#normal about these two

[irrwurz]

Thorin surviving the BOTFA but his injuries leave him too weak to care for his hair... he is much too proud to bother anyone. Not with so many still yet to be tended to or buried. Erebor needs rebuilding, but first must come organization. Thorin resolves that his own vanity can wait.

But it bothers him. Each day his wounds are cleaned at least once, each week his body is washed with a cloth and a bowl of water. He hates it all. Hates that a stranger is touching him, looking upon how the war has toiled his body. Though the attending is nothing but polite and professional, Thorin can feel it in his gut that surely they must be talking. Telling others about the wretched, weak king.

At the very least, he demands that his hair remain untouched. It was not culturally motivated for it was common to care for the hair of a patient as part of the process- it was merely an attempt at control over the situation. To regain some sense of autonomy no matter how meager. His mind and body may be frayed from his defeat, but his hair would remain his own.

Bilbo visits often. Sits with Thorin and reads to him, or otherwise tell him updates about the mountain. Bilbo doesn't have quite all of the information nor understand everything happening, and Thorin had already heard most of it from Balin- but it was a treasure to Thorin regardless. To hear of his pride and joy, his mountain, as described by the words of the hobbit he loved was a gift. Bilbo would sit and have his meals with Thorin, extending their chats until Thorin was drifting off to sleep.

Thorin can feel Bilbo's gaze lingering on him one night, but his expression is pensive rather than appreciative. He had caught Bilbo's adoring gaze before, back on the journey, but this was different. Much more subdued. After witnessing Bilbo make several false starts, Thorin sighed.

"What is on your mind? I would have you speak freely, for I care what you have to say."

"Its your hair." Bilbo then looked away, and Thorin was glad for it.

A hot flush of shame struck him. He could imagine what he looked like. Oily, stringy tendrils of hair, flat mats and tight knots. Nothing regal. Nothing honorable or handsome, nothing deserving of Bilbo's covetous gaze. He was nothing.

"...I know it isn't exactly my place..."

Thorin chuckled bitterly. Bilbo would steal the Arkenstone from him, but this of all things, wasn't his place? To state the obvious, that Thorin looked a mess?

"...But I would be happy to care for it for you. At least until you are able to do so yourself."

This stunned Thorin. Of course, as an outsider, it could mean nothing to Bilbo to offer such a thing. But surely over the year he had spent with the company, he grew to learn the significance of grooming one another's hair?

His silence made Bilbo fidget with his hands, but his expression remained reticent. "I mean no offense and only make the offer out of the... deep affection which I hold for you." He sniffed and cleared his throat as if punctuating the sentence.

Thorin searched Bilbo's face hard. The guarded, knife's edge look in his eyes was reminiscent of when Bilbo had first met the dwarf, how the king had circled him like a vulture appraising a scavenged meal in his own home.

There was a temptation to say no, a petty thought born of wounded pride. It died on his lips the moment Thorin really pictured it- Bilbo running his hands through his hair. The cherry on top was the idea of having clean hair again, something Thorin had maintained even while they had been journeying.

So he agrees. Thorin finds himself adjusted in the bed so that his head hung over one side. A bowl of warm water waited on a stool below. Thorin didn't want to look at Bilbo's face for fear he would see something of a cringe when Bilbo felt how greasy his hair was so instead he closed his eyes.

Bilbo had no hesitation in his touch. He dug his fingers in gently, spreading soap in a lather across Thorin's scalp. The room was quiet save for the suds and their breathing. Thorin barely restrained a groan at the lovely feeling of Bilbo’s blunt fingernails scratching. Oh so lovely. Soon Thorin was floating, utterly swept away by the calm that bloomed in him.

Safe. He felt safe. Truly, Thorin let his guard down and was nearly half asleep when Bilbo began to rinse.

"I'll give it a second wash, just so I've gotten everything," Bilbo muttered, as if more to himself than Thorin.

A second wash he did, and it felt even better to Thorin than the last one had. This time he fell asleep entirely. Thorin only woke when Bilbo began to massage his hair oil in, the strong scent of bergamot rousing Thorin.

"How did you know to use...?" His voice was deep and rumbling from his deep sleep. He opened his eyes just enough to see Bilbo's face, but saw the hobbit refused to look back.

"I watched you on the road. Washing your hair. A lot. Balin helped me locate a vial of the kind you typically use." Bilbo hesitated. "I always thought your hair very beautiful."

"Bilbo." It still felt like he was in a dream. Safe, warm, and held.

"Yes?" He looked at him then. There was an unmistakable fondness in his voice.

