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The noise from outside the house triggered Damon’s sensitive hearing and his eyes popped open in the semi-darkness of Daisy’s bedroom. He heard drunken mutterings and the creak of the porch stairs as they were heavily trod and he rolled his eyes. The man on the porch fumbled with his keys, dropped them with a clatter—and then decided that it was perfectly reasonable to start pounding on the door with his fist.
“Karen, y’ ol’ b---h, lemme in!” Earl demanded in a slurred shout.
Daisy jumped in Damon’s arms, startled awake. “It’s just Earl,” he whispered to her, disgust evident in his tone. Damon certainly didn’t hold himself to any high moral standards, but he felt comfortable judging other people who fell below even that low threshold.
“Karen! Karen, the door—unlock the door, you g----“ Earl continued.
There were footsteps on the staircase in the house and Daisy curled up closer to Damon in anticipation. Of course Karen had to get up and answer the door. She thought she was going to tell him off—as she promised Daisy, drunk and sobbing, at least twice a week—but really she was just bringing in more trouble.
The front door opened and Karen’s hiss carried clearly to Damon’s ears. “Earl, you’re drunk, I don’t want you here—“
“Whaddya mean? I live here!”
“No! Now get out! Go to a motel or something—“
“Get outta my way, you dumb b---h—“
And so on, every line more inevitable than the last. Not only had Damon heard it before with Earl, the same scene had played out dozens of times with Karen’s previous boyfriends, a charming and upstanding lot. Earl made it into the house and the yelling intensified; Karen always claimed she was worried about what the neighbors might think, but once inside the house she seemed to forget there were still people to overhear her.
“You useless piece of s—t, you get your stuff and get outta my—“
“Don’t you f-----g tell me what to do, you crazy-a-s—“
Damon started to pull away from Daisy, intent on ending the disturbing farce for the night, but she stopped him. “It’s her problem, she has to deal with it,” Daisy said, referring to her mother. She favored a tough-love approach. “She has to learn.”
Damon preferred any opportunity for a physical confrontation, ill-matched though it was—especially if his relaxation time had been interrupted. But he yielded to Daisy’s expertise on the matter and settled back onto the bed. He drew the blankets up over her head, attempting to muffle the sounds of the argument below for her. Karen would never learn. She was in her late 40s and still acted like a teenager who had all the time in the world to make mistakes and fix them, who thought no one else was affected by those mistakes. Damon’s lips brushed Daisy’s forehead and he glared into the darkness behind her, picturing the scene downstairs in his mind with every change in pitch and thud of furniture. Not that he was particularly well-behaved himself, but that didn’t stop him from getting angry at those who bothered him in some way.
Suddenly—inevitably—there was a slap of flesh hitting flesh and a cry from Karen, and Damon couldn’t take it anymore. He rolled out of bed, yanked on a t-shirt, and whooshed down the stairs before Daisy could say a word. The coffee table in the living room was overturned and Karen was on the floor, clutching the side of her face. Earl was a large man but Damon slammed him up against the wall easily, his cheap shoes dangling above the carpet. Damon’s pupils dilated as he stared at the shocked Earl.
“Get out of this house and don’t ever come back,” he ordered clearly, then heaved the man back out the front door and down the porch steps for good measure. With Damon’s command to stay away lodged firmly in his brain, Earl shouldn’t be a problem again.
Of course, in a couple weeks there would just be a new Earl.
Damon padded back into the living room on bare feet. Daisy was at her mother’s side, letting the woman sob self-pityingly on her shoulder while she pressed an ice pack to the red mark around her eye. Damon busied himself straightening the furniture, having no interest in telling Karen everything was going to be okay when really, that was all up to her, and she didn’t seem to want things to be okay.
“It’s okay, Mama,” Daisy repeated, rubbing her back. “It’s all gonna be okay.”
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!” Karen replied miserably. Damon stood over them, unimpressed by her histrionics, and wondered when he could go back to bed.
A mechanical wail from outside and the flash of red lights suggested it wouldn’t be for a while. Damon looked out the front window and saw the squad car stop in front of the house. “S‑‑t,” he muttered. “Someone must’ve called the cops.”
“Probably Grandma,” Daisy sighed, helping her mom to her feet. “I’ll go check on her.” The elderly woman frequently barricaded herself in her first-floor suite against threats both real and imagined.
Karen clutched Damon’s hand unexpectedly, as if drawing strength from his unyielding presence. “You’re such a good boy, Damon,” she told him. Her sincerity was not in doubt, only her judgment. “I’m so glad Daisy has you.”
“Yeah,” was all he could think to say in response. He had often thought of compelling Karen to clean up her act, but Daisy was against the idea, saying she needed to make that decision herself for it to really be meaningful. Damon didn’t really care whether it was meaningful, he just wanted some peace and quiet when he slept over at Daisy’s house.
There was a sharp rap on the front door and Karen went to answer it, dragging Damon along as though she couldn’t stand without his assistance. He didn’t really like to play that game, but Daisy wasn’t around to relieve him. Karen answered the door to find Sheriff Forbes standing on the porch, with her usual expression of sober wariness. Her eyes flickered over to Damon but if she was surprised to see him there she didn’t show it.
