Mariela woke up feeling safer than she had in months, and she didn't even realize why until she'd cuddled up closer to the warm body she was next to… and realized that there was a warm body for her to cuddle up with at all.
Suddenly, the night before came flooding back, and Mariela could feel her face catching fire as she remembered everything she'd told Gauche… and that she'd been the one to ask him to get into bed with her.
She laid frozen, unsure what to do. She'd been so presumptuous—how was she supposed to face him after spending all that time sobbing like a child and then asking him not to leave her alone because she's still afraid of the dark? It was insanity. How was she supposed to explain herself?
Mariela decided that the best course of action was to get out of the bed as slowly as possible… and run. As soon as she started to move, however, the arm curled around her waist tightened and made her freeze.
"Marie?" Gauche's voice was rough and thick with sleep, but his arm didn't relax from around her. Closing her eyes and realizing that she'd definitely have to face this sooner rather than later, Marie peaked up at Gauche from beneath her eyelashes. His face looked as sleepy as his voice had sounded, but his eye was opened and peering down at her.
"Um, good morning," Mariela squeaked, curling further into his chest to hide and freezing again as she realized that getting closer was probably just making things worse. "I, umm, didn't mean to wake you up, I'm sorry—"
"Why are you apologizing?" Gauche cut her off, then turned his head to yawn. When he looked back at her, he'd blinked some of the sleep out of his eyes and was giving her a decidedly hesitant smile that seemed to match her own. "You weren't going to sneak out of bed without telling me hello again, were you?"
Mariela's eyes got huge as she stuttered out, "I-I just d-didn't—"
"If I didn't want to be around you, trust me, I wouldn't be around you," Gauche pointed out, but he was smiling and his arm was still firmly held around her waist. "Next time, for the record, I'll feel a lot less creepy waking up in your room if you're in it when I do."
Gauche immediately looked away, and Mariela followed suit.
Next time. He'd said next time.
Mariela bit her lip in the silence that followed—and realized that he was right.
"Look, I don't mean—" Gauche started.
"I like you a lot." Mariela cut him off simply and met his startled eye without hesitation. The last few months had changed a lot—about both her life and herself. It had instilled fears in her that, once upon a time, weren't even ghosts in her mind's eye: fear of the dark, fear of spontaneous cruelty from strangers, fear of the unknown, and above all, the all-encompassing fear for her little brother's safety. And she was realizing that she was so, so incredibly sick of being afraid of everything.
There had been a time when she hadn't been so afraid of her own shadow—or, more importantly, what people might do to her if they were hiding in it. Once, her mother had fretted constantly about Mariela's always doing first and thinking later. She might not have had a lot of choices available to her ever since she'd lost everything but Marlin, but this was a choice that she did have, if she wasn't too much of a coward to make it.
So she was making it.
"I like you a lot, Gauche," she repeated, still meeting his eye evenly. He looked suddenly very awake—but even with his mouth open, he didn't seem to know what to say. After waiting for a moment, Mariela laughed quietly. "As, well. More than a friend. You obviously don't have to feel any sort of way for me. But I thought you should know."
When he still had nothing to say, Mariela finally looked away and sighed with a small smile to herself. He might not feel the same way, but she felt so much lighter regardless.
Looks like I'll have to tell Vanessa and Noelle they were right, Mariela thought to herself as she started to pull away again—she'd gotten to be so close to the two of them, and both had been fairly obvious about what they thought. To her surprise, Gauche tightened his arm around her waist immediately to keep her in place.
"Where are you going?" he asked, finally finding something to say. Mariela looked up at him in surprise; Gauche still wasn't meeting her eyes, but he was also still holding her firmly to his side. "You can't just say something like that and then leave."
Mariela couldn't help herself—she burst out laughing. Gauche looked at her suddenly, face red and eye wide in surprise.
"What's so funny?" he asked defensively. It took her another moment, but Mariela calmed herself down enough to look at Gauche with a big smile.
"This really doesn't have to be something important," she assured him.
"How would this not be something important?"
Mariela blinked at him, unsure what to say to that. "Gauche—" she started, at the same time he said, "Marie—"
They both stopped short, and Mariela looked at him patiently, waiting for him to finish his thought. Gauche, however, looked almost like he'd just been slapped, his eye wide and a look of decided discomfort coming over him. Abruptly, he sat up and pulled away from her, all but shoving Mariela across the bed when he quickly got to his feet. Without meeting her eyes, he pulled his boots on and left, mumbling something about needing to get something done before almost slamming the door behind him on his way out.
Mariela sat in the bed, too stunned to move, her eyes fixed on the door to the room.
When she'd decided to tell Gauche she liked him as more than a friend, she had thought the worst that could happen was his not feeling the same way back—maybe being a little awkward for a while, but she had assumed that wouldn't last forever. If she had anticipated—at all—that he would respond this badly, she never would have said a thing.
Mariela sighed and put her head in her hands to rub at her temples, her eyes closed. Of course she would find a way to ruin a trip to the ocean—somewhere she'd never been before and was so incredibly excited about seeing for the first time—by doing this immediately before they were all supposed to leave. How incredibly…
Typical. Of her.
Marie. Marie. Marie.
Gauche repeated the name over and over again in his head like a mantra, picturing his angel of a sister and refusing to let himself stray from the thought for a second.
Ever since he'd basically ran out of Mariela's room, he hadn't stopped thinking about how close he'd gotten to even further complicating a life he had no desire—at all—to complicate. The only thing that had saved him was calling Mariela 'Marie'… the moment he had, the reality of what he'd been about to do had crashed into him.
