A/N: I actually wrote this back in July, at the same time as Digging Up Bones, and then spent the last four and a half months procrastinating editing it. But it's officially ready to go now. It's a sequel to Tinder Date, includes some mild swearing, and updates will come on Sundays. There will be 5 chapters.
So please read it, and I hope you enjoy this look at the future of our two dear lovers.
He has never believed in the accuracy of tarot reading, in palmistry or divination of any sort. There's no scientific basis to any of it, and the whole thing just makes him profoundly uncomfortable. The very thought of a deck of cards or the lines in his palm laying out his whole past and future is about equal parts terrifying and laughable.
But Christine is away in Galway at a conference, so she'll never know. And besides, it is all Nadir's idea, because they are bored and wandering and there is a festival on, and there's something comforting abut being able to blame it all on him.
So Erik reluctantly agrees, and decides to consider it all a pile of bollocks anyway, even if they do tell him that he has less time left than he thinks. Which, well, whatever. He won't panic unless the doctors tell him the same.
He has one swallow of whiskey from Nadir's flask to brace himself — one of the very few drinks he ever has now — and, body and soul prepared for all sorts of terrible news, enters the tent.
And almost laughs, at the sight of the withered old woman in her silks. What sort of drama is this? Is it a set-up? Is someone trying to prank him? There's probably a camera just around the corner waiting to catch his reaction.
Up close, the woman is a lot younger than he first took her for. He can recognise a good make-up job when he sees it. By now it would be a travesty if he didn't, and there is something about seeing her so obviously faking her age that sets him at ease.
How real can any of this be, if the fortune-teller even looks like a fraud?
The first card she draws is Death. And all he can think is, Lord, tell me something I don't know. And then she draws the Lovers, and he gives it no heed. Besides, he has Christine. There's no one else he needs in his life. And finally, she draws the Empress.
The Empress.
He is almost surprised that it is a card he knows, and the sight of it catches him off-guard. The blessing of all musicians and writers and artists. A symbol of creativity, a good omen, if he believed in omens. Is he going to get a commission?
The fortune teller's eyes meet his. "You're a married man"
It is not a question. The hairs prickle on the back of his neck, and he almost gives her some credence, but then the light catches the wedding band on his finger and he realises, of course she knows.
He nods nonetheless. "For several years now." Two years, eleven months, fifteen days, and about four hours. It's engraved on his heart. Sometimes he thinks it has become part of his bones, as if it has been etched there, a constantly updating timer.
She smiles. "You may expect your family to grow in the near future."
And never have mere words struck such fear into his heart. He stares at her, struck dumb, breath caught in his throat as she clears the cards away, then looks at him expectantly. "Your palm, please."
After, his breath caught and heart beating something like normal, he asks Nadir what the fortune teller told him, and Nadir scoffs. "Longevity and wealth. The usual sort of shit. You?" And Erik nods, shrugs, as if the sweat is not cold on his skin. "The same."
They head for the train, Nadir insisting he join he and Michelle for dinner, and Erik knows Christine has probably extracted a promise from them both to make sure he eats in her absence, so he sighs and agrees and resolves to put the whole thing from his mind.
Which is surprisingly easy. After all, the whole thing is rubbish and he has a stack of exam papers to mark, and some of the answers are enough to drive him up the wall. On one of the questions, where the students have to analyze Chopin's nocturnes, one person simply wrote "George Sand was an imbecile." He very nearly texts Nadir to bring over whiskey.
Christine comes home from Galway in a whirlwind of ideas, about dictatorship and economics and agriculture, and she kisses him lightly on the lips before shutting herself away in her study, muttering about Salazar. Three hours later she emerges, jaded at the sight of her own stack of exam papers.
Erik kisses her forehead and hands her a mug of tea. "I arranged them by module code for you, and then by number of pages, shortest to longest." It took him an evening and a night to do, and at his words a soft smile spreads over her tired features, and she hugs him.
"The exam papers can wait until morning."
They order pizza, and cuddle together on the couch to watch re-runs of M*A*S*H. And it doesn't take long for Christine to doze off in his arms, worn out from her trip. He'd carry her to bed, but he has a scan next week and he doesn't want to lift things until he knows for sure no aneurysm has developed since the last check. So he wakes her, gently, and walks her to bed. And then, though it's only half nine, he turns off the lights and closes up the house for the night, and joins her, and thinks that at least this time he will honestly be able to tell his cardiologist that he is sleeping well. Then Christine nuzzles into him, her arm warm around his hip, and all thoughts disappear.
