Work Text:
Jarreau gets the news late in the afternoon. His comm augment's internal alarm blares loud enough to rattle the bones of his jaw where it's wired in and wake him from a dead sleep.
This better be good, he thinks blearily, slapping half-heartedly at the couch cushion next to his head as if his own augmentations are an alarm clock he can turn off. He was awake thirty-six hours straight before this, caught in a desperate race to hunt down a pair of arms smugglers before they could cross the Canadian border, and when that shitshow of a mission finally ended he left instructions that were as strict as they were straightforward about what circumstances he was allowed to be woken up for. If he recalls right, they were Don't anybody breathe a word in my direction unless TF29 is literally burning down around us. Apparently someone wasn't listening.
Jarreau flicks the screen on, glancing unhappily at the message superimposed across his field of vision—and then, the moment he's read it, throws himself out of bed.
"Shit," he snaps as he gathers pants and shirt and boots, pulls them on with the kind of urgency only panic can provide, "Shit, shit—"
It's more chant than actual words, but it keeps him moving.
Mission gone pear-shaped in London, the message says. Four TF29 agents dead, reporters flocking to the scene of the crime in droves, the world about to be at TF29's door and asking What the hell happened here? Things about to get a whole lot worse for Augs, from the sound of it.
And, added like an afterthought, dashed off in one stark cold line at the bottom of the message, below the names of the dead: TF29 European Division Director James Miller injured in the line of duty. Currently in critical condition, status updates will come when available.
It shouldn't matter. Doesn't matter. Not compared to the rest of it, at least: dead agents, dead civilians, a political clusterfuck in the making. James Miller is one man, and moreover he's the one man who knew what he was getting into better than anyone else. They're the leaders, the both of them. The ones whose job it is to shoulder the risk. He's never happy to lose one of his counterparts, but sometimes the mission isn't kind.
None of that changes just because he had something—quiet, meaningless, entirely physical—going on with Miller.
(It started at a pan-agency meeting not too long after Miller had been transferred into Prague. Jarreau wanted to know who exactly his new counterpart was—was suspicious, he has to admit, of an unaugmented man running a team out of one of the cities most torn apart by its government's war on augmentation—and the man he met there had been nothing like he expected. Quick-witted and sharp, so formal he seemed stiff but willing to call bullshit whenever he heard it, he'd been nowhere close to the spineless pencil-pusher Jarreau had been worried the European Division would end up saddled with.
It only made sense to offer him a drink after. It made just as much sense to invite him back to his hotel room. And every time they met after that—at conferences or meetings or after the rare missions that required them both, sneaking into hotel rooms or rutting furtively against each other in whatever back room they could find—had been nothing more than the natural outcome. Simple as that.)
Miller's a good man. Dutiful, trustworthy, takes good care of his agents. Even Jensen's been warming up to him, from the sound of his emails, and that's no small bit of respect coming from someone with as much of a loose cannon streak as he has.
(He's handsome, too. Good with his mouth. Jarreau'd never guessed he'd be one for silver hair before Miller.)
So it's normal that he's upset, normal that he wants to fly over to London right fucking now and punch Viktor Marchenko in his smug square face. TF29's the next closest thing to family; any half-decent agent would feel the same way. What isn't normal is the tight knot of fear in his stomach, the way he isn't so much hoping everyone's going to be okay as he is hoping Miller's going to be okay. The way the same thought loops through his mind, over and over like an old CD caught on repeat: If I find whoever hurt him—
Stupid. Dangerous. And Jarreau's not about to start an international wild goose chase because his coworker-slash-fling is in the hospital—but he wants to. He really, really wants to. And that's a problem all on its own.
He's over-attached. Thinking reckless. Thinking stupid, really; Vande taught him an important lesson in not letting his guard down, and now he's throwing every last hard-earned bit of wisdom he has out for a man who likes to drink with him and cuts a sharp figure in a three-piece suit. More problems to add to the list; he'll title it Regulations Broken By My Relationship With James Miller, Manderley can stick it to his fridge.
None of those problems are ones he particularly wants to solve, though, and that's the biggest problem of them all.
Jarreau throws his shirt on, then his jacket, wiping at the blood and grease smeared across both. He thought he'd have time to clean them after he slept, but apparently he's heading to London in these. Not the worst he's ever showed up to a mission in.
The rest of the team's waking up when he throws the door open: bags getting packed, guns getting stashed, stragglers getting kicked or shouted awake. Jarreau can't help but smile; he's got a good team.
"All right, everyone," he snaps, swift and sharp. No need to bellow when everyone knows his voice—the last few sleeping agents snap awake at his words. "You've read the message. You know where we're headed. Vertibirds are coming in three hours, and we're all going to be onboard when they take off. The situation in London's evolving—there could be anything waiting for us on the other side of the ocean." Jarreau looks at each of his people in turn. "Be ready."
A ragged chorus of "Yes sir!" echoes through the safehouse.
Jarreau doesn't know if his confidence is well-placed or not. Hell, he doesn't know if he feels confident at all. But that's part of being the team lead too—forcing that self-assuredness until he really believes it, until he can get his people to believe in it too. He knows things'll work out, not because he has any evidence they will but because he's going going to force them to work.
Miller's stubborn. Not exactly easy to kill. Built with those same scrappy, vicious, dog-with-a-bone instincts that Jarreau himself has—the ones that let Jarreau know when he's got a good thing in his grasp and tell him to hold on to it with every bit of strength he has.
And Miller better keep himself alive, Jarreau thinks, because he's got a few things he wants to say to him once he touches down in London.