the low road // 10 troublemaker (part two)
Title: the low road // 10 troublemaker (part two)
Author: that_treason
Rating: M overall (M this chapter)
Length: around 8500 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.”
It's early afternoon by the time they find the bar, a dive tucked away at the end of a narrow side street, on the northern edge of town, far from the lights of both the Strip and Downtown. For all of Damon's bluster about knowing all the details of the hunter bar, it turns out Alaric never really gave him clear directions to the place. They were both well past drunk the last time they discussed it - and there's only so much even a vampire's gifted memory can do against an ocean of bourbon.
It doesn't help that the bar's proprietor seems intent on keeping the lowest profile of any business in the country. No web presence at all, not even a number in an aggregated online directory. They have to stop and ask the locals, who are almost universally annoyed when they hear the question. Apparently this place doesn't have the best reputation with the neighborhood.
Eventually they find the place - a weird little alley between warehouses, dead-ended at the front of the bar. The street is desert bright, washing out the colors of the block letter neon sign that covers the front, but even so Elena can make out every word:
THE BLOODY MARY
"Cute," Damon says and flashes Elena a smile. She looks from his face to the sign and back again, but never gives him more than a shrug.
They make their cautious way down the street towards the bar. It's flooded with sunlight, arranged that way pretty obviously on purpose, between the careful angle of the road, the cutouts knocked in the rooftops to let more light through and the makeshift mirrors stuck up along the walls haphazardly. There's probably never a moment while the sun is in the sky that this alley is in darkness.
Shadows have no chance to grow. The bar is a castle with a moat made of light.
Elena picks out the spotlights in the corners too, angled to light up every inch of concrete when they're on. Otherwise the alleyway is empty, almost scoured clean. No civic improvements or trash receptacles or even litter. Just concrete and asphalt and bricked up windows, all of it baking in the sun.
The door on the front seems perfectly normal, but Elena approaches it with caution anyway. She tugs at the handle, expecting a quick give, but finding it surprisingly heavy and possibly stuck. It gives after a moment, sending up an awful screech when the over-thick reinforced door scrapes against the wall. Security and alarm all in one.
Damon doesn't hesitate to cross inside once she's pulled the door wide enough to allow passage. Elena starts to follow, but what she sees inside gives her pause, so she stands there, awkward on the threshold.
It's hard at first to really understand what's going on in the room, because everything is broken up into small blocks of color and dark. It takes her a moment to process the effect and understand the cause: the ceiling is one large skylight secured with an irregular grid of iron bars. Beams of sunlight pass through at odd angles, creating confusing patterns on the shapes inside.
Once her eyes adjust to the confusion, she makes her way inside, trailing behind Damon towards the bar.
It's only early afternoon, but already there are people scattered around the room, nursing drinks. They're seated at simple wooden tables, unfinished and unstained. Most sit alone, minding their own business: some further illuminated by the glow from laptop screens, others surrounded by sprawled stacks of notebooks and paper.
Damon and Elena's entrance seems to merit an initial once-over from everyone in the room, but no one's eyes linger long once they cross under the skylight.
Behind the ply-wood bar there's a man with his back turned to them, rinsing cheap-looking glasses in a sink. He's dressed in a ripped and faded black trench, that covers him from shoulders to boots. Long black locks of hair hang in his face, obscuring it from view. It's obvious that he notices them, but he doesn't bother to turn around and look - just continues on with his washing.
"Can I help you folks?" the bartender asks, head down. Elena can see that he's lining up the finished clean glasses on a tray at his side. "Have to tell ya up front: probably won't be serving the young lady for another few years."
Damon turns up the charm, flashing a respectful smile at the man's back. "We were told - the young lady and I - that the good people of this establishment might be able to help us with a particular kind of hunt."
"Mind if I ask who it was that did the telling?" Another glass goes into the water with a low-key splash. The bartender's voice maintains its careful neutrality.
"My friend talked this place up," Damon says, raising his voice and talking faster. He's bouncing up onto the balls of his feet, already growing impatient with how the bartender is brushing them off. Elena can hear the agitation creeping into his voice. "He said this bar was the hub for a particular kind of hunter who wanted to operate in Vegas. He specifically said to talk to the owner, someone named Oberlin. That you?"
"Might be," the bartender says simply. "Might not."
Damon rolls his eyes and puts both palms on the splintery bar top. "Fuck, we've been here five minutes and already I'm sick of the cloak and dagger bullshit. I don't know what special handshake or secret code you're looking for pal, but how 'bout this: Vampires," he yells, "Vampires vampires vampires vampires vampires. Is that enough to get your attention?"
Elena shifts her weight to the side, glancing back over her shoulder to get a better view of the rest of the bar. She feels suddenly exposed with her back to all those hunter-filled tables, but there's no visible threat. The patrons don't even look up for curiosity's sake.
The bartender says nothing for a moment, just finishes up with the glass already in his hands. He sets it down in line with the others, flips a bar towel over his shoulder, and picks up the tray. In one smooth motion, he's turned and set the tray down between Damon's pressed down palms.
The glasses rattle when the tray thunks down onto the bar.
