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He’s too young. He’s way, way, way too young.
Larry tries to remind himself of this night after night, since the night Ahkmenrah finally emerged from his tomb, unwrapped his bandages, and looked at him.
Way too young. Too-bright eyes, too-easy smile, too much of whatever it is that makes his voice cultured and innocent all at once. For a world that only comes alive at night, the young pharaoh might as well be a drop of sunlight in human form. Larry’s eyes stray to him more times than he can find excuses for and when Ahkmenrah starts looking back —
Too young. Ahkmenrah’s too young and Larry’s too much of a romantic screw up, and there’s Nick he’s got to watch out for, and how do you even date someone who is simultaneously like twenty years younger and a few thousand years older, give or take a few centuries? You don’t, is the answer. Because life is complicated enough as it is and Larry likes what he’s got here just fine.
Besides, he tells himself, Ahkmenrah would be looking at anyone like that who finally opened the sarcophagus. It’s not that Larry is actually special or well-suited to the younger (older? whatever) man; it’s gratitude, a sudden end to loneliness, room to breathe that’s causing this, and no more. Larry’s a lot of things but he’s not totally oblivious or naive, and so when Ahkmenrah starts looking at him like that he knows exactly where he doesn’t need to be.
“All well, Lawrence?” Teddy asks one night, when Larry’s lost in thoughts staring at the staircase leading to the pharaoh’s tomb.
“Sure, yeah,” he says, turning to walk alongside Teddy. Texas nickers softly and bumps his head against Larry’s shoulder. Larry absently pets the horse’s flank. “Just, you know — same as every night.”
He pointedly ignores the sympathetic, understanding look on Teddy’s face. He’s not really in the mood to be counseled. Not about this, anyway.
Teddy shifts and opens his mouth, but Larry beats him to the punch. “Did we get the Mayans under control yet, or do I need to find the industrial vacuum again?”
Teddy sighs but lets Larry change the subject, for which Larry is eternally grateful.
...
He should know better, Ahkmenrah muses as he studies the man sitting at the museum’s front desk. He really, really should know better. He doesn’t even have the excuse of age, this time. This isn’t any tryst, hidden from his parents and the rest of his royal court. Larry is an honest man, a good man, and whether he knows it or not he’s got one of the softest hearts Ahkmenrah’s ever seen in another. The pharaoh doubts a fun and casual dalliance is at the top of the night guard’s list.
And, if he’s not mistaken, Larry has grown uncomfortable in his presence. How this occurred isn’t… quite a mystery. Much has changed over the millennia, but flirtatious looks are flirtatious looks no matter the era and no matter the language. He’d seen Larry looking — hell, he’s seen several of them looking, as well they should; he’s a pharaoh and an attractive one at that — and had smiled prettily before returning the appreciative gaze. But Larry’s eyes had dropped and he’d started keeping his distance, much to Ahkmenrah’s frustration.
He makes a point of learning about Larry after that, gleaning what he can from the other exhibits. A father, a divorced husband, an inventor, a friend. The guardian of Brooklyn. Their guardian. He talks with Nick, who is brutally honest in the way of children. It’s not a completely terrible report; Nick is happier now and he spills with stories about something called hockey games, trips to the movies, and now ‘the most awesome and amazing job in the world.’ Nick is proud of his father and Ahkmenrah is proud of Larry, too. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be a parent, but he hopes his children would have loved their father half as much as Nick loves his.
“Why are you so interested in Dad?”
“I’m not,” he says, but the look on Nick’s face is skeptical. Ahkmenrah tries again. “I’m just curious about the sort of man he is. You two did free me from my sarcophagus, after all.”
Nick shrugs and that seems to be the end of that until a few minutes later when he looks up from his book and says, “It’s just weird because he’s been asking about you too.”
Ahkmenrah has to remind himself that his heart hasn’t worked for centuries and he simply imagined that it skipped a beat.
...
Larry doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to another man playing father to his son. Another man engaged to his ex-wife, sure — it’s better for both of them if Erica moves on and Don isn’t that much of a tool. But another man picking Nick up from school, helping him with his homework, influencing his future career choices for Chrissakes, that’s the sort of thing that keeps Larry up at night. Or at least it had been before his nights suddenly had a lot more things clamoring for his attention. He’d be lying if he didn’t acknowledge the slightly selfish reasons for taking Nick to work on custody nights. And even if it does let them bond over that holiest of familial prayers (whatever you do don’t tell your mother) he still has to watch Don ruffle his son’s hair and put a protective arm around his shoulders when they cross the street.
