A/N: Happy (late) Valentine's Day to the Elle/Tristan shippers. And lamiss12, if you read this and see any egregious French errors, do tell me about them. =]

The title of this chapter comes from the Sufjan Stevens song of the same name.

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Dress Looks Nice on You

That night – or unfathomable early morning, as Tristan called it with a winning smirk – I snuck in through the back kitchen door. It was always unlocked and propped open at night, because Dorota liked to air the kitchen out after dinner, and courageux vieux Lucien Poirier, the ex-military officer who lived in the house between Tristan's and mine, kept a sharp eye on the neighborhood from his attic window. His diligence made people feel a little better about leaving windows and doors propped open, but it also made it very difficult for anyone, even frisky adults seeking a midnight rendezvous away from the children, to sneak in or out of their homes after dark.

Tristan and I, however, had made an art form out of it. We knew Poirier usually left his attic at about 3 AM to take a stroll and stretch his legs, so at 2:55 we halted just behind the hedges that separated his grounds from Tristan's and watched him abandon his window post. Three minutes later, in his best black coat and a dapper stovepipe hat, Poirier strolled out his front door with the aid of a finely polished mahogany walking stick, halted at the end of his walkway, then made a sharp right turn and marched determinedly down the street and out of sight.

I giggled into Tristan's sleeve as he made a heroic show of carrying me over my back garden wall, then shushed him urgently as he took us both tumbling into Dorota's belladonna lilies.

"You be quiet," I murmured, tilting my head back so his soft lips could have better access to the column of my throat. I felt his teeth skim my collarbone and bite the bow of my shoulder, let my eyes roll back when his tongue probed the hollow of my ear and his lips suckled nerveless flesh of my earlobe. I forgot where I was and for the second time in so many hours, my brain lost control over my body's actions.

Fingers somehow danced their way beneath thin filmy material and cigarette smoke breath hissed against bristled hairs when fingernails sank into skin.

"You be loud," he grunted, and my legs were pulled roughly around his waist. He hovered over me and thrust his tongue between my lips.

The scent of the cold air and the sweet smell of the flowers we were lying in were overwhelmed by his cologne and the rich musky smell that came from the little crevices that cologne couldn't touch. Every place his lips and fingers and legs and hips touched lit up with that smell until I ceased to exist and he ceased to exist and there was only our perfume as we rolled around under the moon. I swore I felt little pinpricks where the stars shone down on my skin, more and more of which became revealed the longer and longer I allowed Tristan's fingers to unravel, unbutton, and unsnap the hooks and ribbons that kept my artfully constructed outfit in place.

The night felt almost like satin against the peaks of my pale pink nipples, which bloomed up in search of the warm cavern of his mouth. When his lips melted over one those aching mounds, my back curved under his grasping hands and I felt more than heard the tender cry that pushed past my clenched teeth. I wanted more than anything to feel all of him against me as I heard a similar noise leave his throat, but a nippy breeze passed under my knees and tousled the short strands of my hair where they swelled over the grass.

Before his lips could begin their endless descent down that torturous path to my underwear, I managed to remember Poirier would sooner or later return to his window and see us. As much as I liked the intelligent inside jokes the two of us could make about me being naked in a patch of belladonna lilies, and as good as the cold air felt against my skin, I managed to loosen the hold my thighs had on his torso and I slithered away from him with the grace of someone who was doing it on a bed of silk.

His hand grasped my ankle and I kicked him good-naturedly in the chest before he could drag me back underneath him.

"Elle." I shivered at the possessive rumble that shook his voice. He said my name like he had given it to me and could take it away whenever the whim struck him.

"Not now." I buttoned myself back up and scampered away from him when he advanced again.

"Maintenant."

He stretched his deft, broad fingers out to snatch the bottom of my shirt, but I pulled back. "Non. Not now."

