Title: Brilliant Disguise
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Josef Kostan/Mick St. John
Fandom: Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,556
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Josef Kostan or Mick St. John, unfortunately. Please do not sue.***
Los Angeles, 1955
Josef's hands shook as he poured himself a glass of blood, tossing it back as though it was water. He poured another, then stood at the kitchen counter in his penthouse, clutching the glass as if it was some kind of lifeline that would keep him safe.
He had almost told Mick St. John tonight that he was in love with him. The friendship that had been forming so well could have been destroyed by a few careless words; by feelings that he'd been so careful to keep hidden and not let anyone have even the smallest inkling about.
Fortunately, Mick had been a little drunk, and hadn't really understood the gist of what he was saying. But it still bothered Josef that the disguise he wore had slipped so badly; it wasn't like him to let his true feelings show publicly.
He himself hadn't been drunk -- but of course, that was because he was a vampire. He couldn't get drunk. Even if he took blood straight from the vein of someone who had passed out from drinking, that high wouldn't pass through their blood to him.
No, he'd been completely in charge of himself and his senses -- and whatever words he'd wanted to say. And for some reason, he'd found himself throwing out oblique hints to Mick about his true feelings -- along with some not-so-oblique suggestions.
If Mick had realized what he was saying, then he had no doubt that the other man would have backed away from him with a look of disgust on his face. Or, in a better scenario, he would have tried to play those words off as though Josef must have been drunk. Or joking.
Which one would have hurt more? He couldn't really say; having his emotions denigrated would have been just as bad as seeing the disbelief and then repugnance that he was sure would have been written on Mick's features if his words had been processed.
It shouldn't have been so easy for the mask he always wore in public to slip. He shouldn't have let his guard down so much. But there was something about Mick that made him want to drop all pretenses, to be as honest as he could possibly be.
That brilliant disguise had always been firmly in place in the past; he'd never let it slip for anyone. It had, once, when he'd fallen for Sarah, but he'd learned quickly what a mistake that was when she kept insisting that he turn her. And that had become a tragedy.
He had always been able to count on that disguise to keep him safe. He'd always known that he could hide behind it, that no one could see his true emotions. And that had always made him feel that he was protected, even when he was surrounded by humans.
It was different with Mick. Completely different.
Mick wasn't just any human. Mick was the human who he had feelings for that were stronger than anything he'd ever felt before in his entire life. In over three hundred and fifty years of living, he'd never felt anything even vaguely resembling this for anyone.
Even Sarah hadn't touched his soul in this way. He'd loved her, yes, but not with the strength of his feelings for Mick. And there had been something about his relationship with her that had been empty at the core -- more an appeasement of her desires than a true and lasting love.
She had wanted nothing more than to become a vampire. Josef had thought that she'd wanted it because she wanted to be with him, but as more and more time went by, he realized that she had only wanted to be immortal, to avoid death and to keep her looks.
There would always be a tiny part of him that lover her. He hadn't been able to let her go in the two years since he'd tried to turn her and she hadn't had the strength to cross into his world -- she still slept in that irreversible coma, not changing, not aging.
Only a few people knew about that -- people who had seen his mask slip a few times. But that mask was growing easier to maintain now, and at times it was no longer a mask. His feelings for her were changing, and he was sure that with time, they would fade and die.
Those feelings had been replaced with newer, stronger emotions -- feelings for a man. He would still lie awake and wrestle with those emotions, not sure if they were something that he wanted to feel even as they grew stronger with every passing day.
How could he be in love with a man, after what had been done to him on his last night as a human? How could he feel desire for a man? How could this have happened? Had he gone completely crazy? Was his long vampiric life finally starting to take a toll on his sanity?
No. That wasn't it at all. Nobody could know exactly where their heart would go. No one could know who they would fall in love with -- or why that love would take them over. It just happened, and there was nothing to be done but follow the dictates of the heart.
A wry smile twisted his lips at the thought as he raised his glass and tossed back the rest of the blood there. Was he really trying to make himself believe that? He, Josef Kostan, who had always tried to avoid listening to his heart?
But this was different. This wasn't just his heart that was involved. This was his soul, his entire being. He felt something for Mick that he'd never felt for anyone else. It wasn't just desire, and it wasn't just some momentary need that would go away in time.
It was love. A love stronger than anything he'd ever felt before in his life.
The problem was, he couldn't tell the man he loved how he felt. He had to keep his disguise in place, stand back and watch Mick chase Coraline around and make a fool of himself. He had to suffer the pain of watching Mick love someone else.
That was what hurt most of all. Knowing that he had to keep his brilliant disguise firmly in place and watch the man he loved go after another person, someone who, in the end, wasn't fit to lick his boots. Someone who would never deserve him -- and never really love him.
Coraline didn't love Mick; she loved the idea of him. She wanted someone who she could control, someone who would grovel at her feet and be her slave. She loved what she could get from Mick, the adoration, the worship. She didn't love him for who he was.
Josef did. But he had to keep that love hidden behind a disguise that might have seemed brilliant and clever at first, but had all too quickly become confining, a barrier that wrapped around him so tightly that he almost felt as though he couldn't breathe.
That brilliant disguise was a barrier between himself and the person he most wanted to be with. And it was choking him, suffocating him, day after day. It would eventually chew him up and swallow him whole, without ever having let him express how he truly felt.
When had that disguise become such a suffocating cloak? Josef almost laughed as he set his glass down on the counter in front of him, leaning forward and gripping the counter so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He didn't have to ask himself that question.
He knew exactly when that brilliant disguise had turned into a trap. It had happened the moment he'd fallen in love with Mick. He was trapped in that disguise that he'd thought would protect him, trapped to the point where he was a virtual prisoner.
He couldn't tell Mick how he felt. He could only stand by helplessly and watch the man he loved throw himself away on someone who was nothing more than a spoilt, worthless brat -- someone who Josef was sure would eventually hurt him badly.
And he couldn't stop that from happening. He was helpless to turn Mick away from the path of destruction that he was following; he could only be the other man's friend, someone to give him a shoulder to lean on and to hold out a hand to him if he asked for it.
That disguise that had seemed to work so well at first had become nothing more than a prison. He was trapped here, in a cell of his own making, forced to keep wearing a disguise that he no longer wanted to don, hiding behind a mask that suffocated him more with each passing day.
And as far as he could see, there was no way out.***