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Chapter Text

Dylan has been watching Jack for a while now, trying to figure out what keeps drawing him back to this kid. And he definitely is a kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen. The others are different; all of them are older and fairly well-known in the magic world. Even Daniel Atlas, the youngest he’s picked so far, is solidly in his twenties.

But Jack?

Jack is an unknown, save for a few forum posts along the lines of ‘watch out for this kid: he’ll clap you on the shoulder, shake your hand with a bright smile and say he likes your work. Then, twenty minutes later, you’ll notice that both him and your watch are long gone.’

At first, Dylan thought Jack was just entertaining. He’s very good at what he does. His cardistry, showmanship, and pickpocketing skills would all be beneficial for Dylan’s plans. However, Dylan thinks as he watches from afar Jack’s rendition of an easy three-card monte hustle, Jack is not quite what The Eye is looking for. He may be a promising young magician with nothing to lose and endless potential, but he’s also a hustler. Still, Dylan can’t look away.

He keeps following Jack, sure he has him figured out, but unable to forget him. This is when he notices one of the few routines Jack never changes. Jack is a street kid and a thief, meaning he never works in one neighborhood for too long, never stays at the same shelters or hostels for too long. Except for every second Wednesday, when Jack passes by the same group home in Brooklyn and does card tricks for the kids through the chain link fence. This is when Dylan realizes that maybe he’s got Jack all wrong.

He knew Jack was smart; he moved around and stayed under the cops’ radar and his marks were all tourists (stealing from locals is never a good idea, Jack clearly understood the saying, “you don’t shit where you eat.”). His marks were also always rich, or at least well-off, which Dylan had noticed but not understood the significance of until now. Dylan had seen a lot of indiscriminate thieves in this city, who were fine snatching wallets from the family on their once-in-a-lifetime vacation, but Dylan had never seen Jack do that. He targeted MBA douchebags with ugly Rolexes and boat shoes. He hopped fences at the docks to catch the luxury sightseeing tour, not the budget boats.

Dylan was wrong about Jack before, but he’s definitely got a better profile now: a kid who aged out of the New York foster system and wound up on the street—a depressingly common occurrence. Now he pawns TAG Heuer watches nabbed from visiting businessmen to support himself. A self-made man, of sorts.

Jack pulls off another con, this time by bending a spoon. As he flees the scene, he doesn’t notice Dylan bumping into him and slipping a tarot card into his pocket.

Voices are floating from the landing up above, one of which sounds sort of familiar to Jack. He can’t quite place it, until he turns the corner onto the landing and makes eye contact with one of the first magicians he ever saw on a grainy library computer screen in 2001.

“No way.” Jack grins, and he knows he should maybe play it cool, but he’s not really sure how. “J. Daniel Atlas? Dude, I have seen everything that you’ve ever done, you’re like…” Incredible? Kind of hot? Probably my first crush? All of those came to mind as stunning examples of how to show his entire ass, so instead he shoots for casual. And misses. He thinks, you’re like, pretty cool. That’s a normal thing to say. Instead, what comes of his mouth is, “I idolize you. Seriously.”

Great. That’s almost definitely worse. Way to make a good first impression.

It’s just that, for Jack, J. Daniel Atlas was one of his first tastes of the real outside world. Jack’s family wasn’t super terrible, just very traditional. Conservative. He and his siblings were home schooled with all the Institute for Basic Life Principles materials, but it wasn’t like they were a full IBLP family. His mom kept her hair shorter and wore jeans sometimes, so their family was actually pretty liberal compared to some of the others at their church.

Real IBLP families banned all media not made by the Institute from their homes. In Jack’s house, though, they had plenty of Disney movies on VHS and even went out to the movie theater every once in a while.

Jack’s family also patronized the local public library at least once a week. While his father was working, Jack’s mom would take all the kids to story hour and, as the eldest daughter, leave his siblings in his care while she perused the books. It was nice to be around other kids outside the rare homeschooling conference, but sitting still for that long chafed. Besides, his siblings were unusually well-behaved as a result of their unorthodox upbringing, so he started ditching story hour and spending his time elsewhere in the library.

Sometimes he read (though not often; reading was always difficult for him), sometimes he messed around on the library computers, and sometimes he poked his head into other events happening in the building.

That’s how he discovered magic. He was seven years old, weaving through shelves to dodge his mom, when his eyes landed on the door to one of the other event rooms. There was a program going on that he vaguely recalled seeing a flier for last week. A magic show.

Jack knew he shouldn’t watch. It wasn’t allowed. Even if they were just tricks, magic was still witchcraft. Still, his curiosity had been ignited and Jack had never been one to worry about killing the cat. He peered through the glass door, straining to see around the heads of the older kids.

Logically, Jack knew that this was just some middle-aged guy in a dumb bow-tie waving a plastic stick and calling it a magic wand.

But Jack couldn’t help the way his breath caught and his eyes went wide. He felt like he’d just learned all the secrets of the universe. He watched with rapt attention as the magician pulled a rabbit out of a hat and handed the animal to a girl in the audience a few years older than Jack.

Somehow, even through the dozen-or-so rowdy children in the room, the magician looked up and made eye contact with Jack through the door. The magician smiled. Maybe he really was magic, because he waved at Jack to come in, like he could tell how badly Jack wanted to.

Jack flushed, embarrassed at being caught wanting something he shouldn’t, and turned away.

He didn’t forget what he saw, though. A few weeks earlier, Jack had discovered Newgrounds. He’d mostly been using it to play flash games that his mom definitely wouldn’t approve of, but he knew it also had user-submitted videos. The next week, Jack ditched story hour again and logged onto the site.

In hindsight, what he found hadn’t been that impressive. It was some thirteen-year-old kid calling himself ‘Magicolio’ and uploading clips of a middle school talent show performance. To Jack, though, it was mind-blowing. He kept watching magic on Newgrounds over the next several years, taking notice as ‘Magicolio’ transitioned to J. Daniel Atlas. He also got his hands on a deck of cards and started learning tricks out of a beat-up old library book. Practicing tricks on his younger siblings while keeping it from his parents was actually pretty difficult, but he only halfway failed. His father thankfully never found out; only his mom did. Jack’s mom was pretty cool, all things considered. She let him keep doing card tricks, just like she let him keep running around in the backyard with his brothers, far past the age it was acceptable for a girl.

That was the thing. Jack was a girl. It’s difficult to grow up in a fundamentalist Christian family, no matter the gender, but it’s especially difficult for girls. The culture created within fundie churches encourages these umbrellas of authority. Christ over the husband, husband over the wife, wife over the children. In the church’s world, Jack’s only future was to pass from the authority of his father to the authority of his future husband. A husband that Jack wouldn’t even really get to choose.

Jack didn’t want that for himself (a sin, Jack wasn’t supposed to want things). That’s why he was so envious of his brothers (another sin) and that had to be why he longed to be like them (sin again. Girls and boys had their separate domains for a reason). Long before Jack knew why exactly his skin crawled when he wore his Sunday dresses, he knew he was doomed to Hell. The realization that he was actually a boy was just the icing on the cake.

That realization came at sixteen, and it changed everything. 2010 had been a big year for transgender people in politics. Jack remembered the pastor ranting and spewing venom about Amanda Simpson, a trans woman who had been appointed by the president to a government position; and Phyllis Frye, an openly trans judge. Jack remembered sitting in the pew, palms sweating and a lump in his throat, realizing all that hatred could easily be pointed at him.

Not for the first time, Jack considered running away. He had kept up with learning card tricks, he could be a street performer in a big city with a new name and identity. That plan would remain just a fantasy for a few months until one of the boys in his church approached after a Sunday service.

The boy was the son of a family friend and was only a year or two older than Jack, so they knew each fairly well. Maybe Jack should have expected this sooner or later, maybe it shouldn’t have blind sided him like it did.

The boy said to his father, “I’d like to court your daughter for the purpose of marriage.” Jack ran away from home that same night.

Jack’s first few months on the streets don’t go well, but at least out here, he’s Jack. With the cash he pinched from home, he managed to take Greyhound buses all the way from his home state in the south to New York City. He even had enough for food the first couple of days, but it turns out living on his own is more expensive than he’d realized, especially since he’d blown half his money on boys’ clothes from a thrift store in Charlotte and a pair of scissors in Baltimore. In light of this, Jack is quick to start performing magic when he gets to New York.

