A/N: To make up for the lack of them in the episode last week (and the week before that and the week before that and probably this week too and it's been 3 whole episodes since 6x04 and the only interaction they've had together has been through a cell phone hear my intense distress and annoyance at this in these words). And to also fill in the gaps/cracks the show is both making and ignoring.

He lingers along the hallways of the hospital, taking the elevator up to one floor and then down to another; tired in step, trying and failing not to think about Caroline, trying and failing to discern why the need to figure this out, to get answers to the feelings she was feeling, was so important to him.

As he's leaning against a large window at the very end of the hallway that separated the isolation ward from a small nurses station, too stuck to move past this particular floor just yet, his phone begins to ring.

Elena. His heart pushes then against his chest, as if jolting awake and protesting at the action; do you like me in reasons that she couldn't, he had wanted to ask, the words had entered his brain as though they were lyrics to a song he used to play on repeat. Do you like me in all the very same reasons she used to?

Will you leave me because of them? Will they be enough to convince you to stay?

"Hi." He says quietly even though he wants very much to just turn his phone off and close his eyes, perhaps find a room with an empty bed just to be and breathe.

For a moment there's nothing but background noise, he can make out the sure sounds of her footsteps on the stairwell that led up to her dorm room. She was coming home from being out somewhere, a party maybe? How strange that he doesn't know but used to. How strange that is to him, still.

"Where are you?" She asks as a greeting to his breathless, tired whisper and his forehead is now pressed against the glass; it looked as though it were about to rain.

"At the hospital."

Caroline had certainly filled her in on what had happened but whether or not she had included him as a participant in the story, he has no idea. Caroline, he's learned and it's like needles into the skin, could displace you as invisible and invalid as easily as she could fill a room with warm air.

"Oh…really? With Caroline? She didn't say that you were together."

A roll of thunder suddenly booms out of seemingly nowhere and reverberates the pane of the window and he lifts away from it and turns abruptly for the elevator; he was done with this suffocation, and it was looking as though the outside howl would give him his release. He hugs the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he pushed at the down arrow button, waiting for it to glow.

"Yeah…it's a bit like that at the moment."

Elena goes completely quiet and still, and it's in this silence that he realizes that she already must know. That Caroline would have told her long before he had, however accidentally, found out himself. How long was long though, he wondered and slaps at the down button again. How long had this been going on? How long had he been missing it or rather, simply pretending it wasn't there between them, so focused on other things, his brother, Elena.

How long had he been wishing and wishing and hoping and hoping she, Elena, his life, would come back to him instead?

The elevator finally dings and he steps in, already moving for the back wall to lean against; he hasn't fed in hours and this along with the strangulation of today resulted in a vast lack of energy. He would go out and hunt in the rain; hunting in the rain was always a particular favorite for him. The rain made things much cleaner and in turn, he became more tactile in his motions and effective in his feed.

"You wanna…you wanna talk about it?" She finally asks tentatively but with a sure thread of encouragement and although his first instinct is to say no, he really, really doesn't, especially not with you; he feels this distinct feeling of subtle, subtle release somewhere in his chest at the mere offer.

He sighs but can faintly hear a smile that turns into a soft, sympathetic chuckle on the other end of the line, "Oh boy, that bad huh?" She says.

He can't help but smile too; how nice it was to have someone who knew him, to be unexplained, to not even have to try. Even though the questions that had been at his lips earlier had been all questions against her:

Why and how and what. What are the reasons for why you like me? Please please please, be different from the reasons for why she did.

Stefan finally reaches the ground floor and he quickly turns the corner, coming out to the entranceway where the steady doors will release him out into what is now a brewing but mesmerizingly welcoming storm.

"Bad is putting it lightly. I royally screwed up," He reaches the main sliding glass doors and as they open, the breeze and open air and scattered rain drops are practically euphoric; he is suddenly torn between wanting to keep her familiar voice and from being out there in it, drenched and running and fueling, forgetting about everything else.

But then, so earnestly, as if reading his mind, he so often thought that she really, really could, she finds a solution, "Hey, so I want to keep talking about this, very much but..ah, it's started raining and I know you always prefer to hunt in the rain and I know I could really use the fresh air, so do you wanna…?"

