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Ashur stands in Tarquin’s empty kitchen, looking around.
Neve had been the one asking him earlier if he’s seen Tarquin lately. Ashur had paused, countering with a question of his own—Why?—because she was using her detective voice, like she was gathering clues for a case.
Apparently, according to Rana, Tarquin hasn’t shown up to work for the past three days.
Tarquin also hasn’t been at the Safehouse in five days now; hasn’t spoken to Ashur in all that time either and not sent word to anyone about why he’s staying away.
But Ashur knows.
Ashur has known since the first night Tarquin didn’t show up, because there could only be two reasons: either Tarquin’s gotten in trouble somehow, or he’s avoiding Ashur.
Refusing to risk Tarquin’s safety by simply assuming the latter, Ashur has investigated the first option every night Tarquin’s been absent. He has walked the path he knows by heart across rooftops to Tarquin’s apartment, crouched above his bedroom window before slipping down onto the scaffolding that’s wrapping around the side of the building.
There he has watched Tarquin through the window, only allowing a brief stolen moment before tearing himself away, not wanting to let his gaze linger uninvited.
Every night he’s left without letting Tarquin know he’s been there. If Tarquin doesn’t want to talk to him, Ashur will respect that—even though he really, really thinks they should talk after what happened between them six nights ago.
And even if it hurts worse than anything else Ashur has ever experienced to know that Tarquin doesn’t seem to wonder how he is doing right now, given the lack of contact from him.
Deep breath in, slow exhale out.
Ashur focuses back on his surroundings, doing his best to ignore the memory of waking up tangled up naked together in Tarquin’s bed for the first time.
His gaze moves to the tiny kitchen table, an empty mug set out in front of the seat by the wall.
Six nights ago, Ashur had been sitting in the opposite chair, pleasantly tipsy during one of their rounds of friendly could-be-flirting banter over a game of cards. Shortly after Tarquin teasingly pried about Chantry men’s sex lives with a wide grin and a bump to Ashur’s foot under the table—adding a comment about how Ashur’s looks must mean many get distracted around him—Tarquin got up to get more for them to drink. Daring, Ashur had grabbed Tarquin by the wrist, stopped him from walking past.
Tarquin had turned towards him, a question on his face as Ashur slipped his thumb to the thin skin on Tarquin’s wrist right where his pulse beat rapidly.
“If you don’t mean anything with it,” Ashur said, voice low and earnest, loose-lipped from the alcohol as he hoped Tarquin would understand what he was talking about, “it’s fine. We can keep drinking until we both forget I even said anything. I just need you to know… it’s yours, if you want it. What I’m trying to say is—I am yours. If you want me.”
It was as honest as he could manage, open and raw yet less soul-baring than outright begging Tarquin to please strike him down fast, make the killing quick if whatever was going on between them was all in Ashur’s head.
They stared at each other in the warm glow from the candles lit around Tarquin’s apartment. Then, to his surprise, Tarquin had been the one to lean down and make their first kiss happen.
While Ashur’s hoped for a long time before that moment that his affection is returned, he’s been unable to tell with certainty. Tarquin is crude and blunt, often saying things that have Ashur blushing beet red behind his mask even at work—yet anytime Ashur has tried to meet him with sincerity, Tarquin’s retreated like a frightened turtle into its shell. If it’s been because he’s truly uncomfortable, or if Tarquin simply never expected to get that far and suddenly he’s stopped knowing what to do, Ashur hasn’t known.
That night, though, there was no room for doubt as Tarquin cupped Ashur’s face in both palms and kissed him hard.
His lips tasted like the cheap wine they’d been drinking, his beard coarse where it brushed against Ashur’s skin as they tilted their heads and deepened the kiss. And when Tarquin slipped his hands down to grab him by the collar of his shirt to pull him up, Ashur followed, hands on Tarquin’s hips as they stumbled their way to the bed.
They’d fucked twice. Fast and hard in their enthusiasm at first, making the old bed creak worryingly with each deep thrust, both of them clawing at each other with loud moans as they chased their pleasure. Afterwards they laid tangled together and stared at each other, out of breath and blown away, before they both ended up laughing. Ashur leaned in and kissed Tarquin again, slow and sweet, until they’d made out for so long they could go again; this time drawn out and overwhelming in its tenderness. Enough that Ashur had to bury his face against Tarquin’s neck and fight not to cry when he came, the reality of finally getting to be so close with him simply too much to handle.
Ashur strokes a hand down his face, willing the memories away. He can’t think about it right now. Not when he needs to focus on finding Tarquin.
