This chapter was finished ages ago and I pretty much forgot to upload it on this site. Apologies for those who have waited. This is no longer a two-shot by the way because I got carried away and didn't know where to go with this. I thought I might as well post this up for you all to enjoy.

Thanks for all the reviews/follows/favourites!

Part II.

Brandt woke up to a sore and heavy head and what sounded like the end of Jane and Benji's conversation in which its topic, judging by the way they threw his name around, had been he, himself.

"Hey, hey, he's waking up," Benji announced happily with a grin and he and Jane gathered around him, relief showing in their faces.

"How's the head?" Jane asked him kindly. "Doctor mentioned a mild concussion."

"Like I've been hit by a brick wall a couple of times," Brandt answered, groaning as he sat up on the cot in what looked like the medical bay at IMF HQ. He noticed that their leader was not in the room with them.

"Where's Ethan?" he asked, trying to rub his head to knead away the dull throbbing in his skull but found it covered in thick bandage. Jane absent-mindedly reached out to pull his hand away.

"Interrogating the prisoner," she told him and when a question formed in his eyes, she quickly shook her head, "Bergmann isn't our man. His tattoo was a fake."

Brandt stared, "Are you kidding me?"

Benji suddenly thrust his camera phone into his vision. "See? Fake," he said triumphantly and Brandt saw a photo of himself, unconscious on the medical bay cot and looking worse for wear for his head was wrapped in bandage and parts of his face were bruised blue and black. There was also a phoenix tattoo stuck onto his cheek. A sticker, it had been a tattoo sticker.

"Benji," Brandt groaned in disgust over Benji's snorting laughter. "That came from another man's thigh." He then slumped back into his pillows and sighed deeply, feeling disappointed and miserable. "Just perfect," he muttered and then sat back up to bury his face into his hands.

"You did a good job, Will," Jane reassured him, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. "If it hadn't been for you two, we wouldn't have known anything about the Box of Tricks or what it is."

Brandt lifted his head from his hands and looked at them expectedly.

"The rest of IMF is looking into it now," Benji explained. "Like us, they believe that the Box of Tricks is involved in other things apart from being just a male brothel for the rich and famous. According to the data collected by Yours Truly, there's evidence that it was used as a checkpoint for drugs and people smuggling and where businesses like arms dealing and information exchange take place. We have reason to believe that Sentinel must have used it at some point."

"I know, right?" grinned Jane when she noticed the stunned look on Brandt's face and he blinked away his muddled thoughts.

"No, no it's just," he began and he could feel Jane and Benji leaning in closer to hear his voice which had come out quiet. "It's Bergmann. He told me about who goes in there. He mentioned that major criminals used the place too but I didn't see any of them in the bar. They must have separated the two groups from each other. You know, a male brothel for the high and mighty as a cover for what really goes down in there."

"So a high-class hotel hiding a brothel for the rich and famous, also hiding a hang-out for major criminals," Jane said slowly, excitement creeping in her voice. "And you're saying…"

"We've stumbled into a whole pot of gold," Benji finished in wonder. "It's possible that every major crook, madman or organisation has done business there. Right under those people's noses."

"So it really wasn't a waste then," Brandt commented, no longer feeling miserable about himself and smiled along with the others.

After a brief moment, Benji suddenly said rather nonchalantly, as if to disguise his concern, "We were worried though. You know, about you. You dropped your comm and we couldn't contact you."

"Yeah, me too," Brandt scoffed in agreement, absent-mindedly kneading his temple under the thick bandage. Jane went to pull his hand away again and then turned to address Benji, "Mind getting us some coffee?"

Benji stared incredulously at her, as if she had just ordered him to swallow snakes. Then he spoke in a high-pitched voice filled with disbelief, "Oh-oh am I the errand boy now? Off to fetch everyone's coffee? Would you like it decaf'd and latté'd with cream instead of milk and syrup instead of sugar?" he then shut up when Jane raised her eyebrows at him and he seemed to collect himself. "Okay, tantrum gone. Just ordinary coffee then," he muttered and retreated from the room, pausing to give Jane a knowing look before shutting the door behind him.

"What was that about?" Brandt asked for he had noticed the tension in Benji and Jane's exchange. "What were you guys talking about earlier anyway?"

"You and Ethan," she simply answered.

"What about us?"

"What happened between you two?"

