Orc in Ithilien

Author’s note: for everyone who commented so kindly on the first part of this story, thanks ever so much for your reviews of ‘Captain of Mordor.’ I was really encouraged to know that people had enjoyed reading it. Here are the first instalments of what promises to be a long and rambling sequel.


Chapter 1.

“Give over, your Highness,” Shagrat panted. “You – you can’t mean to do that to me here. You know I won’t be able - oh. Oh! Don’t! Stop doing that –“

“I can’t have caught you quite right,” the Prince of Ithilien murmured, halting the rhythmic, stroking movements that Shagrat claimed to be objecting to. At the same time he tightened his hold around various salient portions of Shagrat’s anatomy. Shagrat, who was a large Uruk-hai Orc, could often be quite a handful - actually, in surprisingly more ways than one: the Prince, for example, was certainly finding that he had both his hands full at that particular moment. He was gratified to note Shagrat, for all his protests, shoving himself nearer, leaning in closer, for more of his touch. Slowly, he began to move his hands again, caressing languorously, in a way that he calculated would be quite irresistible to Shagrat and for a few seconds the Orc moved with him, pressing in and pulling back, grinding his hips against him.

“I didn’t catch you right,” the Prince repeated. “Did you say ‘don’t stop doing that’?

“No!” Shagrat protested, wrenching himself sideways, with a recklessness borne of desperation (given the nature of the hold his companion had on him) as he tried ineffectually to retreat. The Prince followed after, and soon had him cornered again, up against one of the bookcases in his study. Shagrat shot him a desperate, wild-eyed look, which the Prince summarily ignored, while his hands returned to the Uruk’s groin. He carried on with what he had been doing.

“That’s not – it isn’t what I said,” Shagrat gasped eventually, collecting himself after another long moment. “I meant, someone might see! What if someone catches you fumbling about in here with – oh. Oh! Faramir, no! What if – what if someone –“

Shagrat tried half-heartedly, once again, to pull himself away. Evidently however he had already passed his point of no return, as Faramir intended he would, for at that point his body began to spasm uncontrollably in the Prince’s persuasive grip. The Orc’s head dropped forwards and his teeth closed round Faramir’s shoulder, as he tried to stifle an ecstatic, shuddering groan.

“’What if someone comes,’” Faramir finished for him. He felt the sudden, disconcerting pressure of Shagrat’s fangs pricking at him through the fabric of his tunic when he said it, as with a convulsive movement, the muscles in the Uruk’s jaw clenched then unclenched rapidly. More or less though, he trusted that Shagrat would not bite him. It was quite unlikely that Shagrat would deliberately set out to injure him. Not seriously, at any rate, he thought.

Shagrat sagged against him, weak in the knees, cursing at him fluently in Orcish. During the weeks since Faramir had acquired him, from a travelling circus in which Shagrat had been a most reluctant exhibit, the Orc’s health had improved immensely. But Shagrat had been more dead than alive when Faramir found him, and his physical condition was still far from being satisfactory. He was lame in one leg and had lost an eye, and there were other, more serious injuries that Faramir suspected, but which Shagrat invariably downplayed, or insisted on dismissing entirely, in a blasé, utterly infuriating manner.

Faramir helped him to sit down, suddenly feeling contrite. Shagrat kept his hold on him, and obligingly, Faramir knelt in front of him, while the Orc moved his head, to butt and nuzzle at the base of Faramir’s neck. The sharp points of Shagrat’s teeth grazed against his flesh, scratching slightly. Faramir hoped they would not leave a permanent mark. He felt a slight frisson at the thought of this; fear, mixed with excitement, as he usually did when dealing with Shagrat, for the Orc, no matter how well-intentioned, was equipped neither physically or by temperament to conduct himself with any degree of forbearance or restraint.

“This can’t go on, your Highness,” Shagrat muttered, in a muffled voice. “You - forever after me, like this. Chasing me about willy-nilly, like I’m a one of your maidservants, or some such. It’s not right, you know. Anybody could find us here, any moment.”

And then what, Faramir asked him.

“Anyone could come in, and then what would they think. They’d see you with me, wouldn’t they. They’d see!”

Shagrat’s extreme modesty in this respect had been quite unexpected, but had turned out to be a great source of harmless delight for Faramir. The Orc, it seemed, had not the slightest ability to resist the even vaguest of approaches directed at him by the Prince; he could not help himself from responding to Faramir’s overtures, but at the same time he retained – or had somehow acquired – a keen sense of decorum, and suffered pointless agonies of guilt and embarrassment over what he obviously saw to be the awful impropriety of their situation. Persuading the now, astonishingly demure Shagrat to overstep his own limits of good behaviour had quickly become one of the Prince’s favourite recreational pursuits – although in truth, it was never a particularly challenging pastime. But the Orc seemed genuinely agitated this time, and so Faramir tried his best to ally his anxieties.

“I think,” Faramir said, biting the inside of his cheek, to keep the smile out of his voice, “that the household staff - those of them who have chosen to remain with us - have by now accepted for the most part, that anything that may be going on between us is….going to be going on, regardless of what they, or anybody else, thinks. It really isn’t anyone’s concern but yours and mine, since I’ve made it clear that when I’m with you, I am not to be disturbed under any circumstances. So you must understand, Shagrat, that there isn’t any chance of anyone - seeing.”

Shagrat sighed mightily, his great, rough paws dropping down into Faramir’s lap, as he lifted his chin up to rest on Faramir’s shoulder. “Well then, your Highness,” he said, growling softly into Faramir’s ear, “I suppose in that case, Goldilocks, there
wouldn’t be so much harm in us carrying on with what you’ve started then, would there? Not just this once, eh?” His hands began to rove back and forth, stroking up under Faramir’s shirt and at pulling the waistband of his breeches. “Seeing as you’re sure everyone’s clear they’re to keep out our way, for a bit…”

The Orc’s voice tailed off abruptly at that. With a hurried movement, his body tensed, and he jerked himself backwards. Faramir gave him a bemused look. It was not at all like Shagrat to stop short in the middle of things like this, but the Orc, his expression quite unreadable, was staring with awful intensity at a point some distance behind the Prince’s back.

Shagrat swallowed, and licked his lips. “She clear about that too, is she?” he said.

Faramir turned to follow the Orc’s gaze. The main door to the study had quietly been opened, and when the Prince looked over his shoulder and saw who was standing, framed in the doorway, his mind went blank from panic, as all the blood drained away from his face.

“This may not be what it appears to look like,” Faramir said, feeling his throat beginning to close up with fright.

“There hasn’t been any funny business,” Shagrat heard himself blurting out, almost simultaneously.

Neither of them received much in the way of a reply however, for the incomer, the Lady Eowyn, Faramir’s wife – was it seemed, still much too shocked and horrified by the tableau she’d seen being played out before her to even be able to speak.