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The mission was supposed to be simple, in and out. But when are missions for the IMF ever simple? And when are missions with Ethan Hunt ever in and out?
This mission was to tail someone who was informing on IMF, a mole. They were meant to follow them until they met with the person they were informing on and from there the people in charge would take care of the rest.
Benji should have known by now that Ethan would never have let it go that smoothly. The man was a menace on any mission they were deployed on. So here they were, in the restaurant the mole was meeting their informant at. Benji wanted to sit a few tables away, able to watch vigilantly while not getting too close and tipping off the mole to their location.
Ethan on the other hand… he had other plans. First off, he was going to get the mole and the person they were informing. Secondly, he was going to sit as close as possible so that he had a better vantage point.
Benji, of course, protested. However his pleas to just play it safe this once, let them do what the mission said to, fell on deaf ears. It wasn't like he entirely minded the danger when it came to Ethan. He quite liked the fact that everyday with Ethan was a surprise. Though, he thinks it was more so that he quite liked Ethan. His poor nerves would never recover from all the time spent with him, but hey, at least he was by his side.
Speaking of, Ethan was intently watching the target, sitting across from Benji. They had been placed at a two top after Ethan said something about it being a "special occasion." Benji tried not to think about the way his heart tightened in response.
Apparently the mole had been sitting there for a bit. All they had ordered was a glass of wine, and anytime the waiter came over to get their order they would request more time with the menu. Honestly Benji wouldn't be surprised if they got played and the person they were meeting was never going to arrive. Wait, maybe that means their cover was blown.
As soon as the thought crossed his mind the person at the table got a call. Ethan's eyes narrowed as he watched them intently.
"Shit. I think our cover was blown." Ethan says, moving out of the person's line of sight to stare at Benji.
"Well? What are we going to do then?" The other man asks, heart skyrocketing in his chest, it's so over, what are they are going to do now?
"Do you trust me?"
"Always." The word tumbles from his lips like it's the most natural thing. And it is, Benji has never not trusted Ethan, even when he's scared shitless, he will always trust Ethan.
Suddenly Ethan is coming around the table, down on one knee. 'What the fuck is he doing?'' His hand goes to his pocket and Benji thinks he has died.
"Benji Dunn, these last 7 years together have been the best of my entire life. I may not have been able to do this before, but…I know I can now. So, will you marry me?" And in Ethan's outstretched hand there is a small black velvet box, and a ring. It is a sleek black color, save for the one diamond set in the center.
Benji thinks he has died. He must've. Or he's having a very long dream that has gone way off course. He feels his face flush as he stares into Ethan's eyes. Answer. He needs to answer.
"Yes." He says, breathless. "Yes."
And Ethan is smiling as the people around them clap and cheer, Ethan slides the ring onto his finger (a perfect fit, how did he know?) before capturing Benji's lips in a kiss that has him utterly melting in his embrace.
By the time they part their waiter has come by with a dessert, clearly made in advance. Ethan is tracking the target, still at the table, however seemingly not looking at the two of them anymore. "Perfect. Attention off of us — from them, at least. Eat up, we'll get them once we're done."
Benji ate the dessert with shaking hands, still reeling from… whatever the fuck it was just happened. He finished quickly, wanting to get the mole and then lock himself in his apartment and scream into his pillow like a teenager. Did he always carry a ring in his pocket during missions? Not to mention, why did it fit Benji's finger exactly? Too many questions, not enough time to spiral about them.
When he put down the spoon, Ethan was up and out of his chair, Benji on his tail as they made to walk out. As soon as Ethan brushed past the mole, he turned, gun to their back. "You're coming with us."
"And ruin the happy engagement between you two? Why would I do that?" They responded, their hands below the table seeming to fidget with something.
Benji acted quickly, wrenching one of their arms up from under the table and grabbing the gun out of their hand. They seemed surprised by the act, just staring up at the man, wide eyed.
"Didn't expect you were another agent. How sweet. Your fiancé drag you into this?" Their words dripped with sarcasm, causing Benji to sneer.
"He's not– We're not– shut the fuck up." He settled on, turning the gun on them. "Nowhere to go now."
"All a ruse? Shame, that kiss looked so real."
Ethan rolled his eyes, Benji hoped he didn't notice the hot shame that burned on his face.
Taking in the mole after that was easy… almost too easy. Benji wondered if this was the mole's plan, nothing was ever this simple. He thought as much as soon as they started the mission. Yet in his earpiece Luther's voice rang out, <Good job guys. Transport is outside, drop em off and head to a safe house.>
"Copy that." Ethan responded as the two of them led the mole out of the building. Sure enough agents were there to take them off their hands. As they handed the target to the agents Benji noticed Ethan's hand lingering on their shoulder. What was he up to now?
As soon as transport was gone Ethan turned to Benji, "Something is off. They went along with us a bit too easily. You agree, Luther?"
<Read my mind. You put a tracker on them?>
"Yup."
<Connecting to it as we speak.>
"I had a feeling something was off." Benji said once Luther began tracking the target. "They went along too easily, especially since our cover was blown."
"Exactly what I was thinking, love."
Benji had to stop in his tracks. Mission was over, why wasn't he dropping the bit? He only put on the ruse because their cover was blown, right?
Ethan gave him a smile at his confused look, but refused to say anything more. Instead he led Benji to one of the undercover IMF cars and got in. Benji pulled up the laptop in the glove compartment, logging in and pulling up what Luther was seeing on his monitor. It seemed the target was being taken to the nearest IMF base, but then something was wrong. The light stopped, right over a bridge. Full stop, no moving. As they tailed behind they saw it. There were bombs on the bridge. Of course there were bombs on the bridge. Why couldn't anything actually be simple?
