rescue me (open)

[cameron edward masters]

Hiding behind a bench was not exactly how Cameron wanted to spend his day, in fact when he had woken up this morning he was hoping for one of those days where his boyfriend just left him alone. He woke up hoping like he had enough of him last night, he even hoped the guy was out cold or dead even but that was not at all what happened to him. His luck was not at all on his side, sure his morning started out fine. He had woken up to see that his boyfriend wasn’t there, which was always a good sign because it sometimes meant that his boyfriend was out and it gave him time to eat breakfast and leave the house for the day. Leaving saved him from an entire day of abuse, but that wasn’t the case at all because he had laid there for a few minutes before he heard his boyfriend’s voice.

His boyfriend was drunk, already at nine in the damn morning and judging by his voice Cameron had been asleep far too long but after last night he liked to believe he deserved it. He sighed and pulled his self out of bed like he always did and dragged his self into the bathroom to cover his bruises the best he could, like he always did. Everything seemed to be the same as always and he had no reasons to question anything, it wasn’t in till he was starting to cook breakfast and could feel his boyfriend’s breath on his neck that he had began to feel uncomfortable. He knew just what he wanted when he was like this, and he just didn’t want it. Not today, and he never did in fact every time the two slept together the guy was drunk and forceful and Cameron was sure it was rape but he would never say a word.

He knew that talking was silly, saying anything would only make him mad so he just stood his ground and bit his lip the minute he felt him kiss his neck and feel him up even though he was scared. He didn’t even know what got into him the minute he tossed the pot of boiling water at him and ran for the door, but he knew he had to run because he was pissed and he could tell by the trail of curse words coming from his boyfriend’s mouth. He dodged plates and silverware and just ran in his pajamas and barefoot down the street not even sure where he was going, he just ran and refused to stop. That was just how he ended up behind this bench shivering from the freezing cold air hitting his face. His arm was bleeding from where a glass had hit him when things started flying, he was basically just a mess.

[garrald steven vickers]

Garrald had spent that night working the local nightclub scene and had even accepted a drink offer from one of the patrons once his shift had ended. He wasn't one on romantic entanglements, but she was attractive, could dance with the best of them, and had more money than most other girls in the room; what had really won Garrald over was the fact that, even for just a moment, he could forget that he was in LA to kill someone and just be another face in the crowd. Standing by the bar, chatting up the young aspiring actress made him feel like a fish out of water, but in that moment he wasn't security, the son of a powerful crime boss, a killer, a man who had lost everything he knew, or someone with more insecurities than he would ever let out in the open; he was just another guy being flirted with by the cutest girl in the room.

Regardless, that's where the fun had ended and, despite her objections, he didn't take her home to his apartment. Part of him wanted to do it, even if it went against his own personal code of no attatchments even if to just get the sexual frustration out, but his better judgement won the mental war as it usual did and he ended up hailing a cab for the girl and heading home. Well, at least that was where he thought he was going until his cellphone had gone off from one of the many contacts he kept in the city that owed him favors to inform him of a potential location to Tommy Ancoletti. It was an opportunity he couldn't pass up and while searching for him over the past year had gotten him nothing more than a few bruised knuckles, black eye and nearly stabbed to death in a back alley, any information on a hideout would mean he could barge in on Tommy asleep and gun him down like the rat he was.

Alas, after traveling across the city to the rundown slum of an apartment, he only found a hooker alongside a stash of drugs. Tommy had been there, but was long gone by the time his old friend showed up, but that still didn't stop Garrald from interrogating the whore in his room. After a few slaps to the face, she came around which led him to another location; the same process continued for a few hours with the trail finally going cold at the fish markets in the Chinese side of town. The Triads ran that neighborhood like they had in New York and no olive-skinned fellows were welcome on their turf, so he backed out. Even so, it made him wonder if Tommy may have been in league with the Triads to take over organized crime in the area, which suited his personality quite well being the ambitious punk he was but Garrald knew he'd have to find the answer to that assumption another day and headed on a walk back toward a friendlier side of town.

Coming across the park, he saw old men and college girls alike out for their morning jogs, but he wasn't really there for excercise more than to clear his head from the frustration of still not settling the score with his old partner. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his brown overcoat while he made tracks through the park, avoiding eye-contact with the young women that passed him by, only stopping after noticing someone behind a bench looking like they'd just come from Vietnam. As he drew nearer, he recognized the face from the online messaging board that he often used to keep in contact with his niece, Anya who was the last shred he had left of his late sister, Ashley. Seeing the guy was in some sort of peril, he stopped just next to the bench, "Umm... Cameron, right? You look like shit. What happened to you?"

[cameron edward masters]

Cameron always seemed to have the tendency of getting his self into tough situations lately, it came with being in an abusive relationship and being far too afraid to even think about leaving him. He liked to believe that he loved him, and that he loved him back even though he made it harder to actually believe that no matter how much he really wanted to. He could be called every single curse word and rude name in the book, but he never seemed to be able to leave him. He tried to once in the past, but the guy had brought him back home and warned him “you belong to me and if you even try to leave me again I am not afraid to kill you” and after that you get a little afraid at the very thought of leaving. He couldn’t leave anyway because he also knew he wouldn’t be able to find anyone else, he was just a poor college student, a dancer, singer, writer, painter, he was an outcast and he would sure no one else would ever want him. He planted that thought into his head each and every day; no one else could really ever want him.

