Chapter Text
Snapchat was the unspoken favoured medium of communication used by handlers at each continental Kingsman branch to keep in touch.
There was also a Facebook group, a Skype conversation, and a touch of WhatsApp, but Snapchat was not only quicker but added an extra element of fun and amusement. Conveniently, it also deleted the messages for them, so if any agents demanded they explain why there was a super-secret group of handlers who bitched to each other about missions and different agents' antics, then they could deny all they wanted.
Failsafe.
Merlin sighs as another Snapchat alert pings to life on his heavily encrypted, self-designed Kingsman smartphone, and drags his eyes away from the monitor. Eggsy can handle himself for a few seconds without needing his hand to be held, he tells himself, the computer monitor flashing the Kingsman glasses transmission as Eggsy makes a sharp left, the screeching of car tyres chorusing through Merlin's earpiece.
Holding the phone over his retina and hearing the automatic click of it unlocking, Merlin finds the source of the alert- a new Snapchat from Jun Ling, a fellow handler from Kingsman's Asian denomination.
"Merlin, a lil 'elp 'ere?" Eggsy's voice squeaks over the Comms, as more sounds of screeching, tires, shouts and crashes follow in his wake. The young agent is attempting to outrun some very angry arms dealers in the form of three old ladies- unexpected, but still ruthless- who pursue secret agents in missile-equipped Range Rovers with the skill their peers played bingo. That is, very well.
"Jus' a sec, Galahad, turn onto Thomas More Street, then stay straight on E Smithfield until you reach the turnoff to go left onto Tower Bridge Road," Merlin murmured, tapping the screen once more with his finger to open the Snapchat, a snort erupting from his mouth as he sees the image before him.
" Fishy business," read the caption, where the photo depicted a rather squashed Quala Lumpur fish market stall, seafood thrown everywhere, with a decidedly smelly and slimy looking Agent Baatar perched upon the broken wooden bench- with a massive dead fish for a head.
"Merlin, now would be fuckin' great!" Eggsy sounded a tad more panicky, but with a flick of his eyes towards the monitor, Merlin saw nothing truly amiss, apart from the fact they had an agent being tailed by a trio of lethal grandmothers. "Jus' head t'wards the Thames, Galahad, then backup'll meet yeh there," he replied impatiently, recalling Lancelot and Percival were atop the Tower Bridge,waiting to take out the marks with sniper rifles if needed. Holding one hand up to his earpiece, he changed channels to speak to Alice, Roxy's handler, who was several rooms away in HQ.
"Alice, let Lancelot and Percival know Galahad is headed their way in approximately 2 minutes, prepare to fire on the marks. Please relay this information to Bill as well".
"Noted, Merlin," Alice's crisp tone rung in his ear, and Merlin caught the first few bars of her conversation with Percival's handler, Bill, before he switched Comm channels back to Eggsy. The sound of an engine being floored as Eggsy sped through the busy London motorway reassured Merlin that the young agent was perfectly capable of handling himself for the time being, and so turned his attention back to the smartphone.
" I 'sea' what you did there ," Merlin returned to Jun Ling, with a snap of his half-full coffee mug. Locking his phone, he returned his full attention to the monitor and to his charge, settling back in his chair.
"Righ', Galahad-"
Gunshots filled the air, and Eggsy looked up, Merlin seeing Roxy and Alistair rappelling down the Tower Bridge, firing at the trio of Range Rovers speeding after Eggsy. It truly was a sight, watching his agents kick arse, and Merlin could safely say that he loved his job in that moment.
That was, until, the Range Rover closest to Eggsy's car, dead arms dealer fallen on the accelerator, veered to the left, ramming into a passing lorry, which, beeping wildly, swerved, and clipped the rear end of Eggsy's vehicle, sending him into pirouettes across the road lanes.
"Fuck!" Eggsy and Merlin swore in unison as a symphony of screeching tyres resounding through the Comms, drivers across the bridge, Eggsy included, attempting to stop and regain control of their vehicles.
"Galahad, remain calm, right the vehicle and-"
Righting the wheel into a straight line, Merlin could only watch in disbelief as Eggsy mounted the Kingsman- issue car - an expensive one, Merlin might add- up the back of a double flatbed truck, which just happened to have its top bed down, scream up the back of the truck like a stunt driver, off it and over the Tower Bridge traffic barriers, plummeting into the Thames, all the while screeching like a fourteen year old girl at a One Direction concert.