It's just me and Marie. It'll always just be me and Marie.
There had always been only him and Marie, as far as Gauche was concerned, and he wasn't about to let that change. He didn't want to let that change.
He'd been so deep in his own thoughts that he'd barely noticed anything that had been going on around him since he'd started throwing his things together—maybe a little too roughly—to get ready to go. Maybe he'd also been purposefully avoiding noticing any of the people around him, and who may or may not have had a certain blonde-haired, purple-eyed woman on their broom.
She'd said that Finral was supposed to be taking her… Gauche thought suddenly and scowled viciously. He didn't like the fact that he'd remembered that anymore than he liked the fact that it was probably what had happened. Reluctantly, he glanced around himself to confirm his suspicions—and immediately regretted doing so as he realized that he'd been correct. No Mariela, no Finral, no Yami.
At least they're not alone, Gauche thought, and refused to let the line of thought go any further. He didn't care if they were alone together. He didn't care if she spent every moment of her time with Finral, or anyone else, for that matter. That was what Gauche told himself, unendingly, the entire rest of the way to the hotel they were all staying at. It was what he kept telling himself when they were all checking in, and it became clear that the three of them were still nowhere to be found. And it was what he kept telling himself after he'd dropped all his things in his room and had seen Yami leaving the building with most of the other Black Bulls to head to the beach. In fact, Gauche didn't stop telling himself that he didn't care where Finral and Mariela were until he saw Finral exiting a room in a robe and immediately almost blew his head off.
"HEY!" Finral yelled, scrambling back just in time to avoid Gauche's magic. "What the hell are you doing?!"
"Where is she?" The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, and Gauche would have shot himself in the face in that moment if he could have.
Finral, still seemingly confused, asked, "Who are you talking about?"
Gauche glared at him, but before he could think of anything to say, the door to the room Finral had just left opened suddenly behind him to reveal Vanessa. Unlike her usual state of both intoxicated and happy, she was giving Gauche a withering look as she pulled the spatial mage away from him.
"She isn't here," Vanessa said, her voice clipped, as she met Gauche's eyes cooly.
Gauche scowled. If Vanessa was in the room with Finral—
"I thought this was something we were keeping private?" Finral asked under his breath, and Vanessa's stony demeaner finally cracked just a bit as she laughed.
"Would you have preferred I let him keep shooting at you?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, and his face went even redder.
Before Finral could answer—and make Gauche even more nauseated—he asked Vanessa, "Then where is she, if she's not here?"
When she turned back to look at Gauche, her eyes were hard again. "She's at the hideout, obviously."
Gauche blinked at that, surprised. "I thought you and Noelle invited her yesterday."
"We did invite her yesterday. So did Charmy, and Asta before that. The captain said she should come, too. I think I saw Gordon inviting her, but it's hard to say for certain."
"Then why didn't she come?" Gauche asked, feeling himself getting frustrated. Nothing that Vanessa was saying made any sense. If it were all true, then why was Mariela back at the hideout?
Vanessa narrowed her eyes at him. "She didn't feel comfortable coming and stayed back."
Gauche gaped at that. "Why?"
"I don't know, Gauche. Maybe it was someone sprinting out of her room this morning like they were being chased by demons after slamming her bedroom door shut behind themselves?"
Finral gaped at that, but Vanessa didn't look at him. Gauche forced himself not to look, unable to trust what he might say. This was a conversation he wasn't too happy there was an audience for, but it wasn't like he had much choice.
His face flaming, he snapped, "What the hell are you talking about, Vanessa?"
Vanessa rolled her eyes. "I was on my way to her room to get her opinion on some of the things that I was planning on doing out here while we were all staying. Ironically, I wanted to know if she would want to come with me, Finral, and you. And I heard a door slam and almost ran straight into you on your way down the hall. You must have been in a real rush to not have noticed me at all."
Gauche started to sputter but had nothing to say. Finally, he managed to get out, "It wasn't—"
"—what it looked like," Vanessa finished for him, her face and voice both unimpressed and unconvinced. "Right. That's why when I went to see her after that she'd obviously been crying, and she told me that she didn't think she could make it because she was feeling sick."
"I thought you said she said that it was because she didn't feel comfortable coming," Gauche mumbled, looking away from Vanessa.
"No. Seeing as she was so excited to see the ocean for the first time ever when we were talking about it yesterday and then suddenly didn't want to go for no apparent reason, I put the pieces together."
Gauche felt… terrible didn't quite cover it. And when he finally looked back at Vanessa, he realized that was what she'd been aiming for. Scowling, he snapped, "I don't care. If she doesn't want to be here, she doesn't have to be. Who cares about the beach, anyway?"
"She did," Vanessa snapped back, seething. Gauche had never seen her upset before, though it didn't surprise him much that the first time he did, it was for someone else. They stared at each other for a long moment, both refusing to back down, before Vanessa made a small, disgusted sound at the back of her throat. "Finral, will you take me to grab Mariela?"
Finral stared at her, his eyes huge. "What?"
"Please?" she pressed. Gauche noticed her fingers lacing Finral's and her hand squeezing. "It won't take long. Please?"
Finral, with an anxious glance at Gauche, sighed. He nodded once, then opened a portal next to the two of them. Without a second glance back, Vanessa stepped through the portal and disappeared back to the base. Finral gave Gauche one last look and, seeing the look on his face, quickly followed.
With a loud, frustrated yell, Gauche stomped back to his hotel room and slammed his door shut.