Work Text:
morning checklist
is your heart tied in with double knots? are the windows locked? is your hair almost combed? is the sun wide open? are you sturdy? are you whole? did you pour the warm inside? did you feed the fish in your belly? did you lick the envelopes? did you say “i love you”? did you mean it? are you ready? are you ready?
It’s the birds that wake Alec up. He can’t hear them from his bedroom in the Institute, but had never noticed their absence until he’d started spending the night at Magnus’. His bedroom at home, when he does sleep there, now feels quiet and empty, lacking in something more than simply birdsong. Of course, Alec doesn’t have to look very far to figure out what’s missing. The thought makes him smile, and wriggle gently down into the covers, which is when he registers the ache.
It’s not a feeling Alec would describe as pain, because it seems to be somewhat dulled and sleepy-soft, a warm and insistent reminder of what happened last night.
What happened last night. Alec feels his cheeks heat up with a flush as he remembers exactly why he aches like this. Almost as if the thought had summoned him, Magnus stirs from the other side of the bed and Alec cracks open an eyelid to watch his boyfriend grumble and groan his way into consciousness. Magnus stretches out like a cat beside Alec, chasing the sunlight that waterfalls across the sheets and lights up the tips of Alec’s ears, nose, cheekbones. He opens his cat-eyes, then, and meets Alec’s gaze, a small smear of glitter above his left eyebrow. Alec wants to kiss it away until his lips are glitter-stained.
“Hey,” Magnus says softly, burrowing into Alec’s side and placing chaste kisses against his carotid artery. Alec swallows. All his life he’s been trained to defend, both himself and others. It’s the kind of training that meant he could never let his guard down, never relax, because you never know what might be around the corner. As Magnus traces his lips down the vein towards Alec’s collarbone, jutting out sharp and ugly from his pale skin, Alec thinks that he has never been so vulnerable as he is in this moment, and that he has never felt so safe in his life as he does now. The thought makes him smile, which turns even bigger when Magnus’ kisses trail up to his lips and leave him breathless. “How’re you feeling?” Magnus whispers into the hair’s breadth of space between them, his fingers tracing long and delicate lines up and down Alec’s ribcage.
“A little sore,” Alec says truthfully, “but I’ll be fine.” He reaches up to snatch a soft morning kiss from Magnus. “And you? Are you okay?”
Magnus breathes out a laugh, but eases it into a smile when he catches Alec’s frown. He smooths out the furrows in Alec’s forehead with a pink nail-polished thumb and kisses the skin between his eyebrows. “Alexander, I can say with absolute certainty that this is the most wonderful morning of my life.” When he grins, his cheek dimples, and Alec wants to kiss it smooth again. “But thank you for the concern, it really is quite sweet of you.”
“Well if you’re gonna be patronising about it,” Alec faux grumbles, rolling his eyes, and moves to get out of bed. Two perfectly manicured hands clutching at his shoulders prevent him from doing so.
“Stay a while longer, would you?” Magnus whispers, his lips pressed and moving against Alec’s chest, over his heart. Ba-dum, he feels. Ba-dum. “Not all of us are morning people.”
Alec rolls his eyes again but obliges, settling back against the pillows and closing his eyes. Magnus smells like coconut and mint and something else, something warm and comforting and encompassing, almost like the scent is wrapping Alec up in its arms just as he’s holding Magnus in his. Alec’s thighs are aching and he’s sticky from lying beneath a blanket in the summer sun, but he still wouldn’t trade this feeling, this moment, this gentle weight of a High Warlock in his arms, for all the riches of the world.
Outside, the birds sing, and it sounds like coming home.