Author's Note: I haven't forgotten about Breaking In, I promise, but as I wrote this for Secret Santa, we're gonna take a little break from the dramarama to spend three days in Paris with our favorite lovers. We'll back back to Breaking In, just as soon as these two are done making out. A lot. In Paris.

The rating is technically a T for chapters one and two, but should go up from there. All the art can be found on my tumblr, just search for the tag "paris au" or "L'ébauche"

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"The clock never stops and I hate this damn phone
Some days I want to run from the place I call home
Guess I'm just needing some danger
Give me three days in bed with a stranger…"

- Holly Williams

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The first thing Regina does after checking into her hotel is buy a lighter and a pack of menthols. She doesn't smoke, quit right after college when mother found out and began daily reminders of what it would do to her hair, her skin, her teeth, her lungs. Her prospects. But every once in a while, every now and then, every few years, she'll buy a pack and smoke them one by one, with strong espresso and pastries from that place a few blocks away with the good croissants, and she will remember.

Nights in the Latin quarter, old books and sweet kisses, and long overly-intellectual discussions of art and literature. Daniel. Paris. Freedom from her mother's ever-watchful eye and overbearing influence.

It's been years, but the taste of nicotine always brings her right back. Today, it doesn't have to. She peels open the pack as she emerges onto the sidewalk, then thumbs out a cigarette, the sweet smell of tobacco distinct in the damp winter air. She lights, inhales, and sighs out a lungful of smoke and memory.

Returning to Paris is like reuniting with an old lover. At first blush all you see is everything you loved before, but the longer you linger the more you discover the stranger that hides beneath the surface. Remodeled buildings like new scars on old skin, familiar shops gouged out to make way for new façades, bodies and faces all unfamiliar, all new.

This place had been home for a while, a blissful short while, but now home is four thousand miles east, and Paris is just a ghost she always answers when it calls.

It has called her now, or maybe she has called it. Who knows? But she's here.

One first-class ticket, a few glasses of wine, and a good, long nap had landed her in the City of Lights just shy of noon a few days before Christmas. It's not the same as it was then, but it's something, at least, and she moves through the streets in a cloud of smoke and jet lag until that first cigarette is spent.

And then she finds the nearest cafe, orders herself un café et un pain au chocolat, s'il vous plait, and exhales for what feels like the first time in weeks.

§§§

By eight o'clock the time difference has her head feeling like it's been stuffed with cotton balls instead of grey matter, and her eyes are so tired they hurt. It's late enough, she decides, returning to her hotel on legs that are numb from a day spent walking mostly outdoors. Her fingers are stiff and cold, aching as she uncurls them from around the strap of her purse to fish out her room key.

She takes a long, hot shower, letting the water warm her to her core and then crawls into bed and sleeps clear through until noon the next day.

§§§

She's been in Paris two whole days before she meets him.

It's December twenty-third, just after midday, and she is hugging the wall in a very crowded room of the Denon wing, her day dedicated to a slow and leisurely survey of the Louvre. The others in the room are not so slow, not so leisurely. They're all packed in around a half-circle rail, murmuring excitedly about the painting on the far wall.

The Mona Lisa.

What is it about this one painting, she wonders, that makes so many people jockey for space just to get close to it, just to see it, just to snap a picture? It's a masterpiece – of course it is. But the Louvre is full of masterpieces. Stunning paintings. Exquisite sculpture. Yes, La Joconde is a singular piece, but Regina rather thinks the whole world has been duped. They throw adoration at this one small rectangle of oil paint on panel, as if it is imbued with some sort of magic, while practically ignoring the Rubens and Degas and Renoirs. Hell, she'd wager most of the people in this room won't even bother to spare a third glance to Leonardo's Virgin on the Rocks, but this painting, oh, they go nuts for this one.

And why?

People are so odd. So easily swayed. Sheep.

Still, they make for good entertainment, and she's been on her feet for an awfully long time today. She stretches her ankle, rolls her neck, and watches as a mother snaps a photo of her incredibly bored looking teenage son and overly excited elementary-aged daughter, the crowd behind them, and no doubt some corner or edge of the Mona Lisa visible somewhere in the shot.

