Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Egypt, Thebes, 2130-whatever, BC.

Long ago, Thebes was the City of the Living, the Crown Jewel of Pharaoh Seti the First. Home to Imhotep, High Priest of Osiris, Keeper of the Dead. Birthplace of Ang-us-namun, Pharaoh’s consort. He had the man painted gold and denied clothing other than a loincloth, so that if any other touched him, Pharaoh would know and the violator would be put to death. Seems like a dick move to me, but what do I know?

But he and Imhotep were so in love (or at least so horny) they couldn’t stay away from each other, risking death each time they met. Imhotep had a band of ugly priests that watched his back, but they weren’t perfect. One night after Ang-us-namun’s paint got all messed up, Pharaoh burst into his rooms, surprising Imhotep’s guards. He threw back the curtains that surrounded the bed and found his consort alone. Ang-us-namun tried to distract Pharaoh with a seductive smile, but he noticed the smeared paint and was all like, ‘WHO HAS TOUCHED YOU?!’— What a tool.

He was about to lose his shit for real when Imhotep pulled the sword out of Pharaoh's scabbard, distracting him. Ang-us-namun took the opportunity to retrieve the long knife he’d stashed under the mattress and stab Pharaoh in the heart and then he and Imhotep took turns stabbing him while the guards barred the doors. Again – this all seems very extreme, having a big ol’ stabbing party, but people do crazy things when sex is involved.

Suddenly the doors get rammed open, freaking out the priest’s guards, because it could only be Pharaoh’s bodyguards, the Medjai. Ang-us-namun told Imhotep to flee with his men, and Imhotep only agreed to leave after Ang-us-namun pointed out that he was the only one who could resurrect him. And he went, super reluctantly, getting hustled out of sight right as the doors gave way. The Medjai busted in and were like ‘where’s Pharaoh?’ and then Ang-us-namun pointed to the body with a smirk and said ‘my body is no longer his temple!’ and then stabbed himself in the stomach. Imhotep had a little breakdown in the meantime because, as high priest, he was in charge of cursing the bodies of anyone who crossed Pharaoh and that included his secret boyfriend who’d just taken sole credit for the murder. Yikes.

Then Imhotep and his priests stole the body of his now-cursed lover and they took off into the night, racing toward his only hope of resurrecting him: Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, and resting place of Egypt’s wealth. In that place was an evil book, The Book of the Dead, made entirely out of black stone, which contained incantations to bring a dead body back to life, a most unholy thing.

Seriously, why would they even HAVE that book? Seems like a bad plan to make it in the first place. Alright, I’ll keep telling the story, keep your shirt on. Or don’t, actually, it’s a good view.

Anyway.

Imhotep got all set up with his lover’s body and his organs in the canopic jars deep in the underground city, and thankfully Ang-us-namun’s body was still fresh so he didn’t need a human sacrifice. Imhotep chanted and his soul went back into his body, so all that was left was to put his organs back in place. Right before he was about to do that though, those Medjai guys burst in, having tracked him to Hamunaptra. They disarmed the priests and seized Imhotep, which caused Ang-us-namun’s soul to rip itself back out of his body and into this like, primordial soul ooze that’s running through the room like the world’s creepiest river and he died all over again.

The priests were condemned to be mummified alive, which made them go insane from the procedure while Imhotep was forced to watch. Then they put Imhotep through the worst curse known to them, so horrible it had never been performed before: The Hom-Dai. His tongue got cut out, and then he was wrapped up in bandages just like his priests, and placed in a double sarcophagus. Then the Medjai threw a shit ton of scarab beetles in with him, and they started to eat his flesh – but like, really slowly. Imhotep was cursed to stay alive forever, and by eating Imhotep, the beetles were cursed as well.

Sucks for the beetles.

The head Medjai guy locked both layers of Imhotep’s sarcophagus with a weird key thing that turned into a puzzle box and then the whole thing got dumped into a pit and buried. He was doomed to remain sealed inside his sarcophagus, undead for all of eternity. The Medjai would never allow him to be released, for if they did, he would rise as a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater, with the strength of ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility.

Hold up, hold up. What the fuck, how is this a viable curse? The glory of invincibility? Power over the sands? Henry, this is so dumb, it seems like they could have just killed him in a fuckin’ normal way and we wouldn’t have gone through this mess.

Ow! Stop hitting me, let me tell the rest of the story.

Because I’m the main character, obviously.

Fine, fine. There was a curse and the Medjai watch over the burial site for all eternity and are tasked with ensuring that no one ever raises Imhotep, thus ending the world, yadda yadda yadda.

Fast forward to almost-present day. Enter me: Alex Claremont-Diaz, your hero, funny, strong, a crack shot, handsome, and having a supremely bad day…

Chapter Text

Egypt, 1923 AD

Alex curses to himself as he loads two sets of pistols and his rifle. The giant Tuareg force is getting closer every second. The Legionnaires are only going to get one shot at this, and even then, the odds of ending this day alive or uncaptured are slim to none. He looks on in disbelief as the head of their company canters away from the battle.

“You just got promoted,” Hunter whimpers, shaking like a leaf next to him along the low wall serving as a firing position for the front line.

Alex swallows down his fear and shouts encouragement to the rest of the line.

“STEADY!”

“You’re with me on this one, right?” Alex murmurs to Hunter.

“Oh, your strength gives me strength.”

“STEADY!” he yells again as the Tuaregs get closer and closer. The ground is shaking under their horses' hooves.

Hunter trembles, shakes his head with a moan, and then he’s gone, sprinting away from the enemy, throwing down his rifle as he goes.

Alex doesn’t have time to dwell on Hunter, not even to marvel at his lack of disappointment – he half expected him to bolt since the moment they heard the Tuaregs were on their way.

“STEADY!”

Across the rapidly shrinking no man’s land, the enemy soldiers set their rifles and take aim.

Fucking hell.

“FIRE!”

The Legionnaires around him fire as he does, with a cacophony of loud bangs up and down the line. The leading edge of the Tuareg force is blown off their horses, disrupting the charge, but not as much as Alex had hoped. He and his fellows reload faster than they ever have before, desperation quickening their motions.

“FIRE!”

More of the enemy falls to the sand, but the remaining riders start to open fire on them. He takes as much cover as he can while reloading. A harried glance to either side tells him that their numbers are falling fast.

“FIRE!”

Those still alive fire desperately, and another few Tuaregs crash into the sand. There’s one more moment – a sharp inhale of dry desert heat – and then the rest of the force is on them. Alex spins his rifle and uses it as a club to knock riders off their mounts, fighting for his life as he starts to retreat toward the temple ruins.

He manages to clear enough space around himself to take a breath and tosses his rifle aside, drawing his pistols instead. He backs up steadily, firing from both hands as he goes, blowing Tuaregs off their horses left and right. He tosses the first set of guns when they empty, smoothly swapping to his backup pistols, still retreating. The Tuaregs are too close now, and he stops shooting in order to retreat with more intent.

He runs like hell through a stone archway and leaps over a low wall, chased by five soldiers on huge horses. He hits the ground running on the other side and picks up his pace even more when he spots Hunter ahead of him, near an open temple door.

“Run, Hunter! Run!” Hunter blanches when he sees Alex’s pursuers and sprints for the door.

“Get inside! Get! Inside!” Alex calls, pushes his pace faster, lungs on fire. The hoofbeats behind him get even closer. Hunter clears the entrance but doubles back, arms flailing, and he starts to fucking close the door behind him.

“Hey! Don’t you close that door! DON’T YOU CLOSE THAT DOOR!” he screams as he runs closer but Hunter, fucking Hunter, manages to get the door closed right as Alex gets there. He won’t stop in time and he turns his body so his back slams into the door. It doesn’t fucking budge.

“Fuck you very much for that!” he yells, already sprinting away, zigzagging among the rocks and ruins, avoiding the gunfire as best he can. His muscles are screaming, he can barely breathe, and there’s no way he can keep going much longer. He leaps over a broken column and lands badly, pistols flying out of his grip. Alex reaches for them, but more bullets hit the sand inches from his fingers and he gives them up, once again running for his life. He’s half-herded through the ruins by the enemy and eventually reaches the end of his endurance. He skids to halt in the shadow of the huge weather-beaten statue and turns to face his attackers, panting hard.

The Tuaregs raise their rifles to finish him off. There’s nowhere to hide, Alex is struggling just to remain upright, and there’s no way these men will let him live. He stands there with his eyes closed, bracing himself as best he can against the certainty of death; prayers he hasn’t said in years running through his mind.

Suddenly, the horses go ape-shit, snorting and screeching and bellowing in abject fear. He hears panicked shouts, bodies hitting the sand with dull thumps, then the unmistakable sounds of hoofbeats leaving and men cursing as they race away.

In the silence, Alex peeks his eyes open in disbelief, straightening up in both confusion and shock. He frowns and is just thinking about where he can hide out until the rest of the Tuaregs leave the city when a chill goes down his spine. Whispers fill the air, malevolent-feeling and in a foreign tongue. His whole body feels clammy and achy, like a sudden fever, and color leaches out of the world. There’s a pressure in the air that seems to sit on his very soul and he spins around and stares up into the blank eyes of the statue. There is something fucking evil about this spot.

The sand under his feet starts to shift. He backs away in horror, unable to take his eyes off the sand – it looks like giant snakes are writhing beneath the surface, forming lines and shapes and spraying up in a large oval—

Alex gathers what strength he has left and fucking bolts away from the screaming face in the sand.

Right. So, I had An Experience™ out there in the desert. Don’t pretend that you would have done any better on your own. I somehow made it through the desert, and a bunch of other stuff happened to me in the next three years but that’s its own story, and it's boring, so we’re skipping those bits.

Deal with it.

That brings us to just a few weeks ago, in Cairo. It’s a city so old that the stars have actually changed position in the sky since its birth. Wait, is that true? Holy shit, H, that’s actually really cool.

ANYWAY. Back to the rest of the story…

Chapter Text

Cairo, Museum of Antiquities, 1926 AD

The silence of the library is broken by Henry’s enormous sneeze. He loves his work, truly, but he could do without the constant dust; it always reminds him a little too much of his grandmother’s house. Also, it’s particularly hazardous to have to sneeze while precariously perched on the top of a ladder that might well have been built back when Cairo was still a new city.

He pulls his handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes his nose one-handed before folding it carefully and returning it to its place, refocusing on the task at hand. Literally, he has a stack of books in one arm that need to get reshelved. Henry carefully blows dust off the book on top of the pile and shelves it appropriately, but the next book brings him up short.

“Tuthmosis? What are you doing in this batch?” he mutters, frowning.

He twists his upper body around carefully to look at the shelf behind him. Indeed, all of those books start with T. He sighs; he must have missed this one when he was reshelving that side earlier. He looks down to the floor with a glare. He eyes the distance from the ladder to the shelf the book is supposed to be on. He’s a decently tall fellow – he can probably reach. (And he really doesn’t want to have to move the ladder again if he doesn’t have to.)

Henry sticks the rest of the books in the empty space on the top shelf, then turns again and starts to reach across the aisle with the Tuthmosis book. He can’t quite reach, so he hooks the fingers of his free hand over the top rung of the ladder and starts leaning out over the gap. He’s so close, and leans just a little further—

The ladder pulls away from the shelf and Henry yelps in fright, hurriedly flinging the book away in favor of clutching at the top of the ladder with both hands. It’s balancing on its two feet in the middle of the aisle and starts swaying. Bugger.

Henry loses his balance, making the ladder swing around, and he’s forced to stilt-walk down the aisle. It’s possible that he’s screaming but he’s so focused on not falling to the ground and hurting himself that he’s not monitoring every utterance that may or may not be happening at the moment.

After a harrowing and thoroughly un-asked for journey into the main aisle, the ladder spins again and picks up speed as it travels a few more steps before stopping itself by crashing into a new shelf. Henry braces himself, sighs in relief and then—

The shelf falls into the one next to it. Henry slides down the ladder and lands in a rather inelegant heap on the floor. He looks up in time to see the domino effect kick in. Shelf after shelf falls, thousands of volumes scattering across the floor. Finally, the last shelf is hit and Henry closes his eyes and winces as he hears the bang of the shelf hit the wall.

On the bright side, the noise has stopped. He opens his eyes and stares at the huge mess.

“Oops.”

The door bangs open and the curator storms in, already cursing.

“Look at this mess! Give me frogs, flies, locusts! Anything but this! Compared to you, the other plagues were a joy!”

Henry scrambles to his feet and starts gathering up books. “I’m so sorry, truly it was an accid—”

“An accident? When Rameses destroyed Syria, it was an accident. You are a catastrophe! Why do I put up with you?” He directs the last to the ceiling, as though praying to the heavens for strength – or to be put out of his misery – and Henry feels himself prickling at his words.

“You put up with me, because I can read and write ancient Egyptian, decipher hieroglyphs and hieratic, and I’m the only person within a thousand miles who knows how to properly code and catalogue this library!”

The curator sighs, anger draining away as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “On a good day, I know all of that, Henry. But your late father, god rest his soul, was one of our finest patrons. And your mother still gives generously, despite her withdrawal from public life.” He carefully picks his way through the sea of books to put a bracing hand on Henry’s shoulder. “People are always going to think you got this job because of their patronage, and incidents like this one don’t help that perception. I know better than most how hard you’ll have to work to be taken seriously despite people’s assumptions. But I know you will. Now, clean up this mess before the director makes me fire you.”

He leaves and Henry is rooted to the spot. A distant part of him is angry at the insinuation that nepotism is more important than his actual, quantifiable skills that he worked for since he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. But most of his body has gone cold, unprepared for such a casual reminder of his father’s death. He takes a few deep, steadying breaths; he doesn’t have time for a panic attack right now – he has a whole library to reorganize.

A noise pulls him out of his spiral. It’s a strange, sort of echoey, dragging noise, like nothing he’s ever heard. He follows it into the next room, where all the artifacts from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom are held, calling out for his colleagues.

“Mr. Luna? Mohammed? Bob? Is that you?”

There’s no answer, and the room is dark with only a pair of torches on either end of the room. He hears the noise again. It’s like feet, slowly shuffling across the floor. He grabs the torch and advances, slowly, checking each aisle as he goes. Near the middle of the room, he spots an open sarcophagus. His dread grows at the sight; no one is supposed to open the sarcophagi in here. He creeps up to it and leans over it with the torch, peering inside.

A hideous ugly, rotted mummy sits up with an unholy screech, coming within a centimeter of his face. Henry screams and backs away, almost dropping the torch as he trips in his haste to put space between himself and the casket. Over the blood rushing in his ears, he registers deep, drunken laughter and then his absolute cad of a best friend crawls out from behind the mummy.

“You – you!”

“Drunkard? Fool? Rat-bastard? Please call me something original – the old names are just so terribly passé now.”

Heart still racing, Henry hauls Pez out from the sarcophagus.

“What on earth possessed you to get inside? Have you no respect for the dead?!” he spits.

“At this moment, my dear Hazza,” Pez slurs, “I feel almost halfway there myself. Y’see, there was this bartender. Well, I say bartender, but really, I think she was an angel— oof!”

“Get to the point, Pez.”

“Right-o. So there was this bartender and it was all very horrible as she kept giving this other chap the time of day and obviously that couldn’t stand so—”

“The point—”

“Yes well, we both know I'm an agent of chaos so…” he produces a strange-looking box with relish, “I picked his pocket.”

“You what?” Henry asks faintly.

“Picked his pocket. And I think I got something really good this time.”

“You really have to stop doing that,” says Henry, already distracted by the box. “You’re going to get in trouble one of these days.”

“But not today! Go on Hazza, tell me I’ve found something.”

Henry tunes him out, fingers busy running over every nook and cranny. He gasps as something slides and it’s suddenly unfolding itself. The top opens into a vague star-shape and inside—

There’s a piece of papyrus, folded up and seeming to almost glow where it sits. Henry unfolds it slowly, revealing a map. A really, really old map.

“Pez?”

“Yes?”

“I think you found something.”

Henry is hovering. He knows he is, but he can’t help himself. Ever since he saw the puzzle box his body has been buzzing. The box and the map inside are the real deal, he can feel it in his bones.

The curator has been looking at it for ages. Well, probably only a few minutes, but it feels like an eternity. Pez is doing a good impression of someone who is only mildly interested – sprawled out on his chair, humming softly – but Henry can’t stand still. He leans over the curator’s shoulder, pointing.

“See the cartouche there, it’s the official royal seal of Seti the First, I’m sure of it.”

“Perhaps,” he demures.

Limbs still akimbo, Pez asks, “Question. Who the hell is Seti the First?”

“He was the last Pharaoh of the Old Kingdom, said to be the wealthiest pharaoh of them all.”

“Alright, good. I like this fellow, I like him very much. Birds of a feather and all that.”

“You—” Henry starts, but the curator picking up the map pulls his attention away from Pez. “Oh, Mr. Luna, I’ve already dated it, this map is almost four thousand years old. And the hieratics over here… Well, it’s Hamunaptra.”

Mr. Luna seems to freeze for a moment before brushing Henry’s ideas aside. “Don’t be ridiculous. We are scholars, not treasure hunters. Hamunaptra is a myth.”

“We’re talking about the Hamunaptra?” asks Pez.

Henry nods. “Yes. The City of the Dead. Where the early pharaohs were said to have hidden the wealth of Egypt.”

“Right, big underground treasure chamber. Everyone knows the story: an entire necropolis rigged to sink into the sand. One word from the pharaoh and the whole place could disappear beneath the dunes with the flick of a switch.”

“That’s right. And all we know is that the city mysteriously disappeared around 2130 BC.”

The curator harrumphs, pulling the candle closer in order to better examine the parchment. “As the British would say: it’s all fairy stories and – oh my!”

Henry freezes as the corner of the map catches fire from the candle. Mr. Luna drops it on the floor in fear and Henry can’t move, doesn’t know what to do— In a swirl of colorful fabric, Pez is on the floor, quickly smothering the flames with one of his scarves. He carefully lifts it off the ground and Henry’s heart sinks – a huge portion of the map is missing.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Pez accuses the curator.

“It’s for the best, I’m sure. Many men have wasted their lives in the foolish pursuit of Hamunaptra. No one has ever found it, and most have never returned.”

“You killed my map,” Pez pouts.

“I’m sure it was a fake,” he says airily. “I’m surprised at you Mr. Fox, that you were so fooled.” He reaches out toward the puzzle box, but Henry’s arm shoots out and grabs it close. He hauls Pez, still clutching the map, off the floor and marches them out of the room, tossing a suspicious glare over his shoulder as he goes.

As Henry pulls Pez back to their hotel, he becomes more and more determined. Despite the lack of confidence from Mr. Luna, Henry’s sure the map is real. There has to be someone in this city willing to guide them, and Henry is going to find them, even if it takes weeks.

Not gonna lie, Hen. The image of you surrounded by books you knocked over is fucking hilarious. Did you ever actually clean them up, or did you just bounce out the door on your adventure with Pez?

You put up with me because I’m the best thing that ever happened to you, baby. Now be quiet so I can tell the part about you rescuing me from certain death.

Chapter Text

Cairo, Marketplace, 1926 AD

The sun beats down unrelentingly in Egypt. Henry thought he’d been prepared, but all the first hand accounts and half-remembered stories from his father haven’t done it justice. And spending all his waking hours in the library certainly hasn’t helped build up his tolerance for the heat.

So, Henry is sweaty and irritable, more so for the simple reason that he can’t seem to find anyone suitable to be his guide. Even he isn’t foolish enough to wander the desert without local expertise.

“Face it, old bean, if we don’t find anyone in the next ten minutes, I’m going back to the hotel. That bartender is working again tonight and I’ll be damned if I miss my shot because you were skulking around looking for a guide to Hamunaptra. Again.”

“Would you keep your voice down? We don’t need everyone in the nearest square kilometer to know what we’re up to.”

“Absolutely not. My voice is the perfect volume for every situation,” Pez booms, ignoring the dirty looks of the market vendors he had drowned out.

“I’m deadly serious, Percy—”

“—oooh, full name—”

“—we need to find a guide to the City of the Dead today, or this whole expedition—”

“You’re looking for the City of the Dead? Why the hell would you want a guide to a fucking myth?”

The owner of the voice is leaning against the bars of what is unmistakably a holding cell. The dirt-covered rags he’s wearing and untamed beard make him look a little wild. But there’s something about the challenging spark in the man’s chocolate eyes that Henry can’t help but be drawn to.

Plus he’s wrong, and Henry can’t let that stand.

“Hamunaptra is not a myth, I have years of research backing me up.”

“Oh sure, research – I’m sure books have never been wrong before.”

“Do I know you?” Pez mumbles suddenly, squinting at the stranger. “You look familiar somehow.”

Henry ignores his best friend. “I don’t particularly care for your tone. As it happens I have a map and – Why am I explaining myself to you?”

The man doesn’t answer; he’s gone still, eyes roving over Henry’s face desperately. Henry can’t look away, drawn in by the warm brown gaze of this stranger. Under the dirt, (far under the dirt (and the smell)) he might even be attractive, and Henry feels an unwelcome lurch in the region of his stomach. He doesn’t have time – or the freedom – to go down that particular path. The man nods to himself, standing up straight for the first time.

“I can take you there.”

“What? But you called it a myth.”

“It is. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been there.”

“You were actually at Hamunaptra.”

“Yes.”

“You swear?”

“Every fucking day, sweetheart.” Henry diligently ignores the way his stomach swoops at the pet name.

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant. I was there. Hamunaptra. Seti’s place. City of the Dead. Ooooooooh,” he says, waving his hands around in a parody of spookiness that makes Henry roll his eyes. Pez is outright grinning, more than amused at the man’s antics. Christ, if this works out, the two of them are going to play merry hell with his nerves. Henry steps closer and drops his voice.

“Could you tell me how to get there?” He takes his hat off and uses it to block his lips from any curious onlookers. “I mean, the exact location.”

The man gives him a hard stare. “You really wanna know?”

“Yes.”

“Really wanna know?”

“Obviously.”

He beckons Henry to move even closer. “C’mere.”

Henry leans in and suddenly the man’s arm shoots out, grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him in for a harsh kiss through the bars. It’s an objectively terrible kiss – there’s really no reason for Henry’s heart to be thumping so hard in his chest. The man is abruptly yanked away from Henry’s mouth as he’s dragged away by the guards.

“THEN GET ME OUTTA HERE!” he yells desperately.

Still breathing rather more heavily than he thinks he should be, and ignoring the shit-eating grin on his best friend’s face, Henry flags down the warden.

“Jeffery Richards, at your service, sir.”

Richards is one of the slimiest men Henry’s ever seen, but needs must. He points after the stranger. “Who is that?”

