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They call him a snake. It’s not a codename or some affectionate Metal Gear reference; it’s a character flaw, an insult. Yet, Jackson Whittemore bears the name with pride, like a badge of honor, and greets it with a toothy grin, a wink. Clearly, snake is only a start to a much, much longer list, but when he’s not being a little shit, he’s not all bad. If anything, he gets the job done, and that’s enough for Derek. Hell, he could be an actual hissing, scaly Black Mamba, streaking though African grassland with his stupid smirk and stupid freckles, and he’d still be a better operative than McCall.
That’s why when Whittemore misses the first check-in twenty hours into the mission, Derek doesn’t worry too much. With McCall, he had to hold the bastard’s hand, having him call in every few hours. But, unlike him, Whittemore has proven that he can take care of himself, in fact functions better without someone breathing down his neck, so when 0500 rolls around and his phone remains silent, Derek just finishes his sandwich, his coffee, still reeling over how little paperwork he has to do as Whittemore’s handler.
Then, he misses the second check-in. The third. Fourth. There isn’t supposed to be a fifth check-in, but if there was, he misses that, too. Derek finds himself pacing the length of his office, the thought of his chair sickening him and the lack of dull lines of paperwork and breakfastlunchdinner leaving him irritable and weak.
Deaton leans against his desk, eyes him carefully. “We have to find him, Derek.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Derek practically snarls.
“Why aren’t you at your phone, then?” Deaton demands, “Why aren’t you rallying up the troops? He could be captured, dying, for all we know.”
Or he could be gone. Like McCall. He could have done something incredibly fucking dumb like—like falling in love with the target’s daughter, like abandoning all responsibilities, all allegiances, all secrets to run off with a girl who would only betray him in the end. He could have fallen in love with the girl that killed him in the end, the girl that shoved him out of the helicopter and watched him plummet thousands of feet into a bay. What if Whittemore is just as incredibly fucking dumb as McCall?
What if, after Derek scours the whole fucking Earth, he finds him dead, blue and bloated and decomposed? Like McCall.
Deaton approaches him, then, and it’s when a heavy hand squeezes his shoulder firmly that Derek realizes that his eyes are burning, chest tight with betrayal and loss and grief. He realizes Peter was always right about Derek. He gets too attached, too involved.
So, when Deaton whispers, firm but not unkind, “I think you should step down,” Derek, swallowing thickly, nods in defeat. Because he shouldn’t do this anymore. He can’t do it anymore.
In a breath, he’s taken off the mission and he staggers to his apartment, to his bed. In a week, he steps into an elevator, holding his resignation letter tightly.
He doesn’t realize he’s not alone until glances to his side and meets too-sharp lips curled into a too-smug grin, softened only by what must be under the Band-Aid at the corner of his mouth, an unhealed cut.
“Hale.”
Derek chokes, “It’s you.”
Whittemore laughs, stops abruptly with a wince. “Better than ‘snake’, I suppose,” he says, rubbing at his jaw. His smirk turns vicious as he leans a little closer. “So, I heard you left me for dead.”
He expects it, the fangs, the snakebite, the poison, but instead of hurting, it leaves him numb. He feels almost out of body when he closes the space between them, puts a quick death to Whittemore’s biting remarks by wrapping him in his arms, crushing the operative to him. Whittemore struggles with a strangled noise, but Derek only holds tighter, claws, takes in his aftershave as he buries his nose into his neck until other relents. There’s no sense, no reason, just the press of inflating and deflating lungs and the increasing thrum of heartbeat.
They stay like that until the elevator eventually dings and the doors rumble open onto Derek’s floor.
A shaky breath passes between, from Derek to Whittemore in what sounds like, “Thank god,” before Derek pulls away. He doesn’t turn as he walks off, letter clutched tightly in his hand, and misses the lost look that crosses his ex-operative’s face.