AN: This is my first 24 fanfic, and I'm in a hurry to get it up tonight, so bear with me here. Reviews are loved and appreciated! Thanks.

Michelle knew she was in trouble the minute she reported to Mason's office. It was her first day at the Los Angeles CTU after transferring from Division, and considering the reason she'd left, she wanted everything to go smoothly. It only took one look at the man standing, arms crossed, in front of Mason's desk to know that she was in for another "work vs. personal life" struggle.

But she was, after all was said and done, a professional, and an exceedingly dedicated and capable one at that. So she merely glanced at the man before directing her attention to Mason.

"Michelle," he said briskly, "I know you know the drill and we've got a lot of work to do today, so I'll save the 'welcome to CTU' crap for another day. This," Mason nodded at the stranger," is Tony Almeida. He's your department head. He's gonna show you around and then I need both of you to start running some names and cross-checking them with known terrorist cells within the US. I'll send them down to your station in a couple minutes." Mason bent back over his paperwork, obviously dismissing them. Michelle looked at Tony and willed her heart beat to slow down.

"C'mon," Tony said. "We'll get you set up."

At first he thought she was pretty. It was an objective obse5rvation, and one that he quickly dismissed from his day-to-day thoughts. She wasn't the only pretty woman working at CTU.

Then she earned his respect. She was good at her job- damn good- and she became his favorite delegate almost immediately. He found himself giving her the most interesting and challenging work…not because she was the only one who could do it, but because she would enjoy it, and because he could always count on her. Whenever he got the chance to work in close proximity to someone, he tried to make sure it was Michelle Dessler.

Things continued to progress exponentially, and within the space of six months Tony was having a hard time taking his gaze off her at work, and dreaming about her at night. Somehow, without his conscious awareness, Michelle had slipped past his defenses from "pretty," raced through "attractive," and was permanently filed under both "beautiful" and "sexy as hell." But if she felt anything for him she was hiding it well. Every time Tony considered asking her out he lost his nerve at the last minute when she invariably said something about work.

Even thinking about Nina didn't help.

So Michelle shook herself mentally whenever she caught herself daydreaming. She tried to ignore his physical attributes (plentiful though they were), and attempted to appreciate his personality on a purely professional level. It was a largely unsuccessful endeavor. Once, on a slow day, she was forced to retreat to the restroom to collect herself after she realized she was trying to figure out why he always rolled up his shirt sleeves and undid the top few buttons.

Focus, Dessler, was her mantra.

So she had a crush on a coworker. So what? It happened all the time. She could deal with it.

But sometimes at night she would lie awake, vaguely wishing her job was less critical, less stressful. Would she have casually flirted, or made an effort to find out how he felt about her? Would she have dared to approach him personally, rather than professionally?

Stop it! She told herself. It's never going to happen. Just stop torturing yourself and get over him.