Chapter Text
“I hope you know this isn’t a honeypot, Nurse.”
Derek hid a sigh in his drink and continued smiling at the glittering heiress across the room. “I’m blending, Dex .” he mumbled. “Doing what my cover would do.”
“ You’re your cover.” Dex deadpanned, and Derek contemplated going to the bathroom and flushing his earwig down the toilet for the fiftieth time that evening. Why anyone thought that having Dex run comms for him was a good idea, he had no clue. Or, well, he did- they had some pretty damn impressive mission success ratios- but, that didn’t make it any better of an idea. Dex was annoying , and he didn’t seem to understand that he had to get his kicks somewhere on this job.
“And I would totally hit that.” Derek upped the smoulder in his grin, raising his glass at the girl. It had its intended effect; she flushed a light pink and finally smiled back-- though, at this point, it was more for Dex’s benefit. He was watching, somewhere, from some computer screen feeding into the venue’s security cameras, and it gave Derek endless joy to image the sound of him grinding his teeth in frustration.
“I hate you.” Dex snarled- check and mate - and Derek couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter. He took a lot of pleasure in picking on Dex, especially for never having actually met the guy in person. “Your mark is moving, asshole.”
“I’ve got eyes, Dex.” Derek hummed serenely, as if he were humoring him. He reluctantly tore his eyes from the girl and moved them back to the balding businessman he was supposed to be tailing. He was, indeed, moving, and looking quited harried. “Any idea what’s got our friend so shaken up?”
“You’ve got eyes.” Dex sniped. “Your guess is as good as mine. No one’s coming your way, so, I don’t think you’ve been made, but…”
“But.” Derek echoed, not needing the rest of the statement to know what it meant. ‘ But , there are worse things than having a cover compromised.’ ‘ But , I don’t know everything; watch your back.’ ‘But , you should probably get a move on.’ “I guess party time’s over, then. Keep an eye out for me; I’m in pursuit.”
“Party time never started, for some of us.” Dex huffed, but Derek knew he had his back anyway. For as much as they got on each other’s last nerves, Dex always came through for him. They had one of the highest mission success rates in W.E.L.L for a reason, after all.
Derek smiled as he downed the rest of his drink and pushed away from the bar. It looked like his mark was heading towards the bathroom which, if he would play it right, would be the prime place to lift the drive he’d been sent here to acquire. He dodged servers and couples with grace as he moved through the crowd, and made it through the door just before it closed behind his mark, bumping into him from behind. “Oh!” he huffed, pushing past, with an arm on the man’s shoulder, distracting him briefly from the hand slipping into his jacket pocket and grabbing the drive. “My bad, man, I didn’t mean to--”
“No, it’s quite--” Alright was how that statement should have ended, Derek was sure, but it never got to that point. Suddenly, there was a voice in his ear crying “ Nurse, get down, there’s a-- ”, and Derek had all of five seconds to dive before a spray of bullets ripped through the small bathroom window.
“Holy shit .” he breathed, once his ears had stopped ringing. “Dex? Can it get a sit rep, because--”
“ Holy shit .” Dex’s voice had gone up a few octaves, and Derek could actually hear his fingers flying across the keyboard. “I have no idea what just happened-- Derek, get the hell out of there.”
Derek frowned, pushing himself to his feet. Dex sounded scared , which was something he’d never heard before; annoyed or frustrated, yes, but never scared. “Did you just call me--”
“Not the time, Agent Nurse.” Dex snapped, suddenly back to his usual self. “Get out, now, and get to the nearest safehouse. You’ll have a flight out in the morning, but til then, comms will be dark.”
“Right, yeah.” Derek sighed, looking towards the window. It probably wasn’t the safest route out, as he was three stories up, and there was a decent jump between him and the treeline, but the sound of approaching footsteps told him he had no other choice.
“See you on the other side, Dex.” he said, and jumped.
“No, you won’t, Nurse.” he heard Dex say before his earpiece went dead. “There is no other side.”
