By and by we'll defy a little bit of gravity

[the_death_card]

While Jack knows it's good for him, doing a lot to stretch how far his magic will go before he's exhausted, playing with the door trick is also fun. He's been picking locks for so long now that it's almost boring, especially when his actual magic has progressed to the point that, increasingly frequently, doors will unlock themselves before he even knows they were locked to begin with.

Using the Eye's network is something different. It's a constantly moving lock that, if he hits a slightly different pin in a slightly different way, will open a door to somewhere completely different. He's already found a dozen different places across the United States and a half-dozen more outside of it that have all led to some fascinating afternoons. Every time he finds somewhere new, he thinks to ask Jacob or Max or Andrew for a list of connected places, but so far, he's forgotten to actually do it. Finding them randomly is more fun anyway.

Things have mostly calmed down around the suite, now. He knows most of them have returned to their normal sleeping habits, helped along by their brand new connection. That's still new and something he's getting used to, but like someone said, it feels like a natural next step after the year they spent living on top of each other and how close they've all become since then. It is still something they're all figuring out, though, which means that they're still taking it easy on rehearsals. Normally, that's not something he would mind, but today, it's lead to some restlessness that he knows no jog or trip downstairs to the gym will do anything to help.

When he catches himself rereading the same paragraph in his book for the third time in a row, he groans and levers himself into a sit, setting his book to the side and leaning down to grab his boots where he kicked them off earlier. There's an inquisitive ping at the back of his mind that he brushes off as he stands and grabs his jacket, heading out of his room and toward the stairs.

"I'm going out for a while," he calls to the suite at large on his way downstairs. "I've got my phone."

Merritt doesn't look up from behind his book but he does wave a hand at Jack in acknowledgement, and there's an accepting nudge from someone through the connection. Jack flips a wave back at Merritt as he slips out of the suite, closing the door behind him and heading for the elevator. He pauses once he gets there to run his thumb over his middle and index fingers, calling up a spark and touching it to the keyhole set between the standard call buttons. He can immediately feel the pins that make up the Eye's network, and he drifts over a few of them before settling on one. He nudges it into place with his magic and then pulls his hand away and hits the down button to call the elevator. It comes almost immediately, and Jack steps inside, hitting a button at random and leaning back against the wall to watch the numbers drop - and then stands straight again when it slows to a stop with the usual quiet ding.

For everywhere he's been so far, what he finds is entirely unexpected. If he didn't know better, if he hadn't already seen the Peninsula's lobby dozens of times, he would think something had gone wrong with the magic and he had just been taken downstairs. Ahead of him is another hotel lobby, and he stops just outside the elevator, trying to figure out where he is. Just ahead of him is a small desk bearing a stylized sun - and when he looks at it for more than a moment, the paint seems to shimmer, revealing an equally stylized eye set into the paint. The desk is attended by a dark-haired woman in a blue shirt with a name badge pinned to it, and she looks up at him after a moment, smiling immediately. "Good afternoon, Mister Wilder. Checking in?"

"Uh..." Jack begins intelligently, and her smile turns a little less polished and a little more truly amused as she stands up, smoothing her shirt out automatically.

"Or did you just happen by?"

"That one," Jack returns, a little relieved, and she laughs.

"You aren't the first," she assures him, "but welcome to the Sun Veil Resort. We're located on the Yucatan Peninsula with access to the amenities of Cancun with our own specific brand of privacy for our members and their guests." It's clearly a standard speech, but Jack gets well enough what she's saying - or, rather, very carefully not saying.

"You mean this is for the Eye."

"Of course," she returns before her smile fades into something more solicitous. "Would you like a tour? We do have open rooms at the moment, and I'm sure you and the other Horsemen would enjoy a visit."

Even if this isn't where Jack intended to end up, Jack doesn't even need to think about it before he nods. "Yeah, that'd be great." Saying they would all use a vacation and change of scenery after everything that's been going on is puttting it really mildly.

"Give me just a moment, then," she returns with another smile. She turns her attention back to her desk, hits a few keys on her ocmputer, sets a small bell on the desk, and then rounds it, gesturing for him to accompany her. "Right this way."

