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That civilian plea to be loved that drives people to attempt the stage is very nearly enticingly innocent, or it would be, Eggsy thinks, if they learned to put a little more subtlety into the way the undress, to not be in such a nervous hurry. Roxy just finds the overt lewdness of it amusing, sitting on a bar stool leaning back on the counter to give him the play-by-play commentary while he’s busy cleaning glasses. Amateur nights, held on the first Wednesday of every month, sells twice the drinks, after all: patrons and performers alike in need of a little liquid encouragement.
Eggsy serves one girl two shots of pure courage – burning vodka that distorts her face into a pained frown before she smiles shakily, blinking fast to keep her eyes from watering – and a G&T to someone this side of the stage getting buzzed enough for the dancers to blur.
“That was very nearly smooth,” Roxy says when the sixth act of the night concludes.
“I think that’s the tequila talking,” Eggsy replies. It was without question the best performance so far, but Eggsy isn’t in the mood for it and Roxy’s slipping fast.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Roxy says and Eggsy rolls his eyes.
“It is when ya gotta be sober for another nine of those.”
“No one’s gonna know if you have one,” she says, head thrown back to look at him. It’s carelessly coquettish in the way no one on stage manages to be and Eggsy notices a few men in the audience watching her. “Come on, Eggsy. Be a little naughty; I know Merlin always was. You know how he can’t stand imprecision.”
“Yeah, and I ain’t him.” Eggsy says. He presses three fingers into the space between her shoulder blades until Roxy straightens, pouting.
“Bore,” she says like it’s an accusation.
“Opportunist,” he shoots back, sliding a meaningful look in the way of a guy who bought her a drink just to get to watch her nurse it from afar, but she offers him a sly smile.
“It’s called performance art,” Roxy whispers as the lights dim again.
Eggsy doesn’t have time to think of a response before she’s hopped off the bar stool to wander over to the armchair for a tipsy lounge and a better view, so he rolls his eyes again instead and turns to rinse out a cocktail shaker. The music makes his hands still under the tap though, the first beats already familiar in a way that demands attention.
It’s not a song he’d choose and it hasn’t been anyone’s routine in his time, but Eggsy is certain it’s part of Merlin’s collection, although he can’t tell if it’s part of the old repertoire or yet to be used. Either way, it’s got a professional’s rhythm to it and he gets the sense he should be paying attention. Still in the darkness and to the beat, Eggsy hears the tap tap of something pointed on the floor, then the tense slide of an umbrella opening.
He doesn’t know how he recognises the sound, but he smiles to himself, because - oh yes - this is going to be interesting. He dries his hands on his jeans and crosses them over his chest to watch.
The lights go on, a dripping gold that shimmers off the umbrella tipped low between the audience and the dancer in a dapper overcoat. Eggsy is going to give him points for effort, the perfect charade of someone sleek stranded in Knightsbridge after dark. There’s even a sheen of water sprayed on the top of the umbrella - a testament to an admirable attention to detail. The umbrella spins slowly, the water on it in glittering motion, and Eggsy's pulse picks up along with the live wire tension in the room.
He half expects everyone to go wild when the umbrella tips back just enough to reveal Harry Hart, looking like he owns the world and knows it too, attention sliding over to Eggsy for a long moment before he averts his gaze. Someone in the audience still catches on and glances at Eggsy, who is trying to hide a smile biting down on his lip.
Of course Harry would do something like this and of course Roxy and Merlin would help him pull it off, would have had to. Eggsy has personally approved every performer and their music choices on the list tonight and the last time he checked, Harry wasn’t even in the margins.
Whatever he has planned now, Eggsy intends to watch, so he puts up a golden closed sign on the bar and settles against the counter to bestow his undivided attention on Harry.
The umbrella is the first thing to go (naturally), closed slowly and dropped just off the edge of the stage. Harry makes a whole show of patting down his pockets looking for a packet of cigarettes before he unbuttons his coat and finds one in his breast pocket. He shrugs off the coat easily, shoulders rolling nonchalantly, and it ends up draped over one arm. The other hand finds a lighter, cigarette balanced in the lax line of his mouth, the click of the lighter audible even over the music.Smoking indoors isn’t allowed, but Harry’s clearly been allowed an exception, because when Eggsy glances at the ceiling worried about the smoke detectors, he sees none of them are blinking.
When he looks back, Harry steadily exhales a cloud of smoke. He closes his eyes, tranquil for a moment, then lifts out an arm to drop his coat and take a few calculated steps closer to the front of the stage where the pole is. Harry leans on it and glances at his watch, his character evidently waiting for someone as he takes another long drag, eyes - or rather the one - flitting everywhere. There’s a mystery about the eye patch that adds an edge to the routine and Eggsy can’t help but wonder if it might be an old number adapted to Harry’s new build.
Overhead, the lights shift and Harry appears to grow restless. There’s an ashtray that appears out of nowhere – Roxy’s arm extending to the edge of the stage, Eggsy realises – that Harry stubs his cigarette out in, the last plume of smoke saved until after he’s straightened himself out again. The smoke comes almost as an afterthought, the end of his patience.
