Work Text:
Jedediah stretches as he steps out of the saloon.
Around him, the dim-lit diorama room is quiet. Not as uncomfortably silent as when Ahkmenrah and his golden puzzle blocks were left in London, but frankly, that’s a low bar to clear. Jedediah knows exactly what his kind are, he does, but getting to see all of them but Octavius as cold and still and lifeless was not on his bucket list...
The big, raucous, museum-wide ‘farewell party’ happened last night; tonight is for the Museum of Natural History exhibits to spend time with their loved ones. The Treasures of the British Museum will be shipped out in the morning, and everyone knows the odds on them ever returning are as good as on a three-legged mule in a horse race.
He hears a “Ho!” from the work teams as the rope bridge between the Old West and Roman dioramas is secured into place.
While the Tablet was in the museum, their days were spent dormant, but it was like sleeping — dreams, with snatches of conversation from the visitors slipping in. When it was gone there was nothing — Jedediah closed his eyes one morning and opened them three years later like he’d just blinked.
This time there would be no three years later.
Whining about it does about as much good as pissing into a volcano — be an antisocial monkey the size of a mountain or forget it. Everything Jedediah said to Larry three years ago, every bit of swagger and common sense he cooked up for him, it all still applies, dammit…
He frowns when he sees Lancelot crouched by the Roman diorama.
Now, Jedediah will admit that every man should have a second chance, that maybe, just maybe, the biggest varmint can change his spots. And this one hasn’t actually done anything since coming to the Museum of Natural History. Except draw Octavius’s attention.
Which he’s doing now. Lancelot stands up, bows, then puts his fist to his chest in a way that raises Jedediah’s temperature like he’s wrapped up in a bearskin coat. That is pandering, pure pandering.
“Hey, looky-here! Sir Giant Armadillo himself! What do you want?”
“I thought I’d say goodbye,” Lancelot says, smiling at him like his steaming dislike is cute.
And Jedediah is sick and dog-tired of people disrespecting him; when he’s glaring and standing with his hands on his shooting irons is no time to be smiling at him.
“Well adios then, wax-plate! Don’t let us hold you up!”
Octavius strides across the rope bridge. “Jedediah wishes you a safe journey too,” he says, contenting himself with a warning glare.
“Don’t you be going near no candles now.” Jedediah could be so lucky. Still, at least the memory of Lancelot with his nose hanging off is there to keep him warm at nights.
Or would be, if there were going to be any more nights…
Tilly, aka Girl-Type Gigantor, comes in, sees Lancelot and starts smoothing back her hair. Jedediah scowls at them both — and then at Octavius, because why the heck not? He can’t work out what the gosh-darn fuss is all about. Octavius manages to be pretty even at his most constipated and pompous, soft lips pursed and nostrils flared wide, and no one’s swooning over his beauty… and that thought makes Jedediah feel kinship with a lizard dancing on hot sand. It ain’t right.
It seems no one wants to let old Jedediah be tonight, because once Lancelot’s finally swaggered off, Gigantette looms over them, bottles under her arm. “Alriiight, so it’s kind of late now, but I want to make one thing clear to you little guys, yeah? ‘Cos I saw this old episode of The Outer Limits once, and there was this scientist who kept these Martian bugs in, like, a tank, and they built pyramids and worshipped him as a god. And I just want you to know that I’m not up for that stuff. Like, at all.”
Octavius stares at her, his head tilted to one side like a puzzled dog.
“Are you insulted?” Jedediah asks him. “I feel like if I knew what was just said, I’d be insulted.”
Tilly dumps one of the bottles into his diorama. “Going away present,” she says, and Jedediah just stares, because the bottle’s full — and as tall as a cliff. His work crew and the townsfolk all gather round to admire it. The Romans get one, too, as she turns to leave.
“Hey, hey, Gigantette! You gonna open them?”
“Nuh-uh. I don’t think so.” She waggles her finger at him from the doorway. “I don’t like being called names. Laters!”
Jedediah watches the door swing shut behind her. “Why is she like that?” he demands of Octavius. “Larry didn’t mind the names!”
“Larry conceded defeat, Jedediah,” Octavius says, staring thoughtfully at the bottle in his own diorama. “I don’t believe that is exactly the same thing.”
Jedediah nudges him with his shoulder, watches a startled grin break across Octavius’s face as he asks, “Race you?”
Wei and Jimmy already have their heads together, arguing over where to place the dynamite.
“Centurion!” Octavius shouts as he jogs back across the rope bridge. “Summon the engineers! We have a challenge!” He shoots another wide, toothy grin at Jedediah.
