Title: Not Even Eternity Can Hold Houdini!
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: R
Pairing: Mac/Danny
Summary: Ladies and gentlemen, nothing up my sleeve. Set approximately one year in the future; spoilers for "Sleight Out of Hand".
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Notes: For fanfic100 (Prompt 051: Water).

***

"You want to know what magic really is?" Mac asks, and for the first time all night he looks into Danny's eyes.

"I know what magic really is," Danny says. He takes another drink of his beer.

"Really? What?"

Danny wonders for a moment just how drunk Mac really is. He'd already been working on a scotch and soda when Danny found him here an hour ago, but he'd said it was his first drink of the night, and since then he's only had beer. But his eyes are glassy and there's something a little too belligerent in his tone, and it's unmotivated by anything they've been talking about.

But that's Mac these days: more unreadable than ever. That they're having a drink together at all is pure chance; Danny had only decided at the last minute to grab a beer after he'd finished staggering through a double shift, and he hadn't expected to find Mac here. Then again, he thinks that Mac probably worked something like a triple shift, since they were both racing the clock to close out the same case, and if that's the situation, God knows the man is entitled to a drink or two. Danny wouldn't have felt comfortable actually asking Mac to grab a beer, or anything else, but they were both here and Mac asked him to sit down, so Danny went for it. He's still not sure if this was a good idea or not, but he's made his choice, so here he is. It's been all right so far, and at least they had the case to talk about.

Danny had been pretty fascinated by the whole thing anyway, and while they were working it, he'd thought Mac had been, too. Not that the murder itself had been anything spectacular -- GSW to the head and chest, various pissed off lovers and ex-lovers; take your pick who's got means and motive -- but the backdrop had been a gathering of the Society of American Magicians, and Danny had kept wishing he had more time to examine some of the paraphernalia that was lying all over the place.

"Don't know what it is about us and spring and magicians," he'd said to Mac earlier.

"What do you mean?" Mac asked.

"C'mon, don't tell me you don't remember," Danny said. "The Luke Blade case? That was just about a year ago, if I got my dates right."

"Oh. That." Mac stared down into his beer. "Magic," he said after a pause, and Danny had frowned at him and asked him what the hell he meant, and that was when he'd asked his question.

"It's illusion. Misdirection. You know, the hand is quicker than the eye and all that," Danny says. Mac doesn't answer right away, just keeps on looking at him, and Danny fights the urge to fidget uncomfortably or look away, as if he's a suspect in the box, and Mac is watching him for any signs of guilt or nerves.

He might have known that this evening would end up being a bad idea, Danny thinks. Mac is unreadable to him, and he doesn't know if that bothers Mac, but it sure as hell bothers him. Of course, he's also not the only one in that boat: it's cold comfort at best, but these days he'll take what he can get.

It's been more than six months since Mac and Peyton broke up -- since Peyton finally figured out he wasn't good for her health, if department rumor can be believed -- and Mac, at least in Danny's eyes, doesn't seem any different than he was before the two of them imploded. He walks around in a fog, yeah, like he's the walking dead or something, but he did that before the split, too. He just, Danny thinks, did a better job of covering it up for awhile there. Danny hasn't asked, though, not about the break-up and not if Mac's doing all right. He can't help remembering, even now, how he had been the last one to find out about them in the first place, and how Mac had seemed to think it was no big deal he'd never let Danny know after everyone else had long since been clued in on the status quo.

Peyton's vanished back into the halls of academia now, anyway; no one seems to know if she made that decision because of Mac, or if the two things are just coincidence. Danny ran into her on the Bowery one day a month or so ago. They'd gone for coffee together, but she wasn't talking about Mac, and Danny wasn't about to ask her, either. She'd mentioned him only once, and for a moment her eyes had been alight with a mix of hurt and anger, but then she seemed to steel herself, and had changed the subject.

They e-mail every week or so now; Peyton tells him terrible jokes about zombies and dead babies and grouses about the general idiocy of her students, and Danny tells her about the more unusual corpses he's encountered recently. He's always liked Peyton, and he likes her even more now, because he understands her better. At least, he understands some of what she's going through, and can empathize, because God knows he knows all about what it's like to be left out in the cold.

