the low road // 02 dry
Title: the low road // 02 dry
Author: that_treason
Rating: M overall (M this chapter)
Length: around 3,000 words (this chapter)
Characters: Damon/Elena
Spoilers
through 4x18
very AU after that
Warnings
references to sex while switched off
vampires eat people & vampires kill people
Disclaimers
Everything belongs to the people who own them.
I am just borrowing.
continuation of this prompt from upupa_epops:
“Damon/Elena, AU from 4x17. When Elena reaches to steal Katherine's addresses, Damon impulsively decides to screw the high road and team up with Elena instead.”
A/N: First off, please be aware: I've increased the rating from T to M. There are some references to switched-off sexy times (nothing particularly explicit), but mostly the rating is for violence. Switched off vampires are violent folk.
Originally I wrote one long chapter as a series of short little vignettes - scenes from Elena and Damon's trip out on the low road that I titled "in the country." But then several of the vignettes got away from me and the whole thing got huge, so I've divided it up into shorter chapters by vignette. Consider these little chapters together as part two of a three part story.
Many thanks to afanoftvd, latbfan, and Trogdor19 on ff.net for all the awesome discussions they had with me about continuing this thing. You should be reading everything they write because they are fantastic authors.
[ the low road (part two): in the country ]
// 02 DRY
She slips it into conversation, easy as breathing: she's never drained anyone dry.
Damon looks at her over the solid beige rim of his coffee mug, blue eyes framed by dark lashes. Elena keeps laying gold polish on her nails without pausing to look at his reaction. Her coffee cools untouched by her elbow.
“Not even while you were munching on cheerleaders?” he asks.
“Did you hear Caroline whining about having to hide a body? No, of course not. Something always makes me stop, whether it’s my choice or another person’s -- every time I go to feed, ” she says, laughing to herself. “That’s weird, right? Weird for a vampire?”
There’s electricity on the back of Damon’s neck as she talks, prickly and cold. He’s not sure how he feels about the turn the conversation has taken, going from mundane to dangerous between two sips of coffee.
When he pauses just a little too long she looks up at him expectant, so he settles for blurting, “Well...It’s not that weird.”
“But it must feel good, right? I know...there’s this pull to keep going, even when I feel them slipping away.”
Damon shrugs. “Sure, we all feel that. Part of the vampire fun time package.”
“Then it is weird that I haven’t done it -- it should be totally natural for me.”
“Nah, better to learn control when you’re new,” he says, keeping his voice level and undisturbed. “Otherwise you end up playing jigsaw puzzle party games with body parts and finger painting in blood. Believe me, you knowing when to stop means you don’t have to sit at the vampire kiddie table for the rest of eternity.”
“You mean like Stefan,” she says.
“Stefan, sure. Rippers in general.”
Damon wonders if she’ll take the bait, follow the conversation down more lurid paths and leave the topic behind. He rifles through the grisly Ripper stories in his head, ready to shock and titillate. Stefan’s not the only Ripper in the world running amok and they’ve all left trails of destruction behind.
But instead she frowns down at her nails and ignores the offered segue.
“I’m more like you than Stefan. You’re always saying it, over and over. And I know you’ve killed people while feeding, so I don’t see the problem.”
Like that she’s caught him -- killed off the doubts wriggling in the back of his skull. All it took was a reminder of that professed similarity between them.
Damon justifies it to himself as her need for some kind of maturity, now that she’ll never really grow up. She needs to experiment and find her way in the world.
(But honestly: there’s a thrill that charges through his chest when she compares herself to him. And that thrill is ready and willing to bolster any justification his brain might come up with.)
So he snorts and leans back against the diner booth seat, throws an arm along the vinyl top -- a portrait of relaxed grace. “Nah, no problems. For the moment, I am all about expanding your horizons. It’s just a matter of finding the right time.”
They've been driving since they left Katherine’s town, all through the day and into the darkness. Stops along the way for gas and snacks and nail polish, but never more than a brief pause. Both of them want to get away from everything they left behind, so they head west, into wide spaces where trees don’t cling to the road.
Rain poured down sometime after midnight, which forced Damon to look for a place to hole up. At least an hour passed with no luck before they pulled into the parking lot of a little railcar diner -- all lit up, white and chrome and shining out through the deluge. Inexplicably open 24 hours in a rural town.
Now it’s 3am, in what might be Indiana, but could be Illinois. Neither of them care. The rain roars against the windows, and there’s no sign of it letting up.
“Can I freshen up your coffee?” the waiter asks.
He’s young and tall, wide in the shoulders, with sandy hair and grey-blue eyes. They’ve been ignoring him with laser focus, for all the ways he reminds them of home. Damon’s been chewing back snarky questions about high school football and high school dances (not quite sure how Elena might react), instead letting the boy sit on the counter and read undisturbed from a thin book.
They’ve been ignoring him so long and with such strength that they didn’t notice when some waiterly-instinct brought him wandering over at the exact wrong time.
