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penny00dreadful · 4 months ago

Text

Tags: no homophobia universe, 1920s, but with modern vibes, like Bridgerton, Eddie as Evie, Steve as Rick, Robin as Jonathan kinda but not really, Happy Ending, Gun Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Mummies, Non consensual kissing

For @hbyrde36 happy (early) birthday honey. 🥰

More tags and CWs on AO3

Part 2

Cairo - 1926

So…

Listen.

Eddie had never been the best at paying attention, especially when he got in the zone, got distracted by something.

And being surrounded by books on the subject of his own special interest was really just a disaster waiting to happen.

Yes, he was supposed to be sorting and organising.

Yes, he was supposed to be keeping a closer track of what books went where and what they had in stock.

That was literally his job description as a librarian.

But when he’d initially climbed up that ladder, his arms heavy with books to sort and stack, a new one had caught his eye, one he hadn’t read before. One concerning the ancient architect Imhotep, of whom there was very little written, very little known.

Before he knew it, his legs were aching and his ribs were in pain from being pressed up against the top rung for so long while he had stood there and gotten lost in the volume, book balanced against the ladder while Eddie himself leaned heavily against the shelf.

He only really snapped back to himself when the aches in his body were no longer able to be ignored but even then, he couldn’t tear himself away. He knew he needed to get back to work, just in case the curator decided to wander in and scold him again for nothing in particular. His favourite pastime.

But this book was like nothing he’d seen before. It mentioned a mysterious ledger or volume that Imhotep had kept, containing all of his “spells”. But on top of that, it also mentioned an earlier invasion of the Sea Peoples, previous to their first known landing in ancient Egypt and the man that had come ashore with them. Yellow hair, white skin, bright blue eyes. Apparently his thirst for power had been unmatched, even going as far as to siege Hamunaptra, The City of the Dead, to try and find the secret to immortality.

After that… he seemed to drop off the face of the earth. There was nothing else written about him.

With one eye still on his new discovery, already a decent way through, Eddie started to put the rest of the books away, half assed, reaching blindly out behind him.

It was a delicate balancing act, keeping himself upright on the ladder, keeping his book balanced and still within his eyeline as he leaned over and stopped the heavy volume he was supposed to be putting away from slipping through his fingers.

He missed the shelf twice, but finally felt it catch, leaning just that little bit further to slot it in amongst the other books.

But leaning just that little extra bit was where Eddie’s luck had completely run out because in one heart-stopping moment, the ladder shifted, tilting precariously backwards.

As the ladder tipped back, Eddie jerked forward, clutching at the top rung with white knuckled hands, somehow, somehow balancing on a fucking upright ladder like he was in some circus act.

The book he’d been reading went crashing to the floor with a sound of ripping pages that would normally haunt Eddie’s nightmares, but at the moment he was too busy clutching onto the ladder for dear life to give much of a shit.

He was way too fucking high for gravity to be kind to him and he tried desperately to cut through his panic and shift his body weight so he didn’t fall nearly ten feet down to the hard stone floor.

But it seemed that somebody up there either really loved him or really hated him.

Because he didn’t fall, he got his wish, but he did start to slowly tilt towards the shelf he had been leaning against but the tilt was fast and terrifying.

The ladder landed back against the heavy wooden shelf with a hard crack, the weight and momentum of Eddie plus the ladder plus fulcrums or some shit, shoving the shelf back until for a terrifying heartbeat, everything was still.

Eddie leaned against the ladder, heart pounding and eyes wide, the ladder leaning against the shelf and the shelf balancing on its back edge.

And then, everything was in motion again.

The shelf continued to drop out from under him until he landed, the wind being knocked out of him as the shelves continued to crash back and back and back, knocking into each other like some kind of comical domino effect, the whole fucking library coming down around him in a mess of fluttering pages and splintered wood.

The shelves had been set up in a circle so he had only just managed to get his senses back, rolling out of the way, before the ladder he had rested on just a second ago was crushed underneath the last shelf toppling down.

