In a Not-So-Lonely Hotel Room

The room stinks.

Figuratively, it stinks - the décor is from at least two decades past, there's suspicious staining on the ceiling, and the carpet has seen better years. He can't speak to how comfy the beds are, he hasn't been allowed near one, but the chair he's strapped to is leaving permanent indents on his ass. Worst of all, it seems the place looks like a shithole from the outside too - he hasn't heard anyone pass on the walkway outside the entire time he's been here, and his two captors in their stupid cartoonish masks don't seem to care if he screams his lungs out.

That's... less than great.

The place literally stinks as well. There's a vague mildew-y smell that would be worrisome if he actually thought he'd live long enough to suffer ill effects from being here. There's the collected smells of dozens of takeout boxes of various ages. There's the smell of... well. Him. Turns out even if you're kidnapped right after taking a bath, torture tends to leave you smelling fairly ripe before too long. And honestly, has burning flesh ever smelled good?

Klaus just wishes his brain would decide if he should be terrified, or resigned. These two are, in fact, legitimately terrifying. They're way more professional than most of the baddies he and his siblings went up against as kids, and very obviously uncaring about what condition he's in once this little session is over. Joke's on them, though. They seem to think that just because they caught an Umbrella Academy kid, they now have access to the deepest darkest secrets of the more dangerous members of the team. That said team might actually care what happens to him. That they'd even notice if he was gone.

These dummies didn't do their research did they?

Honestly, the scariest thing right now is he can feel the last wisps of his high melting away, leaving him painfully, brutally sober. Never mind that a nice floaty high would make all of this much more tolerable - he knows if this goes on for too long, eventually the dead will come. Someone will float by, realize he can see them, and then they'll call all their ghost buddies. He will be surrounded by the dead and he can't even get out of this chair.

It's enough to make him hyperventilate. That seems to encourage his hosts, and they hit harder, demand he spill secrets he doesn't have in voices he imagines they think are scary.

Klaus Hargreeves hasn't been afraid of the living for decades.

His world whites out in pain, a high shivery note of agony from an abused kidney, and he giggles, just this side of delirious. A few more hits like that, and it'll be lights out, at least for a while. That's a relief.

Tragically, the giggling was a bad move. They stop hitting him, looking at one another when they could be beating him to a pulp. The hell. He's been kidnapped out of his (sort of) home, dragged here bound and gagged in towel, tied to this stupid chair, and now they can't even beat him to death correctly? Klaus viciously tells them so, furious that his way out was cut off. He shouts every insult he can think of, though it's hard to get properly specific, considering all he's got is two anonymous people in masks and impeccably cut suits. Difficult to put that personal touch on it, you know?

They let him rant for a while, but when it's obvious he's not about to start pleading for his life (honestly, who would plead for this life?), they get back to work. Most of it is a bit rote, after for a childhood in the Academy, and then another decade on the streets. Some of it is downright tame, compared to the shit some of his johns wanted to get up to.

Case in point - they've decided strangling is their new fun bonding activity. He'll give the lady-thug props, the cord tightening around his throat is held firmly, with no wiggle room whatsoever. A few years ago, one of his... we'll call him a boyfriend, to be nice, okay? One of his boyfriends was into shit like this. Called it breathplay, when really he was just a sadistic little freak. But he'd been very giving when it came to the drugs and the alcohol and the place to sleep, so Klaus went along with it. Klaus chokes and twists uselessly, and hazily thinks of long nights full of airless, closed-in moments that were almost always followed by being spectacularly railed. They're not horrible memories, really, despite the numerous near-misses, fingers or belts or what have you left in place for just a moment or two (or more) too long.

"Is that...?" He hears above him, before there is a sound of disgust, and the world returning too-bright when the garotte is whipped away, his frustrated tormentor grumbling somewhere behind him.

Awww. Too bad. An orgasm would have been a nice little bonus on the day.

He runs his mouth, hoping to goad them into coming back, to finishing the job properly like good little thugs. If they aren't going to let him go, the very least they can do is off him before the ghosts come and make this a million times worse. He doesn't think they're near a cemetery, or a hospital - the dead would be here already if they were clustered that closely, but... there's no such thing as unhaunted ground. They'll be here eventually. And these assholes are being spectacularly slow at their jobs.

Clearly he's losing his touch. After an almost insulting attempt at waterboarding, and a break he was definitely not asking for, they go for the one thing that actually hurts - his drugs.

Hey, guys? Do you think assassins are more or less effective when stoned?

Anyone?

Turns out they're excellent at sticking him in a closet and abandoning him there. And they took his 'special chocolate' with them.

Assholes.