Chapter Text
Harry Hart was in trouble.
He was in London; theoretically this sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen, not on his home ground. But ‘theoretically’ did nothing to remove the bullet lodged in his arm (which would teach him to take his jacket off in public ever again), or to repair his glasses (broken in a fight with the six- perhaps five, now, if the shots Harry had managed to get off had done their work- men who were trying to kill him). It did nothing to change the fact that Harry’s current situation- bleeding and breathless and confused, damn it- had just gone from bad to worse. He was in the wrong part of the city.
Oh, Harry wasn’t worried about getting mugged- the local criminal element was small potatoes compared to what was behind him- but it was still… inconvenient. The instincts that had kept Harry alive in countless firefights over the years had kicked in after he was attacked, and they had brought him to a place where he could do a great many things- but none of them were fit in.
Or not, Harry thought as he collided with a man in a three-piece suit headed in the opposite direction. The suit was ill-fitted, though only someone who had spent as much time in a tailor’s shop as Harry had would probably notice. The man was pasty-faced and wide-eyed, less than pleased to have been seen, even by a stranger. Harry turned the corner and realized why.
A couple of young men were huddled around a lamp post, their reasons for loitering immediately obvious. Though all of them straightened up when they saw Harry, only one was bold enough to approach.
He took Harry by the lapels. “Looking for some fun, gorgeous?”
Harry looked down and right into eyes that gleamed with intelligence and what looked like good humor. They were strangely compelling, those eyes, and they drew Harry in. They dried up his mouth and seemed to stop… everything. For a moment, the sharp pain lancing through Harry’s shoulder faded, and his frantic calculations- about how far behind him his pursuers were, what they wanted, and what they were willing to do to get it- stuttered to a halt.
The light was dim, only enough for Harry to see that the young man the eyes belonged to had a slightly crooked grin that was very welcoming. Harry knew that he wasn’t easy to see either. His unusual paleness and the sweat he could feel sliding down his temples and the back of his neck probably weren’t too clear, or at least easily explained away by the circumstances. Harry was sure that the bulky overcoat he had pulled on over his jacket after being shot (stolen from a coat rack- he would have to get Merlin to pay for it once he managed to make contact with him again- and of a much lower quality than anything Harry actually owned) hid the fact that he had been in a firefight well enough for now.
Perhaps blending in wasn’t so impossible after all. Harry said, “I could be.” He sounded like his throat had a wood rasp inside it, and he was still struggling to breathe evenly- but that probably didn’t seem too unusual either, now that Harry thought about it.
The boy leaned closer, those eyes going soft. “What d’you like?”
He had a sweet voice, and Harry found himself unusually tempted to lose himself in it- but he couldn’t afford to. Slowly, the ambient sounds of the city (no pursuing footfalls, not yet, that was good) reasserted themselves, and Harry distinctly picked up wet sucking noises and flesh slapping against flesh in the alley behind him. Grunting. Panting. The occasional, Yeah, give it to me.
Harry had seen far too much to be bothered by such things, but he allowed a look of prudish distaste to cross his face anyway. “I like privacy,” he said. Somewhere out of the way where he could regroup and check his injuries- that was what Harry needed, and if this was an unusual way to get it… well, Harry wouldn’t question what the universe had provided.
“Don’t got a car?”
“No.” The light from the streetlamp fell across the boy’s face as he chewed on his lower lip. Harry found the affect rather fetching, and he wondered if the boy did it out of habit or by design. It certainly drew attention to how smooth and lush it was. Harry had no doubt the gesture had reduced men to wheedling in the past. “You don’t know of… somewhere nearby?” Harry pressed, carefully. “Anywhere?”
“If I did leave with you, it’d be extra.”
Harry offered the first figure that came into his head. Judging from the way the boy's eyes widened, it was far too high.
He said, “I know a place,” a little too quickly. “Let me just…” He took out his phone and fired off several texts in quick succession. “One of my stepdad’s mates works in a- a hotel real close to here.” From his stutter, Harry guessed that it wasn’t a very high class establishment- but then if Harry had wanted high class he would have sought it out himself. Somewhere where they had seen everything, where they looked the other way without question- that was what Harry needed at the moment, and his knowledge of such areas in London was unfortunately lacking. “He don’t normally rent rooms to me, but if you…”
Harry made a sound of agreement and kept his thoughts to himself otherwise. The artless almost-babbling, the tiny hint at the boy’s personal life- it was all so very… charming. Harry considered that, and the possibility (high, in his estimation) that there would be men waiting to rob him at the promised location.
