Title: Slow Suicide
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Josef Kostan/Mick St. John
Fandom: Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,713
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 looked at himself in the mirror, stepping back and regarding himself critically. This was one of the first parties he and Mick had gone to that would put them in the public eye; in effect, the two of them would be coming out to the world.
They'd been to parties together before, but never as an obvious couple. This time, he was going to introduce Mick St. John as his boyfriend, letting everyone know that this was the man he loved. He didn't care what anyone might think of that fact.
Why should he hide the fact that he loved a man? This wasn't the seventeenth century, after all. This was the modern world, and anyone who was too homophobic to accept that a leader of the financial world was gay wasn't a person he wanted to do business with.
Mick had been a little uneasy about this, but Josef had convinced him that it was the right thing to do. He'd insisted that it could be the equivalent of suicide for Kostan Industries, but Josef didn't believe that. He was sure that his business was firm enough to withstand this.
And if it wasn't .... well, then he and Mick would deal with it when the time came. Whatever happened, he wasn't going to give up the man he loved because of the prejudices and whims of an intolerant society. Anything would be better than that. Even death.
Without Mick, he would be committing a slow suicide, anyway, he told himself. Every day would be harder and harder to get through, until he either lost interest in life completely, or he reverted to a feral state and had to be put away for the safety of others.
He didn't want an existence like that. The quick death of his company, the dissolution of all the work he'd done over the past hundred years, didn't matter if it meant that keeping that business together would cause him to lose Mick.
Losing his lover would not only be a slow suicide, but it would take away everything he held dear -- his pride, his dignity, all that he'd worked so hard to uphold ever since those first few years after he'd been turned. He wasn't going to let go of that easily.
Nothing was going to take Mick away from him. And he wasn't going to give in to anyone else's ideas of how he should live his life. After all, he wasn't human. He didn't have to bow down to human society's idiotic attitude that being gay was somehow wrong.
Hell, there had been more acceptance of love between two men when he'd first been turned than there was now, Josef thought in disgust. It was like humans had regressed, instead of moving forward. Well, at least in their attitudes, if nothing else.
If people didn't like the fact that the owner of a large corporation was gay, then they just didn't have to deal with that corporation. Simple as that, he told himself firmly as he adjusted the tie of his tuxedo. They didn't have to do business with him, after all.
There were more than enough people who wouldn't care who he slept with. His personal life didn't affect his business, so it was stupid for anyone in his circle of business associates to turn against him simply because he was involved with a man.
Besides, he was tired of hiding. He'd spent too much time doing that. He'd pretended to be involved with so many women over the centuries that he didn't even notice them any more; he didn't notice any other men, either. Mick was the only star on his horizon.
No one mattered to him in his personal life other than the man he loved. Sure, he had friends, but they all faded into the background compared to the man who had been in his heart for over fifty years -- and always would be, until the end of time.
Until he'd met Mick, he'd actually been committing that slow suicide. He had thought that after losing Sarah, he would never be able to give his heart to anyone again -- and he hadn't wanted to. He was locking himself away from life, at least in the emotional sense.
But Mick had changed all that. Mick had taken a heart that had been bruised and embittered, damaged beyond repair -- or so Josef had thought. He had given that heart new life, a new reason to beat again, hope for a future that they could share.
True, it had taken a hell of a long time for that future to come around. Over fifty years, in fact. Maybe he should have admitted his feelings to Mick way back when, more than twenty years ago, when he'd gotten rid of Coraline and had been free after far too long a time.
Josef sighed, shaking his head as the memories flooded over him. No, it had been right for him to wait until Mick had been ready to come to him. If he'd tried to push for anything other than friendship before then, he was positive that Mick would have backed away.
Mick hadn't been ready to fall in love with him then -- at least, not openly. But his lover had confessed more than once that he'd felt the same strong attraction that Josef had when they'd first met, even if he hadn't wanted to admit to it at the time.
All those years of waiting, biding his time and hoping that Mick would get out from under his obsession with Coraline, had paid off. But then, Mick still hadn't been ready for anything more than a close friendship. And he'd resigned himself to more waiting, and being patient.
That waiting had gone on for much longer than he'd thought it would -- but it had paid off in the end. Mick had given his heart -- and Josef had given his in return. For the first time in over four hundred years, he was completely happy in a relationship.
No one else had ever touched his heart in the way that Mick St. John did. No one else had ever meant this much to him -- and no one else ever would. Mick was the person he'd waited all of his life for, his destiny, the one who he was always meant to be with.
That slow suicide, that downward descent that would have eventually ended in madness or worse, had been arrested. Mick had stopped it by holding out his heart -- and expecting nothing more from Josef but that he do the same.
He couldn't even begin to describe how he had felt when Mick had said those three little words. He had wanted to run along the beach, jump into the air, smile until his face cracked. He'd never felt such joy overtaking him, or known that it was possible to be so happy.
That happiness had come from Mick, from three small words and the sight of the man he loved holding out a hand to him and smiling. That was all it had taken to transform his life from a lonely place into one that was full of light and love.
No one was going to take that happiness away from him with their societal rules and regulations, Josef thought, thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his dinner jacket. He and Mick were meant to be; they'd always been each other's destiny. Nothing could change that.
Wasn't that what Coraline had said about her relationship with Mick? Josef's lips twisted into a bitter smile at the thought; he didn't need to have something like that in his mind. Not now, when he needed all the reassurance of the rightness of their relationship that he could get.
After all, she had been wrong, hadn't she? He was the one who had ended up with Mick; he was the one who owned this man's heart, and who always had, even when he'd been blinded by the spell that Coraline seemed to have snared him with for so long.
Then there had been Beth -- but fortunately, that hadn't lasted long. Mick was an extremely astute man; it hadn't taken him much time to see through her "innocent victim" schtick, Josef thought with a wry smile. She had left the picture as quickly as she'd entered it.
And now ... the two of them were together, and facing the public for the first time as a couple. He wanted to come out before he was outed by some sinister figure who skulked in the shadows, sending him pictures of himself and Mick together.
Hiding his relationship with the man he loved wasn't something he wanted to do any longer. Maybe coming out so publicly would result in a slow suicide for his business -- but it wouldn't be anywhere near as painful as the death of his soul if he had chosen to give Mick up.
He could never do that. Mick was too much a part of him. Mick was his heart and soul, the person he would love for all eternity. He'd lived for over four hundred years just so he could meet this man and love him, and he wasn't going to let anyone take that love away.
Not now. Not ever. He and Mick would see this through, and if it meant that Kostan Industries collapsed, or at least went into a slump, he could live with that. As long as he had Mick by his side, he could get through anything that the world threw at him.
The doorbell rang, cutting Josef's thoughts short. He left his bedroom and hurried down the hallway, a smile on his face. Mick was here, ready to escort him out for the evening. An evening that he was sure would be one they'd remember for a long time to come.***