Elena and Damon’s eyes meet across the table, blue and brown, for two long seconds.
Then it all seems to happen at once: she drops the nail polish brush and pulls the boy down into the booth next to her. There are streaks of gold left on his skin from her still wet nails when she drags his face around to look him in the eye.
“Don’t scream.”
The waiter’s heartbeat races loud, counting off the moments left in his life. When Elena snaps her teeth into his neck, it speeds up even further. He panics and struggles against her, breath hissing through his teeth.
The nail polish brush skitters gold across the table and onto the seat as Damon slides from the booth. He wants a better view of what’s happening. Moves himself so he can see and leans on the chipped counter next to the pastry case.
He knows what’s happening for Elena, as he watches. Somewhere, in the slowing of every heartbeat, there’s a bright line -- this side life, that side death. And the blood pulls you along, with every mouthful convincing you to take and take and take, until the line is far behind you. But -- for Damon at least -- even then, even with that sweetness in his mouth, there is still always a choice, a moment when he can pull back, if he’s so inclined. And he finds that choice intoxicating, possibly better than the blood itself. The ability to control his actions and choose -- life for him, death for her.
Stefan is the opposite, as far as Damon has seen. He loses himself, swallowed whole by the feed. There is no Stefan -- no control, no choices. Just hunger and blood, never satisfaction, never enough. Stefan consumes. It’s only been in recent years that he’s made baby steps towards the control he should have developed a century ago.
And now, Damon thinks, we see Elena.
Blood soaks the boy’s shirt from collar to waist. Elena drinks, no attention paid to the mess, in long squishy gulps, while his skin loses color and his limbs go limp. The once racing heartbeat slows and quiets, but Elena doesn’t pause. She grips onto him even tighter, nails breaking skin where her fingers press too tight.
Damon touches tongue to teeth and watches as life drains from the boy.
He’s made an art form out of self-control and moderation, but that does nothing to change his instinctual attraction to the scene before him -- a beautiful girl and all that blood. The warm copper scent in the air is so strong he can almost taste it on his tongue. His body burns with demand, a bottomless pit screaming always to be filled, but he chooses to ignore it. Elena is magnificent as she feeds, even bathed in harsh fluorescent light -- he drinks her in instead, fills himself up with the picture they make.
But soon enough he listens to the quiet human heartbeat slow until there’s nothing left but silence.
When she pulls away from the ruin of the boy’s neck her eyes shoot to the kitchen door. Damon can hear, just as well as as Elena can, the little noises of a person moving around in the diner’s kitchen. She drops the body to the floor.
Damon doesn’t stop to think: he’s up and through the door to the back before Elena can make a move. He rips the cook from the griddle and presses him up against the wall. Their faces are close, blue eyes capturing muddy green ones.
“Don’t yell, don’t move. How many working here tonight?”
“T-t-t-two, me and Tommy. The new kid that does the dishes called out s-s-sick.” The man is covered in grease and full of fear, shaking himself apart in Damon’s grasp.
“Ok,” he says with a jovial snap of his fingers. “Follow me.”
Damon wanders back through the kitchen door with the man shuffling in his wake, terror written all over his face. Elena is hopped up on the counter near the body, cleaning her face with a wad of slim paper napkins. She flashes Damon a toothy smile when she sees the man following behind.
There’s a whimper from the cook when he glimpses the body on the floor. This doesn’t slow Elena’s reach for him, leaning off the counter to pull him in close. Before she can make contact, Damon steps in the way.
“Easy, gorgeous,” he says taking her face in his hands. “Think you can control yourself this time?”
She looks over his shoulder at the shivering man in the wide aisle. Damon watches her closely, ready for a fight, but she nods her head and motions with her fingers for the man to come near.
The cook jumps when Damon throws an arm over his shoulder, drawing him closer to where Elena sits on the counter.
“What’s your name, sir?” He’s asking the cook, but his eyes are always on Elena.
“R-r-roger.”
“Ok, Roger, Elena here’s just going to practice on you a little bit.” His arm shoves Roger even closer, well within Elena’s easy reach. “She’ll take great care of you, pinky swear.”
Roger stumbles and she catches him. There’s a warm smile on her face now, brown eyes calm and fingers soothing. She coos to him and strokes his face. Roger’s breathing slows and the shivering in his limbs calms. Her hands inch around his shoulders, taking Damon’s place, gently drawing him into a comforting hug. Probably the whole thing takes seconds, but it seems like hours.
Elena takes her time angling his neck with her face until everything is lined up just so. Damon can’t see with all her hair in the way, but he can hear the snap and crunch when she tears into Roger’s throat. And he can definitely see Roger go stiff with pain as Elena traps him to herself. She wraps herself around him with all four limbs, crushing him while she pulls hard at the wound.
Within the space of a minute Damon hears this last human heartbeat begin to slow.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he says. “Control yourself or live at the kiddie table for all eternity. Your choice.”
