A/N: Hi! So... right, first fic. (: Sorry it's so short.

Disclaimers - I don't own any characters, but I do have a copy of Mass Effect 2. Song is Elevator Love Letter by Stars

I'm so hard for a rich girl
My heels are high
My eyes cast low
And I don't know how to love
I get too tired after midday, lately

She's always been so dead-set on every decision she makes.

When he first meets her, every little bit of protest that escapes his lips fall on deaf ears and he's left trying, to no avail, to make a dent in her shield of casted metal. She reasons that her decisiveness is why she's a top Cerberus officer; she reasons that it's the main reason why everyone hates her. She's in love with her job, a blind man could see. In love with the long, depressing hours of nothingness; of the ease when her heart is safe from everything else in the world.

And so, when he first asks her on a date, in the middle of a dark and dingy littered street on Omega, she regards him with cold, piercing eyes, and a mutter of, I don't date. She leaves out the fact that she's never been on a date before, because even though she's the kind of girl that demands a double-take from every passer-by, she's never let anyone in. Cheap flings were the only relationships that she'd ever known, and she usually made the most of them. He chuckles for a bit, before realizing that she's got a glare and a half grimace on her face, and he immediately apologizes. Then, before she realizes it, he holds out his hand with a lop-sided grin, gesturing toward Omega's only nightclub, Afterlife. Then it's not a date, he reasons with that damned smile. It's just a drink.

With a hesitant, surprised nod, she takes his hand, and they lose themselves in the club, with dark pulsating music causing a ringing in both their ears. They seat themselves at the bar (she loves how he pulls out the stool for her) and ignoring the various other patrons of the club around them, they find silence, regarding the other quietly with incredulous, polite and awkward glances at each other. Though the moment is broken when a drunken patron tries to hit on her, and provokes her into breaking his nose, she decides that she's got a hungering attraction to one Commander Shepard.

My office glows all night long
It's a nuclear show and the stars are gone
Elevator, elevator
Take me home

It's odd, how quickly she falls for him. She shouldn't be falling for anyone, let alone the greatest human in the universe. But months under the same roof of the Normandy, and she finds herself physically aching when he doesn't enter her office every once in a while. She doesn't tell him, because she doesn't know how to. She doesn't tell him, because she isn't really the type to confess any sense of feeling anyway – she's nicknamed Frosty the Snow Bitch for a reason. On nights where he pays her no visits, she stays locked in her office, hard at work, her office the only light shining in the deep black void surrounding the Normandy.

She has the slightest suspicion that he knows, though, when she catches his gaze lingering on her form a little longer than considered polite, when his face lights up just as she steps into the same room he's in. They don't talk; they never do, she notices. Half of their relationship is based solely on silence and a mutual understanding that they're both broken and bent and how words can't really express how similar they are. When they do talk, it's about his past, her father, his mother and how genetically engineered she is, and he'd repeat his point about her being so very perfect, and they'd laugh at their ridiculous, yet comfortable banter, and she has to quell the swelling of her chest when she entertains thoughts of his apparent attraction toward her.

So, when she gets shot on a mission – a lucky, caught-her-by-surprise shot from an Eclipse merc, and she watches the sickening red flower blossom and stain her pristine white armor around her abdomen – she grunts in annoyance and falls to ground at the impact, purely because she hates cleaning blood out of her armor, and precisely because Shepard runs through the gunfire to shield her without any thought of his own safety. She hates it when he gets so selfless, so uncaring of himself. Doesn't he realize how much I'd hate myself if he got shot because of me? But she chastises herself for doubting his actions. He's Shepard, after all, and it's there, lying on the ground with a small pool of blood gathering around her, where she decides that Commander Shepard is a man she'd trust wholeheartedly.

When the mission ends, when they've recruited another teammate for their certifiably suicidal mission, when they board the Normandy, he pulls her away from the rest of the team, immediately, for an audience with Dr. Chakwas, and she can't help the faintest hint of a smile when he insists on staying for the entire examination, and escorting her back to her quarters despite its close proximity to the Medical Bay. He lingers at her door for a moment, making sure that she's fast asleep on a painkiller before leaving. She smiles to herself when he leaves with a whisper of, You scared me, Miranda, obviously oblivious to the fact that she'd been awake all along and very immune to the drug, and Miranda decides that Shepard's a man whom she cares deeply for.

I take it out on my good friends
But the worst stays in
Or where would I begin?
My office glows all night long
It's a nuclear show and the stars are gone
Elevator, elevator
Take me home

They've finally made it past their suicide mission to the Collector Base, and as it turns out, it wasn't all that suicidal after all. Despite the bruises that pepper her from head to toe from their fierce battle with the insectoid Collectors, her lips tingle, her spine is electrified and she's honest-to-God drunk on lust as his lips attack every inch of her face and neck. All he had to whisper were the three words she so longed to hear.

She groans at the contact, his soft supple lips brushing against a particularly sensitive spot behind her ear. The wine she'd insisted on sharing with him lies in a puddle on the floor of his quarters as they attack each other with a feverish passion, only mutually stopping for a breath of air every few seconds. Her hands move up to tangle themselves in his hair, and she bites back a moan when his tongue slides smoothly against hers.

John, she whispers, as her arms loop around his neck, as she takes the opportunity to meld her lips back to his, and they stumble haphazardly toward the bed, knocking over the entire bottle of vintage wine that he'd purchased back on Earth. He reciprocates with a breathless whisper of her name, and everything falls away in a tangle of limbs as they crash to his bed in a heated fervor.

Don't go, say you'll stay
Spend a lazy sunday in my arms
I won't take anything away
Don't go, say you'll stay
Spend a lazy sunday in my arms
Don't take anything away

When she awakes, she feels only warmth. There's a pressure on her abdomen and it begins to shift to wrap completely around her waist. Warm breath tickles her ear, and she has to stifle a giggle at the ticklish sensation. Though it usually depended on the morning, when he begins to caress the back of her neck with his lips, she decides that she is, indeed, a morning person. They greet each other with kisses too passionate for the morning, and activities too vigorous for the start of the day.

But when they lull slowly back to sleep, his finger tracing patterns over the smooth flesh of her arm, Miranda Lawson decides that she's finally fallen in love with him.