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It had taken a while for Benji to get Ethan to trust him while driving. He had this—quirk, Benji liked to call it—in which he would always insist on driving unless he was actively bleeding out or both his arms were broken. The only exception to this rule had been Luther, who didn’t like to drive, until Benji managed to work his way under Ethan’s defenses.
Sure, this was probably because Ethan was a bit preoccupied with his Russian prison mate the first time Benji had driven him, but the journey didn’t matter, only the destination, and all that jazz.
Benji was thinking about this as he drove Ethan across the countryside, that damned key burning a hole in his pocket. He was thinking about this and mourning the inevitable loss of Ethan’s trust because he’d ruined—well, everything.
He knew he had to confess to his huge, world-ending mistake before they got too deep and the truth came out anyway. People had already died because of his error. Ilsa had died. Because of him.
But fuck, he didn’t want to give this up. He didn’t want to give up the soft looks Ethan gave him when he glanced over, despite everything that had happened. He didn’t want to give up the long nights with heated kisses and skin on skin. He didn’t want to give up the movie marathons and cuddles on the couch. And he didn’t want to give up this—getting to be one of two people Ethan let drive him around.
But if he’d learned one lesson in his fifty-two years of life, it was that he didn’t get what he wanted. Even when it seemed like he might—when he passed the field exams or when Ethan finally pulled him into a kiss after London—he knew it would come to an end sooner rather than later. He was surprised it had lasted this long, really.
It was getting dark. Benji had to do it now or he’d chicken out.
He pulled over and cut the engine. Ethan looked at him, questioning, but Benji kept his eyes straight ahead, his hands at ten and two like he was seventeen and taking his driver’s test again. He swallowed thickly.
“Benji?” Ethan said.
Benji burst into tears.
There was a shifting sound, the click of a seatbelt, and then Ethan’s hands were on his face, turning it towards his own.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked, eyes wild. “Are you hurt? Benji, talk to me.”
Benji shook his head and tried to duck out of Ethan’s grip, but Ethan held on tight. After a halfhearted attempt at pulling away, Benji unbuckled his own seatbelt and leaned forward to wrap his arms around Ethan’s shoulders and bury his face where his shoulder and neck connected. He felt the warmth of Ethan’s arms against his back, his palms massaging up and down his spine, and Benji sobbed at the thought that Ethan wouldn’t be touching him like this if he knew what Benji had done.
“Shh, it’s okay,” Ethan murmured in his ear. “It’s okay. We’re alright. You’re okay.”
“N—n—no,” Benji wailed, digging his fingers into Ethan’s back, near-clawing into his shirt. “You don’t know—ow.”
“Know what?” Ethan’s voice was calm on the surface, but Benji could detect the undercurrent of franticness behind his words. “What do I not know, Benji? Tell me, please.”
Benji sniffed and nodded into Ethan’s neck. He allowed himself one moment, just a few seconds, to breathe in Ethan’s scent and savor the feeling of being wrapped in his love for the last time.
Then the moment was over, and he pulled back, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I’m sorry,” Benji choked out. “You’re going to hate me. You’re going to hate me so much.”
Ethan’s expression rapidly shifted into one of horror, and he grabbed Benji’s hands. “Benji, I could never hate you. I could never—”
“You will,” Benji promised. “And it’s—it’s okay. I don’t blame you. I’d hate me, too.”
Ethan was shaking his head, lips moving in a silent plea. He was saying no, no, Benji realized, and he sobbed harder, almost shrinking into himself.
“Benji, I lo—”
“Don’t say it!” Benji nearly screeched, wrenching his hands out of Ethan’s grasp to cover the man’s mouth. “Don’t say that. You—you won’t once I tell you. Just—don’t. Please.”
Ethan held his gaze for a long moment, and Benji felt his heart sink at the tears welling up in his eyes. Ethan shouldn’t be crying for him. He’d ruined everything. He let his hands drop to his lap.
Benji held his breath as Ethan leaned forward, agonizingly slow, to press a kiss to his forehead. They froze there for a beat, breathing heavy, Benji’s heart nearly beating out of his chest, before Ethan pulled away.
