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"I don't live with people," Merritt said, looking skeptical. "It doesn't end well."
"For you, or for people?" Jack asked, jostling him aside and dragging his suitcase into the suite.
"You want to leave? Suit yourself," Danny said amicably. He turned to Henley. "Told you he wouldn't last. I would have given him at least a week, though."
In the end, it was that easy, and Merritt refused to look at it as getting played. It was a strategic move – projecting the illusion of complying with what was requested of them while keeping himself in a position to keep an eye on his competition. If that was even what they were. The details of the situation were sketchy, and there was very little that Merritt hated more than sketchy details. He lived in the details, the satisfaction of getting a puzzle to slide together in exactly the right way, and he was having trouble determining what shape the four of them were supposed to be, once they sanded off the rough edges.
He stayed, but he slept lightly and rarely, and read more than he had in the past few decades, wearing a dip in the corner of the sofa where he sprawled out every night.
"You're going to go blind, reading in the dark," he heard one night, and he didn't start, didn't even look up.
"Daniel," he said without any inflection. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Danny settle down against the window, spreading out a tarot deck in front of him. "Sure, yes," he agreed, waving a hand magnanimously. "Join me."
"You have a bed, you know," Danny pointed out. "In its own room and everything. Why you insist on falling asleep with a book on your face, drooling on our couch cushions every night is beyond me."
"As are so many things," Merritt replied.
Danny didn't respond. He shuffled the cards in front of him, stacked them neatly, and carefully picked the first four off the pile. The Lovers, the Hermit, the High Priestess, Death.
"Do you read?" Merrit asked, setting his book aside and leaning forward against his knees, waving a hand at the cards.
"Not well," Danny replied.
"Well enough to know what to make of this?"
Danny shrugged. "I'm not the one here whose job it is to read people."
"Those aren't people," Merritt pointed out. "Or can't you tell the difference?"
Danny swept the cards back into the pile and shuffled again. He fanned them out and held them towards Merritt. "Pick a card?" he offered with a sly smile, and Merritt shook his head, pushing up from the sofa and heading for the bar.
"Not my style of magic," he replied. The glass clinked comfortingly against the solid countertop, and he waited a beat or two before reaching for a second one and pouring two stiff drinks.
"You don't do magic," Danny told him.
"Oh, and you do?" Merritt reached for the glasses to hand one to Danny, but one of them had already vanished.
Across the room, Danny raised his glass and an eyebrow. "You tell me," he said. He scooped up the cards and left the room with his drink, the Hermit fluttering to the floor in his wake.
______________
"I saw your show once."
"Yeah?" Henley asked noncommittally, expertly flipping an egg and enjoying the sizzle it let out. "Any good?"
Jack hopped up to sit on the counter next to her, swinging his socked feet against the cabinets. He shrugged. "I guess," he said. "You're good enough now that you can keep your pants on, though."
"I resent the implication that I wasn't before."
"You know what I mean." He opened the carton of eggs and took one out, tossing it from hand to hand. "You don't work for Danny anymore. You don't work for anyone." He made a face. "Or, you know. You didn't, before all this. Your act is good enough on its own without the cutesy assistant schtick. If you want a cute assistant, you should hire some mostly-naked hunk to play one for you." He lifted a shoulder. "Or a mostly-naked chick. Whatever you're into."
"Maybe I like showing off my legs," she said, returning his shrug. "You ever think of that?" She struck a pose, flipping the egg across his lap onto a plate. "I have great legs."
He eyed her pajama pants and smiled. "The fluffy bunny look really works for them."
She gave him a flat stage smile. "I'm a magician, see? It's funny." She shut off the stove and snatched the egg he was tossing out of midair, placing it safely on the counter. "If you hear of any mostly-naked hunks looking for work," she said, letting her eyes drop to his legs, clad only in boxers, "you can let them know I'm in no need of an assistant." She swept by him, gathering her plate and fork. "Someone has already given me three!"
______________
"I'm gonna fucking puke."
"Do it here and do it now, then," Merritt advised, waving at the empty hallway. "The last thing you want to do is pull that shit onstage. There's not a trick in the world that's going to win an audience back after something like that."
