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Jonathan ordered more whiskey.
It was a beautiful night, the sky was clear of locusts or dust storms of malevolent ghosts, the water of the Nile wasn't running with blood, and O'Connell was fucking his sister. Probably right now, though it wouldn't be the first time. Jonathan wasn't that naive, and Evy was that worldly.
Jonathan looked down at his whiskey, and drank more of it, and then poured more of it, and then drank more of it.
Jonathan was not thinking about O'Connell fucking his sister. Because she was Evy, and she would climb inside his head and suck the thoughts right out if she thought he was being proprietary over her. He wasn't. It was just weird, to know that Evy had never needed him, but would need him even less tomorrow than she had yesterday. Unless O'Connell turned out to be an absolute shit, in which case Jonathan would hold Evy's hat while she ruined him. She'd probably find a way to feed O'Connell to something extremely unlikely, like a jackal-headed statue, and O'Connell would deserve it, if he hurt her.
"You're Evelyn Carnahan's brother?" someone asked, accompanied by the distinct sound of sand sliding off a chair as whoever it was made room for himself, shaking off the canvas.
Jonathan looked up at the man. He was dressed like an Englishman who hadn't been in Egypt long, and certainly hadn't asked anyone local what to wear. He shouldn't be wearing those shoes in the desert, let alone those fancy silk socks. Jonathan would have stolen his pocketbook just to prove he could, and to stop someone less seemly doing it first. If he wasn't already so drunk. And it wasn't his sister's wedding. It didn't look like he'd have any interesting maps or secret documents on him, anyway. The man had a bit of daring around his pretty eyes, like he knew Jonathan was looking through him, and that he looked a bit of a fool out of his depth, but the man didn't care at all.
"Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell's brother," Jonathan corrected, because he was Evy's brother, even if O'Connell was now Evelyn's husband. Evy had a husband. That was--that was strange. Being Evelyn's brother was a task that made him happy enough. That was comfortable. Being O'Connell's brother-in-law, though, that was going to take some more booze to settle into, and maybe a few years. Evy was married. Jonathan had been there. He'd walking her down what passed for an aisle, since she'd wanted to get married in the desert. At least it had been Evy, and O'Connell, because if Evy had been taken over by Anuk-sun-amun and married Imohtep, Jonathan would definitely--yeah, okay, O'Connell wasn't the worst brother in law.
"Jonathan," Jonathan said, pouring a glass for the man who finally sat down on the less sandy seat, "the bride's brother."
"I thought you were. I'm Lily Houghton's brother," the man said, "MacGregor."
MacGregor gave that introduction just the same way as Jonathan would, as an accessory to someone smarter and brilliant and full of drive. Someone who might need a man to hold her books, or get her into the right sorts of clubs by lying about it. Except Evy had O'Connell for that now. Except O'Connell had probably been thrown out of all clubs worth mentioning, so maybe Jonathan was still a little useful.
This was just fine, when he wasn't feeling maudlin.
"Lily--the plant professor, from Cambridge? With the--" Jonathan waved his hand around, trying to show he meant her brains, not her--anything else. Evy didn't actually have many female friends who came to the wedding. "Sorry, I'm drunk."
"I better catch up, then," MacGregor said, downing his drink, and pouring them both another measure.
"She's--Evy's been translating something for your sister? Plant things?"
"Probably something medicinal. Egypt isn't Lily's usual area of study, even if she does know a lot about flax, and cotton, and papyrus, or at least she'd been telling me a lot about it. This--" MacGregor gestured around at the expanse of dry desert, "is a lot drier than the places she usually drags me to. Just as hot, but at least there's no humidity to ruin my silk. My tailor cried when I told him what happened to my clothes in Brazil."
Jonathan looked down at his best shirt, and his new suit he had made for the wedding.
"Linen," Jonathan pronounced. "Linen is much better for Egypt."
"Lily and I haven't been to Egypt since we were children," MacGregor said. "Our father dragged us everywhere when we were little. He picked Egypt after I lost two toes to frostbite in Bhutan."
Jonathan looked down at the man's feet, but they were in shiny leather shoes and silk socks, and not visibly toe-less.
"Evy and I never left Egypt for long," Jonathan offered. "We went to boarding school in England, of course, and for all the hols which weren't long enough to travel back to Egypt, we stayed with our father's cousin near Ely."
"Oh, so you must know Cambridge! Ely's not far on the train. Lily has a research position at Cambridge. I don't like the town very much, there's too many students, and Frank likes it even less. He gets grumpy because all the colleges block access to the river, but I think he just likes to pretend to be grumpy for the irony."
"Irony?" Jonathan asked.
"Frank--he's Lily's man, as much as she's anyone's-- he's not really a punter." MacGregor thought about that for a moment, "and don't bet against him either. He's a terrible cheat."
"Why not live somewhere else? If you don't like Cambridge." Jonathan asked.
