Chapter Text
“Woah, come look at this!”
Daniel looks up as Jack calls out to him, and Jack laughs when there’s a spider web stuck to the side of his hair. “What?”
“There’s, like— potions, and shit,” Jack breathes out, amazed — there’s a display rack, dusty and half-hidden behind a cloth that looks like four generations of moths have already feasted on it, with several vials and glass bottles containing differently-coloured liquids. “I feel like I’m in an alchemy shop.”
“That’s probably rat poison,” Daniel says drily, but he dutifully shuffles closer to take a look. “Or toxic gas. Chemistry ingredients, maybe? That does look cool, yeah.”
It’s not often that Daniel agrees with them — usually, Jack has to talk him around it at first before he concedes that he may or may not share an opinion with someone, but there’s no denying it, honestly — the vials look really cool. Jack’s counting it as a win, anyway.
“This one’s, like, glittery,” Jack hums, reaching into the display to pull out a small, round bottle with a golden-orange liquid. The bottle is grimy, fingerprints and smears left behind where Jack’s touched the glass, and Daniel pulls a face.
“You might get tetanus from that,” he teases lightly, grimacing down at Jack. “I know it doesn’t work like that, but this looks like it would make an exception — just for you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack mutters absentmindedly, before putting the bottle back and pulling out a strange, dull reddish one. “What about this one? This looks like blood.”
Daniel inches closer, brows furrowed as he peers at the vial. “I think that might just be blood,” he remarks, and his eyes flick up to meet Jack’s. “Gross.”
His face is scrunched up, and he looks disgusted — and it’s funny enough that Jack can’t stop the words from spilling out. “I dare you to drink this.”
Daniel’s eyebrows climb on his head, eyes widening as he stares up at Jack. Jack waggles his own eyebrows suggestively, feels a shit-eating grin creep up on his face. “Seriously. Ten bucks says you won’t.”
“Zero bucks says I won’t,” Daniel cuts back primly, “because I’m not going to drink that. That’s how you really get tetanus, or hepatitis, or HIV, or literally any other terrible blood disease that kills you. No way.”
“Coward,” Jack sing-songs, jiggling the vial in front of Daniel’s face and delighting in the scandalised look he gets in return. “What, are you scared?”
Daniel scoffs and reaches up to nudge Jack’s hand away from his face, rolling his eyes as he leans back. “Of drinking a dusty, might-be-blood liquid that’s been here for who knows how long? Yeah, actually. I would love to not do that.”
“Wimp,” Jack coos, and dodges Daniel’s grabby hands just to shove the vial back into his face again. “Come on, just a sip— it’ll be funny—”
He pushes it closer just as Daniel moves to slap his hand away — and instead their trajectories collide, and the vial is smacked clean from Jack’s grip upon the impact, sailing to the floor and shattering into a dozen different shards of glass shrapnel, scattering across the floor between them.
The red content of it spills out, but it’s not liquid— instead, it’s dry, almost powder-like as it billows up in a tiny cloud, particles glittering in the air as they seem to evaporate. There’s only a tiny bit of red residue left behind on the floor, and Jack’s frozen as he looks down at the mess.
Daniel looks up, and Jack raises his head just in time to see wide, blue eyes, an electric shock flashing through his system as their eyes meet and then Daniel’s face morphs into a look of shock that Jack’s fairly certain is mirrored on his own face. “Oops.”
“Oops?” Daniel echoes, and he moves back a bit, careful not to step on any of the glass. “Fuck, Dylan’s gonna kill us. I knew this was a bad idea. Shit.”
He’s— worried, Jack realises, and it’s such an odd realisation that it’s almost enough to give him pause. He’s seen Daniel worried before, plenty of times — just never this openly. Never bad enough that he’s not even making attempts to hide it on his face. It’s just also an overreaction, because it was an accident — it’s not like they did it on purpose, and Jack’s fairly certain Dylan will forgive them if they apologise.
No, he’s more concerned with the fact that they’ve been in this attic for a while — him and Daniel were supposed to fetch some sort of card set that Dylan needed to show them a trick with while the others waited downstairs, and instead they got side-tracked looking at other, irrelevant stuff. They need to get back on track, need to make up for lost time and should probably get back to the others, now.
“It’s fine, we’ll just clean up and then head downstairs,” Jack tries to reason, even as Daniel backs away with wide eyes. “Seriously, just get a broom or something and sweep it up. At least we know it’s not blood, now.” Most of the red dust has already disappeared, dissolved into the air, but not even gross, old, dried blood would do that. “No tetanus for us today. What a luxury.”
“At least there’s that,” Daniel agrees, before whisking away to a distant corner of the attic and Jack sighs, nudges one of the glass shards with his foot. He shouldn’t have provoked Daniel, he figures — he’d kept swinging the vial in his face, which was the only reason Daniel even knocked it out of his hand — but there’s always two at fault in every incident, or so Merritt says whenever there’s an argument in the kitchen and the Horsemen are yelling at each other — so really, they should probably just ignore this happened and move on. Dylan won’t even have to know about it, if they don’t tell him.
It’s not a bad plan — he doubts Dylan would care much for one random, ancient vial hidden in the recesses of their attic — but there’s still a spark of anxiety, of unease and worry and apprehension slowly curdling in his blood, and he finds himself absentmindedly tapping his fingers on the inside of his sleeve. It’s a nervous tic, one he’s seen Daniel act out half a million times, and Jack sighs at the realisation.
