A.N.: Alrighty, here's another one from me. Yes, it's in the timeline but I'll work that in later (really need to go to bed—getting up to go to Six Flags tomorrow.)

Anyway, this one's for Rachie who gave me the idea! Kick back and enjoy it.

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"Are you gonna finish that?"

"Yes. Stop asking," she said, moving her glass away from his grasp.

"You drink so goddamn slow," he said, looking around impatiently for someone who would take his next drink order. "You can't hold your liquor at all, can you?"

"I can hold my liquor just fine."

"Oh really. I seem to remember a certain incident involving table dancing at the last company par—"

"That was one time! And how was I supposed to know that the punch was spiked?"

"…But you drank like, twelve glasses."

"Whatever! Shut up!" She threw up her hands and slumped forward, scanning the room.

The volume of her glass had barely gone down since they got there. "You're a waste of liquor," he said, shaking his head.

"How am I wasting it? I'm going to drink it," She took a sip to prove her point. "Just because I'm not drunk," she paused until he turned back to face her, "Doesn't mean I'm a waste of liquor."

"I'm not drunk," said, obviously getting her implication.

"…Yet."

"Well duh not yet. Everyone gets drunk eventually." Bartender? Helloooo?

"Not everyone Reno. Just you."

"I told ya Laney, I'm not drunk," He noticed her fidgeting, eyes wandering. "The fuck are you lookin' for anyway?"

She seemed to not hear him, still looking around the bar for a minute or so. "Umm…. Didn't you say Tifa worked here?"

"Yup." He swirled the ice in his glass around for entertainment.

"Where is she?"

"Fuck if I know. This place isn't any fun without her. No offense there Laney."

His words fell on deaf ears. "Did she leave?"

"Did you see her leave? Why would she be leaving anyway?"

"I don't know," She squirmed in her seat again. "Maybe her shift is over or something." She turned around to observe the room again.

"Well it's not over for an hour." The conversation was quickly increasing his need for another drink.

"What if she decided to leave early?"

"Didn't we just go over this? We're right by the door. We would've seen her."

"Yeah but…" She paused and frowned. "What if we didn't?"

"I don't fucking know! God, what do you care anyway?" Well, he obviously cared whether or not Tifa was around, but he had his… reasons. "Do you have a crush on her or something?"

…What was she doing? Usually when he said something like that, she was either supposed to yell and hit him, or, in rare cases, just reply completely calmly that no, that wasn't true. She wasn't supposed to turn bright red and look down at her lap like he just hit the nail on the head.

"Holy shit you do."

"…No I don't." She still seemed fascinated by her hands.

"You do."

"Really," she insisted, "I don't. …Not like that."

"Uh huh." He wasn't buying it.

"I'm serious! It's not a crush." She finally looked back up at him, eyes wide.

"Ohhh yes it is. You should just see your face right now."

"It's not!"

"Okay, what is it then?"

"It's like… y'know…" Suddenly she found the table very interesting. "A girl-crush."

"…What the fuck is a girl-crush?"

"You know," He most certainly didn't. "It's like a man-crush… only with… girls."

"Well gee Laney, that's really fascinating and all, but unfortunately it doesn't explain a damn thing." For such a motor mouth she was pretty useless when it came to making a point. The result was the conversation going nowhere very, very fast

She sighed impatiently, bracing herself on the table and leaning forward. "Okay, so you know how you have a man-crush on that guy Vincent?"

"What! No I don—" Well… he didn't really know what one was, so maybe he did. Still, he didn't like the sound of being accused of having a 'man' crush, of all things.

"Sure you do. I've heard the way you talk about him," She took a moment to laugh. "It's like you're practically in love with him."

"No… it's not even remotely like that. I just think… y'know, he's like a Turk legend and stuff, and I know I sure as hell can't fire a gun like that, and you wouldn't think that anyone could make pointy golden shoes look cool but—" He stopped when he caught the look on Elena's face, seeing her precious seconds away from bursting into mocking laughter. "…Shut up."

She shook her head. "So getting back to my point, it's like that."

"Like what?"

"Well, it's more like admiration and that sort of thing. It's not an actual crush."

"Then come up with a better name for it than girl-crush."

"I didn't make it up!"

"How hard is it to just say admiration?" Going nowhere fast—why wasn't he surprised?

"Okay, okay, fine, shut up. But the important thing is that it's… platonic."

"Sure it is." She'd officially prodded him into irritation. He was determined to return the favor.

"It is!" He smirked when he saw he'd managed to get a rise out of her. "I wanted to meet her. I just think that… you know, she's really pretty, and successful with her bar and all, and a really good fighter and—"

"And you wanna have sex with her…" He quickly finished for her, mocking her tone.

