Title: Harden My Heart
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Josef Kostan/Mick St. John
Fandom: Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,709
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.***
Josef sighed as he stood at the window of his penthouse, looking down at the crowd of people in the street below. He would know if Mick was somewhere in that crowd; he would feel his boyfriend's presence, know somehow that Mick was near.
He didn't feel that presence yet, so Mick was nowhere near. But he would be here in just a little while; he'd said that the case he was working on was turning up a lot of dead ends, and he was frustrated enough to give it a rest for the night.
Mick really should be living here, he thought, feeling like a pouty child even as the idea coalesced in his mind. If Mick didn't want to move in, then he wasn't going to force the other man to do it. But Josef couldn't help feeling a little rejected by that refusal.
It was ridiculous for him to feel that Mick didn't want to be with him. The other man had already said that he would move in, as soon as the lease was up on his apartment. But Josef had felt the reluctance behind those words.
He had never wanted anyone to live with him before. No one except Sarah, and he'd still been hesitant about that. Not because of her father, but because he'd felt something in her that hadn't been quite right, even when he'd convinced himself that he loved her.
Josef sighed, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against the plate glass. He had loved Sarah -- he'd just been unsure of her love for him. He'd always felt that she had only wanted to be with him because he could give her eternal life -- nothing more.
Mick really did love him -- because Mick wasn't looking for Josef to give him anything. Mick was already a vampire -- and he didn't particularly want to be. He already had eternal life. What more could he ask for? There wasn't much that he seemed to want.
He didn't want Josef's money -- that meant little to him. He didn't want the fancy restaurants, fast cars, a sumptuous apartment. No, Mick wanted nothing from him that the garden-variety human -- or even another vamp -- might have demanded.
All Mick wanted was for them to be together. Even though he seemed reluctant to move in, Josef could understand that, in a way. It was hard to give up a hard-won independence, even if you'd had it for less than thirty years, as Mick had.
When Mick had finally turned away from Coraline, he'd taken those first steps towards being his own man. Even though Josef had loved him then, and he'd wanted so badly to tell Mick how he felt, he'd still waited, knowing that it was still too soon.
If he hadn't waited, would Mick have left him to be with Beth? Josef knew that his sense of duty towards her had been strong enough to keep him watching over that bitch for years, but he hadn't expected the man he loved to fall for her.
Fortunately, it hadn't lasted long; only a few months. But those months had been the most painful of Josef's life; he'd had to harden his heart towards what was happening, fall back into his role of best friend to Mick, and nothing more than that.
That had been the hardest thing he'd ever had to do; after years of waiting for Mick's obsession with the woman he'd married to come to an end, to see him throwing himself away on someone who wasn't good enough to kiss the ground he walked on was infinitely painful.
But he'd done it -- for Mick's sake. It had never occurred to him that Mick was fighting his own feelings, not able to admit to what he truly wanted. He'd thought that once again, he'd lost someone he loved -- only this time, the loss was so much worse.
He'd thought that he would have to harden his heart for the rest of his life, to hide the pain that struck at him every time he saw Mick with that blonde slut. But he'd been lucky; Mick had come to his senses and shown her the door that led out of his life.
It still seemed unbelievable that after all the decades of waiting, loving Mick and wanting to be with him, it had finally happened. But it still wasn't what Josef wanted; he still didn't have the man he loved by his side all the time. There were still barriers between them.
He couldn't force Mick to break down those barriers. He knew from personal experience how being forced to do anything could feel; he wasn't going to put his boyfriend through that. Mick would never know how badly he wanted them to live in the same place.
All he would do was urge the other man to move in -- and if Mick wasn't ready for that step yet, he would back off and try to be patient. After all, they had forever. It wasn't as though either of them was going to age or die. They were together for eternity.
Patience had never been one of his better virtues. He wasn't good at siting back and waiting for anything -- least of all for something he wanted with all of his heart and soul. But he'd known that he had no choice but to wait, and in the end, it had paid off.
He'd had so much experience with hardening his heart -- which was what he'd had to do while he had been patiently waiting for Mick to realize how he really felt. He hadn't let anyone else touch that inner core of him, the part that only Mick had access to.
He hadn't wanted anyone else to get close to his emotions. He'd given his body away recklessly; he had wanted to forget that Mick was with Coraline, and that he had probably been with other women as well in the time between her and Beth. He'd tried his best not to think about it.
But somehow, those thoughts had always bled through, even when he'd tried his best to keep them locked away, to harden his heart against those softer emotions he felt for Mick. Those wounds had opened late at night, when he was alone, when he wanted Mick beside him.
If he could have cried during those long nights, he would have. There had been times when not having Mick next to him was a physical ache, when he wanted the other man so badly he'd had to literally force himself not to go to Mick and pour out his feelings.
He hadn't done it, thought; he'd forced himself to internalize those feelings, to let Mick go on thinking that Josef only looked at him as a friend. That shouldn't have been so hard to do; after all, he'd still been close to Mick in a way, hadn't he?
But it was hard. It was hard to see Mick with other people, when he wanted to be the one who made those blue eyes grow warm with a flame that seemed to come from Mick's soul. He wanted to be the one sharing Mick's bed, the one who knew his embrace.
It had finally happened. The two of them had confessed their feelings -- and Josef had been a little shocked to find out that Mick's emotions were as strong as his own. He hadn't expected that; he had thought he'd have to work to find the way to Mick's heart.
That heart had been held out to him, offered willingly, in a way that no one had ever offered themselves before. Josef had reached out and taken that heart in his hands, cradling it close, promising to keep it safe forever. And he meant to keep that promise.
He would never do anything to hurt Mick, or to make him feel unloved. It was hard for him to say the words "I love you," but he was working on that. And those words were coming out far more frequently now -- even though he still felt hesitant about them sometimes.
Mick knew how he felt. He knew that he was loved. He knew that he meant more to Josef than anyone ever had -- and that Josef felt empty without Mick by his side. He had to know that. Josef was fairly sure that Mick felt the same way about him.
He wasn't going to have to harden his heart again, though he had a hard time actually believing that. His heart was safe with Mick; it wasn't going to be broken, played with, tossed around and then handed back to him in a bruised, battered condition.
Mick would take care of his heart, make sure that he'd never have to harden it against his emotions again. He would be able to share those emotions freely -- and they would be returned as they never had been before, by anyone who'd been in his life.
Josef raised his head, his senses reaching out. Mick was somewhere around; he could feel the other man's presence as surely as if his boyfriend was standing here beside him. He was close, maybe on his way up to the apartment.
His heart leaping in his chest, Josef headed for the door, just as the doorbell rang. He couldn't hold back his smile; he knew that within a few seconds, he would open that door and Mick would be standing there, looking just as beautiful as he always did.
That was always a sight that he could never harden his heart against, Josef thought as he reached for the doorknob to swing the portal open. His heart was singing, reaching out to Mick already -- just as his arms would be as soon as that door was opened.***