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Orc in Ithilien	By : kspence Category: Lord of the Rings Movies > Slash - Male/Male Views: 8628 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings book series and movie series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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“Shagrat. Shagrat! Wake up, Shagrat.”
“Gerrof. Gerrit off. Get off me!”
The Orc came awake with a start, a frozen expression of horror on his face and his good eye staring wide.
“Sorry.” Ludlow rocked back on his haunches, smiling wanly. “It’s just you were – fussing, again. In your sleep.”
“Your face is wet,” he added, looking away from him.
“Is it?” gasped Shagrat breathlessly, into the chilly air. He rubbed the back of his hand each side across the bridge of his nose, dashing drops of salt water away. “Must be I’m – sweating cobs in here.”
After a short hesitation, Ludlow picked up his pillow and blanket roll and scrambled across towards him.   “Shift over a bit Shagrat,” he said, insinuating himself and his bedding in at one side of the relatively level space where his companion was lying.
After the excitement surrounding the impromptu exorcism of lieutenant Dargaz had worn off, the band of Orcs made their way up to the sandstone cliff Ludlow noted earlier, the base of which was undercut with a number of caves. An unseemly scuffle for sleeping places in the driest and roomiest of them had followed, but the former Uruk Captain and his Halfling companion had secured a prime location for themselves, in a sheltered spot overlooking the others near the top of the slope. Ludlow had hastily built a fire near the entrance to the cave, had time to warm water for a hot drink and by then it had grown too dark for them to do anything but go to sleep. Even the shouts and general levels of rowdiness from the rest of Shagrat’s compatriots, audible for much of the evening, had died down   by now meaning it must’ve been the wee small hours of the night.
They rested on their backs for an awkward moment, the Uruk, seemingly, having developed a sudden fixed and overwhelming interest in studying the rock strata and formations that hung above them on the ceiling of the cave.
All the while and quite unconsciously he was drawing his blanket further and further up, clutching it close around his chin. Shagrat closed his good eye and sighed wearily. Then he clapped one fumbling, heavy hand onto the Hobbit’s leg, positioning it awkwardly as he was absolutely refusing to look straight at him.
Ludlow reared away, scuttling backwards as if he’d just made contact with a box marked ‘content: dangerous scorpions’, or a venomous snake.
“What d’you think you’re playing at, Shagrat!” he cried, aghast. “I’ve grown extremely – fond, of you. I have! But I’m not interested in you like that! I just - don’t think of you in that way!”
The Uruk sagged onto his back, putting trembling hands up to cover his face. “Oh, thank goodness. Thank goodness. Thought for a minute I was going to have to -”
Ludlow sat up straight.   “You didn’t even want to?”
Shagrat shook his head vehemently. “I mean I - like you and everything, but it’s not like that. It’s not.”
“Then why on earth -?”
The Orc shrugged, still hiding his face. “Thought you were making a pass at me. Why else would you want to climb right in my bed?”
“This is not even a bed!” the Hobbit spluttered, pink-faced with indignation.   “You’re not supposed to just go to sleep in whatever crevice you happen to fall into on the floor!”
“I barely even used to sleep,” the Uruk protested, “much less need a bed to do it with!”
“Well then, we’ll be getting you a new one, first thing!” Ludlow said decisively.   “A heather bed, maybe. I saw simply swathes of moorland when we were coming up here so there’s bound to be someone round these parts who’ll be more than happy to tell us how to make one.” He considered Shagrat’s bewildered / craggy / horrifying-looking features briefly and then seemed to subside. “On the other hand, perhaps we’ll just be able to figure it out.”
“I’m not sure I really need –“
“We’ll say no more about it!” Ludlow exclaimed.   “Come on Shagrat,” he went on, trying for a conciliatory tone, “I’m sure it’ll sort your... sleep disorders out in a minute! And, well - if it comes to it, I’m not as young as I used to be, either. Don’t know about you, but I for one would certainly welcome a bit of not sleeping on the floor.”
The Orc thought this over for a minute, his brow creasing, visibly. “So you’re – you’re planning on being in this bed with me, are you?”
“Well, yes. Why not?”
Shagrat stared at him. “People will think it’s a bit weird, won’t they?”
“These Gondor types do seem to have some funny ideas,” the Hobbit acknowledged reluctantly, “but between you and me, back home everybody does it.   In most families, the main bedroom’s just one big bed. Wall-to-wall mattress, and unless it gets really hot in summer, everyone just piles in on it.”
“No hanky-panky?”
