#this is a Constantine free post keep him out of this I��m sick of him and don’t want to hear about his loser personality

[diceyfall]

[fic; the pain that love procures]

requested by @cailegan, vasco x m!de sardet, post-bad ending romance, 800 words 💘

Vasco does not want to believe it.

He stares into the eyes of his lover, surrounded by corpses strewn along the path leading to the sanctuary. Vasco feared that he might never see Tristan again when they parted before and maybe that fear came true, albeit in a way he hadn’t anticipated.

Vasco no longer recognizes the man standing before him.

Tristan stares back at him with his eyes wide, as if he hadn’t expected to see Vasco any more than Vasco expected to see Tristan like this, the blood of his allies he’d worked so hard to convince dripping from his sword, from his hand.

“Vasco.” It’s still Tristan’s gentle voice, still that familiar furrow in his brow marking his worry, so painfully like Tristan that for a moment that Vasco doesn’t know what to think, how to reconcile this monstrous betrayal with the man he loves. The man he thought he knew.

His wounds bleed. Vasco clutches at his injured side pierced by the fangs of one of the creatures that attacked before as he stumbles a step forward, nearly treads on the arm of a priest from Thélème, her unseeing eyes staring up at the sky.

Vasco feels sick.

“Did you do this?” He tears his gaze away from the dead woman to look up at Tristan, who glances at the injury soaking Vasco’s fingers with blood. Constantin is nowhere to be found; they are alone.

After a moment, Tristan’s sad gaze drifts over the bodies he’s left in his wake. He looks mournful, almost as if it weren’t his fault, as if he wasn’t the one behind this massacre.

“I had no choice,” he replies quietly, something hardened in his eyes when he looks up at Vasco again. “I can’t kill him. I won’t.”

It’s a punch to the gut, knocking the air out of his lungs. Vasco’s legs give out and he collapses on his knees with a gasp, blood loss making him grow faint. He thought maybe Tristan was being controlled somehow, forced into doing this, but to hear that it’s all of his own free will? That he intended for this?

“Vasco!” Tristan hurries toward him. “You’re losing too much blood, I have to—“

Vasco pulls out his pistol and aims it at Tristan.

Tristan freezes in his shock, a disbelieving look on his face as he glances from the barrel of Vasco’s pistol back to Vasco, as if the possibility of Vasco turning on him had never even crossed his mind.

“How does it feel, Tristan?” Vasco sneers even as the pistol starts to tremble in his unsteady grip. He can’t tell which hurts worse; the gash in his side, or his heart aching in his chest. “Being stabbed in the back by someone you—“

He chokes on the sentence, can’t even get the words out as his vision starts to blur a little. Tristan is kneeling down in front of him in an instant, pushing his pistol aside and grabbing him by the shoulders, fingers clutching at him in a harsh, almost desperate grip.

“I would never hurt you,” Tristan swears, and Vasco’s fingers clench around the handle of his pistol.

“You chose him.” The bitterness overflows in Vasco’s voice, and he can’t even get any satisfaction from the look of panic that crosses Tristan’s face. “You chose him over me.”

“No!” Tristan’s grip tightens on his shoulders, almost painful now. “No, I swear I didn’t! I love you, Vasco, I could never choose anyone over you!”

Vasco sucks in a sharp breath and lifts his pistol again, presses the edge of the barrel against the underside of Tristan’s chin. Tristan hardly even reacts, staring back at Vasco with nothing but sorrow in his gaze.

“Will you kill me, then?” Tristan asks softly.

Vasco already knew his answer before Tristan asked the question, knew it in his heart as he went looking for Tristan.

“No,” he admits, voice rough in his throat as he bares his hypocrisy. “Never.” 

Tristan’s hand curls around his own holding the pistol, gently lowering it as he keeps his eyes on Vasco. “Will you abandon me?”

He could. Vasco could leave and never return, try to forget Tristan. Try to forget the love of his life.

“No,” he answers tremulously, hates himself for it, for how weak he is, how cowardly he is. “I won’t leave these shores without you.”

Tristan exhales a deep breath, relief in his face before his hand glows with magic and Vasco feels the wound in his side healing over, a familiar warmth that almost aches worse than the pain did.

“Then don’t,” Tristan says, rising to his feet and extending his hand to Vasco. “Stay with me.”

Vasco looks down at his pistol. There’s no bullet in the chamber.

He reaches up, and takes Tristan’s hand.