Title: Rules
Author: Emily
Rating: PG. I dislike the letter G as a rating
Summary: They were her tic, her rules. Her whole life, she thought she was being careful and conscientious.
Notes: Why yes, yes this is my first piece of CSI fanfic. How could you guess? Originally from another fandom, but it slipped into this.

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As she walked down the hall, she tried not to count her steps. Tried not to hold the tray perfectly straight, the soup even with the ceiling. Tried not to breathe in tandem with her footsteps, inhaling with the left, exhaling with the right. Tried not to follow her rules, as she walked to her empty bedroom.

They were her tic, her rules. Her apartment had seemed so small, so fragile, and almost breakable, that she had adapted rules to save it. No walking on the right side of the halls of the ship, that side was sagging and who knows what would happen if she were to add her weight to it? No more than three people in a room at the same time, but she never had to worry about that, who ever came into her place? Her worries about being off balance gave way to a need for everything to be balanced, like two sides of an equation, a subtle difference to her. Equal length sleeves, equal number of people on both sides of her, everything had to be equal.

No one ever told her that it could be considered a disorder; that it could be considered obsessive-compulsive behavior. She thought she was just being careful. Her whole life, she thought she was being careful and conscientious.

Catherine had put her off kilter, off balance, out of sync with herself. She would find her body reacting to this woman who she told herself she wasn't interested in. She found herself forgetting her rules, forgetting to count, much, forgetting almost everything when she was around.

She supposed that was what love was, the loss of rules.

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