They’re rubbing off on each other, spent too much time in close quarters with all of them — he knows he’s taken up Merritt’s little “hmm,” the noise that he makes when he strongly disagrees with something someone is saying but not yet speaking up about it. Whenever he grabs a mug from the cabinet he turns it upside down first in the same way Henley used to, “just in case there’s a spider in it,” and he’s come to adopt Daniel’s way of folding away loose cables and wires and chargers — not because it’s the most practical way, but because he knows Daniel would go around and re-roll them anyway, afterwards.
It’s also because it’s the most practical way, but Jack has decided he’d rather lick the handles of every door in the house than admit Daniel’s right about that. He’s already insufferable enough on a daily basis, thank you very much.
Jack stretches his hands out, pointedly stops the urge to tap and sighs instead. Within seconds, Daniel’s back and the glass remnants are swept away, as is the red dust. With the evidence gone, Jack rolls his shoulders and looks back at Daniel. “Great — thanks. Let’s get back downstairs, the others are waiting.”
“I’ll get the cards,” Daniel offers, and Jack offers a lazy salute to his retreating back before turning towards the attic entrance, ambling over to rest his back against the doorpost as Daniel’s footsteps echo around the space.
It’s a big room, spacious and surprisingly bright even though there’s curtains in front of the windows, moth-eaten and dusty as they are. There’s various props and artefacts stacked around, big wardrobes and shelves with more paraphernalia and oddities than he could have imagined, back when they’d first arrived here.
Dylan had mentioned that this is one of the older safehouses, the one that hosts some of the stranger stuff that the Eye’s come up with over the decades. When he’d first heard it, Jack had been endlessly excited — so many cool things to explore, to try out!
Now, though, in a stuffy, ancient attic with mysterious vials and, loathe as he is to admit it, tremendous potential to get tetanus from nicking themselves on any of the various rusty hooks and serrated edges poking out — he’s finding it a little less exciting. Who knows what was in the vial they likely just breathed in, how many motes of dust are currently making themselves at home in their lungs?
He’s still excited — how can he not be, with the prospect of former Eye magicians’ tricks and performances at his fingertips, but there’s an added layer of caution he hasn’t quite felt before. He doesn’t want to mess it up, but more than that — he’s got no idea what they’ve walked into, and thus has nothing prepared for if things go wrong or something happens.
The sound of Daniel’s footsteps returns, louder than before, and Jack shrugs. That’s why they have Danny, usually — he’s the one who’s overly cautious, worried about everything and then some and comes up with the plans. Jack’s content to let things happen, most of the time — he’s spent so long living under circumstances wildly beyond his control, so he’s learned to simply adapt to whatever’s thrown his way.
“Do you think they’ll be annoyed that we were gone for so long?” Daniel asks, the moment he’s back in sight. He’s got Dylan’s deck of cards in his hands, brandishing it briefly before pocketing it and clapping his hands to get rid of the dust. “I mean, they can’t really blame us for getting distracted. Everything’s so cool.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Jack tries to reassure him — but his tone comes out more clipped than he intends, and there’s a flash of— something, that he isn’t quite sure how to identify, as Daniel’s brows furrow at his response.
“Right,” he mutters, and then shoves past Jack to head down the stairs. Jack’s on his heels, trudging down the staircase and making a mental note to come back just to sweep the staircase later. There’s a lot of spider webs and specks of dust, tiny grey particles floating down from their movement and settling on the corners of the steps.
If he doesn’t remember to clean those away later, he’s fairly certain no one else will remember — no one else will care to, rather, and he’s not sure why but the idea of leaving the place dirtier than they’d found it doesn’t sit right with him.
There’s a murmur of voices downstairs, and the closer they get to the ground floor, the clearer they get. There’s the background noise of a television, and Lula seems to be debating with Merritt about a woman named Linda who, apparently, cheated on her partner with his best friend.
It’s another stupid drama they’ve been watching, and though he usually tries to keep up just because Merritt and Lula are excited to chat about it, the noise grates on his ears now, adding a flare of annoyance to his already strange mood.
Daniel’s right ahead of him, skipping the last three steps of the staircase and landing cleanly on the ground floor below with a resounding thud, rising to his feet with a playful grin as he turns to look at Jack. The decorative vase on the column behind him rattles, and for a moment Jack’s convinced it’s going to fall.
“There’s stairs for a reason,” he snaps out, hurrying down the stairs just to reach the column in time, making sure the vase is stable before rounding on Daniel with a sternly pointed finger. “Seriously, I would have thought you of all people would at least be a little responsible.”
“Woah,” Daniel tries to soothe him, palms up as though trying to prove his innocence, “it’s just a joke, Jack. The vase is fine, don’t worry. Since when do you even care about the decor?”
“Since I’m the one Dylan’s going to blame if we break something,” Jack retorts, rolling his eyes as he shoulders past Daniel, making sure to avoid brushing his shoulder even as he heads towards the living room.
God. The one time Jack’s trying to be responsible, taking care to not glide down the stairs on the perfectly-glidable railing or doing a somersault off the bottom four steps — and then Daniel, of all people is the one to nearly break a vase.
Jack will be blamed for it — he always is, as the others always seem to decide everything is his fault regardless of what he does. He’s irresponsible and brash, impulsive and loud and argumentative, he’s unkind and standoffish and he’s the reason Henley left—
Jack stops, dead in his tracks, as the thought seems to cling to his brain as though it’s gum he’s accidentally stepped in. That’s not true.
