1. favorite movie? probably rogue nation, but fallout is a very close second. for how objectively dark the syndicate is as a villain, rogue nation is just. such a fun film?? easily one of the funniest in the franchise. [see: the car chase in morocco for some of the funniest m:i material] i think the main reason why i like it so much is all the benji and ethan content, and generally all the team content we get. plus it’s the first introduction of ilsa and i adore her, i freakin love rogue nation so much.
BUT DON'T KNOCK FALLOUT. it is a direct sequel to rogue nation and it expands so much on all of the stuff the previous film established, while also continuing the character-centered focus. fallout is a lot darker in my eyes and still emotionally hurts me [hunley my beloved he did NOT deserve to die :(((((] everything about it is just. so fucking good?? the stunts, the characters, everything. basically ghost protocol through fallout was where the series peaked.
14. HEADCANONS!!! most of mine are. pretty silly but i'll share them regardless!
i believe with all of my heart that ethan is definitely still a theater kid [in spite of all the retconning they've done you can take theatre major ethan out of my cold dead hands] and i think he does enjoy musicals. his favorites would probably be fiddler on the roof, les misérables, and hadestown. he has 100% cried during all of them.
benji enjoys horror, but only horror games because he cannot handle horror movies. he pondered for an entire week after playing mouthwashing for the first time.
luther is a foodie. he knows all the best places to eat in london because of how much time they've spent there, and he keeps an entire list of all of them that the team is still working through.
ilsa was briefly a film major, but she's still a sleeper cinephile. she doesn't seem like that kind of person at first glance, but once you start watching something with her and she starts pointing out different things like dialogue, camerawork, lighting, etc etc. it can either be very interesting or very annoying.
brandt has a surprising amount of knowledge about wildlife and he often startles the team whenever he mentions that the random bird they saw was actually a graylag goose.
hunley is a deceivingly good artist. like. the man paints and does printmaking in his spare time and his pieces are fucking gorgeous. he's had his stuff displayed before in small art galleries when he was in college but he unfortunately had to drop art as a career because of parental pressure, but he still does a lot of art in his spare time.
grace likes to collect trinkets, mainly vinyl pins. she's stolen so many from unsuspecting ita bags.
paris got introduced to cookie run kingdom and got into it way faster than she'd like to admit. it's mainly dark cacao cookie's fault.
degas would 100% be the one to bring a stray cat into the safehouse. actually he has done that before and he named her stormy cause she was grey. she's now the unofficial mascot of their team.
Rogue Nation for sure! The plot and characterization in it is what got me into the fandom—also love the benji bomb scene
2. What is your favorite mi stunt/action sequence?
Definitely the fight at the opera in rogue nation i feel like it’s so creatively done and the music in the background is an absolute banger and really feeds the tension
14. Do you have any mi headcanons?
Ooooh! Yes i do
- [ ] Benji is a tea person through and through and has an absurd amount of knowledge on it.
- [ ] If they ever played a DnD campaign together Luther would DM and be really good at it and Ilsa would end up getting really attached to her character that when the campaign ends she like gets a tattoo of them or holds a fake funeral or something, benji would probably be into the combat mechanics. Ethan is a paladin
- [ ] Benji is gay no question but lowkey i feel like Ilsa would be ace or at least have a complicated relationship with sexuality especially considering the field she’s in and i also think that she would be into women wrestling specifically willow nightingale (bc she’s my favorite and also awesome)
- [ ] Benji and Ethan both have stretch marks and conflicting feelings on them but they love the stretch marks on the other person
- [ ] Luther watched Superman and cried, but no one will ever believe you
- [ ] BRANDT AND HUNLEY SHARED AN OFFICE and also desired each other carnally
16. What's your favorite mi rarepair ship?
Thats hard but it’s got to be a toss up between lanedunn and lutheran, Luther and Ethan are boyfriends to me even in cannon and lanedunn is just such a funn dynamic i wish there were more fics
tysm for the ask!!!!! im posting a slightly longer snippet for funsies. again this is a post-final reckoning fic, Benji trying very hard to just take care of Ethan and keep him from completely withering away
“There’s two beds,” Ethan says hoarsely, finally disrupting the silence. It’s the first thing he’s said in a while.
