Notes: Big thanks to faye_dartmouth for betaing both stories and for giving me inspiration to finish the second story.

I've written Curtain Call a good long while ago, but I just now was able to finish its sequel Hope Falls Down.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately the boys belong to the CBS, else I would have let them continue their adventures.

Curtain Call

He should hate the ODS.

In fact, he did hate the ODS. No other team caused him that many headaches and he had stopped counting just how many international incidents he had barely kept at bay because of their unceasing antics.

But for all their unorthodox and unsanctioned missions and stunts they had pulled, the team was always successful and they always came back alive. Sometimes a little worse for wear, but always alive.

Higgins had tried to get rid of the ODS countless times, but nothing had ever touched them or had stopped them. Not with their skills.

But he had actually hoped that he would be able to control them, or at least know what they were up to half of the time, by using Martinez.

While that hadn't backfired, it hadn't worked either. Dorset – the most paranoid and scheming man Higgins had ever met outside politics – had looked through his plot like it had been made out of swiss cheese. And Collins had probably turned Martinez around again just using words. Higgins had seen it happen. Malick, on the other hand, had probably just threatened Martinez into compliance.

The three operatives were a force to be reckoned with. A little army on its own and instead of getting an inside man, Higgins had just given them a translator to help them cause even more mayhem in every language imaginable.

He had tried reprimanding them, had tried giving them the most boring or most filthy and downright worst assignments that came over his desk. But bringing down the ODS was worse than fighting windmills, was worse than trying to put out a forest fire with just a rusty bucket barely half full of water.

They always stood right up again, always came out on top. Higgins started to believe that nothing could bring the four operatives down. Not even the three months long, forced deportation after the mess with Simms had barely slowed them down them.

Instead the ODS had come out even stronger.

So when he heard about the explosion that brought down the warehouse the ODS had last called in from, he wasn't worried. After all, they had always survived.

There was no reason why he still sat in his office at two in the morning. He hated the ODS, but he trusted them to turn the mission around, to come back.

Higgins should be going home, should slip into his bed beside his wife and not stare at his phone in the office.

A phone that had yet to ring, even though hours had passed since the explosion and even though Dorset always called.

Higgins willed it to ring, because while he hated the ODS, he hated to lose them more.

The End