He decided to cross that bridge when he came to it.
The boy pocketed his phone. “C’mon,” he said, jerking his head down the street. Harry obeyed, letting his fingers trail along the sharp line of the boy’s hip as they started moving. He was so warm, and headed in the same direction Harry had been. Good. That at least was good.
As the boy had promised, their destination wasn’t far. The building was dark, with an aspect both garish and battered, sandwiched between two other buildings as if it might be pushed right out of existence at any moment. Harry scanned his surroundings- looking for the men who had started all this, and for anyone else whose attention he might have drawn since he arrived- until he turned and saw the boy holding the door for him. The boy was chewing his lip again and his eyes kept darting from Harry to all the possible avenues of escape, as if he was afraid that Harry might change his mind at any moment.
Harry wasn’t sure what to do, how to behave, what the current vernacular for, yes I am still interested in paying you an outrageously large sum of money to take me up to a hotel room with you was, but he only had to keep this up for a few minutes longer; it would be such a waste of an opportunity to spook the boy now.
So Harry leaned close and let his mouth run over the shell of the boy’s ear. He heard a long exhale- relief, perhaps- and nosed down the boy’s sharp jaw, inhaling. He smelled cheap shampoo and washing powder. If Harry was surprised at himself when he pressed a kiss to the boy’s chin, he was more surprised still when he lifted his head and the boy caught his mouth. He tasted of mint- chewing gum? Mouthwash? Harry wondered only briefly before the shock of being kissed shorted his thoughts out altogether.
The dismal fact was that Harry hadn’t been touched- so intimately, or at all- in a long time. For a second, the sensations of it- being this close to another person again after so long- were overwhelming. But in the second after that, training took over. This boy wasn’t the only one who knew how to seduce, and Harry needed to put on a good show.
That was how he explained it to himself, at any rate- the way he sank into the kiss. He was dimly aware of his hands- one of which had his own drying blood on it, for Christ’s sake- cupping the boy’s face. He was aware, too, of moving forward through the door, and of the boy backing up obligingly into the lobby right up until he collided with a wall. Beyond that, there was nothing but how the boy’s mouth was as plush as it looked, how he kissed wet and sloppy and lacking finesse in all the right ways. Harry ran his tongue over the boy’s lower lip and sucked on it gently.
The boy groaned- yet another surprise- and his hands ran across Harry’s chest and towards his sides.
Harry gripped him by the wrists, pinning his hands on either side of his head against the wall. “Privacy,” he reminded him. It wouldn’t do for the boy to find the gun holstered underneath his arm, after all.
“Yeah,” the boy agreed breathlessly.
Harry looked at him, pinned like a butterfly under his hands, and admitted to himself how much he wanted this boy. The hotel was as out of repair inside as it was out, and against the backdrop of chipped paint and flickering light the boy looked impossibly beautiful, and older than he had before. Not old enough for Harry to feel good about having these thoughts, but at least out of his teens, twenty or twenty-one, certainly- and the eyes, the eyes that had captured Harry from the first, they certainly looked old, and they gleamed with things Harry couldn’t quite fathom. “What do I call you?” Harry asked, because however much longer they were to be in one another’s company, it suddenly felt very important to have a name.
The boy blinked then, surprised, and seemed to weigh his answer for a moment before he said, “Gary. I’m Gary.”
Gary strained very slightly against Harry’s hands, tilting his chin up and parting his lips. Asking for another kiss. Yeah, give it to me, Harry remembered hearing from the alleyway. He pushed the memory aside. He was only playing along, after all; he couldn’t afford to get caught up in the moment.
“Fucking hell, you weren’t lying,” someone said.
Gary twisted under Harry’s hands and Harry let him go, backing off quickly- though not quickly enough to miss the way Gary’s pulse sped up beneath his fingers. They both turned in the direction of the voice, and Harry saw a wholly unremarkable-looking man wearing oversized jeans, his jaw hanging slack as he stood on the stairs.
“No,” Harry’s boy- no, not his boy, Gary- said. “I wasn’t.”
