Can you write for Zoro who turns yandere for reader when he gets hit by a devil fruit. Reader is pinning for Zoro thinking they don''t have feelings for them, but he turns Yandere, so reader low-key kind of accents it thinking Zoro has feelings for them.
ohh, this i like. here's something quick for you, i hope you enjoy and it's along the lines of what you wanted! i did make it just an enhanced fruit, fyi, sorry about that! yandere content ahead, 18+ MDNI wc: 2.5k
You tell yourself it doesn't mean anything, that's what you do, after all. You've gotten very good at it; the particular skill of wanting something and then calmly, methodically, talking yourself out of caring. You've had months of practice. You know the shape of Zoro's indifference better than you know some constellations; you have mapped every casual glance he's directed at you and found all the ways they mean nothing beyond basic awareness. You'd done your due diligence. Tried Nami's suggestions, hell, even tried your own.
You'd leaned in close over maps when his attention was elsewhere, laughed louder at the right moments. You'd learned to read him and then deliberately made yourself readable in return, hoping some frequency would eventually connect.
Nothing.
So you accepted it. Quietly, practically, without drama. He doesn't feel that way, and that's fine. You're both adults and crewmates and the ship is not that large, so acceptance was the only option that made sense.
You'd done it. It hadn't even hurt anymore, not really. Not unless you sat still too long in the dark, or got lost in your thoughts by yourself.
But right now? Celebrating on this new island that smells like smoke and sugar, alochol on your tongue and a smile on your face, you could almost forget it completely.
There's music somewhere down the cobblestone streets, rising and falling between the buildings like it's breathing, and the people you helped save are already pulling Luffy into a dance he definitely doesn't know the steps to. Nami's laughing. Usopp is telling someone a version of events that has already become mythology. Even Robin has the faint curve of a smile at the corner of her mouth as she accepts a cup of something warm from a grateful elder.
You tilt your head back and let yourself feel it; the particular exhaustion that follows a battle well fought, the loosening of tension in your shoulders, the easy warmth of knowing everyone is safe and accounted for.
Well, almost everyone.
"Hey." Nami appears at your elbow, cup in hand, and her voice has dropped the celebratory edge it carried a moment ago. "Have you seen Zoro?"
You scan the square, but you already know what you won't find. With a shared glance, the two of you went to round up the others to begin the search.
The search takes two hours.
Sanji mutters colorful things under his breath as he checks the third tavern. Luffy makes it into a game until Usopp reminds him it isn't one. You say very little, which is nothing unusual when it comes to searching for Zoro, because you've learned that silence is better than spiraling, better than letting your imagination construct scenarios where something has actually gone wrong this time.
You find him sitting on a low stone wall at the edge of the market district, three swords resting against the wall beside him, arms folded, looking for all the world like he sat there on purpose.
He's surrounded by the remnants of a fruit platter, all of it, gone.
The crew converges slowly behind you as you approach first, the way you always do when you're trying to look more relaxed than you feel around him. "Zoro, “there you are! And you seemed to have helped yourself to some fruit. That’s good, at least you’ve been fed.”
He looks up and immediately you can tell something is different. You can't name it yet, but you know. It lives in the quality of his attention, the way his eyes find your face and then don't move. Like they've made a decision.
"You've been missing for two hours," Usopp says. "Everyone was looking. Are you okay, what have you been up to?”
"I wasn't lost. Just went exploring and found found this fruit all cut up and ready for eating. Felt like a shame that someone forgot it around back here, so I sat down and ate it. Wouldn’t want to be rude and refuse food.”
“Food that you took without asking or any confirmation that it was for us to eat?” you question him, sharing confused glances with Sanji and Usopp about the swordsman’s logic.
“Yeah, of course,” he says deadpan.
Behind you, you hear Luffy exclaim something about the empty platter and the unique fruit skin that was left, and then Nami's voice, sharp and climbing: "Where did you get this?"
The island's doctor — a compact, brisk woman who clearly has no patience for pirates or their nonsense regardless of the fact that the crew saved the island — explains that the fruit is rare. Not a Devil Fruit, she clarifies, more of a botanical anomaly. Indigenous to these hills. The locals know not to eat it on its own.
