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“Mr. Hunt,” Benji Dunn, known informally as “the prof” or even more informally as “hey you, the walking pocket protector,” dropped a heavy stack of user manuals approximately two centimeters away from his dozing student’s nose.
Ethan bolted upright, eyes going wide before squinting with the effort to bring Benji’s face into focus. “Fourteen,” he said, “Er, Commodore 64. The square root of pi?”
Benji sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, mostly to hide a laugh. “All good answers, however, I didn’t ask a question yet. I wanted to know if you were under the impression that we’ve entered the napping section of the course.”
“Oh. Is there a napping section?”
“Don’t I wish,” Benji swept the manuals back up in his hands and marched towards the front of the half-empty classroom, populated with about a dozen young agents in varying states of alertness. It was nearing 10pm, and although the convenience of night courses looked good on paper, the reality was mostly a lot of yawns and very little information retention.
“Now, Mr. Hunt, am I mistaken, or are you here as a remedial effort to improve your competency with basic computer systems?”
A few lazy snickers cropped up. Ethan grinned proudly, and replied, “Yes sir, highly remedial.”
“Good. Glad we’re on the same page. It’ll mean fewer explanations and tears if I have to fail you.”
“Yes sir,” Ethan repeated, not at all deflated.
“…right,” Benji turned back to the blackboard and raised the chalk, doing his best to ignore Ethan’s brilliant smile, undimmed behind him. Fortunately, no one was awake enough to catch him flubbing the basic steps for data decryption because his mind was so busy trying to put a name to the precise shade of pink that had risen in Ethan’s cheeks.
Benji was doing such a spectacular job of avoiding even glimpsing the troublesomely attractive delinquent, that he didn’t see Ethan coming until he was dead in front of him.
“You sure set me straight,” Ethan announced, sounding entirely too pleased about that fact.
Benji made a gruff noise and clicked open his briefcase, “Yes, well, I hope you’ve learnt your lesson.”
“Oh, I have,” Ethan slid onto the edge of Benji’s desk, thigh spreading over Benji’s notes. Benji looked at the notes, then up at Ethan, then back to the notes. Ethan didn’t budge.
“But,” Ethan continued, moving even closer and almost sitting on Benji’s fingers when he made a tentative grab for the papers, “I think I could do with some one-on-one, if you really want me to improve my skills. I might learn a lot better in a more…intimate setting.” Ethan waggled his eyebrows—actually waggled them, which Benji had never seen in real life.
“Oh god,” Benji gave up the notes as a lost cause and tried to pack his remaining books up, “Terry and Janice and even Paul warned me that you were a terrible flirt. I didn’t think it was going to be a problem with me.”
“Why wouldn’t you think it was gonna be a problem?” Ethan cocked his head, tongue poking out to trace his bottom lip.
Benji would’ve liked to sputter indignantly at this juncture, but his mouth had gone very dry, so he just settled for gaping at Ethan.
“In fact, I’m getting the feeling that I’m gonna be way more of a problem for you than I was for any of them,” Ethan stuck the end of a pencil between his teeth and Benji hated how instantly envious he was of that yellow No. 2.
“Yeah, I’m getting that feeling too,” Benji tried to breeze by, “Actually, I got it from your first pop quiz.”
Ethan was on his heels, breath passing the back of Benji’s neck, “You want me to study harder?”
The way Ethan said that was definitely illegal in at least seven states, and the building’s over-powered A/C system was the only reason Benji hadn’t started sweating.
“I will,” Ethan promised, leaning in to look up at Benji from beneath dramatic dark brows, “I’ll blow you away.”
Oh, he did not need to use that verb, no he did not.
“That’s…yes. Good. Academically, er, speaking.”
Benji was almost at the exit to the lecture hall but Ethan was on his heels. Damn, he had an entire hallway to traverse before he reached the safety of his office.
“What happens if I get 100% on my next quiz?” Ethan asked, chin popping up over Benji’s shoulder. Apparently, personal space was a problem for other people.
“Would you like a gold star?” Benji offered, measuring his steps so it looked less like he was running away even though he was definitely running away, “I think I have a few stickers in my desk.”