He’s been described as irresponsible and brash, sure — impulsive, he doesn’t deny, and he’s been loud on occasion — but he’s not unkind, or standoffish, and he’s not nearly as argumentative as Merritt and Daniel are, as Henley was. Henley leaving didn’t even have anything to do with him.
Not even just that — even when he does admit to something, back when he told them about how he messed up and Dylan nearly caught him in the apartment in New York, or when he claims blame for another one of the arguments bubbling up after provoking the others—
When he’d apologised for not being quick enough to realise they were taking the wrong tunnel after the Octa show, or for not being a fast enough learner when Merritt tried to teach him hypnotism or crashed Daniel’s motorcycle the first time he’d tried to teach him—
None of those times had they blamed him, actually. Henley had hugged him, told him that she was glad that he was alright after the car crash, and Dylan’s usually the first to tell him that they all know of the ‘no arguing at the dinner table’ rule and therefore only those who chose to break it are guilty. Lula had been pretty adamant that she had been right behind him near those tunnels, that she should have seen it, too — and Merritt had told him mentalism was a hard enough skill to master on his own, and that he’d picked it up nearly as fast as even Merritt himself had.
Even Daniel had forgiven him for the motorcycle, though he still occasionally brings it up as a joke whenever Jack’s trying to get on his nerves or irritate him. Regardless of all that, though — he knows they’re… lenient, at least in some respects, towards him.
He’s always suspected it’s because he’s the youngest, because he’s got the least experience of them all — whatever it is, it means they’re usually the first to talk him out of a jam, even towards each other. It’s a little infuriating, and a lot touching, though he’ll never admit it, and they’ve been doing it consistently enough that he’s almost starting to believe that maybe they’re doing it just because they like him, truly do forgive him for making mistakes or messing up and not just because they feel the need to cover for him just because he’s the youngest and therefore the least likely to be able to pull his weight on the team, or the most likely to mess something up.
All this to say — as much as he struggles sometimes with the drive to prove himself, to pull his weight and then some just to make sure the others know they can count on him, to ensure that he’s still worthy of staying on the team — he doesn’t doubt that they will treat him fairly, at the very least, and treating him favourably at worst if he messes up on something as asinine as breaking a vase. He knows this, has seen it happen before.
… So why is there a conviction, deep in his bones, that the rest of the team will be upset, that they’ll blame him if something breaks?
It’s not right. There’s something off about it, about everything — something that’s been buzzing quietly in the back of his mind and only just now starting to pick up pace. The feeling of wrongness, the little unfamiliar flashes of things he’s never quite felt before, doesn’t know how to categorise — suddenly they feel like big, blaring alerts in his brain, and there’s a thrumming in his ears as he feels his own heart rate start to speed up.
Something’s wrong, he thinks, and he turns around to look at Daniel — Daniel was with him in that attic, has been with him for most of the day, rather. If anything wrong happened, Daniel will know.
He glances over at where Daniel’s standing, still frozen to the spot next to the column with the vase, and the look on his face does nothing to diminish the roar of what seems to be, undeniably, panic in his chest.
Daniel looks hurt, shoulders down dejectedly and staring after Jack with a sullen frown on his face, only managing to school his expression into something more neutral after Jack’s already clocked it. It’s wrong. Daniel shouldn’t look like that.
“Are you okay?” Daniel tilts his head, takes a step closer — too close, far too close, something in Jack’s brain hisses, he’ll see how panicked you are— and Jack takes a step back. “Hey, I’m really sorry — I didn’t know the vase was that big of a deal to you. It’s fine, nothing broke.”
“Stop apologising,” Jack hisses, the words spilling from behind his teeth and pouring down his lips, scorching like acid. That’s not right. Daniel doesn’t apologise, ever — he’ll make them breakfast or dinner, takes over their chores or eases up on their designated workload for a little while whenever he realises he’s done something to upset them — but he rarely, if ever, admits that he was wrong, or says sorry. Something’s different about today — not just different, but truly wrong.
Daniel only shrinks back a bit, faltering in his steps, and purses his lips. “Right,” he mutters lowly, one hand tapping on the pocket that the deck of cards is in, and nods his head. “I’ll just… go give these to Dylan, then.”
He brushes by Jack again, past where Jack’s still frozen in the doorway and heads past him into the living room. His steps are hurried, shoulders hunched, and it’s such a contrast from his usual stride that Jack can’t do anything but stare after him, even though he knows it’s his fault. He should say something, make it better.
He’s fucked it up, again — he’s said something unkind, something rude and impolite and upsetting and instead of owning up to it, simply apologising or taking it back or even just smiling at him just to show that he isn’t upset, he’s frozen to the spot, unable to get the words out. He can’t say it, no matter how much he wants to.
If he admits fault, admits blame — he’ll seem fallible, and that’s simply not an option. He’s got to keep himself safe, keep them all safe — and he can’t do that if he messes up or makes a mistake. Everything he does has to seem deliberate, intentional, even if the others don’t like it or it upsets them. It’s for the best. It’s to keep them all safe, including himself — he can’t get too attached, or they’ll leave him again.
...Again?
It’s the one thing cutting slowly through the icy numbness spreading through his ribcage, into his blood, his veins, outward and throughout his entire body — this isn’t true, either. He’s never had a family like them before, hasn’t ever found a collection of people that he’s been able to invest in fully, as much as he has in them.
