sakura_no_miko

Title: One Look is Worth a Thousand Words

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Harry/Eggsy

Warnings: explicit sex (gay), jealousy, age difference

Other notes: mirror sex, domesticity

Length: 6k

Summary: Eggsy is uncomfortable at seeing an old photograph of young Harry and Merlin, happy and smiling together. In response, Harry decides to show him just how happy Eggsy makes him.

Ack, well, I meant to–do some other fandom, but, as usually happens, I’ve spent about a month straight reading fic for one fandom. I’m pretty tired at work, so my reading time is limited, and my writing time even more so. Such is the way of things.

However–well, a) still tons of good fic and b) even though these are all in the same fandom, I thought of many different topics to write about. Better to write repetitively than write nothing at all, right?

I had an interesting thought at some point early in the Kingsman fandom–I can see why Harry and Eggsy are a popular pairing, but the age difference is kind of an odd thing. We do literally see Harry–already quite adult–meeting Eggsy as a child. Harry’s older than Eggsy’s parents, in fact. A lot of the soul mate AUs tend to emphasize the age gap. For me, it’s somewhat more of the mentor/mentee relationship. Once you’ve actually been teaching, it’s really hard to ever look at teacher/student quite the same way.

But it also struck me–we see these 30, 40, 50-year old actors cast as romantic leads opposite 20-year-old actresses all the time, and I never really paid any attention to it. So why am I getting hung up over it being the exact same thing, but with two actors?

That said, fandom has certainly been dealing with the age issues in a way most rom-coms tend to gloss over. This one is–painful, at times, because it really throws Eggsy’s sweetness and youthful naivete up against Harry being, well, an aging spy, with god knows how much trauma and violence weighing him down. Reminds me of an interesting idea I saw somewhere–that who you fall in love with or have other important relationships with can be very dependent on what stage of life you’re in. Like, someone might be your best friend now, but if you’d met ten years earlier you wouldn’t have gotten along at all.

Just–there’s a scene where Harry just says, it used to be easier to smile and laugh and cry openly, and that line killed me. I know that feeling. I grant, for me, it’s not age, it’s depression and anxiety, but I am all too familiar with that sort of deadened feeling, and how hard it is to describe it to other people.

And really that’s why I read fics–read anything, really. To remind myself that other people feel the things I do, and can be fascinated by the things I consider mundane. That I can write things that matter to people.

That said, returning to the age difference thing, the most heartbreaking fic I’ve come across in this fandom yet just has “Two years into Eggsy’s knighthood and never once has Harry considered that he might outlive the boy” as its summary. I would rec it, but then i’d just find myself chanting “fuck, fuck, fuck,” all night. Nope. Give me all the time travel and AU and age regression shenanigans, but do not give me that.

I’ve also had many an argument with people over my pictures. I love to take pictures of things and places, but rarely myself. Not interested in myself, usually. Had a huge argument when I went on a class trip to Rome. My teacher was adamant that I’d want pictures of myself in these places, while I maintained that I wanted pictures of the places themselves, the way I would see them. Ah. The debate rages on.

Oh, and also there’s mirror porn. Mirror porn in the service of soothing jealousy and re-establishing self-esteem. Which is, of course, the best kind of kinky porn.
(Looking for more fic recs?)
Originally posted on tumblr on 07/10/15