“I was thinking of something else. An incentive…”
“Please, whatever you’re thinking, don’t say it.” Benji’s head was spinning enough as it was. He got a little dizzy when the elderly lady who handled his taxes flirted with him over the phone, how was he supposed to deal with that dialed up to eleven, coming from someone young, hot, and in immediate proximity?
“I was just gonna suggest a movie.”
“A movie?” Benji repeated, doing a solid imitation of a confused parrot.
“You seem like a movie guy,” Ethan shrugged, “So, let me take you to one.”
Benji rolled his eyes, feeling slightly more in control. He wasn’t exactly going to be floored by a cheap ticket and stale concessions at the local dollar theater.
Ethan caught the shift and added with a grin, “I would’ve suggested a movie at my place—popcorn, a bottle of rosé, and no audience to bother us if we decide there are better things to do then just watch…but I guessed that’d freak you out a bit.”
“An accurate guess. Listen,” Benji turned on his heel, pulling out his best stern-professor face (based on one such look from a grumpy old bastard he’d despised at Oxford) and brushing the dust off it. “This is very inappropriate.”
“What?” Ethan held his palms out, shoulders wide, “Two consenting adults having a little conversation is against the rules now?”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
Ethan chewed the inside of his cheek, a flash of white teeth and calculating eyes. “Tell me you’re not interested,” he finally said. “Just tell me that, and I’ll buzz off. Model student, no more bothering you.”
Benji opened his mouth. He was going to say something, but he was worried it would be quite the opposite of what he should say.
Ethan smiled, and Benji saw how terrifyingly easy it would be to fall into it.
“You’re terrible,” Benji declared, fumbling out his office key as he decided retreat was the better part of valor in this situation, “Go away and learn what a file directory is or something.”
Ethan laughed as Benji wrestled his way inside, not daring to open the heavy oak slab wide enough for Ethan to squeeze in after him, as Benji had a sneaking suspicion he wanted to.
“I’ll see you in class!” Ethan said, before Benji could entirely escape.
“God help me,” Benji muttered, slamming the door.
********************
Benji hated the firing range. It was ungodly loud, and the smell always made him think some poor piece of Tupperware was melting in a nearby dishwasher. It didn’t help that he was a mediocre shot on a good day, and that he hadn’t ever actually had a good day. But, basic proficiency with firearms was a requirement for anyone involved in IMF operations, and more than that, he hoped to actually get into field work someday.
Bit of a pipe dream at this point, he thought morosely as the last of his clip pinged uselessly off beside the target.
“You’re too tense,” a voice from just beyond Benji’s left ear noted, making him yelp and skitter away, gun akimbo.
“Whoa, there,” Ethan’s steady hands disarmed him gently, neatly, in under a second.
“For Chri—you! You are a menace,” Benji hissed, blood pounding in his ears.
“Wow,” Ethan twirled the gun idly, “Most people don’t say that about me till at least the second date.”
“Yeah, well, I’m unusually perceptive,” Benji snapped, dragging a hand over his hair.
Ethan smiled like that was some sort of private joke and reached for Benji’s hand.
Benji flinched away. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Are you here to learn or what?” Ethan asked, eyebrow raised in a near-perfect mirror of the disapproving expression Benji had bestowed on him a few days earlier.
Benji’s lips pressed together in a grim line, but he let Ethan take his hand and press the gun into his palm, tapping his fingers into position with businesslike precision. He planted his left foot next to Benji’s, then used the other to tap Benji’s calf, nudging his right leg further out.
“Yeah, alright, I know the stance,” Benji wriggled, which just made things worse.
“Okay, but do you feel the stance.”
Benji could feel a lot of things, mostly involving aspects of anatomy that shared a good bit in common with guns, but which did not appear on the standard IMF field tests.
“I feel…that you could stand a shower. You stink.”
A surprised hiccup of laughter escaped Ethan as he said, “Fair. I was down at the beach, working up a sweat playing volleyball with the guys.”
“Hrmph,” Benji grumbled, which was his way of conveying the fact that he’d just thought about a sweaty, sun-drenched Ethan stained with sand and had a minor cardiac event.
“You should come watch me some time,” Ethan suggested, affecting a casual tone.
“Watch you. Just you?”
