Archive of Our Own

It’s been only a few weeks since Dylan’s successful summoning of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and he’s come to several fascinating conclusions in the time since. They’re immensely powerful, and a little terrifying, and — for a collection of all-knowing, all-powerful entities of apocalypse — they’re surprisingly childish. And oblivious.

Dylan lets himself sink a little further into the couch, watching as Death flicks a card across the room, just barely clipping Famine in the leg, and Famine swears viciously as rounds on Death with a furious look in his eyes. “Try that again, I dare you.”

Death grins, a childlike eagerness on his face, and he reaches for the next card. “Okay.”

This one, too, sails through the air, clattering against Famine’s jacket, and Dylan watches as Famine breathes in deeply, inhaling sharply through his nose and drawing his shoulders back. It’s a little like watching a seagull rearing back before screeching, he supposes, and he decides to cut in before things can actually devolve even further. “Daniel.”

“I’m not your damn target practice,” Famine spits out, not even looking up as Dylan calls his given name, and he closes the distance towards Death with the rapid, jerking strides. “If you wanna play at being a magician, be my guest, but you can do that without disrupting my entire day—”

“— Daniel,” Dylan repeats, voice a little louder, and Famine pauses in the middle of his sentence to round on Dylan with an irritated look.

“What?”

Dylan keeps his shoulders loose, doesn’t let himself tense up even in the face of Famine’s fury — but it’s a close thing. His eyes are blazing blue, every line in his face tense and agitated, and the light hitting him from the side only illuminates the paleness of his face, the sharp edges where the skin pulls taut over bones. The subtle light filtering through the blinds casts shadows along his cheekbones, making him look more gaunt than he is.

Like this, he doesn’t look much like a Daniel, Dylan has to admit. It’s still a strange notion, the concept that the Horsemen of the Apocalypse have actual, human names for him to refer to them to, and in the quiet evenings, when Pestilence is leafing through a book and Death glues himself to the crappy tv he’s installed in the old apartment — they look a little more human, too. Like this, though — all drawn up and agitated, they don’t look very human, and Famine doesn’t look much like Daniel. He looks like Famine, and Dylan very carefully schools his expression and levels him with a flat stare. “Please don’t yell at Jack.”

“Who’s—” Famine starts, and then blinks, corner of his mouth twitching as he glances back towards Death. “Right. Well, he started it.”

“True,” Dylan acknowledges, and then turns to Death. “Jack, please don’t hit Daniel with cards. That’s not a friendly thing to do.”

“It’s funny, though,” Pestilence adds in, suddenly appearing in the doorway of the kitchen. “He makes such funny noises.”

That, of course, only infuriates Famine even more, and Dylan sighs helplessly to himself as the argument continues in full force, loud voices snapping back and forth within seconds. They’re actual children.

Somehow, the notion that they were all unused to actually behaving like actual people, that they wouldn’t be able to work together without bickering like world’s tallest toddlers — it hadn’t exactly crossed his mind, right up until they were all standing in his apartment and he watched the most powerful beings in existence argue over semantics.

He’d been prepared for a lot, back then — for them to try and smite him where he stands, or for them to burn the place down, for his apartment to become ground zero for a new plague or something like that — anything that could be expected when dealing with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He’d been prepared for the idea that they’d say no and kill him, or give him some new, terrible form of disease, or curse him with insatiable hunger for the rest of his, now infinitely shorter, life. Many things.

He hadn’t been prepared for the idea that they were, on all accounts, ignorant.

It’s not their fault, necessarily — they don’t need to eat, and they don’t sleep, and they’ve never had to worry about things like housing or money or clothing. They’re almost ghosts, the way they float through life — when they go out on the streets, most people’s eyes gloss over them, and they haven’t stopped complaining about the six flights of stairs since the moment they got here.

It’s not like there’s much Dylan can do about it, either way — they’re used to simply… appearing in places, to feeling out for where they’re needed and letting themselves be pulled there, but ever since that summoning ritual, their system’s been thrown off.

He still hasn’t fully managed to convince them that he hadn’t done anything about that, but he’d walked them all through the exact steps he’d taken in the ritual and Famine had pored over the journal and his notes for hours on end, seemingly taking every single step apart, and none of them had found anything that might explain the weird distortion in their powers.

It’s convenient for Dylan, honestly — it means that, as far as they can all tell, there is no other place that they’re needed, or at least — needed more. Death says it’s because this is where they have to be — that, being the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and keepers of balance in the world, they’re not able to use their powers for anything other than what’s needed, can’t singlehandedly change the course of the world if it’s not meant to be — but Dylan’s plan doesn’t require their powers, nor does it require them to throw off the balance of what they’re supposed to do. It’s a plan that lets them rebalance the scales of power in society without undoing the balance of the world, and that it’s the most important thing the Horsemen can do for the world, now. That that is why they keep finding themselves back at the apartment.

Pestilence says it’s because Dylan fucked up the summoning ritual, but that it’s the funniest thing that’s happened to them in decades — so he’s forgiven.

Still, though — he’d expected more… freaky powers, creepy omniscient knowledge and wisdom, and less… kindergarten.

The cushions of the couch dip next to him as War sinks down onto the couch next to him, eyeing the bickering in front of her with an amused glint in her eyes. “I have to say, Rhodes,” she starts, not even having looked at him, “this is a lot more fun than I’d imagined.”

Dylan raises an eyebrow at her, calling forth his most incredulous expression, and gestures vaguely at the squabbling in front of him. “This is what you call fun?”

War shrugs, with an elegance that Dylan’s only faintly jealous of, and leans her back against the backrest of the couch. “My whole job is conflict, and fighting — and I don’t even have to do anything for this. It’s free entertainment.”

“Right.” It makes sense, in a convoluted, non-human way, he supposes. War thrives off of discourse and quarrels, and Pestilence seems to get a kick out of riling Famine up — it’s a little funny how the latter doesn’t seem to realise it’s all bait, but it never fails to work. At least War’s not actively instigating anything.

She’s not always vicious, but she’s always sharp, and even though she’s just as content to let the disputes pass her by, when she does get involved she comes out on top every single time. It’s sort of in the name, admittedly, and it’s not surprising — but it’s not exactly conducive to a smooth cooperation between the four of them.

In front of them, Pestilence and Death share a triumphant grin as Famine huffs, crossing his arms and snatching the remaining cards from Death’s hands before falling into an easy shuffle. It’s almost laughable, really — for all his posturing, rolling his eyes and sighing exasperatedly whenever he brings up how they’re now doing magic tricks instead of spreading misery around the world, he’s taken to the cards with all the enthusiasm of a card seeing a cardboard box, and he’s already getting good.

So are the others — Death’s quick and clever with the cards, too, his aim precise and true more often than not, and War’s been tearing through chains and handcuffs as though they’ve personally offended her. For all he knows, they might have — she’s not one to be held down, never letting herself be tied down even for a second, and it’s what makes her a startlingly good escapist even if she still has to work a little on toning down her terrifyingly intense grins.

Pestilence has been going out, practising mind tricks on the people on the streets — after whatever freaky thing he’d tried on Dylan, that first day, Dylan had decided that he himself wasn’t going to be a test subject, no matter how close Pestilence looked at him. He’s had to explain to him how to branch out, what to look for in people — usually, apparently, he could simply sense the things in people that festered, that wanted to spread — secrets, disorders, illness. Coaxing that out was easy — but finding the little tics, asking the right questions… that’s a skill he’s still figuring out.

“Have you given any thought to your places on the stage?” Four heads swivel to look at him when he breaks the silence, and he shifts forward on the couch to lean his elbows on his knees. From the corner of his eyes, he sees War lean forward, too, her hair a reddish blob in his periphery. “I was thinking, we can introduce you in the same order that you appear in the writings, right? That would make sense.”

Pestilence considers him for a moment, then shrugs. “Well, maybe — it’s not like the audiences will know who we are, anyway. We can just shoushiling it, see who wins?”

Dylan blinks, mulling over the words, and decides that it doesn’t actually make much more sense on second thought. “You’re gonna what?”

