Title: Countering

Author: GIA B

Rating: PG-13-ish

Spoilers: The Mummy

Summary: I always wondered what would have happened had Evie actually kissed Rick during her inebriated excursion… simply, my take on that situation. This is my first "Mummy" fan fiction.

Disclaimer: Do not own the characters, nor the preceding events, but only the situation that follows. These events are mere figments of my imagination, and any resemblance to anything living or dead is purely coincidental.

***

Countering

***

"I… am a librarian," I can't help but smile with satisfaction at that title. It's true; I'm not an adventurer, or an explorer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunman, but I am proud of who I have become. My parents would be proud, I suppose.

My head refused to clear for a few moments, to give me some reprieve. Not that I was… drunk, or anything, like those drifters you might see down at any number of the casbahs Mr. O'Connell undoubtedly frequented. No, rather I was just pleasantly… uninhibited. 

And then went my balance.

I landed a bit indelicately in the sand in front of O'Connell, but the comfortable haze I was in cushioned any awkward-landing feelings I may have generated. He watched me; he's an observer by nature, I noticed. He watched me frequently. Often, when he thought I was not paying any attention to him. Under other circumstances, I thought I would find such observations perverse, but with him it did not seem as though he could have anything but the truest of intentions.

As I watched him watch me, I saw a brief flicker in his eyes, which gave me the slight to speak my mind as a new thought began to form. "And, I am going to kiss you… Mr. O'Connell."

"You can call me Rick," he replied, and with the glee of a schoolgirl, I felt I have been given some precious gift. My cheeks no doubt lit-up and I could not help the excitement in my voice as it formulated his name. I tried to show him how sultry I could be, as I said his name and leaned forward. He leaned forward in kind, and my eyes drifted shut. I was told that when two people kiss passionately, their eyes are almost always closed. I had never been kissed passionately so I could not be sure of this fact, but, as my father used to always say, there is no time like the present to put a theory into practice.

He breached the last inch between our lips, and they stilled there for a moment. It did not seem real at first, and so I opened my eyes to watch him. His eyes were not closed, but rather were staring straight into mine, and we just sat there; our lips still touching, and our eyes never wavering. Then his lips moved, and caressed mine, and I was lost in a multitude of sensation. I wanted to close my eyes, but they were glued to his. The only response I could formulate was to move my lips and mimic his actions. Then he…nibbled--for lack of a better, more delicate word--my lips, and I opened them instinctively. My head was completely clear now, and it was as though my body had rid it self of all the alcohol I had consumed earlier.

As my mouth opened, I felt his open as well and suddenly, without any known warning, I felt his tongue swipe my lips and dip ever so slightly into my mouth. I had never been kissed in this manner before, so it was not surprising that I was a little apprehensive about this step. But he dipped his tongue once again into my mouth, and when it connected with my tongue, the contact was not unpleasant in the slightest.

My eyes had yet to slip closed, as I attempted to venture forth and mimic this new advancement. My tongue did not exactly move, but rather twitched in what would be pathetically excused as an action, but it still met his more firmly. My lips closed around this kiss, and it progressed slowly to the end. I noticed a moment later that his eyes had closed, and finally, having had nothing to watch as I did with his eyes, I closed mine as well.

But as soon as they were shut, reality clamped its cold fingers around my stomach, and I pulled away.

"I can't," I said dumbly, and as comical as it was, Rick's lips were still moving slightly. I would laugh, if the situation had not been so serious. He registered that I had spoken, and what I had said, and his head droped to his chest. When he raised it, once again, his eyes bore into me with pending questions. "This was a mistake," was all I could say, and I stood and headed for my sleeping area.

***

"Oh, I've dreamed about this ever since I was a little girl," I said, clasping my hands to my mouth in excitement. The sarcophagus stood upright as Jonathon and… O'Connell attempted to open its lid.

"You dream about dead guys?' O'Connell dead panned, and I returned a glare that showed him that I was less than amused. He dropped his gaze from mine, and I was again reminded of what happened the night before. He did not meet my gaze, as I watched him for a moment, and so I instead immersed myself back into the task at hand.

I used one of the brushes that came from the toolkit O'Connell had given me the day before, as a "gift" I presumed, and as loathed as I was to admit it, I swooned for him when he did that. I brushed the cobwebs off the sarcophagus and let my fingers graze its cover and felt the ancient text impressions run underneath my skin. However, I noticed almost instantaneously that the incantations once chiseled onto this coffin have been scraped away at.

"Look," I said, taking a small step back to include Jonathon and O'Connell in on my explanation, "all the sacred spells have been chiseled off. This man was not only cursed in his lifetime, but in the next as well." The serious moment was broken by one of Jonathon's over-anxious, dim-witted responses.