The effects are temporary — a few days, perhaps a week at most — but they are not subtle. She calls it an amplifier.
"It doesn't manufacture emotion," she says, peering at Zoro with an expression caught between professional interest and personal exasperation. "It removes the filtering mechanism. Whatever was already present becomes —" She pauses, searching for the word.
"Unmanaged," Robin offers quietly.
"Yes. Precisely."
Zoro says nothing, which isn’t surprising but he’s been looking at you since you entered the room.
Not at the doctor who examined him, and not at Nami, who is reading the woman a list of grievances on his behalf. Not even at Luffy, who has perched himself on a medical cabinet and is vibrating with the effort of not asking if he can have some of the fruit.
At you, making you become very interested in the patten on the floor. He’s been like this since you’ve found him, and it’s such a 180 from the normal dynamic the two of you have, it unsettles you. Well, it makes your heart flutter, but also unerves you to be on the recieving end of his sole attention.
"Zoro," Usopp says carefully. "Do you feel... different?"
A beat. “No," Zoro says, while not look away from you. "Clearer. Better than I have in a while honestly.”
—
The first thing you notice is the weight of his presence.
You've always been aware of Zoro the way you're aware of weather, but now you feel him the way you feel heat. Directional. Specific.
You're coiling rope on the deck three mornings after the island when the sensation starts at the back of your neck, a familiar particular prickle of being watched. You glance up without thinking to see Zoro leaning against the mast with his arms crossed and his eyes already on you.
You hold the look for a moment longer than you mean to, and something shifts in his expression — not softening exactly, more like settling, the way a compass needle finds north and stops moving.
You look back down at the rope while your heart does something embarrassing and you choose not to acknowledge it.
He's just standing there. He does that, fuck that's normal behavior. Stupid heart, getting all worked up over nothing.
When you look up again a few minutes later, he hasn't moved. You smile at him, and turn back to your task, not seeing the way something shifts in his jaw. He exhales through his nose like he's been holding something and has just decided to stop.
The crew notices before you say anything about it.
Nami notices first, because Nami notices everything and files it away for later use. She finds you in the galley the evening of the fourth day and sits across from you with the deliberate casualness of someone who has already decided what the conversation is going to be.
"He followed you to the storage room today," she says.
You pour tea. "He was probably just walking."
"He turned around when you turned around."
"Coincidence! The ship’s only so big.”
"He did it twice. Every since he ate the fruit, he’s laser focused on you. I’d say it’s romantic if he didn’t look so serious and scary half the time.”
You say nothing, choosing to focus on the steam rising from your cup.
Nami tilts her head, and her expression is gentle. "You know what the doctor said. It amplifies what's already there."
"I know what she said. You know that I tried for months to see if there was something there.”
"So."
"So there wasn't anything there." You say it evenly, the way you've practiced, trying to keep a lid on your frustration. "He barely registered I existed six months ago!”
Nami is quiet for a moment. “You know I never believed that,” she says finally. “He just showed he cared in different ways. I mean, before he would always watch you. At first I thought it was just — his spatial awareness or something. But he always knew which direction you were in, or what you might be doing. We joked about it at first, but I think we all just stopped noticing because he was subtle about it."
You don't have an answer for that, staring at your tea until it cools, lost in your thoughts.
Then Zoro starts choosing you in ways that are too deliberate to explain away.
Not dramatically, or with declarations or gestures you'd have to respond to if he were Sanji. Zoro doesn't work that way and the fruit doesn't change his nature; only turns up the volume on it. It's still him, still the same movement, the same reserve, the same refusal to perform anything.
But in the evenings, when the crew gathers on the deck and there are eight different places to sit, he positions himself beside you, in the specific way that leaves no reasonable gap for interpretation. Close enough that his arm presses against yours and he doesn't move it, making you acutely aware of his warmth.
You don't move either, allowing yourself the grace to enjoy this moment.
