Chapter Text
The first thing Merlin did with every new recruit cycle was explain that they’d be in seven hells’ worth of trouble if they snitched about Kingsman. Thus far, the only cohort to produce an agent who had already known how to keep his or her mouth shut was the previous one; both Lancelot and Guinevere had proven prior to their induction that they were more than capable of not saying a word. The former, because she’d accidentally walked in on a rather spirited sort of sexual escapade that her uncle and his partner-cum-spy had been engaged in and had promptly blackmailed them both into explaining what they did for a living in exchange for not outing Uncle Alastair and his “friend” James at mummy’s Boxing Day supper. The latter, of course, because of his unequivocal and nearly inborn grasp of “snitches get stitches and end up in ditches.”
The second thing Merlin did was explain the rules by which the recruits would be living for the next several months. The master list of them, he explained, was posted in both their dormitory and in the main break room at both HQ and in the tailor shop downtown. He’d only had to experience a recruitment six times in the almost 30 years he’d been working for Kingsman, and the rules had only ever changed to reflect security issues, basic personnel issues, and updated technology (and those damned social media networks). However, the last year-and-a-half had seen the introduction of a new rule, and one that Merlin privately thought was the most necessary:
14a. Don’t fuck about with Guinevere. He will let Arthur hurt you and then he will make you tea and let you eat a homemade biscuit and will generally look very disappointed with you (if you’re lucky).
This, of course, was immediately followed by:
14b. Just don’t. It’s not worth the resulting paperwork.
Rule 14c was mentioned rather quickly thereafter:
14c. Remember the exploding heads on V-day? That was Guinevere. Just don’t.
Of course, this being a new rule, and the only one that applied to a specific agent besides rule 8 (Don’t touch Percival’s things; they explode and then he giggles at the resulting fires.), the freshest batch of recruits felt it necessary to challenge this.
It did not end well for anyone involved.
(Except JB.)
***
It was a Monday that the new recruits arrived.
They arrived, fresh and eager, ready to become the next Bors. The old Bors had recently joined a very small and elite group of Kingsmen: retired. He had initially planned to retire before V-day, but had stayed on in the aftermath to help sort things out. Now that the world was in better hands, the elderly agent was fully intending to enjoy his well-deserved life in Mallorca. But, his absence meant a new round of recruits. And a new round of recruits meant a revision of The Rules.
The Rules were a collection of rules that had been posted sometime in the eighties in the UK HQ’s staff breakroom. The single sheet of typed paper had quickly become a mess of revisions and scribbles as agents, staff, and recruits tried to jockey for whatever it was that they fancied. The Merlin at the time, a kindly older man who had later been poached to MI-6 to run some sort of technical division there, had finally removed the paper and replaced it with an engraved plaque listing the original rules. Various pieces of the second plaque remained around HQ in desks and in display cases, but the original had been destroyed in an attempt by the then-Erec to acid-etch a rule declaring him the unofficial “leader” of the Kingsman agents.
When the current Merlin took over, he swiftly removed the iteration of The Rules that existed and simply terrorized the entire organization to streamline and follow what he posted. His methodology for going about this was, some suspected, true wizardry, but in reality it was a rather dull and seemingly minor action: he hired Mrs. Aftby as Head of Personnel. Mrs. Aftby was a spry woman of 60 at the time of her hiring, well-used to dealing with the squabbles and petty issues of toddlers. A lifetime of raising a brood of children of her own and running her local parish’s day crêche had left her with an unusually strong and pervasive ability to control groups of people. It helped, of course, that Merlin’s mother was of the same sort of dour stock as he, and together they were able to wrangle Kingsman into something a bit more deserving of the title of “International Spy Agency.”
But, as it is with these sorts of things, there were always agents who felt that these rules did not apply to them (Arthur, then Galahad) or did not apply to others (Lanceless, then Lancelot). Merlin took quite a lot of pleasure in disabusing them of this notion. Repeatedly. With slideshows. And explosives. Eventually, an accord was reached, and by the time the cohort that boasted two active agents as graduates came around, there was a sort of peace about Kingsman.
So when the recruits arrived, one of the first things that happened was that they were informed of the The Rules. Merlin gave the same sort of doom-and-gloom speech every time he had a new group, but the addition of Rule 14 merited special mention in his opinion.
“Dinnae do it. Whatever you think you’ll gain by fussing about with Guinevere, you won’t. And then you’ll end up in pain. And for the love of God, do not make fun of his name being Guinevere. He chose it himself.”
The recruits, full of vim and vigor, promptly ignored this warning.
***
“What is that smell?”
“What smell?”
“The cinnamon smell, you idiot.”