All at once, everything was quiet apart from pages fluttering and Eddie lying on the ground, his heart hammering in his throat against his messily knotted tie and his breathing was ragged, pressing against the buttons of the light blue wool waistcoat he had on, thinking ‘Shit, man, I nearly fucking died.”

If luck was on his side, nothing quite as dramatic as that would ever happen to him again, he didn’t know if he had the constitution for it.

The ceiling above him was placid and white and unmoved by the chaos that had just happened underneath and Eddie continued to stare up at it, trying to figure out just how monumentally fucked he was.

The door to the library opened slowly, almost comically loud amongst the settled silence after the anarchy of a minute ago and Eddie allowed himself one more moment of peace on the floor, thumb running ritualistically over the delicate pocket watch tucked inside his waistcoat, trying to calm himself. He kept his eyes closed and prayed for a miracle that didn’t come. With one last tap against the watch with his ankh ring, he pushed himself to his feet and turned to face his fate.

The curator had arrived, slowly turning, taking the destruction in with a kind of silent shocked horror that did not bode well for Eddie’s future here.

The curator made his final turn and their eyes met, his slack jawed face immediately tightening in anger.

“Do you make it your life’s mission as a Munson to wreak havoc and destruction?” He asked, almost breathless with rage. “Give me all the plagues of Egypt! They would be easier to handle!”

Eddie took a deep breath in and attempted to defend himself, even if he knew it would be futile.

“It was an accident–”

The curator scoffed back at him, throwing his hands up in demonstration. “When Rameses destroyed Syria, that was an accident. You are a fucking catastrophe! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t send you back to your uncle and be done with you!”

Eddie had to stay here. He had to. He hadn’t even gotten to go out on an expedition yet, he was an archaeologist only in theory so far.

��Listen, I’m sorry about this, okay? But you and I both know you need me here. I’m the only one who can translate–”

“Oh.” The curator cut him off with a cold laugh. “I need you here, do I? No, Munson. The only reason you’re here is to pay off your charlatan of a father’s debts. Though I’m beginning to think that just taking the monetary loss would be worth it, just so I could be rid of you.” Glaring at him one last time, the curator spat “Clean this fucking mess up and maybe, maybe I’ll consider letting you stay.”

He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room before Eddie had a chance to respond, just leaving him there to deal with what was admittedly his mess but the guy didn’t have to be such a dick about it.

Fuck.

How the hell was he supposed to deal with all of this himself, he was just one guy and he wasn’t exactly built for like… hard labour.

He was a scholar.

And weedy as fuck.

It was fine, he could admit that about himself.

In what Eddie couldn’t decide was either a blessing or a curse, he had only just picked up a single book before a noise from the back storage room caught his attention.

Thing was, Eddie was not a superstitious man. If he could see it or taste it or smell it or touch it, it was real. Anything else was not something he believed in.

But either way, he’d never really liked the storage room of the museum.

The amount of artefacts back there, stuffed and wedged in so close to each other, crammed into shelves or taking up as much floor space as they could left the space feeling incredibly claustrophobic.

And the lighting in there was barely sufficient, which wouldn’t be the most comfortable at the best of times, but in a room that was full of mummified humans and cats and sarcophagi and canopic jars both symbolic and full of ancient human organs, it was downright eerie.

But honestly, anything available to distract him from the monumental task in front of him, Eddie would take it.

Which is what led to him skulking his way into the back rooms of the museum and trying to ignore the creeping fingers of dread skating up his back and crawling into his hair.

A few steps in, he stopped, almost holding his breath trying to listen out for another noise—and he was given one. A small thump coming from behind a large statue of the goddess Hathor.

Eddie’s throat closed around a swallow and he shook his hands out, hyping himself up to step around her and see what it was. If it did turn out to be some kind of undead walking mummy and he had any luck left, hopefully it would just be one of the cats. He could handle an undead cat.

He had only just managed to step around to her other side, one hand on Hathor’s giant calf (he hoped she didn’t mind) when something behind him grabbed his shoulder and he screamed.

