dear god, take her imprint out of my brain
if sabo could choose a word to define her, it would be deliberate. she rebuilt herself from the ground up. every single detail is chosen carefully. every boundary is intentional. and sabo fell pathetically in love with every single part of the woman who made herself untouchable.
౨ৎ word count: 8636
౨ৎ tags / warnings: fem!reader - referrered to as she/her, women in stem, reader is an it major, nerdy as fuck, sabo is down horrendously bad, reader wears skirts and dresses, very self indulgent, it's my first ever fanfic so i'm very sorry for this.
౨ৎ divider credits: @uzmacchiato
౨ৎ read it on ao3 here!
(sorry to all my gender neutral folks :c)
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ∘˚˳° ｡⋆୨୧ ପ꒰⑅•ᴗ•｡꒱໊੭
The first time Sabo met her, it actually felt kinda anticlimactic. It didn't happen in the lecture hall or the library or any of the usual places where these things supposedly happen. It was in the elevator of the STEM building, and he only noticed her because she was impossible not to. She wasn't loud or wearing anything flashy. At least, not in the conventional sense. Actually, if you passed her on the street and didn't really look at her face, you would only register a blur of blue and dark beige and think "oh, she’s probably a student".
But Sabo is so, so perceptive, he trained himself to pay attention to every single little thing. To survive a world that tried very hard to make him invisible. He noticed details the way other people noticed neon signs inches away from their faces.
And every detail about the girl standing in the corner of the elevator, hands clasped tight in front of her while holding her phone, felt like a quiet, deliberate statement of her existence.
Her hair was pulled back into a hairstyle so sleek and perfect it looked almost sculptural, with not a single flyaway strand escaping it. Resting on her nose were wayfarer-shaped prescription glasses with completely transparent frames, the kind that should have been unremarkable, but they somehow drew even more attention to her sharp and intelligent eyes, that were currently fixed on the elevator's floor numbers with a kind of detached patience.
Then there's the most noticeable thing about her. A 3M Aura mask, white, professional grade, with sturdy head straps; one that looped around the crown of her head and the other one at the base of her neck, precisely sealing her face away from the outside world.
The rest of her outfit felt elegant, but in a cozy way. She was wearing a dark blue cardigan, soft-looking, just the perfect size for her, closed over a blue button-up shirt buttoned all the way up to the collar. The sleeves carefully and methodically folded up, by just a tiny bit to look comfortable. It was paired with a short, dark beige skirt. Her polished black mary janes with a single strap across it, contrasting the long white socks under. The whole ensemble was almost aggressively put together, like a uniform she had chosen for herself, and it radiated kind of a quiet, unapologetic intentionality, while also looking... Absolutely adorable.
Absolutely adorable? Sabo found himself thinking while observing her. Cataloging the way the elevator lights caught the frames of her transparent glasses. The way her hands gripped her phone with a tension that suggested she was aware of everyone else in the confined space. The way her breathing was slow and even, the mask's material barely moving.
The elevator dinged. Fourth floor. She stepped out without looking at anyone, eyes fixed on the floor, and disappeared around the corner towards the IT labs.
Sabo remained in the elevator for a full three seconds after the doors closed, then jabbed the button for the fifth floor, and let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, while reflecting confusedly on the person he just met.
"Huh?"
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ
He saw her again three days later, in the main campus' coffee shop. The one that was always overcrowded and smelled like desperation for the upcoming exams. Sabo was tasting a black coffee at a corner table, while pretending to read through a political science paper he'd already memorized word for word, for his homework, when the door opened and a figure in dark blue caught his eye.
It was her. Same perfect hairstyle, same transparent glasses, same mask. She had a brown laptop bag slung over her shoulder, a serious-looking thing with reinforced corners and a prominent "Fragile" sticker on the side. The girl ordered her drink, a hot chocolate, without removing her mask, and she took it with a shy nod of thanks and retreated to a table near the window.
She didn't drink it right away. Instead, she pulled out her laptop, a sleek, silver model covered in stickers, such as Python logos, a Linux penguin, some cute cats, a few of those aesthetic lyric ones with songs he didn't recognize, and a small sticker that read 'I'm not antisocial, I'm just not user-friendly'. "Huh. So nerdy. Cute." he thought, while she began typing, her fingers flying across the keyboard with the kind of speed and precision that could only come from years of practice.
Sabo tried to go back to his paper. He really tried. But his eyes kept drifting over to her table, to the way she occasionally paused to push her glasses up her nose (a gesture that was unconscious, apparently, since they hadn't slipped at all), to the way she checked the fit of her mask with a quick, practiced adjustment every few minutes, to the way her eyes narrowed slightly when she was working through a difficult part of her code. He was absolutely fascinated by her.
There was just something about that girl... He couldn't put a finger on it. She was just so hard to look away from. She had half of her face covered by a whole industrial-grade respirator, for fuck's sake. And yet. She was just so, so, charming in her own way.
