Chapter Text
He wasn’t in his bed.
This was the first thing to cross Stanley’s mind as he awoke. He could only vaguely recall having opened his eyes, and before him was a vast field of black. Something had congealed beneath his nose and his mouth was sticky and sore. His breaths came out in short snorts.
You’re bleeding, his mind groggily informed him. You’re bleeding, and there’s duct tape on your mouth.
The sound of an engine started to register. He could feel the gentle thrumming reverberating through to his bones. He closed his eyes again, briefly, and tried to orientate himself.
I’m in the trunk of a car. Why-?
He twisted, the bare skin of his arms sliding against rough fabric and metal – a container, it felt like, and some equipment scattered throughout the trunk. He eventually managed to maneuver himself onto his stomach, squashing his bound hands with his bulbous belly. They were tied with something much harder than duct tape. He touched the tips of his fingers to the outside of his bindings and immediately recognized them as handcuffs. He didn’t have any hair pins on him, so there was nothing he could do about them at the moment.
He slid his hands up to his face, fumbling for a loose edge of the duct tape and ripping it off in short, hesitating tugs. A few whiskers came loose as he did. Taking in a few stuttering breaths of air, he willed his racing, adrenaline-addled mine to remember what had happened. The car creaked as he moved, and he recalled crickets. A hot summers evening had drawn crickets to sparse patches of grass outside his apartment. A chirping melody, interrupted by fists thundering against his front door. Running, the thud of pursuing footsteps, and then ringing in his ears.
He squeezed his eyes shut. It was hot, and his body was warming with anxiety. His pulse raced enough to make his heartbeat echo through his ears.
“Hey, you hear that?” Rico’s voice, just outside the trunk.
“Yeah, he’s moving around in there. He’s awake.” That was one of Rico’s goons, and he was just close enough to be intelligible. Stanley instinctively shrunk towards the back of the trunk and in his desperation, started to gnaw on the metal chain that linked his handcuffs. It was a vain effort, and he knew it.
“Yeah, well-” A slurry of Spanish. This, Stanley couldn’t understand. He’d never bothered to learn New Mexico’s native language, but he didn’t need to know it to realize what Rico had said, as the trunk was unlocked and pulled open a moment later. There was a single street lamp towering over the car, outlining Rico and his men a rustic yellow. Rico’s face was cast in and out of shadow as the embers of a cigar he was puffing away at lit up with each inhale.
“You got the room ready?”
“Been ready for days, boss.”
“Good. Give the boys a call, tell them we’re bringin’ him in.”
As Stanley’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could finally identify the disarray surrounding him. It looked like the contents of a garage; hammers of varying shapes and sizes, a stray blowtorch, hedge trimmers, little boxes of different types of nails, and knives haphazardly wrapped in dirty linen. Despite the heat, Stanley’s face managed to drain of colour as he examined them further; there was enough dried blood on each of them for him to know exactly what Rico and his goons intended to use them for.
A hand curled tight around a fistful of his messy brown hair, yanking until his torso was hanging out of the trunk, and he yelped.
“My friend.” Smoke rolled over his face as Rico exhaled. His lips had parted into a yellow-toothed grin. “You are in very, very big trouble.”