Surfacing in the murky river less than thirty seconds later, Eggsy gasped for air, hair plastered to his scalp, glasses dripping, and Merlin breathed a sigh of relief. At the fact Eggsy was alive, of course- and that he had had the foresight to incorporate waterproofing tech into the Kingsglasses several years beforehand.
"Well done, Galahad, but was crashing one of my favourite cars, into the River Thames no less, really necessary? And M-15 will put me in the bad books for all these civilian witnesses," he scolded, shuddering at the amount of paperwork he just knew was going to materialise on this very desk very soon, along with more than one irate phone call from Abacus West, the M-15 chief.
"Thanks for ya concern for my health, Merlin, I'm fine, really," Eggsy retorted sarcastically, swimming for the shoreline with powerful strokes. "Didn't almost die an' drink Champagne de la Thames or nuffin".
"Get back t' HQ for debriefing, and then yeh can organise t' pull my car out o' the Thames yerself," Merlin managed before muting the Comm and pulling it out of his ear, shutting off Eggsy's glasses feed from his computer. Mission 13,943 accomplished, he thought with wry satisfaction, and streaked another tally mark on his clipboard. Reaching for his coffee and meeting only air with his fingertips, Merlin looked down with a noise of dismay to see the cracked remains on the floor, cold coffee seeping slowly towards his shoe.
Snapchat from Magic_Merlin to ~Jun~Ling~, 8hup1nd3er & 22 others.
*A broken coffee mug on floor, snippet of the desk and image of the Kingsman car arcing off the Tower Bridge on computer monitor in the background*
: Galahad broke my coffee mug :(
*********
Merlin's Tower Bridge/Coffee Snapchat saw to it that Eggsy copped a great deal of flack -the good-natured kind- from his fellow agents and handlers alike. In the secret agent business, everyone knew everyone, and the legendary exploits on missions new and old were always painstaking recorded so each Kingsman division had more than a few stories to make everyone fall out of their seats wih laughter. These stories came in handy for scaring new recruits, entertainment for work pub crawls, or just a pickmeup in the daily grind of near-death experiences.
And being secret agents, there is no shortage of interesting stories a week- so all the more reason to record them, or in Merlin's case, Snapchat them.
In the space of a week, a great number of such stories pass into legend. The handlers of the European Kingsman HQ are silent for almost three days, due to a rather nasty virus on their end of the technical system which played "Fuck You" by Lily Allen on repeat whenever they tried to perform the simplest of computer tasks. This was courtesy of the Asian branch- payback for the Tokyo Kontiki Torch Crisis, which was all Agents Ridder and Rycerz's fault, apparently. Asia, of course, denied all involvement, with Jun Ling, Bhupinder and Merlin's other Kingsman Asia friends all lying through their teeth, as was expected.
The United States denomination was doing a training exercise on the Empire State Building, so Merlin received quite a few Snapchats from Darcy, Candy and the rest- mostly depicting Agents Eisenhower, Truman and co. pulling faces and doing thumbs up, with the dizzying heights visible below. Merlin's personal favourite was a Titanic reenactment between Bush I and II, captioned "I'm flying Jack!".
The African Kingsmen ended a burgeoning civil war, and the South Americans foiled a bombing during Carnival, all while wearing some truly spectacular costumes. As previously mentioned, UK's very own Agent Galahad drove a car into the Thames, and was yet to remove said car, much to Merlin's annoyance.
But the agency that took the cake this week was Australasia- after five agents went missing trying to stop a crazed billionaire from stealing The Big Banana, a crate of rabid koalas (also fearfully known as 'drop bears') were gift-wrapped and delivered to HQ, and proceeded to terrorise the entire unit and attempt to destroy the building. That is, until the five missing agents returned, and the feral marsupials were tranquilised. Quite a few Snapchats are sent during the cleanup process, including shredded files, a koala-shaped hole in a wall and a half eaten laptop screen. Merlin is increasingly glad he has no hair, and was not the Chief Handler/ Ops Coordinator/ Guy who keeps the shit together of the Australasian Branch, because if he was, his hair would be falling out quite quickly.
But all in all, just another week in the goings-on of Kingsman.
