THE NEW NORMAL

a human Damon & Elena story

CHAPTER 1

Disclaimer

Obviously, I own no part of The Vampire Diaries. If I did, there would be no Silas, no Travelers, and the whole Sirens/Cade plot would make a whole lot more sense. Regardless of any plot holes or slumps in later seasons, I thank Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson, from the bottom of my heart, from creating such a kick-ass show based (oh so loosely) on L. J. Smith's original book series. No way could I have done this story better than Julie and Kevin, and I'm loving the chance to add my own twist to their TVD universe.

A/N

This is a post-series fic, taking place after the TVD series finale (end of season 8). Expect spoilers for seasons 1-8. If you haven't seen the series finale, which aired in March 2017, I'd suggest watching that before reading this story. All my backstory is canon, meaning that in my universe everything that happened on the show has already happened.

Summary

A few months after the events of the series finale, Damon and Elena struggle to adjust to their new normal as human beings. Elena is in med school at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, and Damon is with her, searching for something not-horribly-boring to do with his mortal existence. Newly married, they're living in UVA's crappy married student housing. Supernatural hijinks will no doubt ensue, but for now their lives are mundane. Damon is finding that he doesn't do mundane that well, and that he's rusty at playing a human. The story focuses on Damon and Elena. I introduce Bonnie in chapter 2, and expect later appearances from Caroline, Alaric, Jeremy, and possibly other TVD characters.

CHAPTER 1

August 2017

Charlottesville, VA

Damon was out of breath after lugging boxes and suitcases and crates of god-knows-what up three flights of steps into their new married-student-housing apartment on UVA's campus. His current load was the last. Four boxes balanced precariously on top of each other, in his arms, because goddammit Damon Salvatore was not going to make one more undignified trip up and down these goddamned stairs.

(And it was a freaking dump. He'd tried to buy them a nice, respectable house on the edge of town, but Elena was excited about being NORMAL. A nice, normal medical student with her nice normal human husband. Normal medical student's spouses, apparently, were not millionaires. Damon's insistence that he was a bona-fide millionaire fell on deaf ears. He was welcome to donate his ludicrous housing budget to feed-the-starving-children or save-the-animals, but for now they were getting by on Elena's stipend and his salary at the downtown C'ville bar she'd allowed him to buy.)

He wished he could blame Elena for all the boxes and suitcases and god-knows-what, but most of the crap he was carrying was actually his crap. Damon'd always said Stefan was the pack-rat, but Damon himself had collected a ridiculous amount of stuff over his 178 years on this crazy planet. 25 years as a human in the 1800s. 153 years as a vampire. And he'd always had his own room to return to, in the boarding house, a room that any human descendants/keepers of the family estate were too afraid to mess with. Mystic Falls had been home for the last eight years, since he'd come back to rescue Katherine from her non-imprisonment in the tomb under the old church. Since he'd met Elena, and rekindled his relationship with his brother. Since he'd become part of a community of vampires, humans, werewolves, witches, hunters, and council members. In those eight years, Mystic Falls had been home. A real home. The boarding house had been a real home. And all the people of the town - including those he'd die to protect and those he'd tried to kill and those he actually killed (some a few times because death doesn't always stick in Mystic Falls) - they had become a ramshackle family. The town had become one big person he would fight to protect.

But now, he'd given the boarding house to Caroline and Ric, so that they could start their "school for the young and gifted" aka baby witches. Elena said she wanted to return to Mystic Falls someday, when they were "real grownups." For the next few years, they were supposed to live in married student housing while his wife - that sounded weird - got her medical degree.

And anyway, this version of Damon Salvatore wasn't such a bad-ass-town-protector.

No, Damon Salvatore was a vampire no longer. His brother had ripped away Damon's superpowers when he forced the cure on him. And then Stefan - his hero hair extra heroic that night - had taken Damon's place in front of the hellfire. That idiot had thrown his life, literally, into hellfire, so that hell-and-Katherine-Pierce would be destroyed forever.

And Damon was stuck on Earth in his wussy human body, now lurching into his and Elena's new apartment, totally out of breath. And sweating. As a vampire, he'd barely sweated.

Right this second undignified sweat was running down Damon's forehead, and in fact all down his body. Great sheets of sticky wetness.

"Lena," he grunted as he dumped the boxes unceremoniously on the ground. "That's the last of it."

Elena sat in a sea of open boxes. She looked up from the box she was unpacking, smiling at him, gorgeous as ever in her tank top and cut-off denim shorts. Her hair was pulled up in a messy ponytail. Then she gasped and rushed over to him, her eyes all wide-open in concern.