Harry smiled a bit at hearing the exchange in the hallway outside his office. It was the first day the recruits for Bors’ position were free to move about the mansion of their own volition, and many had come upstairs to go for a jog with their puppy. Several had commented on the scent of baking cinnamon buns, though none were quite sure where it was coming from. Harry, however, knew. He stood, and journeyed out from his office, to another door three doors down to the left. It was the same aged English oak as the rest of the doors in this hallway, and only a small placard detailing that this was Guinevere’s office gave any indication of the interior.
Opening that door, he watched as Eggsy, now known as Guinevere, moved. The younger man was dressed in black trousers that accentuated his bum, a gunmetal button down with the sleeves rolled up, a matching black waistcoat and a tie the same jade green as his eyes. He also happened to be wearing an apron that bore an image of a cartoon pug in a snapback cap. Harry had it made for him at Christmastime, and Eggsy wore it whenever he baked.
The room Harry entered was half kitchen, half cafe. Eggsy had co-opted for his personal office what had turned out to be a storage room for esoteric trophies from days long since past, but instead of setting up a desk and computer, he personally gutted it over the period of several weeks and installed cooking space out of his own pockets. Barring days when he was on a mission, Eggsy baked weekly for the non-agent members of Kingsman. Of course, Harry, Roxy, and whichever agents he happened to be friends with that week were allowed to sample the treats, but as a rule only secondary staff were allowed to munch freely. The days when Eggsy was gone for a mission Mrs. Aftby baked. She had taken the young man under her wing as soon as it became clear he was going to be hanging around Kingsman for longer than it took to shoot him with an amnesia dart, and had set him about cooking and baking. Eggsy took to it like he took to breathing or acrobatic violence.
Now he baked regularly, and was known to cook delicious, simple meals for whomever happened to be on the premises at dinnertime. Steaming bowls and plates arrived under steel cloches to agents’ offices just minutes after they arrived back to HQ from hard missions. Vast quantities of soups and stews and chilis had made it into the mansion’s cafeteria-like freezers, the regular kitchen staff ecstatic that someone else was taking a bit of the burden of feeding the ravening hordes of Kingsman.
Mrs. Aftby sat in one of the large, overly comfortable chairs with her knitting, and smiled at Harry when he came in. If she wasn’t in Personnel in her cozy, cottage-like office, she was almost certainly at Eggsy’s little cafe, taking her tea and letting Eggsy serve her as many pastries and tidbits he could get away with.
“Good morning, Arthur. How’s your day been so far?”
“Quite comfortable, Mrs. Aftby.”
“Pish. It’s Rosemary. I’ve told you a hundred times.”
“Yes you have, and I still recall exactly how young I was when I met you and your son. You will always be my dear, evergreen Mrs. Aftby.”
The now-elderly woman smiled demurely at Harry and gave him a small wink.
“Your young Guinevere is getting quite good with my mother’s cinnamon bun recipe. Though he seems bound and determined to find some sort of God-awful icing for it. I keep telling him to keep it simple and just use a dusting of fine sugar, but does he listen? No! Worse than Ambrose.”
Harry stifled the knee-jerk giggle that always threatened to erupt when he heard Merlin’s real name. No one was entirely sure where in the lineup of Mrs. Aftby’s brood Merlin had been born, but it was clear that he doted on her in a way his numerous siblings did not. Harry privately thought it was because Merlin was terrified of sending his mother somewhere like a retirement community for fear of her safety, but Eggsy was convinced it was because Mrs. Aftby had threatened the man within an inch of his life. Their ongoing bet had yet to be answered, but Harry assumed it was only a matter of time.
“‘Ey, love! Come ‘ere and eat this.” Eggsy held out a sticky, still-steaming cinnamon bun on a small saucer. His oven mitts were mismatched, one a flowery number Harry knew was stolen from his own kitchen at their shared house, and the other a knitted… thing that was clearly from Mrs. Aftby’s skillful hands.
“I would love nothing more.” Harry crossed the few steps it took to reach the counter and grasped the plate in one hand and leaned in and gave Eggsy a polished kiss.
“Back you get! I’ve got another ‘alf dozen of these bastards to bake, an’ twice that to glaze, an’ a meetin’ with Percival about whether we’re gonna get the Lances with paintballs or tasers for that stunt they pulled in Belfast two weeks back.”
Harry chuckled and sat down across from Mrs. Aftby.
“Darling, you’re well aware that James is no longer Lancelot. That ridiculous nickname you’ve all given him is immature at best, and insulting at worst.
“Yeah, but that don’t stop ‘im from being a right prick to anyone that ain’t Rox or Perce.”
