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fncreature · 7 months

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One Hell of a Day - Benthan

In which Ethan and Benji don’t talk for ninety minutes, and then say too much in the few that follow

A/N: This took. So long to write. But it was fun! I love writing them :D Also this is the first fic I’ve posted in probably a year, so… we’ll see how this goes! Enjoy!

Warnings: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning spoilers (Fic is set after the events of the movie), Ethan & Benji might be kinda ooc, the dumbest realization I’ve ever written, badly paced imo

The silence in the car is thick and hot and absolutely insufferable.

Ethan, although he detestes it, longs for it to last. He doesn’t want to say a word to anyone, not until he’s able to compose himself- really compose himself, not so he could convince everyone else that he was alright, but to convince himself. Ilsa was gone. Grace was in Kittridge’s hands, and he was barely trustworthy. It was him and Benji, and until they got Grace back, it would be for a while. He needs the quiet. He hadn’t had a minute to breathe- or to grieve.

Benji, however, would like nothing more than to start asking as many questions as he can think of, as quickly as possible. Ethan had pressed the key into his hands, put a hand on his shoulder for a moment, and headed into the car. He hadn’t said anything to him since he’d told Ethan to literally jump off a cliff, and hadn’t heard a word since. The look on Ethan’s face set the tone for anything he needed to know and the fact that he was alone was even worse. He’s never liked the quiet, his nervous habit was to break it. It’s almost unbearable, watching him stare into the distance with his head pressed against the window like he wasn’t right there, unsure of anything that’d happened in the last half hour.

But that was Ethan, or at least that was the way he showed himself to Benji.

That is what he tells himself.

He doesn’t even know where he’s going. He just drives, taking exits every once and a while until Ethan is ready to tell him anything, anything, especially where he wants to go. After more than an hour of driving in circles, he can’t take it anymore. “Ethan, where the hell do you want me to be going?”

“I don’t know” He whispers, not even taking a glance towards Benji. “I don’t know. Anywhere we can rest for a night.”

(Ethan doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no idea where the hell to start)

He almost sounds mad. Guilty, sure. Forlorn. It’s been a hell of a day for him, Benji would admit that. It’s been a hell of a day for them both, but Ethan had jumped off a cliff. That, unquestioningly, takes the cake for having “one hell of a day”.

He has no idea where the hell anything nearby is. They’d never go to a chain hotel, too many cameras, too many people around. Benji can’t remember the last time he’s slept in a Marriott. A motel, maybe, but he hated motels. They were unsettling. Bad things happened in motels. He much preferred when Ethan had them staying in a B&B, usually small ones in the middle of nowhere.

(Ethan likes B&Bs. They’re homey. He hasn’t had a home in a while)

Today, to Benji’s dismay, today is a motel day. Motels are unsafe, but for the most part, they are anonymous. They don’t talk to the police. They don’t remember you. Benji hates motels, but today is a motel day. He knows it.

“Could you pass me my phone?” He asks quietly. Ethan passes it over, still barely looking at him.

He feels bad, truly. Ilsa was gone. Grace, he had no idea. Nothing good. Luther had left. He can’t imagine how hurt he feels- how hurt he is. They hadn’t had a moment to breathe in days, and if Ethan isn’t banged up at all, then he’s invincible.

(Ethan always wishes he wasn’t)

He does a messy search for motels in the maps app and hands the phone to Ethan once a list of some nearby pops up. Part of him wonders what Ethan would even be looking for. Bad reviews? How far were they from everything? Security, or lack thereof?

Ethan puts the phone on the dashboard. The motel is another twenty minutes away. Twenty minutes of silent hell for Benji.

(Twenty minutes of self-consolation for Ethan)

Benji wants to shatter the silence like glass. He hates it, and Ethan isn’t helping. If he’d just- if he would say anything, anything, or if he’d just… He doesn’t know what he wants from Ethan. He knows he shouldn’t expect this much from him- he’s been through so much in the past week, why can’t he let the man rest? It’s not like he wants to stop him. But he craves Ethan’s voice, Ethan’s reassurances that whatever would happen, he would handle it. He needs it.

Today, he’d gotten nothing. He’d gotten the key to the end of the world, a hand on his shoulder, and silence. There’s nothing that’s more reassuring to him than Ethan’s comfort, even if he knows that he’s lying. He always pulls through, and he always makes sure Benji’s with him.

He always did. He always had. He always would. He always would. Right?

It’s not over yet. They had the key, and he hoped Ethan knew what it unlocked. And he made it out visibly unscathed, which surely counted for something. But he wasn’t talking. And that… Grace wasn’t dead. She wasn’t. He knew Ethan, and he knew it messed him up when he lost someone, and he knew that he cared, maybe even too much, but…

He’d known Grace for a few days. He’d lost Ilsa and he would still speak to them, although it took him a bit. He just-

He doesn’t know. A part of him can just tell. He just knows how Ethan is, and this isn’t him grieving. Not… not newly grieving.

