OMFG I literally completely and utterly forgot about this fic! I mean I absolutely forgot that it existed. XD Although apparently I actually wrote most of this chapter before I forgot about it - I just rediscovered it on a memory stick yesterday. SO, I thought, well, it's almost done, really, so I'll just get this finished up before I start on my Halloween fic. :3

THIS IS THE PLAN - and a good plan it is too, thank you very much.

In The East My Pleasure Lies

II

"What can I get you?" Alfred put the glass down on the bar expectantly. "I'm havin' a bourbon highball. Same?"

"Oh, good god, no," Arthur replied coolly. "None of your fanciful concoctions. Just rum will do me fine."

Alfred gave a careless shrug.

"Suit yourself."

He busied himself with the drinks, Arthur watching him idly with his chin on his knuckles. It was evening and Alfred's bar, Lady Liberty, had come to life, crowded out with clientele of all walks of life; the market-sellers and the Arab elite of the well-educated, often doctors, interspersed with the clutter of the British Empire, British and Canadian and Australian businessmen and archaelologists. There were usually a few Americans around, too, although Alfred seemed to be the only one in the vicinity tonight - but this varied smorgasbord made his thoroughly-Western waterhole a popular evening destination for those who wanted something a little more modern, a little more familiar. He often tended the bar himself: but tonight he had one of his staff take over so that he might invite Arthur upstairs to a little preview, of sorts, of his progress.

He handed Arthur his rum and came around the bar.

"Shall we?" he said, clinking their glasses.

Arthur rolled his eyes.

"Lead on," he muttered in reply.

Alfred grinned and beckoned, leading him out beneath a draped purple curtain, through a locked door and up the stairs to his living quarters. These premises had been a Victorian structure at some point, falling into disuse somewhere around the 1900 mark, and the design was decidedly British as opposed to Arabic. The staircases were narrow and rickety, the wood warped in places, and the ceiling creaked every now and then, as if to suggest just how cheaply Alfred had gotten the place.

Arthur had been here once or twice before, usually on the same invitation, and he remembered it as messy, disorganised, ultimately offensive to his own neater sensibilities. Alas, it appeared that Alfred had not much changed his ways, for Arthur was greeted with the sight of piled boxes and disordered clothing and haphazard bits and pieces strewn about the place as Alfred showed him in.

"Goodness," he said delicately, disgustedly, lifting the khaki shirt of a week before up by its collar (it had been coiled at his feet like a sleeping snake). "You're quite as slovenly as ever, I see."

"It's ordered chaos," Alfred breezed, vanishing into the first room. "I know where everything is. You coming or what?"

Arthur tossed the shirt over a tall bronze statue of a stag (the antlers draped with several other garments) and followed, picking his way carefully. Alfred's living quarters were small and cramped, a state not helped by his messiness, and he had only two rooms to go between: a tiny squat bathroom and a larger, boxier main room which served a number of purposes: bedroom, living area and work studio. His bed was a large, low thing with plain, thin sheets, its surface littered with so much of this and that that it was a wonder there was any room for him to sleep at all.

"Sit down, sit down, make yourself at home!" Alfred called from his desk; between stacks of books and piles of god-knows-what, he had managed to find a tiny space to put his drink.

"My, aren't you hospitable?" Arthur growled in reply, perching on the very edge of the bed. "Haven't you a sofa or something, at the very least?"

"Nah." Alfred was rummaging around louder than he needed to, in Arthur's opinion. "What do I need one for?" He shrugged. "'Sides, it's not like I'm gonna be here permanently, right?"

"Indeed," was Arthur's crisp reply. He crossed one leg over the other and glanced about languidly.

It wasn't unlike his own home - back in London, of course, the fashionable end - in one important manner: the rare and priceless treasures dotted here and there, just nestled nicely between the everydays of living. In one corner was a marble Grecian bust of Apollo; a Spanish crown aglimmer with jewels hung from the corner of an elaborate Austrian mirror; on his bedside table was an English court ring, Stuart period, emerald and pearl, that Arthur had wanted two years ago and which Alfred had taken mostly out of spite to use as a way of holding cufflinks together. Emanuel Leutze's famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware was slightly askew above the headboard of the bed.

Arthur leaned over and straightened it with one finger.

"Alfred, is this the original?" he asked carefully.

"Hm?" Alfred glanced at it. "Oh, that old thing? Nah, it's one of the copies I made. I was planning to swipe the original next time I go to New York."

