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Ratbag craned his neck and took a peek over the edge of the scaffold. Then he scuttled backwards from the long drop down to the sound-stage below, shaking his head vehemently.
“There’s no way, Ranger,” he said. “Not for all the grog in Mordor! So you can just climb back down there and tell them Ratbag’s changed his mind and now he says he’s not going to do it.”
Talion heaved himself up off the ladder and onto the platform beside him, grimacing. “But, Ratbag,” he said, “I don’t think any of us are exactly at liberty to be thinking of changing our minds.”
He stepped closer to his anxious companion, moving carelessly but also in way that placed his height, as well as the bulk of his body in front of Ratbag and also between; directly in the way of anyone - from outside - who might otherwise have tried to look, or listen in on them. “What is it, Orc?” he asked Ratbag, gently. “You know you can always talk to me.”
Ratbag squinted up at him. “You better tell them that Ratbag doesn’t want to have to get dangled off that bloody thing.” He nodded towards a nearby gantry from which was hanging a sort of a makeshift safety harness, looped together from a selection of short lengths as well as other, longer sections of bits of old rope. This rope harness had a cobbled-together look in general, and everything about it seemed to scream ‘botch-job!’ quite insistently.
Talion ran his hand, distracted, through his hair. “Perhaps if they were to get a better harness for you. How would that be?”
“It’s not the harness that’s the problem,” Ratbag answered, wretched. “The problem is that Ratbag’s been thrown from high-up things before. That’s happened a few times now, and now he’s afraid of heights, isn’t he? Ratbag’s afraid he’ll fall.”
Ah. So that was the problem. The more intimately Talion had gotten to know his Orcish companion, the more apparent it had become to him that the frequency with which he’d refer to himself as ‘he’ and ‘Ratbag’ when speaking increased in direct proportion to the general level of anxiousness he was experiencing.
Admittedly, it was an inescapable fact that Ratbag’s usual state was to always be anxious to some extent, at any given moment - and yet Talion couldn’t fault him for it. He hadn’t spent nearly as much time in Mordor as Ratbag had, but the things Talion had had happen to him when he was there were more than enough to make him feel anxious, too. The way Ratbag had just been talking however. This was already bad, even for him.
Talion moved closer to the Orc across the platform. “Then I’ll just have catch you, won’t I?” His tone was soothing, and he moved closer still. Now Talion was very near to him indeed, close enough that by inclining his head towards just him a little, Ratbag was able to rest his forehead against Talion’s broad chest. Talion leaned forwards as well and lodged his nose and his mouth in a comfortable, practiced move on top of the Orc’s head. He breathed in and out deeply, huffing right across Ratbag’s scalp and for some reason just then Ratbag had the strangest impression that the Ranger was deliberately….inhaling; breathing in the smell of him.
“I’ll always be there to catch you,” Talion told him, with absolute sincerity. “I’m not going to let you fall.” His forearm went across the small of Ratbag’s back and with a fleeting movement he pressed his companion to him.
“But I thought you said - ‘never at work’,” Ratbag whispered, very quietly.
“And I did, because it’s nobody else’s business. But I’ve a personal interest in your safety - and that’s a thing that does bear mentioning.”
Ratbag ducked round and under the Ranger’s elbow and peered down at the members of the video-game production crew waiting below. “Talion, people are staring at us.”
“Then let them look. We’ve nothing to hide.”
The Orc stepped back from him, bristling with suspicion. “So that’s why they’ve sent you up here, is it? Got you trouble-shooting now, have they? Leave it to Talion to save the ruddy day. ‘Cause ten to one they’ve only gone and told you to come up here and handle me.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Talion replied. “I came here because I wanted to, and of my own accord. And, Ratbag, as for the rest of it -”
Their eyes met. Talion held his gaze, and a long, significant look passed between them.
“- as for the rest of it, I should think I’ve been doing sight more than ‘handling you,’ lately.”
“Talion!” the little Orc was scandalized.
“As I was saying, aside from ‘handling,’ lately I’ve been enjoying doing this to you -“ Talion closed the distance between them once more, to show him –
Once he had the Orc whimpering and straining against him, with a practiced movement, he adjusted his grip. “And this –“
“Oh! Talion!” Ratbag sagged against the Ranger, weak in the knees.
And Talion caught Ratbag, and helped him to stay upright, because, of course he’d never let him fall. He made an amused sort of noise against Ratbag’s open mouth. “Mmh.”
They were quiet, coming together with furtive, jerky movements for a moment. Then Talion broke away from Ratbag. He turned him over and said -
“Now, let’s try and remember not to forget about this one either -“
“…..!”
Yes, there were other things Talion had in store for Ratbag, equally pleasant, but for the moment words, it seemed, had failed him.
***