"Oh God, Damon. Are you okay? Why didn't you ask for help? Did you carry four boxes up the stairs at one time?"

He rolled his eyes and asked for a towel.

Elena went into mother-hen-mode as she rummaged for a towel and then poured him a glass of water from the Brita pitcher in the fridge. (Apparently, he needed to add tap water to the long list of things that could kill, or at least maim, him now that he was human. Elena was very interested in safe drinking water.)

"I'm fine," Damon said as ran a towel over his sopping wet hair and face. He gulped half of the glass of water down. "Seriously, Elena. You don't need to worry about me. I didn't want to make 20 more trips so I just loaded myself down for the last few trips."

"You are not invincible," she snapped.

"So I've realized," he said. "And you mother-henning me is only going to make me feel like even more of a pathetic waste of space."

"Babe," she said with just a tinge of pity.

"Don't," he said as he pulled his black T-shirt off. He noticed that his abs were not as ripped as they used to be. He'd heard a lot of humans talk about going to the gym. Elena ran every morning. Was he really going to have to start exercising if he wanted to be able to take his shirt off in front of Elena without her having to pretend he was still sexy? Was he going to have start eating salads?

Being human sucked.

` Damon sat down in the arm chair that had been in his old bedroom, and picked up a book from a crate, trying to pretend he was reading and not just desperate to sit down. In truth, he just wanted to catch his breath. Luckily for him, the book he'd randomly chosen - a first edition of Jack London's Call of the Wild - was one of his, and therefore it was amusing.

"Damon," Elena said, still standing over him, her expression now a mixture of pity and reproach. "You can talk to me."

"Just going to read some Jack London, babe. Did I ever tell you I partied with him?"

"You did not! I don't believe that."

"I did. He was smart."

"You're making that up," Elena said, laughing now.

Damon flipped to the front of the ancient book and held it out for her to read. "Read the dedication," he said with a slow smile, his eyes flirting with her for the first time all day.

Elena ran her finger along the brittle paper, reverently, as she read aloud, "For Damon, who enchanted me with stories of demons and darkness and grand, never-dying love. Jack"

Damon smiled, remembering the rugged novelist, who had ideals and more demons than he wanted. "It was the turn of the century. The last century. I met him in a saloon in Chicago. We spent a good many nights sipping bourbon and telling stories. He thought I was telling him fiction, of course."

"Of course," Elena said. Then she got a look of pure horror on her face. "You didn't eat him, did you?"

"No!" Damon said with a laugh. "Not even snatch and erase."

"And you didn't turn him?"

"No." After a pause, he waggled his eyebrows saying, "I did turn Zelda Fitzgerald."

"You did not."

"You've heard the stories. The woman was crazy. Doesn't that sound like a vampire gone wrong?"

"Seriously, Damon, did you turn Zelda Fitzgerald into a vampire?"

He broke out laughing as he shook his head violently. "No, my love. I did not turn Scott Fitzgerald's wife into a vampire. I did party with them, a lot, in the '20s. I knew Hemingway too. He was a prick. But I liked Scott."

"Really?" Elena said. "Why haven't you told me any of this?"

Damon shrugged. "We were always in the middle of a crisis, weren't we?"

She laughed as she returned the Jack London book to the crate and sat on Damon's lap.

He continued, "I mean, what with moonstones, doppelgangers, Original vampires, curses to break, blood sacrifices, werewolves, hybrids, witches up to all manner of shit, Gemini twins, ancient proto-vampires ..."

"There hasn't been time to talk about my literary heroes and whether you may have been drinking buddies with them?"

"Yep," Damon said.

"Did you sleep with any of them?"

"Probably."

Elena slapped him. "You don't know?"

Damon chortled. "Lena! I didn't sleep with Jack or Scott. Or Papa Hemingway. As far as the ladies, yeah, there's a good chance I screwed some of them."

"But you don't know?"

"Who I slept with in the '20s?" he asked, incredulous.

"Caroline always called you a man-whore," Elena said with reproach as she got up off him and returned to her unpacking ritual. "But do me a favor and no more carrying four boxes up three flights of stairs. Okay?"

"I'm fine!"

"Damon, you could have fallen backwards, and then you know what would have happened?"

"What, Elena? I could get a boo-boo?"

"You could die in a really stupid way!"

"Fuck!" he shouted. "Don't remind me!"

"Damon!"

"I was a human for 25 years and I never once died until my jack-ass of a father shot me through the chest," Damon said, getting really riled up, so riled up that he decided to bound out of the armchair, into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, he stood for a moment in front of this newfangled ice box, basking in the cold air radiating from it. Elena didn't realize how good they had it in the 21st century. "You don't need to baby me. I survived the Civil War. I think I can manage some stairs in the cheap-ass student apartment buildings."

