Wild (sequel to Deep) - Zarry AU

Part 1: Ammolite

Harry was standing with his hands clasped behind him, looking at the picture.

"Feefteen hundredd" she said, carefully.

"Thanks." Harry nodded his head and stepped away from the size-zero gallery assistant to look at the label displayed on the wall alongside the huge picture frame before him. He wasn't interested in what the label said; he was just trying to work out what she had meant. Fifteen hundred dollars? Surely not. This was one of the most exclusive art galleries in LA. He stepped back towards her, hands still clasped behind him, bending his knees slightly so as to bring his ear closer to her. He shook his head to show that he "hadn't quite caught that". "Sorry?" he smiled. (Just a small smile, not the full-force mega-watt Harry grin. He didn't want to overwhelm her, after all.) "Fifteen hundred... ummm, what did you say?"

"Thousandd," she supplied, standing straighter and smoothing down an impossibly narrow black pencil skirt over her imperceptible stomach. "Feefteen hundredd thousandd"

Time was, Harry would have been sharpening his own pencil at this point in time. She was hot (check), young (check – not that that always mattered), and (even better) French, but he just didn't feel that need to prove himself any more.

At least, that was what he always said when people asked.

Instead, Harry stood straight and nodded again. He thought for a minute. What had she said? Fifteen hundred... thousand... what? Who even said that? Didn't that mean one million and ... something? He scratched his head. Did galleries now employ French women who spoke in strange numbers in order to mask their extortionate price points? Somewhere inside Harry, behind the rock-star fedora and sunglasses, there still lurked a boy from Cheshire who was not about to be ripped off.

Harry took a deep breath. Rip-off it might have been but there was something about the work in front of him that had him caught in its tractor-beam. It was a three-dimensional picture formed from layers of what appeared to be shattered gemstone. But it was something he had never seen before: a strange, iridescent, multi-coloured material, like mother of pearl. Only instead of cold, pale tones, it swirled with green and gold - merging into a dark bronze at its edges. Its shape recalled a spiral, a vortex, something that dragged you to its centre. He couldn't take his eyes off it.

"Eet ees made from the Ammoleet" the assistant continued, stroking a skein of gothic-black hair into place over her crisp white shirt. She was unmoving on huge, black patent, Geisha-style wedges. Harry had the impression that if he tapped her lightly she would topple like a bowling pin. "You know, eet ees one of the most rarest stone in the world. And ees organic stone. Made from living things, you know. Fossilisé". Harry nodded wisely. Organic stone, he thought. Sure. He was starting to wonder if he had been living in LA too long.

"Hmmm. Thank you," Harry said. He turned on his heel and left the shop, arms still clasped behind his YSL coat, not even glancing at the assistant as he did so.