(Thank you to the person that requested this ^^ - can be seen as platonic/romantic !!)

Touch was blood-smearing and was Splendor and Justice piercing through flesh and metal alike; to Gabriel, touch was not tender nor soft. Touch was only as graceful as Hell's flames, as metal through sinew. And most of the time, being on the receiving end of that meant Gabriel was cautious, he was leery, he was distrustful.

Until you came along.

Gabriel doesn’t remember how he met you, or why he even let you stick by him. The first time you had tried to touch him (to wipe off smeared oil off his chest plate), he had drawn Justice and almost taken your head clean off. A reflex on accident, considering he'd rather not have the blood of his companion on his hands. You were SLIGHTLY more tolerable than the average filth that littered Hell after all. Yet you continued with such affections anyway, even when he'd grip his sheath each time.

Yet, Gabriel never really rebuked you for it. It wasn’t like him, at first, he thought he had grown diseased somehow. You had noticed when he started to lean into your touch, how quick he'd turn his head if he heard you, had shrugged it off as a newfound experience to companionship - and in a way it was. He grew to be fond of your voice, your charms and wits.

Your touch.

You sit at the edge of a bed, residing in one of the rooms in Ferryman’s ship. Gabriel kneels before you, chest-plate discarded as is Splendor and Justice on the floor. Arms wrapped around you as you sigh, his helmet grazing your stomach. Your fingertips brush against rough skin and puckered ridges, his scars, causing his wings to droop and body to relax at the familiar sensation.

He seems insistent on staying like this, as if he was praising God - maybe somewhere in ten billion worlds, he is. Even despite his newfound paranoia of how the Council would see him, how ashamed he is to do such things away from the eyes of them, from the eyes of the Father.

But he can't help it, he's grown fond of it. Of you.