Erik wakes up in the middle of the night, feeling uncomfortable, wet and cold. He knows it's not real, but it still takes a few seconds for him to be sure that, no, he didn't actually wet the bed this time, either.
He waves on the lamp on his bedside table, rolls out of bed, and steps over to the baby's crib. David's awake, too. He's not crying—he doesn't—but his little face is scrunched up in displeasure.
When Erik picks him up, he has a wet diaper, but he already had that part figured out.
"I've got you," he says, feeling a little ridiculous, the way he always does. Talking to someone who can't talk back still doesn't feel natural to him. Not the way it does for Charles, who never seems to stop talking to David whenever it's his turn to get up with him during the night. No matter how tired Charles is, how bleary his voice sounds underneath, he's always so unbelievably chipper about David's toesie woesies he could eat right up.
Erik does not gush. He does not croon. The phrase "toesie woesies" will never come out of his mouth. But as awkward as it still seems to talk to the baby, he knows he needs to, that David should hear words as well as thoughts as much as possible. He doesn't cry, and that's fine, but he's going to need to learn to talk when he gets older, ideally around the usual time.
Not that any of them actually know anything about how to raise a baby telepath, but the theory seems to make sense. Erik's first two languages were German and Yiddish, because that's what he heard at home. He can't remember learning either of them, not like all the languages he's taught himself since; they've always been there, older than any memory.
Besides all that, Charles swears that David likes hearing Erik talk nearly as much as he likes hearing him think; he finds it comforting, remembering the sound of Erik's voice from when he was still growing inside Erik's body. Erik's not convinced anything about him could truly be comforting to anyone, not his voice and definitely not his thoughts, but he still tries to keep up his part of the discussion, narrating his actions as he lays the baby down on the changing table and switches out the cold, wet diaper for a nice, dry one. David keeps up his half of their discussion by whimpering twice, grunting a little, then sighing. Erik knows the exact moment he's completely comfortable, because that's when he lets Erik feel comfortable, too.
"Are you hungry yet?" Erik asks, though his own stomach would be growling if David were ready to eat something. He'll probably wake Erik up again in an hour. They've tried tempting him with a bottle after changing him, but so far David's resisted any attempt to streamline things, preferring to get someone out of bed for every whim individually, and at least half an hour apart.
Erik picks David up again, one arm under his butt, his other hand supporting his head. He steps back over to the bed and lies back down beside Charles, laying the baby on his chest. There's really no reason to put him back in the crib if he's just going to get Erik up again in a little while. Anyway, Erik likes this closeness, feeling the solid warmth of the baby on his chest, the rise and fall of his breathing under Erik's hand. In all those months he was (ridiculously, impossibly) pregnant, all the fierce protectiveness he felt toward David even then, he never imagined how much more he would feel when he finally met him. Once he was here, real.
Erik never pictured himself as a father, not until he found out he (along with Charles) was going to be one. Despite everything, he doesn't feel like a father. He's not sure he's ever going to. They opened the school going on three years ago, and he still doesn't feel like a teacher. What comes so easily to Charles is a daily struggle for Erik, and he doesn't know if either skin is ever really going to fit him.
The students don't seem to know the difference, but David will. As he grows up, he's going to know everything. That bothers Erik on a regular basis: no child needs to see what's in Erik's head. It's practically criminal.
He said as much to Charles a few weeks ago. Charles told him he was being ridiculous. That neither he nor his mind is nearly as uniquely terrible as he thinks. That if David's going to grow up knowing the worst of every person he meets, well, he'll also know the best of them, and the best of Erik is magnificent. That the only thing that truly matters is that Erik loves him. That David could do a million times worse than to have a father like Erik in his life.
Erik hasn't said anything about it since. Not because he's convinced, but because of the way Charles hovered for the rest of the day, the metal of his chair always humming within a room or two of Erik's location. As if he thought Erik was poised to leave again. Well, he wasn't, and he's not going to. This is his family. Everything that matters to him is here in this house. After so many years of wandering, he's finally found a place he wants to stay, even if he still thinks Charles is out of his mind for wanting him around in turn.
After a while, Erik starts drifting off, just enough that when he wakes up feeling ravenous, like he hasn't eaten in a week, it takes a confused second for him to realize why that is. Then he gets up with David, and they head toward the kitchen to make him a bottle.