CHAPTER 5:

"Man, people have been avoiding me like the fuckin' plague this morning." Reno yawned as he entered his home, closing the door behind him.

"Well that's no wonder. Have you even taken a look at yourself?" Rude asked from his place at the kitchen table. He was having a cup of coffee, with nothing at all to do today. He smiled at Reno's appearance. He had extreme bed-hair on top of his usually messy mane, not to mention his clothes were wet and his shoes were soggy, making a 'splish' sound with every step. One leg of his pants was rolled up to the knee, still tangled up from being in bed the night before, and the other leg was drenched in filthy gutter water. He had just barely thrown on a shirt before leaving the house, and the buttons were uneven. He had just a moment ago gotten out of bed and decided to take a two block trek to the store to buy himself some more cigarettes. He had been practically sleepwalking, out of it until he had his morning smoke, like most people were with coffee.

"What do you mean, yo?" Reno asked, kicking off his water-logged shoes and stepping over to the mirror hanging up in the hall.

"You look like you just escaped the loony bin. Your hair itself is looking pretty intimidating."

Reno shrugged. "Hey, I'm looking a little grungy, but it still looks good. Just because your hair blew off in the wind ages ago, the other old geezers feel like they can relate to you, yo."

"I am not old! I shave my hair and you know it."

"Sure, whatever you have to say to yourself. Here's your paper. I hear the crossword is very tasteful. Maybe you can finish it in time for Matlock." Reno smiled cutely as he handed Rude the daily news.

"You're too much." Rude replied, starting to read.

Reno sat down across from him, feeling more awake now, but was not hungry. He hadn't wanted to eat much since the whole ordeal he went through about 10 days ago. He wanted attention right now, and Rude seemed to be more interested in a boring newspaper, than his gorgeous, dripping wet other half. Instead of audibly demanding recognition, he leaned over, giving Rude the very softest kiss on his cheek. Rude turned toward him, forgetting about the news, eyebrow raised with an affectionate grin now grazing his lips.

"Rude, I was thinking-"

"You were?"

"As I was saying, I was thinking we could try out that bar down by work tonight, yo. It might be fun."

"Rufus said you weren't supposed to go out. I wouldn't have even let you go to the store, but you snuck out while I was still sleeping."

"No, Rufus said I'm not supposed to go out alone, and you had better not tell him I did. Come on, staying home is so boring when we can't even do it. By the way, my last stitch fell out like five minutes ago. Let's go out and do something fun. I'm so sick of everyone else telling us what we can and can't do. You have to go with me, since I won't stay home. You might as well agree, if you don't want Rufus on your ass."

He was right. Rude was stuck going with him, no matter what. He could understand that Reno was getting tired of being cooped up and if he wasn't going to stay in, Rude would have to go with him.

"Okay, fine. What bar did you want to go to? 'The one by work' isn't a good enough description, since there are at least four of them."

"Well, duh. I want to try out the only one we haven't been into, man."

"What, you mean that one with all the neon signs outside of it? I forget what it's called… the… uh… Back…Lander? That one?"

"That's the one."

"Are you serious?"

"Uh, yeah. Why not? We have been together two fuckin years, and we haven't once gone somewhere where people don't give us dirty looks just for hugging each other. I just want to be able to have a good time with you out in the open. It took me being kidnapped and you fearing for my life before you would even kiss me in front of our friends."

"Whatever you want, Reno." Rude replied. "I didn't know it bothered you that bad. Every bar seems exactly the same. You go, get drunk and make a fool out of yourself, and I sit there bored."

"I do not. And you just don't know how to-" Reno was interrupted in his speech by a knock on the front door. He looked at Rude, silently asking him if he expected anyone to come over today. When the older Turk shrugged, Reno drug himself out of his seat and went down the hall to answer it.

"Cloud. What's going on, man?" Reno greeted, stepping away from the door letting his friend step inside. The blond man sauntered forward and planted himself down on the couch in the living room, looking miserable as usual.

"Tifa's mad at me, and everyone else is busy doing their own thing. I didn't want to be around her when she's acting like this, so I came here."

Rude entered the room, plopping in the recliner so that he could talk to his friend.

"Why's she mad at you?" Rude asked, concerned. "Reno, no! Go change your wet clothes before you sit on the furniture." Reno scoffed and headed into his room.

"She's just acting weird about me. She says I'm never there for her. What the hell does she want from me?" He asked, looking angrier by the moment.

"Well, I'm no expert, but she loves you Cloud."

"I know, and I love her too, but-"

"No, yo. I don't think you do know." Reno said, coming back out of the room, having quickly thrown on a pair of slacks, and was still in the process of buttoning his shirt. He sat himself down beside his saddened friend, looking over at him. "She loves you. I mean, she thinks you are top shit."

"She said that?"

"She doesn't have to say it. If you have half a brain in your head, you can see it as plain as my super-cool hair. Tifa wants you to be the man in her life, in that romantic kind of way, not in the way that you're just a friend that's hardly ever even around. She wants a relationship, and all you're doing is sitting here complaining about all the shit she's doing wrong."

