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Jack is pretty sure he has a concussion… In fact, he knows he has a concussion, what with the way his vision is swimming, and the bile bubbling up in his throat.
It’s not like he was hit more than three times, but unfortunately for him, Dylan Rhodes had a pretty fuckin’ powerful kick; he’s pretty sure he whacked his head on the wood when he was sent sprawling across the floor during their confrontation in the apartment, and he’s pretty sure he’s got a couple of bruises forming underneath the fabric of his clothing.
Other than that, however, he feels fucking exhilarated.
Well, as exhilarated as one can be while running from the FBI, on the verge of faking their own death.
“ C’mon .” He scowls, swerving around a corner and narrowly avoiding a side-on collision with a car he couldn’t make out the brand of. There are still people on his trail. Even in spite of his frankly insane driving, why couldn’t he lose them already- “Almost there, where the fuck is the bus ?”
His heart is racing , pulse thumping in his neck and sweat dripping down his forehead like he’s been sprinting for hours. He’s breathing like it too, practically hyperventilating as he spins the wheel, drifting violently past car after car. He’s looking for Merritt, for Henley and Daniel sitting in their decoy cars, obstacles in place to directly distract the pigs from their real plan.
Their real plan of fake killing him, that is.
He sees the back of Daniels taxi and the breath he sucks in makes him almost lightheaded. God, he’s about to die- Not him, really, the cadaver he stole from the local morgue is about to die, for the second time, too… But Jesus , it’s supposed to be him. The body looked almost eerily similar to his own reflection when he laid eyes upon it for the first time, and he had spent a solid half an hour standing in front of the mirror when he stumbled back into the apartment, running his hand through his hair and poking at his skin to remind himself that he was still alive.
Daniel had had to drag him out; His hand on his shoulder an anchor to the real world, and his annoyed promise of a drink that night snapping him out of his nervous stupor… At least for the rest of the day.
He’s only twenty, he doesn’t want to die.
“Aha! Here we fuckin’ go .” He grins, pulse racing, heart pounding as he swerves in front of Merritts bus.
The car switch doesn’t take long, in fact, it’s done in less than a second, and through his rearview mirror, he watches the car, he watches himself explode into an orange burst of flame as the decoy rolls along the road. It slams past their fake taxi, past the bus, halting the FBI vehicles in their tracks and letting them blend, free, into the rest of the traffic.
He can’t help but flinch, however, when the car first hits the barrier; a visual reminder of not only the fact that the body in the car’s supposed to be him, but also his own reckless driving… The danger here probably wasn’t the FBI, it was more like his own disregard for the road rules.
Selfishly ( Selfishly? ), he hopes that the others flinched as well, maybe forgot for a moment, like he did, that it was only a decoy in the car and not his real body. He hopes a little bit, that they care enough about him that they’re a little bit scared, that they don’t want him to explode.
As he slows the pace of the car, he feels the adrenaline pumping through his veins, and he feels bile rising in his throat. As he turns off the bridge and onto a smaller side street, he watches the other three horsemen slow slightly, as if they’re going to follow him. They shouldn’t; they have places to be, a new city to con… He has a different job, and while it’s in the same place, he has to take a different route, get a different apartment, undertake a different robbery.
He also feels like he’s going to hurl, and his vision is swimming so much that he needs a moment, a second, to breathe.
So he drives a little bit longer, and when he reaches a street that's a little bit more secluded, yet still not far away from the highway, he pulls onto the side of the road and leans back in his seat, letting out a long, slow breath.
The rest of the horseman aren’t behind him anymore; they probably stayed on the highway, on route to their next and final task…He’s almost upset they didn’t follow him, even though he knows the plan, he knows the sense of urgency probably coursing through their veins; but god, he would kill for one of them to pat him on the shoulder, for Henley to pull him in for a hug well done, for Merritt to grin at him, for Daniel to tell him that despite his cool demeanor, he was worried about him .
He feels like he’s floating, and he desperately, desperately wants to be back on the ground again… The other three horsemen make finding the ground easier. Especially Daniel, with his take-no-bullshit attitude and exhaustingly dark eyes-
-That being said, he’s kind of glad the rest of them didn’t follow him, because the moment he yanks the car door open, rising on slightly shaky legs, he keels over and hurls on the front tire of the FBI’s car.
—
He isn’t lonely, per-say… He’s just by himself, and it only kind of eats away at him.
The plan is to meet up with the rest of the horsemen after the last show, at the park with that guys fuckin’ tree in the centre of it. Before that he has to break into a warehouse, ship out the cash, and find a kick-ass outfit to wear throughout the process. He should be busy, busy with the planning and the ideas and everything involved in executing the plan flawlessly.
But he’s not.