When he wasn't Snapchatting other handlers, designing new tech or keeping Kingsman UK's shit together, Merlin made it his pet project to get spy couples together- as a sort of Love Doctor, due to the limited romantic opportunities afforded to individuals of their unique profession. He consulted all manner of both local and international agents and handlers alike about their love woes, and had a rather unique method of matchmaking- by bullying the chosen two individuals so relentlessly that eventually they gave in and fell in love.
It made for excellent entertainment, and Merlin was quite proud to say he had a 99% success rate (of course bloody Lamorak had to go and snog Handler Jacqueline instead of Louise back in 2012, but considering the first were now happily married, Merlin still counted it as a success. Because technically, Lamorak's misinterpretation of Merlin's hinting had lead him to the love of his life after all).
And now, after crossing off several other would-be couples, first on his unfortunately short list of victims was a certain Harry Hart and Eggsy Unwin. Merlin was not going to let his annual average of at least 3 unions slip, thank you very much.
"They're so stupid an' oblivious," Merlin moaned down the phone to Gabriel in South America, watching through the window into the Kingsman vehicle bunker, where Eggsy and Harry were laughing together as they walked, arms brushing slightly. "I want to vomit when they gaze at each other adorin'ly".
This disgusting awkward flirting had been relentless ever since Harry had been released from the Kingsman UK medical wing a good four months prior, with a spectacular Kingsman bionic eye (which Merlin designed, thank you very much) and a lovely branched scar spanning over his right eyebrow, temple and forehead. And Merlin was also thankful he had the foresight to make Kingsglasses bulletproof several years before waterproofing them.
So Harry Hart was now Arthur, by unanimous vote of the UK round table, and Eggsy had been by his side every step of the way- when he wasn't on missions driving cars into the Thames, that is.
"If worst comes to worst, lock them in a broom closet like we did with Paola and Ernesto," Gabriel crackled down the phone line. "It's failsafe".
"But Paola and Ernesto aren't half as stubborn as these twats. They'd wear t shirts sayin''I love Harry " an' I love Eggsy" an' still deny it". Merlin ran a hand over his bald head, looking on exasperatedly as Eggsy looked at Harry like the sun shone out of his arse for the 17th time that day.
****
"Have you seen Morgana?"
Roxy's head popped around the corner of Merlin's office.
"No, an' I swear yeh named tha' dog just t' spite me," Merlin replied from his desk, not taking his eyes off his phone, from which another Snapchat alert had popped up. "She'll be wherever JB is, therefore where Eggsy is, which is wherever 'Arry is".
"Very helpful," the strawberry blonde quipped, striding over to peer over Merlin's shoulder in his chair. "Who're you Snapchatting? I didn't know you had Snapchat".
"None of yer business," Merlin replied, closing the snap of of a grinning Agent Kennedy from Candy, an explosion going off behind him in Moscow captioned " From Russia, with love".
"Give it here, I'll give you something to Snapchat". And with lightning-fast reflexes, she nicked the phone straight out of Merlin's hands, ignoring his instant protests, arranged her face into a smile, and snapped a selfie before uploading it to his story.
"Lovely," she grinned, dropping the phone back into Merlin's lap and waltzing out as he grumbled to himself, but couldn't bring himself to delete the Snapchat, despite his own grim expression. And several minutes later, he received an Add request from ~roxy_m~, which he accepted rather too quickly.
Loved your snap of Galahad's selfie with Queen Liz, Tatjana snapchatted Merlin later that day, with a shot of the view from her desk window at European HQ- a charming blizzard. That one of you and Lancelot was nice too.
That boy is the most backward agent I've ever handled , Merlin tapped back, a shot of his brand new coffee mug filling the screen. And that photo was non-consensual.
Nice coffee mug , came the reply, with an accompanying view of her computer monitor, where she was doing background research on a drug cartel in Lombok. But the chemistry in that photo certainly was consensual.
3rd mug this month, thanks to our Galahad. A photo of his latest pet project, a bracelet for Roxy with gems that contained the world's second most deadly neurotoxin. Come to think of it, he was rather fond of the agent, not that he'd admit it to anyone, least of all Tatjana. But not in the way she implied anyway. Besides, he was electing to ignore her insinuation.
I ship it. She had drawn a quick stick figure sketch, one with a ponytail, the other a potato with glasses which soon Merlin realised was him, holding hands.
Good luck with that , he returned, with an emoji depicting a rather obscene hand gesture .
