It had started when they finally agreed to move in together. Actually, that wasn't strictly true; it had started a few weeks before that when they had first begun talking about moving in together. The two ideas were entwined in a gaudian knot, they had been not talking about it for so long it already seemed old when David finally got up the courage to vocalise the subject.
"You realise we'll have to tell people at work." Greg was only half listening to him; the rest of his attention was taken by the pages the Realtor had left behind.
"I'd have thought you'd prefer to let people keep turning up at your old place." He half smiled at David and then returned his attention to the papers in front of him. David sighed.
"Not about the house. About us." Greg did look up then, but only briefly.
"I guess." He said, and then flicked a piece of paper at David. "Are we going to have to pay over the odds for a giant garage just so you can keep that lump of rust for a few more years?" David huffed.
"She is not a lump of rust; she is a work of art." Greg chuckled and started dividing the papers into two piles. "Are you ok with it?" David asked finally.
"The garage? I'll survive, but I want a better sound system." Greg replied, David made an irritated noise and put his hand on Greg's shoulder, forcing him to look up.
"Coming out at work you idiot, not the car."
"Oh yeah, fine." Greg was so offhand David felt he had to be sure.
"Really?"
"Yeah." Greg was looking at him curiously now. "Are you ok with it?" He asked. David exhaled slowly.
"I think I am." Greg smiled and patted the hand resting on his shoulder.
"I'm sure they'll figure it out when we change our address, if they haven't already." He said. "They are professional investigators after all."
David fidgeted in the car all the way to work. If he had been driving, Greg was pretty sure someone would have been extracting them from a tree by now. It had taken two months to actually acquire property; it hadn't helped that David had kept referring to the other parties involved as the 'wicked realtor of the west and her winged monkeys', occasionally to their faces. Greg was still excited by the thought of parking a car on land he actually owned, but David kept pointing out that the bank owned nearly all of their house and most of their souls. The mortgage agreement was still out on the coffee table at home, because Greg hadn't been able to stop looking at it.
"It's like we're married." He had said and David had snorted and stopped unpacking a box and placing its contents in straight lines on the floor, segregated by room.
"Greg, marriage is a holy contract between two people." He paused to straighten up an ornament. "That is a holy contract between two people and a bank. It's much more important." But he wasn't going to let David kill this buzz, the whole thought of the house made him feel warm and the thought of the looks on the faces of his friends when they found out gave him a wicked thrill of anticipation. If it had been left to him, he would have told them all months ago, but he had held back because David seemed so ill at ease with the idea. It was only in the last few weeks that the truth of it, that he was mostly afraid of Greg being upset if he told anyone, had come out. By the end of the night it would all be out in the open and Greg could get back to treating his friends as he always had done, without the secret hanging over him by a thread. He pulled into the parking lot and gave David a reassuring smile.
"It'll be fine, no one will care. They'll be a bit of fun at our expense and then it'll probably never be mentioned again."
"I'm not very good with fun at my expense." David said, stepping out of the car. Greg grinned.
"True. Just breathe deeply and try to get through it without any homicides. Ok?" David nodded.
"I'm not promising." He said.
"I'd be worried if you did." Greg grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "Ready?"
"Yeah." Greg released his hand and smiled again, because he couldn't seem to stop doing it.
"Let's do it."
"Why didn't you tell us you were moving?" Greg looked at his watch; he was amazed he'd gotten three hours into his shift before the news got out. Since Jacqui had left the grapevine had really withered.
"Have you been flirting with the girls in personnel again?" Greg asked turning round. Nick smiled.
"They can't resist my natural charm." He said. 'Which is ironic.' Greg thought, but he said nothing. Nick sat down in the chair next to him and clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't change the subject anyways. Why the big mystery?" Greg smiled to himself.
"We just figured it might be best if we broke the news gently." He said, fighting not to break out into a full grin. Nick however, simply looked confused.
"Who's we?" Greg's smile dropped away, then he laughed and shook his head.
"I think those personnel girls might be a little more resistant than you think." He said.
"What?" Nick asked, but Greg just kept looking at him, grinning. "What?" He said again. "Aw don't hold out on me man." Greg was laughing harder this time.
"Sorry. You'll have to find someone much less resistant to your charm." Nick huffed and stood up.
"Fine. I'll just find someone a little more co-operative." He turned to leave and Greg waited until he was just through the door before yelling.
"Catherine doesn't know." The curse was muffled, but Greg could still make it out well enough.