"Again with the Civil War bragging!" she shouted from the living-dining-room.

"You want a beer, babe?"

"Are they cold yet?"

"Frosty," he said as he popped the tops off two bottles and carried them out to the living area. "Lena," he said as he handed her beer bottle to her.

He kissed her on the cheek, then took a long drag of his drink. "Now that hits the spot." Normally he was a bourbon drinker, but it was damned hot outside, so this ice-cold beer felt damned good. Also, another annoying thing about being human is that he had about 1/20th of his normal (vampire) drinking tolerance. He could no longer drink bourbon like it was iced tea.

Elena wrapped her arm around Damon's waist and leaned into him. "I'm not trying to baby you," she murmured, "It just seems like you're not adjusting as easily as, um ..."

"As you?"

She bit her lip. "It's to be expected. I was only a vampire for a couple years. You ..."

"Haven't been human since 1864," Damon said with a smirk.

She nodded. "I just assumed that you forgot a bunch of stuff. About being human. The mundane stuff."

Damon couldn't help smiling. "That would be true. I definitely seem to have blocked out all memories of sweating like a pig. Do I smell bad?"

"A little," she admitted, knocking him playfully on the shoulder. "Me?"

"Truthfully?" Damon said, kissing her sweaty shoulder. It was so hot in here. "A little."

Elena laughed, and this time it was like music. Purely happy laughter. "I keep forgetting to wear deodorant," she admitted. "I don't think I wore it the whole time I was a vampire. I hope I didn't smell awful!"

"You smelled great. You still smell great. But anyway, vampires don't need deodorant," Damon said. "I don't actually have any. I've been stealing yours."

"What?"

"I didn't know what kind to buy. There's so many options," he sputtered. "It wasn't a thing in my day. We wore cologne, and splashed it all type of places. This roll-on crap you get at the drugstore? Not invented then. I tried the cologne thing last week but I could still smell my sweat."

Elena's laughter erupted into musical glee. "Oh my god, Damon. Have you been too embarrassed to ask for help buying toiletries?"

"I prefer to be all-knowing."

"You're an idiot. Are you afraid of CVS?"

"I'm above CVS," Damon said, his eyes on fire looking at her, drinking her in. She was just perfect.

Elena started laughing so hard she spilled her beer all over the both of them.

Damon put his beer bottle down on the card table Elena had erected as their "dining room table," then rescued her dripping bottle from her grasp.

Damon kissed this beautiful, perfect girl, pulling her towards him. He kissed his girl like his life depended on it. He ran his hands through her messy hair. He could feel her smiling as she kissed him back. "You're beautiful," he whispered between kisses.

"You're beautiful," she breathed back.

Damon was about to pull Elena towards the bedroom. (There was no bed, but he could throw her down on the cheap carpet and make love to her. Human lovemaking was not as fast or intense as vamp-sex, but it was one thing that he liked better as a human. Somehow it felt extra real.

Something made human lovemaking, and human orgasms, so much better than anything he'd experienced as a vampire. He'd almost forgotten the intense, uniquely human, passion he'd shared with Katherine, and the two other women he'd fucked during the war?

And with Elena - this was a hundred times better. He'd loved Katherine, he'd died for her. He'd lived again for her. But he'd never known Katherine. She was a mystery. Elena, his Elena, was real.

He was dying to throw her down on that cheap carpet and ravage her. Their sex life had been good when they were vampires, but now - it was magical. Was it his newfound mortality, or their shared human frailty, or the terrifying idea that one day their lovemaking could produce a little Gilbert-Salvatore?

He was about to wriggle out of his jeans when someone knocked on the door. He must have left it open when he'd come in with the boxes. Dammit.

"Hey, I guess you're our new - " a youthful, clear voice cried out from the open front doorway. "Oh, god, sorry!"

Elena pulled away from Damon, laughing in an embarrassed sort of way.

He whipped around to stare at the interloper. Who just went around walking into people's homes, unannounced? At least in the 1800s his family had slaves to answer the door. Wow, that was racist. But if he called them servants he was pretending like his father had paid them, and well, he hadn't.

At their front door stood a girl about Elena's age, wearing a set of teal scrubs. Her long blond hair hung in two braids on either side of her head. She had a nose-ring. Doctors these days were allowed to have nose rings? Damon wondered if there were any tattoos hiding under the scrubs.

"I am so sorry," she said in a rush. "I saw you guys carrying boxes up early this morning, when I was off to the hospital for my shift. And I thought I'd come introduce myself, now that I was home again. But, well, I can come back."

