It's Wednesday afternoon, specifically the second Wednesday of the month, which means Jesse went out of town two days before, and will be out of town until the weekend. It is also laundry day, and Chazz is dreading it. He meant to do it first thing in the morning, but kept putting it off, finding other chores to do first. Right this moment, he's organizing the rest of the unpacked boxes to clear out junk that can be trashed or donated.
Once the box is full, everything else has found its home in a drawer or on a shelf, and the empty boxes are broken down, Chazz looks around to see an immaculate apartment. And no good reason to keep avoiding his trip downstairs.
Groaning, he gets up and drags his feet to the laundry basket filled to the brim, and then to the door where his shoes are. The moment he steps out into the hall he sees the stairs. He scrunches up his nose, considering washing them with dish detergent in the sink, but that sounds like a night of back pain and like it'd ruin the fabric. Something he could live with, but knew would make Jesse very unhappy. Especially since he made the trip for the last load of laundry without complaint.
Not that he ever complained much. Or even seemed remotely winded by the trek up and down the stairs. It was impressive, but mostly it was irritating.
Someone whistling from down the hallway catches Chazz's attention. He looks over, but doesn't see anyone there. However, he does see the elevator. He looks down at his laundry basket, then back at the elevator, before deciding he's willing to take the risk. It's not like it's closed off completely, so it can't be all that dangerous. At least, he hopes not.
Chazz grabs the laundry and hauls it over to the elevator doors, still hearing the whistling, however it seems to be coming from behind him now. It's unsettling, but he chooses to believe it's just the weird acoustics of the space and is someone in their apartment or on the stairs.
At the elevator, he thinks he waits several minutes longer than normal for the doors to open. The doors screech a little as they do, and inside is dimly lit by a flickering light. He only hesitates a second, before stepping inside and looking at the buttons to see if there's a laundry room button, or if it only goes to the lobby. Fortunately, the elevator has a laundry button, and strangely, a button below it marked with the letter W.
Curious, he presses the W, and the doors screech shut just before the elevator drops, shaking as it goes down at a terrifying speed. It breaks a little too quickly, knocking Chazz off his feet and his dirty clothes out onto the floor of the elevator. The doors open only to reveal a boarded up space in front of it. The places where the boards don't completely line up don't reveal anything; the other side is pitch black.
Chazz hops up and pushes the laundry room button. The doors close, and the elevator shoots up one floor, before coming to another shaky, sudden halt. Chazz stuffs the clothing back into the basket and drags it out of the elevator into a long featureless white hall, at the midpoint of which is the door to the laundry room, across from the stairs. He drags his things inside and despite having been down here already, is still baffled by the state of the place.
Everything looks brand new, as if it had been renovated just this year. Entirely new machines, squeaky-clean tile floors, and modern lights without a bit of dust. It seems like a weird choice, to put so much effort into the laundry room and not the rest of the building where people live. Or into that awful elevator.
Chazz decides to wait out the washer, and then the dryer, before heading back up. Having to come back down later, and then again after that, would be worse than the trip in the elevator. Something he will not be doing ever again.
A couple hours later, Chazz takes his time carrying their neatly folded clothes up to the apartment. Once he's finally there, he eats a quick and easy meal, then passes out without remembering to shower or even undress.
First thing the following morning, Chazz plans to take the box of stuff to donate, but his keys are missing from the hook. He spends the next three hours completely turning over the apartment trying to find them. Once he is certain he's searched every inch of every room he heads to the door, intending to retrace his steps from the laundry room, and finds his keys hanging up on the hook. Except they're at the other end of the key rack from where he usually puts them.
Both livid and exhausted from the search, he grabs everything and heads out. He stays out after he's done dropping off the stuff, wandering through the stores in town and then treating himself to an early dinner at a somewhat fancy restaurant.
By the time he gets home it's late in the evening, and he's surprised to find the door to the apartment wide open.
He walks quietly through the living room and peers into the open door of the bedroom. The door to the bathroom opens at that moment and Jesse comes out with wet hair and wrapped in a towel.
"Hey there," he says cheerfully, but Chazz frowns.
"You're back early. Also, the front door was open."
Jesse gives him a confused look.
"That's odd. I locked it when I got here," he says.
"Apparently not," Chazz says.
Jesse frowns.
"I definitely did," he insists. "I was getting in the shower, and since you weren't here, I made sure to lock it."
They both take a moment to search the apartment, checking to see if everything was still in place, and that no one was hiding somewhere inside. When they find nothing, Jesse frowns harder.
"Anyway, why are you home already?" Chazz asks.
Jesse is staring at the front door, trying to think of possibilities for why the door was open despite definitely locking it, but he can't think of anything that makes any sense.
