Leo slowly turned his head to look back at Stefan, who was still standing silently in the open doorway. A small, knowing smile appeared on Leo's lips. It was not a friendly or warm expression. It was the cool, slightly amused smile of a person who has just heard a very bad lie or a very weak excuse and is waiting for you to realize how thin it sounds.
"Really, Stefan?" Leo said, his voice calm. He pointed a thumb back at the carved names on the marble. "Your ancestors. And their names are exactly the same as yours? Damon and Stefan. That's quite the specific family tradition."
Stefan met Leo's gaze. As he looked at that smile, a cold fear uncoiled in his stomach and spread through his mind. The expression on Leo's face was a direct trigger. It flung him back to that night. He remembered with perfect, terrifying clarity the moment Leo's human mask had slipped. He remembered the monstrous, inhuman face that had stared back at him—ancient, powerful, and full of a cold, focused rage. The polite smile he saw now was a pale, civilized echo of that night's raw terror, and that made it even more frightening.
But Stefan had centuries of practice at masking his true feelings. He kept his own face perfectly, painfully calm. Not a single muscle twitched to betray the fear chilling his blood. He saw the quiet challenge in Leo's eyes, the unspoken dare to try and keep lying. Stefan knew, with absolute certainty, that he had to stick to his story, especially for Elena.
Stefan nodded, his face politely humble. "Yes, it is," he said. He gave a small, helpless shrug of his shoulders, a universal gesture to suggest the situation was silly but unavoidable. "I know how odd it must seem," he continued, carefully keeping his tone light and slightly embarrassed. "It's just one of those strange, old-fashioned family traditions." He deliberately shifted his gaze to Elena as he spoke, aiming his explanation directly at her. He worked to make his voice sound bored and utterly normal, like he was discussing a boring piece of trivial family history.
Elena, standing between them, listened. Her earlier confusion seemed to ease. The explanation, while strange, was at least an explanation. "Oh," she said softly, looking from the stone back to Stefan. "So that's how it is."
But Leo wasn't listening to Elena's quiet acceptance. His attention was fixed solely on Stefan. He watched the vampire tell his lies with an easy, polished smoothness, like a clerk reciting a routine script. The performance was flawless, and that made it worse.
Seeing it now brought the memory of that night back to Leo's mind with perfect, sharp clarity. He remembered that night. He remembered his hand closed around the neck of Stefan's brother, Damon, ready to inflict serious punishment on him. And he remembered Stefan suddenly stepping between them.
Stefan had not just tried to stop the fight. He had launched into a speech. He talked about morality and principles. He told Leo that killing Damon would make him a monster, that it was an evil act. He spoke with a tone of righteous certainty.
The memory of that lecture now burned in Leo's mind. The sheer hypocrisy of it was staggering. Here was Stefan - a vampire who had himself killed countless humans over more than a century - pointing a finger and preaching about right and wrong. He judged Leo while hiding his own violent history and his brother's true nature. The self-righteousness in Stefan's voice that night felt fresh again, grating against Leo's nerves.
A spark of new anger ignited in Leo's chest. It wasn't a wild rage, but a slow, steady heat of resentment. It warmed him from the inside with a focused intensity.
Then, another layer of thought settled over his anger. Leo knew something Stefan could never guess. He was not from this world. In his past life, he had seen Stefan's entire story before. He had watched it as a television show on another Earth. He knew Stefan was here in Mystic Falls for one main reason: he was in love with Elena Gilbert.
This knowledge connected with his anger, forming a new, calculated idea. Stefan had been a hypocrite, preaching morals to him that night. The lies today were just more of the same. Now, Leo saw a direct and simple way to repay him for that hypocrisy.
He would make Stefan jealous.
Leo slowly turned his gaze away from Stefan. He looked directly at Elena instead. In the doorway, Stefan's fear deepens more. He watched Leo's expression change, the earlier amusement fading into something more focused and deliberate. Stefan knew, with a vampire's instinct for danger, that something bad was about to happen. His hand, hidden in his jacket pocket, clenched into a tight, desperate fist, his nails pressing into his palm.
Elena felt the weight of Leo's attention shift fully onto her. She turned to look back at him, meeting his eyes. He held her gaze for a long, silent moment, not speaking.
In that quiet, Leo quickly considered everything he had noticed over the past few days. He remembered the way Elena would glance at him in the hallway, the faint blush that sometimes colored her cheeks when they talked, and how she always seemed to find a reason to be near him at school. He wasn't one hundred percent certain, but the signs were there. He guessed she probably felt some attraction to him.
That guess was all he needed. He decided to test it. The reason was two-fold. First, he was personally curious to know for sure. Second, and more importantly, it was the perfect way to twist the knife for Stefan, who was standing there frozen, forced to watch. It was a simple, effective move.
He saw a flicker of nervousness in her eyes, but also a softness.