Pestilence holds out his hand, Death following suit, and Dylan watches as they proceed to play a game of what is essentially rock, paper, scissors with different gestures. “Right. Okay, yeah, let’s— let’s not do that. We can base it off general charisma, see who’s best at attracting an audience. I think we should do Jack last — you’re supposed to die, anyway, and if we introduce you first people might remember your face a little too well for the behind-the-scenes stuff.”

“Great,” Famine scoffs, “we’re gonna kill Death and make him go last. You just have it out for him.”

Dylan pointedly ignores the barb and instead turns to look at War, then back at Famine and Pestilence. “We need to make sure everyone sees you guys — but that they don’t look too closely. Tell me this — how far do your powers stretch? That weird… mind-thing you all did on me, how does that work?”

Pestilence tilts his head at him, a pensive look on his face. “You mean, the whole… looking into your soul, thing? That’s just a side effect of who we are. If I focus on someone, I can draw things out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dylan dismisses, waving his fingers off-handedly through the air, “but your whole thing is going viral, right? Is there any way for you to… I don’t know, make that happen through a camera, or at the mention of your name?”

There’s a knowing smirk forming on Famine’s face, and suddenly he nods approvingly. “Smart. You want Pestilence to use his influence to spread our show further, make sure more people see it.”

“Exactly,” Dylan snaps his fingers, and he huffs out a laugh. “I don’t even know if that’s possible, but if it is, if we can— then Pestilence— sorry, Merritt first, making sure that it spreads far and wide, any mention of the Horsemen, any thought and phrase that mentions us taking up root in as many minds as we can reach, and then we do you, Daniel. Your whole thing is making people want something, craving something — we need to instill a hunger for justice, for magic, for a show. You need to incentivise them to come, to see the show and talk about it and make sure it stays relevant.”

Famine’s grin grows, and suddenly he looks a lot more like a Daniel again. “I can do that.”

“Then, Henley,” Dylan decides, “we’ll introduce you third. You need to rally people, make them believe in our cause, give them something to fight for. We’ll have you there to make sure people are prepared to take on the upper echelons of society, to know that we’re standing against the people at the top of capitalism, and with your influence, we can make sure that they know where to direct their ire, too.”

War smirks at him, determination and excitement simmering in equal measure, and she nods. “Leave that to me.”

“Then you—” Dylan turns back to Death, and the fire burning behind his ribs, determined and strong, falters a bit. “Jack. You, uh— I’m sorry, I don’t know if there’s much I need to ask of you—”

“It’s okay,” Death shrugs, even if there’s something uneven in his tone. “I can’t exactly inspire much the way they can, and I won’t be there for the third show. It’s fine, though — I know what I have to do. I’ll know if there’s anyone in my way during the car chase, and I’m the only one who can make sure no one else gets hurt during it. I don’t need to influence anyone — I just need to be there. I always am.”

It’s— disconcerting, Dylan decides, to hear such profound solemnity from someone who essentially looks just like a teenager, and he grimaces a little. “Yeah, just— just be careful, yeah?”

It’s a futile thing to say, either way — it’s not like Death can die, after all, and he’s careful enough that he won’t cause an accident or send anyone to an early grave. They’re all sticklers for balance, insistent that they can’t randomly create scarcity or disease when it’s not meant to be there, and Death, most of all, insists that everything has a time, a moment to come. Dylan can trust him to be careful, if nothing else.

His phone buzzes on the couch next to him, a familiar name on the display screen, and he snatches it up, pointing at each of the Horsemen fervently. “Work calls. Do not say a word.” He accepts the call, lifts the phone to his ear and gets up off of the couch, giving a short greeting when he picks up. “Rhodes.”

It’s work calling, Cowan irritably grumbling something about new files coming through, and Dylan bites back a sigh as he reaches for his coat jacket still slung over the back of the couch. “I’m on my way. Don’t call me again.”

He quickly tugs his jacket over his shoulders, stuff the phone in his pocket and turns around, sweeping the room for his bag. “I have to get to work. Don’t burn down the apartment. Also, if you’re gonna fight, do it after eight in the morning — the neighbours complained about footsteps and loud thumping at four am. Don’t make me supervise you. I’ll be back in a few days to check in on your progress.”

There’s a murmured response somewhere from the living room that he doesn’t bother to pay attention to as he disappears into the hallway, snatches his bag from the floor, and pokes his head around the corner again. “Bye.”

“Bye, human,” War calls out, smugly, and Dylan rolls his eyes and debates the merits of buying a set of those Hi, my name is…! stickers just to be able to point at it whenever she calls him human. He has a name, after all. He’s not out here calling her— well, okay, he does call her War, but he’s trying to remember her name, and he certainly doesn’t refer to her as a freaky supernatural being or anything like that.

They’ll get there, though. He’ll make sure of it.

They’re roughly two months into the plan, the four of them living together in Lionel Shrike’s old apartment while Dylan swings by on occasion, still playing the determined, gruff FBI agent while also wrangling the four absolute nightmares of creatures that he’s trying to teach how to be performers, when he catches a cold.

It’s not a big deal. He’d been stuck staking out a suspect in the rain, and then the bastard had made a run for it, and it turns that eating a tangerine every week and trying to corporate something green into his meals at least once a day isn’t enough to boost his immune system to a point where it’ll beat standing in the rain for three hours.

He’s fine, is the thing — sure, he’s running a low-grade fever, and he can’t breathe through his nose properly, and there’s a faint ache pulsing in the front of his head that he refuses to call a migraine but also can’t really call much else, but it’s no cause for concern.

It’s certainly no cause for anyone to stop him dead in his tracks the second he sets foot in the apartment, look him dead in the eye, and intone, “Your life force is waning.”

Dylan clenches his jaw, grits his teeth against the annoyance that surges up and looks Death straight in the eyes as the other stands in front of him. “I doubt it’s waned enough for you to be summoned,” he grinds out, nudging Jack back a few steps and closing the door to the apartment behind him. “It’s a cold, nothing more.”

“Just saying, man,” Jack grins, and holds up his hands innocently. His eyes are sparkling, and if Dylan’s brain were any more online, any less slow and cotton-stuffed, he’d remark upon the fact that, for all that he was still the Horseman of Death, still felt unnaturally cold to the touch and sometimes lingered a little around certain people on the streets, a worried crease between his brows — he looks a little more alive, somehow.

There’s a little more colour on his cheeks, it seems, though that might just be the light — and he’s a little livelier, a little brighter. It could also be the fever messing with his head, Dylan decides, even as Jack bounces back and shrugs at him before disappearing back into the living room.

It’s easy to forget that he’s old — that they’re all ancient, have been around hundreds of times longer than Dylan’s even existed. It’s easy to forget in all of them, but Death most of all — especially when he has the face of a nineteen-year-old and the energy of a labrador puppy being unleashed into a dog park for the first time. He’s started grinning a little more easily, conversation flowing between the five of them quicker and smoother after a couple of days, and now — after almost nine weeks of living together, of planning and strategising and practising with all of them, there’s a steady sort of rhythm in it that’s somehow made all of them seem a little more human.

It’s easier to remember to call them by their human names, these days — and it’s easier, still, to think of them as Merritt and Henley and Daniel and Jack, instead of their apocalyptic titles. They still use them — they are, still, the biblical concepts of apocalyptic doom, but they’re also… funny, Dylan’s found, and attentive, and when they’re squabbling over who looks most like which movie character, they seem almost like people.

He’s definitely not going to tell them that, though — he thinks Henley might strike him down right where he stands, if he lets her hear it. He can’t let them know that he’s grown fond of them — for all he knows, they still regard him as something beneath them, their pet human. They’re infinitely more powerful and important than he is — he’s just lucky that they need him to explain how the thermostat works and that leaving the faucet running might not bother them too much since the water on the floor might not actually wet their trousers or soak into their socks, but that it does very much soak into the floorboards and that, though Dylan’s aware that the security deposit is long since gone after years of abandonment and a half-faded pentagram on the floor, he’d still very much like to keep the neighbours from complaining and barging in to find four magical entities living in a two-person apartment.

