Colin stops suddenly when someone speaks to him and looks back with wide eyes. He is drunk, he is scared, and for the moment, he's not sure what Ben is talking about if he wasn't in the tavern when he fled the scene.
Colin has never struck him as the scheming type, not that that means he definitely isn't; and in fact, it's often those one least suspects that end up being the worst offenders, the most dishonest. Maybe the gentleness is all an act. Or maybe he's just soft, and therefore foolish.
"Whatever you think you know about me," Ben says, before he can stop himself, "you don't." It almost sounds like a threat-- and it's accompanied by another surge of whatever it was Colin felt before, quiet outrage lightly masking abject terror.
Fear and rage, accompanied by a near-threat, are enough to make Colin take a step backward. There is no telling what a man will do when he is both angry and terrified.
"You're right," he says meekly, trying not to overreact. "All I know is the same things everyone knows."
And that Ben is terrified he'll learn something else. Far more afraid of Colin knowing this thing than Colin is of anything Ben might do, and Colin can relate to that. He has a dreadful secret of his own.
"And what are those," comes the low reply, accompanied by a tiny thrill at how the man quails from him. Though not a very convincing sadist, there is absolutely a vindictiveness to Ben, one which comes out when he feels even the slightest shift in power; he's been without it for so long, now, but will never really forget what it feels like to have it.
An almost imperceptible sigh of relief, accompanied by smoke blown from his nostrils. That is, apparently, what Ben wanted to hear.
"Poking your nose where it doesn't belong," he mutters, that tiny hint of pleasure receding in favor of caution. Then, he flicks his fingers in a gesture that both ashes his cigarette and dismisses Colin. "Go on then."
"I don't think of you at all," Ben answers curtly, tossing the last of his cigarette on the ground to grind it out with his boot before he turns to take his own leave.
It has the air of a spoiled child taking his ball and going home-- or at least it would if not for the constant, grinding fear that radiates from him at all times. But, if nothing else, it's probably the most personality Ben has shown anyone in years.
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"What?" he whispers.
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Either oblivious to Colin's nervousness or just uncaring, Ben doesn't move.
"You looked like you'd seen a ghost." And not the chicken, which was the topic at the time.
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Colin promptly looks like he's seen a ghost. Again. That must have been yet another instance of this unsettling ability.
"You just seemed...burdened, somehow." This worked on Faro; maybe it will work on Tall Dark and Shifty. "Like I was making your day worse. So I left."
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Colin has never struck him as the scheming type, not that that means he definitely isn't; and in fact, it's often those one least suspects that end up being the worst offenders, the most dishonest. Maybe the gentleness is all an act.
Or maybe he's just soft, and therefore foolish.
"Whatever you think you know about me," Ben says, before he can stop himself, "you don't." It almost sounds like a threat-- and it's accompanied by another surge of whatever it was Colin felt before, quiet outrage lightly masking abject terror.
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"You're right," he says meekly, trying not to overreact. "All I know is the same things everyone knows."
And that Ben is terrified he'll learn something else. Far more afraid of Colin knowing this thing than Colin is of anything Ben might do, and Colin can relate to that. He has a dreadful secret of his own.
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And the man is enjoying this. Yet with all the wine in his head, Colin lacks the sense to be done there.
"What are you afraid of me doing?"
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"Poking your nose where it doesn't belong," he mutters, that tiny hint of pleasure receding in favor of caution. Then, he flicks his fingers in a gesture that both ashes his cigarette and dismisses Colin.
"Go on then."
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"You think out of everyone in this town, I'm going to be the one trying to air someone else's dirty secret?"
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It has the air of a spoiled child taking his ball and going home-- or at least it would if not for the constant, grinding fear that radiates from him at all times. But, if nothing else, it's probably the most personality Ben has shown anyone in years.