A/N: Took a few days longer than I anticipated, but here it is. As always, many thanks to all the kind reviewers who are leaving me their thoughts. You keep me going, no lie.
/ 10 TROUBLEMAKER
"Long way down," Elena says.
It's a small thought - said in a voice covered with dust and crackling with disuse - but it means the world to Damon to hear her speak.
"Eh, we'd be fine." Damon replies, following her gaze down along the arching white bowl of the Hoover Dam. He thinks for a moment, second-guessing himself with a wrinkled nose. "Might hurt a bit at first."
He lets her drag him by the hand back towards the commemorative plaza, away from the cliff-side view of the chasm and once mighty Colorado.
They look to the work of a passing glance like nothing more than gorgeous young people: maybe college kids touring the country, maybe gap-year Europeans slouching along. No one in the crowd around them suspects their true nature, so they walk unhindered, wolves among the sheep.
Any one of these people might make a meal, but that's not what they're after right now. Instead they seek the milder pleasures of the view, and the sun and air on their skin. Just being outside is enough to feed them, after the long days spent cooped up in Flagstaff - followed by more hours trapped in the car.
They wend their way through the throng of late afternoon gawkers, connected by their outstretched hands even as she forges ahead to where the memorial statues towering over the plaza. The statues are completely alien and yet look like the only beings that belong here on the plaza - razor-winged angels that scrape proudly at the air. They are creatures built for this place of sky and rock - nothing like the tourists that pulse around their ankles, all firmly bound to the earth.
Elena stares up at them, puzzled by what they mean. Damon just watches her.
He's almost thankful for the werewolves and the vampire nest and all the other insanity that kept them locked up in Flagstaff for a week. Without the restriction that kept them together inside, he'd have never seen the signs for what they were.
Sometimes the switch suppresses too much. Instead of freeing young vampires from their emotions, it robs them of their purpose and personality, leaving them bloodthirsty shells. A relatively rare occurrence, but he's definitely encountered it before - always from a safe distance and never to someone he cared about.
It took too long for him to accept that it might be true - to read what was written so clearly on her face. What he'd taken for lack of guilt and care seems to actually be a lack of anything - any want or desire or need. The notion goes far towards explaining her recent craziness - acts of desperation, attempts to fill the growing void - useful to know, but terrifying in its implications.
So now there's a drumbeat in the back of his head, pulsing behind every other thought: the world is truly fucked if this happens to Elena. He'll burn it all to the ground.
He spent the week in the room studying her, looking for all the symptoms that he's so far missed. So now he noticed her fade away whenever she wasn't actively engaged by outside stimuli - training or thirst or sex. Noticed that her eyes were not just cold, but also far too empty, staring out from a void. The more time they spent indoors the more she curled into herself, speaking only as necessary - mostly in the form of questions during dream practice. Before long he was rethinking her earlier reluctance to hide away - less to do with being controlled by Damon (his original guess) and more to do with not knowing how to stay.
It's not hopeless yet.
(-not hopeless yet not hopeless yet not-)
He figures there's still one last shred of Elena fighting back, retaliating against her stubborn refusal to switch back on: empty things don't have nightmares - they don't dream or want at all. Elena has one every night now. Maybe some part of her is fighting back.
He doesn't want to alarm her or set her off. Who knows what she'll do if he mentions his suspicions. A reasonable person might take his advice - but their relationship has never been one you could call 'reasonable.' Far more likely she'd try to take his head off or run or get them both staked in some debacle.
So instead he keeps his theories to himself.
He's hoping the detour to the dam after the long hours on the road will spark something in her, as other places strange to her experience have on this trip in the past. Maybe the view will fill her up - or maybe her vicious streak will resurface. He's ready for either outcome, but so far no dice.
"They're supposed to be about reason and strength and the power of science over nature," Damon finally says, gesturing at the statues that have caught her eye. "But most of these people would probably be happier if they were just angels. Easier that way."
Elena acts like she hasn't heard, wandering away from the statues to where a huge bronze plaque is set into the red rock of the cliff wall. It shows a man rising up from stylized waves, hands pressed flat to the sky, crowned by symbols of modern power - lightning bolts and wires. The art deco inscription that arcs behind the man reads: THEY DIED TO MAKE THE DESERT BLOOM.
She stares dully at the plaque and then drops her head to the stone mosaic set into the plaza floor.
Damon scans the area around them, grasping for straws. At this point, he'd accept a mountain of aggravating snark, if it meant a break in the silence between them.