Brandt suddenly remembered and looked away, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. Benji must have told her then. "I don't know. Haven't you asked Ethan?"

"Not yet," she replied. "But I probably will. I want to hear it from you first."

"What do you want me to say?" he said exasperatedly, gesturing at himself. "It was as shocking to me as it was to both of you. But in the end, I got in with Bergmann. That's what mattered." Then he paused, "Please don't tell me you want to talk about this because you're jealous."

Jane looked almost offended at being assumed that and Brandt had a feeling he should duck under the bed in case she decided he needed a slap in the face. Fortunately, she had no intention in mind because she quickly waved away his words, "This isn't about jealousy. And if you still think I am or that you're thinking that I may be in denial of my own feelings about it, I'm still not going to admit it because this isn't about me. This is you. About you. I just want to make sure you're okay and that it won't get awkward between you and Ethan later on."

"Awkward between…? What are you talking about?"

"Will," she said firmly as she gazed into his eyes. Jane had incredible eyes as they were brown like the bark of an oak tree and warm like an afternoon in autumn. "You know what I mean. Something like this could change a whole relationship. You must know that, you must have gone through it one time in the past."

"Like you and Ethan you mean?" Brandt dared to voice out because he really didn't want to talk about what happened, especially if it was with Jane, so it was better to make her confess about her own experiences instead. "You know, back in India. At Brij Nath's house."

Jane's face changed slightly into a faraway look, as if she was reminiscing about the events of their very first mission together which took them from Russia to Dubai and finally to India, where Ethan had taken the plunge and kissed her to make her desirable enough for Brij Nath's attention.

"It wasn't like we didn't notice," Brandt pointed out. "Well, Benji mostly. But something seemed different between you two when Ethan asked us to meet him after India." Indeed it was only after that mission that Jane and Ethan's interactions became nothing more than continuous casual flirting, more so that Benji complained to Brandt one time that the tension between the two whenever he was in the room with them was beginning to drive him up the wall. Brandt couldn't remember when the two stopped flirting and became companionable friends.

Jane was quiet for a moment before she shook her head a little and replied nonchalantly, "It was just a thing. A little big thing and it passed and… maybe it got weird for a while but eventually, we became okay. But honestly, in the beginning, I thought Ethan was being serious even though he told me he was playing a hunch. So I played along with him and I think, in the end, I realised this was never going to work if we got together and we were better off like this." She then cast her eyes onto Brandt, "But that was me and Ethan back then. It could be different with you both."

"Seriously Jane," Brandt was rather annoyed at the tone she was using, as if she was hinting at the impending doom that was coming sometime in the future for him. "What are you suggesting? That we might end up hitting on each other too? Come on, there's nothing to it. We're probably going to ignore it, sweep it underneath a carpet, label it as one of those times when it just had to happen because it's necessary for the goddamn mission and then get on with our lives. So yes it's going to be very different from your scenario."

Jane merely looked at him unimpressively after his outburst, as if he was an intractable child who insisted his wrong answer to a simple question was still the correct one, and Brandt bristled in irritation at her gaze. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked her flatly, eyebrows furrowed into a glower.

"Because I don't think you realise yet who you're dealing with," Jane pressed on, not the least bit affected by the glare Brandt was throwing her. "This is Ethan Hunt after all. You know how he is. And as far as we know, when it comes to him, we just can't help it. That man is a little bit impossible." And she left it at that because she was sure that Brandt could figure out the rest of the message.

Except that he could because it was true. Sometimes it was difficult to describe Ethan Hunt in a few words, sometimes even in a lot of words. He was one thing and he was everything and if there was something he could do better than possess an abundance of luck in missions, it was that he attracted people to him like paperclips to a magnet. Was it possible that it wasn't going to turn out like Brandt was expecting it to be?

There was a pause.

"It didn't mean anything," Brandt choked out weakly after that moment of silence. "It was for a mission."

"I know," Jane said, smiling sadly. "It's what happens after that which becomes the problem."

Before Brandt could say anything in return, the door opened, signalling the end of their conversation, and Benji slipped inside, oblivious as to what had happened and was carrying two paper cups of steaming coffee complete with napkins and sachets of sugar and cream. He handed one to Jane and the other to Brandt who took it but lost it when Jane snatched it from him. She pushed the cup back into Benji's hands.

"Not for you," she quickly told Brandt, who was gaping at her in disbelief. "You're on a diet of water. No caffeine until you're all better."