"You've moved." David closed his eyes and opened them again but Mandy was still there.
"Well observed. Stay there long enough and I might even do it again." He turned away but Mandy huffed and appeared in front of him, moving around to stay in his eye line.
"You've moved house."
"Have you been stalking me? You know restraining orders don't actually mean 'I love you.'" She sighed.
"Look, Sheila in personnel takes her lunch breaks with Becky in finance who takes the same Pilates class as Jane the new dayshift QD tech who I ran into on the way to work because she had spilt coffee on her new shirt and was drying it under the hand dryer in the toilets but the point is," she breathed out. "You've moved." David looked puzzled.
"Sorry, I'm still trying to process that sentence."
"Stop avoiding the question."
"I'm not avoiding the question; I'm still trying to find it." Mandy stepped closer to him and jabbed a finger into his chest.
"You. Have. Moved. House." She punctuated each word with a poke. "According to Sheila you have the same new address as Greg Sanders, which is a situation even you should know can only end badly. So spill."
"What's to tell? By the sound of it you could already write my biography." A little warning voice at the back of David's head was muttering darkly about his promise to Greg to be honest about this, but it had no chance against the lifetime of training to be a smartass about everything. To his surprise he realised Mandy was giggling.
"You have Greg Sanders for a roommate." She was trying not to dissolve into laughter. "Could you tape the conversations for me? I want to write a sitcom." David glowered at her.
"Too late, it's been done." He said. David cleared his throat nervously. Mandy wasn't his preferred starting point for this, but he supposed in many ways maybe she was the best choice. She was smart, she was understanding and best of all she disseminated information like shrapnel. He mused for a moment longer before he started to speak. "Look…" He suddenly realised he was talking to Mandy's retreating back.
"Greg Sanders as a roommate." He heard her chuckling as she left the lab.
By six hours into his shift, Greg was itching to tell someone. He'd assumed by now that he would be over the revelation stage and in to the good natured ribbing, ready to take the jokes with a smile and hug the warm feeling of being loved enough to be teased to his chest. However, his plans had not counted on being on a crime scene with Grissom for four hours, a man whose interest in office gossip extended only as far as the occasional infestations of the roof.
"Greg, could you take the car back to the lab? I have a few things I want to finish up." Greg leapt into the driver's seat with slightly more haste than he probably should have done, at least enough to cause Grissom to look at him oddly, although he didn't comment. As Greg drove he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, for the first time feeling nervous about his return. Had David already had to explain? He doubted it, much as he wanted to believe Dave's promises of honesty he was pretty sure this was news he would have to break himself if he wanted it to get out at all. This had all seemed so simple when they came in to work, but the time away had given him a chance to let his lingering uncertainties grow into full fledged worries. Would they be angry he had kept it from them for so long? Would they understand what he saw in a man most of them avoided being alone in a room with? Had they all figured it out months ago and were just waiting for him to catch up? He breathed out, pulling into the parking lot and carefully unpacking the evidence. Work first, then the rest.
Catherine finally caught up with him when he was staring at the crime scene photos, waiting for the pattern in the chaos to leap out on him. She crept up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder and making him jump.
"I wouldn't have expected gravitational drops there." She said, her hand skimming the top of the pictures. "Was the vic face down?" Greg shook his head.
"Face up, but David thought he might have been moved." Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the rest of the photos.
"Well if the original body position was face down here." She indicated with her fingers, "that would be the first void in the spatter here and a second void for what? An outstretched arm?" She demonstrated with her own body, hand reaching towards the ceiling. "Then the drops fell from the wound." Greg's eyes flicked round the images.
"Yeah, that makes sense, thanks Cath." She smiled.
"That's what supervisors are for." She moved towards the door then turned back. "By the way, what's this I hear about you sharing a house with Hodges?" Greg looked up sharply, his face colouring.
"Uh… your sources are better than Nick's." He finally managed. He might have been rehearsing this conversation for weeks, but now it was happening he was suddenly tongue tied.
"Women will always give out more when they're gossiping than when they're flirting." Catherine replied. "Y'know if you were that desperate you could have always stayed with me for a while." Greg blinked in genuine surprise.
"Well actually… we own the place." For a second Catherine looked genuinely shocked.
"You bought a place with Hodges? Why?" Greg breathed out, 'here it comes' he thought.
"We're kind of together." Catherine narrowed her eyes.
"What kind of together?"
