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Keeping everyone within a certain arm's length from his heart was the only way he survived moving from place to place. And yet, only in the throes of anxiety and gnawing despair did he realize the depth of the holes he was burrowing in his heart.

They were numerous, so deep that no amount of alcohol could numb. Furthermore, his sense of persistent inferiority did him no favors. He held them all at bay, of course, smiling as if careless.

Sex didn't fill the holes, either. Well, the ones that mattered for his emotional state. Treating it as a tool for so long made him reel whenever a true moment was had between them - even if it didn't involve hot, mingled breaths and clinging to each other.

That something as simple as an embrace warmed him so deeply that it left him trembling. Even long after the moment had started.

A moment that Ren might have considered almost stagnant felt strikingly, vividly -alive- in this moment.