A/N: This is chronologically the last piece set in the Tinder 'verse. It is also (probably) the last piece I will write in it. On that note, there are sexual references as well as references to some pretty major health issues, but that's all par for the course with this 'verse anyway. I hope you enjoy it!
She spent the evening of their first date, after they parted outside the coffee shop, thinking about him. Floated home with his soft voice still in her ears, his slow lopsided smile playing before her eyes, and in some way that sounds as if it should be the summary of their entire lives together. They parted, and he was all she could think about, to the point where she lay on her bed and didn't stir for hours, wrapped in the quiet cocoon of her room, still feeling the warmth of him from their hug, how thin he felt, and his coat smelled of coffee and mint and an edge of spilled ink. And when, at last, she slept, he was there in her dreams.
(He has confessed that he, too, suffered the same. That Nadir sat him down and gave him a shot of whiskey – though he had already had his alcohol limit for the week – in an effort to get him making sense.)
It's been thirty-four years, and still he makes her heart stutter.
Or, it will be thirty-four years, tomorrow, since that first date in March between falls of snow, when it had all melted away and the light was watery pale, and the way it caught his eyes made them almost seem to glow.
Thirty-four years. They will go to dinner. She has bought a new dress for the occasion, just to keep him on his toes, and when they come home Andriú will have the fire burning in the stove, and the candles lit, and leave them with a wink to spend the night with a friend of his. (Their little boy has grown up so fast; how is he turning nineteen next week?) And with Andriú away, and Clíodhna still in the States, they will sway slowly to the music on the stereo. And he will kiss her hair, and she will kiss his collar bone because it's the highest she can reach without standing on tiptoe or wearing ridiculous heels, and they will hold each other a long time, just hold each other, until the fire burns down and they retreat to bed, and hold each other all night beneath the covers.
She's almost lost him, twice, not counting the myriad of different scares he's given her. She'll hold him and he won't say a word about it, just lean into her, and neither of them will let the other think of how lucky they are to still be here.
But all of that tomorrow night. Tonight will be different. Erik has been at a conference in Trinity all day, presenting a paper on queer musicians of the nineteenth century with special recourse to Erik Delacarte. And though they do not attend each other's conferences (not usually, though she has been to three of his, when he has been a keynote speaker, and he has come to a handful of hers, and she suspects more than she knows he has) she can imagine her husband at the podium. Glasses perched on the end of his nose, hair silvering at the edges (and more and more through the rest), the picture of an aging academic, gesturing with his hands, jaw firm and serious. He will be exhausted when she collects him from the station, exhausted from standing, exhausted from talking, exhausted just from meeting people and shaking hands and politely declining the complimentary wine and cheese in favour of tea and a couple of sandwiches.
She'll bring the car to collect him, and bundle him into it, and he'll give her that tired smile after they kiss hello. Then she'll take him home, and run a hot bath to ease the stiffness from his muscles, and she'll bring him tea as he soaks and they'll talk about their days, and the call from Clíodhna, who is stopping in Glenwood today on her very indirect route to a performance in Cheyenne, and is looking at mountains for inspiration and possibly visiting the old graveyard, if she is not reading the copy of Epitaph that John Henry gave her at Christmas ("If you're going to Colorado anyway…" he said with that old half-smile, that turned into a full grin when Clíodhna and Andriú presented him with their gift to him, a photograph they'd had taken, a mock-up of them dressed as Doc Holliday and Kate Harony, Andriú complete with a false moustache). Erik will insist that he doesn't feel as bad as she thinks he does, which she'll know to mean he feels worse, and she'll make sure he eats and takes his evening round of tablets and towel his hair dry while he grumbles that he's not an invalid, and rub the therapeutic heat cream into his aching joints which will put an end to his grumbling though he may grouse a bit at her doing it for him, which she'll know to mean I love you. And when she has washed it off her hands, and turned the lights down low, she'll lie in bed beside him, and stroke his hair, and kiss him. Kiss his mouth and kiss his fingers and kiss his scars, the scars he says he hates having, from two sternotomies and a thoracotomy multiple chest tubes at different times, and the scar from the rib surgery and the raised circle under his collarbone where his ICD lives (it's taken almost seventeen years, but she's learned not to think of the heart she loves as being cradled by two wires to shock it into beating normally when it falters), and she told him, once, that she doesn't mind his scars, because they mean he is alive to wear them, and he got that sad look he still gets sometimes and held her closer, as if that might begin to make it all right that he almost died, he almost died (was dead, for three minutes, from massive blood loss until the surgeons got his heart beating again) and she wasn't there, was on a plane back from Lisbon unaware there was anything wrong, thinking her biggest problem was the baby she'd just discovered she was carrying, the baby who would become Andriú.
