[Ren's apartment.]
He felt broken, and not in a way that was easy to put back together. It wasn't the first time he'd felt that way, and probably it was unlikely to be the last, but that didn't make it any easier, sitting there on the sofa with a beer in his hands and Hannah talking to him. The conversation topic was enough to sober him a little, maybe not enough to clamp down and not talk about it at all, which is what he largely had been doing, but enough to think about all of it and dislike the way he didn't trust anything really.
When he'd been a little boy, he'd never really trusted his parents concern for him. His mother had always been gone on business, and making the government work properly, and politics, and appearances, and the needs to keep secrets and stay away from the past. His father had been better, maybe, but he'd not been exactly a father figure either, and the business had flown him everywhere, and so he'd ended up in a boarding school, and summers with his Uncle who had warned him of the dangers of magic, and of not getting too attached to people, and maybe he'd taken that admonition in more than he'd ever wanted to considering how little he'd cared for his Uncle's training. He lifted one of the hands off the bottle and tightened the fingers for a moment - flexing them, and then returning it to the bottle.
"I did have a nice time though," he protested. And he had. Archie had stayed. People had come, and there'd been the warmth of knowing that people had a good time, and there had been the warmth of the alcohol, and the music, and the fact that total strangers had come to his place, and his place was nice enough to entertain in now, and he had to give his Secret Santa that, at least, it had been good. "Things are shit, but the night was good and I'm glad people came and stuff, like I understand you had a thing, and that's fine that's good, but other people came, some of them even people I didn't know, and that was... cool. And I'm glad I could give them a thing."
And he didn't have an answer for why. She made it sound like he didn't need to, but she hadn't been there, and he'd nearly lost his temper, or at least it felt that way in his memory, built up to be as dangerous as the magic he pretended he didn't have to use, and coming on the heels of the Halloween and the magician who would have ruled the world, it felt like he needed to.
"I don't know, I mean maybe he just didn't know what he wanted. Or maybe I didn't..." he sighed. He could feel tears pressing at the edge of his eyes and he hated the feeling so he swallowed hard and shook his head. "You know, maybe I was too cautious, or not... I didn't really tell him anything. And I've been really bad at friends. Like, except for you, but you didn't let me disappear, you kept asking me things, and there was a guy before, just before- kinda... I liked him, but I think that's kinda passed. And." He stopped, leaned forward to put the beer down on the table, cognizant that he should probably use a coaster, but not wanting to try to find one.
He put his head in his hands for a moment, massaging his temples lightly. "I'm not certain I deserve anything. Honestly. I don't think I'm very good to people. Not really. Like surface, I can smile and give you your coffee, and help you find a book, and sort through how to do laundry, or make you laugh or feel things on a stage, but like face-to-face, I'll disappoint you. I'm having sex, kinda. With someone." The fact that he'd said this startled him a little and he frowned at the beer as if it had betrayed him. "It's just sex, I think. Well. Friends, maybe, with benefits? I don't know. I'm not thinking about it too much."