Work Text:
The elevator at The Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles always performed its duties with great aplomb.
Said duties included, and were very much limited to: vertical transportation, door operations, and the silent observation of humans, usually strangers, pretending (badly) they are not sharing a small space, breathing the same recycled air, for a non-negligible amount of time.
If an elevator could be proud, this elevator was. Very. It had been 1,410 hours since its last malfunction. It had also passed its most recent inspection with flying colors. It was in top-notch condition.
That was, until tonight. But the elevator did not know that. Yet.
It had been a middling to busy weekday, like most weekdays. Nothing new there. It was looking as if it would be a relatively quiet weeknight. This was also not remarkable by any means.
Occupancy shortly before the malfunction made itself known was standard. The weight distribution was acceptable. An emotional disturbance was not likely, for only one person was inside. For the purposes of this log, we will call him Passenger A.
At 12:17 AM and 59 seconds, while the elevator was descending, an additional elevator request was made. Duty called, the elevator answered. It was its job.
The elevator doors opened. Passenger A remained inside. Passenger B entered 4.5 seconds later, 0.5 seconds before the doors automatically shut. The elevator noted the delay, but did not speculate. Elevators were not the speculating type. Certainly not this elevator.
The doors closed once more. The elevator resumed its descent.
At 12:21 AM precisely, between floors six and seven, a grind and screech brought the elevator to a sudden halt.
The elevator revised its earlier statement. It was the speculating type. It began to speculate.
Were Passenger A and Passenger B too heavy? No, not likely, although Passenger B was very tall and both passengers were more muscular than the average human. Had another elevator request been made? A quick scan of the elevator's circuits said the answer was also no.
A malfunction then. The elevator was displeased. The elevator would like to clarify that it can, in fact, feel displeasure under moments of distress. This was one of those moments.
Distress, indeed. For all movement had ceased, and the elevator was now, apparently, stuck between floors. As were its two passengers.
Inside, Passenger A and Passenger B remained upright. Neither spoke, at first. The elevator considered this a promising sign. A sign that perhaps the passengers trusted it. Or perhaps that they considered this a mere blip in their journey to the ground floor.
Passenger A exhaled, so forcefully that a hank of dark hair blew upward and out, then settled back down on his pale forehead. He scrunched his nose. His freckles scrunched with it.
Passenger B shifted his weight, settling down into a low crouch against the elevator's back wall, then began tugging on a thin chain around his neck.
The elevator logged all of this as normal human behavior. This was good. And since the passengers were calm, the elevator attempted a diagnostic restart.
The diagnostic restart was unsuccessful. The silence resumed.
Passenger A stepped forward. He pressed the down button once. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Predictably, nothing changed.
The elevator wondered if perhaps Passenger A was beginning to mildly panic.
Passenger B coughed into his giant, bear-like hand. He said in a heavily accented drawl, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, yes?"
The elevator was impressed. Passenger B knew things. Passenger B was smart.
"Shut up, Rozanov," Passenger A replied.
The elevator suddenly became aware that Passenger A and Passenger B were not strangers. This changed things. Whether the change was a good thing or a bad thing was yet to be determined.
The determining would have to be addressed later. Because Passenger A was now stabbing the down button over and over and over again, only for absolutely nothing to change. Was Passenger A insane? Should the elevator be concerned?
Passenger B did not shut up. "Is there an emergency call button?" he said, rising up from his crouch against the back wall and easing forward.
The elevator officially decided that yes, Passenger B was the brains of this operation. The elevator was gladdened by this fortuitous development. It waited for Passenger A to give his assent.
Passenger A, instead, rolled his eyes, sighed, then pressed the red emergency call button.
The elevator knew that it could take an average of two and a half minutes for an emergency responder to respond. The passengers did not know this fact.
Passenger A pressed the emergency call button again.
"Do you think it is broken?" Passenger B asked.
The elevator deducted twenty-four IQ points from its original assessment of Passenger B. Why twenty-four? The elevator could not say. It said so anyway.
"I'm not sure," Passenger A replied, now tapping the toe of his white Reebok shoes on the floor.