"It's misdirection, right?" he says again now, when Mac doesn't answer him right away.

"That's true," Mac says at last, "but that's not all of it. There's an aspect no one ever considers." He pauses again, and Danny realizes that Mac is waiting for him to ask before he goes on. He really is drunk.

"Okay, I'll bite," Danny says, after he figures the pause has gone on long enough. "What's this other aspect?"

Mac sets his glass down on the table and leans forward. His eyes are intent now, focused, the way they are whenever he's got some bit of information he's eager to share, or the way -- Danny remembers, thinks he remembers -- the way he was during the Blade case.

"What's the cost to the magician?" Mac asks, and Danny frowns at him. He's not sure what answer he was expecting, but that's definitely not it.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"The audience only sees the trick," Mac says. "They see the person who vanishes and reappears, or the rabbit out of the hat."

"You mean they don't see the mechanics of the trick," Danny says. "Right, that brings us back to the whole misdirection angle."

"No," Mac says. "Not mechanics. Cost."

"Cost, like -- "

"They don't see Houdini breaking his own thumb to get out of a pair of handcuffs."

"Jesus, Mac," Danny says, and he can't help an involuntary wince. "How the fuck do you -- "

"See?" Mac says, and he nods at Danny like he's managed to prove his point.

"But, wait," Danny says. "I've read about some of this shit, too. When Houdini did his escape act, he used to get out of his binds in like five minutes flat, then hang out backstage smoking for another hour or so. That was why they'd cover the water tank or whatever, to hide it from the audience. He wanted to build suspense, so he exaggerated the danger."

"Sure," Mac says. "That's all true. But how did he get out of the handcuffs in the first place? His lockpicking tools didn't always work."

"Jesus," Danny says again. He's heard that it's possible to get out of some models of handcuffs just like that, but he's never really imagined anyone doing it in real life. Certainly not for the sake of a trick.

Then again, maybe if Houdini had to resort to that, it wouldn't have been for the trick: it would have been to survive. Danny tries to imagine it. He has no idea, in detail, about how Houdini worked, but he pictures him upside-down in a tank of water, cuffed and chained and closed off from any view of the outside world. Confident, focused. Then realizing that his tools weren't going to work on these cuffs, and that the cuffs stood between him and freedom. Between him and air. Under those circumstances, Danny thinks, he probably wouldn't mind a broken thumb, either. Still, the willpower that would take...

You'd have to really want to escape. You'd have to be desperate.

"I never thought of that," Danny says.

"No one does," Mac says. "That's my point."

"So you're saying -- " Danny pauses to take a sip of beer, and to order his thoughts. "You're saying that's the real heart of magic. A guy breaking his own thumb in order to get out."

"Sometimes that's the cost," Mac says. "Even on nights when he didn't have to do that, imagine what it must be like to voluntarily drown yourself. To -- to go that far." Mac's eyes are far away, and Danny feels his mouth and throat fill with saltwater. Power of suggestion, he tells himself, and takes another mouthful of beer, swallowing hard.

"Okay," he says, after thinking it over. "But still, not always. That makes sense for what you said, like drowning or being an escapist or whatever, but what about other tricks? Like the vanishing act. That's real misdirection; that's look over here and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. There ain't no psychic cost to that."

"Oh, making someone vanish is easy enough," Mac says. "But it still comes with a price, if you're good at it." He's still staring at something in the distance. "Making a person reappear, though, that's the real trick."

"I guess." Danny realizes he's bouncing one leg up and down, and wills himself to stop it. "Again, though, your theory doesn't apply all the time. Like, you remember the Blade case?"

"Of course I do," Mac says. "We were just talking about it earlier."

"Okay, so remember how you turned a piece of Kleenex into a rose?"

A smile ghosts the corners of Mac's mouth, and for a moment he looks almost happy. "You remember that?" he says.

"Sure I do," Danny says. Mostly. He'd been lightheaded by then from lack of sleep, and the events of that entire week now seem like a fever dream, or like something that happened to someone else. But certain events stand out in sharp relief. Mac producing a rose from his closed fist is one of them.

Mac shakes his head. "That wasn't -- "

"C'mon, you had fun abracadabara-ing that rose."

