Taking Care of Reno
Chapter 5: Long Way Down
“Look… A bird!” said Reno, fluttering his fingers in front of the light that emanated from the tip of his electro-rod, eyeing the vaguely avian-like shadow his hands cast on the wall.
“I don’t believe this…” a voice moaned from the opposite side of the darkened elevator car. Of all the people to be stuck with… Why couldn’t the power have waited one more minute to go out? Now she was trapped in here with Reno and his pathetic puppet show.
“Yeah, I’m pretty good, aren’t I?” Reno grinned, “Heh… an elephant!”
Elena let her head bang once against the metal wall… Elephant indeed. Reno’s little shadow puppet looked more like a mutant sea urchin than anything else. It was never going to end. Sure, things had quieted down since that little… incident… at the Sordid Rose Inn, but they’d gone from public humiliation to subtle torture… driving each other nuts in little ways, striving to irritate each other without drawing attention to their antics. She had to admit it could be fun, though. Elena couldn’t remember ever having so enjoyed watching a person eat J-ello, for example… She smiled to herself in the dim light as she pictured the expression on Reno’s face as she’d forced him to choke down every last drop of the lime J-ello he’d taken the liberty of filling her bathtub with… Ever since, the mere sight of the wobbly dessert turned him a shade of green to match.
“And now… A bunny!”
“Dear Holy, will you just stop?!” she cried, her reminiscence interrupted. Reno flashed her a grin, the odd lighting from his electro-rod making the expression look downright evil… At least she hoped it was just the lighting.
“How about a dog?” he asked innocently. She would definitely have to find some way to pay him back for this…
“Reno, I swear, if you don’t knock it off, I’ll shove that nightstick of yours so far up your…”
She was cut off in mid-threat by Reno’s laughter. “Now, now Elena… That’s no way to speak to a fellow-Turk… and a superior at that,” he chided, smirking.
‘I’m not going to let him get to me… I’m just going to ignore him until someone gets us out of here,’ she thought, glaring at him, ‘Oh, why couldn’t I have gotten stuck in this elevator with Tseng?’
“So what, now you’re gonna pout?” Reno teased, “Don’t act so weak.”
‘Don’t act so weak… Don’t act so weak…’ she mimicked silently, ‘Can’t the bastard think of a better insult?’ Weak? She hated it when he called her that. She honestly didn’t know if it was Reno’s twisted idea of motivation, or if that was how he really saw of her. Either way, it infuriated her to no end. One of these days, he was going to say it one too many times…
“Damn… You’d think they’d have us out of here by now,” Reno said, his tone turning momentarily serious. Elena looked at her watch, squinting to see the tiny hands in the dim light.
“We’ve only been in here for fifteen minutes,” she said.
“Fifteen minutes too long,” Reno muttered, “I hate elevators…”
“Scared of elevators? Ha! Now who’s weak?” Elena replied smugly.
“Never said I was afraid of ’em… Just don’t like ’em,” Reno said, returning to his shadow puppets, though with less than his previous enthusiasm.
“Aww… Reno, the big tough Turk is scared of a widdle elevator…” she taunted, laughing as she spoke. Finally, something she could do to annoy him for a change.
“Oooh… Real mature,” Reno retorted.
“As if you’re one to lecture me on maturity, Mr. I-Still-Sleep-With-A-Stuffed-Animal!”
“I do not!”
“Oh yeah? Then what’s that ratty old stuffed bunny you keep on your bed for, hmm?” she said accusingly, daring him to deny the fact. She’d noticed the disgusting looking thing during her stay at Reno’s apartment while he was pretending to be utterly and helplessly ill. The bunny had definitely seen better days… In fact, it looked like it’d been dragged through the most vile gutters of the slums and then tossed into a washing machine in the hopes of restoring it to at least a sanitary condition again. She’d even caught him curled up under the blankets with the plush toy, evidence that she was more than prepared to use against him.
“Mr. Foo-Foo is not ratty!” Reno yelled back, realizing a moment too late what he’d just said.
“Mr… Foo-Foo?!” Elena managed to choke out before falling victim to a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
“Yes, Mr. Foo-Foo,” he replied with as much dignity as he could muster, “And he’s not ratty… Just a little worn!”
“Hee hee hee… Just wait until Rude hears about this…”
“You wouldn’t…” Reno hissed, narrowing his eyes.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t… I still owe you for what you did to my lunch two days ago… And don’t even try and tell me that was an accident! You know I’m allergic to garlic!”
“If you say one word to Rude, I will hunt you down and make sure no one ever finds the body,” he replied, knowing full well that his normally stoic partner would never, ever let him live this down.
“Oh this is just too perfect… Finally something I can hold over you…”
“You’ve been hanging around Rufus too much, Elena… You’re starting to think like him.”
“Oh, that’s not a very nice thing to say. I don’t think Mr. Foo-Foo would approve… Not at all.” She could literally see Reno repressing the urge to strangle her. ‘Good… Now he knows how I feel…’ she thought happily.
“Just… Shut up!” he said at last, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back against the wall, turning his eyes away from her. Elena decided to do just that, for the moment at least. Let him think over his position for awhile. She sank to the floor, trying to find a comfortable position to sit in. The elevator was silent, aside from the incessant buzz from the glowing electro-rod and the occasionally creak of the wires that held them suspended fifty stories up.
‘The maintenance crew sure is taking their sweet time getting here,’ she thought to herself as Reno sat down across from her, the electro-rod between them as a sort of mutually acknowledged boundary. She wondered how long its power supply would hold out. Somehow, the idea of being trapped alone, in the dark, with Reno was not especially appealing… not when he was in the kind of mood she’d managed to put him in, at any rate.
“Damn… is it hot in here, or what?” Reno muttered.
