#soren.

“The last people I fell in love with… Mmm, Soren and Keung. Bell. I would say I’m in love with all of them, and then there’s Aster, of course. That’s something else. Something old. If I talk about it, I whisper, you know.”

@quiprava​ | non-sexual acts of intimacy: accepting!!

They were travelling light to see Avernus. Shaw preferred it that way. After so long as a fugitive or trying to avoid Darkspawn, any group larger than ten set his teeth on edge. Being around the mage again, travelling through the cold rain, it almost felt like back then. ( how wretched was he that he looked back to the Blight and felt nostalgia? )

Soren Amell, a proper lord now, Warden-Commander of all Ferelden, had his own tent. But Shaw didn’t think- he rarely thought- before he ducked under the sturdy canvas flap. Privacy was as foreign a concept to him as peace; luxuries meant for other men.

So, Shaw did not ask permission to enter the tent. It all felt too familiar to their past, when they shared a tent or close enough, when the world needed to be saved and it felt impossible. ( It was impossible. ) But they did it, led by the young mage who now sat on his cot with his head in his hands, chest heaving in sobs.

Shaw had never run from anything in his life-

No, that’s a lie. 

He ran to the Anderfels. He ran from facing his shattered homeland and own broken heart. He ran and left the Warden-Commander with no one to watch his back, and the young mage faced impossible odds- again- and this time utterly alone.

What was it, then, about Warden-Commander Amell that made him want to run? He wanted to turn heel and leave the tent without letting the Hero of Ferelden knowing he saw this moment of weakness. He wanted to forget the way his stomach dropped at the soft sound of the mage’s sobs. He wanted to hate the man who shared the final night with the woman he loved, the damned maleficar- - 

Maybe it was his own cruelty that made him step into the tent and close the distance between them. Soft, his armor off and only a small blade on his back. It was late, the rest of the camp asleep except for the man on watch. Shaw should have been, too, but- - well, it didn’t matter.

Shaw didn’t think- he rarely thought- when he took a knee before the damned maleficar. ( A half foot right before Soren. It was cramped in the tent, Shaw couldn’t stand fully, he- - ) 

“Soren.”