Not showing up at the Safehouse is one thing. Whatever reason Tarquin has for avoiding him, that’s where Ashur is. So long as Tarquin’s been safe, Ashur’s decided to wait him out, at least for the rest of the week, to see if Tarquin would show up once he was ready to talk. If Tarquin hadn’t come back by tomorrow, Ashur already had a plan in place for going to him. If nothing else just to tell him that Tarquin would always be welcome with the Shadows, no matter what, even if he didn’t want anything to do with Ashur anymore.
But not showing up at his day job doesn’t make sense if Tarquin’s absence this week has been because of Ashur. Tarquin would never miss work if something wasn’t wrong—he doesn’t even stay home when he’s sick and truly needs it, something Ashur has berated him for more than once in the past.
And now his apartment is empty, looking like someone just got up and left, even though it’s the middle of the night.
Ashur got in through the bedroom window, left open wide enough it was easy to stick his hand inside and unlatch it. The small kitchen is a little disorganized from a day’s use, a plate with a generous portion of cat food still left untouched on it placed on the floor next to the counter.
So that should mean Tarquin’s been here pretty recently, at least.
Which is a relief, but Ashur still makes a noise in frustration as heads into the one big room of Tarquin’s apartment instead, wondering where in the world Tarquin has gone.
Avoiding looking at the unmade bed like it’ll burn him to do so, his gaze catches on the nightstand. On top of it lies a journal, with its leather cover worn and a big chunk of the pages crinkled from being written on. It’s thick and clearly well used, and Ashur stares at it for a long moment.
There might be a clue in there.
Tarquin could have written about where he is. If he journals, he might have been writing this whole week—jotting down his thoughts and feelings, every little thing going through his mind about Ashur and what happened between them, the things he’s been keeping to himself instead of talking to Ashur about.
Ashur’s fingers twitch with the urge to pick it up and look through it, heart aching with the need to understand, to—
No.
He quickly cuts off his own thoughts, ashamed to have considered it even for a second.
While he wants to get in Tarquin’s brain, wants to learn everything there is to know about him and hear what he’s thinking—he’s never wanted anything from Tarquin that hasn’t been freely offered. Knowing it won’t come easy with Tarquin is part of the deal, something Ashur accepted from the moment he decided to recruit him to the Shadow Dragons.
When Ashur had been searching all over Dock Town for days and days to find the mysterious templar who helped during a slave rebellion. Until Ashur had finally found him at—
He freezes, eyes going wide, the realization so obvious Ashur can’t believe he didn’t think of it sooner.
Suddenly, he knows just where to go.
***
Tarquin’s staring out at the dark water below him, moonlight the only thing illuminating the black mass beneath him. His feet dangle over the edge of the cliff he’s sitting on, high above the docks—it’s quite the climb to get up here, but getting to his favourite view makes it worth it.
He tenses when he hears a twig crunch under boots behind him, but he already knows who it is without turning around.
“Quin,” Ashur’s voice comes softly.
Tarquin keeps staring out at the water, his fingers curling into fists like he’s bracing himself for a fight. “Viper.”
“May I join you?”
Tarquin swallows as Ashur comes to stand right next to him, so close his leg almost touches Tarquin’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he says, knowing there’s nothing to do about this now, anyway. “Sure.”
He is both surprised over Ashur thinking to look for him here, and—a larger part of himself he’s been trying so hard to smother this week—annoyed it took Ashur this long to show up.
“I have been worried about you,” Ashur says first thing after sitting down next to him, kind and caring bastard that he is.
Tarquin closes his eyes, holding back a scoff.
It’s not that he doesn’t believe Ashur means it.
But Tarquin’s been preparing himself for never seeing Ashur again, to never hear his voice or his too nice words that always sting from how earnestly Ashur says them. He can’t look at Ashur, even if he’s covered up by the Viper mask, can’t stand to see his eyes in the light of the full moon.
Not when Tarquin’s spent the past two days writing and throwing away and rewriting a farewell letter to him.
“Heard you’ve been missing work,” Ashur says carefully. “At the Archives, I mean. Don’t worry about the Shadows.”
“Right.” Tarquin looks down at his hands in his lap as he fidgets with the straps of his leather waist belt. Of course word would reach Ashur about that somehow.
Silence stretches for a long moment, before Ashur—again too nice, always too fucking nice—asks, “Tarquin… are you all right?”
The sigh shakes out of Tarquin. “Been meaning to leave Minrathous tonight.”
“What?” The softness in Ashur’s voice is replaced with distress. “What do you mean?”