Jack groaned, leaning his forehead against the cool cinderblocks of the wall. "Fuck you, man." He pushed himself off the wall and started to pace, marching furiously up the hall and then back, jittering and bouncing on his toes. "Fuck all of this, seriously. I'm not a stage magician."
"Right now, you're whatever kind of magician you need to be," Merritt told him.
Jack let out a humorless laugh. "You mean whatever kind you need me to be."
Merritt arched an eyebrow at him. "If that's not enough motivation for you, how about you just think about what Daniel needs you to be?"
"J. Daniel Atlas, Merritt. Christ. I'm taking the stage with – " he broke off, pushing away from the wall and pacing again. "This is a bad idea."
Merritt laughed. "Of course it's a bad idea, kid. It's the worst idea anyone's ever had. And – hey." He stepped in front of Jack, breaking his path and settling his hands against Jack's shoulders, steadying him. "Hey," he said again, his voice level and calming. "We're going to pull it off, dammit." He gripped Jack's shoulders tighter, raising an eyebrow. "Better believe that's fucking magic."
Above them, the lights went out and the crowd roared. Merritt let Jack go and spun him bodily, facing him towards the ramp.
"You good?" he asked.
"Not a chance," Jack replied, and when he turned, his face was cracking into a delirious grin. "Let's put on a show."
______________
They said nothing to each other after the show in Vegas, but she draped herself over him backstage while she laughed with Jack, and she stayed there with her arm wrapped around his chest, warm and solid and more real than anything he had known in a long time. Danny didn't quite lean back against her, but he let his hand drop to her wrist, holding onto it like he used to when the lights went down in their show, just for the reminder that she was right there where he had left her.
She fell asleep against his shoulder on the limo ride back to their hotel, her feet propped up in Jack's lap, Merritt's hat drooping over her eyes, and Danny let his head fall back to look up through the skylight at the lights, for once not feeling the need to hold on to her to keep her from disappearing while he wasn't looking.
______________
They got back to New York sometime between too late and too early, and Henley dropped her bag by the door, kicked off her shoes on her way across the suite, and fell face down onto the first bed she reached.
Merritt cleared his throat in the doorway, and she didn't lift her head.
"My bed," she told him, voice muffled in the blanket, "is all the way over there." She lifted a hand to wave vaguely in its direction.
"Couch it is, then." He sounded tired. She rolled over to look at him, hovering there in the door to his own bedroom, looking faintly lost, and she sighed.
"No, come on," she relented. "I'm leaving." She patted the comforter regretfully and stretched until her joints popped. "Once I learn how to move again."
Merritt made an indistinct noise and crossed the room, and she heard the thud of his shoes hitting the wall moments before the bed dipped with his weight beside her. "I honestly could not give less of a shit," he said. "Hell, get Jack and Daniel in here, let's have a party." He sprawled out, burying his face in a pillow. "As long as it's a very quiet party. With no movement."
"Mmm," she agreed. She scooted upwards until her head hit a pillow as well, curling into a ball and feeling him warm against her back. "Sounds like my kind of party."
She woke in the morning from a dream she couldn't remember to the feeling of his arm draped across her, and she pressed back against him, entertaining for a brief moment the thought of taking him up on his offer from the plane, of waking him to the feeling of her sliding against him. But then the door was bursting open, sunlight streaming in, and Danny's silhouette appeared in the doorway, announcing, "Wake up, McKinney, it's a big day."
Henley caught just a glimpse of his startled face before her pillow hit him square in it, catching on the edge of the door as it went, slamming it shut between them.
"You're not gonna tell me you meant for that to happen, are you?" Merritt asked beside her, punctuating the question with a yawn, and she gave him nothing but a mysterious smile in return.
______________
Danny found him on the fire escape, dangling his feet out over the street and looking down at the city below them.
"Ready to die?" Danny asked, and Jack shrugged like it was no big thing.
"Sure," he agreed easily. "You ready to kill me?"
