self_inflictedexhile | nysm / tvd } { if you will, please move in closer

nysm / tvd } { if you will, please move in closer

In another lifetime, Dylan Rhodes never existed. In another lifetime, he didn't need to, because Lionel Shrike never drown in the Hudson River, Dylan Rhodes stayed Jacob Shrike, and his life went in a very different direction.

At age fifteen, his father started teaching him the tricks of the trade: sleight of hand, how to build a rig, how to do a little bit of actual magic, despite the fact that probably wasn't something he should be sharing, just yet. Shortly after that, Jacob met a young Alma Dray, tagging along with her grandfather, a friend of his father's, stopping by to check up on him. They grew up together, life continued on, and Jacob eventually went to college for Theatre Design and Stagecraft. At twenty-two, just after graduation, Jacob was chosen to join the Eye, his test to help the LVPD clear the name of another magician, despite all the evidence in the world making him seem guilty as sin. There, Jacob met Michael Fuller, his partner a lifetime away, and the two became friends as they managed, despite all odds, to pull off what had been asked of Jacob by the Eye. He continued on into a career as a stage magician in the Eye, eventually married Alma, and continued to occasionally work with Fuller as a consultant, when time allowed.

Over the course of the next few decades, Jacob and Alma tried to have children and failed, and eventually adopted one Jack Wilder, age 10. Using Eye resources, he helped Merritt McKinney get a good lawyer and clear his name after his brother screwed him over. He followed the rising stars that were J. Daniel Atlas and Henley Reeves, and when they decided to call it quits, pulled the both of them back together, forcing Daniel to give Henley a more active role in the show. And eventually, yes, he called the four of them together, not for revenge but something similar, to get them into the Eye. And somewhere along the way, Jacob and Alma tried for children again, and this time managed, giving Jack a brother, Lio, Lionel, named after his grandfather.

Basically, this is the best possible timeline.

And now, it's just after dinner, Jacob off to his nightly rehearsal at 5Pointz, that his space, now, like his father before him. He takes a detour tonight, though, to grab a cup of coffee, beforehand, a little bit of magic pulled around him, to make himself not completely invisible, but at least a little less noticeable. Normally, he doesn't mind showing off or signing autographs, when a fan approaches, and fans do often approach, his notoriety somewhere up there with Penn and Teller, Seigfried and Roy, but -- not tonight. He's not feeling it tonight, a little tired for whatever reason, hence the coffee, so magic it is. And now he's sitting at a table, idly people-watching as he leans into his cup. Have at him, if you can still see him (or, maybe, in certain party's cases, sense him) despite his best efforts.

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"You're fine," Jacob promises, curling back around his coffee cup once the handshake ends. He flashes her a brief smile, meant to be both reassuring and acknowledging (it really is fine, it's nice to meet her, too), and when it fades, glances over her shoulder, to a table, nearby. They're whispering amongst themselves, glancing in their direction, and Jacob explains, "Mostly, I was just trying to avoid that."

He's guessing someone noticed who was sitting over here, without the magic to shield him.

She glances over to the people whispering and winces, before turning to face him again. Her expression does turn a little more curious though, because while she can read the intent of the looks, she's not really catching the story behind them.

"If I were back at school, I'd say someone had a crush on you, but I'm guessing it's a little more complicated than that."

"You might not be too far off the mark, actually," Jacob tells her, glancing back at the group behind them, briefly. That would be incredibly creepy, considering he's probably old enough to be most, if not all, of their fathers, not to mention the fact that he's married, but it wouldn't be surprising, either. People get weird around celebrities. Doubly so here in New York, where he's something of a local legend, if only because he was born and raised here. It'd be like Springsteen hanging out in a coffee shop in Jersey.

"I'm kind of ... " he starts, stops. How do you explain that you're fairly famous, to someone who doesn't recognize your name, without sounding like an egotistical asshole? He sounds almost a little guilty, somehow, for not being able to come up with something better, as he continues, "I've got a show running over at the Neil Simon."

"Oh!"

She's assuming Broadway, because this is New York, and she's going to feel real dumb when she learns that he's a magician, along with being a witch, but at the same time, she's just very curious about this life that's made him famous.

"You're an actor?"

She's right about him being on Broadway, but still he shakes his head. Rather than clarify immediately, however, he instead shifts, holding a hand flat over the table with the air of someone about to put on a performance. And put on a performance he does, producing a deck of cards with a flick of his fingers, though no real magic is involved.

Fanning them out, he holds them out to her. Pick a card, any card. "I'm a stage magician."

