Humanity 4 "The Rivalry"

Chapter 8

I wake up in my bed and roll over to see Stefan smiling at me.

“Good morning.” He says groggily and I smile.

“Hey.” I say back as he wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer to him.

Last night, I broke down in frustration over all of this stuff between Elena and Damon. Stefan calmed me down and we ended up in my bed together…and it was amazing.

“We still have school, you know?” He reminds me and I groan. “Actually, we were supposed to be there twenty minutes ago.” He says as I bury my head into his chest.

“Give me ten minutes and I’ll be downstairs.” I whisper and he nods before kissing my forehead and climbing out of bed.

***

“This whole thing is a disaster.” I say with a sigh as I fill two cups of coffee for me and Stefan.

“Look, we don’t know anything for sure.” Stefan tries to keep me calm.

“Yes we do. Elena is sired to Damon. Which means her one singular burning desire is to make him happy, just like Klaus and his hybrids.” I say, reminding Stefan what all of this means.

“No it’s not. A vampire sired to another vampire is one in a million. Maybe it won’t affect her the same way.”

I shake my head and hand Stefan his coffee. “We already know it’s affecting her. She’s becoming Damon’s minion. Everything he says, she agrees with. Everything he asks her to do…she does.”

Stefan walks over and places his hands on my shoulders to calm me down.

“We need to do something.” I say quietly as I reach my hand into my back pocket to pull out my phone.

I want to call Elena and Stefan knows that. He grabs my wrist and takes my phone from me before I can do anything.

“Wait, no, hold on Ashley. This isn’t gossip. You can’t just drop this on her before we know what’s happening for sure.” He tells me.

“Can I at least tell Caroline?” I ask. “She can talk to Tyler and maybe he’ll know what to do.”

“Alright. Caroline and Tyler, but please don’t tell anyone else. If this is true, then it may have an influence on Elena’s every action and emotion since she became a vampire.” He tells me and I nod.

He lifts my head up with his fingers and presses his lips quickly to mine.

“Now let’s get to school.” He says with a smile and I smile back before grabbing my bag and following him.

DAMON’S POV

“Bag?” I ask Elena as we walk down the stairs to the front door.

“I got it.” She says as she grabs her book bag from the table by the door.

“Scarf.” I say, picking her scarf up and wrapping it around her neck.

“What? Oh…” She starts, but she’s cut off when I pull her into a kiss. “Listen, Damon, we…” She tries to talk, but I kiss her again.

“No. No, no, no. Don’t ruin it.” I tell her.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.” She says with a smile.

“Well, I’m assuming it starts with, ‘what are we?’ and ends with, ‘what do we tell Ashley and Stefan?’” I say and she shakes her head.

“They should know.”

“Why? They didn’t explicitly tell us when they hooked up.” I argue.

“They should still know.” She repeats.