“I don’t know what you’ve been hearing, but as a people we don’t tend to be terribly – “
Shagrat nodded. “Into all that kinky stuff?”
“I was going to say ‘highly sexed,“ Ludlow conceded. “So, no. No hanky-panky.   Or at least – you know. Maybe just the bare minimum of it. At night everyone just likes to sleep together in one big heap.”
They lay next together in silence for a while. The little fire Ludlow had built earlier was burned down to embers now, and cast only a faintly red and orange glow. His companion was quiet but not sleeping; through the shadows Ludlow could just make out the faint shine and sweep, and shine and sweep as Shagrat blinked manky lashes over his one remaining eye.
“What happened between you and Dargaz, Shagrat?” he suddenly said.
The Orc shook his head absently. “Eh?”
Ludlow gestured to the Uruk’s left wrist, which he was favouring slightly, where he’d placed it – very carefully - on top of filthy blanket down by his side.   “I mean this afternoon. When you hurt your hand.”
Shagrat shrugged. “What about it?”
“I’ve seen you in trouble,” Ludlow said. “ My goodness, Shagrat, somehow you seem to land yourself in trouble more often than not! And I’ve seen you at death’s door. Everything’s always so – stacked against you, but you never seemed bothered that you don’t even have a proper fighting chance.”
“Impresses you, does it? All that laughing in the face of death malarkey? Well you got to, on account of - front, don’t you? That’s not saying it means much. Probably just a cultural thing.”
Ludlow persevered. “And then this afternoon with Dargaz. That thing with the knife happened, and the look on your face –“
The Uruk rounded on him then, snarling. “What about my face? Didn’t I just try telling you to leave it? How about you mind your own business, eh?   ‘Cause you know nothing about it! Nothing at all!”
“I don’t pretend to know everything about you,” the Hobbit went on, reasonably, “but I can’t help but wonder if what happened today has something to do with what you’ve been screaming about in the night, most nights since we met. The look on your face, you see, was just the same as how you sound when you’re yelling for help in your sleep and -”
“And how’s that?”
“...absolutely terrified, Shagrat. That isn’t like you at all, and that’s – well, that’s what I think I know about it.”
“Most nights, eh?” The Uruk’s lips pulled back into a toothy, mirthless grin. “You should’ve said. There I was thinking I’d been keeping nice and schtum.”
“Nobody-“ Ludlow broke off for a moment. “No-one ever did come and get you, did they?”
Shagrat sat up and hugged his knees, staring into the dying fire.   He shook his head. “Nah. Well they wouldn’t, would they, seeing how it was part of my punishment, after he – after Faramir – left. Thing is I let him leave, really, you see, because of how I – felt.” Shagrat raised his good eye to meet Ludlow’s gaze. “I suppose it sounds daft to you, coming from someone like me. But even with – all what happened and that - I reckon it would’ve still been worth it, just to be able to think of him being safe. Just to know one of us had got away, free.”
“But you didn’t manage to get away with anything did you, Shagrat?”
“Well I was fucked already wasn’t I,” the Orc said briskly. “From long before I ever met him! So it was just more of the same, really. Couldn’t’ve made much difference to me.”
“But you had to stay behind and pay for it! And you’ve been paying ever since! All these years!”
“It’s not nearly so bad as you seem to think,” Shagrat muttered, hunching his shoulders and ducking his head. “I was a right Mr Confused for quite a while afterwards. Messed up,” he tapped his forehead significantly – “you know, upstairs? So for a long time, I didn’t even remember a lot of stuff properly. It was seeing him again. Then that thing with Dargaz. That’s what’s dragged up a lot of it.”
“And does he know about this,” Ludlow sniffed, “your so-called marvellous boyfriend?”
“I don’t know about ‘boyfriend’ – “
“You told me he told you he’d visit!”
“He says all sorts of things,” Shagrat sighed. “I know he means well – he does!   But I’ll believe it when I see it, if you get my drift. I don’t think I can expect him to be stopping in to see me anytime soon.”
They sat for a while without speaking, the Hobbit obviously bristling with righteous indignation on Shagrat’s behalf.
This time Shagrat was first to break the silence between them. “Let’s change the subject, shall we?” he said, clearing his throat. “Forget what I said about that other stuff, eh? All for the best.”
“If you say so, Shagrat,” the Hobbit muttered, blinking back at him owlishly. “Because changing the subject and forgetting stuff’s’ clearly working for you quite admirably –“
“So,” the Uruk broke in, a little desperately, “do you - d’you reckon she’ll be dropping her sprogs anytime soon? I know they don’t usually do it till the spring. But still, the size of her. Look.”