Two in one night, he’s honored.
So honored it takes Jimmy three attempts to get his attention. “Are we doing this, boss?”
“Heck yeah! Let’s blow the lid right off that thing, boy!”
Now, the saying 'when all you've got is a hammer' is usually rolled out to be negative, but Jedediah has truly never met a situation that couldn’t be fixed with explosives.
And he does like the bang.
Jedediah slings a rope around the bottle and climbs it like a rock stack. Over in the Roman diorama, scaffolding is going up. Their bottle is different, he notices, with a big bulbous cork fastened down by wire. Still, no time to be concerned with them, even if Octavius is fun to watch work; getting the explosives placed just right to take the top off without cracking the bottle is going to take all Jedediah's skill.
Down below him, Wei and Jimmy shout instructions. Octavius is louder, drawing Jedediah's attention even as he slides to the ground and starts to run.
"Fire in the hole!"
POP!
Out of the corner of his eye, Jedediah sees disintegrating scaffolding, falling Romans, and a great plume of froth rising from their bottle like the erupting of Vesuvius. And then his own goes off.
That wasn't supposed to happen, is his first dim thought as sparkling glass rains down.
The blue flames flickering around the broken neck of the bottle are kinda pretty, though…
He watches it, vaguely aware of Octavius approaching with a bucket. “You may share our oddly fizzy wine,” Octavius says, and he’s so clearly resisting the urge to crow that Jedediah wants to sock him on the chin and hug him at the same time.
He thinks he’ll miss him —
— but he won’t, will he?
They aren’t dying. Just going dormant. Like a volcano… And is it like they’ll ever know if the Tablet never returns?
It’s too much for old Jedediah, he ain’t thinking about it no more. “And you can share my fire,” he says, slinging an arm around Octavius’s shoulders. “My BURNING! WHISKY! FIRE!” He pulls off his hat and whoops, hears it picked up by his compatriots, even Octavius managing an awkward little “yeeaah” as Jedediah squeezes him tight — and if he’s going to be dormant, if he never wakes again, this is how he wants to spend his last hoe-down, yes sir.
*
Well, he can’t actually remember his last hoe-down, but waking up is a pleasure. There’s bright light trying to creep in between his eyelids, curly hair tickling his chin, but he can hear soft breathing, can feel puffs of warm air on his neck, paper beneath him and rough wool draped over him and hot, so hot skin pressed up against him… and clearly he lucked out and the night ended well.
The person curled up against him stretches slowly, and he gets a sudden, thrown-from-your-horse-in-rattlesnake-country jolt of panic. That… feels like not many curves and a whole heap of muscle…
His eyes snap open.
Octavius blinks, going from half-asleep and contented to awake and horrified. And Jedediah screams— no, he yells, yep, yells. Octavius gives a high-pitched yelp like his balls got caught in a vise — and no, no, no, he ain’t thinking about Octavius’s balls. Hell and Mary, he sees enough of them as Octavius jerks back, flailing as a fold of white paper droops down over his head.
He shoves it away and glares. Jedediah realizes his own underwear is half-off, bunched around his hips.
He can remember the fizzy wine, bubbles as big as his eyeballs. He can remember the bath-house, and tackling the attendant trying to take off with his union suit while Octavius laughed his drunken Roman ass off. Jedediah pulls the garment up over his shoulders, unable to stop himself sniffing it. Octavius was just joshing him then, because he does not smell worse than the Neanderthals. Jedediah bathes plenty, naked as a baby sometimes, and he knows full well that “hot water won’t un-man him”.
Even if it clearly did something to him last night.
“Don’t you be looking at old Jedediah like this is his fault, boy,” he snaps. “I ain’t the one with my pipe hanging loose.”
Octavius flushes as red as his cape as he snatches it up, the blush going everywhere and huh, ain’t that a sight?
“However we chose to end last night,” Octavius says, as stiff-backed and formal as he can manage with his cloak clutched to his crotch, “it could be the least of our concerns.”
Jedediah stares at him, and he’s going to blame the odd situation he woke up in putting him all out of sorts, because it takes him a whole gosh-darned moment to realize what Octavius is getting at. “We shouldn’t be awake at all. Holy…” The Treasures of the British Museum exhibition was moving on, off on its tour of the States… Ahkmenrah and his family — and their tablet — were moving on… “She took us out of the museum?”
“We don’t know what happened. We should investigate.” Octavius shuffles his feet and clutches his cloak just a little tighter. “But first, I shall attempt to locate my garments.”
Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Jedediah would feel a whole heap better with his hat and boots on himself. They’re surrounded by crumpled tissue paper that has made mountainous walls around them. The paper shivers around and under them as Octavius pushes at it, stomping it down to clear a path. Jedediah finds his eyes lingering on his friend’s muscular ass as he fights his way free. He scrubs at his eyes and wishes he could do the same to his brain. Well, shi-it.
It’s just the one time waking naked together… It could be he’s balking at this with all the sense and good reason of a horse mistaking a twig for a snake. And while he’s doing it, there’s a mystery to be solved that he ain’t solving sitting on his butt. He jumps to his feet and follows Octavius’s path to freedom.
Outside the white walls of the paper, the first thing he notices — well, perhaps the second, but his eyes don’t go straight to Octavius’s naked back as he crouches by a pile of their stuff, hell no they don’t — is that they’re definitely not in the museum. Jedediah knows every inch of that place — he and Octavius are both explorers and conquerors by nature, and they took every advantage of Larry’s decision to let them roam free.
He looks around. In the distance, beyond Octavius, he sees a coffee-machine, dispenser of God’s Own beverage, and a stack of paper cups. The ‘room’ they’re in is even smaller than Larry’s old office — between the size and the plate-metal walls, it’s like one of the Smithsonian Archives loading bays had a love child with a bathroom stall — and he’s got a pitted and scraped metal countertop beneath his feet. The great gaping maw of a purse looms over him, its decorative plastic flowers large enough to use as umbrellas. Among the various treasures and trash scattered around him, like the whole bag was tipped upside down and shook, is a candy-pink hair ribbon and a jumbo-sized can of mace, so it’s no great mystery who it belongs to. Gigantette was so sad to discover that ninja swords didn’t come as standard for museum guards, even in America.
Jedediah pulls his crumpled and crushed hat from underneath the battered and well-thumbed bulk of The Neanderthals Discovered and regards it sadly. Now he’s not distracted, he can work out some of the winding trail that led to this place. Clear as day, they fell asleep under Octavius’ cape and Gigantette came along and picked them up and put them in her purse, oh the indignity. If manhandling is humiliating, what is being wrapped up in a paper handkerchief and bounced around the bottom of a purse with the bits of fluff and old receipts and stray grime-coated breath-mints of life?
“Fer cryin’ out loud.” Jedediah knocks out some of the dents from his hat. With it firmly back on his head, he sets off across the rolling glossy plain of Gigantette’s discarded People magazine.
The strip light above him flickers. As he approaches Octavius, Jedediah feels his mouth go dry.
At least he’s got some underwear on now.
Yeah…
At one point, not long after they defeated the villainous Night Guards together, Jedediah got Octavius to exchange his loincloth for a pair of knee-length drawers like decent folks wear. They didn’t last. Neither did Octavius’s idea of himself as a stoic survive a scrap of linen between his thighs; he didn’t complain once, but Jedediah noticed the inch-by-inch reappearance of golden skin between the top of his greaves and the hem of his tunic as the drawers got cut shorter — and shorter. He said nothing.
He’s saying something now. Wow. “Woah, what the blazes happened to your smalls, son? Did you pick a fight with some ol’ dressmaker’s shears or piss in the laundrymen’s whisky? ‘Cos I kin almost see your—“
“You already have! Many times!” Octavius scrapes his fingers through his close-cropped curls and stiffens his shoulders. “Turn your eyes from me in my moment of shame, Jedediah!”
“What’s this? Mr ‘let me strut around after my bath a-swinging my big hot pilum’ is shy —“
And that’s when Jedediah finds himself crossing his eyes, trying to focus on the tip of the gladius hovering perilously close to his nose. “Turn away,” Octavius snarls, and he’s never led troops in a real battle — neither of them have, the only real memories they both have were made in the museum — but there’s grit and blood and the battlefield in his voice and oh, Jedediah remembers this Octavius well, “or I cut your eyes out.”
“Why you gotta be like that?” But he does as he’s told. Octavius’s sword is a little more effective than his shameful guns. “I thought we were friends.”
“So did I,” Octavius bites out.
Jedediah hears the rustle of fabric, and if that was Octavius finding and donning his tunic, then it’s all for the good. They are friends, this is just a small jumpable canyon in the lush-grassed range of their friendship, but Jedediah won’t lie, even to himself — he’ll be happier with more of that skin covered up.
“Why would I carry a pilum with me after a bath?” Octavius mutters. “This isn’t the time for your riddles.”
Jedediah refuses to fight the grin that creeps across his face. “It’s always the time, boy — and you love —”
The countertop shakes — and Tilly crashes through the door.
“— them.”