"But you said 'bring us two coffees'," Benji complained, staring down at the cup in his hands. "Can't he have a small sip? I'm sure he doesn't want just water. And anyway, whose coffee is this if not his?" He sounded almost protective over Brandt, in which case Brandt raised an eyebrow at his tone. Despite that, Benji merely ignored him.

"That's yours," Jane informed him and got up from her place on Brandt's cot and shepherded Benji towards the door. "We've got to send in our field reports and there's a meeting with the board that we can't miss. We'll talk to you later." She looked at him knowingly one last time.

Then the door closed behind them and he was alone.

He didn't think any more about his and Jane's conversation in the following days. In fact, he didn't see Ethan or the rest of the team until he was discharged from the medical bay a few days later. The only contact he got from any of them was Benji's frequent text messages which arrived at random times of the day and they told him useless things like "Found Irish pub nearby. Ate breakfast. Might bring you there sometime" or "Woman tripped over her own poodle at park. Was hilarious" and even "Police just arrested man for dressing in wife's clothes outside bank". Although it annoyed him greatly to have his phone buzz next to his ear every time he tried to drift off to sleep, he was grateful for the messages since they warded off his increasing boredom. Despite being told he was healing slowly, lately his back felt sore and he had irregular headaches which made him dizzy, especially in the afternoons when the weather was hot.

The first thing that Brandt did after he was pronounced as fit, was discharged and had emerged into sunlight from the gloom of IMF, was go to the nearest Starbucks around the block. He had attracted a few stares from the other customers as he shuffled along the queue leading to the counter. Although his bandage had been taken off, the area around his cheek and jaw was still bruised black. After ordering a mug of strong Americano from the overly friendly barista (she wrote her number down on his napkin), he sat himself at an empty table, stirred in some sugar from a couple of sachets and took a careful sip.

Someone plopped onto the chair opposite him and set down another mug of Americano on the table. It was Ethan Hunt.

"Hey," he greeted pleasantly.

"Oh hi," Brandt returned the greeting, surprised to find him here. He took in the image of Ethan dressed in a cord jacket casually thrown over a top and faded jeans and realised he looked quite nice in this getup, especially when the rays of warm sunshine hit his brown hair.

"How are you doing?" Ethan asked, sipping his coffee. Brandt noticed that he had not added any milk or sugar in it.

"Alright," Brandt answered honestly. "I'll be up and running in a day or two. Where are Benji and Jane?"

"They're in their downtime," Ethan said. "Benji's back in his old office, having another go at playing Amnesia. Jane's wherever she wants to be although I suspect she's out shopping right now."

Brandt was getting distracted by Ethan's face, by the way his long hair fluttered about when he moved his head or the way he glanced upwards when he was thinking. He was also distracted by the way Ethan's fingers tapped absent-mindedly on the handle of his mug and his lips when he talked.

When Ethan stopped talking and was just looking at him, Brandt suddenly turned away; feeling strangely embarrassed about himself that he was aware of his face growing hot as a result. If Ethan noticed anything wrong, he didn't mention it.

"Bergmann won't talk by the way," he suddenly said quietly and Brandt decided to focus his attention on that instead.

"But he talked all the time, you know, in that room," Brandt recalled. "Saying he appreciates the little things like champagne and fighting skills. He said he'd taken a liking to me and didn't seem to suspect anything was off even though he did come close a couple of times. He's also a really good fighter. He's fast like a snake and his hits are like bricks. I had trouble pushing him off."

"I had to put another tranq on him to send him to sleep," Ethan added in agreement. "That's saying something." He sipped his coffee again and Brandt watched Ethan wipe his mouth with his thumb after setting down his mug. "The thing is, he keeps asking for you."

"What?"

"He wanted to know your name and when we refused to tell him, he asked to speak with you and you only," Ethan said grimly, if not a little worriedly. "We wanted to know what he wanted with you and he wouldn't tell us. He kept insisting he wanted to see you. I now see what you mean about him 'taking a liking'."

"He probably wants to continue beating the shit out of me," Brandt muttered and to his surprise, Ethan was shaking his head. "It doesn't seem like it," he said and then narrowed his eyes determinedly. "Whatever it is, I'm not letting him anywhere near you all the same."

Ethan's tone had sounded so protective and surprising that Brandt was taken aback for a second and then found himself smiling before he even realised he was doing it.