For some reason, it's the cards itself that finally makes it all click. It's as though all the signals were there and she was so thrown by the fact that she stole his magic that she couldn't make it work. But the flourish with the cards triggers an avalanche of things she should have known and her hand flies to her mouth.

"Oh my God, my best friend is going to kill me."

Somewhere, a young vampire boy named MG is yelling at her because she didn't choose to be appropriately nerdy and she's going to pay for it later.

"You're that Jacob Shrike."

"I'm that Jacob Shrike," he confirms with a nod. A pause follows, and then he waves the cards, still fanned out in front of him, at her. No, but seriously, pick a card. He wasn't necessarily looking to do an impromptu performance here, before his rehearsal, but -- eh, why not? Maybe it'll make her feel better about this whole thing.

Oh! He is seriously doing the trick. Gotcha. She reaches forward, fingers wiggling as she considers which of the cards she wants to choose, before selecting it and pulling it to her chest. Her eyes dart down to look - three of hearts - and then glances back up at him.

"This is the part where I commit it to memory super hard, right?"

"This is the part where you commit it to memory, yeah," Dylan agrees, amused. He allows her a moment with it, going through a series of cuts and flourishes that seem to be more idle than anything else, a trick of muscle memory, and then he fans them back out in front of her. "When you got it, put it back in the deck for me? Anywhere you want."

She glances down again to double check and make sure she has the card in mind, before eyeing the deck, looking for any tricks or tells, but in the end sets the three of hearts back directly in the middle of the deck, prepared to settle in and watch his hands.

"Done."

"Alright," he answers, raking his tongue over his teeth as he squares the deck, her card disappearing into it. He takes a moment following, to give it a good shuffle, then produces what appears to be the box for the deck, pushing the cards inside. Once it's closed, he presses it between his hands, holding it up in front of him in a vaguely awkward gesture of prayer, and then starts rubbing it between his hands at increasing speed. Somewhere along the way, like a stick rubbed against some kindling in an attempt to start a fire, smoke begins to roil from the box, and alarmed, Dylan drops it onto the table.

"Uh," he drawls, looking back and forth between her and the still smoking box, his expression caught somewhere between nervousness and embarrassment, "it's not really supposed to do that ... " Never mind the fact that he seems to be in no hurry to put the box out, even as the smoke its putting off becomes more real. It's all part of the trick.

[ooc: So sorry for taking forever on this. I literally haven't have five minutes to myself for about a month, now.]

Her eyebrows raise as she sees the cards start to smoke, and she does lean back to get out of the way, but she's very much aware that this is the trick - he didn't just set the cards on fire out of nowhere. So she's amused, but she plays up some shock for the crowd, not wanting them to think she wasn't buying in.

Besides ... it's still a pretty cool trick.

"Oh my God," she says dramatically. "Shouldn't you ... I don't know ... do something?"

Dylan can tell she doesn't really think the cards just set themselves on fire, or that there's any real danger here, but that's fine. Most people don't. The real trick is leaving them wondering what the trick is, how he did it; the real trick is the awe that usually comes, at the end. That in mind, his attentions dart away as he looks for something to deal with the small, smoldering mess on the table, and appropriately belatedly, distracted, he mutters, "Yeah, uh -- shit."

In the end, he ends up reaching for his coffee, and pours a little bit of over it, hoping for the best. While it does seem to ultimately kill the smoke, however, it goes out with a flash of flame, bright but without heat, there and then gone. All that remains in the end is a small pile of ash, oddly dry despite the addition of coffee, and frowning, Dylan reaches to shoo it off the side of the table.

"Sorry, that was kinda ... " he starts, stops, looking down at the table. He waits for her to follow him down to it, and there in the wake of the ash, the three of hearts sits. He reaches for it, seemingly awed himself, and holds it up for her inspection, asking, "So, is this your card?"

Josie looks delighted.

She laughs when she recognizes the card as her own and nods, reaching out to take it from his fingers. As she holds it up to see if she can get a better look at how he did the trick, the smile doesn't fade, either.

"You're an impressive showman. I can see why my friend likes you." She passes the card back to him once she's finished her inspection. "If you're this good winging it, you're probably even more impressive in an actual show."

"I learned from the best," Dylan answers with a shrug and a smile, as he takes the card back. He's also learned to keep a few things on his person, like the flash paper he used in that trick, just in case someone approaches him in public. It's really not that big a deal. Still, he's gracious enough to offer, "But thanks."