"Hmm." Arthur wasn't all that surprised by this admission; he looked at the painting for a long moment, admiring the masterful brushstrokes, the perfected blending, the grace of the composition. "It's really very good, I must say. I daresay you'll get away with it."

"Thanks. I made six others - practice, you know?" He waved his hand vaguely somewhere behind him. "They're under the bed, I think, if you want one."

"You're very kind," Arthur replied dryly, "but I don't think it wise to draw that sort of attention to myself at this present time, carrying a copied painting of that size home under my arm."

"Fair enough." Alfred beckoned him over. "Anyway, what do you think so far?"

Arthur sighed his way over, sipping his rum en route; Alfred scooted his chair back to make room for him to crowd close and see his prize sitting in a bed of French newspaper. It was his mimicry of The Heart of Ra, beginning to take perfect shape, smoothed over with a buffed gold finish like liquid sun. It was clear to see that Alfred had begun work on the detailing, his tools (flecked with fine curls of gold) scattered around his project.

"It looks satisfactory," Arthur said, somewhat haughtily; and then, when Alfred gave a look like he'd been kicked, added: "...Not that I'd expect anything less from you, Mr Jones."

Alfred rolled his eyes.

"Thanks," he said, "I think."

"How did you do it?"

In answer to this, Alfred slid open his desk drawer, into which he'd crammed several other Hearts of Ra, some better in construction than others.

"Just trial and error, you know," he said cheerfully. "Trying to get the weight right was trickiest - in the end I settled for a wire mould to hold the shape, then plaster of Paris mixed with a little bit of pewter."

"And the gold?" Arthur asked, leaning close to run his fingertips over the fake breastplate.

"Ah, a bit of this and that," Alfred said cheerfully, rummaging in the drawer and pulling out a bottle of bright gold powder. "The bulk is cheap jewellery I got in the markets, then there's a touch of real gold, a wedding band or two, and the rest, to give it that lurid finish, is this baby." He shook the bottle, which frothed blazing gold as though a powdered star was captured within. "Got it in Italy a few years back. It mimics Egyptian gold, the kind they used back then, down to the atom." He tapped his nose with a grin. "Trade secret."

Arthur, who had been reaching for it, scowled when Alfred deftly moved it out of his reach.

"Ah, ah," Alfred teased. "I need this - I can't have it disappearing into your pocket, Dr Kirkland."

"I'd do nothing of the sort," Arthur replied, offended. He gestured towards the colour poster of the breastplate, flanked either side by Alfred's own photographs, black and white but very clear in their detail. "What do you intend to do for the jewels?"

"I stocked up when I was in the markets," Alfred said, reaching at his feet for a small wooden jewellery box: he popped it open to show Arthur the abdundance of common bracelets and necklaces, many with real, if roughly-cut and lower grade, semi-precious stones. In between these flashed garish costume jewellery native, by recognition, to Britain and to the United States, brooches and scarf pins and cocktail rings with paste jewels in rainbow colours.

"You think I got enough?" he asked, shaking the box to make his haul rattle.

"More than enough, I should think," Arthur replied stiffly. "Well, I think it's safe to say you're getting along swimmingly."

"You know it," Alfred said teasingly; he flexed his broad shoulders. "You wanna give me a back rub? You know, since I've been working so hard on your behalf?"

"I most certainly do not," Arthur said coldly.

Alfred looked put out for a few seconds before shrugging.

"Fine," he sighed. "You're missing out." He knocked back the rest of his drink and put the glass down before rising, stepping past Arthur. He flopped onto his bed, narrowly missing a half-finished jigsaw puzzle and a bundle of cutlery tied together with frayed string.

"And how do you imagine that?" Arthur asked, at once sinking into his vacated chair. He swilled his rum around the glass.

"You kidding? I have to fight off the girls back in the States."

"Well," Arthur said primly, "I think you'll find that I'm not a girl - nor indeed so easily won."

"I've seen the way you look at me."

"With contempt, I'm afraid to say."

Alfred pouted, propping himself up on his elbows. He met Arthur's gaze.

"Not biting, huh?"

"Not tonight, love."

"Pity." Alfred went boneless again, looking up at the cracked ceiling. "It's more fun when you get angry."

"I expect it is." Arthur was dismissive, turning to look down at Alfred's half-finished Heart of Ra; and this he examined with the eye of an esteemed historian, such as he was. His particular area of expertise was not Egyptology, it was true, but after four months working closely with Egypt's very own expert, Dr Gupta Hussan, he had begun to know quite what was proper of true artefacts from the time of the Pharoahs.

