Marco Bodt likes mornings.
No. He really loves them. He loves them so much that he'll always let loose a silly little smile on his lips at the thought of why mornings make him so happy while he ignores the usual pestering of his friends to let them in on why he loves his mornings.
With a sly curve of his lips, Marco tells them that the pleasures that make his morning so great are a secret. He enlightens whoever is curious that his morning pleasures are pure bliss and happiness ever to be put on the face of the earth.
It's not that he wants to keep it a secret. It's just that he wants to keep it only to himself because the pleasure he experiences during his mornings are addicting, and he doesn't know what to think would happen if any other finds his pleasures to be addicting as well.
Marco Bodt loves his mornings.
However, with all things considered, he guesses that this would be a little bit of an understatement because it's not really the morning that he loves. Rather, he feels right to admit that it's more so his early mornings that he loves the most, and it starts at the ripe hour of five o'clock in the morning.
At five o'clock in the morning, Marco is still in bed. At this time, his mind is just beginning to stir, but not completely; the dream or nightmare in his head is still going on but only fleetingly. It's at this time that his body gets a little less numb. He can begin to feel the cold air that rushes from the air vent, making his body shiver in the slightest even though he's buried himself in a cocoon of his red wool blanket that smells of strawberries.
Eventually, though, it's the warm sunlight which drifts into the room through the blinds of his window that heats his body up against the cold temperature, and at this point, he finds himself taking in the sweet scent of strawberry with a deep inhale. He's still tired; his mind is just about ringing with the low buzz of reality while the occasional honks of cars blaring from the streets make him aware of the outside world.
"Ngh," he'll grumble to himself, swatting his hands around.
As he does so, one of his hands eventually land themselves on another body—on someone warm and bare-chested—who smells like strawberries because this person is where the scent even comes from and is the one responsible for making his stomach growl. His hand would move up across naked skin, tracing this person's back with a light graze of his fingers and feeling the familiarity of this person's skin under his fingertips.
Marco loves it when his hand glides across the scratchy surface of this person's undercut before finally coming home to a tuft of hair that feels so soft because it's been washed with convenience store strawberry-scented shampoo about a night or two earlier.
After a short ruffle, though, he ends up falling back to sleep because he aimlessly tells himself in his mind, 'Just five more minutes,' since he knows he doesn't have to actually get up out of bed until six o'clock.
Jean knows this too and Marco knows that Jean knows because it is a little bit after he falls back to sleep again that Marco feels the other side of the bed dip suddenly after a few minutes. His eyes are closed, but it's when Jean finally decides to get up at Marco knows it's about half-past five o'clock in the morning.
Jean always gets up at that time and that's when Marco's early morning happiness really gets started.
Through flittering eyelids, Marco can see Jean stand up on the side of the bed, stretching. Jean's backside is facing him, and even though his eyesight is dazed, Marco doesn't miss out on the sight of Jean's broad, naked back before him. The best thing then is when his eyes blink fleetingly, still getting used to the light of the room, and soon eventually land on a nice, supple-looking butt covered by boxer briefs.
If he's really lucky, Jean would be wearing what Marco calls the 'Tight Collection,' a bunch of Jean's boxer briefs which squeeze around Jean's firm butt so nicely and tightly that always makes Marco want to rip them off.
The tight boxer briefs are Marco's absolute favorite, but they're also a danger. His job requires him to get to work at eight o'clock sharp, and it never did him any good whenever he gets morning wood just because Jean doesn't understand that it's dangerous to wear and flaunt such tight, squeezing underwear.
Nevertheless, Marco loves his early morning underwear show — no matter which collection Jean happens to be wearing.
His next favorite part happens while Jean thinks he's still sleeping. After stretching around and pulling on a pair of loose jeans, Jean would reach over and ruffle his hair to wake him. If he's really lucky with this too, Jean would sometimes lean over and place a kiss on the bridge of his nose.
He'll hear a grunt from the other then because Jean knows that he's actually awake even when he's pretending that he's still asleep.
Marco knows that Jean knows, but Marco likes getting a kiss on his nose. It's when Jean looks a little embarrassed and Marco would definitely write a book about why this is the cutest thing ever if he could.
The word 'very' is used a lot and it's pretty much just filled with sentences that mean the exact same thing—that Jean is absolutely cute when it comes to secret morning kisses—but Marco is getting to that book. It's just too bad that he'll be the only reader since he doesn't want to make it a number one hit with anyone else.
After Jean would leave, Marco would get a quick whiff of the strawberry-scent coming from Jean's hair and he'd be reminded of his hunger once again. Yet, it's not enough to get him out of bed. He's still tired, though, and even though he'd get a little guilty, he leaves Jean alone in cooking breakfast.
It's always a shame for Marco.
Being so sleepy and tired makes him miss out on the sight of Jean in an apron. It's such a terrible shame.
However, Marco's mind is like a roller coaster at this point. It's always blinking on and off, being awake and not one after the other. His mind is just drifting is some unknown state of consciousness when the scent of breakfast reaches his nose.
The sounds of food being cooked and plates clattering barely reach him when he hears the low hum of Jean's voice, Jean's singing.
Can there be any better morning for him? Marco sometimes muses.
Marco never knows. In the end, there are questions that go unanswered all the time because he'll suddenly smell the delicious scent of freshly-brewed coffee and fried bacon, of the sweet smell of pancakes and cooked eggs with a side of cut tomatoes — his favorite.
And with Jean singing as he sleeps, Marco can't help but think that even his best dream can't be any better than this bit of reality that he gets to experience in his early mornings.
"Marco." Soon, Jean would have entered back into the room—into their bedroom.
This time, Jean's hand would be running through his hair, the scent of strawberries would return, and the low dip of the bed again would make him feel the smile on his lips. Even now, even after all the times he's been experiencing these mornings, Marco can never figure out whether or not that smile has been there the entire time. He only feels it then—when Jean is back by his side, slipping into bed wearing loose jeans that fall a little beneath a boxer-briefed butt.
At this point, it's probably a bit past six o'clock by now. When this happens, he's usually late to work.
But he knows and Jean knows that he has never ever been to work on time.
It's never going to happen either because once Jean slips back into bed again, they lie there for another fifteen minutes with Jean buried under a hug of his arms.
When Marco wraps his arms around Jean then, he can only feel a sense of peace and security run through him. They both don't get out of bed until later, Marco knows he's going to be late, and breakfast is going to cold.
However, Marco really loves his early mornings more than anything.
And he'll be damned if he lets anyone else know why he loves them in the first place.