It was the first time he'd ever seen J. Daniel Atlas look uncertain, and he grinned up at him, tilting back to lean against his legs.
"Put your mask back on, Danny," he advised. "We've got work to do."
______________
"What happens now?" Jack asked, afterwards, and Danny was the one to reply, looking smug.
"We disappear."
"That's the easy answer," Rhodes said, looking steadily at Danny. "I expect you to know by now that nobody gets into magic because they're looking for the easy answer to anything. Disappearing is what happens at the end of a trick. This is only the beginning."
They got nothing from him that night, though, nothing but cryptic hints and the vague promise of something bigger than any of them had imagined. "You've had a long week," he told them, looking completely unapologetic about it. "A long year, really. Take some time, get yourselves together. I have some business to attend to, and then we have a lot of work ahead of us." He eyed each of them in turn. "I expect you to be ready."
One of them was dead, and the other three were felons, so returning to their suite and their lives was an option that each of them had set aside from the beginning. A year was enough time to get their affairs in order, and they had walked into the park that night empty-handed and ready to move on.
"'Get ourselves together,'" Merritt echoed later, pacing a circle around their new hotel room. "What does he think we've been doing for a year?"
"He knows exactly what we've been doing," Danny replied. He was sprawled on the couch, feet kicked up on the coffee table. "Which is more than any of us can say for him. Nice job with your whole 'mentalism' business, there, by the way. That was incredibly helpful to all of us, the way you saw right through him." His voice was thick with sarcasm, and Henley stretched a leg across the couch to kick him lightly.
"Hey, I was right about the daddy issues, wasn't I?" Merritt replied.
"You mean the ones that could be seen from space?"
"I didn't see you doing any better, Mr. Smartest Guy in the Room," Merritt pointed out.
"Guys," Jack said from where he stood by the window, looking out at the city.
"I'll have you know – " Danny began, and Jack interrupted.
"Guys," he repeated. "You should see this."
His face was pressed to the window, and Henley got up first to join him, leaning her chin on his shoulder. She could feel Danny and Merritt join them a moment later, and a smile spread over her face as they looked down at Times Square together.
"We saw it, buddy," Merritt told him. He clapped a hand to Jack's shoulder. "We came up this way, on our way to meet you."
"It is pretty incredible, though, isn't it?" Henley said quietly. "We did that."
She slipped her hand into Danny's, and he squeezed her fingers lightly. "We're pretty good," he allowed.
Merritt darted a glance at him. "Pretty good?"
"You guys," Danny corrected. "You guys are pretty good. I'm excellent."
Jack ducked away from Henley to give Danny a solid punch, and Danny fought back half-heartedly, laughing and evading him easily. Henley watched them, the easy way they danced around each other, the way Jack's face lit up as Danny cornered him against a wall, and she raised an eyebrow, turning to Merritt.
"How long have they been sleeping together?" she asked.
He shrugged. "A while. Less sleeping, more pretending everyone doesn't know that Jack likes to give blowjobs." He eyed her. "Although I guess everyone didn't know," he allowed.
"Oh, I knew that," Henley said, waving a hand carelessly. "I just didn't know he'd started giving them to Danny." Danny's eyes met hers, and she wondered if this was him with his guard down, this brief moment of laughter-crinkled eyes mixed with the tight grip of his fingers into the skin of Jack's wrist, or if it was just another part of the show.
Danny let Jack go, and the smile faded from Jack's face as he looked past Danny to Henley. "Right," he said, rubbing his wrist lightly. "I'm gonna – " he gestured vaguely toward the bedrooms, but Henley shook her head.
"'Get yourselves together,'" she repeated. "Looks like you guys have been getting a head start on us."
"I find that hard to believe," Danny replied, looking at Merritt.
Merritt shrugged. "Sadly true," he said. "Although, if you had come in just a little later yesterday morning…"
"Anyway," Jack put in, "it started with you two in the first place." He gestured between her and Danny. "If you hadn't been playing the Will They Won't They game from day one, things probably would have gone a lot smoother."