“D’you think I was just gonna dump you here and then leave?”
“You should. You have your team to look after.”
“Our team,” Benji corrects, moving away from the door. He wanders over to Ethan’s bedside, looking down at him. The receipt for the rec centre had been timestamped over a week ago, and it doesn’t look like Ethan had washed since then. Benji had smelled him in the car, and it’s rank now. His clothes are just as filthy.
Ethan opens his eyes, looking directly at Benji. “They’re not mine anymore.”
Benji looks away, swallowing down the panic rising in his throat. He’s seen Ethan crash many times before. It happens after every mission, bottomed out from adrenaline and stress. But this isn’t that.
He kneels down in front of Ethan so he doesn’t have to respond, untying his boots and pulling them off his feet. “We need to get you cleaned up,” Benji says, wrinkling his nose. He sets his boots down beside the bed.
“Not right now.” Ethan lets out a long, slow exhale. “I’m tired.”
“You’ll feel better,” he says, standing up again. “And you’ll dirty the sheets otherwise.”
Something approaching amusement flickers in Ethan’s expression. “Are you gonna make me?”
The words come out hollow and small, but Benji takes the joke for what it is. He smiles down at him. “With the state you’re in I could make you do anything.”
“Mm.”
Benji sighs when he says nothing else. “Ethan. Please.”
He adjusts the recorder tucked between his arm and his ribs. “You don’t need to take care of me.”
Benji’s anger flares. “What kind of a friend do you take me for?”
“The kind that listens to me.” There’s a current in his voice beyond exhaustion. Benji gets the impression he wouldn’t be able to speak above a whisper even if he tried.
“And what I’m hearing—and smelling—from you is that you need a shower.”
“Benji….”
He leans forward and grabs Ethan’s shoulders, partly to haul him up and partly to look him in the eyes. Benji begins to speak and then stalls out as he takes Ethan in—really, properly takes him in. The look in his eyes isn’t raw. Raw meant there was still meat left underneath. Ethan’s carved out, right to the bone.
“Ethan,” he whispers. It comes out like begging. “Please. For me.”
Ethan keeps a hold of his gaze for an uncomfortable length of time, but Benji knows he can’t look away. His eyes are at once probing and far away, giving Benji the distinct impression that Ethan’s not actually looking at him.
7, 10, 17 for the ask game!!!! (I hope I chose some you haven't answered yet)
ASK GAME!!
7. Who is your favorite underrated mi character NOT of the main team?
Well aside from Jane, Alanna, Paris, and Degas, I'm going to have to go with Brandt. He's just a silly little gay loser. I love him and his dynamics with the adorable found family in Ghost Protocol, it's SO fun.
10. If you could add any actor into the Mission franchise, who would you add and what type of character would you want to see them play?
answered here but there's another more obvious answer.
ME.
I WANT TO BE IN MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!!!! I WANT TO PLAY ETHAN HUNT'S CHAOTIC LITTLE MENTEE. IT WOULD BE SOOO FUN. And I know nobody's seen anything by me (yet. my films are all indie) but I have the comedy chops enough to be a comic relief and action experience enough to kick ass. I mean, I'm classically trained for goodness sake. I Should Be In Mission.
17. If there was another mi movie, what would you want to happen in it?
Answered here and here, but I'll pitch you another one for shiggles. Picture this: a movie set in between mi1 and mi2, about Ethan and Sean Ambrose's growing friendship and then the scission that draws them apart. Ethan just lost his mentor in mi1. He's vulnerable. Sean likes being the center of attention. And he has a fixation with Ethan. They had... something going on. Okay, this is a purely lustful choice. I am attracted to the toxicity of Ethambrose. And I'm writing a fic about them right now (it's pure smut). I know, despicable. Let me know if you want the link!
hiii kae great word choices. theres some nsfw stuff below lmao
love:
(post-mi3 julia gossiping with benji about her sex life. this is nsfw lol)
“I can offer a trade,” Benji says then.
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I show you something classified, you tell me a few bedroom secrets.”
“I just told you we aren’t having sex.”
