Work Text:
1
“Did you bring the -“
“In your left breast pocket.”
“And the -“
“Already stowed in the blue back pack,” Benji answers without so much as glancing up as he keeps typing away at his laptop until he remembers, “have you figured out how to-“
“Yeah, side entrance.”
“Even with the -“
“Fake IDs, got them right here. I’ll need -”
“Here, take mine.” Benji shrugs out of his sports coat and hands it to Ethan, continuing to type with one hand until both are free again.
Someone across the room chuckles, which gets him to finally look up.
“What?” he asks Degas, who is looking back and forth between him and Ethan, who is straightening his tie, smoothing down the sleeves of Benji’s jacket as he gets ready to infiltrate a gallery opening to bug an internationally wanted arms dealer. The coat isn’t a perfect fit compared to Ethan’s usual tailored looks, but they’re pressed for time and Benji likes the sight of Ethan in his clothes so it’ll do, this time.
He pulls himself back into something more professional and forces his eyes away from Ethan’s figure and towards a smirking Degas, repeating his earlier question.
“It’s just, are you two telepathic or what?”
“You should start a Las Vegas double act,” Kodiak interjects from her seat at the window.
Paris quirks an eyebrow in his direction, but at least she immediately goes back to hiding various knives and guns under her suit.
Benji’s eyes find Ethan’s, who just shrugs, looking just as befuddled as Benji feels.
2
“J’vais prendre ce pantalon,” Paris announces to the room at large.
Ethan glances up from where he’s installing some radio tech into a hollow spoon, for some reason that Benji had laid out for him earlier that he, quite frankly, can’t remember right now. He takes in Paris’ outfit and, more specifically, her - technically his - pants, the way they fit her surprisingly well. They’re roughly the same size, him and Paris, and it makes sense that for their current mission she’d go for pants that are loose enough to fight in instead of the tighter jeans she was wearing earlier. They have a lot of pockets, too, which always comes in handy. Speaking of which -
“Sure,” he tells her, “just don’t eat the gum in the left back pocket.”
“Pourquoi?”
“I’m guessing that’s an explosive,” Degas asks, staring at the green-and-red stick of chewing gum that Paris pulls out of said back pocket. “Mash the two sides together, boom?”
Ethan nods absentmindedly. “Hasta lasagna, don’t get any on ya.”
When everybody in the room noticeably stops in their tracks, he looks up from his wiring job and finds them all staring at him with incredulous expressions.
“Not my words,” he defends the ridiculous expression, tries not to pull a face as he remembers Jack, Prague, more years ago than he can count. The memory still stings, even after all this time. “That’s how a team member in ’96 described it.”
Degas stares some more, exhales a laugh of disbelief. “Dude, sometimes I forget how long you’ve been in the game. I was three in ’96.”
“Et je n’avais que dix ans.” Paris whistles under her breath. “T’es vraiment vieux, mec.”
“And look at where we all are now.” Ethan shrugs, tries to ignore the weird feeling he gets at the realization that him and his teammates back then used to be the same age, roughly, and that now he’s so much older than the rest of his team, and older than even Jim Phelps ever got to be. He’s old enough to not be statistically relevant to the IMF’s average active field agent’s age calculation anymore, to be considered an outlier.
He was exploding fishtanks with that particular IMF brand of gum when they were running around on playgrounds.
“How long have you known him for?” Degas asks Benji, who pulls a grimace, probably having similar thoughts to Ethan’s.
“Must have been, what, early aughts? But I only committed treason for him in ’06.” The two of them exchange a look - good heavens, they’re ancient.
Paris snorts. “Sure, that’s what counts as meeting Ethan Hunt.”
“I was in a tight spot,” Ethan tells them without elaborating, getting kind of uncomfortable with the implication that everyone he meets ends up committing treason for him - even though it’s a fair statement.
“As I remember, you had an explosive charge in your head that was about to go off.” Ethan sends Benji a warning look but just gets a wink in return, and it’s still baffling how Benji manages to look so innocent and so mischievous at the same time. Ethan is terribly fond of him.
However, he thankfully doesn’t elaborate on the whole Julia aspect of it and just says, “hey, you might’ve given yourself an electric shock but you were brought back to life in the end!”
Kodiak throws up her hands in exasperation. “What the fuck is wrong with you guys!”
3
“Merci,” Paris tells Benji after he has just spent half an hour explaining to her how the masks and the vocal adjusters work.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he replies in French, like he always does when it’s just the two of them together.
“No, not for this.”
That gets him to look up from where he was stowing away the mask equipment, finding her going back and forth between staring at her hands and at his eyes, laser-focused, steeling herself like she would for a mission, not for a normal conversation they are having in a safehouse in Tokyo.
At his searching gaze, she continues, “for taking me along. For showing me these things. You don’t have to trust me, but you still do.”
Ah. The good old what the hell am I doing here moment. He’s familiar with it, maybe more so than Paris can know.