And Alfred, well, he didn't seem to be much of an expert in anything, really; but good god was he excellent at copying just about anything set before him. The shape of his construction matched that of the true Heart of Ra in the pictures down to the most miniscule of details, such as a little weathering here on the left wing, a touch of erosion along the bottom. It was clear to see, even only half-finished, that this would be another of his masterpieces, another Washington Crossing the Delaware to fool even those who knew best (for Arthur, on a research trip to Boston, Philadelphia and New York, had seen the original).

The Heart of Ra's true test, of course, would not be Sadiq Adnan, who could almost be relied upon to not notice; but Gupta, who had so painstakingly arranged for the artefact's loan. He had studied the piece in great detail on its arrival at the university as part of a paper he was working on. If the fake got past him, it would get past anyone, of that Arthur was quite sure.

"Hey, Arty, what do you think of this?"

"I beg your pardon?" Arthur looked over his shoulder at Alfred somewhat impatiently.

Alfred, who was holding a newspaper over his head to read it, briefly turned it towards Arthur. It was an English-language Cairo newspaper, its headline squawking about the German-Italian alliance and the repeated breaching of the Treaty of Versailles by Germany.

"Seems like it's getting serious," Alfred went on, looking at the paper again. "Says here that Hitler guy might invade Austria."

"Oh, Churchill's been going on about him for years." Arthur finished his rum. "I expect it'll come to war."

"Do you reckon?"

"I don't think Britain and France will take too much more of Germany flouting the Treaty of Versailles." Arthur gave a dry smile. "It's not in their nature."

"No." Alfred rolled up the paper. "I guess not." He glanced at Arthur again. "...Aren't you worried?"

"About what?"

"Well, uh... if Britain does go to war with Germany, you'll be called up, won't you?"

"Probably." Arthur shrugged. "I expect being an expert on British history, Medieval to Colonial, isn't important enough to warrant my staying back; though, of course, depending on how soon the war breaks out, I might be too old."

Alfred smiled humourlessly.

"I wouldn't count on it," he said. "You're only thirty-one."

"Ah, yes, that's a point. Well, let's just hope that it takes Hitler twenty years to properly piss Churchill off."

Personally he didn't put much stock in this; and indeed, he hoped to be home in London before the situation got any worse, lest he be stranded in Egypt with Germany... well, in the way, as it were. But he didn't say this to Alfred, moreover beacuse he felt that his anxiety wasn't really the business of an American, being as it was that Americans were inclined to show up horribly late to European conflicts. He expected that Roosevelt hadn't much interest in getting the United States involved if he could help it.

"Golly, it's stinking hot tonight." Alfred said this suddenly, sitting up. He fanned himself briefly with the newspaper before setting it aside. "I think I'm gonna go have a cool bath."

"Very well." Arthur thought this was a little bit personal, although he didn't like to say so directly; instead he gave Alfred a meaningful look as he rose. "Then I'll take my leave."

Alfred seemed to misread the look, perhaps deliberately; he raised his eyebrows slyly.

"You wanna join me?" He punctuated it with a little wriggle, a humourous imitation of an on-screen siren.

"No thank you," Arthur bit out. He waved his hand dismissively Alfred as he passed him. "I'll see myself out."

"Ugh, Arty, I'm pretty much throwing myself at you tonight," Alfred groaned, heaving himself up; he started to unbutton his shirt, his bronzed skin glistening beneath.

"Baiting me, more like," Arthur replied crossly. "A-and stop that!"

"Stop what?" All innocence.

"Bloody undressing while I'm still here!"

"Hey, if you can't take the heat, get outta the kitchen." Alfred shrugged off his shirt and tossed it onto the bed; and stood for a long moment, his hands on his hips, holding Arthur's gaze. "Sure I can't tempt you?"

"No!" Arthur pointed furiously at the bathroom door. "Get in there, you little devil! I'm going home!"

"Alright, alright." Alfred put up his hands in surrender. "Sheesh, I was just being polite." He took off his glasses, shaking his head, and dropped them to the bedside table. "Well, goodnight."

He went into the bathroom and shut the door without another word. It was hard to tell whether or not he was offended, given how short his attention span usually was, but Arthur chose not to pay much mind to it. Alfred was a relentless tease who got a kick out of making him uncomfortable and that was that.