She backs away from Roger’s neck and hisses, blood covering a sullen mouth -- but gives in all the same, biting her wrist and shoving it into his mouth. He whimpers and mumbles, muffled by her wrist, as the blood flows down his throat.
“Not too shabby,” Damon says when she pulls her wrist away.
He claps a hand onto Roger’s shoulder and directs his attention to the bloody floor around the body. “Rog, I’m afraid we’re leaving this place a bit of a mess, but I’m sure you are more than capable of taking care of things. Clean up any signs of blood from this whole area. Forget everything you saw here tonight. If anyone asks you about poor dead Tommy, say he went out on his break to meet a girl and never came back. Shame really.”
Damon waves a hand over the body and walks over to the front door of the diner.
“You break it, you bought it,” he says to Elena with a grin. “I have a tarp in the trunk once you get him outside -- there’s no way he’s dripping all over my car.”
And then he’s gone out into the darkness.
By the time Elena comes stumbling out of the diner with the body (strong enough to carry, but unbalanced by the unfamiliar dead weight), he’s got the trunk open and the tarp pulled out onto the ground. There’s still a drizzle falling from the sky, but it’s nothing as dramatic as the past few hours have been. A puddle has already collected on the tarp by the time she gets near enough to drop the body unceremoniously in the middle. Damon helps her bundle the wrapped body back into the trunk.
Elena’s silent as he turns the car from the parking lot back onto the main road. He can sense the frustration coming off her in waves. It’s understandable to him: she drained one body dry and then had to force herself to stop on the second. To a vampire so new, particularly one with her humanity switched off, it could be almost painful to pull back from a kill like that, especially with the memory of going all the way so recent in her mind. And it was her first time too.
He knows that all the frustration in the world is worth it, now that it’s proved -- she can choose when she kills, how she kills, if she kills.
No Ripper after all.
So he lets her sulk in silence, happy enough for the both of them. Just drives them without any comment to a lonely spot in the woods, where he commits poor Tommy to the dirt. Elena never gets out of the car or offers to help and he doesn’t bother to ask. Instead she watches him through the window as the rain spits down. Half an hour later it’s done and they’re gone.
Damon finds them a shabby little motel while it’s still dark, but only just. He wants a place to shower and sleep before facing any more time on the road or figuring out a plan. Maybe a quick bite from a maid. It’s been too long since he properly fed and watching Elena devour the waiter had encouraged his appetite.
Elena’s covered in blood, so he leaves her in the car while he goes inside to get the room. The old man behind the counter never says a word, just accepts cash and hands over a plastic room key.
Damon drives around the corner of the building to park in front of their ground floor room. He’s fixated on taking a shower to wash of all the grime of the road. Elena’s bloodier than him, but she’s also pissed off and sulky, and he figures it won’t hurt to let her stew a little longer.
In another time he would have flashed his best rakish smile and suggested that they save time by showering together. Old Elena would have squawked with rage and hit him. Recent Elena would have lit up with a smile -- all the better to make him happy. But he has no idea about Current Elena -- what she’d do or say in response to a flirty tease. After the events at the diner he decides not press his luck, to focus on one experiment at a time. So he reluctantly puts the shared shower idea (and all it would entail) out of his mind.
Current Elena has other plans. Once they’re both in the room, she slams the door behind herself and tackles him into the far wall. There’s light from around the edges of the curtain on the window -- she didn’t even give him time to hit the switch -- but otherwise the room is dark and musty and silent.
He tries to talk, but her fingers curl across his mouth and cut him off.
Fingers get replaced by her mouth and too sharp teeth -- teeth that slash open the skin of his lips. He tastes his own blood in his mouth when her tongue pushes past. She presses him into the wall, hands grasping at his shirt, tearing seams in a dozen places, but holding back from removing it entirely. The smell of the drying blood on her clothes fills his nose and mouth and brings to mind a flash of the recent scene: Elena in the diner, drinking life from the waiter’s neck. A little breathy noise escapes him.
Damon tries to raise a hand to her face, to regain some semblance of control over her and himself, but Elena grabs his wrist, tight enough to crack bone, and holds it down.
So Damon pushes her, thrusts with his whole body instead of just a hand, away from both him and the wall, with all the force resident in his much older bones. She flies at the bed, landing awkwardly and bouncing, and then he’s on her, caging her in with his arms.
He chuckles at her frustration and she growls back, tense in every limb. A full-on laugh escapes him (mostly aimed at himself, the man who tried so hard to be respectful and chaste). His laughter infuriates her, drives her to flail and scratch. The look in her eyes, shining at him in the dark, full of something more than simple lust decides it for him: he won’t deny her what she wants twice tonight. Instead he lets her grab fistfuls of his shirt to pull it up and over his head. Lets her flip them over on the bed and crawl on top of him.
He’s happy enough to be the target of all her aggression.
The laughter turns to a softer noise when he feels her teeth slip sharp into his neck.
###
If you have the time, leave me a comment. I'd love to hear what you think of this continuation, even if it's just a few words. I'll have the next installment up in a few days.
