Title: Monsters & Angels
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Josef Kostan/Mick St. John
Fandom: Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,044
Author's Note: Past times fic, set in 1955.
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

What had happened to him?

Mick didn't want to look in the mirror. He didn't want to raise a hand to his mouth, to feel the fangs behind his natural teeth. He didn't want to think about what he'd become -- and he didn't want to think about the person who'd done this to him.

The woman he thought he was in love with, the woman he had married yesterday, had turned him into a monster. He didn't want to see what he'd become, even though he was fairly sure that he still looked exactly the same as he had the day before.

It was crazy. People didn't turn into vampires. There was no such thing, he told himself over and over, trying to deny the proof that Coraline had shown him last night. This couldn't be happening. It couldn't be real. He was having some kind of crazy dream.

But his lucid mind told him that this was all too real. He wasn't dreaming; no one had drugged his wine at the wedding reception. His wife was a vampire. And now -- all the saints above and whatever gods might exist help him -- so was he.

How could she have done this to him? Coraline had sworn she loved him, that she'd married him because she wanted to be with him forever. After all the time it had took to win her, he felt that he'd lost her on the very night of their wedding.

Had he actually lost her? The voice in Mick's head made him grip the counter in the bathroom even harder, closing his eyes and shaking his head. He couldn't have lost her -- because he'd never really known her. Not at all, even though he'd thought that he had.

Coraline had hidden so much about herself from him -- including her true nature. Instead of being honest and open with him and letting him make his own decision about being with her for eternity, she'd forced him into a life that he would never want.

She'd made him a monster.

"It's not that bad, y'know," a voice said from the doorway of the bathroom.

Mick whirled around, instinctively raising his hands in front of his face to ward off any blow that might be coming -- and to protect himself if he had to strike out. But when he realized who was standing there, his hands dropped to his sides, his eyes widening in surprise.

Josef. Josef Kostan.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" he managed to gasp, wondering if the whole world was going crazy. Josef obviously knew what had happened, judging from his words. He knew what Coraline was. And he was standing here saying that it wasn't that bad?

"How can it not be that bad?" he demanded, his eyes widening as he realized what Josef's words meant. How could the other man know what he had become, the enormity of what he was dealing with -- unless he was one of them himself?

No. Not Josef. He'd trusted this man, been friends with him for almost as long as he'd known Coraline. He had confided his feelings to Josef, told him exactly what he was going through, how much in love he was, how much he wanted to spend his life with Coraline.

It had all been a mistake. He knew that now. Coraline wasn't the person he'd thought she was -- she wasn't a person at all. She was a monster -- and she'd made him a monster. But Josef's words meant that his friend was also one of those monsters.

"Sure it's not," Josef told him, flashing a smile at Mick as he leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his chest. "You might have to get used to drinking blood, but you'd be amazed at how well you can adapt to anything once you have to."

"So you're one of them, too," Mick said, his voice hollow. "Another one of the monsters."

"I wouldn't call us by such a derogatory term," Josef said, shaking his head and tsking at Mick. "I prefer to think of us as fallen angels. Descendants of Lucifer, in a way. And you have to admit, we can look pretty angelic when we try."

"I know the difference between monsters and angels," Mick muttered, not wanting to look at the other man. "I just didn't know the monsters could disguise themselves so well. Or that they wanted to fool stupid, unsuspecting humans."

"You're one of us now, Mick," Josef told him, his voice quiet. "You'd better stop thinking of yourself as being human, because you aren't any more. It's not an easy transition to make, but the sooner you get used to the idea, the better you'll feel."

"You expect me to feel good about being turned into a monster against my will?" Mick almost gaped at the man who was standing there regarding him so calmly; how could anyone think that what he'd become as a good thing? Was Josef utterly crazy?

Sighing, Josef shook his head, his eyes meeting Mick's, his gaze steady.

"Look, Mick." His voice was clipped, measured, though his words had a tinge of sympathy to them. "You can't keep differentiating between the monsters and angels any more. We're both. There's good and bad sides to all humans -- and all vampires, too."

"You mean there are vampires who don't suck blood? Vampires who aren't out to kill the whole human race?" Mick wanted to scoff, but he couldn't help listening to Josef's words. There was something sincere about the other man's voice, his expression.