“Well yeah, but there’s gotta be something juicy. Otherwise you’d have no problem telling me.”
Julia watches him take a large bite of his burger. “I thought you said you were good at keeping secrets. Now you’re offering to share classified information with me?”
“I’m offering,” he begins, voice muffled, “mutually assured destruction. If I rat you out to Ethan, you can make me lose my job.”
“That doesn’t sound very mutually assured. I have way more leverage.”
“Call it a gesture of good faith, then. Here, look.”
Benji sits up in his chair and taps the power button on his keyboard. His monitor lights up, and she watches in awe as he goes through his file explorer to pull up a document labelled SIC_86_4A_20050314.
“What is that?”
“Tracking data readout,” he says with a shrug. “Go on, read it.”
Julia glances between him and the monitor. “Is this some kind of test?”
“This is me bored out of my mind.” He gestures at the screen impatiently. “Go on.”
Ignoring every alarm bell going off in her head, Julia leans forwards to squint at his monitor. It’s a text file, a raw readout of some piece of equipment—tracking equipment, Benji said. The first few lines are pure nonsense to her, long strings that she can’t make sense of, and then she locates the start date. 20050314. Next to it is a pair of numbers that she thinks are coordinates: 51.096, 44.205. It’s been a long time since she took a geography class, but both of the numbers are positive, so it’s probably somewhere in Europe or Asia. Then below that is a log of timestamps listed next to more coordinates, in intervals of two hours.
Benji scrolls down, letting her read more. It looks like the tracker had been used over a series of weeks, recording movement across at least one full parallel. It must be a GPS tracker, she realises. Maybe on a person? Or a vehicle?
“There you go,” he says. “Now you know top-secret government information.”
“What were you tracking?”
Benji minimises the window. “Can’t tell you that.”
Julia looks down at her cup of fries, fishing out a crispy one. “That was kinda underwhelming.”
He scoffs. “You’re like one of twelve people on the planet who’s seen that readout. Count yourself lucky.” He pauses to take another bite of his lunch. “Now come on. Your turn.”
She smiles at him. She really does like Benji. And it’s kind of exhilarating, really, being the one to divulge secrets for once. In a government intelligence agency office, no less.
“The therapy session this morning was focused on intimacy,” she begins, watching Benji listen attentively as he continues eating his lunch. “And the different kinds of intimacy in my life. It was supposed to be about ‘finding my sources of strength’ or whatever, but mainly we just talked about the fact that Ethan and I don’t have sex anymore.”
“And why is that, do you think?” Benji asks, his tone clinical.
She gives him a sour look. “No therapy questions. This is friend-to-friend.”
“Right, sorry.” He clears his throat. “Why aren’t you two fucking anymore?”
Julia pauses to pick at the dwindling supply of her fries. They’d gone cold by now. “Well, my antidepressants have obliterated my sex drive. Dr. Harrison offered to prescribe me something to alleviate it, but I don’t think I want to. Yet, anyway. Or, I don’t know.” She eats some fries. “I’m just angry at Ethan all the time and I don’t know how to shut it off. It’s exhausting. We aren’t really fighting anymore, but I don’t feel connected to him at all. And I don’t think being turned on would help.”
“There’s always angry sex,” Benji suggests, polishing off the last of his burger. “Relieve some tension, maybe.”
Julia laughs. “Yeah. Well, I mean, one time we did kinda… it wasn’t really sex, though. Or angry. And I don’t think it resolved anything.”
Benji raises a brow. When she doesn’t offer more, he says: “And?”
She bites her lip, her face flushing. “It’s… I don’t know if I should—”
“No way. I held up my end of the bargain.” Benji gestures to his monitor. “Keep going.”
Julia blows out a breath and leans forward, whispering. “I asked him to jerk off in front of me a few weeks ago.”
Benji’s brows shoot up. “Did he?”
“Oh, yeah. He loved it.”
“Alright.” He eats another fry. “More details. Come on.”
She pauses, chewing the inside of her lip. The flush in her cheeks deepens. “We were in bed together, about to go to sleep. He was really turned on but I didn’t want to have sex. But I felt bad, so I asked him to, you know,” she gestures vaguely.
