The bar's halfway full, and cooler than it is outside. Up on the plate it's a beautiful September day - light breeze, blue skies, sunshine. One of those days that make him wish he'd sprung for an apartment in the central plate, where they have parks and trees. He saves on rent, but his only window looks out on an alley. Under the plate, it's stuffy and humid, but in here the fans are working, and it has to be drawing people in. He sees her through the crowd, and he notices when she spots him, sees the recognition in her face and the beginning of a smile. "Rude!" she calls, and he makes his way to the bar, happier than he ought to be, heart hammering.

"You never come around here!" she says. "I keep trying to treat you like a regular, but you just won't work with me."

"...sorry," he says, pleased to note envious glances from a couple of the other men around the bar.

"Well, stay put, okay?" she says, and she slides a whiskey sour across to him, then picks up a tray of drinks and makes her way out from behind the bar. He stays until closing time, talking to her when he can - or speaking in monosyllables while she tries to draw him out, to be more accurate - and watching as the bar slowly begins to empty. He's the last one in there. Even her huge, surly black friend leaves, with a little girl who might be hers. "Your daughter?" he asks, after the door shuts behind those two.

"No, his. Adopted," she adds. "He and I aren't an item."

"Good," he says, quietly, and when she turns to face him, he actually smiles.

"You need to come around more," she says.

"Why?" he asks.

"Because... I don't know, you're just kind of... you're nice. Whenever you come around and we actually get a chance to talk, it's been... you need to do that more."

"I could buy you dinner," he says.

"At this time of night?" Things in the slums close earlier, he remembers. Theft insurance, security tapes, those are perks of Plate life. So is the police force.

"There are places on the plate that'd still be open. Not fancy places, but the food's good."

"You have one in mind?"

"Yeah." A late night after his first mission. They'd shot five men on a train, moved up several cars from the spot - on the second car away, he'd started shaking, and in the third, he stopped, stumbled in amongst the seats and retched uncontrollably until his stomach was empty. Reno waited on him, patted his shoulder, and handed him a handkerchief to wipe his mouth, his streaming eyes. He'd killed people before, during the war with Wutai and the cleanup, in battles, covert ops - it made no sense why this should hit him so hard. Tseng was waiting at the door to the next compartment. They'd split at the station. He bought a small bottle of water, and Reno waited while he rinsed out his mouth, spat, and drank the rest, then led the way to a burger place. It was the best food he'd ever eaten, and while they sat there talking and nursing drinks Reno had never once made reference to his moment of weakness. "Nothing special. Just a diner."

"Just a minute while I close up, then."

.

The bar's crowded again, and a sugary Christmas carol is playing, heavy on the violins. He can tell when she sees him, because her face brightens. She waves at him over the crowd, and he lifts his hand in acknowledgment, shoulders his way through the crowd at the bar to reach her. "I didn't think you'd make it!" she says happily, half-shouting over the noise of the bar.

"I promised," he says, and the smile she gives him strikes him dumb. And then she leans over the bar to awkwardly land a peck on his lips. He should object. He shouldn't be seeing a Shinra-hating barmaid from the slums. He shouldn't smile at her, and then smirk at her glowering friend with the hook for an arm, but he does.

He shouldn't have taken her someplace Reno knew about, either. They'd spend a lot of time in her bar after closing time, talking as they cleaned up, but he could afford to show her the Plate and she'd admitted, finally, that she missed the open air, actual grass and sunlight. Sometimes they'd spend hours in parks on the Plate itself; other times he'd buy her dinner, and while he tried to keep it to places the other Turks didn't frequent, he wasn't flawless about it. The diner in question was an especially chancy spot, but they'd eaten there before with no problems.

Then, two weeks ago, they'd seen him there. The older Turk hadn't said a word to him, hadn't even acknowledged him at the time. The next day, when they were alone in the office, Reno had leaned against a filing cabinet, flipping his taser as if he were a drum majorette, and said "You know the process of falling for someone is a whole lot like the early stages of cocaine dependency?"

He'd just looked blank. "It's an addiction," Reno said. "Euphoria, withdrawal, all that shit. I mean, you know me, I'm all in favor of addictions. But they make you stupid, and I'm just saying, don't get stupid. There's a lot of unrest in the slums and you know that. And we all know they won't be able to bring Shinra down, but that doesn't mean we want to let them have any little victories, either."

"Like what?"

"Something happening to you. You dropping security information. Hell, I don't know what you talk about when you're screwing her."

He hadn't liked that, and it must have shown. Reno stopped playing with the taser. "Just be careful," he'd said, and then he'd left to join Tseng on the Gainsborough surveillance. And Rude had gone out for a walk, and ended up drifting through crowds, looking for some kind of gift for her, trying to forget Reno's words.

He'd found a gift, finally, and had it stuffed in his coat pocket now. A pair of fighter's gloves - he knew she could fight, had watched her doing katas sometimes when the bar was really empty, but she always went bare-handed. She didn't even know he was Shinra. She didn't have any ulterior motives. She couldn't. He kept his hand in his pocket, on the tissue paper wrapped around the gloves, and told himself Reno was being ridiculous. And then she smiled at him and the world felt right again.

Euphoria. So maybe it is a little like an addiction, he thinks, as he settles onto the barstool just vacated by the guy she'd almost elbowed when she kissed him. He'll stay there for hours - he always does - watching her, waiting patiently through long blank stretches between the times she comes back to talk to him. Just a few words here and there. Reno doesn't understand, he thinks.

Tifa's big, angry friend removes a couple of people on the verge of a fistfight, at one point. Others hold onto enough sense to take it outside before he gets involved. People begin filtering out, in pairs or larger groups, some singing, some despondent. Tifa calls "Merry Christmas!" after all of them, even though he sees weariness on her face, or annoyance - she knows almost everyone who comes in here. As the night wears on, people begin leaving alone, slumped and shuffling, or more often reeling a bit. That could be him, he thinks, if he cared about this holiday in the least. Or if it weren't for Tifa.

A couple of people come in with the little girl, and he fades back into a corner as Tifa hugs her and the others - friends, apparently - and small gifts are exchanged, and dirty looks are sent his way. They leave, in the end, and people call out "Merry Christmas" some more, and then the door closes and it's just the two of them.