There was a small, though well-known and respected, museum tucked away in Paris. The curator and owner was the renowned Gabriel Agreste, known for his authentication abilities and for 'discovering' artists. His son, Adrien, was one of the staff and was putting his Art History degree (it came highly suggested by his father) to good use, most often giving entertaining and well-informed tours to the visitors. His tour groups typically were mostly women for the express purpose of staring at him more than the collected art on display. But to be fair, who can blame them? When someone looks like he was a model for the paintings and statues that reside in museums let alone the fashion industry, with beautiful golden hair and sparkling eyes the color of the hills in Ireland and wore his clothes like it was his job (technically it was - even in art museums the staff is not permitted to be less than fully - and professionally - clothed).

Marinette was recently hired as an assistant curator at the museum and her duties often included doing restoration demonstrations. This was how Adrien and Marinette first met.

He was giving a tour when he came upon her station and stopped practically midsentence and just stared with a dazed expression on his face. She was in profile to him but he still felt like he couldn't catch his breath. Her hair, so black that it shone blue in the light, gleamed and fell on her neck with gentle waves, braided back from her face. The fierce concentration on her face stunned him, though the thought that kept repeating in his head was "That's adorable..." when he caught sight of her tongue sticking out due to her focus on cleaning the small statuette that the museum had recently acquired. He stood there, forgetting about the tour group, just trying to commit everything about her to memory.

Coughing and the clearing of throats brought him back to himself. It also caused Marinette to look up in surprise and found an unfairly handsome man staring at her with a gaggle of people standing around him. They both blushed in unison, though hers was significantly deeper than his.

He still didn't say anything though because now his gaze was trapped by her bright blue eyes, thoughts again repeating though a bit less coherent than before.

"Damn. So blue. This is what drowning feels like. But I feel like I could fly. Damn. (love?) Wow. Blue…."

More clearing of throats caused Adrien to visibly shake himself and give Marinette a dazzling smile. ("Dammit that is NOT fair. Who is that attractive? Damn.") Adrien turned back to his tour group and picked up his dropped sentence after a moment's consideration before positioning himself just to the side of Marinette's workstation, taking a deep breath to center himself so he could actually say what he intended.

"Now here is my new favorite masterpiece in the museum, entitled "Breathtaking Beauty" by currently unknown artists. I feel that the name is extremely fitting as I have literally lost my breath looking at this work of art." Marinette's brow furrowed in confusion as that was not the name of the statue she was working on cleaning and repairing, her face soon shifted into a shocked "OH" expression and she turned bright red as he continued. "And in her hands, you can see a recent acquisition which is currently being cleaned so that we can ascertain the provenience and check for areas in need of restoration and see the details. The current theory is that this statuette was part…"

As he continued his speech Marinette snapped her jaw shut and continued carefully cleaning the piece while she screamed internally. "WHAT. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? He didn't ACTUALLY mean that, did he? OHMYGOD WHAAAAT?!" As Adrien led the tour group away from Marinette he had the audacity to turn back to her and wink. Marinette turned an even brighter red and tried her best to roll her eyes and glare but it didn't quite go as planned.

Her best friend and roommate, Alya, upon hearing this story thought it was the greatest thing in the world, of course. The rest of the night was spent with Alya teasing and cooing things like "OOooo, Mari, he likes you."

"Mari, he wants to study you like the paintings that hang on the walls in that place."

"I bet he even wants to KISS you."

All of this was proclaimed over the protests of her deeply blushing friend about how they haven't even talked, let alone know each other's names. After a couple hours, Marinette gave up and went to bed leaving Alya cackling to herself on the couch.

The next day when his tour came by her demonstration area he said, "This is my favorite art piece here, "Marinette" created by the presumed-to-be lovely Dupain-Chengs. The way that the light causes her hair to shine and look like the midnight sky is near miraculous and I believe that a number of constellations have taken up permanent residence in her eyes…" By this point, Marinette is remarkably red again and mutters to herself ("as if") as she turns her focus back to the now cleaned statuette and inspects it for damaged and repairable areas. As the tour group moves away from her station she looks up again catching emerald green eyes, which winked at her again, raising a single eyebrow and pursing her lips a little bit. This just made the blond smile even wider as he continued with his spiel.

Adrien found her again between tour groups to formally introduce himself. He avoided answering her flustered questions about how he knew her name with vague responses such as, "I have my ways," and, predictably, "Magic." She found out much, much later that Adrien, being the boss' son accessed the employee records, not necessarily with granted permission.

Adrien sought her out as much as he could and they began to talk and get to know each other quite a bit. He still constantly complimented her and was met with blushing and stammering or some amount of snark and blushing. Adrien wasn't sure which one he preferred more but they were both ridiculously endearing and attractive, and that first whispered thought (love?) started growing louder in the back of his mind, causing the occasional slight blush or stutter in the blond. Over the days that became weeks that developed into months, they did have serious discussions (in addition to all of Adrien's flirting) about families – his vanished mother and distant father, her close, if a bit invasive, baker parents – the future, art, books, and numerous other things. Most of their interactions were within the museum though Adrien did manage to coerce Marinette from the building and her work for an occasional lunch. Those meals often had both suppressing thoughts of how it could be a date. Alya shipped it so hard and Mari would roll her eyes even if secretly she wanted it to be real as well.

The tours always included a stop wherever Mari was working so that Adrien could publicly comment on her beauty and how she was his absolute favorite thing in the museum. The titles he gave her were sometimes just a variation of her name (there was even one time after a particular conversation he entitled her "Mari Me?" much to her absolute embarrassment. He even had a placard with him that time…) while other times it was relating to his perception of her beauty or comparing her to a goddess. The rest of the staff thought that it was ador(k)able and at least one person would attempt to be in the vicinity when Adrien was giving a tour and Marinette was working so that they could report back to the rest.

Even Gabriel quietly approved. So quietly that no one knew, of course, he had a reputation to uphold – thank you very much – but he would privately smirk when he would hear about his son's wooing attempts. He knew that Adrien was serious even if Marinette and some of the staff did not, partly because it was similar to the stories of how Gabriel had courted his wife which were his son's favorite bedtime stories when he was little.

As the months went on and they got closer and Adrien continued with his tour routine, multiple times a day at this point, Mari decided that Adrien wasn't the only one who could give compliments and so she started plotting. It was time for him to have a taste of his own medicine.

She started making a list, with the help of Alya, of all the things she could say to him when he came by on a tour and picked her favorite and a couple backups (just in case).

And so she waited. She waited through various tours for just the right one. It had to be the right size, have the right dynamic, and he had to say the right thing - it was a Goldilocks waiting game.

And then finally it happened. Five months from that first day and two weeks after she made her resolve to return the favor.

"Here we have my favorite piece of art in the entire museum, the beautiful "Goddess of Beauty" created by Tom and Sabine Dupain-Cheng. A very talented couple don't you agree? The attention to detail is phenomenal - the adorable dusting of freckles and how the eyes seem to hold the oceans but also the sky and all the stars."

Marinette spoke up then, a pink flush dusting her cheeks and a smirk playing about her lips. "And here, painstakingly crafted by Gabriel and Céleste Agreste, is the piece "Adonis à la Adrien" I personally really love the emeralds that were used for his eyes. Unfortunately for us, they did not follow the ancient traditions so we cannot fully appreciate his muscular physique," Mari finished with mirth infusing her voice and her eyes sparkling.

Adrien did not think he had ever been this red before.