A/N: Life's been busy/I've been really tired/I've taken ill/been working on my other big writing project/making music/real life stress/writer's block.

Whatever lame excuse I have for my absences and lack of attention. Take your pick, they all apply, sort of. Apologies if I don't reply to your reviews right away or your PMs.

First try at Reno x Tifa. A special nod towards -x. miss butterfly for making me fall in love with Reti and being my role model for it ;)

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII? Yeah, not mine.

This Is Why

One. The way she sang under her breath while she cleaned up.

It figured that Reno would be the kind of guy to fall for the busty barmaid of his favorite city haunt. It didn't figure that he'd fall for more than her body.

He was pretty sure that the first day he ever heard her sing was a Monday, on a cloudless night with just a sliver of a moon hanging in a sky spattered with a thousand of its counterparts. Maybe it was after seven drinks, maybe it was after seventeen, but all he knew was at the time sleep was ohso tempting and the cherry wood of the bar counter ohso comfortable. His cheek kissed the countertop with the grace of a dying elephant, and maybe he heard her chuckle at him, maybe he didn't. Maybe it was midnight, maybe it was dawn, but all he knew was that he was tired as hell and that there was a vague tune drifting around in his brain, searching for a voice to connect to until his thought pattern clicked out the singular name of Tifa.

He thought her voice was pretty, yeah. Soft and sweet and a helluva lot better than Elena's at three in the morning after six beers on the Turk's Karaoke Night. She hummed something unrecognizable but oddly comforting, and he didn't have the strength or the willpower to lift himself up and make his semi-consciousness known.

Instead, he let himself lie there, half-dreaming and half-awake in a reality that may have very well been a fantasy with her twirling around as she let him lay slumped down on the bar counter, for the first (but definitely not the last) time. And he listened as she sang to herself while mopping up the bar, wiping down the tables and stacking up chairs, and his drowsy mind wondered if she was singing at all or rather just weaving a song with the gentle swiping noises of the rags and the fshh of the mop dragging over the floor.

Still, even hung over and possibly as brain-dead as certain species of carrots, it was all he needed and all he wanted to be right there, listening to her make music with the simplest of melodies strung inside his heart.

Two. The way she looked at him.

Only in this case, the "him" in question isn't Reno, it's a certain spiky-haired, big-ass sword-carrying, blonde-headed idiot of a man. He isn't a fool- he knows where her heart is, where it always will be.

Maybe someday he'll get drunk enough that the boundaries of their relationship (manager and customer, ally and fighter, barmaid and drunk, friend and cold-blooded killer) will smear and blur and he'll forget his standing in her world long enough to ask her what the savior of the world will never find the courage to. But until then, Reno knows he'll keep himself in check, if only because there is no one that makes her light up and glow like he does, that she'd never radiate the same kind of joy around him that she would around Cloud, and even if it's not for him, even if it'd never be for him, he'd let Cloud steal her heart and wear it like yesterday's news because even if those secret smiles and hidden heartaches don't have his name written on them, he'd probably go crazy without them.

Three. The way she could kick his ass.

Reno wasn't a Turk for nothing- in most situations, he could handle himself. Fighting and killing came as easy as deciding which Laundromat to use today. But here she stood, the perfect image of a porcelain doll, china hands and silk hair, the absolute epitome of a girl designed to make a man's ego crack the rooftops… until she roundhouse kicked you to next Tuesday.

He liked tough girls. Maybe it was the sadist in him, but it turned him on when she could deliver the meanest right hook in the history of physical attacks, or that whenever he didn't come home at night she'd still be serving drinks at the bar with that gentle smile scribbled onto her face in a hasty rush of faux cheer. It wasn't hard, even for him, to notice that she wasn't always fine on the inside, but on the outside she still remained soft and sweet and with a sparkle in her eye (which okay, maybe wasn't of joy but of something else) for the public to believe the lies of happiness she'd woven with the fabric of false pretenses.

At least she could look happy on the surface, and superficial joy and looks were all the usual nighttime patrons of 7th Heaven really cared about, anyways. And Reno liked that she could put on a happy face when the man who called himself the father of her kids didn't even bother to show up at home. That way if she woke up without him by her side one day, she might not be so distraught. Because Reno had the unfortunate habit of running away from commitment and long-term promises and hopes and dreams, even though he of all people should have known and appreciated that on-the-surface smiles and laughter meant less than nothing.

Maybe he was more like a certain blonde-haired idiot than he realized.

Four. The way she counted on him, and he counted on her.

It wasn't friendship, but more like something that bordered dangerously close to companionship. Even if Cloud decided the church made for a better home that night, even if he chose to spend three weeks riding his motorcycle to the ends of her earth, even if he was unreliable, Reno would be there.

Every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. 7:30 p.m. sharp, her gaze shifted to the door involuntarily, and as if right on cue in the big dramatic play that was her life, the door burst open and Reno sauntered in, cocky half-smirk on his face as he slouched over to his favorite barstool, his order already waiting for him at his seat.

It wasn't friendship, and calling it tolerance was something of a stretch, but he knew she liked his presence and he was damn happy having hers nearby too.

Even if Cloud was unreliable, Reno would be there. And maybe he could be her makeshift Cloud, born out of a few shots and unspoken words and hastily stuck-together half-smiles. Maybe then she would look at him differently, look at Cloud differently. He couldn't be her knight in shining armor, not now, not ever, not after what he'd done in her past and frankly, he wasn't sure he wanted to change what they had now, their unspoken bond and quiet acceptance of each other.

But even so, he knew his taped-on tin foil excuse for a hero that lay in a stupor on her bar was enough- it was enough to know he was there for her attention when the real knight had other damsels in distress to think about, it was enough to know that he would be here when her hero would not.

Five. The way she just was.

The gentle swish of her hips that drove him mad, the light giggle she offered at jokes patrons told her, the way her eyes sparkled when she was happy, the way her gloves fit on her hand in a perfect match when she flexed her fingers, the way she took care of everyone before herself. But he knew better than to make a move on her, not only because of men with abnormally large swords that showed up at the most inopportune moments, but because he knew he wasn't into committing and mostly didn't consider spending more than a night with her, or any other barmaid in town that he'd somehow find himself opening his eyes to in the morning.

Reno wasn't the kind of guy to fall in love or have big romantic dreams or compassion in the slightest. Where his heart should have been he had only vague memories of one-night stands and of guns cocked in the faces of those he had been ordered to kill. That was the way he'd been trained.

And yet if somehow, one day, he woke up by her side, he just might stay a little bit longer, hold her close for a fraction of a second more, watch her breathe for just a smidge more than necessary, and take in her scent one extra moment before getting up and dressing himself and exiting silently, leaving nothing more than an imprint, a last trace of his shape pressed down on the bed beside her. Nothing more than a sliver of evidence of emotions that Reno wasn't allowed to show, erased as easily and quickly as his exit.

But maybe, if it was her he was leaving, he just might say goodbye before he left.