Reno drinks beer to be sociable and tequila when he's drinking hard. He professes to like Silver Cactaur brand, but Rude's pretty sure that's just because it's the most infamous rotgut around. When he's not making a show of it, he quietly orders the top shelf labels, because he's a Turk, and he can afford it. When he's in a dark mood, he orders a thick herbal liquor from Niebelheim that Tifa stocks. The stuff's black as sin and tastes like licorice-flavored fire, and it's best to stay out of his way if he's drinking it. It's an ill omen.
***
Rude drinks whiskey, usually single-malt, which lies like redgold honey in the bottom of his glass. Unlike Reno, who knocks back his tequila and chases it with lime, Rude drinks slow, savoring. He does so even though Reno and Elena are in unlikely agreement that his favorite booze tastes like acetone mixed with saddle leather. "It's such a pretty color, for something that tastes so foul," Elena says. He doesn't even grace them with a glance over the tops of his sunglasses. "No taste, any of you"—spare with words as ever, even with two rounds simmering in his stomach.
***
Elena drinks beer like she has something to prove. Oh, she likes beer, especially brown ales—she knows which local small breweries make the best—but there's also an element of specifically not drinking so-called girly drinks. It amuses Reno hugely that, with enough drinks in her, she'll forget herself and start ordering strawberry daquiris and apple martinis and—heaven forbid—chocolate mudslides. He never tells her afterwards, because then she'd stop, and it's amusing. And maybe because part of him, that he would never ever share with her, wishes she didn't feel like she had to try so hard.
***
Tseng drinks wine and rarely gets drunk, or at least rarely does so in public. His own dignity is important to him. But he's still a Turk, and that means that there are many things he'd sometimes like to just forget. When he drinks seriously, it's usually brandy, and the memories he's fighting are the specters of every Turk who's ever died on his watch. It's when Tseng's had a bit too much to drink that Elena finally learns the circumstances of her sister's death, and Rude can't decide whether he thinks that's a good thing or a bad thing.