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Jade wakes up, as she usually does, to sunlight pouring in through the window as it starts to peek over the horizon. Her circadian rhythm works like clockwork (ironic, perhaps, given who she’s married to), and sunrise is the time she wakes up every morning to water her plants, brew herself a cup of coffee, and, usually, go for a run (which Dave always refers to as Jade taking herself out for walkies).
As she squirms out of bed, she bends down to press a kiss against one of Dave’s temples. There was a time where he was a light enough sleeper that just that little kiss would have been enough to wake him up, but now, he just mumbles something that isn’t quite coherent English and buries his face in his pillow (in lieu of her hair, which he normally has his face buried in basically as long as she’s in bed with him).
She pauses to draw the curtains in their bedroom shut. She doesn’t want the light to disturb him as the sun crawls higher in the sky, and she needs to change into her running clothes anyway. As much as she’s fine with the possibility of their neighbors seeing her naked, she’s been told that normal people are a bit more restrained when it comes to nudity, and Jade has a weakness for seeming normal, even if she never can be.
Karkat is sitting on the couch when Jade gets to the bottom of the stairs, hunched over his laptop, and Jade offers him a smile. “Good morning Karkat! Staying up late again?” He grunts rather than answering in words, but they’ve had enough of these conversations that she knows that means yes. “Terezi already asleep?” He grunts again, and Jade slips past him into the kitchen to slot two pieces of bread into the toaster. “Well you’d better not be out here when I get back from my run!” she scolds.
“Fuck off,” Karkat grumbles, and Jade giggles a little bit. She slathers her toast with peanut butter (an allergy she thankfully does not share with John and Jake) and grabs a banana before she plops onto the couch next to him. This isn’t her real breakfast—she waits until she can eat that with Dave—but she knows her run won’t go very well for her if she doesn’t eat anything first. As she peels her banana, Karkat’s nose wrinkles; Jade doesn’t know what sorts of fruit they must have had on Alternia, but she knows the trolls all seem to find all fruit on Earth C equally unpalatable (except Terezi, but Jade knows she’s not normal, either.)
“Anything interesting happen last night?” Jade murmurs around a mouthful of toast.
The trolls are not on an entirely opposite schedule to humans—for one thing, Earth C’s sun is nowhere near as bright or hot or dangerous as Alternia’s evidently was, and for another thing, as much as they might protest the idea, Jade knows the trolls would miss them if they never got to hang out again.
After a moment, Karkat shrugs and answers, “Not much. Trolls being trolls. Terezi gleefully investigating crimes like a fucking maniac.”
Jade laughs a little bit, even as she says, “Oh nooo! I hope it wasn’t anything too bad!”
Karkat doesn’t say anything, which could mean it was so bad he thinks she shouldn’t even know about it or could just mean he got bored when Terezi was telling him about it.
Jade finishes her toast and shoots Karkat one last disapproving look before she goes to put on her running shoes.
The sun is higher in the sky by the time Jade actually gets outside, painting it a bright blue rather than sleepy grey. It’s nowhere near its peak yet, but Jade can feel gentle warmth against her skin as she runs through the park, the soft chirping of birds and buzzing of insects filling her ears.
There’s sort of a double-edged sword in ruling over the troll kingdom when it comes to mornings like this. On the one hand, the quiet is sort of peaceful, as sleepy trolls have started to shut themselves inside their hives for the day. Jade can close her eyes and take a deep breath and keep on running, and in a way that she can’t completely explain, it feels like she’s everything. When she’s feeling especially sentimental, she hopes this is what Bec used to feel like, back on the island. …And on the other hand, sometimes the oppressive silence puts her right back on the island, and she has to stop and catch her breath as she fights to keep herself from spiraling and panicking about being alone.
When the muscles in her legs start to burn—in the way that feels good and rewarding rather than utterly miserable—she turns around to start running back to the house. She’s pleasantly surprised when she gets there to find that Karkat actually has dragged himself back to bed—or at least, he’s dragged himself out of the living room. She’s pleasantly unsurprised to find that Dave is still asleep, with his arms wrapped around her abandoned pillow and his nose and mouth buried against it.
She leans down to press a kiss against his cheek, and then she trails down to his jaw and then his ear. “Dave… Time to wake up…” He makes a vague groaning noise, which she thinks might be a nooo, and she can’t help but smile. “C’mon. I’ll make breakfast. How does bacon and eggs sound?”
He groans again, but at least rolls away from her side of the bed this time and opens his eyes. He always looks so handsome like this—rugged, she thinks Rose said one time when they were talking about it. His hair is all messy and he’s got a trace of morning stubble and she can see his pretty red eyes and just how tired they look.
“Good morning, sunshine!” she teases eventually.
He snorts, rubbing at one of his eyes and leaning up onto the elbow of his free arm. “Mornin’. Didju have a good run?” he mumbles. First thing in the morning, Jade can hear the little hint of a southern drawl that John and Rose poke fun at him for (which she really can’t hear most of the time), and it makes her smile wider.
“It was okay! It was quiet out today,” she answers, doing her best to keep her voice as chipper as possible.
“Too quiet?” Dave asks, seeing right through her anyway.
“A little,” she admits. “I think I need to get a running buddy.”
“Mh. You want me to run with you?”
“No way!” she insists, sounding as though he’s just suggested selling their firstborn child. “I like our little morning routine. It’s nice to have a little time to myself, and I like it when you sleep in. You look so peaceful!”
He chuckles a little. This isn’t the first time she’s told him this, but he always acts a little embarrassed when she talks about how he looks in his sleep, cheeks turning pink. “Who else you got in mind?”
