Male orc mage x reader (sfw) (Patreon)

Here is part one of something that was sparked by a message someone sent me on Tumblr (if you're on here and have a different name, I'm really sorry - I have no idea who is who across the two sites because your usernames are different!!!). 

It's 2288 words, and features an orc mage, a non-binary gargoyle, and a reader whose gender isn't mentioned. Hope you like it! It'll go up on Tumblr in a few days probably, but as ever, I share things first with you folks on here. 

You wound your way through the endless passages and staircases of the castle, snippets of lessons spilling out into hallways like autumn leaves caught in a draft: here a lesson on elixirs, accompanied by the heady scents of crushed and smoked ingredients; there a lesson on the ancient burial practices of the elves who had once lived in the far north and who had wielded a very different kind of magic from what was practised nowadays… It was all so familiar that you barely gave any of it a second thought. You had lived most of your life at the castle, and nothing ever seemed to change. 

Corridors and staircases which had once been intimately familiar to the tiny orphan child who had scrubbed them clean of dirt and cobwebs now unfolded to you as a teacher, your long robe brushing against your ankles. If you paused too long in one place, you wondered if you might glimpse the ghost of that child, staring back at you with hungry, haunted eyes. Shaking your head, you moved on. The discovery of the gift in you was one of the greatest things that had ever happened to you, and yet, despite it, you had never belonged here among the others, the humans and elves who swelled the ranks of mages, dotted here and there with a dryad or tiefling. They all seemed to know where you had come from, that you had been a servant, a pot-scrubber and floor-sweeper, and that somehow you had reached above your station in becoming a mage and a lecturer at the castle.

The sudden flurry of of students who filed past you distracted you from your thoughts. They either nodded respectfully or ignored you, too lost in their excited babble over their latest learnings to pay you any mind. Coming at last to your destination, you paused in the doorway, suddenly oddly nervous. 

An orc stood at the chalkboard, wiping it clear of complex formulae and calculations. His dark mage robe was folded neatly over the back of a chair that was clearly too small for him and which remained unused beneath his desk. He wore a simple, dusky blue shirt with the sleeves cuffed up to the elbows, and dark trousers, tucked into comfy looking black boots. Stacks of papers and essays were piled up on the time-scarred surface of that desk, with pots of ink, sticks of differently coloured chalk, and a number of hefty text books and tomes. 

He didn’t notice you at first, and you remained, caught on the threshold in that timeless, liminal moment of indecision. 

A balled up piece of paper flew across the room and struck the orc squarely on the shoulder, and he turned with his back to you to discover its source. Peeking shyly into the room, you saw to your surprise that a slender, wingless gargoyle was tidying up the back of the small classroom. It took only a moment of watching to realise that the gargoyle was speaking to the orc, not with their tongue, but with their hands. And then their brilliant orange eyes darted to you. 

At whatever the gargoyle had said, the orc turned full circle now and looked at you. A scowl settled onto his handsome features, and you almost took half a step back under the force of it. When he spoke, his voice was like rock chippings and sand, harsh and deep and unkind. It was nothing like what you’d expected, and he must have seen that it had shaken you. 

“What?” he demanded. “And no, I’m not the cleaner, and yes, I have every right to be in here. Yes, I’m an orc, and a mage, and I teach here. This is my classroom. If you want to hold a seminar somewhere, you can fuck off and find another room. This one is mine.”

“I know that,” you said quickly, regretting the way this was going already and praying you could salvage it. Orrakh was relatively new to the college, and this was the first time you’d had the chance to seek him out. You had dealt with plenty of testy professors in your time, but you’d never faced openly hostile wariness like this before.

“Oh,” he said, looking as though you’d ripped the rug out from under his feet. “Then what do you want?”

Orrakh wasn’t big, not in the way many orcs were, with their hulking shoulders and colossal tusks. He was practically slender for his kind, but still well over six feet. His twin tusks were modest, neither large nor small, and obviously well cared for, if unadorned. Strands of his bluish-black hair sprang stubbornly forward out of the shoulder-length ponytail into which he had attempted to scrape back the rest of it, and though his brilliant green eyes were narrowed and hard, a curious light burned in them. The beads and charms which hung from his hair and ears clicked and flashed in the light as he moved, and his delicate, sharp ears were studded with piercings all the way up their considerable length. He held the chalkboard duster quietly in knuckly yet dexterous hands, his dark, orcish claws neatly trimmed. 

All this you took in at a glance before swallowing and trying to draw courage into yourself, the same way you drew magic into your body before beginning a spell. “I read your treatise on the interference of solar flares with fire runes,” you said very quickly, “And I was hoping to ask you a bit more about it, perhaps discuss one or two points further with you, but I don’t want to intrude or bother you.”

He did an almost comical double take at that and then just blinked at you. Risking a glance at the gargoyle, you saw genuine mirth glittering in their eyes and they flashed you a broad, expressive grin, all white teeth and lashing tail. 

“You… You read that?” he asked, softening slightly and setting the duster down on the desk. The gargoyle tutted loudly at the cloud of dust the impact kicked up, and Orrakh glanced hurriedly down at it. “Oh, damn,” he cured, using the corner of his mage robe to smear an even worse mess all over the desk and now the fabric too. 

Rolling their eyes the gargoyle stalked on their bird-like legs up the length of the room and slapped his hand away, making shooing motions with grey, taloned hands that you didn’t need to be fluent in Common Sign to understand. They added something else, to which Orrakh nodded, and he turned introduce you. “This is Baikhal,” he said, and the gargoyle extended a graceful hand to you, the cuffs of their mage robes falling down a little over their slender hand. “My teaching assistant.”

