the monsters turned out to be just trees

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

The alchemist's lips parted to labour precisely that: he didn't want Loren's perfunctory routines. He didn't want his good manners, his right things to do. He wanted a friend, not a walking book on decorum. About to say as much, the words were abandoned on his tongue as Loren continued: I want to. Oh. Well he certainly could have fooled Remi.

That it was what Remi wanted was unclear. Hugs helped to be sure, but when it came to the summoner, the alchemist was hard pressed to put to words what it was he did need from him. Or more precisely perhaps, what he was allowed to need. Before he might have let his mind puzzle it out, unexpectedly, the summoner made him laugh, and Remi found himself begrudgingly shaking his head and pulling Loren towards him. It still felt like hugging a skeleton wrapped in feathers, but perhaps that was all for the best.

Leaning his head against Loren's shoulder and bristling against the pin-pricks of tears against the back of his eyes, it was the overwhelming smell of someone normal that ultimately made Remi's knees feel weak and unstable. He'd kept his distance from Ianto for obvious reasons, Sam smelled of nothing, the closest he and Deimos had been was drinking across from one another, Bastien smelled of all sorts of garish things, and Jigano and the alchemist were only close when they were shifted.

But this?

This was everything Ronin currently wasn't. Remi feared that his heart had been shattered too many times that eventually when the pieces were reassembled it would resemble nothing remotely like what it had been. Hope and faith did not suitable band-aids make, not anymore. "I am not okay." Remi whispered into the fur-lining of Loren's coat, the words balanced on a stream of air that threatened to warble into a sob at any moment.