It’s harder than Jack thought it would be to make a living like this. The performance part isn’t that difficult, Jack improves incredibly quickly in both technical skill and showmanship. There are two significant hurdles, though. The first is money. He starts by trying to collect tips in a hat, but he’s only able to make twenty dollars a day at most, even in the most touristy areas. The touristy areas also happen to be the crux of the other issue. As it turns out, street performers are rather territorial, and for the first day in a new spot, Jack will get some dirty looks from whoever the other performer in the area is. The second day, however, Jack will learn that whatever performer’s toes he’s stepping on is more than willing to, as it was so delicately put to him, step on his balls to protect their income.

All the obvious spots are taken, and the right way isn’t very lucrative, so Jack gets creative. He’s already going to Hell, anyway, so busking magic shows turns into hustling turns into pick-pocketing. After this, things start going a little better for Jack. He learns which shelters to avoid, how to hop the turnstile at the subway stations, gets a YMCA membership mainly for the showers, and starts collecting fake IDs like some kids his age collect Pokémon cards.

It’s not a bad way to grow up, Jack thinks. Out here, Jack is sixteen, but he’s also an adult. If he were still at home, he would, in a way, forever be treated like a child. Even after marriage and kids, which would be on the way in less than two years if he’d stayed, he still wouldn’t have authority over himself. Out here, he does. It might be dangerous and sometimes painfully lonely, but home was too.

And it is dangerous. Most of Jack’s energy is spent on finding enough food to survive, and what little energy is left goes to figuring out how to pass, because being homeless is infinitely more dangerous for trans kids. Jack’s pretty lucky. He’s always had a fairly straight-up-and-down build, so there aren’t a lot of curves to cover. However, he still needs to double-up on sports bras to bind and his face is pretty feminine. Plus, as good as it felt cutting his hair in a gas station bathroom—like coming up for air after years of being underwater—the cut leaves a lot to be desired.

So does pretty much everything else in his new life. The first time Jack tries staying at a shelter, he’s not sure whether he should go to the men’s or women’s shelter. He ends up going to the women’s. It feels like a safer choice, but every time the shelter staff refers to him as ‘Miss’, it makes the buzzing sensation in his chest grow worse. The buzzing sensation that he had been used to his whole life, unaware that no one else felt it. It’s tucked away somewhere behind his lungs and below his heart, and it screams whenever he catches his reflection in a bathroom mirror.

Bathrooms are another issue. He got a Y membership for the showers, but the first time he went, he just stood outside the locker room door for five minutes before turning tail and leaving. He gets up the courage eventually, mostly out of necessity, but he counts it as a win anyway.

By the end of his first year on the streets, Jack passes most of the time, so long as he pretends to be a lot younger than he actually is. He’s still pretty short, so he can get away with being a prepubescent tween-age boy. People are also nicer to Jack, the younger they think he is. Jack supposes they must feel worse about his situation that way, so he rolls with it; he’s sixteen looking like he’s twelve.

At seventeen, Jack figures out that a lot of family-owned restaurants will pay cash under the table for bussers and dishwashers on busy weekends. Plus, he usually leaves with leftover food at the end of the night, which is always a major relief.

At eighteen, Jack gets his first binder and figures out that it’s not that hard to get T once he knows the right people and gets over any reservations about the DIY stuff. He has a major growth spurt and loses a lot of the baby fat on his cheeks; he actually looks his age now.

At nineteen, Jack doesn’t notice Dylan bumping into him and slipping a tarot card into his pocket.

Throughout all those years, Jack kept going to public libraries and trawling Newgrounds and, when it came around, YouTube for magic videos.

Mostly for videos of J. Daniel Atlas, who, it turns out, is kind of an asshole.

Chapter Text

Jack thoroughly embarrasses himself on that landing, but feels like he redeemed himself a little when he picks the lock on the door they were all brought to. They find all of these incredible plans and blueprints, and Jack thinks to himself, what the Hell am I doing here? The other three made sense, they were skilled and experienced. Anything Jack could do, they could probably do better. Not that Jack is turning down the offer, even if it felt like his invite was just a big mistake, meant for some other magician. This was the chance of a lifetime to finally do something, be something big. Jack was a thief. When he wanted something, he took it, especially if it wasn’t his.

The others are debating whether they want to get involved, and Jack can hear them distantly, but he’s drifted a little ways away from the group to read through the plans.

“Well, I’m not going back to jail, I’m out,” says the guy with the hat.

“Are you kidding? This is the show of a lifetime,” Daniel says.

“If by lifetime you’re referring to our inevitable prison sentences,” the woman (Henley, he’s pretty sure), replies.

The debate keeps going, presumably up until Jack is snapped out of his reverie by Daniel Atlas, who has somehow managed to sneak up behind him and peer over his shoulder.

“What, did you just learn how to read yesterday?”

It takes Jack a second to get that Daniel is referring to the way he’s reading, running his finger slowly across pages of complex details. “What? Oh. No, I just—I’m pretty sure I’m dyslexic, or something.”

Daniel takes the papers from his hands for a closer look, skimming through much faster than Jack could ever hope to. “Or something? Isn’t that something you’re supposed to know?”

“Back in my day, they just called it lazy,” Hat guy chimes in from where he’s leaning against a wall across the room. It didn’t seem like an indictment, just a comment.

“Could be it.” Jack grins. “Anyway, I’m in. I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Daniel raises an eyebrow. “And what exactly is it that you do? Aside from picking locks and watching everything I do. Obviously, I know Henley.” He gestures towards her, where she’s still standing in the middle of the room, investigating the hologram blueprints. “And I know of Merritt, but none of us have any idea who you are.”

As if Jack knows who he is, either. Most days, he feels more like a kid playing pretend than a real magician. Still, he answers, “I’m a street magician.”

“You’re a hustler,” Henley says with a knowing smirk.

“No—well, yeah, but… I do magic.”

“Great. So, I’m going to rob a bank with a washed-up mentalist, an amateur hustler, and Henley. Great.”

Henley cocks her head and steps closer to Jack and Daniel. “Excuse me? What does that mean?”

“What do you mean, ‘what does that mean’, I just said your name,” Daniel says.

“Oh, right, of course. Like you ‘just said’ that Rebecca fit through the trap door?”

Merritt sighs. Jack tries not to laugh.

The first night is rough. After a lot of debate, they all agreed to give this Horseman thing a shot. They went over all the plans together, talking them to death and pointing out potential issues. Like, for instance, Jack needs to successfully pull off a high speed car chase. Jack has never been behind the wheel of a car before. Why would he have been? Most of the girls in the community he’s from never learn, and after he left, he went straight to New York. There’s no need to drive in the city.

If Jack’s being honest, his role in this whole plan is kind of insane. He knows he’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but it’s probably not normal to be this excited about stealing a body from a morgue and getting shot at by feds. At the same time, Jack’s got basically nothing to do on-stage at their shows. It seems to Jack that maybe he’s only here because whoever they’re working for knows he’s crazy enough to fake his death, but not actually talented enough to perform. It hurts a little, but it’s fair, Jack supposes. Henley, Daniel, and Merritt are all experts at their chosen specialties with years of experience. Jack is a dime-a-dozen pickpocket who just happens to know a few card tricks. On the bright side, maybe this is his chance to get better. He’s going to be working with these people for a while, so he’s bound to pick something up.

For now, though, there’s not much magic going on in the apartment. There’s not much of anything, really. No furniture, even, so they all sit on the floor in a circle with papers spread out between them. They divvy up prep work and discuss custom build props so late into the night that even though Henley and Daniel (as out-of-towners) have hotel rooms, they end up just falling asleep there. Merritt refuses to do the same—complaining about a bad back—and ducks out around three in the morning to his hotel. Jack, having no where else to go, falls asleep in the apartment as well.

At first, it’s a little odd falling asleep around people he doesn’t know well outside of a shelter or hostel setting, but Jack can sleep anywhere. Jack also sleeps like a rock. He really shouldn’t; he wishes he slept lighter for safety reasons, but once he’s out, he’s out. Not much can wake him.

Jack slept pretty great that night. The floor wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was inside and air conditioned, which is leagues better than some other places he’s slept. He’s not exactly surprised to be the last one to wake up; Henley and Daniel probably don’t have much experience crashing on anything other than a bed or a sofa. He is, however, surprised to wake up to a warm brown paper bag being unceremoniously dropped on his chest.