It’s fine, mostly — Dylan’s fairly sure the Eye actually owns the apartment, which is also why he’s not entirely sure as to why he’s still paying rent (that is subsidised by the Eye, too, so he’s really just giving back their own money) but still. He does get wet socks, and after a long day of listening to Cowan’s complaining and being stuck on filing through paperwork for hours on end, the very last thing he wants to come home to is a flood in his house.

He stumbles through the hall, blinking against the bright light of the lamp above the kitchen table, and lets his bag drop to the floor when he reaches the living room. Just when he’s about to head over to the schematics spread out across the desk at the window, the couch creaks as Merritt moves up from it, a pleasant smile on his face. “Dylan, hey, our fearsome leader—”

“— Dylan’s dying,” Jack blurts out, and Merritt’s face shutters in the same breath as his eyes lock onto Dylan, brows furrowing.

“You’re unwell,” Merritt says, on his feet within moments, and then he’s closing the distance between them, ducking into Dylan’s space before Dylan’s even managed to find the air to tell him off. “I feel it clogging up your lungs.”

“Please,” Dylan says tiredly, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, “don’t ever speak to me about my lungs again. I’m fine. It’s just a cold — and I’m not dying.”

“You’re always dying,” Jack points out, “just very, very slowly.”

Dylan lets out a sigh that rattles his lungs, ignoring the way Merritt raises an accusing, vindictive finger at him, and raises his head again to look them both in the eye. “Stop telling me I’m dying — I have at least some amount of years left to go. I think— Don’t you dare tell me,” he breaks off into a hiss, making sure that Jack doesn’t actually starts prophesying his demise, because if he finds out how long he has to live he might genuinely lose his mind. “I’m going to take an Advil, and then I’m going to make tea, and then we’ll go over the plans for the trip to Paris. Do not test me today.”

If he’d been told, two months ago, that he’d speak in such a provocative, unconcerned manner to ancient, possibly-divine (Dylan hasn’t actually asked them about heaven or hell, or religion — that’s a can of worms he doesn’t think he’ll ever get to close again once it opens and it’s not a conversation he’s willing to have any time soon) beings, he’d have laughed in the face of whoever had seen fit to lie to him so blatantly. Now, though, he just turns on his heel and stalks into the kitchen, rifling through the cupboards to find a tea that doesn’t actually contain any caffeine.

Though he usually has no qualms about consuming as much caffeine as the human body could possibly survive, he’s already feeling an exhausted tremble start up in his legs the longer he’s standing, and he doesn’t want to risk adding caffeine and ending up a twitchy, jittery mess. They already have Daniel, which is more than enough nervous energy for an apartment that really wasn’t intended to house four-to-five people.

“Do you need anything?” Jack pokes his head around the corner and holds up Dylan’s own phone, that, upon further inspection, is missing from his pocket. He’s been practising his pickpocketing, evidently, and Dylan resists the urge to let his forehead bang against the kitchen cabinet in front of him. “Daniel’s out on a walk — we can send him to pick up some food for you.”

“I’m fine,” Dylan grits out, and continues his search for a mug in the cabinet — since the others don’t eat, the kitchen makes for a tragic sight, and there’s only one of everything in every drawer and cabinet — one fork, one spoon, one knife, one plate, one mug. They’re all Dylan’s, since he’s the only one that actually uses them, but it never stops being annoying to have to reach all the way into the furthest corner of a cabinet just to find something to drink from. “Just tell him to come back so we can start planning.”

The top right cabinet is empty, as is the one in the middle, and when the left cabinet also comes up empty, Dylan sighs and decides to give up on his quest for tea. His whole body feels heavy, as though gravity pulls on him a little more than usual, and there’s a deep-seated ache in his bones that he knows is just from the fever but feels like he might crumble into dust at any point, anyway.

He shuffles back into the living room, coughing into his sleeve when his lungs protest the movement, and lets himself sink into the furthest corner of the couch. He feels pitiful, really, which is infuriating in and of itself — he’s Dylan Rhodes, hard-boiled and accomplished FBI agent, and he’s not supposed to be knocked out by something so stupid as a common cold. Merritt’s on the other end of the couch, pointedly looking up from the book he’s reading and raising his eyebrows. “Looking good, Rhodes.”

“Urgh.” It’s not much of an answer, he’ll admit, but sue him — as much as he’s lived his life as Dylan Rhodes for the past thirty years, he’s also, unfortunately, still Dylan Shrike — and Dylan Shrike, as he’s finding out, is someone who not only believes in magic, but also in sitting on the couch and wishing for a cup of tea when he’s ill.

He leans his head back against the couch, closing his eyes and resigning himself to a long evening of waiting for his headache to subside while dealing with the Horsemen. He just needs them to help him pick out the best dates for travelling to Paris to hypnotise Étienne Forcier, figure out where they want to stay while they’re there — nothing that requires actual brain power, necessarily, but just effort, and he can barely bring himself to move up off the couch as it is.

He’s not sure how long he sits there — they’re waiting for Daniel to get back from his walk, for Henley to get back from wherever she’s gone, but until the front door clicks and they’re back he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to move again. He drifts in and out of awareness, half-realising that the light in the room’s a lot dimmer every time he opens his eyes, and by the time he startles back into awareness — it’s because there’s someone hovering over him, something warm and strong-smelling right in front of him. “Dylan.”

“Woah,” Dylan groans, jerking backwards from where Daniel hovers right in front of his face, entirely too close for comfort. “What—”

When he turns to the side slightly, he realises that Merritt’s still here as well, eyeing him closely, and behind him Henley and Jack are both turned his way, too, cards in their hands from where they seem to have been locked in a game of— poker, maybe. He can’t quite tell from his place on the couch.

“We made you soup,” Daniel says, snapping Dylan’s attention back to him, and he holds out— Dylan’s mug, he realises, the very one he’d been looking for earlier. “We don’t have bowls, and we didn’t have pans, either, so we had to go out and get those. Not sure why there’s so many of them, but we got one of the flat ones.”

Flat ones, Dylan repeats to himself for a moment, and then his eye falls on the black frying pan, filled to the brim with amber liquid, still steaming on the coffee table next to the couch. “Did you make me soup in a skillet?”

It comes out gruff, his voice rough and scratchy, and Daniel shrugs, a bit of the soup sloshing over the side of the mug when it tilts to the side haphazardly. “Don’t ask me. Drink this.”

“That’s hot,” Dylan disagrees, reaching up quickly to wrap his hands around it to stop Daniel from shoving it even closer to his face, vapour still coming off the top of the liquid, and when he turns to place it next to the skillet, he registers that that’s hot, too. “Take that off,” he realises instantly, “you can’t put hot pans on wood, Jesus.”

“No, I’m Famine,” Daniel says impatiently, but dutifully reaches over to snatch the skillet off the table. There’s already a darkened imprint on the wood, and Dylan briefly mourns the loss of his $30 Ikea table surface. He disappears into the kitchen, and when Dylan turns back to the kitchen table, Jack and Henley are both still staring at him.

“Thank you for the soup,” Dylan mutters, picking his mug right back up to raise it to them in a half-hearted attempt to cheers them. “That’s— nice of you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Jack grins, “he just started doing that, we didn’t have much to do with that.”

“Not true!” Daniel calls from the kitchen, rounding the corner again to lean disagreeingly against the doorpost of the kitchen entryway. “You texted me to pick up things because Dylan’s weakened. I had to ask someone on the street what to get for ill people — that’s fourteen seconds of my life I’m never getting back, by the way.”

“How will you ever recover,” Henley snarks, right as Merritt scoffs and lets his book fall back onto his lap and says, “You’re not even alive.”

“Still,” Dylan intones, “I’m grateful.” It’s weird to say it, to be openly sincere — but it is a nice gesture and they deserve to hear it, even if it has Merritt’s expression turning into something gleeful and smug, Jack’s eyes lighting up as his grin widens, and Daniel’s face contorts as though he’s witnessing something particularly repulsive. Henley, to her credit, remains startlingly neutral, even if she does take the moment of distraction to slip a card from the pile between herself and Jack. Dylan lifts the mug to his lips and takes a sip, lets the warm soup spill over onto his tongue — and all at once, he’s no longer grateful.