"What?" Ethan asked, his mouth stretched into the beginnings of a laugh. "Did I just sound cheesy to you?"

"Wha- oh," Brandt caught himself and then gave his head a little shake. "Well, a little bit, yeah..." and then his words trailed off because he found no words at his disposal. Normally, he was rather quick at thinking up excuses but for some reason, his mind seemed a little hazy. He didn't know what else to say. At this point, Ethan was now looking worriedly at him.

"Maybe you should get some rest," he advised. "You just got out of the med bay today, right? Call up Seymour, he'll drive you anywhere." Ethan then drained the last of his coffee, set down the mug and got up.

"Where are you going?" Brandt asked him and thought the coffee shop looked a little gloomier now that Ethan was leaving so soon.

"Info gathering," came the reply. "Should be gone for a day or two. Depends. And you do know Seymour's number, right?"

When Brandt gave a hesitant nod, Ethan leaned over, patted him on the shoulder twice and then rested his hand on the side of Brandt's neck. Brandt could tell that the action was done unconsciously but it didn't stop him noticing that Ethan's hand was warm and that his touch sent tingles across his skin. He almost shrugged the hand off but Ethan took it away first and said, "Look after yourself, Brandt."

With a final nod and a smile, he left the coffee shop and Brandt's eyes were following him beyond the glass windows. Ethan didn't turn back as he crossed the road and once a car drove past, he was gone.

The skin on his neck still tingled from Ethan's touch and Brandt scratched at it, confused for a moment at what his body was doing, before he took a large gulp of his coffee and thought no more about it.

Thirty-six hours passed after he was discharged from the IMF medical bay and he found himself going back there to get his head checked. Normally he could cope with the headaches, no matter how much the pain felt similar to having screws drilled into his skull, but when he actually blacked out in the middle of a supermarket and woke up to a circle of concerned faces above him, he made the wise decision of returning.

After passing through the multiple checkpoints of security into the secret IMF building, he wondered if Benji was still trapped in his old office, stuck on completing another computer game, or was out at another location, trying to crack the password of a highly secured safe box. When he reached the medical bay, he found to his reluctance that the doctor recommended him to get his head scanned by MRI.

The IMF medical bay was luckily equipped with all the right medical paraphernalia so the MRI scan took a little under half an hour to complete and when he emerged, he was told to wait by the front reception. It was crowded there with many of the people who were waiting he recognised as being staff members from the IMF building, chatting good-naturedly together while they waited to be called. One of them waved at him and Brandt waved back, recognising the face of Bill Payton from the R&D Department. Payton once shared his mug of coffee with him when Brandt still worked as Chief Analyst and had to pull an all-nighter to go through two hundred suspect profiles. He took a seat by the water tank.

A nurse wandered by, decked in the standard lab coat that all medical staff were required to wear in IMF and leaned over him, "Agent…Brandon, is it?"

"Brandt," Brandt corrected, standing up and he read the nurse's name by the ID card hanging from her neck: Janice Wyles. He'd never seen her before. Her hair was dyed blonde and tied up in a scruffy bun and gave the impression that she had been rushing around the building to complete a running marathon. She wore glasses with square frames and her eyes were a light brown and looked unhappy.

"Have you already done a general check-up?" her tone was clipped and sounded rather irritated.

"Uh, I'm here for an MRI scan?"

"Yes I know," said Janice Wyles quickly, if not offhandedly as if she was getting tired of patients reminding her of what her job was. "But we also require a very recent record of your general check-up."

"I did one about two days ago," Brandt explained. "I was under the care of a…Doctor Morrison. Doctor Phillip Morrison?"

"Yes well, last night one of our agents who came back from a field operation was under the influence of drugs and when he was left unsupervised, he accidentally set fire on Doctor Morrison's file cabinet," Wyles replied accusingly, as if it was Brandt's fault that he made the good doctor lose the file with his name on it. "Most of the med records were lost. We're going to have to do new ones."

"That's fine by me," said Brandt indifferently, pretending to be unfazed by her impatience and she pursed her lips and gestured for him to follow her.

Wyles did a pass around each surgery room to look for an empty one but discovered that all seemed to be occupied. Brandt noticed that most of the patients who were being checked over were agents just returning from their field operations. In the end though, Wyles let out a loud and exasperated huff, combing back the strands of blonde hair away from her face and marched to the last surgery room at the end of the hall.