We were here! Like they're standing in front of the pyramids, and not a single painting among thousands.

"Vous ne voulez pas la regarder de plus près?"

The voice is warm and smooth, teasing. And decidedly not French. The accent is all wrong. Good pronunciation, but there's a… something, a je ne sais quoi to native French that is hard to master, even if you've lived among it for a while. So not French, but fluent. Maybe English?

She looks to her right, toward the source, and her heart knocks twice. He's gorgeous. Could melt into some mix of paint and canvas on any of these walls, and nobody would think him out of place. Light brown hair a little disheveled, with a short beard and deep dimples showing around his curious smirk. And those eyes. So blue, and teasing, and friendly.

If someone is going to disturb her people-watching to chat her up in the Louvre, she's glad he's at least a good-looking someone.

"Non," she replies. "Ce n'est pas ma première visite au Louvre. Et je parle anglais."

His smirk widens into a grin, and those dimples sink deeper into his cheeks. "And French," he notes, his accent now distinctly English. So she was right about that, at least.

"Well enough," she replies with a shrug, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She's not usually this easy to charm, something she's always prided herself on, so she tries not to give in to the curving of lips too easily. She drops her voice and leans in conspiratorially, telling him, "I think she's overrated."

He chuckles, this stranger, and mutters back, "Don't let that lot hear you."

"That lot couldn't tell a David from a Delacroix," she counters, glancing back over at the throngs of people, and declaring confidently, "I could take 'em."

"Beautiful, witty, and intelligent," he sighs. "How fortunate for me."

Regina rolls her eyes, but she hasn't yet managed to tamp down that smile.

"So tell me…" He leads off purposefully, like he's waiting for her to finish his sentence. Her name, she realizes, as she spares him a glance to find him hovering expectantly at the end of his sentence.

"Oh, I'm not that easy," she warns teasingly. "Finish your sentence."

He's chuckling again at that, not at all bothered by her refusal to give up her name. There's power in names, she knows, and what would be the point, anyway? She's in Paris for three more days, and he'll never be more than some man who flirted with her in the Louvre. Why not keep an air of mystery? Besides, what if his name is terrible? What if he's Larry the Louvre Guy for the rest of her life? No, she thinks she'd rather not know.

"Alright, then. So tell me, milady…" (Regina snorts. That'll do, she supposes.) "Why would a woman so unenthused by the Mona Lisa spend half an hour in this godforsaken room with her and her admirers?"

"Maybe I like the Veronese," Regina challenges, tilting her head toward the massive painting nearby, Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana.

"Well, who wouldn't?" he agrees, turning to look at it properly, his back to her for a moment. "It's massive."

It dominates the wall nearby, easily double both their heights, and yet everyone is still funneling toward the other side of the room. Largest painting in the Louvre at their backs, but the Mona Lisa is the one they can't miss. Regina turns pointedly toward the Veronese, snubs La Joconde in its favor (it has nothing to do with standing shoulder to shoulder with her charming stranger).

When they're side-by-side again, he says, "Of course, you've not spared a glance for it until now. So I think perhaps you're lying to me, milady."

Regina purses her lips to keep from smiling. Caught.

"I like people-watching," she admits. "They're always more interesting when they think nobody's looking."

But, wait.

Her brow furrows; her head turns away from Jesus' miracle and toward the wonder of God's creation standing beside her.

"How do you know how long I've been in this room?"

His smile had faded into an expression of contemplative serenity, his attention on the massive painting before them although she'd had no doubt he was listening to her. But now, he smiles, and shifts the sketchbook in his arms, tipping it down and toward her.

She hadn't even noticed he'd been holding it all this time, too caught up in blue eyes and dimples and fluent, wrong-accented French.