He took a slow, quiet breath and decided to go through with it. He allowed a hint of real nervousness to surface on his own face - a slight hesitation, an uncharacteristic uncertainty in his eyes. This part wasn't entirely an act; speaking so openly about feelings was unfamiliar and uncomfortable for him. But beneath that surface nervousness was a solid, unwavering determination. He was going to say the words.
"Elena," he began, his voice lower and quieter than before, meant only for her. It trembled, just slightly. "I've been wanting to ask you something." He paused, letting the silence build for a second, as if gathering his courage. "These past few days… when we talk, it doesn't feel like just talking to a friend anymore. It feels different." He met her eyes directly, his gaze intense and searching, looking for the truth in her reaction. "I guess I just need to know… does it feel that way for you, too?"
Elena looked into Leo's eyes. His question hung in the quiet room between them. It was direct and felt vulnerable, which made her own heart react before her mind could. It began to beat fast and hard against her ribs, a frantic, heavy rhythm that felt exactly like it had the very first time she saw him at school.
In that instant, she could no longer avoid the truth about her own feelings. She thought about the past days and weeks—how often he was in her thoughts, how she replayed their conversations, how she found herself looking for him in the halls or at the school yard. She had become quietly obsessed with him. But she had never dared to admit it, not even in the privacy of her own mind. A strong wall of denial had always been there, stopping her from acknowledging what was so obvious.
Now, with his simple question hanging in the air, that inner barrier shattered completely. It didn't crack slowly; it just vanished, as if it had never been real.
She didn't answer him with words. Words felt too slow and clumsy for what she was feeling. Instead, her body moved on its own. She took one small step forward, closing the short distance between them. Now she was standing close enough that she could smell the clean, fresh scent of his skin .
Her eyes dropped from his gaze for just a second, down to his lips. Then her eyes flew back up to meet him.The confusion and the denial were gone, replaced by a single, clear intention.
She leaned in and kissed him.
It was a kiss that felt like the release of weeks of built-up emotion. Her mouth met his with a firm, desperate pressure. All the unspoken feelings she had kept locked inside—the constant thoughts, the secret hopes—were poured directly into that single contact.
For one second, Leo was completely still, surprised by her direct action. Then, his hands came up.They settled firmly on her shoulders, holding her in place. He began to respond. His own kiss deepened, meeting her raw desperation with a more controlled, focused intensity of his own.
The kiss changed, becoming deeper and more intimate. What started as her frantic confession became a silent, shared conversation. It was a wordless exchange that, for those moments, completely shut out the rest of the world. The quiet museum room, the old portraits on the walls, the heavy history in the air—none of it existed. In that space, there was only the feeling of the kiss, the warmth, and the surprising rightness of it.
They were both so absorbed in the moment, in the sudden collision of secret feelings and testing curiosity, that they seemed to forget everything else. They forgot about the carved names on the marble stone, the party humming downstairs, and Stefan Salvatore, who was still standing frozen.
Stefan watched it happen. A physical pain, so sharp it stole his breath, lanced straight through his chest. It felt as if a cold, invisible hand had reached inside him, seized his heart, and squeezed it into a pulp. He couldn't bear to watch for another second. His head jerked away sharply, his eyes fixing on a blank, unmarked spot on the white wall opposite him.
He stood frozen in the doorway, a statue of agony. The sight was a brutal, undeniable confirmation of his deepest fear—he was losing Elena, completely and in front of his eyes. In the silent room, the soft sound of their kiss was the only thing he could hear.
His jaw tightened so hard the muscles ached. The hand hidden in his jacket pocket was now a white-knuckled fist. A painful sting pressed behind his eyes—a furious, helpless anguish he could not release.
Every raw instinct in his body screamed at him to move. To step forward, to intervene, to pull her away from Leo and back to him. But a stronger, colder instinct overpowered the urge. It was the instinct for self-preservation, chilled by the perfect, terrifying memory of Leo's true, monstrous power from that night. That fear was a chain, rooting him to the spot, forcing him to stand there and endure the torture of doing nothing.
…
Downstairs, Caroline finished her conversation with Councilman Miller and his wife with a perfectly timed, bright laugh. She excused herself with a graceful nod and immediately turned to walk back across the ballroom. Her target was the exact spot by the large pillar and potted fern where she had instructed Leo to wait.
As she approached, her eyes quickly scanned the area. She looked at the space beside the pillar, then around it, and then at the nearby groups of people. He wasn't there. The spot was empty.
A sharp, hot flicker of irritation ignited in her chest. Her polished smile tightened, becoming strained at the corners. She took a few more steps, her head turning left and right as she rapidly checked the nearby clusters of guests. She looked toward the bar area, then back toward the dance floor. He was nowhere in sight. A flush of social anxiety mixed with her anger. Can't he just wait in one spot for five minutes? The thought screamed in her mind, a furious, silent whisper. This was a simple instruction, and he had already agreed to it.
Then, she remembered her own words to him. She had told him the historical wing upstairs was "where the real fun is." Of course. That was exactly where a bored person would go. The realization didn't calm her; it just redirected her annoyance. He hadn't wandered off randomly—he had deliberately gone to the one place she had pointed out as interesting, ignoring her direct order to stay put.