Later when you're in conversation with Usopp and he's laughing about something, going on the way he does, you feel Zoro arrive before you see him. He doesn't insert himself into the story. He just stands at your shoulder, present, but not really participating. And Usopp, to his credit, finishes his thought, but his eyes cut once to Zoro and then back to you, and there is something uncertain but amused in his expression. He shoots you a wink before scurrying off, letting the two of you do whatever weird song and dance this was.
The crew adjusts, almost too easily, around Zoro’s new protective edge he has around you, but ou don't know how to.
The first time you should have questioned this edge, you almost do, barely holding yourself back.
Nami announces she's taking a small group into the next port town — shopping, information, the usual. You're already thinking about what you need when Zoro moves into your peripheral vision.
"Stay on the ship," he says. It's not loud, or even harsh in the way his tone can come across occassionally. It has the flat, final quality of something he's decided.
You look at him. "I was gonna go with Nami."
"I know." Something in his expression dares you to push back. Not cruelly, but there's a certainty there that sits in your chest like pressure.
"The town is fine," you say, slower now, unsure if he thought you were incapable of protecting yourself, or your nakamas.
"You don't know that." He interjects, his tone slowly getting sharper while his gaze intensifies.
"Nami's going. Usopp and Chopper too.” You protest. Maybe Zoro’s right about you staying on the ship, because you’re quickly approaching dangerous teritory with the vice-captain. The rest of the crew has suspicously disappeared when it was clear that this might have the potential to go awry, but you didn’t take the hint.
"Nami can handle herself differently." His eye doesn’t waver, instead almost softens, looking honest and sincere, throwing you off from the arguement. "Stay. I can teach you more self-defense that you were asking me for.”
You want to argue, the argument is right there, logical and justified, sitting on your tongue.
But the word 'stay' is in Zoro's voice, and he's looking at you like you're something he's already decided belongs near him, and you have spent months wanting him to look at you like that in any form —
"Okay," you say. You hear yourself say it and something uncomfortable turns over in your stomach. But then his expression shifts, and there is something in it that looks almost like relief, and you tell yourself it's fine.
He just worries, that's how Zoro is. At least he cares.
Nami comes back with gifts and gossip and finds you on the deck with Zoro's sleeping weight to your right, his head tipped back against the railing, while you watch the horizon. You give him a quick smile, encouraging her to come closer, both lowering your voices in consideration to the swordsman, despite his almost infamous ability to sleep through mostly anything.
Nami sets a small wrapped package in your hands, something she bought for you without being asked, and her eyes move to Zoro and back.
"How was it?" you ask.
"Good, you would have liked the market." Her voice is carefully even, still wearily eyeing Zoro, before solely focusing in on you. "There was a stall with the fabric you mentioned wanting, so I got you a sample. Unfourtanelty we ran into Smoker back there so we’re getting ready to leave, but hopefully at the next island, you’ll be able to get it!”
Something small and sharp sits behind your sternum. "Oh," you say. "Thanks anyways, Nami. I’m sure it’ll all be okay soon enough!”
She looks at you for a moment longer than the conversation requires, but doesn't say anything else.
—
You're not unhappy, that's what you keep coming back to, in the quiet moments when you're honest with yourself.
You're not unhappy. He's here, and that word carries a weight you can't fully argue with, because for months his presence was something you observed from a careful distance, something you'd trained yourself not to want too directly.
And now he's here, beside you, watching you and choosing you with a consistency that feels like gravity, like something you could lean into.
It feels, in the weakest and most private part of you, like everything you quietly wanted.
But there is a smaller, steadier voice underneath all of it that’s been getting louder for three days.
It sounds, you think, like the version of yourself that made peace with his indifference. Not because she wanted to, but because she refused to be diminished by someone who didn't see her.
It asks, very quietly: Is this him? Or is this the fruit?
And then, softer: Is there a difference, if you can't tell?
And softer still: Does it matter, if he's controlling where you go? If it is nothing like what you imagined like?
You don't answer, wrapping Nami's fabric sample between your palms and feel the warmth of the swordsman beside you, and you don't answer.
But the voice doesn't stop.
—
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