But she notices now, her mouth dropping open slightly at the image on the paper in front of her. It's a pencil sketch, lines drawn in graphite with a practiced hand. And it's her. Hair curling at her shoulders (it had been snowing when she made her way here, and the flakes had stuck in her hair, dampening it and bringing out some of its natural wave), lips slightly pouted, arms crossed over a torso that disappears into nothing.

"You're not the only one who likes to observe," he tells her quietly, and though there's a levity to his voice, there's an underlying tension that wasn't there before. And why wouldn't there be, she supposes. He's just shown her his work; no matter who you are, that takes a certain amount of guts.

"You're an artist," she says needlessly, one hand rising to ghost against the edge of the paper, smooth and cool under her fingertips.

"Of sorts," he confirms, and she tilts her head a little to one side, lets her hand slip off the book and drop down to hook into her coat pocket.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she questions with a narrowing of her eyes. "You drew this; it's…" She breathes in, and out, gaze skimming her own rendered form again before finishing with, "Excellent. I'd say that makes you an artist. And I don't give out compliments lightly, so don't downplay it. Humility is only so attractive."

He laughs again, softly – so good-natured, this man. "Well, then, thank you, milady. I simply meant it can be difficult to see oneself as an artist when one spends his day begging passersby to let him sketch them for a few euros."

"Ah, you're one of those," she teases, brows lifting and falling appraisingly.

"For now," he shrugs, his lips pressing together in an odd combination of smirk and frown. "Hopefully not forever." He waggles the book in his grasp, offering, "And this is yours, if you want it."

Regina narrows her eyes, just cynical enough to doubt anything offered to her for free – especially from a Paris street artist. Still, she makes sure she sounds as teasing as she does skeptical when she asks, "What's the price, Rembrandt?"

"No price," he assures, but then his brow pinches just a little, his head jinking slightly to the side. "On second thought… Walk with me a while?"

One dark brow arches. "That's your price?"

"That's my price," he nods, shifting his hold on the sketchbook. "To be honest, the sketch was mostly just an excuse to talk to you."

"You spent half an hour coming up with an excuse to talk to me instead of just walking up and flashing those dimples?"

He grins, shrugs. "I've been told one's chances of success in life are greatly enhanced by visual aids." Regina scoffs. Ridiculous. "Also, you're stunning. I didn't mind the wait."

He says it with a disarming sort of honesty, one that knocks the sardonic smirk right off her face. And then, he offers his arm, and another of those bone-melting smiles.

"Now, milady. Show me something better than the Mona Lisa."

§§§

She doesn't have to lead him far. They skirt the edges of the room, worm their way up closer to the lady herself, until they're standing in front of another portrait. Titian's Man with a Glove, a portrait of a young man with one hand gloved, one bare. The dark background brings face, and hands, and shirtfront to stark attention. The man is handsome, and handsomely painted. No secret smile for him, just a look of intensity.

"Ah, the Titian."

She bobs her head, waiting until he steps in closer to her, just a little bit behind, his chest scant inches from her shoulder (she can smell his cologne, something woodsy and clean and masculine), then turns her head toward him to be heard as she says, "Cleaner lines, a sense of light and shadow that precurses Caravaggian-level chiaroscuro, and no busy background to draw your eye from the figure. The subject is enough; no need for extra noise. This is right here, a brilliant example of portraiture done right, and everyone in this room is obsessed with the other one."

He lets out an appreciative little groan, his knuckles brushing her back as he lifts a hand to his chest as if wounded (it's a ghost of a touch through layers of wool and cashmere, but her skin prickles with goosebumps nonetheless). "Not so much bedroom talk, milady, my heart can't take it."

He gets another eye roll for that one, but she's given up on fighting the smile. It's more fun to flirt, especially now that she's found someone she suspects has a decent IQ with which to do so. And a working knowledge of art history.

He shifts his attention from her to the painting, and she does the same, both of them taking a moment in the hubbub of the room to observe quietly.

After a few seconds of silence – from them at least – he tells her, "If we're going for Titian, I'm rather partial to Bacchus and Ariadne. Every single person in that painting looks like they're throwing shade."

