If there was one thing he hated, it was the sound of the alarm clock in his ears, though it was better that it was that obnoxious blaring tone than trumpets. He didn't miss those days. His bed was also far more comfortable, piled high with blankets and pillows (against his will, he pretended, while he secretly loved that his wife was so interested in the the blankets; he didn't much care for the decorative pillows, which was why they were on the floor beside the bed) and holding a beautiful blond that beat anything else he could have asked for in his bed. Betty was a gem, and he knew it, even if he didn't seem to tell her as often as he should.
Today, he was wishing that he didn't have to be up at such an early hour, which explained why he hit snooze and rolled over to slide an arm around his wife and doze just a few minutes longer. He knew he shouldn't in the back of his mind, but he didn't much care. Warmth and comfort beat out the rest for the time being. Desten could stand waiting a few minutes for him to get in.
"Morning," he murmured into Betty's ear as he felt her stir, dropping a kiss on her shoulder before deciding to just suck it up and get moving. He had to get a quick shower to make up for the minutes he'd lost if he was going to have time to actually sit down for breakfast. Nothing he couldn't handle, but his single-minded move towards the shower didn't take into account the fact that Betty might be waking up in an odd mood, so when he resurfaced a few minutes later, it was in a towel, headed for the closet.
Naturally, he halted when he realized she was still in bed. "Hey sleepy, how late did you stay up with that book?" He didn't remember, having been exhausted from the job he and Desten had completed the day before. He'd essentially gotten home, had dinner and fallen asleep on her while she watched her shows, and then dragged himself up to bed. That was where she'd turned to her book, since he was useless for company, and he'd gotten the much-needed rest.
It was probably for the best that Stefan had already gotten out of the shower before Betty woke up, but then again, there wasn't much that was going to soften this blow to her ego. The first coherent thought she had was that she'd been dreaming - yes, dreaming - and it had been about rabbits throwing candy all over the place. She'd been chasing them with brooms, and the brooms seemed to have minds all of their own, and then the Sorcerer's Apprentice scene from Fantasia came into play and somehow the brooms had taken over.. It was a nightmare. She reached up to pull the pillow that her head was on out from beneath her hair and put it firmly on her face. She was in some strange sort of physical pain, and she couldn't explain what it was.
It was, in fact, being woken up after having very few hours of sleep. Her head felt like a thousand bells were ringing all at once, but the sound of that alarm had ceased some ten moments prior - so why did she still feel this way? And come to think of it, where was she? She wasn't in her own bed, that much she could tell just by the feel. This bed felt.. different. It felt like it was invading her, or maybe that was her skin crawling. No, her skin definitely felt like it was tightening around her until she gasped for air and threw the pillow aside. She'd nearly suffocated because she'd forgotten to breathe, of course, because vampires didn't need to breathe, and yet here she was, sitting up and coughing like a maniac.
Imagine her surprise when Stefan strode into the room in nothing but a towel, his hair and upper body still delightfully damp from the humid air of the memory of a shower in the bathroom. She widened her eyes a moment, clearing the final phases of sleep from her foggy mind as it began to race. Her blood was pumping heavily through her body and she could feel her heart thundering (her heart?) as she struggled to piece this together. Where was she? She'd been in Stefan's quarters before and they looked nothing like this.. this pedestrian room! She certainly wasn't in her own housing, that much she knew by the - the frilly things she saw everywhere. Her eyes darted around but they kept going back to Stefan as he absently toweled off and then threw the cloth into a hamper that was nearly overflowing with clothing. And then, of course, he had nothing at all.
He went into the closet before she'd had a chance to say anything at all, and honestly she didn't think he'd seen her until he started speaking, voice coming from the closet as he did God only knew what in there. "My book?" she asked, unsure of whether to be insulted or angry. What the HELL was going on, here? She slowly slid out of bed and then stood rather abruptly, but all of the blood rushed around in her head and she had to sit back down as her vision ebbed into black.
"Oh... oh," she stammered, putting a hand to her temple. She couldn't even begin to explain what the hell she was wearing - a dark, burgundy dressing gown of some sort. It was almost something that she'd have liked, except it wasn't hers and it felt alien against her skin. What had happened? She instantly went to blame that voodoo man Aristide, because he was and always had been the center of everything bad that had ever happened ever, but then she paused - had she done - had she done something to displease Niall? Had he and that silver-eyed witch trapped her in some nightmare? And if this was a nightmare, why was Stefan walking around naked? She could have thought of worse things -
But the heartbeat, and the breathing. She was human!
"I'm going to be sick," she said. And she meant it. She got up and scurried to the bathroom, every step enraging her with how much grace she lacked. She emptied the contents of her stomach, which consisted of virtually nothing, into the toilet, and then backed away from it and rested her head in her hands on the bathroom floor, knees drawn up. She hadn't been human in so long, hadn't felt like this in so long. What curse had been spun upon her? And why the FUCK was Stefan involved?