Fueled by this fresh annoyance, she changed course. She walked with quick, determined steps toward the grand staircase at the edge of the ballroom.Her heels sank slightly into the thick carpet of the stairs as she began to climb, leaving the glittering noise of her party behind to retrieve her wandering date.
The quiet of the second-floor hallway was a stark contrast to the noisy ballroom below. Caroline's eyes adjusted quickly to the softer light. Almost immediately, she spotted a figure standing near one of the open doorways further down the hall. It was Stefan. He was facing away from her, his head bowed low, his shoulders stiff and tense. He didn't move. He looked like someone who had just witnessed something terrible—a car crash or a fight—and was frozen in stunned, quiet pain.
Caroline's natural curiosity was instantly piqued. This was odd behavior, even for Stefan, who was often quiet and serious. Seeing him like this, so visibly upset in this empty hallway, was strange. A practical thought followed her curiosity: if Leo had come upstairs, Stefan might have seen where he went.
She walked toward him, her heels making soft, muffled thuds against the thick carpet that swallowed most of the sound. As she got closer, she could see the tight line of his back more clearly.
Stefan heard the muffled footsteps approaching. He turned his head slowly, as if moving through water. When he saw it was Caroline, a complex wave of emotions passed over his face in less than a second. Most people would have missed it. There was a flash of surprise, followed by a shadow of his current pain. But then, for a brief instant, there was something else—a flicker of grim, almost cruel amusement, and a sense of twisted relief.
In that fraction of a second, Stefan thought one clear thing: Caroline. She was possessive. He had seen how she looked at Leo, with her possessive loving eyes. If anyone was going to burst into that room and shatter the moment between Leo and Elena, it would be her. He wouldn't have to be the one to confront Leo's dangerous reaction. She would do it for him, driven by her own outrage. This bitter realization brought him a sliver of relief amidst his anguish.
Before Stefan could form a word to warn or stop her, Caroline reached his side. She opened her mouth, her tone already sharp with impatient curiosity. "Stefan, what's going on? Have you seen—?"
Her question cut off abruptly, dying in her throat. As she spoke, her eyes automatically followed his line of sight, glancing past him and through the open doorway.
Her gaze was pulled into the room as if by a strong, physical force.
There, in the center of the quiet, museum-like room, stood Elena and Leo.
They were kissing. It was not a quick or shy kiss. It was a deep, intimate one. Their bodies were close together. Leo's hands were resting firmly on Elena's shoulders. Elena's face was tilted up toward his, and their lips were pressed together in a way that was both gentle and intense. It was a private, passionate moment. They were completely absorbed in each other, seeming entirely unconcerned with the world around them, including the two people watching from the hallway.
Every thought, every piece of planned conversation, drained instantly from Caroline's mind. The irritation from Leo being gone and all her social calculations vanished, replaced by a white-hot shock that locked her body in place.
Her best friend. And her date.
Her eyes widened. Her perfectly glossed lips fell open slightly in pure, unscripted astonishment. Then, a cold, sharp feeling stabbed through the shock. It was a mix of three things hitting her at once: the betrayal of her best friend, the jealousy of seeing him kiss someone else, and the utter humiliation of being left for Elena, of all people. The pain was physical, like a knife being twisted deep in her chest.
She loved him. The realization screamed inside her. She had tried so hard, planned everything perfectly. What did I do wrong? The frantic thought echoed. What did I do that made him abandon me here?
Then, the pain ignited into a hotter, clearer fury.No. The word burned in her mind. How dare he? How dare Leo do this to her, humiliate her like this? How dare they both do this? The betrayal from Elena cut even deeper.
In the room, the kiss slowly broke apart. Leo and Elena separated, but only by an inch. A faint, shiny trace of saliva glistened at the corner of both their lips for a second before disappearing. They looked at each other, breathless, the world slowly filtering back in.
Leo was the first to fully break the moment. He blinked, as if clearing his vision. He took a slow, deliberate breath to steady himself. His hands, which had been on her shoulders, dropped to his sides. He then performed a small, habitual gesture—he patted the front of his coat, straightening an invisible wrinkle, a physical action to regain his usual controlled composure.
Elena seemed to float back to reality more slowly. Her eyes were still slightly dazed as she looked at Leo. Then, her gaze drifted past him, toward the doorway. She saw Stefan first. The sight of him—his pained expression, the fact that he had witnessed everything—caused a hot wave of embarrassment to crash over her. Her cheeks instantly flushed a deep, mortified red.
Her eyes then moved from Stefan to the person standing just beside him. She saw Caroline. All the warmth and breathless feeling drained from Elena's face, replaced by cold shock and guilt. She stood frozen, unable to speak or move.
Following her gaze, Leo also turned his head to look at the doorway. His eyes moved past Stefan and landed directly on Caroline. His expression, which had been softened by the kiss, settled back into its usual neutral calm. His eyes met Caroline's.
***