Henley met Danny's eyes. "I don't know," she said, "I think things went exactly as they should have." She crossed the room, not taking her eyes off Danny, but as she reached him, she reached out for Jack instead, pulling him closer by the collar of his shirt and turning to look him in the eye. "Or do you disagree, Mr. Wilder?" He swallowed visibly, and she tightened her grip just briefly, watching the way his eyes darkened, before she let him go. "And the way I remember it," she continued, "it took all of us."
She slid her eyes across the room to Merritt, who was watching them with a dazed expression. "Jesus," he breathed, and Henley smiled sweetly at him.
"A year of living in each other's pockets," she pointed out. "Learning each other's tricks, on the stage and off – and you want to tell me you never thought about it?" She looked at each of them in turn. Danny was the only one who met her eyes steadily without looking away.
"I've thought about it," he said simply. "And then I've remembered that it was a bad idea."
"This was all a bad idea," Jack spoke up, looking at Merritt as he said it, instead of Danny. "It's been a bad idea right from the beginning." He shifted his eyes to Henley, assessing her frankly, and a smile slowly spread across his face. "It's been pretty great, hasn't it?"
"And you heard Rhodes," she replied, stepping into his space. "This is just the beginning." She paused there for just a minute, watching his eyes drop to her lips, turning just slightly to see Danny and Merritt standing there suspended in the moment with them, and then she leaned in to take his mouth with hers, pressing him back against the wall and feeling his hands come to her waist and rest there lightly, not quite holding on yet. When she pulled back, his lips were wet and his eyes were sharp and wanting as they looked first at her, and then over her shoulder at Danny.
"Bad idea," Danny reiterated. "I mentioned that, right?" But he was stepping forward, reaching out to touch her lips, then tilting her face to lean in and kiss her, more softly than he used to, like a question instead of a demand. She met it with a demand of her own, and felt him respond. He was hard against her leg before she pulled away, both of them gasping for breath.
He turned to Jack, then, and Henley stepped back, giving Danny room to slide in and fit up against him, the two of them rubbing against each other in a way that was clearly familiar to them, Jack pinned between Danny and the wall, his hand reaching to tuck into Danny's back pocket and pull them together more firmly.
She pulled her eyes away from them long enough to look across the room. "Merritt," she said quietly, and there was a time when she would have been embarrassed by the hitch in her voice, but that time had long passed. He crossed the room, looking at her the way he always did – like she was beautiful – but this time he let his hands settle against her waist as he reached her. He was tactile with them in a casual way, except with Danny, and she and Jack had grown used to his hands being on them when he had a point to get across. This was different, somehow, more intimate, and she lifted her hands to play with the brim of his hat to lighten the moment.
"I seem to remember an offer of some cheap and meaningless sex," she prompted, and he laughed.
"Is that what we're doing here?" he asked.
"Probably not," she admitted. "You tell me." She put on a stage face, waiting to be read, and he shook his head, lifting his hands to hold them up innocently.
"I'm off duty," he assured her.
"He has been for months, around us," Danny commented from across the room. "Or hadn't you noticed?"
"No, I hadn't," she replied, studying Merritt carefully, and he shrugged, nodding slightly in confirmation.
"Got bored with you," he said for Danny's benefit, but the look he gave Henley said something else. He dropped his arm around her waist and steered her towards the bedrooms in a transparent attempt to deflect the attention. "I don't know about you two," he said to Jack and Danny, "but I'm in the mood to take this party someplace a little more horizontal."
Jack ducked away from Danny and stood in the doorway, looking a little stunned. "This is – " he said slowly. "We're doing this, aren't we?"
Henley walked right up to him, pausing in front of him to touch his hair, ruffled from Danny's hands, then his lips, parted and wet from kissing. "Do you want to?"
His eyes went to each of them, and he nodded. "Yeah," he said a little breathlessly.
"Good." She leaned in to whisper in his ear briefly, and when she pulled back, his breath was coming quicker and he bit his lower lip as he nodded seriously. "Danny," she said, eyes still on Jack, and a thrill went through her at the way he crossed to her with no further encouragement needed. She led him into one of the bedrooms, Merritt saying something to Jack in an undertone as they followed.
