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“What is this?” Eggsy gasps, and Merlin’s mouth falls off his softening prick fast—cartoonishly fast, like the roadrunner going over an unexpected cliff. And yeah, sure, it’s probably a weird time to ask, but the last seventy-two hours—that’s starting from after they got back from Valentine’s bunker, after having saved the world—have been pretty strange and surreal, and possibly the fantastic orgasm Eggsy’s just had (in Merlin’s mouth) has loosened his tongue a bit.
“I think it was a pretty damn fine blow job.” Merlin wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and sits back on his heels. The hard steel edge that’s always in his voice is sharper, either from offence taken to the question or merely the recent occupation of his throat by Eggsy’s cock. Or both.
“Yeah,” Eggsy says on his next exhale, half-distracted, but Merlin doesn’t take any (further?) offence because Eggsy’s distracted by tracing the slightly swollen shape of Merlin’s bottom lip with his thumb and running his fingertips under the edge of his jaw. Merlin’s eyelids flutter closed, and he leans into Eggsy’s palm, and fuck, that’s terrifying, especially without knowing what this is.
In a literal sense, of course, it’s obvious: this is Eggsy recovering from his second orgasm of the evening, his bare arse pressed up against a bunch of fat paperbacks with incomprehensible acronyms in their titles (LISP, SCO UNIX, NFC), Merlin on the study carpet before him on his knees, his only concessions to the nudity that typically accompanies sex being the cuffs of his button-down undone, sleeves of both shirt and jumper pushed up to his elbows, exposing the sinewy smooth lengths of his forearms, and his belt and fly hanging open. There’s a damp spot visible on his boxer briefs, which is either from leaking when he’d been dry-humping against Eggsy’s thigh earlier, rubbing Eggsy’s first orgasm out with the heel of his hand straight through Eggsy’s jeans, or it’s the remainder of the mess now that he’s tucked himself back in, having pulled out just his cock to fuck it between Eggsy’s thighs, and that after he’d stripped Eggsy from the waist down and manhandled him to face the wall next to the bookcase, taking one of Eggsy’s hands in his own and guiding it to the edge of a shelf for a handhold.
It had been a lot, at first, almost too much so soon after coming in his fucking pants. The fast smooth rolling of Merlin’s hips punching his cockhead into the backs of Eggsy’s balls and making him twitch with overstimulation. Not enough lubrication, a bit of a burn in each thrust that made Eggsy clench his teeth and clutch tighter, white-knuckled to the bookshelf. But then there was space for a few heaving breaths while Merlin was distracted, his cock a hot weight making a home for itself in Eggsy’s arse crack, but unmoving for the moment, resting.
Merlin had returned with warm slick fingers that briefly replaced his cock, stroking and spreading the slickness and warmth up and down Eggsy’s crack, palming his balls for a brief moment, then reaching through to spread the slick around Eggsy’s cock too, pulling out two gentle strokes, but Eggsy flinched, still oversensitive.
“Too soon?”
Eggsy grunted in affirmation. He reached back and groped blindly until he found Merlin’s hip, then his cock. He pulled and whined and hoped that Merlin would be able to deduce both as a request for more.
“Just a moment.” More slickness, more fingers, this time lingering to trace around Eggsy’s hole, possibly in contemplation. And Eggsy didn’t know what he wanted either, or what it meant to push his arse back into Merlin’s fingers, but then Merlin’s cock was back between his thighs, the heat of Merlin’s chest a blanket for his back, and Merlin’s arm held him tight around the waist while he thrust lazily in the newly slick space he’d made for himself and sucked kisses under the hinge of Eggsy’s jaw.
It had seemed to go for hours, Merlin sliding his cock between Eggsy’s thighs and worshipping his neck with kisses. But eventually Merlin’s arm tightened further around Eggsy’s ribs, and his rhythm became jerky and stuttering until he came with a deep groan that Eggsy could feel vibrating in his own chest. It made his cock—most of the way to hard again already—twitch too, and he reached for it, but Merlin batted his hand away and turned him by the hips, tucking his own prick back into his pants before sinking smoothly to his knees
He’d paused with his mouth an inch from the head of Eggsy’s cock, catching Eggsy’s eye as he looked up and asked unnecessarily, “Yes?”
