Eggsy woke up cold and burning and screaming. He couldn't breathe in whatever dark box he was locked in; his hands felt like claws more than joints and skin. He scratched at the smooth metal above him, gasping, desperate, thought or said or heard please please take care of Harry please - and then was gone.

Eggsy gasped back awake and promptly retched on the carpet. Once he convinced himself he could breathe, he had skin, and his fingers bent, he forced himself off the floor and took note that the carpet was a garish yellow that he wasn't familiar with. The air was thick with industrial dust and sticky with heat and humidity. He looked out a nearby window and stared at the hazy skyline.

In one world, he had just gotten back from Russia. In the other, he was expecting to wake up in the house he now shared with his fiancé - or at least spend the day getting back there from wherever he'd fallen asleep over in the jet.

In neither world was he anywhere near fucking Miami.

"Shit," he said to the empty building. Merlin's warning from months ago echoed in his mind. It was breaking down.

"What the hell is happening to me?!" Eggsy demanded when he finally reached the Kingsman holding area, still sticky and gritty after eighteen hours in Florida and having just awoken from the most terrifying nap in his life. Guy frowned, but he looked almost as bad as Eggsy felt.

"You can't live in a dream forever."

"I woke up in a dead body! I spent yesterday in Miami - I don't even know which fuckin' world it was!"

"Wonderful beaches, I've heard," he drawled.

"Fuck you!" Eggsy shouted "How do I stop it?"

"You die."

Eggsy swallowed. "So this is going to kill me?"

Guy's eyes took on the same hollow glare that he'd worn when Eggsy'd stormed his base almost four months ago "I never cared how long I got to see him, boy. I'm old. The consequences didn't matter."

Eggsy slammed his hand on the wall "There must be something we can do!"

Guy opened his mouth to answer, but the world wavered before his eyes.

"What-" Eggsy collapsed, asleep. He woke up seconds later in an empty cell.

"Fuck."

Dread rose up in Eggsy's chest. He shut and locked the cell to hide Guy's disappearance and raced back to his empty house. He was a Kingsman, by god, he was good at chases.

He woke up under a bridge by the Thames, which was better than he'd expected since he last fell asleep on an airplane, and took the train to Guy's Hampstead residence. Every so often he felt the pull of sleep that wasn't sleep and stopped breathing, but it held off. He was tired - no, he was exhausted; normally when he switched worlds he still felt like he'd slept, but now sleep offered him no peace.

Before long he was pounding on Guy's door as the sun set over London. He pounded for a good while before Tommy answered, his stooped frame tense and his eyes wide and worried.

"Eggsy," he said, and again the dread leapt up into his heart. Tommy was relieved to see him, not concerned that he'd come over to the house as a hurricane comes over a coast.

"Tell me Guy's here."

Tommy shook his head and Eggsy sagged against the doorjamb.

"He was here when I woke up." Tommy leaned heavily on his cane "I thought - I thought maybe it was finally over. But then I fell asleep on the sofa after lunch and when I woke up I couldn't find him anywhere."

"Fuck," Eggsy said for what felt like the millionth time since he woke up in what he was trying not to think of as his own dead body.

"Eggsy, what's happening? Where is Guy?"

"He's-" Eggsy looked at Tommy's pinched and wizened face, and shook his head "He's gone and fucked the universes to be with you, gov, and the universe don't like it very much. It don't make no sense. But if anyone can fix it it's him, yeah? He'll be back, and when he does you tell him I was here and that you and I both expect him to fuckin' clean up his mess."

"I don't-" Tommy started, then stopped. There was the look Eggsy recognized from his former life, the one in the estates, when the wives would shut out what was probably good sense in favor of the husband they loved. "You swear he'll be back." Tommy's question sounded more like a demand.

"Yeah gov, in the morning probably."

Tommy nodded. Even as fucked as everything was now, Eggsy couldn't blame Guy for what he'd done.

It got worse. Eggsy wondered if he looked like some flickering old cartoon to someone rooted on one side or the other, though he really only switched a few times. For one awful moment on the train he'd been awake when the world bent into horrible shapes and he fell through it. He barely knew the time and didn't know the world when he finally tripped up the front stair to his house. He made it only a few steps before he listed and fell against the wall. The lights were off, so he was pretty sure it was the world he'd rather not have been in, but what felt like seconds and might have been hours later the front door creaked open, spilling the light from the street into the hall.