"Permit me to be selfish and ask you another favor, but do not think me ungrateful for the wonderful service you have done me thus far?"

"I would grant you anything within my power." He meant it. Thorin was not ready to face that, already using up his courage with his next question.

"Now that my hair is clean, would you rebraid it for me?"

"I would be honored."

[shmorp-mcdurgen]

Tough Love

[edgy-senju]

Soul of a sinner

[squibbering]

[p-ranking 6-2, attempt #54] a gabv1el one shot, 1.6k words (~8 mins), see the ao3 version here.

As always, the starry sky houses the moon in the same spot. Tilts it at the same angle, down to the very degree.

As always, the trees draw the same oblong shadows upon the forest floor. Never an inch too thick or too wide, and permanently slanted one way in spite of perspective.

As always, the campfire crackles the same few notes, a bassist in the forest’s melancholic song. It’s grown predictable, the rippling water, the creaking wood. The pitter-patter of wildlife in a freshly empty world liberated in humanity’s absence.

As always, the moment lies in stasis. Unchanged from when he first sat upon this log with his wings slumped low, strung dejectedly to his back with threads of shame, guilt and regret.

Most humorously, his introspection is all that ever changes. When did it grow from silent reflection to the deepest, most relentless rounds of brooding? The fifth time? The fiftieth?

Is he doomed to mope here forever? Arrive freshly wounded from another gratifying defeat, only for the real pain to come from his actions?

Who can wash sins dipped in the thickest tar? Is there a confessional mighty enough for his crimes, mightier than the council who assigned them to begin with?

What is the verdict of a fool puppeteered for eons? A tool for uprooting all supposed evil save from his own, arguably the worst of it all? 

He is a fool. A murderer. A monster. 

Even so, it is not enough to sulk. There are wrongs to right, a pompous head to sever and a tyrannized heaven to set free. And that is just the start of it, his penitence. It will be profound. He will make the greatest amendments for his worst sins. Stop at nothing to rectify the ills brought by his zealous hands, even as his life spills away in pathetic litres. Then, with the very last of his strength, he will pray. Not to God, whose death mirrors his own untethered, declining existence. Rather, to those stirred by his smallest transgressions. The ones just big enough to be felt somewhere, somehow, yet still too miniscule in all he’s done to be brought to memory. 

He will die somewhere quiet, somewhere alone. Dance in a pleasant slumber while his body flakes into ashes, sparks into white flame, or whatever else. A deserved fate, yet one not nearly harsh enough.

The plan is in his grasp, a mere untipped domino away. But time won’t permit him to go much farther from here. It never does.

He has cleaved the councilman’s head enough times to decorate a metaphorical castle wall, each taxidermied mount a broken link between Gabriel himself and God. It is unbearably heavy, his own unsupported body. Yet he drags it to the coliseum regardless, if only to yet again soothe the people with the unlit eyes and agape jaw of an imperious fool.

As always, their applause comes to the most abrupt of stops. As always, just as he’s about to leave and do something about his mounting guilt, the coliseum is gone. The rest of heaven along with it.

Again, the organ. Again, the towering cathedral. Again, the chromatic wash of red on everything from the floor to the ceiling.

He does not need to turn around to know it's there. To see which shadows compromise its boxy frame, and how each dark pane symbolizes its obvious, programmed intentions.

Is he doing something wrong? Is there a grievous error in his plan, one that’s making time loop around in frustrating circles? Are his sins too grave? His repentance too inconceivable for the universe to allow?

And if the universe isn’t at fault, is this the machine’s retribution?

Rusted metal against smooth marble: footsteps. Fast. Impatient. More efficient than they’d been last time and the time before that — exponential. Soon, Gabriel hears that click. That steadfast, deadly sound, universal across the machine’s ever-expanding arsenal.

It’s been too many times to be phased by the device pointed at him. Whatever the machine has in its grasp whirs; a rhythmic, dangerous invitation. Already, Gabriel can taste the coppery sputter on his teeth; feel his chest plate fracture inwards and stab between his ribs; hear that sweet, deafening ring that peaks alongside world-tilting ecstasy. 

He swallows hard, anything to curb the temptation. The machine stares expectantly all the same, its fluorescent iris that same drawing yellow.

He mustn't. He cannot. All fighting the machine has done has cemented him in stasis. Culprit or not, attempting the same thing and expecting any change would be insanity. 

A holier reason: indulgence is gluttony, and gluttony is a sin. Whatever that word means anymore.

The other vice indulgence brushes up against is also a sin, but it can’t be that. Not towards a machine.

