This Shirt

Disclaimer: Don't own the song or the show.

Summary: This shirt is old and faded, all the colors washed away, I've had it now for more damn years than I can count anyway.

AN: I'm a huge Mary Chapin – Carpenter fan, and she wrote the awesome song 'This Shirt' and I just had to use it. Just a random piece of Dantana fluff.

This shirt is old and faded, all the colors washed away. The fabrics gone soft and thin through the years and I've had to replace more than one button in our long history. What can I say, it's my favorite shirt more so now than then. I can't remember when 'then' is really; I've had it now for more damn years than I can count anyway. I don't even remember the original color – I think it's blue. I can remember every memory with this shirt, this partner in crime. This shirt has been more things than a combination of Cher and Madonna. Today it's my lazy shirt. If I tuck it in my 'work jeans' put a belt on and some earrings I have an outfit. I wear it beneath my jacket with the collar turned up high and I'm as dressed as I'm going to be. I grab my bag and head for my Tahoe. Well company Tahoe. But it's mine now. It's so shinny, everything new in my life right now. Except this shirt – so old I should replace it, but I'm not about to try, let's be honest.

Sitting in traffic I pass the time thinking about my wardrobe. This shirt's got silver buttons and a place upon the sleeve where I used to set my heart up right there anyone could see. Both metaphorically and physically is my heart on my sleeve. In Home Ec. I stitched a little pink heart on the inside of the cuff near the button hole. And until I met Danny my emotions were with my embroidery, but now he has my heart and it's much safer with him than me. My mind shifts like a slide projector to another time in my life when my heart was safe. High School. Yeah, I know. This shirt is the one I wore to every boring high school dance, where the boys ignored the girls and we all pretended to like the band. 'Course in high school the dances weren't the only place the boys ignored this girl. I was a nerd in high school. I hung out with other nerds. Really attractive guys don't like their physics tutor, especially when she's younger. I'm still a nerd at heart. What Danny is doing with me I do not know. He is the least nerdy guy in the field, perhaps in the universe.

My memories always lead back to Danny. Give me any topic and I can get to Danny. Traffic clears in a record fifteen minutes, I'm that much closer to work. My thoughts are black as I continue on listening to the radio. I've sort of turned on, tuned in, and dropped out as Tim Leary would say. However as I park I come back to focus. I shut off the engine unbuckle and look at my hands. On my finger, my fourth finger, on my left hand is something that stops my heart every time I see it. It's a small oval sapphire as blue as my Danny's eyes surrounded by six very small diamond chips, three on top, three on the bottom of the dark stone. Everything is set lovingly in white gold and is older than I. I slip off our engagement ring and slide it on to a simple white gold chain. The chain goes around my neck and under this shirt. We want to keep things quiet, with him silence is safety. So we keep our upcoming wedding on the DL for now. This shirt was a pillow for my head on a train through Italy. I was the more fluent Italian in our pair and it was from opera, neither one of us could say a word of sense. Yet he took me by the hand and we wondered the boot shaped country for a week, then we went to France. Stella had to have been behind Danny and me getting our vacation time together. This shirt was a blanket beneath the love we made in Argeles. He purposed under the stars and we made love there. I had button shaped bruises down my back for a week after but he kissed away the pain. Thinking about it still makes me blush – I can't go into the lab like this. I chase a way the cherry kiss with the memory of how this shirt was lost for three whole days in a town near Buffalo till I found the locker key in a down town bus depot. I was like Linus without his blanket for three straight days. Now it's funny. Then – not so much.

I head for my locker thinking about my shirt still, every fiber has a story of my life in it. It holds the good any the bad of me. I only remember the bad as 'you'. 'You' bastard, 'you' ass, 'you' prick, 'you' get out of my life. Some variation on 'you' is how I address the memories, as soon as 'you' even gets a gender I relive to much. I was twenty and this shirt was the one I lent 'you' and when 'you' gave it back there was a rip inside the sleeve where 'you' rolled 'your' cigarettes. I close my eyes and try to keep myself from remembering anything to unpleasant, I only want to keep what I can learn from about 'you' The sleeve was ripped, in the cuff, by the button hole, it was the place I put my heart now look at where 'you' put a tare. I forgave your thoughtlessness but not the boy who put it there. Danny is the only person who can save me from 'you' because he loves me very much and I love him more.

He's in the break room at one with his coffee. I sneak up on him and take the mug from his hands. He turns to me and mocks annoyance; I can tell by his eyes he's not mad at all. The blue doesn't lie. He touches my shirt gently remembering his own encounters with this shirt.

"I like." He says, I love everything about him but his voice with that accent is my favorite.

"This shirt was the place your cat decided to give birth to five, if memory serves." I say. And we stayed up all night watching and we wept when the last one died.

"She ain't my cat, she just says at my place." He says, sometimes he forgets who he's talking to and tries to fool me into believing he's tough New York street – I know better.

"Do you feed her?" I ask smiling. He gives up – I'm right.

End of shift and I'm alone getting ready to leave the locker room.

"Gawd Montana, you're beautiful." Danny embraces me saying, "I love this shirt." This shirt is just an old faded piece of cotton shinning like the memories inside those silver buttons. Our memories make it beautiful.

I pick this shirt up off the floor of his apartment in the early morning light and throw it on as I head for the kitchen. We're not living together, although I know his kitchen almost as well as I know mine. This shirt is a grand old relic with a grand old history but when I wear it with Danny it's new and sexy and so am I.

I wear it now for Sunday chores, cleaning house and raking leaves off my three by five foot patio. I hate taking it off. I wear it beneath my jacket with the collar turned up high. So old I should replace it, but I'm not about to try.

Fin