Harry took the moment Gary spent glaring at the man to glance around at the dingy lobby, annoyed with himself for having failed to take stock of it thus far. There was an unoccupied desk to one side of the room. Harry could only assume that this man was usually the one behind it; Harry supposed it was best not to wonder what had taken him away from it.
“All right, all right,” the man was saying as he took his place behind the desk. “Cash up front,” he told Harry, giving him a rather slimy grin. “Couple of hours, yeah?”
“He’s all night, bruv, and then some,” Gary replied, and the man’s lip curled, his gaze darting from Harry to Gary and back to Harry again, as if he couldn’t imagine why Harry would be willing to pay such a sum.
“Don’t have unlimited space, you know,” the man said. “What if-”
Gary rolled his eyes. “Not my problem, is it? Unless you wanna explain to Dean why my mum lost the flat while he was locked up because I couldn’t-”
Harry decided to bring that exchange to an end, handing over the money the man expected and then some. He was curious- more curious than he could afford to be- but his arm was beginning to hurt again and he needed to move things along. “That should cover any ‘what ifs’,” he said.
Again the man's eyes snapped from Harry to Gary and back again. He put up his hands. “Yeah, all right. Fucking whatever.”
The man threw something at Gary- a key- and Gary caught it with surprisingly keen reflexes. “Come on, then,” he said to Harry, suddenly all warm eyes again. He jerked his head toward the stairs and made his way up them.
Harry followed him, and he let himself touch all the way up the stairs and down the hall. He ran his thumb over that soft lower lip. His fingers trailed over a cheekbone and into short, soft hair. He didn’t let himself kiss, but the tiny breathless noises that Gary made every time Harry avoided his lips were somehow more dangerous to Harry’s control than a kiss would probably have been. Gary pressed up against him, too thin but also too perfect, and Harry counted the seconds until they found the right door.
Eventually they did, and Gary let them into a small room. It was dark, but between the light that streamed in through the window and his own good sense of these things, Harry could tell that they were alone.
Gary turned around and slipped the chain, and Harry breathed a little easier. So. For Gary this was just a regular job, not a robbery.
Gary reached for the light switch and Harry caught his hand. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
There was a moment of hesitation before Gary said, “Okay,” and took a step forward, his breath warm on Harry’s face, his fingers still tightly wound around Harry’s own. “Where were we then?” he asked, his voice growing stronger and more seductive with every word. “What d’you like?”
Harry kept himself very still. His body wasn’t as unruly as it once was, and even when he was a young man Harry had had very good control over it. He wanted, and for a moment he let himself want. Let himself imagine pushing Gary against the nearest available surface- the rickety table by the window didn’t look up to the task, but the wall actually seemed promising and, of course, even rooms like this one had beds- and telling him in perfect, excruciating detail all the ways he could and would spend every second of the time he was paying for taking Gary apart.
He imagined, and then he let it go. He dropped Gary’s hand and took a step back. “What I would like is for you to fetch some alcohol, please. Can you do that?”
In the semi-darkness, he could see Gary blink. He hesitated once more before he said, “Yeah?” It sounded like a question. “I’d have to go back out for it, though. Not too far, I guess- Poodle’s probably got some.”
“Excellent,” Harry said as evenly as he could.
He was a little surprised, still, when Gary obeyed without further protest, disappearing back out the door. The moment he was gone, Harry let out a long breath. He felt so tired now that he was alone- sorer, achier, older.
Still, Harry made himself move, crossing to the window. It afforded him an excellent view of the street, and he could sit at the table with his back fitted firmly against the wall if he only moved the chair a little bit. Perfect. Harry shrugged out of his stolen coat and hung it around the chair. He took off his jacket, too, and stowed his shoulder holsters in the large pockets of the coat. He hid one of the guns in the pocket as well and placed the other on the table, covering it with his jacket so that it would be to hand but not readily obvious. He didn’t want to scare Gary any more than he needed to. He stripped out of his bloodied shirt and tossed it aside.