“What the—” he cuts himself off before he can say something truly unkind — it’s important with kids to use positive reinforcement, to reward the effort instead of the result, and even though these (definitely) aren’t kids, they’re still new to most things in the world, up to and including making soup, apparently, because the substance in the mug barely qualifies as liquid, let alone soup. “What’s even in this?”

It… doesn’t really taste like anything, surprisingly — there’s an overwhelmingly bland taste, a little like sawdust, and the taste itself isn’t even the main issue. No, the issue lies mostly with the texture — specifically, with the fact that the substance in the mug seemingly isn’t sure about whether it wants to be a liquid or a solid, and has therefore decided to be both. “Why is this clumpy?”

“Oh, he put flour in it,” Merritt says cheerfully, throwing Daniel under the metaphorical bus with copious amounts of glee. “Like, a lot of it.”

“You’re clumpy,” Daniel mocks, crossing his arms, and then looks to the side, categorically avoiding any eye contact. “Your phone said we needed to put flour in it — for the slurry.”

Slurry sounds like a pretty solid word for what the mixture tries to be, Dylan decides, and he grimaces slightly. “Well, you made a very successful slurry.”

Daniel doesn’t grace him with a reply, eyes fixed on a faraway point on the far wall and Dylan decides to take pity on him. It’s still a nice thing to do, even if the execution was not only very poor, but also unwanted. “It’s… nice. I— appreciate the effort.”

Saying anything more than that would be a lie, but Daniel’s shoulders slump a little, tension easing out of him a little, and Dylan realises that for all that he acts prickly and annoyed, and still complains that he should be doing better, more useful things half the time — he does care, in his own convoluted way.

Dylan glances down at the mug, debates taking another sip — and decides that, by all accounts, trying to ingest any more of the slurry would only add to his illness rather than alleviate it, and he puts the mug back down on the coffee table, right next to the charred patch from the skillet.

The effort is appreciated — but he’ll make sure to let them know he’ll also accept forms of affection that don’t include choking to death on a clump of flour or taste-testing a bio-degradable form of concrete.

Still, though — he sinks back onto the couch, ignoring the four pairs of eyes trained on him at all sides, and decides to forego the Paris planning for one evening. Of all potential outcomes that might have sprung from his decision to summon the Four Horsemen — death, disaster, complaining neighbours… he thinks this might be his favourite.

“Is that agent Cowan?”

Dylan waves Henley away as she leans in closer to the phone, grinning mischievously, and he turns away to avoid Cowan hearing anything else from his end of the line. “Yeah— I understand, but I can’t exactly take on another case while I’m still waiting on forensics to send me the results from those fibres, can I?”

Cowan grumbles something on the other end, tone snappish, but the words are drowned out by Henley sighing loudly and shuffling herself even closer across his desk, tilted so that she’s just able to reach around and wrap her fingers around the phone that Dylan’s trying to angle away from her, and Dylan quickly shakes her off, ducking under her reaching hands again before huffing testily. Irritation spikes hotly through him, and he wrangles his tone into something neutral as he cuts Cowan off. “I have to go. I have better things to do—”

“Rhodes, don’t you dare—” crackles through the speakers of his phone, even as he’s already tapping the End Call button, and Dylan lets his phone drop onto the desk to level Henley with an exasperated glare. “Was that necessary?”

“Do you want us to ruin his life?” Dylan blinks at Henley as she smirks down at him, eyes blazing and challenging as she sits herself down on the corner of his desk, flicking her hair out of her face and tilting her head quizzically. “I mean, we can’t kill him or whatever, but using a little bit of our influence to alter the course of one guy’s life surely can’t hurt. Don’t tell Jack.”

It takes a moment for her words to register — the Horsemen have all started referring to each other by their human names more often, lately, and it never ceases to surprise Dylan. The bigger issue with what Henley’s saying, though, lies with the fact that she’s apparently offering to ruin Cowan’s life. “Why would I want that?”

Henley shrugs the very picture of dismissal. “It’s obvious the guy gets under your skin. I mean, look at you — you’re even more annoyed than usual.”

“That’s because you’re here,” Dylan counters, and lifts an eyebrow at her as he pointedly glances down at where she’s still eyeing his phone. “I wasn’t that irritated right up until you showed up and tried to take my phone. You guys really do have to stop using your powers on me.”

It’s not often, but it’s often enough — he’ll come back to the apartment and suddenly find himself ravenously hungry, courtesy of Daniel pacing up and down the windows muttering to himself about all the work that none of them are currently doing, their mysterious disappear-to-where-you’re-most-needed powers still not back to normal, and it’s not usually intentional, but since the Horsemen are immune to each other’s powers, he’s not usually aware just how frustrating Dylan finds to feel like he’s starving after a long day of work. He’s not even aware he’s doing it at all.

On the contrary, Henley derives great joy from sparking up little arguments on the street, hovering just slightly too long near someone on a phone call, gleefully detailing the rest of them about the wrathful breakup or years of bad blood between the callers. It’s something in her blood, her very essence, it seems like — whenever she brushes against Dylan, there’s a blazing fire sparking in his veins, lighting up the years of fury and vengefulness that he tries to keep to himself on the regular. She knows he doesn’t like the people at his job, and slow walkers on the streets, and if the look on her face is anything to go by, she feels the cold spike of rage whenever Thaddeus Bradley comes up. He knows she can’t help it — that solely her presence somewhere can be enough to send already-boiling tempers flaring up, but it doesn’t make it easier to grit his teeth and keep his composure. At least he’s lucky, he supposes, that he’s already got thirty years of practice.

Jack’s a lot easier in it. He’s very careful, deliberate in his actions despite the careless way he jumps around the house sometimes — for someone who is the literal embodiment of death, he sure does have a lot of energy. It’s funny, sometimes, to sit back and realise that Death itself is sitting cross-legged on the floor of his dad’s apartment, slowly building the stage for one of their shows out of Lego bricks.

Jack’s the most insistent that they can’t use their powers at random, seems to be aware of his own powers at all times — but little reminders of what he is, what he does are in everything he does. Whenever he brushes against Jack in passing or on the couch, there’s an icy shock from the cold of his skin, an unnatural, ghostly frigidity that never stops startling Dylan, and sometimes he’ll walk in to find Jack staring off in the distance somewhere, eyes far away and glazed over, the usual warm brown of them appearing almost hazy grey. He looks a little more dead, in those moments, and despite the fact that Dylan knows that he isn’t alive, not really — there’s always a pang of alarm at it. He’s never dared to snap him out of it, though, not knowing whether there would be any consequence to it, and not wanting to risk Jack accidentally snatching away his soul or whatever-else he does the people who startle him.

Out of all of them, though, Merritt seems to have the firmest grasp over his powers. He hasn’t used his influence on Dylan since that very first day, and though the combination of his powers as Pestilence and his newfound skills in hypnotism are a near-unshakeable force, nearly drawing Dylan in even when it isn’t directed at him — he hasn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. There’s been nothing like what he feels when War or Famine play up again, and aside from the sickly heat radiating off of his skin whenever Dylan stands too close to him, there isn’t really all that much that sets him apart from a normal person.

He supposes that’s useful — his job is to spread illness, and for that, he needs to be able to fit in anywhere, walk by undetected. Someone with open boils or obvious leprosy would stand out a lot more than a simple passerby, a bystander walking past with a too-knowing smirk on their face. It attracts a lot less attention, in any case.