He doesn’t know.

He wants to break the silence.

He doesn’t want to hurt Ethan by doing so.

Benji swallows hard, trying to swallow down his thoughts, eyes glancing up to the rear-view mirror. He tells himself to watch the road, but… He’s watching Ethan.

(Ethan stares out the window. He can see Benji in the reflection)

His sharp eyes are slightly unfocused, staring at the scenery passing by in a blur of green and gray. His dark hair is tousled and messy, strands falling down in his face. He looks… younger, almost, head resting on the window, turtleneck up just slightly too high.

Benji pulls into the motel lot.

He’s about to ask if Ethan wants to go in, or if he should, but he’s already getting out of the car. Benji swallows, blinking a few times, mouth open to say something but says nothing.

His hands rest on the wheel, and when he looks down, he realizes that he’s trembling. He shouldn’t be trembling, why is he shaking? He’s not scared. He’s not scared. Why would he be scared?

He has the key to the world as he knows it in his pocket. Why would he be scared?

(Ethan is scared)

Benji watches Ethan emerge from the office, a pair of keys in his hand.

Its’s ironic, isn’t it? Benji has the key that is keeping them from safety. Ethan has the one that will give it to them for a moment.

Ethan steps back into the car, nodding to the left side of the parking lot, the keys jingling in his hands. He pulls the car into the farthest spot to the left, allowing Ethan to get out first and lead him to the room. Benji locks the car. Ethan leads him up the weathered and, in Benji’s opinion, flimsy stairs to the room.

He’ll pretend that he’s fine with their room not being on the ground level. Ground level rooms were easier to escape from. He didn’t want to need to jump from a balcony, even if it was one floor up. He tells himself he’s being paranoid, but he can’t tell himself that he’s not overreacting.

He’s with Ethan- Nothing’s safe for long.

He unlocks the door to the room, and Benji shuts the door behind them. Two twin beds mark either wall, a desk opposite the further bed and a small bathroom in the back on the room. The dresser’s in between the bed, and a small chair is in the corner beside the door, along with a lamp.

“Pretty shitty layout for a motel room” Benji remarks, without thinking.

To his surprise, Ethan nods.

His heart is racing. He didn’t- and Ethan had just nodded. They stand there for a moment too long, Benji a step in front of the door, Ethan two paces in front of him, Benji staring at Ethan, Ethan staring at the wall.

Benji can’t take it.

“I- I’m going to get my laptop from the car.” He says, drawing Ethan’s eyes as he speaks, pointing back to the door before quickly rushing out of the room and down the stairs. He can’t breathe. Why can’t he breathe? His heart is going a million miles a minute.

He’s not scared. He’s not scared. He’s not scared. He’s-

He walks to the car, still breathing hard, still shaking. Why is he scared? Why now? They’ve always been doing things like this- He’s been in the field with Ethan since the Kremlin. They’d been working together for even longer. Whether it’d been with Brandt and Jane, or Luther, or Ilsa, he’d-

Oh.

They were alone. With each other. This hadn’t happened before. And he was panicking out because he was alone. With Ethan.

Oh no.

He was alone with Ethan and he was panicking because of Ethan. Because of Ethan. He was shaking and his heart was racing because of Ethan. Ethan. Ethan, who would die for his friends and had always looked out for Benji and was making his heart race for some-

Oh.

It made sense. The unquestioning trust and unwavering loyalty- of course. He liked Ethan. The nervous blabbering, the way he found his eyes drawn to him… God. It was so damn obvious. Hindsight, as it always is, is 20/20. He liked Ethan.

He- He didn’t- Ethan- No. He couldn’t feel that way about Ethan. He couldn’t. He was Ethan’s friend. They were friends. That was all they were and all they are and all they would be. Benji opens the backseat of the car, grabbing his laptop from where he’d set it, swallowing hard and trying to stop thinking. About everything.

He clutches the laptop to his chest and slams the car door.

“Benji”

Ethan’s voice is hoarse and soft behind him, and almost jarring. He hadn’t heard Ethan speak for a while, and the area was nearly silent, beside the sound of cars going by.

“I- You were out here for a while. I was getting worried.” He says.

Benji blinks.

He inhales. “I’m fine, I just-” Ethan steps towards him.

“Benji, I-” Ethan inhales, pausing for a moment, “Listen, I’m sorry about earlier, and I’m sorry for not telling you anything and making you want to leave, but…” He holds the laptop against his chest, anxious, now somehow unable to talk to him. He just- Why was it awkward now? Why was it nerve-wracking to breathe when Ethan was looking at him. It was Ethan. His Ethan, who he’d known for years. He’d never felt like this around him. Why did it need to be like this now?