“Alexander Claremont-Diaz: a waste of space if ever there was one.”

“Where are they taking him?” he demands.

“To be hanged, of course,” Richards says, already following his guards through to the arena.

“What?!” Henry turns to Pez, frantic.

“Come on, we have to get him free!”

“Are you quite sure Hazza? He’s—”

“—Our only hope of finding Hamunaptra? Yes, I agree. Move it,” he says, hauling Pez by the wrist after him.

“I will give you a hundred pounds to release that man.”

“Sir, I would pay a hundred pounds just to see Diaz hang.”

“Two hundred pounds.”

“Proceed!”

“Three hundred pounds!”

Still nothing. There’s an exchange he can’t hear between the prisoner and the executioner. The executioner calls up to Richards, “His last wish is that we untie him and let him go!”

“Of course we aren’t letting him go! Get on with it!” Richards roars.

“Five hundred pounds!”

Richards holds his hand up to stop the proceedings, finally interested, and turns to Henry.

“What else? I’m a very lonely man,” Richards says, leaning closer and running a hand up his inner thigh, squeezing pointedly. Henry smacks his hand away instinctively with the book he’s clutching. The other observers all start to laugh and Richards’ face hardens.

“Kill him!”

“No!” Henry shouts, standing – but it’s too late, and the man, already fitted with the noose, drops. Henry gasps in shock and horror, closing his eyes against the sight. But—

“Ah, his neck didn’t break. So sorry sir, now we’ll have to watch him strangle to death.”

The mocking chants of the onlookers grow louder as Henry thinks fast. He doesn’t want to play this card with the scum sitting next to him, but it’s the only possible card he has left.

“He has the map to Hamunaptra.”

“You lie.”

“I would never!”

“You’re telling me that that dirty, little prick knows the location of the City of the Dead?”

“Yes. And if you let him go we’ll give you…ten percent of the treasure we find.”

“Fifty,” Richards counters.

“Twenty.”

“Forty.”

“Thirty.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Ha! Deal,” Henry says smugly.

Richards looks like he just ate bad fish, but nods and motions for the man to be cut down.

Henry’s heart swells. He has a guide to the City of the Dead, even if it is Alexander Claremont-Diaz, a reprobate he should stay far, far away from. It’s really too bad Henry can’t seem to look away.

The next morning finds him and Pez walking toward the pier with their bags, and Henry finally breaks and asks the question he’s been holding back since they parted ways with their newly-freed guide the previous afternoon.

“Do you really think he’s going to show up?”

“Undoubtedly. He may be a cowboy, but I know the type – if he gives his word, he’ll stand by it to the very end.”

Henry humphs to cover the sharp sense of relief at Pez’s words. “Well personally, I think he’s filthy, rude, a complete scoundrel – I don’t like him one bit.”

“Anyone I know?”

Henry turns to give Mr. Claremont-Diaz a quick reply and his words die in his throat, mouth dropping open in shock. The unshaven, dirt-covered, downtrodden criminal from the jail has completely vanished, and in his place stands a well-dressed, clean shaven, bright-eyed, and sharp-jawed wonder of a man. His warm brown eyes are dancing with a teasing glint – he clearly overheard Henry’s comment – and a wide grin lights up his whole face. Freedom and sunshine suit him exceedingly well and Henry, despite himself, melts a little.

“Oh. Um. Hello,” Henry says, more breath than actual words. If he could smack himself in the forehead he would.

Pez steps forward and claps their guide around the shoulders. “Smashing day to start our adventure, eh, Claremont-Diaz?” Thank Christ for Pez, honestly.

“Yeah, sure,” says Mr. Claremont-Diaz, who checks for his wallet after Pez pulls away. “And you can call me Alex, you know.”

“Oh, no, I would never steal from a partner, Alex. That’s the Pez Guarantee.”

“Pez?”

“Short for Percy – horrid name, only my mother and former headmaster call me Percy.”

Alex grins at Pez’s antics. “So are y’all ready to—”

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” Henry interrupts before he loses his nerve, “Can you guarantee me that this whole thing isn’t some sort of a – a flim-flam?” Out of the corner of his eye he sees Pez mouth the words flim-flam with a raised eyebrow. “Because if it is, I am warning you—”

“Oh, you’re warning me?” Alex cuts him off, looking like he doesn’t think Henry could do any damage to a wet paper bag, let alone another person. “Pal, let me put it this way: my whole damn garrison believed in this place so much that without orders they marched halfway across Libya and into Egypt to find that city. And when we got there, there was just sand. And blood.”

Henry’s taken somewhat aback by the intensity and pain in Alex’s eyes. They hold eye contact a beat too long for societal norms before Alex shakes himself out of it and flashes a hollow smile.

“I’ll get your bags,” he says, and makes his way up the gangplank. Wherever Alex procured his clean clothing, he found pants that cling to his arse and Henry only manages to drag his eyes away when Pez clears his throat behind him.

“Yes, yes, you’re right, Hazza,” he says with a look of unholy glee on his face. “Filthy, rude, complete scoundrel, nothing to like there at all.”

Henry glares, but Pez has got him bang to rights – Henry is already mildly obsessed with the man despite, and actually probably because of, his less than proper attitude.

“Right, morning to all,” comes the slimy voice of Richards behind them.

“Oh no, what are you doing here?” Henry asks, despairing at the sight of the warden with luggage.

“I’m here to protect my investment, thank you very much,” he says, boarding the ship.

Henry’s going to need a thorough bath to feel clean again after interacting with Richards, and by the look on his best friend’s face, Pez is right there with him.

God I hate that guy.

But anyway, there we were, all cleaned up and united at last. About to set off toward the heart of the desert and hopefully, some treasure.

Chapter Text

Egypt, Somewhere on the Nile, 1926 AD

Alex finds his cabin with ease once they get underway. Pez booked them three single cabins all in a row – thankfully Richards is on the other end of the ship. Alex could have gone another ten years without seeing his smarmy face again. Mr. Fox’s apologetic face as he explained what the warden was doing on the same damn boat had gone a long way to soothe Alex’s ire.

In theory, they’re all perfectly safe on the ship; nothing should be dangerous until they make landfall and have to get through the desert before even getting to the city. But every instinct he has is twitching and Alex didn’t survive the fiasco three years ago by ignoring them, so he grabs his weapons pack and makes his way topside. A better view of his surroundings and an actual table to take care of his gear is appealing right now. Finding a seat near Mr. Fox to needle the uptight man is even more appealing – he doesn’t even know his given name, that clearly has to change.

Before he can spot Mr. Fox however, Pez is calling him over to the poker table.

“Ah, Alex, sit down, old bean, we could use another player.”

Alex merely shakes his head. “I only gamble with my life, never my money.” Certainly not with a group of strangers; gambling with his sister and Nora is a whole other ball game.

“Never?” Alex’s focus sharpens at the sound of a southern drawl. He’s gotten used to being the only American in any given group over the last few years. “What if I was to betcha five hundred dollars says we get to Hamunaptra before you?”

“You’re looking for Hamunaptra?” Alex asks, a bad feeling pooling in the pit his stomach.

“Damn straight we are.”

“Who says we are?” Alex asks, hoping against hope that no one blabbed but—

“He does,” all three Americans say at once, pointing at Pez.

He must sense Alex’s disapproval because he shoots him a sheepish smile before turning back to his cards. Alex fights the urge to cuff him on the back of the head.

“Well, how ‘bout it? Is it a bet?”

If the other group is looking for the City of the Dead, it's going to take them a long damn time; he’s the only one from his garrison to survive the attack three years ago. He doesn’t bet, but Alex never minds taking money from fools and he lets a shark-like grin take over his face.

“Alright you’re on.” He’s about to leave when another man, a local by the clothing and accent, pipes up.

“What makes you so confident, sir?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Well, we got us a man who’s actually been there.”

“What a coinc—” Alex actually does whack Pez in the back of the head this time. He feels a little bad that he used the swinging motion of his weapons pack to do it, but not too bad. He can’t have Pez spilling all their secrets to total strangers. And the mention of someone else who’d been to the city just adds to the bad feeling growing in his stomach.

“Whose play is it, is it mine?” Pez starts deflecting. At least he’s quick on the uptake.

Alex leans in and grips Pez’s shoulder. “Gentlemen, we got us a wager. Good evening. Percy.” He squeezes Pez’s shoulder hard in warning before he departs, even more determined to seek out Mr. Fox.

A loud thump of a heavy bag on the table startles Henry out of his research. He suppresses the urge to yelp in surprise with some difficulty and looks up and his breath catches at the sight of a smirking Alexander Claremont-Diaz with a casual display of strength. Even the moonlight seems to be mocking him as it highlights the man’s dark curls.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he snarks.

“The only thing that scares me, Mr. Claremont-Diaz, are your manners,” he says acidly, turning back to his book with a huff. It’s a pity that a man so beautiful could be so insufferable, but it does make it easier for Henry to stay focused.

“You’re still angry about that kiss, huh?”

“Well if you call that a kiss; I found it nothing short of underwhelming.”

The only good news is he doesn’t think Alex knows Henry is lying through his teeth.

The other man’s (strong, biteable) jaw clenches and he unrolls his weapon pack with quite a bit more force than Henry would think necessary. A huge array of guns and knives gleam in the moonlight.

“Am I missing something? Are we going into battle?” he asks lightly, trying to tease.

“The last time I was at that place, everyone I was with died,” Alex says dully as he starts cleaning guns. Henry feels the smile fall off his face, speechless with both sympathy and worry.

Without looking up from his guns, Alex says, “There’s something out there, you know. Something under that sand.”

“Yes, I'm hoping to find a certain artifact, a book actually,” says Henry, finding his tongue again, unable to stop himself from picking Alexander’s brain. “Pez thinks there’s treasure. What do you think’s out there?”

“In a word? La maldad – evil,” he clarifies at Henry’s furrowed brow. “The Bedouin and the Tuaregs believe Hamunaptra is cursed. They call it ‘the doorway to hell’.”

“It’s Ossirian, so it translates closer to ‘passageway to the underworld’ actually,” Henry says, showing off a little. Alexander’s reluctantly impressed expression is its own reward. “I don’t believe in fairy tales or hokum, Mr. Claremont-Diaz, but I do believe one of the most famous books in history is buried out there. The Book of the Living. It was what first interested me in Egypt when I was a boy. It's why I came here, sort of a life’s pursuit.”

“And the fact that they say it's made of pure gold makes no nevermind to you right?” Alex asks derisively.

Henry is impressed despite himself. “You know your history.”

“I know my treasure, Mr. Fox,” he scoffs. “And seriously, call me Alex, all your ‘Mr. Claremont-Diaz’-ing is getting old.”

“Henry, then.”

Henry leans back, abruptly aware that he’d been leaning closer, almost enjoying the back and forth they had. He can’t allow himself to go down that path, not with this man who is so clearly as dangerous as he is beautiful. But the incident at the prison nags at him, and before he quite gives his mouth permission he hears himself ask, “By the way, why did you kiss me?”

Alex takes a second to steady himself; he can’t really believe that Henry came right out and asked – so casually, like he was asking after the weather. The truth is, Alex had been more than desperate in prison. And Henry had appeared, so invested in his quest his whole face had lit up in eagerness to follow this pipe dream into the desert by any means necessary. Even if it meant talking to Alex, the monumental fuckup who never knew when to say no. It was the first time in years that it felt like someone had seen him and not some random, stranded, low-life American. Just having Henry’s eyes on him had awoken something dangerously like hope in Alex. Kissing him had been an attempt to hold onto that feeling as long as possible. (And it had definitely worked.) But there’s no way he can admit that.

So he lies.

He puts on his most obnoxious face and smirks at Henry again. “I don’t know, I was about to be hanged. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The way Henry scoffs angrily tells Alex he hit his mark, but he keeps up the pretense as Henry grabs his book and storms off down the deck in a huff.

“What? What’d I say?” He can’t help but watch Henry as he goes, daydreaming about what those thighs might look like in pants that actually fit.

He’s just picked up the gun oil and rag again when the quiet is broken by a snigger coming from behind some luggage. He gets up, pistol in hand, to investigate. He turns the corner and sighs internally when he sees who it is. That little fucker.

He grabs the man one-handed and shoves him against the pile of gear.

“Oh! What a surprise! My-my friend – you’re alive! I was so very, very worried.”

“Well, if it aint my little buddy Hunter. I think I’ll kill you,” he says, cocking his gun and aiming directly at Hunter’s chest.

“Please, please, think of my children,” Hunter begs.

“You don’t have any children,” scoffs Alex.

“Someday I might—”

“Shut up.” Hunter shuts up immediately, possibly the smartest thing he’s ever done. Alex’s mind moves a mile a minute, putting the pieces together.

“You’re the one who’s leading the American group. I shoulda known. So what's the scam here Hunter? You take them out in the middle of the desert and then you leave them to rot?”

“Unfortunately no,” Hunter sighs. “These Americans are smart. They’re only paying me half now, half when I get them back to Cairo. So this time I have to take them all the way.”

A wicked idea occurs to Alex, and he holsters the gun.

“Them’s the breaks, huh?”

“You never believed in Hamunaptra, Diaz, why are you going back?”

The pleased low of a camel draws both their attention for a moment. Of course Henry is good with animals, as if he wasn’t competent and hotter than the Sahara already. It’s infuriating.

“See that guy?” he asks, gesturing to where Henry is calmly petting a camel on the far side of the deck. “He saved my neck. Figured the least I could do was watch his back while he chases fairytales.”

Henry looks up and notices them watching him. The small smile that graced his features disappears as their eyes meet, taken over by anger, and he leaves the deck for good.

“You always did have more balls than brains,” Hunter laughs. Alex pulls him closer to the railing, joining in the laughter like he’s sharing the joke, and wraps his arm around Hunter’s shoulders. He sighs and braces himself.

“Bye, Hunter,” he says and heaves him over the side of the boat. He hits the water with a high-pitched scream. The splash Hunter makes won’t get him a good score from any judges, Alex thinks, but it is satisfyingly large.

“Diaz, I’m going to kill you for this!”

“Yeah, yeah, sounds familiar,” Alex calls unconcernedly as he walks away from the railing. He starts packing up his weapons, but freezes when he sees three sets of wet footprints on the deck, heading towards the cabins.

The cabins where Henry just stormed off to.

Shit.

The residual fury at Alex’s callus dismissal of everything Henry has been working toward won’t let him settle down for sleep. He’s clad in pajamas, pacing his cabin, trying to do more research on the city, but nothing is sticking. He drags his hand through his hair in frustration, the other coming up to hover over his lips as he remembers once again the sun beating down, the feel of chapped lips on his—

“Christ, man, it wasn't that good of a kiss anyway,” he says to himself and stalks to the sink.

He’s never brushed his teeth more thoroughly in his life. He spits, and straightens up, gasping when he sees the strange man in his mirror. Dressed in all black, tattoos across his cheekbones, and – Henry realizes as he’s shoved against the wall – a hook instead of a hand. He presses it threateningly against Henry’s neck, and Henry freezes, heart racing.

“Where is the key?”

“What? What key?” Henry asks, totally confused.

“Tell me where—”

“Henry!” Alex crashes into the room, a gun in each hand, the very embodiment of one of the covers of the pulp novels Henry will never admit he reads. He’s never been more glad to see firearms in his life. The hook man abandons Henry to go after Alex, who promptly starts shooting. A stray bullet hits the oil lamp, and Henry’s heart drops with it as it breaks open. The oil spill lights the couch on fire, and the flames spread quickly across the floor.

It’s enough of a distraction that Alex can get to him and drag him out of the room. They’re only a few steps away when Henry remembers—

“The map. The map! We forgot the map! Oof—”

Henry turns back only to run straight into Alex’s outstretched arm and is forced to keep moving away from the (admittedly, now on fire) doorway. He keeps fighting, they need that map, but Alex is an immovable object.

“Relax, Fox, I’m the map. It’s all up here,” he says, tapping his forehead.

He stops fighting and tries not to dwell on such a casual display of strength, taking refuge in sarcasm. “Oh, well that’s comforting!”

They round another corner and Henry gasps when he sees the whole ship in total chaos. The tattooed men in black, whoever they are, have set fires throughout the boat. Horses and camels run across the deck, chased by their handlers – people are climbing down the support posts, trying to escape the flames – the reports of gunshots come from every direction.

Alex moves unconcerned through the bedlam as though invincible, merely peeking around the last corner for a moment before jerking back.

“Hold this,” he orders, shoving his pack at Henry. He catches it in his stomach with a huff and watches worriedly as Alex starts to reload his guns. A second later the wood at the corner splinters as a bullet blows it away. Henry is gaping at him – is he humming at a time like this? – when bullets start to come from the other direction. Each one gets closer and closer to Alexander’s head and he’s not moving – just keeps reloading – one meter away – switches to the other gun – half a meter away – spinning the chamber – mere centimeters away—

Henry can’t take it anymore. He drops the pack and grabs a fistful of Alexander’s shirt and yanks him closer, fully into his own space, just as a bullet punches through the wall right next to them. He’s so forceful with the tug that Alex stumbles and his hands, still holding the pistol and ammo, come up to catch himself – bracketing Henry against the wall. Henry blinks down at him, surrounded by the warmth of Alex’s body pressed against his own, and wrapped in the scent of gunpowder and, bizarrely, cinnamon.

He hadn’t realized Alex was that much shorter than him.

Alex turns to look at the hole blasted in the wall where his head had been a heartbeat before, then turns back to meet Henry’s gaze.

“Thanks,” he pants.

“Anytime,” Henry breathes.

A scream of pain startles them both out of the moment. Henry scrambles for Alex’s pack, and Alex hurriedly steps away, dropping the spent ammo and cocking both pistols. Henry sees him take a deep breath, and then at the next break in the gunfire he moves, firing in two directions at once, clearing their path across the deck.

Now is probably not the time to be obsessing over how warm Henry’s hand had felt through his shirt, but despite the shooting, the fires, and the general chaos, Alex is having trouble not thinking about it.

To say nothing of how fucking good Henry had smelled when they’d been pressed up against each other a few moments earlier.

He’s shooting almost entirely on instinct, trusting that Henry is following. There’s no way this boat will be floating much longer – they need to get off as soon as possible. He shoots the last attacker he can see and holsters his guns as he reaches the railing, Henry right behind him.

All the lifeboats are on fire. Just his luck.

“Can you swim?” he shouts over the screaming.

Henry looks affronted. “Of course I can swim, if the occasion calls for it!”

“Trust me – it calls for it.”

“Wait. Don’t you dare—”

Alex ignores Henry’s half-begun threat, picks him up bridal style, and throws him over the railing unceremoniously. He’ll definitely pay for that later.

He grabs his pack, ready to swing over the railing and into the water himself, when yet another asshole in black jumps on him and starts taking swings at him. He’s forced to drop his pack as the man pushes him away from the edge and back towards the center of the boat. The man is a good fighter, Alex will admit – he gets a few good punches in, but then he makes a mistake and backs Alex up against a pole.

With a solid surface at his back, Alex pushes off it, smashing his own fist into the guy’s face and then his stomach. While he’s still doubled over in pain, Alex kicks him – hard – through a door, and into a room that is, apparently, very much on fire. Grimly pleased, Alex heads back to the railing and gets his pack.

“What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

Alex groans. He’d forgotten about Richards. Figures that the bastard would survive the assault long enough to be a pain in his ass.

“Wait here!” he yells, slinging his bag over his shoulder securely. “I’ll go get help.”

“Right,” Richards nods, nervous but determined, eyes tracking the danger all around them.

Alex braces and then swings himself over the railing and into the river. He starts swimming for the nearest shore, following Henry’s blond hair shining like a beacon in the moonlight.

Half a minute later he hears an outraged screech followed by another splash. Richards. Oh well – at least he tried to lose their unwanted shadow.

No, I will absolutely not be apologizing for throwing you in the river.

Besides, it made your pajamas cling to your quads. Like a lot.

Chapter Text

Egypt, Middle of the Desert, 1926 AD

Alex isn’t even out of the river before the shouting starts. Richards is apoplectic, but Alex can’t bring himself to care about the warden right now; he needs to figure out how close they are to the nearest settlement and if they have enough in their pockets (and his pack) to barter for horses or camels. And drinking water.

Somewhere beneath his own disgruntlement and worry, he notes that incandescent rage is a good look on Henry.

“We’ve lost everything, thanks to you!”

“You were just going to leave me there!”

“Hazza, we still have funds—”

“You ungrateful, slimy—”

“All our equipment, my bloody clothes—”

“—and the key, so it’s really not so b—”

“Do shut up Pez, I’m in the middle of something here.”

“—good-for-nothing—”

“Of course, mon petit prince. I’m just saying I got the key back, and did I panic? I did not.”

“—Texan maggot!”

“Percy.”

“Hey! You listen here, Richards—”

Alex’s retort gets cut off by a shout from across the river.

“Diaz! Hey Diaaaaaz!” Alex turns with a resigned groan. “Looks to me like I’ve got all the horses!” Hunter taunts.

Alex can see his smug face from here and loses the last of his tenuous patience. He’s been screamed and shot at, punched, almost lit on fire, and now he’s drenched, water sloshing disgustingly inside his boots. Alex has had enough of this day, and especially of this shithead, and he doesn’t even need to check his surroundings before shouting back, “Hey Hunter! Looks to me like you’re on the wrong side of the RI-VER!”

Hunter’s face falls as he realizes his mistake – Alex is grimly pleased to see the pissed off looks his group shoots at him in response. Alex turns to follow Henry, Pez, and Richards up the bank when he doubles back to address the most insulting part of this whole disastrous evening.

“And it’s Claremont-Diaz, you fucker!”

It takes most of the night trudging through the desert on foot before they come across anyone else. Alex is just glad anyone is still in this area three years later. His feet hurt, he’s hungry, and Richards’ constant complaining and Henry’s silent disdain for the situation (and Alex himself, which hurts more than he’ll ever admit) have combined to give him the mother of all migraines. At this moment there is nothing more beautiful than the light of false dawn silhouetting the tents of a Bedouin trading post.

Henry stomps off to find clothes, and Richards disappears to who-cares-where, so it falls to him to serve as translator while Pez barters for camels.

“I can’t believe the price of these fleabags.”

“We could have gotten these camels for free, if we were willing to give Henry to them,” Alex can’t help but point out as he and Pez lead their camels towards the water troughs.

Pez’s grin is just this side of evil. “Awfully tempting sometimes, isn’t it?”

