the low road // 07 puzzles (part one)
Title: the low road // 07 puzzles
Author: that_treason
Rating: M overall (T (sliding into M) this chapter)
Length: around 7000 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: I hit the LJ character limit on this one and had to split this chapter over two entries.
// 07 PUZZLES (part one)
It's just the tiniest scrape, the briefest scratch - bare skin brushing so lightly over carpet.
A human would never notice it. Most vampires wouldn't give it a second thought - even if they were paying enough attention to pick it out.
But to Damon, listening intently to the silence of this house, it rings out like a bell.
"Heard that. You're in the hallway next to the laundry room." He doesn't bother to look up from typing on his phone.
A disgruntled sigh is the only response.
"You know the drill, back outside and try again. This time come in up top somehow - attic window or something."
He swallows the last of his bourbon and sets the empty glass on the end table beside him. Back down the hall he can hear the front door open and close - it's Elena, not bothering to cover the sounds she makes as she exits the house for the fifth time this afternoon.
They've been here a full day and night, the longest they've stayed in one place since they set out from New York - practically nesting in a foreclosed two-story family home, tucked away in a dying housing development on the outskirts of a dissolving suburban town, just west of the Rockies.
Whoever used to own this house is gone now, without any sign of where they went or what happened. The rooms are still furnished and nothing is trashed. They needed no invitation to get through the door. It's as if the previous owners just vanished off the earth, content to leave a cozy little vampire hideaway behind, in a perfect empty shell of a neighborhood. Plenty of room for supernatural practice free of prying eyes.
No neighbors around to bother them or notice any screams.
The phone in his hand buzzes and a new message pops up onscreen. He snorts and starts to type haphazardly with one thumb, while his other hand feels around on the end table, searching absently for the bottle of bourbon he knows is there. When his fingertips brush the glass he grasps at it with long practiced skill, pouring another double into his glass without a pause or glance.
The texts started two days ago, right before Damon found their cozy new temporary home. They came from a number he didn't recognize, with an area code that was Pennsylvanian not Virginian. Normally he would have ignored it - assumed it was a text from someone screwing with him - but the first text was so strange and somehow the opposite of hostile that it caught his attention: an overly mannered and archaically-phrased question about how humans manage to get around if they lacked a vehicle.
There's only person he knows who is both out of touch enough to be asking these particular questions and desperate enough to reach out to him for answers.
Rebekah.
It was the highlight of his day when he figured it out - an un-vamped Original coming to him for human survival advice. He got the impression (but never asked about it directly) that she was avoiding her brothers and the rest of the Mystic Falls gang. She'd only come to him out of complete desperation (and, he suspects, a fundamental lack of common sense).
Lucky for her he was currently the perfect combination of cheerful and bored - with just enough curiosity thrown in - to override his natural inclination to tell Rebekah to go fuck herself. On a whim he'd texted her back, eventually ending up in a back-and-forth discussion on the merits of various modes of public transportation. Now it's gone on for all of two days, the conversation gradually sliding from fake IDs to work visas to bar etiquette.
It gives him something to do while he waits for all the pieces to fall into place.
Around him the house is still, except for the subtle noise of his fingers on the screen and the occasional buzz when a message is sent or received.
Minutes pass by.
And then for a moment he freezes, head cocked to the side. Listening.
"Better this time," he calls back over his shoulder, "but I can hear the pull string for the kitchen fan swinging around in there. Again, try the back door this time."
There's a blur and Elena's in front of him. She's got his phone in her hands before he can react, but she's largely uninterested in it - just wants to take it away from him and wave it in his face.
"Is there a point to creeping around like this, over and over and over?" Her voice is thick with sarcasm. She brings the phone up under his chin to raise his face up. "I'm starting to suspect this is all some elaborate plan to get me to beat on you again - it's a sex thing isn't it? You're an old man with a kink for girls that hit you back."
All it takes is the snotty growl in her voice and the phone digging into his chin to make his muscles tense for a fight. He's up from the phone and behind her in a second, one arm wrapped around her neck, the other reaching out to pluck the phone out of her hands. Elena takes a sharp breath she doesn't need, full of the scent of leather and bourbon.
"You know," he says with lips pressed into her hair, right on the edge of her ear, "you're absolutely right." He pauses for dramatic effect. "This was never about teaching you to sneak around. As it is you're practically silent as the grave."
He uses his grip on her shoulders to spin her out and around to face him. The feral twist that was his mouth a moment ago widens to a grin. "Really I just needed to stall for time."
"Stall? Why?" Elena regains her balance instantly, pulling away from him and shifting subtly into a fighter's stance, tensed to react to his next move. Damon can't help but be just a little impressed at how far she's come, how effortlessly she turns suspicion into safety. He slips the phone into the back pocket of his jeans with overly careless nonchalance, eyes steady on Elena's. He watches her gaze flick to the movement of his hand, watches her analyze the action for information and danger, watches her eyes jump back up to meet his.
"No, wait, better question," she says, "What are we doing now that the stalling is over?"
"All this time," he says, amused at her instant suspicion, "these practice games we've been playing at? Kids' stuff - fundamentals. It's time for some real challenges."