"Eggsy!"

Eggsy almost sobbed when Harry's arms came around him. He raised his hands weakly to hug back, but then Harry tore away, the grey light from outside putting the fear on his face in stark relief as he frantically ran his hands over Eggsy's body for injuries.

"I'm alright, I'm alright. Just tired." Eggsy insisted even as he wavered without Harry there to hold him up.

"What can I do?" Harry asked, cupping Eggsy's face in his hands.

"There's only one person who can do anything," he breathed "and him and I are out of fuckin' synch."

"Who? If Merlin and I can bring him in-"

"No, not here, love, not if we can avoid it," he thought of how Tommy would react to a bunch of men in suits showing up on his doorstep, "Don't bring him in, but he might talk to you if you ask nice and say who you are. Guy Bennett."

Harry blanched at the name, "Eggsy, Guy Bennett is dead."

"Nah, there's another one, lives in Hampstead with his-"

"Recent husband, we know. They were found dead this morning from a carbon monoxide leak."

"Oh," Eggsy said, and half a second later Harry was wiping at his face.

"Eggsy, Guy Bennett, he - he's the reason -"

"That's a different Guy. Didn't care about nothin' but Tommy." Eggsy interrupted "Sorry - it's not like I never lost anyone, I don't even know why -" he batted Harry's hands away and scrubbed at his eyes "fuck, they deserved more time. They really got married?"

Harry nodded, still watching him closely, and Eggsy smiled a little. So much for Tommy's staunch refusal to pander to The Man. He took a deep breath "I guess I better go to sleep then. It's about my only chance," though a part of him hoped to god Bennett was dead in both, poor bastard.

"Must you?" Harry whispered "Eggsy, you disappeared for four days."

"Is that all?" Eggsy leaned forward and hovered close, "It feels like years when I can't see you."

A hurt sound escaped Harry's throat and he crossed the short distance to kiss him. It was demanding and sweet at the same time, a lonely sort of kiss that Eggsy wished would last forever and wanted to banish at the same time.

"You'll come back," he said when he pulled away, a demand more than a question, and Eggsy's eyes snapped up to his face. Have I really made you sound like that, he wondered. He and Guy Bennett were more alike than he wanted to think.

"If it fuckin' kills me, love."

Eggsy walked slowly through the lower halls of the Kingsman mansion. He'd finally been allowed to sleep. He wondered if, with the disruption halved by Guy's death, the progression of the breakdown had slowed.

He half expected to find an empty cell or a dead body when he pressed the button that moved the iron door aside, but when he stepped in his heart lurched – Guy was there, and he was breathing.

"You're still alive."

Guy looked at him and laughed. He laughed, and he kept laughing until he was sobbing though his smile, and it was the strangest thing, but Eggsy understood. Thirty years of work for three months, and it was worth it. It would be worth it even if Eggsy really did start to see two worlds like intertwined film from a stop-motion camera, and it would be worth it if he slipped between them and out of them both. But Guy was here, and he was alive, and the dead part of Eggsy's heart that the last three months had revived saw a glimmer of hope in that tragedy.

"Just tell me one thing. How many times have you woken up here since?"

Guy coughed, still laughing, but less "every time," he said, then again "every time."

Eggsy took a deep breath.

"Ok."

He drew his gun and fired a single shot.

Eggsy didn't fancy finding out just how many times the universe might get confused and shove him in some burnt-out corpse, so he figured he didn't have a lot of time left. That, added to the fact that someone was bound to stumble across Bennet's body in a few hours, was what made him charm one of the spare pilots into letting him leave for his most recent assignment early.

"I don't see what your rush is," Merlin was grumbling in his ear "you seemed in a good enough mood a few days ago."

