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It's early morning and the apricot fingers of dawn have yet to send their tendrils across the sky and I'm lying here awake for some reason, it could be for any number of reasons but I don't spend time working out why.
Instead, I transfer my gaze onto the man in my arms, his skin is soft to the touch and its golden tones look so beautiful a contrast to my pale skin. The scent of his expensive shampoo and body wash lingers in my nostrils as I place a kiss on his touseled hair. I love how he smells and how no matter what cologne, clean skin or the sweat that comes from exerting his body.
His head rests on my chest his left hand slightly curled up above my right collarbone his body tucked into my side as his thigh presses across my abdomen its weight a comfort, grounding me in ways I find hard to explain. He always needs body contact to sleep deeply, even in the hot weather he snuggles into my chest, along my back or in my arms.
I remember the cold nights that I spent alone in this room and how grief filled me so fully that even the basics of life were a chore. Only by falling back to patterns ingrained into me at boot camp and by trying not to think could I get up, shower, shave and dress most days. Eventually, I made up a bedroll on the couch to remove myself from my marital bed as her scent evaporated from the linens and the empty space engulfed me.
In between then and now were three other marriages and numerous short-term relationships, attempts at recapturing happiness. That quickly turned into my resenting them on the realisation that those women were nothing like Shannon, then why should they have been?
I wish I had taken the offers of therapy, even spoken to the chaplain instead I blocked it out with the veneer of happiness that dating and courting had brought me. A layer so thin and brittle that it could no way endure life let alone the trials and tribulations of living together.
I lost myself, Gibbs the family man became Gibbs's second B for bastard and so far away from the man I was, the man I wanted to be. I regret the way I hurt those women, I tried to mask my grief and they paid, emotionally
The other relationships were just escapes, a hoped temporary release from loneliness and sexual frustration. I found company in bars, or through those occasional random meetings in life. I was okay with more varied lovers and never felt constrained to a particular gender. But, even with life around me, in general, becoming more liberal and open, some bastions of tradition and rules remain in many fields. The military and law enforcement were and in some places still are very hostile to those who were bi or homosexual. So from before puberty I kept that side of life quiet.
Then on a case, in Baltimore, he tackled me in a dirty alley bringing me swiftly to the ground in a solid hit that forced the air from my lungs.
I twisted to face him I as soon as I made contact with those beautiful green eyes of his I was lost. Our chests heaved after the exertion of the pursuit and I wanted to gaze into those eyes and get his name the connection was immediate.
Instead, I had to maintain my cover and all I could think to do was to punch him in the face. The answering Glock pistol thrust into my face finished the altercation quickly and soon I was being pushed onto my chest and my hands pulled behind me as he applied the handcuffs and dragged me to his car. I listened to his warm baritone go on about tube socks and recite the plots of several movies. It was both amusing and infuriating but it made me want to know him all the more.
Luckily I got that chance and I still feel smug about it.
I glide my hand from the bottom of his hairline down that elegant neck and down the line of his spine to where his buttocks swell. The skin is warm, his Italian heritage makes it appear to glow in the warm lighting. In winter or when he's unwell his skin becomes sallow and his hair loses its lustre, but now, in summer his skin is radiant and his hair has gained its sunshine highlights. Except for on his chest, he is only lightly-haired across the rest of his body and he often jokes that this is why he feels the cold.
For all his wideboy antics Tony loves skin-to-skin contact and he loves to have me run my hands over his body to be held, loved and cherished. It doesn't have to progress to sex, although it often does, it's the contact. Hours of being held, wrapped in a cocoon of love told through words and actions what he means to me.
I wonder if it's because of his childhood where he was ignored unless he was being used as a form of currency to ease his parents movement though society or to grease the wheels of a business deal. Treated as an object, performing the role of cute and much-loved child and heir to the DiNozzo business empire. A nice picture for the society papers in a small tuxedo alongside his glamourous parents, then quickly abandoned when the photographers and party guests left to his actual life. The life he where he haunted the DiNozzo's large ostentatious homes in silence, like a ghost where, except for the numerous members of anonymous staff, the only touch he felt was a precursor to pain and humiliation.
I still catch glimpses of that depressed and vulnerable eight-year-old boy, dispatched to a boarding school only days after finding the body of his alcoholic mother. To what became a continual cycle of warehousing him in numerous ever cheaper boarding schools as Senior burned through the Paddington fortune and DiNozzo assets. Unpaid school fees and the failure to collect his son for the academic holidays became the norm, as the man given the title father forgot about his son and turned his attention to wooing and marrying ever younger sociolites who had large trust funds and no intentions of being mothers.
A childhood like that usually results in a poor outcome, a short life blighted by substance abuse and crime yet he grew into this beautiful, talented man. A gentle nature with an enormous heart who is generous to a fault. A man with a quick wit and encyclopedic knowledge of film, theatre and so much more. A man who loves to show his romantic side and doesn't mind that often he leaves me blushing under his attention. He saw through my facade and noticed the little chinks in my outer shell and he proceed to dismantle the armour I had expected to 'protect' my heart forever.
Easing my fingers through his hair I notice that silver is starting to thread its way into it, and I know he will just laugh when I point this out to him. He calls himself my 'eye candy', and at first I didn't know if I should be flattered or offended by this, but the wide grin, a kiss and the promise that he'd always love me smoothed away my anxiety over the age difference between us.
His six-foot-one body is graceful in all its forms and comes with a fluidity and grace I never expected to see in a man. The year high-level college sport, his natural athleticism and his need to keep moving have honed this over his lifetime. As he chases down perps, plays on the basketball court, dances or moves as we make love it all looks smooth and powerful, it feels even better to be the focus of that body's stregnth.
I had yearned to yet again have this easy domesticity with someone, the little touches for no real reason, doing something simple but which shows you care, to wake up and fall asleep with your limbs entangled. I just never thought it would be possible with a man.
When as a nervous 18-year-old I had stood in front of the altar and promised myself to Shannon, I had truly intended that would be us together for life. I knew we'd have ups and downs but that's married life. Then on deployment I'd received those little crocheted babies' booties in my mail and my breath caught in my chest. I had run flat out and begged the Corporal in charge of communications to let me call Shannon. It had been a little after midnight in the States but Shannon's voice was so full of joy and plans for our baby and our life together. Little did I know that eight short years later they would both be gone.
Tony asks me to share my stories of Shannon and Kelly with him, he's never shown any resentment of them, unlike my other wives. He includes their memories with ours, their photos sit alongside ours on the mantlepiece linked by the ones of me Shannon and Kelly. I can share my recollections, the scrapbooks Shannon created of Kelly's milestones and the things I missed whilst training or deployed away from home. He holds me on those difficult anniversaries and whispers words of comfort and love into my ear.
Despite his worries, he would have been an amazing father, a loving and devoted parent.
Our home is full of photographs documenting every area of our lives for as much as im known for my boats and woodworking Tony is a skilled photographer. He loves the old film cameras, a juxtaposition to the piece of high technology that he uses daily to capture evidence. So many snapshots of our lives together so far and I hope for many years to come. There are still so many places to visit and so many things to experience in this life and I want them to be with him, Tony, the light of my life and completion of my soul.