"The kind where you buy a house." Relief bubbled in Greg's chest when he said it out loud, but the feeling dropped into his stomach when he realised Catherine was laughing. She patted him on the shoulder.
"You're good Greg; you really had me going there." She smiled and stepped back from him. "But you should have kept with the believable." She turned and headed for the door.
"When you and your roommate totally lose it with each other, you're always welcome at mine." She left the lab and Greg stared at the floor, thoroughly confused.
"What did you do to him?" People always liked to talk to David when he was holding delicate instrumentation in his hands or was buried half inside a machine, Henry had just surpassed himself by managing both simultaneously.
"Hang on, just let me finish repairing the expensive equipment and I'll get to your inane rambling." Carefully David extracted the smashed bottle from the carousel mechanism of the GC-MS, dusting off the last few fragments before allowing the machine to resume. "And that is why" he muttered half to himself "Ecklie should listen to me and let the company who built the machine service it, rather than letting in the lowest bidding monkey with a screwdriver." He finally turned around, pausing to drop the fragments into the nearest sharps bin.
"What have I done to whom?" He asked. "My influence is far reaching; you'll have to provide some specifics."
"Greg. What have you done to Greg?" David pondered for a moment.
"Nothing recently, I must be slowing down. Why?"
"Mandy said you were moving in together. I can't think of anything that would cause that to happen that doesn't involve spiked coffee or a death threat."
"Feel free to pick from those options." David tried to ignore him but the voice in his head was becoming more insistent. It was also sounding more and more like Greg, but he chose to ignore that disquieting fact until he was within screaming range of a qualified therapist. He rolled his eyes and started speaking again. "Alternatively, just assume that something has been going on that you have all missed." Henry looked confused.
"Like what?" He asked. David sighed, exasperated.
"We're moving in together, you figure it out." The puzzled look remained on Henry's face for a few seconds, then he shrugged.
"Nope, I'm still stuck on my first guess."
"Well go and ask an adult." David replied, more irritated than he wanted to be. "I'm busy."
The problem with CSI's in pairs was their ability to corner you. Greg had never really appreciated how intimidating those vests were until he saw Warrick and Sara heading towards him and realised he knew what this was going to be about. After Catherine's reaction he had lost almost all taste for discussing his little revelation tonight. It had hurt, even though he knew she genuinely had thought he was joking. It was a reaction he had never even considered. Now he took a gulp of too hot coffee and burnt his tongue, adding to his general feeling of unease.
"Hey Greg." Sara's tone was casual, which worried him immediately.
"Hey." He nodded and then diverted his eyes back to his coffee cup, in the vain hope they would leave him alone.
"What's new?" The tone was still casual and light and Greg suddenly knew what it was like to be on the other side of the interrogation table.
"Not much, I moved house."
"Yeah, we heard." Warrick moved into the conversational opening with practised ease, shifting to stand next to him at the same time.
"Is it nice?" Sara asked.
"Yeah, it already had hardwired speaker cabling all over the house, there's a big enough lounge for my T.V, we've got a garage, y'know." His voice had risen with enthusiasm as he spoke and the second he stopped he knew that had been a mistake.
"We being you and Hodges, right?" Greg had never really appreciated how intimidating Warrick could be until this moment.
"Uh-huh." Greg's hand rubbed his neck in a nervous gesture. "About that…" Sara cut him off.
"It's ok Greg, we get it." Inwardly Greg breathed a sigh of relief.
"Oh, cool."
"Yeah, I mean you guys have always had that banter thing going."
"Yep."
"And Vegas property isn't cheap."
"No, it's definitely not."
"So I can understand having someone to buy with makes it easier."
"Well, sort of."
"It's not like either of you have long term girlfriends or anything you could move in with." The metaphorical juggernaut of the conversation suddenly reversed up to Greg and unceremoniously ran him over.
"Sorry, what?" He stared at Sara, wide eyed.
"You guys needed someone to help with a mortgage, you came to an arrangement, we get it." Warrick answered for her and Greg suddenly had the insane notion that everyone else was reading from a script, one he had clearly not been provided with.
"It's not like that…" He started, but was interrupted when Nick walked into the room and chuckled.
"Man, if you're going to lie to Catherine you've really got to try harder." He said, shaking his head and laughing.
"What?" Sara asked, turning round.
"Greg tried to convince Catherine that he and Hodges were 'together'."
"As in house buying together?"
