#benminta1

[hvlfwygod]

strangers | ben & chase

summary: Chase finds someone he can understand. Both he and Ben get a better idea of what they’re up against.

"Yeah, that makes sense," Ben said into his phone. He was sitting in a cafe with Chase, sipping a coffee and trying to manage with the spotty wifi. He listened to Hazel talk for a few more seconds, nodding even though she couldn't see him doing it. "Yeah. Thanks, Haze. I'll talk to you soon." Reluctantly, he hung up.

They'd spent the last few days exploring the town, but it'd been a lot of dead ends and the same story, over and over. Fox was saving the town, but no one could really say from what. Ben thought every seemed exhausted, too, but it was harder to bring that up in casual conversation. At least, based on the brief phone call he'd just had, he wasn't alone in thinking this whole situation was weird.

"Okay, I talked to Hazel and Rae," he told Chase. "They think this whole thing is really fishy."

Chase sipped his hot chocolate and leaned back in his seat. "I don't know. It's weird that everyone's looking at him like a new Jesus Christ." He chewed his lip. "And I don't know what we're gonna do with the guy once we're done with the hag. Like you said, he's not breaking any laws, and it's not like we can just tie him up and cart him across the border without anyone noticing."

Ben sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, I don't know." He stared at the steam rising up from his cup. "I don't understand why people are so willing to believe in him, either. Now that Hazel and Rae explained it to me it just feels so, wrong? Like, he's taking all their profits for himself." He sighed again. "Maybe once the hag is gone it'll be different?"

Chase rubbed his hands together and sighed, shrugging one shoulder. "She might be using the mist to make him seem really good in their eyes?"

Ben nodded. "Or make everything look more dire?" He leaned back in his seat. "I don't really know how that stops him now, it's not like he'll just give everything back."

"Yeah." Chase sighed and ran his thumb over his lip. "Do you think we could... I dunno. We could freeze all his assets? I don't know how that works." He stood suddenly. "Do you want anything to eat? I think I'm getting a sandwich."

Ben shifted and reached for his coffee. "Um, sure. Whatever you're getting."

There was only one person ahead of Chase at the counter, a young woman gesturing towards the case of sandwiches in the midst of a conversation with the barista. 

“–don’t know what you’re saying.” The end of her sentence lifted in volume enough to be overheard and, oddly enough, understood. Each word was laced with frustration, but absent was the accent that had given them so many headaches. One finger tapped the glass. “Look, that one, okay? Please, god.” Chase walked up to the counter and tipped his head to look at the woman, giving the barista behind the counter a small, somewhat sympathetic smile. He waited until they were done with the woman's order before ordering his, and he felt as though the best way to get through might be to follow after her lead, though he didn't want to be rude. He wasn't sure if Ben ate meat, but didn't want to go back to ask. "Uh, hi. Can I just get two of the vegetable sandwiches?" He looked at the price that showed up on the register so that he wouldn't have to ask four times what it was and then paid, nodding along to the barista's chatter, and giving a small smile over to the woman as she waited as well.

She was already staring at him, though her returning smile did appear sheepish at being caught watching. "Sorry," was drawled to him in a decidedly American voice, at odds with the Newfoundland flannel-and-raincoat uniform she was wearing. Chase could guess she was his age, give or take a year on either side. "Didn't wanna creep you out, but– are you a tourist?"

Chase nodded slowly and ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, the accent give it away?" He sighed and shrugged one shoulder. "Where are you from?"

The girl twirled one of her twin braids around a finger, a hint of a laugh in her expression. “Um, yeah, we’re speaking the same language. Austin, where the sun still knows how to shine. You?”

Chase laughed quietly. "It is kind of a different language, huh? I think even if they had a different accent I'd have a hard time understanding what they were saying," he said softly with a shrug. "Well, right now, New York. What brings you all the way up here?" He raised his eyebrows.

"My job." She rolled her eyes and turned to grab her sandwich from the barista with a quick word of thanks. "Mind if I take a seat with you? I'd like, kill for a conversation where I know we're talking about the same thing."

Chase ran a hand through his hair and bobbed his head as he stood up a bit straighter. "Oh, yeah, sure!" He nodded his head over in Ben's direction. "I'm with my—" He paused, looking for a word and then figured it was too much to explain, especially if they were still trying to keep a cover. "Friend over there." He nodded and then took his sandwiches once they were ready. "I'm David, by the way."

"Minnie. Pleasure to meetcha."