“Oh fuck yes,” Eggsy had said, shutting his eyes tight and tipping his head back against the bookcase. He couldn’t watch this, not without exploding, second orgasm in an hour or no. Merlin on his knees sucking him down was simply too close to all the thoughts he’d been having for months. Years, in fact, really, if he was truly honest with himself, but only months with concrete objects. The first had been Harry and in particular Harry’s casual leaning, waiting halfway down the stair outside the police station so that Eggsy would only see him once he’d come round the corner. So many times Eggsy had played out alternate endings to that scene: Harry not taking so kindly to Eggsy’s lack of gratitude at being released from his arrest, beckoning him closer, pushing him down to his knees and feeding him his cock withdrawn carefully from his perfectly pressed trousers. There was also, after the Professor Arnold business had put Harry in hospital, Harry praising him for his weapons marks, then congratulating him more explicitly, asking Eggsy quite politely to strip off his jumpsuit and make good use of the mechanical hospital bed by finding the best angle at which to raise it so that Eggsy could straddle Harry’s face and fuck his mouth. “Not vigorously, please,” he’d have said, “I’m still convalescing, I’m afraid. I’d simply prefer for us to share the work.”
Merlin had become the second concrete object of Eggsy’s male-oriented sexual fantasies after that “Come here and whisper it in my ear” business. Obviously.
And now, now Eggsy is holding Merlin’s face in his hand, Merlin’s eyes closed and peaceful, the tight lines of worry temporarily smoothed. It’s heavy—literally, Eggsy can feel the weight of Merlin’s skull and brain and genius and worry in his wrist—and frightening, and it sucks to be the one to shine the harsh light of reality, but Eggsy can’t just pretend this isn’t happening. He tips Merlin’s chin up until the tendons of Merlin’s neck tighten again to hold the weight of his head. Merlin opens his eyes.
“What are we doing?”
Merlin sighs. He climbs to his feet slowly, bracing a hand on Eggsy’s shoulder for balance. Needing the momentary crutch has nothing to do with his age, surely; logically, on the contrary, it has everything to do with having been on his knees administering an ecstatically good blow job, but still the moment brings the age difference between them straight to the front of Eggsy’s mind, and a little ball of icy worry forms in his lower abdomen.
“I think we’re taking a shower,” Merlin announces. “Then we’ll talk.” The ball gains mass and jumps around as Eggsy awkwardly gathers his clothes and follows Merlin through the bedroom to the master bath, exposed in his nakedness now and fighting a bizarre twinge of shame over the come trying to stick his inner thighs together, even though Merlin is the one who put it there.
The shower feels like a time-loop, because that’s how all this oddness started. Or not quite, but close. After Valentine and the quick fuck on Merlin’s desk, Merlin had invited him home for a shower, and they’d washed each other gently and kissed slowly under the spray, kissed until Eggsy’s mouth was burning and raw from Merlin’s five o’clock shadow and the water was getting cold, and then Merlin had given Eggsy a t-shirt and shorts identical to his own and slid into the bed behind him, tucking his knees into the backs of Eggsy’s and pressing his chest to Eggsy’s back. Eggsy had fallen asleep quickly and slept without dreaming. He’d woken alone in the bed, too hot, and with the clock telling him it was early afternoon.
Merlin hadn’t returned that day. The only interruption into the more than slightly unnerving quiet and emptiness of the flat was the ring of the doorbell when Eggsy, still unshowered, was eating the scrambled eggs on toast he’d scrounged for a very late breakfast. He shrugged into the red robe he’d found in the bathroom (Harry’s, he’d instantly recognised) to answer the door. It was a Kingsman courier, delivering JB, and fuck, that was instantly mortifying, to realise he’d simply forgotten about his own fucking dog, even if he had been saving the world.
The Kingsman courier ignored his blush and stammered apology as she passed JB into his arms. She paused to give JB a last scritch behind the ears and a peck on the nose before returning to her car, and Eggsy felt JB’s easy acceptance of her affection like a stab in the gut. Not that JB had ever been un-accepting of strangers, but to know that she had been there for him when Eggsy had been, well, (1) saving the world, (2) getting his brains fucked out by his (former?) immediate superior, and (3) sleeping like the dead… Well, maybe it was somewhat excusable after all. Eggsy would just finish his breakfast, have a shower, and take JB on a really long walk to make it up to him.