“I don’t have anyone in mind!” She pauses for a moment to consider, though. “Do you think I could convince Karkat or Terezi to go with me?”
“I wouldn’t ask Terezi,” he answers quickly, and Jade raises her eyebrows. “She likes to bug people on purpose. Putting that energy into running seems like a disastrous idea.”
She giggles a little bit. “Who do you have in mind then?”
Dave pauses, and Jade can’t tell whether he’s just tired or he’s actually thinking about it. Either way, he eventually answers, “Dirk.”
Jade’s eyebrows go up. “Dirk?”
“Dirk,” he repeats with a single nod. “He’ll be able to keep up with you, and I don’t think he’ll be an asshole about it. He’ll take it seriously and he won’t get all giggly, but he won’t make it totally unfun.”
Jade thinks about pointing out that Dirk is an alternate universe version (splinter, she thinks he usually calls it) of the man who “trained” Dave, but there’s no good reason to bring up his Bro and ruin a perfectly nice morning.
“I’ll talk to him about it!” she says instead; although she privately thinks running with Dirk probably wouldn’t be very fun, she’s willing to be wrong!
Dave finally sits up all the way, and he leans forward to kiss her. She smiles into the kiss, bringing a hand up to stroke her fingers against his jaw. After a long minute, he pulls away just enough to murmur, “Breakfast?”
Jade grins, perking up a little. “Breakfast! You wanna come to the kitchen with me, or do you want breakfast in bed?”
“Ain’t no good reason for breakfast in bed.”
“I can’t bring you breakfast in bed just because I want to?”
“Nope. ‘S in the rules. You didn’t read ‘em?”
“Show me these rules!” Dave reaches out to wrap his arms around her as he pulls her closer, and she yelps with surprise before giggling. “Excuse you! We just agreed to get out of bed for breakfast!”
“I didn’t agree to shit.”
“Daaave!” she whines, although she’s still barely suppressing her giggles.
Dave groans and unhands her. “This is so unfair. If I promise to make myself a bowl of cereal, can I stay in bed a little longer?”
“Get up!” He finally gets up. Jade huffs and puts her hands on her hips. “Jeez, what is going on with you? You’re always whiny, but you’re not usually this whiny!”
“Woah, hey, what? I’m not whiny. I’m super cool and stoic. And it’s exhausting being this cool and stoic all the time, so I’ve gotta sleep in.”
“Oh, well if you’ve gotta…” She smiles and takes a step closer to him, pressing her hands flat against his stomach where she can feel his muscles through the thin fabric of his pajama shirt. She has to tilt her head far back to look up at him when she’s pressed this close, but he looks back down at her and he’s not wearing his shades, which means she gets an up close and personal look at his eyes. “Is everything okay?”
Dave slides his hands down to her hips, rubbing his thumbs against her hip bones. “Yeah, everything’s good. Just bein’ an asshole. Sorry.”
Jade purses her lips and debates arguing with him, but she decides to leave it for now. She doesn’t think this is really super serious self-deprecation. Still, she leans up to kiss him one more time before she mumbles, practically into his mouth, “Bacon and eggs?”
“You’re the perfect woman,” he mumbles back, and she grins.
Bacon and eggs is not an especially complicated breakfast, and Jade is able to get it onto a plate on the table alongside a cup of coffee for him within 20 minutes. Dave makes no secret of his appreciation. “Holy shit I love you.”
She can’t help but laugh a little bit. “You say that every time I make you food!”
“It’s true every time you make me food. It’s true when you don’t make me food, too. It’s true all the time, actually. Trust me; I’m the Time guy.”
Jade beams. “I love you too. All the time!”
“Phew. Sick. I mean I’d have the rest of forever to win you back, but I’d still miss you in the meantime.”
She laughs again and goes to get her own plate and cup of coffee. “I’m not going anywhere!”
“Good. ‘Cause you promised to stay with me forever. And it was in pen, so it’s happening.” She rolls her eyes, but Dave is grinning at her, which makes it hard not to grin back. Impossible, really. She grins back, but she quickly hides it against the rim of her coffee mug as she takes a.
“So what’s on the agenda for today?” Dave asks between bites of scrambled eggs.
“Not much! I’m gonna do some gardening. Aaand maybe we could watch a movie or something?”
“Movie sounds nice. But I dunno. Feels like we should go do something outside. When was the last time we went on an outside date?” Jade thinks. They’ve been to a couple of outdoor parties in the last couple of months, but this is totally different. They would be—“Stop.” She blinks, staring up at him with a sort of startled look. “Stop thinking about it. I love you. I don’t care if we go to the zoo or something. I’ll love you every day.”
Jade smiles softly, moving to press a kiss against his cheek. “I love you more than anything,” she mumbles. Then, after a moment, she adds, “We can go to the zoo. After my gardening.”
“Can I come with you?”
“Are you gonna stare at my butt the whole time?”
“Yeah. Duh,” he answers immediately, without any hint of remorse. “I’ll be very brave and keep my hands to myself, though.”
She snorts. “If you promise to keep your hands to yourself, you can come with me.”
Dave pumps his fist in the air and Jade huffs another laugh.
When they’re done eating breakfast, Dave swoops in to pick up the dishes before Jade can even think about washing them—which he does most of the time, except for the rare occasions where he convinces her to leave the dishes for Karkat and Terezi to bicker over when they wake up. While he takes care of that, Jade changes once again, this time into her gardening clothes.
It’s far past noon before she’s done, and Jade swipes at some sweat beading up on her brow (smudging dirt onto her forehead) and beams brightly up at Dave. “I think I’d call that a successful morning!”
Dave laughs, just a little, and leans down to kiss her forehead (right by the dirt smudge). “I love you. I think any morning with you is a success.”