He wanted to know her name. He wanted to know why she wore the mask and if it was just for health reasons or something more, something that matched the careful and deliberate way she seemed to navigate through the world. He wanted to know what her voice sounded like, what her smile looked like, if she had a sense of humor or if she was just as serious as her style suggested.
But instead, he watched her pack up her laptop exactly 45 minutes later, the motion somehow breaking Sabo's trance of staring at her. Her hot chocolate basically untouched, except for a single sip taken with a quick and efficient motion of lifting her mask just enough to bring the straw to her lips, and then resealing it back immediately. She wiped down her table with a sanitizing wipe she pulled from her bag, dropped it in the trash, and walked out without looking at anyone.
Sabo stared at his now cold coffee and realized he hadn't even started his homework. Fuck.
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ
By the end of the week, Ace noticed something was clearly wrong with him.
They were in their shared apartment, a small and chaotic space that somehow fit Sabo and his brothers perfectly. An organized mess, you could call it. His books and papers stacked in careful towers, Luffy's video games and snack wrappers scattered everywhere, Ace's always fully packed messenger bag by the door as if he was always ready to leave by a moment's notice. Sabo was supposed to be helping Ace study for his marine biology midterms, but instead, he was staring at the ceiling, his hands on the back of his head, his textbook open and forgotten on his lap.
"Dude." Ace snapped his fingers in front of Sabo's face. "You've been weird all week. What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"Bullshit." Ace flopped onto the couch next to him, throwing the textbook far away, into a pile of something Sabo doesn't even want to think about. "Is it the family thing again? Because I told you, we can-"
"It's not the family thing." Sabo cut him off, in a very direct way. The family thing was a whole other can of worms, one they had all agreed not to touch upon unless absolutely necessary. Sighing deeply, he said, "It's... Complicated. So. There's this girl-"
Ace's eyebrows shot up so fast they practically disappeared into his hairline. "A girl? You?? The guy who's always so against relationships???"
"I didn't say anything about a relationship. I just said there's a girl."
"Basically the same thing, coming from you." Ace leaned forward, smirking, "Who is she? What's her major? Is she hot?"
Sabo thought about the girl in the elevator, in the coffee shop, and that he had spotted her twice more since then. Once in the library, sitting at a computer terminal with rod-straight posture, and once walking across the campus with an umbrella held tight on her hand, despite the fact that it wasn't raining. Frowning, he said, "I don't know... I don't know her name. I've never spoken to her."
"You've never spoken to her and you're already this far gone?" Ace let out a low whistle, his eyes open very wide. "She must be something else."
"She wears a mask," Sabo said, and immediately felt stupid for leading with that, physically cringing, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "Like. One of those very professional respirators, with the head straps. And she always has her hair in this very formal, kind of, hairstyle, always slicked back methodically away from her face," saying all of that while gesturing with his hands, "and her outfits are really put-together, like she thought a lot about every single thing she wears. She's an IT major, I think. I saw her going to the IT floor many times."
Ace stared at him for a long moment, blinking. "You have never spoken to her, but already know she always wears expensive masks, how she does her hair, her major, and the fact that her outfits are 'intentional.'" He made air quotes around the last word. "Holy shit. You're down bad."
"I-I'm just curious," Sabo corrected, but even to his own ears it sounded weak. "She's... Interesting. Different."
"How so?"
Sabo struggled to put it into words. How could he explain that she always seemed to move through the world like she was both bracing for impact and refusing to flinch? How every detail of her appearance seemed like a carefully constructed boundary, but her eyes were always sharp and observant, like she's never missed a single detail of everything that's going on around her?
"She's private," he said finally. "But not in a cold way. More like... She's always protective of herself, I guess? And I want to know why. And I want to know if she'd let me in. I guess the perfect word to describe her would be deliberate. Literally everything about her feels calculated."
Ace was quiet for a moment, his usual chaotic energy turned into something far more serious. "Well, clearly. If she really wears a mask like that everywhere she goes to, like you say she does, she's obviously protecting herself from something. Like, you know, curious people like you. She probably wears that 'cause she doesn't want to talk to people unless necessary. You know how these STEM-major people are. Antisocial as fuck. It lowkey scares me. But you know what? I support you. You and your weird ass tastes. If you really want to get that mask girl, go for it. IT major, right? So, that means you're in the same building almost all the time. You're a law and political science major, your classes are literally on the floor above hers. Make it happen."
Sabo was a bit surprised by his response, frowning a bit more while thinking. He didn't want to seem like he was intruding on her personal space, like he only wanted to know about her because of her mask and pure curiosity of what's behind it. Still, he was shocked on the inside by his older brother's support. So, he really could make things happen? He was good at it. He had gotten into university on a full scholarship despite his complicated family situation. He had built a life for himself and his brothers out of nothing but sheer determination and a refusal to give up. He could figure out how to talk to this one girl.
One girl who wears a respirator mask and sleek hairstyles and preppy clothes and who was slowly, inexplicably, taking up more and more space in his thoughts. Just one girl, and yet, it had to be the most unreachable girl ever.
"Yeah," he said slowly. "Maybe I will."
