Chapter Text
“So, I wanted to run something by you,” Mark says, not looking up from his phone. Ethan flops down onto the couch beside him and gestures for him to go on, tilting his glass of water up towards his lips.
“So, we’ve got like a month left of Unus Annus.”
“Mmm,” Ethan grunts.
“I thought it would be cool if we did a shooting video. Like, you know how we did archery? Like that, but, you know, with guns. Like at a firing range or something.”
Ethan groans internally, setting the glass on the coffee table. Goddamn, another skill-based video? He’s sick of ‘em, to be completely honest. He’s tired of having to pretend to suck at everything, having to downplay his coordination and skill.
Back when they did Chinese archery, he’d snuck in a cheeky little shot and split Mark’s arrow just for shits and giggles, but recently they’ve been doing more and more of these types of videos. The gymnastics video had been a small reprieve where he was actually able to show off a bit, but since then, with the wrestling and the archery on horses and aerial hoops and aerial silks, God, he’s tired of it.
Christ, the fans probably think he’s a damn hazard to himself at this point.
Mark is staring at him. How long has he been staring at him?
Ethan barks a small laugh, shaking his head. “Sorry, man, zoned out there for a second. Yeah, we can do that. Did you- do you know anywhere around here that does that?”
Mark’s jaw works for a second before he speaks, slow and a bit cautious. “Are... listen, that’s why I was asking. We don’t have to if you don’t want.”
“No, we can,” Ethan assures. He ducks his gaze, hates lying to Mark more than almost anyone else. “I just... I’m tired of looking like an idiot in front of the cameras, you know?”
“Aww, Ethan,” Amy’s soft voice drifts from the kitchen. Ethan looks over, watches as she walks from around the countertop and over to the living room, plunking herself down on the arm of the couch next to Mark. “You know the fans love you, right?”
“Yeah, I just...” He sighs, shoulders curling in on himself. Fuck, he’s a fucking terrible friend. He doesn’t deserve Amy’s sympathy.
Mark’s hand presses on his arm, a firm weight. “Hey, we don’t have to. It was just an idea.”
“No, I-” he exhales sharply, “I want to do it. It’ll be fun, you know? And it’s probably, like, a good thing to know, just in case.”
Mark is looking at him, clearly doesn’t want to let it go so easily, but Amy, bless her soul, seems to pick up on Ethan’s insistence.
“I think it would be good content,” she says readily. “Just so long as you guys don’t accidentally shoot each other.”
Ethan’s stomach flips at the thought. “Uh, yeah, we’ll definitely be careful. No playin’ around or anything, even for a bit.”
“Right,” Amy nods. She leans against Mark’s shoulder, looking down at his watch. “It’s getting pretty late. Are you staying tonight?”
Ethan shakes his head, rising to his feet. “Can’t, I have Spencer this week. And I have some stuff to wrap up at home before I can go to sleep anyway.”
“Well, just make sure you get to bed at a reasonable time, alright?”
Ethan cracks a smile and nods. Amy is such a great mom-friend. He loves her so much it hurts his heart sometimes.
“Yeah, we can’t have you sleeping in and uploading late again,” Mark says jokingly, and Ethan shoves his shoulder, laughing.
“Hey, fuck you, man,” he chuckles. “Those haven’t all been my fault.”
“Well, that’s true, I guess,” Mark concedes, dragging a hand through his hair. Ethan shoulders his backpack, a little heavier than usual with his new camera nestled inside. Mark and Chica walk him over to the door, as they always do.
Ethan bends down to give Chica a couple scratches on the head, slipping his feet into his shoes.
“You need to get that cut,” he says, gesturing to Mark’s wild mane of hair. He’s taken to pulling it back recently, but it’s still getting out of hand.
“I know,” Mark groans. “I know we’ve made some jokes about it, but maybe for a video? Like, on the last week or something.”
“It’s a thought,” Ethan laughs. “Just know that I’ll probably fuck it up.”
