#davejade week

“Hmmm… Interesting… Very interesting…”

Dave stares at Jade as she jots something down in a notebook, raising his eyebrows. “What are you doing?”

Jade looks up at him with wide eyes as if she wasn’t obviously fishing for him to notice that she was doing something, and she quickly flips the notebook closed. “Nothing!”

“Jade, you have to know that there’s no reality where yelling nothing like that while scrambling to flip a notebook closed like it’s an embarrassing diary entry you don’t want anybody to read over your shoulder comes across as inconspicuous. What, are you writing steamy fanfiction about me over there or something? Trying to take note of how hot my shoulders look while I’m holding a plate or something?”

Jade snorts with laughter, bringing a hand up over her mouth like she can physically hold in the giggles. It’s Dave’s favorite kind of Jade laugh, and he struggles to hold back on a smile so he can keep looking at her sort of sternly. “I’m not writing steamy fanfiction! I would just show you if that was what I was doing.”

“Obviously,” he says, unable to stop himself from huffing a laugh. “So what are you doing?”

“I can’t tell you!”

Again, he raises his eyebrows. “Why not?”

“I can’t tell you that either!”

At this point, Dave sets his Hot Pocket down on the kitchen counter to cross his arms over his chest. “Okay, well I’m not going to keep doing whatever it is you’re trying to get me to do over there until you tell me what’s happening.”

“Daaave,” Jade whines, which is, admittedly, almost enough to get him to cave on its own. “Don’t worry about it!”

“We have gotta work on your misdirection skills. This is just sad.” He shakes his head solemnly, and Jade laughs again.

“Just eat your lunch!”

“Nope. This is a matter of principle now.”

“Pleeease?” Shit. She looks up at him with those puppy dog eyes that always feel like they’re stabbing a knife straight into his chest, and Dave brings a hand up to cover his own eyes so he doesn’t have to keep looking at them.

“No way. Not falling for it this time, Harley. You can put those puppies away.”

He waits a few seconds and then peeks between his fingers, only to see that Jade has picked up her notebook and started writing again. “Wh—Hey!” He reaches forward to try to grab the notebook out of her hands, and Jade laughs and stumbles back a step just out of his reach. “Jade, come on,” he huffs, stepping after her.

“This is top secret!” she laughs.

“You have to know that only makes it more interesting!” he says back, barely holding back his own laughter.

“I know!” she agrees, grinning at him as she slips out of his reach again. “You’ll just have to wait until I publish my paper about this!”

“What paper? Your paper about what?” He manages to use his socked feet to his advantage to slide and block the kitchen archway just before Jade slips out of it to start sprinting through the apartment. At least, he would be blocking it if Jade wasn’t so damn small. As it stands, she tucks and rolls between his legs, only barely managing not to trip him before she hops onto her feet and starts running.

Dave rolls his eyes as he gives chase. This is absurd. This has got to be one of the silliest things they’ve ever done.

He loves it, obviously.

Even though she’s moving on tiny legs, Jade is a lot faster than he is, and she had a head start. By the time he’s skidding to a halt in the living room, she’s nowhere to be seen.

“Jade, are you hiding?” She is hiding, though not very well, since she starts giggling from behind the couch at the question. Dave approaches the couch with slow, near-silent footsteps as he calls, “Damn, Jade. You really got away from me this time. I guess I’ll just give up and go eat my Hot Pocket now.” More giggling. By the time he reaches the couch, he can’t stifle his grin anymore, and he all-but jumps in front of her. “Gotcha!”

Jade shrieks, although it gives way to more laughter a second later. She makes a feeble attempt to crawl back away from him, kicking at the floor with her feet, but he’s got more leverage, and a second later, he situates himself above her, holding himself up with a hand at either side of her head. His chest is heaving with the effort of chasing her around the house, but it’s hard to feel mad about it when he can see the stars in her eyes. He leans down to kiss her, and she hums against his mouth as she kisses him back, bringing her hands up to cup his jaw.

Fast as a shot, Dave picks a hand up off the floor, snatches the notebook up from where she’d been clutching it to her chest, and rolls away from her. “Nooo! No fair!” Jade yells, trying to grab it and yank it away from him.

“What? Totally fair. Way more fair than playing chase around the whole house.”

“That was fun and you know it!”

“Irrelevant,” he dismisses, using one hand to brace her shoulder and hold her away from him while the other hand finally cracks open this mystery notebook.

There are a few doodles, which is inevitable for any Jade notebook. She’s got frogs and lilypads all over the margins, and hearts framing the words—words like, “subject has had four hot pockets today but no tummy ache yet………” Dave stares. Another note says, “subject is only wearing one sock… not sure where the other sock went…”

“Jade, what is this?” he says, only managing to keep himself from laughing because he has genuinely no idea what the hell she’s trying to do here.

“It’s an experiment!”

“An experiment,” he repeats, tone flat.

“Yes!” She snatches the notebook out of his hands, but, evidently deciding the jig is up, she settles in his lap, leaning back until she can lean her head on his shoulder and folding her legs up so she can hold the notebook open in it. Dave gives in to the urge to lean down and drop a kiss on her shoulder, where he props his chin a second later.

Dave takes a second to get a good look at the rest of the notes. The whole thing seems to just be describing Dave’s regular day-to-day routine, with occasional silly commentary from Jade, like wondering how he can sit at his desk mixing for two straight hours without getting screen fatigue. “Skill issue,” he teases affectionately.

Jade snorts. “If that’s a skill, I’m okay with not learning it!”

He shrugs, wrapping his arms around her waist to tug her a little closer. “This still isn’t clearing all that much up for me, babe. What’s the experiment here?”

“Weeell, I guess it was more of a case study,” she offers, and this time Dave snorts.

“Were you just following me around all day taking notes?”

“I’m honestly surprised you didn’t notice sooner!”

“Well, excuse me. I guess next time I’ll assume my girlfriend is performing unethical experiments on me.”

“Whaaat! This is totally ethical!”

“It’s definitely not.”

“In what way is this not an ethical experiment, Dave?”

“Pretty sure you’re supposed to get informed consent from the subject in a case study.”

Jade opens her mouth as if to argue before she seems to process what he actually said, and then she snaps it shut and stares up at him sheepishly. He snorts and tilts his head to brush a kiss against her cheek. “Well you don’t have to look so sad about it. ‘S fine,” he murmurs. When she still doesn’t perk up, he presses another kiss against her cheek, and then he starts a whole barrage of kisses until she finally starts giggling and shoves his face away with her hand.

He returns his chin to her shoulder and hums, raising an eyebrow. “You wanna tell me why you decided to start running experiments?”

“I was bored!”

He scoffs a laugh. “You’re like one of those dogs that’s way too smart for its own good.”

Jade rolls her eyes fondly and flips the notebook closed, turning around to face him. “Next time I should do a real experiment. With variables and everything.”

“What kind of variables are we talking here?”

“I can’t tell you! It would compromise the integrity of the—”

Dave cuts her off with a kiss, and she hums and melts into it.

When he pulls away, he leans in close to her ear to mumble, voice low, “Well, you know that I’m down for some experimentation.”

She snorts, before biting her lip and scolding, “Dave!”

“What can I say? When you get with a scientist, you get used to the idea of experiments. Maybe you even get into them a little.”

“Daaave,” she scolds again, although it’s not very effective, given the giggles that it’s couched in. It’s especially ineffective when she leans up to kiss him, and he wraps his arms around her, tugging her a little closer. She pulls away before they get very far, just enough to murmur, “Well we’re going to have to take notes.”