Notes: So this is just something I did for funsies. It's largely unedited and I'm tired now so I'm done with it. Mira pretty much decides, "You made me coffee this one time, you are now my friend. You are probably going to now hear my very many opinions on everything." Also, friends to lovers is kind of low key my jam.
Because You're My Friend
A recurring joke on the Athens is that Commander Mira Shepard emerged fully formed from a vat in the Alliance Labs, citing protocol and issuing writeups for uniform violations as part of a project to make the perfect XO.
Six months ago, when she was transferred, nobody knew quite what to make of her. She was supposed to be there for evening rounds with Anderson. She showed up at 0600 and told the Captain she'd show herself around. Somehow, nobody noticed the woman standing by the coffee maker, listening to scuttlebutt until Zheng started asking questions about Akuze.
Kaidan would never forget the look of pure terror on Zheng's face when they heard, "I heard she seduced the Thresher Maws."
She quickly gained a reputation for coming and going without notice. Something would happen and Shepard would just appear in a room, almost always with a fresh cup of coffee, and she'd vanish just as suddenly. Sykes liked to claim that she could teleport, normally right after Shepard caught her doing something she wasn't supposed to.
She liked order and routines. She liked her paperwork arranged a certain way and he suspected that she would fight somebody over the color coded files. Where Anderson would let some things slide, she never did. She never wrote anybody up with malice, she always explained it, and she never did it just because she could.
It didn't hurt that once on Arcturus Station, she swooped in on a Captain doing an unfair spot inspection of Ensign Fisher and argued him off with flawless knowledge of Alliance procedure. Fisher claimed that she was about to beat him over the head with the rulebook with all the professional grace of one of the Admiralty Lawyers.
After that, he overheard Anderson on the coms with her former CO, Captain Rachel Cavanagh. He didn't mean to, but he had to drop off paperwork and caught Cavanagh's shout of, "She's your goddamn problem now!"
The first time he was on an away team with her, she used him as a human shield. They were pinned down by Batarians and couldn't duck out of cover for long enough to shoot back. She asked how his barrier was, if it could take a shot. When he replied, she then asked, "Do you trust me Lieutenant?"
Four shots later and he learned that half her skill in paperwork was devoted to getting away scot-free with what he could describe as insane stunts. He also learned that she was one of worst people to have to give first aide. She squirmed and claimed she was fine, despite a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
When he finally wore her down into accepting treatment, he almost added that it wouldn't hurt at all. Then he got a look at her dark grey eyes and realized that if he lied to her, whatever trust she had in him would be gone. So he told her that it was going to hurt like a son of a bitch and oddly enough, she thanked him for it.
Gradually, the rest of the crew came around to her. She may have been a weird, grouchy, stickler for rules, probable ninja XO, but she was their weird, grouchy, stickler for rules, probable ninja XO. She was smart, very capable, despite her quirks, they were lucky to have her.
Still, she remained closed off. She could talk for hours with anybody from the crew about just about anything and nothing, but always managed to never say anything about herself. If they asked, she'd deflect in such a graceful manner that most of the time, nobody even noticed she didn't answer their question.
He always thought better of asking. In his experience, when somebody had walls like that, they didn't appreciate people trying to bring them down. He figured that was why she started sitting next to him at meals and on the transport. She would sometimes talk shop, but otherwise rarely said anything and that was alright by him.
She did her job. She did it well. She didn't need to be anybody's friend.
Sometimes, if aura symptoms kept him awake, he'd find her just as sleepless at the table in the mess or the rec room, still hard at work on expense reports or reading up on new technical or legal journals. No matter what time of night he caught her, she always had a fresh cup of coffee.
The two of them would sit in comfortable silence. She'd acknowledge nightshift if they came by, answer any questions they had, but otherwise, they were perfectly quiet. Eventually, she started talking about work, asking for his thoughts on maneuvers, showing him journal articles, and asking him what he thought of an omni-tool or medi-gel development. Still, she was remarkably closed lipped about what she thought of any of it. It was an odd little routine, but it worked.
Once he noticed her cup was empty when he showed up. She was so wrapped up in whatever was on her datapad that she tried to take a drink before realizing that she was out. She sighed and the dark circles under her eyes looked worse than usual. He wanted to tell her to go to bed, whatever she was working on would still be there in the morning, but she was stubborn and he felt as if it might cross a line. Since he was already up, he offered to make her a cup. She looked at him, faint surprise etched onto her stark face.
"Thank you," she said, sliding her mug over to him. "Black, no sugar."
It was a weird sensation, all of a sudden becoming one of the few on the ship who knew anything about the Commander. Six months onboard and despite best efforts and the ongoing bet on the lower decks, nobody knew anything about Commander Mira Shepard, save for what was in her files. Six months earlier and she definitely would have told him that she'd take care of it herself.
Knowing how somebody took their coffee was an inconsequential thing to know about a person. Yet from someone as guarded as Commander Shepard, something as small as a coffee order felt like so much more.
The next time she shows him an article, she tells him in no uncertain terms what she thinks about the author's methods and conclusions.