Instead he’s sprawled across the floor of an only somewhat-shitty motel room, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels resting in his open palm.
…Alright, maybe he’s a little bit lonely.
“They’re fine, they’re all good… I’m all good.” He mutters, staring up at the slowly rotating ceiling fan on the ceiling, almost mesmerized by the light as it spins. He snatched the bottle of whisky from a drunk man’s shopping cart in a grocery store parking lot two hours ago; he technically shouldn’t be drinking, both for the sake of the law and his own wellbeing, but god, he misses the horsemen, and the law’s never stopped him from doing anything before.
He misses the way Henley laughs at his jokes, and the way she never hesitates to check up on him when he’s obviously nervous. She recognises him as young, teases him for it more than the rest of them; But there’s something almost sisterly about the way she pats him on the back, familial in the way she rolls his eyes at him whenever he pours himself another drink from one of Merritt’s bottles. He misses Merritt, and his almost constant avoidance of any sort of serious conversation. He misses the way he makes fun of him for practically anything , misses the way he drapes himself across the furniture as he reads, and solves the paper’s crossword every morning.
He makes a conscious effort to keep Jack’s hands away from the booze, because while all of them are magicians, he’s sneakier than the rest of them when it comes to that kind of thing. He still buys it, though, and once he has a glass in his hand, he makes no effort to take it from him, only snorts, and turns back to his book, or his conversation.
He misses Daniel a little bit more than he misses the other two. Not by much, but still.
“Daniel, Danny… Whatever.” He sighs, and sits up to take a swig from the bottle. “Motherfucker was probably happy I almost died, the asshole.”
He misses Daniel's sarcastic quips, the way he’s so easy to annoy, to anger, especially by Merritt. He misses the way he fiddles with a deck of cards every chance he can get, misses the way he squeezes Jack’s shoulder every time he walks past him.
God, it makes his cheeks a little warm, but it’s probably the half a bottle of whisky he’s downed in the last forty-five minutes.
He misses Daniel's eyes, the way he calls him Wilder every time he wants to make fun of him; He misses the way the name Atlas feels on his tongue; sparkling, like good champagne and pop-rocks as it dances from his lips. Daniel always grins at him whenever he says it, tilts his head and runs his tongue along his teeth as he follows him with his eyes.
Henley and Merritt watch, and when his cheeks are red and Daniel excuses himself to the bathroom, they wiggle their eyebrows and laugh like hyenas.
He’s not entirely sure what to feel, how to feel about it.
“Feels like I've been here for years.” He mutters, and gets to his feet.
It’s dark outside, he’s twenty years old, drunk, and one of the world’s most successful international criminals.
Through his research – internet searches, wikipedia reads, now that he doesn’t have to worry about being tracked. – he’s concluded that more people fake their deaths than he thought, and many people do it way less dramatically than he did.
He thinks it’s a little funny, actually… He’s twenty years old, and legally dead. He hasn’t spoken to his parents since he was fifteen, but he wonders if they know, if they’ve found out about his early demise and fraud-enthusiast status. He wonders if they care , if they know he learnt his craft out on the streets of New York after he disappeared all those years ago… He wonders about them, but beneath his almost mourning of his fellow horseman, the alcohol running through his blood, and the constant adrenaline in his veins, he can’t quite bring himself to care very much.
He wonders if that makes him a bad person, but then again, if he is one, then not missing his parents probably isn’t the reason for that.
—
He robs the warehouse, he breaks into the park, he completes his mission, and now? Now he’s waiting.
Actually, he’s not just waiting, he’s practically vibrating with excitement. He watched the horseman’s show from a cracked phone he swiped earlier, grinning the whole way, vindication filling his bones as he watched Rhodes fail his mission.
“That’s for the concussion.” He had muttered, watching his friends disappear into an explosion of money, unable to keep the smile off his face at the defeated look filling the agent's expression. Since they had finished their show, there was nothing left for him to do but wait, pacing, bored, around the tree with the King of Spades embedded into its trunk.
‘The Eye’ is sitting nervously at the back of his mind, dancing around with the idea of finally meeting up with the horsemen again. He had robbed the warehouse successfully, broken into the park, laid eyes on the famous tree… yet he still had almost no idea what he had done all of that for. Sure, it was all to join ‘The Eye’, or something, but he genuinely didn’t know what ‘The Eye’ was , other than some kind of weird magic organization that Daniel, Henley and Merritt seemed to be practically obsessed with.
The thought of it made him a little bit nervous… He had done all of this because he was told to by someone or something he couldn’t see that he had to; an organization that worked in the shadows, Stringing people along like puppets. That was why he had framed Thaddeus Bradley, why he had stuffed a million dollars into his car before running away to the park, because he had been told to.
