#constantin x male!de sardet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

diceyfall · 5 years

Text

[fic; love endures]

m!de sardet x vasco, soulmate au with spoilers for vasco’s and petrus’ questlines, 2162 words, chapter 1 💘

The name first emerged on the inner side of his wrist when he was twelve years old.

He remembers running to his mother’s bedroom in the middle of the night, all aflutter with excitement as he leaped onto her bed, shaking her awake to show her the black lines that had appeared right atop his veins.

“Léandre d’Arcy?” Princess De Sardet read out loud, her brows furrowing as she looked at her son with bewilderment.

The d’Arcy family that she knew of, she told him, had only one son. His name was not Léandre, but Bastien.

“Don’t fret, Tristan,” she shushed him as his face fell, caressing the black curls of his hair soothingly. “We’ll find your Léandre, I promise.”

But, as it turned out, Léandre could not be found.

His family had given him away to the Nauts.

Were Tristan not the nephew of a merchant prince, these circumstances might have been overlooked, but as it was his uncle told him in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances was he to seek out his soulmate.

It would be a scandal; the son of a noble house, bonded to a mere sailor’s boy? Admitting this would be no different than to personally hand the Nauts leverage over one of the most powerful families on the continent, and so Tristan and his mother were both sworn to secrecy.

“I’m so sorry, my darling.” His mother held him in her embrace that same night, trying to gather up the pieces of his broken heart as he cried against her shoulder. “Have faith. No matter what your uncle tells you, I’m certain you will find him some day.”

Tristan did not believe her then, doesn’t think he believes her now, thirteen years later as he walks the port of Sérène to meet the captain of the ship meant to carry him to Teer Fradee, yet fate has a strange way of working itself out.

“Lively there, lads and lasses!”

The voice pierces through him like an arrow lodged through his chest, pinning him in place as he stands and stares at the captain’s back, pulse pounding in his wrist right above where the name burns in his skin as if set aflame.

“Green blood?” Kurt, standing right by his side, somehow sounds distant and far away, as if speaking to him through a wall of glass. “What’s the matter?”

Tristan takes an unsteady step forward, toward the silhouette of the man barking orders at his subordinates.

“You, man! Carry that properly!”

His name… what was his name?

Someone drops their cargo and the sound of porcelain shattering startles Tristan from his trance.

Vasco. Captain Vasco, not Léandre. But if he happened to be seagiven, the Nauts would’ve changed his name. Then, perhaps—

Tristan breathes in deep, trying to calm his heart hammering against his ribs as if to break through the bone, his hands shaking slightly at his sides as he clears his throat and calls out.

“Captain Vasco?”

The man freezes and Tristan knows at once that he feels it, too. Tristan can see it in his shoulders, in his back as he is like a statue among the bustle of the other Nauts around him, hurrying along to make the last preparations for the voyage while their captain is motionless.

Seconds seem to stretch into hours before he finally moves, turning around ever so slowly, and the moment their eyes meet hope blossoms in Tristan’s chest for the first time in years.

The captain’s lips are parted slightly and his amber eyes are wide when they meet Tristan’s darker ones, gazing at him in mute astonishment and something inside Tristan sings, like everything has finally been put right in the world.

His face, Tristan thinks, is perfect. He’s perfect.

“Okay, what am I missing, here?” Kurt startles both him and the captain as he glances between the two of them with a confused frown. “Do you two know each other?”

Tristan almost laughs, but when he looks back at the captain his expression is shuttered as he eyes Tristan up and down, a hard line in his mouth as he shakes his head as if to shake something off of him.

“No,” he answers curtly, averting his gaze from Tristan to look at Kurt. “We’ve never met.”

What? But…

Tristan takes another step forward with urgency. “Tristan! My name- it’s Tristan De Sardet.”

Captain Vasco nods in acknowledgment, but there’s nothing in his expression that speaks of recognition. Tristan’s name has no effect on him whatsoever. “The prince’s nephew, I presume?”

The warmth of hope that filled Tristan before hollows out, his shoulders sagging as a familiar bitterness fouls the taste in his mouth. He was mistaken, of course. It was his own fault for being naïve enough to believe his soulmate would appear before him so suddenly, after all this time.

He should’ve given up on the idea a long time ago, thought he had let it go when his uncle told him to, yet apparently the desire within him is still there.

A dying ember, perhaps, that refuses to blow out.

With how the captain reacted when Tristan called his name, he almost thought… but no matter. He won’t make that mistake twice.

“Yes,” Tristan says, forcing a smile onto his face. “The prince’s nephew.”

Neither of them speak of it to each other once they embark on their long voyage to Teer Fradee, but Tristan does confide in Constantin afterwards.

“Have you asked him?” Constantin suggests, sighing with his elbows hanging over the ship’s railing when Tristan answers that he hasn’t. “Why ever not? If there is even the slightest chance that he’s your soulmate—”

“He didn’t recognize my name,” Tristan replies, lower back leaning against the wooden edge and his arms crossed over his chest as he watches a few cabin boys scrub the deck. He recognizes Jonas, remembers what happened with his parents back in Sérène, but dismisses the thought as soon as it arises.

“There may be a reason for that,” Constantin argues, pushing off from the railing and turning to face him. “You know how secretive the Nauts are; it’s rare for them to be bonded to someone who’s not one of them. Perhaps he’s struggling with the revelation? Or something else is going on? My point is that you won’t know until you ask!”