Mark waves him off. “So what? It’s not like I really ever leave the house anymore anyways.”
Ethan shrugs, digging his keys from the side pocket of his backpack. “Alright, well, I’m gonna head home. Bye, Amy!”
“Drive safe!” she calls in reply.
“Will do,” Ethan says, patting Chica. “Bye, Mark, I’ll see ya on Saturday. If you want me to look into some places for the shooting video, let me know.”
“Sure,” Mark nods, squatting down to draw Chica’s attention to him. “Text me when you get home.”
“I always do,” Ethan says, rolling his eyes. He gives one last goodbye and steps out of the house, closing the front door behind him. He takes a quick scan of the brightly lit sidewalks on either side of the house, then makes his way down towards his car.
He has his phone up to his ear before he’s even fully in the driver’s seat of the Tesla, gently setting his bag in the passenger’s seat. It rings out only once before the call connects.
“Why the hell didn’t you call back sooner? You fucking know you’re on call, Nestor.”
Ethan allows his head to thump back against the headrest, rubbing a hand down his face. “Listen, Miles, you know better than anyone that keeping up appearances comes first. And, in case you weren’t aware, I have two extremely active channels and a pretty large social circle to tend to. Weren’t you the one who always told me that there’s no job without a decent cover?”
“You’ve been gettin’ real cocky these past few months, you know that?”
Ethan shrugs, switching the call to come through the speakers. “Quarantine’s been boring, dude, gotta spice it up somehow.”
“Yeah, I saw on your Twitter that you got those cute little tattoos.”
“They are cute,” Ethan says defensively, pulling out onto the road. “I thought the skull was funny. I thought about asking Jamie to include a gun in the commission somewhere, but I figured that would make people ask questions. At least with this, they just think it’s for Unus Annus.”
A soft snort sounds through the line. Ethan’s lips twitch it an approximation of a smile. “I’ll never understand how one of my best men is the same self-proclaimed ‘Soft Boi’ with over a million subscribers that think he’s just some nice, clumsy idiot. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone with as much versatility as you, not even your old man.”
“Hey, I like to think I’m nice,” Ethan argues. “Maybe not clumsy or soft, but I’m nice!”
“Yeah, yeah, sure you are; right up until I call you with a job.”
“Speaking of,” Ethan says pointedly, “do you actually have a job for me or are we just shooting the shit?”
“Like I’d ever willingly shoot the shit with you, ya fuckin’ psychopath,” Miles grumbles, and Ethan laughs.
“Shut the fuck up, asshole,” he says fondly. “Tell me about the case.”
“Caucasian male, 34 years old. Name’s Lawrence Moore. Abusive fucker, apparently; wife contacted us, said recently he’s been coming home drunk and getting a little too handsy with their daughter. She’s a nice lady; not lookin’ to kill him, just scare him a bit. She’s in the process of filing for a divorce, neither her or the daughter should be an issue. I’ll text you the address, it’s about a three-hour drive from LA. Time isn’t a top priority, but I’d say it needs done within the week.”
Ethan rubs his eyes, huffing a sigh. “You want me to drive a total of six hours just to scare some guy?”
“Hey, what you choose to do is entirely up to you, just as long as he stays alive and I don’t need to call in the clean-up crew. You’re better than that, Nestor.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ethan mumbles. Generally, he tries not to get too involved with the cases but... “Miles? How old is the daughter?”
Miles’s voice drops into something softer, something Ethan’s only heard from him a handful of times.
“Eight.”
Ethan’s hands tighten around the wheel, knuckles blanching white.
“There’s a reason I assigned this case to you, Ethan. So you tell me right now: do I need to reassign?”
Ethan swallows his anger, forces himself to take a measured breath.
“No, sir.”
Four years.
He’s had this job for four years, been in training for even longer, and it’s something he stops to think about sometimes.