The only thing Dylan hasn’t quite managed to figure out is whether or not he’s telling the truth when he says that he’s not messing with Dylan. Not in a bad way, necessarily — but he’d called Dylan’s mind diseased when they first met, nudging at the darkness there, and— sure, Dylan has to admit, planning revenge on the reporter making light of your father’s death and nurturing that hatred for decades until it spun into a catastrophic world-wide plan of societal resetting, taking down anyone involved in his father’s death and striking out at the people on top of the food chain in equal measure — it’s not exactly normal behaviour. Most people would harbour resentment and grief and heartbreak in equal measure yet continue to grow up into semi-well-adjusted people with boring jobs and lives, but Dylan’s never been destined for the ordinary.

His father was outstanding, a man with magic sparkling at his fingertips, and Dylan’s never wanted anything but to be like him. Watching that fall away under the darkness of inky black water, sinking further and further while Bradley turned to the camera and capitalised on it — it broke something he doesn’t quite know how to fix. He’s carried that grief, that heaviness with him for years, resigned to feel it weighing down his bones for the rest of his life — but strangely, over the past four months, it’s all started feeling a little lighter.

Merritt hasn’t said anything about it, though he does shoot Dylan a knowing look whenever he looks out over the living room, the Four Horsemen squabbling back and forth familiarly, and he feels something fond bubble up. He’s not sure whether he’s done anything about it, whether he’s somehow used his powers to ease the heaviness of it, to alleviate it bearing down on Dylan — but he’s not exactly about to ask.

Still, though — “I don’t need you riling me up until I blow up at Cowan — if I say the wrong thing, we could blow the entire operation.”

Henley rolls her eyes, sitting back a little on the corner of his desk. “Then don’t say the wrong thing. Besides, not everything’s about you — I could just… pay him a little visit, see how things are going at home with him. Give him a little nudge. Nothing gets a guy off your back like a little divorce, right?”

“Again,” Dylan sighs, “why would I want that? He’s a perfectly fine colleague, even if he’s blander than a bag of uncooked rice.”

“He irks you,” Henley says, and when he meets her eyes, she’s staring back intently. “You find him irritating, and he makes your life more difficult. We can get him out of your way, if you want him to.”

It’s… certainly a thought.

Not a very nice one, notably, but for one second Dylan lets himself think on what it would be like to not have Cowan nagging at him every step he takes. The man’s not all that adept, just a little shy of competent at his job, and he’s ill-tempered, seemingly having it out for Dylan — and Dylan, in return, has it out for him right back. They’ve never worked together well, and the idea of having someone else on the team in his stead is tempting.

It’s also a risk — a huge one, that he’s not willing to take. Cowan is difficult, and bothersome, but he’s also crucial to the plan. Everyone at the office knows about the mutual dislike between Agents Cowan and Rhodes, and if anyone starts suspecting Dylan while they’re running the heist — not that he’s planning to, but should he miss a step anywhere, Cowan will be there to point the finger at him — people will assume it’s simply Cowan trying to throw him under the bus, same as usual.

He can’t risk anything happening to Cowan, not when he might get someone competent in his stead — and so he shakes his head, ignoring the weirdly touched part of him that notes absently that the Horsemen, apparently, care about him enough that they take note of who upsets him and feel strongly enough about that to offer to do something about it.

It could also simply be that they don’t want him distracted, or that they care about him insofar that a farmer cares about the cat that catches mice for him — a pet that does tricks, that’s useful to them, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless. He doesn’t need it — doesn’t need anyone, and certainly not four concepts of apocalyptic doom that could snuff out the world without lifting a single finger (and instead to bicker over which spice has the best colour).

“I don’t need him out of my way,” Dylan says evenly, though he does let a small degree of the fondness he feels at the idea show on his face. “Cowan is instrumental in the plan, and his irritating idiocy is important. I’ll be fine — I just need to complain once in a while, I think.”

Henley sighs theatrically, but obligingly slides off his desk and pats his shoulder condescendingly. “Alright, Dylan. Whatever you say. Let me know when you change your mind.”

She says it with enough certainty that even Dylan, for a moment, is convinced that it’s not a matter of if, but when, and then he shakes himself out of it and turns back to his phone, now face-down on the desk. One of these days, he’s sure, his plan to summon the Horsemen will come back to bite him in the ass — but when it does, he’ll be ready.

Sometimes, Dylan isn’t alone on the streets.

This is a fact that he’s become uncomfortably aware of, sometime during the ninth month of being acquainted with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He’s used to the brisk walk from Lionel Shrike’s New York apartment to his own by now, but lately he’s felt eyes on his back — even when he goes out on a quick grocery run or makes his way to the parking lot before heading to the office.

It set him off, at first — one hand lingering near his waistband, where his FBI standard-issued handgun is holstered, eyes shifting subtly across the street to find whoever’s lurking in the shadows, hair standing up in the back of his neck — until he’d stopped around the corner of a block and waited for his stalker to catch up. It hadn’t taken long before a figure appeared in the entrance of the alley he was hiding in, and he’d pulled his gun on them before he’d even realised that the side profile he was staring at was a little too familiar.

They were bored, apparently, because despite none of them ever having taken up magic tricks before Dylan had approached them (unsurprising, Dylan admits) they were all extremely quick in picking up the details and quirks of their tricks (very surprising, Dylan’s decided).

Jack’s flicking cards left and right, never misses a target anymore these days, and there isn’t a lock or knot that Henley can’t have undone within a minute. Daniel shuffles through decks of cards at lightning speeds, and Merritt manages to enrapture anyone he sets his sights on within seconds, and if it weren’t so incredibly helpful and important to the stunt they’re trying to pull off, Dylan would find it a little terrifying.

It is terrifying, frankly — if this is the amount of energy they dedicate to any thing they do, it’s no wonder that they’re capable of tearing apart the world — and that they became the Horsemen in the first place.

None of them have been very forthcoming, necessarily, but between a few off-hand remarks and careful, well-timed questions, Dylan’s managed to uncover more about the Horsemen’s backstories than he’d ever thought he’d get to know about.

They’d been human, once. He’s not sure how long ago, nor what it was like — but each of them had lived, had been alive and warm and breathing once, until tragedy had intertwined with their fate and ultimately cut their lives short. Merritt’s mentioned that the drag of disease is painful on the lungs, leaves behind aching scrapes that only stop hurting once your body gives up — despite the fact that the Horsemen can’t feel pain, that they can’t get ill or hurt. He’s speaking from experience — he’d seen it in the way Merritt’s eyes glazed over just ever so slightly, far away, stuck in a different time — and then he’d shaken himself off, plastered on a smarmy grin and changed the topic.

Henley’s story is a little different, from what he’s been able to gather — though she never stops shouldering on, that fiery intensity never once dimming or dying out, she’s talked about battles and fighting, a flash of heat and adrenaline in the final moment before a violent death. She’s mentioned final, desperate bursts of power and crawling on despite your body giving out, and that awful, searing heat clinging on until the breath trickles from your lungs. It makes sense, Dylan thinks — the Horsemen each have their own things, their own quirks and idiosyncrasies, but where Merritt has wrapped himself up in thick coat despite radiating heat and Daniel layers up, still shivering despite wearing shirts under blouses under sweaters — Jack has a dark leather jacket over an equally-colourless shirt, never seeming either cold or warm, and Henley’s outfits never have layers, never seem like they should be warm enough for the environment she’s in.

He knows they don’t feel the temperature — not really, not in the same way actual people do — but Henley, somehow, always looks like she’s too warm, like she’s still stuck in that final, perpetual flash of adrenaline, never quite ready to stop moving forward and to let go. He thinks she might be more familiar with the final throes of violent deaths than she’s ever let on.

Jack, on the contrary, hasn’t said much on it — he’s been vague, hard to pinpoint despite the fact that he earnestly and genuinely tries to answer any question Dylan asks. He reads like an open book, which is doubly confusing given that Dylan never quite feels like he knows more after talking to him. Most of the time, Jack talks him in circles, half-profound statements and riddles to get Dylan to answer his own question. He’s still not sure whether he’s doing it on purpose, but he can’t bring himself to be annoyed over it.