From the lining of his jacket Harry retrieved his emergency first aid kit- containing tweezers, a needle and thread, gauze, and other necessaries- and set it on the table as well. He also produced his wallet, counting out the money he had promised Gary. He placed it on the other side of the table, as far from his chosen seat as the table would accommodate. He wanted Gary to have to come to him to get it- that way, he was most likely to still get his alcohol- but he didn’t want him to feel overly trapped or threatened. Gary was welcome to run once their transaction was at an end, unless he planned to bring back some friends or perhaps the police. Harry didn’t think he would, though; Gary had already proven himself trustworthy, insofar as that went, and the police most likely weren’t his friends any more than they were Harry’s.
He did wonder, absently, whether Gary was meeting any resistance from the man downstairs. Harry decided that if it proved dangerous to him he would find out as a matter of course. Otherwise, it wasn’t his business.
Harry crossed to the bathroom, washing his hands and rinsing the crusted blood off his shoulder so he could get a better look at the injury. His makeshift wrapping had almost stopped the bleeding, and the wound itself actually didn’t look too bad. Harry was reluctant to glance up into the mirror, but as he retrieved a towel- and washed it by hand for good measure- he did catch his own reflection. He looked as sore and tired and old as he felt. It made him wonder what Gary thought when he looked at him- and suspect that it wasn’t at all complimentary.
Harry sighed and returned to the table. There he set about threading the needle (or trying to, he abruptly became aware that the arm attached to the shoulder in question was shaking violently)- and that was how Gary found him.
“Fucking hell,” Gary said. He stood frozen in the doorway, staring at Harry, for longer than Harry would have expected him to. Harry considered how he must look, stripped down to an A-shirt and far more muscular than he had probably appeared in that bulky overcoat- not to mention bleeding sluggishly from a bullet wound and scarred from many others in years past.
Harry looked at Gary in turn. He noticed that Gary had brought a fresh bottle of gin rather than rubbing alcohol- which made sense now that Harry thought about it. Gary’s eyes were wide and his mouth was hanging open. Harry wanted to kiss into it. He flexed his shoulder; once he allowed himself to fully acknowledge it, the pain of the bullet wound was considerable and it tamped down on Harry’s lust quite admirably.
“Guess you ain’t actually in this for the pleasure of my company,” Gary said at last.
“No,” Harry replied evenly. He jerked his chin toward the table. “But the money’s yours. I keep my promises.”
Gary shut the door- something else Harry hadn't expected- and crossed to the table, placing the bottle in front of Harry before he reached for the cash. “Haven't earned this,” he remarked as he leafed through it.
Harry dabbed at his shoulder with the towel he’d cleaned off, biting back a hiss. “If I can rely on you keeping your mouth shut and not talking to the police, you absolutely have.”
Gary looked skeptical.
Harry took a plug of the gin- cheap, disgusting, and utterly appropriate- before pouring some of it onto his shoulder. A searing pain exploded across it, setting off fireworks behind Harry’s eyes. “You’re free to go,” he told Gary. He knew this wasn’t pretty and it was only going to get less so. He forced his eyes open, and he looked hard at Gary. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I believe you,” Gary said, and there was the strangest gravity in his voice. He took the money, but he didn’t leave either. He crossed his arms over his chest and set his jaw. “I’m staying.”
Harry stared at him for a moment more, then barked out a laugh. “All right,” he said. “Go and wash your hands.”
Gary obeyed and returned. Harry passed him the needle and thread. “Can you disinfect and thread this?”
“Yeah, bruv,” Gary said, and took it.
Once he was satisfied that Gary was doing as instructed, Harry took up the tweezers. Removing a bullet one-handed wasn’t exactly easy, but this wouldn’t be the first time Harry had done it and he doubted that it would be the last.
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Gary wince in sympathy. “Does that hurt?”
“A great deal,” Harry admitted through gritted teeth.
"Right. Stupid question."
Harry set the bullet on the table, breathing hard, and slumped back in his chair for a moment, looking out the window. Still nothing of note.
“What are you looking for?” Gary asked.
“There are men trying to kill me. I don’t know if they’ve managed to pursue me this far or if they can find me again- but I don’t know how they found me in the first place either.” Harry shrugged, which proved to be painful mistake.
“Are you like James Bond or something?”
“Or something,” Harry replied.