"This used to be over there," he says, pointing back over his shoulder to the far side of the dam. He doesn't know why he's telling her any of this - he barely cares, even though he has fond memories of the early days of the dam. Just trying to fill the empty air with something, even if it's awkward facts. He's this close to hoping she'll get aggravated and just hit him. "But that was back when you had to drive across the dam to get through the canyons. Now it's all closed off, so you have to use the bri-"
"Where are we going?" she interrupts, saving him from his lame attempt at tour guide. There's a row of plaques set into the ground at her feet - each one crowded with the symbols of the states that take water from the Colorado. The Nevada marker on the end is captured beneath her toes. She's staring intently at the little shield, looking for something. "Vegas?"
"Fuck no," Damon says without thinking, voice a mixture of laughter and venom. "Vegas is the worst. Tacky as hell and everyone tastes like an ashtray. Plus it's crawling with vampire hunters out to prove themselves. City used to have a ton of class back in the day, but now it's a pit."
"Crawling with vampire hunters?" Elena repeats. She turns to look at him, eyes coming up to meet his for the first time in days. He forgets himself and takes an unnecessary breath, all while refusing to let the falling sun silhouetting her face force his eyes into a squint.
"In the late 80's Vegas developed a baby vamp infestation," he explains. "Lots of confused tourists, lonely drunks, suicidal gamblers - easy pickings for the young and dumb just starting out, attractive to those who haven't been able to make it in other cities. That was the beginning, anyway - then things got worse: the babies got desperate for someone to talk to, so they turned themselves some equally clueless friends. Suddenly you've got a city full of hungry, hungry stupid hordes. And wherever vampires start to build up-"
"-You attract vampire hunters," she finishes his thought. She turns from the memorials, and starts to move with more purpose in her step, making her way back towards the concrete staircase that leads to the parking deck.
Damon catches up to her in two long strides. "Exactly. And since older, wiser vampires-"
"-like yourself-" Again she interrupts. Sarcasm in her voice now. A beautiful sign of life.
"Sure thing, sweetheart," He says, nodding agreement. "Creatures with any sense avoid the downtown as much as possible - it's practically vampire kindergarten - and absolutely as annoying as it sounds. Far as I know, the casinos on the strip are still controlled by some ancient bastards, but they don't give a rat's ass what happens in the rest of the city. Probably view the hunters as crowd control or something. So it's the perfect setup for vampire hunters at the beginning of their careers - experience without the threat of absolutely instant death. It's like boot camp and Disneyland all rolled up into one neat package."
"Kindergarten-Disneyland-Boot Camp," she says slowly, pausing at the bottom of the grand stone stairs. He can see the wheels turning inside her brain. "Interesting combination."
Damon continues past her, stepping up twice and then turning around to look down on her. "Ric told me once that he flew out for a week once, loooong before he even considered coming near Mystic Falls. Spent the whole time putting down idiots he caught basically feeding in public." He looks down at her and crosses his arms, convinced of his opinion. "Honestly, there are far better places to spend our time."
She walks up the stairs past him, thinking it all through. He falls in behind her, not bothering to catch up until he nearly runs into her at the top. She's turned around to get one final glimpse of the canyon, before it disappears from view behind the walls of the parking deck.
"If not Vegas," she asks quietly, "then where?"
"Death Valley," he says slowly, relishing every syllable.
"Death Valley," she repeats carefully, walking again. They pass from too-bright sunshine into cool gloom and turn towards where the car waits, in a far corner of the lot. "Isn't that a little...on the nose?"
"Give it a shot, sweetheart," he coaxes, "I promise you'll love it. Beautiful desert landscapes. A veritable buffet of tasty, healthy, young people just passing through on their way around the world. Classy historic hotel with a fantastic bar right in the middle. What more could you..." he trails off as she looks up, a wide grin plastered across her face, her first in a week.
"Vegas," she says simply.
"Troublemaker," he calls her with a lop-sided smirk. If a scuffle or three will shake her up, he's certainly more than happy to put a few people in the ground to make it happen. And honestly, he wouldn't mind a good brawl himself, to work out the tension building in his chest. "Which are we fighting: hunters or vampires?"
She snorts. "Why choose?"
Warmth spreads through his chest and he can't help himself: he steps in front of her, catching her with one outstretched arm as she tries to go past. He spins them both, gently landing her torso against a nearby pylon. His hands reach up of their own volition, cupping her face on either side and then sliding into her hair. There's a little puff of air from her mouth just before their lips meet - a stunned little breath slipping past her control.
There's fire in her mouth, once she recovers from her initial surprise. It sends an electric shock through his whole body, erasing worry from his mind. Her hips rock against him, hitching up the fabric of her silky top just an inch. His hands drop from her hair, magnetic, to scoop up her thighs around his waist. Her mouth slinks from his to nip along his jawline, while her own hands bury themselves in his unruly mop of black hair.