He practically sways on the spot from relief, he has to steady his hand and grip harder to the phone so as to not hang up on her and rush right outside, so wonderful was this offer and overcome by it he was because that was exactly, exactly what he preferred. And needed. And could use himself.

"Yes…yes, that would be wonderful, actually. I'll meet you in 2 minutes outside your building."

Even though lately being around her has been an oxymoron of sorts: stabilizing and heartbreaking, he doesn't care. He wants to be outside and to forget and be with her all the same.

Stefan hurriedly clicks his phone off and pushes it deep into his pocket before throwing the hood to his jacket over his head and rushing forward to meet the wind.

They chase and feed until it stops raining, and it rains for gloriously, mercifully - it's undoubtedly a cure for this past week - much longer than he had thought it would. Sometimes they separate but mostly they stick together and he doesn't know how she had grown to be as good as she is at pursuing and catching a meal, but isn't surprised. He has to almost prevent himself from standing back in admiration; they had come along way from a year and a half year ago, heck even 6 months ago when the cruel desire to feed on other vampires had been dispelled as a violent, messy tremor within her.

When it does start to ease up, and the clouds have practically rolled right back to reveal a clear, wide black sky, they finish. They make no audible decision to stay but seem to both come to a stop together in a space of open forest. She drops down onto a fallen, thick log and he starts a makeshift fire between them before slumping down on a stump that seemed the least wet place to rest.

"That was exactly what I needed, thank you."

Elena pokes at the fire with a stick and shrugs, "Hey, I should be thanking you, I forgot how amazing hunting in the rain was."

A small, fond smile comes to his face because they had hunted in the rain together exactly once, now twice as vampires but she had stayed behind as he went out himself back when she had been human, many, many times. She would always profess her confusion and even worry over why he liked it so much because he would come back completely soaked. It seemed to her to be a very miserable thing to willingly put yourself through. Trying to support him though, as she always did, even in the littlest of matters, she had bought him a thick and warm waterproof jacket to wear. It didn't get a ton of use; Damon caught him wearing it once and made so much fun of him, the thing practically flew right off his body.

Damon, though, had never quite understood the love and thrill of it either.

"So. Let me hear it. What happened?"

Stefan looks up at her and his smile, even though already small, fades easily. Caroline hadn't even been a thought across his mind in the past hour or so. How strange and almost confounding it was, that his once closest friend, the person who could ease and simplify his worries all just by standing right in front of him, had become the very root of them.

"I just…"He sighs and shakes his head before standing, now restless, letting their last conversation together seep into his bones. He bends over the fire to warm his hands, "I don't know what to do." And he honestly, truly, does not. Not anymore. He felt like a boy again and there weren't many times when that happened, when he truly felt 17. 17 year old boys were helpless and hopeless when it came to romantic attachment and the navigations of it. He thinks back to the time when he had rehearsed what he was going to say to Katherine on the night of the ball, after he would walk her to her bedroom door, half a dozen times in front of his mirror. Re-reading the poetry books that were the only remaining remnants he had left of his mother, trying to get it right. Trying to get the words to fit in his mouth, seeming so big and bold and beautiful, too beautiful for him, to properly express how he thought he felt. How he might've at one particular moment or another felt as love for her.

He didn't know how to look, or what to look for, in order to express this though, whatever this was. There was nothing really, perhaps, to express. Or maybe there was. Some muffled, abstract feelings he hadn't even realized were within him. Or maybe weren't?

It was both puzzling and worrying.

And maybe that was the problem: the unknowingness.

Elena watches him, with careful eyes, silently waiting; she twists her wet hair up into a tight bun and bends in closer to the fire, as his eyes before her swirled and fixed with quiet despair. She finds herself forgetting about the problems with Damon, the memories of the two of them now seeming faint and even more foreign. Why did it matter so much, remembering their love, if what was left behind was nothing but disgust and dread? It had been practically exasperating, both the morning and then the night with him but with Stefan, a lonely face, a face she knew so well, even perhaps better than her own, was there clarity and peace.