"Uh, oh, things just didn't take as long as we expected, so I changed my flight," Jesse says. He smiles at Chazz again. "Would've thought you'd be happier to see me. You seemed pretty disappointed when I told you it'd be a week."
Chazz shrugs and smiles back.
"I am happy to see you. I'm just tired. I cleaned, suffered both the stairs and the elevator for laundry yesterday, and went to donate our junk after searching for my keys all morning."
"The elevator?" Jesse asks, concerned.
"Yeah, it's definitely a high-risk experience," Chazz says as he heads into the room and flops down on the bed.
"I'm glad you survived," Jesse says, sounding more serious about it than he means to. "Wait… you went through everything without me?"
Chazz folds his arms behind his head.
"Yeah, I mean, I said I'd finish unpacking. That was part of it. I promise it was all obviously junk." Chazz does his best to sound reassuring, but Jesse still seems unconvinced. "Really, I was careful. I barely got rid of anything."
Jesse sighs, smiling, then returns to the bathroom. When he comes back out, he's fully dressed for bed. He crawls over Chazz and flops down beside him. Chazz pulls Jesse closer, and Jesse rests his head on Chazz's chest.
"So," Jesse says, "The elevator does work, then?"
Chazz scrunches his face up and shakes his head.
"Work is definitely not the right word. But it does go up and down, just, you know, like a drop tower ride goes up and down."
"Oh my," Jesse says, lifting his head to look at Chazz. "You'd have figured they'd just turn it off, with it being that bad."
"You'd think they would've done a lot of things about this place before letting anyone live in it. Yet here we are," Chazz says, gesturing vaguely around them.
Jesse rolls his eyes and lays his head back down.
"You know, there was this W button right beneath the one for the laundry room," Chazz continues suddenly.
"W? What's that stand for?"
"I have no idea. It dropped me down to a floor below the laundry room and when the doors opened, it was boarded up."
Jesse sits up again, intrigued and very confused.
"Below? The stairs end at the laundry room," he says, and Chazz can hear the interest in his tone. "The floor around them is cement with a raggedy old rug covering it."
"This is not an adventure, Jesse," Chazz tells him, sitting up as well. "We should definitely keep out of the one place in this dump that they actually bothered to seal off."
"But why a W? Why does the elevator go down there?" Jesse looks way too excited by these questions than Chazz would like. "Oh, do you think that's why the laundry room is the only place renovated?"
"I think it can all be chalked up to negligence and probably a basement filled with asbestos," Chazz says, earning him a disappointed look from Jesse.
"What's up with you? You love a good mystery!"
"I just don't think this is particularly mysterious or good."
Jesse frowns, then shrugs and lays back down.
"I reckon you're right. I'm definitely askin' about the W next time I bump into the landlord, though," he says, as Chazz gets up and heads for the bathroom.
"I'm going to take a shower."
"Good, maybe it'll wash away all that bad attitude," Jesse mutters as soon as Chazz closes the door. He gets under the covers and gets comfortable before pulling out his book.
After Chazz is done with his shower, he's in a better mood. He mindlessly plays on a dueling app and listens when Jesse pauses reading to explain the plot of his book or read a passage aloud. Eventually they put their things away and go to bed.
Jesse wakes up to loud footsteps coming from overhead. He glances at the clock, a little peeved to see that it's 2:30 in the morning. The footsteps fade, then come back, and then it repeats. This goes on for a half hour before Jesse decides to go up there.
"What are you doing?" Chazz grumbles, covering his head with his pillow, when Jesse flips on the light.
"Didn't mean to wake you," Jesse says, "Whoever's upstairs is makin' a huge racket. I'll be right back."
"I don't hear anything," Chazz says. He sits up and Jesse stops to listen. It's gotten really quiet and Jesse realizes it has since just before he turned on the light.
Then something hits the floor above so hard, it shakes the ceiling.
"What the hell was that?"
"I told you, they've been doin' that for the past thirty minutes."
"I'm going with you," Chazz says angrily, getting out of bed.
"Okay, but let's keep it nice and polite," Jesse says as he heads out the bedroom and to the front door. "They might not have realized they have downstairs neighbors yet."
"Fine."
Chazz and Jesse stop at their unlocked door, but neither of them has the energy to argue about it being unlocked this time. They just head upstairs and are stopped again at the landing between the stairs to the top floor. It's boarded up just like the basement, but this time there's a sign explaining that the floor is unsafe and currently under repair.
"Wait, there's no one up here?" Jesse checks the boards for any possible entry point.
"There's probably wild animals up there. Or a squatter found a different way in," Chazz says, storming off back down to their floor.
Jesse hurries after him.
"Maybe the elevator goes up there."
"You can go check that out. I'm going to send an email ," Chazz says angrily, "to the landlord. Then tomorrow morning, I'm going down to complain again in person."
"I'd appreciate it if you stopped biting my head off at every inconvenience," Jesse says as they walk into their apartment.