He’s moody the next night or two after Nick returns to his mother’s home, and the exhibits have come to expect it. Attila and his band cut back on pillaging, Teddy gives more inspirational speeches than usual, Rexy greets him with a nuzzle that never fails to knock him off his feet, and Dexter… Dexter is actually the same little shit he always is, but at least Larry can appreciate the distraction of chasing after the smaller primate and hurling curses at his fuzzy little backside. At any rate it’s easier to get his frustrations out at a monkey than at the sticky world of child custody.
After an hour of frustrating keep-away, Larry is cleaning off a spit-soaked keyring in the men’s first floor bathroom when a voice behind him says, “I thought you solved that problem already.”
Larry jumps, bangs his elbow on the ceramic sink, and lets out a stream of curses. “What, they didn’t invent knocking yet where you’re from?”
Akhmenrah’s reflection in the bathroom mirror is apologetic. “I had not meant to startle you.”
“Yeah, you never do.” There’s a bite to Larry’s voice that doesn’t need to be there, but he’s a little beyond self-censorship at the moment. He scrubs the keys harder than necessary. After a few moments of increasingly awkward silence he explains, “Dexter learned how to use scissors.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Just my pride. And the key clip for my belt.”
He can still see Ahkmenrah in the mirror, leaning against the tiled walls with arms crossed lightly over his chest. In the flickering lights of an industrial bathroom he looks laughably out of place. The fluorescence makes his skin sallow, his eyes gaunt, and his ceremonial robes look like the kitschy leftovers of a Halloween sale. (Not, Larry reflects without humor, that he himself looks much better. The light exaggerates every wrinkle and dry patch on his face and does nothing for the alarming encroachment of gray hair.) Still, if Ahkmenrah notices how bizarre it looks for an ancient Egyptian pharaoh to be casually resting against a bathroom wall next to a paper towel dispenser, he doesn’t show it. He stands there carelessly, watching Larry watch him.
“Something I can help you with?”
“I wanted to see how you were faring.”
Larry faces the other man and there is far too little space with far too much uncertainty between them for it to be tolerable. He tries to find charity in himself and fails. “Another fun night covered in capuchin excretions and wondering if my son is calling my ex-wife’s fiance Dad yet, how about you?”
Hurt crosses Ahkmenrah’s face and Larry tries to ignore the throb of guilt in his chest. He expects the pharaoh to call out the misguided anger, or to start bickering, or leave, but all Ahkmenrah says is, “I miss Nicholas too. The museum isn’t the same without him.”
Larry’s jaw works for a few moments before he realizes that he’s gaping. But before he can think of a damn thing to say, Ahkmenrah’s turned and left.
...
When Ahkmenrah begins preparing for sunrise, he realizes he is not alone in his tomb.
“Hi,” Larry says, hand on the back of his neck. “Thought you might like some company before dawn.”
There is usually a stiffness to his body in the minutes before daybreak, but in this moment Ahkmenrah swears he he has never felt more alive.
“I would,” he tells the night guard, more grateful than he can say.
...
Larry doesn’t spend the end of every night with Ahkmenrah but he does go to his tomb when life could be going better. The few times the pharaoh inquires directly about Larry’s problems get a dismissive laugh and an obvious attempt to change the subject.
“I’m the one paid to watch over you guys, remember? Play mediator, be everyone’s therapist…”
Ahkmenrah offers a small smile. “And you are marvelous at your job, Larry.”
Larry shrugs and half wants to play it off as nothing, but Ahkmenrah won’t let him.
“The museum is a family now because of you. You care for us and we, in turn, care for you.”
“Pretty dysfunctional and chaotic as families go.”
“Most of them are, in my experience.”
Larry looks anywhere but the young (incredibly ancient) man still smiling at him with an expression that should be reserved for someone who actually deserves it. “I’m not—”
He quiets at the hand that reaches out to hold his.
“But you are.”
...
Ahkmenrah had been honest when he told Larry the Museum wasn’t the same without Nicholas. He himself has only been free a short while, but even he can see the clear delight in the others’ faces at having another guest from the outside world — and a curious, awe-struck guest at that. Nick accepts readily what his father sometimes still has trouble believing. Nick’s world becomes their world, a mess of homework and hockey games and cartoons every Friday night. Ahkmenrah finds himself curious and awe-struck in return, examining the contents of Nick’s backpack as though he himself were an archaeologist in the pursuit of lost treasure.
“You are all taught to read then, lowborn and elite alike?”
“Of course. You can’t really do anything if you can’t read.”
Ahkmenrah pulls out a large volume and starts leafing through it. “And this is?”
“My Pre-Algebra textbook.”
Ahkmenrah nods to the device held in Nick’s hand. “And that is?”
