It was early June when she came to him and told him she wanted Erik to meet him.

He'd been wondering when it would happen, and he set down his newspaper and put his reading glasses on top of them.

"He's already met Anea," she was saying, "and I really want—"

He lay his hand on top of her hers, and smiled. "Just tell me when, and I'll put on a good shirt."

There was a light blue one he was very fond of that would do the job.

"You don't have to go to any trouble," she whispered, and he squeezed her fingers.

"He's important to you. I want to."

It was the next morning that she brought Erik to see him. She'd told him that the boy had had several surgeries on his face to repair a birth deformity (and his heart ached to think of a young child having gone through so much), and true there was a certain asymmetry about the young man she introduced him to, but it added a charm to him, and the twist of what must once have been a harelip added a slightly crooked character to his face, something a little distinguished.

He shook the hand of this tall young man who was clearly nervous, and smiled at him. "I've heard a great deal about you," and something flickered in Erik's eyes to hear it, like a half-question, but his grip was steady on Raoul's hand.

"All good I hope."

Christine excused herself to make tea for them, and he asked her to bring the biscuits, and then he turned his attention back to Erik, fiddling with a stray thread on his jumper, and decided that the best he could do was put the boy at ease.

"Christine tells me you're a musician."

The magical combination of words, and Erik's fingers stilled as he smiled. "I am."

When Christine came to him, hardly a week later, upset after a visit to 1939, upset after the Sorelli of that time told her she never wanted to see her again, he settled her on the couch and added whiskey to her tea, and ached to tell her that it would only be temporary, ached to tell her that someday she would find Sorelli in 1945 and it would be different, so very different.

He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to. He opened his mouth for to find the words but they all escaped from his head and when he tried again he coughed instead, and concern flickered through the grief in her face but he waved her off.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, it's nothing." Why couldn't he tell her? Why? Why must she suffer thinking Sorelli would hate her forever? Why must she have to feel that ache of love in her heart and think it unrequited? Who decreed that such a thing must happen?

He couldn't answer, couldn't say, could only squeeze her hand and whisper, "Give it time," and watch as tears welled fresh in her eyes again.

(What he would not have given in that moment, to be able to go back in time himself and tell Sorelli to never say that terrible thing.)

He wrapped his arms around her, and drew her close, and let her cry until she fell asleep. And then he dried the tears from her face, and covered her with a blanket.

Let her sleep as long as she needed.

It was not a tremendous surprise, a little more than an hour later, when Erik turned up on his doorstep. Erik, the worry clear to see in his face, and Raoul knew without asking that he had come in hope of finding Christine, so he invited him in and told him she was asleep on the couch, and when the surprise crossed Erik's face that he knew, when Erik saw her and seemed to weaken, he decided the boy needed a drink.

Tea, first, and to have some things explained to him, about Christine, and Sorelli, and what had happened, and time.

Erik was, if possible, even paler, after he explained about knowing her since 1945, the older her, but how she had only met him in 2008. He considered offering him whiskey to steady him, but decided chartreuse was a better choice.

Whiskey for grief, chartreuse for time, and celebration.

(An odd relief, that he could say these things to Erik, even if he could not speak them to Christine herself.)

It was good of Erik to visit him whenever Christine was away. He had not expected him to do so but he was glad that he did, that he took the time to with how busy he was with his computer work and his music.

How strange it felt, that the Erik he'd heard so much about, that Christine had first told him of in 1973 after Darius left, would be sitting there in his kitchen or at the fire, telling him about his computer coding and 3D modeling and all these things that didn't exist all those years ago, but that he has made a career out of, and though Raoul has no head for such things it was and is interesting to hear about, and reminds him of the colourised photographs Christine had given him for his birthday.

He asked Erik, early in their friendship, about colourising photographs, and it amused him when Erik gave a wave of his hand, and said it was easy.

"I could teach you if you want," he said, and Raoul snorted.

"I think I'm a bit old for picking up new skills."

It amused him, and warmed him, to find Erik so interested in Christine's research, so interested in hearing his old stories of sixty and seventy years ago, especially when he confessed that he never knew much of history.

"I want to be able to keep up with her," he said, "to talk to her about it properly and not just ask questions she'll think are stupid."

Raoul smiled. "You know there's no such thing as a stupid question, don't you?"

"I know but you know what I mean. I want to know something about it all when I'm talking to her."

He could see Erik was earnest, could see Erik really did want to be able to discuss Christine's research with her, and it was that that endeared him to Raoul forever.

"In that case, I suggest you start with Against the Tide."

He knew Christine and Erik would be happy together, knew it in a clear logical way because he knew from her older self. But it warmed him to see it for himself, in those early months. And it was a comfort, that Christine would know happiness in her own time, that she would be loved.

He only ever wanted the best for her.

They went for a lot of walks that summer, he and Christine. A lot of walks, none of them particularly long, and they never said much to each other but they didn't need to. It was enough, on those sunny July afternoons, just to have her on his arm as they went down the street, just to feel her beside him.

Just to know that she was in the present, and that she was happy.

To anyone looking in, that first Christmas, they would make the picture of a family. Him playing the old grandfather (maybe great-grandfather, such peculiar thoughts), Anea assumed to be his daughter, Christine his granddaughter (the most peculiar thought), and Erik her boyfriend. And yet, in actuality, not a drop of blood shared between any of them, nothing that would mark them as a family in any traditional sense of the word.