“Tell me,” Ethan said firmly despite his trembling hands. His jaw was clenched and his chest heaved, sure signs of emotional distress—distress Benji had caused.
God, he was a monster.
“It’s my fault,” Benji spat out, keeping his eyes locked with Ethan’s because he was also a selfish bastard who wanted to soak up every last shred of affection before it vanished. “It’s all my fucking fault.”
“What is, Benji?”
Benji whimpered like a fucking baby and finally broke eye contact. “I—you know I moved to America when I was recruited to the IMF.”
The sound of fabric shifting. Maybe a nod? “Yes.”
“Well, I wasn’t recruited to the IMF so much as…kicked out of MI6,” Benji said, haltingly. “I made a—big, big mistake. Fucked things up monumentally. So I got booted, and it was IMF or prison.”
“It was IMF or prison for most of us, Benji, I don’t see how—” Ethan said, stopping when Benji held up a palm.
“Just let me explain,” Benji said. He dropped his hand into his lap, twisting his fingers together in the absence of his usual pen or paperclip. “When I was with MI6, I was put in charge of this project. Well, I wasn’t officially in charge—we had supervisors—but I was the one doing most of the work because I had the most experience in the subject. Um. Nuclear engineering.”
He chanced a look at Ethan, whose face had scrunched up in confusion.
“What—Benji, nuclear engineering?” Ethan shook his head minutely, almost a tremor. “You did computer science.”
“And mathematics,” Benji added. “And…nuclear engineering. That one wasn’t at Oxford. I transferred in some credits from another uni—you know what, I had a lot of interests as a child. I couldn’t pick. But that’s not important.”
Ethan dipped his head to allow him to continue.
“As I said, I was basically in charge of the whole operation,” Benji told him, looking down again. “MI6 had become aware of a weapon of mass destruction being passed around by various nefarious organizations. You know how it is. And the higher-ups were afraid. Very, very afraid of what this weapon could do because it was something unlike what anyone had ever seen before. World-ending stuff. I’ve told you about my professor’s anti-God metaphor.” He waited for Ethan’s nod to go on. “Well. There was this weapon. Very scary.” No going back now. “We called it the Rabbit’s Foot. Sort of an ironic thing, to take the edge off.”
Ethan let in a sharp breath, and Benji just had to look at him. There wasn’t horror or hatred in his expression yet. Only confusion.
“Yes, that Rabbit’s Foot,” Benji confirmed. “I saw it in a photograph, once. Didn’t look that threatening, but it could destroy multiple continents, kill billions of people. Still can, I suppose. We never did quite neutralize it.”
Ethan bit his lip and tilted his head. “Why didn’t you mention this when I was trying to find it?”
Benji let out a bitter laugh. “Multiple reasons.” Because it was the biggest fuck-up of his career. Of his life. Because he was ashamed. Because he was terrified of someone finding out what he’d done. Mostly because he was a coward. “I didn’t know where it was. And one of my conditions for joining the IMF was that my past would be rewritten so no one would know what I was involved in before.”
“So what happened?”
Ethan still looked—not unphased, because he was still crying a little, same as Benji. But he wasn’t upset at Benji. He was trying to understand. He was being kind and so, so Ethan.
“My team and I were meant to find a way to essentially kill the Rabbit’s Foot,” Benji explained. He dug his fingers into the seat cushion and couldn’t resist the urge to bounce his leg. His heart rate hadn’t slowed since he’d parked the car. “The problem was that we didn’t know what the Rabbit’s Foot was, exactly. We knew it involved some sort of nuclear energy—hence the nuclear engineering. We knew it would take out a significant portion of the population if used. But that was it, really. We didn’t know how it was deployed, if it could be controlled, what it even did. Nothing.”
Benji’s voice had grown hoarse by this point, and he coughed to clear it. Ethan reached into the glove compartment where a single unopened water bottle had been stashed. He twisted the lid off and offered the bottle to Benji, who took it with a heavily shaking hand.