Tarquin finally does glance at him, then—can’t keep himself from it, no matter how bad he knows he should. And isn’t that the fucking problem? Ashur’s magnetic, pulling Tarquin in no matter how hard he’s been trying to fight it for so long now.
Ashur’s taken his hat off, his mask pulled down and hanging around his neck, leaving his beautiful face bare.
It hurts just as much as Tarquin knew it would to look at him, the memory of what it’s like to be as physically close as one can get with him flooding his mind. The old familiar hurt in his heart over how much he wants around Ashur feels like getting submerged in ice cold water, shocking and life-threatening.
He blinks too fast a couple of times, forcing back the sudden pressure of tears building behind his eyes.
“Was going to pack up what little I have and get the fuck out of here,” Tarquin says, voice hoarse. “And never return.”
Ashur stares at him.
“Quin, if this—if this is about what happened between us, then that’s—if you regret it, you don’t have to feel like you need to leave, I would never hold it against—”
Tarquin barks out a humorless laugh, shaking his head. Regret is a ridiculous thing to call it.
“It’s not…” Tarquin trails off, can’t find the words to explain any of this. If he was the kind of man who could talk about these things, he wouldn’t have had to avoid Ashur for almost a week, wouldn’t be feeling like he has to run, run, run. “I don’t regret it.”
“Then why do you want to leave?” Ashur says carefully. While clearly still worried, he sounds like he honestly wants to know too. The way he always does when he’s talking to Tarquin—like what Tarquin has to say actually means something to him, no matter how much Tarquin sucks at this.
“I don’t want to leave.” Tarquin looks straight ahead again. What does it matter if he’s honest? Ashur is here, got to him before Tarquin could bolt, before he could take his things and slip away from a life that’s going far too well for him to know what to do with. He’d wanted to leave behind nothing but a letter doing its best to explain how fucked in the head Tarquin is and asking Ashur to please make sure to find someone to take care of his cat once he’s gone.
He should have left earlier tonight like he’d planned, because then he wouldn’t have to deal with sitting here now, wishing deep down for Ashur to convince him of staying.
Tarquin wonders if the heavy weight he has in his chest, like a large stone right where his heart should sit, is something he was born with. Or if maybe it grew over time, and now it’s simply been there for so long he can’t remember anything else.
All his life, existence has felt so, so heavy.
He doesn’t outright want to die anymore. Not like he often did when he was younger. Yet Tarquin still often longs for his life to stop, to take a break, to get put on hold. To simply not have to be sometimes, to become unaware of his own skin and the body he inhabits for a while; to have the constant heaviness he carries taken off like an overburdened work horse getting unsaddled.
Worst part is how much Ashur helps with just that.
Being around Ashur makes Tarquin forget how idiotic it would be to ignore the things he carries in the first place. Ashur fills his days with meaning, makes him believe that things in life can be important and get improved, and that Tarquin is allowed to believe in and want to be a part of something hopeful again.
That he’s allowed to have something in life that matters.
“I don’t want to leave,” Tarquin repeats. “I want to stay here. With the Shadows. In Minrathous, however shitty this fucking city may be. I wanna help make it better. With—you.” He looks at Ashur again, only a glance before his gaze flicks back forward, his voice quiet as he says, “I want to stay with you. And that’s… why I want to leave.”
“Oh,” Ashur says. Like maybe he understands Tarquin’s overwhelming fear of losing something good, the desperate need to put it down and leave it be by your own choice instead of having it ripped away from you.
Tarquin startles when Ashur’s ungloved fingers touch the back of Tarquin’s own bare hand.
“Ashur.” Tarquin clenches his jaw tight, doesn’t know what he means by saying his name—maybe a warning, but it comes out like a plea. He doesn’t remove his hand despite tensing up. Instead he wills himself to relax it, uncurling his fingers for Ashur to slip his hand into his and press their hands palm to palm before interlacing their fingers.
“I want you to stay, too,” Ashur says, like it’s the easiest fucking thing in the world to be so honest, and gives Tarquin’s hand a squeeze. “With the Shadows. You’ve completed our team. And Minrathous is infinitely better with you in it. And most of all, selfishly, I want you to stay with me.”
Tarquin shakes his head, even as he grips Ashur’s hand back. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Ashur. Come on.”
“What?”
“You can’t seriously think you want—” Tarquin throws his free arm out, gestures vaguely in the general direction of his own… everything.
“What if I do?”
“Then I still don’t want you back, because you’re gonna tire of me so fucking quickly.”
“Tarquin.” Ashur sounds a little amused all of a sudden. “If that was happening, I would’ve been tired a long time ago.”
