my intention," Harry drew away reluctantly and pulled a checkbook from his pocket, scrawling out the figures then and there while Dean blinked at how easy it had all been.

"Oi, well, you ain't, that is..." Dean tried. Eggsy figured he wanted to ask for more but his small mind was too puzzled to form the words.

Harry tore the check off but withheld it, that steely, dangerous gaze he was so very good at turning on others falling into his eyes.

"Understand, Mister Baker, that this money comes with the expectation that this is the last time Eggsy or I will ever hear so much as a whisper of you. If you take this money and do not promptly vanish, I will, in fact, incapacitate you permanently," He smiled, and it was terrifying "Are we in agreement?"

Dean, who, when Eggsy looked, had lost his arrogant air and grown pale, swallowed and nodded.

"Good," Harry held out the check.

Dean took it as though from the jaws of a snake and seemed to want to say something more, but shut his mouth with a click and hurried out of the shop instead.

Michelle hesitated, looking at Eggsy. Eggsy smiled a bit.

"I'll be alright, mum. If you ever need - I'm tryin' to get my feet under me, so don't hesitate to call if you need someplace to stay, yeah?"

"The agreement does not extend to you, miss Unwin." Harry added.

Another moment Michelle hesitated, then nodded and gave Eggsy a watery smile before following her husband.

"You ain't got to throw money around to impress me." Eggsy said when they were gone.

Harry blinked "I wasn't."

"You give away ten grand to make a point on the regular?"

"It was a point I wanted to make very clear."

"This is never going to stop, is it." Merlin sighed from the foot of the stairs.

"No," Harry replied primly.

"Wonderful. Insufferable was too kind an assessment. Come along then, Eggsy, you might as well learn now what it is Kingsman really does."