Seb was sound asleep in his cot when he felt Jim shifting next to him, mumbling something in Gaelic. Now, he wasn't fluent in the language, but Seb was half-convinced that it was something along the lines of catch that chicken and, honestly, that's not the weirdest thing Jim had ever whispered in his sleep before. "Shut up," he mumbles in return, flinging an arm around Jim's waist. Jim wiggles, but he doesn't make any more noises. Content that the rest of the night would be quiet, Seb allows his eyes to flutter closed again.
After Munir had dragged Alicia back to the surface by her ear, he'd been forced to listen to the trespassers bragging about the canopic jars they'd found inside the cursed chest. It took all of Seb's restraint not to tell them that opening the chest would probably end with them being midnight snacks for a servant of darkness, but he figured he'd just let them figure that one out on their own. Five hours later, he just wanted to get a good night's sleep before he had to call his wife the next morning and let her know that Alicia was still alive. He wasn't really looking forward to that phone call, but at least he'd be able to talk to his baby and hear her giggling, and he would have the chance to ask Kelsey why she felt the need to tell Jim about their daughter's health and not Seb.
Feeling his frustration rising with that thought, he gets up and tugs on some shoes before walking outside into the chilled desert air. London got pretty nippy at night, but it didn't hold a candle to Hamunaptra. On top of all the weird howling winds that sprung up from time to time, there was the breeze that seemed almost able to rip through your body.
Seb meanders over to the fire where Ally and Henry are snuggled together and looking at something on her phone. Seeing the pair together didn't really surprise Seb much, Alicia had contacts all around the globe and she usually crossed paths with at least one of them whenever she came back to Egypt.
"What are you two lovebirds lookin' at," Seb asks, sitting on Alicia's left. He would never admit it to anyone, but he loved to snuggle on cold nights and his sister-in-law didn't mind sharing the abnormally huge blanket she and Henry had wrapped around their shoulders.
"Cat videos," Henry answers, lips turned up in a smile. He didn't seem the type to smile often, probably suffering from depression, but he didn't look uncomfortable. "This one here just chased a large dog out of its yard."
"Sounds lovely." He settles comfortably against Alicia, allowing his eyes to drift closed again as the warmth of the fire sinks into his aching bones. "Got anything worth drinking over there?" Without looking up from the phone, Alicia grabs a bottle out of the sand and holds in in Seb's face until he takes it. One other thing he'd never admit in a million years, his eyesight was becoming shit without a scope to peer through. He holds the bottle away from his face so he can read the label, making an impressed sound a moment later. "Twelve year old Glenlivet?"
"I stole it from Donovan."
"Yeah, that makes more sense." He takes a long swig from it, letting out a satisfied hiss as it burned its way down his throat. "She may be the world's biggest bitch, but she has good taste."
"My thoughts exactly, Seb."
"Don't be stingy," Henry says, holding out a hand," you've got to share it." Henry takes a small sip of it, obviously the type that would savor his expensive booze even though no one who cared was around to see him do it. Going off the nice equipment he'd brought along, Henry Knight probably grew up well off and had the mannerisms to prove that, though he often fought against them around his friends.
"Watch this, a cat's gonna go slap a lion." She had just pulled the video up on her phone when one of the horses made a sound. Seb turns, tuning out the sound of Henry's snorted laughter. The other horses join in, whinnying and bucking against their ropes.
"Ally, you still got your pistol," Seb asks, continuing when Ally confirms it. "I'll be right back." He runs off for the tent he shared with Jim, the Irishman waking up when he hears Seb digging frantically through one of their bags until he found the pair of pistols he was looking for. They were only simple revolvers, but he had twelve rounds between the both of them and something was about to happen. "Get over to Alicia and Henry, no questions asked."
"Tiger, what's—"
"Now, James!" Jim bolted up out of bed at the use of his given name, following at Seb's heels all the way out of the tent as they ran over to the fire. Henry was brandishing the bottle of whisky like a club while Alicia was holding her little Walther that she loved so much. "Take care of him and stay here."
"Wait up," Jim and Ally yelled in unison, but Seb wasn't slowing down as the sound of rapid hoofbeats filled the air.
