Chapter Text
Ethan, 1992.
Ethan leant back and crossed his legs, a perfect parody of ease, as he bore the scrutiny.
“It really is uncanny,” Viper said at long last, leaning back in his own chair.
He remembered Viper in the same amorphous way he remembered his early years, before he was quite conscious of himself, but he’d been nothing but amenable since Ethan showed up. He smiled, and found that he meant it.
“I’m taller,” he said, and Viper’s lip quirked in what could have been a smile.
In truth, he had no way of knowing whether he was taller than his brother, but the rote words were still a comfort, even now. He hadn’t seen Pete in coming up three years, and it had been even longer since they had spoken. Waiting in Viper’s airless office, the blinds pulled down in a futile effort to keep back the beating sun, he felt a curl of unease in his chest. His hands were steady, his knees still, and yet under Viper’s steady attention he felt a prickle at the back of his neck. Exposed, he realised, he felt exposed.
Somehow, the IMF could never quite prepare its agents for when things got personal.
“So what’s the plan here, son? Are you planning to haunt the place until Barnes shows up?”
An alarming lack of planning had actually gone into his presence at Miramar. He had seen the mission file and accepted it before hearing the full brief. Sarah had noticed, and if she had noticed, then so had Phelps.
“Well,” he said instead, smiling, “unless you want me wandering around the place until I find someone else who can grant me access to the Lincoln then I suppose I’ve got no choice.”
For a moment, he thought Viper was going to give in and ask the question that hung between them. Ethan had no intention of telling him the real reason he needed to get on board the Lincoln, or why he needed to get close enough to Admiral Barnes to plant a tracker on a file that he was most certainly not meant to have access to, but for a fleeting moment he was sure that Viper would be able to see straight through his orchestrated lie.
“And there was nowhere else you could find him, huh?” He asked.
Ethan straightened. “This seemed like the best-”
“Kid, cut the shit.”
His mouth snapped shut. He took a moment to look at Viper. Viper met his eye unflinchingly. “I thought I might see if Pete was around while I was waiting,” he said, eventually. He felt weighted, the earlier unease transmuted into shame.
“How long’s it been?” Viper asked.
“A while,” Ethan said. He wondered if Pete kept the blank postcards he sent, if they were pinned up with the rest of the collection or tossed as soon as they arrived. He was under no illusions about his quality as a brother, but, sometimes, he wished things weren’t quite as they were. Emotions always seemed to come so easily to Pete; he smiled when he was happy, shouted when he was angry and wept when he was upset. Ethan, who had the same expression of polite interest whether he was facing down a cache of armed terrorists or waiting to see his brother like a naughty schoolchild, envied that about him on occasion. Mostly, though, the thought exhausted him.
“He’s on base,” Viper said at length, “but he got co-opted to run some last-minute flight analysis. He’ll be around soon.”
Ethan’s face remained neutral, his breathing steady. “I look forward to it.”
“In the meantime, though,” Viper said, “you want to see Barnes’ NAVADMINS?”
Ethan looked up sharply. “That would be helpful,” he said cautiously. Viper’s mouth curled once more in a restrained smile. Not for the first time, Ethan wondered how much Viper had managed to guess from their limited interactions.
There was probably nothing incriminating in the administrative minutia that came from Admiral Barnes’ desk, but there was rarely such a thing as an overabundance of caution in his line of work.
Viper pushed himself from his chair and crossed the room. He opened the door and stuck his head out. “Kazansky,” he called, “get in here!”
He was back in his chair before the door was opened again, this time by a younger officer, Kazansky, presumably. He was tall, broad, and blond. He had an angular face, and there was something cold about the way his pale eyes swept over Ethan before dismissing him entirely. He tried not to let it rankle.
“You got the latest from Barnes?” Viper asked.
Kazansky’s posture was picture perfect, his voice low and controlled. “Yessir, on my desk. They came through the morning.”
“Go get them, would you?”
“No need,” said Ethan, jumping up, “I’ll come with you.” He had no desire to sit in that airtight office until Pete showed up with only Viper’s knowing insinuations for company.
Viper looked at him sharply, but nodded. Kazansky said nothing at all, just turned on his heel and went the way he had come.
Ethan followed him and let the door fall shut behind him. He followed Kazansky through the outer office and towards a corridor, observing the whole time without having to look around him, a perfected art. The whole place was stuffy, busy bodies pushing past in uniform, ceiling fans circulating warm air throughout the room, and the pervading smell of cigarette smoke which seemed to hang, translucent, throughout. He stuck close to Kazansky.
Kazansky hadn’t looked back at him once, not even in askance. Ethan wondered if he had ever met Pete. Perhaps he was new on the base, or just singularly uncurious.
Either way, it hardly mattered. He followed Kazansky in silence through a long corridor and then down another until they came to a row of offices. Not quite as nice, nor as central, as Viper’s, but an office nonetheless.
Kazansky opened the door and gestured him through.
Kazansky’s office was small and cramped, dominated by a large desk covered in neat stacks of paper. It was windowless, but blessedly cool from the lack of sun.
He heard the door click shut behind him and turned to ask after the orders when he was abruptly spun by a hand on his shoulder and pushed against the door.
His first and immediate thought was that he was certainly being attacked. Kazansky had him pressed against the door, chest to chest, a hand around his wrist and then- oh.
Oh no.
He wasn’t being attacked at all, it was infinitely worse. He was being very thoroughly kissed.
He had found himself in stranger situations than this, he was sure, though usually with more forewarning. He was quite literally trained to put himself into stranger situations than this, a process which had been exhaustive, extensive and highly intense.