"Quoi?" Tristan's mouth dropped open in shock. I had never refused before; I had always begged and pouted, and he had always pulled away prematurely. That was our game, and we had never once deviated from those unspoken rules. My change in tactic threw him off so much, it was all he could do to stand and brush the disheveled locks away from his wide-open eyes. "Oui, maintenant."

His slick poise was gone. I gave him a pale pink smirk and left him in the belladonna lilies.

The eastern sun lit Paris with a grey light the next day – or later that unfathomable morning, I thought to myself with my pale pink smirk – and Dorota hardly noticed the bent stems of her precious flowers where they sat in the shadows; she bustled around the kitchen with too much purpose to spare even a leisurely glance out the back windows, and I sat in the adjacent breakfast nook with a cup of café au lait and one of my school notebooks.

I had made it all the way through ma mère's high school years in the hours after Tristan's departure, and was trying to compose a concrete list of questions to ask my godfather.

Unfortunately, I was – and still am – terrible at lists.

1. Was mère in love with Chuck Bass?

2. Was Chuck Bass in love with mère?

3. Are they still in love?

4. Is Chuck Bass my

I took a long gulp of my coffee and didn't ask Dorota for a refill.

Instead, I shut the notebook, capped my ballpoint pen, and decided to spend my morning on more productive pursuits. Mère always said my organizational skills left a lot to be desired, so as part of my brand new self-improvement plan (initiated by my reflection in the bathroom mirrors at Trois) I had decided to buy a daily planner and arrange my closets in alphabetical order according to designer.

By the time I reached Alice + Olivia, I had only managed to piece together my lunch outfit (a purple dress with a square neckline and big white polka dots, lacy black tights with asymmetrical patterns, and a pair of clunky white Michael Kors sandals that I couldn't remember buying), and was seriously considering arranging everything by color instead. The front doorbell rang before I could fully realize a vague plan, which consisted of throwing my clothes away and starting over from scratch – the whole mess would be much easier to organize if I started fresh, was my basic logic. It is worth mentioning that not only did my organizational skills leave much to be desired, but I handled common sense with a practically non-existent grain of salt.

"Visitor for you, Miss Elle!" Dorota sounded impatient, but I chalked it up to her pursuit of The Perfect Lunch and headed for the stairs to greet my godfather.

The dressmaker's mirror that sat beside my closet caught my reflection and I stopped with my hand on the doorjamb.

The archives on Gossip Girl's website chronicled ma mère's teenage years with such detail and care, that there were often pictures to accompany the shocking headlines and witty articles. It was very hard to connect the two of them, the Blair Waldorf who lived and breathed and dressed in the bedroom across from mine and the Blair Waldorf who lived and breathed and dressed in Manhattan, because they were so very different. My Blair preferred to stay at home with her circle of two or three very close friends, and the only parties she attended were charity events and select shows during fashion week. The Blair I had discovered on Gossip Girl was a lot like me: always up to something, always out with a group of people she could manipulate and control, always wearing something edgy yet flattering, fitting rather than trendy, chic instead of gauche.

And despite my shoulder skimming bob and the foreign angles of my facial features, I saw her in the mirror. I saw her in the fullness of my unsmiling cheeks, in the subtle dip of my shoulders and the skinny frailty of my pale arms. I even saw her in my eyes, as black and unlike hers as they were. Even the shimmering gloss on my too-big lips seemed to make my mouth curve in a faint echo of hers, and the white sandals bent my posture out of its usual shape and into a shadow of the thrown back sweep of her dignified stance.

As eerie as it was, I accented my look with a silky yellow headband and continued my path to the stairs.

The handsome man waiting at the bottom of the stairs was not the one I had expected and I immediately regretted the headband.

"Tristan?"

His dark head turned and I saw the lofty upturn of his mouth before the rest of his face came into view. "Bonjour, mademoiselle."

"En Anglais," I snapped in an undertone. Now Dorota's impatience made sense. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to see you, of course, ma petite," I felt his eyes glint wickedly as he took in my ensemble. "What are you wearing?"