Chase bobbed his head and walked over to Ben. He placed one plate in front of him and placed the other in front of himself. "Uh, Luca, this is Minnie. She's from Texas so she wanted to sit with us, since, y'know, she can actually understand us." He took a seat and looked to Minnie. "You said you worked here?"

Ben had been watching Chase talk to the stranger with a steadily growing interest. That interest turned into faint concern when the stranger accompanied him back to the table. Ben sat a little more upright in his chair as the new person joined them. "Oh, um, sure." He tried to make eye contact with Chase, to silently ask, what the hell? He was unsuccessful; all of Chase's attention was on Minnie. Ben followed his gaze and offered a tight smile as a greeting.

Minnie twiddled her fingers at Ben as she dragged a chair from another table over. "Hey. I'm an artist so no, not here." A note of distaste stuck out in her voice, but she didn't sound offended. She smiled at Ben. "Are you from New York too?"

Chase shook his head. "Oh, no, I meant... You said you worked here in town, right? What kind of art do you do?" He clung to the ability to speak to someone who wasn't Ben.

Laughing at her mistake, she nodded. "Oh, sorry, yeah. Half a year now or so, kinda goin' with the flow, painting, sculpting, tattooing and the like. "

Ben felt a surge of annoyance. New York was a big state, but Chase couldn't have picked anywhere else? He nodded to Minnie's question but didn't say anything else, taking a small bite of the sandwich while the other two continued to chat. When Minnie mentioned how long she'd been there, though, Ben leaned a little closer. "Um," he interjected, "that's really cool. Was it um, hard? Finding work here?"

Chase glanced at Ben when he spoke, then looked back at Minnie. "Oh. Yeah, we heard that there was some sort of, I dunno, hard times lately?"

Minnie looked between the two of them. "Um, no, it was pretty easy. Things were kinda shitty here and then a bunch of new jobs opened up, so I grabbed one."

Ben frowned. "Where? Sorry, um," Ben reached into his bag and pulled out the notebook that he'd been using. "Were they at any of these places?" He showed her the first page.

Chase glanced at Ben and then back at Minnie. "We're doing a project on the local economy. For our business class," he clarified.

A crease appeared between her eyebrows, but she took the paper anyway and scanned the list. "Yeah." She pushed it back to Ben.

He nodded once and dropped the notebook back into his backpack. "Okay. Yeah, we noticed that a bunch of places are being bought up, so I was just... curious." Ben considered the risk before he decided to ask another question. "Do you know about the guy who's doing all that?"

"Yeah," she repeated and quirked an eyebrow. "He owns my job, small town, I've met him here and there. Whatcha want to know?"

Ben faltered. "Um. We met him, too, the other day. He was saying that he's been doing a public service?" He glanced at Chase, then back to Minnie. "I guess we've been trying to get, everyone else's opinion on that, too? Do you think he's improving things?"

She threw a quick glance over her shoulder and leaned on the table, lowering her voice. "Nah."

Chase looked from Ben to Minnie and ducked his head a bit closer. "Really? What do you think?"

"Okay, it's not that bad. Some things are improving. He's fixing up a lot of shit. But things weren't that bad to begin with, he coulda just not come in the first place and let the people living here keep working on it. Now they– we, I guess– all owe him."

Ben found himself nodding along. "I noticed that, too. From what we've been reading, there was nothing really, um, that bad happening. And I don't see how him owning all the profit makes this town better off?"

"Peelin' paint does not a charity case make. Now he just controls everything." Minnie seemed to remember her sandwich for the first time and picked it up to start eating.

Chase hummed in response and looked at Ben, quirking an eyebrow at him. He picked up his own sandwich to eat as well. "That's... interesting that you think that."

For the first time Ben found himself really appreciating how terrible this man was. He felt anger twist inside of him. This guy was using a monster to exploit an entire town for money and control. Ben finished his coffee. "Yeah," he agreed, a little late. "Thanks for answering my questions."

He got a shrug in response from her. "Sure. Thanks for the company."

Chase felt like that meant that she was going to leave soon, but was still desperate to be around someone who he could understand that wasn’t Ben. He swallowed the bite of his sandwich that he was chewing. “Do you know if anyone else feels that way? Or is everyone just too friendly to say anything?”

Her eyes flicked between Chase and Ben. “I imagine there’s others in the same boat. This is for a school project?”

"The question on the economy was." Chase nodded. "The rest is... I think we just want to keep you around because I can't understand a word anyone else is saying," he admitted sheepishly, with a small laugh.

