I seem to be back in the ficlet habit. I’ll try to write a longer fic at some point (probably for benthan week, but for now..
Ethan leaned against the door jamb and watched Benji, amused and in awe.
Ever since it was all over, and Ethan followed Benji out of Trafalgar Square and laid his heart and soul at his feet, Benji had refused to lose contact with his team. Paris is a weekly visitor, Grace slips in on an occasional dark night (she really enjoys the ‘in the shadows’ bit of being a spy) Degas calls constantly. And then there’s Tapeesa and Donloe. Benji video calls and learns a few new phrases of Tapeesa’s language and then she passes him to Donloe to have hours and hours of coding talk.
Ethan understands very little. But he does like to lie on the sofa and listen.
He’d been aware Donloe was one of Benji’s icons. Benji had rhapsodised about his coding ability more than once, and wondered where he had disappeared to. Luther and Ethan had exchanged guilty glances at those moments. It was only when the idea of finding Donloe became fixed in his head and Benji applied himself to the task that Ethan had told him.
Benji listened intently to the entire story and then sat back.
‘Fucking Kittridge,’ he said.
‘Kittridge? It was me, I broke in, I destroyed that man’s career’
‘You broke in- nice trick by the way - but it was Kittridge who reassigned him.’
And Benji had spent a good few months hacking Kittridge’s email box and causing chaos. Now that he had found Donloe and than Donloe and Tapeesa became part of his team, Benji spent hours talking to him.
Ethan lay on the sofa, only half listening, drifting off to the soothing sound of happy Benji. They seemed to be discussing some kind of mission (Benji and Ethan were retired. However Benji got bored and Ethan got restless so once on a while they did a private little favour for friends that looked a lot like a mission). Ethan allowed himself to drift off to sleep.
‘That knife saved my life,’ Benji said, and suddenly Ethan’s eyes shot open.
‘Mine too, in a way,’ Donloe replied. ‘I am happier in this life than I ever could imagine being. I tried to tell Ethan that.’
‘He doesn’t handle reassurance well,’ Benji replied. Ethan lay very still. He knew Benji knew he was there - Benji always knew he was there - but Donloe wouldn’t.
‘I could see the way he looked at you on the plane,’ Donloe said. ‘When he got back on. Like his whole world revolved around you. And yet - he wasn’t reaching out to you. He just gazed at you when your back was turned. Like I suspect he always did.’
‘He - what?’ Benji asked. Ethan lay very still.
‘Oh - you never saw, did you?’ Donloe asked. ‘You never saw the way he looked at you when you weren’t looking.’
Tapeesa said something and Benji took a moment to work it out.
‘I don’t know how many years he’d been looking at me like that,’ Benji said. ‘I didn’t know he looked at me like that!’
‘We all talked about it, the way Ethan looks at you, but we’d all known you such a short amount of time. We thought it was a new thing. But when I looked closer, I could see it was muscle memory for him, to look at you like that. He loved you for a very long time. The lines of his face had settled into a look of adoration at you.’
Benji stared at the screen dumbfounded and then slowly turned to stare at Ethan. He continued to talk to Donloe, but it was Ethan he was looking at.
‘I’ve loved him since I met him,’ Benji said slowly. ‘Twenty years. But him - I have no idea. We never talked about it.’
‘But you’re together now?’
‘We’re together now, yes..’
‘Well, he waited a long time. I could see it, the way he touched you when he was comforting you. I saw the way you turned away, and didn’t expect him to - I don’t know. Like you didn’t expect comfort from him. But then he gave in. He reached for you and it felt like something he’d been holding back for years. I know, I had much the same journey with Tapeesa.’
Tapeesa said something and Benji laughed, a half-tearful laugh.
‘Years….’ Benji said softly. Ethan only looked back at him. ‘Years of looking at me when my back was turned…everyone must have known. I must have been the only one who didn’t know.’
‘Friends and enemies and strangers,’ Donloe said. ‘So I gave him the knife. I wanted him to realise that he didn’t have to hold himself separate from life and love. He wasn’t destroying your life - anyone’s life. He made it better. He could allow himself to love you.’
‘Like I said, the knife saved my life…’
Benji turned back to Donloe.
‘Lots to think about,’ he said briskly. ‘I’ll call you next week.’
He ended the call with love to Tapeesa and then turned back to Ethan.
‘Everyone knew,’ he whispered. ‘Everyone knew but me.’
‘Luther knew,’ Ethan confirmed. ‘We talked about it. And Ilsa too, I think. I’m sorry.’
‘How many years? How many years had you been looking at me with love when I couldn’t see?’
‘Since Vienna,’ Ethan said. He waited as the thoughts crossed Benji’s mind. He waited for the outcome. Anger? Disappointment? He deserved both, for hiding it all these years.
‘You must have been so lonely,’ Benji said softly.
Benji stood up, and wait over to Ethan, pulling him upright, and kissing him, deeply, meaning it with everything.
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