All he knows is that Jack’s death was long ago, before the others, even — Death has always been there, as far as they knew, but despite the warmth, the gentleness and compassion that Jack has when he speaks of the dying, of guiding the dead — there’s something a little more haunted in his gaze whenever the conversation turns to the Horsemen themselves. Jack’s fervent about his duties when it comes to being Death — he clings to his role as a guide, insistent to be there for the newly-dead, the searching, the lost, the confused — and though he’s never explicitly said anything, Dylan’s drawn his own conclusions about it.

There aren’t that many reasons someone would value companionship in one’s final moments that much, he supposes, unless they’ve had to miss it. Jack is vocal about not wanting anyone to go alone, about needing to guide them and help the people on the edges of life to feel safe, to let go and feel at ease — and Dylan can only think, whenever he gets riled up into another one of his rants, that it’s something he must have missed. That he must have had to figure things out on his own, or that he’d been alone and scared when he’d died.

That’s all long ago, though, and Jack’s never said anything about it — and so Dylan won’t, either. He doesn’t say anything about any of them — not about the way that Merritt seems to breathe a little easier in open air despite technically not even needing air, and the way that Henley always has an eye on all exits despite being, quite literally, an apex predator — there isn’t anything, no creature or force in the world, that could be a danger to her.

Dylan doesn’t say anything about the way Jack always lingers in his periphery whenever Dylan’s over at the apartment, the way that he lags behind them on the streets and hovers whenever someone catches his eye, the reassuring smiles he shoots at strangers whose eyes widen when they see him — and he doesn’t say anything about the way that Daniel shakes and trembles, sometimes, as though his body’s running out of fuel, not having enough energy left to keep up with the way that he moves loudly and boldly through their half-life.

Daniel’s backstory wasn’t hard to figure out either, Dylan supposes — it’s kind of in the name, and the way he seems to cling onto anything, never stops reaching further, wanting, needing just a little more— it speaks for itself. Daniel’s mentioned feeling starvation set in slowly, and he’s mentioned being forgotten — Dylan hasn’t fished for the details, on account of not wanting to end up on the bad side of an infuriated omen of starvation, but it’s painted a fairly clear picture — Daniel died of neglect, hungering for anything and anyone, wanted to be acknowledged and saved — and though none of them are performers, have never set foot in the limelight and have never let themselves be seen on purpose…

There’s a palpable excitement in the air whenever they’re discussing the plans, and they’ve practised enough that their individual tricks have all but become second nature by now. The show is drawing closer, only three months away, and whenever Dylan gets back to the apartment again there’s a noticeable anticipation. It’s exciting, even if it’s also terrifying, the dozens of ways that this could go wrong, the hundreds of reasons it won’t work—

He’s got a pretty solid team, though. Quite possibly the best one in the world, though he freely admits that he’s biased. They might be loud, and inexperienced in essentially anything that isn’t simply doing their supernatural duties to the world, and they’re more childish than the literal children Dylan sees in the streets — but they’re also dedicated, and steadfast, and determined.

Unfortunately for him, they’re also dedicated, steadfast and determined in their quest to follow Dylan when he goes out on his own.

Their excuse was that they got bored sitting at home, and that for all that Dylan’s a trained FBI agent with almost two decades of experience under his belt, not to mention carries a gun most of the times — they’ve seemingly decided that one of them needs to stick around just in case anything happens to him.

Not that they care about him personally, Daniel had assured him staunchly, but because without Dylan, the plan couldn't go through — and he’s not letting nine months of practice and professional neglect go to waste. Jack, he’s fairly sure, just likes hovering, enjoys spending time with someone who isn’t also cosmically appointed to be a keeper of earthly balance, but Merritt and Daniel both tend to linger just outside of his periphery, just barely out of view. Henley’s a little bolder in her stalking, though her idea of following him around is less unobtrusive and more chattering about all the things irritating her about the people on the streets. He’ll never admit it, but he’s does enjoy his daily griping about people walking too-slowly in front of him or stopping last-minute on the curb.

It’s a little annoying, though — he’s a grown man, and fully capable of taking care of himself. He’s had to draw a firm line at following him to work — he can’t risk anyone seeing them linger around the office building and connecting the dots when their faces are plastered across the news in three months, and he won’t allow anything to throw the plan off. They’d taken that about as well as they’d taken his firm boundary of Do Not Stare At Me While I Sleep, back in the first month — after a late night, he’d crashed on the couch in their apartment and woken up to Jack hovering entirely too close for comfort, Henley and Daniel just a little behind him and Merritt on the opposite end of the couch — all staring at him.

Sure — they don’t sleep, and he gets that there might not be much else to do for them at four in the morning, but he’d sent them out to buy books and puzzles and two pingpong bats the next day and strictly forbidden them from ever doing that again regardless of how fascinating they found him. It was just freaky.

Therefore, they no longer follow him all the way to work, but they follow him to his car in the parking lot, and they follow him to the grocery store when he goes to get himself food — because they never need any, and he’s grown tired of always having to remember to bring his own food whenever coming over — and they follow him when he goes… anywhere, really.

Not always — but enough that he’s learned to ignore the prickle of eyes on his back, which should be alarming enough that he’d probably get fired if his boss ever found out about that. Sorry, ma’am, I’m not being stalked — these are just the apocalyptic beings that I summoned to rob a bank, would likely not fly with her.

They’re well-intentioned, though, and he lets them have his fun most of the time — he doesn’t mention it, and neither do they, and all of them continue their arrangement while pretending that there’s not a weird gang-stalking agreement hanging in the air between them. It’s not too bothersome, and he tries not to think about it too much — right up until he turns a corner and Merritt’s standing right in front of him, eyes blazing, and shoves him back roughly. “Wait here.”

Dylan stumbles back, grocery back tumbling from his arms as he instinctively braces his arms in front of himself — and Merritt’s already turned back, disappearing into the alleyway Dylan was just about to cross. “Stand still.”

His voice is low, booming — and the hair on the back of Dylan’s neck stands up at the sound. He’s never heard Merritt sound like that — not even on the very first day of their meeting, when Merritt used his influence to look into Dylan’s mind. He quickly rounds the corner, groceries forgotten, only to see Merritt standing squarely in the middle of the alley. In front of him, three boys square up, one of them brandishing a wicked-looking knife. “Give us your wallet, old man—!”

Dylan’s about to pull his gun on them, step in and— protect Merritt, his mind nonsensically offers, but Merritt steps forward, leaning in towards the one closest to him. From where he’s standing, Dylan can’t make out his face, but he can make out the grin in his voice when Merritt speaks again. “You’re going to drop the knife, and you’re never going to pull anything like this again.”

It’s not hypnosis. It can’t be hypnosis — Dylan knows how it works, has familiarised himself with it and suggestion and mentalism for over thirty years, and there’s no way solely a firm tone of voice should be able to get someone to cave — but Merritt is no ordinary man, and Dylan watches as the boy closest to Merritt — he seems to be late teens, maybe early twenties — just barely not a kid anymore, but apparently old enough to threaten strangers in alleys — drops the knife and darts back, expression contorting in absolute terror. “Wait— Don’t, please—”

Merritt takes another step closer, seems to breathe out deeply — and the other two recoil as well, flinching back until they’re near the wall. “Please, we didn’t mean it—”

“Leave.” The three boys scramble past him, blindly hurtling towards the open street and hurtling past Dylan, who only barely manages to side-step the first one to avoid crashing into him. Merritt turns back, rights his hat on his head and lets his grin fall, grey eyes narrowing as he looks over Dylan. “You okay?”

“I think you did my job,” Dylan says slowly, hand still hovering over his holster, and he can’t keep the frown off his face. “What the hell did you do?”

Merritt laughs humourlessly, walking back to stand next to Dylan again — entire ordeal seemingly forgotten already. “I’m the Horseman of Pestilence, Dylan. My influence is contagion, transmission. Diseases aren’t the only things that spread — fear, too, is easily encouraged in the minds of the feeble.”

It’s the middle of the day, skies clear, but in the shadows of the tall buildings they’re sequestered away between, darkening the lines in Merritt’s face and giving his eyes a cold glint — Dylan’s reminded, starkly, that for all that the Horsemen have become accustomed to him, seem to have settled into their new roles as performers with enthusiasm and annoyance and an energy not unlike that of a particularly dedicated seagull stealing a fry from a small child at the beach, they are still, at the end of the day, not human.