“Sprogs?” Ludlow repeated vaguely.
“Whelping the pups.” Shagrat jerked his head towards the scurfy, spotty coat of the Warg, which had sidled in on the other side of the hollow the Uruk was lying in. It rolled onto its back, exposing its rotund belly in obvious invitation for Shagrat to give a good scratch to it. “Giving birth,” he said. “You know.”
“I most certainly don’t know!”
“You can’t’ve not noticed! The way she’s filled out lately.”
Actually Ludlow had noticed, for the Warg’s girth around the middle had increased to such an extent that now it seemed more than double the size it had been compared with the day he’d first set eyes on the beast.   “I thought it had worms! That he needed a dose of worming treatment, that’s all!”
“Nope. See? Milk’s starting to come in, too. Look close and you can see where she’s growing a sort of an udder -”
The Hobbit cut him off, shivering slightly. “How can that even be possible?”
Shagrat humphed and puffed and - looking at the fire then studiously up at the rocky ceiling, anywhere at all, in fact, except directly at the shocked, bewildered face of the Hobbit - embarked upon a mumbled, non-specific discourse concerning the facts of life in general, which, for all its excruciatingly vague, tongue-tied delivery promised to pay special reference at some undefined latter point to all of Warg-kind.
“No,” Ludlow interrupted, cutting him off, mercifully short. “The birds and the bees. Yes, thank you: I’m quite aware of that already. What I mean is obviously, one doesn’t like to look, but, things being as they are, it’s just not something it’s been possible for me to - not notice.”
The Uruk just stared at him. “Eh?”
Ludlow was blushing furiously.   He gestured towards the Warg, which was still on its back waving all four legs in the air and coincidentally also displaying the source of Ludlow’s deep confusion up in the air for all to see.
“Shagrat, my dear fellow,” he said gently. “Your dog’s a fine specimen of its type; no doubt about it. But surely there can be no room for confusion here. It’s male - I mean just look at it. The thing’s clearly got a todger.”
“Eh?” the Orc repeated, seeming for a moment to genuinely be mystified. “Oh! Oh yeah. No – they’ve all got that. Looks like one but it isn’t. Dunno why they have that –“
“Additional appendage?”
“Fake cock. But yeah, it must be important, ‘cause they’ve all of them got it.”*
“You mean the dogs, and the – girl dogs, too?”
“Let’s just say from what I’ve heard it’s not exactly a barrel of laughs when they come to push the pups out.”
“The pups don’t come out through – oh! My goodness! I can imagine,” Ludlow said faintly.
“You couldn’t tell? Really?”
Ludlow sniffed. “I made what seemed to be a perfectly reasonable assumption, based on appearances. But, no. I honestly couldn’t! How did you know?”
Shagrat drew a long breath in through his nose, shrugging.
The Uruk regarded him sidelong for a time. “You know,” he began, “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this either, but that Melek’s a fine-looking girl.”
Ludlow jaw actually dropped. “Melek’s a –“
Shagrat smiled to himself, as if he’d just had something he’d been wondering about confirmed.
“Are you quite sure?” Ludlow began. “Melek doesn’t seem to have an awful lot in the way of –“ he broke off, gesturing vaguely, his hands held out in front of him.
“Tits?”
The Hobbit snatched his arms back to his sides then folded them. “That’s certainly not what I was talking about. I was thinking about her - her womanly attributes, in a purely abstract sense.”
“I think you’ll find her armour’s prob’ly keeping most of her ‘womanly attributes’ flattened right out. But if you were to go looking, I should think you’ll find something under there. If you want to put it abstractly.”
“Oh, but we’ve only just met!” Ludlow protested, pink-cheeked with pleasure. “I’m sure a nice girl like Melek would never – well!   I’d certainly want for us to get to know one other better, before thinking about anything like that.”
Ludlow broke off, apparently considering their recent conversation for a minute. “Um, Shagrat, as for what you said about....’things’... to be found beneath Melek’s armour. You weren’t trying in a roundabout way perhaps to tell me – that is, she doesn’t by any chance happen to also have –“ he stopped again there, darting a nervous look at the Warg.
Shagrat shook his head. “Nah. Melek’s not got a cock. I mean – nothing’s impossible, but let’s just say it’s unlikely.”