That was before he spent eighteen confused hours in Miami torn between phoning Kentucky, calling home, and trying not to catch syphilis from air that was so wet that he was practically swimming, Eggsy didn't say. He didn't think about the rest of the mishaps. Most were too horrifying and confusing, one too precious. Nothing in either universe was going to keep him from going home to Harry - his fiancé. Even tense and walking a knife's edge between worlds, the thought brought a smile to his face.

"Just got too much energy," Eggsy replied "need to burn it off with a good fight."

Ironically, it was Ayer again. He figured it was a pity to be killed by a man who, in their last encounter, had been felled so easily, but he hoped Ayer would be colder and harsher here, just like everything else. Rumor had it he already had the French parliament under his thumb - Eggsy agreed, given that it happened about a week before - so Eggsy was on his way to Ayer's compound in the alps. Something about the unforgiving mountain range drew European maniacs; Eggsy pondered as they landed the Jet.

Ayer was a lot more formidable with his army of brainwashed people and animals at his command. He and Harry had been damn lucky.

"Round the next corner, mission control is the second door on the left," Merlin said, her voice high and quick. She was scared but she was holding it together well. He wanted to assure her the outcome of the mission was decided, but he doubted it would be a comfort.

He went where she told him and barricaded the door, finding the control room thankfully empty. A wall of monitors sat before three long rows of computers with double monitors. The whole thing looked very national-security, NASA-esque.

"I'm looking for ways to get you out. Just sit tight there, Galahad," Merlin said in his ear. On one screen he could see Ayer hurrying towards a private jet.

"Merlin, where's the self-destruct?" he asked.

"It's by the monitors. Don't activate it until I clear your exit."

Eggsy scanned the room and spotted an obvious red button set into a raised console. He ignored Merlin, walked over, and pressed it. All at once the compound's lights went red. This was one case where the concept of self-destruct made sense, Eggsy decided as insane gorillas pounded on the door outside, but still, that was a bit easy.

"Galahad?!" Merlin shouted in his ear and he winced.

"Stop what you're doing and focus on keeping the hanger door shut." Eggsy said. When her frantic typing kept up he sighed. "It's three minutes to game over. I'm not getting out. Make it count."

"Galahad," Merlin started, but the typing stopped. He really had liked her. She was never one to give up before the very last, but even she could see he was fucked.

"It's alright, Merlin, this isn't your fault. You better be fucking recording this, because it's me going on record - I wanted to die here. Nothing you did or didn't do could have stopped me. This was my plan all along, it just worked out to be more mandatory than melodramatic. I've lost everything. I'm tired. And there's someone waiting for me."

"Eggsy-"

"Goodbye Merlin." He ripped off his glasses and crushed them under his heel.

As the seconds flickered closer to zero he pulled out his phone and sent one last message.

'Merlin, ask that girl to marry you while you both still have teeth. Don't beat yourself up when you hear. I'm happy as fuck, but I ain't got time to say why. Doubt you'd believe me anyway. Thanks for the advice on rings.'

He hit send with seconds left, and laughed at the reply that pinged back almost instantly.

'Wanker.'

The base exploded.

"I died," Eggsy said to the sun-dappled room.

Harry's arm tightened around his chest. Eggsy looked over to find him already wide awake, staring so hard Eggsy thought he might lose a layer of skin.

"Yes."

He frowned at Harry's shattered look "what do you mean 'yes,' I just did it five minutes ago."

"I...beg your pardon?"

Eggsy frowned as more of his brain came online "We should talk." Harry moved to sit up, but Eggsy grabbed his arm. "But I've just died and I'd like a few minutes to lie here and deal with that."

Harry was still staring, but he slowly relaxed back into the mattress. Eggsy ignored his imploring look, flipped onto his side and tucked himself as close as he could get.

His first morning with Harry wasn't quite as romantic as he would have hoped, as his mind was still reeling from the whole blown-into-an-alternate-reality thing, and Harry, though he'd got with the program and was holding onto Eggsy almost a hair too tight now, was clearly also stressed. Still, it was his first morning with Harry. That was what eventually made him smile into Harry's neck. He'd done it. This was where he was going to stay, forever, if Harry would have him.

"Eggsy?"

"Yeah love?"

"About that talk."