Ben resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Chase, and nodded along with him. "Yeah, it's been... surprisingly hard to adjust." He returned to his sandwich, letting Chase have his time to talk to someone else, since he seemed so desperate to.

Confusion cleared from her face as Minnie laughed. “I get it. But it’s nice to have each other, I bet. How long’ve you been together?”

Chase blinked and shook his head quickly as he understood what she meant, the tips of his ears and roots of his hair turning slightly pink. "Oh, I... We're just... We're... He's my sister's..." He opened and closed his mouth and pressed his hand into his cheek as he shook his head again. "We're not together. It's... nice to have someone around though, I guess, yeah." He found himself very interested in his sandwich.

Ben saw the roots of Chase's hair slowly start to change and leaped back into the conversation, pulling the attention back to him. "That's so funny," he said, forcing a chuckle. "We've never gotten that one before. We're just classmates." Ben turned his body a bit so he was looking at Minnie more directly. "Did you come up here all by yourself?"

His effort to distract her from Chase’s hair seemed successful as she refocused on Ben. She laughed when he did. “Oh, sorry, must’ve misread that. No, some of my family came too- lifesaver on having people to talk to I can understand, even when they’re on my nerves. It’s just you two in town, or school trip?”

Chase's hair faded back to normal— or, at least to the normal colour of the disguised hair, as he got over the temporary embarrassment. "Oh, I bet a family trip here would be great." He sighed and turned his sandwich over in his hands, letting Ben answer the second question as he ate.

"Just us," he said, figuring if he lied it might be obvious to her when she failed to spot any other visitors after this. "We're researching a few towns around here before we head back to school."

“Oh, cool. Which ones?” Minnie smiled at him.

"Um," he tried to remember which towns Chase had said the other day. "We stopped in Cape Breton before this, and we'll probably go to, um, PEI after this."

She whistled. “Quite a road trip. Nowhere else in Newfoundland?”

Ben shrugged. “If someplace looks interesting, maybe. We’re kind of winging it.” Did people wing it on road trips? Ben had no idea, but he hoped she’d accept this answer.

Chase swallowed and nodded. “Yeah, we were in Quebec for a bit, but since neither of us speak French it wasn’t really, like... a thing.” He laughed a bit. “Just thought we’d explore the Maritimes.”

Between the efforts of the two of them, she seemed to accept the answer without trouble. “Fun! I’ve always wanted to do that, just get in a car and drive wherever the wind takes me.” She checked her watch, a simple accessory with a leather band. “Ugh, my break’s totally almost over. David and Luca, you said?”

He was almost a little relieved to see her have to go; at least it would mean no more questions he was unprepared to answer. “Yeah.”

Chase smiled and gave a bit of a nod, sad to see her go. "Yeah. It was nice meeting you, Minnie."

She wrapped up the rest of her sandwich and stood. “Yeah, pleasure. You wanna chat again before you skip town, I work down the street. Company’s nice.”

"Sure." Ben pulled up another smile and waved as she walked away, then focused back on Chase. "That was weird." 

Chase nodded, actually considering this, and turned back to Ben after he watched Minnie walk away. "Was it? She seemed friendly."

Ben frowned, finally letting his annoyance show. "Yeah, Chase, it was." He rubbed his face. "At least she also thinks what's going on is fucked, too. I felt like I was going crazy."

Chase frowned at Ben and leaned back as he lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Yeah, at least that means that some people might feel the same way that she does. Makes what we’re gonna do with him in the end a bit easier? Like let the town deal with him?”

Ben was quiet for a moment, his knee bouncing. Chase still had no idea that Nemesis had visited him, and he thought it was a bit too late to bring it up now. He picked up his sandwich and put it back down. "We need to get rid of the hag first, I think, before we can figure out how to deal with him."

Chase rubbed his jaw and nodded. “I think we’ll have to kill her after we destroy the totem, and I think we’ll have to do it in a dream.” He frowned and finished his hot chocolate, now cold from how long it’d taken him to drink.

"So our next step is finding the totem,” Ben sighed. “And destroy it in a dream. Super easy, right?”

Chase raised his eyebrows at Ben. “Never say that things are super easy. You’d die in a second in a horror movie. Let’s go investigate a creepy lighthouse, what could go wrong?” He shook his head.

Ben breathed out a small, humorless laugh. "Well, fuck, I guess I'm screwed, then."