“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,” Merritt’s saying as Jack startles awake.

Jack takes in his surroundings quickly. Henley and Daniel, clearly having been awake for awhile, are leaning against one of the built-in bookshelves next to the unlit fireplace eating breakfast burritos. A quick glance at the contents of the bag now in his lap showed two of the same burritos wrapped in foil. Merritt, who Jack assumes bought the food on his way over, leans against the kitchen doorway next to Henley and Daniel.

“Now that sleeping beauty here is finally with us,” Merritt says, gesturing with a half-eaten burrito of his own, “we can get started.”

“Sorry,” Jack says with a lopsided grin.

Henley shakes her head and huffs out a small laugh. “How did you manage to sleep like that on this floor?”

He shrugs. “I’ve slept in shittier places. This wasn’t so bad.”

“Well, I definitely can’t do that again.” Henley takes a bite of her burrito, talking as she chews. “If we’re going to be using this place for a while, we need to get some furniture.”

“Gross.” Daniel winces at the sight and she drives an elbow into his side.

The next nine months pass somewhat similarly to those first couple of days—with plenty of bickering between Henley and Daniel. Other than that, it’s pretty good. The apartment they use to plan and rehearse is a better place to crash than Jack’s had in a while, and he’s pretty sure no one’s figured out that he’s trans.

He’s actually not super worried about that. They’re all too busy prepping and practicing to ask each other any personal questions, and no one seems like they’re exactly bubbling over with the need to share, either. They’re friendly, but they’re not friends. Just…co-workers. It shows onstage, Jack thinks, after their show in Vegas. They’re all good individually, but something is lacking all together.

Jack half-wishes that they were friends, if it would make their performances smoother, but Danny and Henley are too busy arguing with each other; actually, Danny’s too busy arguing with everyone; Henley’s nice enough, but Jack has no idea what to talk about with her; and Merritt, Jack’s a little wary of. He’s too observant, too good at reading people. If anyone was going to figure him out, it would be Merritt, and after the “Tranny Tuesday” thing? Jack’s pretty sure he doesn’t want Merritt to find out.

It’s not that Merritt, or anyone else for that matter, actually said anything outright transphobic when Merritt recounted the story of his interrogation, but still; it didn’t sit right with Jack.

He’d said, “No shame,” snapped his fingers like in Paris is Burning, and suddenly Jack was twelve years old again; sitting in church and listening to the pastor preach about homosexuality and cutting off the branch that bears no fruit.

But, of course, Jack’s not twelve; he’s twenty. Despite the New Orleans show going well after that, when the Horsemen touch down in New York the next morning, Jack is nervous. Everyone is scrambling for the big finale (and bickering, of course) and Jack speaks up.

“Guys, I don’t know if I can do this, alright? I don’t want to go to jail, you know?”

“Then don’t screw up,” Danny says, handing more papers to Jack. “You’re always talking about how you want to be treated like an adult. Now might be a good time to start acting like one. Stick to the plan. Stay here and burn it all.”

And Jack’s not twelve anymore, so he stays behind while the others run, burning everything except the Elkhorn file. Jack’s twenty, he is an adult, no matter how much the others tease him for being young. He can do this. He tries to focus on the sound of crackling fire rather than doors being kicked open on the floors below him.

When Rhodes and another agent finally make it to 6a, he’s just barely finished burning the important stuff, and he scrambles to the top of the bookcase next to the fireplace as quietly as possible.

Rhodes is now in the room with him, looking directly at the still-burning fireplace, and honestly? Jack can’t believe he wasn’t immediately spotted and shot. Instead, Rhodes turns away and Jack begins to creep back down the bookcase and towards the door.

Jack isn’t bad in a fight by any means, he was homeless for three years. He didn’t survive that without getting into a few scraps, but part of him has always shied away from a fight. Fighting means getting real up close and personal, which means his opponent could figure out that he’s trans, which means the amount of danger that Jack is in just about triples.

So when Jack slips into the kitchen to see the other agent, he resolves to take him down without getting in too close. He grabs the dish towel soaking by the sink, sidles up behind Bald Spot, and shoves it in his mouth.

The towel doesn’t exactly keep him quiet, but it muffles his yelling a little as Jack rips the suit jacket off his shoulders and twists it, so Bald Spot can’t slip his arms free quite so easily. Jack pulls him over to the sink, grabs a knife and stabs through the material of the jacket as he stuffs the fabric down the sink, keeping Bald Spot locked in place as he turns the disposal on.

Jack should probably feel worse than he does, but Bald Spot’s hands will be fine, so long as he keeps his wrists together. Besides, he was probably going to shoot Jack. Now, though, Bald Spot is really yelling through that towel, and Rhodes is coming in from the next room, so Jack yanks Bald Spot’s belt free.

Trying not to think too much on the fact that Rhodes has a gun pointed at him, Jack wraps the belt around the gun and pulls it from Rhodes’ hands. It goes flying across the room behind Jack and hits Bald Spot right in the dick. Unintended, but Jack’s sure it looked it cool.

He snaps the belt into Rhodes’ face, then whips it back into Bald Spot’s for good measure. As he turns back around, he realizes he should have timed that better. Rhodes is crowded into his space, trying to grapple him. Jack manages to turn it to his advantage and tackle Rhodes against the fridge, but even as the adrenaline surges through him and keeps him moving, Jack somehow finds time to think, oh shit.

He let Rhodes get in close. Sure, Rhodes had bigger, more immediate things to worry about, but it’s a real possibility that he could figure it out. He could out Jack to the media, and then the other Horsemen would find out too.

Jack can’t spiral about this now, he has to keep going. He can’t be the one to fuck up the plan. Jack ducks back into the living room, rolling under the table towards the window to put distance between himself and Rhodes. The fire escape is out there, but that’s not his plan. He just needs to waste enough time, but Rhodes is already right there. He shoves the table into Jack’s legs, giving him just enough time to roll over it. Jack ends up back in a grapple again, but he grabs the cuffs from Rhodes’ belt and ducks down, cuffing his ankle to a chair that had been knocked over in the scuffle. Jack reaches back up to grab the radio, too, and backs away as Rhodes trips over the chair and hits the ground.

The radio crackles to life in his palm, “Five is clear. Standing by for six.”

“You little shit!”

“You little shit,” Jack mimics.

“What game are you playing,” Rhodes asks.

Jack mimics him again, trying to get a feel for Rhodes’ tone and cadence. “What game are you playing?” Feeling good about the impression, Jack speaks into the radio. “We’re all good at six. Move to seven.”

Jack doesn’t have a moment to even grin when the mimicry succeeds, Rhodes is already moving towards him again, so Jack chucks the radio at his head. Rhodes ducks out of the way, but the radio does fly right into the fire, so Jack counts it as a win. Then he runs right past Rhodes and slides to grab the Elkhorn file, taking care to make it as obvious as possible.

Rhodes grabs a poker from the fireplace and Jack, backing away again, stuffs the file in his jacket. When he does so, his fingers close around a couple of handheld flash cannons. He almost forgot he grabbed those, he should probably use them.

Dodging swings from the poker, Jack shoots the flash paper at Rhodes to help keep the distance and stay out of range. The burning flash paper probably won’t do much more than singe Rhodes’ eyebrows, but as Jack runs out of room to move backwards, it’s enough to distract Rhodes into blocking his face with both hands. Meaning, he drops the poker. Before Rhodes even has a chance to register what happened, Jack’s got the poker. He smirks before throwing it into the air, evening the playing field a bit.

Then Rhodes kicks him square in the chest, sending him flying into the curtain. Luckily, Jack knows how to use curtains to disappear. He’s not sure Rhodes thought that one through, really. When Rhodes tackles the curtain, Jack’s already ducked into the room to Rhodes’ left. Jack scrambles toward the window while Rhodes wrestles with the curtain he’s tangled up in. Finally getting free of it, he makes eye contact with Jack in the mirror across from both of them.

Jack’s not proud of it, but he freezes. He’s running out of options and flash paper. Then, a stroke of good luck—Rhodes doesn’t realize it’s a mirror and sends a large flight case hurtling towards it. The mirror shattering and Rhodes’ momentary confusion gives Jack enough time to grab the top of the archway between them and swing himself back into the room over Rhodes’ head. He’s pretty sure he’s wasted enough time for the others to get into position, so he tries to run towards the door, only to fall flat on his face as Rhodes trips him.

