Eggsy shut the front door to his house with a hard sigh. It was dark inside as always, which at least eased the ache in his head. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the door - only to wince when the dried mud on his back crunched against the wood.

He should probably have gone to headquarters. Waking up in the ass end of Scotland with no recollection of getting there was something that screamed 'go to the Merlin department,' but he was gross from the mud, and from eight hours on public transport, and whatever the fuck had happened could damn well wait until after he showered and slept.

He dragged himself off the door and made it as far as the couch. They'd finally fixed the light in the square, it seemed, though it had been blocked from his sight in the hall. He believed this for a whole minute, which was embarrassing given his profession, before the clink of dishes forced him to reevaluate his assessment.

A quick glance over the back of the couch confirmed - the kitchen light was on. The kitchen light was on because someone was in his kitchen. Now that his training was kicking in he had no idea how he'd missed the smell of food wafting around and the general disturbance of his house. There was stuff that wasn't his on the coffee table, a second umbrella on the rack - the butterflies were back up, for Christ's sake.

A head injury was looking more and more likely by the minute.

This was either a very eccentric baddie who felt like making his debut with an absurdly personal flare, or a burglar who was more into making a mess than stealing. With caution, he heaved himself up and walked to the doorway.

Eggsy stopped on the threshold to the kitchen.

Oh god, he thought, I've died, then I guess that makes more sense.

Harry Hart was in his kitchen cooking dinner.

He couldn't see Harry's face from the angle he was at, but it was still obviously him. Harry was by the stove with a frypan over the burner in one hand and a spatula in the other, like he'd been expecting Eggsy home at about this time and had thought to start cooking for the both of them. He was in a white button down and pressed black pants that were somewhat wrinkled from the day, and a green apron that wasn't doing much to keep the flour off the black fabric. His hair was free of product, allowed to curl about freely. It was as domestic as it was impossible, and Eggsy stood in the door and wondered how, exactly, he'd passed on, and who he ought to thank for it.

"You're just in time. Dinner's ready." Harry said at last, startling him out of his trance. He reached up and shut the burner off with the sharp click Eggsy knew well from cooking meals himself here, and suddenly Harry was crossing the kitchen, smiling, looking the same as he had in the last days of his life - with the exception of a silvering scar that arced back from his eyebrow. Words got stuck in Eggsy's throat at the sight of him, thought ground to a halt, so he had somewhat of an excuse that when Harry leaned in, fingers brushing the edge of his jaw, and pressed a kiss to his lips, he only kept staring, still, as if afraid he'd burst if he so much as breathed.

It was chaste and short, the sort couples who've been together for years shared, but it still sent a shock though Eggsy's overworked nerves, made his shattered heart flare to life, and stung like the first drop of salve on a wound.

"Welcome home, Eggsy."

Eggsy was glad he couldn't speak, or he might have sobbed.

Then Harry was off again, plating the food and setting two places at the table as if he did it every night, as if he hadn't died and nothing was weird about this at all. As he moved to his seat he looked at Eggsy again, raising his eyebrows "Are you planning to stand in the door all night?"

Eggsy started and moved across the uncharacteristically bright kitchen to sit at Harry's right in the longest knee-jerk reaction he'd ever managed. Harry smiled again, and Eggsy watched him start to cut his food.

What is this, Eggsy wanted to ask, but it tangled in how are you here and I missed you and why did you kiss me, and so on, and somehow they together came out as: "Harry it's eleven o'clock at night. Why the hell are you eating pancakes?"

Harry stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth and looked at him, but it had been too long for Eggsy to decipher what was behind his eyes. Finally, he smiled warmly, the way he always had.

"I wanted blueberries and dinner." He replied, and set about eating with an air of prim satisfaction.

"It's breakfast, though, innit?" Eggsy asked, feeling somehow more dazed, but started eating anyway. It was a terrifically made breakfast.

As Eggsy ate his mind settled a bit, and he figured he may as well roll with being dead if Harry was doing it anyway. Then something nudged his foot, and he glanced down to find -

"J.B.?" he asked shakily. J.B. yipped at him and wagged his tail hopefully.

"Finally woke up, I suppose. What kind of dog won't greet his master at the door?" Harry said.

Like playing a country song in reverse, Eggsy thought, and laughed a bit, handing J.B. a chunk of pancake.

"He'll get fat if you keep spoiling him." Harry scolded, and Eggsy smiled at him.

"It ain't gentlemanly to comment on someone's weight, Harry."

It wasn't even a conscious decision he made to follow Harry into the master bedroom after dinner, more a product of how he couldn't imagine letting Harry leave his line of sight. Harry didn't seem to mind one bit anyway. He turned once they were in the room and reached behind Eggsy to shut the door, then backed him into it and kissed him again. It was just as shocking as the first time, a jolt of lightning along his shot nerves that lit him up too bright and not bright enough all at once.