He's weighing options in his head, the pros and cons of various surfaces within easy reach, when he feels her stiffen in his arms. She lets go of her hold on him, hands and hips, and he staggers back, momentarily confused at her change of mood. A solid unexpected shape halts his stumble - a new body in the area, where none was before. When he whips around, he's face to face with a man in the brown security uniform of the dam.
"Evening officer," Damon growls.
"Deck's closed, folks," the guard says. He sounds tired, only barely interested in what he's just interrupted. Just an employee at the end of his shift, who couldn't care less about a pair of handsy kids in the deck. "Need to ask you to take it elsewhere."
"Sure-" Damon starts to say. He reaches a hand out to tug Elena away from the pylon and back to the car, but she's already on the move, closing in behind the guard. Time stretches out as Damon watches events unfold, not a foot from his face. The guard's eyes go wide when her teeth rip into his throat, but he doesn't have a chance to scream. Damon has it handled, holding the man's eyes and whispering soft commands. Don't scream. Relax. Forget.
A thin trickle of red escapes her mouth, winding its ways down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. The guard's eyes start to roll back into his head as Elena continues to rip at the wound.
" 'Lena," Damon whispers. She's close to the line now, almost to the point of no return.
This floor of the garage is currently empty, but who knows for how long. Damon's less than excited about the prospect of body disposal at a major tourist site, closing time or no. Besides after the events of the past ten minutes, he's got a new priority list in mind for himself - feed and fuck, in whatever order works best - and he doesn't want to waste any time on cleanup.
Just when it looks like there'll be no escaping body disposal, Elena's head bucks back, curls exploding around her face. Damon just manages to catch the man, who faints into his arms - still alive but not for long. There's an awkward moment when he has to juggle the guard while tearing open his own wrist, but Elena makes no move to help. Instead she just watches him with her dark eyes, bottom lip disappearing behind her teeth, to scrape away the last streaks of blood.
###
Now Damon has a plan.
If he's going to be forced to stay in Vegas for any length of time, he going to make sure it's worth both their whiles. Basic violence isn't good enough - she needs a situation complex enough to pique her interest and arrest the slow slide into decay.
Elena's all for pressing on immediately, but the plan requires more time. They need to wait, optimally until tomorrow morning, before making any moves in Vegas proper. He has to find them somewhere to pass the time. Neither of them want to check into another anonymous chain hotel - not after a week of staring at industrial painted walls and mass market paintings.
So the roadside motel they stumble across soon after leaving the dam is almost a gift - far from cookie cutter corporate.
The actual building - a flat two stories curled around a dusty parking lot - is surrounded with the rubble of an wild west dream: rusted metal cut-outs of teepees and animals decorate the lawn, next to a playground painted to look like a ghost town. Inside their room they find the same general pattern as all the other cheap motels they've encountered - only this time done up in a riot of rich desert colors: deep turquoise, rose, sandy brown, vivid orange. The overall effect is mesmerizing.
They head out soon after dropping their bags, hunting for quick and easy prey. Perfect luck finds three trusting twenty-somethings taking a spin on the rusted Cowboys-and-Indians merry-go-round. Damon drinks his fill between two of the girls, while Elena snacks on the third. It's all over in ten minutes: kids stumbling back to their room, lightheaded and inexplicably gripped with the idea of spending the rest of the night turning their friendship into an exploratory threesome.
The buzz that develops in the back of Damon's brain confirms his suspicion: those kids were full of pot. It makes him restless and he wants to walk it off, out in the quiet darkness under far too many stars. Elena's uninterested in a walk, so she goes back to the room by herself. When he gets back, sober and thoughtful hours later, he finds her curled up in the Navajo blanket printed chair, already asleep.
He puts them both to bed.
Hours pass. Evening dissolves into deep night.
He's sprawled across the bed, staring at yet another borrowed ceiling. Industrial white despite their best efforts, unnoticed when they checked in and terribly irksome now. Bars of light cut into the room from between too-wide slatted blinds - the endless by-product of a neon hotel sign hung close to their window. The light streaks through the otherwise darkened space in all those strange shades neon seems to take - pink and fuzzy blue and goldenrod.
Damon isn't bothering with sleep at this point - the few hours he got were more than enough. He's more invested in the weight of Elena on his arm and chest, where she's snuggled tight against him, without a stitch of clothing to separate their skin. Fingers press into his ribs according to the rhythm of her dreams, tensing down and then opening again. Sometimes she's leaves bruises behind, but Damon doesn't even flinch. They heal again and again.
