Love is Joy.
It's waking up in each other's arms with a kiss and knowing even before you leave your bed that it's going to be a good day. It's your first holiday at your new place going off without a hitch. It's celebration over anything you deem appropriate. It's laughing over the tiniest things just because.
Love is Betrayal
When everything but the sting of treason falls away and you are left with only confusion and hate. When her accusations are laced with hate that grips you with sharp, stabbing pains that break your heart and steal your breath. When you have to stand down and take the full force of her misguided rage and accept that no matter what you do, things may never be the same.
Love is Tenderness.
It's soft touches and tiny kisses all over. On your nose, your collarbones, your eyelids. It's your favorite soup in bed when you're sick and breakfast just because when you're not. It's comforting touches and glances that reassure without so much as a word.
Love is Relief.
When your lips crack with every word you speak and dust coats your throat and every part of you wants to give in to temptation and provoke this bastard to just kill you right then. But when it all seems like the world has turned on it's ear, he takes that bag off of her head and suddenly the world starts turning once again.
Love is Desperation.
When every moment seems like the last one you will ever have. When you beg and plead with her to just come home and the tears that have threatened to ruin you both flow freely down your cheeks as your heart breaks again. When you grab her and kiss her because you know as well as she does that it might be the last time.
Love is Silence.
It's laying in bed with your foreheads touching, just comforted by the other's presence. It's sitting in your house, not doing anything in particular, but knowing that if words are truly needed, you will say them when it comes time. It's wordless conversations across a room, eyes conveying all you need to understand.
Love is Sacrifice.
When you give up everything you have, everything you are, to search endlessly for her when you have no idea where she could be or if she is there to save. When you do it all over again. When she tells you that she has to start her journey of self reflection by herself, and despite every fiber of your being screaming no, you let her.
Love is Spontaneous.
It's showers together and kissing in the rain. It's dancing in the kitchen and tickle fights on the couch and nerf gun wars just because you can. It's kisses- anywhere and everywhere for whatever you want. It's surprise trips and surprise guests and sweeping her off her feet, both literally and figuratively.
Love is Loneliness.
When all you want is to wake up wrapped up securely in his arms, his warmth enveloping your entire being and his skin soft against yours. When you watch a movie and it seems dull and empty without your partner spouting off movie trivia or speaking along with the lines. When you bury your nose in his sweatshirt and pain lances through your heart at the realization that it no longer smells like him.
Love is Passion.
It's lips and teeth and tongues tangling. It's hands and heat and sweat. It's friction in all the right places and all the wrong places and in places that are sure to leave a mark.
It's fights. Not arguments, not disagreements, fights. All out red-faced yelling knock down drag out fights because you are so completely certain you are right.
Love is Patience.
When he launches into one of his long, slightly self deprecating rants just to get his thoughts out of his head and all you can do it sit and wait for him to be done so you can help. When you know there's something that he's not telling you, but you know pushing him will not get you anywhere. When he knows the same thing about her.
Love is Romance.
It's candlelit dinners and a dozen roses and diamonds that sparkle in the light. It's kisses in the rain and trips to the opera and flowers in the middle of the week for no reason. It's proposals laying in bed in the early hours of the morning when neither of you looks particularly nice but you can't stop staring at each other anyway.
Love is Fun.
When she pinches your backside as she passes behind you in the kitchen. When you throw a bit of flour in her hair. When she surprises you in the middle of the summer with a tiny plastic thing that passes as a pool and shoots you with a water gun instead. When you have a lazy sunday watching movies and build a blanket fort in the living room only to knock it down when you decide to make love inside it. When it snows a foot and a half overnight and you don't even have to convince her to make snow angels and a snowman and have a snowball fight.
Love is Fear.
When you get a call from Gibbs telling you that he's been shot and they're on their way to the ER. When you come home for the first time expecting her to be there and she is absent. When you find out that she's gone into labor six weeks too early. When you think you may never see each other again.
Love is Irritation.
When he constantly corrects your words even though he knows it is not your first language or your fifth. When she is constantly adding things to your honey-do list when she knows those are not skills you possess. When all you want him to do is pick up his damn socks because you've already asked him four times and they're still sitting on the floor.
Love is Understanding.
It's waking up in the middle of the night to her distressed cries and not having any idea what to do, but you hold her close anyway. It's coming into the office at midnight to tell him that he's done all he can do and that it was not his fault. It's holding his hand at funerals because even years later he takes so much to heart. It's letting her be alone sometimes to work through things because for so long that's all she could be.
Love is Excitement.
When she shows up at your door after a year apart, saying that she is ready, and you know that your life can finally begin again. When you see him standing at the end of the aisle with tears in his eyes. When the test is positive.
Love is happiness and sadness and tears of all kinds. It's screaming for anger and happiness and pain and pleasure. It's elation and destruction and laughter and heartbreak. It tears you apart and lifts you up and tears you apart again. But you live through it all. You experience every bit of it and you just know.
Love is worth it.