"Mind telling me what's eating you?" Brandt offered her helpfully because he noticed the dark shadows under her eyes that were being hidden by the frames of her glasses.

Wyles shot him a calculating look, as if he had asked her a trick question, and then replied snappily, "What every med staff feels after being on-call for more than fifteen hours."

She knocked on the surgery door sharply, didn't wait for an invitation and just strolled inside. "Hi Beau," she greeted tiredly to the short dark-haired nurse inside, who was busy trying to open a box of needles. Behind her, a pair of tall green curtains covered the cot inside the room and Brandt could just see the silhouette of a patient sitting still through the thin cloth.

"Oh hello Jan," answered the nurse in a high-pitched, almost childish voice. "Need some of these?" she shook the box of needles towards her.

"No I just need to steal some of your space," Wyles explained and gestured for Brandt to sit down by the desk. "Geez, Beau. I swear the only time I don't enjoy working here is when these spies come back from being bombed to hell and are expecting us to stitch them back together."

Brandt shot her a look, perhaps to remind her that he was also a spy who was prone to being bombed to hell and was expecting the med staff to stitch his body back together because that was their job after all, but Beau was nodding enthusiastically at Wyles, agreeing with her words.

"Exactly," she squeaked in a hushed tone. "Sometimes I think we don't get paid enough to handle things like this."

"Exactly," groaned Wyles and motioned for Brandt to step onto the height and weight meter so that she could record his figures. "Gosh, last night was like a nightmare. You know Bethany's asking me to redo all the med records that were in Morrison's cabinet? You know the one that got torched? I swear, Beau-"

"Yeah, yeah," Beau was nodding again and Brandt wondered when she was going to open that box of needles anyway. Beau continued, "It was like- I don't know, it was like, ugh, where do they even put these people on these missions-"

"You know what, Beau? Sometimes I think I know how injuries work but when I get a patient who tells me they fell off a twenty-five-story building and then got steamrolled into a pancake in Paris but ended up with only a couple of bone fractures in return, then I really don't know what's going on," Wyles complained, having recorded Brandt's height and weight and now she was gesturing for his arm so she could measure his blood pressure.

"I heard a rumour that they're like superhuman," Beau whispered dramatically. "IMF do keep a lot of secrets and I wouldn't be surprised if superhuman agents was one of them."

"Yeah, you're telling me," Wyles muttered in agreement, pulling off her stethoscope after listening to Brandt's heartbeat and grabbed her pen to take note of it. After several more minutes of Wyles measuring something else from his body ("hold still, just there - a bit to the left, right now - freeze") and recording them down while throwing remarks over her shoulder to Beau who still fiddled with her box of needles, she finally then looked at him. "Fill in the rest of this form," she instructed, pushing the paper and pen towards him and then turned to speak to Beau again.

Brandt quickly ticked and scribbled answers for the questions on the form ("Do you have any disabilities? If yes, state them" or "Have you been injured in the last month? If yes, state them" etc.) and when he finished, he pushed the completed form back to Wyles, who took no notice of him until he cleared his throat for her attention.

"Finished?" she didn't wait for his answer but took the paper and studied it. Meanwhile, Beau had finally opened the box and was now filling her new array of needles with different coloured chemicals. She got up and pulled the green curtains aside.

To his surprise, Ethan Hunt was sitting there on the cot, crossed-legged, bare-chested and eyes closed as if he was meditating. His skin was darker than when Brandt last saw him and there were bruises dotted here and there across his bare chest. His long hair hung over his face, matted with mud and blood.

"Okay, you're done," Wyles suddenly announced, getting up, the paper clutched in her hand. "You can leave now, Agent Brown."

"Brandt," he corrected her with a frown.

At the sound of his voice, Ethan's eyes opened and he turned his head and saw him. Ethan seemed surprised to find him here too. With the way Wyles and Beau had treated them while they chatted, it was almost impossible to guess that the patients on either side of the green curtains were in fact each other. Beau was trotting up to Ethan, asking him to hold out his arm where she then carefully inserted one of the needles into his skin. Ethan paid no heed to her nor did he flinch when the needle penetrated the skin of his wrist. Brandt could feel Ethan's curious gaze on him, as if trying to figure out what on earth he was doing here and what was wrong with him, when Wyles answered his unspoken questions for him.

"Sorry, Agent Brandt. That concludes your general check-up. You can leave now."