Danny turned to her with a faint smirk, ready to make some comment, and she stepped in to kiss him instead, her fingers smoothly working at his clothes, stripping him naked in what felt like seconds with the experience of long years together. It was familiar, the quick change, the pre-show ritual, and she smoothed her hands over the skin of his hips as she kissed him, using the moment to push him lightly off balance until he was sitting on the bed.
"Jack," she said quietly, and stepped aside.
He dropped smoothly to his knees in front of Danny, and with no leadup, he reached for his cock, already hard, stroking it lightly and then leaning in to wrap his lips around it. "Fuck," Danny gasped, and Jack made an answering noise as he pulled back, then ducked down again, further this time.
Henley reached backward blindly and felt Merritt take her hand and slide up behind her, fitting himself to her back and resting his chin on her shoulder to watch. Danny leaned back, tilting his hips up towards Jack, catching their eyes and making a show of it. Merritt breathed out a laugh against Henley's neck, and she guided his hand between her legs, pressing it to herself and rocking back against him, feeling him hard in his pants.
He slipped his fingers into her pants and teased her lightly, making her squirm against him, and she kept her eyes on Jack and Danny until Danny's breath started catching in a way she recognized. "Jack," she said, and watched the way his eyelashes fluttered back to awareness, the blissed out look he gave her as he lifted his mouth off Danny's cock with a pop. Danny let out a low frustrated groan and flopped backward on the bed, and Henley felt a smile spread across her lips. It melted away as Merritt slipped a finger inside of her, just briefly, still teasing, and then he was taking his hands back, stepping away to see what her next move was, and leaving her as frustrated as Danny sounded.
"You like that, don't you, Jack?" she asked, stepping over to him and sliding a hand down his face, touching the corner of his lips with her thumb. He turned his head to catch it in his lips, closing his teeth against the tip of it lightly in answer. She pulled her hand back and drifted it down to his chin, tilting it upwards so he was looking up at her, rocked back on his heels and waiting almost patiently. His cock was straining against his pants.
"Come here," she said, stepping back and stripping off her clothes as she went. She settled back on the bed behind Danny, who was watching Jack as he stood and followed her, hesitating by the side of the bed before he took off his own clothes, his fingers quick and effortless.
Danny's hand drifted towards his cock, and her eyes snapped over to him. "You keep your hands to yourself," she told him.
"That's my plan," he agreed with a wicked little smile.
Her gaze flickered to Merritt, who looked surprised for a split second before his eyes dropped to Danny and crinkled in an almost invisible smile. He perched lightly behind Danny on the bed, and at Henley's nod, he reached to close his fingers around Danny's wrists, pulling them over his head.
"What – " Danny began, and looked wildly over his shoulder at Henley. "Henley…" he said, and she smiled sweetly at him.
"You had your turn," she said, and turned to Jack. She let her legs fall open slightly, inviting, and he licked his lips before looking up at her almost shyly. "God, Jack," she whispered, and reached down to touch herself with his eyes on her, bringing herself to the edge and then backing off, watching the way his fingers twitched towards his own cock but didn't close around it. "Come here," she finally said, her voice hoarse, and he dropped instantly, pressing his tongue to her, sliding his fingers inside her slick and easy, and bringing her off almost immediately, rocking desperately against the mattress as she came against his face.
She stretched back against the pillows, letting her head drop to the side and take in the sight of Danny and Merritt beside them, Merritt's fingers tight around Danny's wrists, Danny actively arching off the bed in desperation. "Danny, I think you owe Jack something," she said, and watched his face as his eyes dropped to Jack's cock. She nodded at Merritt, who carefully relaxed his grip, pulling away and sliding across the bed to sit against the headboard beside her.
Danny flexed his fingers and looked at Jack, who darted a quick glance at Henley before moving over and kneeling beside Danny. "Yeah?" he said quietly to Danny, who raked his eyes over Jack's body and then agreed hoarsely, "Yeah."