Cloud looked at Reno, slightly stunned. There was no reason why he should feel like that. He knew Reno always said what was on his mind, but he didn't need to say that.

"What Reno means to say is that maybe it isn't all her fault that she's angry. You have been shooting her down for the longest time. She knows you have feelings for her, and she wants you to make the move and be with her. You're her childhood sweet-heart, and she has been waiting for you a long time. Her patience is just wearing thin, because you really do not seem to appreciate her as much as you should."

"One of these days, you're gonna lose her, yo."

"What?" Cloud asked, defensively.

"She's a woman. She's getting sick of waiting, and if you don't do something, then somebody else will."

"Vincent." Cloud growled.

"No, not Vincent. But that's just because he forgot how to feel attraction forever ago. If I had a fine ass woman like Tifa wanting to get all up on me, and I wasn't in a committed relationship with the love of my life, I would have already took her from you by now. She's like the perfect woman: strong, smart, hard-working, kind, beautiful, the works. What do you even have to complain about? And if you ask me, which you didn't, but like I give a shit. I think you are being a total jackass neglecting her like that. You need to get over your shit before it's too late."

"Reno."

"No, Rude. Cloud needs to hear it like it really is. Look, no one else in this world will ever love you like that. That kind of love happens once in a lifetime. You're skipping a chance at being truly happy because you can't drop the past. What happened to Aerith was not your fault and you know it. It would have happened anyway. You did your fucking best. But that's it. You're too scared to jump in because of that."

"I really cared for her, Reno!"

"Yeah well guess what. She loved Zack! Not Cloud, ZACK! When it came to you she was just a friend until the Jenova cells gave you his memories. She only started loving you when you became just like Zack. And even if she really wanted to be with you, she's dead. You can't bring the dead back even if you want to. She never has or never will love you as much as someone who's right in front of you. And I know you love her too, that's why you're so damn jealous. You're just going to sit there pining, and when you decide to finally forgive yourself, you're going to be too late. She'll have already given her love away to someone who had the time for her, yo."

Both Rude and Cloud looked over at the younger man, shocked that he would say such a thing. He usually didn't care about these sorts of conversations. Even Rude was curious as to where this huge outburst came from.

"Cloud, I'm sorry. I'm being such a fucking jerk because I haven't…uh…been shown any tenderness, if you will, for way longer than I am comfortable with. I just hate seeing a woman sad like that. It's because of you that she feels like that. If you don't want her, stop stringing her along and say it to her face, so she can try to at least find someone who can make her happy."

"Like him?"

"Who?" Rude asked.

"Vincent."

"For the last time, Vincent doesn't-"

"I saw her with him."

Reno's mouth dropped open, and then suddenly went into a fit of giggles, trying to mask them by coughing repeatedly.

"It's not funny." Rude grunted.

"I was coughing! So, Cloud, what do you mean? Was she with him or with him?" Reno accentuated the last part of this sentence by momentarily dry-humping one of the couch pillows. Rude gave his leg a gentle slap from the chair close by, which silently asked him to stop doing that.

"She had her arms around him. I think she was kissing him."

"You think?"

"I couldn't get a good look."

"Cloud, relax. There is no way he would kiss her, or even let her try it with him. Vincent doesn't see Tifa that way. She just spends a lot of time with him…when she can find him. She says he's a good listener. She feels like she can confide in him about her problems, because he isn't a big talker. He'll just stand there, and let her talk all day, and if she's sad, he'll offer her a safe place to cry. She doesn't want to be with him, and he doesn't want to be with her. They get along well, and she trusts him because he isn't the kind of guy to use her emotions in order to…um, get something from her." Rude said. It was true. He and Reno had seen Tifa talking to Vincent whenever Vincent was around. They were friends, nothing more.

"Really? That's it?" Cloud asked, hoping his friends weren't covering for a secret relationship he didn't know about.

"That's it, but if you don't hurry your ass up, Vincent might grow a heart again, yo." Reno said, smirking evilly. He wanted to rile Cloud. He wanted his friend to get some guts and shoot for happiness, maybe even drop the angst he always fogged the place up with.

"You're right." He replied.

"How do you even feel about her, buddy?" Rude asked.

"I…I love Tifa. I really do. I'm just-"

"Afraid." Rude finished for him.

"I don't want to let anything happen to her, like it did to...It's just like you said. My past is haunting me."

"Then don't let it, yo. Just give her a little bit of time to cool her jets and then go for it. Stop holding back."

"What should I do until she calms down?"

"You can come out with me and Rude tonight. We're going out to the bar. I'll make sure you have fun."

"I guess I could accompany you, but I don't want to drink."

"You don't have to. You can join Rude in making sure that I'm still able to walk outta there at the end of the night, how about it?"

"Yeah...okay." Cloud agreed.

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***Note: Sorry, everyone. This chapter is a little short, and nothing really superly important happened in it. I was just trying to establish a possible branch off between Cloud and Tifa, and I have been pretty busy with family stuff. I promise the next chapter will be better and longer. Hope y'all liked it anyway.