And yet, looking at these three people so dear to him (and how quickly Erik earned a place in his heart), he had a sense that that was what they were. A family, in their own way, of their choosing.

And looking at them, he would not have had it any other way.

The pneumonia, that time, came on him as a bad cold early in the new year. A bad cold, and it went into his chest, and by his birthday it had landed him in hospital (again), breathless and tired and sore, every breath tearing in his lungs.

The oxygen helped, and the painkillers, and the antibiotics, and it all together just left him so tired.

Damn tuberculosis damaging his lungs the way it did. Damn age.

Christine came to see him, and Erik, to wish him as happy a birthday as he could have. He could see they were worried about him, could see the fear in Christine's eyes that this might be the coming of the end, and he wanted to tell them otherwise, wanted to assure them that he'd recover from this and go on another two years, but the words wouldn't come, so he had to settle for smiling at them instead, and thanking them for coming to see him.

Erik told him he'd found some jazz records to give him when he was out, and the thought of them lightened his mood a bit, but he could see Erik couldn't settle in the room, couldn't know what to say to see him so ill, so when he made his excuses and slipped out, Raoul didn't mind. He wouldn't have him feeling out of place on his account.

He squeezed Christine's fingers tight, and gathered all his strength to whisper "you won't have to dust off your Auden yet," and it was all he could say, the only way he could think to tell her that she didn't have to worry about him this time, but hardly had the words left his mouth when he saw the tears shining in her eyes and he repented saying them at all, repented that he had made her think of his death even accidentally.

"You know what I mean," he whispered, and his throat was so sore he was hoarser than a moment before.

She shushed him, and squeezed his fingers. "I know," and her voice was soft, "I know."

He was long-home again by the day she came to see him and tell him she had met Philippe in 1934, and as they sipped their tea she told him all about it, how Philippe had insisted she join he and Sorelli for dinner, and how he seemed delighted to meet her. That she had not expected him to be so tall made Raoul snort, and his heart ached to hear her because he could just picture his brother as she must have seen him, tall and elegant and wearing one of his fine evening suits and with that slightly crooked smile and how he longed to have been there himself, longed to see him, just once.

Hearing about him from her was not the same, but every word she spoke of him was a treasure.

The tears prickled his eyes, and her thumb was soft, wiping them away.

("He was happy," her voice low, soft, "they both were." And he drew in a shaky breath, and swallowed. "I'm glad they were," his own voice faint. "I'm glad.")

("I'm glad they had each other. That she wasn't—that neither of them were alone.")

("They loved each other very much. And I think—I think a part of her never recovered from losing him." A part of me never recovered either, he thought, but could not say.)

("It's good to know they're still out there," he whispered. "Good to know you can still go back and find them, that they haven't-haven't been erased from the world." And it sounded ridiculous to his own ears because of course she could find them, of course when she was going into the past, but he had to say it and she brushed her thumb over his knuckles and nodded.)

("I know what you mean," she whispered. "I know what you mean.")

The referendum on same-sex marriage was a little more than two weeks later. 22 May 2015.

That it would fall on the anniversary of when she had first travelled into the past made him smile.

How far the world had moved on. When he had loved Jack, had first learned about himself, it was illegal to do the things they did, to touch each other the way they did and kiss and feel the feelings that were in their hearts. All the nights when they had hardly dared breathe too loud in case they were discovered, how they always had to slip back to their own beds by morning—to dream of it being allowed was impossible, and even when he and Darius were together they kept such secrecy it was almost suffocating (would things have been different, if they had not had to be a secret?), and it was only after Sorelli had been dead a year that it finally became all right in the eyes of the law to be what they had been.

And they were voting on marriage, to allow people like him to be married.

It was almost more than he could get his head around.

Such change, in only a few decades…

Erik brought him to the polling station. So help him but he never missed a vote in all his years, even managed to vote from hospital in 1973, and old and frail as he might be but he was not about to miss this one.

He'd come out of retirement to write an article about it, and the importance of voting yes, and Christine typed it for him and sent it off, and he knew publishing it was outing him to the world after all his years of being careful, and not even his AIDS activism in the '80s had really done it, but this would and he didn't care.

Let them know. He was old and he was tired and so help him but he was gay, too.

(Finally the word seemed to fit and feel right.)

And when the day for voting came, he dressed in his best and Erik brought him to the polling station and his hand trembled as he held that pencil, and marked his X in the box beside Tá, Yes.

There were tears in his eyes as he folded it, and he thought of Sorelli, thought of Darius, and wished he could tell them.

How he wept the next day, watching the coverage of the count.

A landslide victory.

The footage of all those young people in the streets, and not so young, wrapped in their rainbow flags, laughing and crying and celebrating, and he was so proud, so happy, to think that they could have the things he never could have, that they could know the happiness he had had and so much more, and no law could tell them otherwise, that they could be free in a way he had never been.

They were what it had all been for.

Erik was in his garden, pruning his roses for him, and Anea was pottering around his kitchen, making a cake to celebrate. And Christine was sitting on the arm of his chair, and she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, and as the tears rolled down his cheeks he lay his head against her shoulder, and she kissed his hair and held him, just held him, and didn't say a word.

He didn't need her to.