Whatever joke Alex was going to make back dies in his throat as he catches sight of Henry walking towards them, finally out of nightclothes that haven’t been in a river and then covered in sand. If Alex didn’t know better, he’d assume that Henry found a tailor out here – his pants fit so exquisitely well that they look painted onto his thighs. The rolled up sleeves of his shirt expose forearms much too toned to belong to a librarian. Henry’s even making the dorky sun hat look good. How very dare he.

Alex can feel himself gaping. He can’t seem to look away from Henry’s face – his blue eyes shining brighter than the sky. Thank god Pez is already moving ahead to greet Henry and therefore not looking at Alex’s face. He pulls himself together to keep walking but can’t help the single word that slips past his lips.

“Awfully.”

“I never did care for camels,” Pez comments on hour four of their journey. “They smell, they bite, they spit – disgusting.”

Alex watches with contempt as Richards gnaws at what used to be a chicken wing, chewing with his mouth open and picking at his teeth with ragged fingernails. He shudders.

“Yeah, disgusting. But anything’s better than turkeys.”

“Turkeys?” asks Henry, visibly amused.

“Don’t judge me. When you’ve been threatened by a wild bird of prey then you can have an opinion.”

“I wouldn’t possibly dare to say otherwise, I assure you.”

“I swear they can see into your soul – they know your sins, okay?”

“Of course they do, old bean,” Pez chimes in. Alex startles – he’d quite forgotten the other two were riding behind them the whole time.

“Regardless of your detour into turkeys,” Henry says blandly, “I think camels are fun. Very different to horses, of course, but they have a certain something about them all the same.”

“You’ve actually spent enough time outdoors to know horses?” Alex can’t help but be skeptical of that – Henry’s porcelain-white skin doesn’t look like it’s ever seen the sun prior to this journey.

“I’ll have you know that I was on the polo team at Oxford. Captain my final year.”

“Oh.”

Alex refocuses on the desert and very carefully doesn’t let himself think about what Henry might have looked like in the polo uniform pants.

It’s a long, monotonous trudge through the desert. It’s been hours of ignoring Richards’ snide comments, of bantering with Pez; hours of trying to ignore the feeling of being watched, of trying not to argue with Henry and failing.

Something about the man just draws Alex in, makes him want to poke and prod and find out absolutely everything that makes him tick, makes him want to draw out the teasing, loving man that comes out in flashes when he laughs with Pez.

They’d paused around noon in deference to the hottest part of the day, but now it's the middle of the night, and if they have any chance of reaching the City of the Dead by sunrise, they need to press on. Alex is used to long marches, but the pace is clearly wearing at the rest of the group, all asleep in their saddles. He’s surprised that Richards’ snoring hasn’t woken the other two yet.

Henry’s camel comes alongside his own, and, despite his denials to Pez that he wouldn’t fall asleep, he’s snoring softly in the saddle. His body slumps as his camel slopes along, Henry’s head coming to rest on Alex’s shoulder. It’s cold in the desert at night, but the warmth from Henry’s head seems to spread through Alex’s whole body. He leaves Henry in place for a minute, reveling in the contact, but eventually his guilt catches up to him. If Henry wants that kind of support from him, Alex needs to hear it first. He gently maneuvers Henry back upright in his own saddle and slowly lets his hand fall away, staring at the peaceful, open expression on Henry’s face as he sleeps. Henry’s camel snorts in response to the shifting weight, and Alex shushes it sternly.

A soft laugh catches his attention. He turns and Pez catches his eye.

“What?” he mouths, unwilling to wake Henry.

Pez just rolls his eyes with a knowing look. A particularly loud snore from the warden rips through the air and Pez’s expression turns mischievous as he raises his riding crop, looking pleadingly at Alex. He grins and nods. Delighted, Pez smacks Richards on the chest with the crop before quickly pretending to be asleep again. Richards jerks and curses as he wakes up and Alex hastily turns to the front to hide his amusement. Serves him right.

He does another sweep of the desert, trying to convince himself they’re alone, when he sees figures on a cliff less than a mile away. He can make out ten silhouettes, probably riders on horseback. Well, he wasn’t imagining things, at least, but the confirmed presence of the watchers makes a chill go down Alex’s back, dispelling the warmth Henry left behind.

It’s a few minutes to sunrise when they get to the site of some of Alex’s worst memories. There’s no reason this stretch of empty desert should feel so foreboding, but Alex’s body is tensing up in memory of gunfire and blood.

“Good morning my friend.”

Alex is a professional ignorer of people and things – or he would be, if that paid anywhere near as well as treasure hunting. He (very maturely) refrains from spitting at Hunter as they draw near each other to wait for the main event. In the back of his mind he’s confused that Hunter’s group has already caught up to them (by all accounts it doesn’t make sense) – but they must have lost more time than he thought at the trading post.

The group of Americans are even more impatient than Alex to get moving again. “What the hell we doin’?”

“Patience, my friend. Patience.”

“Remember our bet, Claremont-Diaz – first one to the city. Five hundred cash bucks!”

“Hunter! A hundred of those bucks are yours if you help us win that bet.”

Hunter smirks. “My pleasure, gentlemen.”

“Hey Alex, nice camel,” Hunter taunts. Alex just snorts – the moron is literally trying to mock him from the back of his own camel.

“Seems there weren’t enough horses to go around, eh Hunter?” he drawls, sensing more than seeing Henry start to spur his camel forward indignantly.

There’s a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach, he’d describe it as a sort of swooping if pressed, but he ignores it and merely motions Henry to stay where he is.

“Wait for it.”

“What are we waiting for then?” asks Pez.

“We’re about to be shown the way,” Alex says, in the most dramatic fashion he can muster while bracing himself and his camel to run across the desert. There’s no way in hell he’s letting WASP-y fucking Hunter win this race.

Both groups are tense, waiting; most don’t even know what they’re waiting for, since only Alex and Hunter have been to Hamunaptra before. Alex checks his reins, then secures his gear and his weapons before falling still, strung tighter than a bowstring.

The sun crests over the horizon.

Hamunaptra appears behind a hazy, mirage-like wall, a long sprint away from them. The magic that preserves the city makes the very air around them feel electrified. Both groups are frozen in awe, struck dumb at the sight of a fucking city appearing out of thin air.

Naturally, Pez breaks the silence.

“Holy shit, Hazza, it’s really here.”

“Oh my,” Henry breathes. His voice is softer than Alex has ever heard it. It’s a nice voice when Henry’s not keeping it sharp tearing Alex’s ego to shreds.

Someone in Hunter’s group mumbles, “Would you look at that.”

“Hamunaptra,” Hunter says with a gesture more commonly seen from an out-of-their depth tour guide.

“Here we go again,” Alex sighs. He takes a single, deep breath, and kicks his camel into a run. Hunter takes an early lead, but Alex knows he can overtake him.

Alex’s world is a blur of sand and wind as he rides toward the city, focused on catching up to the weaseliest guy he knows. He spurs his camel faster and draws even, managing to keep pace, but is forced to shield his face as Hunter starts whacking him with his riding crop. Alex blocks it as best he can and takes the next opening in the blows to grab Hunter by the neck of his shirt.

“So long, buddy,” he grits out and yanks Hunter off his camel. The thud as his body hits the ground is extremely satisfying. He grins to himself; he’s definitely going to win this bet against the Americans – his camel is hurtling along at top speed, there’s no way anyone can catch him now—

The sound of heavy feet pounding the sand behind him reaches his ears, and suddenly Henry is next to him. He looks more at home on the back of a camel than anyone who’s never even seen one before last week has any right to be. Henry meets Alex’s eye as he draws even, a hint of a proud smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

“I thought this was meant to be a race, Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” he taunts over the whipping wind.

“Oh it is on, Mr. Fox.”

They both urge their camels even faster, flying over the sand neck and neck, the City of the Dead drawing closer and closer. Alex is having so much fun he can even sidestep his anxiety about returning to Hamunaptra.

Henry laughs breathlessly next to him, and Alex’s attention is caught. His throat is suddenly dry in a way that has nothing to do with the desert’s heat. The rising sunlight catches Henry’s hair, makes his skin seem to glow golden, and that’s all fine, Alex already knew that Henry was attractive. That’s just a fact. What is stealing his breath is the expression on his face – open and relaxed and fucking delighted. What’s distracting Alex is the sudden burning desire to make Henry laugh every day.

Alex is so caught up watching Henry’s face that he doesn’t notice Henry pulling ahead. The surprise on Henry’s features indicates that he wasn’t expecting the animal underneath him to kick it up a notch. Alex wasn’t ready for it either, he can’t speed his camel up any faster, and Henry gallops ahead of him. Behind him Pez whoops, “Go Hazza, go!” as Henry crosses the boundary into the city.

He can’t find it in himself to even be annoyed that he lost; it’s enough to see Henry so relaxed and happy. He shoves any other feelings he might have about that into the back of his mind.

So we got to Hamunaptra, more or less in one piece. I, of course, wanted to turn around again immediately, but Moneybags over here was paying me to escort him there, help him look for this golden book, and escort him back. So I had to stay, despite every part of me screaming that this was a bad idea.

Learn from me kid: if a pretty face asks for your help to lead them into certain death? You say no. And if you do it anyway, make sure they pay you double.

Chapter Text

Hamunaptra, Again, 1926 AD

Henry still can’t quite believe it – he’s actually here, in Hamunaptra, getting ready to look for the Book of the Living. Henry’s glad the Americans are camped on the far side of the city, having dismissed his insistence at his preferred entry point as hopeless nonsense. Richards is being typically unhelpful, just standing around making disparaging comments about Alex’s knotwork. Once he returned from scouting the perimeter of the ruins, Alex had gotten right to work setting up a belay line for them to drop into the city below. Henry snorts to himself when Alex casually flicks the end of his rope with enough force to wrap around itself and hit Richards in the face. Trust Alex to take every opportunity to mess with the odious man.

Looking over to check on Pez’s progress, he can’t help but frown.

“Pez, you’re meant to catch the sun with that,” Henry says.

“Right on, old bean, it’ll work.”

Shaking his head fondly, Henry gets back to work on his own mirror. A shadow falls across the surface as Alex wanders over, full of manic energy and clutching a small pack in his hand.

“So, uh, what are these old mirrors for?”

“Ancient mirrors,” Henry corrects, rubbing the surface furiously. “It’s an Ancient Egyptian trick. You’ll see.” He’d explain, but it really will be much more impressive to see the trick in action, and Henry can’t help but want to impress Alex. To prove that he’s not just a useless academic in constant need of rescue.

“Ah, here,” Alex says, voice a little strange as he holds out the pack. “This is for, uh, you.”

Henry takes it with a quizzical look down at Alex. He gestures for Henry to open it.

“Go ahead. I, um, borrowed it off of our American brethren. I thought you might like it – might need it I mean – for when you’re, you know…” he trails off with a vague digging gesture. “I’m gonna go take a lap around our camp.” He walks away backwards, only breaking eye contact when he trips on a rock and almost falls. “And what are you lookin’ at?” he snarls at Richards as he stalks past.

Richards holds his hands up in surrender as Henry picks at the ties holding the pack closed. Clearly being back in the city is making Alex jumpier than usual, hopefully the lack of people shooting at him will let him calm d—

It’s a set of professional archeology tools.

Henry feels a lurch in his chest at the sight, unable to help reaching out to stroke the hair of the various sized brushes and trail a finger down the side of the trowel. He feels himself beaming – something that hasn’t happened very often since his father passed. The fact that Alex cared enough to procure these for him… It’s everything.

Alex is the first one to drop into the underground room. Just because everyone got to the city in one piece doesn’t mean he’s going to get complacent now – that’s how people get dead. He lands easily and peers around for threats in the gloom. Everything is still, so he calls up to the others that it’s clear.

The city might not actually be cursed, but the stench underground is nothing short of supernatural.

Henry’s the last one to drop inside, landing with more poise than Alex would have ever expected from a lifelong academic. He really shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but surprise is a better emotion to focus on than fixating on the way the rope looked wrapped around Henry’s thigh.

Henry walks over to some kind of giant circle thing that turns out to be another one of those old (sorry, ancient) mirrors.

“And then there was light,” Henry says before heaving the mirror to a new angle. Sunlight from above immediately reflects off the one Henry adjusted, and then bounces off a dozen more scattered throughout the room. Alex’s breath catches – apparently Ancient Egyptians knew their shit, if the whole thing still works so long after the creators were alive. The light hitting Henry’s hair makes it look like he’s got a halo.

The reflected light illuminates all manner of tables and jars in the room – detritus that Alex doesn’t have the first clue about, but Henry’s eyes light up in recognition.

“It’s the preparation room! This is where they wrapped the bodies and readied them to be put in the sarcophagi. According to my research, there’s a good chance the book will be in a secret compartment at the base of one of the big statues. And everything I’ve read about the layout of Hamunaptra alludes to the base of one statue being near the preparation room. So let’s go!”

Pez, always interested in everything, is poking around near Alex when a wave of clicking washes over the room. Alex cranes around, but there’s no movement anywhere that he can see. Henry looks tense as he halts on his way to the door, gazing toward the far side of the room, deeper into the warren of tunnels.

“Beetles,” he whispers.

“Beetles! I hate bugs,” Richards whines.

“Well, they aren’t in the room with us, so deal with it,” mutters Alex. “Keep moving.”

Only a few tunnels from their entry point, Henry stops the group. “There, Anubis’ legs!”

“You’re sure?” Alex asks.

“Of course I’m sure, it’s labeled!” says Henry, waving impatiently at the hieroglyphics next to him, not taking his eyes from the base of the huge statue, searching frantically. He reaches out to run his fingers across the stone, looking for any imperfections that would betray its secrets.

“You can – nevermind, you’re focused. He can read hieroglyphics?” Henry hears Alex ask in a strained voice.

“He’d be a pretty poor Egyptian scholar if he couldn’t, mate.”

“There should be a secret compartment…” Henry mutters, pulling out the pack of tools Alex gave him earlier. He brushes some sand off, looking for the evidence. “Where—”

Suddenly, Alex grabs his shoulder and shoves Henry behind him. Henry opens his mouth to protest, but then he hears it – approaching footsteps. Alex pulls out his pistols as he creeps to the corner of the statue’s base, Pez right behind him with his own gun out. Henry edges behind them both, holding his breath, not wanting them to get too far away. Alex jumps around the corner, leveling his guns—

Henry exhales in relief when he recognizes the other digging group. Everyone chuckles ruefully at how jittery they are, letting their guns fall to their sides.

“I almost shot you, Henderson,” Alex comments. “This place plays tricks on your senses.”

“You can say that again,” says Mr. Henderson. “Hell of a thing. Now then. Why don’t you just mosy along, and leave the real digging to the professionals.” As the threat lands, everyone’s guns are back up and Henry’s lungs constrict again.

“Hey, that’s my toolkit,” the man in glasses accuses, (Henry thinks he’s called Mr. Burns) staring at the pack in Henry’s hands. Everyone else ignores him, so Henry does too. Henry may not usually condone common thievery, but in light of their current situation, he’ll let it slide.

“We got here first,” Alex bites out. Even Pez, who is normally the epitome of mellow, looks thunderous.

“I don’t see your name written on it, pal,” drawls Mr. Daniels. His drawl is nowhere near as pleasant as Alex’s to listen to; Henry had noticed that back when the groups were introducing themselves before splitting up to set up camps.

The tension in the chamber is too much for Henry’s nerves, so he steps forward, heart racing, to try and defuse the situation.

“Let’s be nice, children,” he says, drawing even with Alex. No one so much as breathes. With a steadying breath, Henry reaches out and puts a quelling hand on Alex’s bicep. His skin is warm through his shirtsleeves, and Alex’s muscles jump at the touch. It’s the first time Henry’s initiated contact between them.

“There are other places to dig,” he murmurs in Alex’s ear, trying not to linger.

Reluctantly, Alex and Pez lower their weapons at the same time as the other group. Henry gently pulls them both to the side to let the others pass by before nudging the both of them toward the door.

“You sure about this, Mr. Fox?” Alex says in a low voice as they walk away, throwing a dirty look over his shoulder as they go. “Because I wouldn’t mind roughin’ a few of them up for their lack of manners.”

“As flattering as that is, I think you’ve already committed enough crimes on our behalf today, Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” he says dryly.

Alex raises his eyebrows in question. Henry just lifts the toolkit mutely. Alex ducks his head.

“Well, Burns should have kept a better eye on his things,” says Alex blithely. “Sloppy of him. I’m sure you’d never be so careless with your tools.”

“Certainly not.”

Alex and Pez grunt as they swing their pickaxes at the ceiling together.

“So now we’re right below the statue, and if we dig up through the ceiling we should gain access to the secret compartment before the others do,” Henry says brightly.

“Yanks,” Pez mutters in disgust. “Beastly Americans. No offense, of course.”

“None taken,” Alex replies, dry as the sand surrounding them.

“Say, where’s our smelly friend – he could take a turn at this.”

“Must have wandered off,” he shrugs. “Maybe he’ll fall in a hole. He’d deserve it. What do you think is going to be here, anyway?” he asks Henry.

“Well, if we’re really lucky, it’ll be the Book of the Living. But it might just be a mummy and its canopic jars. Hard to say for sure.”

“Canopic jars?”

“Mhmm, that’s what they put the organs in when they mummify someone.”

There’s no way Alex heard correctly. No fucking way.

“Let me get this straight,” he says, leaning on his pickaxe. “Not only did they wrap your body up and put a bunch of oils and shit on it, they also ripped out your guts and stuffed them in jars?”

“Mhmm, and they take out your heart as well,” Henry says blithely, not even looking up from his notes – careless in the face of Alex’s nausea. “Oh, do you know how they took out your brains?”

“Hazza, I don't think we need to know this,” Pez interjects fruitlessly.

Alex nods furiously, stomach already churning, but Henry barrels on, eyes all aglow with the excitement of teaching Alex something. He’d have shut Henry up about organs and shit already, if he didn’t look so fucking attractive when talking about Ancient Egyptian funerary practices.

Alex is fucked.

“Well, they take a sharp red-hot poker, and shove it up your nose and scramble things about a bit and then rip it all out through your nostrils!” Henry exclaims. (Alex could have done without the very illustrative hand motions or the indecent glee in his voice.)

“Ooof. That's gotta hurt,” is all he says.

“Oh, you wouldn’t feel anything – you’d be dead when they did this.”

It’s a good thing he’s pretty.

“Hey, Pez – if I don’t make it out of this, don’t put me down for mummification.”

“Likewise,” Pez says, swinging his pick like a golf club. He makes contact at the height of his swing, and suddenly the ceiling between them collapses, depositing a huge stone box in a cloud of dust.

“Oh my god,” breathes Henry. “It’s a sarcophagus. Buried at the base of Anubis… He must have been someone of great importance. Or he did something very naughty.”

Alex can’t help the hysterical giggle that escapes him at Henry’s choice of words, but despite every instinct he has telling him to get out of Dodge, he steps forward to help clean off the lid.

“Well, who is it?” Pez asks.

“It just says: He That Does Not Deserve A Name.”

Alex notices a weird recess in the lid and blows the loose sand off to reveal a strange shape, imprinted with a drawing of a scarab beetle. “This looks like some kind of lock.”

“Well, whoever was in here surely wasn’t getting out.”

“No shit. It’ll take us a month to crack into this thing without a key,” Alex says resignedly.

“A key?” Henry muses. “Oh! A key! That’s what he was talking about!” he exclaims, moving toward his pack.

“Who was talking about what now?”

Henry flaps one arm impatiently as he keeps digging through his things. “The man! The man, the one on the barge, with the hook for a hand. He was looking for a key – got you!” He shows them the puzzle box and twists it. Prongs pop out of the sides and even Alex can tell it is a perfect match for the weird shape. Henry places it gently in the recess, but before he can twist it, a scream echoes through the halls.

“Grab the key, let’s go,” Alex yells, already haring off toward the sound. He skids to a stop around the corner when he recognizes fucking Richards as the one screaming his head off, running full tilt at a wall. Alex feels Henry and Pez come to a stop on either side of him at the same time that Richards hits the wall and collapses.

Alex can tell without getting closer that the warden is dead.

Henry, you can’t tell me it’s “indecent” to have a party just because it’s the anniversary of that fucker’s death. You’re just as happy as I am that Richards is gone.

Chapter Text

Hamunaptra, Still, 1926 AD

Later that night, Henry is still shaken. He’s never seen someone die so violently before. His father got weaker and weaker as the sickness ravaged his body. When he passed it was calm, peaceful almost – a sigh between heartbeats. Nothing like Richards’ agonized wailing as he flung himself into the tunnel wall.

“What do you think killed him?” Pez asks, also still shocked.

“Besides the obvious blunt force trauma? No idea,” says Henry.

“According to our friends, Richards wasn’t the only unlucky bastard today. Some of their diggers got melted.”

“Melted?” yelps Pez.

“Mhmm. Salt acid. Pressurized salt acid. Some sort of ancient booby trap,” Alex says.

“It’s a common trap for Ancient Egyptian tombs,” Henry confirms faintly, more than glad he didn’t have to witness that.

“Maybe this place really is cursed,” Pez whispers. A piercing gust of wind goes through camp, causing their fire to flicker ominously. Henry shivers and pulls his blanket closer around himself. Alex and Pez look at each other in fear, and Henry shakes himself.

“Oh for goodness sake, you two.”

“You don’t believe in curses, huh?” Alex asks as he stokes the fire higher.

“No, I don't. I believe if I can see it and I can touch it, then it’s real. That’s what I believe.”

“I believe in being prepared,” Alex says, cocking his shotgun.

“Let’s see what our friend the warden believed in,” Pez says, interrupting what Alex is sure would have been a diatribe from Henry. He digs through Richards’ pack. “Ooh, Glenlivet, twelve years old! Well he may have been a stinky fellow, but he had good taste. Bottoms up!”

As he takes a healthy swig, Alex hears whinnying – but the Americans’ horses are calm and they’re picketed on the opposite side from where Alex heard the noise. Dread pools in his stomach.

“Take this,” he says, shoving his shotgun at Henry. “And stay here.”

He’s got a bad feeling about this.

“Wait, wait for me,” Henry calls behind him, paying no heed to Pez’s protestations.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, horses jump the low ruin walls ridden by riders in all black, bearing swords and torches. It’s a sight straight out of Alex’s worst nightmares about this place. The attackers yell war cries as they ride through the camps and Alex can hear the Americans rousing to defend themselves. Gunshots echo from every side, screams surround him, and Alex is momentarily frozen, lost in his memories of the last battle he was a part of in this place. He sees swords flash in the firelight, striking down man after man from the Americans’ camp.