Andriú Erik, and his middle name was her own insistence, that Erik just accepted with that sad look, and she knew he was thinking of how he'd almost left them, even if it had not been willingly.
The pregnancy with Andriú was so much harder than the one with Clíodhna, and Christine knows, she knows, it's because of what happened, because of the aortic dissection that almost took Erik, but it will have been twenty years in July and she finds she is happier when she can manage not to think of it, so she doesn't, but she'll always remember seeing him for the first time in the ICU, in an induced come with induced hypothermia, so pale he did not look real, did not look like himself, so many wires and tubes she was afraid to touch him, and a tube in his mouth, going down his throat to keep him breathing. His fingers were so cold beneath hers, so cold and still, and she kissed his forehead and kissed hand and closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see him like that even as she listened to every beep, every click, every whoosh measuring out his life.
(She remembers the first day he was allowed to wake from the sedation, and he was breathing on his own again by then, and his eyes filled with tears to see her when at last they opened, his fingers stirred in hers, and she kissed them and shushed him when he whimpered and soon he fell back to sleep again. It was another week before he was well enough to truly see her, to realise that there was something she wasn't telling him for all that she had told him, and it was then that she told him there was to be another baby, that she'd taken two pregnancy tests in Portugal and another here, and tears trickled from his eyes as he squeezed her hand and whispered in a terrible voice that was too hoarse to be his, "at least Clíodhna won't be alone.")
But tonight she'll hold him, and kiss him, and resolutely not remember those days, and ask him if he wants anything more. And he might admit to exhaustion and if he does she will kiss him, and turn the lights lower, and read to him, softly, until he dozes into sleep, or murmur into his ear of nothing in particular, and stroke the slight smile gracing his lips.
Or he might give her that lopsided smile, the one that was shy when it first came across a coffee table thirty-four years ago but now makes his eyes crinkle and if he gets that smile his eyes will take on their old twinkle they still get sometimes and he'll whisper, "my fingers are not so stiff as you might think" or something to that effect, and she'll tweak his nipple for cheek when yes or no would have sufficed, and they'll yelp and giggle and nuzzle their way through loving each other, as gentle as they can, because he still sometimes sees her as breakable and he frequently has been, and they'll sleep tight against each other, warm and content and safe.
Andriú is not home until late because he has extra labs and a rehearsal for the play he insists is not too much on top of his studies, and she'll wake to say hello to him and have tea, and if Erik wakes he'll join them, but if he doesn't they'll leave him asleep. Heaven knows he needs it.
Unlike Clíodhna, Andriú did not inherit their father's condition, and if there is anything Christine is most grateful for other than Erik's continued existence in this world, it is that, that one of their children was spared those genes.
She's kept everything Erik has ever given her and today, on the eve of their anniversary, she goes through it all again, takes a break from the chapter she's attempting to write. She keeps it all in a wooden box in the wardrobe, that Nadir sourced for her through one of his contacts. Every odd note, every dinner receipt, every birthday and anniversary and Christmas and Valentine's card, every train ticket she ever got going to Sligo to visit him. A collection of little things people might call rubbish, but it's part of the story of who they are, of the man she loves and how she came to love him, and she lays it out on the bed, in an act of missing him, his music playing softly in the background.
