AN: The first fic I have finished in AGES. Kind of proud of it. Can be read both as pre-slash and gen. Rated T for swearing. English is not my native language, so please bear with me and point out any mistakes so that I can correct them. Has not been brit-picked and Eggsy's accent is mostly guesswork. Hope you have fun reading!

1

The stone is gleaming in the sunlight. The weather had been holding well the past few days, almost no rain and a pleasant breeze once or twice tempting Eggsy to forgo his suit jacket and stroll along the London streets with nothing but his suit trousers, tie and shirt.

Harry would not have liked that.

But then, who was Eggsy to say what his mentor would and would not have liked? Compared to all the time Harry Hart spent on this earth, the part of it spent in Eggsy's company was laughably small.

The gravestone is, unsurprisingly, an understated affair. Tucked away as it is in some far corner of one of the smallest graveyards in London it has taken Eggsy almost twenty minutes to find it.

There has not been a funeral. At least not as far as he knows.

(Because even though he now is one of Kingsman's agents and calls himself Galahad, as Harry used to, there are certain kinds of information too classified even for his access).

Harry Hart, the stone reads,

1969 - 2015

With respect and devotion

He does not know who had decided what to write on the grave. Probably Merlin, though.

Eggsy does not know what he intended to achieve by coming here. The grief, constantly at the back of his mind, pulsing like a heartbeat and resurfacing at the calm moments, at the sight of blood, at the sight of a suit or the dark brown of a Guinness is brought to the surface and if Eggsy is honest with himself (and he is nothing if not at least honest) it hurts like a bitch.

He shifts his weight. Guiltily slips into his suit jacket and straightens his tie, until he looks as pristine as he is capable to.

Bites his lip.

"Oh fuck this." He bursts out after several minutes of awkward silence (and he did not even know that conversation with a gravestone of all things could be awkward in the first place). "This is ridiculous, you know that Harry?" He gestures to the grave, the whispering trees in the wind, gestures, ridiculously enough, with the umbrella hanging from his arm, careless with the weapon in a way Harry would never have condoned. "This whole thing - it's complete bollocks, that's wha' it is. As far as I'm concerned you can go rot -"

A bitter laugh escapes him at that, and suddenly he's hit by laughter he has not felt since seeing blood and blood and shattered glass on pavement. He doubles over, tears streaming down his face.

It hurts, laughing. Eggsy is fairly sure that he must be completely mental.

"Fuck this." He whispers eventually, the back of his hand wiping his face. "You think you can just go fuck of and all's fine, but let me tell you, shit's not fine and it's fucking your fault. Posh bastard."

Posh dead bastard.

He resolves not to return to the graveyard after that particular disaster.

2

He returns to the graveyard not even a week later in a desperate attempt to ease the hole gaping in his chest (except when he looks there is nothing but smooth skin and a shirt and a west and a suit jacket).

Laughing like a maniac at Harry's gravesite should have been the last of it. He has a life to live, after all, a sister to look after, a mother to spoil, missions to carry out and princesses to screw.

Even if princesses do not quite hold the appeal they once had, he has promised himself that he would not become one of these miserable pathetic people his ma always watches on crap daytime telly.

Nevertheless his feet take him towards the iron gate and the gleaming stone next to the hedge in the corner of the graveyard as if he has no choice in the matter.

At least JB enjoys it, happily chasing butterflies about (or attempting to, that pug has gotten fat and Eggsy can't for the life of him figure out why - he is careful, dammit).

The stone looks just the same as it did when Eggsy last was here, but someone has placed a new bundle of flowers at the foot of it. Eggsy has never known shit about flowers, but they're red as Harry's robe is, hanging undisturbed in the back of his wardrobe, untouched since that day as the rest of the house.

Eggsy tells him so.

"Din't want to touch nothing." He said, feeling stupid for more than one reason. "Tried once, but all I could think of was how mad ye'd be if I'd thrown away your things and made them untidy an' stuff."

Eggsy stands tall, nose in the air and assumes his best Harry-stance, one hand in the pocket of his trousers. "Really Eggsy," He says, accent identical to Harry's. He has managed that by now. "A gentleman does not touch what is not his."

The slight smile falls from his face looks at the dirt at his feet, worrying at it with the toes of his Oxford's.

He stops when he realises what he is doing. When he hears Harry's voice in his head, reprimanding him for dirtying the expensive leather.

"Stupid shit." He says, blinking a little faster. "C'mon JB, we're leaving."

The dog wants to linger, but Eggsy coaxes him away with promises of treats and a cuddle.

3

Despite having been here twice already, Eggsy has never touched the gravestone.

He does not know what he expects it to be, what he expects to happen, maybe a trap door opening beneath his feet, leading him down, down, into a secret tunnel at which's end Harry would be sitting, legs crossed, raised eyebrows, tumbler in hand.

The stone is cold and smoother than expected. Spring is coming on strong, birds singing at all ungodly hours of the day, flowers blooming merrily. Eggsy bats away a bee.

He does not even know what he is doing here, this time.

The flowers are blue this time, one of the few he knows. He snorts when he realises they are forget-me-nots and suppresses the need to kick at them.