Alex manages to pull himself out of it, adrenaline and fear pushing his body forward to higher ground. He pulls a pistol and starts shooting riders off their horses. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Henry fire the shotgun and fall from the recoil. Braced against a low wall nearby, Pez is shooting with one hand between pulls from the bottle he took from Richards’ pack. Of course, fucking Hunter shows up and takes some, his mouthful spraying Pez in the face as an attacker barrels toward them. Hunter flees (like he always does) and Pez takes off, one hand still clutching the bottle.

“Alex! Help!” he yells, leading the attacking rider directly past Alex’s perch. Alex jumps onto the man, knocking him off his horse. The masked attacker comes to his feet with his sword unsheathed and gleaming menacingly in the moonlight. Alex manages to yank his pistol free of his holster in time and shoots the sword out of his hand. He turns to shoot a passing rider, but turns back at the sound of scraping steel. Apparently one sword isn’t good enough for this masked fucker, and this time Alex is the one relieved of his weapon.

Flinging himself out of range of the man’s new sword, he lands near his pack – and the firepit. He snatches a stick of dynamite and lights it. Alex scrambles to his feet and brandishes the lit fuse like a sword in turn. The masked man balks at the sight before raising his voice above the din.

“Enough! We will shed no more blood. But you must leave – leave this place, or die. You have one day!”

The men in black all remount and gallop away, disappearing into the night even faster than they appeared.

Alex pulls the fuse out of the dynamite before it explodes and tosses it aside. There was something familiar about the masked man’s voice, but before he can pursue that line of thought, he sees Henry on the ground, still clutching the shotgun. He hurries over and pulls the gun out of Henry’s hands. Alex braces Henry’s back as he sits up slowly, clutching his head.

Henry’s head is swimming as he sits up. Alex’s hand on the small of his back is warm, welcome, and, much to his chagrin, entirely necessary.

“Hey, you alright?” Alex asks as he helps Henry stand.

“Yes, yes I’m fine,” Henry whispers. “Thank you.”

They are standing very close together, Alex’s hand still at the small of Henry’s back, the other coming up to brush gunpowder off his cheek, his fingers leaving tingling trails in their wake. Henry’s throat goes dry as he looks down and meets Alex’s eyes.

“Well that just proves it,” Mr. Daniels says shakily, and Alex turns from Henry’s gaze, but doesn’t move away; Henry has never felt safer in someone’s arms. “There’s gotta be treasure under this sand.”

“No,” Alex says. “Those men are desert people. They value water, not gold.”

Mr. Burns wanders over and Henry notes with a sort of detached hilarity that he’s got half a face of shaving cream.

“You know. Maybe just for tonight, we could, uh, combine forces.”

Alex’s arms drop slowly as he steps away to start helping repair the campsites. Cold air rushes in and Henry misses him immediately, his own arms wrapping around himself in a pale imitation.

Pez stumbles over and yanks him into a fervent hug.

“You okay, Hazza? I lost track of you for a bit there.”

“Perfectly fine, just jarred from falling.”

“I’ll just bet you are. How long was he holding you up again?”

“Oh, shut it.”

Alex steadfastly ignores the dread in the pit of his stomach as they re-set up camp near the other group in the wake of the attack. The Americans bed down almost at once, but he, Pez, and Henry are too wired to sleep. Alex pushes his fears aside as the three of them pass Richards’ whisky around and around, determinedly talking about anything but the ultimatum the attackers had laid down.

Halfway through the night, Pez started composing songs of praise about some bartender and her “lovely companion” that he’d run into (and into and into) the night before they got on the boat. Alex had wondered aloud if Pez really had the stamina for something like that, but Henry had merely rolled his eyes and stopped passing Pez the bottle. Less than an hour later, Pez is passed out, curled around his pack like it’s a teddy bear.

Now it’s just him and Henry left awake and Henry’s tracing constellations with lazy gestures above his head and Alex—

Alex fails to keep his eyes off the broad shoulders and corded forearms outlined in the firelight. He makes the mistake of looking at Henry’s face and Alex is caught: happily drowning in the hazy blue of Henry’s eyes.

“You seem like you want to ask me something, Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” Henry says, plucking the bottle from Alex’s loose grip and taking another pull.

“Do I?”

“I’m pretty sure you want to ask me what a place like this is doing in a – hic – gent like me?”

Alex chuckles. “Yeah, something like that.”

He stokes the fire and asks the question he’s been biting back for days now. June would be proud of his restraint, honestly. But Richards is dead, and Pez and the Americans are asleep, and he and Henry are pleasantly drunk – well, Henry might be more than pleasantly drunk but that’s a problem for the morning. And Alex’s natural curiosity has been burning ever since they met.

“What are you even doing in Egypt, Henry?”

He turns to Alex, eyes struggling to focus through the fog of alcohol. “Egypt is in my blood, you see my – my father was a very, very famous explorer. Arthur Fox.”

Holy shit. Alex had heard about Arthur Fox – everyone had heard of Arthur Fox.

“And he loved Egypt so much he married my mother, who was a noble, and quite an adventurer herself, despite her mother’s disapproval.”

“I get your father and I get your mother. I even get him,” he says, gesturing at Pez, his loyalty and sense of adventure obvious even in sleep. “But what are you doing here?”

“Look, I – I may not be an explorer or – woah—” Henry says, standing in indignation and immediately almost falling over. “—an adventurer or a treasure seeker or a gun fighter, Mister Claremont-Diaz, but I am proud of what I am.”

“And. What is that?”

“I. Am a Librarian.” he says with a drunk-as-fuck grin. Alex can hear the capital letter in Henry’s voice and grins up at him.

The fire pops and crackles and the alcohol seems to overwhelm Henry’s sense of balance again as he falls to his knees and leans heavily into Alex’s space. The alcohol on his breath almost burns Alex’s eyebrows off – he’s so drunk.

“And I am going to kiss you now, Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” he slurs.

Alex’s heart kicks into overdrive. Henry is so close and smiling and wanting to kiss him and Alex is drunk and a little horny and there’s that swooping sensation in the pit of his stomach that he’s been ignoring every time Henry smiles at him and—

“I thought I told you to call me Alex,” he manages.

The look of delight that takes over Henry’s face takes his breath away.

“Alex,” Henry whispers, leaning in closer, and then: “Fucking eyelashes.”

Alex matches the motion, eyes closing of his own volition, just a whisper of space between their faces.

There’s a faint shadow of lips against his own and then—

Henry passes out, falling forward into Alex’s lap, snoring.

Alex sighs, but gets all of Henry’s ridiculously long limbs in as comfortable a position as possible on the sand before putting himself and his pack firmly on the opposite side of the fire. Neither of them can consent to the drunken cuddling he can barely admit to himself that he wants, so distance is the only solution. Any closer and he knows he’d be plastered against Henry’s back, limbs entwined, faster than you can say ‘Hamunaptra’. He shuffles around in the cooling, strangely unforgiving sand, closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep; they’ve still got a lot of work to do before they can leave this fucking place.

He’s not disappointed they didn’t kiss.

He’s not.

…Did you know that moonlight makes your eyes look like silver?

Chapter Text

Hamunaptra, Fucking Still, 1926 AD

The sun is barely risen before Henry chivvies him and Pez back to the sarcophagus they found yesterday. If Alex wasn’t being paid extremely well for this, he’d have fucked off already, no matter how begrudgingly curious he might be – or how attractive Henry is.

Henry unlocks the stone lid and they push it aside to reveal… another sarcophagus, wooden this time, nested inside with its own lock, a perfect match to the first one. Whoever put this guy in here clearly didn’t want him getting out. Henry makes them pull the wooden sarcophagus out and lean it against the wall so he can have better access. The rational part of Alex’s brain wonders what the fuck they are doing opening this up when it clearly is supposed to stay locked. Before he can voice his concern, Henry’s beaming face distracts him.

“I’ve dreamt about this since I was a little boy.”

“You dreamed about dead guys?” Alex can’t help but ask. Henry is so focused he doesn’t even spare a disparaging glance his way. (Alex definitely isn’t disappointed, no sir.)

“Oh look, the sacred spells have been chiseled off this. This man must have been condemned not only in this life, but in the next.”

“Yeah, great,” Alex says, thoroughly unenthused.

Pez fits the puzzle box to the lock and turns it. “Let’s see who’s inside, shall we?”

He and Alex struggle to get the lid off; the wood created a much tighter fit than the stone lid of the outer sarcophagus. They keep working at it and it gives way all at once with a burst of dust and the mummy inside falls forward. Henry screams and Pez and Alex jerk backwards, all three of them chuckling in nervous relief when they realize nothing is actively attacking them.

“Christ, I hate it when these things do that,” says Henry.

Alex sees something glistening on the surface of the body and forces down the immediate and visceral nausea. “Is he… supposed to look like that?”

“No,” Henry says moving (what the FUCK Henry) even closer, “I’ve never seen a mummy look like this before. He’s still – still—”

“Juicy,” Pez and Alex say in disgusted unison.

“Yes. He must be more than three thousand years old, and well, it looks as if he’s in the middle of decomposing.”

Eager to look at anything besides the unfortunately goopy body, Alex’s gaze falls on the coffin lid and he gulps. He doesn’t usually find many things disturbing, but—

“Look at that.” He points without looking directly at the scratches and dried blood covering the inside for a second time.

“Oh god,” Henry breathes. He reaches out and cautiously traces over the deep grooves, brow furrowed. “These marks look like they were made with fingernails. He was – I think he was buried alive.”

A chill runs through the trio; Alex certainly doesn’t manage to suppress his shiver.

Henry looks at the lid closer, eyes narrowing against the dim, flickering light of the torches.

“And he left a message in the blood,” he says grimly. “It reads: Death is only the beginning.”

“Okay, nope, fuck this. Where’s my gun?”

“What are you going to do,” Pez asks, “Shoot him? He’s already dead.”

“If he decides to wake up? Hell yes, I’ll shoot him! I’m Texas born and raised, if you think I’m not gonna shoot first and ask questions later if it so much as twitches, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Henry strides through camp that night with his head held high. He may not have found The Book of the Living, but he did find a very important mummy. No one would have gone through all that trouble with the locks and multiple sarcophagi for just anyone. Henry’s not just a librarian anymore; he’s got real, quantifiable archeology experience now.

He slows as he passes the Egyptologist’s tent. The man is trying with all his might to open something without any luck. Henry edges a little closer and gasps softly in recognition. It’s a book, made entirely of some kind of black stone, and right in the center is a six-sided depression, the exact shape of the locks on the sarcophagi they found earlier today.

The Egyptologist finally notices Henry watching and looks up with a glare.

Henry smiles blandly. “I believe you need a key to open that book,” he say, and continues ambling back to the fire Pez, Alex, Hunter, Henderson, Daniels, and Burns are gathered around.

Henry sees Henderson brandish a canopic jar at Alex. “Hey Diaz, what d’you reckon these’ll fetch back home?” Alex doesn’t answer, just stokes the fire.

Daniels notices Henry approaches and apparently can’t resist being an arse. “We heard you boys only found a nice gooey mummy.”

“Claremont-Diaz,” Alex snipes, but he looks up at the unsubtly veiled insult to Henry’s prowess and grins up at Henry as if by reflex. The firelight catches the crinkles in the corner of Alex’s eyes and Henry’s breath catches in his throat; he forces himself to keep walking forward as normally as possible. Alex breaks their eye contact to shove at Hunter’s shoulder.

“You’re in his seat. Move. Now.”

Henry is dying to tell Pez and Alex his suspicions about the black book, but refuses to say anything in front of the other group, so he pulls the dead beetles he set aside earlier out of his pack.

“I also found scarab skeletons, as it happens. Flesh eaters, you know? They can stay alive for years eating flesh. Unfortunately for our…moist friend below, he was still alive when they started eating him.”

The other group and Pez all recoil in disgust, but Alex, apparently over his earlier squeamishness, grins wickedly and nudges Henry’s shoulder with his own. “Probably got a little too frisky with the pharaoh's daughter.”

“According to the inscriptions on the casket, he suffered from the Hom-Dai. It’s said that if a victim of the Hom-Dai should ever arise they would bring with them the Ten Plagues of Egypt.”

“Aaaand that’s dark enough for me, Hazza. Wake me in the morning, yeah?”

“Night, Pez,” Henry says.

“We’re for bed too,” Burns says, gesturing at their group. “Maybe you boys will have better luck tomorrow and find something actually worth anything.”

Alex makes as if to stand and throw a punch, but quells grumpily at the hand Henry puts on his shoulder. “Perhaps we will,” is all Henry says in response. “Goodnight, gentlemen.”

“One day, you holding me back is really gonna piss me off, H,” Alex mutters as soon as the others are far enough away.

“One day someone will say something that actually bothers me,” says Henry lightly. “We should get some sleep as well. Plenty of places still to look for the book tomorrow.”

“Yeah, alright. G’night,” Alex yawns, stretching out on his back just out of the ring of light from the dying fire. Henry settles opposite him but his brain won’t quiet down, too busy with thoughts and theories about the black book. He has to know what’s inside, and so forces himself to bide his time, waiting for the camp to fall asleep.

He waits for a good hour before slowly getting to his feet and creeping back toward the Egyptologist’s tent. The man is snoring, dead to the world, and still clutching the book against his chest. Carefully, oh-so-carefully, using every half-remembered trick Pez taught him on a lark, Henry eases the book out of his arms. He backs away silently, keeping his eyes on the Egyptologist until he can hide behind a tent. He waits another beat in case the man wakes up, but when all remains still, he slinks back to his pack by the firepit.

He rummages for a second and then pulls out the puzzle box with a soft ha of triumph. He’s just twisted it open when—

“That’s called stealing you know,” Alex drawls quietly. Henry throws a dirty look over his shoulder; he hasn’t moved, hasn’t even bothered opening his eyes. Henry snorts – what a dramatic arsehole.

“According to you and Pez, I’m borrowing,” he whispers haughtily, turning back to the book.

He hears soft footsteps on the sand and then Alex crouches next to him. “Thought you said the book was made of gold?”

“I did.” Henry carefully places the puzzle box in the lock and twists it until he hears a click and the lock falls open. “This is a different book. I’m fairly certain this is The Book of the Dead.”

“And you’re sure you want to mess around with that?”

“It’s just a book,” Henry says absently, running a hand reverently down the cover. “No harm ever came from reading a book.” He heaves open the surprisingly heavy cover and, as he does so, a cold, howling wind gusts through the camp. Several torches near them blow out and the already dying fire barely has any embers left.

“That happens a lot around here,” Alex says uneasily.

Henry is already scanning the hieroglyphs eagerly when Alex asks, “What’s it say?” Henry looks up and is caught in his eyes for a moment. He feels himself blush and looks down at the text again quickly.

“Um. Well, I haven’t read hieroglyphs aloud in a while, so you’ll have to excuse any mistakes—”

“H, it’s not like I’ll have any idea if you do mess up.”

“Ha. Right. Of course.” He clears his throat and places his finger on the first picture, following the line of text as he reads out the Ancient Egyptian, “Ahm kum Ra. Ahm kum Dei.”

Henry keeps reading, transfixed, and doesn’t notice the wind picking up, the sand shifting around the pair of them, or the rest of the torches going out. He barely registers the warmth of Alex’s arm curling around his shoulders protectively.

“No!” The shout from the Egyptologist startles him out of his fog. The man is running right toward them, looking both angry and utterly terrified. “You must not read from the book!”

Suddenly he hears a strange, piercing whine coming from out in the desert. Henry and Alex stand in unison, shoulders unconsciously leaning into one another for support. He stares into the darkness, desperately trying to see what could be coming. Out of the corner of Henry’s eyes he sees the Americans scramble out of their own tents as Pez stumbles into his other side. The sound gets louder and louder as it draws closer.

A huge swarm of locusts, big enough to fill the sky, bursts out the darkness and envelops the camp. Alex grabs his hand and drags him toward their drop-in point, Pez sprinting next to them. They drop into the city and run for the doorway, slamming it behind them. They manage to kill the few locusts that followed them into the tunnels and keep moving.

Alex lights a torch and leads them down the hallway. The sound of beetles reaches their ears and they all freeze as the noise gets louder and louder before a huge swarm of them break through the floor in front of them.

Henry recognizes the type of beetle immediately. “Flesh-eaters! Don’t let them bite you!”

“Run!” screams Alex. “Back the other way!”

“Way ahead of you, mate,” pants Pez. The tunnel spits them out into a large chamber, the walkway ramping up to a dark doorway. Henry sees a couple pedestals to one side of the ramp and a niche in the cliff-face on the other side.

“Jump! They won’t be able to follow us,” he calls to the others, jumping for the rocky nook. He pants furiously trying to catch his breath and relaxes a fraction when he sees Alex and Pez land safely on the pedestals opposite him. The beetles continue on their way up the ramp and out of sight, the creepy sound of their clicking legs growing faint and then fading completely into silence. He leans back in relief, but yelps as the wall behind him gives way.

He falls onto his back as the wall spins shut again, leaving him in almost total darkness. Henry gets to his feet, dusting his pants off. He isn’t hurt, at least, but being separated from the others has his heart racing uncomfortably in his chest. Movement in the corner of his eye catches his attention and he exhales when he recognizes Mr. Burns.

“Oh thank god. I thought I was going to have to find everyone else on my own.” He walks closer. Mr. Burns doesn’t say anything, just stumbles into a shaft of moonlight.

“Mr. Burns? Are you alright?”

Henry reaches his side and gasps in horror, backing away again quickly. Burns’ eyes are gone, the empty sockets dripping blood down his cheeks. There’s blood in his mouth, too, Henry notices. It looks like his tongue has been cut out. Henry covers his mouth in a futile attempt to keep his dinner firmly in his stomach and keeps backing away.

He hits something solid and actually yells when he turns and sees – Christ above – a mummy. A mummy shouldn’t be upright, much less moving, and Henry backs away down a third branch of the tunnel, not taking his eyes from the creature in front of him. The part of his brain that isn’t frozen in terror recognizes it as the body that they unlocked earlier today. It looks even juicier than it did this afternoon. Henry has the horrible suspicion that poor Mr. Burns’ state is the cause.

His back hits another wall, but he doesn’t dare take his eyes off the creature prowling toward him to see if there’s another exit. This chamber is open to the sky, moonlight pouring across Henry’s face as he struggles to draw breath.

The mummy pauses. “Ang-us-namun,” it says. It sounds sort of like a question and Henry can’t bloody move, his limbs frozen between fight or flight. The thing comes closer, mere feet from Henry and then speaks again, arm outstretched, and this time he recognizes the Ancient Egyptian.

“Come with me, my prince, Ang-us-namun.” He feels what little blood he had in his face drain away at those words. Oh god—

“There you are!” Alex’s half-relieved, half-annoyed voice almost makes Henry weak at the knees. “Do you think we’re playing hide and seek? C’mon let’s get out of h– woah!” Alex freezes as he catches sight of the mummy.

“Henry! Let’s– Ahhhh!” Pez shouts from the same hallway Alex came from. Henry darts a glance his way and sees him crash to a stop in the doorway, the rest of the American group right behind him, all of them dropping their torches in fright.

The mummy roars and it’s such an unnatural noise that Henry can feel every hair on his body stand on end. He might whimper, but Alex—

Alex screams back and Henry chokes on hysterical laughter at the utter absurdity. Alex levels one of his pistols and shoots the thing in the eye. It screeches in pain, doubled over, and then Henry is being shoved toward the others.

“Move!” Alex yells at the rest of the men. They scramble to obey and Alex keeps Henry in front of him the whole way through the tunnels and back outside. They skid to a halt in the sand at the sight that greets them.

The attackers from the night before are back, still clad in all black, swords drawn and gleaming in the light from the moon and the torches. The Egyptologist, still clutching the book, is being held hostage with a sword across his throat.

Their masked leader steps forward menacingly. “We told you to leave or die. You refused. Now you may have killed us all. You have unleashed a creature we have feared for three thousand years.”

Alex scoffs, stepping to the front of their group. “Relax, I got him.”

The man shakes his head, almost pitying. “No mortal weapon can kill this creature, he’s not of this world.” The group splits then to reveal Mr. Burns, eyes wrapped in bandages, and being supported by two more of their attackers.

“You bastards!” Daniels yells. “What did you do to him?”

“We saved him, before the creature could finish what he started.” He gestures at a nearby horse and the two supporting Mr. Burns assist him up into the saddle before rejoining their group.

“Now leave, all of you, quickly. Before he finishes you all. We must now go on the hunt. Try and find a way to kill him.”

“I already told you, I got him,” Alex all but growls.

“We know this creature, you do not. It is a bringer of death. It will never eat. Never sleep. Never stop. Leave while you still can.”

Alex opens his mouth, probably to argue more, but a whimpering moan from Burns draws his attention. He swallows hard and then nods.

“Fine.” He turns to the group ranged behind him. “Let’s get back to Cairo. We can get a ship out from there.”

‘Nothing bad ever happened from reading a book,’ my ass. I’m only going to hold this over your head for all eternity, I hope you know that.

Chapter Text

Cairo, Fort Brydon, 1926 AD

They get back to the fort in the middle of the afternoon two days later, and the American group peels off to pack as quickly as possible. Pez salutes Alex and Henry before sauntering in the opposite direction. Alex always packs light, ready to bail as soon as he needs to, so he follows Henry to his room to help him pack instead of finding a room for himself.

“How do you think those men are going to stop that creature?” Henry asks, making a beeline for his desk as soon as he clears the threshold.

“I thought you said you didn’t believe in that ‘fairy tales and hokum’ stuff,” Alex says as he grabs Henry’s clothes from the closet. There’s a cat on the trunk, where the fuck did that come from? Whatever.

“Shoo.”

The cat ignores him, but Henry pulls the cat off the lid for him. Alex fumbles the trunk open with one hand and dumps his armload of clothes before moving to the dresser for more. Henry’s words are a little muffled as he walks toward the closet. Why’s he doing that? Alex already cleared everything out.

“Having an encounter with a three thousand year old walking, talking corpse does tend to convert one.”

Alex returns to the trunk with more clothes and pulls up short when he sees that it’s empty. Of fucking course. Henry, that noble asshole, was unpacking. Alex drops his latest armload in the trunk. Maybe Henry will come to his senses.

“Forget it! We’re out the door, we’re down the hall, and we’re gone.” Alex is so far past the realm of fucking around about this. He’s freaked out down to his bones and barely staving off a panic attack – they need to get out of here.

“No, we are not,” says Henry as he again unpacks the armload of clothes Alex had just put in the trunk. Alex grimaces and moves to start packing the books, hoping against hope that Henry will let him do his damn job and protect him by getting their whole party the hell out of Egypt.

He’s not loving his chances, but he’s got to try.

“Oh, yes we are.”

“No, we are not. We woke him up and now we’re going to stop him.”