It is Nadir who goes with him up to Dublin for his appointment. Christine still has exam papers to mark, and Erik insists that she stay home and finish them off. It is not entirely altruistic of him. He knows there is some part of her that is relieved over not having to go. She always gets anxious at his appointments, even when she tries not to let it show, and it always makes him more anxious than he already is, which he emphatically does not need. She remembers too well the days that he doesn't, when he was on a cocktail of medications after having surgery on his aorta only a few months before the wedding. Sometimes, at night, she traces the scar on his chest, and he knows she's thinking of that, and the fear that he might have to go through it all again.
He can't fault her for her anxiety.
He's terrified of the same thing.
But when it's Nadir with him, he's full of stories about his law practice, and it's enough to take Erik's mind off all that could happen.
The scans are all clear, he learns later, and he's passed with a clean bill of health for the next six months, and the relief is overwhelming. And oddly, incongruously, he remembers the tarot reader, Death sitting on the table before her, and has a moment of satisfaction at having defied the cards.
In the early days of March, it was nine years since they met, since the fateful night they matched on that app, and Nadir interceded to arrange the coffee date that he almost backed out of. But on 7 June, that magical day, it is three years since they married. Three years since they stood in that church, with his mother and Bill and Lilly and Uncle Al, and Nadir and Michelle and the trio of John Henry, Kate, and Morgan, and a small collection of Christine's friends from the history society and Portugal, and some of his music department friends. A small quiet affair, and it was two of his violin students who played. He was still frail, still tired after the surgery only a few months earlier (and Christine would have delayed the wedding until he was stronger if he had let her, if he had not put his foot down and insisted that after two years of looking forward to it he was not putting it off any longer, so help him if Nadir had to prop him up he was going to be there), but later, in Carton House, he mustered the strength to take her for their first dance (his own composition, and one of his students played it on the piano, and after their honeymoon, he played it for her himself, in the quiet of the living room with the lights down low, and she kissed his cheek and murmured that she prefers it this way), and when that first dance ended, Uncle Al cut in on them, insisting on dancing with his new niece even as he gave Erik a warning look to take it easy. Al returned her to his arms after, and he danced with her several more times as the evening went on, in between sitting back nursing glasses of water (and one of champagne, just for the occasion), watching her dance and laugh and look so beautiful he was not certain it was not a dream. His mother saw the tears shining in his eyes, and come to sit beside him, squeezing his hand, and he was so overwhelmed he leaned into her as if he were a child again.
Three years. And his heart is still so full after all this time that even though he was planning to take her out for the occasion he does not think he could bear sharing her with other people.
They have a quiet dinner at home, by candlelight, and she wears the new dress she bought for this night, and he wears one of his tailored suits, a particularly fine one, and pairs it with a burgundy waistcoat that disguises his thinness. Not that there is much point in disguising his thinness, because Christine knows all about it, but it's a boost to his esteem, and a man can always pretend.
Afterwards he plays for her, their wedding dance and a couple of new pieces that he has composed while she's been busy, or in the hours he's spent in university late in the evening. And she sings for him, and they take each other to bed.
They take precautions, as they always do, and Erik drifts off to sleep, content that everything is right in the world.
And for two weeks everything continues as it always does, quietly, slowly. With music, and a meeting about the semester beginning in September, and his supervisory work. The Digital Humanities head gets him in to talk about his own thesis from years ago to the stressed Masters students, and he takes part in a concert for the alumni, and Christine sings for it at his own request. And he looks at her up on that stage, and thinks about ghost lives, about the singer she could have been if her heart had not led her to history (and he wakes up grateful every morning for that passion burning inside of her), about the concert pianist he might have been if it had not been for his condition and his anxiety and craving for academia, and the way they might have travelled together. But this is the life they have, and it is peaceful, and far more comfortable than in his student days, and he would not give one second of it up for anything.
Then Christine comes to him, near the end of June, and she's pale as she asks him to sit down, and his heart drops thinking that something might have happened, to Lilly or his mother, or even, heaven forbid it, to Nadir.
She must see his thoughts, because she shakes her head slightly, her lips tight. "It's nothing like that." And her voice is hoarse.
"Then what?"
She squeezes his hand, and takes a shuddering breath, and the world slows down, narrows in to this point, this moment right here. "I'm pregnant."
A/N: Two historical notes for references in this chapter - George Sand was the pseudonym of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, Chopin's lover, and Salazar was Doctor António de Oliveira Salazar, the oft-forgotten Portuguese dictator who was more interested in agriculture than developing industry. He ruled for thirty-six years, longer than any of the other European dictators who were his contemporaries.