He hopes that it’s all it’s cracked up to be, because Jesus , he’s legally dead, physically aching, and a little bit mentally losing it due to the last few weeks of what was practically solitary confinement.
There are footsteps, and he freezes. Following the footsteps is laughter, bickering and voices he recognises like the back of his hand.
He can’t help the smile on his face as he walks over to the gate, rolling his eyes as he sees Henley gently tug at the chain holding it closed. He can see their faces fall for a moment, and he can’t stop himself from swaggering forward, brandishing his lock-picking tools in front of him as their eyes light up at the sight of him.
“You didn’t hear me before? Nothing’s ever locked.” He grins, and Henley honest-to-god beams , pushing the gate open after he’s done and wrapping her arms around him in an instant.
“Nice work, Mr Wilder!” She grins, and he hugs her back, pulling away after a moment to watch her smile at him. She looks like she missed him, and the idea warms his chest a little bit as he grins back at her. “You've been holding up alright? Weren’t tailed or anything? God, we missed you.”
“Everything went according to the plan.” He nods, and with a relieved sigh, Henley steps back. It feels kind of like reuniting with an older sister, seeing family again after months of being separated. “I missed you too… all of you.”
Merritt claps a hand on his shoulder, and he grins; He smells like money, like sweat and magic as he steps past him into the park, bumping shoulders with him in the process.
“Atlas over there’s fuckin’ insufferable without you around.” Merritt rolls his eyes, and Jake snorts, watching him spin around and meet his eyes. “We’re never doing something like that again, you hear? Next time I’m the one that gets to live by myself for three weeks.”
“I have a feeling that you wouldn’t’ve been able to get away like Jack did.” Henley grins, and ruffles Jack’s hair as she walks past him. “You can’t drive like a hooligan in your old age.”
“I’m not-” Merritt starts, but he’s drowned out by her laughter again, and he’s left-
-J. Daniel Atlas is staring at him, and almost as soon as Henley and Merritt turn around, he launches forward, and places his hands on Jack’s shoulders almost painfully . His fingers feel like they’re digging through his jacket and into his skin, but the touch sends a jolt up his spine, and he shivers.
“...Hey, Atlas.” He grins, tilting his head to the side and raising an eyebrow. His smile fades, however, when he notices that Daniel is looking him up and down, a concerned expression on his face as he looks up to meet his eyes. “... You alright?”
“You’re not injured, you’re fine.” Daniel states, matter-of-factly, as his eyebrows furrow. He looks almost worried, and for a moment, Jack’s about to roll his eyes and laugh, before he realizes that his words might be for the sake of calming his own state of mind, rather than genuinely making an observation. “You’re- you were alright after the chase? You were fine on your own? Yeah?”
Jack hesitates for a moment. He was alright, physically, but he was nervous, he was lonely -
“I was alright.” He hums, and Daniel releases the hold on his shoulders slightly, lifting his fingers momentarily as he lets out a small sigh. “I’m pretty sure I got a concussion or something, but I was totally fine after a nap-”
This was evidently the wrong thing to say, because the death-grip on his shoulders is back immediately, and Daniel’s staring at him with that look in his eyes, the stressed out one from before they left the apartment the last time, and-
“Rhodes gave you the concussion? The car?” He mutters, voice rising slightly in volume and intensity as he speaks. “You were driving like an idiot, so I wouldn’t be surprised-”
“It was Rhodes.” He interrupted, and raised an eyebrow teasingly. Daniel snapped his mouth shut, and blinked, hard, as Jack tilted his head. “But I was fine, man… What, were you worried?”
“I-”
“He was pacing around the new apartment like he was about to explode.” Merritt groaned, and Jack glanced back towards him with a grin. Henley was watching them with raised eyebrows, and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “I offered to hypnotize him, but-”
“-But I refuse to let him near me with a ten-foot pole.” Daniel interrupted, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “I wasn’t worried, I knew you could do it.”
Jack turned his gaze back to Daniel, and watched as he straightened up, slowly pulling his hands back to his own body, and releasing the hold on his shoulders. He could still feel the touch over his jacket, and for a few moments, they simply stared at each other, making eye contact as their iris’s glittered in the dark.
“...You knew I could do it?” He murmured, and after a moment of silence, Daniel nodded, and brushed past him to follow Merritt and Henley.
“‘Course, you’re crafty, better than the rest of us at that kind of thing.” He hummed, and Jack spun around, quickly following as they began to make their way into the park.
“What? Better at almost killing ourselves through reckless driving?” Henley grinned, and Jack couldn’t help the way he laughed as she reached backwards to swing an arm over his shoulder.
He knew that he was legally dead, public obituaries plastered themselves across social media and from what he could see, there were memorials being held across the country for him, even in spite of his criminal status…
…He was legally dead, but god, he felt so, so alive.