“We?! What ‘we’? We didn’t read that book. I told you not to play around with that thing. Didn’t I tell you not to play around with that thing?” Alex can hear the distress in his own voice and hates it, but Henry doesn’t seem to be registering anything beyond the literal words.

“Fine then: me, me, me. I, I, I. I woke him up, and I intend to stop him.”

“Oh yeah? How? You heard the man, no mortal weapons can kill this guy.”

“Well then, we’ll just have to find some immortal ones,” Henry says, pulling his heavy-as-shit typewriter out of Alex’s arms with one hand before he can pack it away. Alex very carefully doesn’t let the casual display of strength distract him. He lets his hands drop to the lip of the trunk and grips hard to stop himself from reaching out and pulling Henry into his arms and dragging him out of the country.

“There goes that ‘we’ again—”

“Look, will you just listen to me,” Henry says desperately, moving to the trunk again to make eye contact. “We have to do something—”

Even Alex’s yell of pain as the lid slams down on his fingers doesn’t deter Henry from his goal. He follows Alex around the room as he shakes his fingers out, checking for damage. He’s very much attached to his fingers, after all – they allow him to shoot people.

“Once this creature has been fully reborn, his curse is going to spread until the whole of the Earth is destroyed!”

“Yeah? And is that my problem?”

“I rather think it’s everybody’s problem, Alex.” He ignores the swoop in his stomach at his given name in Henry’s mouth.

“Henry. I appreciate you saving my life at the jail and all, but when I signed on, I agreed to take you out there and to bring you back. And I have done that. End of job, end of story, contract terminated!” He knows instantly his fear has made him go too far. He can almost see Henry’s walls go up: eyes shuttering, jaw clenching, shoulders curling in as he shrinks himself down protectively.

“And that’s all I am to you? A contract.” His voice is quiet and calm, but Alex can hear the faint tremor of devastation lurking behind his words. He takes a breath, tries to calm himself down and tries one more time to convince Henry to come with him.

“Look, you can either tag along with me and get yourself and Pez out safely, see your family again. Or. You can stay here, try to save the world, and probably die.” He lets the stakes hang in the air for a moment. “What’s it gonna be?”

The question is barely out of his mouth before Henry straightens up with steel in his eye. He juts his chin out defiantly, “I’m staying.”

Alex can only gape at him. There’s a part of him that’s howling at him to ignore Henry, throw him over his shoulder, and make him leave. But there’s another part. And that part is fucking hurt that Henry thinks so little of his own life that he’s refusing to save it. Even Alex isn’t so self-destructive as to want to tie himself to that kind of martyr. He straightens up, squares his own shoulders, and steps back from Henry.

“Fine!”

“Fine.” Henry’s voice is mocking.

“Fine!” Alex yells again as he wrenches open the door.

“Fine.”

“Fine,” he says, as much sarcasm as he can muster in his voice as he slams the door shut.

He needs a fucking drink, and he needs it right the fuck now.

Alex makes his way into the officer’s club, and recognizes Pez half-slumped on a stool. He’s halfway across the floor when someone bumps into him and he blinks down at the drunk man standing in the fountain in the middle of the floor.

“Oh, hey Winston,” he says, and keeps moving. It’s enough to make the old pilot spin around and follow him, rambling the whole way. He reaches the bar, and flicks Pez on his ear in greeting, gesturing behind him with a rueful grin. Pez chuckles quietly at Winston’s antics and pours Alex a shot without a word.

“You know, Diaz, ever since the end of the Great War, there hasn’t been a single challenge worthy of a man like me.”

“Claremont-Diaz,” Alex corrects absently with a sigh. “We’ve all got our little problems today, don’t we, Winston?”

“I just wish I could have chucked it in with the others and gone down in flame and glory, instead of sitting around here rotting in boredom and booze.”

Alex, having heard this speech before, says rotting in boredom and booze along with Winston under his breath, making Pez huff out another laugh as he pours his own shot. Quick as a snake, Winston grabs the glass and downs it one.

“Cheers. Oh well, back to the airfield,” Winston laughs, clapping them both on their backs, hard enough to bruise later.

Unable to hold in his frustration any longer he turns to Pez. “Tell me, has Henry always been so—”

Pez rolls his eyes. “Oh yes, always.”

“Well, we’re all packed up,” Henderson says, joining them. “But the damn boat doesn’t leave till tomorrow morning.” Dimly, Alex registers that he might still have a chance to convince Henry to abandon his harebrained scheme and actually leave this hellhole. He’ll try again after they kill this bottle. And maybe another after that.

“Tail firmly between your legs I see,” Pez comments, dry as the sand surrounding the fort.

“Yeah, you can talk – you don’t have some sacred walking corpse after you.”

Amen to that, Alex thinks, downing half his drink. Daniels posts up next to him, looking haunted.

“How’s Burns?”

“He had his eyes and his tongue ripped out. How would you be?” he says bitterly. Daniels collects his own drink before walking away to brood at a table.

Henderson stays with them for a couple more rounds before he calls it a night, wanting to be clear-headed enough to make the boat in the morning. He raises his last shot.

“Good luck, boys.”

They clink, and the three of them drain their shots. There’s a beat and then the taste of iron overwhelms Alex’s mouth and he spits out the liquid in disgust at the same time Pez and Henderson spew theirs.

“Sweet Jesus,” Henderson groans.

The room is full of the sounds of disgust and surprise and liquid being sprayed, as Alex wipes his mouth. He hears Henderson say “It tastes like—” but Alex’s eyes are caught by the fountain, now running red. He drops his glass to the floor in shock.

“—blood,” he finishes Henderson’s thought.

Pez speaks, voice heavy. “And the rivers and waters of Egypt ran red, and were as… blood.”

And Alex, somehow, knows what this means.

“It’s here.”

Shit. Henry. He doesn’t know.

Alex takes off running towards Henry’s room, ignoring the others’ calls.

I wish I could say there’s nothing grosser than drinking whisky that turned to blood, but that was only the tip of the iceberg during all this nonsense, as both Henry and I experienced first hand.

Chapter Text

Cairo, Fort Brydon/Museum of Antiquities, 1926 AD

He hasn’t even gotten to the stairs when he sees a tall figure strolling along, nose buried in a book.

“Henry!” he calls.

“Oh, so you’re still here,” Henry says icily, glaring over the top of his book.

Alex lets out a manic chuckle as he skids to a halt. “We’ve got problems.”

Before he can say anything else, thunder rumbles through the courtyard. Alex and Henry turn in unison and stare at the horror being wrought across the city.

A huge storm has come up in the hour he’s been at the bar, hiding most of the sunlight. Thunder and lightning strikes are accompanied by winds stronger than he’s ever felt outside of a sandstorm. And there are actual, literal fireballs raining from the sky. Without thinking about it, Alex grabs Henry’s arm and starts dragging him under cover, towards the stairs. One of the soldiers screams as he’s struck by one of the fireballs, going down in a ball of flames. It’s like being back in the war, under enemy fire. Alex swallows down his bile and keeps them moving toward the relative safety of stone walls.

They reach the bottom of the stairs leading to their quarters when he hears freaked out whimpering coming down the stairs. He turns to see fucking Hunter scrambling away from him.

“Hey!” Alex darts up the stairs and grabs him by his harness before shoving him against the wall. “Hunter you fucking stinkweed, where’ve you been?”

An animalistic roar echoes from the higher floors, chilling Alex to the bone. Hunter uses his distraction to escape down the stairs. Alex pulls out a gun and reaches for Henry with his other hand to pull him up the stairs. If the mummy is here, that means there’s no more chance to leave Egypt, so confrontation it is.

And Alex might not get a chance to hold Henry’s hand again, so if he’s maybe indulging himself, no one will ever be able to prove it.

They hit the landing and Alex nudges Henry behind him as he checks that the coast is clear as they enter the other Americans’ suite. Henry’s gasp draws Alex’s attention to the corpse in the sitting room. The fresh bandage over one eye is all that remains to identify the body as Burns. Poor bastard.

A strange cracking and popping noise from the next room has Alex bringing his gun up reflexively. He feels his heart try to beat out of his chest in terror as he catches a glimpse of the creature. It’s twisting and writhing on its feet in front of the fire, visibly gaining muscle and skin – becoming stronger. It spins and roars at them again. Alex’s hand is trembling as he holds the gun on the mummy.

“We are in serious trouble,” he says with a gulp, drawing his second pistol.

The monster starts toward them, continually roaring, and Alex opens fire. The bullets don’t do anything – of course they don’t – but he doesn’t have any other options. Henry yelps, backing to the side against the bookshelf. Alex keeps firing desperately, but all too soon they click empty and then the mummy is on him, sending him flying with a single shove. He thinks he hears Henry shout ‘Alex!’ as he sails through the air, landing on Pez and the others, who have apparently caught up. His breath gets knocked out of him as he lands, but he struggles to a sitting position as fast as he can – that thing is still up and dangerous.

His heart is in his throat when he sees Henry backed fully against the bookshelf, the mummy even taller than him as it leans closer. It says something to Henry in a language Alex doesn’t understand, ducking its head closer and closer to Henry’s, almost as if it’s going to kiss him. The rage that flashes through his body at the thought is all consuming, but before he can do something stupid like punch the undead fucker, the moment is cut with discordant notes from the piano.

He looks over and sees the fucking cat stepping on the keys. The creature whirls around at the noise and positively shrieks at the sight. It seems to panic, scrambling toward the window before turning into a small sand tornado and disappearing. There’s a beat of silence and then Alex can’t help himself.

“We are in very serious trouble.”

Henry’s thoughts are going a mile a minute as he leads the shell-shocked group through the halls of the antiquities museum.

“Care to tell us what’s going on, sweetheart?” Alex grumps from one step behind.

“Look, there’s only one person I know who can give us any answers and that’s – you!” He shouts, freezing in the threshold of his (probably former) boss’s office. The curator isn’t alone like Henry had supposed, and his heart races as he registers the head-to-toe black and wickedly curved blade. Only his eyes and cheekbone tattoos are visible between the strips of black cloth around his head. He hears the sounds of four guns being cocked behind him and then—

“Raf?” Alex’s voice is strangled with shock.

Curator Luna nods at them regally. “Alex. Mr. Fox. Gentlemen.”

Henry gapes, whirling on Alex. “You know the curator?”

“I should have guessed you’d be involved in this mess somehow,” says Mr. Luna, scrubbing a hand over his face.

Alex flaps an unconcerned hand at Henry. “He was my mentor for a while, he knows my parents.” He turns to address Luna, gun still pointed firmly at the man in black, and speaks in rapid Spanish. Henry might melt. “I didn’t know you were in Egypt, would have been nice to know I had someone to bail me out.”

“You were in jail?” Mr. Luna pinches the bridge of his nose, and switches to Spanish himself. “Nevermind, don’t tell me, or they’re going to murder me when they find out what you’ve managed to get up to.”

“You two can do a catch up later,” Henry says, swiftly cutting off Alex’s retort. He’s not sure his heart could take more of the rolling r’s and easy confidence with which Alex wields the language. “What is he doing here?” he says, gesturing at the man in black. “He tried to kill us!”

“Do you really want to know, or would you prefer to just shoot him?”asks Mr. Luna, sarcastic and a thousand percent over the lot of them.

Alex holsters his gun and nods cautiously. “After what I saw back at the city? I’m willing to go on a little faith here. Plus I trust you, Raf.”

The curator sits, waving them all to do the same. Alex and the remaining Americans take him up on it. Pez leans against a column, eyeing the man in black with something alarmingly close to interest— Henry stays on his feet, knowing he’ll just be twitching if he sits.

“We,” Mr. Luna says, gesturing between himself and the man in black, “are part of an ancient secret society. For three thousand years, we have guarded the city of the dead; sworn at manhood to do everything in our power to stop the high priest Imhotep from being reborn into this world. My job is to stay here as a first line of defense and discourage people from attempting to find the city in the first place. This is Ardeth Bay. Well, the latest Ardeth Bay – it’s a title, not a name – and in charge of the Medjai forces in the desert.”

The stranger visibly steels himself before unwrapping the scarf from his head. Henry actually jerks in surprise when he turns out to be blond.

“I can’t believe you actually led this idiot into the desert, Alex. You’re supposed to be smarter than that.”

“Liam?!” Alex’s face is a bizarre mix of pleased, shocked, and – if Henry’s not mistaken – embarrassed.

“Do you know bloody everyone?” Henry can’t help but blurt out.

“We went to school together,” Alex says vaguely, still gaping. “I thought something about you sounded familiar out in the desert.”

Liam shrugs. “Surprise.”

Alex recovers a bit, eyes hard. “He’s not an idiot, Liam, he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”

Henry can feel himself blushing and studiously doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He doesn’t even want to think about the gleeful expression that Pez is no doubt sporting.

“Well he still summoned a goddamn mummy, so—”

“Liam—” Alex starts, but Henry speaks over him.

“And you think this justifies the killing of innocent people?”

Mr. Luna cuts off whatever Liam was going to say. “To stop this creature? Let me think.”

“Yes!” Liam and the curator yell in unison.

“Question.” All eyes turn to Alex with one finger raised. “Why doesn’t he like cats?”

“What the hell are you on about, Alex?” Liam asks, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“There was this cat in the suite—”

“Mr. Wobbles.” All eyes turn to Henry now, and he can feel himself blushing violently. He ducks his head and mutters, “My sister named him after I mentioned in a letter that a cat had decided to take up residence in my rooms.”

Alex blinks at him, before shrugging and turning back to the curator. “Right. So, Mr. Wobbles was there and startled the mummy thing and he screamed and turned into this wild sand tornado and disappeared.”

“Cats are the guardians of the underworld. He will fear them until he is fully regenerated,” Mr. Luna explains, relaxing back into his chair. The earlier tension is all but dissipated now. For all he pretends to be unperceptive, Alex is a master at playing a room.

“And then he will fear nothing,” Liam snarls, shooting a resentful glare at him. Henry glares back. He bloody knows the situation is partially his fault, but right now they need to focus on stopping it.

“Yeah, and you know how he gets himself fully regenerated?” Daniels asks into the tense silence.

Henderson answers dully, “By killing everyone who opened that chest.”

“And suckin’ em dry, that’s how!” Daniels’ scared voice echoes in the tall room.

A thought that has been niggling at the back of Henry’s mind suddenly comes into focus as he paces past Pez attempting to draw back an ancient bowstring.

“Pez, stop playing with that.” He lets go with a placating smile, not an ounce of guilt. Henry focuses back on Mr. Luna.

“When I saw him alive at Hamunaptra he called me… Ang-us-namun.” Mr. Luna and Liam exchange an alarmed look. “A-and just now in Mr. Burns’ quarters he – well I’m fairly certain he was trying to kiss me.” Henry firmly ignores the low growl that escapes from Alex – he does not have time to examine how that reaction makes him light up like the streets of London on Guy Fawkes Night.

Mr. Luna looks thoughtful as he says, “It was for his love of Ang-us-namun that he was cursed in the first place. Apparently, even after three thousand years—”

“He’s still in love with him, yes,” Liam agrees grimly.

“Yes, that’s certainly romantic, but what has it got to do with me?” Henry asks, dread welling in his stomach.

“Perhaps Imhotep will once again try to raise his lover from the dead,” says Liam.

“Yes of course.” Mr. Luna’s voice is quietly resigned as he and Liam look at Henry. “It appears he has already chosen his human sacrifice.”

Whatever words that had been building die in his throat at the pronouncement. He looks at Alex, sees his own helplessness and futile anger reflected in Alex’s face.

“Bad luck, old bean,” Pez says. Henry loves him all the more fiercely for trying to sidestep the despair in the room, but the heartbreak behind his best friend's eyes is obvious.

“On the contrary,” Mr. Luna says, standing up. “It may just give us the time we need to kill the creature.”

“We’ll need all the help we can get – his powers are growing,” says Liam, looking up in horror through the skylight.

They all look as well and Henry chokes as he sees the sun getting eclipsed by the moon, moving faster than celestial bodies have any right to move. As the sun disappears, the room is plunged into darkness; the only reprieve are the two flickering torches.

Once more Pez’s voice breaks the horrified silence, but this time it’s flat and bleak as he quotes:

“And he stretched forth his hand towards the heavens, and there was darkness throughout the land of Egypt.”

There’s something so hilarious about you reminding the mummy of his dead boyfriend. I’m never gonna get over that.

Well obviously I don’t wish that – but he wanted you alive. And you alive is better than you dead any day of the week in my book.

Chapter Text

Cairo, Fort Brydon/Marketplace, 1926 AD

Some part of Alex’s mind is giddy at the way he and Henry are mirroring each other, pacing up and down the room as they work through the problem. The other part is fucking worried.

“We have to stop him from regenerating, and that means…” Henry stops pacing and swivels toward Daniels and Henderson. “Who was there when you opened the chest?”

“Well, me and Daniels here, and poor Burns, of course, oh, and that Egyptologist fellow.”

“Not my ol’ pal, Hunter?” Alex asks.

“Nah, he’d fucked off by then.”

“Typical Hunter.”

“Be that as it may,” Henry says over him, “we need to find the Egyptologist and bring him back here to the fort before the creature can get to him and the Book and become even more powerful.”

Alex’s mind races as he looks at the people assembled, assessing skill sets and acceptable risks.

“Right, here’s the plan. Henry stays here. You three come with me.” He beckons with a finger and starts to walk away, halting at the protestations from all four of them.

“Not me—”

“Wait just one moment—”

“Come on—”

“You can’t just leave me here like some kind of – old carpet bag!”

“I’m feeling safe here actually—”

“Who put you in charge anyway, Mr. Clarem—”

Alex can’t take anymore protests. Despite the few (very fucking few, he’s five-nine, no matter what anyone else says) inches that Henry has on him, his height is no match for how determined Alex is to keep him safe. He stalks forward as Henry continues berating him, lowers his shoulder, and hoists Henry over his shoulder while muttering some choice swears and continuing his path toward the bedroom. And a door that locks from the outside.

“What the devil do you think you are doing?! Pez, stop him! Mr. Claremont-Diaz, you are not leaving me in here!” Henry shrieks as Alex walks away, slams the doors closed, and locks them.

He’s not sure what his face is doing when he turns to Daniels, but it’s evidently enough to have the other man trembling. Alex snatches the front of his shirt and hauls him close.

“This door. Doesn’t. Open. He doesn’t come out. And no one goes in. Right?”

“Right.”

He turns to Henderson with a raised eyebrow. “Right?”

“Right.”

Satisfied, he drops the key in Daniels’ hands, ignoring Henry’s continued shouting and banging on the door, even though it makes his heart clench. There’s no way Henry’s getting hurt on his watch – he’d never forgive himself.

“Let’s go, Pez,” he says, straightening his holsters in one sharp movement.

Pez chokes and splutters as he takes a sip from his flask. “Oh, well I thought I’d just stay at the fort and just, you know, have a look round—”

“Now!”

“Right, yeah, we’re just gonna go… get the Egyptologist then,” Pez mutters to the others before scrambling after Alex.

There’s lots of crashes coming from the Egyptologist’s rooms as they approach. Alex signals Pez to stop so he can listen at the partially open door. There’s the sound of glass breaking, papers shuffling, and an occasional thud of wood on tile that is probably furniture being overturned. And if someone is searching this guy’s rooms, Alex already has an idea of who’s inside.

Smirking grimly, he kicks the door fully open and strides in, Pez at his heels.

WASP-y fucking Hunter; sometimes Alex hates being right.

“Well, well, well. Let me guess, spring cleaning?”

Hunter looks up in a panic from where he was dumping out desk drawers and runs toward the window. Alex just picks up the nearest camp chair and chucks it at him, getting him in the back and sending Hunter sprawling across the floor.

“Nice shot!” says Pez, and then he drops his voice and continues, “If a certain blond had seen that, he’d be swooning right now.”

“Focus, Pez,” he mutters, trying not to let how pleased he is by that knowledge show on his face.

“Oh, did you fall down? Here, let me help you up,” Alex says, and hauls Hunter up by the lapels of his coat and pins him against the bookshelf.

“Now, I’ll use small words so you’re sure to understand me.” Hunter just whimpers. Alex shakes him and continues in the most patronizing voice he can muster. “You came back from the desert with a new friend, didn’t you, Hunter?”

“What friend? You’re my only friend,” he says, in a voice high with panic, eyes shifting from side to side.

Alex sees red, and throws him on top of the desk.

“What the hell are you doin’ with this creep, huh Hunter? What’s in it for you?”

Hunter wheezes, “It is better to be at the right hand of the devil, than in his path. As long as I serve him, I have immunity.”

He manhandles Hunter into yet another wall in his fury.

“Immunity from what?” he growls.

“I don’t wanna tell you, you’ll just hurt me more.”

Well. He’s not wrong. Alex drags him into the center of the room and pulls him close.

“What are you looking for here? And try not to lie to me,” he adds before lifting Hunter clear off his feet and within a finger’s width from the spinning blades of the ceiling fan.

“The book!” Hunter yelps, nervous eyes on the fan blades. “The black book they found at Hamunaptra. He wants it back. He said it would be worth its weight in diamonds.”

“What does he want the book for? Details Hunter. Now.” Alex’s arms are starting to burn but he refuses to let them shake while Hunter is finally giving him some answers.

“Oh come on, I don’t know – aaaahhhh—” he screams when Alex lifts him just a little closer to the blades.

“Okay, okay! Something about bringing his dead lover back to life. That’s all! He just wants the book, I swear, just the book!” Alex lowers him, but no sooner do his feet graze the ground and then he turns to Pez and adds:

“And, or course he wants your friend—”

Alex hauls him close again, and he knows storm clouds are gathering on his face.

“—But other than that—”

Whatever Alex was going to say is cut off by a scream from outside. Distracted, Alex doesn’t see Hunter’s fist coming before it’s buried in his gut. He gasps in pain and loosens his grip on Hunter’s jacket. In a flash, the asshole is gone, jumping right out the window despite being on the second floor.

Alex and Pez run to the window. Hunter stumbles up to a hooded figure in the middle of the square and gestures back at them. The figure turns and Alex’s stomach rolls over as he recognizes the creature. Then its jaw unhinges, opening wide enough to come halfway down its own chest and more goddamn locusts come pouring out – the column aiming right for them.

“Shit!” Alex slams the window shut just in the nick of time. He and Pez hold it closed against the onslaught. Eventually the pounding stops and they relax. They leave the room and creep up the stairs to street level cautiously. The square is totally devoid of life, a handful of half-decomposed bodies the only evidence of the creature’s presence.

“Alex. He was stronger again. And he’s hunting the Americans,” Pez says, voice shaking.