"Sorry," Chazz says, sighing as he goes to his computer.
Jesse doesn't say anything, but he decides it's good enough for now, considering it is three in the morning and Chazz doesn't ever react well to being woken up. He heads to bed and lets Chazz deal with the landlord. Jesse would prefer he be the one to do it, since Chazz is most certainly going to be rude about the whole thing, but he didn't have the energy to argue about that.
When Jesse lays down and turns the light back off, he spends ten minutes listening for any more noise, but everything's quiet now. Relieved, he falls back asleep.
The next morning Jesse wakes up and Chazz has left early for work. Presumably to stop by downstairs to complain first. Glad to have a small break from Chazz and be alone in the apartment, something he hasn't actually had the chance to do yet, Jesse takes the opportunity to clean up and reorganize. He wasn't home for half the unpacking, so he isn't entirely sure where everything is.
After an hour of searching the entire apartment, Jesse realizes his box of duel monster cards are nowhere to be found. They were definitely here when they moved in, because they came in Jesse's personal bag. He goes back through the apartment a second time, but he still can't find them. Chazz wouldn't have donated them, he thinks, they were cards and they were in a small wooden box that definitely couldn't be described as junk.
Jesse takes a deep breath, and decides to busy himself with something fun until Chazz comes home. Maybe they're just somewhere he hasn't even thought to check.
On the way home from work, Chazz stops by the mailroom. Hovering right around his box, looking off into the far corner of the room, is a little girl with pink highlights and ill-fitting, old fashioned clothing. Chazz raises an eyebrow, but otherwise ignores her as he moves into the space and unlocks his box. When he glances down at the mail he's pulled out, he catches the girl staring up at him, standing just a little closer than she had been a moment ago.
"Can I help you?" Chazz snaps, stepping back. He tries to be casual, but he's obviously startled.
"She doesn't like you," the girl tells him with a slight smile. Chazz glares at her.
"Who?"
The kid doesn't respond, and slowly backs away until she exits through the doorway and turns the corner. Chazz stares for a while, not entirely sure what to make of that interaction. He is pretty sure he doesn't like children, though.
After a moment, he just shakes his head and tosses the junk into the bin and takes the letter addressed to Jesse with him upstairs.
By the time he reaches their floor, he has a stitch in his side, but is fortunately not short of breath. It's definitely getting easier to make the trip, though he isn't sure he can handle another full lease in this place once this one's up.
He opens the door and finds Jesse sitting on the floor with his cards spread out around him, looking pensive.
"Hey," Chazz says. Jesse glances up and smiles.
"Hey." Jesse sets down the cards he's holding, and turns in place, to fully face Chazz. "I was wonderin' if you knew where my card box ended up?"
Chazz raises an eyebrow, looking over the cards in front of Jesse. "There's more?"
"Yeah," Jesse says. "It was a little wooden box with a broken latch and a small deck of cards in it."
"Oh," Chazz says, looking through the fridge for dinner ingredients. "It was in the donation pile."
"Why would you donate that?" Jesse is a little surprised to hear it was intentional.
Chazz pulls out an armful of food, and closes the refrigerator door. He gives Jesse a confused look as he sets the food down on the counter.
"Why wouldn't I? It was a broken old box with some lame, old cards in it."
"Lame?" Jesse frowns and stands up. "There's no such thing, but more importantly, they're special to me. That's why I had them in their own box."
"How would I know," Chazz says, surprised that Jesse cares so much. "It's not like any of it was in good condition."
"This is why I wanted to go through stuff together. Or through my own things," Jesse says, his annoyance a little more obvious than he means for it to be.
"You said you didn't mind," Chazz says.
"I didn't, but that's because I didn't figure you'd throw out cards."
"It's not like I threw them in the trash." Chazz stops trying to prepare food, and folds his arms. "Even though I probably should've, judging by the state of them."
"Just because something doesn't meet your standards, doesn't mean it's not worth caring about," Jesse says. "Especially since they weren't yours to have an opinion on anyway."
"Well, I didn't know you'd care so much about some old box of cards."
"You should've asked."
"Yeah, well, I didn't," Chazz snaps.
Jesse frowns and walks over to the door. He slips on his shoes and grabs his jacket. Chazz turns to him, confused.
"Where are you going?"
"To get my things back," Jesse tells him, opening the door.
"You don't even know where I donated them," Chazz says.
"I'll figure it out. I don't really want your company right now, anyway."
Jesse shuts the door and Chazz is left standing in the kitchen, feeling a little irritated, but also a little confused and guilty. He puts everything back in the fridge and goes to lay on the couch.
Chazz wishes he had just apologized. He didn't mean to start an argument and he certainly didn't want to hurt Jesse's feelings. It's just that he's been more irritated than normal, which he definitely attributes to the apartment. And he isn't sure why, but it just feels easier to take it out on Jesse, rather than figure out how to get over it.