He loves these people, the Horsemen — Daniel and Merritt he’s known for years, Dylan almost just as long. Even Lula has seemed to slot in almost effortlessly, and it’s good. He feels safe with them in a way he never has before, with anyone — he doesn’t shy away from Merritt’s hand when he reaches over to ruffle his hair, and the age-old instinct to flinch away whenever Dylan raises his voice or slams with the doors or reaches for him a little too quickly, too harshly — that’s nearly gone, too, whenever they’re in the comfort of their own house.
He’s found a predictable pattern in Daniel’s reactions, knows exactly how far to push before Daniel starts getting genuinely irritated, and he’s realised just how much he truly gets away with if he simply grins up at them and flops onto them while they’re sitting on the couch, or asks them in his nicest voice if they’ll please get him a coffee, too.
It’s good. It’s familiar, and domestic, and it’s everything he’s never had before and everything he never wants to let go of, again. He’s not going to. He never has, and he doesn’t think they will, either — if they were going to leave, they would have done it a long time ago, back when Henley left as well, or when Daniel started getting antsy and short and snappish, and Merritt got bored and started provoking anyone he could get his hands on for entertainment, and when Jack felt himself getting jittery and pent up with energy that had nowhere to go, no performance to direct it towards.
They were all pretty unbearable, back then — even Dylan, who seemed to take it upon himself to be the most cryptic, secretive person ever and leave them in the dark as often as possible. If any of them, any more of them had been planning to leave, they would have done it then. Henley had.
Her absence had hurt, had seemed like a gaping chasm that tugged and pulled, dared him to jump in and let himself tumble into a freefall the way Daniel had seemed to — but he’d clung to Merritt, even when Merritt jokingly offered him the bottom bunk bed in his apartment and Jack had jokingly taken him up on it and both of them had realised that they’d appreciate the company that would bring.
They’d gotten through it, and they’d grown all the closer for it — and now, after the Octa show and Macau and the London show and everything that happened during and around it — they’ve never felt more like a family.
Dylan’s gotten a lot friendlier, more open and relaxed and amiable, letting himself get roped into staying after dinner and watching shitty television or action movies with the others, and Merritt had made obvious efforts to provoke Daniel less often. Daniel, in return, seemed more content to let them hang off of him and had stopped going after Lula as much, letting things slide instead of calling them out, and Jack—
Well, he doesn’t think he changed all that much, honestly, but that might be less due to the fact that they finally seem like a real family, and all the more due to the fact that he’s never seen them as anything else to begin with.
He’s been committed to them from day one, pouring his heart out on his sleeve and offering it up to any magician that would try to pickpocket it from him. He’s picked his people and he’s been lucky enough that they picked him back, and though there’s many things he’s scared of — failure, not being enough, fucking up and them being mad at him or getting hurt, any of them, more and more and more things that bubble up and want to spill out, that try to fill him with anxiety and clamour for attention, attention, attention—
He suppresses the surge of panic, quells it harshly, and breathes out measuredly. Well, for all the things that he’s scared of, the others walking away has never really been one that’s seemed realistic.
Dylan clung on to a plan for thirty years. Merritt’s steady, dependable and predictable in his choices, his investment in their cause enough for him to join and his investment in the rest of them enough for him to stay. Daniel’s never been one to do things by halves — he’s as devoted as can be, and if he’d planned to leave, Jack’s fairly sure he would have gone with Henley. Lula’s obvious, too — she’s desperate for a place to belong, and they’re offering her one. She’s not stepping out, either.
That only leaves himself, and Jack already knows he’s in it for the rest of his time. He’s not leaving them, and they’re not leaving him, so he’s not entirely sure why there’s such a spike of grief, of hurt and betrayal and heartbreak when he considers the idea that one day one of them could leave. It’s improbable.
He’s been standing in the doorway for too long, evidently, because there’s a sharp cough and when he looks into the living room, Lula’s got her eyebrow raised at him. “Are you gonna come in, or are you gonna keep standing there looking like Merritt just tried to feed you a sock?”
Jack rolls his eyes, shrugs in a quick, jolting movement and stalks into the room, heading for the kitchen that’s right past the dinner table, where Dylan’s shuffling through the deck of cards Jack and Daniel had been sent out to get. “Thanks, kid,” Dylan grins, and Jack only sighs irritably as he moves past.
“Not a kid,” he grumbles, and continues into the kitchen, where Daniel’s filling up a glass of water, looking up shiftily as Jack approaches.
“Do you want some?” he offers quietly, reaching out, and Jack shakes his head as he moves past, ignoring the red lights flaring up in his head at the sight of Daniel breathing out wistfully as he turns his back to Jack again. It’s strange, it’s unusual and odd and wrong and his instincts are telling him to worry, to fix this instantly and make everything better. He’s supposed to care for the team, keep them safe, keep them happy — he should figure out why Daniel’s suddenly so downcast, why he seems insecure and quiet and unhappy when there was nothing wrong not even an hour ago.
It’s just that it’s so hard to ask him what’s wrong, when he can barely even hear himself think over the pounding of his heart in his throat that hasn’t seemed to stop ever since he set foot into the living room.
