The hospital's fluorescent lights began to burn his pupils; their harsh white glow leaving dots that blurred his vision. He suddenly felt a rush of nausea, and stumbled into the nearest men's room and retched into the porcelain bowl. Everything seemed surreal. Beads of cold sweat popped from his skin, and as he clung onto the toilet seat as if his life depended on it, Reno shuddered. The world was a cruel place.

His child, someone he had created had perished half an hour ago. Someone who belonged in this world, who needed someone to hold and love, was wrenched away from life's curious mysteries.

Reno picked himself up from the floor. For a hospital, the bathroom was filthy. His knees were wet with a homogeneous mixture of toilet water and bodily fluids, his hands that clutched the seat were somewhat sticky, and the stench of human waste lingered in the air. Ripping off a piece of toilet paper, Reno wiped his mouth and flushed the toilet, exiting and heading towards the sink to wash his hands.

He felt as if he knew he was pretending that everything would be all right. That made him feel worthless? Undeserving? Reno was at a loss of words.

Brooding outside didn't work. He sat in front of the hospital's main entrance, the one with all the flowers and perfectly cut grass. Children with balloons skipped by with their mothers, not knowing that on the other side of the building, people died, came into the ER with their chests ripped open in horrific accidents, attacks, rapes… Oh how the cruel things in the world were hidden from such innocent eyes.

Goddamnit, there were no more cigarettes left. He tossed the empty box into a nearby trashcan and slumped down on a hard bench.

Man up, Reno. Man up, he thought.

Red-Hot: I got my ass handed to me by a girl Saturday night.
ShakenNotStirred: Oh, really? I bet she was really ugly and buff.
Red-Hot: Naah, she's really hot. And top-heavy. Damn, she's really hot, when I think about it.
Red-Hot: No offense to you and all but you didn't put up a picture so I don't know what to say.
ShakenNotStirred: You'll see me soon enough, Reno.
ShakenNotStirred has signed off.

Red-Hot: Are you stalking me? ARE YOU? HUH?
ShakenNotStirred: If I was stalking you, would I need some cheesy instant messaging program to contact you?
Red-Hot: …right.

ShakenNotStirred: JESUS CHRIST RENO, I DO NOT HAVE A CRUSH ON YOU!
Red-Hot: Then tying me up in the storage room with telephone cords isn't an act of love?

"You want to love me… you want to huuug me, you want to smooch me…" he swirled some spaghetti noodles around his fork and waved the fork around, very much like a conductor does so with his baton, and droplets of tomato sauce landed on the table. Tifa didn't seem to mind.

The taunting seemed to get to her, and she held her fork savagely in her fist and stabbed her pile of noodles, a squirt of red sauce landing near Reno's plate. Tifa snatched a napkin from a pile on the side of the table and wiped it up as if she had some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

As she balled it into a fist, she looked at him, her round eyes meeting his playful ones tinted with mako. "I'm just a very considerate person, and I haven't had anyone over for quite a long time. It gets lonely, you know?"

Oh, how some inappropriate thoughts flooded his mind. "Doesn't your skin scream my name? Doesn't it long for my attenti-", he began, but something white- the napkin- was thrown at his face. "-on? Don't you just want to get me all riled up, wet, and oiled down—"

"This is how you roll a blunt." He licked his finger to seal the end of a neatly made, perfectly divided joint.

So that was what love and loss felt like.