“It shouldn’t matter, really, I suppose,” Ludlow said, giving him a wan smile. “And it’s a pity – inconvenient even, sometimes, but I find one just can’t help one’s own – preferences.”
The Uruk snorted. “Tell me about it,” he said.
They sat for a minute in a slightly stilted sort of silence.
“So!” Ludlow said at length, “I expect it’ll be – nice for you then, won’t it, to soon be hearing the patter of tiny Warg feet?”
“I suppose,” Shagrat nodded. “Hadn’t really thought about it. But it’ll be all right, that. ‘Cause we sort of - go together, don’t we? Orcs and Wargs- well, it’s tradition isn’t it? Two things that’ve always been a good fit.”
Ludlow nodded. “I don’t know – like spit and sawdust? Or pie and gravy?”
“I was going to say ‘flies on shit.’”
The Hobbit grimaced. “I wouldn’t call that an especially appropriate way of putting it.”
“You reckon? But who wants to have an Orc – or needs to have a Warg hanging around? Chuck ‘em out - chase ‘em off, whatever you do, you want to do your best to get rid and keep ‘em down. Like flies and shit. It’s always been like that.”
“Even in Mordor?”
“That was different!” the Orc exclaimed. “Even if I did use to wonder sometimes what it’d be like to be let off the leash for a bit. Not often, and never out loud of course – no way of knowing which ones were on the big bosses’ ‘special payroll’ and there were spies everywhere, back in the day. Later they tightened up the loopholes so even thinking about anything like that – making a break for it, you know - setting up on your own, was enough to land you in proper hot water if you were caught.”
Ludlow stared at him. “Your superiors can’t have been able to tell what you were thinking?”
“Not all the time, and they didn’t bother listening in on every little thing. But that sort of stuff – treason? Oh, yeah. They’d ways of picking that up straight out your head.   That’s why – apart from that thing with Goldilocks, I almost never stepped out of line. It was obvious from the off things weren’t ever going to change. No point in hoping for anything different. Gotta just grit your teeth and get on with it. That’s what you did.”
“But there’s no bosses here, Shagrat. It’s just you and the others now. And this hillside and all the mountain over it’s yours now, Shagrat, isn’t it? Your new home.”
“Home!” the Uruk exclaimed, looking honestly gobsmacked as he considered what Ludlow had said. “Well - I suppose it could be, couldn’t it? Hadn’t got as far as thinking of it like that. I’ve never really had one of those before.”
“No? What about that tower in Mordor we’ve all heard so much about?”
Shagrat shook his head.   “Nah. That was just a place to doss down and keep some of my stuff.” He gave a derisive snort.   “Don’t think it counts as a proper home, does it, if you’re not allowed to leave.”
“What would you call it,then?”
“Home? I’ve no idea,” the Orc said. “You?”
“It’s maybe – where you’ve come from? Or - I’m not sure. That you want to be heading back to?”
Shagrat looked at him sidelong . “And d’you – you know, think about going home again? Back to that Shire of yours?”
“I dream about it sometimes,” Ludlow said slowly. “Walking in the woods on an autumn night. And seeing the fields in summer. The little rivers, and pretty hills.” He broke off and shook himself. “But, with any luck, that’ll never come true. I haven’t seen nearly enough of anything to want to go home as yet. Can’t imagine I ever will have done, if it comes to it.”
“You know,” he went on, “you mightn’t realize this, but I’m not exactly a typical Hobbit. As a rule we’re pretty sedentary folk. A bit too fond of our home comforts, and we don’t go in for adventures, or tramping through the wilderness, very much at all.”
Shagrat grinned at him. “Or sleeping in caves and throwing your lot in with a load of Orcs?”
“Needless to say, yes! I’ve always been considered a bit of an odd-ball for it, I suppose. Nobody ever said anything to my face, but I know they all thought I was a bit – off. I never really felt - you know, quite like I was home, back home.”
“And camped half-way up a mountain, billeted in with our lot? Feel at home now, do you?”
“Well, it’s early days. But oddly enough – yes. I think I might.”
By now Shagrat already knew better than to hope for, or to count on anything, so to his ears his next question, which he blurted out a bit too quickly, also sounded much more hopeful than ideally he’d have liked. “So,” he said, “so you’re thinking you might want to stay?”
The Hobbit turned to him with one of his broad, kind smiles. “If you’d like me to Shagrat. All right.”
TBC
*This being what everybody knows about spotted hyaenas, which the Wargs in the original LoTR film trilogy were based upon, so this seemed particularly apt.
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Orc in Ithilien