Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.

Notes: no-divorce AU, domestic fluff.

"The children are still asleep," Charles murmurs groggily, flinging an arm out as if searching for Erik beside him. "The house is still standing, this is a ghastly hour, and more importantly, I'm still here. Why do you insist on doing this every morning?" He sounds like nothing more than the children he professes still asleep—the children who are, of course, no more children than the previous batch or the batch before that (though at least Charles and Erik have a greater advantage in years now).

Erik rolls his eyes, a wasted gesture since Charles is determinedly keeping his own closed. At least Charles misses the smile that springs unbidden to Erik's lips, as well. "If we all lazed about until noon, nothing would ever get done," he says calmly, dressing himself efficiently and resisting the urge to run his fingers through Charles's hair and ruffle it even further. "Be thankful I'm letting you sleep."

"Oh, I'm very thankful," Charles says, voice muffled into his pillow. "Now leave, before I make you."

Erik grins, unseen, and does as he's told. As he exits, he directs one of the metal furnishings on the bed to uncurl and prod Charles under the arm, relishing the sound of Charles's indignant yelp when he does.

You're barred from this bedroom. Charles's voice fills his ears with a distinctly peevish tone. I mean it, you're not allowed back in. Not even if you beg and plead..

Liar, Erik responds with amusement. I know how you like it when I beg and plead. Go back to sleep, Charles.

Charles retreats from Erik's head, grumbling as he goes, but leaving behind a patina of warm fondness he can't manage to erase. Erik heads down to the kitchen for a glass of water before he goes out for his run. (He could have taken it from the nearest tap, but this is an opportunity for him to check the hallways, survey the house, make sure all is still and safe. Erik knows that Charles has a near-constant, low-level awareness of the entire house, but—there is a part of Erik, very small but still there, that cannot manage to entrust everything to another person's vigilance. This is a thought Erik keeps tucked away from Charles's familiar presence in his head—not because Charles would be hurt that Erik doesn't trust him to be fully watchful, but because Charles would look at him with sad eyes for the fact that Erik has never managed to let himself be completely at rest, and Erik has become just pathetic enough that he would like to stay away from anything and everything that might cause Charles to look like that.)

Once inside the kitchen, Erik fills his glass and looks out the window, feeling through the house as he does—the only metal that sparks in his mind is the metal he recognizes. All is at rest, for now. He's in his exercise clothing, ready for his usual run (he runs at this time because there is no one else up, because he needs the silence, because he doesn't want to be stared at, because when Charles is sleeping and Erik can feel the pounding of his own feet on the ground reverberating through his body, he can try and organize his thoughts into some order that might explain how it is he gets to keep this life), and yet something holds him back, an inexplicable urge to slow down and savor, for once.

Perhaps it's the slight chill he can feel in his bones (a sign of age, as is the silver peppering his hair, though when Charles ribs him about it, Erik often reminds him that at least Erik still retains most of his own). Perhaps it's the strange yearning Erik can feel suffused throughout his body, to go back to Charles, their bed, to curl into his open arms, to let Charles tell him the things he always tells him, Darling, come to bed, let go, I'll stand watch, stop running from me, if nothing else. I love you, a thousand times over, and Erik will sometimes growl, sometimes ignore him, sometimes kiss him quiet, but perhaps just this once he wishes to listen.

Perhaps it's that when Erik looks around the room, he is curiously staggered by the things he sees, the myriad signs of his presence: his jacket hanging over the back of a chair; the bread he loves that Charles always remembers to buy for him; the twisted metal curtain rod that they lied and told the children had come from a practice session gone wrong, when in reality it happened when Charles backed Erik against a counter and smiled at him wicked-eyed and sucked him off slowly with all his considerable expertise, and Erik cursed and came and found, when he opened his eyes, that he had lost his control like a mere boy, and Charles had laughed delightedly and refused to let him set it right. Erik studies the room and sees that he has left himself there, in pieces; has gone against everything he ever taught himself and grown attached, rooted himself in place. He has been lovingly and gently caught, forever, and Erik thinks that he would want nothing else.

This much he has when he never thought he would; and maybe it is Charles's unquenchable optimism making its mark on him, but Erik finds that instead of thinking How much I have to lose, he is simply thinking—How much I have.

Erik shakes his head, rubs a hand over his face. Sets his glass down and turns on his heel, heading back toward the bedroom that holds the man who happens to be the trial of his existence and, miraculously, the love of his life.

Coming back? Charles asks. To his credit, he sounds only as unbearably smug as he always does, no more.

You aren't expecting begging and pleading, I hope, Erik sends, dryly, resigned to the fact that his hopeless affection and half-frightened happiness would be palpable to anyone, let alone the world's strongest telepath.

I'm sure I can talk you into it, Charles says, sly and suggestive and utterly sure of himself, lovely and maddening and everything Erik has ever wanted, and then Erik is throwing the door open with an outstretched hand and slamming it shut behind him without looking, because all he can see is Charles—opening the tight curl of himself on the bed, making a space for Erik like it's instinctive, smiling sweet, tempting, unguarded.

Erik can't do without this. He knows it with the visceral clarity with which he knows all the most important things in his life—like that day on the beach, years ago, when he'd listened to Charles and stayed his hand, because to do otherwise would have meant stepping off a precipice from which he could never come back; or when Charles had kissed him for the first time shortly after, relief and love and uncertainty shaking him from the inside out so that Erik could feel it rushing through his mind, and Erik had held him with careful, unsteady hands, and kissed him back, because—he could have it. He could.

Erik can't do without this, and Charles has spent and will continue to spend every moment they have together convincing him that he won't have to.

"Come to bed, darling," Charles murmurs, eyes bright, glowing throughout with the kind of sheer contentedness Erik didn't know it was possible to feel, not without breaking open from it. His mind reaches out to Erik's, and it's like the taste of summer on Erik's tongue, and the feel of wind rushing past him as he runs, and the heady tang of metal in the back of his throat and the feel of it coursing through his veins, and the trembling that takes his limbs over when he buries himself in Charles's body, and the sound of Charles's voice when he says what should be the tritest of words, I love you, I have you, you're mine forever, but instead emerges like Charles coined the phrases fresh, solely for Erik; and if Erik is very, very lucky, he will get to spend the long and untroubled years of the rest of his life sinking himself into every depth of Charles he possibly can.

"Yes," Erik says simply, and goes to Charles.