"Oh, I can't just leave," MacGregor said, "I'm a professional hanger-on at this point. Where would she be if she didn't have me to boss around? People might start getting scared of her. I provide an invaluable service of looking so silly no one notices that Lily's taken control."
"Me too," Jonathan agreed. "Well, I hope so. Maybe Evy doesn't--Evy has O'Connell now, and I--It's not that I didn't want her to get married, but it's always been the two of us. And maybe it'll be three of us, and we can settle down somewhere close, and I can take care of any sproglets they have while they go graverobbing, but it's bloody awkward. Just figuring it out."
"She can love both of you," MacGregor said, with the amount of sincerity that a quarter of a bottle of whiskey deserved. "I was--well, not worried about Frank. Distracted by him myself, honestly, he's magnificent--but Lily would murder me if I tried to be overprotective (not that I could manage that anyway) so I was hardly going to make a fuss. But it feels strange, until you sort it all out."
"But my sister is married," Jonathan said.
MacGregor nodded, in a way which looked like sympathy. "Lily won't marry Frank. I don't suppose he'd ask, but it's mostly--" MacGregor waved a hand vaguely in the direction of England "--politics. She's allowed to be smart so long as she's also an old maid, at least in the rules of her college. You haven't seen a complicated list of rules until you've seen the personal conduct expectations of a women's college at Cambridge."
"Evy's never really cared much." Jonathan stops, and thinks, "well, she cares a lot, and she might start trying to set ancient curses on Bainbridge scholars for not respecting her, now she knows how they work a little better."
"They're very far away," MacGregor agreed with Evy's reasons for not caring, although possibly he was asking if ancient Egyptian curses worked from a distance.
"Thankfully."
"It's nice, that your sister got married."
"It is not," Jonathan grumbled, not meaning it at all, but she's Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell now, and he never had any say about it.
MacGregor laughed. "Frank lives with both of us, and lets me dress him, which is all a distraction from rumours that Lily's living in sin. Everyone knows the rumours about me, so they think I dragged home a barbarian without a brain and dress him for fun. Which, it is fun, but people who gossip think Frank is my bit of stuff, and people who don't gossip think he's Lily's bodyguard."
"O'Connell would make a terrible bodyguard. The both of them are always touching things they shouldn't, and then O'Connell is shooting things he probably shouldn't. Not that he doesn't carry Evy out of trouble as well, and it's usually her fault, but--"
MacGregor's laugh was concilitory, like he understood that problem entirely too well.
"I like your shirt," MacGregor said, reaching out to touch Jonathan's open cuffs, running the fabric through his fingers.
"My mother was Egyptian," Jonathan offered, but he was drunk, so MacGregor probably didn't know what he meant. Something about offering to find him better linen shirts, maybe? He should do that. He'd take MacGregor to the tailor. Jonathan probably needs to learn how to dress rich, now he's got a fortune.
"All my other shirts are stained brown," Jonathan said, running his fingers down his shirt, watching MacGregor watch his fingers, even as his own tightened on the cuff. Huh. Interesting.
Jonathan wasn't stupid, he just looked like it next to Evy. And he was more observant than he liked to pretend, because being an observant officer meant you got promoted, and then you were in charge of men, and then they died. Competence was a punishment.
"Stained?" MacGregor prompted, while Jonathan got distracted by the perfect flop of hair over the man's forehead.
"The Nile ran with blood two months ago, and contaminated the water. It got into the laundry."
"We were in Tanis when that happened," MacGregor said, refilling his glass again. "There was blood running out towards the sea. Frank was almost surprised, and you don't want to know how weird things have to be to surprise Frank."
Jonathan wanted to test that, but he doesn't know Frank, and no one would believe him while he's drunk. He's barely believable when sober. He could probably take his tales to any Cairo establishment and get very drunk off other men's money if he tried, now. He should try that, later. It's a wedding, and MacGregor's thumb was still running along the edge of his cuff.
"The Nile running with blood isn't even in the top weirdest things that happened to Lily this year," MacGregor said, grinning. "Did you see Frank? He forgets he's not immortal anymore. Except maybe he is, and he's just not been killed yet. We'll find out eventually, I suppose."
Jonathan thought about immortals, and thought about Imhotep, but that definitely wasn't a conversation for a wedding.
MacGregor was fidgeting with his cufflink, running his thumb across the cabochon. Jonathan tried out the movement himself, feeling the raised shape of the C under his thumb. It was too hot for this, even if it was a wedding. He slipped the cufflinks into his breast pocket, and let his cuffs hang open over the back of his hands. They were bright white, starched stiff.
"I'd thought the Nile water might dye cloth pink. I hoped so, since it didn't really feel like blood in the water, but the stains are brown. Proper blood stains," Jonathan grimaced, and tried not to think of Flanders, looking down at his white linen shirt, new and crisp for the wedding
"I never saw a lot of blood," MacGregor said, in that embarrassed way some men got. He was flushed, but that might be the booze, or the topic of conversation, or the way Jonathan kept staring at his mouth. Some men notice that. MacGregor definitely noticed, but they were talking about the war, so he probably shouldn't kiss him until they changed topics.