****
Harry was off at the Conference of the Kings, and Merlin was having good fun snapping Eggsy moping around HQ to his handler friends. That was, until, the the moping continued for positively hours on end.
"Don' yeh have somewhere t' be, Galahad?" He inquired, as Eggsy pushed, with one final grunt, a couch over to the general area of Merlin's desk, and flopped down on it, one arm obscuring his face.
"Nup, Rox is in Mumbai, Mum n' Dais are visitin' me aunt in Yorkshire, n' Arry's away for three days on 'is conf'rence". Pathetic , Merlin captioned the photo he took of Galahad over his shoulder. It had only been three hours so far since Harry had left for the annual Kingsman Conference of the Kings, where all the Arthur equivalents met and discussed various issues and goings on within the spy organisation. However, the boy was so miserable it seemed his mentor would be away for three years.
"Surely yeh can find some form o' entertainment other than hangin' aroun' me like a bad smell?"
This truly was getting ridiculous, Merlin concluded. He believed that a quick word to Roxy when she returned to Mumbai might help a bit, if not solve the problem altogether.
"Sorry, guv, ya stuck wi' me," Eggsy returned as a tinkling collar rounded the corner, JB jumping onto his owner's lap. Merlin just shook his head as he received a flurry of replies to his Snap.
****
Valentine's Day was coming up, and Roxy and Merlin had a plan.
"Are yeh certain it's goin' to work?" Merlin queried as they set everything up, peering over his shoulder to look at Roxy.
"Well if it doesn't, it should at least improve things between them," she shrugged, adding a flourish a heart-shaped confetti to the table. All this plotting together had brought he and
Roxy closer, not that he was complaining. Harry had been giving him shit for it for weeks, and now it was payback time.
Besides, the sombre events of Valentine's Day, now a year ago, were best forgotten in the past. Or buried rather, under the pink, white and red colour scheme of one of the western world's favourite commercial exploits.
"Can't wait 'til the meeting today," Roxy giggled as she slipped put of the room, and Merlin paused to take a quick photo of their handiwork. One year on from Valentine's attempted genocide, and things were definitely looking up.
Magic_Merlin to CandyCane, Tatjaaaaana, ~Jun~Ling~ and 3 others
Operation Arthurhad is underway!
"Wot's all this?" Eggsy laughed as he sauntered into the Round Table meeting on Valentine's Day, picking at some of the pink, heart-shaped confetti on the table in front of his chair.
"Happy Valentine's Day," Roxy said in a sing song voice, giving Eggsy a friendly elbow.
As he inspected the bundle of flowers on his desk closer, a frown appeared on Eggsy's youthful face, and his knuckles whitened around the flowers. Luckily the room was almost empty, but Merlin knew he and Roxy were in for it.
"It was you two, innit? You two been in cahoots for a while now, eh?"
"Eggsy-" Roxy began but the other agent cut her off.
"No, this ain't ok, alrigh? Stop trying to make it out Harry has feelins fir me when we all know he don', this jus makes it a thousand time harder fir me, 'k?" He dumped the roses, and heart shaped envelope in the wastepaper basket, scraping the confetti off the table in front of him, but leaving Harry's Valentine's display untouched.
"You get rid of that". Eggsy pointed to it venomously. "S'just gonna cause trouble".
"Eggsy, listen here, I'm his best friend, I think I'd bloody well know if me best friend in the entire sodding world liked-"
"Everything alright in here?" Harry strode through the door midway through Merlin's argument, and Eggsy slumped down in his seat, slouching slightly. "Never better," the Galahad agent muttered as Harry spotted the Valentine's Day bundle in his place at the table.
Eggsy excused himself quietly, ignoring Roxy's protests, only returning once the other knights began to arrive, amid chuckles and wisecracks over their own Valentine's Day bundles. 'For God's sake' Merlin thought frustratedly during the meeting, whilst he rattled off new crime statistics to the knights assembled. If only Eggsy had stayed behind, so he could have seen the look on Harry's face.
Magic_Merlin to SenoritaJuanita, Tatjaaaaana, 8hup1nd3er, Dazzam8 and 16 others.
*shot of Valentine's day decorations in the wastepaper basket*
Operation Arthurhad: fail :(
****
"I'm out of ideas, Rox," Merlin complained to the other agent late one night, feet up on his handler's desk. "Maybe we should jus' give up".
