Title: ninety-nine percent perspiration

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Rating: PG.

Summary: Mi4. He'd let 'should' slip in favor of what he wanted to do. 500 words.

Spoilers: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011).

Notes: Slashy + a side order of guilt. Because: shiny action movie. Sorry?

The knowledge that Julia Hunt was still alive was a weight off of Will's soul.

...Enough of one for him to pick up the smart phone and agree to continue working for her husband, anyway.

He'd missed the field. The instincts and training that had driven his success in the physical arm of the IMF had served him well during his rise through the ranks of the analysts, but desk work had never really been an adequate substitute for pushing body and will to the edge – and making sure the other poor bastard died for his cause before he or she could imperil IMF's. It had been his judgment he didn't trust anymore.

Still didn't, really, though the demotion from team leader to 'helper' would hopefully minimize the issue. Of course, being 'helper' on Ethan Hunt's team was... a complication in other ways.

The chief reason the guilt had stuck so long and so hard was the reason that he'd followed Hunt in the first place, three years before. He'd known Hunt was capable of taking care of himself given even a few seconds' warning; which meant the best of the agents on the couple's detail should have stayed with Julia. Which meant Will. That wasn't his arrogance talking. It was simple acknowledgement of skill. But he'd let himself get distracted... and nearly a dozen people's lives had changed drastically as a result.

He and the agents left with her had left the field. Julia might have survived, contrary to what he'd believed for so long – but she'd still been the guest of six Serbian nationals for as long as it took her husband to get sanction and a secondary mission to justify her rescue. And there'd been a body – some other poor woman killed in Julia's place to muddy the trail of her disappearance.

Inexcusable. A life was a life, and he was sure Julia would carry the memory of those hours of captivity for the rest of hers, no matter how well she'd recovered. All because of one William Brandt's juvenile fixation on her husband.

Call it a puppy crush, starry eyed worship of a legendary agent, led astray by his dick, whatever – he'd been so fixated on what Ethan Hunt would think, what Ethan Hunt would do, and the sight of Ethan Hunt running shirtless, shining with sweat, that he'd let should slip in favor of what he wanted to do.

It was only justice, he supposed, that his judgment would be subordinate to the other man's in future. That lifted the guilt enough to let him work – the rest, he'd just have to harness to keep himself motivated. He'd thrown himself out of a building to save Ethan's life once already; who knew what else the coming missions would throw in his way?

Forget getting over it – any of it. From there on out, Will figured he might as well try Ethan's method: run with it, make shit up, trust his team, and see what happened.

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© 2012 Jedi Buttercup.