It's the nightmare again.
She won't talk about them, not on her own or when he asks. Inquiries are met only with silence or a race to the next distraction - so he's given up trying to even raise the topic. Pushing her on it only makes things worse.
He feels her start awake, eyelashes fluttering against his chest, but he doesn't say a word. Just lays there as she lifts her head, scattered curls tugged by gravity to trickle down his ribs. The vast silence in the room presses at his ears. She sniffs at him delicately, and the answering exhale falls warm over his skin.
Her face never ventures far from the edges of him as she makes her way to his face - dragging her chin and nose and cheek along the curves of his body, from chest to neck. Her breasts brush against him as she climbs, tracing lines across his skin. She shifts her weight and rolls herself on top of him and he feels her breath again, spilling hot across his neck.
And still he doesn't move. Doesn't react. He waits, letting her take what she pleases.
She presses a kiss to his throat, firm and slow, before her lips spread apart to pull his flesh between her teeth. He can feel her sucking at his skin, while all the rest of her limbs grip him close.
For a moment when there's just a two tiny stars of pain - twin pins pricking at his neck where her fangs press - and then she clutches at him, pinning him down to the bed as her teeth razor through his skin. Blood flows thick from the wound, gushing onto the starched sheets of the bed. It spills out past her mouth as she laps at the tear. He lets his head fall to the side when she nudges with her own. It stretches his neck tight and makes the blood flow even faster.
Still there's silence in the room, roaring now - neither of them makes a sound. Who knows what would happen if they did.
Now she sucks at him, drinking his life down in long draughts, pausing now and then to open the wound again and again. Her nails break the skin of his chest as she tightens her grip and little wells of blood form in place. The bite started with its own peculiar gentleness, but now she's forgotten how to be kind.
The truth is he wouldn't have it any other way. This is why he stays, on top of love, on top of caring. He stays because of this perfection - her scent in his mouth, and his blood in her throat. This ever-present fire between them, beyond any words and all emotion - stronger by far than the switch.
And then as suddenly it ends as suddenly as it began. She lets go, without cleaning away what remains, backing off just long enough for the skin close a final time and halt the flow. Then her head falls down and he is buried in the tangle of her hair and the smell of her shampoo - warm vanilla and honey. She is tight in every part, every muscle clinging to him - for strength, for solace, for comfort, he doesn't know.
The blood loss makes him dizzy and it only adds to everything he feels. There's a tingling all over him, where her skin touches his. He's on fire, filled up with need, but still he waits - because control is the only thing he's ever really owned.
He doesn't have long to wait: she strikes at his mouth, pulling his lip between now blunted teeth. He tastes his own blood on her tongue. And like that he gives up on control, wrapping an arm around her waist and rolling her underneath him.
Neither of them sleep again that night.
In the morning, she ignores the dried rust stain that spreads out from the pillow - another color of the desert she's added to the decor - but Damon's eyes flick there again and again until they're both ready to move on.
He leaves a fifty on the dresser for the maid.
###
They stop for gas just down the road.
The brilliance of the desert lit up by the morning sun is almost blinding after the gloom inside the gas station's convenience store. Elena hands are full of cups of coffee, so she has to push awkwardly with her back at the door on the way out. The bell attached to the door clangs wildly when she lets it go, breaking the early morning peace. Damon is across the lot, leaning against the gas pump, fiddling with his phone - but his head snaps up when he hears the clatter.
The sun beats down on her head, warming her air conditioned curls. Her thoughts are dull and slow, despite the cashier blood sloshing around in the center of her. She'd taken it from the middle-aged woman behind the convenience store counter while Damon was busy outside. Not that he's likely to care about her snack - Elena had stuck to the dictionary definition of restraint, and no one was dead or on fire or screaming threats. Zero consequences, everybody wins.
The woman was tasty enough, but still somehow less than what she really needs - the blood fails to reach past the fog that clouds her brain. Hence her coffee back up plan.
Her thoughts are a jumbled mess. She feels both fine and decidedly not fine, leaving her with the peculiar sensation of existing as two beings at once: the iron perfection of her body overlaid with the weary fragility of her brain. Physically everything is perfect and nothing has changed - nothing can change. Muscles and sinew and bone are at her beck and call, ready to fulfill her every want. But that empty space in her middle, that place where her heart used to be - nothing more than a projection of her mind on her body and yet just as real as anything - is spreading out to the whole of her, hollowing her out.
