Title: Notes on a Scandal

Rating: M

Genre: AU All Human

Pairing(s): Bonnie/Stefan, Klaus/Stefan, Bonnie/Klaus, Bonnie/Stefan/Klaus, Stefan/Katherine, Caroline/Matt, Tyler/Vicki, mentions of past Bonnie/Mason, Klaus/Marcel, ect.

Summary: Schoolteacher Niklaus Mikaelson has led a solitary life until Stefan Salvatore, the new English teacher at Mystic Falls High School, befriends him and takes him on as a confidante. But as their relationship develops, so does another as Stefan begins an illicit affair with an underage student, Bonnie Bennett. When the affair is discovered Klaus decides to write an account of the events in his friend's defense— through which it is revealed that his intentions with this "friend" go well beyond platonic friendship. Things become further complicated when Klaus' obsession extends to Bonnie during Stefan's trial.

Warnings: Infidelity, Sexual Content, Non-Canon, Polyamourous Relationships, OOC Behavior, etc.

Author's Note: This is a repost. This fic was removed from Wattpad and I am so frustrated. There is a glitch going on on Wattpad and my stories are disappearing. The fixed the issue with one but honestly I am tired of dealing with it. So I started this fic for two reasons the main one being that I need help and the second being I wanted to do a Klefonnie story in a different sort of setting. I am taking a bit of a risk with this, but I am trusting that if not open to the idea at the very least you all will give me honest feedback. Okay so this is inspired by both the book What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal and the movie adaption of the book which was titled simply, Notes on a Scandal. However, I am taking the idea toward different territory. I will try to keep everyone in character for the most part, but I can't make any promises. So here is how this will go, the start of this will be in Klaus' POV, a first person, and then it will go into third person as the story goes along. Klaus's perspective of things is a bit skewed and he is not the most reliable narrator but his observations do have some merit. There will be breaks in which we will see Klaus' POV again as he writes his account of events and it will jump into present which is amidst Stefan's trial. Anyway please give me feedback or I will curl up in a ball and eat cookie dough and cry (side note: I will likely be doing this sans the crying whether you give feedback or not). Here goes nothing! Happy reading!

Foreword

"We are bound by the secrets we share." ― Zoë Heller, What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]

Mystic Falls, Virginia

March 1, 2010

In spite of the trial beginning today, Stefan saw fit to talk about the first time that he kissed the Bennett girl, last night at dinner. I had of course, heard the story before, more than once. Sometimes prompted and sometimes not. However, this time around, a new detail slipped from Stefan's lips.

When it became clear that in spite of my lack of response the story would continue, I began to ask questions. I happened to ask him if there was anything about the experience that surprised him. He took this question into consideration for some time. Thinking on it for a while and closed his eyes in the most irritating of ways as if he were reliving the experience over and over again.

The answer that he came up with was one that I had not expected. The smell and the feel of the whole thing, in particular the smell of the Bennett girl and the feel of her lips. Her being a teenager, and a cheerleader besides, he had expected her to smell of something both disgustingly flowery and overwhelming in equal parts. He expected her lips to feel sticky with lip gloss and perhaps taste of something fruity like cherries, or worse strawberries.

When it happened, it was a very surreal moment. If not for the scents, the feel, the taste; I would have been able to convince myself later that it had not happened to me but someone else. She smelled like soap and vanilla, her scent was soft and warm. Her lips were soft as well, and gentle. I have never felt such warmth and gentility since my mother passed away after her illness. I thought such things were lost to the world…

Every night this week since we moved into his old family boarding house Stefan has talked to me of her. He sits in an old worn chair that used to be his mothers and he speaks in a low voice as if he is afraid that someone might hear, though as his brother bought their childhood home for his own family some time ago, and the boarding house is vacant, there is no one left to hear.

Often the things he says are extremely personal in nature, very in depth, and detailed. If not for how closed mouth he has been with the reporters I would guess that he could not speak of the Bennett girl without falling into some ridiculously worshipful exaggerated diatribe.

From what I have discovered over the eighteen months in which I have known him, I can say very plainly that Stefan is a brooder. He goes over his own behavior again and again, particularly things that others might consider to be a sin, in incredible detail. Dissecting his own actions, his brows knitted together and his mind consumed with guilt whether or not he feels that his actions are wrong.

I am the only one who he ever speaks with in this way, outside of himself and the girl. We don't have secrets, Stefan and I.

When I first saw her undress, do you know what I thought of Nik? It was the oddest thing, but I thought of being invited into someone's home. It was as if I was a guest being welcomed with open arms. And I made it my own home. Set up myself there. Built shelves in her mind to stack my secrets upon. Placed my dreams in a drawer in the valley of her breast. Locked my soul in a room between her legs. It never occurred to me that she was too young to offer me shelter, it still does not occur to me in fact…

The house metaphor is one that pops up often. The trouble with Stefan being a teacher of literature is that he is of the mind that everything that leaves his mouth must sound poetic. No matter how many odes he sings of the girl's hair or sonnets he recites about her eyes, I still often wonder at the fact that he does not know how very ridiculous that he sounds. Still I kept giving him cues and asking questions. "When you were kissing her for the first time were you nervous?"