“How are you doing tonight, Karen?” the Sheriff asked. “Heard you had a little trouble.” As many times as Sheriff Forbes had been to the house on calls like this, she and Karen were on a first-name basis.
Karen started to explain about Earl to the Sheriff, an incoherent and disjointed narrative punctuated by much crying. “Earl came home drunk, they started fighting, he hit her, I threw him out,” Damon summarized abruptly. He didn’t roll his eyes, but the disdain was obvious from his tone.
The Sheriff had heard the story before—just different nights, different names. Still, you’d think there was no other crime in Mystic Falls (aside from the occasional body drained of blood) from the amount of time Forbes spent asking them all questions, settled on the couch in the living room. Karen clutched Daisy with one hand and Damon with the other; the connection made him uncomfortable but he was also cognizant of how it might enhance the Sheriff’s opinion of him, so he tried to keep a sympathetic expression on his face.
“Next time someone shows up drunk and angry, don’t let them in,” Forbes advised Karen. “Don’t even open the door. Just call us and we’ll take care of it. That’s what we’re here for.”
“I know, I know,” Karen sniffled, wiping her nose with a tissue. There was a pile of them next to her on the couch, which Damon tried not to shy away from too obviously. He was definitely not interested in any of her bodily fluids, not even her blood.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve been out here for this,” the Sheriff reminded her in a stern tone. Damon blinked quickly to keep his eyes from glazing over in boredom. In the chair next to him, Grandma Rose ‘accidently’ whacked his bare feet with her cane. “You don’t need men like this,” Forbes went on. “You don’t need this kind of trouble, Karen. You need to put a stop to it before something really bad happens.”
“You’re not gonna take Daisy away from me, are you?!” Karen gasped in sudden panic. She finally let go of Damon’s hand to clutch at Daisy with both, and Damon watched her closely in case he had to prevent her from crushing her daughter in desperation. “No, you can’t take Daisy away from me!”
“No one’s suggesting—“ Forbes began.
“It’s okay, Mama,” Daisy tried.
But Karen was on a roll. “No, no, I’d never let them hurt my Daisy! Ever since she was a little thing she’s been my flower, my sunshine! You take my Daisy away, I don’t know what I’d do!” Damon bit his lip hard to keep from snapping at her.
“Well you should be thinking about Daisy before you let these men into the house,” the Sheriff told her. There was something delightfully hard-hearted about her that Damon sometimes admired.
“The Devil dances with sinful hearts,” Grandma Rose pronounced ominously. “And those that drink sin will never be purged of it.” She nodded sagely, staring at Damon with a narrow gaze.
“Did you miss your medication again, Grandma Rose?” Damon asked in an overly-solicitous tone. The elderly lady had never really cared for him, which he sometimes thought meant she was the sanest person in the household.
Before the Sheriff could comment further there was a knock on the door and one of her deputies stuck his head in and summoned her. It didn’t take superpowers to figure out his purpose, not when an inebriated, panicky bleat filled the air. “I’m outta that house and I ain’t never comin’ back!” Earl insisted.
Damon impulsively followed the Sheriff to the front porch; Earl was being babysat on the lawn. “Found him wandering a few blocks away,” the deputy reported.
“Were you here tonight, Earl?” the Sheriff questioned gravely. Damon gave the man a dark look over her shoulder.
“I ain’t never comin’ back to this house!” Earl repeated fanatically. “No, ma’am, I ain’t never comin’ back!”
“D—n right you aren’t,” Damon growled unexpectedly.
“Easy,” the Sheriff told him, giving him a glance over her shoulder. She nodded at the deputy. “Take him to the drunk tank for a few hours. We’ll talk to him later.” She looked back through the doorway at the three Fortescue women in the living room, then carefully pulled the door shut and drew Damon away from it. He tried to put himself back in the mindset of a responsible member of society—it was never going to be a Method job, though.
Forbes sighed and shook her head. “This is a mess,” she commented. Damon thought of several snarky comebacks but couldn’t clean them up in time to do more than shrug and nod. Her eyes zoomed in on him. “What are you doing here at this time of night, Damon?” she asked sternly.
Indignation bubbled within him. Between Karen and Earl, she was going to get after him? “This time of night? Sleeping,” he replied, trying hard to remember his role.
Forbes was not impressed with his answer. She was often not impressed with sarcasm. He needed to remember that. “As an officer of the law I gotta point out to you that Daisy’s underage,” she informed him, albeit with some reluctance.
Damon both conceded her point and dismissed it. “Come on, Liz. You know the kind of men Karen brings home.” Tonight being but one of many examples. “I don’t like Daisy being here at night. And if she is I’m sure as h—l gonna be with her.” Damon was fairly certain Daisy could crush someone with a single eyebrow if they bothered her and thus he didn’t really worry about her safety; but he managed to say the line with a conviction that almost startled him. Don’t bury yourself in the part, he reminded himself.
The Sheriff admitted his point as well. “Just be careful,” she warned him. “Things like this can go bad quick.”
“I’m always careful,” he assured her.