“And then what?”
“And then what what? I just told you.”
Benji gives her a look. “Classified. Government. Files.”
“But you didn’t even tell me what it was for,” she protests. “I need more details.”
“A lorry transporting unregistered firearms across south-western Russia,” Benji says easily. He should probably keep his voice down. “Your turn.”
Julia sighs, her face heating again. “I think I dug myself in a little too deep—”
“Come onnnn,” Benji whines. “I know you wanna tell me.”
“Oh, you can read minds, can you?”
“Standard agency training.”
She blows out a breath. “Fine.” Julia eats more of her fries to buy herself some time, trying to figure out where to start. “He kinda like… let me direct him. Like I told him where and how to touch himself.”
Benji nods encouragingly.
“He kept wanting to kiss me, but I wouldn’t let him. And we just did that for a while, y’know. I made him go slow. Ethan was really into it. And then I—” She glances around again.
“No one’s listening,” Benji assures her. “Except me, of course.”
Julia leans towards him, dropping her voice even lower. “I made him ruin his orgasm. It kinda felt like punishing him. And I don’t know if this is fucked up or not, but I really enjoyed doing it. Punishing him, I mean. He even thanked me for it afterwards.”
Benji leans back in his seat, grinning, tossing a fry in his mouth like it’s popcorn. “Now this is what I’m talking about.”
pain:
(only hit for this one is one i thiiiiiiiiink ive posted before but ill post it again. more post-mi8 benji & ethan stuff)
Then Ethan nods, sighing. “Okay.” He swallows. “I can sit up by myself.”
Relieved, Benji moves back, still hovering as he watches Ethan grit his teeth and pull himself up into a sitting position on the edge of the mattress. He stands under his own steam, too, although he doesn’t mask the clenched gasp of pain.
“See?” Ethan says hoarsely, straightening his spine. “I’m fine.”
“You’re the picture of health.” Benji holds a hand out. “Let me take that.”
“Take what?” He glances down at Benji’s hand and then a jolt rocks his body. Ethan presses the recorder tighter to his chest. “I can carry it.”
“Well, you can’t take it in the shower with you,” Benji reasons. “I’ll hold onto it for you while you’re—”
“I’m not giving it to you.”
The intensity in his voice takes Benji aback. He stares at Ethan hard. For the first time since Benji saw him, there’s a real spark in his eyes, a defensiveness that dared him to try and take the recorder from him. Benji could easily overpower him in the state he was in, but that’s not the point.
“Okay,” Benji says eventually, diplomatically. “Okay. You can put it on the sink counter, if you like. I won’t touch it.”
Satisfied, Ethan nods, limping towards the bathroom. Benji follows close behind him, trying not to hover too much. He seems steady enough on his feet.
tender:
shockingly no hits for this one!
wet:
(hilariously this one is not nsfw. post-mi8 juliaethan timeeee)
“Luther told me he was dying,” she says quietly, trying to keep control of her voice. “Months ago. We spoke a few times since then. He gave me Benji’s contact information and said if I need help with anything, I could call him. And your’s, too,” she adds.
Ethan looks away then, chin scrunching, rocking on the bench. “He didn’t tell me.”
“He didn’t want you to worry,” she whispers, and Ethan curls inwards on himself, head bowing. Tears leave little wet circles where they fall on his jeans.
“He took—took care of you,” he gets out, letting out a ragged breath.
She feels tears on her cheeks. Julia reaches for his hand again. “Ethan, let me hold—”
“I don’t want you to,” he says wetly, curling his arm against his chest to keep it away from her.
“I know that’s not true.”
He keeps his head bowed, badly hiding his grief from her. After a moment Ethan glances up at her, hollow.
“Let me,” she whispers again, palm up in offering. “Just your hand.”
He stares at it, blinking tears away. She watches his shoulders shake from crying, only half-swallowed.
She makes a beckoning motion, smiling. “Come on.”
Finally he unclamps his hand from his knee and takes hers. His skin is cool to the touch.
“What have you done to yourself?” she asks, feeling his fingers tremble in her hand. It’s not from grief; it feels like nerve damage.