Gary rolled his eyes at the half-answer and passed Harry the needle, wincing again when Harry applied it. “Should you really be doing that?” he asked. “I bet I could-”
“No.” Harry took a breath and softened his voice. “It’s no reflection on you. It’s better if I do this kind of thing myself, that’s all.” Harry tolerated pain well, he really did- but he was also conditioned to attack anyone who was causing him it. He actually trusted this boy to a degree that surprised him, but he wasn’t going to let Gary tie him up just to safely do something that Harry could do himself with a reasonable degree of proficiency, and the stitches only had to last until Harry got out of this mess and reported in. “As I said, I keep my promises.”
Harry meant, I would lash out at you, even if I told myself not to. I might hurt you. He wasn’t sure Gary would understand, and he was a little surprised when Gary nodded seriously as though he did. “There anything I can do?”
“Keep your eye on the window,” Harry said. “And…” He hesitated. “Talk to me.”
Gary stood and crossed to the window, leaning against it and looking out. “What about?”
“Anything you like.”
“Dunno,” Gary said uncertainly. “I…”
Harry did hiss that time, and he wanted very much to take his mind off what he was doing. “How did you come to… do what you do, then?” he asked. “Tell me that.”
“What kind of question is that?” Gary sounded like he was deciding whether to be offended or not, and leaning toward yes.
“The kind I have to ask when I know nothing else about you,” Harry pointed out. He knew that Gary’s lip curled when he mentioned his stepfather, and that the stepfather’s friend didn’t appear to have much respect for Gary, but neither of those things actually solidified into real knowledge of who he was. Obviously there was more to Gary than what he did, but Harry knew so little about his personal life. Probably Gary would want to keep it that way, so it was all he had.
“Right,” Gary said, flushing a little. “You’re right. We need the money, is all.”
“We?” Harry prompted, keeping his voice gentle so that Gary wouldn't feel he had to respond to the question.
“My mum and me. She’s got a baby on the way.”
Harry made a noise of acknowledgement. No mention of the stepfather, he noticed. But then Gary had said he was locked up, hadn’t he? Assuming Harry was right to guess that Dean and the stepfather were one and the same, yes. Harry didn’t push for more information. It wasn’t his business.
“Gonna get her something real nice after this,” Gary volunteered. The warmth and pride in his voice effected Harry in ways that- attracted to Gary or not- amazed him. He wanted Gary to sound like that all the time.
“Do you know what yet?”
“Not yet. Any suggestions? It’s your money.”
Harry laughed, a little breathlessly. He was almost done; for some reason, that was always the worst part. “No idea,” he said. He supposed one personal confidence deserved another- and it was strangely easy to tell Gary things he never told anyone, so he said: “Do you know, my mother was on her own too?”
“Yeah? She marry a dickhead later on?” And there’s the stepfather after all.
“No, she died.” It was the truth, although not all of it. Harry might have had a few swallows of the gin, but he would have to be very drunk indeed to tell that story.
“Fuck! I’m so sorry.” And Harry could see that Gary really meant it.
“Don’t be, it was a long time ago. My point, I suppose, is that it’s been a long time since I… had a family. But I’m sure you should be proud of what you do for yours, whatever it is.”
“I am,” Gary said.
“Good,” Harry replied, finishing his stitches and snapping the thread with his teeth. He noticed Gary’s eyes following him and held them briefly, then said, “The window, if you please.”
Gary blinked and looked out sharply. “Yeah, bruv,” he said. “Don’t see nothing.”
“Fair enough,” Harry said. He took a moment to recover and then returned his own attention to the street below. “Now, I’ll be needing a phone.”
Gary blinked. "You don't have one?"
Harry shook his head. It was foolish, he supposed, to rely so much on Kingsman's more advanced technology that in an emergency he didn't have something anyone on the street would.
Gary pulled a mobile out of his pocket and offered it to Harry.
“A landline would be better,” Harry told him. He could use Gary's, certainly, and Merlin would most likely be able to cover their tracks well enough that Gary would never get any deeper into this mess than he was already- but it was worth trying to limit his involvement.
“Dunno if this place has got one.”
Harry glanced around and indeed saw no trace of a phone. Harry sighed. “All right,” he said, and took the one Gary offered. “Thank you.” He called in to the shop, giving the code for his current situation- disconnected from base, injured, pursued- and hanging up. Now it was all a question of whether his fellow Kingsman agents or the people who were currently trying to kill him would find him first. “Have a seat, Gary,” he said as he watched Gary fidget.
Gary sat. “What do we do now?”
“I wait,” Harry told him. “You should go home.”