“It’s fine.” Benji says. He stares down at the asphalt. “Really, I’m- I’m sure you’ve- A lot happened today. It’s fine.”

Ethan looks away, and he knows that Ethan doesn’t believe him.

He wonders, again, how battered Ethan must be. He hadn’t thought about it since he’d landed, but- He’d told the man to drive off a cliff and parachute onto a train. He wasn’t unscathed. Ethan, although he appears as such, isn’t invincible.

He walks a bit closer, their feet barely a foot or two away from each other. “I’m sorry. Really. And I should’ve told you about what happened earlier, so we can figure out what to do next.” What comes next? He has no idea, and if Ethan has somewhere to start, then something big happened on that train.

(Ethan has somewhere to start. And blood stained on his hands)

“It’s- It’s okay, Ethan. I could tell the second you looked at me that something had happened. I never expected you to be forward with me, and I’m used to it. It’s fine.” He says, trying to be honest without being too honest. Being fully honest meant telling Ethan why it wasn’t fine.

So he isn’t. He will lie to Ethan and will continue to do so until… when? He wants to? He feels like it? One of them fucks up and he doesn’t have any other choice?

It’ll probably be the latter.

“Benji. Benji. Just be honest with me, yeah? If you’re- If you don’t want to do this, if you can’t handle this, it’s okay. I’m- This is the weight of the world on our shoulders, and if you don’t want that, it’s okay.” Ethan says earnestly, in a way that makes Benji’s heart jump in a way that should be dangerous.

What if he said no to Ethan? If he told him it was too much for him? He wouldn’t, of course- he couldn’t. Leaving Ethan, grieving, with the weight of the world on his shoulders and being hunted by most governments, by himself would be like shoving him off a cliff.

But knowing Ethan, he’d manage to catch himself and climb back up.

He shouldn’t feel like this. He shouldn’t want to leave, and he shouldn’t want to kiss Ethan in the middle of an empty parking lot with the weight of the world on their shoulders. He shouldn’t be imagining what Ethan’s lips taste like. Ethan’s his colleague and his friend and nothing more than that.

“Of course not. I can handle myself.” He knows the words are coming out of his mouth already, but he doesn’t know if he’s lying or not.

“You’re shaking.” Ethan notes with the slightest tilt of his head.

He’s got to laugh this off. He’s got to laugh this off. “I’ve got the most dangerous object in the world in my back pocket, Ethan, I don’t know what you’d expect.”

Perfect. Perfect. That sounded like him, it was logical, it was perfect. He was not going to accidentally confess that he liked Ethan. He could not, would not, and should not.

He raises an eyebrow. “You were sitting on that thing while you were driving?” Benji stifles a laugh. He shrugs, trying to keep himself from smiling. It’s… It’s funny. The thing itself wasn’t even dangerous, but it’s power was immense, and he was sitting on it for ninety minutes in a rental car.

Ethan glances to the ground, a smile hinting at the edges of his lips, brow raised. “Do you want me to take it?”

“Oh, absolutely.” He slips the golden key out of his pocket, the white and red gems on each half glinting in the gently fading light. Benji outstretches his hand to him, turning slightly to set his laptop on the roof of the car.

Benji would like nothing to do with the key. The smartest thing to do would be throwing the thing to the bottom of the ocean, but… Well, it almost already had been. He holds out the key to Ethan, who, after a moment of staring, gently takes the key from Benji’s hand, fingers lingering in his hand for a second too long. He closes his hand around the key and tucks it in his back pocket.

Benji raises an eyebrow, and Ethan shoots him a warm smile. He’s not thinking about Ethan’s smile anymore, though. He’s thinking about his hands, the soft touch of his fingers as he’d taken the key. He’d always made a habit of glancing at Ethan’s hands after a fight- he’d never admit it, but it was his way of telling how bad things had gone without him seeing or needing to ask. Bruised knuckles were essentially nothing. But there were times when he’d see Ethan’s hands littered with cuts and scrapes from falling, bruises all along his hands, and he wouldn’t say anything, but put bandages and something for his inevitable pain where Ethan would find it.

Today, Ethan’s hands were littered with tiny cuts absolutely everywhere, his knuckles bruised. He assumes broken glass. But he won’t push.

For the second time in this conversation, he has no idea what to say. It’s unlike him, it always has been, and he knows Ethan knows that, too. He doesn’t even think before the words spill out of his mouth, “You should get some rest.” He looks up from the pavement. “You should, too. We’ve gotta be ready for what comes next.”