He didn’t deserve this simple gesture. He drank it anyway because he was selfish and thirsty and Ethan was still looking at him like that.
“Thank you,” he whispered before clearing his throat again and capping the bottle. “So we didn’t know what the Rabbit’s Foot was. This necessitated the creation of an adaptable kill switch—something that, once used on the Rabbit’s Foot, could analyze it and figure out how to destroy it itself. This was when Artificial Intelligence was just starting to be fiddled with, you know, and we thought that was the solution. I still can’t see another way we could’ve done it, even after all this time.”
Benji studied Ethan’s face to see if he’d caught on yet but went on when he didn’t find anything but intent concentration in the man’s eyes. “So MI6 put a bunch of us—engineers, computer scientists, and the like—together and told us to find a solution. We developed an AI to target the Rabbit’s Foot and find and exploit its weaknesses. I did most of the…developing. That part was successful. We tested it on different weapons another branch had cooked up. It was fascinating, really. And it worked beautifully. I was right proud of myself for a while there. Even got a little pay raise for the good work.” Benji snorted at the memory. “God, I was an idiot.”
“Hey—”
“I was,” Benji interrupted, narrowing his eyes at Ethan. “I wasn’t cautious enough. I was responsible for anticipating every outcome of our little project, and I didn’t even consider the possibility that we’d gotten in over our heads. I apparently learned nothing from The Terminator.” He let out a watery chuckle at his own joke and shook his head. “Well. You can probably guess, but the AI went rogue. We’d been testing it on this nuclear launch system, and instead of neutralizing the bombs, it set them all off. Completely annihilated three villages in Azerbaijan. There were…so many deaths.” Benji blinked back another onslaught of hot tears. “And then it just vanished. Without a trace. Even all our files on it were wiped. There was not a single sign we’d even been assigned to the project.
“We tried to find it. We spent months searching the globe for even a hint of the AI’s presence, and—nothing. Zip. It was like it had never existed, except for the fact that four thousand, seven hundred and fifty-two people were dead.” Benji shuddered, and the water bottle crinkled under his grip. He let it fall into his lap and covered his face with his hands. “I killed them all.”
This time, Ethan said nothing. Benji choked on another sob.
He lowered his hands, sure his face was completely red, and continued. “Eventually the pressure for MI6 to concede responsibility became too great, and—well, I got the brunt of the blame, which I deserved. Everyone on the team was fired and tried. A few of those who’d barely been involved got off with a quiet move across the country. I was sentenced to life in prison. That’s when Briggs contacted me and, well, you know the rest. I took a job as a techie, low on the totem pole. I’d had enough responsibility for a lifetime and did a fantastic job of fucking it all up.”
This was it, then. Benji couldn’t look Ethan in the eyes as he said it. He couldn’t watch the understanding and compassion in his eyes turn to hatred, or worse, fear. So he looked solidly at the dashboard where a blinking light told him the car was low on oil.
“You’ve probably figured it out by now,” Benji whispered, unable to say the words in a steady tone, “but the AI. Well. It named itself the Entity.”
And that was that. Benji suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired, like he’d expended all his energy confessing his sins. He kept his eyes trained on the dashboard. Another few tears spilled down his cheeks, and he raised his arm to wipe them on his sleeve—
—only for a warm, solid hand to catch his wrist in midair. Benji reflexively looked at Ethan, and what he saw only made him want to sink into his seat more.
Because Ethan was crying. Fat, wet tears collected on his chin, and his mouth trembled. His eyes squinted at Benji, but he didn’t look angry; he looked—
He looked—
Ethan slowly, cautiously raised his free hand to Benji’s face and wiped his tears away with his thumb. He did the same with his pointer finger on the other side of his face before finally cupping Benji’s chin in his palm. Benji whimpered at the touch and couldn’t stop himself from leaning into it.
“Benji,” Ethan said in a low and guttural voice. “I could never, ever hate you. Never.”
Benji keened, his vision blurring. Ethan released his hand to wipe away his new tears and then rest his hand on the back of Benji’s neck. He brought their foreheads together until they were breathing the same air, and Benji was unable to look away.
