A/N: This is set after the DaReya track ends, and some time has gone by after that. And um. This is my I-came-back-to-the-fandom-please-accept-me-again fic. I am only slightly ashamed to say that I ignored my 2 Raazi WIPs and 1 other CID WIP to write this, and completed it in 3 total hours.

Also I feel the obligation to mention that I have nothing against Jayvanti. I truly love her character, I just find her initial advances a bit. Funny. Pls don't hate me.

Review and let me know how this is :)

Peaceful Coffees

Shreya is just looking for a moment of peace, which is disrupted in the best of ways.

Shreya is just looking for a moment of peace. A moment when she can sit in her peaceful corner of the bureau, at her peaceful desk, and have a peaceful coffee while peacefully uploading case files. And she manages to achieve all of them, for about a whole minute.

Then her peace is disrupted by the presence of Daya sir in her peaceful corner of the bureau, coming towards her peaceful desk, raising his brow at her peaceful coffee, and peering into her peaceful work. She can tell. She can just tell. Peace is an illusion. She sighs.

She gets up when he approaches, file in hand, and nods as he awkwardly mumbles some fluff about what to do with the file he presents her with. Then she assumes (hopes) that he'll leave. But he doesn't. He hovers near her desk awkwardly enough to make her wonder if this was what she had looked like when she had been trying to not-so-subtly grab his attention.

"Is there also something else, sir?" she asks after several moments have passed, more out of curiosity than anything, because Daya sir does not usually act like this.

"Oh." He looks up from his shoes. "Umm. Yes, actually."

Shreya sits back down when he motions her to, then he edges closer to her desk. She dares to pick up her now slightly less peaceful coffee again.

"I need a favour," he says, scratching his neck and not looking her in the eye. Interesting. She leans back into her chair.

"Yes? What is it?"

"It's, uh." He looks around the bureau, empty apart from themselves and Jayvanti and Purvi, the two of whom are at the opposite end of the bureau.

"It's what?" Shreya asks, maybe a bit too amused, even though she swears she isn't trying to be petty. She takes another sip from her coffee, the peace which it had been bringing her rapidly declining.

Daya sighs, runs a hand through his hair the way he is wont to doing, and finally looks at her. Maybe she should have been expecting him to do that at some point, but she really isn't and ends up scalding her tongue.

"It's about Jayvanti," Daya says, embarrassed. Shreya raises an eyebrow and says nothing more, so he continues, "she has been trying to … um. Get my attention."

Shreya's eyebrows arch higher. "Affection," she corrects him before she can stop herself, and Daya grimaces.

"Yes. That." Shreya doesn't have any particular opinions about Jayvanti's obvious advances towards Daya. Not only because it's really not her place, but because she believes that she is totally, completely, irrevocably, done with the situation-that-was and the hypothetical-that-could-have-been. If anything, she wishes Jayvanti luck. Daya sir is a tough nut to crack. Still, she takes a particularly pointed breath in and sips her coffee once more.

"I want you to talk to her about stopping that."

Shreya straight up chokes.

Some of the decidedly not peaceful coffee has managed to make it to her nasal passage and is making her gasp, her throat burning up and eyes watering and stinging. She grabs a tissue hastily and accepts the water that Daya passes her. When she can breathe again she sees her other two colleagues looking at them, bemused. Shreya flushes.

She turns back to Daya sir, who is looking equally bemused, and raises her eyebrows once more. "Me?" she asks, hoping that her voice conveys her bewilderment. It apparently does not.

"Yeah," Daya replies, and Shreya lets out a short, mirthless laugh.

"Are you sure you don't see why that is a really bad idea?"

Daya frowns. "No? It would be one colleague talking to another colleague."

Shreya narrows her eyes. "Do you …" she trails off, leaning back into her chair. Daya leans on her desk. Shreya laughs again, shaking her head at the absurdity of the situation. "Sure, I can do that, because it's not as if I have ever tried to make a pass on my senior, or fallen in love with him, or tried to date him." Daya sighs, a heavy sound, and grimaces. Shreya continues, "my telling someone else to not would not be ironic at all."

"That was different," Daya counters, and Shreya narrows her eyes.

"How?" She asks pointedly.

He ducks his head, and when he looks up again he avoids looking into her eyes. "Because I love you too."

Shreya would like to say that his saying what he had had not affected her at all, but in truth her heart nearly stops beating. She breathes in, then out, then in, then out again—mechanically—biting her lip. She stares at him pointedly until he finally looks at her again, more nervous than she has ever seen him be. She hasn't missed the one discrepancy in their two statements. She should say something, she supposes, but instead just sighs. Daya looks away again. He does that a lot, she realises.

"Sorry," he says, but Shreya disregards it.

"How hard was that to say?"she asks, defeated. It shouldn't matter anymore, any of this, because time has passed since everything ended, because it's ended, but she wants answers. She deserves that closure, at the very least.

When Daya looks back at her he finds her brows furrowed and bottom lip trembling the way it does when she is agitated, and all he can say, the only thing he can say, is, "I'm sorry."

He half expects her to snap at him, but she simply sinks further into her chair. They stare at each other in science for a few minutes, neither knowing what to say, until it is broken by Freddy entering the bureau with the general ruckus he brings with him.

"I'll talk to her," Shreya says finally, signalling the end of their conversation, and, by extension, asking Daya to leave.

Except he is not sure he can, like this. Without really knowing. 'How hard was that to say?' is not no. It's also not a yes, but he tries not to think about that. He doesn't really deserve an answer, he thinks, but it's worth a shot. This is the bravest he has felt in a while, brave enough to tell her the truth, so he can commit this last act of bravery before he loses his nerve.

"Thanks," he says, stops, then continues, "Shreya, uh, do you want to … um. Get a coffee sometime?"

Shreya visibly flushes, then pointedly drowns her mug of peaceful coffee, which has by now gone cold.

"Okay."

~Fin~

Please review :)

~Ruhi