"It was amusing."

"And you definitely had fun making me set you on fire." Danny tips his glass toward Mac in a little toast. "Don't even try to tell me otherwise."

That almost-smile flickers on Mac's face again for a moment, and Danny feels his own smile slip a little. He used to think that moments like this were a glimpse of who Mac might have been if fate had worked out a little differently, but after awhile he'd given up on that notion. If fate really had gone in a different direction, then Mac wouldn't be the same man. That's all there is to it, and in spite of everything, changing things like that might be a greater sin. He might not have -- Danny might not --

Danny stops himself. It's a bad mental path to be going down: nothing but a road of pins, and no guarantee he'll find his way back in one piece.

"I recall," Mac says, shadow of a smile still lifting the corners of his eyes.

"You can't tell me there was hidden cost to that." Not for Mac, anyway, and Danny shouldn't remember so well. He shouldn't. But there are a lot of things about Mac that Danny should never let himself remember, and he always does anyway.

"No," Mac says, "but that's a minor act of illusion. If you're really serious about misdirecting people, that's where you pay the price. You do it well enough, your audience doesn't know where to look. Do it even better than that..."

His voice trails off, and he stares at the far wall again. Danny watches him, not saying anything, and when his gaze returns to the here and now, there's faint regret in it that Danny doesn't know what to do with. He can deal with Mac in a lot of moods, but not this one. Regret is only one step away from second thoughts, and those are dangerous.

"...Do it even better than that, and you don't know where to look, either," Mac says. He looks right at Danny, right into his eyes.

Danny turns his glass, watching it leave rings on the wood. "And then sometimes you end up with broken thumbs," he says.

"Precisely," Mac says.

They're both quiet then; Danny just keeps spinning his glass between his hands and wondering what the hell he's supposed to say now. After a few minutes, Mac clears his throat, and then looks down at his watch when Danny glances over at him. "It's late," he says. "I should get going."

"Yeah, you and me both." Danny drains the last of the beer from his glass and then stands. "'Least I don't have punch in again 'till day after tomorrow."

"You deserve the rest," Mac says.

"Yeah." Danny nods.

"I'll walk you out."

"Sure."

It's a clear night when they step out into the alley behind Sullivan's, and Danny breathes in deep, listening to the sounds of the city. The door shuts after them, and he turns to tell Mac to have a good night, and that he'll see him next shift. But then he stops. Mac is looking down -- no, Danny realizes, he's looking at something in his hands. "Whatcha got there, Mac?" he asks, since Mac isn't moving.

"You know, Danny," Mac says, not looking up, "it's funny you asked me about that rose trick."

"Yeah, why's that?"

Mac looks up and opens his hands. There's a twist of Kleenex sitting on his palm.

"No way," Danny says. "No fucking way. You always carry one of those things around?"

"No," Mac says. "I picked it up at one of the magic shops we visited the other day."

"So, what," Danny says, "you planning on taking your act on the road?"

Mac shakes his head. "I just wanted to see if I could still do it."

Danny folds his arms. "Let's see, then," he says. What the hell? "And I want to see if I can figure out how it's done."

Mac smiles a little. "You won't figure it out."

"Hey, I haven't gotten this far solely on the basis of my charm and good looks." He thinks that Mac has something else in his hand -- the trick mechanism -- between his fingers, but he can't tell for sure. "Light 'em up. And don't think you're gonna fool me into looking anywhere but your two hands."

As Mac goes through the trick, Danny does keep his gaze on his hands, save for one moment at the very beginning when he can't help a quick glance at Mac's face. The shadows are long, though, and the glance is too brief for Danny to get any good idea about what Mac might be thinking. So he only watches the movements of his fingers after that, and doesn't look at Mac's face again until he raises his hands to his mouth.

Danny watches as Mac blows a puff of air into his fist and then spreads his fingers; there's a rose in his hand when he finishes, and Danny still has no idea of exactly how he did it.

"There," Mac says, and Danny looks into his eyes. The old gleam is present there, and the smile that Danny remembers so well is in full force now. He's happy, at least for this exact moment, and Danny thinks again about things that might have been.