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ
The opportunity came sooner than he expected, in the form of a campus-wide network outage that sent the IT department into chaos and left Sabo hanging in the middle of a research session with an essay due in 48 hours and no access to the online legal databases he needed.
He found her in the IT help center, with a handful of other tech students receiving complaints from panicked students and faculty. She was behind the main desk, her mask sealed in place, as always, her hair as sleek as ever, typing furiously on a desktop computer while three different people tried to get her attention.
"No, it's not just you." she was saying to a professor who was gesturing wildly to her. Her voice was... Not what Sabo had expected. He had imagined something soft and timid. But instead, her voice was low, calm and notably steady, with a dry edge to it that suggested she'd already explained this multiple times. "The entire campus' network is down. Yes, including the Wi-Fi. No, I don't know when it'll be back up. When I know, you'll know."
The professor mumbled something about deadlines and late salaries and stormed off. The girl didn't even watch him go. She was already turning to the next person in line, a freshman who looked like he was about to cry.
"My paper-"
"Is it saved locally or on the cloud?"
"I don't-"
"Is there a copy on your hard drive? On your desktop? In a folder that isn't synced to an online service?"
"I think so? Maybe? I don't remember-"
She let out a slow breath that wasn't quite a sigh. "Okay. When the network comes back up, come find me. I'll help you recover it. For now, write down everything you remember on a paper. The network won't be down forever, and even if we can't recover the cloud version, we might be able to pull an archived copy."
The freshman nodded, looking slightly less panicked, and stumbled away. The girl turned to the next person in line, which happened to be Sabo.
Her eyes met his. Up close, they were a shade of brown so dark they were almost black, and they flickered over him with a quick, assessing glance, taking in his creased button-up shirt, his own clear-framed prescription glasses (he had started wearing them more often, for reasons he did not want to reflect upon), the laptop clutched under his arm.
"Network issue?" she asked, and her voice was slightly flatter now, the customer service politeness fading away with her patience. A sign of tiredness, he noted, and flinched mentally at the thought.
"Yeah... Something like that." He set his laptop on the counter between them. "I'm actually looking for a workaround. I need access to Westlaw for a legal research essay, and obviously the campus VPN is down with everything else. I was wondering if there's a way to route through a different server, or if there's a local cache of the databases somewhere. I know the law library used to have them on DVD form, but I'm not sure if that's still a thing."
Something shifted in her eyes. The flat politeness sharpened into something more engaged, more interested. "You're not going to yell at me about how this is ruining your future grades?"
"I figured you didn't cause the outage, so yelling at you would be pretty much pointless. And it would make me look like an asshole."
"Huh." She tilted her head slightly, raising her eyebrows, and he could have sworn the mask moved in a way that suggested a smile beneath it. "You'd be surprised of how many people don't reach that conclusion. Let me see your laptop."
He slid it across the counter. She opened it, and he noticed her slender fingers, with nails slightly longer than average and no polish, moving across the keyboard with practiced efficiency. "Law student?"
"Double major. Law and political science."
"That explains the Westlaw. Most people on this campus don't even know what it is." She was typing now, pulling up command prompts and network settings, her eyes scanning hundreds of lines of code and IP addresses with the speed and familiarity he associated with her area of expertise.
"Okay. So the campus network is completely fried. Someone in the admin building unplugged the wrong thing, I guess, or maybe we got hit with a cybernetic attack, or-honestly, it could be anything. But the local private network is still up, which means..." She trailed off, frowning at the screen. "Which means the law library's internal server might still be accessible. They have a cached version of Westlaw that updates weekly. It won't have the absolute latest cases, but if you're doing a research essay, it should have enough."
"That's perfect. How do I access it?"
She didn't answer right away. Instead, she reached into the same laptop bag he'd seen before and pulled out a sticky note and a pen. She quickly wrote something down, her cursive handwriting big and round, and slid it across the counter to him. An IP address. A set of login credentials. And at the bottom, a string of numbers and letters that looked like a network path.
"This should get you in," she said. "It's technically a backdoor the IT department uses for maintenance, so don't go spreading it around. And it'll only work while you're physically connected to the law library's ethernet ports, so you'll need to go there. But it should help you for now until the main network is back up."
Sabo looked at the note, then at her. "Thank you. Seriously. You just saved my paper."
"It's my job." Her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, and he got the distinct impression that she was smiling. "Good luck with the paper."
"Thanks." He hesitated, the paper clutched in his hand. This was the moment. He could ask her name, introduce himself, something. But the line behind him was growing, and she was already turning to the next person, and the moment slipped away before he could grab it.
He walked to the law library with the sticky note burning a hole in his pocket and her handwriting imprinted on the inside of his eyelids.
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ
After that interaction, he started seeing her everywhere. Or maybe he was just looking for her more carefully. Maybe he had always been seeing her, a figure in muted colors and a white mask, and now he was just paying attention.
He learned her schedule through fast absorption and observation. She was in the IT floor most mornings, either in the labs or the help center. She ate lunch alone at a table in the corner of one of the break rooms, always with her laptop open, always eating something she had brought from home in a glass container.