In front of him are two options. The poker and a deck of cards. The choice is obvious. He scrambles to pick up the deck and shove it into his jacket sleeves. He turns over to Rhodes standing over him.

Jack holds his hands up in a mock surrender. “All right, hey, hold on, hold on, hold on!”

Rhodes pauses, like an idiot. Jack flicks the cards out into his hands, feeling a bit like a less cool Wolverine.

“Really?”

“Yup.” He’s committing. He starts throwing cards, aiming for the face. Realizing he’s next to the kitchen entryway again, he throws one in Bald Spot’s face. For good measure. He’s still stuck in the sink disposal, somehow.

Jack makes for the door, more successfully this time, and flees into the hallway with Rhodes in close pursuit. He runs down the stairs and swings his body into the trash chute, pressing his limbs to the sides to control the speed of his descent. He’s got the papers in his mouth now, just to really make sure Rhodes sees them when he jumps in after Jack.

With Rhodes gaining speed above him, Jack is caught between wanting to go faster to avoid getting crushed and not wanting to enter free fall and break his legs. He settles for just a little faster and, when they both hit the bottom, manages to roll out of the way in time. He’s dropped, the papers, though. Rhodes spots them at the same time as Jack and makes a dive for them, but Jack is faster. He snatches them up and steps right on Rhodes’ back when he makes his escape.

Jack’s finally out of the building and in the alley. He starts making for the street when a sudden stab of pain ricochets through his chest and he realizes that he’s been binding since New Orleans. There’s just been no time or privacy to take his binder off. He’s actually pretty surprised he’s only just now started to get chest pain, but adrenaline is a miracle worker.

He definitely needs a miracle right now. He also needs to keep moving. Jack runs through the alley, cuts through the basement of an adjacent building, and makes it out onto the street. He immediately slows and attempts to look casual. He fails. A a pair of feds immediately clock him, so Jack punches one in the face and sets to work on handcuffing them together and stealing their keys. As they try to untangle their limbs, Jack gets just enough time to make it to the car they had just vacated and takes off.

At least the physical activity is over. He can sort of catch his breath, as much as the binder (and his nerves) will allow. The others acted like this would be the easy part, but he’s only been driving for the last nine months. He’s barely comfortable merging into highway traffic, let alone running red lights and weaving through lanes at ninety miles per hour.

Jack was the only one who could play this part, though. The Horsemen all knew that whoever stayed behind to burn the papers might not finish in time. Plan A was to burn everything with enough time to get out of the building and start running. They’d keep the feds after them for a enough time to let everyone else get in position, then get to a car. Plan B was the more likely scenario, and what ended up actually happening. Whoever stayed doesn’t finish burning things in time and has to fight their way out of the building. Jack is the only Horseman who is actually any good in a fight, making him the obvious choice.

The chest pain is getting worse. That, combined with the intense stress and focus, leaves him sweating and white-knuckling the steering wheel. When all of this is finally over, Jack swears to himself that he will never, ever wear a binder for this long again.

It’s not a promise he’s actually able to keep.

Chapter Text

It’s been a little over a year since New York, and Jack thinks at least some of them have to know at this point. Either they don’t know how, or they’re just too nice to bring it up.

Dylan must know. Dylan has to know a lot about him that the others don’t, given that Dylan obviously watched him for long enough to choose him.

Henley left a few months ago, and Jack’s pretty sure she never knew. He got pretty close to telling her once or twice. That’s the thing about Henley, she’s got this way of making people want to tell her stuff. She just seems easy to trust. Part of Jack is glad she left. He doesn’t want to make the mistake of trusting anyone fully. He misses her, though, of course he does. Jack even misses arguing with her.

Jack doesn’t argue with the others often, he prefers to play peacekeeper. He knows he’s not as good as the rest of them, so it’s better to not give them any more reasons to potentially kick him out. Back during that first year together, however, there were a couple of times he snapped at the others. He felt like they didn’t respect him or take him seriously—which was fair, but oftentimes still grating—and once, it led to a shouting match between him and Henley. He’d said something stupid to her, like, “you don’t know what it’s like to not be taken seriously.” Not his finest moment.

She snapped back about being a woman in a male-dominated industry, of course she knows what that’s like, and Jack really has no clue what it’s like having everyone around you just wait for you to fail.

Jack had yelled back with something about how she had that nice, middle-class family of hers she always talks about to fall back on, while Jack doesn’t have that luxury, and if he fails, he’s screwed.

He’d wanted to apologize. Tell her that he does know what it’s like to be in her shoes, in ways she never would have even considered. But Jack thinks he’s always been a bit of a coward when it really counts, so he never told her.

Lula definitely doesn’t know, either. She’s too new and flirts with him too much to know the truth.

Merritt’s the most likely. It’s his job to read people, and he’s been sleeping on the top bunk right above Jack for months. Or maybe, Jack reassures himself, the possibility has never even crossed his mind. Merritt is pretty old, he’s probably never even met a trans person before. He’s seen one of Jack’s binders in the laundry before, but he probably didn’t even know what it was, so it’s fine.

Danny is also pretty observant. He’s clever enough to have figured it out, but if he had, Jack can’t imagine a world where Danny wouldn’t hint at it in an argument. That’s the interesting thing about Danny; he’s an asshole who isn’t above finding the bruise and poking at it, but at the same time, Jack doesn’t think Danny would directly out him if he knew. Beneath all the condescension and arrogance, Danny’s a decent guy.

The whole team is, really. That’s why Jack is so terrified that he’s going to mess up and lose them. That’s why he really didn’t argue that much when Dylan told him to stay behind-the-scenes a little longer.

Instead, Jack got up this morning and didn’t complain about his role. He got ready for the day, putting his binder on, and helped with all the prep work. That was hours one through five. The Octa show was supposed to take three hours, four including getting back to the safe house in one piece. Altogether it should have been only nine hours wearing his binder.

When Lula says that she’s weirdly starving, Jack notices he is too. Jack also notices that his ribs are hurting way, way more than they should. He quickly finds out that’s because he’d been shoved onto a fifteen-hour flight to Macau.

Which means this is hour twenty-three of binding.

He’s so fucked.

Jack knows he shouldn’t wear his binder for more than eight hours at a time. He’s pushed that limit before, like from New Orleans to New York, but even that was only around twenty total hours. If he keeps on like this, chest pain and shortness of breath will be the least of his worries.

Jack decides he doesn’t have time to deal with that right now. The team has bigger things to worry about, so he does too. He’ll be fine.

He can’t even take his binder off that night, because there’s no privacy and certainly no sleep. They’re up all night planning, then the next day, they steal the stick.

By the time Jack’s getting patted down in the lab, it’s been thirty-seven hours and part of him is hoping security notices something is off about him so he can just take the stupid binder off already. The only reason he’s even still conscious is adrenaline, he’s well aware of that. He just needs that adrenaline to hold on for a little longer.

When they pull Dylan out of the river it’s a full forty-eight.

Seventy-two when they touch down at Heathrow.

By the time the clock strikes midnight over the Thames, it’s seventy-eight, but at least the end is in sight. There’s a lot of cleanup, though, so they finally get to the Greenwich Observatory just past dawn at eight in the morning.

This puts the final time at eighty-six hours.

Jack collapses shortly after.

He jolts awake in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room with several ice packs pressed to his chest. He shoots upright, or tries to, anyway, but the sharp pain in his ribs stops him from sitting up all the way. He collapses back into the pillow with an undignified sound (that he will not call a whine) and a very painful cough.

“Careful. You have three fractured ribs.” Jack looks to his right to see Dylan sitting in a chair by the bed. “Anything you want to tell me?”

Jack can’t exactly breathe easily, but he’s breathing easier than he was before. He knows that he’s no longer wearing his binder. He knows that question is rhetorical. Jack looks away from Dylan in favor of staring at the ceiling. “Not really.”

Dylan sighs. “Jack…” He trails off before starting again. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? You scared the shit out of us. Merritt was the one who figured out what was wrong, and you didn’t even tell him. He had to figure it out on his own.”

What was wrong, because there was something wrong with him, there always will be. Guilt wells up in Jack’s chest, right next to the fear that crept in and took root the moment he woke up. “I didn’t… It was none of your business.”

