Changes (CSI, Gil/Greg)

The change came in waves, a slow but inexorable tide of disorder that crept in from the corners of his apartment until, suddenly, one day, it encompassed everything. Looking back now, a year to the day after it all started, he could catalog what he hadn’t noticed while it was going on.

It all started with the DVD Greg left at his apartment accidentally on the weekend of their third date, a campy horror flick that had been more funny than scary and so entirely macabre in its comedy that Gil loved every minute of it. The case stayed on top of the TV for about a week until he’d had to hurriedly clean in preparation for a visit from a colleague he hadn’t seen in years, and then it had gotten shoved on the shelf with all of Gil’s DVDs. After that he completely forgot it wasn’t his, and maybe Greg had too.

Then came magazines and books, left out on tables or chairs or even the bed, that got shoved around the house until Gil was so used to seeing them that he didn’t even think of asking Greg to take them away, and then they too ended up filed away on one of his many myriad shelves. Clothes started to mingle in after the third month they’d been dating, normally after they’d been thrown across the room or shoved under a piece of furniture, sitting in their hiding spots unnoticed for days on end. Gil would pick them up later on, wash them, and set them aside in his laundry room only to not do laundry for a while or get distracted.

Greg was a phenomenal distraction.