She never removed her mask to eat in public. Instead, she would slip the food under the mask one bite at a time, in a motion that felt rehearsed and deeply private.
He learned her name the week after the network outage. He was in the library, researching for another paper, when he heard someone call out "Y/N!" and saw her turn. Y/N. He rolled the name around in his head, testing how it felt. It suited her.
He learned that she was brilliant. He already knew she was an IT major, but he hadn't realized the extent of it until he overheard a conversation between two of her professors in the faculty lounge. One of them was exclaiming about a student who had found a critical vulnerability in the university's registration system and reported it responsibly instead of exploiting it. The other asked who it was, and the first professor said her name with the kind of admiration usually reserved for colleagues, not undergraduates.
He also learned that she was kind. Well, in her own, shy ways. He watched her spend 20 minutes helping an elderly professor set up a two-factor authentication on his email, her patience never wavering even when he kept forgetting his password. He saw her give her hot chocolate to a crying junior who had just failed a midterm, pressing the cup into her hands with a brief, quiet, "Chocolate helps. Statistically speaking." He noticed the way she always held the door for people behind her, the way she sanitized her table not just for herself but for whoever came next, the way she left detailed notes on the whiteboards in the IT labs for students who were struggling with the same problems she'd already solved.
And he learned that she was fiercely, unapologetically private in a way that went beyond mere introversion and shyness.
He started noticing the small things. The way she flinched almost imperceptibly when someone got too close to her in a crowd. The way she always positioned herself with her back to a wall, her eyes on the exits. The way she cleaned her workspace with the kind of thoroughness that suggested it wasn't just about germs. The way the respirator didn't feel like just a mask to her and more like some sort of armor.
That realization made him feel a deep sadness for her. But at the same time, it made him want to know her even more. He needed to be very careful about how he approached her, because someone who wore armor that tight so consistently was someone who had been hurt badly before.
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ
On a rainy thursday, Sabo was leaving the engineering building after a late study session when he saw her standing under the canopy by the entrance, staring out at the pouring rain with an expression of quiet sadness. She was wearing a different cardigan today, in a dark green color, with a short brown pleated skirt and her usual white socks and mary janes. Her mask was in place, her hair was perfect, and she was holding her laptop bag with both hands like she was considering making a run for it. Surprised, he felt like the universe finally gave him a good chance. He better not fuck it up, he thought.
"Forgot your umbrella?" he asked, stopping beside her.
She glanced at him, and he saw the moment of recognition in her eyes. "You're the Westlaw guy."
"Sabo." He held out his hand, then hesitated, wondering if she'd be uncomfortable with the contact. But she reached out and shook it, her grip firm and brief. "And yeah, I'm the Westlaw guy. You're Y/N, right? You saved my paper."
"You saved your own paper. I just gave you an IP address." She looked back out at the rain. "And yes, I forgot my umbrella. I checked the forecast this morning, it said there was a 10% chance of precipitation."
"10% means there's still a chance."
"Statistically, it means there's a 1 in 10 probability. I took a calculated risk." She sighed, looking down. "I calculated wrong."
Sabo laughed, and he saw her eyes crinkle slightly at the corners. "I have an umbrella," he offered. "A big one. I could walk you wherever you're going."
She hesitated, and he saw the wariness creep back into her posture. The slight step back. The way her grip tightened on her bag. "I don't want to inconvenience you."
"It's not an inconvenience. My apartment's off campus anyway, I have to walk through the rain regardless."
Another pause. She was weighing something behind her eyes, some internal calculation he couldn't see. Then she nodded, a small, precise movement. "Okay. I'm going to the STEM building. There's a server maintenance task I need to finish before tomorrow."
"Server maintenance, huh. Sounds important."
"It's actually very tedious," she corrected. "But necessary."
They walked together under Sabo's large black umbrella. She stayed carefully on her side of it, not quite touching him, but close enough that he could smell something faint and clean-soap, maybe? Or laundry detergent? No perfume. Of course, perfume could probably interfere with the mask's seal. That reminded him...
"Can I ask you something?" Sabo said as they walked.
"Sure. I reserve the right not to answer."
"That's fair. Why the mask?"
She was quiet for a long moment, the rain drumming on the umbrella above them. When she spoke, her voice was careful, measured. "Well, I don't have any conditions that require me to wear one. At least, not on paper. But, I do have a weaker immune system. I get more sick than the average person, and allergies hit me a lot harder. I get them way more frequently too, and without the mask I become a sniffling mess every day. Which is disgusting. So it helps."
"Oh. Makes sense."
"But- That's not the only reason," she continued, hesitating, and there was something almost challenging in her voice now, like she was testing him. "I also just... Like it. The mask. It makes me feel safer. Less exposed. I know that probably sounds weird."
"It doesn't sound weird."
"It sounds a little weird."
"Okay, it does sound a little weird. But I get it." He shifted the umbrella slightly to block a burst of windy rain. "I have my own things. Armor, I guess you could call it? Just not as visible as yours."
She looked at him then, really looked at him, her dark eyes scanning his face like she could read his mind. "You're not what I expected."