A pause follows, as he looks beyond her, back to the crowd that's slowly been gathering. When he returns his attentions to her, there's an apology written on his face, and he asks, "You mind giving me a minute here, though?"

He'd like to continue this conversation, talk about actual magic, that kinda thing, but he should also not just ignore the fans. If she has the time to wait on him, he'll spend a few minutes with them, then they can go somewhere else, somewhere more private. Maybe head in the direction of 5Pointz, even if they don't get all the way there, and this time with the magic to keep people from noticing him intact.

"Not at all."

She has the benefit of being the invisible one in this particular situation, so she steps back and lets Dylan do his thing. She doesn't wander far, though, just far enough to give him some space. She might get a coffee from one of the carts so that she doesn't look awkward.

After a couple more tricks and a handful of autographs, Dylan finally breaks with the crowd and heads over to her. As he approaches and once he's sure he has her attention, he nods towards the door, then adjusts his heading to lead the way out. He pauses again, once they're out on the street, fingers working subtly at his side as he pulls a blanket of magic over them. Now, no one will pay them any mind.

"Try not to water the plants with this one, huh?" he teases, sure she can feel it.

She laughs, tipping her head back as the spell settles over her, and she nods. "I'll do my best." And she will not siphon the magic this time, since it is a thing she can choose to do, and she doesn't want to blow Dylan's cover again. That would just be rude.

"So how long have you been a big magic star?"

"Thanks," he shoots back.

A moment of pause follows, at the question, his good humor fading into something more thoughtful as he tries to do the math in his head. "Uh," he starts effectually, as time and technicalities prove more difficult to put together than he figured they would be. He shakes his head a little before he continues, "I don't know? Like fifteen, twenty years?"

Another pause, then, "I've been doing magic on stage since I was, like, twenty-five-ish, but I've been doing actual magic for way longer than that." Which he probably wasn't supposed to be, he wasn't even supposed to know that real magic was a thing, given that he wasn't in the Eye until his early twenties, but -- well, his father hadn't been able to resist cluing him in and teaching him a few tricks, and he'd been eager to learn. No one had said anything since he hadn't made a nuisance of himself with it, he figures.

"I figured that much." Josie herself has been doing magic since the womb, but she also knows that she and Lizzie are kind of a special case. "That's pretty cool, though. That you figured out a way to hide in plain sight like that."

She doesn't have the showmanship for something like that, but he clearly does. It's good that he has the opportunity to make use of it.

"Yeah, Dad didn't teach me that one until I was a little older," Dylan tells her on the heel of a snort. He's pretty sure that Lionel's logic behind that one was that, if he taught him when he was younger, he might use the ability to start trouble -- nothing too terrible, probably, as he never was a bad kid, but still. He was a kid. He would have done something stupid at least once.

"But yeah," he continues after a beat. "A lot of the stuff I do's kinda ... showy." Or not, as the case may be. Most of it works on stage, somehow. Either way, "I take it that's not the case for you?"

The whole watering the plants thing was pretty subtle, comparatively.

Edited 2020-05-20 00:43 (UTC)

"Depends on the spell. I was definitely a bit of a fire bug as a kid."

... Still is, if she's being completely honest, but let's not scare off her new friend quite yet with her penchant for setting things on fire to fight back. Sometimes a monster like a mummy requires a big ol' fireball to put it back where it belongs.

"But most of the stuff I tend to use now is about ... protection."

If Dylan needs to reach for something, magically, to defend himself, it's going to be fire for him, too, so he really can't say much about that. The fact that she needs to protect herself from what he assumes is more than just muggers is enough to raise his eyebrows, however. "You get into a lot of trouble?"

"Here and there."

Not as much as she did when she was a teenager, and the school was a monster magnet, but at the same time, she's still one of the last remaining members of the Gemini Coven, one of the cursed set of twins designed to consume each other.

She and Lizzie have found ways around that ritual for now, but that's not going to work for long.

"When you're one of the last remaining witches of the Gemini Coven, it kind of comes with the territory."

"You got a twin around here somewhere I need to look out for?" he shoots back, trying to make a joke out of it. He's =more worried about someone else showing up to try and water the flowers with his magic, and not about the fact that, from what he knows of the Gemini Coven -- well, the shit they do with twins in their tradition is horrifying. Totally. Yep.

He really doesn't blame her for being something of a firebug, in that case. He's glad the Eye's traditions are much softer, saner.

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it's all good, i've been pretty busy myself

no worries. and i'm ... just going to keep calling him dylan in the prose, even if he's jacob here.

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