“We all started out like you, you know? Well, obviously not exactly like you, didn’t work for some psychopath serving an all-knowing AI and then crashed a bunch of police cars in Rome -“ He stops his rambling at the familiar questioning tilt of her head and pulls his thoughts together. “The IMF is built on people who have a criminal past, and chose to do something different. If I weren’t here I’d probably be rotting in some US prison right now.”
Paris’ eyes widen, and he grins. “Don’t think you’re the only one with a mysterious past. Why do you think I’m so good at hiding from the IMF whenever they disavow us again.”
“What did you do?”
At this, he finds himself at a loss for words. What did he do, indeed. “I was good at hacking into things, and many people will pay a lot of money for that sort of skill. Got mixed up with the wrong sort.”
“Ah.” She doesn’t say more, but he can tell she’s thinking about it, considering what he’s telling her. “Ethan?”
“Him, too. Well, not exactly the same, but we can’t all be hacking into the pentagon servers.”
Her eyebrow quirks up and Benji thinks she almost looks impressed.
“He had a whole punk look going for him back then, too,” Ethan says from the doorframe, appearing out of nowhere as he is wont to do. Paris flinches. Benji doesn’t even blink. He has gotten used to Ethan’s weirdness, after all these years.
“I showed you a picture of that in confidence.” Then, “And how the hell did you know what we’re talking about?”
Ethan grins. “You get that wistful look whenever you talk about your criminal past. And I happen to like the punk look.”
“Ethan recently did a stint in a Moscow prison,” Benji gleefully informs Paris, ignoring the flirty look in Ethan’s eyes.
“Recently, as in, over a decade ago.”
“God, I’ve known you for too long.”
Paris mutters something about wanting to get out of here but stays seated in her chair anyway, which means that she doesn’t actually mean it. She’d never stay in a place for even a minute longer than she wants to, Benji is sure of that.
Her comment is, however, enough to snap him out of bickering mode and to lock back in to tell her what he wanted in the first place. “We’re more similar than you’d think, is what I meant. That’s why we take you along, why we trust you. And if it weren’t for what you did for me in South Africa, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“And we like having you on our team,” Ethan adds, wearing that familiar gorgeous grin that, over the years, has inspired loyalty in more people than Benji can keep track of.
Paris’ lips quirk upwards, which Benji takes as his sign to lighten the mood.
“And you’re almost as insane as Ethan, which means you can replace him when I finally get him to retire.”
At this, Paris snorts.
“As if that will ever happen.” When she gets up from her chair and leaves the room, she does clap Benji on his shoulder in passing and lets her hand linger for just a moment, squeezing once, twice. For her, Benji figures that’s as good as a hug.
Once she is out of the room Ethan throws him a knowing look.
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re a great team leader. They respect you.”
“They won’t for much longer if you keep telling people about my punk phase.”
Ethan laughs at that, and Benji’s heart feels all warm and gooey. Maybe he does like being team leader.
4
Something hits his head.
The second time, he’s ready and catches the energy bar without looking.
The third one is thrown right back at its source.
“I got the hint the first two times,” he grins over at Benji, who is rolling his eyes already. It’s a familiar farce that they go through on almost every mission. It never gets old.
“Yeah, but you won’t eat them unless I keep chucking them at you. When will you learn!”
Benji likes taking care of Ethan. Ethan knows this. Ethan likes being taken care of by Benji. Benji knows this. Their routine will never change.
From across the room, Paris groans at their antics.
“Don’t get me started on you!” Benji exclaims, and Ethan thinks he’s in the clear once all of Benji’s love and care and endless impatience is focused on her. Paris, however, looks like a deer in the headlights. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday, either. Here, take two.”
He throws two energy bars at Paris. The t-shirt he’s wearing is tighter than his usual clothes and Ethan briefly wonders if it’s one of his, stolen from his suitcase to fend off the Singapore heat. As he throws the snacks, the muscles of his back, so often hidden away under layers of clothing, ripple deliciously through the light fabric of the shirt. Ethan lets himself gape, just for a moment.
Paris catches the power bar out of the air and tears one of them open with a shrug.“Je préfère ceux aux myrtilles.”
“Well, they didn’t have the blueberry ones, only peanut butter or banana. Get over it.”
With that, he turns back to Ethan and throws a fourth bar at his head. It’s this one that Ethan finally opens and bites into.
It’s a blueberry one. Ethan sends Benji a private smile in thanks and gets a soft little smile in return.
Paris, observant as ever, grumbles something about favoritism. Benji pulls out her favorite strawberry protein shake and is in her good graces again in an instant.
He seems to have expanded the list of people he likes taking care of. Ethan thinks that it suits him.
5
“Six hours,” Benji tells Ethan and then turns to ask the room at large, “has anyone seen my green sweatshirt?”
“Three,” Ethan negotiates, pulling off and handing him the woolen turtleneck off his back. Benji absentmindedly slips it over his head, allowing himself two seconds to ogle the strip of skin at Ethan’s back that is revealed when his shirt rides up with his movements, and two more seconds to enjoy the way the sweater still smells of Ethan.
Then, he snaps back into semi-professionalism. “Five.”
“Four.”
“Deal.”