"Really? What did you expect?"
"Someone more... Performative. You have a reputation around campus, you know? The charming law student who somehow knows everyone. Student government, debate team, that academic article that showed up in the campus paper last month about student privacy rights and that literally everyone was talking about. You're very..." She paused, searching for the word. "Polished."
"Ouch."
"It's just an observation. Don't take it as an insult, it isn't necessarily bad. It's just not usually genuine."
"And you think I'm genuine?"
"I'm reserving judgment." But her eyes crinkled again, and he was starting to recognize that as her version of a smile. "Ask me something else."
"Okay. Then why the sleek hairstyles? I mean, you always wear it up in an almost aggressive way."
This time, there was no hesitation. But he could tell she was caught off guard by the 'aggressive'. "Practicality. Long hair gets in the way when I'm working. It catches on things and blocks my peripheral vision. Also, I can't wear a headstrap mask with my hair down. Tampers with the seal."
"Oh. You have really thought about all this."
"I've thought about everything." She said it matter-of-factly, without any speck of embarrassment. "Every choice I make about my appearance is deliberate. The clothes, the hair, the mask. I don't do things without a reason."
Sabo thought about his own carefully curated appearance: the expensive, but wrinkled shirts, the perpetually messy hair, the easy smile that he'd perfected over years of navigating social situations he'd never been prepared for. "I think we might be more alike than you would expect."
She didn't respond to that, but she didn't deny it either.
They reached the STEM building, its dark windows reflecting the gray sky. She stopped under the canopy by the entrance, and Sabo stopped with her, the umbrella still held over both of them even though they were out of the rain.
"Thank you," she said. "For the walk. And the umbrella."
"You're welcome. Good luck with your server maintenance."
"It doesn't require luck. Just patience. And caffeine, too. I guess." she said the last part silently.
"Well, good luck with those, then."
She huffed a small laugh, the first actual laugh he'd heard from her, a quiet exhale that fogged the edge of her glasses and wrinkled her eyes for just a moment. "Goodbye, Sabo."
"Goodbye, Y/N."
She disappeared into the building, and Sabo stood there for a long moment, the rain performing its rhythm on the umbrella, a stupid grin starting to spread across his face.
Oh, he was so fucked.
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ
After that day, things began to shift. Not in a dramatic way. Y/N didn't suddenly start seeking him out or greeting him enthusiastically across the campus. But she didn't avoid him either. When they passed each other on the corridors, she'd give him a small nod of acknowledgment. Nothing more, nothing less. When he ended up in the IT help center again (this time with a legit question about accessing a legal database from off campus), she answered his questions with the same dry competence as always, but her eyes lingered on him a beat longer than necessary.
And once, memorably, she sought him out. He was in the library, hunched over a stack of case law papers, when a shadow fell across his table. He looked up to find Y/N standing there, her laptop bag over one shoulder, her mask and glasses and sleek hair all perfectly in place. She was wearing a long sleeved navy dress today, with her usual white socks and mary janes. She looked like a particularly stylish librarian, or a very cute and gorgeous student about to do one of those completely performative studying sessions in an overpriced coffee shop, holy shit, he's surely drifting off.
"I have a question," she said, no hesitation present in her voice, as always.
"Okay." He gestured to the chair across from him. "Have a seat."
She sat, but on the edge of the chair, like she might need to leave at any moment. "You wrote that academic article last month. About student privacy rights and the university's data collection policies."
"I did."
"How much do you actually know about the legal framework? Or were you just summarizing talking points?"
Sabo blinked. Most people who'd read his research paper had either praised it excessively or had given it harsh criticisms. No one had ever questioned his actual knowledge in this quite formal tone. It was lowkey refreshing.
"I know the framework pretty well," he said. "State privacy laws. There's also a patchwork of federal regulations around data collection from educational institutions. And there are some interesting precedent cases around student data and third-party dealers. Why?"
She pulled out her laptop and set it on the table between them. "Because I've been doing some digging into the university's new learning management system. The one they rolled out at the beginning of the semester."
"The one everyone's been complaining about?"
"That one. The interface is terrible, but that's not why I'm here for. My concern is the data." She pulled up a document on her screen. Pages and pages of technical analysis that made Sabo's head dizzy. "The system collects significantly more data than it needs to function. Location data, browser history, device information, even keystroke patterns. It's all deep into the tiny letters in the terms of service that no one reads, but it's there. And the suppliers they're using have a history of selling student data to third parties."
Sabo sat up straighter. "Oh shit, that's a pretty serious allegation."
"Well, I wouldn't consider it an allegation." Her eyes were sharp behind her glasses. "It's a real thing. I've been documenting it for weeks. I've already filed a report with the IT department, but they're dragging their feet because the supplier contract is worth a lot of money and the administration doesn't want to deal with it."
"And you want to do something about it."
"I want to know what our legal options are. If the university is violating student privacy rights, there should be some kind of resort. Maybe a formal complaint to the department of education, or a state regulatory body. But I don't know the legal landscape well enough to figure out where to start."
