[restaurant; ren & hannah]
"Good," Ren responded, and he was earnest in that response. Hannah seemed like someone who cared about people and the community and was far more valuable then it seemed that she might be considered to the job she was in. He smiled slightly at her statement, mostly because he'd underestimated her too. He'd thought, well she'd seemed like someone who was maybe a little silly, and he'd thought that until he'd realized that she wasn't - not at all. "You can certainly use that to your advantage," he offered her a smile, and with that smile the certainty that she could probably do precisely what she was saying she wanted to do. "If you need anything ever, though, you know you can call me right? Doesn't matter how strange it might be."
After all, the AI thing had been strange, but Ren was glad he'd gone with her. He was glad she hadn't been there alone.
He let the waitress bring the food, and started dipping some of it out onto his plate, letting her do likewise, while he listened. He supposed there was some truth to the idea that he might be in shadows. Certainly there were things he didn't talk about, and some of them were darker than he'd like to admit to. But he couldn't help a smile as she called him out. "I guess it's easier to talk about what I've done," he shrugged. "They're related aren't they?" But they weren't exactly the same, and Ren wasn't good at letting out who he was. He was an actor, he wore masks, and he had for as long as he could remember, really. In Repose the mask was mostly one of a good-natured barista who knew books and films and plays and could talk to anyone about them. But not about himself.
"All right," he reached for a fork, and tried to think of something he could throw out there that would be good enough, a beam of light into the shadows, but not revealing the whole of everything. He turned ideas over in his head, which ones were too much, which might be just right. It was easier to keep the mask on, talk of where he'd been, and what he'd read. "One. I've skinny dipped in a the Swiss alps. Two. I submitted a winning script to a Festival in New York. Three. I decided to take up acting because of a family member."