<Bombs look to be connected to something within the van. Seems to be our mole there.>
"Are they being interrogated? Is the person they're informing planning on blowing them to high hell if they reveal anything?"
<It's plausible. Trying to connect to the bombs, its deceptively easy in the sense that they're similar to IMF standards.>
"Whats the deception then?"
<Someone else is rewriting the code for them as we speak. So I can get in, the problem is staying in.>
"Benji, love, can you try and get access to the feed from the van? I have a feeling this whole thing is a setup…"
Thankfully Benji's hands worked automatically. His brain on the other hand was stuck on repeating the word 'love' over and over in Ethan's voice. That was the second time that's happened, what the fuck was going on?
The feed of the inside of van pulled up on the screen. The mole was being interrogated, but there was something else. One of the other agents sitting in front of the screen that separated the driver and the containment unit was acting suspicious. Their hands were fidgeting. IMF training was very strict on policies for how agents could act, especially in an interrogation. This agent was not following those policies.
Instantly curious, Benji zoomed in on the feed. The agent was wearing gloves, but they had pads along different areas, and they seemed to be pressing them at specific intervals. Their eyes were also covered with glasses, and with this closer view, Benji saw how their eyes were moving from left to right, as if reading something.
"Shit, there's someone inside the van." He said, beginning to try and deactivate the gear. "They must be using the gear to rewrite the code…" He was focused now, attempting to establish a connection with everything inside the van so that he could zero in on the gear. After a few moments of typing a smile made its way onto his face. "There it is. The code here was much more complicated. But Benji didn't bother with rewriting any of it, deleting it would work much better. After he scanned to make sure there was no 'automatically detonate the bomb if these stop working' a quick Crtl + A and then a hit of the backspace button had the agent in the car immediately furious.
Their frantic looking around got the attention of the other agents and the mole, who cursed them out.
<Code stopped rewriting itself, bombs deactivated.> Came Luther's voice over the earpiece, and Ethan and Benji breathed out a sigh.
Through the feed they saw as the other mole was detained as well, and the containment moved forward.
"Good job, team." Ethan said, and then he moved to give Benji a kiss on the cheek. "Great job there."
The car started moving and Benji just had to sit in silence. He was going to confront Ethan about this once they got to the safe house.
The drive there was mostly silent, Benji's thoughts couldn't sop racing. All he kept thinking about was the ring on his finger, the kiss, the pet names. God he had been in love with Ethan for so long, but this was so odd. There was no confession, no dating. Ethan just fucking proposed to him and kept the ruse going even after the mission was done. What was happening? The thought of this being a prank crossed his mind more than once, and he tried not to dwell on it because if he did he would definitely begin crying. This being a prank would be one of the worst things to ever happen to him.
When they finally arrived Ethan parked and walked over to open Benji's door to open it for him. What was happening???? Beji thanked him and they both walked into the safe house. 'Deep breaths, Benji. Deep Breaths.' he kept thinking.
Once inside Ethan threw himself onto the couch, sighing and leaning his head on the backrest. Benji sat down next to him, taking a deep breath to try and calm himself.
"Ethan, can we talk?"
Ethan gave him a questioning glance, but sat up on the couch once he heard Benji's tone of voice. "Yeah, of course. What's up?"
"Why aren't you dropping the whole, 'we're engaged', thing?" He just had to go for it, no beating around the bush, his mind was too consumed by anxiety to even be able to ramble his way to the question anyway.
"Why would I? I asked you to marry me, you said yes. Why would I need to drop that?"
Now Benji was more confused than ever. "Well, yes. I did accept the proposal. But Ethan I thought you did that because our cover was blown?"
"I did do that, but also because I had been planning on proposing anyway. Figured I'd kill two birds with one stone." Ethan replied with a shrug.
"Ethan we weren't even dating!"
The confusion on Ethan's face deepened, "What do you mean? Haven't we been together since after the whole: saving the world from Hendricks? Not too long after that I remember asking if you wanted to be my partner…"
Benji's jaw was dropped. Ethan thought they were dating for that long??? Benji thought he was still in love with Julia. "I– what? Ethan I thought you meant like work partner! Not boyfriend!"
Ethan's face looked hurt, and he was about to say something when Benji cut him off, "If you thought we'd been dating since then, why in the world did you only start using pet names today. Not to mention the kissing. What changed?"
"I thought you wanted to keep the relationship on the down low. Figured since I proposed publicly and you accepted I was able to finally show some PDA." Ethan responded, though he still seemed relatively hurt. "Does this mean you don't want to marry me?"
Benji couldn't help laughing at that. "Of course I want to marry you Ethan, it's just a bit of a surprise because I hadn't known we were dating!"
"I could've sworn you did. Everyone else thought we were."
"They WHAT?"
<Yeah, with how close you two were I just thought you weren't into PDA, or you were attempting to be at least somewhat discreet.> Luther chimed in.
Benji buried his face in his hands, "Okay, well. Whatever, for me we've skipped straight to being engaged before we've ever dated."
"I can take the ring back if you want–" Ethan began, but Benji cut him off.
"Absolutely not. It's gorgeous, I just need a bit to process the fact that I'm engaged to you. Here I am having thought my romantic feelings for you were unrequited when this whole time you thought we were dating."
Ethan giggled, and Benji thought it was the most adorable thing in the world because Ethan Hunt does not giggle. The man then pulled Benji into a hug, Benji's face burying itself in his neck. "Glad to know you're still my fiancé even if you didn't even know you were my boyfriend."
Benji moved his head make eye contact with Ethan, "Shut up and kiss me, Ethan."
Ethan gave him a smile filled with such fondness that it made Benji want to melt in his embrace. "Of course, love." and then they were kissing, and just like earlier it was perfect and soft, and Benji was happy that it was real.