Title: Waiting Just For You
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Josef Kostan/Mick St. John
Fandom: Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,669
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.***
"What made you decide to wait for me?" Mick asked Josef as they lay in bed after making love, moonlight streaming through the open window to illuminate their bed. "I didn't think you actually liked me all that much when we first met."
"I thought you had potential," Josef drawled, stretching out his lean body next to Mick's. "And I thought you were a great-looking guy," he added, a small smile hovering around the corners of his lips. It was obvious that he was trying not to laugh.
Mick knew that there was more to his boyfriend's decision than that; he knew that Josef had felt the same attraction that he had the first time they'd met, but he wanted his lover to say the words. "Come on, you were attracted to me even then, weren't you?"
Josef laughed softly, raising his arms over his head and looking over at his lover. "Maybe. It took you a while to grow on me, though." He closed his eyes, acting as though the conversation was over and that he was going to sleep.
Mick wasn't going to let this subject go so easily. Rolling over on top of Josef, he pulled the other man close against him, wrapping his arms around that slender waist and molding the length of their bodies against each other, as closely as he could.
"Maybe?" he asked softly, tilting his head to one side. "I think you were a lot more attracted to me than you're saying, Mr. Kostan. I wouldn't admit it at the time, but I'm more than willing to say it now. I think I fell in love with you at first sight."
"You did? I thought you told Coraline I was a pompous ass," Josef told him, a teasing note in his voice. "I didn't think you were all that fond of me the first few times we met. But I might as well admit it now. Yeah, it was love at first sight for me, too."
"I wish we had both been able to say that a long time ago," Mick said, his tone regretful. "We've wasted so much time when we could have been together, Josef. I regret that. "I know that we've got eternity ahead of us, but think of all the time we already should have had."
"Do you really think the time we've known each other was wasted?" Josef asked, his voice a soft whisper. "I don't. Think about it, Mick. We've gotten to know each other as friends. We already know so much about each other that we might not have found out if we'd been lovers from the first."
Mick turned Josef's words over in his mind, reluctantly agreeing with them. "Yeah, but I still wish we'd have had more time together in the past. I wouldn't have made such stupid mistakes -- and I wouldn't have put you through the pain of watching me make them."
"That did hurt a lot," Josef admitted with a sigh. "I kept wondering why you couldn't realize after it was over with Coraline that I'd always had feelings for you. I guess I expected you to be ready to come to me, and you weren't. Not yet."
"And you were too proud to come to me, weren't you?" Mick murmured, his arms tightening around Josef. It was sad, in a way -- that they had circled around each other for so long, denying their true feelings, pretending that they were just friends.
"I waited for a long time, Mick," Josef told him, his words punctuated by a heavy sigh. "I finally did come to you, remember? I think you were a little shocked that I did, even though by that time, you were ready to admit to your feelings."
"Yeah, I was kind of surprised -- but mainly because I thought somebody like you could never fall in love with me," Mick said softly, his mind going back to that memory. Was it really such a short time ago? It felt as though that time was further in the past than it actually had been.
"Why shouldn't I have fallen in love with you?" Josef asked, his tone curious. "You've always done that, Mick -- sold yourself short. You don't give yourself enough credit for being an amazing guy. I guess that's got something to do with thinking that you're a monster."
Mick didn't want to meet Josef's eyes; this was a subject he really didn't want to get into. Even though he had willingly let Josef turn him for the second time, he still couldn't help looking at himself as being some kind of monster, no matter what his lover thought of him.
He'd had a hard time looking at himself as anything but a monster since Coraline had first turned him. There were definite advantages to being a vampire; he wasn't going to deny that. But he still hadn't been able to reconcile himself completely to this existence.
Being with Josef had changed that, in some ways. He was more accepting of himself and what he was now; it didn't seem so bad to be able to live forever, even though so many of his human friends aged and died, when he had his lover by his side.
"I guess it has something to do with that," he finally admitted, sighing as he spoke. "But it's not just that, Josef. Sometimes I have a hard time believing that somebody like you could want to be with me. You've been around for so long. And you could have anybody you wanted."
" But I don't want just anybody, Mick. I want you," Josef told him, his voice husky with emotion. "I've always wanted you. All that time I was waiting -- even before I knew Sarah -- I was waiting just for you. Nobody else could have affected me the way you did."
"Not even Sarah, when you first met her?" Mick asked gently, not wanting to cause Josef any pain from the memory of his first love, but needing to know. He didn't want to feel tht he had ever been second best to a woman who had only wanted to be immortal.
If he was going to be brutally honest, he had to admit that he hated Sarah. She had tried to use Josef to gain eternal life -- and it was poetic justice that she hadn't had the strength to cross over into the realm of vampiric life. Mick wasn't sorry for her at all.
He was only sorry that Josef had to deal with the pain of losing someone he'd loved. He had known that pain himself -- though the two women he had thought he was in love with in the past had only been using him to gain their own selfish ends, as well.
"Not even her," Josef whispered, shaking his head. "I loved her -- but it wasn't the kind of love I have for you, Mick. It wasn't the same at all. It was that whole first love thing -- and everybody knows that your first love is never the one that's best for you in the end."
"I can vouch for that," Mick said with a sigh. His own first love had been Coraline -- and he knew from bitter experience that first loves were always the ones that taught you the most permanent lessons about love and loss. Those were lessons he was still learning to put behind him.
Thank goodness this man hadn't been his first love. He would never want o lose Josef in the way that he'd lost Coraline -- either the first time, or the second. The first time had been of his own doing, of course, but at that point, he hadn't had much of a choice.
"All those years that I was waiting to find someone special -- I was waiting just for you, Mick," Josef said, his breath catching in his throat. "Not Sarah, not anybody else who I might have thought I loved for a brief time. Just you. As soon as I saw you, I knew that you were the one."
"I knew you were, too," Mick told him, his own voice strained; if he was capable of crying, he almost felt that he'd be doing just that at this moment. He'd said three little words to Josef before, but never had he felt them so deeply, so acutely, as he did now.
"So many centuries of waiting," Josef whispered, raising a hand to caress Mick's cheek. "But it's all been worth the wait, hasn't it? Yeah, we might have spent more time together already than we have -- but we were getting to know each other during all that time."
Mick nodded, realizing that Josef was right. That time hadn't been wasted. They'd known each other as friends, discovering things about each other that they might have glossed over if they'd been lovers. Their relationship had evolved just as it should have.
"All I can say is, I'm glad you waited," he murmured, taking Josef's hand in his and bringing it to his lips. He kissed the other man's fingertips, softly, gently, the kisses sweet and lingering. "I love you, Josef. I've loved you forever, and I'll love you until the end of time."
"I love you, too," Josef said, his voice a mere whisper in the quiet of their room. Mick leaned down to capture his lover's lips with his own, the time for words turning quickly to a time for action. The waiting was over; now was the time for them to enjoy every second of being together.***