Title- One Moment of Joy
Pairings- Meg/Erik
Rating- T
Summary- Basically a load of fluff of the highest order. E/M

A/N- This was written almost entirely because I was sick of angst from every quarter (I know, right? What the hell?) and felt a strong need to write something fluffy. The result was a oneshot so sappy, the editing process almost sent me into a sugar coma. Blame Sadie Montgomery and her Phoenix of the Opera series. It induces a strong desire to write E/M fluff.

Yesterday was his wedding day.

This is the very first thing that occurs to him when he wakes up.

The actual process of waking up takes a surprisingly long time. Erik cannot remember the last time he slept so long or so soundly, and returning to consciousness takes far longer than usual. He doesn't mind. The soft, warm feeling of gradually leaving unconsciousness is surprisingly pleasant. And that first thought that enters his mind once he's conscious makes it all worth it.

A lazy smile crosses his mouth as he lets his mind drift back to the previous afternoon.

It was by necessity a very simple, private ceremony, but everyone who mattered was there. Raoul and Christine were in attendance (he considered asking his former rival to be his best man, but the tacit agreement between them not to acknowledge the strange antagonistic affection they had come to share prevented him from doing so), and of course Antoinette was there. She had managed to get in contact with M. Reyer and the aging concertmaster, the maestro who once taught Erik the basics of musical notation via Antoinette, was the one to escort Meg down the aisle. The closest thing he ever had to a mentor was the one to place Meg's hand in his.

Erik cried unashamedly as he and Meg said their vows. At long last someone had laid claim to this wandering child in the wilderness, and he was unable and unwilling to hide how moved he was as she held his hands and spoke the words that bound them together for eternity, looking up at him with nothing but love and trust in her beautiful eyes. He thought the feel of her lips on his as they shared their first kiss as husband and wife might be branded into his skin for the rest of his life.

Erik glances down at his new bride's fair head. She is curled up against his side, one of her slender arms draped across his bare chest, and there is a contented smile on her sleeping face. This, Erik decides, is absolutely heaven. When she found him three years ago beneath the burning wreck of the opera house, he couldn't have guessed that she would become so vital to him. To this day, he still isn't sure just how he came to fall so desperately in love with her, but he supposes it doesn't matter. He does love her, and she loves him in return. It seems incredible, but it's true. She's stubborn and beautiful and ridiculous and sweet and impossible and far braver than he thinks he is and for some insane reason she loves him. Enough to save him, enough to marry him, enough to share his bed. Meg has done the impossible- she has tamed a Phantom, and he adores her for it.

He buries his face in her golden hair and inhales her sweet smell, lilac and hyacinth and something that's entirely Meg, and pulls her closer to him, reveling in the feel of her soft skin against his. A moment later she stirs, and looks up at him with a sleepy smile on her lips. The fact that his face his bare doesn't even seem to register with her, or if it does, she simply doesn't care. He kisses her grinning mouth, exploring her gently.

He never imagined experiencing a moment like this. In all his days lost in the dark, he never dared to dream of it. Not even in the throes of his insanity over Christine had he held any hope of something like this, a moment that was so simple and innocent and joyful. He had wanted it. Dear god, he had wanted it. He had seen others have it, that feeling of owning someone and being owned in return, and he had wanted that so much, but it had always seemed so terribly far away. Yet here they both are. He and Meg, and even though there were times throughout their highly unorthodox courtship when he was terrified it wouldn't last, even though doubtless there will be such times again... right now he's perfectly happy, maybe for the first time in his life.

"Good morning, husband," Meg says, pressing herself even more deeply into the circle of his embrace.

Erik wonders if it's even possible to be more in love than he feels at this exact moment.

Somehow, he doubts it.