“Pleased to meet you,” you said, wondering whether they could hear you or if the reason they spoke with their hands was only because they did not use their voice. Or both. 

Baikhal added something with their hands which you didn’t understand, and Orrakh growled softly but goodnaturedly. “‘And demonstration dummy’,” he quoted. “Yeah, that too. Well, it’s your fault for being nigh on indestructible,” he added, effortlessly accompanying his vocal words with a series of fluid gestures. The way he maintained eye contact and waited until Baikhal was looking at him made you suspect that the gargoyle couldn’t hear well, but you were left no more time for pondering, as they added something else to Orrakh, and he nodded. “See you later,” he said, still speaking with his hands even as he voiced the words aloud. 

The gargoyle tossed a playful wink at you, flicked Orrakh’s flat nose with the tip of their long, lithe tail in passing, and left the room. 

“You two have known each other a long time, I take it?” you asked, relieved to see Orrakh relaxing now that he knew you didn’t think he was a cleaner. There were orcs at the castle, but none of them had magic, and all of them preferred roles which included manual labour, such as stable master or weapons trainer. There was one gruff old grizzly orc who worked in the stacks at the library, but he was an exception. You’d never met an orc possessed of magic, though the shamans of the high plains to the south were practically legendary in their power. 

Orrakh sighed and watched his friend go. “Yeah,” he said. “We’ve been through a lot together. They’ve got no desire to teach, though with an interpretor, they’d do just fine, I’m sure. Hell, I’ve even offered to voice for them, but they’re happy doing their own research and helping me out instead, so…” he shrugged and turned back to you. “What did you want to discuss, anyway?”

“If you’re busy, I don’t want to interrupt,” you said hastily, eyeing the stack of papers on his desk, no doubt waiting for his red pen and quick mind. 

He let out a cavernous sigh and scrubbed thoughtfully at his chin. “I’ve got a ton of marking to do,” he admitted, following your gaze. “Look, why don’t we go into town later and we can discuss whatever it is over a drink?”

Your surprise must have shown in your face, because he chuckled, his raspy, rough voice mellowing out. 

“Too forward of me?” he amended. “Sorry. It doesn’t have to be anything more than two academics discussing -” he broke off suddenly. “Gods, where are my manners!” he held out his hand and you slid yours into it without hesitation. “I’m guessing know you already know this, but I’m Orrakh.” He eyed your full mage robes and added, “I can’t believe we’ve not met before. What do you teach?”

“You’ve not been here long,” you reassured him, introducing yourself by name. “And I teach astronomy. I have a particular interest in the influence of the moon and planets on the efficacy of certain spells, hence my interest in your paper.”

“Wait,” he said, his grip tightening on your hand as his eyes went wide with sudden realisation. “Wait, you wrote that paper on the gravitational affects of the moon on water spells in tidal areas, didn’t you?”

It was your turn to blush awkwardly, and you nodded. You knew as well as Orrakh did that he had quoted from that research a number of times in his own paper, and it had been somewhat disconcerting for you to read your own name in the footnotes of someone else’s writing. 

Orrakh suddenly became as star-struck as you were, and the two of began discussing a number of topics which centred on the influence of the heavenly bodies on certain spells and rituals, despite the fact that he had a lot of work to do. When you eventually reminded him of this, his ears pulled back in obvious distress, and his shoulders slumped. “Yes,” he sighed. “Well, I suppose you’re right. Thank you for humouring me anyway.”

“I’m hardly humouring you,” you countered. “I’m the one to blame for distracting you. I look forward to continuing it over a drink later, if you’re still up for it,” you added, and your stomach flipped over at the way his eyes lit up and he beamed a beautiful, genuine smile at you. 

He nodded and knuckled the small of his back with a soft grunt, eyeing the stack of papers as though it were some kind of owl pellet that had been unexpectedly deposited upon his desk. “This is the one bit about teaching I really don’t like. Baikhal often helps me out with it, but they’ve got a date tonight, so I said I’d handle it.” Despite his initially frosty behaviour, you could see quite clearly that Orrakh was a gentle soul, and when he caught you looking at him, he cocked his head to one side, beads clacking softly. “What?” he asked gently. 

“I didn’t know what to expect when I first met you,” you said honestly. “I knew you were an orc, but I’ve never really spoken with an orc much before… I’m really glad you are as you are, that’s all.”

His green skin flushed a darker hue at that, and he glanced down at his empty hands. When he did return his gaze to your face, his eyes were oddly glassy, and his voice more ragged than usual. “I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you when you first showed up,” he said. “It… It has not been easy for me here, but I never should have used that tone with you. Those who do not know who I am, that I’m a lecturer, assume I’m here to sweep the floors or that I’m parading myself around in a mage’s robes…” 

The hurt in his voice cut you to the quick, and you stepped back to be closer to him. “This place is full of stuck up snobs, Orrakh. I know first hand the looks they toss those who keep the castle clean and tidy for them. They look down on them, scorn them for being ‘lesser’, but without them, who would keep this place running?” You broke off, having said more than you’d intended, and it had obviously piqued his curiosity. “Anyway, I’m sorry they treat you like shit. They clearly have no idea what a formidable mage you are.”

He quirked a lopsided smile. “You’ll have to tell me more about the story behind those comments,” he said, adding your name quietly afterwards, as though trying out the sound of it on his tongue. Finding he liked it, he smiled again. “But some other time.” He glanced askance at the essays on his desk and groaned. “Duty calls…”

This is a Part One, I think, but I'm not sure when I'll do a Part Two. Depends on the reception that Orrakh gets, I suppose... If you liked him/the story, don't forget to drop a like on this post and leave a comment if you'd like to!