"I did promise, didn't I." Eggsy sighed and sat up reluctantly, Harry close behind him, and rubbed at his face. "Yeah, ok, here goes." He took a deep breath "I told you I'm not...I'm not your Eggsy."

Harry opened his mouth but Eggsy barrelled on, fearing he'd lose his nerve if he didn't "Guy Bennett, you know? He built somethin' so he could get back to the guy he loved. I got sent to investigate, was caught in an explosion and 'ave been bouncing between my world - where I just died - and here, where everything's fuckin' perfect, ever since. I didn't know what happened at first, so I didn't say anything, and I was too happy to think about it until Merlin found me." He shifted so his feet dangled over the edge of the bed and gripped the comforter tightly "And I still didn't say nothin' because I didn't want to lose you. I'll understand if you're angry Harry, but I thought as long as you didn't ask I wasn't going to ruin the best thing in my life." He said the rest in a rush, as much as he was glad of it, it felt unimportant now "Then just this week the whole thing got unstable, but from what I can gather it's just cuz I did it too long. The only way to fix it was to pick one, and the only way to pick one was to die in the other. So I picked."

There was a long, tense moment where Eggsy couldn't look at Harry, and Harry didn't say anything while he absorbed what Eggsy had said. Then he moved to sit beside Eggsy, perching with one hand close to Eggsy's. "I can hardly be angry with you for perpetuating a precedent I set myself," Harry said quietly. "How much did Merlin tell you?"

Eggsy turned to Harry and found his dark eyes unfathomably deep "If you're asking whether I want to hear your version, the answer is yes."

Harry nodded and started the story slowly. "You were in an explosion. We can agree on that much. You didn't walk away from it. I went myself as part of the search party and found you. I hadn't managed to tell anyone yet - the night you came home, I assume it was your first visit - was the first time I'd managed to make it as far as the kitchen in the week since."

"Merlin told me," Eggsy said. "But...I kept wonderin', if I walked in after bein' dead for a week, how come you acted so normal?"

"You stood by the door for nearly an hour. I saw you. I'm afraid I coped rather poorly," Harry smiled ruefully.

"It couldn't have been that long."

"It was. You were strange, that night. It seemed as though you weren't whole."

"Probably wasn't." Eggsy agreed, thinking "You were making pancakes. At almost midnight. Who the fuck does that?"

"It used to drive you mad. I think some part of me half expected you to come back just to scold me."

Eggsy swallowed past a lump in his throat and thought of all the stupid little things he'd done in the past with the same feeble hopes. "That's...really sad, Harry."

"Well it did work." Harry gave him a brittle smile, but it faded quickly "Eggsy..."

"Ask, Harry. Anything you want."

"In Paris. You fought...you were maddening. I've never seen even an experienced agent move the way you did."

Eggsy ducked his head "Yeah, well, I mighta been showing off for you a bit."

Harry let out a shaky laugh and absently thumbed the ring on his left hand "I'd say it worked. You were brilliant."

It's stupid how easily Harry's praise can still turn him into a grinning idiot, so he bites his lip and focuses on the other important part of Harry's statement "Even an experienced agent?" Eggsy inquired, and Harry nodded.

"You're a reserve agent here until a space opens up. You're a bit of a contentious topic among the knights. Might I ask what your code name is there?"

Eggsy didn't think he could hide the pain in his eyes when he answered, so he didn't try.

"Galahad."

Eggsy watched it dawn on him, what it meant that Eggsy held his title. They were both quiet for a long time. Then Harry chuckled to himself, though it held little humor.

"What a pair we make," he ran a hand through his hair "Still, I'm sorry that you had to choose. Your family will be devastated."

Eggsy dropped his eyes to the side.

"Eggsy?"

"It wasn't just you, Harry," He said, quiet and harsh like a confession "Roxy, Mum, Dais... all I got for company there is a bunch of polished rocks. I ain't gonna miss it. But-" he swallowed and studied a loose thread on his pillowcase "But I ain't your Eggsy, am I then. If you want me to leave-"

"No!" Harry's hand darted out and latched onto his arm like he was afraid Eggsy might vanish, which was probably fair, and Eggsy looked up to find his eyes wide and fearful "No, please don't go. You're not the Eggsy who lived with me these past few years, darling, but you are mine."

