I never thought I'd write jeanmarco in my life haha but here it is, just a drabble, though.
Inspired by the Brazilian poem, Ligue os Pontos (literally, Connect the Dots) by Gregorio Duvivier. At first I was going to use it for another ship, but I realized it would fit JeanMarco perfectly.
Well, I hope it's enjoyable uvu Please, tell me what you think!
connect the dots
In the nights when you fall asleep first, when the weather is warm enough so you only pull the thin bed sheets up to your hips and your cheek is pressed against the pillow with your back facing the ceiling, I watch from the side as the moonlight paints your tan skin a lighter color, highlights the scars on your arms and makes your form glow in our bed.
In the nights when you fall asleep first, I watch in silence as your ribcage expands and contracts, set in a slow and peaceful rhythm, and your fingers loosely curl around the cotton fabric as a smile spreads across your face. Your sleep always greets you with pleasant dreams as opposed to mine that gifts me with visions of you lying bloodied on the ground with half of your face missing, and leaves me breathless with the impression that I have seen that before, in some other life perhaps.
In the nights when your back is bare for the world to see and I lie wide awake with beads of sweat trickling down my face, it is the tiny dark dots on your skin that seem to relax me and soothe away the frown that I wear. My shaking hand finds the drawer of my nightstand in the dark and pulls it open, retrieves a black marker from inside and I support my weight on my left elbow so I can better look at the canvas that is your broad back.
The pen cap gets lost among the sheets but the tip of the marker finds your skin and I connect the dots, your freckles, one by one, with eyes as wide as a child's. My trembling limb leaves an uneven trail of dark ink on your skin, but I ignore it – I was never able to draw a straight line – and as dots are connected I bite my bottom lip, and wonder if the final image will be one of a mythological being, posing heroic and proud on your back. Will it be one of the deities from the Olympus – Apollo, god of light, Poseidon, god of the seas – or a hero – Hercules, Achilles, Perseus – perhaps?
If not a mystical creature, then maybe I will see the map leading me to a treasure, hidden in the bottom of the deepest sea, a chest filled with golden coins and shimmering jewels, countless pearl necklaces that I will wound around your neck as we laugh and rings that I will slip on your fingers, and kiss your knuckles and your face, and we will smile because we found a treasure together, not because we are so rich.
Another dot is connected and I start to think that all your freckles would form one of the brightest and prettiest constellations, had the tiny dots the chance to transform into stars and shoot up towards the sky, get lost in its endless darkness and guide the souls to the doors of heaven, until the day they would grow faint and weak, and dissipate into cosmic dust.
But all the dark lines I traced across your back do not form any of these, they only form a distorted polygon that will never point me to the right direction where that treasure chest is hidden, nor does it outline the figure of a divine hero that overcame many labors. You stir, the tip of the marker still touching your skin leaves for once an even line as you turn to lie on your side and face me, and as I hold my breath and meet your sleepy brown gaze I realize something amidst all the images from my nightmares that flash in my mind.
All these lines simply tell me that you are here, and that is all I ever needed.