Author's Note: I do not own the characters.

ALL BECAUSE OF A SHIRT/ALL BECAUSE OF A DRESS.

All because of a shirt.

She lay there staring up at the ceiling. Faint light trickled through the edge of the curtains which framed the Talon apartment's living room window, bathing it in a dark purple hue that was preferable to pitch black. Her clock read 2:30, and while she simply could not summon up sleep, she was glad it had been a quiet night. Rather than her cousin and her boyfriend snoring in the bedroom or worse, getting their freak on, this time her lack of sleep was due to her own thoughts, which kept drifting back to him.

And it was all because of a shirt. How can a simple garment completely transform your view of somebody just like that? Sure, she'd seen him dress smartly on a number of occasions and she'd always thought him to be handsome and with a great physique, but on those occasions he still carried himself as if unsure of his place in the world, ill at ease in formal attire. This time though, he went from naïve plaid-wearing farmboy to smart sexy modern man in seconds. The shirt hugged his body in just the right places, with rolled-up sleeves amplifying the effect.

To top it all off, a bomb that wasn't really a bomb had exploded on a bus just outside the building at the same moment she'd been left gobsmacked by the sight of him wearing the shirt - the force of the blast sending her into his arms. It was almost uncanny how that happened. It felt so comfortable and so safe being held there, she didn't really want to let go. In that moment, she'd been reduced to the one thing she'd sworn she'd never ever be - the damsel in need of rescuing, if not exactly in distress.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. She'd always liked him even if they both had an unwritten agreement to downplay their friendship, settling for a comfortable routine of banter and bickering interspersed with moments of genuine care and affection.

Now though, all because of a shirt, she was going to have to face dealing with some new-found feelings and the possibility that they might have something more than friendship. He seemed to carry himself with so much confidence now and coupled with his smart new appearance and naturally helpful and polite demeanour, it was an irresistible combination. Everybody of the female persuasion in the office had made eyes at him, and he'd only been at work for one week. Some were openly leering and flirting but he just brushed it off. Maybe he really was oblivious to it all.

Not even when he turned up in the bullpen with messy hair and the shirt covered in debris did he look anything other than sophisticated and confident. It had thrown her bantering off-kilter to such a degree that she was embarrassing herself when assuming she'd been summoned to meet her new boss, and when trying to flirt her way to gain site access from a police officer. She was acting like a jealous girlfriend and she'd even thrown winks and words of encouragement his way. When did she ever do that willingly? Was she 'marking her territory', so to speak? Hands off ladies, this farmboy is taken.

She was in trouble and she knew it, and all she could do was bury her head beneath her pillow and will on the ZZZs in desperation. From now on she'd always look at and think of him differently. All because of a shirt.