[Carlos/Gael/Patrick/Ollie] What goes around comes around....

[memorylost]

Patrick Zeitlin had not been on the Deck in nearly 8 years, having first been sent to study and then to act as an ambassador within the British government. He had learned, many years ago, that certain people of rank knew a 'little' about their existence. It was a necessary evil to ensure that goods and trade existed- to ensure the safety of their peoples. All well and good and boring, yet his king had insisted. Patrick was too quick of mind, and sweet of tongue to be wasted on a trivial task within the deck.

But then he'd been called back, a 'mercy' no doubt as his grandmother was gravely ill and dying. He was, he imagined, supposed to be torn with grief and thus being given the time to mourn the woman who had raised him. When his parents had died, after all, she had taken him in. Given him everything. And been pathetically easy to manipulate as far as Spades went. Still- had it not been for her, Patrick never would have met the most wondrous of toys he had ever known.

Gael Shaw, his precious Gael Shaw. So fragile, so delicate- so deadly when pushed to the right corner. Gael had been but 14 when his father had died, so torn and broken by his death he had hardly noticed Patrick's claws as the then 19 year old wrapped his arms about him in comfort. By the time Gael did notice, though, it had been too late for him to fight back- he was ensnared. His. His alone. And Patrick had worked so very hard to keep it that way.

But then his king had ordered him away, and by then the 16 year old Gael had moved to the Hearts in a vaguely veiled attempt to put space between them. It had had the opposite effect, it had given Patrick the room to worm in closer, to guard him tightly and 'protect' what was his. It was his King that forced actual space between them. And if Patrick were ever given the chance, he might well make Jordan Novak regret that. Unfortunately, making his King pay for his slight would have to wait. First- he had to make Gael pay for his boldness, his...disgusting willingness to whore himself out to any man or woman who wished to touch that which was not theirs to touch.

He had seen Gael for the first time at the bar, Mooseknuckle. His arms wrapped tightly around a man, Oliver Byrd as he later learned, dressed as a harlot and in heels. There were bruises across his pale skin, and laughter bubbling out of him as he flirted and danced with so many that not. His lips had dared to touch with nearly half the bar's and he paid no notice to the simmering heat that had radiated off Patrick. Indeed, Gael had not even noticed the other man until right before he and Oliver Byrd were leaving.

The Heart seemed to diminish when his gaze crossed the bar, his smiled fade and his eyes for a brief moment grew wide- fear rolled off him in a brief, but potent way. It was that that gave Patrick grim satisfaction. And that which held his hand that night- Gael could suffering with wondering when his punishment would come, it was please him to know the Heart could not sleep for fear.

So he let the man worry at himself for a week, and then he struck.

Finding Gael's apartment was not difficult. Nor was climbing up the fire escape and prying the window into his kitchen. He found his way into the bedroom, and glowered at the scene- at the bed he could only imagine the likes of one of Gael's other lovers, Carlos Sanchez, forcefully taking his pleasure from the Heart. At the rope and whips, the sex toys, and the filth of another touching what was not theirs. It fueled his anger, his hate, his need to cleanse what was his. Had always been his.

Was it not him, after all, that had bred these desires in Gael? Taught him the pleasure of pain, the joy of being helpless, given him the need to be bound to find his release? Was he not the one who had taught Gael how to please his lover? To sharp in his softness?

The unlocking of the front door alerted him to Gael's return, and Patrick backed into the shadows as he waited for his prey. When Gael pushed into the bedroom, yawning from his 'hard day's work', Patrick watched observing the lithe frame of the smaller Heart. How easy it was going to be to break him. And he would need to be broken in order to be rebuilt and cleansed....oh yes.

Gael never saw the first hit, falling to the floor limply as he blow hit him solidly on the back of his head. Patrick, however, did wait for him to come back around- bound and gagged- before he began the process of 'cleansing' his object, his slave, his toy. His. The whip fell against the flesh of Gael's back and torso harshly over, and over. Patrick ignored the tears and the muffled pleas as his snapped his arm down harder, and then harder still. He ignored the blood that splattered the walls and floor as the leather cut through the fabric of Gael's shirt and skin.

When the pound of flesh wrought by the whip was no longer enough to satisfy his rage, he turned to his feet- kicking and stomping on the younger heart. It was only when the boy stopped moving, stopped crying that he stopped his assault. Chest heaving he glared down at the bloodied, beaten heap on the floor. He was not so beautiful now, was he? Bloodied, bruised and broken.