"No I don't! I mean, you don't want to have sex with Vincent… do you?" He let his glare serve as an answer. "Right. So that's settled then."

He scoffed. "Uh-huh. Sure. I still say you wanna do her."

"Say what you want," she said flippantly, acting like she wasn't listening.

He grinned for several reasons as he saw Tifa approach their table. "Oh, I will."

Tifa returned his smile and he was positively thrilled. She seemed happier and happier to see him nowadays, and why wouldn't he like to be noticed by the object of his interest?

"Hi guys," she said cheerfully, smiling at Elena as well.

"Hey babe. How's it goin?"

"How's it going?" she repeated with a laugh. "I'm working! But I think I can take a break and talk for a while."

Reno looked over her shoulder to the drunks at the counter impatiently eyeing their bartender. "You sure about that?"

She followed his eyes and waved dismissively. "They'll be fine. So are you guys enjoying yourselves?"

Reno glanced at Elena, watching her fidget and blush. Girl-crush his ass. "Oh we're doin great," He cast a cheesy grin in Elena's direction. "Laney in particular."

Tifa smiled at her. "Well that's nice to hear," She caught sight of Elena's barely emptied glass and frowned slightly. "Oh… did you not like your drink…? I can make you something else if you want."

"N-no! …No. It's good, really. Thank you."

Tifa's faded into slight puzzlement and she looked at Reno. "Laney can't hold her liquor," he quickly explained with a smug glance at Elena.

Suddenly Tifa giggled, before she thought to stifle it. "Really?"

Reno grinned. "Oh yeah. Total lightweight."

"I'm not!" Elena insisted, still not touching her drink.

Tifa smiled reassuringly. "Are you sure? I can get you something else if that's too strong. Really, it's no trouble."

"No, I'm fine. It's okay. Don't worry about it."

Reno watched in total amusement as Elena made a fool of herself. She was never the eloquent one, and this whole 'girl-crush' thing was certainly affecting her conversation skills even more. She didn't perform well when she was nervous.

He turned to Tifa. "So am I comin over tonight?"

She giggled again. "Are you inviting yourself?"

"Well if you don't invite me first…"

She smiled. "Sure, you can come over tonight," He came over every night anyway. "How about you Elena? You want to come over too? I'll cook something for you guys."

"Oh, um…" She promptly blushed and fidgeted. He followed her eyes and quickly saw why the embarrassment was so severe. "I'd hate to intrude…"

"You wouldn't be intruding on anything."

Reno watched helplessly as his romantic evening was being ruined. "Who says she won't?" They way he was planning to spend his time with Tifa, Elena would be one hell of an intrusion. But his words went unheeded.

"Thank you," Elena said with a trace of a smile. "But I have to get up early tomorrow."

"Aw, well, maybe some other time."

Reno admittedly wanted Tifa's attention back on him. "So just me then?"

"Just you," She trailed off slightly, before straightening in sudden realization. "But you have to promise to help me clean up before we leave."

"Aww, come on."

"Reno…" she said pleadingly. She took on what he assumed was an unintentional pout—a face he couldn't say no to.

"Okay fine…"

"Thank you Reno," She leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek. He gave Elena a self-satisfied smirk while Tifa was momentarily distracted. "I've got to get back to work. I'll see you later," She smiled at Elena. "It was nice… well… meeting you, I guess," she said with a slight laugh, walking off when she found Elena to be tongue-tied.

Reno watched her leave for a moment—a very long moment—before eyeing Elena. He tapped his fingers on the table, giving her a few moments for her embarrassment to lessen before he made it far, far worse.

"…You were starin at her boobs."

"What! No I wasn't!"

She most certainly had been. Not that he could blame her. It was hard to miss the way that Tifa was spilling out of her shirt. Hell, he wouldn't miss it for the world. But looking and staring were two different things. The poor girl needed to learn subtlety.

"Ohhh yes you were."

"No I—!"

"Gimme a break Laney. I saw you." How he'd managed to tear his own eyes away long enough to see that was beyond him.

"I wasn't staring! I was just… looking. I…" She paused to collect her thoughts. "I'm… jealous."

"Oh I understand completely. That's why I was staring too. I wish I had a rack like that."

"Ugh! You are so goddamn annoying!" she said, once again slumping onto the table in frustration. A few silent minutes passed as her anger and mortification cooled down. "Do umm…" She straightened up and continued talking to him as he stared in the other direction. "Do you think they're… real?"

Well that got his attention. He tapped his chin thoughtfully "Dunno. I've been wondering about that for a while myself."

She suddenly looked at him with distaste. "…You didn't try asking her or something stupid like that, did you?"

"No," That was probably the kind of thing he'd do, but he really hadn't. "If I'm gonna find that out, I'm gonna do it the fun way."