Tristan thinks about his cousin’s words in the days that follow, but whenever he finds a chance to speak to Vasco privately the captain always seems to find some new chore to do, orders to give or subordinates to supervise and it is torture.

Every time Tristan looks at Vasco he feels a sense of belonging he’s never experienced before, yet Vasco seems to have no problem shutting him out. Their conversations are cordial at best and frosty at worst, which doesn’t give Tristan much in the way of confidence when he finally works up the courage to ask.

He finds Vasco alone in his captain’s quarters for a rare moment, seated at his desk and writing something down in a journal, and takes advantage of the opportunity as he steps inside with a knock against the open door. “Captain?”

Vasco freezes again--an effect Tristan seems to have on him often--his pen motionless on the page before he carefully puts it down beside the journal and looks up at Tristan.

His tone is neutral and businesslike, giving nothing away. “Can I help you?”

“I was wondering,” Tristan starts, eyes tracing the tattoos lining Vasco’s brows, fully visible now that he has his hat off. “Have you per chance ever heard of… of a man named Léandre d’Arcy?”

Nothing. Vasco simply stares at him in thought, reclining back into his chair. “Can’t say that I have. Why?”

Tristan smiles wanly, a preferable alternative to pulling his hair out like he truly wants to do. “No reason. Forget I said anything.”

He feels Vasco’s gaze on his back as he turns around to leave the room, heavy between his shoulder blades.

“Is he your soulmate?”

Tristan halts, hand clutching at the side of the doorway to steady himself. He inhales a quiet breath, composure shaky at best when he eventually finds the strength to face Vasco once more. He finds the captain staring at him with an inscrutable expression, elbows on the table and hands folded in front of his face, hiding his mouth.

Going against his better judgment, Tristan approaches the desk and rolls up the sleeve of his right arm, revealing the bare skin of his wrist and the black name marked upon it in sharp and rough letters, right below his hand.

Vasco goes very still when he sees it, saying nothing for a while and betraying none of his emotions in his blank expression. He reaches out and lightly grips Tristan’s wrist with his fingers, eyes fixated on the name as Tristan’s breath hitches in his throat at the touch.

It is feather-light, inducing a shiver down his spine when Vasco’s thumb brushes over the name and Tristan doesn’t understand, could cry out in sheer frustration.

If Vasco is not his soulmate, then why does his body react like this? Why is his heart pounding, why is his skin burning, why does he feel so utterly and perfectly whole when he’s around him?

“He was given to the Nauts a short while after he was born,” Tristan explains weakly, which seems to snap Vasco out of wherever his mind drifted off to while caressing Tristan’s skin, yanking his hand back as if he’d been burned. “I thought… perhaps—"

“Sorry,” Vasco interrupts him abruptly as he leans back into his chair again and folds his arms in front of him, not meeting Tristan’s eyes. “Wish I could help.”

Tristan’s heart drops. “Right. Of course.” No reason to embarrass himself any further than he already has.

Although, just as he makes to turn around and head out the room, he pauses.

“Forgive me, this may be a personal question,” he starts, thinking that if he doesn’t find out it’ll drive him mad until the end of time. “But, do you have a soulmate, Captain Vasco?”

Vasco picks up his pen again, returning to his writing. “I do.”

“What’s their name?”

He’s silent for a moment, the tip of his pen hovering over the page before he lets out a deep sigh.

“Drust,” he answers, looking up at Tristan with his gaze aloof and cold. “A male name native to Teer Fradee, I’ve been told.”

“I see.” Tristan swallows thickly, and something must be lodged into his throat as he suddenly finds it hard to breathe. “Well, I hope you find him.”

His smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

Vasco watches De Sardet leave, and as soon as the door closes shut behind him all the tension drains out of Vasco at once as he sags back against his chair with a weary breath.

His hand instinctively reaches down to his hipbone where the name is written in a graceful hand, contradictory and nonsensical if his soulmate is a native like he was lead to believe. He thumbs at it through his trousers, always feeling it burn whenever De Sardet is near, and his thoughts linger on the mark on De Sardet’s cheek, but it all seems so absurd.

Everything inside him is telling him that he already found his soulmate weeks ago when he first met him in the port of Sérène, standing there and staring at him in awe and wonder, a rapture that had overtaken them both.

Yet his name is not Drust, just as Vasco’s name is not Léandre.

He has no idea what to think. The handwriting on De Sardet’s wrist was so eerily similar to his own--could Léandre be the name given to him by his parents, before he became a Naut? But even if that’s true, De Sardet’s name is clearly not Drust and, by his own accounts, he has never stepped foot on Teer Fradee before.

Even if Vasco were to suppose that De Sardet is in truth a native who somehow ended up the nephew of a merchant prince, the timeline makes no sense. If De Sardet was stolen as a child young enough to have no memories of the island, considering his age he would’ve had to be taken… what, twenty, twenty-five years ago? No one from the continent knew about the island back then. Hikmet, its oldest city, is only fifteen years old.

It’s impossible for him and Sardet to be bonded to each other, no matter how he looks at it. In the end, Vasco's soulmate must be a native on the island, while De Sardet’s soulmate is probably another Naut.

Vasco closes his eyes and resolves to think of it no more.

His name is not, and never will be, Léandre.

[ read the rest on ao3 ]

#greedfall #captain vasco #vasco x de sardet #de sardet x vasco #de sardet #vasco #greedfall fanfiction #dice's fics #damn i wrote this in record time lmao #anyways reblogs are appreciated <3

36 notes · View notes