Harry’s hands start on the cufflinks, removed carefully to be carelessly tossed to the side. From the floor, the vanish without a sound, but from the bar, Eggsy can see the silhouette of Roxy’s helping hands catching them mid air. It’s like a magic show, Harry’s body language drawing people away from his assistant while he’s putting on this whole separate show for Eggsy. It’s an expression of the utmost trust, to let someone see the orchestration of such elegant deceit, and the meaning of that gesture isn’t lost on Eggsy, who grinds his teeth together in anticipation as Harry rolls his sleeves up sloppily.
He loosens his tie with two fingers until he can pull it off unceremoniously and let it slip from his fingers. Everything about his performance signals a tired man undressing unwatched, something ordinary and yet painfully intimate, a window into a stranger’s life. Opening the top buttons on his shirt, Harry breathes out with a sort of impatient relief. He seems to wait for his imaginary counterpart for a few more moments – hands on his hips, pacing like a caged animal – before he finally gives up.
Eggsy loves the act, the narrative that’s simultaneously foreign and something he feels has transpired before, just not for him to see. Up in the spotlight, Harry runs a frustrated hand through his hair before he returns to the buttons on his shirt. The way he fingers open two more buttons one handed would be delicate if it weren’t for the force he uses to tug his shirt out of his trousers, a hint of irritation starting to colour the scene.
The remainder of the row of buttons becomes a hasty affair, plain and simple, fast moves exposing skin. Harry hasn’t bothered with an undershirt for this, nor does he make a fuss of disposing of the shirt, simply lets it drop down behind him. It’s not a gesture befitting Harry Hart, but it is something this persona he’s adopted would do - eye patch and torso full of faded scars, a mobster that’s clawed his way up the ranks and into money, permanently discontented in his the nihilism of his life.
Eggsy’s eyes are on the hand that moves to his trousers: no belt, two buttons, a hook, and a zipper. It all happens in one fluid sequence, shoes discarded somewhere in the two steps Harry takes toward the pole. The wool of his trousers pools at his ankles for a short moment before he’s moved on and stepped out of the legs, somehow barefoot. Eggsy thinks he must’ve skipped out on the socks for the sake of logistics, not that anyone notices. Bending for something so trivial is inelegant and, in Harry’s case, vertigo inducing.
Even within this act he’s put on, the limitations of his body are still very much the same and, for Eggsy, it’s wondrous to watch him work around himself and deceive an entire roomful of people so flawlessly. Reduced to just his briefs, Harry has to make his stride work for him – a confident fluidity in his movements that isn’t quite enough to garner a wolf whistle, but captivates nonetheless.
He returns to the pole, a hand coming up to caress it like he’s longing for a spin. All the more complicated stuff is out of the question with a two decade long absence from the stage and a shot to the head, but the teasing thought of it is something too. Eggsy reckons no one else can tell what that flicker of emotion in Harry’s eyes truly is; it’s such a context bound longing and, up there, Harry is totally anonymous.
On the pole, Harry’s fingers find a proper grip and he spins - one, two, three - not far off the ground and with his muscles visibly straining, but he tilts his head back when he lands with a heavy thump, heaving for a single breath, his weight falling back on the pole against his back. Then he swallows, self-aware and utterly himself for an instant before he gathers himself in the slow drag of three fingers back down the pole. They come down over his shoulder, tracing a line down his torso just past his navel, touching on the edge of racy without quite making it there before the motion turns on itself like a parabola.
A hand ghosting up the tight line of a taut muscle in the column of his neck. Eggsy watches the tension slip as he turns his gaze from the edge of the curtain back to Eggsy, two fingertips halting on his lips. Eggsy hasn’t noticed the music fading until its gone entirely, the silence straining like a void waiting to be filled. It has such a magnetic pull, the sound of a false shot feels like completion even though Eggsy still flinches, just and just aware of the hollow sound Harry’s head makes falling back against the pole as the lights go down.
In the three second pitch black stillness, he lets out a sharp breath wrought with tension and inhales a much shakier one. The applause starts up like a startled afterthought, roaring deafeningly in the dark until the lights come back on. It’s a dim sheen that makes everyone in the audience silhouetted lumps from Eggsy’s perspective. Then the spotlight falls on Roxy, now risen from her chair.
“Thank you! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, but there is a schedule to keep to,” she says to quiet the audience, smiling widely. In the background, Harry clutches his clothes to his chest awkwardly, trapped in the middle of his professional walk of shame. “That wonderful performance you’ve just witnessed was a Kingsman special, courtesy of one of our very own, a former Knight back for a last hurrah. And no, I’m afraid you can’t hire him for your next party. His private shows are extremely exclusive events.”
There her line of sight meets Eggsy’s and she winks. Two or three people glance over at him and he’s suddenly grateful for the low lighting, because his face is growing uncomfortably warm. It’s never occurred to him as a possibility – Harry dancing for him – even though Eggsy has given a drunken lap dance or two in their time.
Mercifully, she moves on from him to Harry, asking for one last round of applause. He takes a shallow bow, eyes on Eggsy the whole time. Focusing on a point in the distance helps him with his balance and they’ve locked eyes before, but this isn’t about that. This is the point of intersection of their parallel pasts, a homage to their first meeting in this same room three years ago, now a wide open future.