🏖 for the selfship asks! :3
🏖️: (S/I) and (F/O) on vacation to their dream destination.
If there was one thing Reaper prided in, it was his ability to gather information and to track. Despite his own ambition for revenge, Mariana was a very pretty annoying distraction. Every bit her age, every bit younger than him by 26 years that had this been a normal "relationship", they would probably be receiving stares.
Luckily, there was no such issue when it came to going to a very remote and very private cabin in the woods in Europe. No looks, no judgements, and definitely no one around for them to be quiet when they got feral in the sheets.
Here, their masks were off. His, in a quite literal sense.
"Do you always have some secret nook in a different country?" asked Mariana one morning after a particularly rough night of the mattress mambo. She was at the stove, boiling water for the teas she always drank, wearing just one of his many combat shirts that fit her far too big. "You take leave wherever you want to go and just ghost for a while?"
"Not in every country," huffed Gabriel, arms folding over his bare chest as he sat at the table. "You just have to know where to find those sorts of places."
"And you decided on a cabin in the woods where the nearest town is a million miles away?" There was a teasing lilt in Mariana's voice that made his blood vibrate. Somehow, she always knew how to get his body tight with a need that made him feel more alive than he'd felt in a long time.
"Sounds like a complaint, mariposa. I could drop you in that town alone to fend for yourself, if you like."
"Your threats stopped becoming threats a long time ago, Gabe."
She wasn't wrong, which annoyed and aroused him. She was the only person who sassed him without fear, but also looked at him without fear or disgust at his current state. Gabriel was a shell of his former self and with Moira's experimentations, his physical state wasn't exactly something women would fawn over.
Except Mariana. She didn't fawn, but her hands and lips had already touched every inch of his pallid, damaged skin like he was everything she could want and more. And their bond, messed up as it was, was dangerous should anyone realize their connection.
"Here." Her voice was soft now as she set a cup of tea on the table in front of him, the scent of lavender filling the air. "It doesn't help with everything, but it can soothe a little."
Gabriel knew what Mariana meant. Moira's experimentation may have saved his life, but Gabriel's body was rebuilding and destroying itself over and over. The pain was agonizing, chronic, and he only just recently began to show vulnerability in front of Mariana when the pain got to be too much.
Mariana sat across from him, her own cup of tea steaming as well. "There's no way to get O'Deorain to come up with some cure for the pain?" she asked, dark brown eyes lifting to meet his.
"Not unless it's to her benefit," Gabriel answered, reaching to grab the cup of tea to drink it. He wasn't much of a tea drinker, but Mariana had loaded the cabinets of the cabin with different tea bags and seeming to know the best one to help relax, to help with sleep, and other things. "We didn't come here for that, mariposa."
"Then what did we come here for?" Mariana asked, lowering her tea cup. In that moment, the sunlight already streaming through the window had caught the engraved bullet he had gifted her, hanging around her neck on a thin chain.
A physical claim, no matter how much he denied otherwise. Instead, he answered her question. "For us to be off grid."
There was a knowing shimmer in her eyes; Mariana knew when Gabriel was only saving face. In truth, he was a possessive and selfish bastard; he wanted Mariana to himself, even without admitting what this thing between them was. He had claimed her in every way that mattered.
And the part of him that was his former self wanted to give her something normal instead of twisted.
"Off the grid," she repeated, taking another sip of her tea. "Okay, old man. That's our excuse. Not that I mind it. I always wanted to be in a cabin in the woods."
That, Gabriel knew already. "No one would be able to track us here anyway. We can stay as long as you want."
"And if I say I wanted to stay forever?"
That question. That question always will haunt him, even while they both were off grid in a way they both deserved to be.
Because the answer was far too tragic and fucked up to be spoken aloud.
Gabriel may not be able to give forever; but he sure as hell would give her the present.