"Can I ask you something? And can you give me an honest answer?" This was a little dangerous, and perhaps, a little inconsiderate of her but he never really could properly get out whatever was troubling him unless poked and provoked.

He looks up, unsure but open, trusting; it was so instinctual, to trust her, "Please."

Elena tugs on her bottom lip with her teeth, hesitating for a second, hoping she knew what it was she was perhaps starting, "Could you see yourself with her? At all? Ever?"

When his once believed future, dreamed future, impossible future, distant future was sitting less than a foot away from him, no, he really couldn't. But without her there? With Elena gone and faded from his mind, could he? Truly? At all? Even in the smallest of ways, be with her? Caroline?

But he holds Elena's eyes that don't waver, even in the slightest, she is right there with him and knows the answer to these questions all at once. He's grateful for the blanket of the night. That it was just the two of them, that all he can hear is the fire and the woods and the sound of her breathing; this was his protection and in it, he felt very brave.

"When I first found out that she did…I thought for half a second, so intensely for that half a second, it almost scared me because I wasn't even looking for it and my answer was yes. But I know now I can't do that to her. Not yet anyway. When I think of the future I still only see you and I cannot do that to Caroline, I wouldn't ever forgive myself. I love her and I care about her but that there is a difference to the way I love and care about you, matters. Until there isn't, I can't be with her. So no. I don't."

It's raw and honest and a lot of information she probably shouldn't even hear, she doesn't have the right anymore, but she takes those words as if they're breakable, fragile things, takes them and holds them; it's been almost two whole years since they have loved one another, but perhaps days, seconds, since he has loved her. It's important that she must always remember this.

The need to be closer to him then is sudden. Maybe out of empathy or sorrow, or maybe because she loved him too, so very much. Just not in the fineness of true love anymore, and wanted, so very badly, to remind him that things changed and she changed, but really, actually, didn't. She just let Damon overtake anything else and made it impossible to remember how it felt to be loved by anyone who wasn't him. Maybe that was why. Maybe.

"Stefan…"

"You know…I asked her. I asked her why. Why she liked me…did I ever ask that of you?"

Elena ducks her head and closes her eyes; her butt is wet, the log hadn't been terribly dry but the need to tuck her hands beneath her thighs just to keep from reaching for him was paramount. So she tucked and sat and kept her eyes closed, thinking of all those memories, of that moment when he had turned away from her, when he never needed to ask the why do you because she had pulled him back to her and told him, 'This way. I love you this way. Just as you are. I love you.'

It had always been so obvious to her, why she did because in a way, it had been the very same reasons for why he had loved her.

Elena is warm and she's kind and she's caring and she's selfless and it's real. And honestly when I'm around her I completely forget what I am.

"Did you ever feel the need to ask me that…specifically…why I loved you?"

And she looks up to catch his face, to see the expression, genuinely curious because he had always been doubtful, unsure at times, of himself compared to Damon but in the general notion of it all, did it really matter to him, wanting to know why? They clawed and fought and supported and loved, intensely, loved one another; it had been obvious in the things she did and he did and what she saw and how she had held him and kissed him and made love to him. All of it. It was completely, devastatingly, obvious.

I get to just be myself.

"I…" He pauses, there's a catch in his voice from this day, and from being so near her and from letting this be what it actually is: not friendship but a void of difference and space between them even though nothing was really different, nothing at all, "I would sometimes try…you never allowed me the full opportunity though. You always, instead, showed me why, time and time again. It overwhelmed me that you did. I never needed to ask the why."

And she understands now, in perhaps a way she didn't earlier, wanting to support Caroline, why he didn't and couldn't like Caroline just yet. Why he was probably, in a way, preventing himself from even the chance to try and like her.

He had never simply liked Elena; he had always simply loved her.

And this was the sure difference, the prevention from moving on from one to the other.

"I want to…I really want to hug you right now but I know that that is probably not what you need, and I don't want to be selfish even though I really have been, I've been so selfish, with the Damon situation, to ask you to hug me."