"As in 'together' together." Sara looked back at Greg.
"Really?" She asked.
"Yes, really." Greg was beginning to feel immeasurably tired of this conversation and of the entire night.
"You thought she'd fall for that?" Warrick was smiling now and Greg was resisting the urge to pinch himself to make sure this wasn't just some surreal nightmare.
"No, probably not." Greg began edging towards the door; all he wanted now was to be out of the conversation and the room.
"Come on," Nick said, still smiling. "We'd all have to have failed to realise that you are both gay and that you'd been together for months. We're CSI's man, we'd notice."
"Yes, you'd think you would." Greg's voice was fading to a mumble as he reached for the door handle. He was determined to be the one who walked out on this conversation. "I have to go and make sure this isn't all a dream." He muttered as he darted out of the door. The other three CSI's looked at each other, bemused.
"What was that about?" Sara asked.
"I've just had a very strange conversation with Henry." Bobby was now leaning on his doorframe and showing off the fundamental difference between him and Henry. When he leant on the door he looked like he was applying weight, with Henry the doorframe seemed to be holding him up.
"Not the facts of life talk again." David said without looking up. It was autopilot speaking now, the rest of him had ceased to care.
"Sort of." Bobby stood up straight and took two steps into the room. "Seems someone has been suggesting to him that you and Greg might be more than just good friends."
"Yep, that was me." David glanced briefly at the microscope and then scribbled a note to himself; he hadn't yet worked up the courage to look at Bobby.
"Why?" David looked up in surprise, catching Bobby's eyes for the first time.
"Because it's true." Bobby narrowed his eyes for a second.
"And the real reason?" David sighed.
"Because I enjoy messing with his mind. Does that sound better?"
"Sounds more likely." Bobby replied.
"Well I'd hate to play against the odds." David had given up on the honesty plan; he should have gone with his first instinct and told Greg it was a stupid idea.
"Yet it still makes me wonder why you'd say it in the first place." Bobby mused. He wandered around the lab, randomly touching objects as if he knew it was a habit that could reduce David to incoherent rage. Thinking about it, there was a high chance he did know. David gritted his teeth and ignored him as best he could. "I mean, it's not like you're not capable of coming up with better lies." Bobby continued. "Unless you've finally lost it and are acting out some private fantasy." David snapped in an embarrassingly short amount of time.
"Yes, that's exactly it. I have private fantasies about Greg Sanders and then feel the need to act them out at work." David pointed angrily across the corridor. "Do you know how many times I've dreamed of making out with him in that cupboard? Or on the break room couch? In fact, I'm madly in love with him, hadn't you noticed?" The sarcasm dripped from his tone, Bobby paled slightly and stepped back.
"Don't push it too far man, I was only kidding."
"Get out." David growled, no longer in the mood to put up with any of this. His temper wasn't being helped by the revelation that he still worked in a lab with glass walls and no sound proofing.
"Fine." Bobby turned to leave and met Greg coming the other way. "You're a brave man to live with him." Bobby said as they passed. "But probably a stupid one."
"What was that about?" Greg asked in wonder as he came through the door. He noticed David's flushed face and the look in his eyes and in a second his own irritations dropped away. "You ok?" David offered him half a weak smile.
"Yeah. Just proving to myself again that we work with morons. Not sure why I'm even surprised anymore." Greg put his hands in his pockets and looked at his shoes.
"You too huh." He said.
"Well you don't usually judge humanity so harshly." David replied. He looked at Greg properly for the first time. "Bad night?"
"I feel like we're back at the conference." Greg said.
"The 'Ecklie has accidentally forgotten to approve the budget for accommodation' one? Or the 'no one ever told Jacqui not to drunkenly pick up men at the conference dinner' one?"
"The 'me and Hodges can share a room' one."
"Oh, with the twin beds." Greg nodded dejectedly.
"Yeah. Well it was pretty funny watching you fall down the gap in the middle every night, but I still thought the hotel receptionist had got what I meant."
"Which is why we decided you should never try subtlety again, for the good of my back." David grimaced at the memory.
"But I'm not even trying to be subtle!" Greg suddenly exploded. "Short of screwing you on the meeting table I'm not sure how I could be clearer! They just won't believe me." To his surprise David laughed. "I'm glad you think it's funny." Greg said peevishly.
"If it makes you feel any better they don't believe me either." Greg sighed and leant on the counter.
"Are we really that unbelievable?" He asked.