“-- This complete and utter bullshittery .” Shitty said, pacing the area in front of the projection screen. He’d been doing this for going on twenty minutes, now, as they waited for Lardo to arrive and the UNWELL council to convene for the special debrief. Due to the way Derek’s mission had ended, they had deemed it necessary, though Shitty wasn’t happy at all about the interference.
“Dude,” Derek said, leaning back in his chair. “Chill. They want to figure out what happened, just like we do.”
“Bruh, I am so unchill right now, and will remain unchill for so long that they might as well classify me as my own damn desert.” Shitty huffed, but he at least stopped pacing. “What they want is to make this a bureaucratic nightmare, tie it up in red tape, drench it in black ink, and hand it back to us with a little gag order so that they never have to think about it again.”
“Which is why we’ve got a plan.” Lardo, thankfully, chose that moment to enter, and both Shitty and Derek’s eyes swivelled to her. She looked calm and collected as usual, only the slight bags under her eyes betraying the fact that she’d gotten just as much rest as the rest of them had- which was to say, none at all.
Behind her was a tall redhead Derek had never seen before, shoulders slumped too much for him to be an actual agent. He looked like he’d at least attempted to dress up, and had fallen more than a little flat with his flannel shirt and khakis that had frayed at the bottom from wear. That, and the fact that he was paler than a vampire in the winter betrayed him as someone from the tech division; probably one of Dex’s lackies, if Derek had to guess. He was cute, objectively; freckled and not meeting anyone’s eyes, definitely nervous-- and he made a mental note to send a few lines his way and see what stuck. Derek could dig a cute techie.
The UNWELL council logged on just as he was contemplating whether or not this particular techie would appreciate Keats or Trek quotes more. Everyone in the room sat up a bit taller as the representatives stared back at them, all looking as foreboding and dreary as they usually did. “Mr. Knight, Agents Duan and Nurse.” the Head Councilwoman said, nodding at them each in turn. She didn’t even look towards the techie, which didn’t seem to bother him. “It seems you’ve had an incident.”
“I wouldn’t say this one was entirely on us, ma’am,” Lardo said evenly. “Our mission brief stated that there would be no hostilities on this mission, and that our agent was to recover the drive-- that was all.”
“And, by those standards.” Shitty said, standing. “It was a mission success. The death of the target was not our fault, or even on our radar.”
“That being said, there was still an incident.” another council member said. Derek could see the matching tick in Shitty and Lardo’s jaws at the condescension in his voice. The redheaded techie flinched, and Derek felt a little pang of sympathy for him. He wasn’t being paid enough for this, probably; hadn’t even been on this mission. It’d just been him and Dex, since they’d thought it was a routine milk run. “And, it needs to be resolved.”
“We have a plan of action already.” Lardo said, moving to stand beside Shitty. “Overnight, we found ties from the mark to other underworld organizations-- including, distantly, ACE.”
There was an obvious air of tension in the room now. No one talked about ACE, and the UNWELL council didn’t want to recognize them as a threat, but the number of WELL missions being sabotaged by the organization worldwide was climbing too high to go unnoticed as of late. “Do you think this was a hit against SamWELL, Ms. Duan?” the Head Councilwoman asked.
Lardo shook her head. “The information we obtained was on the auction block, ma’am.” she said. “I think that the ACEs lost the bid, and decided that if they couldn’t have it, no one could.”
“What exactly is on the drive, then?” A different councilwoman piped up. Lardo shoot her head.
“We aren’t sure, yet.” she said. “It’s encrypted heavily, but, we’re working on breaking it.”
“The information we’ve received so far makes it look like a list of coordinates.” Shitty said. “Leading to what, we don’t know, but we plan to send Agent Nurse to look into it, as he was there when the initial incident took place.”
“We’re also asking that his clearance level be upped to twenty.” Lardo said, which got Derek’s attention. He hadn’t known about this part, and, he only had level twelve clearance, now. Twenty, though it wasn’t the top of the ladder-- Shitty had level twenty five, Chowder had thirty, and no one really knew how far up Lardo could go-- was pretty damn high up there.