It wasn't short this time. This time, Eggsy had to grab Harry's hips to hold on while Harry kissed him like he was never going to kiss anyone else ever again, a slow and sweet undoing. Eggsy kissed back with just the same level of reverence, and could hardly believe he'd done enough good to have this kind of heaven waiting for him.

Eventually he drew back, leaving Eggsy glad for the door's support, and brushed a hand along Eggsy's suit.

"What a mess you are." Harry said quietly "What have you gotten up to?"

Hell if I know, Eggsy thought.

"Sorry," Eggsy replied.

Harry shushed him and gave him a light nudge towards the bathroom "Go and get cleaned up. I'll bring you something to sleep in."

He moved away and Eggsy told himself he didn't instantly feel bereft. But he was right, Eggsy's suit was an unsalvageable, crunchy mess of mud and sweat and possibly gum from the train, and his hair was only marginally better. So he went. He left the ruined suit in a pile on the bathroom floor and lost track of time standing under the water, felt it take some of his shock with it and leave him shaken and ready to break.

"Eggsy?" Harry called after an undetermined amount of time. Eggsy snapped back to himself and shut off the water.

"Comin'," he called back, drying and wrapping himself in Harry's red robe on impulse. He almost stumbled when the smell of Harry's soap rose off it the way it hadn't in years and had to brace himself on the sink to blink back the tears that were suddenly in his eyes.

Outside that door, waiting for him to come out, was Harry Hart. The man he'd loved so completely and so stupidly, the man who'd been dead and buried five years ago, as real as anything had ever seemed. It was like the thought had been too big to settle in his head and just now had fitted into place. He bit down on his knuckle to ground himself. He wasn't going to lose it here. He wasn't.

"Are you alright, darling?" Harry called again.

Darling. It was a good thing he was dead, otherwise he probably wouldn't have survived this. Eggsy let out a long breath and opened the door.

"Yeah, sorry. You were right, I was a mess." He tried to smile but was afraid he came short.

Harry stood by the door with a neatly folded stack of clothes in one hand and a worried crease between his eyebrows. Eggsy looked down at the clothes because looking at Harry felt a bit like looking directly at the sun.

"Those for me?"

"Yes. Though you do look lovely in my robe."

Eggsy grinned shyly "I'd rather sleep in this then, if it's all the same to you."

Harry gave him such a fond look that Eggsy thought he might melt on the spot "I'm often forced to wonder why on earth you even bought pajamas."

Eggsy knew the stitching on the hem he could see, damn well actually from his first and favorite suit, so he smiled and said "Maybe I just liked the tailor."

"I've no doubt." Harry replied, turning back to set the clothes aside and climb into bed. For a moment Eggsy got stuck again, taking in the sight of Harry settling in for the night on his red sheets under the slowly dawning realization that he was expected, hell, wanted, on the side Harry hadn't taken. His feet carried him over though, and he slid between the sheets like a missing puzzle piece. Harry shut out the light, casting the room in darkness only alleviated by the half-moon outside the window.

Eggsy didn't close his eyes. How could he? Harry was settled in beside him, had tucked himself close and draped an arm over Eggsy, and Eggsy couldn't have brought himself to look away if he'd bothered to try. Minutes that felt like seconds later, Harry opened his eyes to look back at him.

"Are you sure you're alright?" he asked quietly.

Eggsy's lips parted on a reply, but he couldn't think of a convincing lie. Instead, boldly, he leaned up and kissed Harry again. Harry let him - he was never going to stop reveling in that - and Eggsy licked his way into Harry's mouth, tasting those stupid pancakes and mouthwash and trying to memorize every second of it. He broke away an age later, his bones all but vibrating, and after the briefest moment of hesitation, he brushed his fingers over the new scar. Eggsy swore Harry's eyes started to shine, but that couldn't be. He let himself draw Harry closer still.

If this was death, he thought, he had to wonder why he hadn't tried it sooner.

Eggsy snapped awake to the pings of a heart monitor. The sheets reeked of antiseptic, and when he flipped around and threw an arm to the other side of the mattress all he got for the trouble was a bruise from the bed's handrail.

The heart monitor sounded like a techno beat at a rave, but that and Eggsy's rapidly speeding breaths were the only sound in the otherwise empty observation room in Kingsman headquarters. Eggsy started to shake, but hyperventilating brought another bit of information to light: not everything smelled of antiseptic. He looked down and found the hospital gown had been replaced by Harry's robe, still smelling of an aftershave Eggsy had let run out four years before.

"Where do you think you're going?" asked the nurse when he came in to see why the monitor had flat-lined.

Eggsy shoved his feet into his Oxfords and blew by him.

"Home."

Home, as he'd called it, was a hollow shell as always. The other umbrella was gone, the butterflies locked away in a dusty office he never, ever entered, J.B.'s food dish still tucked in the very back of his Tupperware cupboard with the tub-less lids and odd plastic baubles.