His whole body seized up and he swung around, ready to fight Meresamun if he had to, but his panic was quickly washed away by indignation when he heard the cackling and finally realised it was Robin, doubled over and nearly weak with laughter. She was the one that had grabbed him, not some mummy come to life, of course.

What a ridiculous thought.

Robin was clutching at her stomach, leaning heavily against Hathor, her head resting on the statue's seated thigh (which she probably didn’t mind as much as Eddie’s touch) while Eddie was left standing there, trying to calm his heart down and huffing himself into a frenzy.

“Are you done?”

“You should have seen your face!”

Eddie crossed his arms over his chest while Robin continued to giggle to herself. He gave her another five seconds of mirth before he’d finally had enough.

“I don’t need your spooky shenanigans right now, Buckley. I’ve got a lot of shit to clean up in the library, the Baembridge Scholars have rejected my application again because I apparently don’t have enough experience,” he released his arms to use air quotes, “and I am one more fuck up away from being shipped back to Indiana—”

Eddie frowned. Robin was doing nothing but continuing to smile at him, like his complaining was cute.

“What?” He snapped.

She just shrugged, coy and nonchalant.

“Oh, nothing.” She rested her elbow where her head had once been, against Hathor’s thigh. “Would it make you feel better if I told you I have a present for you?”

“Really?” Eddie immediately perked up because who didn’t love presents? He held a grabby hand out. “Gimme.”

Robin tutted at him.

“Say please.”

“Is it something I’ll actually give a fuck about this time?” He glowered at her. “Or is it another one of your ooky spooky haunted artefacts or dense as fuck language texts disguised as a present?”

“I dunno.” She shrugged, pulling something from her pants pocket and holding it out to him. “You tell me.”

He snatched the small metal hexagonal box from her, turning it over in his hands and settling himself down on Hathor’s plinth.

Slightly indented on the bottom, most of the sides equal in size apart from two which felt slightly thicker, and grooves in the top telling him there must be some way to open it, though he could see none.

“It’s a puzzle box.” He muttered to himself as Robin sat down next to him.

His brain was whirring immediately trying to figure it out, so much so, he barely heard Robin speak next to him, “I haven’t been able to figure out how to—”

With a click, Eddie pressed his fingers into two sides, twisting, while sliding a near invisible latch on the bottom and the grooves on the top flipped open.

“Well, now you’re just showing off.”

There was a delicate and almost crumbling piece of paper folded in the middle, almost shoved in like it wasn’t supposed to be there.

Eddie pulled his sleeve over his hand, gently tipping the paper into it and looked down to the mechanism underneath. Indents, more grooves and spokes. It looked like it was meant to fit into something, the metal flaps at the top that had fallen open, indented in a very similar way.

“It… it looks like a key of some kind.” He muttered to himself.

With delicate and covered fingers, he carefully unfolded the piece of paper in front of him, expecting hieroglyphs or maybe some Ancient Greek text but instead he was faced with… a map?

Was he in some kind of pirate novel or something? Maps like this just didn’t exist in the real world.

“Where the hell did you find this?” He asked, casting a cursory eye over it, vaguely recognising it led to somewhere in Egypt, based on the landmarks, the ink, the papyrus paper type and the script.

Robin shrugged, something cheeky in her eye. “From a friend.”

“You don’t have friends.” He replied, glancing up at her before looking back down. There was something itching at the back of his mind. Something telling him this map was important and he just wasn’t seeing it yet.

“I have lots of friends!” She huffed. “You just don’t know any of them.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Worried I'd be too cool for them?”

“Yeah, sure.” She scoffed back. “The girls down at Sappho’s Bar would definitely look at you and think ‘cool’.”

“Hey, just because I’m not their type doesn’t mean they wouldn’t think I’m cool!”

“There’s bi girls there too, you know.”

“Exactly, they’d think I’m cool.”

Robin snorted. “No they wouldn’t.”

He pouted, looking back towards the map, trying to figure out what he was missing when all at once, it clicked.