Paris, wearing a suspiciously familiar green sweatshirt and not even trying to hide it, asks what they’re talking about.
“Ethan is going to sleep for four hours. We’ll reconvene back here at 1700. The rest of you rascals can do whatever. Probably should catch some shut-eye, too.”
Kodiak, not yet adapted to a regular sleep rhythm after having just returned from another one of her stints helping out on the USS Ohio, grabs a well-read paperback from one of the bookshelves and settles into an armchair. Degas bows out with a vague wave, disappearing into one of the free bedrooms.
Paris sways in her spot leaning against the kitchen counter, clearly uneasy. “Et toi, tu vas pas dormir?”
Benji glances at her, then at Ethan, who is halfway on his way to the bedroom him and Benji are sharing.
“I’ll keep an eye on things here,” he tells her, trying to project through to her that she is safe, that he’ll look out for her, that him keeping watch is the only way Ethan ever goes to sleep for more than a cat nap during missions.
Ethan, in turn, yawns demonstratively, then jerks his head towards the one still unclaimed bedroom. “Come on, you can trust Benji.”
Paris looks outside into the freezing Oslo streets, pulls down the sleeves of Benji’s - of her - of their sweatshirt to cover her hands, and nods.
She’s down the hallway
+1
“I told you to wake me.”
“Ten minutes more never hurt.”
Ethan looks adorably rumpled as he emerges from the bedroom, his hair sticking up on one side of his head and pressed flat against his skull on the other. He makes his way across the room where the rest of the team is getting ready for their mission and tells Benji, “I’ll sleep in tomorrow when we’re through with this mission.”
“That just means you’ll stay in bed for ten more minutes after the sun has risen.” Benji looks up at him with a frown from his seated position, but he instinctively tilts his chin up further to receive the quick peck on his lips when Ethan bends down.
“Half an hour,” he says, and they share a private smile between them, knowing that the only way to get Ethan to stay in bed for any longer than that is for Benji to pull out some very persuasive techniques that would not be appropriate do discuss here.
Benji quickly reaches up to squeeze Ethan’s hand where it’s resting on his shoulder, then turns back to his laptop. “You should check this out.”
Ethan bends over him, their heads closer than they technically need to be to see the screen when, in the screen’s reflection, Benji spots Kodiak’s gobsmacked expression.
“What?” he asks, realizing that Paris and Degas, too, are staring at them.
“How long has this been going on?” The disbelief is audible in Degas’ voice.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Ethan squints at him, then at Degas, at Paris, at Kodiak, who says, “the two of you, canoodling.”
“This is not a new thing,” Benji states, slowly.
Kodiak’s eyebrows rise, looking very amused by the whole situation. “Yeah, clearly. When were you gonna tell us?”
“This makes so much sense,” Degas whispers, more to himself than anyone else.
Benji doesn’t quite - it’s not like him and Ethan are open about their relationship, but they don’t really go to great lengths to hide it, either, just try to be as professional about it as they can and not let the IMF bosses in on it if possible - Benji starts racking his brains for other moments that would have let onto them being together but comes up empty. Luther knew, of course, but since he - the thought still hurts, like a knife getting twisted in an unhealed wound, but since he, well - maybe they have been a bit more careful, a bit more closed off, selective of who they let in.
They definitely haven’t been kissing in front of the team, that’s for sure.
A glance at Ethan confirms that he has reached the same conclusion. When Benji silently asks him how he wants to handle this, he just shrugs, mirroring Benji’s feelings exactly - they don’t mind the team knowing, they might actually appreciate the team knowing, now that it’s out.
“Well, sorry for not telling you guys,” Benji tells them.
From across the room, Paris cackles maniacally as she announces in French, “For the record, I knew.”
“Well, you’re just more observant than the others.” Pride shines through in Ethan’s voice, but Paris shakes her head, still grinning.
“No, I just saw you kissing on the plane after the Sevastopol.”
Degas slaps a hand on his chest like she just brutally wounded him. “You’ve known for that long and didn’t tell me?”
Paris winks. “Not my fault you’re not as observant as me.”
As they descend into bickering, Benji throws a smile in Ethan’s direction and finds him already smiling at him, warm and open, his hand back on Benji’s shoulder.
At Benji’s beckoning, he leans in closer to hear his low murmur. “How long do you think it’ll take them to figure out we’re married?”
There’s that familiar twinkle in Ethan’s eye that he loves so much as he whispers back, “fifty bucks says Paris will know in less than a month.”
“Done.” Benji has faith in Paris, but it had taken Luther three weeks to realize and he had known them both inside and out for decades and was probably monitoring the search history on all their devices - as a safety measure, of course. Back then, Benji lost fifty bucks betting that Luther would get it sooner. He’s winning the money back this time.
Kodiak watches them from across the room and remarks, “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”
Benji winks at her. “Just admit it, you’re jealous.”
With a cartoonish leer at Ethan, Kodiak shoots back, “maybe I am.”
Looking up, Benji has a first row seat to his husband’s cheeks flushing a delightful pink. Oh, this is going to be fun.