"I'm going to ignore that comment," Roxy raised her eyebrows at him though the webcam on his clipboard, making him feel a tad sheepish despite her being half a world away in Auckland. "If we give up now, they'll be miserable and lovesick forever!"
"No thank yeh," Merlin agreed, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He wasn't going to give up that easily, even though he said it in jest. There was only so much more lovesick pining he could take. "Any ideas then?"
"You can send them on an overnight mission in disguise as a couple, tie them both to chairs and force them to watch the footage of confessing their feelings about each other to us two-" Roxy paused for a moment, brow furrowed as she thought hard.
"Or," she grinned slyly, "We wait until Christmas, for which I have an elaborate, ingenious plan".
"Do tell".
Magic_Merlin to Gabriel_T, Tatjaaaaana, CandyCane and 9 others.
*Image of Harry and Eggsy walking together, with a doodled pink love heart around them*
Operation Arthurhad: Back on track >:)
****
" How's the plan for Arthurhad going?" Sven Whatsapped Merlin, who was currently handling for Harry on an intel gathering assignment in Bordeaux.
"Could be better, could be worse," Merlin returned, as Harry sat across from an informer in a sweet little cafe by the sea. " We've got a master plan though".
"It's 'we' now?" Came the cheeky reply, followed by another message. #LanceLinLives .
Sending back a simple but effective No , Merlin returned to focus on Harry's info collection on the organ harvesting trade in Europe. But the name kept bouncing around the edge of his mind, teasing the threads of his consciousness.
Lancelin. LanceLin. Lancelin .
Not bad, he decided before he could stop himself. Not bad at all.
Another alert came through, a Snapchat from Kingsman UK's Alice, Roxy's handler, and slightly surprised, not receiving many Snaps from his UK colleagues, Merlin tapped the screen to open it with a hint of apprehension.
But what he saw dispelled the knot that had been forming in his stomach, and Merlin actually laughed aloud, corners of his eyes crinkling up in amusement. It was a video of Roxy from Alice's computer screen on mute, obviously screeching her lungs out as she plummeted towards the sands of Qatar in a basejumping suit. But the Frank Sinatra tune playing purposefully softly in the background took the cake.
"Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away..."
Magic_Merlin to AliceinEng-er-land: lol.
****
It's the third Tuesday in June, and since that's the third Tuesday of the month, it means it's drinking night. And drinking night involves Harry Hart and Merlin meeting in Harry's townhouse and spending a great deal of the night and wee hours of the morning drinking and playing very bad poker, 90% of the time. The other 10% comprises of drunk conversations and random bumbling around Harry's house doing stupid things they'll regret the next morning. But all in all, it's quite good fun.
They've reached the point in the night where there's more of the 10, and less of the 90. The alcohol's still being poured, but in more liberal amounts with clumsy hands, and both men are slumped on Harry's comfy armchairs in his drawing room. Harry busted out some Cuban cigars they uncovered while rummaging through some drawers looking for a photo album of their time as recruits, and said photo album is now half-open on the card table, in between empty scotch glasses and the cigar package.
"We were such shits back then," Merlin giggled as he pours himself another glass of whisky that's a tad too generous, but he drinks it all the same. Harry just nods in assent, smoke curling from his lips as he exhales, cigar dangling from one hand, his own glass of whisky propped in the other.
"D'you 'member that time we parachuted onto the Eiffel Tower for our recruit exam by accident?" Harry bursts out, leaning forward in excitement as Merlin falls into fits of laughter again at the fuzzy memory.
"Arthur was in a rage....We've had good recruits for Lance, eh Harry?" Merlin slurs, sobering slightly at the memory of their dead friend. The room feels a little bit emptier now he's not here with them, the third member of Tuesday drinks, and whiskey would never taste as quite as good as it had when James was around.
"We did," Harry manages, face fallen as Merlin concludes he too is feeling the absence of the third body that usually occupied the chair to his right.
"Was gonna kiss him".
"Who? James?" Merlin cocks his head, alcohol-addled brain working to comprehend what Harry was saying. He'd never noticed Harry having any romantic inclination toward their friend, and if he had missed it, he was feeling rather put out about it, considering he thought it had been-
"Nooo, 'Ggsy." Four syllables put Merlin's fears to rest, and he subtly unlocked his phone and began recording on Snapchat as Harry continued his drunken ramble about the 'hot as fuck' Eggsy Unwin who he would never have a chance with because 'young things like that like young things, not antiques like me'.