The man's face is a ruin. One eye is completely missing, the hole covered over with a black patch. There's a boiling mess of scars around the cover, tracks where something got a hold of his skin and ripped it away, taking eye and bone along with it. The damage follows the curve of his skull back into a mess of patchy black hair.
Damon's face splits into a wide grin. "Looks like this is the place."
"Might be the magic words you were looking for were 'please' and 'thank you,' but we can get back to your lack of manners another time. You want to kill vamps, you get my attention - regardless of that mouth you got on you." He says, pulling the bar towel off of his shoulder. "I'm Oberlin and The Bloody Maryis my bar. Now how 'bout you just get to your point, so we can hurry this little conference to its final destination, eh?"
Damon lifts his palms to drum his fingers on the bar. "We were talking about my friend, the one who sent us here. Kinda weird name, so maybe you'll remember it: Alaric Saltzman?"
"Might, might not," he replies, slipping back into non-committal tones. His hands are busy drying the glasses on the tray with his bar towel. "What sortof origin story we talking about?"
"Origin story?" Elena asks. Her voice is soft and distant.
Oberlin glances up from the glass in his hand for a moment, studying her before answering. When he speaks again, his voice has softened a little. "Every hunter's got some story for how they got mixed up in all this. You, me, your 'charming' friend here. So what's the beating heart that got this A-lar-ic going?"
"His wife was turned," Damon says, cutting Elena off, "but it took a while to figure it out. He thought she'd just been killed at first and...well..." He shakes his head. "Let's just say it was downhill from there."
"Alright, pretty standard Reason Number Two right there - death of family member, or members, at the hands of a vampire, with optional family-member-turned-evil trauma on top. Did he have to kill her by chance?"
Oberlin's voice takes on a weird mix of enthusiasm and boredom as he talks - the sound of an old pro who's seen it all before, but somehow can't bring himself to move on. Every word sounds tired and talked to death, the same speech given to hundreds of rookies who have walked through these doors, the vast majority dead and buried.
"Nah," Damon says, flicking a glance at Elena, just to gauge her reaction to the topic. She couldn't care less what he says about it and her face stays blank. "Isobel walked into the sun one day, couldn't handle the life."
"It's not a life, it's an abomination against nature." For all that the content sounds harsh, the words have no emotion behind them, just another fact of life Oberlin's world. "She did your friend there a favor, otherwise he'd be looking at the further option of destroy-your-own-vampire-kin trauma - definitely not a fun one. Fucks ya up good," he says before his eyes shift to Elena. His next words are quiet and restrained. "Apologies, Miss."
"So that's Alaric's story - his Reason Number Two. Remember him at all?"
"Can't say as I do," Oberlin says, shaking his head. "Get a lot of Two's in here, to be honest. Probably the most popular."
"Dare I ask what Number One is?" Damon mocks.
"The first reason that ever existed: holy missions from God, angels, aliens, ghosts of dead relatives, or dead presidents, or long dead heroes, miraculous talking pets, miraculous talking zoo animals, miraculous damn talking plants or the occasional sentient television program." He finishes the last of the glasses while he rattles off the list with precision. It's a form letter, memorized and spit out without thought. "Number One's your basic crazy - the kind that wakes up one day convinced they have to find and kill creatures of the night. Don't usually last long - sanity issues and delusions of invincibility and such - but if they figure out enough of the rules to get really engaged they tend to at least go out with a bang."
The life comes back into his eye at the conclusion of this rant, when he drops the towel on top of the glasses and looks up to give the smile on Damon's face a long, hard stare.
"Given all that, you can understand why I've gotta ask what brings you two young folks to our town lookin' for this particular sort of trouble. Not that we'll stop you from whatever madness you decide to get up to, as long as you keep it away from the bar. Suicide by vampire is none of my business. Just like to know what to expect is all."
"Fair enough," Damon says. He wraps an arm around Elena's shoulders, drawing her in close for a sideways squeeze. "This is the lovely Elena, who I suspect more than fulfills your 'Reason Two' category."
"My family is dead." Elena's voice is coated in rust. This is one conversation that requires nothing fake from her, so she's not bothering to pretend. The role of emotionally-traumatized human is well within the wheelhouse of the emotionally-stunted vampire. "Parents, brother, all gone."
Oberlin nods at Elena, respect for the dead evident in his voice, despite his earlier boredom. "Sorry for your loss."
Damon's free hand comes up to rest over his heart, stealing back the center of attention with his overacting. "And since that fateful day, Elena has dedicated her life to destroying vampires wherever they can be found."
"Fine, fine. I'm willin' to bet I know the reason you're standing there next to her," Oberlin says, setting his own hands on the bar and leaning across.
"You're not crazy and you're not grieving." He sucks at his teeth and leans over further so as to give Damon a head-to-toe look, taking in his spotless boots and designer clothes. "You're flippant about the whole thing, cocky in general - there's no real meaning here for you. So I'd peg you at Reason Number Three: the thrill-seeker. One of those assholes who has some chance encounter with a vampire - just dangerous enough and sexy enough to convince just the right sort of moron to make a life of it. Decide they're suddenly the Batman or something, just because they've noticed evil exists in the world." He juts his chin at Damon, disdain obvious in his voice. "And with you in particular, I'd say we've got skirt-chaser thrown in the mix, taking advantage of this poor young woman's grief."
