the low road // 03 the phone
Title: the low road // 03 the phone
Author: that_treason
Rating: M overall (T this chapter)
Length: around 1,500 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.”
This one's a bit different, but I hope you'll stick with me for it. Remember when I said these chapters were originally all one piece? This is one of the shorter, less stand-alone ones.
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// 03 THE PHONE
Damon's phone buzzes all the time. The noise is incessant: a hive of bees kept in the pocket of his jeans.
Caroline calls three-times-a-day-everyday to leave him long information laden tirades berating him for everything he's ever done (and failed to do). She threatens him with increasingly ingenious retaliation - all because neither of them will call her back.
"Blondie is probably building a torture chamber in her house for me at this point - and not the fun kind," Damon says, looking at his phone, the disgust in his voice mixed with amusement. "These are getting kinda graphic. Didn't think Care Bear had it in her."
He sounds almost impressed.
Elena rolls her eyes. "Sounds like you should stay away from Caroline."
"Hell, that's always true. I'm just wondering if I'm being hunted down even as we speak," Damon mutters. He darts his eyes around in a mocking attempt to look for Caroline's attack.
"We're having this conversation about Caroline because...?"
Damon tries to sell his doomed request by being polite: "You could just call her back, tell her to leave us alone-"
Elena snorts. "It's not us she's threatening Damon - just you, the big bad Salvatore. Caroline Forbes is not my problem anymore."
Matt calls every morning to leave short messages on Damon's voicemail, made up of nothing but questions for Elena: Just wondering how you're doing, Elena? Do you know that we miss you, Elena? Any idea when you might come home, Elena?
(Damon has to give him some credit: the quarterback is just the type of guy to make all that nagging sound sweet instead of passive aggressive.)
"He's playing twenty questions with my voicemail. It's fucking annoying," Damon snarls to Elena.
She just shrugs in response. "If they bother you, erase them. Or better yet, throw your phone away."
"Can't," he says, squeezing together his thumb and forefinger. "I'm this close to beating Stefan's Bejeweled high score."
Klaus calls once and Damon is sorely tempted to pick it up, just to see what possible reason the hybrid could have for contacting him. But then Elena comes out of the tiny gas station store where the've stopped for the moment, golden and dazzling in the too strong sun, and Damon thumbs the screen to send the call to voicemail.
Klaus leaves no message and never calls again.
Damon never mentions that one to Elena.
Elena threatens his phone, over and over, as they travel. Sometimes she fights halfheartedly to take it away from him. Other times she curses him, mocks him, tries anything to shame him into getting rid of it himself. But she never comes close to success and, as far as he can tell, isn't even really trying.
She says the noise of it vibrating in his pocket bothers her ears, but he thinks it's something more. She doesn't want any reminder of all that they left behind, so she hides behind flippant comments and mock violence whenever it comes up. What he doesn't understand is why she isn't trying harder to get rid of it - to force a permanent end to this last line of connection.
(Not that it would matter if she did manage to destroy the phone. If Damon's learned one thing in the past two years it's this: always have a backup.)
Stefan never calls, not after the first dozen were ignored.
But when the texting starts, Damon can't help himself. He reads Stefan's messages and eventually responds. Why he does it, he couldn't tell you if you asked. Maybe out of a need to prove himself right, win the old argument. Maybe out of brotherly devotion or brotherly rivalry. Whatever the reason he might tell you, it's only a surface explanation. It always comes back to this: Damon can't let go of Stefan - they're under each other's skin.
So Stefan and Damon text back and forth, about Elena and the trip. Around and around they go, each one questioning the other's methods in short sarcastic little bursts.
Stefan argues as loudly as a text will let him that Elena's actions (killing the boy in the diner in particular) will drive her further away from her humanity. When the day finally comes that she does switch back on, the memories of everything she's done will break her. Maybe she'll never come back from it. She needs to be home, surrounded by those who care enough to keep her in check until she comes back to them.