All of which was to say he froze.
He pushed back against Kazansky’s chest and tried to think of something eloquent to say.
“Um?”
Kazansky retreated a whole half step and looked down at him in confusion. “Mav, you alright?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, he thought, as it all clicked into place. Pete, what have you done?
Kazansky was actually looking at him in concern as Ethan tried and rejected at least four different gambits. Ethan almost wished he’d go back to the mask of indifference. He was good looking enough, he supposed, taller than Ethan, though that was hardly much of a metric. He opened his mouth again to try and say something but shut it again with a click.
Kazansky was still looking at him, this time with growing concern. “Mav?” He asked again, “You seem a little…” he waved his hand vaguely about his temple. Ethan was just about to make another bold attempt at explanation when Kazansky’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit, is your brother already here?”
“Yep,” Ethan managed at last, his voice higher than he expected, “yeah, he’s here.”
There was no easy extraction from this. For a moment, he bemoaned the lack of a window which would surely have made a more dignified exit than slipping out of the door and hightailing it towards the horizon. Maybe he’d be able to leave and catch Pete at home, oh shit, what if they shared housing-
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of shoes slapping against the tiled floor of the hallway; someone was running, and quickly too.
Suddenly, he found himself displaced as the door was wrenched open. Kazansky jumped away from him as if scalded and there, standing in the doorway, chest heaving with exertion, was Pete.
There was his brother.
He looked older, and by more than three years, too. Ethan catalogued the changes automatically; his face was slimmer, his hair shorter. He was flushed and sweating from what had sounded like a dead sprint. He looked healthy, though. Healthier than the last time they had spoken face to face, sometime after his brother had lost his best friend and become a hero in the span of a handful of weeks. He took it all in and only realised come the end that Pete was doing the same to him.
“Hi Pete,” he said at last.
He didn’t know how much Pete knew about what he did exactly, and he knew even less about how much he had inferred. He’d held his brother at arm’s length ever since joining up and sometimes, when he couldn’t remember how to read his brother or how long it had been, times like now, he regretted it.
Pete didn’t say anything in return and Ethan felt his smile dim, sure that any minute the peace would break, but his brother stepped forward, wordlessly, and embraced him.
He hugged him back tightly. When he pulled away, he held his brother by the shoulders and looked him up and down.
“Still handsome,” he said with a laugh.
Pete grinned, “Still a dick,” he said in return.
He wasn’t sure what he would have done next, a few too many years of silence and vague contact still unspoken between them, if he had not heard a choked off exhale from behind him.
Kazansky was pale, almost ashen, one hand on his desk for support. His face was pure mortification. He barely resembled the cold, assessing man Ethan had first met at all.
“Ice,” said Pete, pleased, “this is my brother, Ethan.”
Ethan tried to decide if a wave would be pushing it. “We’ve met,” he said pleasantly, instead, and then, when Kazansky looked at him as though he was thinking of the easiest way to smuggle his body off base in a duffel bag, added, “friendly guy.”
Kazansky looked straight past him to Pete. “You didn’t say you had a fucking twin!” He hissed.
Pete looked at him as though he’d grown an extra head, “I told you-”
“You said you had a brother, you said there was a family resemblance!” He whispered furiously.
Pete gestured between his own face and Ethan’s as though he thought that Kazansky had somehow missed it. Kazansky was beginning to grow flushed. Pete looked between them.
“Wait,” he said slowly, “Ice, did you-”
“Shut up. I’m going to murder you.”
Pete looked at Ethan. He held his hands up. Unfortunately, the situation was rapidly becoming funny now that he wasn’t on the back foot. His brother’s mouth grew thin as he struggled to hold back a laugh.
“Mav, I thought…I wouldn’t have-”
Pete schooled himself as he risked a hand on Kazansky’s arm. “Ice, it’s okay. Calm down.”
Kazansky looked desperate, “Mav, I kissed him,” he said lowly.
Ethan looked closely at Kazansky’s desk as though he could will himself into not hearing anything else. He wondered if there was some sort of filing system in place, if he could somehow just grab what he was there for and leave. Seeing his brother had been great, but he’d seen him now and maybe it would be easier for everyone if he just slipped away while they were distracted-
“Calm down,” Pete said firmly, “He’s my brother. He’s not going to say anything unless he wants to find the quickest way down from 50,000 feet, right Ethan?”
There was a pointed silence as Ethan considered if the air vent system would take his weight. Who was he kidding, the place was a sauna, there were no vents to speak of.
“Ethan?” Pete said again, this time in warning.
“What?” He said, “Oh yeah, of course. I wouldn’t. My lips are sealed.”
There was an awkward moment before Kazansky stirred himself into action, grabbed the papers off his desk and shoved them at Ethan. He’d catch Pete later, he decided quickly. Kazansky was glaring at him as though this was somehow his fault, and look, Ethan would quite literally take a bullet for his brother, so there was no need for the suspicion. Pete could do a lot worse than shack up with a man and Ethan would still swear hand on heart that the sky was pink, up was down and yes sir, no sir, my brother’s innocent, sir!
Even years apart couldn’t change that.
Somehow, none of that translated to Kazansky and between the scowling and the palpable outrage, he couldn’t help but think they might have got off on the wrong foot.
But if there was one thing the IMF had taught him, it was the value of a swift exit and a well-timed extraction. “I’ll see you around Pete,” he said and, with papers in hand and a hand on the door, he turned, winked, and slipped into the corridor.
But hey, he thought to himself, walking quickly away, it’s not like we’re going to have to see each other again, right?