"To be honest, if I wasn't in the middle of it, I wouldn't believe it myself." David came to stand next to him, bumping his shoulder in an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture. "Does it matter?" Greg shrugged.
"Yes… No… I don't know." He bumped David's shoulder back. "I just want thing to be simple."
"Then you shouldn't have started this relationship."
"I started it? That's not what I remember." David blushed.
"The point is," he said firmly "you need people to know. I couldn't care less. But I care that you care."
"They just won't understand it."
"Then we'll have to explain it very slowly. Possibly with diagrams."
"We're trying to tell them, not scar them for life."
"If that's what it takes." Greg smiled slightly.
"So that's the plan? Words of one syllable?" David nodded. "Then let's do it." Greg held out his hand.
"Greg, this is not a movie. I'm not going to say 'let's do it' and grab your hand."
"Not even if I say please?"
They had decided just to go with what they had. Greg had suggested gathering everyone together and tackling them all at once, but David had refused to 'turn coming out at work into some kind of rally.' So they had caught Catherine, Nick and Bobby in the break room and stood in the doorway until they began to make the people in the room nervous.
"Are you two coming in or not?" Catherine finally asked irritably. They advanced into the room and David unsubtly kicked the door shut.
"We need to talk to you." Greg said. Nick looked around.
"All of us?" Greg nodded. Nick perched on the edge of the sofa and met Greg's gaze with a level one of his own. "So shoot."
"Catherine," Greg began, turning to look at her "when I said me and David were together, I wasn't joking."
"What?" Catherine almost squeaked. If it had been David doing the talking he probably would have waited until she had a mouth full of coffee but Greg wasn't that cruel.
"Are you serious?" Nick asked. Bobby was looking between all of them, trying to fill in the gaps in his own understanding.
"So you and him" Bobby managed finally, "are… together." He had searched for another word, but couldn't find one that didn't conjure mental images he'd rather avoid.
"Yes." Greg said firmly. Catherine was still shaking her head.
"Hodges?" She asked, incredulous.
"Was that addressing me, or just a comment on the situation?" David asked. Catherine made no reply, her eyes still darting between them.
"You're gay?" Nick asked Greg.
"Evidently." David answered and Greg kicked his ankle.
"Bi actually." Greg replied.
"Ok…" Nick was still looking confused. Catherine kept alternating between looking at them and shaking her head and Bobby appeared to have stopped breathing entirely whilst he processed this information.
"No way." Catherine said quietly. Nick darted his eyes to her and they shared a look of incredulity. David, who had been keeping his temper remarkably well, finally gave up.
"Right." He said striding into the middle of room. "I knew it would come to this." He pointed to himself and Greg in turn. "I am gay. He is gay. We are gay. And we are both together." He dropped his hands, exasperated.
"Isn't that the beginning of 'I am the Walrus'?" Catherine asked. Nick snorted a laugh and David made a high pitched noise. Greg put a restraining hand on his arm.
"We promised to get through this with no homicides." He muttered out of the side of his mouth.
"I didn't." David muttered back.
"Ok, ok." Catherine said. She looked at Greg's hand for a moment where it still rested on David's arm. Finally she looked up. "I'm sorry." She said to Greg, "but I really thought you were joking."
"I think we all did." Bobby said from behind the three of them. He was smiling. "I still say you're a brave man, and probably a stupid one." Greg smiled back and shrugged.
"Maybe. But I'm stuck with him now." Nick still looked serious.
"I just have one question." He said at last.
"Yes?" David sounded a lot calmer, if still wary. Nick fixed him with a look.
"Housewarming?" He asked and grinned. Greg turned to David, his eyes suddenly bright and excited.
"Can we?" He asked. David sighed, but there was just a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
"I'll hide the valuables." He said.
Catherine was haunting Grissom's office at the end of the shift, the way she always did when there was something she wanted to talk about. Grissom sighed and hoped it wasn't too serious.
"Greg and Hodges have moved in together." She said finally. Grissom didn't bother to look up.
"I know, personnel told me. They don't work together directly, it shouldn't be a problem."
"You knew about them?" Catherine's voice held such a note of shock that Grissom finally looked up.
"Didn't you?"
"No! They've spent half the night trying to explain it to the lab." A brief look of surprise flickered across Grissom's face.
"Oh, I thought everyone knew." He chuckled quietly and returned to his paper work. "I mean," he said half to himself, "it was pretty obvious."