Comments

[the_highpriestess]

"Okay, so that was super weird," Henley starts from the top of the stairs and as she pads down them. If she was Daniel, it might not be hard to imagine her just standing there, waiting for him to return, to capitalize on the theatricality of it all. All things considered, even so, it's not really much of a stretch of the imagination, particularly when she doesn't continue until she's hit the bottom of the stairs. "That was like, I don't know, going just out of range of a radio station or something."

Her sense of the connection didn't really break, she could still feel Jack there, however faintly, like the faintest snatches of a song through the static, but -- yeah, it's still weird, even if they're all getting used to it from Dylan. He's back at work; their connection is constantly strained by the distance. This was more, less, she's not sure. She wonders where Jack ended up and that might be a prompt to answer that question without actually asking it outright. She can sense his -- excitement, she thinks, too, and now she's curious, if she wasn't before.

[the_death_card]

Jack looks up at her and breathes out a laugh. "Felt weird for me, too," he agrees. "Guess I know what it's like for Jacob now." He opens his water to take a drink. "You been waiting on me to get back?"

He wasn't surprised that she was here, thanks to the connection, but he's less sure if she's been waiting or if she felt him get back and came out then.

[the_highpriestess]

"Yeah," she agrees, making a brief face. She imagines Dylan isn't dealing with that several hour service outage well, even if he's been careful about keeping any displeasure to himself -- she knows she wouldn't be.

"But a little of both?" she admits, when she forces that thought away. She definitely felt him get back and came out, then, but she was also kind of waiting on him. She did mention being curious as to where he ran off to, didn't she? To the point where she's just going to ask outright, now. "Which, speaking of, where'd you go?"

[the_death_card]

Jack shrugs to the first part of that and then grins. "Uh. Cancun, believe it or not? You know I've just kinda been finding random places in the Eye's network, and I ended up at this hotel." He caps his water and then holds the bottle out to her so she can see the custom label with the same stylized sun from the clerk's podium. "And, uh...." He reaches into his pocket, coming up with a shell he picked up when they went down to the beach, to hold it out to her, too.

[the_highpriestess]

"Seriously?" she asks, reaching to take the shell from him. It's not that she doesn't believe him, mind, it's just -- well, like Dylan has said, she's still in awe of everything they can do, the magic, real or otherwise, not about to lose its charm now, if ever. Shaking her head, that in mind, she turns the shell over in her hand, then looks up at Jack, radiating dim amusement. "If there's a spa, you're gonna have to teach me how to get there."

What girl could say no to the idea of a spa on the beach?

[the_death_card]

"There's a spa, and like three restaurants, and four pools and it's kind of huge," he returns with a grin - that then turns sheepish. "And I might have made a reservation starting like, tomorrow, considering we're all just hanging out." He pauses a beat. "So, uh. We can go check it out, if you want. Or we can just try and convince Daniel and Merritt to go tomorrow." Another beat. "Or both."

[the_highpriestess]

She arches her eyebrows at the mention of a reservation, though she doesn't seem displeased, only surprised. It fades quickly enough at the idea of checking it out now, however, and she nods immediately, enthusiastically. "Oh, I've gotta see this. The boys can wait until tomorrow."

[the_death_card]

Jack snorts a little at Henley's dismissal of Merritt and Daniel but grins, definitely - and as always - on board with showing off. "Lemme change shoes real quick," he requests, already heading for the stairs, to jog up them two at a time. His boots were fine, but they were kind of a pain to slip off when their tour wandered onto the beach.

[the_highpriestess]

Henley half-follows him, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to glance up them and towards the door to her own room. "Should I change?"

At very least, she feels like she should grab some sandals -- and maybe some sunscreen, given the fact that, with her complexion, she can look at a picture of the sun and burn. Not that she's opposed to being outside, not like Danny can be, sometimes, the beach is very much her idea of a good time, but well. She knows her limits or to take precautions, whichever.

[the_death_card]

"Um..." Jack begins, looking her over. "There's a beach? And it was still kinda summer weather? So you might want something, yeah. And a hat or something?" Because the narration feels like they've probably had the sunburn discussion at some point during the year. "It was really nice there," he says again with a grin.