Again, Ethan brings up the future. Benji wishes he wouldn’t. It would be so much easier not to think about Gabriel or Grace or Ilsa, or the key he’d handed to Ethan moments ago, or how the world's governments would kill them to get it. It would be so much easier to tell Ethan a simple I love you and kiss him against the car until they weren’t thinking about anything but each other.

God, it would be easier.

And god, would it be cowardly. And Benji Dunn is not a coward. He’s not. He is so many things, but a coward is not one of them.

No matter what he tells himself.

He’s not a coward, but he is scared. He is absolutely scared. He sighs, opening his mouth to say one thing before deciding on another:

“What does come next, Ethan?”

He looks so unsure, a crease forming in his brow that Benji has known to recognize when Ethan was left speechless. He’d never done it. Honestly, it was cute.

So he continues, not thinking of where his words are going before he says them. “I don’t know what happened back there, and frankly, if it doesn’t provide some new, life-altering information, I don’t think I want to know. So tell me, Ethan, what the plan is. I will blindly follow you to the ends of the earth if you need me to, and I won’t even be surprised anymore. But I trust you, and I hope you know that you can trust me, so just tell me what you want to do. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”

He’s never seen a look like this on Ethan- It’s a mix of confusion and disappointment, sadness and some form of grief. He’s completely speechless, just looking to the ground near Benji’s feet.

God, he wants to kiss him.

Ethan swallows, letting out a breath, speaking hoarsely. “You shouldn’t.” (Grace did. Ilsa did. Julia did. He didn’t want Benji to.)

He doesn’t know what else to say, other than, “Why?”

“It just gets people hurt, Benji. Or killed. I- I won’t let that happen to you.” He spits bitterly, still unable to meet Benji’s eyes.

His heart races. “I will follow you to the ends of the earth, Ethan, if you want me to or not. If you need me, I will be there, whether you want me to be or not. I trust you, and there is very little you can to to sever that, Ethan, because-” He stops himself just in time. Because I love you. Because he loves him. There is no other word to describe the way he feels about Ethan Hunt. And he was about to fuck it all up, by telling him this.

“Because?” Ethan asks, finally looking up, but still not at him.

Benji swallows. Because he’s Ethan’s friend? Because he trusts him more than anyone? Because the bond they have is built on years of trust and trauma and everything that can’t be put in words? “Because I love you,” Is still the thing that slips out of Benji’s mouth, no matter how much he doesn’t want to say as such.

Ethan doesn’t say a word, locking eyes with Benji as he takes another step forward, hand moving to rest on Benji’s shoulder.

And then he’s being kissed, hard, one of Ethan’s hands making its way to his back as the other remains on his shoulder. And then he’s kissing back, feeling Ethan’s chapped lips on his own as he leans forward into the agent. Benji’s hands move onto Ethan’s chest and around his waist, his warm cheeks crashing into Ethan’s as his breathing goes a million miles a minute.

He’s been kissed before, but never like this. This was what it was supposed to be like, when people described it in stories and movies. His previous kisses had been quick and messy and nothing like this. This was warm and perfect and something that meant so much more, and as they separate for breath, all Benji can do is stare into his green-blue eyes.

“We- I-” He tries to say something but it doesn’t come out right. “We should go inside. Safer. More private.”

He just wants to kiss Ethan again, but doesn’t protest. He’s right, of course, but they stand there frozen for another moment, wrapped in each other’s arms, until Ethan moves his hand back up to Benji’s shoulder and lets out a light breath, accompanied by a smile.

Benji presses another peck to his lips.

“Inside” Ethan presses, grabbing the laptop from the top of the car behind them, and Benji grabs it from his hands and pulls him up the stairs, watching him pull the key to their room and open the door. The brunette pulls him through the doorway and kisses him against the door, pushing his head back and forcing the laptop against his chest for a moment until Ethan stops suddenly.

“Did you lock the car?”

“No,” Benji laughs, but he just wishes that Ethan would shut up and kiss him again. He fishes through his front pockets and produces the key, and Ethan takes it from his hands and lets Benji move from the door before stepping out to the front overhang to lock the car. Meanwhile, Benji grabs a cup of water and fills it up, sipping it carefully, trying to slow his racing heart.

Ethan looks at him from the doorway, sunset fading beautifully behind him, smiling. “Geez, we’ve had one hell of a day, haven’t we?”

Benji smiles, setting the glass down and pushing the door shut, kissing Ethan again.

#Benthan #Benji x Ethan #Benji Dunn x Ethan Hunt #Benthan fic #Benji dunn #Ethan hunt #mission impossible dead reckoning #fun tibit- the og ending for this fic was to replace the last line with ‘Benji chokes on his water’ and that would be the end. fyi.#god ive never posted for this fandom so I hope this is ok.#could I have absolutely made this a ‘there was only one bed’ fic? yes. did i? no. have restraint #creature writes

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