Sebastian:

We are in Montreux, walking down ancient little streets. You're practically skipping down this one, on your face an expression of joy so pure it makes my heart stop—I haven't seen you look that way since before either of us got into sex, back before our parents got married, when we were just school friends.

"So here we are. Le Quartier de Valmont. Your ancestral home." You shoot me a deceptively innocent look. "'Ya un Suisse..."

"Trust you to turn everything into an insult."

"Well, what do Swiss bankers attract?"

"French whores."

"There, does that make you feel better?"

"It does, actually."

I push you up against the moss-covered stone wall. "Is this your surprise?" you whisper, reaching down to feel the bulge inside my pants.

"No."

"Good, 'cause I wasn't surprised." I shut you up with a long kiss. Then I pull back and take your hand in mine, and we walk down the street together like nothing happened. I lead you to a spot underneath a tree where I can sit with you and run my fingers through your hair.

"Remember how when I first told you I was coming up here, you were asking me how the fuck I managed to get transferred so soon?"

"I seem to recall you saying something about 'turning up the old Valmont charm.' I was hoping that didn't mean you actually had to fuck anybody."

"Well, actually I wasn't very charming at all. I just told your mother straight out that I had the dirt on her."

"What was it?"

"Guess."

"Proof she snorts coke?"

"Better. Footage of her and aunt Helen..."

"Now there's an image I didn't want in my head."

"...in a threesome. With the pool boy."

You laugh so hard you nearly choke on your lemonade. "The pool boy? God, could you be more cliché?"

"I shit you not." I take out the rest of the picnic things, and our talk turns to college plans. Ecole Normale Sup, American University of Paris. Here in Montreux, it's the first really good day of spring. We're carefree with each other, the way you can really only ever be with someone who knows all of your darkest secrets. We talk, eat, and finally fall silent. You lean back against me and then look up at me with an expression I never thought I'd see on your face, a smile of pure love and trust. And I kiss your neck once and then do it a couple more times, because you're so damn irresistible I can't help it, and you reach up and dig your nails into the back of my neck in a way that I know without words means fuck me now please, and as we're going back to the hotel room I think to myself: so this is what happiness feels like.

A/N: "'Ya un Suisse..." is the typical beginning to a Swiss joke, which is France's go-to [insert-dumb-ethnicity-here] joke. Another hint for the Hidden Paraphrased Literary Quotation in Chapter 10.: it's from Don Juan, and every bit as true with the genders reversed.