And if anyone judged him for taping Harry's little confession, Merlin thought as he saved the video to his camera roll, they could calm their tits, because Harry would have no recollection the following morning, with the copious amount of alcohol he had consumed. He captions the clip ' The confeszsion of teh yr' ( alcohol does affect one's spelling ability) before sending it off to quite a sizeable portion of his Friends list.
"Merlin?" Harry's address startles Merlin and he looks up from his phone.
"Whadya say?"
"D'you think I'm a fucking wanker and fool for being tits over arse in love with my own proposal, who's so young I feel like a cradle-snatcher every time I look at him?"
Merlin reaches over and claps Harry on the arm, almost falling out of he chair as he does so. "S'long as yeh're 'appy, 'Arry'" he said seriously, eyes meeting Harry's concerned chestnut brown ones. "Then I don't give a flying fuck who yeh want to shag".
"But I don't want to just shag him," Harry protests, and Merlin turns his phone's voice recorder on with a sigh and a slight giggle, settling himself back in his chair for the next soliloquy. Here we go again.
****
" Kennedower is officially a thing!!!!" Read Candy's slightly overexcited Snapchat, depicting US Agents Eisenhower and Kennedy in a passionate embrace at the North American HQ. Merlin can't help but shake his head in amusement, contentedly exhaling as he abandons his Intel search on poaching in Kenya to reply. Candy and Blaine had managed to get the two agents together quite quickly, with some choice romance advice from a certain UK master at arms/tech whiz only speeding up the progress. That made a grand total of 2 couples this year that Merlin had helped to get together, he noted rather smugly on his clipboard, and it was only mid-July.
He wasn't going to ruin his annual 3 a year streak though, thank you very much. Merlin was determined to make Harry and Eggsy his 3rd success story of the year, and in total, his 19th successful would-be couple. So this was a wakeup call, to get a bloody move on. If it could be moved on at all.
"Cong-twats-ulations, and ur welcome" he fires back, the glowing of his laptop screen behind him illuminating the words. Sighing tiredly, Merlin placed his phone back on his desk and hauled himself out of his seat, seeking another cup of coffee from the machine in the lounge, where Agents and Handlers alike could gather and relax.
They were out of his favourite coffee beans, Merlin noted glumly as he stood forlornly in the deserted lounge. Checking his watch, swearing quietly when he saw it was 2:03 am and the supermarket was too far away, and would most definitely be closed, Merlin flopped down on one of the comfortable sofas, flinging a hand over his eyes. He was used to the late nights, but without coffee, he needed a few minutes of shuteye.
He'd wake up in 5 minutes, Merlin promises himself, letting his eyes drift shut. But he doesn't wake when a Kingsman jet fresh from Istanbul lands quietly in the hangar, the agent inside yawning softly as they disembark. He doesn't wake as said agent enters the lounge, and brews a cup of tea, the quiet noise of the water jug heating barely rousing him.
And he doesn't wake when a soft blanket is pulled over him, and a pair of hands ease his glasses off his face and fold them in his lap, a ponytail brushing his shoulder as a featherlight kiss is placed on his forehead.
Merlin sleeps on as Roxy clicks off the lamp in the lounge, her barely audible footsteps dissipating behind her into the hallway and the dark.
****
It's another whirlwind month, and all of a sudden summer is ending, taking ocean blue skies painted with canvas clouds and honey-warm sunshine with it. August was drawing to a close as Merlin received the first Snapchats of the season from Ike and Darren in the Australian outback, proclaiming with grim expressions that 'Magpie Season was upon them'. A short video followed afterwards, depicting Ike with a google-eyed bicycle helmet on backwards, screaming and running as fast as his legs could carry him through the Kingsman Australasia HQ grounds whilst a black and white-winged blur swooped relentlessly above him.
Merlin was in fits.
The end of August in Britain, however, remained stubbornly hot, despite the slight browning of the leaves on the trees hinting that Autumn was not so far away.
"It's fuckin' boilin', Merl, an' ya still expect me t' be run in' round like its a luv'ly 18 degrees?" Eggsy complained down the Comms, wiping his face on the sleeve of his suit as he sprinted through the sunlit Surrey fields of a place known as the Surry Hills Area of Natural Outstanding Beauty. Merlin imagined it would be a tad more beautiful, however, were a pack of hunting hounds not chasing after Galahad at that very moment, set upon him by a wealthy mobster who did not take kindly to being spied upon.