When she woke up in the darkness, fresh from the ever present nightmare, she was able to distract herself, to comfort herself, in Damon's waiting arms. Much like blood, sex is a powerful diversion, but the effect only lasts in the moment. Any ease that it brought her last night is long gone, chased away by the glare of the morning's already too hot sun.
Before she can avoid the image, it leaps back to mind - the man in the crumpled suit with the gash in his neck. Her own private haunting, who watches her every night become more brittle and more empty, all while asking too many unanswerable questions. It's just the briefest stab behind her eyes, there and gone again in seconds, but it throws her even more off balance.
There's a flash flood through the empty spaces inside her - a crashing wave of fear-anger-guilt-rage that seeks to fill her up and tear her apart. She clamps down tight against it with all the will she has left. Teeth crack and reform in her mouth. Her fists go white from the pressure.
Then the moment passes and Elena is empty again.
She hands Damon his styrofoam coffee cup when she reaches him, despite the incredulous look on his face. She knows he's trying to figure out what the beverage means. You could count on one hand the number of times they've bothered with (non-alcohol) human food since they crossed the Mississippi - so it's an even bet that the coffee means something, even if it isn't clear what.
Plus the expression on her face during her return to the car - during that one momentary loss of control - was probably setting off alarm bells in his head. He's gone wary of her again in recent days, a product of being allowed too much time to study her in the hotel. If she isn't careful, he'll go all patient on her again.
"Look, Elena-" Damon starts.
She doesn't give him a chance to finish the thought.
"What's the grand scheme for Vegas?" she asks, pulling back the tab on the lid and blowing a little through the hole to cool her coffee. Her face hangs deliberately down, pretending absolute interest in the cup and its contents - all the better to avoid the concern in his eyes. "Why did we have to wait for daylight?"
"You wanted trouble..." he says slowly, turning his eyes away from her to follow the line of the horizon. "The vampire plus vampire hunter kind of trouble?"
"I want to pick a fight," she says simply, voice thin and cracking. "I asked to pick a fight."
"Ok, ok," he starts, "here's what I figure-"
A noise of aggravation escapes her throat as she rolls her eyes at him over the lid of her drink. She gulps the coffee, ignoring how it burns her throat. The burns heal in a wave just behind the pain, a fraction of a second later. Caffeine trumps pain.
"Does everything have to be some elaborate plan?" she asks. "Can't we just pick a fight? You're like some vampire rube goldberg machine."
"Ah, ah, ah," he says, waggling a finger at her above the lid of his untouched cup. "There are fights," he says, "and then there are fights. Sure, we could waltz into town, eat some tourists, attract some attention, and get into an every day brawl. But why settle for that when we have a chance for some real artistry?"
Elena chucks her now empty coffee cup and leans back against the car. "Artistry?" she asks, sarcasm evident. He watches as it arcs from her hand into a metal trash drum by his side.
"Yep," he says, looking down at the styrofoam in his hand. "Ric told me tons about the way the hunters operate. They've got a bar in town that's practically a secret clubhouse. All of the locals hang out in there swapping stories and teaching each the newbies how to whittle."
"So what? You want to destroy their bar?" she asks. In spite of herself, she's intrigued about his idea. Major mayhem is a better opportunity for distraction than the simple street fights she'd had in mind.
"Nah, we don't destroy it," he says, savoring the moment, "we join up. Just two kindergarten vampire hunters visiting town to find some action. We get the lay of the land, take out a few obnoxious baby vamps... and then when the opportunity presents itself..."
Elena finishes his thought: "We have some fun with the unsuspecting hunters too."
"You in, Gilbert?" He asks, knocking her lightly on the shoulder with his coffee cup for emphasis. She can feel the liquid slosh around inside when it hits her skin. "Ready to put all those skills through a real test?"
Elena glances out into the desert, where the road shoots off in a line toward the horizon. "How do we convince them we're not vampires? They have to be on the lookout for supernaturals infiltrating their bar - otherwise they're too stupid to have survived this long."
Now the smirk widens into a full grin. "And with that thought, we come back to your original question."
"Daylight rings," she says, with now obvious enthusiasm. Maybe it's the coffee, maybe it's the idea - whatever it is, she's starting to feel less like a walking hole in the world and more like herself. "You said they mostly see baby vampires in this town, right? I bet they hardly ever see a daylight ring - even a ton of the older vampires we've met don't have a clue about them. We walk into that bar in the middle of the morning, they'll probably have no clue we're protected."
"Exactly," he says, drawing out the word. He glances away, eyes going distant while he takes a moment to consider some new thought - but then shrugs his shoulders dismissively. "And even if they don't buy it, we can still have fun kicking their asses."
###
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?