"Ally," he could hear Henry shouting," Jim! Didn't the man just say to stay here?! Don't leave me by the fire by myself!" Black-clad riders seemed to suddenly appear out of the night, storming through the camps on black horses with scimitars flashing in the firelight. Seb doesn't hesitate to bring his pistols up and start firing, his vision zeroing in on the targets around him and everything that wasn't important falling into the background.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was killing these riders before they could kill him or Jim. Adrenaline hampered him as it kicked in, but he fell back into the dance only known to soldiers as he made his way through the riders, teeth grinding together with each bang echoing through the night.
At one point, he jumped up on one to the crumbling walls and then tackled a rider of a horse, ignoring the burning sensation in his back when the pair hit the sand hard. Seb pins the man to the ground with one knee in his chest, blowing the sword out of his hands with a single squeeze of the trigger. He could see the pain blooming in the man's eyes, a trickle of blood trailing down his hand where the bullet had nicked him.
He was about to squeeze the trigger again when he heard a horse coming up behind him, quickly rolling away from it seconds before a blade came down. Instead of taking his head as the rider had intended, only a few hairs are shorn and drift to the ground like feathers on the breeze. Seb shoots the rider and turns to do the same to the man he'd tackled, but finds only a bit of blood in the sand to mark where the rider had been.
Seb begins to move again, firing his last shot into the chest of a rider before flipping the pistols around to act as clubs. He turns as he runs, spotting Watson a few feet away and trying to fight one of the riders, gun clicking whenever he squeezed the trigger. Seb pauses just long enough to throw one of his pistols, nailing the rider in the back of the head hard enough to make him lurch forward in his saddle. With the distraction, Watson rolls forward toward one of the fires, pulling a stick of dynamite out of his pocket and lighting the fuse, holding it up towards the rider with a determined set to his jaw.
Seb joins him, still clutching one pistol tightly in his hand as he meets the rider's eyes. It's the same one from earlier, he notes, recognizing the way the man held himself in the saddle. That's the one I tackled. The rider looked frustrated now as he stared at the sparking fuse and then at the man who held it. This far into battle mode, Watson wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice himself if it meant saving the others.
"Enough," the rider shouts, harsh voice calling the other riders to attention. The noise comes back to Seb all at once, slowly dying down back to normal as the riders stopped their attack. "We will shed no more blood, but you must leave. Leave this place or die. We will give you one day." After one more command shouted in Arabic, the riders left the camp at a fast gallop, some of them riding double.
Watson plucks the fuse out and tosses it away, the sparks going out as he grinds it under his shoe. Now that he wasn't hyper focused, Seb could see the wounded and dead scattered through the camps, some of the tents little more than ash while others were cut to ribbons. His eyes catch of a flash of blue silk, spotting Jim as the other man sits up and rubs at the back of his head. He looked no worse for wear, the rifle lying beside him and the low wall in front of him giving Seb an idea of what had happened.
"Looks like my dynamite came in handy after all," Watson breathes out, looking pale as he rubbed at his leg.
"That settles it," Donovan says, breathless and still clutching at a pistol that was no longer loaded. "If they're willing to attack like that, then there has to be a fortune buried under our feet."
"The only thing these people value is water." Watson looked disgustedly over his shoulder at the woman. "They're probably the guardians of this place and are scared that we'd wake up some kind of beast or another." He lets out a soft sigh, running shaking fingers through his hair, oblivious to his split lip. "Now, where's that idiot gotten himself to?" Seb walks over to his own idiot savant, helping Jim back to his feet and cupping his cheeks.
"You alright," he asks, checking Jim over for anything major. His nightclothes were torn in places and a dark bruise was beginning to form along his left cheek, but there was nothing other than that. "Jim?" He shakes the dark-haired man sharply, Jim's eyes focusing on his face.
"You've got red on you," he mumbles, using his dirty sleeve to wipe some blood off Seb's cheek. Seb leans into his touch, not minding how filthy either of them were as the exhaustion started to set in. "God, you look awful, 'Bastian."
"You don't look so hot yourself, Boss. Come on, let's go check on the others and get some rest." It wasn't hard to find Alicia, she and Henry were standing at the base of a statue, the neck of the liquor bottle clutched in Henry's hand while Ally was holding the shattered remains of the base. They looked more horrified at the loss of whisky than they did about the dead man sprawled on the ground in front of them, some of the dark green glass embedded in his skull. "Now, that's just a waste."