Jack knelt over him, careful and methodical, and when he guided his cock to Danny's lips, he closed his eyes, bracing himself against the bed and letting out a slow shaky breath. Danny took him fast and deep, ever the showman, and lifted his hands to Jack's hips, digging prints into his skin.
When Henley looked up at Merritt, his eyes were on her instead of the boys, the way she was touching herself lazily as she watched them. "You're still wearing clothes," she remarked, reaching up to tug at his shirt. "You should fix that."
He did, his fingers clumsy and distracted, and then his hands settled on her instead, touching her everywhere, slow and thorough as if cataloguing her responses to each pass of his fingers. Beside them, Jack was making increasingly desperate noises, and Henley didn't look at him, keeping her eyes on Merritt instead, knowing instinctively that Jack was waiting for her signal to come down Danny's throat.
She guided Merritt closer to her, reaching for his pants, for the condoms she'd slipped into the pocket, and his serious face dissolved into an expression that was half amusement and half hesitation. "Are you - ?" he began, and she shut him up by sliding the condom onto him and tugging him closer to her.
"Please," she said quietly, and he needed no further encouragement, dropping his head to her shoulder and letting her guide him inside of her, slick and easy and so deeply satisfying. She wrapped her legs around him, arching up to meet him, and as he started fucking her in earnest, she met Jack's eyes over his shoulder and gave him a tiny nod.
Jack cried out as he came, dropping his face to the bed, hips stuttering against Danny, and he rolled off immediately, his back settling warm against Henley's side as Danny gasped for breath beside him. Henley wrapped an arm around Jack's body and tangled her fingers into his as Merritt twisted his hips against her and she came with her head thrown back, curses escaping her lips. Merritt followed her over the edge, his breath damp and hot against her neck, and they lay there for a few moments catching their breath, until Danny's voice came from the other side of the bed, low and broken.
"Henley."
She slid out from under Merritt, grabbing another condom, and walked around the bed towards Danny, stretching luxuriously. "Hi," she said, looking down at him sprawled there, lips red and wet, cock straining upwards, hips shifting desperately.
"Hi," he replied, voice almost shaky, and she took a moment to appreciate the sight of J. Daniel Atlas spread out against the bed needing her.
She knelt beside him and smoothed the condom over his cock, enjoying the way his hips twitched upwards into the touch. He started to reach for her, but Jack intercepted him all on his own, wrapping their fingers together and looking down at Danny as Henley straddled him. She stroked him slowly, grinding herself down against him, ramping herself back up with the soft slide of his cock against her clit, and his fingers twitched against Jack's hands, eyes closing, lips letting out a low groan as he dropped his head back against the bed.
"You're a fucking sadist," he said.
"You knew that, though," she replied, and sank down onto his cock, taking him deep and slow. "You've seen my act."
He lasted almost no time at all, coming inside of her as she rocked against him, and she took her time to get herself off as he softened inside her, starting by touching herself and then beckoning Merritt over to finish her off with his fingers, tightening around Danny and wringing increasingly helpless moans from his lips.
She collapsed onto the bed afterwards, folding up between Merritt and Jack, her hand stretching across Jack's side to curl over Danny's hip. "Still think this is a bad idea?" she asked against the skin of Jack's neck, feeling him shiver lightly against her.
"Yes," Danny and Merritt said in unison, but Merritt pulled her tighter against him, and Danny pressed his hand over hers against his hip.
"Do you think Rhodes knew what he was doing," Henley asked, "putting us together?"
"Probably," said Merritt.
"No," replied Danny.
"Doesn't matter," was Jack's contribution. "It worked."
"It did, didn't it?" Henley agreed. "Congratulations, by the way. We did it."
"Mmn," Jack mumbled in agreement, smiling into the pillow.
"Do you think – " Henley began, and Merritt settled a hand against her side.
"Henley?" he said.
"Yeah?"
"Good night."
He leaned over her to touch her temple softly, and as she felt her eyelids getting heavy, she looked up at him. "Off duty, my ass," she said. He smiled gently in reply, and she fell asleep with him and Jack pressed against either side of her, her fingers tangled into Danny's. She dreamed of magic.