She is rambling, looking for the refusal, for a way out because leaving and running, perhaps to never stop ever again would be so much easier but her eyes manage to catch his and he's so honest, he's so sure, he's so weak and tired and in love with her, it's silly and she's sorry. She's sorry it can't be more, maybe soon, maybe one day again, but not now, not just yet.

"Come here." He asks and she slowly stands, slowly closes the space between them and walks into arms that are open and waiting for her, always always always, he would probably be waiting for her - she didn't deserve it, it made her want to cry - to love.

It's less of a hug than it is the two of them holding onto one another, tight and crushed, she can feel his hand at the back of her neck; the way he used to hold her whenever she was upset or if it had been a very long while since they had seen one another. When a long while used to be only hours and not days, weeks, months. And she wants to stay forever, pressed to him, pressed against the familiarity of it. Of being able to remember, every single time and moment he has ever held her this way but knows the longer she does, the more it hurts him so she pulls herself back.

Their hands linger until there is a definite separation between their bodies and it's only then that she realizes that the fire has practically been gone out, that she can barely make out his face anymore.

"You didn't just stay away because of him, did you? For all those months."

Elena watches his shoulders, as they sag, as his neck practically shortens an inch or two and his head bends to the floor: honesty coming, brutal brutal honesty. She holds her breath.

"No. I stayed away because of you as well. Watching you grieve for him was almost just as painful as losing him was."

"Would you have done it? If I had died and you were stuck to live a life without me. Would you? Damon is seeing it as so selfish of me. Would you want to be compelled to forget? You told Rebekah to do it once before?" She asks, a rock in her throat.

The very idea is excruciating and insane. He shakes his head, suddenly taller and is so overcome one hand goes directly to her face, to cup her cheek, "No…no no, that was different. I was in pain then, yes but you were still in front of me. I've left you before, knowing you were alive and I could almost feel it, you know? I could feel that you were still alive and breathing but without you here? I don't think I could do it, be without you here…It's why I never refused or made any arguments to what you were doing. I understood."

A memory passes over her mind at that moment and in it, she's laughing so hard, her cheeks hurts. With his thumb graving her skin, she can see herself laughing, her cheeks just hurting and hurting, she's so happy in this memory and he's there, he's real, she doesn't even have to think or try. The memory of Stefan and of them together is so solid, so easy to picture and remember, it's grounding.

"I'm so glad you didn't. I'm so glad that I can remember and that you can too, as much as I know it must hurt you. I'm so glad, Stefan."

In the hospital, he was lost, wandering and alone. Out here, he felt free; his hand to her face, a face he can't bear to leave.

"Me too." He whispers and lets her go, just like that because he must. Because she would have to get back to the dorms and he wanted to check in on Caroline and her mother, despite everything. Despite everything he cares so much, it was his weakness.

"Caroline, you know, she'll be okay. Probably not right away but I know if you keep trying, she'll see that and appreciate it. And hey…"

They're feet away now, the fire is completely out and it's almost as if they were never there to begin with, "She'll want you, even as a friend, in whatever way she can have you in. Believe me, be patient, it'll be okay."

He'll smell like Elena and his palms will be hot and yet, Caroline will be in front of him, wanting, willing and he'll look right at her and he'll feel nothing at all.

"Sure." He nods with a small smile and watches her turn and leave.

Because you are wanting and accepting me, he thinks she meant really, because you are wanting me even as we are, Stefan, even as I'm breaking your hurt. You are wanting me.

That's why.

A/N: Literally the first thing that came into my head the second he asked Caroline, "Why?" was the line, 'Tell me, is it different from the ways Elena did?' and man oh man, did that get this thing going. I hate (love) how Paul Wesley can simultaneously make you want to hug the shit out of Stefan and then also want to slap him around a little. But mostly hug him, poor, sad boy (clearly I have picked a very biased side in this team Caroline/team Stefan relationship mayhem). Anyway. This too was terribly sad, but hopefully a good read. I've got another fic almost ready to post based on Stefan and Elena's moments in 6x04 which is a little lighter, so look forward to that if I get my act together and finish it.

And can I also say how absurd I find it that I'm still getting inspiration even where we are at the moment. Absurd I say!