My right hand flew protectively to the chartreuse ribbon behind my ears. "It's my house, I'll ask the questions."

He moved with languid grace and an infuriating familiarity into ma mère's front sitting room and poured himself a glass of wine. In a sudden rush, which abated only when I put my right hand on the stair rail to steady myself, I hated that he knew exactly where the glasses and bottles were kept, and I despised how proper and comfortable he looked next to a portrait of me at five years old. He turned around and saw that I hadn't followed him, and his maddening leer actually made me feel cheap.

"I hate you when you're like this."

"Pourquoi?" He poured another glass of sparkling Crémant de Bourgogne and brought it to me with false gentlemanly poise.

I ignored the desire to remind him that I was to ask the questions in my own house. He pulled my hand away from the railing and led me, quite patronizingly, to 'our' white chaise lounge chair underneath the front window. It put the view of my front lawn behind us and created a romantic backdrop for whatever illicit tryst he had in mind, but I was not charmed by his transparent methods, not even when he sat down next to me and pulled my legs to rest over his lap. My rejection the night before had made his usual dignity melt and pool at his feet like used candle wax.

But, damn me, I still found him unbearably handsome. I scooted closer, making the hem of my purple dress rid up around my thighs.

"En Anglais." I knew my demand would go unheeded. He hated English. "What are we celebrating?"

He pushed our flutes together without letting them clink, then tipped the sparkling contents of his glass past my eagerly parted lips. "Toi."

I let his hand rest intimately on the top of my thigh, even as the image of that hand kneading the same part of Sophie's anatomy made me want to recoil. I wondered if she had asked the same thing as he poured her wine from his father's collection, if he had murmured 'Toi, ma petite' into the valley of her breasts as she wriggled beneath him in the hedges of his mother's garden. My stomach lurched as I remembered the crushed belladonna lilies.

"You have to go," I said, and I shrunk back as my gut told me to.

"Non, je ne dois pas partir." He pushed toward me, using the arm of the chaise to propel him. His hand moved from the top of my thigh to the crease under my knee and dragged me onto my back, the better to loom over me and regain the control he so desperately yearned for. Once he had me where he wanted me, he stopped cupping his wine glass and cupped the underside of my left breast instead. My eyes fluttered closed when I felt the pad of his thumb stroking the precise spot – he knew where my puckered traitorous nipple was without any searching. "I have to stay, and you have to give in."

His hand skimmed my stomach and reached the belt of my polka-dot dress. A phantom wind from the night before seemed to dishevel my hair beneath the bow of my headband, and I wanted to pull away as I had then. Instead, I let his hands part my thighs and slide my lace tights down to my knees. The cupid's bow of his lips rubbed against the inside of my left knee, down past the gentle downward slope of my quivering skin, down and down to the place he had teased endlessly but had never seen.

"Dorota – " I thought to gasp, but the sensation of his hands rubbing slow circles across my calves made the name come out as a choked cough.

" – Is in the kitchen."

Tristan spoke against me on purpose, just so I could feel the vibrations of his words caress the frayed nerves of my lower body.

I whimpered helplessly against him and gripped one of the carnelian red throw pillows between my pale white knuckles. My hips bucked against his tongue as it thrust into me, mimicking his probing kisses in the garden. The grey light streamed through the wide windows and caught us both in a complex pattern of dim diamonds and black crosses, and the diamonds became crosses when his tongue began an intricate dance with my more intimate areas.

Everything blurred together and I found myself gripping the hair on his head and throwing my legs over his shoulders. He smirked and I knew it.

"I'm..." Tristan interrupted me with a low groan, and I squeaked in surprise when the stronger vibrations sent a blush up the entire length of my body. He burrowed deep inside me and twisted and swirled his tongue in ways I had only ever done in mocking jest across a crowded classroom; I at last understood the true meaning of 'breathless'.