The empty bottle of wine they shared the night they first had sex, that he strategically dribbled on her and licked and kissed away (and at the remove of thirty-three years and nearly eleven months the memory of it makes her shiver) alongside an empty bottle of the champagne they had at their wedding. Tickets from every concert they ever went to. Hozier and Florence and Mumford all in the same year, and she flew back from Portugal for each of them. The Decemberists and Ed Sheeran, Erik's head thrown back and eyes closed as he swayed with the music. Lisa Hannigan was the first they ever went to together, their first year, and he was so overwhelmed at the woman he'd always considered a goddess of music that he wept as she played 'Funeral Suit' and Christine held him and kissed him and they leaned into each other while all around them people held their lit lighters to the sky. They never went to as many concerts as they should have. There wasn't time, between each of their theses and their research and their books, and for how great concerts are they're exhausting and Erik didn't have the greatest stamina even then. He usually fell asleep with his head on her shoulder on the bus on the way home, and for a long time there just wasn't the money for concert tickets. But the ones that they went to were all the better for being rare occurrences, and every time she had Erik standing beside her, watching Florence up on that stage, it felt like dancing with him again for the first time under the purple lights of the Roost.
They go to all of Clíodhna's that they can. Dublin and Cork and Galway and Athlone and Belfast and more, even though she tells them not to, that they don't have to, tries to convince Erik that he needs rest more than he needs to see her play again and again and again, but they don't listen to her, and instead they go and lean into each other and cry at their little girl being all grown up and adored by so many thousands upon thousands of people, and Andriú is his sister's biggest fan.
And next time, when Clíodhna plays here in Maynooth in the grounds of Carton Estate at Easter, the one that she plans to record, she's going to bring Erik up on stage with her, so they can play the song they recorded together but that she's never played live before when she could not have Erik playing with her, and Erik is terrified and delighted and proud, and he's going to do wonderfully, and Christine is just proud that he can have that chance for the world to see him.
There are old theatre tickets too. Musicals and plays and Les Mis every time it ever came to Dublin, and cinema tickets too. And beside them are her wristbands from going to Pride. As long as she's known him, as long as she's loved him, she's known Erik is bi, even if he favours women over men and loves her over everyone. He is still bi and every time they ever went to Pride she felt proud holding his hand. And now they go with Clíodhna, who has never had a moment of doubt over who she is, and the night she told them she likes girls as well, Erik hugged her and said, "you're far from the first in this family" and Christine hugged them both.
And beside the wristbands are the little bands the babies wore around their tiny wrists in the hospital after they were born. One for Clíodhna, and one for Andriú, with their names and birthdays and she traces her fingers over them and remembers how her heart throbbed holding each of them for the first time, five years and six weeks apart, and how she and Erik wept that Andriú was well after everything, even though he came early and he was so small, so tiny, tinier even than Clíodhna had been.
(There are her wristbands, from labours and complications; and the collection of Erik's, from surgeries and tests and the euphemistically termed "interventions". His collection is the biggest of all, but she keeps every one of them, just to remind her of how lucky she is to still have him.)
(Not that she needs much reminding.)
She has two journals of pressed flowers, one from every bouquet Erik has ever given her, every flower he ever slipped into her hair, every flower crown he ever made her, daisy chains and bracelets threaded by those elegant fingers and the deepest velvet red rose plucked from her wedding bouquet.
A bundle of sheet music with marginalia, not every piece he ever composed for her because then she would be at serious risk of needing a new box, but the most special pieces, Christmas gifts and their wedding dance and the one he composed for her when she turned fifty and grinned as he kissed her. CDs of playlists he assembled for her, and ones of him playing, and a memory stick of songs.
And a second memory stick, and accompanying disc. A three-hour video he recorded over a week while she was in Coimbra. He used Clíodhna's cameras and sound-recording equipment, and played each song until he was happy with it, his own and other people's, and finished with Eric Clapton's 'Wonderful Tonight' becoming Warren Zevon's 'Keep Me In Your Heart'. It was his gift to her for their thirtieth anniversary, and his voice is rougher now than when they first met but that crack in his singing catches her heart on all the low notes, and every time she gets to those last two she can't help the tears that come to her eyes.
Two Mother's Day cards, handmade by Clíodhna in school the year Andriú was born. One from Clíodhna herself, and one she signed from Andriú "because he's too small to make you a card, and he can't hold the pencil, Mummy" and it was all she could do not to cry.
