Chapter Text
2D honestly believed that he would end up where he needed to go. That was how his life went. Things happened to him and he always ended up alright in the end. He always ended up where he was meant to be.
But where am I, exactly?
The dizzy singer lifted his head from the couch and felt the blood rush down his neck in waves of tingling nausea, and he threw a hand over his mouth.
“G-god…” he murmured into his fist. “Wh-what ‘appened…?”
He swung his head around to glance at the dense room, steeping in some sort of smokey haze and a deep red light. The couch was hard and uncomfortable, but 2D was pleased that he hadn’t woken up on the dirty floor (and he thought his room was a right mess). There were vials chucked haphazardly at the base of a wide vanity with a mirror in the middle, and when 2D peered at himself in the mirror, he saw the flash of someone else’s face: like a mask.
If he hadn’t been ordered to clean it up at least once a week, 2D might have thought this was Murdoc’s room. After all, Murdoc did seem to have an attachment to things like strange little glass bottles, and masks, and whatever was burning in the incense dish next to that enormous bookstand.
2D hardly felt his fingers as he rubbed his numb face.
He swore to himself (again) that this was the last time he went out Murdoc. Whenever he went out with Murdoc, he would wake up feeling like shit . Perhaps he ended up where he was meant to be, but it couldn’t hurt to end up there without a raging hangover, right?
2D was slow about getting up, shifting his numb weight over the edge of the couch until his feet sunk into the thick carpet, toes tangled in the furs. He had to get back to the studio quickly, or else Murdoc would be especially cross.
However, when he went to stand up, he tripped over his own metal ankle-cuff and smacked into the coffee table.
“I don’t remember that ,” grumbled 2D, now rubbing the dull, throbbing lump on his forehead, right where the table caught him at the corner.
In fact, 2D didn’t remember much of last night. He sat against the couch, seeing as he wouldn’t be going anywhere with this ankle-cuff attached to it, and closed his eyes, recalling the strobelights, the wild bass riff by Murdoc on someone’s stage, a microphone, Murdoc handing him that drink–surely this wreckage was the remnants of another Gorillaz concert after party.
Well, there was nothing he could do about being chained to a couch, so 2D slumped his shoulders, shut his eyes, and decided to ‘sleep it off’.
Then the lights came on and before 2D could make out much more than their black hoods, he was blindfolded and gagged with a thick strip of cloth.
“Your most precious thing is ours ,” growled the man on his right, or was that his left? 2D couldn’t tell which way he was facing after they stood him up, spun him around and tossed him back on the couch–right back where he started.
He tried asking them about it through the cloth, but he quickly realised that wasn’t very effective. All his words sounded like “MMmm”. He had no voice like this.
The men moved around him. He heard a match scrape as it lit and smelt the smoke of some spiced candles. The book binding creaked as it opened and landed against the stand with a dusty thud , the pages whispering as they turned.
2D shivered once the men removed his clothes–or what was left of them anyway. He only had a shirt and a pair of pants. His trousers and his jacket were already missing, lost somewhere in the void of last night.
Then, he felt a trickle of something warm and waxy drip over the back of his neck, smeared by the pressure of two, strong hands. They worked it into his skin–this lotion –and as it melted from the heat, his throat started to burn, so he tried to wriggle free, but the man caught him by the shoulder and pinned him in place.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned.
I …don’t like that , thought 2D, shivering now for an entirely different reason.
“You won’t escape from us tonight.”
It was still night? That came as a mild surprise to the singer who often slept well into the day. This place was full of surprises—not all of them pleasant, however.
He suddenly felt the pressure on his shoulder push him down until he fell on his back, wincing as the couch refused to cushion his fall. He grappled for the back rest to pull himself up again, but now there were cuffs on his wrists and a body blocking his way.
Yet despite the restraints, he still felt warm and dreamy, like this was all part of some imaginary fetish he’d cooked up with a couple of drugs from Murdoc’s medicine cabinet. It wouldn’t have been the first odd thing he’d dreamt.
Did it count as a dream if it was this uncomfortably…wet?
“ Wait ,” 2D heard his voice pleading in his head, but the only part he could translate through the cloth was the distress.
“ Mmm !”
Sweat and oil soaked through his skin. It felt hot, and heavy, and suffocating . 2D winced when he choked through the cloth for a breath that wasn’t filled with smoke, but they turned him over and smashed his voice into the couch. The cloth loosened.
“W-wait,” his voice cracked.
“We’ve waited long enough thanks to him .”
2D didn’t have time to ask who “him” was before he cried out as the pain of a wide knife cutting through his backside. Or, at least, that’s what it felt like and so that’s what he imagined in the blindfold. A knife that had been hovering over the candle flame until it seared and cut easily through his lower back like cheese–soft enough to slice, but hard enough to feel the painful pressure digging through his flesh, to feel it press into his bones and make his knees wobble, and ache.
He clawed at the couch as the knife slid through him again, biting back his voice.
Clearly, they didn’t like that.
A couple fingers wedged between his teeth and pried his mouth open, letting his voice tumble freely in time with the knife-like-thrusts.
“ N-noodle,” 2D whined. “ R-russel…!”
" They were right," hummed the man in his ear. "You make such a beautiful sound. Yes, yes, give it to us. Let it out."
He gulped, choking on the fingers as they slid down his throat as if to pull the words out by hand. “ M-murd…oc…!”
“Help me!” — was what he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t find the voice to do it and whimpered instead.