Despite the earnestness in his tone and posture, a second later a crushing sort of guilt clouded his eyes.

"Harry?" Eggsy asked.

Harry drew back, and Eggsy was half afraid he'd take back what he said as well, but he didn't say anything more.

"Should I-?

"No." Harry said again with no less conviction than before. "No, I never want you to leave."

"Then what is it, love?"

"I'm a terrible man," he said in a rush "The fact is there's two of you, and I love you both, but how would he feel to know what I've done?"

For a long moment Eggsy said nothing. But with each second that passed Harry seemed to collapse more into his guilt, and eventually Eggsy couldn't bear to watch any more.

"He asked me to take care of you." Eggsy's voice was barely above a whisper.

"...What?" Harry lifted his head.

"When...when the...whatever, started to break down. I woke up in his body."

"My god, Eggsy-"

"Didn't last long, I guess the fire did something to his lungs 'cuz I passed out real fast, but he or I or whatever...said 'take care of Harry'," he swallowed "So...I don't think he'd be angry or hurt. I wouldn't be if it was me."

Eggsy fell quiet again and waited for Harry's decision. He'd promised himself he'd go if he was asked, and he would, even if he would ruin himself in the process. The moment was short but stretched on in Eggsy's mind, and then Harry blew out all the air in his lungs with a soft sound and Eggsy found himself hauled into his arms.

"My darling Eggsy," he said quietly, his voice cracking and the sound made Eggsy's eyes prickle. Eggsy held fast when Harry started to tremble. Eggsy couldn't cry so easily anymore, not for himself, but his eyes still burned for Harry's loss.

"So I can stay?" He asked, the cloying fear in his heart driving him to speak.

"Yes," Harry said softly. He drew back just a bit and wiped his eyes, "You're different, Eggsy, I knew you were different, and I fell in love with you all over again. I wasn't lying at the party. I agreed to marry you."

And suddenly he can cry, wouldn't Emma be proud. Harry drew him close again. How long they sat on the bed Eggsy didn't know.

"Mum can't ever know," he said eventually, and Harry nodded.

"Merlin and Roxy already do," Eggsy had expected that, if he was being honest, "We should have breakfast and head to Kingsman. There are things we'll need to sort now that you're going to stay."

Eggsy sighed and drew back just enough to kiss him. It was chaste and hesitant, but Harry welcomed it, and that was enough. When Eggsy climbed out of bed, Harry took up his glasses and slipped them on his face.

"Merlin, we have our answer. He's come home for good."

A few weeks later Eggsy had the strange experience of attending his own funeral. Only Harry, Merlin, Roxy, and what few Kingsman employees were briefed on the situation stood by the headstone set where Eggsy was so used to seeing Harry's. They'd had to be careful with the inscription, but Eggsy had emphatically agreed when Harry came to him about their final decision. He could live with being buried as Gary so long as the name was followed by Hart.

Rain drizzled on their umbrellas, and Eggsy half wished he could tell himself what a dramatic funeral he'd had. He slipped his hand into Harry's as they stood, hesitant, and Harry twinned their fingers together tightly.

Slowly the others trickled away, until it was just the two of them by the grave.

"Eggsy, why don't you head back to the car." Harry let go of his hand and gave him the umbrella. "I'd like to have a word with your counterpart."

Eggsy was no stranger to conversations with headstones, so he nodded and trod off to stand by the car dutifully. Once he was out of earshot Harry took another few minutes to look at the headstone, the light rain settling as dewy mist in his hair.

"I've heard you told him to take care of me," he said eventually, interrupting the silence of the graveyard "Well that's bullshit. For heaven's sake, Eggsy, you were my world. And you died." He rubbed at his eyes "Neither he nor you can keep me from grieving, darling, and I don't want either of you to. I intend to miss you every day. I intend to keep loving you until I follow you into the grave. And I will still love him, because there's room enough in my heart for both of you."

He set his hand on the cool, damp stone, and let it take his weight for a moment.

"Goodbye, Eggsy," he murmured.

He turned back to the car, where Eggsy - the second love of his life - was leaning against the car under his umbrella, waiting.