Enemy Action
A Word: Yeah, I got nothing. It was unbearably cute and dorky and I had to write about the Billy thing.
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Will hasn't been called Billy since he was ten and decided that was old enough to not be a little child anymore. It'd taken him several months of patient explanation -and a lot of pouting he can now admit to that- but he was able to leave the nickname behind for the much more adult sounding Will. Or Bill as his grandfather had insisted on calling him.
The first time Benji calls him Billy, Will blinks and almost doesn't duck in time to avoid getting hit by a baseball bat. Benji laughs at him for the expression on his face later. It was apparently priceless, and Will forgets to tell the other man not to call him that as he fights off the urge to strangle him.
The second time it happens is two missions later and Will almost doesn't catch it. Benji's picked the code names again. Handing them out with his usual poorly restrained glee that means there's some meaning behind them that's going to require internet access to figure out. It takes Will an embarrassing amount of time to make the connection between The Kid and Benji's snickers.
The third time it happens is after a debrief during their almost habitual after action dinner. Ethan's vanished after the appetizers are demolished, and Will doesn't expect to see him again until they get called back in. Which won't be for another month at least. His anniversary is coming up and the IMF knows better than to pull him in around this time of the year. Grief they think, and Ethan lets them. Jane begs off pleading headache. A minor complaint that really doesn't cover the fact she's probably still suffering from a concussion.
It leaves him alone with Benji and the plate of burgers that they'd ordered thinking there was going to be four of them to eat it. Benji solemnly folds a napkin into the collar of his shirt and eyes the plate with the same intensity he give firewalls. "Think we can take this, Billy?"
Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
Will narrows his eyes and watches as Benji's lips turn up in an unrepentant grin. It's clear that this is going to be a thing with Benji, and that nothing Will does or says is going to change that. Benji's got the nickname in his head and is ridiculously enamored with it for some reason. Protesting and fighting it now will only encourage him to take it extreme lengths.
"I think we can manage," Will responds verbally and pulls out a handful of napkins to be ready near his plate. The burgers look a little on the dangerously greasy side.
They aren't able to manage it in the end, but Will is surprised to find he doesn't mind much. Benji turns the meal into a weird competition with trash talk better suited for football games, and Will spends a good portion of the time trying not to get food down the wrong pipe.
By the time they've split the remaining burgers into containers, and argued about how to split the bill; Will has found himself minding the nickname less. It's kind of amazing, after all, how very many insults there are that rhyme with Billy.
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