Fic rec - Lagavulin and Guinness

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Lagavulin and Guinness

Author: Snarfle

Fandom: Kingsman: The Secret Service

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Harry/Eggsy

Warnings: graphic violence, torture (both being tortured and torturing someone else), PTSD, dissociation, character injury, suicidal ideation, blackmail, nonconsensual drug use, manipulation, extremely dubious morality, honeypot missions, classism, homophobia (including an attack on a minor character) bullying, familial drug abuse and alcoholism, past spousal/parental abuse, past child abuse, custodial battle, explicit sex (gay and het)

Other notes: AU, canon-divergence, post-movie, family, court trial

Length: 160k

Summary: Plenty of people had looked down on Eggsy throughout his life. He had gotten fairly used to it. Didn't mean it was fair, but he knew how these things worked. What really sucked was that the new Arthur was worse than the old one.
 

My thoughts:

 

So, there is one fic I swore never to read again. Golden Boy. I re-read it once, and only once, for a fic rec. That fic filled me with so much pain at the end, because a guy meets his true love, but they are forever separated because the guy made a major fuck-up in his youth. Then there’s The End of the Road, in which a show’s OTP is systematically taken apart, and every reason why their relationship might not work out is laid bare. Might be able to read that again, but it’ll put me in a funk for days. I also noted to myself not to re-read The Good Times Are Killing Me, in which characters try to stay together for one last Christmas. You notice there’s a theme here — apparently I just cannot deal with really intensely emotional breakup fics.

And then, ladies and gentleman, there is this fic.

I’m not sure I can get through this without a lot of swearing, because I read this fic back when it was a WIP, and I was so filled with righteous fury, as a reader, that — it was like the reading equivalent of wanting to punch a wall or throw your controller into the screen.

Eggsy, who is absolutely my boy, my dude, my character who I want to cuddle and destroy everyone responsible for his suffering — he gets tortured. A lot. I mean, Kingsman is a spy movie, so there’s a lot of fic where the characters get captured and/or tortured. Kinda comes with the territory.

But this fic — this is a fic where Eggsy, because he is lower class, because he dared to shake up the Correct Order of Things, is tortured by his own boss, because she’d rather him die than admit that he’s worthy of being alongside her white, upper class collection of twats.

Which, yeah — that’s gonna trigger some people. I am hesitant to rec this fic, not because it’s badly written or sexually explicit, but because it’s literally about someone being tortured over prejudice, and that’s not something that’s gonna brighten your day. It really is so violent. Like usually I gloss over warnings for violence outside horror movies, but this one is pretty violent.

And, like — it’s especially heartbreaking, since it takes place after the end of the first film. (We do not discuss the second film here.) The whole film is about Eggsy being this kid from the lower class who gets My Fair Lady’d into a high-class world of spies, and he saves the world. He breaks the glass ceiling. He finds his place in the world.

But, oh, this fic says. Oh, the real world is not that easy. Break down one barrier and you’ve just gotten yourself into an even more threatening world.

And all of that is before the dubious morality comes into play.

This is also a fic where the lead character, in the course of his job as a spy, tortures a woman. Graphically. And then he gets called up on trial to explain himself, and —

Ok, we can all agree torture is bad, yeah? Horrific. And yet — and yet, I remember the year 24 came out. You know, Jack Bauer, super spy, willing to torture people if it meant stopping a bomb or saving the president. This was, oh, two months after 9/11? It was a nasty, scary time, and the show tried to play things both ways — that torture is horrific, but maybe sometimes it’s necessary.

And this fic, well. The first film ends with Eggsy — my boy, remember — mass-murdering a mad genius and all the people who threw in their alliances with him, and it’s kind of a joke. It’s the end of an action movie. The bad guys lose. We’re supposed to cheer when the action hero guns down terrorists or drug cartels or crooked cops. We’re not really supposed to think about the action hero being put on trial, or dealing with PTSD, or trying to convince someone that he’s still a fit and faithful guardian to his baby sister, even if his day job involves killing people.

And, again — we’re hugely sympathetic to Eggsy, because he’s getting tortured himself. We see him get tortured. And then we see him torture someone else, and he has to deal with the fact that he is good at it. The survival skills that have kept him alive also let him survive doing terrible things. It’s bleak and brilliant.

But it won’t really improve your day.

The only real high point is that — spoilers? — things do finally get better. Eggsy has loyal friends who defend him, help take care of him, help him heal, help him grow. Which is really the only thing that keep your from falling into total rage and/or despair.

Actually — yeah, let’s go ahead and get into spoiler territory.