“A Nintendo DS Lite.”
“A Nintendo DS Lite,” Ahkmenrah repeats, as though it’s a mysterious, ancient incantation. And for all he knows, it might be.
“Yeah. Hey, did I ever explain Pokemon to you?”
And that’s where Larry finds them an hour later, Ahkmenrah hunched over the DS with Nick looking over his shoulder, cheering him on.
“Hey, how are you guys… doing?”
The look in Ahkmenrah’s eyes throws Larry for a loop, equal parts excited and rapturous. “Did you know,” the pharaoh says, sounding more like his apparent age than he has in a long time, “that there are these small creatures called Pocket Monsters—”
“Nick, you didn’t.”
“—and some of them can shoot out fireballs—”
“But he’s so happy, Dad!”
“—and I’m going to be the very best there ever was,” Ahkmenrah finishes gravely, while Nick laughs and ducks away from his father’s attempt to wrap him in a noogie.
Later that night after Nick finally falls asleep and Ahkmenrah reluctantly relinquishes the DS, the pharaoh accompanies the night guard on his final rounds. “It really is amazing,” Ahkmenrah is saying. “Nicholas will have more opportunities than most children his age ever would have had in Egypt. Is it true they all learn to read and write?”
“Most of them, yeah. At least that’s what the schools are supposed to teach.”
“And the volume of arithmetic, is that for all children as well? Not just the sons of architects and stonemasons?”
“Yeah, they all get math too. Actually — Nick’s ahead of his class. He’s the only sixth grader at his school in Pre-Algebra. They wanted to skip him a grade but Erica and I didn’t think that’d be good for him socially, you know? He’d miss his friends and all the older kids have these swollen pituitary glands — what?”
Ahkmenrah is laughing softly. “I have never heard a man sound so proud of his son’s achievements.”
“Nick is a special kid,” Larry says a bit defensively, but Ahkmenrah shakes his head and lays a hand on his arm.
“I meant it as a compliment. You truly love your son.”
“I’m his dad. It’s kind of my job.”
“That there were more fathers like you in the world, Larry Daley.”
“What about you? Did Mr. and Mrs. Ahkmenrah not show up to your parent-teacher conferences?”
“You realize that I don’t understand most of what comes from your mouth, correct?”
Larry gives him a lopsided grin and, impulsively, Akhmenrah steps closer so their shoulders brush as they walk. He still has not removed his hand from Larry’s arm, and Larry has still not shied away from the touch.
“What were you parents like?”
“Oh, let’s see… I would say typically pharaonic, but that wouldn’t mean much to you. They loved me and my siblings.”
“I bet you were the favorite,” Larry teases.
“I was,” Ahkmenrah says softly, his expression falling for a moment.
“Hey. Hey, did I accidentally hit something sad? Because we can both get temporary amnesia and forgot I put my foot in my mouth.”
“No, it — it is fine.” They walk in silence a few moments while Ahkmenrah collects his thoughts. “I was the youngest of six siblings and still chosen to ascend the throne.”
“Six? Whatever happened to the fourth son of a fourth son?”
“Sisters.”
“...that would make sense, yeah. What were your siblings like?”
"Well, there were the twins, a brother and sister, two years before me. Khonsumose and Merytkhonsu.”
“Khonsu, like the moon god?”
“One of the deities with lunar associations, yes. We have several. The twins were born after a full day of labor, just as the moon rose above the horizon. Khonsumose was given over to the priesthood, and Meryt…” His smile is sad. “She caught a fever and died in her fifth year. I never truly knew her. Nor our next oldest brother, Heruhotep. He died as an infant years before I was even born. Truly though, my parents were lucky to only lose two children before adulthood. The gods did not smile on all families as they did mine."
"Not sure I could believe in gods who think four out of six kids is a good deal," Larry admits.
"The world is cruel. I find it easier to believe the gods grieve with us rather than stand around throwing curses in a fit of pique."
"Fair enough." They continue to walk and Larry wonders at what point Ahkmenrah had laid his head on Larry's shoulder, or when the two of them had fallen into the same gait. Belatedly Larry realizes that some of the other exhibits have been noticing their closeness and that the whistling from the miniature room is directed at them. "So, the two Khonsus and Hotep. What about the others?"
"Well, the oldest was Shefytma'at." And here Larry can practically hear the smile blossom on Ahkmenrah's lips. "Her name means... well, ‘she who is the majesty of order and harmony’ is one translation."
"Lemme guess, it was an ironically apt name?"