"Don' be such a baby," Merlin retorted, in his favourite sweater despite the startling heat- truth be told, he was in an air-conditioned room-, the sound of the hounds persistent baying ringing through the Comms. "Prepare for extraction in less than a minute".
"I'd try and shoot the bastards, but there's 6 and they're too far, I can't get a clear shot," Eggsy explained, panting slightly as he continued to race across the grassy fields, the dogs slowly gaining on him. Back in HQ, Merlin switched screens to the tracking signal on the Kingsman helicopter, whose whirring was beginning to become audible above the approaching dogs baying.
"Stay calm, Galahad," Merlin placated Eggsy through the Comms, sensing an unspoken reason as to why the young agent may have been unable to turn a gun to the dogs, no matter how ferocious they were- the Kingsman recruit final exam, where he had almost been forced to 'shoot' JB, his prized pug, would be weighing heavily on his mind.
"I have a visual on the aircraft, Merlin," Eggsy wheezed, and through the Kingsglasses camera on his monitor, Merlin and Eggsy saw the helicopter begin to descend towards the ground, a rope hanging from the moving aircraft for Eggsy to grab hold of. As Eggsy whipped his head over his shoulder, Merlin saw the dogs were closer than he had previously hoped, and a tiny splinter of panic lodged itself in his brain, at the thought that the young agent might not be able to outrun the hounds after all.
"Pick up the pace, Galahad, just a bit further," Merlin urged him, hand tightening around his coffee mug.
The helicopter mercifully came within Eggsy reach, and after a few more heart stopping seconds, the young agent jumped to grab a hold of the rope as the aircraft kept moving. But Merlin could only watch in horror as one of the dogs, centimetres from the agent, jumped from its pack and latched its jaws around Eggsy's leg. With a shout of pain, the agent lost one hand on the rope, wriggling his leg in an attempt to dislodge the creatures vice-like grip on his leg as the chopper continued to ascend into the sky.
"Eggsy-," was all Merlin could exclaim before Eggsy reached around behind his back, yanked his pistol free and with a sob barely audible about the deafening helicopter blades, put a bullet between the beast's eyes. The agent clung onto the rope for dear life as the canine's limp body fell through the air and to the ground below, turning his face away before impact.
"Mission accomplished," Merlin murmured, hoping it wasn't too inappropriate that he had taking a Snapchat moments earlier of Eggsy being pursued by the hounds, captioned " Dog days are over".
When Eggsy arrived back in HQ a short time later, Merlin found he wasn't the sole member of the Kingsman employ down in the hangar waiting for his arrival. A very tense looking Harry Hart was there before Merlin as the plane touched down, hair askew like he had been raking his hands through it, and without even asking, Merlin knew that Harry had been watching the mission surveillance from the computer in his Arthur office. Shit.
Eggsy barely made it down the jet's collapsible stairs and onto the tarmac before he gave everyone a watery smile, face crumpling as he made a beeline straight for Harry. Upon contact, The older agent held him closely and tightly, jaw set, glaring at anyone who dared to give him a questioning glance- namely Roxy, who had just descended into the hangar herself, and Merlin.
"You would do well to make sure Galahad did not receive any further missions of this ilk, Merlin," Harry managed, Eggsy's face still buried in his shoulder.
And for once, Merlin didn't have it in him to argue.
****
"How's the lad holding up?" Merlin asks Harry later that week when the latter strides past his desk.
"Better," came the reply, a twitch of a smile in the corner of his mouth. "The therapy sessions are working quite well".
With no small effort on Harry's part, Merlin thought dryly, taking a sip if his coffee. The one good thing that had happened since the dog incident, besides his agents seeking counselling becoming compulsory (Arthur's orders) was that Harry had become overwhelmingly protective of his former protégé, and would spend any and all of his free hours with Eggsy, who was on Merlin-enforced leave for a week.
"Good t' hear," Merlin replied, eyes flicking up to look at Harry, who was smiling at something on his phone and tapping away.
"Hello? 'Arry? Arthur?" Merlin tried to catch the knight's attention exasperatedly. "What're you grinning about?"
"Nothing much," Harry remarks, tucking his phone into his bespoke suit pocket and striding off, ignoring Merlin's call of "Git!" following after him.
