[Ren's apartment.]
The smile came despite himself, not because he wanted anyone to think badly of Louis, but there was something about the loyalty that was nice regardless, and he couldn't deny that it made him feel a tiny bit better. "Alright," he told her. Was it really in his power for him to say whether or not she would like him? And then a, "thanks," followed that, quiet, and accepting of the loyalty even as he tried to remember the last time someone had said that sort of thing to him, or really even done anything like that for him at all.
Words pounded around in his head, and he struggled to gather them into something that would come out coherent, and it wasn't just because of the alcohol he'd consumed, although he could easily blame it on that if he wanted to. Trying to put words to his relationships wasn't something he'd usually done very well. He read lots of books, and he could act on stage, but he was a lot more comfortable with a script than trying to write one. The idea that he might be being selfish with Archie, was definitely there, but he didn't much like the idea of saying so, maybe because he didn't want to damage Hannah's opinion of him, which he couldn't help but feel was rather higher than it should be. And telling a story required words, words that were swimming. One thing at a time.
Why did it feel so hard to paint a picture?
Ren lifted his head, reached for the beer again and swung it into his mouth, and then he pushed himself off of the sofa and paced towards the door of the kitchen, and then turned, back and forth for a moment, all anxious energy. Paint a picture, if he were blocking it for the theatre...?
"Louis is a spotlight on the stage," he finally decided on. "Steady, at least it felt that way." Maybe less so, or at least not for him. He shook his head. That left Adrian and Archie, and maybe Claire, who he hadn't mentioned, but there'd been moments... sometimes he wondered if his magic would be able to counter what typically happened when she touched people - but he never had pursued asking, even when he'd been occasionally tempted to do so. Was there something wrong with him that he could fill in a string of maybe might bes? Even Hannah, there'd been moments, he'd been tempted to drop his lips to hers - not recently, but he could remember them, flitting like a butterfly. "I liked that idea," he finally dropped back to Louis. Because that had been it, hadn't it? Louis had this quiet way about him, and at least until he'd become not Louis, he'd seemed completely normal in a town that was a long way from it, and Ren was a long way from it himself.
He breathed in again. "I liked the idea of something steady; I think people think I'm that, but I'm not. I only pretend to be sometimes. Most of the time I'm -" he waved a hand. He was this turbulent uncertain mess more often than not. "Usually my relationships have been more sparks and flames." That probably described Archie reasonably well. It certainly described why he'd never actually given in to the urge to kiss Hannah - because he needed this from her way more than any spark that might have been there - there was the selfish again, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth, but it couldn't be just selfishness, because it wasn't as if she needed that from him. He wasn't certain if it described Adrian. It described part of things with Adrian, maybe. It didn't do justice to the memory of talking Adrian through a meditation process, or the night he'd let the other man sit through his closing routine. That wasn't spark and flames that had been something else. Something he was going to try to unfuck-up, because maybe Adrian had needed a friend, and maybe he'd done a terrible job at being one, and maybe it wasn't too late to make that right.