Spoilers follow

The relationship between harry and Eggsy is certainly something to behold. I actually had a mild revelation when I watched the film, because the age gap between Harry and Eggsy in a romantic context did bother me. Harry is older than Eggsy’s father, and for some reason, Eggsy read as “older teenager” to me, even though I know they said he’d been old enough to be in the Marines for a year or two before film started. And then I thought, well, most straight romances have no problem putting a 40 or 50 year old dude with a 20-something woman…. Which is more a symptom of questionable standards of romance, to be fair, but—like, if I can accept it in a straight relationship, why not a gay one? Really I should get more critical of the trope, but, eh. That’s more than I need to think about right now.

But here, while Harry still has shades of “protective mentor,” it’s very evident that he is still a trained spy. He is violent, manipulative, and vicious by turns — out of love for Eggsy, yes, but he’s still not above using those tricks on Eggsy “for his own good.”

Like, take this short scene the first time they get together — after Harry has drugged Eggsy to force him to reveal his secrets:

“Hi,” said Eggsy, wishing he didn’t sound so breathless.

“It says something about your psychology,” said Harry, softly, “that your reaction to me betraying your trust and circumnavigating one of the most fundamental aspects of your personality is to kiss me.”

“That’s a lot of big words, bruv,” said Eggsy, brushing his thumb against the corner of Harry’s kiss-bitten mouth. “You sure you wanna talk right now?”

For a long moment, Harry actually looked torn. He seemed to be in some sort of a moral crisis for a moment.

Eggsy just has the fascinating ability to compartmentalize — to accept that, yes, something bad happened to him, and there will be consequences, but he can choose to ignore or forgive or get vengeful as need be. He’s pissed at Harry, but he also understands why Harry did it, and accepts it. Possibly not the start of a healthy relationship — and yet, Harry has a brief moment where he stumbles, he questions.

It’s always weird reading those dark AUs where, like, both people are criminals and whatnot. Like Mirror Universe Star Trek or Sociopaths in Love. Where this is obviously not a healthy relationship, but you can tell the characters do have a relationship.

But the best part is, the whole relationship gets called out. There is a long and detailed conversation between two abuse survivors about how Harry is potentially abusive. Actually, there are a lot of conversations about abuse — between Eggsy and his mother, between Eggsy and Dean, between Eggsy and Harry. About how individuals cope with abuse. About escaping abuse. About PTSD. It’s really difficult to read, but very raw and real. Another reason to rec this fic, damn.

And this, of course, leads to the best/worst cliffhanger — because, remember, I read this as a WIP. I got a point where that cliffhanger was the end of the fic.

After a crazy attack on the headquarters, Eggsy finally knows that Harry was the one leaking information, and he confronts him, which is hands-down a brilliant scene, and it leads to this exchange:

“You ain’t my savior,” said Eggsy. “You helped me and mentored me, but the saving part? I did all that myself. I don’t owe you shit.

“We’re on equal grounds, as far as I’m concerned. So, as an equal partner, I got this to say. You ever fucking hit me again, you even start to raise a fist to me in a way that ain’t practice sparring, then we’re going to have a huge fucking problem. I don’t want my boyfriend choking me. It ain’t going to happen.

“Drugging me, hurting me, all of that shit… It ain’t right, Harry. It ain’t fucking right. And I may be like my mum, but I’ve got a lot of my dad in me, too. And you know what? It wouldn’t matter if I were all my mum, because she’s got a lot of good parts to her, too.”

Eggsy stopped for a moment, trying to remember his point. Then he continued, “Yeah, it ain’t right. And you know fucking what? Let’s face it, here – I could do better than you. There’s a reason you’re over fifty and unattached, and it’s not because you’re picky. It’s because you’re fucking impossible. Impossible. But, for some dumbarse reason, don’t ask me why, I still like you. I more than like you. God, if I knew a fucking thing about love, I might even call it that.

“I wanna be with you, Harry. But not if you hurt me. Because…”

Eggsy dragged in another breath, and was startled to discover he was getting perilously close to tears. He took another deep breath, clamping down on the impulse.

“Because I deserve Lee, not Dean,” he said.

It’s so goddamn narratively perfect. A brilliant conclusion to all the threads of the story. I could legit keep writing for several more pages, but I’m sure you’d be decided by now.

Anyway. TL;DR: This fic is brilliant if you can stomach frank depictions of abuse and torture and people managing to find a happy ending anyway.

Also, this is probably the longest list of warnings I’ve written. It just kept growing as I re-read…

 

 

(Looking for more fic recs?) 

Originally posted to Pillowfort