She scoffed. "Yeah right. Good luck with that."

"Hey," He leaned closer to her with a finger pointed towards her face. "I hate to break it to you seeing how you're so hot for her, but she wants me… bad."

"Dream on."

"Oh get over it Laney. It's so obvious that I have a better chance with her than you do."

"Hmm," she said in mock thought. "But you don't really know that…"

True, maybe he didn't. Maybe Tifa did swing that way. It sure would explain why she hadn't hopped into bed with him by now…

"Do you?"

He glared at her instead of answering. "If this is your way of trying to get in on whatever she and I have going here, you can forget it. The whole two girls thing is hot and all, but no offense, I don't like you that way. Besides, I'm not sharing."

This time she laughed. "You wouldn't know what to do with her," she said derisively, rising from her seat.

"Where are you goin?"

"I told you, I have to get up early."

"What for?"

She shuffled her feet in the doorway. "Well I've got to do some things, and then…"

"Then…?"

She turned red and lowered her face to hide it. "I have a date."

"Oh. Well you're gonna have to drag her out of my bed first," he said pointing to the bar.

"Not her…"

"Who then?"

"I… I don't wanna say."

"What're you, embarrassed?" She said no more and turned to walk out. "It'd never work out with you and her y'know! You're both too shy!"

He muttered to himself about how damn weird Elena was as he watched the bar empty out. He quickly downed her drink before taking a seat at the bar.

Tifa greeted him with a smile. "Where's Elena?"

"Oh, she uh… left."

The smile wavered slightly. "Oh…" She took a moment, shifting from foot to foot. "Was she all right?"

"Whaddya mean?"

She shrugged and started wiping down the counter. "I don't know… she seemed kind of… nervous, or something."

He awkwardly tapped his fingers on the counter. "She was."

She stopped the motion of her hand and frowned at him. "She was? Why?"

"Uhh…" Well there was no way this wasn't going to be weird. "Because of… you…" He trailed off almost inaudibly, hoping she wouldn't hear him.

Her frowned deepened. "Me? Why?"

"Oh y'know, she uhh… she… uhh…" He'd been more than eager to tell Tifa about Elena's fascination when she'd been around to embarrass, but now that she was gone, things seemed far different. He opted to go with the truth. "Well, she said that she thought it was cool that you were a bartender, and you were a good fighter…" He allowed a pause before adding the last part, wondering if her reaction would change at all. "And that you were 'really pretty.'"

Much to his surprise, Tifa turned a slight pink nearly matching Elena's blush at Reno's first suggestion of a crush.

"…Really?" she asked, the beginnings of a shy smile on her face. "She said that?"

"Yeah."

She looked away for a moment at some invisible spot on the wall. "That's… that's really sweet of her to say."

Reno looked at her strangely for a moment. "Yeah," Then he realized that if Elena really was some form of competition, he was putting her way ahead in the race, by the looks of it. "But y'know… I think she has some kind of thing for you."

Far from the weirded-out look he was expecting, her blush and smile intensified. "She does?"

He coughed. "I dunno, I guess so." Goddammit, how the hell was he supposed to know that Tifa wouldn't be totally freaked by the thought?

"Well that's really… flattering."

Suddenly he thought of what Elena had said. "But y'know, I told her you don't swing that way," He paused and looked form left to right a couple of times. "Uhh, do you?"

She finally turned the furious, indignant red he'd been waiting for. "Well… Well, I guess not…" Suddenly a strange smile appeared on her face. "But it's never really that black and white, is it?"

He shifted in his seat, hardly believing what he was hearing, hardly believing that maybe Elena could give him a run for his money, despite the fact that she was female.

What was it with women and being so goddamn open-minded?

He made one last-ditch attempt to turn Tifa off of whatever notion he had just put in her head. "But anyway, I told her it wouldn't work out between you two."

Her faint glow diminished just slightly. "Why not?"

"You're both too shy." He couldn't help a grin as she seemed to be processing that thought.

But just as soon as she'd seemed to give up on the idea, her eyes took on a faint sparkle. "Well you can't really say for sure. Things are funny like that," She took a bottle with her as she walked to the back room. "Besides, you never know with the shy ones…"

She trailed off mischievously, with Reno dumbstruck at the counter. He shook his head at what had just happened. What had started as an innocent joke at the expense of a friend had turned into something that made him wonder if even the fact that he was a man was enough to get Tifa.

And that was just a blow to his masculinity, not to mention his ego. Why did shit like this always happen?

Grumbling, he rose from his seat, remembering his promise to help clean up.

Girls…

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A.N.: I'll admit to rushing to get this done. Hopefully it didn't turn out too bad. And hopefully it wasn't majorly fucked up to begin with. Reviews are love.