Ethan’s hands cupped possessively around Benji’s arms, bringing them up and adjusting their angles until they suited him. “I’d be jealous if you were watching anyone else.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Benji pronounced, staring at Ethan’s flawless forearms all wrapped up around his own, “Incorrigible. Intolerable.”
“Do you wanna keep impersonating a thesaurus, or shoot?”
Benji pretended to think about it. “Why not both?”
“Hmm,” Ethan’s lips were so close to Benji’s ear, there couldn’t be more than a molecule separating them, “and people call me a smartass.”
“People are right. And I just happen to get snarky when strange men take it upon themselves to instruct me in the finer points of weaponry at close range.”
“Does this happen to you a lot? Do I have to fight for your honor? Because we were just talking about the jealousy thing—”
“Oh, shut up, would you?”
Ethan’s hand slid around to cover Benji’s stomach, which shut them both up very quickly.
“Be strong, here,” Ethan’s fingers flickered over Benji’s diaphragm and he tightened his core instinctively. “Breathe in, and out—” his finger closed over Benji’s and the gun went off like indoor thunder. The bullet ripped the cardboard heart out of the dummy target.
“There you go,” Ethan murmured, and he wasn’t being subtle anymore (as if he ever really had been), his mouth against Benji’s cheek, “it’s easy. Just let your instincts guide you, don’t think too much.”
Benji tried to get ahold of his breathing. Ethan’s hand was a brand on his skin, through his shirt. He laid his fingers over Ethan’s for one oxygen-deprived second before using the contact to push his hand away.
“It’s my job to think too much,” Benji replied, stiff and tired.
Ethan let him pull away. His sharp eyes tracked the movement, narrowing with concentration. “What’s the problem?” he asked, setting aside for the first time since they’d met his veneer of slick, snarky charm. His words were so firm and genuine, as if all Benji need to do was just tell Ethan the problem, and he would fix it.
“Besides the fact that you’re highly irritating and extremely unattractive?” Benji shot back after regaining his footing in the face of such sudden openness.
“Yes, besides those two entirely untrue things.”
“You’re my student. Instructors don’t date students. The end.” There. Now Benji had said it. No doubt about what they were dancing around, now.
“Not the end,” Ethan countered. “Technically, we’re of equal rank. Being, respectively, a highly decorated field agent,” Ethan tipped a hand under his own chin, posing, “and a brilliant young technical expert, researcher, and teacher extraordinaire.” He slid a hand onto Benji’s shoulder in a move so smooth, Benji couldn’t believe he’d seen it outside of a film, much less have it happen to himself.
“Okay. Flattery will get you…not nowhere.” Benji tilted his head pensively. “Two inches closer, and not a millimeter more.”
Ethan eagerly grabbed the two inches with another to spare and Benji didn’t pull away. “I’ve got some more flattery, if you’d like to hear it.”
“I’m sure you do. But I’m still your teacher, as in, there’s a power dynamic here.” Benji tapped Ethan’s chest and immediately regretted it, because it was warm and firm and now he just wanted to run both palms all over it, and Jesus it was getting hard to think. “So, as long as your grade and by extension your standing in the agency is in my hands, there can be no…this,” Benji waved his hand in the shrinking space between them. Ethan watched, mouth slightly ajar.
“You know,” he said, eyes sparkling, “I think your impeccable morals are incredibly sexy.”
“Pfft,” Benji scoffed, “I think they’re a bit of a buzzkill, honestly.”
Ethan stole another inch, smile turned loose and adoring, “Please, let me buy you dinner.”
“When the semester’s over,” Benji insisted, snatching some air to put between them before those unshakable morals of his cracked, “If you’re still interested after I’ve decimated your few remaining brain cells with the final, you can ask again.”
“Me and my last brain cell will be waiting with flowers and champagne.”
“Flowers are a waste of money and champagne gives me a headache.”
“Chocolates and beer, then?”
“You’re getting warmer.”
“Yeah,” Ethan agreed with a smirk, and Benji was mortified to realize he was definitely blushing.
*****************
Ethan finished the exam in the middle of the pack, handing over the packet of papers with a nervous pinch to his brow. Benji took it with a prim nod, wishing he could offer words of comfort but keeping his mouth shut instead. Ethan was out the door and Benji still had five students left staring holes in their test booklets and he wondered if he’d ever even see Ethan again—not that he wanted to see him again. Except that he really, really did. Except that even if it didn’t go anywhere real, it would’ve been nice to know that at least Ethan hadn’t just been flirting with him for the hope of a higher grade.