7) Who is your favorite underrated mi character NOT of the main team? Easiest question ever. JANE!!! AGENT JANE CARTER MY LOVE. she's my favorite female mi character and one of my all time favorites. She's just so cool and compelling. She's a dedicated and skilled agent with a tragic backstory who wants to be in the game and who is good at it but not immune to a little goofing around every once in a while. She's a lot like Ethan in that regard. Big fan of Jane <33
12) Do you have a favorite actor interview or behind the scenes clip? Oh my gosh can I answer All of them??? I just love seeing the cast have fun. But I have been rewatching the Pom and Simon food tasting video a lot lately 🤣 it just gives me so much seratonin
20) In which mi movie do you think Tom Cruise's hair looked the best? Oh gosh this is such a toss up between 4 and 2, because I love him with long fluffy hair, but I think I gotta hand it to 2, since it's longer in that one. Long haired Tom Cruise is a gift to humanity and continues to be part of my will to live 💯
thank you so much for the questions and for making this ask game!!! its a ton of fun :)
6 - If you had to crossover MI with another fandom, which one would you choose?
Possibly legend of Zelda ? I feel like the central thing is placing Ethan in a context of being some chosen/cursed hero and LoZ has that for sure. actually now that i think about it there are so many other properties with that exact premise to choose from lol. Including Star Wars. but I’m not super compelled by crossovers generally
20 - Have you had any ideas for stories you aren't able to write yet? Maybe a genre or word count goal that will take some practice before you write it.
yesss I would really like to write a follow-up to mistakes of living where Ethan stays with Ilsa for a couple months and they both have to go from like being serially alone and only running into one another randomly to like, living together in a small apartment. like they don’t actually know each other that well and are strangers in many ways,
so I want to explore how out-of-order they get to know one another and also dealing with each other’s damage etc. I’ve tried to write it before a few times but I never get past a few paragraphs, so I’m just letting it percolate for a while
i would also like to write a little follow-up coda to Parlour Tricks where Ethan and Ilsa run into each other while working and behave Very Normal in front of Ethan's team. I want Luther to see them interact because I feel like it would take him five seconds to figure out whats going on. because like he says to Ilsa in Fallout "[Ethan] cares about you more than he's willing to admit" but we never really see Luther see them interact. so i think that would be funny. also because he would be like ok dude so first you pick a civilian to fall in love with and ruin her life (which he warned ethan about in mi3) and NOW you fall for a fellow spy working for a rival intelligence agency. you really know how to pick em man
I’ve also thought about the gang finding Ethan after he’s been tortured on some mission and dealing with him being completely incapacitated and checked out, and now they have to figure out how to complete the mission while not having a team lead while ALSO making sure ethan stays mostly alive. but whenever ive tried to write it, it’s never come together in a way I liked so I probably won’t continue with it
ty anon! im just gonna start posting full excerpts now bc these arent getting finished for a while lol. this has a bunch of tfr spoilers fyi
run:
more post-mi8 fic baby lets gooo
“Is that from the arctic?” Benji asks, watching the tremor in Ethan's hands.
“Yeah.”
“Has it gotten any better?”
“Hasn’t gotten worse.”
He tosses his clothes into the corner of the room. They’re remarkably filthy. He becomes aware of the smell of his own body, and a rush of guilt courses through him at Benji having to deal with all of this, all of him. If he’d just stayed away, left Ethan alone, he wouldn’t have to be here, ordering him around, forcing him to do basic tasks because he can’t even get out of bed—where’s the recorder? Sink counter. He hasn’t heard Luther' voice in a while, not in over an hour. It’s the longest he’s gone without hearing him outside of sleeping—
“Ethan.” Benji’s voice is far away. “You alright?”
It takes him a moment to come back to himself. The shower spray is suddenly very loud next to him.
“Yeah.”
Ethan steps into the shower and closes the curtain. The water is hot. It makes him realise how cold he’s felt, even while sweating through his jacket. It feels good on his body.
But it’s still too quiet, and the drumbeats in his head are only getting louder. “Benji,” he pleads. “Talk to me.”
“Ah, right.” Benji clears his throat, raising his voice enough to be heard over the spray. “You’re alright in there?”