Her laugh is sudden and loud, and thankfully short. He's not wrong about that one… She manages to tamp herself down to a snicker (not that her outburst would even draw an eye in this room), turning to look at him again and watching his face shift from anticipatory amusement to a sort of slack-jawed awe that smacks an awful lot of the way she'd looked at his portrait of her, she thinks.

It's over in a blink, and then he shakes his head and murmurs as though it's a revelation, "You have the loveliest smile."

Regina presses her lips together self-consciously, the opposite effect his words probably should have, but she feels suddenly naked, exposed. One hand lifts to tuck her hair behind her ear, and she thinks inexplicably of kissing him. Wonders for one, insane moment what his mouth would taste like against hers.

She swallows heavily, pushes back at the thought. They've known each other, what? Five minutes? She doesn't even know his name.

And then he's jerking his head toward the doorway and urging, "Come on, let's escape the chaos."

§§§

They wander. All over the place. Meandering through the first floor painting galleries, and making small talk as they go. He's an art student, has lived in Paris for the last fourteen months, and he comes here to the Louvre, now and then (to the other museums as well) to study people, and art. To sketch the statues and the tourists.

Regina tells him that she was overworked and overtired, that her little Parisian holiday was meant to de-stress and de-compress.

"Has it done so?" he asks, as they turn a corner, from Italian Baroque toward 19th century French, already having taken a spin through the Murillo room.

"So far." She adjusts her purse on her shoulder, wishing she'd have checked it, or left it at the hotel. But she hadn't had the fortitude to brave the Louvre's coat room during holiday season, so she'll suffer through the tugging weight, switching it to her other shoulder for a while in an attempt to balance out the misery. Her stranger watches her, presses his lips together for a moment but says nothing. "I've slept, and shopped, eaten good food and had some excellent French wine."

"Sounds like a happy Christmas, then, if perhaps a lonely one."

"I'm not lonely right now." She's not sure what made her say it – she hasn't felt lonely since she stepped off the plane – but it's out there now, and she just hopes it doesn't make her sound like a desperate idiot.

But it must not, because he flashes her those dimples again, shallow this time, a small, pleased sort of smile, and nods his head.

"Good. I suppose we'll have to see to it that you stay that way."

They spend twenty minutes standing in front of The Raft of the Medusa, murmuring in museum-appropriate tones about the use of light and shadow and color, the emotions it evokes, the magnitude of it. She'd done her thesis on this piece, and so she gushes, cannot help herself, gives him half a lecture on the historical significance of the piece, its influence throughout the subsequent generation of French art, the actual shipwreck itself.

When she realizes he's been silent for five whole minutes while she prattles on, she stutters out, flushes with embarrassment as much as excitement and shakes her head, offers up a self-deprecating apology for her motormouth.

But he shakes head, insists no apology is necessary. And then he asks questions, and he gives opinions, and he listens with genuine interest. This man does not for a moment look bored, or frightened, or like he thinks perhaps he has bitten off more than he can chew. Not the least bit intimidated by her knowledge, her competence. (What a refreshing change.)

Instead he looks at her like… like she's the ocean and he's hoping to drown.

No, not like that. Nothing as romantic or sappy as that. But like she's fascinating, like she's interesting, like his attraction to her (clear as day even without knowing that he'd spent half an hour drawing her) is as much about her mind as whatever he sees beneath her wool peacoat and cashmere scarf and less-than-perfect hair.

Is he for real?

The thought that eventually they will part ways – that he will go to his home, and she to her hotel, and that will be that – lingers in the back of her mind, a painful itch that she tries to leave alone, tries not to scratch at with her consciousness because scratching only ever makes it worse.

So she delays, abandons the Medusa after more than a reasonable amount of discussion, but stops again in front of Ingres' La Grande Odalisque.

He tilts his head to and fro, then leans in and whispers, "Is it just me, or is her arse in her knees?"

Regina snickers, her nose wrinkling, teeth catching her lower lip for moment before she taunts, "Now who's throwing shade?"