Harry sighed. The curious case of James Morton-Worthington was one he’d inherited after V-day. The former Lancelot had been shot twice in the chest and had had his legs cut off below the knee by Valentine’s bodyguard-slash-lover Gazelle and her fearsome prosthetic blades. While they’d managed to get him home after his injuries, Kingsman had been scrambling to figure out Valentine’s plans and had been unable to reach him in time to reattach his legs. Now restricted to a wheelchair until his orthopedic surgeon deemed him fully healed enough to warrant prosthetics, he was effectively stuck. And a bored James was a dangerous, awful James. Roxy was granted immunity from his general grumpiness due to her being Percival’s niece. And Percival, of course, was spared all but the worst of it on account of being the other Mr. Morton-Worthington. Because of this sourpuss attitude, though, James had earned himself the disfavor of a majority of the Kingsmen, as well as the support staff. Someone had begun referring to him as “Lance-less” and the unfortunate moniker had stuck. Still, he made for a remarkable handler, and thus was set to work with his namesake agent quite often.
“Still, dear. A gentleman does not comment rudely upon someone’s disability or injury, and certainly does not do so in a malicious manner.”
“Malicious, my arse. I give ‘im fresh cookies every soddin’ week!”
“Just so. Please call him by his name, darling.”
Eggsy huffed in response and turned to the oven, deftly sliding the last tray of doughy buns inside to bake off.
The rest of the hour passed genially, with several members of the tech services team coming in to grab some treats and some tea. Percival stopped in to have a word with Harry, and pick up the small blue box of cookies Eggsy had in fact baked the previous night to take to James. However the mood turned wintry and bleak when the door opened with just a few minutes until breakfast hours were over and one of the recruits poked his head in.
“Oi! You!” Eggsy’s voice brooked no argument in it’s glacial tone. Harry privately mused that he must have picked it up from Merlin, given the way the recruit stopped with wide eyes and a look of startled shock on his face.
“Uh, yes Gwennie?”
Eggsy’s eyes narrowed and a good number of the staff present sat or stood straighter. Eggsy tilted his head in what Harry knew to be a coldly calculating move, one he’d seen over and over in footage from Eggsy’s most violent missions.
Suddenly, Eggsy smiled a large, pleasant smile. Harry was clearly familiar enough with Eggsy’s mannerisms to note immediately that this smile didn’t reach his eyes. Percival seemed to note the reaction as well, which didn’t surprise Harry. He and Eggsy got on like a house on fire, and spent a fair amount of time together outside of missions.
“Come on in, bruv! Just pullin’ out a fresh batch, yeah? Sit on down ‘ere and I’ll get you one all done up proper.”
The recruit eased into the small room, large eyes taking in the group of assembled staff and agents meekly.
“Uh, yes. Thank you sir. We all smelled the baking, but Merlin said there wasn’t a bakery….?”
“Nah, Merlin’s just sour ‘cause I don’ let ‘im back ‘ere to get any goods. Oh, Perce? Can you get me the bowl of icing we was workin’ on last night? I’ve run out o’ the stuff I ‘ave out here, and you know I just put the stuff last night back in the fridge. Got me ‘ands full an’ all.”
Percival shot Eggsy what was a clearly amused glance and said, “Certainly, Guinevere. The cream cheese or the special blend?”
“Oh the blend. These lads been workin’ ‘ard. Might as well give ‘im the good stuff, yeah?”
“Be right back.”
Harry watched Eggsy remove the final batch of buns from the oven and scrape one off onto a delicate saucer. Eggsy then reached for a new metal spatula from the bain marie he kept his utensils in and awaited Percival’s return.
It came soon enough. The rather unassuming man carried a small Pyrex bowl with cling film stretched over the top. Inside was some sort of white colored paste. Harry knew right away that this wasn’t going to end well when he saw the twinkle of mischief in Percival’s eye as he handed the bowl over to Eggsy.
“You’re the guv, Perce.” Eggsy removed the cling film and took a large dollop of the paste and smeared it over the top of the cinnamon bun. He then set the spatula down, dusted the “icing” with cinnamon sugar, and handed the recruit the saucer with a wink and a happy smile.
The recruit happily ate it all and left with a smug smile, a box of cinnamon buns with special icing (“to share with your friends, there’s a lad”), a wave from Eggsy, and a a ticking time bomb in his stomach.
“Did… did you just rig a recruit to explode, darling?” Harry looked askance at Percival and Eggsy.
“Nah. Me’n Perce cooked up a batch of laxative-icing to fuck with James an’ Rox last night, and I figure this is a better use of it, yeah? ‘Sides it ain’t like you weren’t thinkin’ o’ somethin’ mean to do, yeah?”
