These characters do not belong to me. I am merely borrowing them and thusly, I hope that Alliance Atlantis or CBS Productions does not decide to sue me.
-----------Meet me Halfway, borrowed from Kenny Loggins, I hope he doesn't sue me either.
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I wake to the sound of soft breathing, I roll over and no longer to my surprise, the man I love is lying next to me. I watch him sleep, he looks so peaceful. He must be dreaming because I can see the little lines on his forehead rumple and he lets out a series of low groans and then shifts his position. I watch him for a while,
there is no alarm this morning. It's our day off. I memorize his face, the tiny little lines around his mouth and his cleanly shaven face, the dimple in his chin. The way the covers rise and fall with every breath he takes. The soft wheezing he makes with his nose when he inhales and exhales. My God, he's beautiful. How lucky am I to have this man who loves me and shares his life with me?'
I slowly and gently crawl out of bed and make my way to the bathroom. I brush my teeth and fix my hair a bit. I walk out of the bathroom to see he is still asleep. I decide to make today a little special, I walk over to the kitchen and start the coffee and begin the breakfast. Pancakes, sausage and scrambled eggs with cheese in them. I hand squeeze the orange juice because I don't want to wake him with the sound of the horrible juicer. I place the food on a plate and set up a breakfast in bed tray. I carry the tray over to the bed and set it down beside this beautiful man. I walk around the bed to his side and softly kiss him awake. He rubs his eyes and then they open. Bright blue like I have never seen before, brighter than the sky on the clearest day imaginable. I softly run my fingers through his salt and pepper curls that have been matted down by the pillow. Good morning' I say and he rolls over onto his back and rubs his eyes again. Softly in the background I can hear the song that seems to lend itself to us more than any other song, I hear:
In a lifetime of made of memories
I believe in destiny
Every moment returns again in time
When I've got the future on my mind,
Know that you'll be the only one
Meet me halfway across the sky
Up where the world belongs to only you and I
Meet me halfway across the sky
Make this a new beginning, not another lie
In a lifetime there is only love
Reaching for the lonely one
We are stronger when we are given love
When we've burned emotions on the line
Know that we are the timeless ones
Meet me halfway across the sky
Up where the world belongs to only you and I
Meet me halfway across the sky
Make this a new beginning, not another lie
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Flashback -
This man lying next to me, I never thought it could happen. I never thought he could admit to himself, much less me, that he truly had deep feelings for me and that he loved me. I had resigned myself, a long time ago, to the fact that he was and always would be closed off, hiding from any truth that he or others might have tried to tell him. He buried himself in his books and his bugs and consciously or unconsciously drove me away, all the while I was suffering a not so silent pain; occasionally lashing out at him and others for no good reason. Drowning my sorrows in the bottom of various bottles, I began to hurt even more because my feelings of rejection were amplified.
Until one day, for no apparent reason he showed up on my doorstep and more or less demanded entry into my domicile. I was in no real shape to have any length of discussion with him about anything. At that point I was so angry with him and disappointed with myself for bearing myself to him, that he was the last person I wanted to see in the world. My reception for him was less than warm and possibly down right cruel, throwing bits of previous conversations back at him whenever he tried to make amends; "You can't risk it" you said. "I just don't feel that way" you said and so on and so forth. I would not have been the least bit surprised if he turned on his heels and left, but he didn't. He stayed, he took the abuse I was hurling at him, he sat and patiently waited as I went on with my tirade and when I was done verbally assaulting him, all he said was five words. The five words I least expected to hear from him, ever. "I'm sorry. I love you". When he said those words, I half wanted to smack the living crap out of him, thinking he was messing with my head again, and the other half of me just wanted to curl up in a tight ball and cry my living life out.
He explained that he had been in a deep state of denial and it took Brass virtually accosting him and giving him what-for to make him realize just how much I was hurting. Brass told him that everybody at the lab knew how he felt except for him and that he should literally come crawling to me on his hands and knees, begging forgiveness. He didn't crawl, but he did make every attempt to make it clear to me just what he had been wrestling with these past few years, Denial, self deprecation, and the ever popular self loathing.
-
Flash forward ---------------
So, I sit in bed with this man. This strong but at the same time very fragile man whom I have loved since I can remember and he has only just realized that he loves me in return. We do the things that lovers and friends do, we talk, we laugh, we anguish, we argue, we make up, we make love, and the love making is very good. Who would have thought that under that creepy bug-man exterior was the heart of a tender and unselfish lover, always putting my needs before his and readily admitting when he is wrong.
I love this man, for better and for worse, though since our little discussion, there has been very little bad to our relationship. I thank God every day that his mother raised the most selfless partner, I think, the world has ever seen. I never thought of myself as a God fearing person, but after all the stuff I did to myself, in spite of him and all of the self destructive behavior that I exhibited, I thank God that this man next to me, the man I love, eventually approached me before it was too late and stuck by me in the early months when I was having a hard time accepting that he was really being true.
Thank God For Gil Grissom.
The End