Brandt got up and he happened to peer over Wyles' shoulder, his eyes meeting Ethan's amused ones, and then once more his lips moved on their own accord, forming a smile. In seeing it, Ethan gave one in return and then his heart, Brandt realised, fluttered wildly in his chest.

"Aren't you going to leave?" snapped Wyles when she realised Brandt hadn't moved. "I thought you were waiting for something at reception. Go, go!"

He was ushered outside and the door slid shut behind him and he walked down the hall in a daze.

It turned out he really didn't need the MRI after all. The scan showed there was no abnormality in his head and that his blackout may have been a one-time thing. He was then given a new dose of pills that he had to take twice a day, was instructed to drink plenty of water and have lots of rest, and if headaches continued to persist, he was going to have to come in again.

He didn't see Ethan anywhere about an hour later in the medical bay, although he spent about fifteen minutes hanging around the corridors making idle chat with some of the staff who recognised him but knowing that he was only doing so in hopes that he could bump into Ethan again on the way out. But seeing that it wasn't going to happen any sooner, he exited the building with the packet of pills stuffed in his pocket and a bottle of water in one hand and his mind kept replaying the moment when his eyes met Ethan's, the smiles, and then the familiar feeling blooming in his chest. He hadn't felt that way since Cindy Linebacker back in junior high school.

Brandt was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

When he got home - and home being merely a temporary safe house that IMF picked for him to rest during his downtime - he paced up and down the living room, his pills and bottled water forgotten and his thoughts racing through his mind.

Ethan, his mind chanted. Ethan. God, even the name sounded suddenly appealing to him.

Several hours and cans of beer later, he called Benji.

"I need to talk to Jane."

"What?" Benji sounded distracted and there was a noise playing in the background. Was Benji playing another computer game? "Why are you asking me? Jane isn't even here."

"I lost her number," Brandt said hastily. "You could find out though."

Benji huffed down the phone and Brandt heard him typing rapidly on his laptop. "I'm sending the number to your phone now," he told him and sure enough, Brandt's phone buzzed as it received a text message. He was just about to thank Benji and hang up when the latter spoke:

"Are you alright?" he asked. "You're not in some kind of trouble, are you?"

"No," Brandt answered curtly.

"Because why are you talking to Jane." It wasn't a question and Benji's tone was suspicious.

"Why shouldn't I talk to Jane?"

"Well you know, you could… talk to me," was it him or was there a hint of jealousy in Benji's voice? "Unless it's something to do with… Oh. Oh god, is this something to do with that thing, you know…I mean of course you do, you know, that thing between, um, you and uh, Ethan?"

Ethan. Brandt cringed at the name and sank into the couch, running his hand through his tousled hair which he had been messing up while thinking hard and deep for the past four hours. He sighed in defeat.

"It is, isn't it?" Benji said expectedly.

"I need to talk to Jane," Brandt said again, his voice quiet and dejected. "Goodbye, Benji."

"W-w-wait, wait, wait, wait," Benji cried out when Brandt was just pulling the phone away from his ear. "Brandt? Will? Will, are you still there?"

"Yeah," Brandt answered gloomily.

Benji let out a long sigh as if he was readying himself for a speech. "Is it bothering you?" he asked in a steady voice.

"What is?"

"The kiss."

Now that the issue was out in the open, Brandt was considering it carefully, tried to remember what he had been feeling when Ethan's lips had met his. There had been shock, loads of it, and general disorientation because his mind had shut down in those few seconds. Ethan had not kissed him gently. It wasn't like there were fireworks being set off in his head. He may have felt hot all over when he'd pushed Ethan off but it was mostly from the lack of air and the feeling of embarrassment at being caught off-guard. The whole experience felt strangely mundane, like someone just put their mouth on yours by accident and that was it.

"No," he replied confidently because he really wasn't bothered at all and it was strange. It was incredibly strange.

There was a surprised silence at Benji's end and somehow Brandt pictured him crouched in front of his laptop, computer game on Pause, his phone glued to his ear and his face, blue from the glow of the laptop screen, forming a bewildered expression.

"Okay…" Benji finally said. "Okay so if you're not bothered by it then why do you need to talk to Jane?"

"You know Benji, I really have no idea," Brandt muttered exasperatedly, staring up at the dark ceiling. He had not bothered to turn on the lights in the room so he was pretty much sitting in darkness. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I shouldn't talk to Jane because I don't know what to tell her. I'm just… it's all kind of messed up for me lately."