Harry paused a moment to consider that in his own mind, he’d been slowly dismembering the recruit for daring to call Eggsy “Gwennie,” and nodded in solemn agreement.
“There’s a good lad,” said Mrs. Aftby from the corner.
***
Life went on, some recruits got sent home, and Eggsy baked. After the Cinnamon Bun Event, as it was being called, six recruits spent a full 72 hours in medical, and three of those left of their own volition, unable to stand the thought of crossing the slightly-mad Kingsmen on accident. Those remaining seemed like a good lot, and few incidents happened after things quieted down. As it happened, however, things didn’t always calm at Kingsman.
Eggsy had been grounded to HQ for several weeks after a particularly tenuous mission had ended with him contracting some sort of tropical fever. Though he was very nearly recovered after just two weeks, a persistent cough (and Harry’s meddling in the medical files) kept him home for another month and a half. During this time, he joined Merlin in helping to train the recruits whenever possible. Eggsy claimed it was just a way to kill time, but it only took a matter of days for all of Kingsman to recognize that Eggsy was besotted with the recruits. He led their runs with sing-song drill chants, showed them some of the more advanced tricks to teach their puppies, and became their go-to agent when they needed advice on how to deal with the others. So despite Harry’s insistence on not coddling the recruits and to simply stay home and rest, Eggsy became a secondary instructor.
What sealed Eggsy’s fate as being forever known as Recruit Team Mother was the time Gareth walked in to the recruit barracks, ready to see them snap to fearful attention, but instead found them all blissed out and napping in a circle on blankets around Eggsy who was reading Harry Potter aloud to them and petting one smaller girl’s hair in absent circles.
(“What? I do the voices right, and they all just drop into some kind of fuckin’ subspace or somethin’. It’s like they all got trained up as kiddos by Pavlov’s soddin’ librarians to just get all gooey when someone drones at them in a calm and quiet voice!”)
They had reached the point where the recruits would be given wilderness survival training. Kitted out with the bare essentials, they were dropped from altitude into a remote Scottish forest with the instructions “Don’t die. I dinnae want to deal with the paperwork.” issuing from Merlin’s mouth as they jumped.
All was well the first two nights. The recruits made a base camp, took turns hunting and scavenging, and set up what even Merlin grudgingly admitted was a rather ingenious method of collecting rainwater in their canteens using only stolen bailing wire and a recruit’s silicone breast pads cannibalized from her bra.
Then their signals went dark and all hell broke loose.
“What exactly do you mean when you say YOU LOST THEM?!”
If Eggsy weren’t already incredibly aroused from watching Harry’s hair fall from it’s oiled and defined style, the growl and shout he sent Merlin’s way would have done the trick. He shook his head to clear the lustful thoughts and discreetly adjusted himself as he turned a more attentive ear to the proceedings.
“I meant just that. 30 minutes ago, all of their trackers went dark. I’d think it was some kind of accident or interference, but they blinked out one at a time as if they were being disabled somehow. I’ve already scrambled Gareth and Tristan to go check on them, discreetly of course. In case something did simply interfere and they’re still out there just surviving, I dinnae want to interrupt.”
Harry was as content with that answer as he could be given the situation, but things turned grim after a few hours when Gareth and Tristan informed Merlin that they had found the smoking remains of the camp, but no sign of the recruits. Harry sighed his Arthur Sigh.
Eggsy had only heard Harry sigh like that twice before, and each time it was for something so gut-wrenchingly bad that Eggsy had immediately gone out to the closest fine chocolatier and bought Harry as many expensive truffles as he could carry. The man’s sweet tooth was as legendary as his disdain for missions going wrong and non-designer clothing.
“Find them.”
“Aye, I’m trying. And dinnae take that tone with me, Harold Pembroke Hart. I will call your mother and tell her you were being mean to me.”
“Sod off, Ambrose. Your mother likes me better than you anyway.”
“You cheeky…”
“Oi! Gents!” Eggsy interrupted the older men, who turned their twin myopic gazes upon the younger face of Guinevere. Eggsy meekly shoved his non-regulation (“Eggsy darling, stop bringing outside tech into the office; we’ll get hacked and then Merlin will win my bet with him.”) iPad into their faces and hit the PLAY button on a private YouTube video aptly named Kingsman Hostages.
The three of them watched the video, each taking in everything they could about the grainy footage. Clearly the recruits were all still alive, or had been when it was filmed, and each seemed mostly unharmed. Whomever had kidnapped them was wearing a balaclava, muffling his voice along with keeping his face from being seen. Smart, yes, but then he had to go and ruin it by wearing a uniform with a name tag on it.
“This should be fun,” muttered Merlin, and Eggsy and Harry could only nod in grim satisfaction.