Then the world aligned again as Tristan pulled away, as he always did, his lips shining in a superior sort of way. I wanted him, and the evidence was reflected in the angelic camber of his patrician grin. He had taken back his role as the self-controlled tease who left the party just when it got too loud and sweaty to bear, and I was once again the half-undressed victim left parched and panting with thirst.

Naturally, I was not pleased with that reality. I much preferred the version of myself that left him needy in the grasp of Dorota's garden, so I yanked my patterned tights up to shield myself from his bright, leering eyes. Then, without waiting for his appealing apology, I kneed him right between the legs with such force that he toppled off the chaise lounge and onto the soft Arabian rug I had given ma mère for her 36th birthday. I sat upright and tidied my hair as he whined and writhed in pain, then grabbed my abandoned wine glass from the side table.

Tristan looked utterly betrayed and I giggled with intentionally cruelty.

"Miss Elle!" Dorota was standing at the front door again, shouting up the stairs. "Your godfather here for you!"

I offered Tristan an unapologetic smile and spilled the Crémant de Bourgogne over the crotch of his very tented trousers.

"If you'll excuse me, I have a guest to attend to." Then, giddy with the adrenaline of our almost-encounter rushing through my veins, I cast a pointed look at the stain slowly spreading across the evidence that Tristan wanted me, and took a leaf out of Kathryn Merteuil's book.

"Down, boy."

I slid the sitting room doors shut behind me and gave my beloved godfather, Nate Archibald, a pearly white ladylike smile. He stood at the foot of the stairs, exactly where Tristan had stood, and looked quite surprised to see me there in front of him. A gift-wrapped package went back in his coat pocket immediately, and he turned to me with an equally large grin.

"Is that my present?" I bounced up and down like an eager child on Christmas morning, hoping that I could transform my residual sexual energy into completely kosher lunch conversation.

Nate rolled his eyes and started to hand the gift over, but a pale hand came to rest on his elbow and the manicured fingernails that dug into his Armani clad sleeve caused him to return the small, rectangular box to its hiding place. I clasped my hands anxiously behind my back, suddenly self-conscious of the glossy black polish that didn't suit my ultra-feminine ensemble.

"Mère," I whispered, and I desperately hoped Tristan had left the house through a side window. "I thought you..."

"Wouldn't be back until Tuesday?" she finished my sentence for me and removed her Chanel sunglasses. I felt the full scrutiny of her gaze. "Surprise. Is Dorota through with lunch yet? Nate hasn't eaten since Reims."

Before I could so much as formulate the thought that would lead to the words I don't know, the double doors I was leaning against slid open behind me and I felt Tristan's hand rest against my back to keep me upright. ...Of course he hadn't launched an epic escape. The very sound of my mother's voice would have driven him immediately to scheme every possible way he could make the rest of my day miserable. A quick glance over my shoulder at his gleaming eyes, and I knew the scheme was already underway.

"Ms. Waldorf," his hand pressed against my back and urged me forward. "Bienvenue. I hope you don't mind, but Elle invited me to join you."

I saw ma mère's mouth twitch with distaste – she really did not like Tristan, and for the first time in my life I thought that might be a good thing. She would order him to leave her sight at once, banish him from our home for all of eternity, and I would be able to sit on that chaise lounge again without feeling dirty.

She snapped the arms of her sunglasses closed and tucked them delicately into the pocket of her travel purse. I saw her feet move together and her chin lifted in a distinctly resolved way, and I knew that Society Mère had reared her ugly head; the way she brushed her expertly crafted chocolate curls over her silky shoulders told me I was in for an earful later. Then, her mouth bloomed like a blood red rose opening its bud to the sky, and I suddenly wished I hadn't kneed Tristan in the Marchand family jewels.

"Bien sûr."

I was a helpless girl condemned to a painful death, and the dining room table was to be my gallows.

Translations:
Courageux vieux - courageous old
Non je ne dois pas partir - I do not have to leave
Bienvenue - Welcome
Bien sûr - Of course