almost immediately into dating, simon riley would buy you a gun.
probably a 9mm. matte black, no frills, utilitarian. nothing bigger than needed. comfortable enough to hug your palm, heavy enough to remind you of the implications of what you carry.
and really, it wouldn’t come as a surprise to you.
you knew he was a soldier, knew he kept closets full of gear and could disappear without a sound — appear the same way too. you knew how he moved, how his eyes never slowed until they met yours. knew there was something unsaid about his skill level, redacted parts he left out on purpose. but even above that — you knew the truth of him. under the mask, under the muscle, under the scars of his past. the boy who grew up with vigilance as his only defence. you know enough to know you don’t survive what simon has survived and come out normal.
you come out disciplined. dangerous. prepared.
simon doesn’t believe in luck. won’t leave his trust in the cavalry showin up in time when that’s already failed him many times before. simon doesn’t deal in safe.
he deals in preparation. for the worst. for even the most unlikely.
love comes in many forms. and maybe for simon it’s not candle lit dinners or couch cuddling movie nights (though of course you bribe him into those anyways. he’s never quite been able to say no to you) it’s making sure he does everything in his power to make you capable.
and he does it with all the patience he’s got to offer. there’s no expectation no pressure no timeline — god knows simon isn’t expecting you to become a super assassin overnight. he takes you out to some half-forgotten range an hour outta the city, tucked in nice between the pine and fog. sets up the targets and has you aim at them empty, watching the way you hold tension in your tendons. teaches you how to force it out through breath. how to work the weapon like an extension of yourself.
the rundown is quick and simple. caliber, kickback, magazine release. then he steps back and tells you to shoot.
you exhale the breath like he taught you and pull. when you miss, he nods once and says again. you go through three full mags and miss each one. it isn’t long before your palms burn as bad as your cheeks do with the humiliation of it — but it’s all forgotten when you land just a tap off the bullseye and simon walks over with his hands up.
“that’s how it starts, sweet’eart.” he murmurs, smirking against your mouth.
simon riley is a man of many talents, but his greatest achievement yet is loving you. and maybe it’s not always voiced by ‘i love you so much baby.’ — but instead it’s running you through drills around the crooked ikea furniture in your living room until the sun has set and the moon is out. or blindfolding you and telling you to unload and reload the mag. or leaving sticky notes with unlikely scenarios scattered around the house and quizzing you on your answers while youre cockdrunk against the counter.
you’ve learned his language by now. hes protective and realistic and a little bit cynical. but god does he make you feel alive for it.
you know by him teaching you how to use this gun it’s his way of saying i will do everything in my power to keep you alive because im in love with you and i wouldn’t survive a fuckin day if i lost you.
heheee the idea of zoro being carried came about through a yarn with @randomexistentialemo who had some excellentttt thoughts about a reversal of @pierogiy's amazing comic here
x
Zoro’s first thought is this is going to be such a pain to explain.
His second thought is huh, that’s a lot of blood.
His third thought, arriving late and petulant and somehow the loudest, is sanji’s never going to shut up about this.
The alleyway’s narrow enough that the air feels pressed into it, the whole island stinking like a port that forgot it’s supposed to be pretty for tourists. Rain’s been threatening all afternoon and now it’s finally committing, giving them a thin mist that slicks the cobbles and turns everything reflective and mean. Nami’s up ahead with her staff out, eyes bright with murder and math – two of the bounty hunters are down already, groaning into puddles. The rest have decided that cornering the Straw Hats in a tight space is a clever idea, which means they’ve never met Zoro. He almost enjoys it: the satisfaction of Yubashiri clearing sheath, the weight in his hands, the clean certainty of angles and distance and this is mine.
Then the one with the hooked spear gets clever and the worst part is it isn’t even a dramatic move. It’s not even particularly skilled, for that matter. It’s just timed, a cheap little feint that draws Zoro’s guard high and then snakes in low, catching the back of his thigh like a butcher testing the grain of meat. He feels the point bite like a hot punch, a sudden wet slide signalling the unmistakable give of skin. He inhales sharply through his nose, more offended than surprised as the spear yanks sideways, his leg answering with a lightning bolt of pain that makes the world narrow hard at the edges. For one ugly, hideous second his body forgets it’s supposed to be a wall and becomes absurdly human.
