There's an old legend that says every freckle represents someone who loved you in a past lifetime.

"Stop moving."

With a cheeky, sidelong glance at Jean, Marco shifted his foot beneath him, his eyes squinting slightly in amusement. Grumbling, Jean pulled the book from his lover's hands and tossed it, rather haphazardly, onto the coffee table, knocking over an unlit candle. Marco frowned, but his prepared protest is dislodged from the front of his mind when Jean crawled on top of him, his knees pinning his arms to his sides.

"Jean, what are you doing?" he asked patiently, if somewhat exasperatedly. Jean leaned in close, his tongue caught between his lips, the tip peeking out from between them.

"..your freckles.." he mumbled. His amber eyes were focused intently on Marco's cheeks. The brunette sighed.

"I thought we'd agreed that I had sixty-one freckles on my face?" he reminded Jean. The younger man nodded.

"Yeah, yeah. But this isn't about how many there are-"

"Trevor just died."

"I'll reload my save. It's about the shape of them," he breathed, clearly enraptured. Marco rolled his eyes and wriggled his arms free, settling his hands comfortably on the sides of Jean's thighs, scratching lightly at the porous, polyester fabric of his old basketball shorts with the faded college logo. "They're all the same shape."

"Freckle shaped?" Marco mused. Jean's gaze flickered up to Marco's brown eyes, and he jutted his jaw out in a pout.

"Don't be shitty," he huffed. He brought a finger up and traced it over Marco's cheek, smirking as the other man shut his eyes and squeezed his legs. "They're all little oblong dots, and they're like, I don't know, sharp looking at the end. Like a sword or somethin'." Marco chuckled.

"They're just freckles, babe. You don't need to hyperanalyze them." Jean looked indignant.

"They're not just freckles!" he insisted. "Who has dreams about ordinary freckles?"

"Weirdos like you?" Jean reached down and twisted his nipple through his shirt, making him squirm.

"Shaddup! I'm tellin' you, yours are, I don't know, special or something," he said. "Like the other night: I dreamed that we were in like, twelfth century Spain or some shit, and you didn't have a single freckle." He poked Marco's face for emphasis. "And two weeks ago, I dreamed that we were artists or something in renaissance France and you had freckles then, all shaped like this, but you didn't have this many." Marco was smiling up at him. His thumbs had slipped under the elastic waistband of Jean's shorts and were rubbing small circles on his hips. "Don't even-"

"No, it's not that. Do you remember that old wive's tale Sasha's sister told us? The one about how freckles were connected to your past life?" Jean rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, but Hanji is also bonkers, you really have to be careful with what you listen to with her," he warned.

"Are you going to let me be sweet and romantic?" Marco asked. Jean clamped his mouth shut and pursed his lips. "Anyway, if every freckle means someone loved you, and if all of mine are shaped the same," he began. With some effort, he slid back from under Jean so that he was sitting up, his back resting against the armrest of their couch. He pulled Jean down into his lap and kissed his chin. "Then maybe it's always been you who's loved me, Jean."

Jean hummed, a grin spreading across his face. He rested his forearms on Marco's shoulders, playing with the short hairs at the nape of his neck.

"So you think we find each other, over and over again?" he asked. Marco wrapped his arms around Jean's back and pulled him closer; Jean fell against him, stretching his legs out to rest between his lover's.

"I can't imagine you being with anyone else, in any lifetime, in any version of the world," Marco murmured. Jean wrapped his arms around Marco, burying his face into his chest, grinning widely. Marco held him tighter. Growing up, he hated his freckles, and had always been teased about them. When he met Jean, with his bizarre, two-toned hair and his odd, adorable obsession with the damn things, he slowly grew to accept them. As he thought about this old legend and about Jean's dreams, he decided that he wouldn't mind if he were one day born into a world where he was covered from head to toe in oblong, sharp freckles.