Chapter Text
“Please do not look at me like that.”
It’s a sudden request, not said with a shaky tone or an anxious plea. It’s said smoothly, with a voice that Niji has grown quite familiar with.
Sabo’s wearing his revolutionary garb, a mockery of the noble clothing that he only seems to tolerate in this form. With that gaudy yet recognizable hat and worn cravat, loosely hanging down his chest. He looks as he usually does in his wanted posters, with lips curled into a brazen smile and eyes filled with determination. There’s a fire that burns beneath his skin, trembling within his soul and yet as he stands beside Niji on this small stone balcony, he is calm.
His smile is not brazen and ahead of him isn’t war. It is only the sea that stares back at them, the deep waters shining like liquid black onyx beneath the moonlight.
Niji blinks at him from beneath his goggles, tinted lenses only a minor inconvenience as he admires the other man. His cold heart doesn’t exactly quicken its beats as he watches Sabo look at him, a faintly forlorn emotion brewing up in blue eyes. He’s leaning against the balcony’s railings, resting his face in his left hand, eyes watching as Niji seemed to calculate his words. Blonde hair shines in the light, trailing over his body as if trying to outline it.
“Like what?”
Niji finally asks, squinting his eyes at the other man. Perhaps it’s another exchange of banter, a poor joke or observation that Sabo attempts to make. Trying to pick apart an empty shell of a soldier, trying to set the dualities between the two of them as if they were equals. What an unexpected relationship, an abnormal friendship that still seems to leave Niji in disbelief whenever the revolutionary makes his appearance.
A prince and a criminal.
Sabo huffs, averting his eyes. It’s so human, something that Niji almost finds himself liking. The burn scars that creep out of Sabo’s leather gloves, from the back of his neck just barely hidden by his coat’s collar. The blonde waves that don’t serve to hide the large scar on his face, and instead seem to carve out his face well. Simply an accented detail that makes the centerpiece shine.
He chuckles, his lips splitting apart into a light smile.
How funny it was, to see something that was usually deemed grotesque be proudly shown to the world, a supposedly vulnerable sight being used as a badge of honor almost.
“Like you could love me.” Sabo admits, a claim that seems so completely out of left field that it actively freezes Niji. It’s such a concrete claim, as if an unwavering truth.
But Sabo lies. Niji lies.
Perhaps it’s just banter, playful exchange of jokes that is intended to throw the aloof Niji off his mental course and earn himself a laugh from the blonde.
Niji’s palms are clammy, not dripping but it’s a sensation that he’s never felt before. No, felt is the incorrect word. Experienced. He’s never experienced symptoms of anxiety, effects on the human body that drives one to stuttering words and shaken behavior.
Despite all this, Niji can only keep his lips pressed tightly closed.
“Like you could love me,” Sabo repeats, pulling his arm from the railing and standing properly. He’s not any taller than Niji, but it feels as if he intends to overarch his form, to swallow him up. “Like you want to learn how to. It makes me think that I deserve it.”
How sappy. How ridiculously vulnerable to admit, to say to someone like Niji. To a thing like Niji.
What does he deserve? Does he deserve this unlikely attempt at friendship? Does he deserve the secrecy of the night to be his cover, for the sun may unveil him and the cruelty of the world emerges?
How human. How so ridiculously human that it’s almost endearing, that Niji wants to nurture it. Wants.
There’s a pause in his thoughts.
Does he though? It’s so completely against his given psyche that it’s disgusting. It crawls inside him as if it were invasive, forcing something in him that, despite how disgusting and raw it was— he is curious. He is intrigued. He wants to pull out every string of muscle from his heart and figure out why it thumps, why it pumps and why it quickens when Sabo meets his eyes again.
“What if I did?”
He can see how it takes the blonde by surprise when he leans in a bit, in that cocky nature that gets Sabo’s face scrunching up in uncertainty mixed up with disbelief.
“What if I wanted to know how to love? You’d be the first, and that’s quite the honor.”
Sabo doesn’t fluster, he doesn’t grow rosy pink like most women, no, he smiles in that challenging way that thrills him. Chases, they’re boring. He prefers it to be a quick pursuit, something that doesn’t beat around the bush or fool around, leaves his hands without much to clean and there are no lingering emotions beside “mission complete”.
Sabo smirks, laughs even. Whatever this was, whether it be friendship or something that yearns to be explored; Niji wants it.
He did want it, as if finding the perfect prey and licking his teeth, he wanted it.