He almost misses the simplicity of living in Maine, when he started up his YouTube channel both out of passion and at his dad’s encouragement. He remembers back when he was eighteen, how his dad had vouched for his lack of attendance at their family Thanksgiving, claiming that he was working overtime at the restaurant when he’d actually been at training. The whole “working as a restaurant manager” was a cover that was so often brought up, it nearly became true.
His dad moved to Maine when he retired from the work, smartly choosing Cape Elizabeth. It was only a twenty-minute drive from Portland, one of the agency’s main training centers. Ethan had been introduced to the life at age sixteen, and it had never occurred to him to do anything else. Training became too much to juggle with gymnastics and YouTube, so he quit gymnastics, though his training did become a bit more geared towards his natural skills with agility and coordination.
Mark contacting him and asking him to move to LA to be his full-time editor had coincided perfectly with his completion of the training program. It’s been four years. Four years since he moved out to California and officially joined the agency.
Four years since his first kill.
He’s honestly lost count of how many he’s reached now, intentionally made himself forget because he’d been obsessed with it during his first few months and it had started to bleed into his daily life.
Still, there are times, times like these, where the job is hard. He hasn’t had a case like this in a long time, not since his major fuck-up back in 2018.
Miles is giving him a second chance, he knows. A shot at redemption. A chance to prove that he is capable of doing what he’s told, regardless of his own morals or opinions.
The hardest part about the case, honestly, is managing to cut eight hours out of his day to disappear without anyone getting suspicious about it. Kathryn asks, and Ethan claims he just needs a night...out.
Kathryn, wonderful as she is, doesn’t ask any questions; she merely pats him on the shoulder and tells him to be safe, to call if he needs anything.
Aside from that, the job is cake. Ethan spends the drive down slipping into the proper mindset, and when he gets there, it becomes comically easy.
He arrives at a quarter to midnight, and a quick scan shows the house to be empty when he cruises by. He parks a couple blocks down, spends half an hour getting a read on the neighbors, then walks down the street towards the house. The neighborhood is kind of dingy, several street lamps out and the sidewalk littered with wrappers and discarded masks.
He ducks around to the house’s tiny, fenced-in backyard, easily levers himself over the fence. He starts to pull out his pick-set, then huffs out a quiet laugh upon realizing he doesn’t even need to pick the lock. Rather, the window to the right of the door is propped open.
He slips inside, wrinkles his nose at the state of the bathroom, then makes his way into the kitchen, bypassing the cluttered countertops and making for the living room to settle down on the sofa.
He waits for maybe an hour when Lawrence comes stumbling in through the front door. The reek of alcohol hits Ethan’s nose immediately.
It’s odd, not killing the man. In all of his career, this is probably only the third case where he’s been explicitly asked not to kill the target. It makes it harder, in a lot of ways.
The man is large, burly, but Ethan has him on his ass in seconds, a taser pressed firm against the guy’s bicep. He fucks him up; breaks his nose and a couple of his fingers, dislocates his shoulder, and leaves him with a pretty nasty concussion.
“Touch either of them again and I won’t go nearly as easy on you. Do you understand?”
The man whimpers out some approximation of “yes,” and Ethan fishes out the guy’s phone and stomps it to pieces on the floor, leaves the same way he came in. In and out, a fifteen-minute job.
Not his cleanest work, certainly, but then, he wasn’t given the job for it to be clean.
There’s blood crusted under his nails and drying on his knuckles when he calls Miles.
“Hey, it’s done.”
“You good, kid? You sound exhausted.”
“Fine, just ready to get to bed,” Ethan says. Not really a lie.
“Hey, you start getting tired behind the wheel, you pull over at a motel and stay there for the night. Your dad would kill me if I inadvertently got you killed.”
“Aww, you care,” Ethan teases, but he knows Miles truly does. “You know, you’ve always been my favorite.”
“I’m gonna tell Pete you said that.”
Ethan laughs. A genuine, full laugh that fills his chest with something light. It’s a good feeling. Helps him feel a little more like himself.
A little more human.