They both run to the counter’s edge. Down on the floor, Gigantette groans and swears under her breath. The fact that she’s tied to a chair probably doesn’t help her mood any. Neither does the gun being waved in her face.
The guy waving it has the proportions of a brick outhouse and the expression of a man waiting in line to use one. Though that could just be his face… “I won’t ask you again, cupcake! Where is the Tablet of Ahkmenrah?”
“That big pitbull look familiar to you?” Jedediah whispers.
Octavius shakes his head.
“Alright! Alright! I already told you,” Gigantette says. “It’s with the rest of the exhibits.” She points with her foot.
The guy doesn’t even bother looking; Jedediah does.
Through the door is a long space, dimly lit. He sees a couple of plastic chairs bolted to the floor, and secured shipping containers. The floor is metal and looks like a hundred air-vent covers fastened together. Jedediah breaks out in a sweat just looking at it. One of the containers shakes; Trixy is unhappy.
“You can’t fool me, sugarplum,” One-Gun says. “My granddad said you’d keep it with you.”
Now Jedediah remembers. Nearly fifty years of being locked away like a rabid raccoon, kept from his manifest destiny — and from fighting Octavius — by three freaks of nature done up in blue… how could he forget their faces? Gus Junior here sure looks like his grandpappy, oversized and angry-lookin’.
“Reckon you can cut Gigantette loose if I keep him diverted?” Jedediah whispers.
Octavius nods. “Chest-bump?” he says quietly.
Jedediah acts without thinking. He grabs hold of a handful of Octavius’s tunic to yank him in, but it’s different somehow, without those extra layers of flannel and wool and metal and leather between them. The heat of Octavius’s body and his breath in Jedediah’s face makes his skin goose-bump inside his union suit and, um, other bits get all up and interested…
Octavius squeezes his shoulder. “Good luck, Jedediah.”
He scoots over to the bag and starts gathering up the ribbon.
“You too, kemosabe,” Jedediah says, and wastes some valuable time watching him.
But Jedediah has his own mission. There’s a magazine needing tearing and folding up. It’s hard work, but he ain’t shy of raising a little sweat. And he and Octavius’s YouTube addiction once led to them making dozens of these things in one night, inspired by their favorite vloggers to put the full power of Roman Engineering and American Inspiration into the design of the Perfect Paper PlaneTM. Just what he needs now…
Gus Jr. is hovering in the doorway, looking toward the container as it shakes and Trixy roars. “What kind of weirdy shit is that?”
Jedediah hauls one of the planes to the edge of the counter. Far below him, Octavius drops off the end of the ribbon and darts across the floor. Gigantette’s eyes widen as she sees him.
“You carrying wild animals back there or something, monkey nut?” Gus Jr. starts to turn back — and startles in a hell of a satisfying way as the plane flashes past his eye line. “What the —”
He’s not as stupid as he looks. Jedediah slips back into the shadow of the coffeepot as Gus Jr. moves toward the counter.
“How much did your granddad tell you about the Tablet?” Gigantette says, and his head swings around — away from Jedediah, but if he’s looking at her he could see Octavius, not completely hidden by her coat as he saws at her bonds. “Did he tell you about the magic?” What is she doing? Jedediah gets hold of another plane. “It’s amazing what you see in this job. Like, you’re always clearing up after the exhibits but it’s worth it?” He’s going to stop this right now. He’s going to jab it right in the guy’s eye… “This morning I had to scrub hieroglyphs off the Easter Island man, get Trixy’s horn from Rexy… one of Laaa’s bruvs got a lighter… and you wouldn’t believe how the Huns get with alcohol. Brutal. Oh, and two of the miniatures were in the planetarium, snuggled up together like they didn’t know they weren’t going to get a chance to, y’know, unsnuggle. I kind of forgot to put them back in one or other of their little worlds so it’s like, irrelevant now, but I’ve been thinking, what if they did want to spend the rest of forever like that? That is so romantic.”
Jedediah’s face is burning. The plane is unlaunched.
He does remember the stars dancing and swirling above him, Octavius’s weight against his side as they leaned on each other. He thinks Octavius moved first, but Jedediah sure as all hell reciprocated…
Welp, that’s a memory…
Gus Jr. snorts and turns away. “Is there something in the AC at that museum? Because my old man is crazy… as… well…” As his words trail off, Jedediah realizes where he’s looking.
He stares at Jedediah.
Jedediah stares back.