Sabo looked at her, in a slightly surprised way. She had found something important, something that could affect every student on campus, and instead of just complaining about it or hoping someone else would fix it, she'd done the research and was now actively seeking out the tools she needed to make the change happen.
He'd never been this attracted to anyone in his entire life. Oh, he's so, so utterly fucked, he thought.
"Okay," he said. "Let me look through what you've got. I can't give you official legal advice since I'm not a lawyer yet, but I can help you figure out what laws might apply and where to file complaints."
"Really?" For the first time since he'd met her, she looked almost... Surprised. Like she'd expected him to brush her off or tell her it wasn't his problem. "You would do that?"
"You're trying to protect students' privacy rights. That's literally what my research was about. Why wouldn't I help?"
"Most people don't actually follow through on their stated morals when it requires work."
"Well, I'm not like most people."
She stared at him for a moment, and then, guess what, she reached up and adjusted her glasses in a way that seemed almost... Flustered. "No," she said quietly. "I'm starting to realize you're really not."
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ
Because of that, they started meeting each other regularly. It began as purely professional collaborations, him helping Y/N navigate the legal aspects of her data privacy concerns, her helping Sabo understand the technical side of the issue so he could write more informed academic papers and, eventually, a formal complaint to the relevant regulatory bodies. They'd meet in the library or the STEM building or, occasionally, the coffee shop where Sabo had first watched her work.
But, somewhere along the way, the conversations started to drift.
It started out small. Y/N would mention a book she'd been reading, and Sabo would ask about it, and suddenly they'd be thirty minutes deep in a discussion about science fiction or philosophy or the ethics of AI and the use of it during college. Sabo would mention his brothers; Ace and his chaotic energy and Luffy and his bottomless stomach and his inexplicable ability to make friends with literally anyone. And she would listen with what seemed like genuine interest, occasionally asking questions that suggested she was actually paying attention.
He learned more about her, the small details that didn't fit into her carefully curated public image. She had a cat, a grumpy persian named Ada (because of course she named her cat after the first ever programmer, which was a woman!). She was allergic to kiwis, which was another reason she was so careful about what she ate. She had taught herself to code when she was 12 by watching tutorials on youtube because her school didn't offer computer science extracurriculars. She'd chosen this university specifically because of its IT program, but also because it was far enough from her hometown that no one from her past would recognize her.
That last detail was offered hesitantly, late one evening when she was probably very tired and had her guard slightly down, and they were the last two people in the library's study area, so Sabo had asked why she'd chosen this school when there were better IT programs elsewhere.
"I needed a fresh start," she said, her voice quieter than usual. "Somewhere no one knew me. Or rather, somewhere no one knew the person I used to be."
"Who did you use to be?"
She was quiet for a long moment, her fingers absently tracing the edge of her laptop. "Someone who didn't have boundaries. Who let people walk all over her because she thought that was the only way to be liked. She used to get hurt, really hurt, because she trusted the wrong people." She looked up at him, and her eyes were dark and serious, with some slight melancholy behind them. "I decided I couldn't keep on being that person anymore. So I rebuilt myself from the ground up. Every choice I make now is very deliberate, all part of being the person I wanted to be instead of the person I was."
Sabo thought about his own past. The family he had walked away from. The name and the weight he had left behind. The way he'd built himself into someone capable and untouchable, someone who couldn't be hurt because he had already survived the worst.
"I understand," he said. "More than you know. Really."
And something passed between them then, unspoken recognition of some twin flames, two people who'd decided to become something new rather than to remain what they had been born into.
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By the time winter break approached, Sabo was thoroughly, hopelessly, and perhaps just a little pathetically in love with her.
He'd accepted it now. There was no point in denying it, not when Ace and Luffy had taken to making exaggerated kissing noises every time he mentioned her name (which was very often), not when he found himself structuring his study schedule around the times he knew she would be in the library, not when the sight of her and all of her armor made his heart rate accelerate in a way that was probably medically worrying.
The problem was, he had no idea if she felt the same way. Y/N was, as always, impossible to read. She'd opened up to him more than she seemed to open up to anyone else on campus, telling him things she said she'd never told anyone, like about her past and her fears and the weak immune system thing and how much it bothers her. She'd started seeking him out for reasons that had nothing to do with data privacy, asking him to go get coffee or to do study sessions or, once, to help her pick out a new laptop bag because hers was starting to wear out and he "seemed like someone who has good taste in bags."
(He did have good taste in bags. He picked a beautiful black leather messenger bag with reinforced stitching and a padded laptop compartment, and she started using it every day since.)
But she never touched him. Never flirted. Never gave any indication that she saw him as anything more than a friend and a collaborator. And Sabo, who had spent years learning to read people and could charm his way through any social situation, was completely at a loss.
"What if she's just not interested?" he asked Ace one night, when the frustration had gotten too much to keep inside. "What if I'm reading friendship as something more because I want it to be something more?"