Elena's posture loosens just a bit. She's more than ready for a change from the monotony of their current pace and definitely curious about what Damon might consider a 'real challenge.'
"Sounds fair," she says, crossing her arms. "What are we practicing?"
"Mmmmm, think of it less as practice and more as a test. We're going to challenge the most important weapon in your arsenal."
It's Elena's turn to roll her eyes, but her smile is colder than Damon's and her voice is full of snark. "This is going to be some sort of weird motivational speaker thing, right? Like my unbreakable spirit or something."
"It's your brain, smartass." He smirks at her, unwilling to be goaded. "Older vampires will always get the drop on you physically - they'll always be stronger and faster and more experienced. All you've got going for you in those situations is how fast and how well you can problem solve. Your lack of humanity gives you an edge, but only just."
"Is that what you've been doing nonstop on your phone for three days? Sexting with some ancient Nosferatu all this time trying to set up a duel or something?" She reaches around him to try to snag the phone from his pocket, but it's a slow feint, mostly for show. Damon play slaps her hand away.
"Please, you're nowhere near ready for a live fire exercise. We're starting out a little lower on the food chain for your first round. Win this and we'll see about getting you some of that Nosferatu action."
"Humans?"
"Humans."
###
Damon leads her out of the house and away, down the winding roads of the housing development. He hums to himself a little, oozing smug satisfaction. His lack of chatter gives Elena the time to reconsider the activities of the past two days in light of this new challenge - whatever it is.
She knows that Damon picked this house and development for a reason.
He's changed since the fight in the bar, doesn't dance around her anymore with too much patience and calm. The old her would have found the return to snark and agitation - along with all those bumps in the road - infuriating, but it does more to relax the new Elena than any soothing tone or carefully managed deflection, and she finds herself trusting him more and more to take her where she needs to go. She's no longer worried that he's doing his best to change her back. Somehow he's proven it, just through his willingness to fight back.
So she let him take over their travel plans for a little while, let him decide where they should go and what they should do there. Let slip some of her control, in favor of curiosity.
When he suddenly moved them from an endless string of hotels to a foreclosed house in the suburbs she accepted it without question. When he sent her into town alone on a series of seemingly menial tasks (good bourbon that required trips to multiple liquor stores, hours at a laundromat washing their clothes and arranging for dry cleaning) she figured he was planning something interesting.
The day spent creeping into the house over and over, though, seemingly without end, has worn her down a bit. This had better be good, she thinks, but never quite finishes the threat in her mind, just follows behind him over the warm sidewalks, through the hazy summer smells of grass and heated asphalt.
When they finally stop, six blocks and two turned-corners from where they started, she can't discern the reason - it's just a cul-de-sac of houses, tucked away at the edge of the development. Most of the buildings look abandoned - with un-mowed lawns and paint peeling away - but there are three in the middle that have life in them yet.
Damon turns to face her, arms spread wide to indicate the half-circle of houses at the dead end.
"Your assignment: get inside each of these three houses," he says, looking and pointing at the three better kept houses, "and call my cell from their landlines. You have 24 hours for each house - three days, three break-ins." He turns back and grins at her, smile wide and full of teeth.
It's obvious to Elena that he's inordinately pleased with himself over something - always a reason to be cautious around Damon, and even more so now that he's no longer pulling his punches around her. So she takes his mood as seriously - very few things make Damon happy that don't involve sex or trouble and this is decidedly not his sexy voice.
"That's it? Just get inside and call your phone?"
"That's it."
"There has to be some kinda catch."
Damon smirks and shrugs and refuses to answer any more questions. Just turns her at the shoulders and shoos her into the street, aimed towards the first house in the row.
She approaches it with caution - paces the sidewalk out front, taking in all the angles. There's a red brick facade on most of the front, but she can see cream colored siding where the corner turns. Two car garage, porch light on, one car parked in the driveway. The lawn is manicured and neat, edged by a border of late spring flowers. The perfect line in the grass between this property and the next tells the story of the neighborhood: deserted there, protected here.
No toys laying around. No fence on the yard. No sound of animals. No signs of life.
What would be the catch?
Elena shoots a look out to where Damon has come to rest, leaning against a telephone pole at the opening of the cul-de-sac. He stares back, arms crossed, waiting for her to move. There are no clues she can see in his posture - he's relaxed and calm and kind of... smug?
That settles it for her. Whatever he has planned can't be terribly dangerous for her, otherwise he'd be on edge. So she shrugs her shoulders and crosses the lawn towards the porch. Three steps up and she's in front of the screen door, rattling it when she knocks with one fist.
There's no immediate response from inside, so Elena pulls the screen door open far enough to peer into the darkness of the house. She briefly wonders if maybe the house is uninhabited but somehow otherwise trapped, but quickly discards the notion when her hand bounces off an invisible wall blocking her path. It's still disconcerting to her, the way magic owns her life now - sometimes air is solid and sometimes it's not, and there's nothing the physical laws of the universe will ever have to say about it again.
"Hello? Anyone home?"