We cracked open the case with our puzzle-box, but it stuck. O'Connell, using his brute strength, pulled on the lid and it begins to slowly give away. Suddenly, it wrenched back and fell forward a rather sickly sight: a still decaying, 3000 year old corpse.

It seemed I was not the only one who noticed this fact, and Jonathon and O'Connell stated as much. We also noticed etchings on the inside and deducted that the poor bugger mummified before us was done so with his life still in tact. A single oath was also etched into the inside of the lid, and I translated solemnly, "Death is only the beginning". But as interesting as it sounded, one fact still remained: we had turned up nothing useful to boast about to our American "brethren", as O'Connell put it before. O'Connell daringly pushed the mummy back into the sarcophagus and, with the useless help of Jonathon, pushed the stone-case back onto the ground, leaving the lid open for convenience sake.

They, feeling the late day begin to take its toll, started heading for the exit. I held back a bit, not wanting to walk in awkward silence with O'Connell, especially with the night before terribly fresh in my mind. He noticed my hesitation and turned to look at me expectantly. I dropped my head away, and turned back to the open coffin. I did not hear his footsteps sift through the sand, and so I turned back around and met his eyes.

"I think I'll stay here, and do a little… exploring and adventuring of my own." He seemed to see through my façade and, though it looked like he wanted to say something, he stayed silent. As I watched him go, I could not help but feel guilty for treating him so poorly. I was supposed to be a lady about things, and here I was acting like a selfish child. At least I had not gotten to the point of blaming him for my decidedly unladylike behavior the previous night. It was my fault, and I was determined not to let it happen again.

***

I had discovered the scarab skeletons over an hour earlier, and yet I refused to stand up and face them. I wanted to stay away, and disappear, back to Cairo. I also had discovered that this particular mummy was cursed with the "Hom-Dai" which was, of course, the most awful of all curses.

He was an extraordinarily unpopular guy.

And as vital of information as that was, I still had not moved from my spot on the dirt floor. I was afraid, to be honest; afraid that if I let myself, I could do some serious damage, and I did not mean physically. But kissing him had felt so incredible, and though I had only been kissed twice before that by people outside of my family, I knew it would be by far one of the most exciting kisses I might ever experience. But denying it ever happened was equivalent to declaring myself a coward and I had come to far and struggled for far too long to take that title easily.

So I stood up, grabbed a few scarab skeletons, and headed back to the surface.

***

After explaining the plight at which our mummy friend had found himself in to the rest of the group, the majority of the group decided to call it a night, and retired to their respective tents. I stood too, intending to leave to my sleeping area, when a hand reached out quickly and engulfed my hand.

O'Connell pulled me back towards him, as he sat there looking up at me. I had made a half-hearted attempt to pull my hand free, but he gripped it tighter. He didn't say a single word, but his expression said all that was necessary to say.

"I already told you," I said, my accent making this complaint seem far too lyrical for what the situation warranted, "I can't." He did not seem to understand, as he squeezed my hand tighter. He stood to join me at a fair level, and my eyes released his.

"Explain this to me," he pleaded, "because I don't understand."

"I'm afraid," I replied softly after a moment of silence. His brow furrowed as though he was trying to make sense of this piece of information.

"Afraid that, what; I'm going to take advantage of your innocence?" That was a bad move, good sir.

"Ohhh," I huffed, "just because I may not have experience with intimacy as you apparently do, does not mean that I am innocent by any stretch of the imagination. And let it also be said that I am thoroughly appalled that you would think me so fickle as to naturally assume such a thing about someone I don't even know!"

"Then what are you afraid of? Oh and by the way," he said, releasing my hand and pointing his finger into my chest, "you just assumed that I have experience with intimacy, as you say, and you don't even know me!" I snarled at this, and his eyes twinkled ever so barely.

"Do you really want to know?" I countered, throwing his own words from Cairo prison back into his face.

"Yeah, I really want to know."

"I'm afraid because I can't trust myself with you." As soon as the words were unleashed from the safe cavern of my mouth, I regretted them. Now he had a one-up, as the yanks would say, on me, and he could very easily use this against me.

So I turned and calmly walked away, not giving him the opportunity to use it just yet.

***

End Part 1

What do you all think? I wasn't sure how I wanted this exactly to play out, I just really wanted there to be a story out there where they had kissed when she had declared as much. So this is just that story.

Reviews would be good, so I can decipher whether or not this is worth continuing. This is my first Mummy fic, and so I'm not secure in my standings here, but I tried my best to keep these characters as close to themselves as possible. Anyway, let me know!

-GIA