“I will always love you, Benji,” Ethan continued. He spoke firmly like he was giving an order. “No matter what you’ve done in the past. No matter what you will do in the future. I will never stop loving you.”
You shouldn’t, Benji tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out, so he was left moving his lips soundlessly in the wake of Ethan’s intense gaze.
“You made a mistake,” Ethan acknowledged, “but those deaths aren’t on you. It was the Entity. You were trying to save lives.”
“I killed them all,” Benji protested. “I killed thousands of people. I killed Ilsa.”
Ethan winced before steeling his expression. “No. That was the Entity, not you. It’s not your fault.”
“I created the Entity.”
“You were trying to prevent a nuclear attack,” Ethan countered. “And you weren’t the only one making it. You were ordered to by MI6.”
“I should have been more careful with it.”
“So should everyone else,” Ethan said. “Benji. You’re not going to change my mind and make me blame you. Just accept the fact that I’m with you ‘till the end and move forward.”
I’m with you ‘till the end. Benji closed his eyes, his face crumpling. He felt Ethan press a kiss to his cheeks, his nose, his chin. This was…nothing like he’d expected. He’d thought there’d be screaming. Maybe a few punches. He’d expected to be sleeping in a ditch tonight, left to find his own shelter far away from Ethan and any IMF safehouses. Now that Ethan was holding him, kissing him, soothing him, Benji had no idea what to do.
“Why?” he asked, the question barely a whisper. He choked at the end of it, the word devolving into a whine as he lost control of his voice again. He kept his eyes closed, unable to bear the weight of Ethan’s sad eyes on his at the moment.
“Because you’re a good man, Benji,” Ethan answered, “regardless of your mistakes. Because you’ve been by my side for nearly two decades. Because you would do the same if you were in my position. Because I’ve loved you for years and will continue loving you as long as I live.” He pressed another feather-light kiss to each of Benji’s eyelids. “I’m so sorry you thought I would hate you for this. I don’t.”
Benji began shaking with something he couldn’t explain. There was a rushing in his ears, and he didn’t know when he’d stopped breathing, but he was now very much aware of it. His eyes snapped open, and there was nothing else he could do but pull Ethan into a desperate, messy kiss.
Ethan tasted of salt. Or maybe that was Benji. He was nearly certain he’d worried at his lip out of stress so much he’d broken the skin and bled. Ethan’s hand on his neck tightened, and Benji lifted his own hands to card through Ethan’s sweaty hair. He tilted his head to deepen the kiss and forced his tongue past Ethan’s lips, needing something more.
Ethan broke the connection, pulling back a few inches and maneuvering Benji’s chin so he could look dead into Benji’s eyes.
“Benji, breathe,” he instructed, taking a deep breath and exhaling in an exaggerated manner. He’d done it countless times to guide Benji through his semi-regular panic attacks.
Huh. This was a panic attack. Funny how Benji’d had so many and still couldn’t recognize them immediately.
He followed Ethan’s lead, matching his breaths until he didn’t feel like he could explode at any moment. He let his forehead droop until it was resting against Ethan’s shoulder, and he sunk into Ethan’s arms once again.
“There you go,” Ethan murmured into his hair, planting another kiss there. “We’re okay. We’ll get through this. I love you. I love you.”
“I don’t even—” Benji’s voice cracked, and he took a shaky breath. “I don’t even know what to do now. What do I—what do I do? Tell me what to do.”
“We’re going to go to the safehouse we picked out,” Ethan said, “and we’re going to sleep for fourteen hours. And then we’re going to figure out the Entity’s next move. We have one more advantage than I thought. You know how the Entity thinks; you built its brain. We can find a way to stop it. Benji, don’t you see? You’re the key to defeating the Entity. That’s why it targeted you specifically with the fake bomb.”
“We already have a key,” Benji muttered. “It’s poking me in the arse.”
Ethan huffed a laugh and kissed him on the crown again. “I love you. We’re going to fix this, and I love you.”
And Benji thought, maybe, he believed him.