Ace, who was sprawled on the couch with a bag of chips balanced on his stomach, gave him a look of profound fury. "Bro. She asked you to help her pick out a bag. She tells you things she doesn't tell anyone else. She laughs at your stupid ass jokes. In her language, that's basically her asking you to be her boyfriend."
Sabo snorted, "She doesn't laugh. She exhales slightly more forcefully than usual."
"Same thing, in her language. The point is, she likes you. Maybe she doesn't know how to show it, or maybe she's scared, or maybe she's waiting for you to make the first move because she's put up so many walls to the point she doesn't know how to take them down. But she clearly likes you."
"How do you know?"
"Because no one spends that much time with someone they don't like."
That phrase caused something inside him. The thing is, Sabo wanted to believe him. He really did. But every time he was with Y/N, every time he thought maybe there was a moment-a look that lingered too long, a conversation that felt like it was dancing around something unspoken-she'd pull back, retreat behind her mask and her careful composure, and he would be left wondering if he had somehow imagined that happening or if he did something wrong.
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On the last day of classes before winter break, they had agreed to meet up at the coffee shop to celebrate finally finishing final season. Sabo arrived first and grabbed their usual table by the window, ordering her hot chocolate, very fitting for the current weather, and his black coffee while waiting with a nervous energy that made his leg bounce uncontrollably under the table.
She arrived ten minutes later, and Sabo knew something was wrong the moment he saw her. Something about her posture was different. Hunched. Defeated. Her eyes behind the glasses were red-rimmed, like she'd been crying, and her mask's straps were slightly messy in a way they never were.
"Y/N?" He was on his feet before he could think about it. "Hey, are you okay? What happened?"
She didn't answer right away. She sat down in the chair across from him, her movements stiff and mechanical, and stared at the hot chocolate like she had never seen one before.
Leaning forward, he tried to catch her eye. "Talk to me. Please. What's wrong?"
She took a shaky breath, the mask moving with the exhale. "My research advisor just told me that the university is likely going to reject my complaint about the learning management system. They're citing 'insufficient evidence' and 'contractual obligations' and a bunch of other corporate bullshit. He said there's nothing more he can do."
"That's..." Sabo felt anger rising in his chest, hot and sharp. "That's not right. You documented everything. We put together a solid legal argument. They can't just-"
"They can," she cut him off. "They already did. The official decision comes after break, but my advisor made it pretty clear what the outcome is going to be." Her voice cracked. "I worked so hard on this. I thought... I thought if I was thorough enough, if I built a strong enough case, they'd have to listen. But they just don't care! They never cared. It was all just... A huge fucking waste of time."
"It wasn't a waste of time." Sabo's voice was fiercer than he intended. "What you did, the research, the documentation, the willingness to stand up for something. That does matter. Even if the administration doesn't listen right now, you've created a record. You've laid the groundwork. And I'm not going to let them ignore it."
She looked up at him, and her eyes were wide, raw and vulnerable in a way he'd never seen before. "Why? Why do you care so much?"
The question hit him like a physical blow. He could have deflected. He could have talked about justice and privacy rights and the importance of holding institutions accountable. All of that was true. But it wasn't the truth.
"You know why," he said quietly.
She shook her head in a very desperate motion. "I don't. I-I really don't. I don't understand why you keep showing up, why you keep helping me, why you seem to actually enjoy spending time with me when I'm..." She gestured aggressively at herself. "This."
"This? You mean yourself? Y/N, there's nothing wrong with you."
"Yeah, right. Most people think I'm weird, or cold, or stuck-up. I know they do. I've heard them talking shit behind my back, so many times. And don't even get me started on the mask thing. They always say I'm too paranoid, or like I'm overreacting about something that doesn't really exist. People stare at it. All the time."
"Then they're idiots." Sabo leaned forward, and something in his chest was cracking open, some dam of restraint he'd been holding onto for months. "You are the most deliberate person I've ever met. Everything you do, you do for a reason. You've rebuilt yourself from the ground up into exactly the person you wanted to be, and you don't apologize for it. You don't make yourself smaller or softer or easier for anyone else's comfort. Do you know how amazing that is? I can't even believe how hard that must've been for you, and I'm incredibly proud of you for that."
She was staring at him, her eyes wide, her mask completely still.
"You're fucking brilliant." he continued, the words coming faster now, unstoppable. "You found a privacy violation in the university's system that no one else noticed, all by yourself, and you've been fighting to fix it even though it would have been easier to just let it go and let someone else find it, if anyone else ever finds out about that. You're kind in this quiet way that doesn't expect anything in return. You have this very precise way of looking at the world that I find myself wanting to see more of every single day. I don't just like you, Y/N. I think I might be in love with you. And I have been for a long time now."
The silence that followed was deafening. Y/N didn't move. Didn't blink. He had left her speechless for once. She just stared at him, her expression completely unreadable behind the mask. Sabo felt his heart plummet into his stomach with each second that passed. He'd said too much. He'd pushed too hard. He'd ruined everything-
"You love me?" Her voice was barely a whisper, muffled by the mask but still audible. It was trembling. All of her was trembling, he realized, a fine tremor running through her hands where they were clasped on the table.