Merlin wasn’t back when Eggsy and JB returned, and he didn’t return by any hour that could be appropriately taken for dinner time. Eggsy called for Chinese at half ten and picked at it while pretending, even if just for himself and JB, to be engrossed in whatever action movie was playing out on the widescreen in front of him. He felt watched and awkward cleaning his teeth and washing his face in Merlin’s master bath, and he almost couldn’t put the shorts and t-shirt Merlin had given him the night before back on, but he had nothing else to wear, and it would be weirder to climb back into Merlin’s empty bed naked.
He fell asleep more quickly than he’d expected, half-curled around JB. He woke again in an empty bed, but he had a hazy memory of half-waking in the night to a solid presence behind him and an arm around his waist.
The second day was much like the first, only his walk with JB stretched even longer: every second he had an excuse to be outside Merlin’s flat was precious. It was weird being there completely by himself, but it’s not like Eggsy had Merlin’s mobile number, or his e-mail, or any way to get hold of him at all. He thought about calling the shop, but he couldn’t think of what he would say—“Oxfords, not brogues” wouldn’t work anymore, he was certain. He didn’t have anywhere else to go, so he stayed. He stayed with the quiet and the emptiness. He ached with loneliness. And anxiety rose in him as the hours passed into evening, steady and inexorable like an ocean tide.
The second night Eggsy woke to a thigh slotting between his, and he started to turn, but Merlin stopped him. He curled close, and Eggsy could feel him half-hard pressing against his arse, but Merlin only kissed behind his ear and whispered, “Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Merlin had been gone again the third morning, but he came home just past tea time. He found Eggsy and JB in the study, and Eggsy froze as if caught red-handed at…something, although all he’d been doing was reading.
“Christ, the world’s a fucking mess, Eggsy,” Merlin had exclaimed and collapsed on the sofa, his legs falling open in a casual, wide sprawl, inviting the eyes to focus at the apex of their V. Eggsy couldn’t help looking, but Merlin didn’t mind. He quirked a smile and beckoned. “Come here, you.”
So that’s how it started again, with Eggsy straddling Merlin’s lap and kissing him, and Merlin moving rather quickly on to rubbing Eggsy through his jeans, exactly like every retrospective fantasy Eggsy had been having about what it might have been like, if he’d actually had the guts to try it with a guy in his teens.
And now having fulfilled several more of Eggsy’s fantasies, Merlin is washing him up in the shower, again, paying particularly close attention to soaping and scrubbing his arse, teasing with gentle fingers around his rim in a way that can only be intensely intimate, in this moment, because Eggsy can’t possibly get hard again now. So he avoids Merlin’s eyes and tries to keep himself upright under his own steam instead of falling into the temptation of leaning back against Merlin’s chest.
The conversation finally takes place in the kitchen, alone, over tea, JB having curled himself into a ball in the centre of Merlin’s bed, earning a glare from Merlin in Eggsy’s direction, but in the end Merlin only nudged Eggsy out of the bedroom with a hand at the small of his back and turned off the lights behind them. He’s put the kettle on to boil and fetched chocolate biscuits from a cupboard, and Eggsy’s just about to expire in the awkward silence. He also has zero interest in biscuits.
“You asked what we’re doing,” Merlin starts while he’s pouring, after the kettle’s clicked off. He brings the mugs to the table and gestures for Eggsy to sit, so Eggsy sits, blows on his steeping tea, and doesn’t look at Merlin in hopes that not looking will keep him talking. It works.
“I think we’re doing different things, you and I. I’m– To be honest about it, I’m pretty sure I’m using sex—sex with you—as a physical release for my emotional distress. My grief.”
Well, that’s frank. Eggsy freezes, staring into his tea, but it doesn’t have any answers.
“You’re a good lad, Eggsy, a good agent, and a friend. Look at me.” Eggsy looks up. “Be honest– You’ve not been pining for me, you’re not in love with me. You care for me, sure. I care for you too. But what you’ve been doing is, and I’m speculating a bit here, but I think I might be right– You’re trying it out with a man for the first time.”
Eggsy blushes, and Merlin ignores it like a saint. “So we’re both using each other, really. Right?”
Eggsy shrugs, not trusting himself to speak just yet.
“Was I right about you?”
Eggsy nods, and then, to clarify: “It’s not like– I’d never really thought about it before. Before Harry.” He winces; that may have been too honest. “Sorry.”
“No need. Believe me, I understand. He’s quite an inspiration.”
“Was it the same for you?” This is strange territory, a conversation skirting their sexual fantasies about the recently departed Harry Hart.
