Chapter Text
It’s always the eyes, Phil thinks as he stares over the barrel of a gun into William Brandt’s. He can already feel a trickle of blood from where Brandt's precisely placed shot had grazed his eyebrow and yet the first thing that comes to Phil’s mind is how ridiculously attractive Brandt looks holding a gun.
Phil has a thing about eyes. Windows to the soul is a romantic hyperbole, but most people aren’t as well versed in masking their eyes as they are their facial expressions. Even fewer people are as good at reading people’s eyes as they are their body language. Phil is very good at the former and excellent at the latter. He has always been drawn to people’s eyes, making him very conscious of his own, and both skills had served him well in his chosen profession.
The last time Phil had seen William Brandt was a year ago and across a conference room table. It was at the annual meeting that boasted inter-agency cooperation, but typically resulted in nothing more than the agency heads gaining a few pounds from indulging in too many lavish dinners. Phil was standing behind Fury and Hill, watching as the IMF Secretary's new Chief Analyst fidgeted nervously across the table. Brandt’s eyes shifted restlessly around the table and it would have been easy to dismiss it as yet another nervous tick. Even Phil had been ready to look past the younger man, but a nagging instinct told Phil to pause and look closer, which was when Brandt’s eyes unerringly met his.
Phil struggled to show no outward sign of his reaction to being caught in William Brandt’s gaze. This was no nervous tick. This was Brandt casing and categorizing every person in the room, done at such a speed that it looked like no more than a deferential glance. Phil knew that his own face exposed nothing, his eyes masked and hidden behind dark, reflective sunglasses, but his heartbeat quickened at the feeling Brandt could see through it all down to his core.
Brandt’s eyes lingered on Phil for a beat longer before they flickered in amusement. A corner of Brandt’s mouth lifted minutely and Phil let his chin drop a fraction of an inch in response. Brandt had clearly recognized Phil’s attempt to blend into the background and Phil was man enough to admit when he was caught. Then Brandt’s gaze shifted, making a slow sweep down and up Phil’s body, before quickly moving back to the top of the table and away. Phil suddenly found his heartbeat quickening for an entirely different reason.
William Brandt was distracting. Phil’s reason for being at the meeting was similar to Brandt’s - watch for what the other heads were not saying in addition to what they were - but his attention continued to stray toward the Chief Analyst. He found Brandt’s nervousness, which was obviously not faked, incredibly endearing when compared to all the posturing and chest pounding being done at the table. There was no question that the man was attractive and Phil spent an embarrassing amount of time watching the changing light create rainbows in the younger man’s eyes. Phil groaned inwardly when he realized what he’d been doing and felt like kicking his own ass for being such a sap. He was acting like a hormonal teenager.
Phil told himself he was allowed one last look and caught Brandt looking right back. Once again, Phil knew there was no outwardly discernible way to see what direction he was looking in, but this didn’t seem to matter to Brandt. The analyst startled, ducked his head, and actually blushed. Phil came to two quick conclusions: one, he was becoming infatuated with William Brandt and two, he didn’t mind at all.
Unsurprisingly for Phil’s life, that was the exact moment that his phone buzzed in his pocket, signaling the need to make a quick exit to fend off a Stark-related nightmare. The Stark incident turned into several and while Phil had looked up Brandt’s information, too much time had passed for contacting him to look like anything but creepy. Phil’s only option was to wait for another opportunity to approach the Chief Analyst.
Brandt, it seemed, had taken the idea of inter-agency collaboration to heart, setting up a system for the various agencies to flag planned ops where jurisdiction could be questioned. Initially, it was used only by Brandt and his team of analysts, but then the IMF set the ultimate example by stepping away from an op and letting the FBI complete the take down of an international arms dealer. Phil knew Brandt must have played a large part in convincing the Secretary to allow the change, but it worked. Suddenly everyone was using Brandt’s system to flag ops and share information on targets being watched by multiple agencies. The amount of information being openly shared between agencies was unprecedented and Phil had to give Brandt points for being so devoted to the cause.
It was when MI-6 and Scotland Yard started posting information that Phil finally saw the system for what it was - an intelligence goldmine. In addition to the general benefit of information sharing, Brandt also had a map of the interagency spider web that covered the globe. He could see who and what was being watched and by whom, determine where holes existed that needed patching, and identify any brewing hotspots before anyone else knew they existed. Any of the other agencies could extract the information, but it would be a painstaking process. IMF and Brandt had access to the raw data, had had it from the beginning, and had likely set up their internal monitoring for this exact purpose. The arms dealer wasn’t a concession, it was a well calculated move that had worked flawlessly. William Brandt was a genius, an assessment that Fury wholeheartedly agreed with when Phil shared his conclusions at their next staff meeting.
“What we should be asking ourselves,” Fury said with a pointed look in Phil’s direction, “is not why we didn’t see this earlier or create it ourselves, but how the hell we get Brandt to leave IMF for SHIELD.”