After more time searching than was needed he all but collapsed on his couch, head in his hands.

So. Not dead. Insane.

He really did try to take deep breaths and stay calm, but by the time the sun rose he was shaking apart, feeling more alone than he had in years even though what felt like just hours before he'd fallen asleep in Harry's arms. At least he had a damn good reason to be as mental as he was, he decided. But he couldn't stay in the house. One second it was quiet, and then the next, and the next, a yawning void of emptiness that seemed to grow outward and inward until he was grabbing his jacket and nearly flying out the door.

It was a short walk to the cemetery. Roxy had commented once that it was strange, and now had he been thinking, he might have noticed that leaving a silent house at barely six in the morning for all the liveliness of a graveyard didn't make that much sense. But when he finally stood next to the nondescript, polished, grey stone, he felt more whole and at home than he had anywhere else since it had been placed.

"Hey Harry," he greeted. Heedless of his suit, Eggsy sat in the still dewy grass and stared into the name that broke his shadowed reflection. The sun glinted off one corner, glimmering as beads of condensation warmed beneath its rays. For a while Eggsy just sat, his strength misplaced, his heart too heavy to give his voice direction. Two plots over from the Hart plot lay a much more familiar name to him, but it wasn't them he needed now. Roxy was far and away, entombed with the rest of her relatives, but she wouldn't have done either.

"Saw you yesterday," he said at last "you made pancakes. And kissed me."

The stone was silent as always.

"It was wonderful, Harry. And now it feels like I'm the one in the ground. But the whole thing's impossible, innit? Wakin' up someplace you're alive and in love with me, then wakin' up back here. Hell of a psychotic break."

He shifted and took up his usual spot, resting his back against the cool stone.

"It's been five fuckin' years, Harry, and it still feels like I'm missing a limb. Pathetic, that's what it is." He tipped his head back "why'd you have to go and die on me?"

He stayed until the sun climbed another few dozen degrees in the sky, so it beat down and heated his hair until his scalp itched. He didn't feel particularly better when he got up, but as a rule he didn't hang around during the busy hours. If he came too often, his Kingsman-appointed shrink would find out, and there would go his carefully maintained image of a brash and egotistical, but perfectly sane, state of mind.

He really was methodical about it. Just let them try to take Kingsman from him, he'd thought when the soft-looking woman had been assigned to him after the car crash, they'd have to dig it out of his soul beforehand.

The truth was he'd lost everything, and it had all culminated in the grayness of London coming to settle in his bones, in late nights staring at ceilings and recklessness that put him in medical only slightly more often than everyone else. He wondered sometimes if their lives were as stripped bare as his.

Emma-the-psychologist was one of the best in all of the EU, but there was no rule book for the pathology of spies, and fooling her was just a matter of giving her a thread and letting her follow it thinking he wasn't feeding it to her from the other end.

Besides, it wasn't like he didn't talk to anyone. Harry was always a terrific listener.

He thought he was ready when he entered the house, but then his feet turn to lead just inside the doorway. He couldn't walk into his house the same as he'd done just hours ago only to know that the green apron Harry had worn the night before was probably still a pile of spare fabric at the shop, that the canned blueberries collecting dust in the back of his cupboard were still there doing just that.

He didn't move until the old landline he'd forgotten to disconnect for five years straight started ringing, and even then it was slow and he didn't answer until whoever it was called a second time.

"'lo?" He answered, trying to sound normal.

"Galahad! Why aren't you answering your glasses?!"

"My-" he looked around. Hadn't he fallen asleep in them? Where had they gone? "I'm...not sure where they are." He answered slowly.

"You're not sure -" Merlin (the new one, a sharp blonde woman who was younger even than him and who compensated for it by being both amazing and absolutely bull-headed) growled in frustration "You were not authorized to leave observation. Come back in immediately - I'll deal with your glasses when you get here."

"...yeah." Eggsy replied, and hung up.

Where the hell were his glasses?

He knew where he saw them last - on Harry's nightstand, beside Harry's own. Useless for some reason, but there. He'd have seen them if they were still in the observation room. Slowly he trudged up the stairs again and entered the master bedroom reluctantly. Harry's absence was more obvious in here than anywhere else, though he'd been numb to it the day before. Eggsy lived for his job and that was it, which showed. Harry kept books in various stages of completion around the room, had artsy old pictures and yet more butterflies and left tea stains on the polished wood with his cups. Eggsy's version was barren, save his closet full of suits tucked beside skeletons of his past.

That barrenness made it easy to determine that the glasses weren't there either.

Eggsy frowned, but Merlin's rage was a frightening thing, so he strode to the bathroom to wash up before he headed back in. Except he almost slipped and brained himself on the sink when he spotted the red robe he'd woken up in hanging on the wall like a ghost beside its identical twin.