He could handle the bruises he was given, the days of crying himself to sleep, laying in bed hearing his boyfriend snoring beside him. He use to be so nice too, he use to be his best friend before the two boys got together and then he just seemed to change when he got into drinking when he turned nineteen. For almost four years now the two boys were together, and sometimes he just wasn’t sure why he stuck around and then he remembered the times when he actually was nice. He really did have his days, those days where he was his loving boyfriend he had in the past and he would even apologize and all of his promises really did seem so sincere. He always seemed to think that he could believe him that this time it really would be different but it always turned out the same, and Cameron was just stupid and scared. Those things seemed to go hand in hand for him now and besides he really could handle it or at least he thought that he could, things weren’t even that bad anyway. Bruises healed, and so did cuts and no one seemed to suspect anything was wrong, maybe he really could be an actor.

He would sit in his home, play the part of a loving boyfriend, who loved his boyfriend very much but behind closed doors it was a whole different story and his life just seemed to be totally full of secrets and he was just trying hard to keep them all hidden. He knew that people were always around trying to figure things out about everyone, and he just hoped he would never be one of those people that would be broadcasted for the whole world to see. That was the main reason why he would never be one of those rich people, one of the people on the top of the ladder. He was never one of those people who were able to handle all of that pressure, he was actually one of those people who just went and crumbled. He just seemed to feel so bad about his self sometimes, he had pretty low self esteem and he had for a few years now. He was even one of those kids in high school that actually paid attention in class, he never really did have a lot of friends and now even if he did have friends his boyfriend really didn’t let him be with them much. He liked to always keep him all to his self, and he never understood why.

He just sat under this bench hugging his knees and trembling, blood flowing out of his wounds and he knew he probably looked like shit but he really didn’t even seem to care. He didn’t care who really saw him either, he was just mostly trying his best to hide even though he knew for a fact he would be found and when he heard his name he jumped almost frightened. Turning his head he stared at Garrald and bit down on his lip hard, not sure what to even say since he knew he was not alright and his boyfriend was on his trail still. “I-yes I’m fine, I am just. Okay I’m hiding” he spoke quickly shivering since he was not at all dressed for the weather and his feet were freezing, it was pretty clear that he had just ran off and he looked scared so it was also obvious something had to have happened.

(It's crappy D:)

[garrald steven vickers]

Judging by the way the young man was under the bench in a near fetal position, trembling and bleeding, it would have been obvious to even the most untrained eye that he had been through a seriously stressful situation. From the wounds, the former mobster assessed that Cameron had likely been attacked and was most definitely hiding. Even before he had told Garrald why he was under the bench, the older man had already figured that much out but was still curious as to who or what he was hiding from. The wounds made it hard to tell due to it not being an obvious knife attack, or assault with fists and could have been something as simple as a dog bite; however, the only reason that wasn't a possibility is that Cam wouldn't be under a bench in the park had a dog attacked him due to ease of a second attack. It was something much more serious than that, and while he didn't have to concern himself with it, he saw no reason to just pass the guy by and pretend he didn't see him bleeding and in a bad state.

"I gathered that much," he replied at his admittal of hiding before taking a look around the area noticing people walking around starting to direct their attention in the direction of the bench, but none of them seemed to be looking for Cameron. If they were, then they were very convincing actors but, in his experience, Garrald had never seen anyone so talented in manipulating people so amatueristic with their attacks and allowing their target to run away. After all, a bleeding man in pajamas was going to attract a lot of attention by the local authorities and a trained hitman would know that. "Come out from under there and let's move to a less public area before someone calls the cops. Then you can tell me who attacked you."

The dark-headed man gave Cameron a knowing look as if he'd already caught on to more than had been told to him, but he also found it necessary to make him feel reassured that he didn't want to get the cops involved. Once the authorities became involved in a situation, everything got to be proceedural and run by morons that obeyed the limitations of the law; Garrald wasn't someone that had ever operated within the law, especially since coming to Los Angeles to find his sister's killer. He'd make no exception when dealing with his niece's friend that had obviously been attacked and was as scared as a five-year old going through their first haunted house on Halloween.

[cameron edward masters]

Life seemed bearable for Cameron when he thought about it, sure he really had to think about it because he dealt with a lot but compared to some people he had it pretty good and he was at least alive. He had heard of thousands of people who were killed everyday due to abuse, and though he was terrified of the very thought of that possible happening it hadn’t yet and for that he had to at least be grateful. He could live another day, and perhaps he was selfish for complaining because there were always someone worse off than he. There was also the fact that he never thought of actually getting out of the situation that he found his self being stuck in, so perhaps he deserved just what was brought to him. He deserved it for sticking with the guy who was abusing him in the first place, it did seem fit. Sure he had to deal with everything that was dished out to him by his boyfriend, and that meant having plates and other things thrown at him but he wasn’t dead yet and in a way he had to at least be grateful for that.

He could be grateful for a lot of things actually, because he knew that at home things would be so much worse for him since his parents were the religious type. At home all he heard was things about how he was going to hell and he just couldn’t seem to understand it, maybe that was why he decided to just be atheist. In his mind the very idea of religion in general was stupid, and he refused to believe there was a god because he was sure if there was he would just stick around and let all these horrible things happen to people. He looked at Gerrald for a moment, his eyes only showing fear and even a little bit of panic at the thought of actually telling someone what was going on but he knew that if he didn’t it would only be even more suspicious. He just nodded and rose on shaky legs, talking sounded like a good idea.

“I guess talking sounds like a good idea, because even if I don’t say anything there is still reason to be suspicious” he mumbled biting down on his lip ever slightly staring down at the ground. Since he was now standing it was easy to tell his clothes were old and in some places they were even splattered in spots of blood, his face was bruised. His eye a dark purple, and a bruised outlined the one side of his cheek, Cameron just looked like a total mess. Walking a distance away from other people sounded like a good idea now, because he really didn’t want to be seen. Not now when bruises were even scattered on his arms, he knew he should have grabbed his jacket when he had made a run for it.