“It’s that stupid flashlight of yours that’s making it so hot,” said Elena, nodding to the electro-rod. It was probably overheating, it’d been on so long.
“Well, we could always sit around in the dark,” he spat back. Elena chose not to dignify that with a response. It would just lead to another argument.
Reno shrugged his jacket off and tossed it on the floor. He shifted uncomfortably for a moment before beginning to unbutton his shirt as well.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“What’s it look like?” Reno drawled, “It’s like a sauna in here.”
“It is not that hot,” Elena replied, rolling her eyes. Reno smirked and started to whistle innocently. Elena cringed and the half-hearted whistle turned into an obnoxiously nasal tune. She glared at him and he paused just long enough to grin at her before continuing with what was probably, knowing Reno, a popular drinking song from one of his favorite bars.
He knew she hated it… which was probably why he only did it when he really wanted to get under her skin. She’d tried asking him calmly to stop, tried screaming at him, tried throwing various office supplies at him, but that had only seemed to reinforce in his mind that this was a great way to get on her nerves.
She hated that sound so much, and it didn’t help that Reno’s whistling always had a shrill, grating quality to it… nor did it help that the obnoxious Turk pretended to be utterly tone-deaf when he did it so that even songs that might not have been truly irritating were butchered and mangled so horribly that it was unbearable. And of course, he did that on purpose, too… She’d heard Reno sing any number of times – mainly times he’d been drunk off his ass – and while he definitely didn’t have a singing career in his future, he could at least carry a tune.
At last she couldn’t take it anymore. The sharp whistle bounced off the walls of the little elevator car, which only served to amplify the detested sound. Elena could already feel the beginnings of what was sure to become a splitting headache. Sadistically, she toyed with the idea of drawing her gun and simply putting him out of her misery… but that was out of the question. Besides the fact that Tseng wouldn’t be at all pleased, any shots fired in the confines of the elevator would undoubtedly ricochet. With her luck, she’d probably end up shooting herself instead of Reno. She’d never get away with it anyway. The little red light on the security camera in the corner told her that they were being recorded, and she silently cursed the fact that security was on a separate set of generators. Finally she settled on doing the next best thing. She slipped off a shoe and flung it at Reno, nailing him squarely in the forehead. The whistle promptly died on his lips.
“Ow!” he yelled, rubbing his forehead. He snatched Elena’s shoe from the floor, “Just for that, I’m keeping it!”
“Fine!” she replied, “In that case, you’ll want the other one to go with it!” She hurled the other shoe at Reno as hard as she could, hitting him in the chest. He flinched.
“Geesh… Come on, Elena. I bruise easy, ya know…”
She wished she had something else to hit him with.
“Yeah? Tell it to Mr. Foo-Foo,” she muttered, and glanced down at her watch. ‘Half and hour stuck in here.’ she thought, ‘Where are those repair guys? They’ve gotta know we’re in here…’
She leaned back against the wall and sighed, gazing up at the security camera. Someone had to be watching… And if they weren’t, that someone was going to lose his job just as soon as she got out. But that thought was suddenly shoved aside as the faint odor of smoke registered.
“Reno?” she said, alarmed.
“What?” he replied, only barely acknowledging her.
“Do you smell smoke?”
Reno’s eyes widened and he sat up, just as the light from the electro-rod began to flicker.
“Damn it! It’s overheating…” he muttered, reaching for the weapon to turn it off. A stream of electricity arced out from the tip just before he touched it and for a moment, Elena could see the current flowing up his arm. Reno let out a pained yelp, skittering backwards as the electro-rod shorted out, “Great! This is just great! Now I’m going to have to get it repaired!”
In the pitch dark, Elena could hear him moving around for a moment before he sat back down.
“Wonderful… Perfect!” he continued, “This is just what I always dreamed of. Stuck, in the dark, in an elevator… with you!”
“What’s the matter Reno? Don’t like the dark? Maybe you’d feel better if Mr. Foo-Foo was here…” she teased.
“Would you just drop it?!” his voice screamed at her from the darkness, “My mom gave me that toy, ok?! It’s the only thing they let me keep when…”
“When what?” Elena asked a moment after Reno lapsed into silence. “Reno?”
“When they dragged me off to the orphanage after she died. There. Happy now?”
She been prepared to respond with another biting remark, but the sudden admission stopped her cold. She just didn’t know what to say to that.
“I’m sorry,” she said dumbly, lacking anything more intelligent.
“Whatever.”
Neither of them said a word after that. They sat silently in the dark elevator until suddenly the car lurched and the fluorescent lights flickered back on as they began to rise.
‘Oh thank you… Thank you, thank you, thank you…’ Elena thought as she climbed to her feet, and a few seconds later the chime sounded and the doors opened.
The two Turks stepped into the hallway, finding the corridor empty. Elena had expected someone to be waiting there… preferably with an explanation and an apology for leaving them stranded for so long… but the fact that she was finally free overshadowed that annoyance as she followed Reno down the hall.
“Um… Reno?”
“Now what?” he sighed.
“Can I… um… have my shoes back please?”
Reno stopped in mid-stride and spun around to face her. The frown he wore quickly turned into his trademark smirk.
“No… I think I’ll keep ’em… They’ll look great on Mr. Foo-Foo…”
Elena stared at him, her mouth hanging open. ‘That’s it… I hate him…’
“Hey!” she yelled as Reno turned and started down the hallway, “Give those back! Those shoes cost me 900 gil! On sale!”
Reno laughed wickedly and broke into a run, to which Elena had no choice but to chase him…
———-
Rude turned away from the video monitor showing the interior of the elevator, and switched off the microphone he’d planted inside the car. It had definitely been worth all the trouble he’d gone to setting it up.
“Mr. Foo-Foo, huh? I’ll have to remember that one…” he said to himself.
-fin-
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