“Fuck. Henry. We have to get back to the fort,” he says grimly and the two of them take off in a sprint.

Alex hopes with every fiber of his being that they aren’t too late.

At least the bed was comfortable.

Henry had yelled about asshole-ish, self-righteous Americans who thought they knew everything for close to an hour (in multiple languages) before accepting defeat. Evidently, Alex had put the fear of god into the other Americans before dragging Pez out the door with him. As angry as he was, he couldn’t shout forever, and he still had his notebook and a pen so he could at least scribble down some thoughts.

His eyes had started to droop a couple hours ago and he’d given up and gotten ready for bed, resigning himself to a sleep plagued (ha, ha) by nightmares of the dead walking the streets, attacking everyone he loved—

At least the bed was comfortable.

Henry had been tossing and turning, had tried flipping his pillow over to the cool side, had tried counting sheep, but he still couldn't sleep. He’s just about to give up completely, when a light scrape of what has to be a key in the lock reaches his ears. A truly spectacular ass (attached to a truly spectacular asshole) backs into the room, pulling the door shut quietly behind him. Alex turns around, flushing slightly when he sees that Henry’s awake, and has been watching him the whole time.

“Alex, what—?”

Alex creeps silently closer, then reaches out, hand trembling, to cup his jaw, the heat in his eyes convincing Henry to save his questions for later. For after.

Henry’s heart is racing – the memory of their drunken almost-kiss at Hamunaptra echoing against the messy desperation of Alex’s mouth at the prison yard. Henry swallows thickly, licking his lips against his suddenly dry mouth; watching Alex’s pupils blow wide as he comes ever closer.

Alex sits on the mattress level with his chest and leans over Henry, one hand coming up to caress the side of his face reverently. He murmurs something, low and gravelly, maybe even in Spanish, because Henry can’t understand him. Before he can try to get Alex to repeat himself, Alex leans even closer – and then his mouth is on Henry’s.

The kiss starts softly, almost a tease, a relief – to finally be acting on the tension that has stretched between the two of them since they met. Henry lets himself sink into the sensation, follows and answers each movement of Alex’s lips. Then the kiss changes, deepens, darkens – more force and teeth and it’s like Alex is taking, possessing, yanking the very breath out of his lungs—

Henry’s eyes open on a gasp that turns into an aborted scream. Leaning over him is not Alex, but the creature. Somehow it’s become even more solid, most of a human face and body, but there are patches of decay and rotting bones that Henry can see through. He shoves at the creature’s chest, desperate to get away, when the door bursts open.

“Hey! Get your ugly face offa him!”

Henry’s heart lifts at the sound of an angry Texan accent echoing through the room. The mummy sits up and Henry scrambles over the far side of the bed, getting as much distance between them as possible. It roars at Alex and Pez in inarticulate rage, stands, and starts to stalk toward them. Alex just raises one cocky eyebrow.

“Look what I got,” he says, holding up Mr. Wobbles. He hisses, as if on cue.

Just like the first time, the mummy lets out a bone-chilling, inhuman shriek – jaw elongating like a snake – before twisting around itself in a swirl of black robes. It turns into a cyclone of sand and they’re all forced to cover their eyes as it hurls itself across the room and out the window.

The sudden silence rings in Henry’s ears as he peeks over the top of the bed, only broken by the three of them breathing hard. He can feel his eyes wide with adrenaline as he meets Alex’s intensely worried gaze. Henry couldn’t look away if he tried. Alex’s emotions are playing across his face: fear and relief and longing warring for dominance of his features. Henry’s loath to think what his own face might be doing in return; the mask he worked for years to perfect has long since fallen away when it comes to Alex.

“Are you alright?” Alex asks softly, taking half a step toward Henry.

Henry is still trying to get his voice to work properly when—

“Well, I’m not sure,” pants Pez, leaning against the doorframe.

Alex finally breaks eye contact, incredulous at Pez’s gall – and Henry takes what feels like his first proper breath since he woke.

“Why does he even want me as his sacrifice? I’m hardly the only option.”

Alex snorts. “Even the mummy can tell you’re the hottest guy around.” Henry can feel himself blush even as Alex’s brain visibly catches up to his mouth. “I mean—”

“I am appalled, frankly, that I wasn’t the one he set his sights on,” Pez says. “Although it does make it easier to flirt with your friend in black.”

“And the fact that he tried to kill us earlier is fine with you?”

“I’ve always had an overdeveloped sense of adventure,” Pez says with a waggle of his eyebrows.

I locked you in your room and I’d do it again. If you’d been with us, Imhotep would have gotten you even faster.

Although you not realizing a fucking mummy was kissing you because you were dreaming about me is very flatter—

Ow!

Chapter Text

Cairo, Museum of Antiquities/Marketplace, 1926 AD

Alex knows he should be grateful that the mummy didn’t totally finish regenerating, but he can’t help but shove Daniels into the car with more than a little force. He had one job and he fucking left, left the room, left Henderson, left Henry alone to deal with that monster. He leaves Daniels and Pez to follow as he hurries to catch up with Henry halfway up the grand stairs of the museum.

“Do they have any ideas? Do you?” he asks, gesturing ahead to where Raf and Liam are leading them.

“No, Mr. Luna and Mr. Too-Good-for-a-Last-Name-Just-A-Title-Thank-You seem to have been running into a wall during their brainstorming.” Alex bites his lips against the grin that wants to burst out at Henry’s snark. “But according to legend, the black book that the Americans found could bring people back to life. Obviously, I never put much stock in that; it's silly to believe in legends.”

“Better believe it now, it brought our buddy back to life.”

“Well. Yes. So I was thinking that if the black book could bring dead people back to life then maybe—”

“The gold book can kill him,” Alex catches on.

“That’s the myth,” Henry shrugs. “Now we just have to find out where the gold book is hidden. Mr. Luna said that the tablet just up there should be able to help us.”

They hit the next landing and Alex hears a strange, rhythmic noise. He pauses, moving to the window overlooking the entrance instead of continuing up, and Henry follows him close enough that Alex can feel Henry’s heat at his back. Alex’s gut clenches in fear when he looks down. A huge shuffling crowd fills the street approaching the museum. They’re all chanting – Alex can’t quite make out the words from this distance – and each person below has something on their exposed skin. Dark, almost like a bruise or—

“Ah, last but not least, my favorite plague: sores and boils,” Pez sighs.

Liam’s incredulous voice is faint when he asks, “You have a favorite plague?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Alex sees Pez wink. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Raf interrupts Liam’s stuttering reply with a grim tone. “They’re under his thrall. It’s begun. The beginning of the end.”

Now Alex can hear the crowd clearly. “Imhotep…Imhotep…Imhotep…”

Henry’s voice pulls Alex out of his despair spiral. “Not quite yet, it hasn’t.”

Determination is a good look on Henry; it makes his jawline even sharper than normal and Alex wants to put his mouth on it. Later, he tells himself firmly.

Sitting on the balcony above the lobby is the tablet, and everyone rushes closer. Every thud of fists on the doors below them makes Alex more tense. He, Liam, Pez, and Daniels all exchange bleak looks behind the academics’ back. Alex checks his guns again just to feel like he’s contributing. Henry speaks quickly as he and Raf scan the symbols.

“According to Bembridge scholars the golden book of Amun-Ra is under the statue of Anubis.”

“But that’s where we found the black book,” Daniels protests.

Pez has never looked more smug. “Looks like those Bembridge twats got it wrong.”

“Yes, they mixed up the books,” Henry agrees vaguely, still reading. “Mixed up where they were buried. So, if the black book was under the statue of Anubis then the gold book must be inside—”

A huge crash echoes through the lobby and the jeering, torch-bearing crowd pours into the museum at a run, shoving each other to get to their small group first.

“C’mon Hazza, faster.”

“Patience is a virtue, Pez,” Henry hums, eyes still searching the hieroglyphs.

“Not right now it isn’t, sweetheart,” Alex can’t help but cut in.

“I’ll, ah, get the car started,” Pez says, dashing off down the back stairs to avoid the horde.

“I’ve got it! The golden book of Amun-Ra is at Hamunaptra inside the statue of Horus. Take that, Bembridge scholars!” Alex doesn’t have time for the pride that floods through him at Henry’s success. Or the sudden desire to kiss him senseless. They have a possessed, diseased throng and a fucking evil mummy overlord to escape first.

There’s barely time for Henry to sit with his excitement before Mr. Luna is ushering everyone down the back stairs. They make a mad dash down the stairwell, through the service entrance and across the moonlit courtyard, and then everyone is piling into the car Pez started.

Suddenly there are warm hands on his waist and elbow, helping him up into the car and when he turns to say he’s quite capable on his own, actually, Henry’s voice dies in his throat. Everyone says a picture is worth a thousand words, but right now Alex’s eyes are a whole bloody novel of everything he’s not saying.

“Alex—”

“C’mon H, no time, get in the car,” Alex says, gently shoving him over before climbing in himself.

A high-pitched whining scream interrupts anything Henry might have tried to say.

“Imhotep! They’re getting away, Imhotep!”

Fucking Hunter.

From inside the museum, silhouetted in the window, Imhotep gives an unholy screech of frustration. The mob inside immediately redirects toward the car, and Pez accelerates quickly across the cobbles.

Alex stands in the passenger seat, incandescent in his rage. “You’re gonna get yours, Hunter! You hear me? You’re gonna get yours!”

“Oh, like I’ve never heard that before!” Hunter calls after them.

Thankfully, the crowd can’t run faster than the car. Pez navigates them deftly through the city’s marketplace, in total control of the machine even in narrow streets and near-darkness. When Henry glances next to him at Alex, his heart clenches at how his eyes are squeezed shut, his face a mask of tension. Unable to help himself, Henry reaches out a hand and puts it on Alex’s knee in silent support. Alex’s eyes fly open, pinning Henry in place with the fire in them.

The moment is broken when Pez slams on the brakes, bringing the car to a skidding halt. An unnaturally silent, menacing mass looms before them, blocking the street. Henry hears Mr. Luna cursing in Spanish behind him and then—

“Fuck it,” Alex mutters before reaching his foot across and slamming the gas pedal down. “Hold on!” he shouts to the rest of them and the car hits the first wave of men with a sickening crunch.

The car bursts through the front lines and pushes aside the next few attackers, but the group seems never-ending and eventually the car is swarmed. Pez punches one in the face over the low windshield, keeping one hand on the wheel. On his other side, Alex is standing again, shoving and punching almost calmly as he dispatches enemy after enemy. A glance behind shows Liam and Mr. Luna laying waste to more of them. A yell from Pez has Henry whipping around again, almost nose to nose with a new boil-ridden foe. Henry doesn’t have much room to maneuver tucked in the middle of the front seat but he manages to poke the bastard in the eye. The man recoils in pain and then Alex’s fist swings into view, punching him off the hood before the man can regroup.

Alex grins over Henry’s head at Liam when they manage to clear the car of attackers completely. They’re both panting hard and Henry hates the swoop of irrational jealousy that hits his stomach at the frenzied look they share.

Daniels screams then, drawing the group’s attention. He’s got two plague-servants on him, trying to get at the canopic jar. Liam and Alex both move to try to help him, but before they can, Daniels is thrown from the car.

“Oh shit,” Liam says, staring behind them in horror.

Shots ring out steadily for a few moments and then— Silence. He must have run out of ammo.

Daniels’ scream haunts Henry as Alex sinks shakily into his seat once more.

Alex has barely caught his breath after Daniels’ screaming fades when the car bounces on something. The wheel jerks in Pez’s hand and careens into a fruit stand. And of course, there’s still an angry mob after them.

He hoists Henry out of the car over the door and pulls on his wrist to nudge him to relative safety behind Alex as he stoops to grab a torch. Alex waves the torch in front of the advancing horde to try and clear some space. They are chanting again and each utterance of Imhotep’s name has his skin crawling.

The mob forms a ring around them, but stops advancing. Alex’s blood runs cold when they part, making a path for the most heinous person he’s ever met. And the now fully-regenerated mummy is there, too.

Imhotep stalks closer with Hunter cringing in his wake. He speaks with a gravelly, unnatural voice in what must be Ancient Egyptian. His face is confidently unconcerned with Alex’s group as Hunter translates: “‘Come with me, my prince, it is time to make you mine forever.’”

Alex can’t help but step slightly in front of Henry protectively while he snarls at Hunter.

Behind him, Henry merely scoffs. “He said, ‘for all eternity,’ idiot.”

“Not the time, Hen,” Alex mutters, not taking his eyes off Imhotep.

He speaks again, reaching out one hand toward Henry. “‘Take my hand, and I will spare your friends.’”

“Oh dear,” Henry mutters. “Got any bright ideas?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” Alex mutters back. He’s done nothing but try to think of how they can escape since he first heard the crowd chanting back at the museum. Unless they get a miracle, they are utterly fucked.

“Well, you better think of something quick, because if he turns me into a mummy you're the first one I'm coming after.” Alex whips his head around to stare up at Henry in disbelief and gets caught by the emotions he can see swirling in those blue eyes. With an unsteady breath, Henry breaks eye contact and steps forward, taking Imhotep’s hand. The creature’s eyes glow with triumph as he tucks Henry into his side, smirking challengingly at Alex.

Absolutely fucking not.

Alex pulls a pistol with his free hand and levels it at Imhotep. “No.”

“Don’t!” Henry urges. “He still has to take me to Hamunaptra to perform the ritual.”

Liam tries to force Alex’s gun down, but Alex fights him, unable to look away from Henry’s face, scared but resigned. Alex can feel his heart cracking.

“He’s right,” Liam says lowly. “Live today, fight tomorrow.”

“Fucking fine.” Alex ignores the hitch in his voice, holsters his gun and steps forward, just once. Liam’s hand immediately comes up to his shoulder to stop him going further and Alex fights off the urge to punch his former best friend. The only person he wants touching him right now just sacrificed himself to a fucking lord of the undead, like that is in any way an acceptable solution. He stares at Henry, drinking in every detail: the sharp jaw clenching to hide his fear, high cheekbones flushed with exertion, and his eyes, sky blue and on the verge of hopeless tears as Henry stares back. Alex shoves down the howling thing inside of him and focuses on his rage, finally tearing his eyes from Henry’s face to glare at Imhotep.

“I’ll be seeing you again,” he grits out.

The mummy just smiles mockingly at him before leading Henry away. Henry looks back over his shoulder at Alex, worry and grim determination warring across his face.

“Henry,” Alex can help but say, starting to step after him, but Liam forces him to stay put. Hunter nods at Imhotep before closing in on Pez and pulling the puzzle box out of his coat pocket.

“That’s mine!”

“Thank you,” Hunter says with a sardonic grin.

“What a wanker,” Pez mutters. “He could have ruined my coat.”

Imhotep shouts something to the mass of people and they start moving closer, but Alex is still focused on Henry. Imhotep’s words have Henry struggling against his grip. “No! Let go of me! Let go! You said you wouldn’t hurt them!”

“Goodbye, my friend,” Hunter says with a salute and that’s the last straw. Alex rips himself from Liam’s hold, but Hunter’s already gone, disappearing through the throng rapidly closing in around them.

Alex looks at the crowd, desperately searching for a weak spot, but there isn’t one. He steps back and feels something on the ground that isn’t stone. He looks down and sees a drain cover, hope surging in his chest. Alex chucks the torch he’s holding at the nearest man to buy them time, and yanks the cover to the side.

“C’mon, into the sewer,” he calls, reaching out for Pez.

“What about Henry?” he asks, still staring at the place where Henry disappeared from view.

“We’re gonna get him back.” They will. Anything else is unthinkable.

Pez jumps into the hole with a yell. Alex grabs the front of Liam’s shirt and tugs. “You next!” Liam drops from view and Alex looks up to help Raf and freezes. Raf is too far for Alex to grab, fighting a whole gang of them with a fucking sword.

“Raf, come on!”

Raf keeps swinging. “Go.”

“We have to go, Raf!”

“Go on ahead!” Raf urges, slicing expertly. “I’ll catch up!” Alex doesn’t believe him. But there’s no time, the mob is too close, and the three of them are Henry’s only chance. With a prayer he’s sure is futile, he slides into the sewer, leaving Raf alone on the surface.

He lands, closes his eyes, and gives himself exactly one breath to mourn.

“Liam, can you get us out of the city through these tunnels?”

“Yes, but. What about Luna?”

“He told me to go ahead. Said he’d catch up,” Alex says hollowly.

Don’t you ever pull that shit again, Henry. I’m dead serious. My heart can’t take it.

Chapter Text

Egypt, On the way back to FUCKING HAMUNAPTRA, 1926 AD

“You really trust this guy, Alex?” Liam mutters out of the side of his mouth. “Everything I’ve ever heard about him says he’s nuts.”

“Oh, he’s one hundred percent insane, but that means he’s: one, still in Egypt, and two, willing to fly a plane as long as we frame it right.”

“What do you mean, frame it right?” Liam hisses, but they are close enough now to call a greeting so Alex ignores him.

“Winston, my man!” Alex calls over the sound of Winston’s phonograph being broadcast to the airfield. “A word?”

“Ah! Young Alexander, is it not? And with friends!” Winston calls back with a grin, gesturing them forward with his teacup. As they get closer, Alex hears Pez hum satisfactorily.

“I know he was drunk off his mind the other night, but damn he’s got style. What a set up: tea and music and shade, and just look at that scarf!”

“What does his scarf have to do with anything?” asks Liam.

“Scarves are quite important, darling. I never go anywhere without at least two.”

“Welcome to my humble little outpost, gentlemen, what can I do for you?”

“We’ve got a little bit of a problem,” Alex says. “We need to get two days into the middle of the desert as soon as humanly possible.”

Winston merely looks at him appraisingly over the rim of his teacup.

“And what’s your little problem got to do with His Majesty’s Royal Air Corps?”

“Not a damn thing.” Alex hears Liam choke on his tea in protest behind him and a swift thump that must be Pez whacking him on the back. Winston leans forward, a feverish gleam in his eyes.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Well, you probably won't live through it.”

“By jove,” Winston marvels, hurriedly putting his tea aside. “Do you really think so?”

“Everyone else we’ve bumped into has died, why not you?” Pez cuts in. There’s a pang in Alex’s heart as he remembers leaving Raf to his fate, but he pushes it down. He can mourn later, after they’ve rescued Henry and stopped the undead fucker.

Winston stands. “What’s the challenge, then?

“Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world.”

“Well it sounds easy when you say it like that,” Liam mutters.

“If Henry’s the damsel, does that make you the fairy-tale prince?” Pez asks, but luckily Winston laughs triumphantly, drowning out both their words and Alex’s choked-off noise of protest.

“Winston Havelock, at your service, sir,” he says with a sharp salute to Alex.

The air base springs to life once Winston starts barking orders. The little two-seater biplane is ready in less than twenty minutes, including fully loading the mounted machine gun with new ammo.

“I can’t help but notice that there are only two seats and four of us,” Pez says dubiously.

“Yes, we’ll have to strap two of you to the wings, I’m the only pilot on site,” Winston shrugs.

“So, who gets to ride in the plane?” asks Liam.

“Me, of course,” says Alex. “I know the coordinates and I’ve used guns like that before.”

“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Pez mutters.

“I’ve never been on a plane before, could be fun, I guess.” Liam muses.

Ten minutes later, they take off, Alex sitting behind Winston at the gun control, Liam and Pez strapped to the wings on either side. Once they even out, Alex leans over to Pez’s side, catching his attention with a sharp whistle.

“Are you alright?!” he shouts over the wind. It’s hard to be sure through the goggles, but Pez is probably glaring daggers at him.

“DO I BLOODY LOOK ALRIGHT?”

Alex flashes him a thumbs up and swings around to check in on Liam. “How ya doin’?”

Liam doesn’t answer, but his beaming smile and little wiggle of excitement tell Alex everything he needs to know, so he settles back in to watch the desert spread out behind them. From this high in the air, it’s sort of beautiful.

About halfway through, Winston gets his attention, pointing out the side of the plane where a large sand tornado is moving quickly over the dunes.

“See that? I’ve never seen one so big!”

“Never?” asks Alex with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Nope!”

Henry’s not sure of the mechanics (begrudgingly, he suspects ‘magic’), but he’s deep in the middle of a sandstorm and can hardly catch his breath with all the wind and sand. Suddenly he’s thrown without ceremony onto solid land, Hunter landing on top of him with a pained grunt.

“Get. Off. Me!” he yells, punctuating each word with a shove or a kick. The wind is still blowing hard, spraying sand all around them and Henry keeps his eyes closed as he rolls further away from Hunter with a last shove.

“I need a new job,” Hunter whines.

Suddenly the storm gets smaller, more localized, but the sand doesn’t dissipate. Instead it coalesces into the form of Imhotep, who strides past him and Hunter with purpose, aiming for some place behind Henry. With growing dread, Henry turns, his fear confirmed when he sees Hamunaptra across the plain.

“Oh my god. We’re back.”

A strange droning noise reaches his ears. As it gets louder, Henry recognizes it as a motor and looks around hastily, but there’s no cars anywhere out here. Finally he looks up and his heart leaps when he spots a yellow biplane flying over them, aiming toward the city.

“Alex,” he breathes, unable to keep his relief inside. Walking into Imhotep’s clutches had been the hardest thing he’d ever done, but to save Pez, to save Alex, he didn’t even have to think. It was only when Imhotep had ordered the mob to kill his friends that he’d started to panic. But now he had proof that at least one of them had survived, and were arriving in style. Who needs a prince on a white horse anyway?

Henry’s attention is forced away from the plane when Imhotep leans forward and releases a low, guttural howl. The hard ground in front of him cracks, releasing a gigantic wall of sand that seems to respond to Imhotep’s control. With a gesture, he sends it after the plane.

From Henry’s spot on the hill, the plane looks like the smallest bug trying to outrun a tsunami. He’s frozen in fear, mind unable to process what’s happening in front of him. In the middle of the wall of sand, the shape of a face pushes out, huge and menacing. Henry swears it smirks as the sound of a machine gun popping starts. They must have a gun on the plane, but aside from a few sprays of sand marring the face, there’s no effect.

Imhotep opens his mouth on a roar and a heartbeat later, the face in the wall of sand follows suit, swallowing up the plane completely.

“Stop it! You’ll kill them!” he shouts at Imhotep.

“That’s the idea,” Hunter says dully.

A tiny, desperate idea occurs to Henry and he runs closer to Imhotep. The regenerated mummy has his eyes closed, holding himself in a trance. Henry looks back at the wall of sand hopelessly, catching a glimpse of it tumbling in the sand wave, dangerously close to the ground.