There is a small collection of satin ribbons in different colours, blue and red and green, and pretty hair clips and a small tub of blue and gold glitter. A miniature violin in a case. A tiny pirate's chest full of notes in Erik's writing. A model racehorse. A tiny music box that plays a tinkling tune reminiscent of Gary Cooper's watch in The Plainsman (and she teased him that he'd watched too many westerns lying on his uncle's couch). A print of Anthony Andrews in The Scarlet Pimpernel because of their mutual love for him. Sea glass and two smooth stones. Countless little trinkets that he gave her because they reminded him of her.
Letters. The letter he gave her before the first surgery on his aorta, the planned one for the aneurysm. The letter he gave Al to give to her in Coimbra on the day of her graduation, because he was still not well enough after the surgery to be there himself, and Al hugged her as she cried, heart aching for missing him, for his condition robbing him of this day they had been looking forward to for so long. The letter he gave her the night before their wedding. The three letters together as they should always be, written within four months of each other, and each so different, speaking of fear and hope and promises and love and pride in her, the sheets that his hands filled with words just for her eyes to ever read, and she has never showed them to anyone else.
And photographs. So many photographs. Of him, of her, of the two of them together, of them with Clíodhna and Andriú, and his mother and Bill and Al, and Nan. And Nan is gone now, has been gone so many years, and Bill too; and Al is the same as ever though his age has slowed him down, and his bones hurt almost as much as Erik's do sometimes, and dear sweet Marina, the woman who brought Erik into the world and raised him after his father died, is eighty-two and still full of mischief and excitement and really doesn't look her age at all.
But Christine's favourite photos are the ones of her and Erik together, taken in random moments. The one of them holding each other against a brilliant sunset, that Nadir snapped. One of the first dance at their wedding. One of them teasing Clíodhna who could only have been two, head full of dark curls, one of them asleep on the couch and Andriú at three sprawled across the two of them, and where Clíodhna's curls were dark his were blond and still are. Photos of them kissing and laughing and the one that she took of Andriú as a small baby asleep on top of a sleeping Erik. And one she took of Erik, asleep surrounded by wildflowers in Al's old hay meadow in the drought of their first summer.
(The selection of artistic black and white nudes, that Erik slipped into her suitcase before they parted the last Christmas she flew back to Coimbra. And she doesn't know who took them but she suspects John Henry because it's just the sort of thing he'd agree to do, and the first time she saw them her mouth went dry. She looked at them a lot that spring, when she desperately missed the weight of Erik in the bed beside her.)
She is particularly attached to the picture of their hands side-by-side, hers small and delicate, his long and elegant, showing the stamps of the Roost. It was their first New Year's Night together, and after kissing at midnight they slipped out of the club and across the road to the shadows in the empty car park. And kissing led to wandering hands and gasped breaths, his lips curling against hers, and she lay back against the earthen bank as he kissed her breasts and a trail down along her belly, his fingers rubbing her, stroking her, and she came with his head between her legs, her skirt hitched up high, biting her lip until she drew blood to keep from crying out in the cold night air as she bucked against him and he kissed her and nuzzled her there, right there, and kissed her inner thigh as she shuddered boneless and weak, his arm all that kept her upright, and he bit her shoulder afterwards to keep quiet as her hands caressed him and stroked him and gave him his own shaking relief, and they were a dishevelled mess as they stumbled back inside, breathless on their own love, but it's still one of her favourite nights they've ever spent together.
All these pictures, all these things, all filled with so many memories. And some of them are sad, and some of them are lonely, but all of them are beautiful, all of them are special, are part of who they are and how they got here. Are a testament to thirty-four years of loving each other, to twenty-seven of marriage, and yes there was pain and hardship and fear and sheer terror a few times at seeing him so ill, but those awful times made the good times all the better (still make them better), all the more special, all the more wonderful, and she would not give up a second of what they've had for the world.
Her phones buzzes with a text. Erik. On the train. And she smiles.
Time to tidy all the memories away safe again, and bring the man she loves home to add more to them.
(Though she might leave those artistic nudes out, just this time. Just to see if he remembers.)