"Oh yes. She broke off an arranged marriage with the emperor of Kush because, and I quote, 'I was not put on this earth to endure weak-minded, foul-breathed boys pretending to be kings' and proceeded to dump a barrel of wine on his head.”
“Holy shit,” Larry laughs, “I had no idea the sass ran in your family.”
“Apparently it does,” Ahkmenrah says with utter delight. “Oh my parents were furious. When they threatened to disown her she said ‘you can’t disown me, I quit’—”
“Oh my God.”
“—and my mother said, ‘what, you think I liked your father when we were betrothed’ and he said ‘well you were no spring ostrich yourself’, and just as my parents began arguing, my sister slipped out of the palace and stowed away with a self-styled merchant prince of Thrace.”
At this point they’re both laughing too hard to do anything but hold onto each other. It’s certainly a better look on the pharaoh than the gloom from a few minutes ago, Larry reflects.
“Anyway,” Ahkmenrah says, wiping at his eyes, “That’s how my family tree branched out to Asia Minor, and also how I became an uncle.”
“I literally cannot top that. You know you win with over-the-top family stories, right? I thought Thanksgiving dinner with my ex-inlaws after the divorce was bad.”
“I’m sure you have equally impressive stories of family mayhem,” Ahkmenrah chuckles as they resume walking. The pharaoh's tone shifts again and he says, “And then there’s Kahmunrah.”
...
Ahkmenrah is so quiet as he tells the story that Larry has to strain to hear. It takes the better part of an hour for to tell it from beginning to end, and though the strain is clear in his voice the pharaoh doesn’t allow himself to cry.
“I loved him,” he tells Larry once they’re back at the tomb. “He was my brother and has never stopped being so. What sort of weakness keeps a man from truly despising his murderer?”
Ahkmenrah closes his eyes and presses into the hands suddenly on either side of his face. He swallows as Larry strokes his cheeks, his jaws, and finally his lips.
“You aren’t weak, Ahk,” Larry says softly.
Ahkmenrah says nothing and just leans in to kiss him.
...
“Does Nicholas have any siblings?”
It’s a few weeks later during the next custody weekend, and Larry is stroking his sleeping son’s hair. “No. Erica and I were going to, but — it just never seemed like the right time. And then our marriage started not really being a marriage anymore.” His keeps his voice down, though Nick’s ability to sleep through nearly anything the museum’s inhabitants get up to makes such caution largely unnecessary. Ahkmenrah supposes it’s the principle of the thing that matters to a father. “He might get a half-brother or sister one of these days, though. Erica says she and Don have been trying.”
There’s worry in his voice as there always is when it comes to his family. He worries that Erica may be too old, though she’d kill him for thinking as much, for a safe pregnancy. He worries that Nick won’t take too kindly to being an older brother — or that he’d take to it too well, and Larry might see even less of him than he does now. He’s so wrapped up in these worries that he doesn’t notice Ahkmenrah leaning over the front desk and peering at the papers strewn about. “Why are you studying hieroglyphs?”
Larry panics and slams his borrowed library books and three-ring binders full of notes closed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ahkmenrah raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow and gives him a look that should really, really be illegal to use on people lest they spontaneously combust. (Larry always knew Ahkmenrah was gorgeous when he smiled, or smirked, or breathed in his general direction; he’s just admitting it to himself now.) “You’re hiding something.”
“I’m not hiding, I’m obfuscating. Get your facts straight.”
“Larry, if you wanted to learn I could have taught you. Was this supposed to be a surprise?”
Larry sighs with irritation. “Guess it won’t be anymore. See if I do anything special for you again.”
Ahkmenrah’s smile turns Larry’s entire body to jelly and he’s glad to be sitting down and not tripping over his own feet or prancing into walls. The pharaoh reaches into the desk, steals Larry’s notepad, and begins writing. “I haven’t done this for a few thousand years so forgive me if my spelling is atrocious.”
“What are you writing?” Larry asks, tilting his head to watch the scrawl of pictograms flow across the page. It doesn’t quite look like the cursive inked on parchment featured in his research — he supposes it’s hard to make anything look especially beautiful with a ballpoint pen — but he can make out each symbol legibly enough.
“A surprise,” he replies, finishing with a flourish and passing the notepad back across the desk. “Or a project, if you feel up to it.”
Larry scans the page before looking up with a raised eyebrow of his own. “Is that a challenge I hear?”
“If you like,” the pharaoh says with a grin before turning to continue his night’s explorations. Over his shoulder he calls, “And I have every faith you’ll rise to that challenge gloriously.”
Larry stares after him, unable to tear his eyes away. He hates to see Ahkmenrah leave but God help him does he love to watch him go.
...