He compensates the only way he knows how: swing like hell. Zoro’s follow up strike takes the bounty hunter across the chest and sends him scrambling backward, tripping over his own feet in a slurry of rainwater and fear. Zoro tries to take a step to finish it – and his injured leg folds like it was never his, enough that his knee buckles and his weight lurches all wrong in some traitorous wobble that makes his stomach twist. He catches himself on instinct, blade point scraping a bright line in the wet stone. A breath later, another bounty hunter sees it; a knife whistles in, aiming for the gap in Zoro’s guard but it never hits – something blonde and furious blurs into the space between them like a kicked storm, Sanji’s foot connecting with the bounty hunter’s jaw with a crack that makes the man’s teeth click together and sends him flying god knows where. Sanji lands light with his shoulders squared, cigarette somehow still lit like physics knows better than to argue with him.
“Oh, good thinking,” he drawls, eyes scanning from Zoro's swords to his leg. “Get yourself a mortal wound in the middle of battle, amazing strategy.”
Zoro bares his teeth. “S'a fight.”
“That wasn’t a fight,” Sanji corrects, disdainful. “That was you trying to show off.”
“I wasn’t –”
Sanji takes one step closer, the light catching his expression in flashes and there’s anger there, sure, but there’s also something under it that makes Zoro’s ribs feel tight. “Do you even understand the irony of you getting stabbed in the fucking leg on my watch?”
“It’s not your –”
Sanji’s gaze snaps to Nami. “How many more?”
Nami doesn’t look back. She cracks her staff across someone’s wrist and sends a pistol skittering. “Too many and somehow I don’t think this place specialises in nice funerals, so get your asses moving.”
Zoro can see the calculation happening in real time in Sanji's brain, quick and vicious and grossly competent. They need to move. The alleyway’s clearly a trap that they’ve been herded towards on purpose. Zoro clocks what's coming before Sanji even says it.
“I’m fine,” he starts, automatically, because it is deeply embedded in his bones to lie about pain.
Sanji’s smile is sharp and bright in the rain. “You’re bleeding, you can’t put weight on it, you can't fight.”
Zoro tries again, slower. “I can walk.”
“You can limp, seaweed-brain, and you're not even that cute about it.”
Nami shouts: “Less flirting, more moving!”
Zoro, despite himself, feels his mouth twitch but then his thigh pulses again, all hot and wet, and the burgeoning grin collapses into a grimace. “No,” he growls as soon as he sees the expression shift on Sanji’s face, because he has a very clear and very horrified understanding of what’s going to happen and he already hates it.
Sanji doesn’t spare the refusal a scrap of dignity. “Yes.”
“Don’t you dare.” He tries to step back but his leg immediately reminds him that it’s injured, actually, and there'll be no suave footwork today. He stumbles a fraction, catching himself on his swords and feeling his skin alight with pure irritation at his own body.
Sanji uses the opening to hook an arm behind his back, another under his knees and the world just. Tilts. Zoro’s stomach drops like he stepped off a cliff as he’s abruptly horizontal, weight fully in someone else’s hold, rain hitting his face at a different angle. The alleyway sounds shift: Nami’s staff cracking skulls becomes background and Sanji’s breathing is right there, steady and strong, his chest under Zoro’s shoulder, warmth bleeding through wet fabric.
Zoro has exactly one second to register the sheer indignity of it before he registers something worse: Sanji doesn’t strain or wobble. Sanji just fucking lifts him like Zoro weighs nothing, like Zoro’s a sack of flour and Sanji is just out picking up dinner supplies. He’s also looking down at Zoro with the most infuriatingly smug expression the swordsman’s ever seen on a human face.
“Aw,” Sanji coos, voice a little too sweet, a little too venomous. “You’re lighter than you act.”
Zoro’s jaw tightens. “Put me down.”
Sanji shifts his grip, adjusting Zoro like he’s getting comfortable. “How about no.”
“I’m going to stab you.”
Sanji’s grin flashes. “With what, sweetheart? Your pride?”
Zoro’s entire body goes hot. “Don’t call me that.”
Nami darts past them, hair whipping, and shouts: “If you drop him I’m billing you!”
“I’m not dropping him!”
Zoro, because his mouth is a goddamn traitor, mutters: “I’d like to see you try,” and Sanji’s head tilts slowly, curiously, like a predator catching a scent on the wind. Zoro immediately regrets existing because Sanji’s arms tighten fractionally, a subtle squeeze at Zoro’s back and knees, secure and possessive and controlled. Zoro feels it like a hand around his throat. A very, very nice hand.
(Maybe the hand moves lower, in his imagination. Maybe it doesn't.)
“You wanna see me try what?” Sanji's voice is low and dangerously calm.
Zoro forces his expression into some kind of stone. He aims for granite and misses spectacularly, but it's all he can manage right now. “I want you to shut up.”
Sanji hums, pleased as a cat. “Mm. That’s not what you said, Mossy.”
