Memories and Music

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in this story. Hopefully the makers of Moonlight will provide us with their own, far better version of this story when the series is renewed.

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"So, what's today's ethical dilemma…?" Josef drawled as Mick handed him the glass, inflecting the words with all the affectation of boredom he could muster. Mick stared at him for half a second with raised eyebrows before collapsing onto the couch. "Oh, same dilemma as ever these days. Man, you're interesting."

"Thanks, I appreciate the sarcasm."

"I'm just saying, turn her already. This whole forbidden love thing is getting tired." He took a sip from the glass and grimaced; chilled, obviously dead even before it was drained, all the delicious top-notes long since faded, so much so that it almost tasted metallic. Looking over at his friend, he noted how he had quickly downed his glass, in the same way as humans took their pills and medicines. Mick probably didn't notice the inferior flavour of his chosen diet; or if he did, he likely saw it as some kind of punishment. There was no enjoyment, just a nod to nutritional necessity. "And therein lies your entire problem." muttered Josef quietly. That being said, Mick heard it from across the room. "Hey, you've got your scruples too." he protested.

"I wouldn't say scruples, more rules. Scruples imply adherence out of choice, rules are there because they're needed. My rules keep the torch-wielding mob out of my face, while your scruples would probably have you doing the wielding under different circumstances." Josef said it with a genuine, if non-comprehending smile on his face. This was perhaps the one aspect of Mick, his best friend, that he had never understood. It was also possibly the most important part of the guy's identity. Josef leaned forward, tapping his pale fingers against his glass. This was fast turning into a re-run of almost every one of their more serious conversations from the past fifty or so years. Neither of them wanted to go over it tonight. "Right, a distraction is called for," Josef announced as much to himself as to Mick, and unfolded himself from the chair. "Seeing as we have no freshies…", he let that one drop to prevent being dragged back to the cyclical dialogue of theirs, "and no TV…"

"All you ever watch is the financial garbage anyway. Walking into that room with all the screens full of numbers is like stepping into the Matrix."

"Yeah, well someone's got to keep an eye on these things. You were still picking your nose and scabbing your knees in 1929, but it gave me a serious headache. Took me twenty five years to fully recover." His eyes swept over Mick's bookcase. "I could suggest an evening of readings from important and improving literature…"

"Now that betrays your age."

"Hmm, and it's as mind-numbingly dull as listening to you whinge, although it does depend on who's reading." He seemed lost for a moment, a faint but distinctly predatory smile on his lips. Mick cast around for something to throw at him and bring him round, but there was no useful junk like that hanging around his apartment. The place was spotless, like a picture from a lifestyle magazine. Of course, both his apartment and its glossy counterparts had the advantage that no one lived in them, he thought ruefully. He made do with calling out: "Hey! Back in the room yet?" Josef spun neatly to face him, "Back in the room." he confirmed with a grin.

"Look, if you're that bored of talking to your best friend you can put some music on and I'll see if I can find you something else to drink." Mick told him. Josef winced at the mention of another glass of stale blood. "Or… you could get out." Mick added in mock offence at his friend's snub to his weak attempt at hospitality.

