Benji's dark secret

It was a warm and sunny day and when Benji was walking around the house into the big garden, to meet his teammates. Will, the owner of the place, was dripping wet when he approached Benji, greeting him happily – obviously he just had been in the pool for a swim. "Nice to see you, and thanks for the invitation" Benji said to him warmly before turning towards the others.

He noted Luther maintaining the grill, wearing shorts and a barbecue apron. Ethan, lounging by the pool, wore swimming trunks like Will and had sunglasses on. In fact, Benji was the only one wearing not only shorts or swimming trunks (grill apron not counting), but also a white t-shirt. The invitation has said "pool party" after all.

"Hey Benji!" Luther called cheerfully, waving his hand and making no intention of leaving his precious grill. "Hey Luther!" Benji called back good humouredly, while making his way towards the edge of the pool, where Ethan was getting up from his lounger. Looking good as always, the latter one looked at him closely for a second, before taking him in for a friendly hug.

"Good to see you, Benji," Ethan smiled, making Benji nearly blush. "Yeah, good to see you too," he replied, patching him awkwardly on his shoulder, before taking a step back to look more closely around the site. "Nice garden!" he complimented Will, who was standing nearby, drying himself off with a big white bath towel. "Yeah, thanks to the pool," he answered proudly, clearly fond of it. "You want a beer? I was just going to fetch some from the kitchen." "Yeah, sure," Benji replied before turning to Ethan again.

"So, what's up?" he asked his teammate, starting a casual conversation. Ethan shrugged his shoulders. "Not much. It's been awfully quiet the last few days." "So, you actually managed to come here without crashing a car or catching a bad guy?" Benji said in an unbelieving voice, teasing him a little. Ethan laughed out loud, causing a pleasant feeling to run through Benji. He just loved to hear Ethan's laugher. Then Ethan started to ask him random light-hearted questions, with Luther soon joining in on the conversation.

Not much later Will was returning, handing each of them a bottle of beer. "To us and our successful mission," he said his toast. Of course, the others now had to add theirs. "To catching Lane in a glass box," Ethan was joining in, grinning gleefully in remembrance, not noticing how Benji slightly flinched when hearing the name of his kidnapper. "Yeah, to catching that damn guy and making the world a better place," Luther added. Now they all looked to Benji. "Uh, to our great team," Benji said, cringing internally at how lame it sounded and hoping that no one had seen him flinching.

Thankfully, they all joyfully drank their beer and kept smiling happy smiles after his toast so he guessed they didn't. In the following conversation, Benji wandered off a bit, choosing a deck chair to sit on and look over the pool, which was sparkling nicely in the afternoon sun. Keeping one ear on their conversation, he heard them jokingly mocking about his clothing a little later. Sometimes they were such girls, lamenting about everything (although mostly not taking it seriously). Now they were speaking in lower voices, so he couldn't hear them anymore. Great, that sounded like they were up to something. As he knew them, they were probably making some more or less hilarious bets. He just hoped these bets had nothing to do with him wearing a shirt despise the heat of the day. He dreaded the day when one of them would find out about his secret, hopefully it wouldn't be today.

It would be such a shame to ruin a lovely day like this and he always loved their company, especially Ethan's., although he found it hard to say why he liked him more than the others. Maybe it was his beaming smile or his confident manner or even his cool and melodious voice. He tried not to thing about how good looking he was – it would lead to a dangerous terrain. He couldn't resist frequently sneaking looks at him, though. Of course, he always made sure to let his eyes wander on around the others and over the surrounding area, too, so it wouldn't look like he was stalking him or something. You could never be enough careful in the present of such good agents, after all.