It’s a headache and a half cracking the hieroglyphics and at a certain point, surrounded by ancient Egyptian dictionaries (to his surprise there’s more than one) and two open computers, Larry realizes he probably cares more about this than would most professional Egyptologists. When he finishes the translation he frowns and double checks his work, then checks again just to be sure, but he keeps arriving at the same answer. Which is just - ridiculous and romantic and downright cheesy if he’s honest with himself.
And it’s perfect.
When he finds Ahkmenrah it’s as though the pharaoh’s waiting for him, chin held high and that infuriating smile playing over lips Larry now knows to be soft. Ahkmenrah knows and Larry knows that he knows and in that moment Larry’s sure he’s about to burst with all the teenage sappiness he never, ever thought he’d feel again.
“You wrote me a love poem,” he says, handing over the notepad with Ahkmenrah’s writing and Larry’s notes. Shoving it over, really, and he hopes the other man doesn’t notice the way his hands are shaking. But of course he does because Ahkmenrah notices those sorts of things and suddenly Larry finds his fingers being kissed and his knees going all wobbly. “A goddamned love poem, you sentimental—”
“Is my heart not softened by your longing for me?” Ahkmenrah murmurs. The notepad drops to the floor in a flutter of paper and Larry cannot bring himself to care about anything but those eyes staring into his and those lips around his knuckles. “Does my fruit not excite your passions? I will not allow it to depart from me.”
“Looser translation than I was going for,” Larry manages. “Though I was wondering what the hell a dogfoot was. It’s a fruit?”
“Yes, a dogfoot is a fruit. A known aphrodisiac, in fact.” He kisses Larry’s jaw and starts working him out of his black jacket. At some point the clip on tie becomes unclipped and joins the papers on the floor. “I will not allow my heart to depart from me, though it is cudgeled to the guard of the overflow. That’s the furthest the Nile swells in its banks, by the way.”
“I figured. And, something about further cudgeling to Syria and Kush and other faraway places? And — fuck, Ahk—” There’s a mouth at the curve of his neck and a clatter as Larry’s hands knock off Ahkmenrah’s crown and slide through his thick hair.
“To highlands, with switches, and to the lowlands, with twigs,” the pharaoh recites softly against his ear. “And yet, never will I listen to to their council to abandon my longing. And yes, Larry Daley, now I am flirting with you.”
“Yeah, no shit? You were so subtle, what with all the sex fruit and the S&M cudgeling and the — where’s my belt?”
“What belt?” Ahkmenrah asks, holding up the strip of leather that had been guarding Larry’s pants against intruders. “I don’t see any belt.” And that, too, gets tossed to the ground.
“You’re making a mess,” Larry grunts as he gets backed up against a pillar.
“Oh, I mean to,” Ahkmenrah promises before dropping to his knees and looking up with a smile.
...
Larry and Ahkmenrah quickly become the biggest source of gossip the museum’s ever seen. It doesn’t matter that Larry tries to insist that everything even remotely sexual stay behind closed doors (partially because Ahkmenrah delights in ambushing him in public spaces to give him a heady kiss, then sauntering off like the royal pain in the ass he is) because people talk and apparently everyone is a romantic at heart. Still, through all the ribbing and laughter he’s surprised that the exhibits seem genuinely happy for him.
Or, as Jedidiah so eloquently puts it, “What do you mean Gigantor’s gettin’ himself some before I do?”
Larry really, really doesn’t want to think about the mechanics of miniature sex, but since becoming a night guard he’s found himself having to contemplate all manner of odd and occasionally unspeakable things. He decides to take it as a complement and to wish Octavius godspeed.
Still, there are worse things than getting meaningful looks from his friends. Even Erica notices, pulling him aside the next time he drops Nick off and asking if he’s found someone.
“It’s — a little complicated,” he says, but he can’t stop the curl of his lips or the softening of his eyes. “We’re working on it. I don’t know how serious it’ll be in the long run, but I like him.”
“Good,” Erica says sincerely. “You deserve someone who makes you happy. Make sure you tell him that, okay?”
Larry promises he will, and he does. Back at the museum that night he says, “My ex-wife says hi, by the way.”
“Tell her I say hello in return,” Ahkmenrah replies. “When are you going to introduce us?”
“As soon as I can figure out the ‘dating an ancient mummy who only comes alive at night’ part,” he says drily. He leans in and distracts himself with kisses for a few minutes before Ahkmenrah puts a hand on his chest and gently pushes him away. “Hey, what gives?”
“You’re happy,” is all the pharaoh says.
Larry finds himself smiling and wonders how the hell he ever got this lucky. “Yeah, Ahk. I really, really am.”