Still...

He went to the bedside table, his footsteps disguised by the rush of running water in the old bathtub, and righted Alfred's glasses, over which their owner didn't have much care. He folded them properly and set them upright; and then, quickly, quietly, he shook the cufflinks free from the ring and slipped it into his pocket.

"How are the preparations going?" Arthur asked over his tea.

Gupta seemed to give it some thought, stirring his coffee in silence.

"Hm." He tapped his spoon off against the porcelain cup. "Quite well, I suppose - although Mr Adnan is not very cooperative."

Arthur rolled his eyes.

"I'm not surprised, somehow." He rolled his shoulders, breathing out the heat of the day. "I hear you did take him to Giza in the end."

"And to The Valley of the Kings," Gupta said evenly. "He did not care much for my commentary."

Arthur snorted.

"Men like him never do," he said coolly. "History is wasted on them."

Gupta nodded, sighing. They were both quiet for a moment, enjoying their beverages in the cool, tiled reading room of the History department; the balcony opened out onto the pretty campus, lush with a line of palm trees, with a good view of the dome rising like the sun and the square, modern clock tower. It was their custom at this time, around two in the afternoon, to stop work and take a languid break with their drink of choice, listening to the birds twittering in the palms. Arthur was not a great fan of the heat here but he had grown fond of Cairo and its university and found these weekday sojourns in Gupta's company more than pleasant.

"I trust," Arthur added after a moment, "that Mr Adnan will at least be present at the gala?"

"I expect so," Gupta replied morosely. "It seems to be more his sort of thing than the luncheon." He smiled dryly. "Women, journalists, champagne..."

"And he's still being uncooperative?"

"Well..." Gupta seemed embarrassed. "It was more that Mr Adnan wanted to wear The Heart of Ra to the gala."

"Ah." Arthur shook his head. "Well, no, you're quite right. That simply won't do."

He carefully stirred his tea, looking at it through his eyelashes; watching the steamy amber swill of it. His touch was delicate, thoughtful, silver tinkling on the porcelain.

No, that wouldn't do at all.

"What on earth do you think you're doing?" Arthur bit out, approaching Alfred from behind.

Alfred, who was dressed as a janitor, turned to him with a grin.

"Scoping out the place, obviously," he replied cheerfully. "What do you think of my disguise?"

"I think it's terrible. It's not even what I'd call a disguise - it's a pair of overalls and a mop." Arthur rolled his eyes at him. "Do you know, I think you want to be caught, Alfred."

"Tch, who's gonna recognise me?" Alfred snorted.

"Gupta, for one; and Mr Adnan, more importantly, for another." It was much too hot for this and Arthur couldn't help but find himself growing very cross with Alfred's flippant approach to the matter. "Ugh, I should have known better than to involve you in this..."

Alfred simply laughed.

"Yeah, right," he teased. "Like you could pull this off without me, Arty." He pinched at Arthur's cheek. "The only thing you're good at is running off with the artefact after I've done all the work."

"Oh, Christ, I don't have to stand here and listen to this!" Arthur snapped, batting his hand away; he straightened his tie indignantly and stalked away. "Good day."

He could still hear Alfred crowing with laughter as he turned the corner; and he got some self-satisfaction out of flipping his middle finger at him, even if Alfred couldn't actually see it. God, that was it - he was never involving himself with Alfred Jones ever again for as long as he lived-

He heard footsteps; and then, a moment later, voices. Looking up, Arthur saw Gupta emerge at the other end of the hall, engrossed in talk with another faculty member. Of course, it was a small department, which was the reason he didn't want Alfred hanging around in whatever pathetic "disguise" he had pulled out of his wardrobe - it wasn't unreasonable to have Gupta almost on top of them, as it were.

Ducking back around the corner, hoping that Gupta hadn't seen him, Arthur paused to glare at Alfred, who was staring very intently at an encased scarab ring further down the hallway.

"Oi," Arthur hissed at him. "Get moving."

Alfred blinked up at him.

"Get moving where?"

"I-I don't know, just get out of here, you stupid prick!" Arthur edged to the corner of the hall and leaned out just enough to get a quick glimpse of Gupta and his companion; they were nearing them, soon they'd turn the corner and walk slap-bang into Arthur, who was peering around it like a nutter-

"Oh, hell." Arthur pushed off the wall and sprinted down the hall, catching Alfred by the wrist as he passed him and dragging him along. "Will you come on?!"