"No, no, it's been a rough day in the Asian markets, I want to delay learning how much I've lost for a while longer." He wandered over to Mick's sound system. Predictably, it was an iPod, continuing his Apple obsession, connected up to a slim pair of silver speakers. As someone who took care to own the best of everything, Josef knew that they wouldn't deliver great sound quality, but as a vampire, this made next to no difference. Even in the highest quality recordings using the latest technology, he could hear hundreds of distractions in with the music. In fact, the state-of-the-art systems picked up more background noise for vampires: building work near the recording studio; one stifled, misplaced note amongst an orchestra of dozens; the musicians' breathing; their heartbeats. To all musical intents and purposes, Mick had the best system for their kind. Josef flicked through the list of artists. They were almost all jazz players from the forties and fifties, along with the first pioneers of rock and roll. The rest were a roll call of the legendary guitarists of the past fifty years. "Wow, it's like carbon dating," he commented. "It's like you've been dead for about fifty years." Although, of course, that's exactly what you think, he mentally added, and caught the echo of his thoughts in Mick's eyes. Mick ignored it though, and answered flippantly, "Come on, the oldies are the best. Besides, I can play most of what's on there." Josef knew that. He also knew that his friend had barely touched a guitar in half a century. It was another thing he had completely given up after Coraline's unexpected wedding gift, along with his family and friends. Josef had actually seen him play before all that, while he was in LA on a business deal; he was pretty good, if not in a way that would ever have been particularly successful. Mick could have happily lived out his life playing weddings, parties and bar mitzvahs, some day meeting some cool, quirky but essentially "nice" girl and settling down. Until he met her. At the time, the musician just seemed to be the latest of Coraline's many conquests. She seduced the poor guys until they were wholly under her spell, and then they would disappear. There was, with hindsight, clearly something different about Mick though. Josef wondered he didn't see it coming, although predicting Coraline's behaviour was never really possible. Mick seemed to have stopped brooding on his past, fortunately, turning the conversation around to his friend: "Don't tell me you don't prefer stuff from the good old times."

"If by good old times you mean before being turned," Josef began, "then I'm going to have to say no. A lot of religious music back then, didn't go down huge after becoming a scary demonic-type. And look, we're right back to the torch-wielding mob. Besides, got to move with the times." He could say this in the full knowledge that his record collection backed his word: it stretched across the output of all the centuries he had lived though, and was pretty much right up to date. Got to play something at his penthouse parties, and Monteverdi would just look weird. "So you're saying no music means anything more to you?" Mick questioned.

A soundtrack immediately began playing in Josef's head, and Mick, the apartment and LA melted away to be replaced with New York, a huge, elegant room with a ceiling raised by honey-hued marble pillars, and a few hundred smartly-dressed people sweeping across the floor. But he only had eyes for the beautiful red-haired girl in his arms. She seemed weightless as they danced, thanks to a combination of her graceful movement and his own unusual strength, but she also had a solid, warming presence, like no mortal he had ever encountered before. She radiated a sense of permanence, of eternity, to him, and it made his heart ache because he knew it was an illusion, and the only way he could possibly make it a reality would expose his nature and drive her away. The pianist at the end of the ballroom finished the waltz off with a flourish of technical virtuosity, and Josef led Sarah to a stop and leant in to kiss her. He could feel her blood coursing into her face, caused by a mixture of the dance's exertion and simple pleasure, and felt again, to his own amazement, how the last thing he wanted to do was to actually taste that blood. She kissed him back, as passionately as they could get away with in this formal setting in reserved 1955 America, without being thrown out for indecency. Even so, an older gentleman in the uniform of a high-ranking officer and his matronly wife gave them a disapproving stare. Sarah and Josef looked suitably chastened but she couldn't hold her composure for long after the older couple had turned away, and burst out laughing. Luckily, the sound was covered by the polite clapping of the dancers for the performer, but Josef took the opportunity to pull her into his chest in pretence of hiding her unseemly giggling fit. She quickly gained control of herself, suppressing her laughter from a force that made her whole body shake to a mischievous flicker in her eyes, which she turned up to gaze directly into his. He wanted to consume her, although he didn't want to. He knew that would bring her nowhere near as close as he wanted her. He contented himself with drinking in the emotion that streamed from her eyes into his instead. He knew, and had known pretty much since they met at the train station, that it was love, and it scared him more than anything ever had in all his long life. Too bad for him that she loved a paper man, a figment of his imagination named Charles Fitzgerald.

"Gee, these fundraisers are so staid," she complained half-jokingly.

"Sorry to disappoint," Josef told her, smiling back at her, "Although that said, you probably should not have expected a wild night out at a high-society charity ball for veterans."

"Yes, but my attendance is probably expected at an event mama organized." she sighed.