“Was Harry my homosexual awakening, do you mean? No, not in the least. I’ve known I was bent ever since I pulled Simon Cromwell into the cleaner’s closet, he didn’t clock me for my troubles, and we both came in our pants after I pushed his face into the wall and dry-humped his arse. I was sixteen.”
Eggsy crosses his legs under the table. Not for that reason. Just, because. Because Merlin’s deadpan honesty makes him feel like one of the godawful pinned butterflies in Harry’s loo with Mr. Pickle.
“Have you ever been with a woman?”
“Sure,” Merlin shrugs. “It’s not what I prefer, but for me it’s not impossible. From a physiological perspective it’s quite similar, anyway.”
Eggsy thinks for a moment to untangle this. “You like fucking. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Yes, Eggsy,” Merlin’s tone is softly indulgent, “I like fucking.”
“And Harry–” Eggsy’s blush nearly gives him away before he finishes the question. It’s wildly inappropriate, but what’s dead is dead, and for fuck’s sake, but he’s curious. “Harry liked being fucked?”
“Yes, quite.”
“And what were you, together?”
Merlin fishes the bag out of his tea and gets up to discard it before answering. “I don’t know how to explain. As you get older, the labels matter less. I love him, if that’s what you’re asking, but we never really– There was no question of either of us settling down with anyone else, because of what we do, so we didn’t ever pin it down, what we were doing.”
Eggsy won’t mention the slip into present tense: I love him. He jokes instead: “But you and me, friends with benefits?” He grins, cheeky, and Merlin falls straight for it.
“Is that what you kids are calling it these days?”
“Sure is, grandpa.”
“Oh, you’re not going to get away with calling me that.”
“What are you going to do?”
Merlin pushes his chair back, making space between him and the table. “Come here and turn around.”
Eggsy stands, almost dizzy with the way all the blood in his body is rushing down, yet again, straight into his cock. He steps into the space Merlin’s made for him and turns to face away. Merlin hooks his thumbs into the waistband of Eggsy’s shorts and pulls them down slowly until they drop loose around his ankles.
“Step out of your shorts, spread your legs, and bend over.”
Eggsy does as he’s told, but his belly is roiling with nerves. “Are you going to spank me?” Because honestly, he’s not quite sure he’s into that.
“Hardly,” Merlin says, and then his hands are on Eggsy’s arse, and his thumbs are spreading his cheeks apart. Eggsy can feel the warm puffs of air from Merlin’s words as he continues, “I’m going to eat your arse and then, as long as it’s something you want, fuck my cock straight into you over this table and pound you until you can’t remember your name.” Merlin licks one wet stripe all the way up from Eggsy’s balls to his tailbone. “Why else did you think I washed your arse so thoroughly?”
“Fuck.”
Merlin leans in again and traces the tip of his tongue just around Eggsy’s rim while Eggsy tenses and swears incoherently. “Oh, oh shit. Fucking fuck.”
Merlin pulls away again and releases his hold on Eggsy’s arse. He runs his hands down the outsides of Eggsy’s thighs in long strokes, up and down, but all it does is raise gooseflesh all over Eggsy’s body, and he’s hot all over, and he would swear he can hear his heartbeat from the pounding throbbing of his dick.
“Is that a yes?” Merlin asks.
“Yeah, fuck, please.” Eggsy doesn’t care that he’s begging. Hell, it’s kind of hot to be begging.
“Good. Just try to relax now.”
There are three things that, later, Eggsy can recall in vivid detail from this, the best fuck of his fucking life (no pun intended) and possibly the best fuck he’ll ever have. First, the absolute synchronised perfection Merlin achieves curling his tongue into Eggsy’s arsehole at the same time as he twists his fingers around the head of Eggsy’s cock. Second, the roiling surge of desperation that Merlin incites by repeatedly pushing just the head of his cock just past Eggsy’s rim and pulling it out, and this is before Merlin decides that olive oil will do in a pinch for lube, so it’s too tight, and a little burning, and it shouldn’t even feel good at all, but it does. Third and finally: that moment when Eggsy gasps, “Harder,” and Merlin moves one of his hands from Eggsy’s hip to his neck, pushing him more firmly into the table and then carefully moving his thumb to press down on his carotid artery. It makes Eggsy instantly dizzy, and then he’s floating; the only thing keeping him tied to the earth at all is the driving pressure of Merlin’s cock, which is absolutely perfect.