"Fucking hell," he says. "I never stopped watching your hands the whole time, I'd swear to it."

"And you were still misdirected."

"Yeah, looks like it."

Mac twirls the rose, and Danny's gaze drifts from his eyes to his mouth. The air between them suddenly changes, becomes heavier and more charged. Mac must feel it, too, because his eyes widen a little. "Danny..." he says.

Danny thinks he should back up, back off, but instead he doesn't move.

The first brush of Mac's lips against his is tentative and nearly chaste. They're not touching each other at all as Danny presses his mouth to Mac's and they kiss for the first time in forever, slow and so light it's already driving him crazy. He parts his lips a little and flicks his tongue against Mac's.

Mac makes a sound in the back of his throat and cups Danny's face in one hand, kissing him harder. Danny hauls Mac in close and forgets all about slow; he lets the kiss deepen, lets himself get caught up in it. Mac's lips are firm, but the inside of his mouth is wet and yielding, his tongue hot and quick. Danny's hands slide down to Mac's ass and he digs his fingers in, and he can't help whimpering a little himself as their hard-ons rub together.

They're still kissing as Mac turns and backs him into the wall and as he begins to fumble with Danny's belt, and by the time Mac unzips his pants and takes his cock out, Danny is already too far gone to care about anything but this. About Mac's tongue buried in his mouth, and his fingers stroking up and down his shaft. About the way he rubs his thumb over the tip until Danny groans again.

Mac squeezes him tight and Danny comes. It's sharp and sudden and he could collapse right then and there, but when he finishes thrusting, he catches his breath and then turns them around, edging Mac to the wall as he reaches for his buckle. He starts to jerk him off roughly, rubbing him hard and fast in a way that will bring Mac to the brink in no time. He still knows Mac's body well enough, after all this time, to know that, and to know when he's getting close. When Mac's breathing begins to change and the little sounds he's making start to get closer together and more out of control, Danny breaks their kiss and pulls back. He wants to watch him come.

Mac's hands are clenched into tight fists, and his head drops back against the wall. His eyes are closed, mouth open, and he bites his lip, eyelids fluttering, as Danny strokes him harder. His cock is red in Danny's fist, slick, and Danny watches the quick rise and fall of his hips as he pushes himself into it. He arches when he comes, mouth working in dumb helplessness and neck bared to the night sky, and Danny tries to memorize this moment when Mac is entirely defenseless, entirely incapable of presenting any face to him but his real one.

He sags back against the wall when it's over, and Danny moves in close, pressing a kiss to the hollow of his throat. Mac's hand tangles in his hair for a moment, and Danny is within a breath of leaning in for another kiss when he suddenly realizes what's just happened between them. Jesus, he thinks, Jesus Christ, and steps away from Mac. Mac's eyes fly open, going wide the way they did before, and he tucks himself back into his pants in one quick motion, but doesn't move otherwise. He and Danny stand there and stare at each other. He's still breathing in shallow gasps, and Danny's heart is racing in his chest. It's happened again, the two of them, and here they are right back at the start, someplace Danny thought he'd never find himself again. But, then, he thinks that every time.

Misdirection. The word falls into Danny's mind, tolling loud and clear like some insane bell, and he can't help recalling their earlier conversation. But which part, he wonders. Which part is the misdirection -- the kiss, and what happened after, or everything that happened before? He tries to puzzle out, as he stands there, which part of Mac's behavior is the part that's meant to distract him from the truth, and he's dizzy with the effort within moments; he can see too many possibilities, too many choices, and all any of them do is lead him down one blind alley after another.

They're still staring at each other, and even now neither of them has said a word or made a move. Houdini would break his thumb to get out of handcuffs if he had to -- and Danny wonders if that's even true, or if it's just some myth created out of nothing. Out of wishful thinking. But a person could be desperate enough to do that, he could, and Danny imagines a straitjacketed man taking one last, long deep breath and holding it just before the water closes over his head.

"Danny," Mac says then, and there might be a question in his voice, or there might not be. He reaches out toward Danny, and his fists fall open as he does. A crumpled rose drops to the pavement.

Danny stares at Mac's empty hands and doesn't move, and wonders where he's supposed to look now.

***