Now, he ain’t no yellow-liver, but —
He dives behind the cups as Gus Jr.’s hand shoots out, takes refuge behind the coffee maker as the cups are swept aside. He can hear the giant’s breath as he comes closer…
The coffee maker shifts behind his back. When he looks up, he sees Gus Jr.’s fingers hooked around the top. His guns probably wouldn’t do him much good but damn, he wishes he had them on him.
He considers the distance to the pepper spray —
“OW!”
The exclamation makes Jedediah’s ears ring. The coffee maker vibrates but remains unmolested.
“What the hell are you?”
Now that doesn’t sound good…
Jedediah looks out of his refuge. Gus Jr. is bending over, and Jedediah’s chest tightens as he straightens up. Octavius’s tunic is nipped between his fingers, and the man himself dangles from it, red-faced and scrabbling at his neck as the fabric cuts off his air.
Not good. Dammit, Octavius — if he was going to rescue Jedediah by stabbing one of the big guys in the foot, he should know to run like hell afterward.
Octavius splutters and kicks out. Gus Jr. brings him closer to his face, eyes wide and fascinated.
“You’re just like a little doll, aren’t you, candy crush? Only real flesh and blood…”
Jedediah snatches hold of the last paper plane. He’s got this. He’s got this covered harder than a Wyoming cowpoke with six blankets and a tent to keep out the chill…
After all, did Dan and Phil fly their own planes? No, they —
He drags it to the end of the counter.
— did —
One push, and he jumps with it.
— not!
He whoops out loud as the wind whips off his hat.
And Octavius stabs Gus Jr. in the hand.
Gus Jr. howls in pain, Tilly leaps at him, Octavius falls, and Jedediah throws all his weight into changing the plane’s trajectory.
He can get him…
The plane crumples under Octavius as he ‘lands’ on it. The crash that follows is dang painful, but it broke his fall, so Jedediah thinks he should be thanked, not showered in Latin curses. Ungrateful Roman —
BANG!
And the world goes wild.
Jedediah doesn’t know where the gale comes from, but the crash dumped him close enough to the plastic seats to grab a leg. In another world, he might grab hold of it with both arms — in this one he catches Octavius’s wrist.
“There goes my hope that we were on a boat!” Octavius shouts. “We’ll be sucked out!”
Somewhere beyond the howl of the wind, Jedediah can hear the thud of Tilly’s fist against flesh, and Gus Jr.’s voice: “They were sold to me as blanks! I didn’t want to hurt anyone or damage the plane, just scare you!”
Idiot. Damn idiot. And he managed to rip the neck of Octavius’s tunic while manhandling him, which outrages Jedediah as much — no, much more than if he did it to Jedediah himself. The scarlet fabric flutters in the wind as he digs his fingers into Octavius’s skin, clinging to the chair leg as the gale lifts them both up off their feet.
“I won’t let you go!” If it happens, if Jedediah loses his grip on Octavius, then he’ll let go of the chair leg and let himself follow. He ain’t afraid of falling, or of being too far from the tablet when the sun rises — better to be dust in the air with Octavius than whole and without him when the moon comes back —
Wow.
He pokes the feeling. It doesn’t go away or let him joke it off.
Welp, that’s the last time Jedediah gets to tease Octavius for being melodramatic.
“I wish to apologize!” Octavius declares at full parade-ground volume. “I genuinely don’t remember yesterday’s dawn, but if I behaved… inappropriately… then I am sorry, Jedediah. I—”
Jedediah tightens his grip on Octavius’s wrist. “Would it be so bad?” he hollers back, rushing the words out before he can think. “If we did get all Biblical last night, would you hate the idea?”
Octavius stares at him, blank-faced, and Jedediah frantically tries to remember if he’s ever explained this particular usage of ‘Biblical’ to him. He must’ve, right...?
“Of course!” Octavius snaps, and Jedediah actually feels it in his chest. “What’s the point if I can’t remember it?”
Well, kick open the saloon door and call the sheriff a daffodil… Jedediah whoops out loud.
The wind cuts off as something gets put in front of the hole, and somewhere in his mind he’s thinking about the reality of that — they’re flying, they get to explore some more places… they get more time — but they’ve landed in a heap, and his hands are finding Octavius’s face.
Once Jedediah Smith makes a decision, he does not shrink from it.
He kisses Octavius full on the mouth —
— and Octavius throws his arms around his shoulders and kisses back, fingers in Jedediah’s hair and digging into his back, lips hard and demanding like he’s expecting to conquer. The cargo hold clearly lost too much air; Jedediah’s lightheaded, overheated…
Gigantette’s “awwww” is like a bucket of cold water to a pair of fighting dogs. But this is not the end of it, they’ll have time. They’ve got time.
They’re flying…