Not that Benji would ever do that. In fact, he was tense as a rail grading Ethan’s test, checking and re-checking answers, mentally comparing his evaluation to all the others to make sure that no stupid, romantic part of him was trying to fudge his objectivity.
He was utterly relieved when he found Ethan’s work to be solid, consistent, accurate. Benji marked the paper with a thick red sharpie and set it aside, relieved that one way or another, it was over now.
He posted the grades early the next morning, hanging the sheet in the hall and sticking the pin into the corkboard with an exhausted finality. It was barely dawn, Benji awake before any sane person was roaming the halls for the precise purpose of not running into anyone.
“Jeez, prof, the sun isn’t even all the way up. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Christ on a cracker!” Benji stumbled into the wall as Ethan appeared at his elbow like a particularly lively and handsome apparition, “Where did you come from?”
“Ventilation,” Ethan popped a thumb towards the ceiling. “I was waiting for you. Didn’t want security to bust my balls for loitering.”
Benji glanced up and indeed, there was a grate slightly ajar. He frowned at Ethan, who bit his lip and clasped his hands behind his back. “You’re putting me on,” Benji accused.
“Am I?” Ethan smirked, dancing around Benji to peek at the grade sheet. His animated expression froze when he caught sight of his final grade.
Benji shuffled in place, unaccountably nervous.
“I got a B?” Ethan asked, tone flat and unreadable.
“Yes,” Benji confirmed, then said with more confidence, “Yes, you got a B. B for barely made it but put in the effort, last minute as it was.” Now Benji was getting irritated, and as a result, verbose, “B as in barely scraped by, B as in buddy, let’s hope you’ve got other people on your team to handle the technical bits, and you can stick to the fisticuffs and honeypot schemes.”
“I’m great at honeypots,” Ethan admitted with zero modesty. “And terrible with computers, and anything computer-like. It’s why I’m so surprised I even passed, much less… Seriously, thank you. This B is probably more than I deserve.”
“No, no,” Benji shook a finger in Ethan’s face, “a B is exactly what you deserve, trust me, I checked. Many times.”
“I’ll bet you did,” Ethan said, making that somehow sound like a filthy innuendo. Benji felt a little faint and couldn’t tell if it was from the sleep deprivation, the shock, or something else entirely.
“So, just to be clear…” Ethan propped one hand on the bulletin board, leaning in, “you’re officially no longer in charge of my grade.”
“Yes,” Benji nodded, not meeting Ethan’s eye, “that’s all in the registrar’s hands now, god help them—mmph!”
Ethan pressed Benji up against the wall, their boots clattering against each other and papers rustling round their ears as he captured Benji’s mouth in a no-holds-barred, open-mouthed kiss. One of his hands found Benji’s and held it up next to his head, while Benji used his free hand to grab a handful of leather jacket and yank Ethan in closer. The sigh Ethan let out when Benji transferred his grip to Ethan’s hair was pornographic, hips shifting and friction between their chests.
Ethan pulled away with a gasp and Benji only barely let him, keeping hold of his bottom lip between his teeth for as long as possible. Ethan was flushed and wide-eyed, mouth red and kiss-bitten, and Benji thought that Ethan should look like this, always.
“Sorry,” Ethan said lightly, after a few moments of just looking at each other, trying to process what was happening, “I probably should’ve asked first, before...” his fingers alighted on Benji’s cheek, tracing down to his chin, just skirting his mouth.
“You’re right you should’ve,” Benji agreed, the signals of his reproach extremely mixed by the way he took Ethan firmly by the belt loops, “The manners on you! Like you were raised in a barn.”
“Next to a barn,” Ethan answered immediately, “farmhouse.”
“Smart,” Benji mumbled, pinching Ethan’s thigh, because he could.
“Yes sir,” Ethan agreed, grin latched securely back onto his face. It looked so good, Benji was dying to taste it again.
“Christ,” he shook his head, dazed, “What am I gonna do with you?”
Ethan’s grin was heart attack sugar and promises made to be broken as he reeled Benji in by the tie and whispered, “Oh, I’ve got lots of ideas.”