"We will do something you want to do next time. Something more to your tastes; less refined and less expensive." he mocked. Sarah's father was almost as rich as he was, although he had the advantage of being born into old money. Of course, Josef was old money too by now, after the advantage of centuries in which to acquire it, although he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He winced at the thought of a silver spoon anywhere near him, recalling bad memories of a rather unwilling meal at a fancy banquet in London a hundred and forty, what, six years ago? Sarah poked him playfully in the ribs. "Why do I put up with you?" she tutted.

"I have simply no idea." he earnestly replied.

"I tell you what, all will be forgiven if you take me out to that new jazz bar next week," she offered, "I feel like a change of scenery."

The mention of jazz immediately brought to his mind Coraline's new husband, Mick. He had been a musician, and fancied himself as a jazz artist. His musical career had been brought to a sudden stop a few years ago when she had turned him on his wedding night. Trouble is, previously the guy had had no idea what she was and consequently no desire to join the ranks. She had difficulties getting him into his new life, which he rejected at every turn. By the time Josef had met Mick late last year, he had learnt the necessities of his nature, but Josef could sense that he was still fighting it, and only his almost slavish attachment to Coraline kept him on the straight and narrow. His eyes were constantly haunted, and Josef suspected that the relationship would end up very badly for one of them, and probably both of them, within a few decades. Of course, he didn't mention any of this to Coraline. He didn't like being on the wrong side of her. But the truth was, she never should have turned him like that, and given the guy's state of mind, she shouldn't have turned him under any circumstances. But she said she loved Mick, and now Josef was beginning, crazily enough, to almost understand her. These thoughts flashed across his mind in a fraction of a second, before he turned to Sarah and told her, "What the lady wants, the lady gets."

Across the floor, the pianist dramatically stretched his fingers out and played the first chord of another waltz. Separating himself from Sarah, Josef offered her his hand to dance again in a show of gentlemanly chivalry. She took it and they began the dance. As they spun slowly around the room, weaving in and out of the other dancers, she said to him, "You do dance the waltz well, Charles. Maybe I could stand to attend a few more balls this season."

"Practice makes perfect. Besides, there are only a few steps and always a similar rhythm." he answered. He really did like this dance, and was glad it had stayed in fashion for so long. Long enough to allow him to dance it with Sarah in his arms.

"It appears you are an expert in the matter," she commented brightly. "I'll put you to the test: what's the name of this waltz?"

Josef couldn't help himself, his need to show off compelled him to answer easily "It's Chopin's Valse in A-flat major, or 'L'Adieu'".

"Oh, yes? Familiar is it? When did you first dance to it?"

Josef looked at her momentarily. He decided to answer with the truth. "I believe it was 1836, in Vienna." He waited for her polite laugh at his poor little joke.

"And was that before or after you stopped… being human?" she said quietly, leaning in to speak into his ear.

Josef almost stumbled, but recovered and replied in the most normal voice he could, "I'm sorry, I don't follow."

Sarah leaned in closer and whispered, "I know, Charles. I know what you are." Josef stopped dancing and looked at her. She stared steadily back into his eyes as he desperately searched hers for fear, disgust, hatred… but there were none of those to be found. He knew what she would see in his eyes: utter, consuming fear. He hadn't felt this cold in centuries. She smiled up again at him, the same smile she had always reserved for him. He caught the breath he needed to speak and managed to utter, "Shall we leave?"

"Yes, let's." she calmly replied. He put his arm around her and led her out of the ballroom, though the lobby and outside. The sun, glittering off the hundreds of windows in the towering buildings around them, stabbed into his eyes, and he instinctivly raised a hand and turned away, blocking Sarah from his vision along with the sun. Realising this, he turned back to her, eyes narrowed against the glare. She was still smiling, and reached out one of her slender hands to take a recently disposed copy of the New York Times out of a trash can. She held it against the sun, and with her other hand she took his and led him into the shade under one of the trees lining the street.