Thirty-six hours later, the Kremlin blew up, IMF instituted Ghost Protocol, and William Brandt disappeared. The speed in which all the other agencies recoiled from the IMF and anything possibly connected to Moscow was impressive. A frustratingly small amount of information trickled in. They received word the next morning that the IMF Secretary’s body had been found floating in the Moskva River. Then there were rumors about an incident in Dubai and nobody could ignore the missile that had fizzled before landing San Francisco Bay. It appeared as though an IMF team had managed to stop an impending nuclear strike without any support from the IMF or any other agency. Details were scarce, even after the IMF was reinstated, and the only name that was leaking out, as was typical of IMF-saves-the-world events, was Ethan Hunt’s.
Months passed and there was still no word from or about William Brandt. His interagency system sat unused since Ghost Protocol. It was common knowledge that the Secretary rarely traveled without his newly promoted Chief Analyst - something that hadn’t been true with past chiefs. It spoke volumes about the Secretary’s belief in Brandt’s skills, but also meant that chances were high Brandt had been in that SUV with the Secretary. Phil tried and failed not to think about the various scenarios that all lead to the same outcome. The idea of Brandt’s body left unknown and unclaimed in the middle of Russia produced stronger emotions than Phil would have expected from only meeting the man once with no words exchanged.
Feeling strange about mourning a man he barely knew, Phil started researching what he could about William Brandt. He learned about Brandt’s childhood in San Francisco and even found a hilarious high school yearbook photo. Phil read about how Brandt had excelled at the Air Force Academy, eventually catching the eye of an IMF recruiter. Brandt’s field record was filled with commendations until a very sudden departure into the analyst ranks after an op in Croatia. Phil’s instincts told him there was something deeper there, but he couldn’t dig further without alerting both SHIELD and the IMF.
Phil had just convinced himself to drop this strange obsession with William Brandt when he received an alert about an upcoming IMF op in New York. Someone was using Brandt’s system again and Phil couldn’t help grinning in the confines of his office when he read the brief. William Brandt was alive, if the signature on the alert was to be believed, and still Chief Analyst. Phil then read the rest of the alert, stopped grinning, and walked quickly to Fury’s office.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, Phil’s recommendation to respond was overruled, which is why he now found himself kneeling over an unconscious Ethan Hunt and looking down the lethal end of Brandt’s gun.
Brandt’s eyes widen in recognition before they narrow accusingly.
“Is he?” he asks Phil with a small motion towards Hunt.
“Alive,” Phil responds. “Just stunned.”
“Aragorn is alive, but down,” Brandt says and Phil is glad they thought to patch into the IMF comm.
“Gimli thirty seconds behind you,” replies a female voice.
“Where’s the drive, Gandalf?” Brandt asks.
“He’s down the corridor,” comes another voice and Phil registers the accent. “Looks like he got held up by some other - oh bloody hell! Another energy surge. He’s on the move, headed for the roof.”
Brandt spares a quick look at Phil. “You have some explaining to do, Agent Coulson,” he says, but doesn’t wait for a response and takes off running down the corridor.
Phil ignores the adolescent flutter in his stomach at Brandt knowing his name and runs after the Chief Analyst turned field agent. He bursts out onto the roof only to be tackled to the ground by Brandt as an energy burst explodes over their heads. Brandt jumps back up with a small curse and continues the chase. Phil assesses the situation and takes off along the far side of the roof to cut off the only other avenue of escape.
“Sitwell?” Phil asks into his own comm.
“We’ve got agents headed up to the roof just ahead of where Hunt is chasing him,” Jasper responds.
“Hunt’s down,” Phil corrects as he runs. “That’s Brandt. You need to send medics to Hunt’s last position.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Legolas,” warns Gandalf. “you’re headed straight toward a group of whoever these other guys are.”
“SHIELD,” huffs Brandt, sounding unimpressed.
“Ah...that must explain Mr. Energy Hands,” says Gandalf cheerily, before calling out a warning. “You’ve got about an eight to ten foot drop to the next roof.”
Phil turns a corner in time to see the mutant Hydra agent make a flying leap off the roof and Brandt follow a few seconds later without any hesitation. He hears a grunt that tells him that Brandt landed, but doesn’t have the vantage point to see the IMF agent end the leap with a graceful tuck and roll that gets him back on his feet with barely a pause.
“Well that was impressive,” comments Sitwell.
Phil drops himself down to the next roof in a much gentler move - there’s no way his bum ankle would take the leap - and continues after Brandt.
“Down!” yells Brandt and Phil automatically jumps behind an air conditioning unit as another energy blast zooms by.
“Keep your hands down,” orders a voice Phil recognizes as Jenkins and he shakes his head at the junior agent’s useless command.
Phil peers around the corner and sees Brandt in a squat behind his own AC unit. The mutant is now facing the SHIELD agents, clearly unintimidated by the dozen assembled men and women. The mutant’s hands start to take on a brighter glow and Phil prepares to shout a warning.
“Fuck this,” Phil hears Brandt mutter and two gunshots ring out in quick succession.
The mutant is now puddled in a heap of misery, his bloody hands tucked into his body. The SHIELD agents stare in disbelief as Brandt tucks his gun into his back holster, calmly walks over to the mutant, and snags a memory drive from his pocket. Brandt walks away without a backward glance, giving Gandalf his status and requesting Hunt’s condition as he goes.
William Brandt, it would seem, is much more than a distraction. Not only is he an extremely intelligent analyst, but a competent field agent with bravery bordering on insanity. Phil doesn’t stand a chance.