But breathing- yes, for now his precious was still breathing.

Sniffing, Patrick excused himself from the bedroom to wash his hands, and clean the blood from his face. Now, he thought, he needed only remind his precious just who had control over life and death for him. Turning back in the bedroom, he pulled Gael's cracked and bloodied phone from his back pocket and unlocked it with the boy's finger print. Finding the two he wanted he sent a text with a place and a time, before also sending them both a picture of Gael's bloodied and broken face.

Yes, Gael would live. At least long enough to see him taken the two men he seemed to 'care' for away from him.

"The things I do, my dearest love, to prove just how much I love you." He said softly, brushing the boy's hair back before he hoisted the limp body up and carried him back out of the apartment.

Comments

[strangebyrds]

Sarcasm was, he thought, as much a coping strategy as it had ever been when he'd been in the Navy. You wouldn't meet a more sarcastic bunch of smartasses than men in the middle of a war. No one stayed earnest very long.

"I'll get the drop cloths, sweetheart," Ollie said before he paused and looked over at Ty with a steady look that held just a faint trace of tired amusement. "Is it that you could have taken care of him or is it that I shot him so you didn't have to?" He asked. "Patrick isn't the first man I've shot in the head."

Of course, the others had been soldiers in the Zagros mountains, men who might have been hunting down a crashed American pilot but who, largely, weren't complete fucking nutcases about to go on a killing spree.

"Which isn't to say that I don't want a shot of vodka as soon as we're done here," he said as he disappeared backstage. "Because Jesus Fucking Christ, if any night deserves that, it's this one."

[missinglinks]

"No, I guess not." Ty muttered, looking down at Patrick with a bit of mild disgust. He didn't know what Ollie had done in his other life, but he did know that Ollie was more than he seemed. He wanted tell the man to trust him, but he figured that wouldn't work any more than telling his father to relax during a tense meeting.

"I don't care about trying to beat you in a body count," Ty continued to mutter as he moved toward the back to the cleaning closet. He found the bleach and some water to mix it in and a bucket to mix it all. When he got back, though, he found Hadyn standing on the stage looking pensively at the blood pulled there before turning toward the body on the floor.

"Well," he said, turning to look at Ty. "You've had an eventful night." He said in a sardonic voice, looking over at Ty and then giving him a good once over. It was in that moment that Ty realized his father must have been worried, or else he would not have arrived so quickly. The older man's features relaxed as he seemed to realize Ty was fine, and he looked back at the body on the floor. "I'll call Jordan. Let him know he has an errant child on his hands no longer."

[strangebyrds]

He didn't consider it a contest, and probably he would have told Ty about it - if someone else hadn't come into the theatre. It was a popular place for two am.

He shouldn't be surprised, Ollie thought as he came out with drop cloths, that Ty had called his fathers. Both of them, because Elisha might be making sure that Gael made it through this hell, but Hadyn was the one who ran the theatre. Still - not the face he particularly wanted to see. "One way to put it," he said, glancing at Ty, who was giving him a look like he expected him to have a sarcasm-off with Hadyn. To be fair, that would be in character for him of late, but mostly he wanted to get this done, as cleaned up as it could, and have a very large drink. Maybe two.

He waited until Hadyn was out in the hall to call the King of Spades before he looked back over at Ty, and waited until the door closed before he spoke. "I'm not trying to make it a contest," he said. "In the Navy we always thought the ones who did were a little bit psycho."

[missinglinks]

Hadyn seemed to ignore Ollie, save a single glance in his direction before turning back to Ty. Moving toward his son, the man reached out and squeezed his arm briefly. For whatever it was worth, Ty supposed, his father was not one in the practice of being overly affectionate, and what he did show was somehow made more important because of it. And then he left, turning toward the hall to make his call.

"I just...Oliver," he said, "I was just wanted to be sure you were fine. You have a look about you that....I don't know how to explain, and frankly it worries me. For your sake. You didn't have to shoot him, not because I wanted to kill him or anything- but because I could have protected myself."

And then maybe Oliver wouldn't have that look in his face, in his eyes. Maybe he shouldn't even be pushing it he thought as he helped Ollie wrap the body in the plastic. "Is it against the rules for me to care?"