"Maybe you should…um, tell me from the beginning," Benji murmured, sounding almost embarrassed. "I'm not really good at this, uh, you know, 'talking' stuff. But, um, I'm willing to sacrifice my manliness to listen to your feelings."

Brandt suddenly burst out laughing, not a series of manly chuckles but deep bellows of laughter that were hard enough to leave him almost breathless, making him clutch at his side. It was a while before he could calm himself down. What on earth was going on with him? It was the stress – the stress brought about by thinking too much, his mind mulling over the same thing over and over again that he became restless and exhausted at the same time. He felt the need to unwind by talking to someone and the only person he could think of that time had been Jane. Because Jane had talked to him about this, Jane had understood what he went through and possibly knew what he was going through right now.

Now, the tension he was feeling this past few hours had alleviated a little the moment Benji offered to hear him out. It was true that they normally never did things like this but at that moment, he felt a strange rush of affection and sense of close comradeship for the other man. Not that Brandt would ever mention it to Benji. Surely, once this thing was resolved, they would mutually agree without the need for words not to talk about it ever again.

"Oh wow, tell me you're still alive," Benji moaned after Brandt struggled to regain his breath after his bout of laughter. He could tell that the former was grinning on the other side. "That sounded almost painful," continued Benji.

Brandt breathed in deep and slow, wiping the tears of mirth which had formed in his eyes. "God, Benji," he gasped. "I… I really don't know what to say."

"Ha-hey. Glad that my pathetic attempt at offering my sympathetic ear to you has cheered you up a bit," Benji said breezily. "That aside, okay serious time. Just… just tell me first what happened in the Box of Tricks. That's a start."

Taking a deep breath, Brandt opened his mouth and began.

He described to Benji the moment when he and Ethan had stopped in front of room 108 and were considering what they should do. Brandt had fired off some ideas and Ethan remained quiet and the next thing that he knew, Ethan had him up against the wall and was kissing him. Bergmann had emerged, curious of the ruckus outside his room, found them there and Brandt had beaten Ethan up and caught Bergmann's attention at the same time.

"Spontaneity does sound like Ethan's forte, alright," Benji delivered his verdict in a pensive tone. "I mean, if Ethan had done that to me, I probably won't be surprised. Er, you know, after I get over the big shock that is. I mean, this was just for a mission, right? I'm sure it isn't like Ethan to suddenly want to jump you in the middle of a mission."

"Yes, that's what I mean," Brandt emphasized.

"Then… then what are you so worried about?"

Brandt sighed again, resting his chin on his chest while his other hand absent-mindedly fingered the buttons of his shirt. "Ethan," he muttered into the phone.

"And?" For once, Benji sounded impatient. "God, Agent Brandt. Stop being such a girl and tell me what's wrong with you. Don't keep me guessing like this."

"It's Ethan," Brandt finally snapped, his voice becoming close to hysterics. "It's me… me thinking about Ethan. You know, that, like that Ethan is suddenly there, right in front of me, clear as day, like in the coffee shop when I got discharged and, and then at the med bay today. It's like I just noticed things about him, like his hair and his eyes, and I remember his stupid little habits, you know, like when he's waiting for a suspect to show up and his fingers are always playing with something, or-or when he says things like "good work, team" in that tone of his after we finish an op." He took a deep breath and his voice came out weak, "I don't know…it's like- I'm like…"

"Like a high-school girl with a crush," Benji finished for him. "No offense but I am giving you my straight-forward, non-judgemental, objective perspective to you." He paused to draw in a breath, "William Brandt, you are attracted to Ethan Hunt."

Brandt's stomach fell because he already suspected this about himself for a while but kept denying it for hours. Now that Benji had voiced it out, the reality of the situation dawned on him hard, like a slap in the face. He groaned and buried his head into a cushion, "Attracted…?"

"Yeah, you know. 'Attracted'," Benji answered him brightly and, as if he assumed that Brandt was having trouble figuring out what the word meant, helpfully stated, "'Attracted' as in 'fancy' as in 'have a crush on' as in 'being infatuated with someone'. Sort of like what Jane went through with Ethan after India. Oh god, does that mean I'm going to be witnessing some more sexual tension in the air for the next few months?"

"Shhhit," Brandt swore in a hiss, his voice muffled into the cushion.

"Shit," Benji agreed along with him.