“I don’t want to talk about me,” Ethan says, and then, remembering his manners: “Yes, I’m fine.”
The warmth and the water is grounding. He clings to it, trying to duck as much of his body as he can beneath the spray, to get all of him warm.
Benji hums. “Well, I told you I’m learning more French… oh, d’you know the French term for blindspot is angle mort—dead angle?”
Ethan smiles, closing his eyes as the water runs over his back. “I did, yeah.”
“I like that a lot better. Much more poetic. I think I’m gonna start saying it in English, too.”
“Learning French is going well, then?”
“I’d fail a language proficiency test,” Benji tells him. “But it’s enough to get by. I can chat with Paris, usually. Degas’ French is a lot better than mine.”
Ethan tips his head back. A shiver runs down his spine as the warm water contacts his scalp. He can feel the grime slowly loosen from his skin. If he looked down, the water would come off of him grey.
“Degas,” he murmurs, working through what Benji is saying. “I’m surprised you’re all staying together.”
“Everyone needs a bit of a breather,” Benji says cryptically. “It’s been an intense… well, awhile, I guess.”
“You’re not working, are you?”
“No, nothing like that.” He hears Benji move further into the bathroom so he doesn’t have to talk as loud. “World’s in a bit of a hectic state at the moment, so we’ve been lying low and resting, mostly.”
“In London, you said?” Ethan glances at the bottle of soap Benji presumably bought, trying to determine if he had the energy to actually wash.
“Yeah, London.” Benji huffs. “Never considered you would be this close by. I figured you’d fucked off to the other side of the world.”
“Need to get on a plane for that.”
poison:
no hits for this one!
flower:
this is other post-mi8 fic im working where ethan meets up with julia to tell her that luther has died
Julia stares down at the postcard in her hand. She’s gotten this type of mail before; dead drops with redacted files inside, postcards that just had addresses written on the back, envelopes with USBs in them. The kind of mail she has to hide from Erik or explain in some roundabout way that she knows he knows is a lie. Luther had stopped sending things by snail mail mostly, partly on account of how often she moved around. But telecommunications are still down in a lot of places, and she’s been in Pittsburgh for a few months, so it’s not a surprise.
She can tell as soon as she looks at the postcard that it isn’t from Luther. The front has a photo of purple mountain jewel flowers on it, and on the back are two lines of shaky handwriting. The first line is a set of geographic coordinates and a date, two days from now. The second line just says please.
these last two are from a post-mi3 wip where julia hangs out with benji during his lunch breaks and tells him all her marital problems
It’s not as hot outside today, so Julia asks Benji if they can go to the park to eat their lunch. They find a good spot with a bench under the shade of a large white oak.
“I came here with Ethan on a date once,” Julia tells him. She keeps her smoothie tucked against her side as she lays in the grass, staring up at the tree canopy.
“It’s a good spot,” he says, stretched out on the bench. “Lots of dogwoods here. They smell nice when they flower in the spring.”
Julia smiles at him. The grass tickles her cheek when she moves her head. “Are you a botany guy, Benji?”
“Not more than anyone else,” he says with a shrug.
“What’s that tree called?” She points to their left, about a hundred feet away at an outcropping of small, squat trees. The park is mostly empty this time of day, but there’s an old woman walking her dog nearby.
“Oh, mulberry, but that’s easy.”
“Liar.”
“No, they really are mulberries.”
“I meant your level of botany knowledge.”
He saves himself from responding by taking a deep drink of his smoothie.
Julia keeps her eyes fixated on the mulberry trees. It’s summer, so the branches are heavy with ripened berries. If they walked over there they’d be littering the ground.
“I asked Ethan to come here to pick berries with me,” she tells Benji. “He likes drinking protein shakes for breakfast—”
“Of course he does.”
“—and I told him we could pick some to put in his morning shakes,” Julia continues, smiling. “We filled up two sandwich baggies with them. It was the first time he told me he loved me.” She gestures at the trees. “It was right over there.”
Benji sobers a little, staring at the mulberry trees. “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me to pick berries with them before.”