Tarquin glares at him, frown lines deepening as he furrows his brows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re acting like I don’t know you, when I do. And I like you. Even when you drive me crazy, there’s no one else I care for more. Even when you pull stuff like disappear after we slept together and then tell me you were about to flee the city just to get away from me, you’re still the only person I want by my side at the end of day.”
Feeling his face heat over the gravity of that statement, Tarquin shakes his head again, barreling straight towards Ashur’s words at maximum speed to show how easy it is to break them. “You don’t know that, Ashur. You don’t know what it’d be like to be—to be together. With me. Not like that.”
“So let’s find out, then.”
“Maker’s fucking tits.” Tarquin closes his eyes and rubs the fingers of his free hand against one eyelid. “You can’t seriously be asking me to love you.”
“I’m not,” Ashur says carefully. “I’m saying that if you do care for me… you should let me love you back.”
Tarquin thinks he might be sick. “I wouldn’t be good at it. The loving, or—being loved part.”
“I think,” Ashur says, thumb stroking across Tarquin’s knuckles, “there’s no one in this world I would rather be loved by. And if you let me, I will spend however long it takes to prove it to you.”
Staring at Ashur’s face, Tarquin says, “Why? Why do you even like me? I get—that we’re friends, that’s one thing, I guess, but I’m not—” He cuts himself off, looking away while working his jaw. “I’d be a shitty partner. I go to work and when I come home, most of the time I like to sit alone and just enjoy the silence. That’s my fucking life, Ashur. You could have anyone, and I’m—I’ve got nothing to offer. I don’t do stuff. I’ve got no savings. What little coin I have left after food and rent goes to my medicine and treatments. I’m never having kids, so forget about that. Most of my family are either dead or fucking suck and you’ll never meet any of them. I’ll never want to live in one of your oversized mansions—even ignoring the fact we couldn’t be seen together in public, anyway.”
“Tarquin. I don’t care about any of those things. I want you for you.”
“That makes even less sense, you fucking weirdo!”
Ashur chuckles, like Tarquin’s being cute about this. Then he goes quiet, studying him for a moment, before reaching up to stroke the back of his knuckles down Tarquin’s cheek, tender like he’s something precious.
“Coming home and sitting in silence with you sounds perfect. That’s why I want to be with you. Because it doesn’t matter what we do together. I just want you in my life.”
Tarquin swallows thickly, feeling himself run out of things to say to fight back. “I’ve never been with anyone before,” he tries. “Not—not like that.”
He’s never had someone to come home to. Never thought there would be someone who would want that with him, and so Tarquin decided a long time ago there would never be anyone he wants it with either.
Ashur has shuffled around so many things in his head in the year they’ve known each other.
“We’ve got that in common.” Ashur smiles. “So we’ll figure it out together.”
Tarquin opens his mouth, closes it again. “Why do you keep saying these things like it’ll be easy?”
“I don’t think it’ll be easy.” Ashur shrugs. “But I do know I have never once thought of you as a chore, or a problem to be fixed.”
Tarquin makes a noise. “I think I could do with a little fixing, sometimes.”
“Couldn’t we all?” Ashur tugs on his hand, making Tarquin look at him, before fitting his palm at the curve of Tarquin’s jaw, holding his face. “Just don’t leave, Quin. That’s all I’ll ever ask of you. Stay and work things out with me. No matter how difficult things get, just promise me you’ll still talk to me.”
Biting his bottom lip, Tarquin holds back another sigh from shuddering out of him. “No one’s given a shit about what I have to say before.”
“They’re missing out,” Ashur says. “And yes, I’m including even when you’re yelling about something.”
“You’re going to regret thinking that.” Tarquin rolls his eyes, determined to not let Ashur make him laugh even as he can’t fight the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “And then I’m going to regret believing you.”
Ashur smiles back, stroking his thumb across Tarquin’s cheek. “Or what if I mean it, and we grow old together?”
Despite it all, that’s all Tarquin’s ever dreamed of—no matter how much he’s pushed it down and gone about his life telling himself he’s better off alone.
When Ashur leans in, Tarquin lets himself be kissed, pushes into the press of his soft lips with longing he can’t hold back when it feels so fucking right with Ashur.
In the great comfort of Ashur’s touch, fear still claws desperately at Tarquin’s chest, warning him of danger. But maybe—maybe there are ways to fight off even the most terrifying things in life when there is someone willing to face them with you.
Tarquin closes his eyes, wraps his arm around Ashur’s shoulders to pull him closer, and prays the risk will prove worth it.