"Where are we going in such a hurry?" Alfred asked amicably, pattering after him; he was still clutching his mop.

"My office." Arthur stopped at the door he'd emerged from barely a minute before to find Alfred doing a poor job of washing the floor with a dry mop; he fumbled in his jacket pocket for the key, clattering it in the lock and getting it open just as Alfred's hand brushed his in an attempt to help. He threw open the door and shoved Alfred into the room, behind him with a hair's breadth to spare. He shut the door with his weight, leaning against it.

"Ouch." Alfred rubbed at his back, dropping his mop. "What the hell was that all about? I mean, if you wanted me to screw you senseless over your desk, all you had to do was ask-"

"Shut up." Arthur kicked him in the shin. "Gupta's coming."

"Yeah, well, if you want to be coming, maybe you'd better bend yourself over that desk-"

Arthur clapped a hand over his mouth, silencing him; forceful when he struggled.

"I told you to shut up," he hissed. "Can't you keep quiet for two bleeding seconds?" He nodded towards the door, through which the sound of voices carried as they grew nearer. "Shush, you fucking idiot."

Alfred did go quiet, at last responding to the urgency in Arthur's actions; and the voices passed by the door and receded, footsteps accompanying on the marble tiles. Arthur let out a breath but kept his hand over Alfred's mouth.

"Incidentally," he said coldly, "I don't like the way you speak to me sometimes, being so boldly suggestive. It's disgusting."

Alfred at last pushed his hand away, looking at him over the frames of his glasses.

"You say that like we've never slept together," he said frostily. "Or do you like to pretend that none of those times ever happened, Arthur?"

"Are you forgetting where we are?" Arthur snapped. "One way or another you're going to get yourself arrested-"

"You didn't answer my question." Alfred folded his arms. "I know you like to use me for whatever it is you want but you at least acknowledge that all those times happened, right?"

"Of course I do," Arthur bit out, "but that doesn't give you the right to speak to me the way you do. It's not a joke."

"A joke?" Alfred raised his eyebrows. "That's funny - I thought you were the one who didn't take it seriously."

Arthur snorted.

"Considering you're the one who always fucks off before I wake up, that's a bit rich," he said acidly.

Alfred exhaled angrily; but a comeback to this seemed to fail him and he flopped into the plush chair before Arthur's desk instead.

"Going to sulk now, are you?" Arthur asked archly. "I haven't forgotten the time you left me handcuffed to the goddamn radiator in that hotel in Paris, either."

"Oh yeah?" Alfred looked sharply at him. "How about the time you threw my clothes out of the window of a moving train en route to St Petersburg?"

"That was because of the handcuff incident!"

"Then let it go!"

Arthur gave a groan, raking his hands into his damp hair.

"Oh, good lord," he groused, "it is a joke, isn't it? You and I, the whole bloody thing."

Alfred frowned, looking at the floor.

"It doesn't have to be," he mumbled, sounding strangely subdued.

"I don't want to discuss it." Arthur's voice was clipped as he went to the window, watching the quiet campus through the hot bend of glass. "...Not here." He felt for his cigarettes, feeling rather frazzled all of a sudden; taking one from the leather case with his teeth and lighting up. "Look, let's just... get this done, alright? Fifty-fifty, as we agreed. Just business. Let's not bloody... complicate things here of all places." He turned to Alfred, offering him the cigarette case. "Do you understand?"

Alfred took a cigarette, lighting it with a chemical flash of his own silver Zippo.

"It's not as though I shout it from the rooftops, you know," he drawled.

"All the same," Arthur said with a mouthful of smoke, "you possess an air of... unsubtlety, my dear."

"Maybe it's a compliment." Alfred said this with a sly nonchalance, looking at his cigarette.

"Hmm." Arthur raised his eyebrows. "And maybe, in other circumstances, I'd be flattered." And then, when Alfred looked up at him again in suprise, he added: "But you're still a cheeky fucker and if you speak to me like that again, I'll cut your damn tongue out of your head."

"Heh." Alfred grinned. "We'll see if you hold me to that next time we're in a back room at the Moulin Rouge, babe."

I am actually about a third of the way through the final part of this story now, I find that this one is very quick to write, so I hope to get that done before I start the Halloween fic and then cry over the other eighty million fics I've started and not gotten back to: Shatter, Lavender's Blue, Down Will Come Baby, Pangaea, Hey Young Blood...

...Although at least I haven't fucking forgotten about their existence, jfc. o.O