Gentlemen do not kick innocent flowers.

Still.

"Fucking Forget-Me-Nots, really?" He asks the birds and the bees and whoever it is taking care of the grave, probably Merlin, probably watching him with a fucking camera like the sneaky bastard always does. "Of all the bloody greenery in the world you chose fucking forget-me-nots."

He grips the stone harder, frantically looking around for a microphone hidden in the bushes, a camera up in the trees. "But ye know wha', that's fucking unnecessary, y'know that? It's not like I could forget him ever, the fucking cunt. Don't need no stupid flowers to tell me that." He shows the trees the fingers .

The birds keep chirping and no-one answers him. It does not surprise him. Fucking Kingsmen and their fucking secrecy.

He does not stay long after that. But he does apologise to the stone for calling him a cunt before he leaves.

4

It rains the fourth time he comes. Thick, heavy drops falling and hitting him harder than rain should probably hit a person. Each little drop feels like a punch in the stomach. Or other soft, vulnerable parts of his body.

Eggsy does not like thinking about that.

He may be a little drunk, and if he says a little, he might mean completely shit-faced. But it is not like Harry can hold it against him anymore. He has a few days off, anyway, and he can spend them however he likes, thank you very much. And if he wants to spend them in the local pub, downing one pint after the other, adding a shot in between, pissing against a wall and getting into an inadvisable fight with some fuckers whose faces he doesn't remember and stagger to his mentor's grave at quarter past twelve in the pouring rain, it's nobody's business but his own.

The gravestone seems impossibly small in the dark, the ground around it rapidly transforming into mud. Eggsy has this brief image of just shoving the muddy water aside and getting to the coffin, opening it and taking Harry out, into the light, to the fresh air, to Eggsy where he clearly belongs.

He does not do it, obviously. Apart from the fact that he is wearing his best suit (god knows why, though) he cannot really tell his hands from his feet at the moment.

He drops to the ground at the foot of the blasted thing heavily, leaning on the freezing stone. Water immediately soaks through his trousers and blast buggery fucking arse this is his best suit but he cannot quite figure out how to get up right now.

Besides, it's not like Harry is here to see it.

Eggsy chuckles at that.

"Not 'ere!" He yells, throwing his hands upwards towards the falling rain. "Not fucking 'ere, Harry fuckin' Hart! Can't do nuthin' now, can ye! Oh no, 's my turn now, I can decide! If I wanta sit 'ere in the bloody mud you can't do a fuckin' thing! Not fuckin' ere!"

He demonstratively slouches down against the gravestone and makes a show out of getting comfortable.

"Se e tha'?" He says. "Nothin' ye can do when ye ain't here. Bastard ."

The good thing about the rain is that no one has to know when the drops on your face are tears.

"Not 'ere."

He does not need to say Fuck I wish you were. It is obvious from how he is found in the morning, head cushioned on stone, how he is ushered into a car and given a new suit at the HQ without having to say anything. He feels Merlin's pitying eyes on him for days.

5

He has JB with him again and he lets him run around freely off his leash, yipping happily at flowers - thousand pinpricks of colours among the stones. He watches for a second, indulgently, before glancing around. He has never met another person at Harry's grave, but it does not occur to him to find that particularly newsworthy. After all, who likes coming to graveyards? Besides, a buried Kingsman probably makes for a lot of extra security.

He lights a cigarette.

The stone already shows the first signs of weathering, he notices. It is slightly leaning to the left, some discoloured spots already showing up on it. It makes him wonder how long it has been, how the stone can already look like ages have past, when Eggsy is not even fully done grieving .

He takes a drag and exhales slowly, lost in thought.

"You know" He says eventually, still not quite having overcome the awkwardness of talking to a piece of stone "I'm sorry about the other time. Was a bit out of it, you know, with the mission in Cuba and how it went wrong and on the way back saw your portrait they hung up... looks rubbish by the way, like one of those aristocrat ones in ancient castles and stuff."

He smirks. "But you might just like it."

A thought occurs to him, shivering in a cold breeze, dropping some ash. "Y'know what would be wicked? Like, if we had those moving portraits. Like Harry Potter." A sigh escapes him. "Wouldn't feel so ridiculous talking to a gravestone."

He stands there for some time, smoke drifting upwards and dissipating, thoughts drifting through his head. JB eventually settles down at his feet, contentedly chewing on a blade of grass. The dog got over Harry's death a lot better than Eggsy has. Sure, there was the odd bit of whining at the beginning, but the pug has calmed down rather quickly. Although he sometimes looks at him sadly when Eggsy drifts off in the middle of the day because something just reminded him of Harry.

Or maybe that's just what pugs look like. Who the hell knows.

Eggsy flicks some more ash onto the grass.

"I don't even know what I'm doing here." He admits to the empty air. "It's not like you'll come back or anything. Got to teach myself stuff now. Like how to properly iron the suits. It's a right science, it is, bloody annoying if you ask me. But if I had, like, the wrong creases in my shirt and stuff I'm sure you would come back to haunt me."

He stills. "That's an idea, actually. Pissed of ghost of Harry Hart's a whole of a lot better than no Harry. S'just isn't the same."