The anxiety’s kicking into overdrive, the feeling of wrongness swelling and swelling until it’s near-all encompassing. Something needs to give, needs to change — something’s happening, something bad and awful, and if he doesn’t start moving now, if he doesn’t get up and fix it—
He breathes in sharply, looks up through a haze and watches as Daniel stares back at him, pale and wide-eyed as Jack tries to fish for a coherent thought in his brain and comes up empty. He doesn’t know how to get the words out, how to begin fixing this when he doesn’t even know what’s wrong—
There’s movement in his periphery as the light changes in the doorway, someone showing up to the kitchen even as he hears Daniel’s voice reverberate around him, rattling in his skull like gumballs in a machine. “Jack, hey— are you okay? Can you look at me?”
His voice is quiet, soft — gentler than Jack’s ever heard him, and it only worsens the feeling that it’s all upside down and incorrect. Daniel’s never gentle, and especially not when there’s people around to hear it.
There’s hands on his shoulders, bright blue piercing through the haze and he tries to fixate on Daniel as he leans in, eye contact boring through the fog that’s trying to shroud his mind. “It’s okay, Jack, you’re gonna be alright.”
The tone switches abruptly as the moment is broken, as Daniel looks to the side and calls out to whoever’s shown up at the entrance. “Dylan, what should I do?”
“What happened? Daniel, what did you do?”
There’s a second pair of hands on him, and footsteps filtering in through the roaring in his ears. He gasps for air for a moment, his pulse skyrocketing as he’s crowded, his back bumping into the edge of the kitchen counter — and suddenly he can breathe again when the grip on his shoulder lessens and his vision clears, some space between him and the people driving him into a corner.
Merritt’s in front of him, suddenly, and his voice is smooth and lilting and pleasant to listen to, and it’s almost enough to lull him into a sense of security when there’s a spike of terror, sharp and bright enough that he physically jerks backwards, tears himself away from Merritt’s grip and throwing himself into the furthest corner of the kitchen.
He feels like a cornered animal. He needs to breathe, for this feeling of wrongness to go away — he doesn’t feel like himself, in the slightest, and the idea of losing control over anything, any more than he already has — it’s enough that he might just start spiraling, instead.
Hypnotism means subjection, means complete submission and surrender of autonomy and control over anything he does, and the idea of that is enough that he feels his hands start shaking where he’s come to bury them in the fabric of his sweater.
Someone swears above him, and it’s only when the light dims briefly as someone steps between him and the kitchen lamp that he realises he’s sunk onto the floor, crammed his back into the corner where the cabinets meet and is hunched in on himself like world’s most pathetic human being to ever exist.
Embarrassment burns bright, and even though his lungs spasm when he tries to draw in a deep breath, he still tries to straighten up his shoulders and sits up, tries to look up at Merritt through watery eyes and forces a smile to his face.
“Sorry,” he croaks out, shaking his head to clear the fog out and unclasping his hands where they’re still bunched into his shirt, shaking and trembling like he’s in a sub-zero environment. “Sorry, it’s— it’s fine.”
“This don’t seem fine to me, kid,” Merritt hums, but dutifully backs off, leaning back a bit even as he sits back on his haunches and tilts his head, peers at Jack curiously. “Did something happen to set you off? You’re never this jittery.”
“Nothing happened,” Daniel jumps to his defense, “we were just in the attic for a while and then got back downstairs. Nothing should be wrong.”
He’s crouched, too, leaning against the kitchen cabinets on the other side of the kitchen — but there’s something strange about him, too, Jack realises as he lets his eyes roam over Daniel’s frame. He looks the same, nothing out of the ordinary — but he’s still.
Once he clocks it, it’s impossible to unsee — Daniel is always in motion, pacing up and down the living room or shuffling a deck of cards, tapping out patterns quietly along the edge of the kitchen table or flicking a coin up and down his fingers. He’s twitchy and jumpy and rarely sits still, not unless they knock him out first — so the fact that he’s quietly sitting back, eyes clouded and worried as he waits and eyes Jack… it’s wrong.
“You’re wrong,” Jack says, and he grimaces as it comes out stilted — he hadn’t meant to say it, really, but it slipped out and the panic he’s swallowing down, pressing down on hard just so it stays beneath the surface means that it comes out clipped and accusatory instead of questioning.
Daniel reels back a bit, and sighs. “I’m just trying to help, Jack,” he mutters, and heaves himself to his feet as he shakes his head. “Sorry, I’ll just— leave you to it.”
Merritt’s head is swiveling between the two of them like he’s watching a tennis match — there’s a dark frown between his eyebrows, and a tightness at his jaw in the same way he usually gets when he’s considering something. “Stop,” he commands, holding up a hand to stop Daniel from leaving, and he turns his back to Jack to fully watch Daniel. “You are being weird — both of you.”
“Well, sorry if my stress inconveniences you,” Jack snaps out — it’s not like he can help it, and it’s really Merritt’s fault for coming in here and choosing to make it his problem, too. Jack’s perfectly fine sorting himself out all on his own, and he doesn’t need anyone else to watch him do so — let alone make rude comments about it.
He can feel himself getting irritated, something sharp and thin cutting through the anxiety that’s slowly starting to rescind again, tightly locked away beneath the iron grip Jack’s trying to crush it under. It’s good — if he focuses on the irritation, the anger and frustration and indignation, he won’t feel the panic as much. It’ll be easier to ignore the wrongness of it all if there’s something else that takes precedence, something else to focus on. It’s easier to be angry than it is to be scared, and it’s good for hiding behind — if he seems scared the others might try to make him feel better, might make it worse — but if he seems angry, they’ll leave him alone. He can still pretend that he doesn’t get scared if he scares them off, first.
