Title: Blood of My Blood
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Josef Kostan/Mick St. John
Fandom: Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,567
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.***
"Don't you think it's a little weird to keep blood in wine bottles?" Mick asked Josef, arching an eyebrow as he watched his boyfriend work the cork out of the bottle he'd just picked up. "I know it's ambrosia to us, but to anyone else, it's kind of sick."
"And since when did you ever know me to care what anyone else thought?" Josef asked him, tossing him an amused glance as he opened the bottle and set it in the middle of the table before taking a seat. "I like wine bottles. That gives the evening a touch of class."
"I don't know that pouring blood into a wine bottle makes it classy," Mick protested, reaching for the bottle to pour some of the red liquid into his own glass. "But it's different, that's for sure. And I'm not going to laugh at you for doing it."
"Can I help it if I have a sense of style that other vampires don't?" Josef asked, quirking a brow as he leaned back in his chair and watched Mick pour the blood into both of their glasses. "It comes from having grown up as a servant when I was human."
"That's hard for me to wrap my head around," Mick murmured, shaking his head. "You, a servant. I just can't see that. The Josef Kostan I know would never have settled for that kind of life. But I guess you didn't have much of a choice at that time."
"No, I didn't," Josef answered, his voice clipped. "I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, so to speak. And you're forgetting something, Mick. I wasn't Josef Kostan then. I was just Charles Fitzgerald, the bastard son of a wealthy duke. Base-born. Insignificant."
"I don't think anybody could ever see you as being insignificant," Mick said, his voice tinged with the love he felt for the man seated at the table with him. "If they did, then they were fools. Just because of the fact that you were an illegitimate child --"
"It was pretty much a damnation back then to be born out of wedlock," Josef interrupted him, picking up his glass and swirling the blood in it around before draining half of the glass. "Things have changed a lot in four centuries, Mick. You should know that."
"I do know." Mick shifted slightly in his chair, wanting to ask Josef a question that he knew might bother his boyfriend, but one that he'd needed to have the answer to for a while now. "They've changed so much that it's not okay for somebody like your father to rape his own son."
Josef had been putting his glass back down on the table when Mick spoke; when he heard those words, his hand began to shake, so violently that the glass crashed into the wine bottle, knocking it over onto its side and spilling some of the wine onto the tablecloth.
Josef didn't reach out to pick the bottle up; instead, he sat there, staring at the red liquid seeping out onto the cloth. Mick righted the bottle, not taking his eyes from Josef's face. He'd known that this would be a touchy subject, but it apparently bothered Josef more than he'd thought it would.
"How could your own father do that to you?" he asked softly, wanting to reach out and take Josef's slender hand where it lay only inches from his own on the table. "You're the blood of his blood, Josef. That should never have been allowed to happen to you."
"What do you think that people in my time would have said about the two of us, Mick?" Josef asked him suddenly, looking up and meeting his eyes with an intense stare that Mick hadn't expected. "You're the blood of my blood. I did turn you, after all."
Mick shook his head, a frown furrowing his brow. "It's not the same thing," he protested, knowing in his heart that there were some who wouldn't look at their relationship as being a good thing. There were some vampires who were adamantly against what they were doing.
"Not just people in my original time -- but so many of the vamps around today," Josef continued, his hand clenching into a fist. "They'd say that we're being incestuous by sleeping together. Hell, they'd say that we don't even retain the right to have feelings for each other."
"They're wrong." Mick's voice was flat, expressionless. "I know what they'd say, Josef. I know that a lot of our kind don't approve of us. But this isn't their life to lead. It's ours. And if they don't like the idea of us being together because you're my sire, then to hell with them."
"It's funny, y'know," Josef said, his tone musing. "Everybody thought it was okay for Coraline to marry you when you were human, and then turn you. It's apparently fine for you to have sex with your sire if you're already fucking them when they turn you."
Mick was surprised at the bitterness he heard in Josef's voice. He knew that his boyfriend hated the fact that some of their kind looked down on their relationship; he didn't much like it himself, but there was nothing they could do to change those opinions.
"I'm the blood of your blood, Josef," he whispered, wishing that he'd never brought up the subject. Josef's face was pale, his fist still clenched on the table; in spite of the more relaxed tone of his voice, he was obviously upset by their conversation.
"I know you are," the other man whispered. "Just like I was the blood of my human father's blood. And what he did to me was wrong. But what you and I are doing isn't. It's not like I'm technically your father. But in vampire parlance, I am."
"It doesn't matter what other people think," Mick told him, capturing Josef's hand in his, stroking his lover's fingers until they unclenched and Mick could twine their fingers together. "It only matters how we feel about each other. It's just an opinion, Josef. A wrong one."
"I hate that so many of our kind look at us as doing something wrong," Josef whispered, his voice hollow. "I don't want anybody to hold the fact that we love each other against us. What's wrong with it, Mick? What's wrong with finding the kind of love we have?"
"There's nothing wrong with it." Mick got to his feet, the spilled blood forgotten. He moved to where Josef was sitting, tugging at his lover's hand and pulling the other man to his feet. Wrapping his arms around Josef, he drew his lover close against his body, whispering into his ear.
"Anybody who sees what we mean to each other as being wrong is just jealous of what we have," he said, feeling deep in his heart that his words were true. "They want what we have, and they can't find it with anybody, no matter how many humans they turn."
"You're the blood of my blood. And being in love with you just makes that blood bond stronger," Josef said, his voice barely a whisper. "Why can't people understand that? And why do they have to hold the fact that I've finally found somebody to love after four hundred years against me?"
"Because they want what you and I have," Mick told him, sighing. "I wish there was some way to change how those people think -- but we can't, Josef. We'll just have to live with the fact that some of them will always see you and me as being wrong."
Josef sighed, nodding and then resting his forehead against Mick's shoulder for a moment. "You might be the blood of my blood -- but you're also the love of my life," he said softly, his voice husky with emotion. "And I'm not going to let you go now that I've found you."
"You'd better not," Mick told him, tightening his arms around Josef's slender waist. "I'd have to follow you around and beg you to take me back, and that wouldn't be a pretty sight. You'd get tired of having me at your feet all the time, when you should be in my arms."
Josef laughed at that, raising his head and pulling away slightly. "That's where I'd like to be right now," he said, casting a glance towards the table. "I'll clean up the mess later. Right now, I want you to take me to bed. To hell with the idiots who think that's wrong."
"The way I feel about you could never be wrong," Mick replied as he followed his boyfriend out of the room and down the hallway. He might be blood of Josef's blood in the vampiric sense, but this man was also his lover and the keeper of his heart -- and for Mick, that was all that mattered.***