The Head Councilwoman looked as surprised as he did. “With all due respect, Agent Duan,” she said, somehow managing to make it sound like that wasn’t very much respect at all. “I don’t think that there’s a precedent for that here. This seems like an information gathering mission, and while it may not be basic--”
“With all due respect to you, Councilwoman.” Lardo said, echoing the passive insult. “We’re dealing with ACE here, most likely, and we’ve learned from past mistakes that they shouldn’t be underestimated. Dealing with them, and decrypting the information that Agent Nurse would need from the recovered drive will require on site technical assistance from a trained expert-- in this case, the head of our technical division. Level twenty clearance is required to meet with him, so--”
“So, since Agent Nurse is already in the room with me, and since I’m the only person in the entire system who’s going to be able to get him the information he needs, he may as well have the clearance necessary to make eye contact with me.”
Derek instinctively reached for his ear when he heard Dex’s voice, and looked around the rooms for hidden speakers or somewhere he could be hiding. The voice wasn’t tinny and distant, though, as it normally would be- it was in the room. Derek’s gaze snapped to the redheaded techie, who seemed like he was the one who had spoken, and, oh god--
“Watch yourself, Agent Poindexter.” the Head Councilwoman said, and Dex (Dex! It was really Dex; Derek couldn’t believe it.) “It’s been quite some time since you’ve had field experience, hasn’t it?”
“My field testing scores were in the ninety eighth percentile, ma’am.” Dex said, not sounding proud, as anyone else would be, but just like he was stating a fact. “And, Agent Nurse is more than capable of handling himself under pressure, should I need assistance.”
That just might have been the first time that Dex had ever complimented him, and Derek couldn’t even tease him about it. Had he not been so shocked about actually being in the same room as him, still, he might’ve been a little disappointed. The Head Councilwoman, though, just maintained an unimpressed expression for a few long moments before he sighed.
“Very well.” she said, and had she been any less composed, Derek though she might have spat the words. “See that you’re briefed on field procedures and that the UNWELL council is informed of your progress at regular intervals.” She nodded to someone off camera, and the connection went dead. Shitty let out a long whistle as he hit a button to raise the projector screen.
“Man, that was fuckin’ cold, even for her.” he said. “She’s got a bone with you, Poindexter.”
“Yeah,” Dex mumbled, slumping in his seat. “I know.” He looked exhausted and small. Derek felt the odd and overwhelming urge to hug him, but he was pretty sure that would get him punched and also couldn’t get his legs to work properly, so, he sat.
“Holy shit.” Derek said, as that was the only thing he could process. “Dex, dude.”
“Ta-da.” Dex drawled, recognizing his presence for the first time. “Congratulations, Nurse; you now get to count yourself among the five people who have seen me in person in the last five years.”
“Didn’t know they let you out from behind the curtain, Oz.” Derek shot back, because this was exactly the same thing he did on comms, right? It shouldn’t be weird; if he and Dex could shoot the shit without seeing one another, they could do it in person. (Except, this was also the cute guy Derek was planning to flirt with not even thirty minutes ago-- oh, god, Dex was cute ; he was screwed.)
“They don’t.” Dex said. “That’s the whole deal.”
“Banter on the plane.” Lardo said, sliding two manila folders their way. “Dex has the coordinates, and that’s all the information we have so far; we’re pretty much flying blind on this one, so, watch each other’s backs.”
“Don’t we always?” Derek said, giving her a grin, which she returned.
“Kick some ass, boys.” she said before sweeping from the room, Shitty at her heels. He gave Derek and Dex a thumbs up before the door closed behind them, and it was just the two of them, sitting in a room, staring at each other.
“So,” Derek said slowly after a full minutes of silence. “You’re a redhead?”
“And you’re an asshole.” Dex said, but he also blushed, so Derek just grinned. Dex sighed, and stood. “Go back a bag, Nurse; we’re going to France.”