The alarm clock on the nightstand blinked, 4:15am. It was a warm night, the blankets had been kicked away into a tangled mess sometime earlier and the young man that lay on the bed wore only a threadbare pair of sweatpants. Taylor was on his side, asleep and facing the wall with a peaceful expression. He was exhausted, college and his job barely left him any time for rest, but he needed the money too much to quit working and he was too stubborn to give up after working so hard for his degree. He remained still as the faint echo of a doorknob being jiggled and then unlocked sounded in the room. The tiniest hint of a smile appeared on his lips as footsteps moved through the small apartment, but it was schooled back into a sleeping guise by the time the hinge of the bedroom door creaked.
The man that slipped into the room was average height, his features indistinguishable in the dim light cast by the clock. The intruder had a duffel-bag slung over one shoulder, but set it down beside the bed as he approached. He watched the sleeping man as he bent down and unzipped the bag, removing four rolled up straps from inside. Quietly he moved around to each corner of the bed, anchoring a strap to each of the bedposts.
He reached again for the duffel, but stilled as the man on the bed moved slightly. He waited and glanced towards the door to check the escape route. Fleeing was unnecessary, all Taylor did was restlessly turn his face against the pillow and snore softly with his breath stirring the blond curls that framed his face. The intruder resumed movement then, pulling cuffs from the duffel-bag and carefully reaching over the sleeping body. His movements were gentle but certain as he secured two of the cuffs around the sleeping man's wrists, then the other two around his ankles.
Once the cuffs were in place he secured them to the straps, letting them remain loose as he considered his next move. Taylor could still escape the bindings if he awoke then, he would only be truly helpless after the straps had been pulled tight. Rather than do that the intruder reached into his duffel-bag one more time. He extracted a pair of earplugs, a nose plug, and a face mask with a single hole for a mouth.
The intruder knelt on the bed. Taylor murmured in his sleep, then twitched a little as the earplugs were placed in his ears, but didn't wake even as the mask was pulled over his head to cover his eyes and the plug was secured on his nose.
A smile flitted across the intruder's lips and he glanced over at the clock as he brushed his fingers across the younger man's lips. 4:30am, right on time. He firmly covered his mouth.
Taylor shifted, stretching against his bedsheets as he 'woke' as naturally as he could. The stranger held his mouth closed, waiting until the first sign of actual struggling before he let Taylor breath and he set about tightening the bindings on his legs and arms.
Taylor started to struggle earnestly as soon as the intruder's sure fingers finished securing the final cuff. He cussed and fought against the straps that held him to the bedposts. The bindings did not give, though he could move each limb an inch or two he could not slip the cuffs off or unlock them from the straps. Blind, deaf, and helpless, there was very little he could do.
The intruder waited, letting Taylor wear himself out by struggling and screaming. Eventually he grew bored of that and reached over, quieting the yells with a hand over the young man's mouth. He pressed his fingers tightly together, so that his captive couldn't sneak a breath between them.