Immediately Gary shook his head. “Bad idea. If Poodle sees me leaving he might… get the wrong impression.”
Harry wasn’t sure what exactly the wrong impression would be. He decided not to ask. “I’d almost forgotten,” he said instead. “You’re booked for the evening.” Something about the way Gary flushed made Harry think there was more to it than Gary had said, but once again he didn’t push for an explanation. Gary could have any number of reasons to prefer not to go home, and Harry was obviously more than paying for his time. However grisly the evening was turning out, this could well have been the easiest money Gary had ever made.
Harry spent a little time considering what he’d seen of the building, weighing the likelihood of those men attacking here or there if they found him first. He was surprised by how quickly Gary fell silent- until he looked up and saw that he had fallen asleep. Harry, who hadn’t fallen asleep in the same room with another person in a very long time, marveled at the trust involved. Surely someone like Gary would be very nearly as conditioned against such a thing as a spy.
Gary looked vulnerable in sleep, mouth half-open, face soft, thick eyelashes spread across his cheek. Harry wanted to touch the curve of his neck and brush his lips over Gary’s eyelids, but he didn’t move.
He went back to looking out the window.
Now and then Harry would see someone passing on the street, consider them and eventually conclude that they weren’t one of his attackers. Several minutes went by before Harry finally saw someone that he recognized from earlier. The way he was looking around suggested that the man was alone, just scouting in this direction. He thought Harry might be holed up in the hotel, but he wasn’t sure. That ruled out the possibility that there was a tracker inside Harry, or something similarly far-fetched and unpleasant. He doubted that they had only stumbled on him by chance today though- there were too many of them and they were too well prepared.
He took his gun and rose, unable to resist brushing his fingers across Gary’s cheek as he went. Gary didn’t wake. Harry picked up the key Gary had left by the door and headed outside.
Harry had forgotten just how cool the night was, and he was grateful for the bite on the air; it brought him back to himself. It was easy to come up behind the man, gripping his neck. Harry didn’t even need the gun, the cool pressure of his ring against the man’s throat stilled him. “Do you know what that is?” he asked, his finger twitching slightly.
The man nodded.
“If you keep very still and answer my questions, I won’t use it. Who do you work for?”
“His name’s Granby, but I’m not- I’m just a merc- I’m not-”
“Loyal?” Harry suggested. “That’s just as well.” It wasn’t unexpected, to be sure. Granby had always had more money than charisma, and he was in a foreign prison at the moment thanks to Harry. “How did you find me?” he asked. He needed to know.
“We had somebody watching that tea shop you use. It was the only thing he knew about your interests that actually checked out.”
Harry rolled his eyes. He would have to find a new tea shop, then. How very inconvenient. He was just about to speak again when shots rang out. “It appears your friends have joined us,” Harry remarked. “I’m sorry about this.” The man started struggling in his grip and Harry activated the ring. On the right setting, it kept the man still and stiff as a board for several moments, making a passable shield.
Harry dropped low and fired back. Whoever was shooting hit the ground, and the man he shot instead of Harry did the same a moment later. “Two down,” Harry murmured. He stayed on alert as he crossed to the man he'd just shot and took his pulse- dead- and then stole his mobile. The dead man had recently been in contact with two other men, one of whom mentioned a third man- also dead, Harry had killed one of them earlier after all- in his texts. That left just one more unaccounted for.
Harry didn’t see anyone else. He made his way back inside. The man at the front desk- Poodle, had Gary called him?- had apparently napped through the whole thing, but there was no guarantee that no one else had called the police. Silencers or no, Harry would think someone had heard something.
When Harry got back to the room, Gary was still asleep in the chair.
Returning to his post, Harry took another swig of gin and let him sleep.
Not too long after that, Harry heard a soft knock. He opened the door a crack and saw Kay on the other side. Harry let him in. “Did you run into any trouble?” he asked.
Kay snorted. “Just yours,” he said. He was a slender man, red-headed and not overly handsome, with hooded eyes and a mouth well-suited to telegraphing how very inconvenienced he felt he’d been, which was exactly what he was doing right then. “I was shot at.” He sounded affronted, as if that had never happened to him before.
“And is the shooter well?” Harry asked politely.
“No, in fact.”