JB let out a small whine and got up, circling Eggsy's feet and sniffing the air.

"On second thought I've been wearing your robe, y'know the wine red one? And I don't feel like giving that up, so stay where you are."

Eggsy smirks as if he's made a particularly good joke. He knows he has not, though, that was an abysmal try at it.

He drops his cigarette stump and is about to turn around and go looking for JB to take him home when somebody says "Too late for that now, isn't it?"

He whips around fast enough to make him dizzy, and somebody snuck up on him, where's the bloody umbrella when you need it and how on earth did he get to be a Kingsman when all that's needed to distract him is a cold piece of rock?

There in the shadow of some kind of tree (like with flowers Eggsy had never truly understood trees) stands an impeccably dressed Harry Hart.

And he has an umbrella, of course.

+1

There is a terrible moment when Eggsy thinks he actually has managed to turn Harry into a ghost somehow before common sense kicks in. Ghosts are see-through, after all, and Harry looks about as real as it gets. Eggsy's pulse is out of control

JB, the traitor, instantly runs to Harry and is jumping up and down next to him. How the bloody dog even manages to do that is beyond Eggsy, as fat as he has gotten. When Harry bends down to pick him up, safely nestles JB in the crook of his arm and feeds him a treat a lot of things suddenly make sense.

"You've been feeding him!" He accuses complete with pointing finger and all. He lowers it instantly when Harry tuts disapprovingly at his manners and it takes a second until he gathers his senses and blurts out (rather stupidly and not at all kingsman-ly, in retrospect) "Hold on, I thought you're dead!"

Harry feeds JB another treat, gives his chin one last scratch and sets him down again.

"You really shouldn't do that, you know." Eggsy says. "He's gotten so fat it's ridiculous."

Harry brushes lint and dog hairs from his dark grey pinstripe suit and strides forward as if he was just strolling along on a sunny Saturday morning. Eggsy knows he is gaping but he cannot help it, and to be honest, he is pretty sure nobody could hold it against him.

When Harry is close enough Eggsy reaches out and grips his arm - solid, warm, muscled.

"You're not dead." He asserts. "Why are you not dead?"

Harry's eyes are brown and soft in the sunlight, his smile both teasing and reproving.

"For all matters and appearances I am." He says. "We agreed it would be better this way. I had some recovery to do, after all."

Eggsy catches sight of the scar at Harry's temple for the first time and nods slowly, in a daze. It takes a second until the words catch up to him.

"Hold on, we?"

Harry looks slightly guilty at that.

"Unfortunately yes."

Eggsy groans and cannot stop his head from thudding forwards, coming to rest on a hard, warm shoulder, rising with each inhale and exhale.

Alive. Something whispers in him. So very alive.

"Fuck." He says. "Everybody was in on it, weren't they?"

Merlin's pitying glances. Roxy's guilty expression. He tightened his grip on Harry's bicep.

A hand rose and settled on his hair, feather light.

"My most sincere apologies, Eggsy." When Harry speaks Eggsy can hear it rumble in his chest. It vibrates against his head, through his spine all along his body.

Alive. Every part of him screams. So very alive.

It feels stupid to cry now, so he does not. Tears are for sadness, and whatever he is right now it sure as fuck isn't sad.

"You were to prove yourself first." Harry says quietly, breath rustling the hairs on top of Eggsy's head.

Eggsy rewards him with a hearty thunk of his skull against the shoulder.

"Bastards. Proved myself enough now, did I?"

The hand in his hair tightens. "Enough for me." Harry says gravely. "Always enough for me."

Eggsy wrappes his arms around Harry's muscled frame and squeezes once, hard, for good measure, before letting go and raking his hand through his hair. Harry's hand returns to his side smoothly, as if he has just flagged down a cab or opened a door or something else terribly mundane, not fucked with all of Eggsy's world for the fourth time since they met.

Bastard. Eggsy thinks. Fucking alive bastard.

When their eyes meet Harry looks at him with his expression soft and fond and Eggsy can't help but beam. Harry's eyes rake over him briefly, asserting that he is alright, that he is not hurt. Then they slip to the side and Harry's brow furrows.

"Eggsy" He says, a dangerous tone to his voice. "Are those ashes?"

"C'mon" Eggsy doesn't have to force himself to sound chipper as he links arms with Harry. "Let's go get a drink. There's still that whiskey in your kitchen, y'know the really old one? Bet it's 'specially great after reunions 'n' shit."

"Did you smoke on my grave?"

Harry twists his head to look at the grave as Eggsy drags him away. "There is half a cigarette lying there, Eggsy. My grave is no litter box!"

Eggsy grins.

"If you like that just wait what I've done to your house." He says, just to see Harry splutter and say, slightly shrilly "You better not have done anything to my house! I do remember you saying you did not dare to change anything."

Eggsy just laughs and tightens his hold on Harry. "Bruv, I ain't be lettin' you out of my sight anytime soon."

Harry sighs sufferingly. "I assume that means I will not be getting my dressing gown back."

But his grip on Eggsy's arm is strong and assuring, the pulse beneath his fingers steady and calm.