Merritt shrugs, the strange, eerie atmosphere disappearing from the air, and Dylan takes a step back, looks back out to the street where the last of the three boys just turns the corner and disappears down the block. Fear spreads just like disease. It’s an oddly unsettling realisation, even if it does make sense — Merritt’s influence isn’t just infection, or contagion, but it’s the virality of anything that can spread, and fear can be just like that.

Merritt huffs a laugh and bumps into Dylan’s shoulder amicably as he leaves the alley, too, and starts down the street again. “You’re gonna be late. Get to your car, Agent Rhodes.”

“Don’t call me that,” Dylan snaps back, more on instinct than anything else — if anyone overhears, they’ll risk drawing attention, and people might remember having seen FBI Agent Rhodes, bureaucratic fuck-up extraordinaire from live TV, with Merritt McKinney, smug magician-turned-bank robber together.

Merritt bows mockingly, gestures for Dylan to go first, and shakes his head. “As you wish, Agent Rhodes.”

There’s no one around them to overhear, and Dylan rolls his eyes at the principle of it before obligingly setting off at a solid pace, only belatedly realising his hand’s still lingering over his holster. He lets it fall back to his side, breathing out measuredly, and ignores the discomfort prickling on the back of his neck at the casual display of power — that hadn’t meant anything to Merritt at all, apparently. He sent three kids scrambling away in terror with barely two sentences, and though the Horsemen operate on a plane of existence just slightly different from the rest of the world, seem to be completely used and desensitised to the true extent of their powers — Dylan’s a little ashamed to admit that it’s easy to forget, sometimes, just how powerful they really are.

They’re beings of impossible power, capable of twisting any one person beyond belief with a mere look — and yet they’re also the ones arguing over whether the pillows on the couch should be yellow or red, and making him truly awful soup (though, Dylan’s glad to admit, they’ve upgraded to soup instead of slurry, at this point, so that’s a plus) and plastering a printed-out picture of Cowan over the darting board at the far wall after the fourth time in a row that Dylan came home grumbling about Cowan’s awful manners.

They’re… not friends, Dylan’s decided, but they’re something a little more than coworkers, and it’s not entirely unpleasant, even if it’s a little unusual. It helps, because he doesn’t need to be worried about them — not really. They can’t get hurt, or bleed, or get sick or die or anything else that he’d have to be worried about with anyone else. They may not be entirely responsible, but they’re self-sufficient because they don’t require anything to stay alive — they’re barely alive to begin with.

He has to quicken his stride a little when Merritt catches up to him, and they move down the street in silence, neither of them saying anything more. Dylan wonders, faintly, if Merritt can sense the sudden realisation, the caution brewing in him — but if he does, he doesn’t comment on it.

Merritt walks him to his car, same as usual, and waves sardonically all the way until Dylan pulls out of the parking lot and disappears down the street. It’s familiar, a routine they’ve settled into despite Dylan’s insistence that he’s not with them, that he may have set the plans up but that they’re a team, that he’s not supposed to be working together with them so much as standing to the side, guiding them from afar.

It doesn’t matter all that much in the end, Dylan supposes — the Horsemen have never listened to anyone in their non-lives, and, well… he’s not stupid enough to assume he’ll be the first to change that. Still — if he waves back at Merritt as he becomes smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror… that’s nobody’s business.

“Dylan?”

Dylan looks up blearily from his files — papers are scattered all over the desk, the final contracts and arrangements for the Las Vegas show highlighted and scrawled through with notes, little modifications that Dylan’s still reading through, and blueprints, schematics and floorplans haphazardly strewn across the surface.

He’s fairly certain he was in the middle of checking the guest list for the New Orleans show, double-checking that all the invited people were actually in attendance, but his laptop’s screen is black, long since having gone to sleep-mode, and his notes on it seem to have devolved from names and addresses to…. a recipe for zucchini bread.

He might have had a good reason for it, Dylan decides, even as he blinks down at an ingredient list that, for something that looks to be zucchini bread, contains a surprising amount of carrot — was it a carrot cake, maybe? Was he making a shopping list? — and looks back when his name is repeated, this time coming face to face with Jack hovering just behind him. “Dylan, are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dylan groans out, in a voice that sounds more like he’s auditioning for the role of zombie on a terrible teenager-targeted TV show, and he clears his throat, pulling himself back together enough to flash a smile. “Yeah, always. What do you need?”

Jack frowns down at him, eyes the mess on his desk skeptically and then leans in closer, eyes roving over Dylan’s list of names-possibly-turned-recipe-slash-shopping list, and then stands up a little straighter. “You’ve been sitting at this desk since four o’clock,” Jack says evenly, and when Dylan doesn’t react to that, points at the clock behind them. “It’s nearly one am.”

“Oh,” Dylan says, and then forgets to say anything else. There’s a dull headache forming, and there’s a blurry quality to the world that does nothing to improve his general mood. Briefly he wonders if this is Jack’s doing, the living room shadowy and gray, all colour leeched away — and then he realises it’s because the lights are all off, with the exception of the tiny desk lamp that Merritt had gotten for him after weeks of complaining about Dylan ruining his eyesight.

“You should eat something,” Jack says, nudging Dylan’s chair until it rolls slightly away from the desk, and he starts sorting through the papers on the desk. Dylan would correct him on where they need to go, which papers belong to which stacks — but that implies he does know, and he’s also sort of guessing which go where. “Danny says people should eat every three to four hours to keep up their blood sugar.”

“Danny doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Dylan grumbles, ignoring Jack’s disbelieving laugh, but lets himself be dragged to his feet when Jack tugs on his shoulder and shuffles dutifully over to the couch. “I’m too old to be bossed around like this, you know.”

Jack stares back at him over his shoulder, levels him with a flat look, and smirks. “I’m technically your elder.”

“Not looking like this, you aren’t,” Dylan grumbles, but relents — as lively and bright as Jack is, easily the most enthusiastic and animated of the four of them, there’s still traces of something more, something beyond humanity in him, as they are in all of them. Jack’s skin is still icy cold to the touch, and sometimes he gets lost in staring out the window and Dylan swears he forgets to breathe. It’s a little freaky, and despite the ten months of half-living with them, he still hasn’t gotten used to it.

“I texted the others to pick you up some food,” Jack announces, and then drops onto the couch, patting the spot next to him expectantly when Dylan hesitates. “C’mon, you promised you’d catch me up to the list.”

They’ve all caught references here and there, of course, throw-away lines and jokes people make in passing on the streets, but none of them have ever actually sat down and watched a movie, or read a book — not that they can remember, anyway. Not until last year, when they suddenly no longer got pulled across the globe to fulfill their apocalyptic duties and instead kept showing up to Dylan’s apartment — unannounced. It’s really not his fault, anyway, despite what Daniel decides to believe — he’s only summoned them the one time, and no more. It’s not his fault that for some reason, the universe has decided their presence is needed in Dylan’s apartment more than anywhere else in the world, and though they’ve definitely had to adjust to the idea that their duties were suddenly no longer theirs, the fate of the world resting in its own hands instead of theirs — they’ve settled in, over the past few months, and as such they’ve even developed hobbies.

Henley seems fascinated by computers, technology never something she’s gotten to spend time with before, and the time that she doesn’t spend practising her tricks is usually spent behind Dylan’s spare laptop. Daniel, similarly, is fascinated with the Internet — though not because he likes the technology itself, but because of Wikipedia. Dylan wouldn’t have thought a pre-apocalyptic being would end up being a huge nerd (not that he’d ever say this out loud, lest he finds himself in a tiny, very targeted apocalypse of his own), but life never does stop surprising.

Merritt’s started reading — it’d taken some time to find a genre he’d liked, because the first time Dylan sent him out to get books he’d taken the first ten off the shelves and complained the whole time about the storyline, but he’s had to go out and get bookshelves (and subsequently taught them how to hang up shelves). Jack, though, had been more fascinated by television and movies — Dylan’s told him of the biggest, most well-known franchises out there, and Jack’s slowly been making his way through them.

