magician's apprentice | what if i wanted to break (rp for the_death_card)

[onebehind]

For all that the fight lasts maybe forty seconds before Jack gets a hand on his radio, for all that he and Jack have done this dance a hundred times before, it's the hardest thing he's ever done. He can't hold back, after all, and he can't pretend to fall for any of his little tricks. If he does either, Jack will know, suspect, and as much as he'd love to tell him, he can't. This is a test of faith, he is Jack's test of faith, and so he has to keep playing along and make it look good. It helps, he thinks, that he won't use his magic with Fuller in the other room, and Jack knows it.

It doesn't help that, for as hard as this all is, it's also easy to forget that this isn't just a game for how often he and Jack have sparred, none of it real, and so, that in mind, when he does get the radio, he slips.

"You little shit," he breathes, and while the corners of his mouth don't twitch, he doesn't smile, nothing here worth smiling about, he still freezes. The world freezes on an inhale, and half of him hopes Jack gets it now, calls him out, because he's tired of all this, while the other half is busily swearing internally. Either way, he knows he's given something away.

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[the_death_card]

Jack had known going into this that he couldn't hold back, that this wouldn't be their easy back and forth like in all the times they had practiced before. He knows Dylan is actually out to stop him this time, and that he has to deal with both his dad and his uncle. He knows he can't hold back, can't count on either of them pulling punches.

It all goes like he plans, though. He's lucky enough to slip past Dylan, to get Fuller incapacitated without actually doing that much damage (he can't help the "sorry" he blurts out as he hits him in the head with his own belt) - and then he can keep his full attention on Dylan.

It's closer than he would like considering Dylan knows his moves, and he's lucky to get hold of the handcuffs, to get him secured to the chair - and then he has a hand on the radio, which is one of the most important parts of this: he needs it to make sure he can keep the rest of the FBI's teams off his back.

He's distracted enough with the radio that he almost misses Dylan's question - and then he stops, blinking at him. Dylan's been calling him a little shit for years, now, and it's always been affectionate, always a sign that he's doing something right. He knows, of course, that Dylan knows what's really going on, that he just has his own part of this to keep up so that the FBI doesn't catch on, but that feels entirely out of character for Agent Rhodes, which means it's a slip - which means there's something else going on that he hadn't really considered since after Dylan told him someone else in the Eye had commissioned the art for their cards.

"You..." he begins - and it comes out half in Dylan's voice considering he had already been concentrating, preparing to misdirect the other teams. He swallows and starts again. "Are you....?"