Damon was all for her leaving and coming back, preferably knocking on the door and offering them a bottle of wine type of coming back, rather than barging in through open doors. But Elena was rushing over to the girl and shaking her hand and smiling, trying to put her at ease. Of course, she'd not interrupted anything important.

"So sorry," Elena was saying. Why was she apologizing? "We're newly-weds. I guess we're pretty revolting."

"Oh not at all! I know how that goes. Johnny and I have been married for a few years, but yeah, there's that newlywed phase where you can't keep your paws off each other!"

"I'm Elena. Elena Gilbert. I'm starting at the med school in the fall. First year."

"Alice Salisbury. Third year in med," the girl with the nose-ring said as she shook Elena's hand. Then she looked expectantly at Damon.

"Damon," he said with a tight smile.

The girl scrunched up her eyes in thought. "Damon Gilbert? I went to middle school with a Damon Gilbert. Did you grow up in Portsmouth?"

Damon laughed, a real laugh. "It's Salvatore. Elena kept her maiden name. Very feminist this one. Of course, where I come from, women always take their husband's name, but Lena here is a modern, liberated woman. She even votes."

The girls broke out in laughter. Elena glared at Damon. He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

"And where are you from?"

"All over. Military brat," he said, so used to lying about his background that it was second nature. "But I never went to middle school in Portsmouth. Or anyplace called a middle school. And of course, I'm not a Gilbert."

Alice smiled. "Well, now that we've got that sorted. . . Johnny sent me up to find out if you guys want to come down to our place and order a pizza. Maybe get some beer, play some cards? It's been a while since we had fun neighbors and, I don't know, we saw you pull up and you looked fun."

Elena and Damon exchanged a look. She wanted to go. He could almost hear her pleading with him - this was exactly what she'd been hoping for. Normal human neighbors. Pizza and beer and no supernatural nonsense. It had been months since Stefan died and Hell was extinguished. They'd all been picking up the pieces. Elena had been holding her breath, as if she expected that any morning she'd wake up to a new disaster, a new doppelganger plot or evil witch come to doom them to gloom. But each morning the sun had come up, and there had been no supernatural nonsense.

Damon felt like he was a soldier who'd come back from the war and was having trouble adjusting to normal life. Elena must feel the same way - especially because the last time she'd had a chance at a normal life with him that life had been ripped away from her. She'd spent several years in a sleeping-beauty-like-coma. Damon knew it was difficult for her to trust in tomorrow when experiences like sleeping-beauty-comas had been her normal.

But for months the sun had kept rising and setting. For months, they'd quietly prepared to leave Mystic Falls, so that Elena could start medical school and the highly esteemed, but not too distant from home, University of Virginia. (Caroline had compelled the Dean of Students to believe that Elena had finished her undergraduate work, which she would have if that asshole Kai hadn't put her to sleep for four years. It killed Damon that he couldn't do the compelling.)

They'd gotten married in a small ceremony right before they'd left home. Caroline had officiated.

And now, here they were in this crappy married student housing complex. Being invited for pizza and beer by a seemingly nice and non-dangerous neighbor. As much as Damon wanted to fuck Elena on every surface of their apartment (right now, seriously, her cut-offs hugged her ass just right) - he grinned at Alice.

"How about I kick it up a notch? I've just some good bourbon in the bedroom," he said.

"That sounds great!" Alice said. She was a bubbly one. Damon had to remind himself that it was no longer okay to snap her neck if she got too annoying, or possible to compel her into talking less. "How fancy."

Damon nodded. The bourbon would save him from drinking any more foul-tasting beer. And it was spiked with vervain.

You could never be too careful, and if Alice and Johnny were vampires, it was best to find out now. On second thought, he should probably wear a button-down shirt so that he could hide one of Ric's retractable stakes under his sleeve. Staking a vampire pretending to be a med student sounded like fun, but Damon hadn't killed a vampire since he'd become a newly minted human and he honestly didn't know how it would go down. Maybe he should bring along a few syringes of vervain. Weaken the hypothetical vampire before the staking. But that sounded like less fun.

(Of course, there was no way in hell this girl was a vampire. She was far too perky. But you could never be too careful. And 153 years as the walking undead had taught Damon Salvatore to never assume that anyone - human, witch, vampire, werewolf, fill-in-the-blank monster - was what he/she/it seemed. Sure Katherine had fooled him once or twice, but even that manipulative bitch eventually showed her stripes. Damon Salvatore was no fool, so he would bring along his family's vervain and his best friend's Indiana Jones weapons. And if there was no threat, at least he'd avoid dying stupidly.)

But fuck. Being human was downright pitiful. So fucking vulnerable. Damon hated being the prey instead of the predator.