Dylan’s made a list of the top fifty most popular movies, and Jack’s pretty much through it already — there’s only a few more to go, and Jack always insists on getting Dylan to set the movie up for him. He’s tried to explain how the system works several times, but Jack insists that the remote control doesn’t work well with him, seemingly reacting to his powers — despite the fact that Dylan’s walked in on him watching something on the screen several times before.

It’s fine, honestly — it’s nice to have some background noise, and it feels a little bit like a privilege. The others join in occasionally, and sometimes Dylan will linger in the kitchen entrance, watching the four of them on the couch, bickering and squabbling over the characterisation and choices they’ve made — and they seem a lot more… real. Like they’re just people, having their first chance at actually being human.

He’s the first one in several hundred years to see the four of them together, and not just that — he gets to work with them, and introduce them to the concept of manners, and despite the fact that it’s a little terrifying sometimes when their powers play up and he’s instantly reminded of the sheer forces of nature that the four beings in his apartment are — they’re also good company.

They’re not good people. He doubts they even qualify as people, really, and they take neutral stances on most things — they don’t seem bothered by death the same way most people are, and take natural disasters in stride because “It was time for a flood, anyway,” but they’re not bad. They’re used to doing what’s necessary, regardless of moral implications, and it’s made them ruthlessly effective.

It also means that he has to keep pushing for absolutely no meet-and-greets, at the shows, because one single conversation with any journalist, any member of the public, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. No audience would cheer for someone waxing poetically about how death is inevitable and will come for them all, not when they’re there to be entertained and distracted from the horrors of daily life — and god forbid Daniel goes on another rant of how they are, technically above humans.

Coming from a supernatural being of doom and famine, sure — that checks out. The general populace doesn’t know that, though, and thus he’ll end up seeming as the most arrogant bastard known to mankind with a solid god complex — and it’d be a nightmare to clean that social image up again. Thus — no speaking privileges for any of them, outside of their places on the stage.

He’s already dreading the interviews with the FBI he knows will come up eventually — despite his faith in them when it comes to executing essentially any other aspect of this plan, he doesn’t trust them not to make fun of him in the interrogation rooms or accidentally call him by his first name, and he can’t risk it. He’s still gearing up for his bi-monthly lecture on how to tackle that when it comes up — but none of that matters tonight.

Dylan directs Jack to the next title on the list, and they’re only a quarter into the movie when the front door creaks open, Merritt calling out a muffled greeting from beyond the hallway, and Dylan yells back something unintelligible that he’s fairly certain will count as a greeting.

Merritt shuffles into the living room, a pizza box brandished out in front of him, and he displays it with a grin. “Food for the poor mortal,” he mocks, shoving the box closer to Dylan, and Dylan smiles in thanks.

“Awesome, thanks. What’s on this?”

Merritt frowns at him. “What do you mean, what’s on this? It’s just a pizza.”

Dylan opens the lid of the box and peers inside, barely holding back an exasperated sigh when he comes face to face with a pizza with no toppings. “Please repeat to me what you actually asked for when you got this. I’ve never seen a pizza this depressing before.”

“I just asked for a pizza,” Merritt says, tone offended, and he snatches the box away from Dylan again. “He asked what needed to be on it, and I just said a basic pizza, nothing more. How am I supposed to know what you want on it — I’m not a mind reader.”

Despite the affronted air with which he speaks, there’s something smug about it, too, and Dylan realises abruptly that Merritt’s taken Jack’s invitation to get Dylan some food as literal as possible — solely to piss Dylan off. “Great,” Dylan says flatly, and then holds out his hand again. “Thank you for the pizza, Merritt. I don’t even know if this qualifies as pizza, to be honest — is there even cheese on this?”

“Nope,” Merritt says proudly, and hands the box back. “Enjoy your pizza.”

Before Dylan can even take out a single slice, though, the front door opens again, clicking shut softly as a courtesy to the neighbours in the way that only Daniel remembers to do. “I’m back.”

“Hi, back,” Jack calls out, and waves cheekily as Daniel, too, trudges into the living room, a plastic bag in his hand.

“I got your stupid pizza,” Daniel grumbles, shoving the bag at Dylan — and Dylan watches in disbelief as a second pizza box appears, stacked on top of the one he’d already gotten from Merritt. “I don’t know why you can’t just go out and get your own, but whatever. Jack, move over.”

Daniel plops down onto the couch between Jack and Dylan, casting an irritated look at Dylan when Dylan doesn’t respond. Merritt’s still grinning down at him, and Dylan hesitantly cracks open the lid of this one, too. “Thanks… for the, uh… pizza?”

It… doesn’t look all that much like pizza, if he’s honest. The top of the box has sort of smushed down a lot of the ingredients, it seems like, but Dylan can’t even really figure out what pizza this must have been. There’s a little bit of everything, seemingly — salami, and bell pepper, and broccoli, and ham, and onion, and olives, and several types of cheese. It’s more like a pile of pizza toppings with a little bit of pizza dough at the bottom, than an actual pizza, and Dylan looks back at Daniel in disbelief. “What did you even order?”

“Oh, everything,” Daniel says dismissively, as though it’s the easiest thing in the world— “they asked me what you wanted on it, and I didn’t know — so I just figured I’d get a bit of everything, and you can just pick what you want and toss the rest.”

“Great,” Dylan repeats flatly, staring down at the two boxes on his lap. “I have a nothing-pizza, and an everything-pizza.”

It’s a little hysterical, honestly — sometimes he forgets, because they don’t actually have to remember things like eating and shopping and whatnot, that they don’t actually understand the world. As much as they’ve haunted it for years, they’ve never actually had to participate in it, and once in a while he’s reminded starkly — and it never stops feeling like a slap in the face.

“Are you gonna say thank you, or are you going to make a face at me and pretend you don’t hate it the same way you do when we make you soup?”

“I don’t hate your soup,” Dylan corrects Daniel instantly, even as Daniel shoots him a flat look, and then he corrects himself when he hears Merritt scoff from the side. “I only hate your soup a little bit. No, this is— This is a good thought, thank you. It’s— certainly something.”

“You’re welcome,” Merritt says graciously, even as Daniel huffs and crosses his arms at the same time, cutting him off with a “No, he’s not.”

Merritt leans onto the armrest of the couch, following the movie with a half-eye even as Dylan pokes the everything-pizza, debating whether he should sort out half the ingredients to donate to the nothing-pizza to have two actual pizzas, or if he should simply resign himself to eating only pizza toppings and give up on trying to reach any actual pizza for the rest of the night.

It’s a comfortable evening, despite the vague frustration-bubbling-into-amusement at the Horsemen’s complete and utter incapability to just… be normal about things, and just when he wonders where Henley is — there’s the tell-tale scrape of keys in the front door, and Henley’s footsteps draw closer to the living room not long after. “Hey, Dylan. It took a while — Jack said to pick you up some food—”

Dylan’s already laughing by the time she’s even rounded the corner properly, and it’s not long before Merritt, Jack and Daniel join in, even as Henley frowns irritatedly at them and holds up another pizza box. “— so I got you pizza.”

The third box is added to the stack — this time, a very normal, ordinary pepperoni pizza, and Dylan’s brief debate of which pizza to dissect first is solved by having the option to simply enjoy a pizza without having to either deconstruct or reconstruct it on his own, and he settles in as the movie keeps on playing, Henley and Daniel instantly bickering over the best pizza toppings while Merritt cuts in that you can’t pick the wrong topping if you have no topping, honestly and Jack laughs at them all, occasionally shushing the others when they get too loud during an important scene.

It’s disgustingly domestic, and more than a little bit exhausting, and as Dylan dumps the two ridiculous pizzas on the still-burnt coffee table and decides to finish the pepperoni one, he can’t help but admit to himself that as much as he’s looking forward to the actual show, and the aftermath of it, the revenge — this life, the one he has right now… it’s not half bad, either.