“Then there’s probably only one of them left.” Harry checked his ammunition, feeling Kay’s eyes on him. Like Lancelot and a few of their other agents, Kay avoided wearing the glasses if he could help it, which meant that for once Harry didn’t feel like it was actually Merlin glaring at him.
“You can’t go after him.” Kay sounded firm. “I’m meant to take you in and finish this myself. Are you going to fight me?”
Harry kept silent just long enough to make Kay worry about himself, then said, “Of course not.” Staying up all night wasn’t as easy for Harry as it once was- and that was when he hadn’t been shot. I’m getting too old for this, Harry thought. That brought him back to Gary, who was still slumped back in his chair. It was strange that he would have slept through Kay’s arrival, not to mention all the shooting. Harry wondered if he was faking.
All the same, Harry got on his knees next to his chair and touched Gary’s arm as gently as he could, watching Gary’s eyes come sluggishly open. “Hey,” Gary said thickly.
“Hello,” Harry replied, leaning a little closer and resting his hands on the chair’s arms.
“S'happening?”
“It’s almost dawn,” Harry said.
Gary continued blinking at him for a moment, and then he sat up sharply. “I fell asleep,” he said, as if surprised at himself.
“Clearly you needed it.” Harry backed off, but then braced Gary’s elbow as he stood up unsteadily. Harry imagined it, he was sure, that when he did Gary leaned into his touch a little more than was strictly necessary. “Where can I drop you?” he asked.
“Where you found me, I suppose,” Gary said.
Harry nodded, and since Gary didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get away from him, he let his hand linger on Gary’s arm as he steered him past Kay and towards the door. Gary paused sleepily. “What about all your- um- medical supplies?”
“People will take care of it,” Harry informed him. “The owners of this… establishment will never know what really happened here.”
“Okay,” Gary murmured.
Harry didn’t know which other agents had already arrived, but the bodies downstairs were already gone. He opened the door to Kay’s car and gestured for Gary to climb in first. Gary did so and Harry followed after him, settling against his shoulder. Gary seemed to radiate heat. “What I said about keeping what you saw today a secret…” Harry started. Kay was watching them in the mirror, and Harry could tell that he was quite willing to load Gary up with amnesia darts if he needed to.
“Already done, bruv,” Gary said. “Wouldn’t nobody believe me anyway.”
Amused in spite of himself, Harry smiled but said, “Even so.”
“Won’t tell a soul, swear down.”
“All right,” Harry agreed. It didn't take them long to get back to the street corner where Harry first encountered Gary, which seemed like a year ago suddenly. Harry was still smiling a little when they arrived. Most of the other boys were gone, but one or two lingered.
“That’s me, yeah?” Gary said. He opened the door and climbed out.
“Gary,” Harry said. There was something in Gary’s face when he stopped and turned around that Harry couldn’t quite read, but for a second it robbed him of his voice. He just reached out, Gary’s mobile in hand, and offered it back to him. When Gary hadn’t asked for it back, Harry had thought very seriously about keeping it, just for the excuse to track Gary down later, but he knew that that wouldn’t be a very good idea. It was an indulgence that he couldn’t afford, and so he refused to flirt with it.
“Oh,” Gary said, and took it. But then he lingered, and Harry was aware of the few boys still on the corner watching the car.
“Yes?” he asked gently.
“I was wondering- what do I call you?”
“Call me?” Harry was startled; it was such an odd question for Gary to ask when they both knew perfectly well that it was a bit late for introductions.
“Yeah.” Gary scuffed his toe on the sidewalk. “Like for my diary and shit. Can’t just call you James Bond now can I?”
Harry swallowed. “Call me Harry,” he said at last.
“Harry.” Gary made it sound like the most interesting name in the world. He nodded a few times and pocketed his phone. A moment later he was gone, melting into one of the alleyways as if he’d never been there at all.
Harry slumped forward in his seat. If he’d thought he was tired and sore before, he had been seriously mistaken. It was as if he had been holding himself together with energy he hadn’t known he possessed until Gary walked away.
He caught Kay watching him in the mirror above the dash. “The strangest things happen to you,” Kay said.
Harry made a noise, half agreement and half annoyance. Kay began the drive towards Kingsman HQ. Harry looked out the window and he didn’t see Gary, just strangers on a street corner. He doubted that he would ever see Gary again.