Dylan is silent for a moment, presumably gathering his thoughts. Presumably about to swear at him or tell Jack he can’t be a Horseman anymore, or some combination of the two.

“I don’t really understand,” he says, and it’s not how Jack expected him to start. He doesn’t sound angry, and Jack knows that’s wrong. He lied to him. Dylan has to be angry. “But Jack… we support you no matter what. To be honest, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say or do right now. It’s, uh, it’s like Caitlyn Jenner, right? But the other way around.”

Jack squeezes his eyes shut so tightly he sees little phantom sparks of light. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s like that.” His voice comes out strained.

“Okay. Okay, that’s…okay.”

An incredulous laugh forces its way out of Jack, not quite painlessly. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say, Jack.”

“Does everyone know?”

Dylan hesitates. “Yeah, kid. We all know.” Jack inhales sharply, face screwing up, not just because of the stabbing pain in his ribs. He’s trying not to cry, trying not to make it obvious that he’s about to cry, but he’s never been good at keeping his emotions off his face. “It’s okay, Jack—”

“No, it’s not. It’s really not, Dylan.”

“Jack, we—”

“Will you just leave?” The words burst out of Jack before he has a chance to think about them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay. I’ll come check on you later.” Dylan gets up from his chair, and before Jack can work up the courage to ask him to stay, the door is shutting behind him. The tears Jack’s been fighting against slip free and roll silently down his cheeks.

Jack knows he’s wallowing in self-pity, which only makes him feel worse. He’s such an idiot. He knew they’d find out eventually, he just thought it would be on his terms.

He’s not sure how long he’s been laying there like that, alone and miserable, when a soft knock sounds on the door. It’s not right. When Dylan knocks, it’s more forceful, and he calls out to whoever he’s trying to get the attention of. Merritt is similar, but he doesn’t wait for an answer, just opens the door if it’s not locked. Danny’s knock is staccato and sharp, and Lula doesn’t knock at all, only barges in.

Jack doesn’t know who’s at the door, only that they feel like they have to be quiet and gentle. It makes Jack feel nauseous.

“Come in,” he calls, making the effort to sit up, because what else can he do?

The door opens with a slight creak, and Lula pokes her head in. She’s got two paper plates of pizza balanced in the hand not still clinging to the doorknob. “Hey. I brought you dinner. We got thin-crust. Danny didn’t even complain about it once, it was kind of nice. Maybe you should get hurt more often.” She winces at her own joke. “Sorry. I didn’t really mean that.”

Jack hates the way she’s treating him like he’s delicate, like he’s going to break down at any moment. Before all of this, she would have just made the joke and trusted him to get it.

“‘S fine,” he mumbles.

Lula takes that as an invitation to stop hovering in the doorway and sit on the bed in front of Jack, her legs folded up beneath her. She holds one of the plates out towards him, and he’s not really hungry, but he takes it anyway. He knows it’s a peace offering. At least, that’s what he hopes it is. It could also be a ‘here’s your last meal before we kick you out on your ass, hope you like pepperoni’ sort of thing.

Jack expects Lula to start in on him immediately, like Dylan did, but she just sits there. Eating a slice of pizza like nothing is wrong. In response, Jack picks at his, attempting to look like he’s eating more than he actually is. It tastes like cardboard.

Lula is halfway through her second slice, mouth still full, when she finally starts talking. “You know, I had this boyfriend once. Like, eight years ago, but I was super in love with him.” She swallows, puts the plate down on the bed, and wipes her greasy hands on her jeans. “I thought I was going to marry him one day.”

“…Okay?” Jack’s not sure at all where this is going or why she’s telling him this.

“I think maybe we’d still be together now, but this was back when I was living in Arizona, and he moved. That’s why we broke up, he moved to Boston.”

Jack puts his nearly untouched plate next to hers. “Why are you telling me this, Lula?”

“Because, he moved to Boston because it was way less conservative than Scottsdale. He’s transgender. Like you.” Then she just grabs her plate again and keeps eating her pizza like she didn’t just shatter Jack’s entire conception of reality.

Jack’s worked really hard to unlearn a lot of stuff he was taught as a kid, things that were provably, verifiably false. Like ‘the Earth is only six thousand years old’ and ‘evolution is fake,’ but some things Jack thought were immutable. The biggest of them being that people like him were completely unlovable.

And sure, Lula’s a freak. She loves a lot of things that normal people don’t, like decapitations and Jersey Shore, but the idea that she could love someone like him is still earthshaking. It’s comforting. Someone he cares so much about isn’t disgusted by his existence. Jack might not be lovable in the eyes of the community he grew up in, or the eyes of his family, but maybe that family doesn’t matter. Maybe freaks like Lula mean more than any pastor or parent’s approval.

Jack only realizes that he’s crying when a tear lands on the back of his hands where they’re white-knuckling the sheets spread over his lap.

“Anyway, you don’t have to, like, talk to me about it,” Lula’s saying, but Jack’s not really listening anymore. “It’s whatever, you know?”

No, Jack doesn’t know. None of this makes any sense, but he’s grateful for it.

Lula finishes her pizza and leaves him with a bottle of Advil and a lot to think about.

The next day, all Jack really wants to do is stay in bed and hide from the world. He tried that for a while, but Danny of all people came and dragged him out of bed, telling him that if he stays there, his lungs will collapse, or he’ll get pneumonia, or something. He lets Danny guide him through deep breathing exercises every two hours on the dot, and press ice to his ribs for twenty minutes out of every hour, because he knows Danny’s only this annoying when he’s worried out of his mind. The worry is nice, even if it’s sometimes a little suffocating.

It’s also absolutely horrific to have Danny insist on holding the ice to Jack’s ribs. He can’t wear a binder right now, obviously, so he’s stuck with oversized hoodies. He doesn’t want anyone’s hands anywhere near his chest, and after arguing for a solid five minutes, he eventually just yanked the ice out of Danny’s hands and told him to fuck off.

To Danny’s credit, he did fuck off, but that also means something is still really wrong despite how normal Danny’s been about the whole trans thing. He hasn’t brought it up once, hasn’t changed how he acts at all. It’s weird, and Jack can’t help but wait for the other shoe to drop. Danny is the type of person who needs to understand everything all the time, but he hasn’t yet asked Jack a million and one uncomfortable questions.

Then, when Danny goes into to get a bunch of really unnecessary papers he’s printed off about rib injuries, Jack accidentally gets a peek into his room. Well, Jack says accidentally, but really he was on-purpose snooping as best he could from the half-open doorway. On Danny’s nightstand are two books. He hasn’t read either, but he’s familiar with one of them.

The first, that Jack’s never heard of, is called Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender. The second is Laura Jane Grace’s book. He remembered offhandedly bringing it up when it came out a couple months ago. He’d been talking to Lula about music, and it turns out they both listened to some Against Me!. In a way, Jack was sort of testing the waters, seeing if Lula knew about Laura, and if she cared. Danny had been in the room, but Jack hadn’t thought he’d been listening.

He wonders when Danny picked up the book. He doesn’t think Danny has had time in the past couple days to go looking for books. Jack can’t just stew in uncertainty, he has to ask.

From his spot in the doorway, he speaks up. “Danny, did you…know? About me. Before…”

Danny looks up from where he’s rifling through a stack of unorganized papers at his desk. “Before you passed out and hit your head on the tile floor giving everyone a heart attack, you mean?”

Jack fidgets with the strings on his hoodie. “Yeah.”

“I’ve known you for almost four years now. Of course I knew, unlike some people, I actually pay attention.”

“Oh. For how long?”

Danny pauses his movements with the papers. “Four months ago you said you were the oldest of eight, four boys and four girls, but six months ago you said you had three younger sisters. It’s simple math.”

“Danny, how the fuck did you remember that?”

Danny doesn’t meet his eyes, just looks back at the pile of papers in front of him. “Oh, here it is.” He crosses the room, pushes Jack out into the hall, and shuts the door behind them.

“Seriously Danny, how did you remember that? It was six months ago.”

He brushes past Jack, walking toward the kitchen. “And four months ago. I just remember important details, you should try it sometime.”

Jack ignores the slight, it’s par for the course with Danny. “Nothing about that was important.” Danny doesn’t say anything, just keeps walking. “Danny? Danny!”

Jack never does get a real answer.