He laughs, and shrugs, then mock-confesses, "Professional jealousy, I suppose. Although perhaps unwarranted. Ingres wasn't terribly well-received for much of his career, was he?"

It's not a question, more a statement of fact – and a correct one, at that – but she appreciates that he accepts she'll know that as well he as does.

"He wasn't. And this," Regina juts her chin toward the nude before them, "Was never paid for. And you're not wrong, her spine really is about six inches too long."

"And yet here she hangs, in the Louvre," he sighs, then he aims another smile her way and teases, "Perhaps one day you will, too. La Grande Touriste."

Regina wrinkles her nose at the title, balking at the label of tourist, even though she knows full well she is now. After all these years, she can't really claim Paris as her own.

"The Scholar in Contemplation, then?" he tries again, and that's better.

Much, much better.

They stick with the French paintings, making their way upstairs to the rest of the collection, and she tells him art history was a passion and a compromise – she was only allowed to study it under the guise of architecture, and eventually urban planning, but the buildings had never been her favorite. She appreciates them well enough, and can rattle off all the facts and trivia, but she'd fallen hard for the paintings, the sculpture, the sense of time, and gravity, and evolution.

He'd found himself thirty and unfulfilled, uninspired. Had come to Paris to spend a week in a remedial art intensive (he'd always sketched, always doodled in the margins, but had never taken it seriously) and had finally felt that spark again. It had taken a while longer for him to uproot and immerse himself, but he'd done it, finally.

Regina is suddenly, terribly jealous of Larry the Louvre Guy (she should never have thought that; now it's going to stick), a burning envy searing her lungs, stealing her voice as they walk.

If he notices her silence (and he must, for he's an observer, too), he doesn't say anything. They walk an entire room without speaking, until he stops in front of Regnault's Three Graces, with their sumptuous curves, their soft edges. Regina thinks they're… peaceful. Soothing. She traces thighs and knees and toes, the highlight of a shoulder and the shadow of a hip. Breathes out her envy for her mystery man's freedom, and inhales a breath to continue their flirtation anew.

"Brought to a halt by the naked ladies, huh?" she teases, and he chuckles (oh, how she likes when he does that).

"They are a favorite of mine," he retorts, unclear whether he means naked ladies in general or these three in particular. Regina imagines the answer is probably both.

"They are beautiful," she agrees.

"Exquisite," he corrects, his gaze moving over the painting in a lazy perusal not unlike the kind she's caught him giving her now and again.

"Does this mean you're an ass man?"

It's a bold taunt, especially for a man she's just met, but she can't resist it. Right there in the center is a perfectly rendered rear end, after all.

He doesn't miss a beat, turns to her with mischief in his eyes and lobs back, "Why do you think I'm talking to you?"

Regina's brows shoot up to her hairline for a brief second, and she reassesses her definition of "bold."

"Too much?" he questions with a grimace.

Regina dismisses good concerns with an easy, "No, no…" Turning her attention back to the painting as she adds, "I do have a great ass." Because why should he be the only shameless flirt in the room.

It earns her another of those toe-curling laughs of his, and a murmured, "Oh, I like you. Nothing like a woman with a healthy dose of self-confidence."

She squints at the painting, scowling in concentration to keep from smiling. Her cheeks are starting to ache.

He's not wrong about the confidence, and yet, he is. She knows she's beautiful, has been told time and again (has been told by one coworker in particular that she has "an ass that won't quit"), but she doesn't always feel it. She looks in the mirror and sees every scar, and freckle, every fine wrinkle. But confidence is attractive, and relatively easy to fake. She's gotten good at saying all the right things. At burying insecurity under bluster.

What does he see when he looks at her?, she wonders.

He'd probably tell her – his candor seems endless. But she doesn't ask.

She comments on the graces instead.

"The breasts look a little… pasted on, though. But I suppose you can't have everything."

His curiosity is all mock-sincerity when he asks, "You mean that's not what they look like in the flesh?"