"If I wanted to kill all the humans around me, would I have been friends with you for this long without doing it?" Josef asked, raising an eyebrow. "And Coraline. Would she have fallen in love with you if she just wanted to kill you in the end?"

"So she didn't kill me." Mick raised his hands, feeling as though he was covered in blood, even though he hadn't so much as touched anyone since Coraline had told him what he'd become, much less killed anyone for their life sustenance. "But she made me what she is!"

Josef sighed again, shrugging his shoulders. "And she was wrong to do that without your consent. But don't blame all of us just because she's going off the deep end, Mick. You can't change what you are. You need to try to make the best of it now that it's done."

"And how do I do that?" Mick wanted to know. "Kill myself and be done with it?"

"Of course not." Josef looked exasperated, a frown crossing his features. "Learn how to live with being a vampire. Let us teach you. It's not such a bad life, y'know. You'll be around for a lot longer than you would as a human. And maybe you'll end up feeling like you're not such a monster after all."

What choice did he have but to accept Josef's words? There was really nothing he could do but accept what he'd become -- because he knew in his heart that he wasn't ready to end it. Not yet. Not without knowing what this might be like.

"I'm having a hard time believing you're a vampire," Mick told Josef, squinting at the other man. "Where are your fangs? Why don't you look like some kind of monster? You look more like an angel. Maybe a fallen one, but you still don't look evil."

"Evil?" Josef laughed, shaking his head. "Appearances can be deceiving, Mick. I'm not evil, any more than any other predator that has to use others to stay alive is evil. And for your information, I don't always kill people just to drink their blood. I'm not .... uncouth."

Mick almost wanted to laugh at that word; it was, well .... ancient. His eyes widened as it dawned on him that he didn't know exactly how old Josef was. He looked so young -- but he could literally be hundreds of years old.

"How old --" he began, before shaking his head. "No, I don't really need to know."

"Going on four hundred years old," Josef told him, quirking an eyebrow at him again. "Older than Coraline. She wasn't turned until a couple of decades before the French Revolution. I'm not one of the oldest vamps around, but I'm getting up there."

"You sure as hell don't look it," Mick muttered, not wanting to look at the other man. Would he feel the same way about himself? When he first drank blood from a human, would he feel that he hated what he was -- and not be able to look at himself in a mirror again?

"Thanks -- I think," Josef said with a laugh. His voice softened when he spoke again. "You have to get used to this, Mick," he said, holding out a hand to the other man. "It'll get easier as you go along, believe me. And you have a lot of options as far as knowing how to survive."

"I don't want to 'survive,'" Mick snapped, looking at Josef's hand as though he wanted to slap it away, but not moving. "I want to wake up from this dream and go back to being who I was. What I was." Even as he spoke, he knew that wouldn't happen.

"You can't go back," Josef told him, a faint irritation creeping into his voice. "This is your life now, Mick. If you want to keep on, you have no choice but to accept it. And be glad that you have somebody to help guide you through the beginning."

Slowly, Mick nodded, finally reaching out to take Josef's hand.

Maybe he'd have to give this a try after all. What did he have to lose? He had a wife, and even if he wasn't human any more, he still had responsibilities. Maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed. Maybe he wasn't such a monster, not in the world he'd stepped into.

But would he ever be able to see himself as being anything else? Mick didn't know the answer to that; he only hoped that Josef's words were true and that appearances could indeed be deceiving, at least enough to let him pull the wool over his own eyes.

Taking a deep breath, he smiled at Josef, feeling like he was jumping off the edge of a precipice.

Was that a flicker of desire that he saw in the other man's eyes? And was that an answering desire that he could feel within his own heart, something in him that reached out to this man? The thought made him feel a little dizzy, as if he couldn't breathe.

What other surprises were going to be in store for him? He had become a vampire; he was going to have to learn to live an entirely new life -- and on the day after his wedding, he felt like he was falling in love with another vampire. A male vampire.

This had been the weirdest day of his life, Mick though, wishing that he could clear his head and marshal his whirling thoughts. How could he feel such an attraction to Josef? They were just friends. And he couldn't be in love with a vampire. Could he?

He didn't love Coraline. He knew that now. He'd be obsessed with her, but that wasn't love. But he didn't know if what he felt for his angelic-looking man who appeared so young but was actually ancient was love, either. He'd need time to figure that out. He'd need time to think about a lot of things.

Had he become a monster -- or an angel? Again, only time would give him a final answer.

***