Daniel, on the other hand, seems to wilt. “Listen, Merritt,” he starts, and takes a hesitant step backwards. “I’m sorry if I’m being weird but I’m really just having an off day, that’s all. Can I go? I’m clearly not wanted here.”
It’s a surprising admission, even if it’s said in a dismissive tone, and Jack can’t help but agree with Merritt as he watches Merritt’s eyebrows climb up into a look of baffled surprise. “Do you even hear yourself? You’re apologising. To me. Did you hit your head — both of you? It’s almost like you…”
Merritt trails off, and then pins Jack with a firm glare. “You said nothing happened. Talk me through it. Didn’t take any weird white powders while you were up in the attic, took a shot of three hundred-year-old absinthe?”
“We’re not stupid,” Jack snaps, rolling his eyes as he hunches forward, balances himself back on his feet and uses the kitchen counter to stabilise himself as he gets back to his feet. “Of course we didn’t.”
“Well…” Daniel trails off, and Merritt whips around to stare at him expectantly. Daniel bites his lip in an unfamiliar, uncertain gesture — one that Jack knows he himself does when he’s trying to find the proper words without knowing whether it’s the right thing to say. “We did drop a weird, powdery bottle.”
“A weird, powdery bottle,” Merritt echoes, and Jack doesn’t even need to see his face to know the skeptical look on his features. “That sounds completely normal and unassuming, to me.”
“What type of bottle?” Dylan speaks up, and Jack turns to watch Dylan as he hovers in the doorway. He’d nearly forgotten that Dylan was here, too, and he can see Lula looming over Dylan’s shoulder in the entryway. “There’s a lot of things the Eye left floating around this house — that might explain some of… well, this.”
“And what exactly do you think this is?” Jack asks pointedly, crossing his arms — he’s not sure entirely what Dylan’s implying, but everything in him screams that he needs to be defensive, needs to redirect the conversation into something where the others are not looking closely at him, trying to dissect exactly what’s wrong with him as though they haven’t all known for years that it’s too many things to count.
“You’re acting strange,” Merritt says primly, and points an accusatory finger at Jack. “You’re dickish, you’re rude — you just had a panic attack on the kitchen floor. I’ve never seen you do that. You’d rather fall over yourself apologising than be an asshole to us on purpose — don’t even deny it, we all know it’s true.”
He rounds on Daniel, who gets equally intensely pointed at. “You are also weird. You’re apologising, and quiet, and look like you’re gonna jump out of your skin if I so much as breathe on you. That’s also not normal. Are you guys trying to prank us?”
“I’m just trying to be helpful,” Daniel says sullenly, and Jack has to bite back a laugh at that. Daniel, helpful? About as likely as Dylan saying he’d like to start a farm, or Merritt deciding to join the circus. Actually, the latter might genuinely happen if the Eye ever disbands — and Jack dismisses the thought as soon as it pops up. Not useful, now.
“You’re never helpful, Daniel,” Dylan speaks up, not unkindly but still decisive, a frown evident in his voice. “You’re efficient and smart and pragmatic, but you’re more likely to disagree for the sake of disagreeing than you are to be helpful for the sake of it. You said so yourself — you said, to quote, you’d rather eat Merritt’s hat than lift a finger to help us.”
Dylan’s voice morphs into the same structured, clipped manner of speaking that Daniel usually adopts, and it’s eerily similar — enough that Jack laughs out loud, this time, even as Daniel looks properly put out.
“Fine,” he admits, albeit grudgingly, “I did say that — but I was really trying to be helpful, now.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little weird?” Merritt says, and even though it’s not an accusation this time, Daniel still leans a little further away from him. “Like, I’m not saying you’re not allowed to — just, why now? What changed?”
He turns back to Jack, and fixes him with the same severe stare. “You, too. Why are you suddenly argumentative and anxious? When did that start?”
“Not sure,” Jack shrugs, racking his brain to think back on it. “Daniel broke that vial of weird powder upstairs and started freaking out about it — that pretty much freaked me out, too, especially when he started apologising to me. That’s never happened before — something’s wrong.”
Dylan looks between the two of them, even as Daniel doesn’t speak up to defend himself. That, in and of itself is odd enough — Daniel rarely misses an opportunity to argue, especially when he’s being accused of something — but Jack doesn’t miss the moment Dylan’s expression goes from something like what the fuck to something more akin to ah, fuck.
“What?” he presses, walking closer just to push Dylan into answering. “What’s going on? Was there something in that vial?”
Dylan hums uncomfortably, eyes darting between Jack and Daniel before settling somewhere on the ceiling for a moment. “I mentioned that the Eye had some weird experimental stuff up here, right?”
It was the first thing they’d been told when they’d first arrived, actually — don’t touch anything weird, don’t break anything and don’t ingest any of the sketchy things they find in either the cellar or the attic. “Uh,” Jack says, intelligently — “does breathing in red powder count as ingesting?”
Based on the flat look Dylan sends him, the answer ranges somewhere between yes and duh. He sighs, and for a moment Jack wonders whether this is the line that’s been crossed — if Dylan’s gonna tell him, “Hey, we had a good run, but you’ve fucked up a little too often,” or something along those lines. He should probably start packing a go-bag, just in case.
“Based on you guys, I’d say that counts,” Dylan sighs, and he reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I’m gonna make some phone calls, see what exactly was in it. Until then, stay put, don’t do anything weird and stay out of the attic. I don’t need you guys breathing in anything else and making this worse.”