“You can descend farther without contest. There’s more for you down there, machine.” he offers, displeased with having to barter Hell’s remaining population around; they are people he’s coming to realize, but the machine will not see reason lest there’s blood involved.

It stares blankly at his shoo-ing hand, unbudging in its confusion. If Gabriel had any easily definable features they’d be twisted in a scowl. “You can understand me, can’t you?”

It nods.

“Then leave. You’ve had your laugh. My defeat,” my tantalizing, thrilling defeat, “—doesn’t satisfy you, hasn’t been.”

Regardless, it does not budge.

“A whole world down there — yours for the taking! Throw that insatiable hunger at those who will reciprocate it, not me!” His hands gesture about in exasperated motions.

Still, that persistent gaze. At its apathy, Gabriel whines.

When Lust’s denizens broke at his feet, stuck between one world of pain and another world of tortuous winds — winds that for so long had felt like the gentlest breeze — did they feel this same helplessness? This sinking, crushing feeling of being trapped in a situation?

Airborne or grounded, he towers over the machine. And yet, he is still so terribly small.

What he does next is humiliating. Blasphemous. 

The machine flinches as he kneels. 

“Please,” a whisper against the plating of its legs. Then, more to himself than anything, “I need to make this right.”

His helmet rests against its midsection, impossibly smooth iron against corroded steel. Its wires vary in size and segments. Gabriel tries to hear the static and blood pumping throughout them. Wonders, sinfully, how hot both can get. Does the machine burn for him, as he does it? Can the entropy of a system equate to ecstasy? 

From this angle and despite the dim lighting, there’s a glare obscuring the machine’s optic. Not like its face is indicative of much anyway, but Gabriel wants to pretend that it’s in thought. 

Airborne or grounded, he towers over the machine. And yet he peers up at it bashfully, like he would to God.

For the first time since he’s met it, the machine chooses mercy. 

He does not realize it at first. He thinks the hand that cups his chin, then lifts him up is a sardonic gesture, a mockery to end all mockeries. Just as he objects to being gently walked to the center of the room — courted, — the machine raises a finger. 

You can decipher meaning without expression or words, he’s learned, so long as you know your subject enough. What the machine means to say is ‘just one more.’

Gabriel’s laugh is a breathy, ugly thing stuck between frustration and anticipation. They’re both in their places now, slot in position like actors in a play. Already, he can feel the unfurling of his being. The white-hot spikes of pain that blear the corners of his vision the same color. What about the machine makes temptation, something he’s resisted for eons, so alluring?

What’s one more?

Ironically, unsheathing Justice and Splendor is an act of surrender. With no lips to speak of, the machine takes a hold of his hand again and leans down. Its optic is warm, like a kiss should be. Then it steps away, the reserves of its gentleness assuredly dry. Gabriel doesn’t know what he likes more; its unthinking and brutal programming, or its occasional, endearing deviancy.

The courtesies are over, the machine takes aim. He’s been missing that muzzle.

There is blood and there is pain. There is divinity and there is parodied humanity. There is Gabriel crying out loud enough to tumble the heavens and quake the Earth. There is the machine and its searing heat sink on the precipice of eruption. There is love.

He towers over the machine, dwarfs it. Outshines it in every possible category. Has more grandeur, glory and honor than it can even begin to compute.

And yet.

The fight is won. The victor, obvious. The machine looms over his limp body, like one would a squashed but still moving bug. All Gabriel can muster are shallow breaths against the cathedral floor, life a mere bullet away.

The machine’s iris jolts from one corner of its optic to the next. It kneels over him, straddles him, a sick curiosity tied to its every move. Gabriel winces, convinced for a moment that even if its promise meant anything, it was overwritten by some vindictive line of code. When the machine puts its revolver to the side, his hacked shoulders go lax.

For a while, he and the machine are all that is. It cups his jaw again, rubs circles onto his helmet, tells him he’s so good and deserving and capable of redemption, then promises to never leave.

When it’s gone, he realizes too late. The stars and trees are back. Far away, he can hear the crackling of fire. He drags himself to it, hopefully for the last time.

u/iheartpancakes42069 on r/ULTRAKILL:

guys i swear this isn't a mod but if you play through 6-2 enough times in a row there's a cutscene??? thankfully it didn't affect my time but holy shit this game has so many easter eggs... is gabv1el canon now?? hakita?????

u/fuckmykappachunguslife_2

Definitely a mod, lol. How much did you pay Gianni for this?

u/fuckmykappachunguslife_2

Wait what the fuck

u/iheartpancakes42069

SEE??

[incomescrane]

The morning after the first long rest.

[rainbowslugger]

lukey and woogie are so cutieful i love them so much