Jack knows he shouldn’t be drinking be drinking coffee at nine at night, but he is supposed to stay out of bed, and brewing a pot of coffee doesn’t happen in bed. So, technically, it evens out. Besides, Jack likes coffee and he never sleeps well, anyway.

The kitchen is also usually empty at this time, which Jack is grateful for. Danny has been glued to him all day, motherhenning. Lula’s been normal, but anytime Dylan is in the room with him, Jack can feel his eyes on him, but is never able to actually catch him looking. Dylan does seem to have a semi-permanent sort-of guilty look on his face, though. Jack’s not really sure what that’s about, but he is sure he doesn’t want to deal with it.

Merritt, Jack actually hasn’t seem much of at all. Until he startles the hell out of Jack by opening the fridge while Jack’s absorbed in pouring what Danny refers to as “heinous amounts of creamer” into his coffee. The creamer goes everywhere on the counter and Merritt just chuckles and takes a beer from the fridge.

“Shit, man,” Jack says, wiping up the spilled creamer with a dishtowel, “what the hell?”

“Sorry,” Merritt replies, not sorry in the slightest, “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He leans against the counter behind Jack.

He just gives Merritt an incredulous look over his shoulder, because yes, he absolutely did, and goes back to cleaning up the counter. Merritt pops the cap off the beer against the edge of the counter and watches in amused silence.

Silence doesn’t normally bother Jack this much, but everyone’s just been dancing around the subject at hand all day, and the tension is really starting to get to him.

Jack’s discomfort is obvious to Merritt, because of course it is. “Something on your mind, Jack?”

Jack stares into his coffee mug. “No.”

“You sure? It’s just, you’ve got some real tension in those shoulders. Maybe you should see someone about that. A nice massage will fix you right up.”

Right. Because Jack needs to be fixed. He shoots Merritt a withering stare, then immediately regrets it, because looking Merritt in the eyes is sort of like posting a picture of your credit card online. Jack looks back at his coffee. He hasn’t taken a single sip yet.

Merritt sighs and resettles himself where he’s leaning against the counter behind Jack. “I got all night, kid.”

Jack balls up his fists, takes as deep of a breath as he comfortably can with three fractured ribs, and releases them. “No one’s said anything today. At all.”

“Mm, pretty sure I heard Danny yapping today as usual.”

“About me.”

“Oh,” Merritt says, pretending very poorly like he hadn’t understood what Jack was getting at until just now. “I see. Did you want us to preach the bible at you? Or, no, I know, daddy never taught you how shave properly or how to tie a tie. Well, Jack, if you had just asked, I would have been more than happy to—”

“Yesterday, Dylan said you were the one who figured out what was wrong. With me. You knew.”

It’s silent for a beat, then Jack hears the clink of Merritt putting the bottle down on the counter. “I knew.”

“How? Since when?”

“Jack, I’ve been living the same apartments as you for almost four years. We’ve shared a room. If I didn’t know by now, I would have to retire, because I’d have lost my touch.”

“You never said anything.”

“You’re not usually supposed to, I don’t think.” Merritt sighs again. “Jack, it’s not like it’s a big deal—”

“Of course it’s a big deal. It’s—”

“How is it a big deal, Jack?”

He flushes red, gripping the counter now, and still refusing to turn and face Merritt. “It’s—I’m not who I say I am.”

“Well, we all knew that the second you introduced yourself.”

“What do you mean, ‘all?’ ‘The second I introduced myself?’”

“We all knew Wilder wasn’t your real last name, but Jack, it’s a stage name, Daniel and Lula use them, too. Very common in this industry.”

Jack whips around to face him. “Merritt, I’m being serious.”

“So was I, but, clearly, I’m lost. What are we actually talking about, Jack?” Merritt knows full well what they’re talking about, Jack knows that. For some reason, though, Merritt’s going to make him say it.

He takes a breath. “I’m transgender.”

“Oh, that. Also not a big deal.” Jack just stares at him. “We work in show business, Jack. If any one of us cared about something like that, we wouldn’t survive in this industry. You know how many gays and transgenders are in show biz? All of them.”

“I…I don’t think you’re supposed to say it like that.”

“I think your coffee’s getting cold. Goodnight, Jack.” With that, he grabs his beer and turns to leave the kitchen. Over his shoulder, he calls out, “and by the way, you’ve got to stop throwing needles away in the regular trash. Someone might poke themselves.”

Jack pours the coffee into the sink. “Why can no one in this house finish a conversation?”

It’s just past nine when Dylan pulls him out of bed the next morning.

“Can’t have you laying around all day, you’ll get pneumonia,” he says.

Jack rubs his eyes. “Danny keeps saying that too, but I feel fine. Doesn’t even hurt that much.”

Dylan looks skeptical, but thankfully doesn’t call him on it, he just keeps working on scrambling enough eggs to feed a small army while Jack sits at the island. He’d offered to help with breakfast, but Dylan wouldn’t let him.

Jack looks at counter top in front of him, tracing the little patterns in the marble with his finger. “I was, uh”—he swallows—“I was scared.”

Dylan looks back at Jack. “What?”

“You asked me why I didn’t tell anyone. I’ve never told anyone. I was scared. I still am, I think.”

Dylan nods. “What exactly are you scared of?”

“I…I don’t know, really.”

He hesitates. “I’m not good at this, but…Jack, do you not know or do you just not want to say it out loud?” Jack doesn’t answer. “I don’t know what to do, kid. I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”

Dylan takes the eggs off the heat, leaving them on the warm part of the stove for whenever the others start to wander in. He fixes a couple plates, sets one in front of Jack, then walks around the island to sit next to him.

“Jack, look at me.” He manages to pull his eyes away from the counter to meet Dylan’s. “Nothing you could say or do is going to change anything. You’re still going to be part of the Eye, you’re still going to be a Horseman, you’re not going anywhere. It doesn’t matter to any of us what you are. You’re here because of who you are, and that’s never going to change.”

Jack dips his head again. He has to, his eyes are burning, and he knows that this time he won’t be able to stop himself from crying.

He whispers, “You should all hate me.” His voice cracks and he can’t see clearly through unshed tears. He refuses to blink for as long as possible, delaying their fall.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, and Jack’s ashamed to say it made him jump. Dylan doesn’t take his hand off, though. “Why would we hate you, bud?” His voice is softer than Jack’s ever heard it.

He finally blinks and the tears spill out. He sobs, “Because there’s something wrong with me, there’s something so wrong with me.”

“No, Jack, there’s nothing wrong with you. Don’t ever say that, don’t ever think that. There is nothing wrong with you.”

“There is.” He scrubs furiously at his eyes. “There is, and everyone’s known it my whole life. I can never go home because there’s something wrong with me.”

“Fuck that.” Jack looks back up at Dylan, a little surprised at the intense reaction. “There’s something wrong with your family for making you think like that, not you. It’s not home if you can’t be yourself there. Screw them. Your home is here now. With us.”

Jack’s tears come faster now, and collapses into Dylan’s chest.

“It’s going to be okay, kiddo,” Dylan says, wrapping his arms around him. “You’re okay.”

Chapter Text

Things get better. It’s not a sentiment that Jack ever thought would truly apply to him, but suddenly, it does. It’s been about a week and a half, and his ribs are healing. They still hurt like a bitch, and the dysphoria from not binding is sometimes overwhelming, but Dylan says he’s probably not going to get pneumonia if he hasn’t already. So that’s a bright side.

Dylan also says that with the Eye’s money and resources, Jack will probably be able to get top surgery at some point after his ribs are totally healed. Jack had never once thought surgery would be an option for him, but the thought makes him a little giddy, he can’t lie.

It’s also much easier than Jack thought it would be to go back to feeling normal around the others. After his conversation with Dylan, it’s like a weight’s been lifted off his shoulders. He can breathe easier, and it’s not just because his ribs are hurting less.

Recovery also isn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be. It’s a lot of getting dragged into watching reality TV with Lula, then ignoring the TV to argue with Danny, who is still hovering around Jack.

Today, it starts as an argument they’ve had many times before and will have many times again. Jack is on the couch in the living room with his legs curled up beneath him, Lula’s sprawling next to him with her feet in his lap, and Danny sits in an armchair with a book he’s pretending to read (“I’m not watching Bachelorette reruns, why would I ever be interested in that, shut up, Lula.”).

Jack may not be from NYC, but he’s a New Yorker at heart. Danny is from Chicago. Lula is tired of their shit.