She needs to be contained.
Damon argues right back. Control from the outside has never helped a switched off vampire change their mind - Stefan and Damon are proof of that. Containment breeds contempt, and only encourages the contained to lash out more. Controlling Elena, even if it's for the kindest reasons by the kindest of friends, will drive her further away and deeper into denial. She needs the space to figure things out, to come to terms with the emotions she left behind.
Around and around they go.
Damon would lay money down that Stefan is judging him as much as the situation. Yet another example of Damon's selfishness - letting Elena run wild to satisfy his own desires, to get his way. Stefan never calls him out directly, but Damon can imagine the wrinkled brow behind every passive aggressive note.
Stefan doesn't really trust the new Damon: patient Damon, bumpless Damon, the Damon who promised to wait for her. So Damon does everything to convince Stefan that this method is working. He can see Elena changing, see little sparks of humanity - something is happening. He just needs more time.
Stefan never brings up Silas, and Damon never asks.
Damon knows from the regular reports Caroline flings at his voicemail that things with Silas have reached a stalemate. The Originals skipped town early on (gone south to Louisiana for some reason), but Stefan and Caroline have managed to keep Bonnie safely hidden away from Silas without any help. They distract him and mislead him, discouraging any outright conflict they could never hope to win.
Damon tells himself it's for the best that he's here, with Elena. If Elena was still in Mystic Falls, roaming around switched off and seeking freedom, they'd all be too distracted by her to focus on the Silas threat. He's doing his part for the war effort by following her around the country, subtly encouraging her return to the land of humanity - and letting everyone else get on with it.
And given his past history, he's just as likely to provoke Silas into another, more personal massacre as he is to really help with their careful guerilla warfare.
(This is how he comforts himself, how he justifies it when he listens to Caroline's scolding messages. More and more Damon feels a twinge of guilt when he hears play-by-play descriptions of the fight against a now permanently immortal and very angry Silas. But all he has to do is look over at Elena, sleek and alive and with him, and he can put the guilt from his mind. Justify it all to himself. For a little while.)
Damon never brings up the sex, and Stefan never asks.
He's not sure what he'd type if it did come up. He'd have to figure out what it all meant first, before he could ever translate it down into a meaningful text.
Elena always initiates, like that night after the diner. Sometimes she seems angry or frustrated or passionate - but it can be hard to tell if it's real emotion or just a good fake. More often Elena's mood is indecipherable, aside from the sheer fact that she wants him.
She never lets him talk, during or after. If he tries to speak she stops him, with fingers or a fist or a glaring look. Slams him down on the bed or bites hard into his skin. After a few nights of this he gets the hint and stops trying to make any sound that could be construed as communication. Just lets it happen, in the dark.
It's not the same as what they had - that one happy night in the ancient past, before the Cure or the sire bond or Silas. Always something is missing, locked away where he can't reach. But it's still Elena, so it's still a brilliant shining thing, unlike the same acts with anyone else.
He knows it's worth it, worth bending to her rules, because sometimes he sees, in flashes and fits and starts, the barest hints of real emotion playing on her face.
So he never denies her when she starts another round. He watches and he waits, hoping that she'll find her way back to him through this, as much as through the feeds or the kills or anything else they do on the road.
But he couldn't explain it to Stefan, not with all the words in the world.
Not that it matters. He's already given Stefan the most important truth: this won't last forever. He can see it in her eyes, when she threatens his phone or cuts off conversation by lifting his shirt. There are cracks in the careful walls that he forced her to construct, around her humanity and her past. He has plenty of time - they both do. All eternity for her to find her way back.
And he knows he can already see the start of it - knows he can see it in her eyes.
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Thank you to latbfan on ff.net for asking questions when I wrote the original first chapter - particularly questions about Damon & Stefan and what's going on back home. They really made me think through Damon's motivations.
I should have the next (much longer, much plot-ier) chapter ready in a few days.
