Chapter Text
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One
Here’s the thing most people don’t get about Michelle; just ‘cause she knows when to keep her mouth shut don’t mean she’s bloody stupid. She ain’t claiming to be the next Einstein or anything - barely scraped through high school as it was, even before she had to drop out in Sixth Form 'cos little Eggsy started making his presence known - but she’s got eyes, and she’s smart enough to put two and two together.
But it also means she’s smart enough to know the old line about gift horses and how you ain’t meant to look ‘em in the mouth, so when Eggsy shows up at the Prince in a suit that looks like it cost more than their month’s rent and offers her and Daisy a better life, away from the grit and grime of the estate, Michelle doesn’t question how the fuck a tailor (even a posh one in Savile Row) can afford to pay his newest shop-boy enough to afford a three-bedroom in the nice part of town. Honestly, at the time she’s just too terrifyingly relieved at the thought of being able to leave behind Dean, who came back to the flat on V-Day with his pockets full of spent cartridges and sleeves soaked to the elbows in other peoples’ blood.
For the same reason, she doesn’t really think too deeply about the efficient, vicious way Eggsy beats up Dean and his boys when they try to stop her leaving (other than to privately thank the judge who sentenced Eggsy after he stole Rotti’s car, because whatever they did at that military camp he got sent to apparently sharpened Eggsy’s already considerable brawling skills into a kind of beautiful, well-orchestrated ballet of violence).
It shouldn’t matter. Eggsy’s a tailor, now. It’s a steady, settled job, away from bar-room brawls and sidewalk scuffles, and there shouldn’t be any call for him to be out breaking people’s faces with his fists.
And yet, somehow, her boy keeps getting himself in trouble.
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Tailors travel a lot, apparently – she don’t really understand it all, but there’s trips to buy fabric and patterns, and trips to scout new designs, and trips to see clients too posh to come to them, and it all adds up to Eggsy being away more often than not. Usually he heads out in a crisply pressed suit and vest, sometimes in his old chav gear, and occasionally in the kind of outfit that makes Michelle want to go You ain’t leaving the house dressed like that, young man, but the eyeliner-and-leather look is what passes for high fashion these days accordin’ to the papers, so maybe that’s what he has to wear to fit in with that crowd.
However he leaves, though, he always seems to come back scraped around the edges. Sometimes it’s barely anythin’ – a graze high on one cheek, a shallow scratch along his forearm – and sometimes it’s much, much worse.
‘I’m ‘ome!’ she hears Eggsy call from the front door one evening, just as she’s washing up the last of the dinner dishes. She pokes her head out into the hallway to greet him (he’s been gone for a week, this time, off somewhere in Italy) but the words dry up in her mouth at the sight of him.
‘What happened to you, love?’
‘S’ nothing,’ Eggsy shrugs, carefully sliding his duffel off his uninjured shoulder. His left arm is in a sling and the bandages neatly applied to his scalp don’t hide the impressive goose egg or the mottled bruises extending down the side of his neck. ‘Local lad didn’t like me making a pass at one of his mates, so he took a swing. I didn’t like ‘im spoilin’ my chances, so I took one back. Things went to shit pretty fast after that.’
He tries to grin at her then winces as his lip splits, fresh blood trickling down his chin. Michelle reaches out and wipes it away, the same way she used to when he was small and getting picked on at the playground for not havin’ a dad.
She doesn’t ask how an ordinary thug managed to land a hit on Eggsy when she’s seen him take out five blokes in seconds without breaking a sweat. She wonders it, though.
‘I’m fine, Mum, don’t fuss,’ Eggsy says, pulling away. ‘I’ll come down get dinner in a bit, yeah?’ and with that, he’s disappearing up the stairs to his room.
Michelle stands in the hallway, gazing down at the smear of blood across her fingers, and a feeling of unease curls deep in her stomach.
She finds Eggsy’s shirt in the laundry hamper later that night. The left sleeve has been slashed with something sharp and clumsily sewn up with off-coloured thread, and a large bloodstain hasn’t quite washed out of the front. She stares at it for a long moment, then finally throws it into the machine and tells herself firmly that it’s nothing.
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