"Yeah." He swallowed hard. "I-I do. And I'm sorry if that makes things weird, or if you don't feel the same way. I just-I couldn't keep it a secret anymore. Not after watching you be so brave for so long. You deserve to know."
She reached up then, and for one heart-stopping moment, Sabo thought she was going to push her glasses up her nose once again. But instead, her fingers found the messed up straps of her mask, and she hesitated, her eyes meeting his with a question in them, nervously saying:
"Can I-" She stopped, swallowed. "Is it okay if I-"
"Only if you want to," he said quickly. "You don't have to. I know the mask is important. I don't want you to feel like you have to change anything for me. It's really not a problem for me-"
"I know I don't have to." Her voice was steadier now. "That's why I want to do it."
Slowly, carefully, she unhooked the straps. One from the back of her neck first, then the one from the crown of her head. The mask came away from her face with a soft rustle, and Sabo found himself holding his breath.
He'd imagined this moment before so many times. But the reality was both simpler and more overwhelming than any of his imaginings. She was beautiful. Her face was slightly marked from being covered so much by the mask and her lips were very chapped. She looked vulnerable without it, exposed in a way that had nothing to do with immune systems or allergies.
"I love you too," she said. "I have for a while. I just... Didn't know how to say it. I'm not good at... This." She gestured between them. "Feelings. Vulnerability. All of it."
"I know." Sabo felt a grin spreading across his face, wide and goofy and completely beyond his control. "I know you're not. But you just did it anyway."
She smiled. A real smile, shy and a bit rusty around the edges, like she had forgotten how to do it, along with a slight, shy snort. "I did it. And I didn't die. Feels promising."
He laughed, a loud noise that made people at the other tables look over. "Yeah. That's promising."
She reached across the table then, her bare fingers brushing against his hand. It was the first time she'd initiated physical contact with him, and Sabo felt the touch like electricity. The butterflies in his stomach were going absolutely insane.
"My mask," she said, glancing down at the respirator that was now sitting on the table between them. "I'm not... I can't stop wearing it all the time. The weak immune system thing is real. So is the anxiety. It's going to take me a while to be comfortable without it in public, and I might never be comfortable without it completely. Is it okay..?"
"Oh," Sabo said, in a slightly embarassed way, his voice slowly becoming steadier. "Yes, that's completely okay. A-and, no, it's never a problem. You wear what you need to wear. I fell in love with you exactly as you are, masks and all. I don't want you to change for me, if you're comfortable this way, then be it."
She stared at him for a long moment, her dark eyes searching his face. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed to find it, because she nodded once, and her smile widened just slightly.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Good."
"Good?" He was still grinning like an idiot, and he didn't care. "That's all? Just 'good'?"
"It's the highest praise I'm capable of giving at the moment. I'm emotionally drained and I haven't had enough energy drinks today."
Sabo laughed again and pushed her hot chocolate towards her. "Well, I don't have any energy drinks right now, but treat yourself to this hot chocolate. Fitting for the cold weather. We can figure out the rest later."
She picked up the cup and, without the mask in the way, simply brought the straw to her lips and took a long sip. It was such a small, ordinary gesture, but watching her do it without the barrier of the mask felt almost unbearably intimate.
"We're going to fight the university's decision," she said after a moment, her voice stronger now. "About the data privacy thing. I'm not giving up."
"I know you're not. And I'll help you. Whatever you need, even if you need me standing outside the administration building with a protest sign. I'm in."
She giggled, "That miiight not be necessary."
"You never know. I've got a lot of opinions and I'm not afraid to make them known."
She huffed-her own version of a laugh, he noted-and took another sip of her hot chocolate. Outside the window, the first snow of the season was beginning to fall, thick white snowflakes drifting down to paint the campus in white.
"Do you want to get dinner tonight?" Sabo asked. "Not at the dining hall. Somewhere off campus. Where you can be comfortable."
Y/N considered this, her mask still sitting on the table between them. "There's this ramen place two blocks from the STEM building. It's never crowded, and they have private booths in the back."
"Sounds perfect. It's a deal, then."
"I'll probably put my mask back on for the walk over," she warned. "And possibly during dinner, if the restaurant is busier than normal. And I can't promise I'll be good at... This dating thing. I've never actually done it before."
"Hell, I have time. We'll figure it out." He turned his hand over under hers, lacing their fingers together. Her palm was cold and dry, and her grip was tentative but steady. "One step at a time."
She looked at their joined hands, then back up at his face. Behind her glasses, her eyes were bright, with something that was probably the start of tears and hope for the future.
"One step at a time," she repeated. "Statistically, the first step has the highest probability of failure. But after that, each following step becomes progressively more likely to succeed."
"Did you just try to comfort me with statistics?"
"Well, did it work?"
"Uh. Yeah."
Her mouth twitched, another almost-smile with a shy giggle. "Good."
And outside, the snow kept falling, covering the campus in a white blanket, as if the world itself was getting a fresh start.
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ᅠᅠᅠᅠthank you so much for reading, if you got this far <3
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