Title: In Amber
By: Valentin
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: PG
Summary: This was never going to be you, Nicky, he'd said to you. We would never have left you there. You won.

He's wearing the straw hat.

You teased him about the first time you saw it. Then a quirky counterpoint to soot and dust and death in a Las Vegas trailer park, it's at home here under the Aruba sun.

He's coolly elegant in cream linen slacks and woven leather belt, white cotton shirt open at the neck and rolled at the cuff. He'd plopped the hat on his head in front of the mirror and is glowering at his reflection, complaining that he looks like the travel destinations poster boy for vacationing poofters. You slide up behind him, inhaling the warmth of him where his hair curls damply inside his collar, and tell him that if he looked any hotter you'd be putting the chain on the door and doing your best to make sure you'd both be dead of exhaustion by checkout day.

His mouth tilts almost imperceptibly--a major tell for those who know how to look, and you do--and he turns in your arms.

By the time you eventually come downstairs you've almost missed breakfast. He tosses the hat on an empty table by a window and runs his hand through his hair. You rest a casual, proprietary hand against the small of his back to steer him toward the remains of the buffet. He's amused, and advises you not to be disappointed when no one steps up to challenge you for his favours. But you've watched the lithe brown bodies of the boys who troll among the tourists. You've seen their narrow, calculating glances.

You keep your hand on his back.

*****



You've been in this tiny, crowded gift shop for almost an hour, and you've finally convinced him that Catherine will be far more interested in an amber pendant's setting than in what sort of primordial bug it holds at its heart. The jeweller hands over her loupe with a resigned sigh and drifts away to hover over more malleable clients. You stand a little separate to watch him, bent over his final selection of possibilities.

You were first in here two days ago, when a quick look around had turned up a remarkable resin graveyard from the Pliocene. He'd pulled you to the window and held the fist-sized slice of pale, polished fossil amber to the light, pointing out Diptera and Hymenoptera, Coleoptera and Isoptera, telling you of patterns of termite colonization and showing you how the delicate wings of Alate fluoresce in the sun.

You love it when he's like this, face open with the pleasure of sharing this passion, so you'd done your best to hide your growing discomfort. When you'd finally given in to the need to rub furtively at the phantoms that still lurk under your skin he'd lifted your hand from your arm and turned it over to press the amber into it.

This was never going to be you, Nicky, he'd said to you. We would never have left you there. You won.

He'd looked at you the way he was looking at you when you woke up in the hospital, when he'd carefully held your swollen hand and told you that you had never disappointed him.

You won. You're smarter and stronger and braver than Gordon was, and you beat him. He tells you these things over and over in different ways, and each re-telling peels away a layer of the numbness that separates you from how you feel about that endless night and day and night.

Don't take it with you, you'd said to Kelly Gordon. You thought you knew then, but it's now that you don't sleep when you're alone.

When you returned to the shop today he'd been disappointed to discover that the amber had been sold. He turned his attentions to the search for gifts: the pendant for Cath, small figured gold earrings for Sara, a watch face for Greg crafted from a marbled slice of petrified wood. For Warrick there's a CD by a local jazz band from a club where you'd had dinner.

And for him, once you're home again, there's the amber, tucked into a box at the bottom of your suitcase.

Fini