"What…? How…?" he began. His normal, cool, calculating self seemed to be looking at him from without, making unhelpful, snide comments. Smooth. He stopped trying, and Sarah filled his stricken silence.

"You're not as good at pretending as you think, Charles," she said softly. "You think after spending all this time with you I haven't noticed that you never eat? That your bed is always perfectly made before your house staff have even got up? It's never slept in, is it? You think I haven't noticed that you can hear me mutter things under my breath from the next room? You think…"

"Alright, alright, your point has been made," Josef whispered, glancing anxiously around at the people bustling a few feet away from them , but they were being wholly ignored. "How long have you known?"

"Well, I finally realised what exactly was up when you got from Los Angeles. Do you remember I came up to surprise you? I presume you heard me before I opened the door, because you had your back to me as you drained a glass. There was a mirror. I saw you. I decided you must be a… you know, despite the reflection, on account of the teeth, and the drink of choice."

"So you've known for almost six months… I thought you might have noticed after you left so quickly, but you came back the next day, so I dismissed it. Why did you come back?" Josef said wonderingly.

"I came back because I saw that if you were going to hurt me, you could have and would have…"

"And you're not here to kill me now? I don't see any stakes, or silver, or sharp objects, or anything particularly incendiary…" Josef hated his own paranoia. Sarah leaned in and put a finger over his lips and said close to his ear, "And I came back because I love you. I know what you are, and I love you." She pulled away with a soft kiss.

Josef was again reduced to staring at her in amazement. He could barely hope that this wasn't some trick his mind was playing on him before he woke up in his new refrigerator. But it was real. He could hear Sarah's excited heartbeat, her pulse seeming to be his own; he could smell the life of the city around him; and he could feel the pain of the sun slowly attacking his body, acting as the necessary proof of reality, the proverbial pinch. He found himself repeating Sarah's last three words to her, words he thought he would never say to anyone and which held more meaning than all the rest of his existence, and while he said those words his face lit up in joy as if it truly belonged to a young man. He picked Sarah up high and spun her around, not caring who noticed the spectacle, and they both laughed for sheer happiness. As he placed her back on her feet, her skirts continuing their orbit and brushing deliciously against him, he thought of something that might be important to mention at this point: "By the way, my name is actually Josef."

Sarah grinned back at him wickedly. "You know, Joe," she remarked, "after that first revelation, I think I can deal with that." Handing him the crumped newspaper and taking his hand, she stepped out into the sunshine and began leading him home.

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"Hello? Once again, back in the room yet?" Mick's vaguely amused voice interrupted Josef's reverie, and something hit his shoulder. Mick had finally found something to throw at his friend: a once cent coin discovered in a coat pocket. Joesf shook his head to clear it and turned round. "Yeah, sorry." he muttered a little sheepishly. He hated to think what Mick would say if he could know what his friend had been thinking of. He did not want to get into that. Everyone needed secrets. He selected a song at random from Mick's iPod, but he didn't listen to it. He also wasn't really listening to Mick when he started talking: "Well, thank God for that, thought we'd lost you for a second or two there. You know…"

A short while later, probably in the middle of one of Mick's sentences, Josef suddenly got up and announced, "Yeah, I agree. Well, this has been fun, must do it again sometime. See you poker night?" Mick looked at his friend quizzically, but said nothing. He had long since given up trying to understand Josef. Obviously tonight, the lights were on by no one was home, or at least no one was willing to answer the door, but Josef didn't want to talk about it, so Mick didn't press it. "Yeah, great, poker night." he answered, and got up to let his friend out the door.

Josef walked distractedly though the door, but in the hallway he stopped and said over his shoulder, "Good luck with the whole Beth thing, I hope it works out for you both." and then he strode purposefully away down the corridor. Mick watched him leave in surprise, hoping he was ok. Then he shut the door, and flicked on his notebook to see if there was anything new on Buzzwire.