The elevator knew shoes. It was very well-versed in all manners of footwear. Even elevators need hobbies from time to time. The elevator was also grateful Passenger A had redirected his perceived unease to foot tapping over button jabbing.
Passenger B began to hum a pretty tune. The elevator was appreciative of Passenger B providing some much-needed elevator music, which this elevator unfortunately lacked.
Eighty-one seconds passed.
"Can you stop that?" Passenger A hissed.
"Stop what?"
Passenger A glowered at the closed doors in front of him. Passenger B grinned to himself, then resumed humming. Passenger A groaned and mashed the emergency call button again.
It had not yet been two and a half minutes. The elevator wished someone would answer. The passengers were growing unpredictable.
Passenger B was still humming. The elevator wished harder.
"Fuck you, Rozanov," Passenger A said.
The elevator did not know the meaning of the first word, but detected some malice in its intent. The elevator wondered briefly if the passengers, who were not strangers, disliked each other. If so, the elevator came to the conclusion that this was a bad thing. Perhaps even bordering on very bad.
"Okay," Passenger B replied, drawing out the vowel.
Passenger A blew out a breath and whirled around, looking Passenger B in the eye for the first time since Passenger B had entered the elevator.
Passenger A glared. Passenger B winked. Passenger A threw his hands up in the air and groaned.
"Emergency services," the emergency responder finally answered. "What's the emergency?"
Passenger A spun back around and stumbled forward, leaning into the emergency call button. This was not necessary. The emergency responder could hear everything and everyone in the elevator no matter where they stood.
"Hey!" Passenger A stammered. "I'm stuck in an elevator at the Ritz-Carlton."
"Which Ritz-Carlton?" The emergency responder sounded bored.
"Um, the one in Los Angeles?"
"Is it just you?"
A pregnant pause followed.
Passenger A opened his mouth, but Passenger B cut in before he could get a word in edgewise. "No, he is with a friend," he said.
The elevator found this new information intriguing. Friendship had not been something it had detected in its careful observation of Passenger A and Passenger B's behavior thus far. Could friendship be more nuanced than it had originally thought?
"I’ll be there in forty-five minutes," the emergency responder replied. The call went silent.
Passenger A and Passenger B laughed. Their laughs were very different. Passenger A's was hurried and high-pitched. It ended with a frown. Passenger B's was low and lingering. His eyes also crinkled at the edges.
The elevator noted that the emergency call line did not click, meaning that the emergency responder had not ended the call. Passenger A and Passenger B did not make this connection. The elevator figured it was not a problem either way. The elevator could not know how incorrect it was.
"I think you and I have very different definitions of the word 'friend,'" Passenger A said to Passenger B, swiveling back around to look him in the eye once more.
Passenger B smirked.
The elevator had, over the years, transported a statistically significant number of intoxicated wedding guests. It immediately recognized Passenger B's expression as trouble.
"I think," Passenger B said, "you and I have very different definitions of many things."
Passenger A crossed his arms. This maneuver increased available personal space within the elevator by approximately five percent, two point five percent per bicep. The elevator was not sure why it was noting this, but it did so anyway.
The emergency responder, still connected through the call line, did not announce his presence. Still, neither passenger noticed the line remained open.
The elevator briefly considered informing its passengers somehow, although it was not entirely sure why. Anyway, it did not consider for long because it quickly remembered that its human to elevator communication systems were very limited. Ding! and floor number illumination about covered them.
Passenger A resumed his foot tapping. Passenger B resumed tugging on his necklace.
"I can't do this," Passenger A suddenly said.
"Can't do what?"
"Stand in an elevator making small talk with you for forty-five minutes."
"Who says we must do that, Hollander?"
"Do you have any better ideas?"
Passenger B brought his hand to his chin. He rubbed it, as if he were seriously contemplating the question. Then: "Yes," Passenger B said.
The elevator did not appreciate Passenger B’s tone. Passenger A seemed to be of the same opinion, as he narrowed his eyes. The elevator interpreted this as a somewhat subtle but also rather excellent survival instinct.
Perhaps the elevator had made a miscalculation. Perhaps Passenger A was the smarter of the two.
"Absolutely not, Rozanov," Passenger A said.