Swallowing down his nausea, Henry reaches out and pulls Imhotep in for a kiss. It takes the undead man by surprise, knocking him out of his stillness as he kisses back. Keeping his eyes wide open, Henry spins them so he can watch the plane. The sand wave dies away, no longer under Imhotep’s control because of Henry’s distraction. With a noise of triumph, Henry pulls away.

The little plane buzzes by them, trailing dark smoke from the engine. Henry’s excitement dies away quickly as the engine sputters, pushing the plane over a dune and out of sight before crashing with a cloud of sand and smoke.

Henry stares in horror at the place where the plane disappeared, willing Alex or Pez to appear. There’s still no sign of life when Imhotep’s hand clenches his upper arm in an unforgiving grip, dragging him toward Hamunaptra without a word. Behind them, Henry hears Hunter tripping over himself to catch up.

“I loved the whole ‘sand-wall’ trick. Beautiful. One of a kind.”

Imhotep just growls without turning around, towing Henry along with him, leaving Hunter to scramble behind.

What the fuck is he supposed to do now? Nothing in Henry’s life has prepared him for this situation – nothing could have. Part of his soul is screaming, demanding that he try to pull free, go check the crash site, but Henry pushes all that aside. Imhotep is unnaturally strong, both physically and magically; there’s no way he’s getting free. As Hamunaptra gets closer with every heavy step, Henry carefully, meticulously, folds all his worries for his friends up as small as possible and stows them away. Trudging across the desert in awful silence, Henry wracks his brain for any scrap of knowledge that could delay what is rapidly looking inevitable.

Alex’s head is swimming when he comes to, blinking hard against the bright sun. He scrambles out of his seat and drops clear of the aircraft quickly when he sees that the engine is still on fire. Out of the corner of his eye, Liam cuts himself free with a particularly wicked-looking knife. As he’s moving his way around the plane to the other wing, Pez’s voice – fully annoyed, but strong and alive – cracks across the air.

“A little help would be useful, if it’s not too much trouble!” Pez is still strapped to the wing of the plane, gravity making his scarves dangle below his head, and Alex is struck with the absurd urge to laugh. Before he can help his friend, Liam strides forward with purpose and deftly unclips Pez from the harness. When Pez drops, Liam catches him easily in his arms.

“Well aren’t you all sorts of competent, then?” Pez leers. “What else are you hiding behind that ‘stoic warrior’ mask, Liam?”

“Um.” Liam is blushing furiously and Alex circles the plane to check on Winston.

“I mean, your arms aren’t even shaking. Just sweep me off my feet, why don’t you?”

“Right. Well,” Liam says haltingly before gently lowering Pez to the ground. Alex is sure the pair of them keep talking (well, Liam would keep talking while Pez would keep flirting), but as he reaches the cockpit there’s a loud rushing in his ears, like a waterfall.

Still strapped in behind the controls, is Winston. Unmoving. At least two head wounds. Alex just stares at the old pilot, willing himself not to cry. The old man never wanted to survive the war without his old buddies. He knew the risks. But preparing for it doesn’t mean it’s any easier to see it come to pass.

“Oh. Well, bollocks,” Pez says softly, squeezing Alex’s shoulder in solidarity.

“He’s with his boys now, I guess,” says Alex dully.

“Onto something new, a challenge worthy of him. And he went out in ‘flame and glory’ after all. Not rotting in—”

“‘Boredom and booze,’” Alex finishes in unison. “Right.”

“We should carry on, I suppose. Do we need—”

Pez’s words are cut off by strange metallic noise from the other end of the plane. He and Pez turn as one to see Liam yanking the machine gun and all the ammo off the back of the plane with his bare hands. Liam turns to them, clutching the gun in his hands and Alex just raises an eyebrow at him.

“Don’t you dare judge me for this, Alex. You get to run around with your guns all the time. But the Medjai have a very specific aesthetic, so it’s been all swords and horses for the last ten years. Sometimes a guy just needs a big fuck-off gun, you know?”

He throws the machine gun over his shoulder as if it weighs nothing and struts away from the smoldering wreck.

“You can take the boy out of Texas, but…” Alex trails off.

“I wish we never got into this mess at all, but I am not complaining about getting to witness all of that,” Pez says, a little absently. Alex suspects that tone has more to do with Liam’s casual display of strength than any lingering effects of their crash landing.

He and Pez follow Liam back toward the city in silence. At the top of the hill, Alex pauses for a moment and turns back to look at the bi-plane. With a howl of screeching metal, the sand surrounding the plane shifts dramatically, swallowing it up without a trace. Alex salutes the blank area in Winston’s memory before turning back and catching up with the others, more determined than ever to put a stop to Imhotep. No one else Alex loves is going to die today. Not if he can help it.

He made a wall of sand look like his face and ATE the plane, Henry. That is so far beyond the scope of our original agreement.

It’s a good thing I care about the world. And that you’re pretty.

Chapter Text

Egypt, *Heavy Sigh* Back In Hamunaptra, 1926 AD

Henry pauses at the top of the stairs, gazing in horror at the chamber opening up beneath him. The only light comes from the torches in Hunter and Imhotep’s hands. Every wall is covered with carved drawings and hieroglyphs. There’s pools of strange and foreboding-looking liquid scattered throughout the floor. In the center of the chamber, he sees two human-sized stone tables – altars, probably – next to each other.They’re empty for now, but Henry has a creeping feeling that will shortly change.

Hunter roughly shoves his shoulder from behind. “Keep moving.”

Henry refuses to let Hunter move him forward and instead uses every centimeter of height over Hunter to stare down at him.

“You know, nasty little minions such as yourself always get their comeuppance.”

Hunter gulps audibly. “They do?” he asks, voice notably higher than normal.

Henry leans down, letting his grin sharpen wickedly as he whispers, “Always.”

He walks down the stairs under his own power, smug at the faint whimper that Hunter lets out before clattering down the stairs, unwilling to stand alone in this foreboding underground city.

Imhotep moves with purpose around the chamber and Henry realizes with a jolt that Imhotep remembers this room. He pulls canopic jars from his robes, placing them precisely on the edge of one of the stone tables. Imhotep motions impatiently at Hunter, indicating that he should light more torches; Hunter squeaks and scrambles to obey.

A gunshot echoes through the oppressive silence.

Henry can’t help but sigh, “Alex,” – hoping with all his might that he’s right.

In the blink of an eye, Imhotep opens a new canister and shakes out a handful of fine powder. Holding his palm flat, he turns to the carvings of men on the closest wall and blows the powder at them. There’s a beat, the sound of stone cracking, and then the pictures are moving and two skeletons materialize out of the wall, bowing to Imhotep.

Henry steps back in fear, bumping into Hunter behind him. “The Bembridge scholars never wrote about this,” he mutters to himself.

Imhotep draws himself up to his full height and the Ancient Egyptian the pours from his mouth makes Henry’s blood run cold.

“Kill the intruders and wake the others.”

Henry doesn’t have time for more than a single moment of unadulterated horror before his world goes black.

Alex grunts as he shifts rock after rock, trying to clear the secret entrance into Hamunaptra that Liam directed them to. Apparently, when “overzealous Americans” haven’t “utterly destroyed the place” the secret door opens with a cleverly hidden lever and it’s super easy to get inside. Alex had pointed out that Liam is just as American as he is, and the other group did way more damage to the hidden city than he did, and started shifting rocks. With a sigh, Liam joined in while Pez got a torch lit.

“You know, you should really take the rocks from the top first or the whole lot will come down on us.” Alex meets Liam’s eyes and reads the same fond exasperation on Liam’s face that he’s feeling. Conveniently for Pez, there’s only room for two of them to clear the entry way at a time. “Go on lads, put your backs into it!” Pez chivvys.

Abruptly, Alex is a lot less fond. He straightens up to stare at Pez in disbelief and sees Liam do the same out of the corner of his eye. Pez has the good sense to look abashed and he ducks his head. “Yes, well, you’ve got the idea, I’ll just let you get on with it shall I?”

With a roll of their eyes, Alex and Liam get back to work. Pez starts pacing behind them, impatient as Alex is to get to Henry. A short moment later and Pez’s voice floats over the thuds of rock on sand.

“Woah. You gents should come look at this…”

They keep clearing, focused on breaking through, only stopping when a scream from Pez pierces through the quiet scrape of rocks. Alex whips around and sees him freaking out, scrabbling frantically at his own arm and whimpering in pain.

“What happened?!”

“My arm, it’s crawling up my arm!”

Alex can’t see a fucking thing so he yanks Pez’s scarves off and rips the thin shirt open enough to expose Pez’s upper chest and arms. Bile-like revulsion rises up his throat at the sight of a moving lump traveling under Pez’s skin. It seems to scuttle up the outside of his bicep and over his shoulder. The closer it creeps to Pez’s heart, the harder Pez thrashes.

“Do something, oh my god, do something,” whimpers Pez.

“Hold him still,” Alex spits at Liam as he flips open his butterfly knife with a flick of his wrist and moves even closer.

“Don’t do that something,” Pez protests, but Alex ignores him, quickly plunging his knife into the side of the lump. Pez yelps with every movement of Alex’s knife, but Alex blocks out the noises, instinctively knowing he has to carve whatever it is out quickly or risk Pez’s life. He scrapes around the edge of the quivering mass and then flings his knife out and away from their group. A buzzing, clicking, blueish, blackish something flies off the end of his knife and hits the ground. Alex recognizes it as one of the flesh-eating beetles that Henry had disgusted the Americans with on their first night in Hamunaptra, but this one is still alive. The scarab is stunned from hitting the ground and Alex takes the chance to draw his pistol and aim carefully. He shoots and hits the beetle dead on, its guts flying everywhere. It doesn’t move again.

“Your aim’s gotten better,” Liam comments faintly after a tense moment, still gripping Pez by the shoulders.

“Fuck you too,” Alex says, cleaning his knife with his own scarf.

“You alright, Pez?”

“Well I’m bleeding a fair amount, but I’m alive so I’ll take it,” Pez rasps. Liam leaps into action, dressing the wound on Pez’s chest with strips of his outershirt. Pez is quiet except for a couple sharp intakes of breath as pressure is applied to the knife wound. Liam then takes off his own wrist wrap and buckles it carefully around the beetle-entry wound on Pez’s wrist more gently than Alex has ever seen him do anything before now. When Pez finally looks up, his eyes are wide with some emotion that Alex can’t quite name as he meets Liam’s gaze.

“Thank you, Liam,” says Pez softly.

“I’d say any time, but I don’t want you making a habit out of getting hurt,” Liam murmurs back.

Alex looks away from the tender scene, tears pricking at the backs of his eyes. Fuck he wishes Henry were here. He shakes himself mentally and moves back to the blocked doorway to shift more rocks. He can cry later, after Imhotep is dead for good and Henry is safe in his arms. It’s quick enough work and Alex has the door clear before Liam and Pez finish staring into each other’s eyes or whatever.

The room Alex edges into is almost pitch black, the only source of light far away and near what must be the ceiling. There’s a circular something, sort of glowing with a cold light and Alex can’t help but smirk as he remembers Henry’s excitement when they’d first dropped underground. Drawing his pistol, he takes careful aim and fires at the mirror. It spins wildly before landing at the correct angle to bounce light all over the new chamber.

Alex’s jaw drops as he looks at pile after pile of treasure: statues and jewelry and scrolls and money, all in brilliantly shining gold. Any other time, he’d be ecstatic, would already be doing the mental arithmetic about how much he could feasibly haul back to Cairo to sell. But for all the wealth in the room, the most precious item is missing: Henry. Alex pushes the daydream of riches aside and beckons the other two into the room.

Pez speaks, voice full of wonder and longing. “Can you see—”

“Yes,” Alex cuts him off.

“Can you believe—”

“Yes.”

“Can we just—”

“No.” Alex refuses to let them get distracted by history or riches now, not when they’re so close to rescuing Henry. He’s barely taken three more steps before the sand in front of him starts moving.

A group of mummies crawl their way up through the floor and advance on the three of them. Alex doesn’t even think before drawing his shotgun and firing. Next to him, Liam is already using the bi-plane’s machine gun to devastating effect. Even Pez, who only uses firearms when given no other option, pulls Alex’s pistols from his holsters and fires wildly. When one of them is out of ammo, Pez throws the gun itself and nails one mummy in the head hard enough to separate the skull from the body. Still firing, Alex shoves the other two behind him and into a new hallway, desperate to put some space between them, buy them some time to find the statue.

It seems like only seconds later, but Alex is panting hard by the time Pez is shouting, “There! That’s Horus’ statue!”

He shoves his shotgun into Pez’s hands. “Cover me, I can buy us some time.” A quick search of his bag produces a very handy stick of dynamite. He lights it with surprisingly steady fingers while the other two keep the horde at bay.

“Time to close the door!” He chucks it at the center of the mob and crouches, pulling the other two down with him. The explosion at their backs louder than Alex was ready for, echoing wildly off the stone. He straightens up with his ears still ringing a little. “I don’t know how long that’ll hold them, let’s get this fucking book.”

“It’ll be buried at the base,” Pez says, striding forward with purpose. “We’ll have to dig again.”

“Right. Liam, cover the door.” He nods, standing with his back to them, gun at the ready. They break through the sand below the statue with relative ease, but the chest they find is wedged tight.

“It’s almost like they didn’t want anyone messing with this stuff, huh?” Alex grunts, yanking ineffectually.

“Almost like that, yes,” Pez grits out. They pull together and manage to slide it a whole half an inch. Behind them, Liam starts firing. Craning his head around, Alex sees a new wave of stupid undead priests. Great.

“These guys just don’t quit do they!”

“Just keep working on getting that book,” Liam says grimly, striding forward to meet them, brandishing the machine gun.

A bang and a prolonged tremor bring Henry back into awareness in confusion and pain, feeling stone beneath his back and aching shoulders. His arms are shackled tight above his head, his feet pulled to full extension and securing him on top of a stone surface – likely one of the altars he noticed earlier. Not good.

A look to his right reveals a series of canopic jars lined up with exacting detail, just far enough away that no matter how much squirming he does, Henry can’t knock them off. And he certainly tries, twisting his hips and knees in increasingly uncomfortable ways, but nothing works. Very not good.

He freezes when he feels something climbing across his stomach. Straining to look down at his body, vision swimming alarmingly, Henry makes out a rat meandering its way over him. He swallows down his instinct to scream like a bloody banshee, not wanting to draw anyone or anything’s attention more than he already has. He takes a deep, centering breath and turns his gaze to the left and away from the vermin crawling across him and the sight that greets him makes Henry think: should have kept eyes on the rat.

Henry has seen a lot of mummies in his work at the museum, in all states of preservation. But it’s one thing to examine them with a scientific detachment and quite another to be practically nose to nose with one. He starts pulling against his restraints with renewed vigor, desperate to get away.

Out of the corner of his eye, Henry sees Imhotep stalking towards the altar, cradling the Book of the Dead like a newborn child, and his heart sinks. Whoever made these shackles knew what they were doing: excellent craftsmanship, hard-wearing, no weak points whatsoever. In almost any other context, Henry would be giddy at the quality, but right now, he’s cursing the craftsman’s entire lineage because he can’t get out.

A few words of Ancient Egyptian from Imhotep and suddenly the altar is surrounded by more walking skeletons. Imhotep reaches the altar and smirks down at Henry; he can’t help but arch his body as far as possible, desperate to put any distance between himself and that abomination. Imhotep’s expression softens as it moves to the mummy next to Henry. He slowly reaches out a hand and caresses its face, murmuring sweetly.

“My Ang-us-namun,” croons Imhotep. Henry’s heart sinks even further. Everything that he’s read about means he knows it’s too late to hope for rescue.

The ritual is about to begin.

Another bang, closer this time, actually shakes the room enough that dust falls from the ceiling. Henry’s heart lifts – only two people he knows carry that much mayhem wherever they go.

“Pez! Alex!”

Finally, among spraying sand and the sound of bones exploding, he and Pez manage to pry the chest free. Alex stops Pez from opening it right away, something pinging in his memory. He aims the top toward the nearest clump of priests and wrenches the top open from behind it. A stream of something shoots out of the chest and hits the skeletons. An unholy screech later, and four priests are melted.

“Shit, was that what got the American’s diggers?” Pez asks, shaken.

Alex nods. “Pressurized salt acid. Should be safe to get the book out now.”

Pez pulls out a rectangular package wrapped in ancient linen. He unwraps it slowly, and Alex feels something in him unclench when the gold cover is revealed. They have the right book, thank fuck. Behind him, he hears the ominous click of an empty gun chamber.

“Fuck!” Liam yells, backing away from yet more priests (how many did that fucker make anyway?), throwing the machine gun aside. “Save Henry, kill the creature!” He unslings Alex’s empty shotgun from his back and brandishes it in front of him, edging toward the back of chamber. The priests follow him as though compelled.

Alex takes advantage of their distraction to light another stick of dynamite. It’s sparking in his hand, the wick burning down, but he hesitates. There’s no way to throw it and not injure Liam. As if sensing his thoughts, Liam shouts again.

“Don’t wait – go! Get to him while you still can!”

Alex throws the dynamite.

Pieces of priest bones fly every which way. When the smoke clears, nothing is moving, but there’s no sign of Liam, either. Alex turns away. Liam is smart, he probably ran off around the corner, he’s fine, he’s probably on his way out right now. There’s no time to check.

“You good?”

Pez nods, but he’s staring at the empty space where Liam was with something akin to despondency.

“Pez! Alex!”

The shout is faint, but Alex and Pez whip around at the sound. Henry.

“Let’s go get our boy,” Pez says.

“After you.”

There’s only one thought in Alex’s head when he and Pez find the chamber where Imhotep has set up shop: for shit’s sake.

He managed to find the creepiest room in the whole place. The walls are more cobweb than stone, and there are barely enough torches to pass even a cursory safety inspection. Pools of churning purple-black ooze are scattered throughout the chamber. Smack in the center of the chamber, there are two stone altars ringed by yet more undead priests and torches. On one slab is a mummy, a proper one this time, not a drop of body juice in sight. And on the other – Henry. He’s stretched out, each limb shackled at the corresponding corner in a way that must be massively uncomfortable. Even from the ledge where he and Pez are perched, Alex can tell he’s scared out of his mind.

And then Imhotep starts chanting from the black book, and Alex is dropping into the chamber proper without a thought. He lands softly and stalks closer, grabbing a sword out of a statue’s hand as he goes. If he can sneak up on Imhotep, he can stab the fucker. The chanting gets louder and more guttural and Alex freezes when one of the pools of ooze starts rising into the air. It’s somehow neither liquid or gas, some nebulous thing that would look more at home at the bottom of the ocean than in the middle of a desert. It bobs and weaves through the air and toward the altar, like a snake following its charmer. The mass hovers above the wrapped mummy for a heartbeat, then Imhotep says one final word and it sinks beneath the wrappings.

The body arches off the slab with a scream of what sounds like pain. Henry has braced himself as far from the half-regenerated form next to him as possible, horror etched across his features. Alex gets moving again, sword raised, but it seems Imhotep isn’t done. He says something that isn’t English, but Alex understands enough when Imhotep raises a knife above Henry’s chest and Henry’s screams curdle his blood.

The chance for surprise has passed. Instead, Alex bellows and rushes the priests, hacking with the sword, working his way steadily toward the altars. The commotion makes Imhotep pause before he can stab Henry. Alex breaks through the ring and runs at Imhotep, but doesn’t get more than two steps toward him before another line of priests pops up out of the ground and forces him back off the dais. Fuck.

Henry’s still dazed from whatever Imhotep did to him and the violent yo-yo his emotions are going through isn’t helping to clear his head any faster. All he knows is that he was about to be stabbed to complete the ritual when he heard Alex’s yell. He can see flashes of a sword between skeleton priests but can’t make out Alex clearly. Imhotep is still hovering over him, and Henry closes his eyes against the horror of his death. There’s nowhere for him to go, no way to escape the knife.

“Henry! We found the book!” Pez’s shout from above has Henry’s eyes popping open in shock. Above him, Imhotep’s eyes widen in recognition. “The Book of Amun Ra,” he says in Ancient Egyptian, and then he leaves the dais and heads toward the stairs, clearly intent on relieving Pez of his burden by any means necessary.

“Pez, don’t just stand there! You have to open the book and find the inscription, it's the only way to kill him!”

“I can’t open it, it’s locked. We need that puzzle box key thing, Henry!” Pez calls back, but at least he’s moving now, no longer a stationary target. Henry tries to think through his raging headache, and a dim memory swims to the surface.

“The mummy has it! It’s in his robes!”

“Roger that, Hazza!”

Henry groans and closes his eyes as another bolt of pain lances through his head. The scrape of metal on bone is closer now. Alex. He can hear Alex breathing hard, presumably trying to brute force his way through the ring of undead priests surrounding the altar. There’s a swish, a clatter, a clang, and then his left wrist is released from its shackle. He moves that hand down carefully, trying not to strain the muscles there even more. The adrenaline rushing through Henry’s body is finally starting to push aside the pain in his head, and he risks opening his eyes.

Alex is quite dashing when he’s wielding a sword and coming to Henry’s rescue like a fairy tale prince. Henry’s actually a little mad that his vision is still wobbling a bit; he wants to remember every second of this. Alex is a blur of motion, a tornado of sword moves and punches and the occasional kick. Henry’s eyes focus long enough to see him plant one hand on the altar and push himself into the air to kick the skull off one of the priests. Very attractive. Ten out of ten, would watch again. Somewhere in the chaos, Alex manages to cut his ankles free as well. Henry scrabbles at the last shackle— might as well try and get the rest of the way free rather than just uselessly staring at Alex’s corded forearms as he whirls around the altar.

Alex has worked his way almost fully around the altar now and slices the skull off what seems to be the last priest. The undead priest bobbles its own skull, and Alex uses the flat part of the sword like a cricket bat, whacking the skull out of his line of sight.

“Fucking mummies,” he says, staring at Henry with something wild and triumphant in his eyes. If Henry wasn’t already lying down and dizzy, the heat in his gaze would have made him have to sit down and fan himself. Alex moves forward and lines up his sword with the last shackle. He pulls back to cut through, but then disappears with a yelp of surprise. Henry struggles upright as much as possible and sees that several of the newly-partial skeletons are working together to pin Alex to the ground. Alex is too busy fighting to reclaim his sword to see the third undead priest limp forward holding a huge slab of stone above its head menacingly.

“Alex, look out!”

Somehow, Alex gets his sword and swipes at the feet of the advancing mummy. It stumbles, no longer attached to its own feet, and falls backward, squished by the slab. He dispatches the other two skeletons in the blink of an eye and then he’s at Henry’s side again.

“Thanks for the warning, sweetheart.”