[strangebyrds]

"Of course it's not against the rules," Ollie said as they covered Patrick completely with the plastic and he stepped back. He hadn't looked at himself in the mirror, but he could imagine what Ty saw, at least. Pale, tight-lipped, eyes too dark. Some mornings he woke looking that way.

"Is it against the rules to want to protect you, even if you can take care of yourself?" He asked. "Jesus Christ, Ty, he was in your face. Even he might not have missed at that close of range. Even you might have had some trouble disarming him. I knew I could make the shot, so I took it. I wasn't really thinking about afterwards right that second."

He took a glance towards the door but Hadyn was evidentially still speaking to his brother, meaning he had time.

"Look," he said. "I know what it's like to have to wrestle a gun from a man determined to kill you. Zeitlin was determined to kill all of us. Not just the two of us who touched Gael." Though he and Gael - well, they didn't happen much that way the last few weeks. Not since Gael first had gone home with Carlos Sánchez. Even the night they'd left together after their little Kesha performance, Gael had been too on edge to do anything.

[missinglinks]

Ty was not particularly worried about what Hadyn saw or thought when it came to Oliver just that moment. He wasn't even sure he could explain why he was so torn over the whole situation. "I know," he said, stepping over the body and closing the distance between him and Oliver. "I know...." But knowing didn't make him worry about the consequences any less.

"Are you both done with your heart to heart?" Hadyn asked suddenly, waving his hand about in the air in a general sort of manner before he looked about. "Go on, I'll see it is cleaned up. You've both done enough for the night." He said, finally looking at Ollie for the first time. "Get that drink you want so badly. Go see your friend."

[strangebyrds]

There was something about Hadyn that had grated on him since the day they'd first actually had to speak to each other - which hadn't been until Ollie had become a Ten. In some ways being a Nine of Diamonds, first chair violinist had made for an easier life. At least one free of tangling with Hadyn Novak, who did, he thought, seem to enjoy doing the little things that were bound to put other people on edge. If he was charitable he would have reminded himself that Hadyn wouldn't have any idea that the phrase drink you want so badly was nearly enough to send Ollie running the opposite way from any bottles of anything. Instead his spine snapped straight and the tight-lipped expression Ty had managed to banish slammed back into place.

"Thank you," he said, and when he looked back at Ty, at least his eyes were losing the annoyed glitter that Ty's father had so easily invoked. "Someone needs to call Dr. Prochazka," he said. "I should do that before we do anything else. I didn't even think about it until now." And he wasn't sure Carlos would think about it. Of course, Ty's parents might have done it. Either one. Hadyn had been in the hall for a while, and Elisha Kagan arranged everything in and out of sight while seeming not to do much more than throw catnip mice for his cat.

[missinglinks]

Ty could have sighed at his father, though Hadyn did seem to hardly notice Ollie's expression. He was more or less busy texting someone else on his phone, lips drawn thin as he seemed to be thinking. He wasn't even sure that Hadyn had heard Ollie, he seemed so preoccupied.

"He has been notified." He said, suddenly, looking up at Oliver. "Mr. Byrd....Please. Go with Tyler. See to your friend. I shall see to the details. I th-...believe it is for the best." He looked to Tyler, smiling softly just a bit as he looked at the two of them. "Go..."

Tyler nodded, slowly. Then he turned to Oliver and reached out to take his arm and tug him slowly. "Come on...."

[strangebyrds]

"Alright," he murmured back to Ty. He wasn't, he finally realized, going to be allowed to just try to manage everything, even if taking charge was one of his favorite ways to deal with stress. He took a deep breath as the stepped into the hallway and glanced over at Ty. "Do you think Gael's going to be okay? Physically, I mean." Mentally, emotionally - hell, he wasn't okay, and he hadn't gone through anything like this.

"You know the worst part is that Patrick texted me because he thinks I'm sleeping with him. But I haven't slept with Gael since we got back from the outposts."

[missinglinks]

"Patrick....has always been a bit weird when it came to Gael." Ty admitted with a frown as they moved out of the theatre. He'd have to thank his father later for taking care of that mess. Not that he couldn't have done it, but was nice to not have to. "And if he hadn't texted you, it would have just been Carlos in there-" He paused, thinking about that. "And they'd probably both be dead. So, you might not have been sleeping with him. But you saved his life. Look at it that way."

And right now, Ty thought, he needed to get Ollie someplace where he could drink, forget and maybe sleep the night into a memory. "Come on, I've got whiskey at home and no where to be in the morning."