It’s one of his rules - Tony doesn’t fall for straight guys. Not since the first one, anyway, back in college. The fascination was brief, and only lasted long enough for him to figure out that there was no point in breaking his heart over the ones he couldn’t have when there were so many others who wanted to have him.

Tony can’t remember a time when people didn’t turn to look, men and women both. While everyone else at his prep-school was being pummeled by adolescence, he was simply kissed on the forehead and sent on his way from pretty child to pretty man, with all the awkwardness ending up on the inside. Tony might never be sure if people like him, but he knows they like looking at him, and that makes part of it easy. Because at least something should be easy. Every once in awhile.

So since Tony never falls for straight guys, it has to be something else with Gibbs. Maybe the need for approval. Or attention. Or affection or acceptance - but Tony has a feeling that he could work his way through the dictionary and it still wouldn’t explain why he could get hard just watching Gibbs walk into a room. And it’s more than just imagining what it would feel like to have Gibbs’ hands on him and wanting to know what Gibbs’ skin tastes like - Tony can sense a connection between them that has him reminding himself over and over why he made the rule in the first place.

That connection makes him weaken, and when Gibbs breaks into the dark place Jonathan’s words have sent him, it makes Tony want to say fuck the rules. It makes Tony want to tell Gibbs that this case has made him cold inside and afraid of the dark in a way he hasn’t been in a very long time.

But Tony doesn’t fall for straight guys. He smiles instead, and waits for Gibbs to walk away.