Right. There’s something cold settling in his bones, now, something slow and creeping and trickling upwards that makes it feel like he’s slowly freezing. He’s already fucked it up — and now Dylan thinks he’s going to make it worse. Of course — he shouldn’t have expected anything else.
Across from him, Daniel looks equally reprimanded, and there’s a tense silence in the kitchen as they all seem to process the information, none of them really sure on what to do next.
“Well,” Merritt eventually claps in his hands, startling and unpleasantly loud, “now that we know at least something’s up — shall we get out of the kitchen? Lula and I were just about to find out whether Linda’s getting back together with Trevor or not.”
“Who?” Dylan asks blandly, and sighs when he sees Merritt’s shit-eating grin. “Nevermind, I don’t think I want to know.”
“That’s for the best,” Daniel agrees, a small smile on his face as he looks up at Dylan, “everything I know about that show is against my will. They won’t shut up about it.”
Lula pipes up from over Dylan’s shoulder, waggles a disagreeing finger at him. “Hey, it’s a good show!”
“Whatever — watch a show or don’t,” Dylan sighs, side-stepping Lula to head back into the living room, “I’ll be back later, hopefully with more information. If either of you starts feeling sick or anything else, let me know. I think it’s harmless, but you never know.”
“Will do,” Daniel salutes, and Jack can’t help but stare at him — he’s got a small grin on his face, eyes wide and expression open, and he looks— younger, somehow, a lot less worried. There’s always a nervous energy that seems to linger around him, visible in the way he never quite stops moving and working and seems to react without taking a single second to think about what he’s doing or saying, and none of that is present, currently. He looks a lot more relaxed.
It’s nice — good for him, Jack thinks faintly, even as he tries to breathe out and dispel the anxiety that bubbles behind his sternum. Whatever this is, at least Daniel seems to be dealing with it alright.
He doesn’t feel alright in the slightest — even though his heart rate is sort of back to normal and his breathing no longer sounds like he’s just ran a marathon, he still feels jittery and jumpy and like the world is too much, like everything is going wrong and he needs to start fixing everything, ever, right this second. It’s exhausting.
There’s commotion around him as they all file out of the kitchen, Daniel lingering in the doorway for a moment before following after the others, and Jack’s left on his own in the kitchen. It’s quiet, and something in him settles the moment that their eyes are off of him, that he gets to breathe out and slump, no longer pulled upright by an invisible string that tells him he shouldn’t let them see any weaknesses, any vulnerabilities.
It’s not an unfamiliar instinct — he’s bluffed his way through many interactions, and living on the street for a while instilled enough caution and intuition in him that he knows seeming like an easy target is dangerous — but it’s been a while since he’s felt it this strongly, and especially around the other Horsemen.
They’ve become the closest thing he’s ever had to family, and the way he’s come to feel about them borders as close to safety as he thinks he might ever get — so the wariness, the caution that tells him to back off, keep your distance, guard your weaknesses — it’s old, and he hasn’t felt it in a while.
He sighs to himself, tries to rid himself of this nervous energy and ends up snatching a coin off of the kitchen counter and flicking it back and forth between his fingers the way he’s seen Daniel do a million times before — a little habit he’s seemingly picked up from him, too.
The others are already camped out on the couch, Lula and Merritt bickering about what to watch — Merritt agrees that they should watch something other than shitty drama TV for the sakes of Daniel and Jack, and Lula insists that they need to find out what happens to Linda. Daniel’s slouched on the other side of the couch, curled up into one of the pillows and watching the other two bicker.
Jack comes up behind him, leans his arm on the backrest of the couch next to Daniel’s head as he leans in to ask him what they’re planning to watch — when Daniel suddenly seems to register Jack’s presence and startles, flinching away from him roughly.
It’s a very un-Daniel-like reaction, and Jack immediately pulls back, too, watching him with wide eyes. “Sorry, sorry,” Daniel immediately stumbles out, “you just startled me. I didn’t see you come up.”
“It’s fine,” Jack says, even though it’s decidedly not and there’s the sting of rejection burning in him even though he knows it’s not personal — he himself used to flinch around the Horsemen a lot, in the beginning, and it was never anything personal towards them either. It’s just odd because Daniel grumbles and side-steps and twitches, usually, when they lean on him or sling an arm around his shoulder, but he doesn’t often flinch — which makes it all the worse that he’s doing it from Jack, now.
“It’s so weird,” he hears Lula whisper, and when he looks up, Merritt and Lula are leaned in towards each other, Lula one hand to her face as she stage-whispers to Merritt. “It’s like they’re completely different people.”
“It’s also like they’re right there,” Jack snipes, rolling his eyes as he heads over to the armchair — he doesn’t want to sit on the couch and risk one of them deciding to slouch over and lean against him right now. The idea of it makes his skin crawl — he needs an out, a way to get up and do— what, he isn’t even sure himself. There’s something that he should be doing, it feels like, even though they’re not actively preparing for any shows and he’s not behind on chores. There’s no real reason for him to feel this way, and he simply decides to ignore it.
He’s not particularly successful, but that’s to be ignored, too.
They end up picking some action film — something loud and bright and noisy, something that he usually loves but that just feels like too much right now, and even though he usually loves hanging out with the whole team, even if Dylan’s not here right now, he finds it hard to settle in, to stop tensing up every time someone shifts in their seat or the noises on the screen get louder.