There were distant rustlings coming from inside the house, somewhere up the stairs and out of sight. At the sound of her voice the rustling stops. Everything goes quiet for a moment, before she picks out the slightest sounds of sneakers on carpet. Whoever this is, she thinks, they move quiet enough to make even Damon take notice.
Turns out to be nothing and no one out of the ordinary: the face of a scrawny seeming kid, no more than sixteen years old, comes swimming out of the darkness of the house's interior. Wide round glasses perch on his nose and cover most of the top half of his face. His hair sticks up in all directions, disheveled through lack of care rather than some ragged style.
"Hey there," Elena says, flashing a sweet smile. Her voice is warm and so close to being human, faked from her memories of what it's like to feel. "My car broke down a few blocks away and your house is the first one that seems to have anybody home. Think I could come inside and use your phone?"
She turns the charm on him hard, trying for innocence with just a hint of flirt - bites her lip just a bit in embarrassment and wrinkles her nose.
He reaches up and unlatches the screen door with one hand. The spring on the door is broken, so once the hook is undone it swings open wide. She steps back to let it move, doesn't get any closer to the boy. Doesn't want the invisible force between them to give her away.
But with the door out of the way she's free to notice his right hand wrapped in a large white bandage, with crusted blood showing all the way through.
Before she can even think to control it, she feels the darkness moving across her face, in veins and blackened eyes. One look at the boy's face and she knows that he saw it. He doesn't look afraid enough to move away from her yet, just looks tense and puzzled, trying to decide what's wrong with the beautiful woman who has inexplicably landed on his doorstep.
Elena tries to salvage the moment, acts according to logic without over-thinking. Any second now he could take off into the house - she needs to get him under control.
So she leans in as far as that invisible wall will let her, quicker than any human could, and catches his gaze. Nose almost touching nose, two sets of brown eyes locked together. She can't physically reach him to hold his face, so she has to be quick and let the compulsion spill without much subtlety or thought, before he can turn away.
"Invite me in right now." The full force of her will is behind every syllable, naked aggression lacing the words. No trace left of her earlier coy tone.
His mouth falls open and he stumbles back, tripping over his own shoes, obviously shocked by this stranger on his porch with her too wide eyes and dead voice. His hand flies out to grip the solid interior door - both to steady himself and to bring it within easy reach to close.
"Look, lady," he squeaks out, "I don't know what your problem is, but you really can't come inside. I'm sorry your car is busted, but I can't help you with it. I gotta go now and my mom will be home any minute and you should definitely go right now before she gets here."
The door slams shut in her face. She hears a deadbolt drive home from within, hears the boy slide down the inside of the door onto the floor, hears his breath tear out of his chest. There's something in that noise, in the panic that she hears from his heart and his breath that excites her and aggravates her all at the same time.
Elena wants inside, regardless of Damon's puzzle.
Thinking of him makes her turn involuntarily to look where she left him, leaning against the pole across the way. But Damon isn't out there anymore - no he's already here at the bottom of the porch steps, less than a foot away - looking up at her from below and grinning like a cat.
"You've got him drinking vervain." She says it simply, no question in her voice.
"Yep, him and his mom." he says. "Picked it up when we passed through Boulder - hippie all-natural grocery stores on every corner, perfect for organic chamomile tea and garden variety vervain."
"Why would you buy vervain?"
"Comes in handy," he says, lifting his shoulders and squishing his mouth, obviously pleased with himself but trying to act cool about it. "A weapon that can be used against vampires is good to have around."
"And the cut on his hand?" she asks as she crosses her arms. "You do that too?"
He doesn't bother to answer her questions. Just says, "Can't wait to see how you get in there" and turns to leave, boots crunching on the concrete of the path. He doesn't make it far, almost immediately swings around again before she has time to yell or comment or reply.
"Oh, and one other thing I should mention. Your mission is to get into this house with a minimal death toll. Eating them all is too easy - and easy's not at all what we're here for. So low body count equals higher score. Higher body count...well..."
"And I care about score because?"
"Just like any other game, darlin' - better score, better prize."
And then he's gone, zipping away out of sight. Elena looks down the road, idly wondering if he's out there watching her. Maybe he's up a tree or crouched in the bushes. Maybe he's sitting on a roof, eating popcorn and watching her through binoculars. But there's no evidence of it that she can see, so it becomes a moot point - if Damon wants to spy on her it doesn't change the game.
And if he isn't out there spying... Paranoia won't change a thing.
She turns briefly back to look at the locked front door again. Tucks a wandering strand of hair behind her ear and cants her head as she listens to the ragged breathing from the other side of the door. And then, without warning, walks away - down the steps and out onto the sidewalk, turning to take in the buildings as a whole.
Three houses all in a row. Each one trapped in a different way. She figures Damon went for escalating trials - first house easier than the second, and that house in turn easier than the third. She turns the puzzle over in her mind, looking for the greater loophole - the one cut that will sever the whole knot.
It comes to her, in that moment, that this challenge has nothing to do with the humans involved and everything to do with the original problem - how to defeat a vampire older and more arrogant than her.
Time to switch things up. She walks down the street, towards the third house, not caring in the least if Damon is out there watching.