This was… no way…

He’d only just read about it in that book before disaster hit and now there was a map… here… in front of him?

What were the odds?

“Fuck me, Buckley.” He breathed.

“I’d rather not.”

“He didn’t even listen to me!” Eddie growled for what must have been the fifth time, knocking back his drink while Robin patted him on the shoulder, again. “Did you hear him? Are you going to chase the Bracelet of Anubis next, Munson? What a fucking asshole.”

He could hear Robin muttering to herself, probably losing her patience with him and his bitching considering how long it had been going on but come on!

This had been his chance.

At this stage the only excavation he would have to his name would be the plaster dinosaur skeletons in the museum's sandbox with the rest of the children.

The fucking curator, his boss had barely even considered a word out of his mouth that this ancient fucking map that had popped out of an ancient fucking puzzle box was something worth pursuing.

He’d never make any discoveries worth while if no one would fucking let him do anything.

“Okay, listen.” Robin plucked his next drink from his fingers, tossing it back her own throat. “I know a guy who can help. He’ll get us there.”

“Oh, really?” He asked, turning his half irritated, half defeated glare her way. “And how is this guy supposed to help? If he’s a benefactor for expeditions, why hasn’t he hired people already, then? Why would he help us? And based on your cryptic ‘I know a guy’, it suggests that I do not know this guy. And I know every eccentric benefactor out there, I’ve sent them all letters and no one will take a Munson on. So either you’re lying to me or you’re being conned.”

“Neither, actually. He’s an old friend.”

“You can still be conned by an old friend. Ask anyone who used to call my dad ‘friend’. This guy is probably gonna jump ship as soon as he gets his hands on some valuable artefact to sell back to some foreign museum because that’s apparently something some consider morally and ethically okay.”

Robin sighed, looking at him with big pleading eyes. “Just… trust me, okay?”

“Okay, fine.” Eddie was powerless against those eyes. “Let’s go see Mr. Richy-Rich McMoneybags who just so happens to have an innocent and purely academic interest in Egyptology.”

“I never said anything about his interests being purely academic.”

“Ah HA!” He pointed at her.

“They’re not profit driven either! Jesus Christ Eddie, would you just—”

“Fine, fine! I said we’ll go, so let’s go.” This was going to be a fucking disaster. “Let’s go see the rich old man.”

“He’s not old.”

“Right, right, yeah sure. Okay, so we’re going to go see your bosom buddy, the not-old Mr. Richy-Rich McMoneybags who has a not purely academic interest in Egyptology.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“What?” Robin blinked at him, trying to turn her eyes big and innocent but he could tell underneath she was enjoying herself far too much.

Eddie gestured around to the fucking prison she had just lead him into and the empty cell sitting in front of them, waiting to be occupied by this apparently wealthy, not old but also fucking imprisoned friend of hers.

“The guy’s locked up. What good is he to us locked up?”

She shrugged. “We’ll just get him out.”

“Oh, we’ll get him out will we? How the fuck are we going to do that?” Eddie dragged his hand through his hair. “You ever committed a jail break before?”

“No,” she shrugged back, nonchalant and unbothered, “but I’m sure I could learn to. That’s something you’d be familiar with, right?”

Eddie dropped his head back to look at the ceiling. “That was different!”

“Different how?”

“Well it was 6,000 miles away in Indiana for a start.”

Robin waved him off. “Semantics.”

“How did you even get that artefact from this guy? You’re no pickpocket. How do you even know him?”

“I didn’t pickpocket him. I told you. He’s an old friend.”

He scoffed at her, hands on his hips. “You’re such a bullshit artist.”

Eddie turned on his heel, intent on stomping his way out of the fucking prison but Robin grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Eddie, Eddie I swear I’m not bullshitting you. I swear. Just hear the guy out, okay?”

He turned back around to stare her down, searching, practically trying to read her mind but he could find only sincerity.

“Fine, but when this guy turns out to be some kind of con artist or creep or fucking… whatever, you’re buying me my drinks for the next year.”