When he looks over, Lula is completely engrossed in the movie, and Merritt seems to be planning a trajectory to throw a peanut at Daniel. It’s bound to cause an argument, or at least a dispute — but Jack doesn’t have the energy to do anything about it, to tell him to stop or butt in.
He watches as Merritt rears back, lets go of the peanut just at the right time for it to go sailing in a smooth arc above his head and knock Daniel square in the forehead.
Jack feels his shoulders tense, prepares himself for Daniel to start yelling or arguing, to toss a pillow back or snap that Merritt needs to stop behaving like a child — anything that he would usually do, anything to give their day a semblance of normalcy — but instead Daniel laughs, reaches over to the bowl of peanuts and tosses one back.
“Hey,” he calls out, nailing Merritt in an eye and throwing his head back when Merritt yelps. “That’s what you get, loser.”
Lula laughs, too, and then peanuts go flying everywhere — Jack watches as one disappears between the couch cushions, one bouncing off and underneath the side table, and feels irritation rise. It’s not like they’re likely to clean it up, afterwards — he’s not usually particularly picky about cleanliness, would normally be among the firsts to instigate or retaliate, but all he can think of is the mess that they’re making, how loud they’re being and how awful he feels.
There’s a headache building, slowly and steadily, and when one of Lula’s shots goes wide and comes too close to Jack, he’s had enough. “Can you stop?” he snaps, and the others fall silent as he jumps to his feet and gestures around the couch. “You’re making a terrible mess, and you’re acting like children. God, no wonder Henley left us.”
Low blow. He knows it immediately, sees it in the way Daniel shuts down and Merritt’s face goes dark, the way Lula tilts her head and squints at him worriedly. He went too far, and he knows it — but he can’t find the words to apologise. He turns to walk away, figures the best way to resolve the situation is to simply remove himself from it, but he’s stopped when Merritt speaks up.
“Jack, hold on,” and it’s imploring, commanding, it makes his hair stand on edge even as he pauses his hasty exit and turns to face him. “What’s going on? You’re acting like an asshole, and it’s not like you.”
“I’m not acting like an asshole,” Jack crosses his arms, aware of the petulant tone he’s taken on but unable to keep it from his voice, and Merritt scoffs.
“Yeah, you are. You’re acting like— well, actually, you’re acting like him.” and he gestures towards Daniel, who only raises his eyebrows innocently.
“I’m not doing anything,” he says by way of apology, and Merritt narrows his eyes at him.
“Yeah, exactly—” Merritt says again, “that’s just it. Jack’s acting out, being a real dick right now, and you’re not doing anything about it. In fact, you’ve just been sitting here having fun. That’s not normal either — you’re acting like him.”
With that, he nudges his head back to Jack again, and Jack laughs. “Oh, great — yeah, that’s real nice. What, Daniel’s acting like me and I’m acting like Daniel? Maybe that’s what the powder did, Merritt — swapped our personalities, made us into different people. That’s real plausible.”
He injects as much sarcasm into his tone as he can, and it comes out scathing. It’s blunt and unkind, and he can’t bring himself to care — he’s nervous, and jittery, and everything feels wrong and he doesn’t really understand what’s going on which only sets him off further, and Merritt’s taking this moment to be annoying about things. It’s hard to find the energy to be gracious in his responses, right now.
“Hey, you heard Dylan,” Lula jumps to Merritt’s defense, “he said the Eye did weird experiments back in the day. Maybe they made a real personality swap-potion, or just a make-Jack-an-asshole-potion.”
It’s a stupid joke, one he himself could have made, but it’s not all that funny, and he finds himself rolling his eyes before he can stop himself. “Enjoy the movie,” he bites out instead, before setting off at a brisk pace and leaving the living room behind, stalking into the hallway instead and heading for the stairs.
He needs to be anywhere else, really — any place that doesn’t have judgy people that look at him too closely, try to scrutinise him or figure him out, not when he feels so poorly, when he feels like his bones are trying to shake out of his body and his first instinct is to snap at the others regardless of how guilty it makes him feel.
He’s unmoored. He doesn’t feel like himself, doesn’t know what to do about the awful energy that’s taken up residence in his bones, how to stop feeling like he’s going to jump out of his own skin the moment anyone looks at him slightly too long.
He’s lashing out, and he’s aware of it — the others don’t deserve it, and the best thing he can do is get some distance between them, let himself calm down somewhere that he’s not going to snap at the others for making jokes that wouldn’t have bothered him any other time.
He stomps up the stairs, aiming straight for his bedroom and wincing as he slams the door shut just a tad too loud, leaves the wall shaking from the impact. He can’t find it within himself to feel bad for it — not when everything is wrong, when he’s royally pissed off the others and it’s only a matter of time before they get sick of him, tell him to clean up his act or pack up and leave.
They wouldn’t do that, he tries to tell himself — he knows these people, has spent years with Merritt and Daniel and slightly less than that with Dylan, and even though Lula’s new she’s already attached — he knows they wouldn’t leave him.
It does nothing to stop him from feeling it, anyway, and he’s pacing up and down his room before he can stop himself. The noise from the television still filters in through the floor, just barely there, but there’s no voices accompanying it, no laughing or bickering or conversation the way he knows there usually is.
It’s a meager reassurance — at least, even though he’s having a terrible day, he’s managed to ruin their mood too. Misery loves company, he supposes.
He turns around on his heel, turns back towards the door, and continues pacing.