And whilst he was glad that Harry and Eggsy's relationship was only improving, Merlin couldn't help but take a sneaky snap of Harry's retreating back, and caption it "O ur Arthur- Utterly Insufferable".
September passed fairly quickly too, with no shortage of agent antics and hilarious Snapchats from all over the world. After receiving word that Agent Bogatyr's is personally responsible for the power outage in Japan (something about a deadly virus, three geishas and some edible underwear), Merlin receives a Snapchat of a paper Bogatyr's head being set alight by Sven and Oleg, who looked rather too enthusiastic about it. Australasia finishes it's HQ renovations, complete with a water slide and BBQ area as requested. South America foils a plot to assassinate the Argentine president, and Asia's youngest agent has far too much fun at the Monaco Formula One Grand Prix, complete with a video of said agent speeding off in one of the multi-million dollar cars.
Turning back to his work, Merlin managed to write approximately one sentence in his apologetic email to the CIA (Lamorak- don't even ask) before Bors decided now would be an opportune time to approach Merlin and give him a play by play account of his scuffle with some Chilean mercenaries. A play by play account that Merlin didn't really have need of, considering he had been watching over Derek in the Handling bunker's shoulder the entire time.
After shaking Bors off by convincing him Harry would appreciate a rather more in depth description of the fight, with an evil smirk on his face, Merlin returned to his email. But less than a sentence later, who to walk into his office but his co-conspirator?
"How is it that every plan we put into place for them to get together fails, but they still manage to grow closer and closer without jumping on each other?" Roxy complained exasperatedly, flopping down on the sofa Eggsy had yet to remove from Merlin's vicinity- much like he had yet to remove that damned car from the Thames.
"If I had the answer to tha', Rox, a great many people would be a lot happier," he supplemented, typing a few more words of apology in the email.
"It's like whatever we do, the opposite of the desired effect happens, but when we don't do anything, they just- ugh". Roxy shakes her head in defeat. "There's only so many drunken ramblings about how he wants to shag Harry, in explicit detail too, that I can take".
"Tell me about it," Merlin agreed, forsaking his email for a moment in favour of swivelling in his chair to face the sighing agent. "Yeh wouldna believe the shit I've heard from our dear Arthur".
"Well I've got a plan, a small one, that we can try before the Christmas one," Roxy confessed, leaning back in the sofa, eyes shut. "But it'd involve the misuse of Kingsman equipment, us both gritting our teeth through more drunken conversations, and a copious amount of mildly illegal recording of said conversations".
"Does the endgame look somethin' like shutting both of them in a locked room and blaring said conversations through some speakers a' them 'til they start ruttin' on the floor?" Merlin arched an eyebrow, staring intently into Roxy's now open eyes.
The other agent smirked, gaze sparkling slightly with mischief in a way that Merlin definitely did not find charming. "Something like that".
"Something like wha'?" Came a voice from the direction of the hallway, and both Roxy and Merlin, Kingsman reflexes coming into play, flicked their heads towards the source of noise- a curious Eggsy approaching the area.
"Somethin' like annoyin' li'l shits who eavesdrop on other people's conversations," Merlin retorted, cool exterior masking the chink in his armour that had been visible moments earlier.
"Good to see ya too, guv'nr," Eggsy winked in Merlin's direction making the handler snort derisively. Eggsy seemed a lot happier, he noted quietly to himself, any hidden guilt he had over the whole Hounds of Baskerville - well, really, Hounds of Surrey Hills Area Of Natural Outstanding Beauty- incident dissipating.
"Truly, we were just discussing how Gareth has an unfortunate habit of singing off-key during missions, and how the only person who sings worse than he does is you," Roxy says rather seriously, making Eggsy's eyebrows shoot skyward on his forehead.
Merlin spun back to attempt to finish the damned email as the pair continued to argue in the background. My sincerest apologies for all and any inconveniences caused by Kingsman: United Kingdom's agents-
"Hey, my rendition of 'A Team' is aces, fanks Rox -"
After backspacing and rewriting the same sentence four times, Merlin gave a frustrated sigh, before sneakily slipping his phone out of his pocket.
Video Snapchat from Magic_Merlin to 8hup1nd3er, LikeIke & 16 others.
*Merlin's computer monitor with the email on it, cursor slowly blinking, before the camera slowly pans over Merlin's shoulder where Roxy and Eggsy are arguing loudly and animatedly. A resigned sigh is heard*
Really enjoying the peace and quiet...