Robin smiled at him like she’d already won. “Deal.”

A door inside the cell in front of them crashed open and two guards pushed their way in, roughly shoving another man through, covered in tatty rags and looking wild with a mess of unwashed long hair and a thick beard covering the bottom half of his face.

This was Robin's old friend benefactor guy?

Benefactor guy, now down on his knees, behind bars, didn’t even deign to look at him. He seemed for all the world like he was above everything happening and adjusting his rags as though he was in white tie, shrugging off the guards hands on his shoulders.

“Robbie.” He said with a crooked smile. “Nice to finally see you again. Took you long enough.”

Eddie’s body involuntarily tensed as hazel eyes slid over to him, but only for a second, like he wasn’t worth the attention before he looked back at Robin. “Who’s the guy?”

Eddie’s eyebrows flew up into his hair.

“I— He started to bite out, but he was cut off before he could even gather steam.

“This is Eddie. Eddie, this is Steve-”

“This is Eddie?” Steve snorted, giving him a scathing up and down. “Doesn’t look much like an archeologist.”

Eddie’s hands, resting against his hips, balled into his trousers and he ran a tongue over his teeth, trying and failing to hold back his bite.

“Bold words for a caveman behind bars.”

Steve didn't even acknowledge he'd spoken. “C’mon Robbie. I thought you said you were going to help me out, not pick up some… hermit.”

“Excuse you, I am a scholar. Have you seen yourself, who the hell are you calling a hermit–”

“Eddie is everything I told you he is, Steve, and more.” Robin had her hands up now, trying to mediate between the two of them. “And he’s your ticket out of here so maybe you could put the mean girl away for five minutes?” She ended on a hiss.

Steve rolled his eyes, the arc leaving them landing back on Eddie again who continued to scowl.

“I dunno, Robin.” Eddie shrugged, trying to gain an air of nonchalance that probably wasn't working. “I think he looks pretty comfortable here.” He sent a condescending salute Steve’s way. “We’re good without you, man. But thanks for the puzzle box.”

He turned, shooting a wave over his shoulder. He had only managed to get a few steps before Steve called out behind him, teasing and bitchy, stopping him in his tracks.

“But were you able to open it, though?”

Eddie inhaled, deep and settling. Or at least that was the idea. Counting to ten didn’t seem to do much for his mood either but he tried, god damn it.

Mouth set in a firm line, he turned back around.

Steve was grinning at him, that crooked upward tilt of the corner of his mouth just barely visible through the months of beard build-up, smug and challenging.

Eddie crossed his arms again.

“And if I did?”

Robin, who had pulled a guard to the side, chatting to him in rapid fire Masri, hands flying and clearly engaging. She was distracting the guard from the two of them, giving them a chance to talk about whatever which was only made clearer when she sent him a wide eyed stare over the guards shoulder, somehow both telling him to be nice and talk to him.

“So,” Steve dragged his eyes up and down Eddie’s body, bored and unconcerned about his surroundings. “You’re here about Hamunaptra then.”

Eddie blinked at him, his mouth hanging open and his heart thudding loudly in his chest. “How do you even know about that?”

“Because that’s where w–” Steve stopped himself short with an awkward little throat spasm that he tried to disguise as a cough, like that was hiding whatever he had been about to say. “That’s where I was when I found the box.”

“Bullshit.”

Steve flicked his hair out of his eyes. “Or don’t believe me, I don’t care.”

Eddie was almost at a loss for words.

“You’ve been to Hamunaptra? You?”

Steve just smiled, sharp, knowing he'd caught his fish.

Fuck sake. This was all such a major crock of bullshit. But Robin had to have brought him here for a reason. The guy seemed to have Robin well and truly under his spell somehow and despite his previous misgivings about her being conned, he did trust Robin. He trusted her judgement and he didn’t think she would be the type to be so easily taken in by some guy claiming to have been to a mythical city without any evidence aside from the puzzle box unless there was something substantial there.