“Ethan said the same thing.”
eat:
“Do you know what happens to people who divorce IMF agents?”
The inside of Benji’s car is noxiously warm. Despite the generous salary he bragged about having, his car hasn’t seen the benefit of that money. He leaves the engine idling so the AC can blast cold air, but she suspects that won’t last.
“Uh,” he hums, peeling the foil wrap off his chicken sandwich. “I dunno, honestly. I don’t think most of them get married.”
Her own sandwich sits still sitting wrapped in her lap. She takes a drink of her coke instead. That’s nice and cool, at least. “Like are they going to monitor me? Follow me around? Will I be put in witness protection or something?”
“I know they monitor family members of active field agents.” Benji pauses to take a bite of his sandwich, chewing vigorously. “But again, I don’t know of any that are married.”
“I’m sure they’re already monitoring me anyway,” she mutters. Her fingers pick idly at the sandwich wrapping. She’s not that hungry.
Benji gives her a worried look. “Are you serious about the divorce thing?”
She sags against the passenger seat, blowing out a breath. “I don’t know. I’m just thinking about my options right now.”
They’re parked in the Popeyes parking lot, under the meager shade of a few trees in the back corner. She was the one who requested they eat out, not wanting to be overheard in the office, but now she’s kind of regretting it. It wasn’t nearly this hot this morning.
“We aren’t even sleeping in the same bed anymore,” she tells Benji, slowly unpackaging her food. “He’s on the couch most nights. Six weeks ago we were—” Julia clenches her teeth. Six weeks ago she was head over heels thinking about her wedding. All she feels is dread now.
“I’m sorry,” Benji says quietly.
“And I shouldn’t even be saying any of this to you,” she continues, talking past the lump in her throat. “Ethan asked you to babysit me and you’ll probably just report all this back to him. But I guess I don’t trust him now either, so what does it matter?”
The words come out more despondent than she intends. For the first time since she met him, a grave expression appears on Benji’s face. “I don’t tell him what we talk about.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
“Well, if I told him what you just told me, he’d be pretty distraught. So if he’s walking around crying his eyes out in the next few days, you’ll know I said something.”
“Would he be distraught?” She watches his frown deepen. “How would I know? I don’t know him at all, apparently. We’ve been together for almost four years now, and the whole time I thought he worked at a transportation office. He told me the bullet scar on his leg was from rock climbing. Most of what he’s told me about this life is a complete lie. Did you know he’s been stabbed before?”
Benji takes another bite of his sandwich instead of responding. She really should eat. Julia pulls the wrapper back from her food and takes a single bite. It’s fried and doughy and spicy and the pickles are good, but she’s not in the mood to really appreciate it.
“I mean,” Benji says eventually, pausing further to take a sip of his coke. “I don’t know your personal life, but I did know Ethan before he met you. He was kind of an asshole. Rude, demanding, you know. Type of guy who always got what he wanted because he looks like a Ken doll. I mean he’s still a prick sometimes, but he’s mellowed out a lot. And I don’t think he did that kind of soul-searching for the benefit of his coworkers.”
Julia contemplates that as she takes another bite, staring out the front window of Benji’s Honda. It’s busy in the parking lot this time of day, with everyone trying to squeeze in some quick carbs during their lunch break. They’d just happened to get lucky and beat the rush. She gets the impression Benji’s timed this out before.
“Plus he got put on Interpol’s most wanted list when he went to find you.”
Her eyes snap to him. “What?”
“He was arrested for something and broke out, I don’t know what, and then fled the country. Almost got me on it too, asking for help tracking your phone. Really, you should be thanking me for saving your life.”
She feels the world begin to spin around her. “What?”
“I can’t really tell you much more,” he says, wincing. Her expression must be crazed. “Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. He’s cleared off of it now, anyway.”
Julia stares at him. “He never told me any of that.”
Benji just shrugs.
She sinks back into her seat, swallowing hard. The AC’s starting to run warm. She breathes out slowly, trying to calm the sudden spike of her heart rate. Another thing he hadn’t told her.
“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t divorce him,” she says eventually.
“No,” Benji agrees. “But you asked me if he’d be upset about it. I get the impression he would be.”