Henry’s breath catches at the endearment. “Anytime.” Alex cuts through the last shackle and pulls Henry off the altar and into his arms. Henry chokes on a sob of relief and lets his head fall on Alex’s shoulder. Alex pulls him tight, muttering in rapid Spanish. Henry can’t understand a word of it through the pounding in his head, but it sounds like curses and blessings both. Henry just wants to be held for a moment, just wants to pause. He knows there’s still the Big Bad of the century to stop and Pez is around somewhere, but right now, Alex is hugging him close and Henry lets himself sag into his strength. Somehow, he still smells like bloody cinnamon.

Dimly, he hears Pez saying something. It’s not English, and the cadence sounds like he’s reciting something. Henry finally recognizes Ancient Egyptian and jerks his head up in alarm, half pulling out of Alex’s arms. That’s not the right incantation.

“Well dip me in shit.” Pez’s flat voice echoes in the ominous silence. Henry sees what he’s wrought a moment later. Can’t they catch a break?

Somehow, Pez has managed to summon undead soldiers. Because of course he did. Alex swears under his breath as a line of four soldiers advance on the pair of them. Alex pushes Henry behind him and they back up slowly, careful to edge around the twin altars.

“This just keeps getting better and better,” Alex mutters, readying his sword.

Henry watches the soldiers, eyes flicking to the sides occasionally to see if another exit has appeared since he last checked. “Do something, Pez!” he yells, voice shaking rather more than he’d like. If Pez doesn’t figure something out, and soon, they’re all screwed.

You really have to remember to tell us the whole plan, sweetheart. You can’t just expect us to read your mind all the time.

Chapter Text

Egypt, A Dream: One Day We Won’t Be in Hamunaptra Anymore, 1926

“Me? You’ve got to be joking!”

It takes everything in Henry not to actually hit himself in the forehead in frustration.

“Finish the inscription on the cover, you bloody numpty, then you can control the soldiers!”

“If we weren’t in deep, steaming shit right now, we’d be having words about your tone, Hazza darling.”

Henry is distracted from further witty-as-a-coping-mechanism-for-fear-repartee as he’s yanked away from Alex’s back by the scruff of his neck. The yelp of surprise gets stuck in his throat as he makes eye (eye-to-bandage?) contact with the mummy that was lying next to him. Ang-us-namun. From the corner of his eye, he sees Alex start toward them, sword raised, but a shouted command from Imhotep across the chamber has the skeleton soldiers pressing their advantage. Heart in his throat at seeing Alex surrounded, Henry’s on his own, weaponless, and likely without backup anytime soon. Bugger.

He quickly kicks out at the mummy’s knee and then sprints for the far side of the chamber. If he can hide from Imhotep’s old lover for long enough, Pez might just have the chance to turn the tide in their favor. The old tombs are decent hiding places, or would be, if Ang-us-namun wasn’t preternaturally fast despite being several millennia old. He bobs and weaves, spinning away from the mummy’s blows as best he can. He dashes away again and ducks behind a new tomb.

“Hurry up, Pez!”

“I can’t figure out this last symbol.”

“What does it look like?” Like nothing so much as a particularly virulent venereal disease, Ang-us-namun pops up again. Henry dodges the first punch, but he’s a touch too slow for the second and he staggers to the side.

The mummy takes advantage of his shot balance and body slams him against the tomb, dazing him even more. Before he knows it, a mostly-dead hand lifts him off the ground by the throat. Helplessly, Henry scrabbles at the hold, to no effect.

“It’s a bird of some sort— Oh, it’s a stork!”

Ang-us-namun has a short knife-type-thing in his other hand now, pulled from who knows where, hovering menacingly just above Henry’s heart. Henry can’t speak around the hand at his throat, through the lack of air. His eyes rove wildly around the room, taking in Imhotep still stalking Pez, and Alex desperately fighting four soldiers at once. He stumbles to the ground, sword flying out of his hand. He starts crab-walking away from the group of soldiers with their swords drawn, pulling Henry’s heartstrings tighter with every foot. Henry has to speak; failure is not an option, in this world or any other.

With a massive effort, Henry chokes “ahmenophus,” hoping it’s loud enough for Pez to hear. His vision is going black at an alarming rate; Henry doesn’t think he’ll get a second chance to communicate with Pez. He keeps his eyes on Alex – if this doesn’t work, he wants Alex to be the last thing he sees.

“Jolly good, mate,” Pez says, maddeningly calm despite the chaos, before using his voice to full effect and positively booming out, “Hootash im ahmenophus!”

Right before the swords run Alex through, they halt in unison. Each soldier straightens up to attention and faces Pez. Henry can see Pez now, off to the side between him and Alex. The look of satisfied surprise on his face is almost enough to make Henry laugh.

“Destroy him,” Imhotep orders the soldiers, gesturing at Alex, but they don’t move. Abruptly, Henry realizes that Ang-us-namun’s grip on his throat has slacked slightly, distracted by the commotion. He wrenches himself free, gratefully pulling air into his lungs. A shriek of rage comes from Ang-us-namun and he attacks with his knife in earnest. Henry stumbles back, keeping just ahead of the blade.

“Destroy Ang-us-namun!” Pez’s command echoes through the chamber. With a mighty leap, the soldiers vault across the chamber and start stabbing Ang-us-namun. His screeches are awful, a shiver goes down Henry’s spine. He stays where he is for now, leaning back against the wall and catching his breath.

Before Henry can recover enough to even think about what’s next, Imhotep seems to fly across the chamber in a rage, right at Pez. He lifts Pez up by the throat, (seriously is that an Ancient Egyptian thing or just a former lovers thing?) ready to kill the man responsible for Ang-us-namun’s (second) death. “Now you die,” he snarls.

Ever the hero, Alex appears as if from nowhere, sword in hand once more. There’s a flash of metal in the torchlight and Imhotep is separated from his own arm with great prejudice. Pez falls to the ground in a flutter of scarves, but still alive, and scrambles away still clutching the locked Book of Life.

Christ, even getting his arm chopped off doesn’t seem to be slowing Imhotep down. With his remaining arm, he grabs the strap of Alex’s holster and throws him across the room, stomping after him, intent on doling out more damage.

As a side note, if Henry never has to watch someone reattach their own arm, it’ll be too soon.

Henry’s about to do something idiotic like run to Alex’s side and fight a functionally immortal undead creature with nothing more than his fists, when Pez pssts from behind a statue, holding up the puzzle box. Bless Pez’s pick-pocketing hobby, honestly; he must have lifted it out of Imhotep’s robe whilst being strangled. Hope surges up in Henry and he rushes to Pez’s side, only looking back once to see Alex push himself to his feet. Still fine then – relatively, anyway.

“Here, get it open — I’ll hold it, it’s bloody heavy,” Pez says, shoving the puzzle box at him.

Henry twists the box open and fits it in the lock. “Yes, well it’s made of gold, what did you expect?” The lock opens with a click and Henry turns pages in a hurry, skimming the hieroglyphs frantically and calling over his shoulder, “Keep him busy, Alex!”

There’s an ominous thud and what sounds like something squishy and heavy sliding down a stone surface. The muffled, “No problem,” confirms that Alex was the one who made involuntary contact with a wall. Henry turns more pages. Where is it? From the sounds of things, Imhotep is kicking Alex’s arse all over the chamber, so if Henry wants him in one piece, he better find the incantation quickly.

“Hurry, H, hurry,” Pez mutters, watching the fighting over Henry’s shoulder, eyes wide and worried.

“You’re not helping,” Henry responds in a singsong, then gasps when his fingers find the hieroglyphs he’s been searching for. He spins to face Imhotep, who has unhinged his bloody jaw – like that’s a normal thing – and looks like he’s about to eat Alex whole.

“Kadeesh mal! Kadeesh mal! Pared oos! PARED OOS!” Henry shouts, every fiber of his being focusing on the inflection and intent behind each word. They’re only getting one shot at this.

Imhotep looks scared for the first time since regaining a human form. He restores his jaw to normal human standards and drops Alex, who takes the chance to stagger to Henry’s side. He’s bleeding and limping, but still upright, and Henry lets the relieved grin take over his face.

“Doing all right then?”

“Oh yeah,” Alex drawls, leaning against Henry’s shoulder. “Never better. Practically a spa day.”

In a flash, the torches turn from orange fire to blue, blanketing the room in an eerie glow. The temperature in the chamber drops noticeably, and Henry shivers. Pez and Alex draw in closer, Alex putting an arm around Henry’s waist. The warmth from his arm is almost shocking and Henry melts into the contact. There’s a strange noise coming from the top of the stairs. Imhotep is hovering in place, clearly unable to decide which way to go through his fear. As the noise gets louder, Henry realizes it sounds like wheels and hooves on cobblestones.

A ghostly chariot bursts into view at the top of the stairs. The otherworldly neighing makes all the hair on the back of Henry’s neck stand up. The chariot careens down the stairs, aiming straight for Imhotep. He tries to run away, but the chariot is too fast, and it passes right through him, dragging Imhotep’s soul from his body as it goes. Imhotep screams in pain and the chariot uses the far side of the chamber to turn in a wide arc before heading back to the stairs, Imhotep’s soul flailing like a particularly ugly windsock behind it. Imhotep chases after his own soul part of the way up the stairs, but as quickly as it appeared, the chariot is gone again.

The torches flicker back to orange, the room warms up, and Henry feels like he can breathe again. Imhotep spins around from halfway up the stairs, eyes furiously locked on Henry this time, and starts running at them, screaming in rage.

“I thought you said this was gonna kill him,” Alex sighs. “Just once I’d like the solution to be one fucking step instead of twelve.” He lets go of Henry to scoop up the sword, miraculously laying nearby. He takes up position in front of Henry and Pez, every inch a figure out of legends, the epitome of a hero.

Imhotep moves quickly, so intent on getting to Henry he doesn’t register Alex stabbing him through the stomach until he can’t move any further forward. Imhotep blinks and reaches down to where he’s impaled. His hand comes up covered in blood.

“He’s mortal now,” Henry breathes, more than a little relieved that it worked. It fucking worked.

Alex pulls the sword free and Imhotep staggers backward in pain and shock and falls into one of the pools of shifting ooze. As he stands there, sunk to his waist, Imhotep starts to decay again before their eyes. The goop is unpleasant to look at, almost seeming to reveal faces in each ripple as it surges around Imhotep and pulls him lower until only his face is visible. Imhotep’s face is the last thing to morph back into a skeleton, eyes staring right at Henry. He rasps out one last menacing phrase before sinking completely below the surface of muck.

Henry translates into the tense silence: “Death is only the beginning.”

All of Alex hurts. Actually, that’s underplaying it. Alex feels like he’s been thrown into a mortar mixer and then scraped across bricks by inexpert masons.

“We’re done now, right?” he asks, just shy of a desperate plea, half-leaning on the sword to keep himself upright.

As if the universe was listening and decided to fuck with them some more for daring to be at all optimistic, an earthshaking thud reverberates through the room. A beat of breathless silence. And then sand starts raining from the sky all around the room as the fucking ceiling starts lowering.

“Time to go!” he yells. Trying to ignore his screaming muscles, Alex drags himself into action, ditching the sword so he can grab each of the others by the wrist and pull them after him up the stairs. They have to get out of this lowest chamber before the exit is cut off. At the top of the stairs he hears a splash and then Henry yanks his wrist out of Alex’s. When he looks back, Henry is dancing in place next to a pool of gross ghost goo, gesturing frantically.

“You lost the book?! Pez I can’t believe you—”

Alex and Pez double back without talking about it and each grab a wrist again.

“Not the time, Hazza!”

Alex leads the way through hallways deluged by waterfalls of sand, one arm above his head in a fruitless attempt to keep his eyes and mouth clear. A few breathless minutes of running and they end up in the treasure room. The back entrance he, Pez, and Liam came through earlier is so close.

“Over here!” Alex calls as he aims toward the door.

“Pez!”

Alex stops again at the distress in Henry’s voice. Pez has halted in the middle of the room, gazing around at all the treasure that’s about to be lost, probably forever. With a frustrated sigh, he and Henry go back for Pez.

“Couldn’t we just—”

“NO!” he and Henry yell at the same time, dragging Pez along behind them. God save him from any more misguided priorities of Englishmen, they don’t have time for this – Alex can see the exit up another set of stairs, closing faster now.

“Move! Dive through,” he says, pushing Henry and Pez forward before throwing himself through after them.

“Diiiaaaaaaaaaaaz!” Of course. Fucking Hunter, somehow still alive, has found them. Hell, he’s probably responsible for the collapse of Hamunaptra. It seems like the sort of thing that’s Hunter’s fault.

Alex reaches his hand out, ready to pull Hunter through once he reaches the top. But Hunter’s too slow, and even if Alex managed to grab hold of him, there’s not enough space left for a body. He retracts his arm, and the opening closes with an echoing thud. Alex sags, panting. Hunter’s a fucking shithead, but Alex had mostly been kidding about actually killing him. A maiming would have sufficed. Apparently the universe disagreed.

“Bye, Hunter,” he mutters. A hand appears in his field of vision. Alex blinks away a tear he’s sure Hunter doesn’t actually deserve and lets Henry haul him to his feet.

“We’re not out yet, love, c’mon.”

“Moving. That’s a thing I can do. For sure.”

Henry snorts, and it's so undignified that Alex can’t stop the giggle that escapes.

“I can see daylight, lads, get a move on!” Pez calls from up ahead.

They burst out of the ground and into blinding sunshine and utter mayhem. The ground is shaking, columns and statues falling, camels galumphing and horses cantering in every direction. It’s all the three of them can do to keep running, dodging flying stones and spraying sand and frantic animals. Finally after the longest two minutes of his life to date, Alex hears an almighty crash and gets knocked off his feet by the percussive wave. He, Pez, and Henry all land in a heap, but the world is finally still. They manage to get on their feet again and Alex just gapes in horrified amazement at the site they just fled from.

The whole city is gone. Not even one ruin left to disturb the unnaturally flat plain; it’s like the desert swallowed Hamunaptra whole, unwilling to let one stone see the light of day ever again.

Pez yelps and Alex spins, winding up for another fight, when he recognizes the rider that evidently came up behind them.

“Give me a bloody heart attack, why don’t you?” Pez snaps at Liam, clutching his chest.

“And here I thought you’d be pleased to see me,” Liam pouts.

Pez sniffs. “Two things can be true.”

Alex is ready to tease Liam to within an inch of his life for the blush on his cheeks when a second voice has him whirling around in disbelief.

“So you got out alright after all. Bueno. Now I won’t have to tell your parents,” Raf says with a tired grin. He looks a little rough around the edges, but he’s alive.

“Mr. Luna!” Henry gasps.

“I just saved the fucking world,” Alex says, refusing to acknowledge the crack in his voice. Henry’s hand comes to rest on the small of his back in support. It’s fine. Alex is fine about it. “Could you not drag me like this?”

Raf just raises one eyebrow. “I could inform Zahra you got arrested in a foreign country?”

“We’re good actually. Glad you’re alive,” Alex says, leaning back into Henry reflexively and turns his attention back to Liam in time to see his face go all gooey at Pez.

“You have earned my respect and gratitude,” he says softly, blanching when he realizes everyone is paying attention to them. “And that of the rest of the Medjai, obviously.”

“It was nothing, really,” Pez’s mouth says. His face says something quite different.

“As the Medjai say: May Allah smile upon you always,” Liam says, saluting them as he sits straight and readies his reins.

Pez nods, all wistful fondness. “And yourself, my good man. You know where to find me, I trust.”

“That I do,” Liam winks, and nudges his horse away.

“Goodbye to you too, Ardeth,” Alex calls sarcastically. “Next time, less with the trying to stab me with a sword!”

“No promises!” he calls back, trotting toward the cliffs.

“Later, Raf.”

“Do try to stay out of trouble, Alex,” he says, looking pointedly at the lack of space between him and Henry.

“That is a gross misinterpretation of what happened here—” “I’ll ensure it, Mr. Luna,” Henry cuts in.

“Heaven help us all,” Raf mutters, before kicking his horse into a trot and joining Liam, both of them disappearing into the distance.

“Wait,” Pez says, “they’re just leaving us here?”

“There are still camels around, and I can get us back to Cairo. We’ll be okay,” Alex shrugs. Henry’s hand strokes up and down his back and Alex fights the urge to purr in contentment.

“After all that, we have no treasure, no puzzle box, no book. We’re just leaving here with nothing?”

“Well, we did save the world,” Henry points out, drier than the sand around them. “We have the satisfaction of a job well done.”

Pez just rolls his eyes at that. “But we’re leaving empty handed.”

Alex gets his own arm around Henry and looks up into his eyes. Fuck they’re so goddamn blue, Alex isn’t sure how he ever managed to function around them up to this point. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Oh, please,” Pez groans.

Alex barely hears him over the catch in Henry’s breathing, over his own thundering heartbeat. The rest of the world drops away, leaving himself and Henry in a cocoon of intense eye contact and swirling feelings. Slowly, he reaches up and drags the back of his knuckles along Henry’s cheekbones, delights in the way Henry shivers at the touch, eyes fluttering. He keeps moving his hand until it’s around the back of Henry’s head and pulls him down into a searing kiss.

Alex pours everything he’s feeling – all the worry and longing and fear and desire and frustration and love and exhaustion and relief – into the kiss, and Henry meets him beat for beat, just as passionate, just as loving. Henry’s arms come around his waist and pull Alex even closer, and Alex sinks further into the embrace. Henry kisses like it’s all he needs to survive – like he’d shrivel up if forced to remove his mouth from Alex’s. Their lips meet and retreat, only to press close again and again, unwilling to go further than a hair’s breadth away. Henry’s hand comes up to card through Alex’s curls and Alex pushes up on his toes, desperate to be closer. Wants to fuse them together, a package deal, so close that no one will ever get one of them without the other.

Henry eventually pulls back with a gasp, trying to catch his breath again. Alex doesn’t let him go very far, using the hand he still has at Henry’s jaw to tip Henry’s forehead against his own. When he opens his eyes, Henry’s are already open, staring down at him in ecstatic disbelief.

“Alex,” Henry whispers.

“Hey, baby,” Alex croons back, delighting at the way the pet name makes Henry groan and drag him in for another kiss. This kiss is decidedly less soft than their first, all heat and tongues and roving hands.

“Oy, lovebirds.” Alex and Henry break apart at Pez’s annoyed yell. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’re still in the middle of the sodding desert. Incidentally, while I would certainly never turn down an opportunity to see you fall apart, Mr. Claremont-Diaz—” Henry sort of squawks in protest. It shouldn’t be cute. It is. “Henry is practically my brother, and I shall simply expire if forced to witness your coupling. You must cease and desist.”

Alex’s brain is too tired to parse all that, too muddled from getting tossed around like a rag doll and then kissed within an inch of his life. All he manages to get out is an oh-so-intelligent, “Huh?”

“Keep it in your pants till we get back to Cairo, or I will leave you both here without a camel. Clear?”

“Crystal.” He can’t resist leaving Henry with one last kiss before reluctantly stepping out of the circle of his arms to wrangle a few camels. While there are more than enough camels roaming around, only two of them still have saddles. He checks the saddlebags, hoping for water when he hears a clinking from the biggest bag. He opens the flap and grins.

“Not so empty handed after all, Pez,” he calls down from the back of the camel, interrupting Pez and Henry’s furious whispering. The fact that Henry’s beet red and Pez is looking smug means they were definitely talking about him. Score. “It’s stuffed full of gold.”

“That is good news. I can’t help but notice, however, that there are only two camels and three of us.”

“Only two saddles,” he shrugs. “Someone will have to double up or be on alert the whole way back to the Bedouin camp so they don’t fall off.”

“Right then. Henry, get up there behind your strumpet, you’ll both be insufferable otherwise.” Pez moves away to mount his own camel and nudges it into a walk. Alex offers a hand to Henry, who ignores it in favor of practically leaping into the saddle behind him, curling around him like nested parentheses.

“Hello, strumpet,” Henry breathes into his ear. Alex’s whole nervous system snaps into focus at the words, but he makes an effort to seem unaffected.

“I feel like I should be offended by that,” he says lightly. Henry’s chuckle tells him that he was not as nonchalant as he might have wished.

“But you’re not.”

“But I’m not,” he agrees. “Now keep your slutty, slutty voice to yourself so I can steer us back to the camp and then back to Cairo.”

“Are you saying I’m distracting?”

“I’m saying that if you distract me we’ll be stuck in this desert forever and I won’t be able to take you apart in all the ways I want to when we get back to Cairo.”

“Oh.” Alex shouldn’t turn around. If he turns, he’ll see Henry’s face and get distracted all over again. He should focus on getting them away from Hamunaptra.

He turns. Henry’s pupils are totally blown, gaze unfocused. Alex kisses him, he can’t help it. But he keeps it short and faces forward again, urging the camel to catch up with Pez’s. He’s not too cut up about the delay. He’ll survive.

After all, they’ve got all the time in the world now.

Chapter Text

London, Our Flat, 1933 AD

So, there you have it. The full story of how Henry almost destroyed the world and I had to swoop in and save it.

You’re trying to think of a way to refute that, but you can’t, can you, baby? No, you can’t. Because I got thrown across rooms and attacked with swords and chased by locusts and evil undead mummy guys so I think I get to be smug about saving the world for the rest of my natural life, actually.

Hmmm, interesting. While you raise an interesting point that if the ancient guys hadn’t done the Hom-Dai there wouldn’t have been anyone to wake from the dead when you read from the book, YOU STILL READ FROM THE BOOK, HENRY. Liam and the rest of the modern Medjai can carry like, one percent of the blame. You’ve still got to own a solid thirty-nine percent here.

Imhotep has the other sixty percent, obviously. If he wasn’t such a dick to begin with, raising him from the dead would have just been a fun fish-out-of-water comedy. Instead, he wanted to take over the world, so we got stuck with a tense action-adventure with a hefty helping of horror piled on top. Of fucking course I’m talking about the mummy juice. Shit’s disgusting.

Anyway, I fell in love with Henry and somehow that translated into his enthusiasm for all things ancient and potentially cursed becoming endearing, and now I follow him around making sure he doesn't die in random underground tombs, so it still seems like he came out ahead in all this. Absolutely infuriating and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I see you rolling your eyes, young man. We’re your dads, we’re allowed to be sappy and in love, especially after the ridiculousness of our first couple weeks of knowing each other. Keep up the sass and we won’t take you on any more expeditions, no matter how much you beg. Why were you asking about curses and Hamunaptra and all that, anyway?

…

Oh for fuck’s sake.

…

And you just put that bracelet ON?!

Henry, he gets this from your side of the family.

Chapter Text