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Benji really hadn’t been planning on telling him.
He felt guilty. He had got hurt – again. He had been in trouble and needed to be saved – again.
Real agents just shrugged these things off. Look how well Ilsa coped with being almost strangled. And Ethan got bombs tied to him and people shooting at him all the time, and just carried on.
It was ridiculous, Benji thought, for a field agent to feel the need for a little comfort – a little sympathy. If Ilsa was fine, he was fine.
It would be so shaming to let Ethan know just how badly he was hurt. Or how it had bought back memories of the last time Solomon Lane had him in his power. How was Ethan supposed to rely on him, if he found Benji sobbing in pain in a corner somewhere?
Which was why he made sure the corner he was sobbing in was very, very far away from everyone else.
Of course he’d forgotten to take into account Ethan’s ability to find him anywhere.
Benji looked up and only saw a shadow against the sunset, outlined in the door of the tent. He cried out – certain for a moment that Solomon Lane had come back for him.
‘It’s only me,’ Ethan said. ‘I came looking for you – you haven’t been to meals.’
Benji couldn’t swallow food yet. He was subsisting on protein shakes. And yet how could he possibly explain that to a man who was up and walking around hours after smashing up half his body in a helicopter crash?
‘I’m not hungry, and I’ve got some work to do, so I just thought I’d catch up…’
‘Your voice sounds strange…’
Damn. He’d been so careful not to speak to Ethan in the tent. He talked to Ethan all day normally – he’d notice the change in his voice.
‘I’ve – got a cold. It’s breezy, up here in the mountains,’ he said.
But this was Ethan Hunt, who could smell a lie from five miles away, and knew Benji better than himself. He stepped into the tent.
Damn the man, couldn’t he leave Benji to feel sorry for himself in peace?
Ethan stepped forward slowly, making sure Benji had time to grow used to his presence before he came a little closer. It was a gentle gesture towards someone who had too much of his life stripped away from him by a madman recently, and it broke Benji’s heart. Would he do this to Luther, or Ilsa? No, because they were tough and strong and didn’t need to be babied.
‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Benji insisted.
‘Of course you are,’ Ethan said warily. ‘Because you’d tell me if you were not. You wouldn’t keep that from me.’
Oh great, guilt.
‘Ilsa told me about the fight with Solomon Lane. She says you saved her life.’
‘Well, it’s what we do, isn’t it? Us IMF. Save each other lives all the time. Barely worth mentioning. But I have work to do, so….’
Why wouldn’t the damn man go away!
‘She said you saved her life at considerable risk to your own – but she wouldn’t tell me any more.’
‘Well at least she respects my privacy!’ Benji snapped. But that wasn’t enough to deter Ethan. He crouched in front of Benji.
‘I do respect your privacy. But I need to know what’s happening with my team.’
Benji looked up at him, begging him silently to just go away.
But one treacherous part of him wanted Ethan to know, to comfort him, to make it right.
But field agents didn’t do that.
‘Can I?’ Ethan said, gesturing at the battery powered lamp.
Oh, what the hell. Might as well get it over with. Benji nodded. Ethan reached over and switched the lamp on.
He couldn’t disguise it. Not even Ethan Hunt, master of masks, could hide his horror when he saw the bruise on Benji’s neck. He reached forward, very gently, to push aside the collar of Benji’s shirt, to look closer. Benji tensed, waiting to wince, but Ethan didn’t hurt him. Benji watched Ethan closely, waiting for one hint that Ethan was disappointed in him, felt that Benji wasn’t a good enough agent, that Benji was going to let him down by screaming in pain.
‘He hanged you?’ Ethan said, horrified. Benji nodded. ‘You fought back,’ Ethan said, his eyes going down to Benji’s torn hands, the cuts from the bottle.
‘Best I could,’ Benji said. But he knew he had to admit it all. ‘Didn’t work though. Ilsa still had to save me.’
‘You saved her first, she says. How far – how bad…’ Ethan swallowed softly. ‘How close did I come to losing you?’
