#;ben

ben had always tried to hide his compassionate side, considering himself nothing but a monster. something that needed to be destroyed. but then there was this. this situation. this ugly part of humanity that he loathed. though he ignored the fact that he was originally following the kid to feed off of and eventually kill him. still, as they started crowding around him, his fingers tensed up and his stomach flipped. this could go one of two ways, he figured. either they’d rob him, and leave him alone. maybe rough him up a bit. or, there would be a commotion and the boy would end up dead or worse. either way, it seemed like unnecessary evil. again, ignoring the true nature of why he showed up, when they had the kid cornered he had no choice but to step up, fists clenched tightly, not wanting to act too soon, lest he spook one of them and push them to do something irrational. “hey, kid,” he called out. “you okay?”

        “Just let me love you when your heart is tired.”

She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t fucking believe it. Here she was, surrounded by Misty Valley lore. Well, she wanted to find a place to sulk properly about the town, and what better place to do it than around people genuinely trying to learn more about it? Or something like that, anyways. She hadn’t planned on coming here when she stormed out of the house (on foot, she didn’t have enough money to put gas into the ungainly truck she had inherited from her parents along with the shitton of responsibility she had never ask for), but it was colder than she expected, and so she ducked into the first public place she could find when her cheeks started to go numb. And the first public place just happened to be the fucking Misty Valley Museum. If she hadn’t already been convinced that fate had a cruel sense of humor, this would have clinched it.

She ordered a coffee from the little cafe at the front (it was instant, and tasted like crap, but it was also warm), and then plopped down on a bench in a little art installation of local talent. In Portland, something like this would have probably been chic, but here, half of the pieces revolved around the witch trials that had happened who knew how many years ago. Misty Valley’s claim-to-non-fame. It made Angie want to puke. Needless to say, she was not in a good mood when she got the boy’s eye from across the room. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” she snapped. For all she knew, he hadn’t even been staring at her. He could have just picked the wrong moment to glance over. But whatever. The mood she was in, she’d probably snap at Mother Theresa if she came by offering the secrets to world peace.

         Ben was only just getting used to the idea of having anyone else even look at his yard, let alone have free reign of it. And he still wasn’t sure if Dallas fully grasped just how much it meant to him, but that was probably his fault for underselling it. “Okay, not too many lights. I had a hard enough time not just stringing fairy lights everywhere while I was decorating.” That. That has got to be the gayest that Ben has ever sounded. In his hands were eight bags total with different kinds, colours and sizes of Christmas lights that they’d just returned with. “I mean, do you even know what you’re doing?”

         Ben was leaning back in the booth, turning his head left, and then right at a crowd across the bar as the other spoke. He was mostly listening, which was impressive. For him. “I don’t like this bar. Let’s go back to my place,” he said simply, finishing off his drink and putting the glass down before looking over to the other. “Or--” he shook his head, noting the way he spoke for the first time, maybe ever. “Did you wanna come back to my place?”