Title: Bad Memories
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Josef Kostan
Fandom: Doctor Who/Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Table: lover100
Prompt: 44, Virgin
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Tenth Doctor or Josef Kostan, unfortunately. Please do not sue.

***

"What were you like before you became a vampire?" the Doctor asked Josef as the two of them reclined in bed. He was lying with his head propped on Josef's shoulder, the other man's arm around his waist, their bodies sated and relaxed.

"I was a boring person," Josef told him, his voice nonchalant, almost bored. But the Doctor could fee lthe tension that had tightened the muscles of Josef's body; asking him about his time as a human had somehow touched a nerve. A raw one, apparently.

"You don't have to talk about your human life if you don't want to, love," the Time Lord said, keeping his voice soft and gentle. "I'm just curious to know as much about the man I love as I can. But you don't have to tell me if it makes you uncomfortable."

Josef shook his head, sighing as he did so. "It doesn't really make me uncomfortable," he said, his voice low and strained. "It's just .... a time I don't like to remember. I didn't like who I was very much when I was human. And the last night of my human life was .... well, difficult."

"Do you want to talk about it?" the Doctor asked, keeping his voice gentle. If that last night of human life had been hard for Josef, he might need to get his feelings about it out into the open -- and the Doctor knew that it was always better to release negativity than to keep it bottled up.

"I .... guess I could," Josef answered, his tone subdued. "What do you want to know? I guess the first thing I should tell you is that my family was poor. I was a servant in a big house, just like everybody else in my family was. I was British. From London."

"You don't have a trace of an accent now," the Doctor said wonderingly, reaching up to run a gentle finger across the outline of Josef's upper lip. "I love your voice," he added, in case his boyfriend might think that was a criticism. "How did you lose the accent?"

Josef shrugged, a small smile playing around his lips. "Enough years in enough different places, and any accent goes away for good. I've spent the last two hundred years in America. So I got rid of the accent over time. It never comes out any more."

"I can understand why you didn't like being a servant," the Doctor observed after a slight pause, trying to move the conversation forward. "You're not the kind of person who would enjoy that kind of life. I would never imagine you as being servile to anyone."

"I never was." Josef's muscles had tightened again; the Doctor could feel the tenseness of his lover's body, hear the anger bubbling up behind Josef's words. "I wasn't just a servant, though. I was the son of the master of the house -- even though I was born on the wrong side of the blanket."

The Doctor's eyes widened in surprise; he hadn't expected something like this. No wonder Josef had worked so hard to establish himself as a success in his days on Earth. He'd wanted to rise above the life he'd had as a human -- and his humble beginnings.

"So, because of that, and because of the fact that I 'didn't know my place,' some of my father's friends decided to 'teach me a lesson,'" Josef went on, his voice expressionless and dry now. "And my father was part of it, too. I should have expected that."

"Your father was part of a group of people who beat you up?" The Doctor scowled, instantly forming a dislike of Josef's father. "You might have been an illegitimate child, but that didn't give him the right to treat you so badly. I know it was a different time, but --"

"They didn't beat me up," Josef interrupted, his voice bled of all emotion. "They raped me. They took turns holding me down and having their way with me. And my father was the first one to do it. He wanted to be the one who, in his words, 'spilled the virgin blood.'"

"Wh-what?" the Doctor stammered, shocked to his soul by what Josef had just told him. He thought that he had seen every kind of ugliness there was in the universe, but this was something that he had a hard comprehending -- or even conceiving of.

"I said, my father was the leader of a group of men who raped me," Josef said, his voice loud and clear. "That's why I don't like remembering my last night as a human. I'd have died that night, if I hadn't been turned. I would have bled to death in a ditch. Like an animal."

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," the Doctor murmured, unsure of what to say. He had expected to hear some sort of story about Josef running away from home after being beaten; he hadn't thought that he would hear a confession quite like this one.

"I was found by a vampire," Josef continued, his voice still expressionless. "I was turned -- and then he disappeared. He told me what I'd become, and told me some of the things I'd have to do to survive. But he didn't really give me much of a start on this life."

The Doctor sat up and turned to Josef, his hearts feeling as though they were breaking. What had Josef ever done to deserve such treatment? He deserved a better life than the one he'd been give as a human -- or as a vampire -- and the Time Lord was determined to do that for him now.

He reached out for Josef, taking the other man into his arms, still feeling how tense that slim body was in his embrace. After a few moments, Josef almost seemed to melt into his arms, resting his head against the Time Lord's shoulder and finally speaking in a low whisper.

"I didn't have any idea what they were going to do to me," he whispered, his voice faltering. "I knew about sex -- I mean, I'd had sex with girls. But I'd never been with a guy before. I didn't have a clue what they wanted -- until they started ripping my clothes off."

The Doctor couldn't speak, couldn't make a sound. To think that this had happened to Josef, his beloved -- and that one of the perpetrators had been his own father -- it was something that he didn't want to begin to contemplate. The horror of it was just too great.

"All I could think of when they were taking turns with me was that I didn't want to die this way," Josef whispered, his voice breaking. "And I knew that I was going to. That's why being turned was a blessing for me. I don't regret it for a second."

"Neither do I," the Time Lord told him, his own voice soft and loving. "If you hadn't been turned, then you and I would never have met. I wouldn't have discovered the love of my life. And you wouldn't have been able to come on this wondrous journey with me."

Josef lifted his head, giving the Doctor a wan smile. "You're right," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. He cleared his throat, shaking his head. "Sorry about that. This isn't something I can talk about without getting a little emotional. Those are some bad memories."

"I don't blame you for that, sweetheart." The Doctor didn't loosen his hold on Josef; he wanted to keep his lover in his arms, to comfort him for something that might have been long past, but that obviously still caused him a great deal of pain to recall.

"So now you know why I don't like to think about my human life," Josef said with a sigh, his dark gaze meeting the Doctor's and not looking away. "If you don't mind, I'd rather just leave this subject behind us, okay? We can talk about it later. Maybe. I don't know."

The Doctor nodded, understanding how his lover felt. There were things in his past that he didn't like to think about either -- though he did want to tell Josef about his past at the Academy with the Master, to let his boyfriend know that he wasn't alone.

Josef wasn't the only one who had been betrayed in that way by someone he knew, someone he might have cared for. Josef hadn't said that he loved his father, but he had to have felt something for the man who had given him life, didn't he?

That was a question that he knew there wouldn't be an answer to until they talked about this again -- and he was also fairly sure that it would be a while before the subject was brought up. But he did want to bring it up again, to tell Josef about the loss of his own virginity.

But this wasn't the time. Josef obviously didn't want to continue the conversation, and the Doctor wasn't going to push him for more answers that he was reluctant to give. But it was something for them to talk about later, when they were both in the right frame of mind.

They had time for that. They had all the time in the world, the Doctor told himself as he closed his eyes, feeling Josef relax in his arms. He wasn't going to bring up this subject again for a while -- and when he did, he would have his own story to tell.

***