“Okay…” Eddie sighed, unfurling his fists only to shove his hands into his pockets. “Okay. You tell me how to get there and I’ll get you out of here.”

Steve gave him another look up and down, almost appraising him and with a cocky crook of his finger, beckoned him closer.

“You want me to tell you how to get there?”

Eddie hesitated, not wanting to give into the arrogance but his need to know was stronger. He stepped forward until he was standing in front of the bars, Steve on his knees behind them, looking up at him with big downturned eyes that somehow looked both innocent and dangerous.

Steve gestured him down lower, like he was wanting to share a secret and Eddie supposed he was, in a way.

Eddie crouched down, hands out of his pockets, elbows on his knees, leaning a little further in, desperate to know, to learn, to have the thing that would finally put him in amongst the other archaeologists.

But then he didn’t even have a moment to react, a moment to think.

His chin was grabbed in between firm fingers and he was pulled forward, sending him off balance, only barely managing to catch himself against the bars of the cell.

Eddie’s mouth was open in a gasp and his eyes were wide as a set of dry and chapped lips pressed against his own and there was the barest swipe of a tongue entering his mouth.

“You’ve got a deal.” Steve hissed, pulling back to speak into his mouth before it was all over and Steve was ripped away by the two guards behind him.

One of them cracked him hard over the back with their baton while Eddie was frozen in place unable to do anything but gape in shock.

That fucker just kissed him!

What the fuck?!

A hand closed around his shoulder, pulling him gently back and he looked over to Robin, ready to bitch her the fuck out about her ‘old friend’ who took entirely too many liberties, never mind how Eddie had felt about it at the time, but he faltered at the look on her face.

She was wringing her hands in front of her staring at the door Steve had just been dragged through like she could will him back in front of them.

“So… minor update on the situation.” She said, while Eddie tried to wipe the tingle away from his lips. “Steve’s about to be hanged.”

He nearly choked on thin air.

“Steve’s about to be what?! Since when?!”

“It’s a new development! You can bust him out, right?”

Eddie stared at her. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve broken out of prison before, haven’t you? That’s what everyone says about you.”

“Oh my god.” Eddie hid his head in his hands. “That’s a rumor. Shit that’s whispered behind my back because those yuppie fucks wouldn’t know an actual criminal if they came up and snatched the fucking silver spoon from their mouths! They all think because my dad is a lowlife thief, that I’m the same and, okay. Maybe I spent a night in jail back in Indiana but that was nothing and I bribed the guard to let me go so, like, technically—”

“Do you think we’d be able to bribe Steve out?”

“Well you’d better fucking hope so, because if you seriously brought me here hoping we’d somehow be able to smuggle him out of a prison full of guards in the middle of the day then—”

“Okay, okay I get it, it was a stupid idea. At least I have access to Steve’s funds.”

“Wait, what the fuck? You’ve had access to his money the whole time? You could have funded me the whole time?”

“This is an emergency, Edward!”

“God, fine!”

Eddie was forced to watch as Robin attempted to barter for her friend's life, terribly.

Apparently she seemed to think that low balling them first, like they were haggling for fucking spices was the way to go and it was doing nothing but pissing the guards off.

He looked on, heart in his throat as Steve was shoved to stand over a trapped door, a rope being tugged around his neck while Robin frantically tried to raise the price to no avail.

There was a horrible sound of wood clapping as the trapped door fell open and Steve dropped. Only a short distance, not long enough to break his neck but still leaving him slowly suffocating to death, his face turning the most horrible shade of purple as his body began to convulse.

Robin was up to $1,000 which, while it was a substantial chunk of money, clearly wasn’t doing it for them.

“$5,000!” He blurted out, going as high as he could conceivably go without fainting. It was nearly double what he earned in a year, once his repayments in the name of Al Fucking Munson had been taken out, but as long as Robin wasn’t full of shit about how much Steve was worth, the guy could take the hit if it meant saving his life.

Part 2 AO3

My biggest thanks and much love to @pearynice and @hitlikehammers for the beta work with this and to the @strangerthingswritersguild for their motivation!