Elena speaks again, but there's no more emotion in her voice than before. "I wouldn't quite call him a 'thrill-seeker' - although he's definitely an ass-"
"-matter of perspective-" Damon cuts in. It's clear that Oberlin doesn't like him - which just makes Damon ever more eager to annoy.
"- and I wouldn't call him "the Batman" - cause that's just asking for trouble-"
"-again, really depends on how you look at it- ow," he yelps, when she elbows him in the ribs.
"But whatever you call him," she finishes simply, "he can handle himself when things fall apart. That's what I need to get things done."
Damon rubs at the spot on his chest where she elbowed him, grin deflated down to a smirk. "Look, the lady wants to kill vampires, I want to kill vampires - can we move on from the comic book bullshit now? My friend implied that you knew everything about the undead in this town - we're just looking for a tip on one that's on the younger, fresher side. Something more...fun size?"
Oberlin looks again at Elena, looks her right in the eye. There's something there, in his expression that she can't read - maybe pity, maybe not. "Sure this is what you want? Once you go down this road, there's no going back. The end is never pretty, whatever the triumphs in between." There's concern in his voice.
Elena merely shrugs, unwilling to play pretend just to save Oberlin's emotions. "We're just here for information, if you have it. Otherwise, we'll figure it out on our own."
There's a twitch in Oberlin's cheek, just a momentary narrowing of the lids around his remaining eye. He picks the tray up with both hands and walks it down to one end of the bar, where there's a woman with her head down on the wood. Her head pops up when he drops the glasses loudly next to her ear.
"Give me a hand with these folks, would'ya?" Oberlin asks her over his shoulder, before returning to stand in front of Damon and Elena. The woman takes her time down at her end, hopping down from the bar stool and stretching.
"Can I fix you two some drinks?" Oberlin asks. He sets two shots glasses on the counter in front of them. "On the house - sortof a good luck charm we like to do for new folks in town."
Elena opens her mouth to accept, but before she can get a word out Damon's already cut her off.
"Thanks but no thanks - no offense intended, of course," he says with thick sincerity. "Elena here is underage and I avoid alcohol as a general rule. Bad for the brain, bad for the body - good way to get yourself killed."
"You sure?" Oberlin asks again, already filling the two shot glasses with a dark liquid from a bottle with no label. Elena can smell it from across the bar: cheap and unsubtle whiskey. "Got vervain pre-mixed in every bottle. Got the formula perfected - you won't even taste it." He looks up from the shots and smiles at each in turn. "Absolutely certain it's a no?"
"Afraid so. But I wouldn't worry about us," Damon says through a smile. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little clear vial filled with amber liquid. "We're just fine."
"Suit yerselves," he says. With one hand he pushes the shots off past Damon, to where the muscular woman is looming over Damon's shoulder. "Joss, can I interest you in a couple of freebies? Just gonna go to waste."
Joss doesn't wait for a further invitation, just reaches past Damon to grab the shots and downs them one after the other.
"What is it, Obe?" she asks, voice scratchy and tone flat. She cuts an odd figure in the bar. Most of the patrons are men on the younger side, while Joss shows her age. Her coffee-colored skin is criss-crossed with lighter scars, visible on any skin not covered by her leather jacket.
"Jocelyn, meet Damon and Elena," Oberlin says, pointing at each in turn." Damon, Elena, meet Jocelyn Hightower. She's an old hand at this business, one of the few hunters to stay full time in Vegas. You came here looking to get up to speed on the current situation - well, Joss is the best one to ask."
"Pleasure to meet you Jocelyn," Damon says warmly. "Or is Joss better?"
Joss' eyes are busy traveling from Damon's boots back up to his face, cataloguing him methodically. There's a hardened frown across her face, that only grows more pronounced once she looks past Damon and makes eye contact with Elena. Her eyes flick to Oberlin, looking for some sign. He nods just slightly, before turning away to fiddle with bottles and barware behind the counter.
"Obe is willing to vouch for you," she says finally, turning back to Damon "which means for the moment I'm able to extend you a certain level of trust. Until I see some results, that level of trust does not extend to conversation on a first name basis. Understand?"
"Crystal clear, ma'am," Elena interjects before Damon can say anything to piss the woman off. She slides a hand behind her ear, pulling back the curls that have slipped into her face.
"Like the lady said," Damon says, following Elena's lead. "Crystal clear."
Joss looks down at the bar and starts to toy with one of the empty glasses, rolling it around along its bottom edge on the counter. "On Folsom Street, in Downtown, there's a vampire strip club. It's all fake of course, just a lot of cheap effects and stage makeup. Except today I received a tip that one of the girls is the real deal, preying on idiot tourists and weak-minded fetishists. I was going to take her out myself, but you can have her if you like."
Joss looks up at Elena, as if to gauge her reaction to the offer. And Elena stares back into eyes as empty as her own.
"Thank you," Elena says calmly, "that sounds like an excellent place to start."
###
A/N: Next Week - Vampire Hunters?