Not exactly. As I said before it was a very surreal moment. But there were things about the exchange that kept me rooted firmly in reality. I was calm, alarmingly so. It was because she was so gentle I think, that made me calm. There was no pressure, no tongue, just the soft press of her lips to mine and then she lingered. She lingered so long that I relaxed too much into it, and I dropped my car keys. I've never heard anything so loud in my life as those keys hitting the ground. Then I ran, of course. I wasn't nervous no….not during….but afterward…afterward... By the time I made it to my car I was trembling. Nervous and scared because I knew…I knew it would happen again.

I never respond. I keep my face impartial. Make sure that I don't judge. Not that it would matter if I did. Stefan simply wants someone to listen to him. Someone who will not condemn him or twist his words in the way they have been doing in all of the papers.

However, as I said before Stefan has always been this way with me. I could not tell you why but from the day that we met he has been rather comfortable with tossing out intimate truths about himself and his life. He's always been very frank with me, and though I do not understand it, I am flattered by it. It was the frankness and the intimacy that he shared with the girl that was his undoing.

At the moment I am taking my seat in the court room on the side of the defendant. It is the first day of Stefan's trial and the reporters that have been slandering him are present as well as most of the small unremarkable Virginian town.

I am the only one sitting on Stefan's side of the room outside of Alexia Branson, whom considers herself to be a friend of his. We are the only ones that had stood by him in this, me going as far as to give up my apartment to help him pay his lawyer's fees. Then later I moved into the boarding house after his wife Katherine kicked him out of his home (understandable given the situation) so that he would not be alone.

Much of the town believes that since I have so clearly taken Stefan's side on things that I have some sordid secret of my own. My publically siding with Stefan has left me no choice but to resign from my own position as art teacher at the same school that forced Stefan's resignation once the unfortunate business with the Bennett girl surfaced. I do not mind as I abhor teenagers and meant to strike out on my own with my art just the same.

Alexia taps me on the shoulder and asks after Stefan's well-being. I lie and tell her that he is fine, though I am not sure what sort of answer that she expects under the circumstances. She nods and sits back in her seat just behind me, without further word.

In truth Stefan has not been sleeping well at night. And often he stays up when he says that he is sleep(though he slept well enough last night after I took the liberty of scenting his pillow with vanilla, a necessary evil as he had to be well rested before the trial even if I had to pay a homage to the girl to get it done). I can sometimes hear the scratching of pen across paper and his voice talking to himself through the walls from my own room next door to his. He writes to the Bennett girl, night after night. Letters that he sneaks out in the early hours of the morning and sticks underneath the windshield wiper of her car. He never signs them as if that will reduce suspicion if someone were to see them there, but I suspect it is only due to the neglect and self-absorbedness of the girl's parents (the same neglectful behavior that allowed the affair to take place without their knowledge for so many months) that he has not yet been found out. The girl never writes back to him.

Still Stefan has taken to planning out their future together. I have only been inside of his room a handful of times, and when I entered the first time I made a disturbing discovery. There are lined pieces of paper that he has tapped to his wall, marked with permanent marker and outlining the dates from the moment he met the girl to present and then blank pages with only lines and dashes as if he hopes to one day fill them with more moments in their unfortunate courtship. No, Stefan is not alright, but how do I explain all that is wrong in a courtroom full of people who wish to have his head?

This is not my story. But as I am the one telling it and I am involved in some of the events I am going to describe, I suppose introductions are an order. My name is Niklaus Mikaelson, but you may call me Klaus. (At times my sister, Rebekah and Stefan refer to me as Nik but I tolerate that only because I care for them more than most). I have been living in this small Virginian town at my family's estate known to most a Mikaelson Manor, for the past twelve years. Two years ago I left my family home and purchased a loft apartment just inside the town limits where I lived up until February when this unfortunate business was discovered and Stefan's prosecution started. Before I resigned I was an art teacher at Mystic Falls High School for ten years. I met Stefan Salvatore, eighteen months ago, he was the first friend I had had in fifteen years. He is a twenty-five year old English teacher charged with indecent assault on a minor after being discovered having a sexual affair with one of his students-who was sixteen years old at the time the affair started.

The town has been talking of little else since the affair first came to light. It has received a certain degree of media coverage as well. The reporters use words like "unhealthy" and "monster", things of that nature to describe Stefan, though in reality the only thing that is unhealthy about him is the degree to which he martyrs himself.

They also find some joy in the fact that his wife Katherine Pierce (she never took on his last name), who is ten years his senior, was his own professor at one point in time when they met, as she teaches a course at Whitmore College. Human Sexuality of all things. They speak of his relationship with Katherine as if it were some precursor to the incident with the Bennett girl. Some sign of his deviance.

I used to take the media much more seriously before discovering that reporters and journalist are all idiots, at least speaking of the majority of them. That is why I have taken it upon myself to write a more accurate account of things. As Stefan's confidant and caretaker, there is no one more suitable than I to take on the task.

