In the mornings it was a give and take as to who woke up first, though they both blinked their eyes open at the first light of day. With heavy sighs between deep breaths they nudged one another, prodding leathery arms and nudging sheet-wrapped legs for the other to move and let them out of bed.
Sometimes, no matter the fact that Daryl fell asleep with his back pressed firmly against Jesus, Jesus woke up with his legs tangled with his partner's and Daryl's arms curled around his chest. Jesus prodded the other awake with languid kisses from the tattoo that bore his father's name on top of his breast to just underneath his jaw. He sometimes even poked his chin into the soft skin just above Daryl's collarbone with a grin as Daryl brought a hand up to swat at him.
Other times Daryl woke up first to find Jesus asleep on his stomach with his cheek pressed against the mattress, his pillow haphazardly pushed to the corner of the bed. The blanket they slept under gathered at his hips as the summer heat made anything more than a sheet useless. Daryl watched his partner's freckled body rise and fall with his eyes glazed and lingering on the tanned skin of his back. On these mornings, Daryl woke Jesus up with kisses peppered along his spine, his calloused fingers rubbing circles in Jesus's waist.
There were even rarer mornings when they woke up in each other's arms and the first thing they felt was their partner's breath on their face or the gentle rise and fall under rough hands resting on weathered chests. These were the mornings where they woke up simultaneously, Jesus blinking his turquoise eyes and seeing Daryl's blue through a sheet of dark, sweat damp hair, meeting Daryl's grimace with a lazy grin of his own.
The peaceful moments never lasted. There was never a dull day in either Alexandria or the Hilltop, and sooner the two would be forced to rouse themselves out of their room and into their daily lives as scavengers and recruiters. But before they left the sanctity of their room, before they so much as opened their door to release themselves back into the chaotic world of the death, they pulled each other into their arms and buried their faces into the other's neck. With a final squeeze they parted, but with Daryl's hand on the doorknob Jesus would place his hand on the back of Daryl's neck to pull him down and press his lips to his forehead.
"I love you," Jesus whispered, every morning.
Daryl pulled back and butted their foreheads together softly. He eased his grip on the doorknob and squeezed Jesus in his arms, lifting the other man's heels from the ground. With a chaste kiss to his lips, he tightened his grip on the doorknob. Turning the handle, he answered, "Love you, too."
a/n: Finals are finally over! And I passed all of them and the classes as a whole with grades high enough that I don't have to repeat any and my scholarship is intact lmao. Now I have the whole summer to actually finish some of my (many) WIPs for this fandom and put more time into building my twd+fanfiction blog, thatsmygvn. This was born out of my undying need for something fluffy and also my own attempt of writing something not-angsty for this ship. I'd like to think it was a success?