“Chicago style is not even actually pizza, that’s a fucking casserole.”

“I’m sorry that I like actual substance to my meals. I don’t usually go for flimsy little pieces of cardboard.”

“I thought flimsy cardboard is what you made last week,” Lula chimes in, eyes still glued to the screen as Jojo Fletcher gives a rose to Robby Hayes.

“Those were brownies and you know it. They weren’t even that bad!”

“Hey, don’t worry, Danny! If you fuck it up, you can just call them Chicago style, and serve it anyway!”

“Jack, I don’t care that your ribs are already broken, I will come over there and break more of them.”

“First, they’re not broken, they’re fractured. Second, I’d like to see you try.”

Lula rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, will you two just kiss already?”

Jack turns bright red and chokes on his own saliva. “What?”

“Relax.” Danny turns a page for the first time in ten minutes. “She’s talking about Jojo and Robby.”

“I most certainly was not,” Lula says, “and anyway, I thought you weren’t paying attention.”

“I’m not.”

“Mhm, sure you aren’t, loverboy.”

Now it’s Danny’s turn to go red. “Shut up, Lula.” He chucks his book at her head, but the shot goes wide. Jack knows Danny has far better hand-eye coordination than that, meaning he missed on purpose.

He picks up the book from the floor. “Oh, hey, this is Tranny.”

“It’s what?” Lula says, sitting up.

“Laura Jane Grace’s book. We talked about it, remember?”

“Oh, yeah! Let me see!” She reaches for the book, but Jack holds it out of her reach.

“Nope, I’m stealing it. I want to read it.”

“Great, so I’ll get it back in about eight months when you finish it,” Danny complains. There’s almost none of the usual bite to it, though. He thinks maybe Danny knows he would never ask for it, even if he does want to read it.

“Shouldn’t have thrown it, then.” Jack thumbs through the first couple pages.

Jack has a love-hate relationship with reading, and by now, the others know this. Public libraries saved his life a million times over; every street kid will tell you something similar. It’s warm on a cold day, cool on a hot day. Sometimes there’s free food at events, and there’s always at least one librarian that will turn a blind eye to someone using the bathrooms to wash up. And, of course, there’s the books. The books at public libraries have helped him parse through all the lies he was told as a kid and figure out how the world really works.

At the same time, Jack’s never been particularly good at reading. He’s slow and mistakes similar looking words and letters for each other; the letters seem to blur together and move around on the page. Now, as an adult, Jack’s aware that he probably has dyslexia. As a home schooled kid trying to read aloud from those stupid ‘wisdom booklets,’ he thought he was just an idiot.

To be fair, Jack can be kind of dumb, and the others definitely know it, too. Not because of the dyslexia thing, as much as Danny pokes fun at him for that, Jack knows he doesn’t really mean it. Not when it comes to magic or their shows, either; he’s proven his worth more times than he can count when it comes to being part of the team. However, when it comes to things the others might view as simple common sense, Jack can understand why they might think he’s a little stupid. Clever, but stupid.

He’s okay with that label. He knows that when he speaks up between the episodes of The Bachelorette that they’ve all focused back in on (Danny’s given up his pretense of disinterest, for now), his question is most likely going to be met with laughter. Still, he wants to be sure.

“The, like, majority of people believe in dinosaurs, right?”

Danny slowly turns his head towards him, looking like Jack has just handed him a million dollars. “What? Sorry, run that by me one more time?”

“No, never mind. I don’t think I will.”

“No, no, no, you tell us what you meant by that right now,” Lula says, pausing the TV.

“Uh, you know. Dinosaurs.”

Danny replies, “Yes, we know dinosaurs. That is not the part we have questions about.”

“As a kid, I was always told that most people knew dinosaurs weren’t real, and that only—”

Lula waves her hands to cut him off and raises her voice almost to a shout. “What? What do you mean ‘always?’”

“Like, it was in my science textbook.”

“What the hell kind of science textbook did you have?” Danny has fully turned his body away from the screen now in favor of staring directly at Jack with a bewildered expression.

“A bad one?”

“Yeah, that’s fucking obvious,” Danny says. “Your parents didn’t ever correct that?”

“No, they didn’t believe in dinosaurs either.”

“I’m going to lose my mind.” Lula shakes her head, disbelieving. “Hey, Jack, I know you don’t talk about your childhood a lot—actually, like, ever—but I’m going to need so many more details.”

Lula is right, Jack never talks about his childhood. Most of them don’t for various reasons, but Jack knows his was especially weird. He’s not even sure how to explain it in a way that makes sense.

“Well, my parents were super religious and they didn’t believe in science.” It’s a massive oversimplification, but it is true.

“Are you Amish? Is that why you have a billion siblings?”

“Lula—no, we weren’t…well, I mean, there are similarities, but—”

“Oh my god, you were Amish! I was literally joking.”

“We weren’t Amish, we were baptist. Like super baptist.”

“But that is why you have seven siblings,” Danny says.

“It was seven when I left, but it’s probably more by now.”

Lula exclaims, “Oh, this is just the gift that keeps on giving. What? Did you have to like, churn butter everyday and milk the cows?”

“We didn’t live on a farm, so no. We had chickens, though. But this was way out in the country, everyone had chickens.”

“Fascinating. This is so much better than The Bachelorette. Did you and your siblings all have names matching names, like the Duggars? Oh my god, are you secretly—”

“No!” He cuts her off before Lula can get too far into that spiral. “And we didn’t have matching names, but we were part of the same religion as them.” Jack shifts in his seat. This isn’t exactly the most comfortable conversation to have. He gets it, though. If he were Lula, he’d bombard him questions, too.

“Did you, like, know them?”

“We’re from completely different states.”

“Oh.” She looks disappointed. “Is that why you won’t watch Counting On with me?”

“Yeah. I hate that show, it’s too much like my family. I left for a reason.” Jack is silently begging her not to ask why it’s similar, why he left.

Lula doesn’t ask. Danny does. The traitor. “What was the reason?”

Jack freezes. They know he’s trans now, they should realize that’s part of the reason, but how does he explain it out loud? He’s never talked about it before. He’s not sure he wants to.

They would back off if he asked them to, Jack knows, but some part of him feels like he needs to say this. He’s spent so much of his life hiding who he is, and he wants the Horsemen to know him. Lula and Danny especially.

His voice is shaky when he starts. “Um, girls in that community get married pretty young. Like, seventeen or eighteen, usually. And I was sixteen, so… so yeah. I had to get out of there. And I’m trans, and you can’t be trans there. It was…bad. I had to leave before I…before I couldn’t.

“I had been practicing cards tricks on my siblings for years. Mostly to distract them when my parents were arguing, and so I thought that I could go and do magic. My mom took us to the library a lot, and I’d sneak off to go mess around on the computers. Actually, Danny, that’s when I started watching your tricks. On Newgrounds. It was, uh, part of the reason I learned magic.” Jack is staring down at his hands, but he hears a sharp intake of breath. From Danny, he thinks. The next part is quiet, almost a whisper. “I think maybe you saved my life.”

Jack hears the armchair creak and he looks up. Danny leaves the room so fast that Jack almost doesn’t notice his hands are shaking.

After a few moments, he hears the door to Danny’s room click shut. It’s not exactly a slam, but it’s close. A second later, multiple somethings in there clatter to the floor.

“I…I shouldn’t have said that.” He feels a little nauseous and his vision is blurred.

Lula tucks her legs up onto the couches and moves closer to him, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder. “No. You’re wrong. You definitely should have. You needed to say it and Danny needed to hear it.”

Jack puts a hand on her arm where it’s tucked around him. He’s still staring off at nothing. “He left the room. He literally couldn’t even look at me.”

“No, you couldn’t look at him. He was looking at you. I think he left because he was about to cry.”

Jack shakes his head. “No, no. Danny doesn’t cry.”

“Everyone cries. Anyone would cry hearing what you said.”

“You’re not crying,” Jack points out.

“I’m not the one who saved your life.”

Danny doesn’t leave his room for the rest of the day, and Jack just sticks with Lula. He feels unmoored—like he’s not quite in his body anymore—and his nerves are all raw and exposed. Lula’s presence is grounding.

He can’t stay with her forever, though. Eventually she goes to bed, and Jack tries to do the same. He can’t fall asleep. He can’t stop thinking about what he said to Lula and Danny, and replaying the moment Danny left the room at nearly the speed of light.