Stefan is unaware of my plans, he has enough to worry about so I will keep him in the dark about things for now. He will appreciate it I am sure when it is all said and done. I have as I said drawn some media attention myself so this will be for my sake as well as his, and in some ways it will even be for the sake of the girl.

I will be the first to admit that Stefan's account of things is not the most reliable. Though he shoulders all of the responsibility so married is he to his guilt, at the same time he has the irritating habit of romanticizing the relationship. As of late his remorse stems for the fact that the girl is being scrutinized and must be put through the process of his trial and the town being privy to her personal information through him. Other than that, his own actions do not seem to bother him all that much. But as confused and muddled as Stefan's recollection of their "love" is, he is honest to the best of his abilities and so I can say that as far as he knows he is telling the truth about things.

Almost as I write this the girl and her parents walk into the courtroom. Her mother and father look down as if they are the ones on trial and in a way they are. They have been in the process of getting a divorce for some time or so Stefan tells me the girl told him. The father is often out of town and the mother is currently staying with her own mother in a separate home and so the girl was often left alone in the house she shared with her father. A house that Stefan himself has become extremely familiar with.

The parents sit on the prosecutor's side and the girl walks behind them. I am surprised to see her head is held high and there is a look of determination on her face that is almost unnerving. The Forbes girl stands next to her, her hand on the girl's shoulder. They have been friends for some time Stefan told me once. Funny I have never seen them together until this moment. The Bennett girl, whenever I chanced to glance in her direction long enough to pay attention to whom I was looking at, has always been alone.

The girl surprises me further as she does not follow her parents. Instead she takes her seat on Stefan's side next to me (which means I will soon have to stop writing). Still I look at her out of the corner of my eye as her friend hesitates before sitting with her.

I have seen her before as I said, but I have never really looked. I see some of it as she looks towards the doors across the room that open to allow Stefan and his lawyer to enter, the beauty that Stefan so often speaks of. She is not as attractive as Stefan (not that I find him to be attractive, only beautiful in the way that most aesthetically pleasing things are) though their eyes are a similar green. But I can see that she is not wanting as far as looks, though her mouth is slightly crooked and her nose is much too small and makes me think of some sort of fey creature.

I glance at her parents and find that though her mother is glaring and her father is rather stiff neither of them have come to fetch their daughter. It is clear whose side the Bennett girl is on in this and the whispers coming from the townspeople around us who were shouting about her stolen innocence and labeling her tainted only days before are very telling.

Stefan looks put together in every sense of the word even with the ongoing whispers around the room. I would credit his suddenly looking much less haggard than he has since the ordeal began to the new suit I took the liberty of purchasing for him, for the purposes of the trial and the fact that I forced him to shave this morning, but it is clear what has lifted his spirits enough for him to appear human rather than stray animal. His eyes become bright and alive as he sees the Bennett girl as if she has been the one at his side these weeks and not I. As Stefan takes his seat he looks right at the girl and smiles. It is a rather idiotic thing to do considering what he is on trial for but I resist the urge to roll my eyes at him, though it is nice to see him smile.

The Bennett girl smiles in return though she is fidgeting with her hands in a way that makes me think of swatting her as if she were a fly. Stefan needs her calmness at the moment, she is usually a very put together brave faced girl when she is being swarmed by reporters, walking pass them calmly without comment.

I suppose I expected her to be shielded by her parents on the prosecutor's side of the room but she has surprised more than me by taking Stefan's side so her action might very well be what is responsible for her nerves. The Forbes girl is of no help, her eyes are darting around the room quickly and she looks only seconds away from leaving the Bennett girl's side. Alexia touches the girl's shoulder from behind and Bennett jumps and begins to chew on her bottom lip.

Stefan turns slightly and frowns at the Bennett girl sympathetically. He gives me the most pleading look I have ever seen before his lawyer forces him to turn around again and whispers admonishingly in his ear. I understand as Stefan is being rather stupid, but really the man needn't be so close in order to tell him so.

I glance down at the Bennett girl as she begins to tap her heeled feet against the floor.

Sighing I place my free hand over hers to stop her movements, but she sees it as a gesture of comfort. She freezes altogether, except both of her hands now clutch one of mine. She smiles at me as she glances over, mimics my posture her body now confident and erect. I catch the soft scent of vanilla and frown. She squeezes my hand before letting it go and then she pulls something out of the pocket of the pencil skirt she is wearing. A letter, folded but I can still see the faint outlines of Stefan's handwriting. She places the small paper in between her hands, folds her hands together, places them in her lap, and stares at Stefan's back as the judge enters the room.

"He looks good," she leans over and whispers to me her eyes still forward, "He hasn't been sleeping I can tell but you've taken good care of him. He said you would. Thank you, Mr. Mikaelson."

She leans back over toward the Forbes girl and whispers something that seems to calm her. Inexplicably something shifts and she stops being the Bennett girl in my mind and I suddenly think of her as Bonnie. Perhaps I could talk to her as I talk to Stefan, it will be good for her to tell her side of things, make my account more accurate. It does Stefan good I think, talking to me. And perhaps I will finally understand why it is that he chose her.