Her head swivels to glare playfully at him. "Oh, please. Mr. Charming Art Student with Dimples Who Picks Up Women in Museums by Drawing Them Portraits. Don't play innocent with me. You've seen your fair share of breasts, I'm sure."

He grins. Guilty, but unashamed. "We all had our youths." Then he turns back to the Graces, his body close again. She can smell that cologne, can almost feel the heat of him but that's ridiculous. She can't, not really. There's several inches between them, still. "They could be worse, though. Half of the Italian Renaissance looks like someone slapped a couple of cantaloupes on a flat chest and called them womanly curves."

"Well, what do you expect when all the models were men?"

"Foolish lot if you ask me," he says sagely, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans and letting his shoulders rise and settle. "When God grants you a legitimate excuse to spend all day staring at naked women without feeling like a lech, you thank your stars for the gift and take advantage."

Men.

"Is that what you do, then?" she taunts. "When you're not sketching tourists, that is."

"Not as often as you'd think," he tells her. They're looking at each other now, the Graces forgotten for a moment. "The opportunity to draw a woman in all her glory doesn't arise frequently. Not outside of a classroom, anyway."

"Maybe you should spend more time offering unsolicited drawings to unwitting women in museums," she teases, waggling her brows at him, and realizing a moment too late the implication in her words. "Drum up some interest."

"Is that an offer?"

She feels heat up the back of her neck, the apple of her cheeks. That hadn't been what she meant, not really. She laughs softly, shaking her head in dismissal and telling him in no uncertain terms, "No. It was not."

Still, she can't help imagining, for just a moment. Letting him. Her naked, him with a pencil in hand, tracing her curves on paper. She licks her lips unconsciously, and his gaze flicks down, and back up. His eyes are so blue. So blue, and inviting, and the Three Graces stand by, forgotten, as the air between Regina and her charming stranger grows charged, electric. Like the first breath outside after a thunderstorm.

He's biting his lower lip, teeth caught on the bottom of a smile, her rejection tumbling off him like water off a duck's back, and as the tension between them sparks and zings, he says, "Have dinner with me."

Regina blinks, snapping back to her senses, shaking her head a little to clear it.

"What?"

"I'm starving," he says, shrugging nonchalantly. "Let me take you to dinner."

Oh, that's… that may not be a good idea. This is a gossamer moment of frivolous flirtation, a bubble that will pop just as soon as she steps outside the museum, and she knows that, she's alright with that. With this ébauche of a masterpiece that will never be covered over with paint, never be finished. But if she leaves this place with him… Well, then there's no telling what will happen.

"I'm leaving in a few days," she protests weakly, regret coloring her words more than she'd like, but he is undeterred, reaching for her hand, and holding it gently in his.

"I'm not asking about a few days, I'm asking about tonight," he dismisses. "You will have to eat dinner, yes?"

And, well, "Yes…" she will.

"So have it with me. No promises, no expectations. No nude modeling, I promise." He smiles again, and she feels her mouth echo without thought or hesitation. His thumb skims her knuckles, those warm eyes imploring her. "I find I don't want to part ways with you quite yet, milady."

She doesn't either. Not at all. She wants to say yes. But it's foolish, and she's leaving, and… And screw it. She's on vacation. In Paris, alone, to relax, to unplug and unwind, and undo the stifling effects of a nine-to-five job that leaves her all too often with a headache, and a backache, and a deep-soul ache of dissatisfaction. And a beautiful man is asking her to dinner, so screw it. And maybe him, if she's so inclined.

With one caveat.

"No names," she demands, making his brows rise slightly. "Ever. When you have names, you get attached. You go home and you think 'I wonder what Larry is up to these days, and you get sad, and I am not here for sad."

He seems to understand, or at least agree, because those brows sink back down and he nods, then smirks. "It's not Larry, I'll give you that much." Thank God. Goodbye, Larry the Louvre Guy. "But alright. No names." He lifts her knuckles to his lips, presses a kiss there and asks overtop of them, eyes sweetly boyish but with an edge of promise, "Will you dine with me, beautiful stranger?"

Regina smiles.

"Yes."