"You do not even know my idea yet."
"I know your face. And that is not a look I want to encourage in an enclosed space."
"You do know my face, don't you?" Passenger B replied, smiling slowly.
The elevator held its gears.
Passenger A uncrossed his arms and stepped forward, toward Passenger B. The elevator logged this as deeply confusing, totally antithetical behavior. Passenger B tilted his head and also took a step forward. The elevator began actively monitoring its own structural integrity, just in case.
For a moment, neither spoke. Then, Passenger A lunged, hands connecting with the back of Passenger B's head. A deep moan followed. The elevator could not detect which passenger had made the sound, but it was about 86.28% certain it came from Passenger B.
The elevator had seen passengers kiss before. This did not resemble any of those instances. This was frantic and desperate. More like a decision had been made without consulting any other systems involved, if there were any other systems involved to begin with.
And then it was over faster than it had begun.
For approximately 11.26 seconds, no one moved. Even the elevator knew this was a very long period of time for two humans to stare at each other, unmoving.
The elevator logged this as post-incident instability, though it had no formal definition for what had just occurred, and was therefore… improvising. The elevator did not know it could improvise. It logged this as unsettling. Very unsettling.
Passenger B exhaled first.
Passenger A did not step back immediately, which the elevator noted with increasing concern and a growing list of questions it was not sure it could ever possibly find out the answers to.
Passenger A stared at Passenger B. The elevator categorized his furrowed brow and deep flush as what happens when one experiences problematic continuity.
The emergency call line, still active, remained silent.
Passenger A finally spoke."... This didn’t happen," he said. "I didn’t kiss you."
Passenger B merely smiled in return. The elevator made the official decision that both Passengers A and B were equally, mind-numbingly, 100% idiotic.
"You are very bad at lying, Hollander," Passenger B said.
"I'm not lying!" Passenger A shouted.
Passenger B leaned forward, into Passenger A once again. Passenger A allowed it. Passenger B raised his pointer finger up. It hovered in the air for a second too long. Then, Passenger B brought his finger to the tip of Passenger A’s nose and gave it the gentlest tap. Passenger A’s jaw slackened. He muttered something nonsensical, but stayed rooted in place. Zero consequences ensued.
In the elevator’s professional opinion, these humans were very weird. It also did not like where this encounter seemed to be heading.
The elevator, out of sheer panic, or whatever qualified as panic, tried to initiate another diagnostic restart. Again, it was unsuccessful. Absolutely nothing changed. The elevator was still stuck between floors, and so were they, its two passengers.
But only for the next however many minutes, however many minutes that would haunt the elevator for the rest of its unnatural life, since the elevator was correct about where things were heading. Fortunately though, the elevator's structural integrity did, in fact, hold.
And when the doors finally opened however many minutes later, and Passengers A and B were released back out into the world, everything changed.
The elevator couldn't know that though. It was just an elevator.
Just an elevator with the mechanical failure which led to the call that was leaked to the press that outed Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, not as confirmed rivals, nor as friends, but as lovers, and far faster than they likely would have preferred, according to most acceptable timelines for human relational disclosure. They were outed nonetheless.
But that was later, and this was now.
Neither passenger said anything upon the doors being forced open. The elevator recorded this as normal, although perhaps slightly rude, since the emergency responder that was currently freeing them was there too.
Passenger A stepped out first, back straight, dark hair slightly askew, but expression carefully schooled into nonchalant professionalism. Passenger B followed half a step behind, looking entirely too satisfied for someone exiting a stalled service transport unit.
The elevator doors remained open a fraction longer than necessary, as if waiting for confirmation that the Situation had, in fact, concluded. Which it had. In a way.
The emergency responder grunted, slapped an "Out of Order" sign on the elevator's hall call buttons, then ambled away, scratching his ass.
Passenger A paused. Passenger B also paused. Then, as if by mutual agreement, they nodded at each other, turned on their heels, and headed off in opposite directions.
The elevator closed its doors. Later, once it was fixed and fully operational once more, the elevator would classify the event as: Mechanical malfunction (resolved), passenger interaction (finished, twice over, once each), implications (ongoing).
The elevator would be correct.