"You didn't end up in France?" Jonathan asked.
"No. Just a few skirmishes--well, and a submarine. Nothing to talk about."
MacGregor's eyes were rather intent, and his fingers were stroking along the back of Jonathan's, his fingers slipping from the linen along the back of Jonathan's sand and sun blasted hands, like he was admiring it.
"Supply line work?"
"Oh, I was--," MacGregor said, his voice slower than it had been, "working as a medicinal research assistant for Lily, you know. Not that anyone was pushing me to sign up. I'm a known deviant, not officer material."
"Lucky bastard," Jonathan muttered, "I would have got myself thrown out of school for sucking Flemmings, if I'd known that would have saved me from being respectable enough for the war."
MacGregor licked his lips, and that was extremely unfair. Jonathan was drunk, and Evy was married, and MacGregor was definitely watching Jonathan's lips now, and he wasn't fool enough not to notice.
"This is all we have left, is it?" Jonathan said, swirling his glass like he was mysterious. It sloshed over his hand because actually, he was drunk, not mysterious.
"What is?"
"I'm not very good at--" Jonathan flung a hand out at the desert. "The big things. Evy's good at the smart things, and the big things, and the important ones. And now she's got O'Connell, and your Lily has Frank, and we're left being very small men in very big worlds."
"I don't mind that," MacGregor said, leaning into Jonathan's space.
"I don't either, but sometimes I think I should mind."
Jonathan lent forward, except it was more of a floppy slide towards MacGregor. He tried to grab the arm of the chair, and missed, and MacGregor's leg beneath his hand. His trousers were very soft, and his thigh was very firm.
MacGregor laughed, a little gust of sound, even as his hand slipped down the line of Jonathan's shirt buttons, to his waist, and then back up his chest. MacGregor had lovely hands, even when Jonathan was looking down at them from a funny angle as he was distracted by the pressure of fingers moving though the fabric.
"No need to talk about it, though," MacGregor said.
Jonathan nodded, because a wedding was not the time to talk. Even if the happy couple had--gone somewhere? Inside a tent? Jonathan couldn't see Evy, but he didn't have to, because O'Connell was there, and if Jonathan screamed because a mummy had sprung from the sands, O'Connell would probably come to his rescue.
But Jonathan didn't need rescuing, because MacGregor's lips were warm and open under his.
Oh. Yes. This is what weddings were for.
"Jonathan," Evy called, even as she walked straight into his room without knocking.
"Evy?"
MacGregor rolled over, taking the sheets with him and falling off the bed on the far side under the window. Jonathan was left blinking and naked, so he grabbed a pillow to cover his groin.
"Oh, good," Evy said, "Lily was wondering where MacGregor had got to."
"Go away, Evy."
"Just a moment. I had an idea about where this plant Lily is looking for might have grown, in ancient times, because there was a plant quite like it depicted in a tomb in the Valley of the Queens, but that queen came from somewhere closer to Luxor. The Nile has always been very well mapped, of course--Frank looked over my maps, and he was only a little rude about them--and there's this area south of Luxor which seems promising."
"Evy, please leave," Jonathan said, but she just rolled her eyes, because she always knew when he was aching with hangover.
"You're going on a river cruise for your honeymoon?" MacGregor asked, only his eyes and messy hair showing over the bed. Jonathan lent over to pick MacGregor's pants from the floor near Evy's feet, and threw them over the bed towards him.
"Well, Lily and Frank--did you meet Frank at the wedding, Jonathan?--are coming too, which means it's hardly a honeymoon. More of an expedition, although hopefully not an adventure. Not so soon after the last one."
"Evy."
"I had breakfast sent to my room. Join us when you're dressed."
She was nice enough to close the door behind her. And she hadn't opened the shutters. That was remarkably kind, for Evy. She was in a good mood. Of course she was. She just got married. Jonathan would probably also be in a good mood, except for the whiskey.
"Does your sister believe in hangover cures for breakfast?" MacGregor moaned, crawling back onto the bed and burying his face in Jonathan's chest.
"Does yours?" Jonathan retorted.
"Lily's been searching for another panacea for long enough I'd have thought she'd prioritise it, but she never does."
Jonathan ran his hands back up through the short hair at the base of MacGregor's neck, feeling very good indeed. Even with Evy's interruption, and the hangover which was threatening to drop an anvil on his head as soon as he opened the shutters. Never seeing daylight again sounded like a good plan.
"I suppose three rooms on a river cruise makes more sense than four?" Jonathan asked.
"I hope you're prepared. A boat ride with Frank is--an experience."
"It's better than camels."
"I hope to never have the privilege to compare them."
Unfortunately, within the month MacGregor had the opportunity to compare camels to boats, and greatly disliked the animals. Jonathan thought he looked rather charming, even when his hair was matted with sand, his last clean shirt only fit for rags.