Benji tried to laugh, to pass it off as a joke, as nothing really, but the laugh caught in his throat and turned into a cough.
Ethan shuffled in further. He put his hand on Benji’s arm, a familiar gesture of comfort that almost broke Benji.
‘Tell me,’ he said, softly, and Benji had never disregarded an order from Ethan.
‘He – hanged me until I passed out,’ Benji admitted, shamefully. ‘I think I might have died a little - sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Ethan said, incredulous. ‘For what?’
‘For needing to be saved, yet again! For nearly dying, yet again! For failing…’
‘Failing? You think you failed? You saved Ilsa, defeated Solomon Lane, and stopped the bomb and you survived being hanged! In no way is that a failure!’
Ethan settled down on the floor next to Benji, still so close, staring into his eyes.
‘You have to know that in my eyes you did not fail. You have never failed.’
‘I needed to be rescued…’
‘Do me a favour and tell me how many times you’ve rescued me?’
Benji fell silent. Somehow it didn’t seem the same…
‘You survived,’ Ethan said. ‘That’s more important than anything. You – you have to know it’s very important to me that you live.’
‘Good techs aren’t that hard to find…’
‘That not what I mean.’
Ethan moved closer to him. He reached forward to switch off the light, as if what he wanted to say could only be said in darkness.
‘I want to rip Solomon Lane apart for daring – daring – to lay a finger on you, not once, but twice. I want to hang him from the highest tree and watch him twist in the wind as he dies slowly. I want him to see a countdown and know that his life is ticking away. Then I realised – that wouldn’t be enough. Not for how I want him to suffer. I want him to watch all that happen to someone he loves and know he can’t do anything to save them. And I know that is cruel and wrong and not how an agent is supposed to think...but that’s what I want.’
Benji thought for a moment. There were implications in what Ethan had said – echoes of something Benji felt for Ethan – but Benji felt if he pushed – if he asked for more – whatever was between them right now would drift away on the wind.
‘Me too,’ Benji said. If Lane had done all that to Ethan – Benji would have wanted the same revenge. But Ethan was worth it…
‘But on the other hand,’ Ethan said. ‘You beat him. He underestimated you. He looked at you and he didn’t see who you really are, and it cost him dear.’
Ethan sounded almost triumphant.
‘And who I am really?’ Benji asked, because damned if he knew.
‘My field agent,’ Ethan said, almost surprised he had to say. “My friend. My closest friend. My – my….’
‘Yours.’
Somehow Benji managed to put it all into that word. He felt Ethan smile in the dark and then Ethan put his arm around him.
‘Mine.’ Ethan agreed.
Benji wanted to say more. Just to tell him – you matter to me. More than anything. I want to be good at this for you. I want to not hurt so I don’t have to see the pain in your eyes when you look at me. I want you to know you can always rely on me. I want – I want more.
But I don’t know how to say it.
‘I let you down,’ Ethan said suddenly.
‘How could you possibly think that…’
‘You have to know – I ought to let you know – you ought to be able to feel that when something like this happens, you can come to me, not hide away in a corner.’
‘Oh really? And who do you go to when this happens?’
‘You.’
And now that Benji thought about it – that was true. He saw Ethan tired, and worried and in pain, more than anyone else.
‘I’ll always save you,’ Ethan said softly, in the dark, like a whispered prayer. ‘I will always come for you. I will always protect you. And it’s not because you are weak, or a burden. It’s because I want to. With all my heart and soul I want to keep you safe.’
Benji wanted to answer, wanted to promise the same thing, but what he could offer Ethan Hunt that could match that?
‘But for now, love,’ Ethan said, standing up. ‘I want to take you to the medical tent and get you some painkillers and ointment for bruises. No argument.’
‘None from me.’
Ethan held out a hand to help him stand up, and held onto him all the way to the medical tent, though Benji was quite capable of walking. In the moonlight Benji thought he saw tears on Ethan’s face, but why would that be?
Why would Ethan Hunt cry for him?