Sighing, Chazz covers his face with his arms and lays there, deciding that he feels too bad to eat. He had been looking forward to sharing a meal, anyway, so there isn't much point in dinner until Jesse gets back home.
Jesse finds the place Chazz donated to rather quickly, since it's the closest location, and he rightfully assumes Chazz wouldn't have gone too far out of his way just to get rid of stuff. After a lovely chat with the shop owner, Jesse retrieves his box back without paying. The rest of his time out is spent getting a cheap meal and taking a walk to blow off steam. He returns home a couple hours later to a dark apartment.
Trying not to wake Chazz up, Jesse quietly gets ready for bed in the dark. But the moment he lays down Chazz shifts and speaks.
"I'm sorry. I should've just said that to begin with."
"Well, I appreciate you sayin' it now," Jesse says.
"Were you able to get your cards back?"
"Yeah."
"I'm glad," Chazz says, and rolls back over on his side. "Goodnight."
"'Night," Jesse says. After a moment he sighs, then rolls over and scoots closer to Chazz so he can cuddle up like usual.
The next two weeks are pretty quiet, with the two of them working more than spending much time together or at home. When they do see each other, it's when they can meet up somewhere for lunch, or when they both happen to be going to bed at the same time.
Once their first day off together arrives, they make it a day of staying in and just hanging out. After a meal, a movie, and a lot of just doing quiet activities in the same space, they take on the challenge of doing the laundry together.
"You sure you don't want to show me the secret basement?" Jesse asks as they carry their clothes out of their unit.
"I'll tell you what, since you keep bringing it up, we can go down there but only after we've already walked down to the laundry room," Chazz says.
"Good thinkin'! Then we just have to go down one floor," Jesse says, very pleased by this compromise. "Gives us a better chance of survival."
Chazz pretends not to laugh, which Jesse thinks is a win. Especially after how sensitive to the topic of the building he's been up until then.
They reach the bottom floor and get their clothes into the wash before heading to the elevator. As they walk down the hall, Jesse looks around at the walls and back at the space behind them. The whole area is empty, and it seems odd to him that the only room is directly in the center of the hall, just in front of the stairs.
At the elevator, Chazz presses the button and they wait a full five minutes before the doors open.
Jesse gets inside first, excited to investigate, but is disappointed to find no mysterious button.
"Maybe I'm just missing it, but I'm not seein' a W," he says, and Chazz leans over to look.
"What the hell?" Chazz feels around the space where the button had definitely been before.
Jesse pats Chazz on the arm. This is apparently the wrong thing to do, because Chazz glares at him.
"It was right here!"
Jesse raises his hands up defensively.
"I believe you," he says, and he really does. "I just don't know what to say. 'What the hell' sums up my thoughts pretty well."
Chazz storms out of the elevator and Jesse follows after giving the panel one last look.
"It doesn't look like it was removed. It's like it was never there," Chazz says, sounding defeated.
Jesse frowns. He isn't sure how to comfort him, and he can't come up with a good explanation. At least not one that wasn't blaming the paranormal or challenging Chazz's sanity - neither of which would go over well with him.
"We can ask around," Jesse suggests. "See if anyone's seen it, or knows where it went."
"I'd rather not embarrass myself by asking strangers about some vanishing elevator button," Chazz grumbles. Jesse shrugs.
"Alright, I'll ask."
Chazz stands there for a moment, staring at the elevator with his brow furrowed and arms crossed, before turning and heading for the stairs. Jesse hurries to catch up.
"Are you okay?" Jesse asks.
"I don't want to talk about it. Talk to me about anything that isn't related to this place," Chazz says, so Jesse starts telling him about the latest development in the world of ice dueling.
At the thirteenth floor landing, one of their neighbors comes up the stairs behind them. He's got a bounce in his step and a smile on his face, not even the slightest bit winded from the climb.
Jesse smiles and greets him and the two end up stopping in the hall and starting up a friendly conversation. Chazz, entirely uninterested in interacting with this person, or any of their neighbors, goes to their door and unlocks it.
"Oh," the man says suddenly, getting Chazz's attention. "Wow, you boys live in one of the haunted units?"
"What?" Chazz asks, but the man's watch starts beeping.
"Oops! I've been idle too long, better get back to it. Good luck with the apartment!" he says, then jogs back down the stairs.
Taken aback, Jesse watches the stairs for a moment after he's already disappeared before turning around. Chazz is giving him an extremely dirty look, which Jesse frowns at.
"It's probably not really haunted," Jesse says, though he's not actually convinced of this himself.
Chazz huffs and goes inside, Jesse following quietly as he goes over every strange occurrence since they've moved in, wondering if it's anything more than coincidence.