Zoro’s injured leg throbs in time with his pulse and the sheer embarrassment of realising it’s kind of hot when your crewmate can just. Hoist you around. They break out of the alley into a wider street to where the rain heavier and turning the world glossy, lights smearing gold in puddles.
Bounty hunters spill into the street from two directions but Sanji doesn’t slow. He shifts Zoro higher against his chest in one smooth motion and kicks the first person in the face without breaking stride; Zoro feels the movement through his whole body, the shock of impact carried through Sanji’s arms like a pulse. His brain offers, unhelpfully: he could kill you like this and then Zoro’s body offers, even more unhelpfully: he could do other things like this.
Zoro’s face goes hotter. “Quit jostling,” he snaps because he needs his mouth to do something that isn’t just blurting all his thoughts out in one awful confession.
Nami leaps onto a stack of wooden crates and cracks her staff down in a perfect arc, taking out two bounty hunters at once. “Sanji, get him out of here!”
“Working on it!”
Zoro would like to protest that he can still fight and is still armed and, most importantly, is still Roronoa Zoro but everytime he tries to shift his leg screams at him and Sanji’s grip tightens like a warning, the message clear: don’t make me drop you.
Zoro grinds his teeth. “Quit acting like you like this,” he scowls because his pride is dying a slow death, apparently. It’s the safer thought to admit to right now. “Carrying me like – like –”
“Like you’re my bride?” Sanji supplies, delighted. “My little wife?”
Zoro’s ears go fucking nuclear. “Shut up.”
Sanji’s smile turns wicked. “Say please.”
Zoro’s stomach flips, violent, and he knows his glare isn’t even halfway convincing. He tries anyway, because the alternatives are starting to look pretty damn grim. “Fuck off.”
Sanji kicks another attacker away, still not slowing, still wearing that smirk. “Then suffer.”
Zoro would like to deny that he’s already suffering. He’d like to deny that a part of him is filing this away like a treasure and, on top of that, he’d like to deny that his body keeps lighting up like a damn bonfire everytime Sanji adjusts him, everytime Sanji’s fingers flex against his spine, everytime Sanji’s jaw clenches in concentration when it could be clenching around – he cuts that thought off at the shins.
They round a corner toward the docks to where the Merry’s visible now, bobbing cheerfully in the rain with the crew shapes moving on deck; Usopp’s frantic flailing against Luffy’s laughter carrying, even over wind. Sanji increases speed until he’s almost sprinting and, really, Zoro’s pride should be dead by now. Instead, something in him purrs as Sanji clears a fallen crate with a leap that’d probably trip up lesser men. Zoro’s hand clamps reflexively into Sanji’s shirt all the same, gripping the wet fabric at his chest and does not think about Sanji’s jawline from this angle or the line of his throat or the way his fingers are spread across him or –
They reach the gangplank and Sanji barrels up, the deck boards welcoming them with a familiar creak. Luffy turns, grinning, and then his eyes widen. “Whoa! Sanji’s carrying Zoro!”
Zoro’s soul tries to leave his body. “Shut up,” he snaps, all autopilot.
Luffy laughs louder. “Aw, Zoro’s a princess!”
Sanji rolls his eyes. “He’s a problem.” He carries him straight past the main deck chaos, past Usopp screaming about ropes until he's intercepted by Chopper, charging toward them with a medical kit at the ready and huge, panicked eyes.
Zoro tries to speak but Sanji cuts in, voice sharp. “Spear. Thigh. A lot of blood. Don’t freak out.”
Chopper squeaks, “That’s – that’s a lot of reasons to freak out!”
Sanji doesn’t stop; he takes Zoro toward the galley like he owns the route, like he’s decided Zoro’s body is his responsibility for the next ten minutes whether Zoro likes it or not and Zoro should be furious about that. And he is! It’s embarrassing and unnecessary as hell! But. But. It also means he doesn’t have to be the one holding himself up right now and that he can let his weight go somewhere safe and Sanji smells so good and he – oh.
For the first time since the fight, it occurs to him he might be a little concussed.
When they reach the galley doorway Sanji pauses, just for a second, and it’s like the noise of the ship drops away altogether, leaving just the two of them there, Zoro held like something valued and Sanji breathing like he ran through hell because it was, for one reason or another, worth it to him.
Sanji’s voice drops, rougher. “You gonna argue with me all the way through the stitches, too?”
Zoro should say yes. Hell, he should say something cruel and funny or just – anything even remotely helpful. Instead, he hears himself say, very low: “Don’t drop me.”
Sanji scoffs, something soft and quick as a match strike crossing his face before he smothers it. “As if,” he mutters and carries him inside.
x
zoro probably dying from blood loss: oh. oh???? OHHHHHH