[the_highpriestess]

"In that case," she starts, following him up the stairs in earnest, now, "give me, like, five minutes?" Yeah, she's definitely putting on a sundress -- not to mention sunscreen.

[the_death_card]

"Take your time," he returns. "I'll change, too, if you are." He was just planning on changing his shoes and leaving his jacket here, but he'll go ahead and actually put on lighter clothing if she wants to change, though he's less worried about the sunscreen part of things.

[the_highpriestess]

"I'll meet you back down here in a five," she repeats, a confirmation, before ducking into her room.

Somewhere closer to ten, she reappears, padding down the stairs in a pale yellow sundress, the white floral print on it a tasteful ghost of color -- or absence thereof, whichever. She's found a wide-brimmed hat, as promised, matching in color and similar, fingerless gloves. The only thing that doesn't quite match are her shoes, flats, black, but she figures not breaking her neck in heels is more important than being fashionable, at this point.

"Okay, ready," she calls.

[the_death_card]

Jack gets back to the living room before her, though not by much. He's changed into khaki shorts and a t-shirt and exchanged his leather jacket for one of his lighter hoodies, his boots for tennis shoes. He looks up when she comes back downstairs - and then scoots forward off his perch on the back of the couch. "Let's go," he agrees, waiting for her to get the rest of the way downstairs before he heads for the door, holding it for her once he gets there.

[the_highpriestess]

She heads out, throwing a glance over her shoulder as she waits for him to catch up. When he does, when they're walking side by side towards the elevator at the far end of the hallway, she looks up and down, teasingly appraising, and then offers, "You know, I think this is the first time I've seen you out of jeans."

It's not, but.

[the_death_card]

Jack knows she's just teasing, but he makes a face at her anyway. "I don't sleep in jeans," he returns. "And you got me all fancy for the stage stuff. Other than that, though..."

He also doesn't go for runs in jeans and so on, but he's teasing back, here.

[the_highpriestess]

"Those don't count, so ... " Yep, this is definitely the first time she's seen him outside of jeans. Stop arguing with her, Jack Wilder, she wins. And she's just going to nudge him, that in mind, if he didn't already get the gist of things.

[the_death_card]

He just makes a face back at her, nudging her back before he adds, "In that case, this might be the first time I've seen you not in heels. It makes me feel taller." He holds a hand up to compare their heights.

Two can play this game, yup.

[the_highpriestess]

With no small amount of petulance in her expression, she pushes up on her toes and holds there, as if she was wearing heels. "Better?"

[the_death_card]

Jack looks down at her feet and then back up at her. "You're gonna get a foot cramp and regret that in like five seconds."

[the_highpriestess]

"I stand like this all day in heels," she shoots back. While, true, she has some support, like that, she still thinks she could manage, without, if she really wanted to be that petty.

Never mind the fact that, after a beat, she sinks back down onto her heels. It's more about not wanting to ruin her flats, not made for standing like that, than anything else.

[the_death_card]

Jack just looks amused as she drops back down. "Kinda glad Merritt's the tallest of us." He rubs his fingers together, calling up a spark before he reaches out to touch it to the elevator's call button. It takes him a moment to find the one for the hotel, longer than it usually takes him to find either the warehouse or the suite considering it's still new. "At least things are kinda even."

He's usually the shortest in any group. It's nice that they're all more or less matched.

[the_highpriestess]

"You're still the shortest of you boys," Henley tells him, teasing, as if she sensed his not-quite upset about usually being the shortest. Never mind the fact that Danny's about the same height, if not the same height. Never mind the fact that she's the shortest, period, of all five of them. She still has to bust his balls.

It'll give them something to do until they 'land' and the doors open.

[the_death_card]

"I'd threaten to go find a goth shop and get some platform boots, but we all know I'd bust my ass in them," he returns, levering himself up out of his corner as the elevator slows. "You can keep the heels."

[the_highpriestess]

"You sure?" Henley asks, mock-innocent, as she, too, shifts, preparing for the doors to open and Jack to lead them into Vacationland. "You might surprise yourself."

Heels are -- no, actually they are that much of a pain in the ass. Never mind.