"You'll have to steal the other bottle from Donovan's bag." It's not until he's in the tent and halfway through the motion of pulling off his shirt that he realized his side was beginning to ache something fierce. "You're bruised. Is it the ribs?"
"Nah, it's superficial." Wincing, he completes the motion and kicks his pajama pants and shoes off before just sliding into a pair of old sweats. "Think you can hand me that shirt?" Jim nods mutely, grabbing the long-sleeved top and helping Seb put it on without stretching too much. He would take some Ibuprofen later if it didn't ease up, but he'd put it off as long as possible to avoid swallowing pills.
Jim, still in his contemplative state—because, really, it wasn't shock that made him so quiet after a vicious fight—pulls on an identical set of blue silk pajamas. The old ones were thrown into a corner and a pair of simple slippers were slid over pale feet, everything back to perfection aside from the dark locks that stood up all over Jim's head.
"What are you thinkin' about over there?"
"That those men had no reason to attack us beyond old superstition." He looks up at Seb, chewing on his lip and a small crease appearing between fine brows. "Perhaps Donovan wasn't entirely wrong in thinking that something's under the sand that they don't want us disturbing."
"Yes, Jim, there's a monster lurking beneath our feet. In related news, the boogeyman is hiding under our bed and Santa Claus is busily working on making me pistols that are identical to the ones Jesse James used." The sarcasm was practically dripping from the words, but Jim only makes a noise of vague interest. Seb just shakes his head, pulling his boots back on and ignoring the ache beginning to spread through his side and over his hip.
He could still hear talking outside, an excited chatter that marked Holmes spouting out some facts about God only knows what. Just a few days ago he'd heard the taller man speaking about the origins of rock and the chemical components of Coca-Cola. Honestly, he was starting to think Holmes' intellect was on par with Jim's. As though to drown the Englishman out, music begins playing over the speakers from the research tent and Seb can't help his smile when he recognizes the tune as one he'd grown up with.
"There's a port on a western bay and it serves a hundred ships a day," Seb sings along, tapping his foot along with the beat. "Lonely sailors pass the time away and talk about their homes." He sways a little, watching as Jim scribbles something down on a sheet of paper, the handwriting nearly illegible and coded so that only Jim could understand it anyway. He'd tried to teach Seb one day, but eventually grew bored and decided that throwing monopoly pieces at Seb's head was far more entertaining.
"Sebastian, if you feel like you just have to dance, then do it outside. 'M busy." Seb tugs on the back of Jim's night shirt, it was just enough to have the silk grazing the arched back and send shivers all the way to Jim's toes. "That's not funny." The simple truth was that, yes, it was very funny. The most dangerous man in all of London—probably in all the world—was ticklish.
"And there's a girl in this harbor town and she works layin' whisky down. They say, Brandy, fetch another round, and she serves them whisky and wine." Realizing he'd get no work done, Jim throws his pen down on the collapsible desk and storms out of the tent, dragging Seb along by his wrist.
The sailors say 'Brandy, you're a fine girl', the music continues. By the fire that had been relit, Alicia and Henry were swaying along to the beat, a little too close together for them just to be colleagues. 'What a good wife you would be. Yeah, your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea'.
"Teach me how to fight."
"What," Seb asks, biting back a laugh that was bubbling up in his belly. "I thought you'd wanna dance."
"No, I want you to teach me the basics of fighting." Jim gets into the proper fighting stance, though his muscles were tense and knees locked. "Show me how to knock someone like you into the dirt in case those Medjai come back for round two." And the pieces fell into place, Seb giving an indulgent smile as he moves to straighten out Jim's stance into something a little more natural. That's how the rest of the night seemed to pass, Seb teaching Jim some of the basics of throwing punches while a few of the others danced, drank, or sang along to the song; sometimes a combination of the three, though it was soon made clear that a drunk Sherlock Holmes was something that belonged on YouTube and not so close to an open flame.
He came on a summer's day, bringin' gifts from far away, but he made it clear he couldn't stay. No harbor was his home...