Restlessly, he gives up on trying, and leaves his room for a glass of water from the kitchen.

He leaves the light off and fills a glass straight from the tap. He turns to go back to his room, and is suddenly face to face with Danny. A bit of water sloshes out of the glass in his hand as he startles. He has no idea how Danny snuck up on him so well; he’s less than six inches away and Jack hadn’t heard him at all.

“Danny! Jesus, man don’t do that. You scared the hell out of me.” Danny doesn’t say anything, he only stares at Jack with an expression he can’t name. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

One of Danny’s hands is on his jaw, and the other rests on his waist, and Danny is kissing him, and Jack can’t breathe. Can’t even think. Danny is kissing him so desperately, and all thoughts of apologizing disappear from Jack’s head immediately. All he can do is reach behind him to set the glass down on the edge of the sink and kiss Danny back.

Jack feels the edge of the counter press into the small of his back, and it hurts a little, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care because Danny is the one pressing him up against it. Danny is the one biting at his bottom lip and slipping his tongue into Jack’s mouth, and he’s pressing so close to him it’s like he’s trying to crawl into Jack’s skin and stay there. Become part of him. Jack can’t figure out for the life of him why Danny would want to do that, but he’s not complaining.

Jack wraps an arm around Danny, resting his hand against the back of his neck. He laments, not for the first time, Danny’s choice to shave all his hair off, because he’s always wanted to thread a hand into his hair, or pull it, or something. Distantly, he wonders if Danny will grow it back out, if he’ll let Jack kiss him again when he does.

Danny’s grip on his hip tightens, and Jack can’t help the embarrassing little noise that slips out when he does. He can’t help it. He’s wanted this for so long, and now he has it. It almost doesn’t feel real.

As tight as Danny’s holding him, he’s still being so careful not to put any pressure on Jack’s ribs. Careful, but not gentle. Nothing about this could be described as gentle. It’s needy and desperate, almost like Danny’s been wanting this for as long as Jack has.

Then the kitchen light flicks on and they spring apart.

Dylan’s walking in. He stops for a second and takes in the scene in front of him: Jack pressed against the counter, Danny still much too close, and both of them with their lips reddened, Jack’s probably swollen from Danny’s teeth. It’s obvious what’s just happened.

Dylan takes a breath like he’s about to say something, then shakes his head, turns off the light, and walks back out.

Early the next morning—far too early for Jack’s tastes, around eight—his bedroom door bursts open, slamming into the wall. Lula barrels into the room, throwing herself onto Jack’s bed. “You kissed Danny! Oh my god, you kissed Danny, and I missed it! Wait, can you do it again, I need to see this—”

“Lula, what the fuck? And he kissed me, actually.” Jack is still groggy and unsure if he’s processing Lula’s words correctly.

“No! You’re kidding me, he kissed you? Shit, now I owe Merritt twenty bucks, thanks for nothing.” She flops down on her back next to him. “So tell me everything. I need all the details, how was it?”

Jack sighs. There’s no chance he’s getting back to sleep. “It was a mistake. It’s not going to happen again.”

Lula rolls over to face him. “What? What do you mean? Was it bad? You’ve been wanting to kiss him for, like, ever. Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone?”

“You’re not subtle.”

Jack squeeze his eyes shut. “It wasn’t bad. It was so, so good. It was amazing. But Danny doesn’t want that, he’s not even—” Gay. Danny’s not gay. As far as Jack knows, he’s only dated women, but Danny only kissed him after finding out that he’s trans. Maybe Danny doesn’t see him as a guy, anymore. His stomach drops.

“What the hell are you talking about? Did he say that?”

“No, but—”

“Jack, he kissed you. Danny doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do.”

“Danny isn’t gay.”

“He kissed you.”

“But I’m—”

“Jack, please shut up. Danny’s bisexual.”

Jack opens his eyes and looks over at Lula. “How do you know that?”

“He’s a magician. All magicians are bisexual, and all dogs go to heaven. It’s like one of laws of physics.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“Shh. No. Don’t talk, because you’re going to say something dumb again. He likes you, you like him. Go talk to him.”

“I thought you said don’t talk.”

“Don’t talk to me, but do talk to him—wait hang on, Dylan told Merritt who told me that he caught you guys. What happened after Dylan left? What did Danny say?”

“He didn’t say anything. He just left, too.”

Lula covers her face with her hands, muffling her voice. “You’re both so stupid. Jack, get out.”

“This is my room.”

“I don’t care. Get out and go talk to Danny.”

There’s no arguing with Lula. Jack’s pretty sure she would drag him to Danny if he didn’t go by himself, so he gets up and goes to look for Danny.

He knocks on Danny’s door and waits. When it opens, Danny looks annoyed and beautiful.

He obviously just woke up, wearing nothing but plaid pajama pants. Dear god, he’s not wearing a shirt.

It’s nothing Jack hasn’t seen before, and objectively, there’s not even much to look at. Danny is paler than a snowstorm and built like a stalk of celery. Subjectively, Jack is deeply in love with him—has been for a long time—and Danny’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Jack had a plan. He had thought about what to say when he was walking down the hall to get here. It was a good plan. Instead of the good plan, Jack just says, “You kissed me.”

“I know. I was there.”

Jack barely registers the response. He’s still looking at the bare expanse of Danny’s chest. It’s hypnotizing.

Danny clears his throat, and Jack manages to tear his eyes away. He flushes, knows it very clear where he was looking. “Uh,” Jack says eloquently. “You kissed me.”

“You said that already.”

“No, I mean—why?”

Danny rolls his eyes. “It’s too early for this. I’m kissing you because I want to.”

“Wait, what do you mean—”

Danny cuts him off again by kissing him, and Jack is starting to see a pattern.

This time, Jack is pressed against the door frame (not nearly as forgiving on his ribs as the counter, by the way), and he’s starting to think Danny might have a Thing about pressing him up against things. His hands are warm on Jack’s hips and he’s pretty sure Danny can feel his pounding heartbeat where their chests are touching.

And isn’t that a horrifying thought. Because now Jack is very aware of exactly where their bodies are touching, and exactly what Danny is touching.

Jack pulls away, his hands coming to rest on Danny’s shoulders, holding him at a distance. “Do you—are you…do you like…guys?”

“Your ribs are fractured, not your skull. Are you fucking stupid? Why would I kiss you—twice! I kissed you twice—why would I do that, if I wasn’t attracted to men?”

“I-I’m trans.” Jack’s fingers twitch on his shoulders, trying not to grasp at Danny like a drowning man with a life ring.

“Wh- yes? I know this, why do you keep saying things I already know?”

“I’m a man.”

“And I’m better at card tricks than you,” Danny remarks with the usual amount of bite.

His voice cracks. “What?”

“Oh, sorry, I though we just stating random facts.” He wraps his hands around Jack’s wrists. “What’s your deal?”

He wants to explain, but he’s not good at this. He’s never been good at finding the words to describe what’s going on in his head. “You didn’t mean to kiss me. It was a mistake.”

Danny nods. “Right. Yeah, no, I tripped and accidentally shoved my tongue down your throat and grabbed your ass.”

He blinks. “You didn’t…you didn’t grab my ass.”

“Didn’t I? I was definitely thinking about it.” Danny cocks his head and squeezes Jack’s wrists a little tighter. “Try again.”

Jack takes a breath. “You only kissed me after you figured out I’m trans.”

“And, what? You think that’s why I kissed you?

“Is it?”

“No! I kissed you because I wanted to, because I’ve been thinking about it for almost two years! You can’t just tell me that you think I saved your life before we ever even met and expect me to—” He cuts himself off and drops one of Jack’s hands to rub at his temples. “I wanted to kiss you. That’s all. I want…” Danny shakes his head.

“What? You want what?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He lets go of Jack completely and turns away, as if he’s going to go back to bed. Leave Jack just standing there.

Jack shifts away from the door frame to take some pressure off his ribs, but doesn’t leave. He may not know how to do this—and clearly, neither does Danny—but he has a sinking feeling that if he walks away now, something between them will change for the worst. “Danny…”

He stops walking. Sighs so quietly, Jack almost misses it.

“Danny, I… I liked kissing you. For the record.”

“I know.” Jack swears he can hear the smirk in his voice. “For the record.”