Something's wrong with me...
Zoro x Vinsmoke!Fem!Reader | Modern AU | Gym AU | Sanji's Sister | Zoro Has a Massive Crush | Fluff | Comedy
♡ Summary
Zoro has a problem.
His heart keeps racing. He can't concentrate. His pulse goes crazy every evening around seven-fifteen, and apparently none of his usual solutions—less caffeine, more water, more sleep—are working.
The problem? It only happens around you. And somehow, Zoro is the last person to realize he's hopelessly in love with Sanji's little sister.
♡ Word Count
~2,700 words
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Zoro had a problem.
A serious one.
It started small. A stutter in his chest when the gym door swung open at the same time every evening, seven-fifteen, like clockwork. He'd tell himself it was nothing. Coincidence. A trick of the fluorescent lighting.
Then it kept happening.
He blamed the training first — maybe he'd pushed too hard on deadlifts, maybe his form had gone sloppy and his heart was just... compensating. He cut his sets down. It didn't help.
He blamed caffeine next. Cut the energy drinks. Still happened.
Dehydration. He started carrying a liter bottle everywhere, drank until his stomach sloshed when he walked. Still happened.
Lack of sleep, then — obviously, that was it, obviously his body was just worn thin and his heart was overcorrecting for exhaustion. He went to bed at nine for a week straight.
It still happened.
And it only happened around you.
That was the part he couldn't explain away. Not the gym, not the caffeine, not his own carefully rationed sleep schedule — just you, walking in with your hair scraped back into a bun that never quite held, headphones slung around your neck like a habit rather than a choice, shoulders and arms built from actual, serious work rather than vanity, the kind of muscle that came from lifting heavier than most people in the building and making it look easy — and his heart would kick against his ribs like it had somewhere to be.
You'd catch him staring — not often, but enough — and you'd smile, easy, like it cost you nothing, and something in his chest would seize up so hard he'd lose count of his reps.
You'd say his name — just his name, nothing more, "hey, Zoro, can you spot me" — and his pulse would stutter like it had forgotten its own rhythm.
And once, once, you hit a new PR on your squat and turned around mid-celebration to flex at him, biceps and quads standing out sharp under sweat-slicked skin, grinning, glowing, and completely unaware of what you were doing to him — and he was, in his own words later, absolutely fucking gone.
So he came to the only logical conclusion available to a man who had spent his whole life understanding pain as something physical, something you could name and treat and train through.
I've gone soft.
It scared him more than any sparring injury ever had. He knew what to do with a torn muscle. He knew what to do with a break. He did not know what to do with this — whatever this was, this low-grade fever that flared every time you existed near him.
He decided, eventually, that this required outside expertise. Not a doctor — he wasn't that far gone yet — but someone who might actually take him seriously. Someone who wouldn't laugh.
He chose wrong.
He found Nami and Robin on the office couch after closing, Nami with a spreadsheet open on her laptop and Robin with a book she wasn't really reading anymore, both of them looking up when he planted himself in front of them like he was about to report an injury.
"I think something's wrong with me," he said.
Nami didn't even look up from her spreadsheet. "Define wrong."
"My heart keeps racing. Randomly. For no reason."
That got her attention. She closed the laptop halfway. "How random."
"Very random."
Robin's eyes had already gone soft and knowing in that way that always made Zoro nervous, like she'd solved a puzzle before he'd finished describing it. "Does it happen at any particular time of day?"
"...Sometimes."
"Around seven-fifteen, perhaps?"
Zoro went very still. "How did you—"
"No reason." Robin smiled, the kind of smile that meant there was absolutely a reason, and Nami had already abandoned the spreadsheet entirely, leaning forward with the focused delight of someone watching a slow-motion car crash.
"Does it happen more around certain people?" Nami asked, entirely too casually.
"...Maybe."
"One certain person?"
Zoro's jaw worked. "I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to." Nami was grinning now, sharp and merciless, the kind of grin that had cost him money in poker before and was clearly about to cost him something else now. "Zoro. Sweetheart. I love you, but you are the single most oblivious man I have ever met."
"I am not oblivious. Something is medically wrong with me."
"Nothing is medically wrong with you," Robin said gently, though her eyes were bright with the effort of not laughing outright. "I imagine you already know what this is. You're simply hoping one of us will tell you it's a virus instead."
"It could be a virus."
"It is not a virus," Nami said, "unless you're referring to the incredibly obvious crush you have on—"
"Don't." Zoro's ears had gone red. "Don't say it."
"—her," Nami finished anyway, delighted, "which, by the way, everyone on this group has known about for weeks except apparently you."
Zoro opened his mouth to argue and found, humiliatingly, that he had nothing to argue with. He closed it again.
Robin took pity on him, marginally. "It isn't a bad thing, you know. Caring about someone."
"I don't do soft," he muttered, mostly to himself.
"You've been soft for weeks," Nami said. "You just called it dehydration."
He scowled at both of them, grabbed his bag off the floor with more force than necessary, and left before Nami could charge him for the consultation — which she absolutely would have, given the chance.
But the walk home gave the thought room to settle, uncomfortable and undeniable, and by the time he reached the gym the next evening he'd more or less accepted what Nami and Robin had already known for weeks. Accepting it, though, and saying it out loud were two very different problems, and he still hadn't solved the second one by the time you walked through the door at seven-fifteen exactly, hair scraped back, headphones around your neck, and his heart did the thing it always did.
He caught you after your cool-down, when the gym had thinned to just the two of you and the vending machine's hum in the corner. You were sitting on the bench, forearms resting on your knees, water bottle in hand, the definition in your shoulders still catching the overhead light, and something about the way you looked up at him — a little too knowing, a little too amused already — made him wonder, with rising dread, whether Nami had somehow beaten him here.
"I need to tell you something," he said.
You raised an eyebrow, entirely too composed for someone about to hear a confession. "Okay."
"It's about the — " He stopped. Started again. "My heart's been doing this thing. Around you. For weeks."
"Mm-hm."
"I thought it was dehydration."
"Sure."
"Or the gym. Or caffeine."
"Right."
He narrowed his eyes at you. "Why do you already sound like you know where this is going."
You bit back a smile, not quite fast enough. "No reason."
"Did Nami talk to you."
"I plead the fifth."
"She did." He dragged a hand down his face, ears burning, torn between mortification and something that was rapidly losing the fight to be anything other than fond. "Great. Perfect. I get ambushed twice in two days."
"In her defense," you said, setting the water bottle down, "she was very excited about it."
"Of course she was."
You looked at him — really looked, patient, waiting, giving him the space to say the thing he'd walked over here to say even though half the surprise had already been stolen out from under him.
He exhaled. Might as well finish what he started.
"I like you," he said, plain, no more hedging, no more diagnoses. "That's what's wrong with me. Has been for weeks."
Something in your expression softened, all the teasing falling away into something warmer. "I know."
"You know."
"Nami," you reminded him.
"Right." He huffed, but it came out closer to a laugh than a complaint. "So what happens now."
You smiled, unbothered, like the answer was obvious. "Now you ask me if you can kiss me."
He blinked. "Can I still kiss you?"
"Yeah."
And his heart started racing again — the exact symptom he'd carried across two separate interrogations and one deeply unhelpful search history — except this time, he didn't fight it. He leaned in, and you met him halfway, and the gym kept humming along around you like nothing life-altering had just happened on a bench by the water fountains.
When he finally pulled back, ears still burning, he exhaled like a man setting down a weight he'd been carrying too long.
"This is definitely Nami's fault."
"Mm." You laughed, threading your fingers through his. "Careful. She'll invoice you for it."
He groaned, but didn't let go of your hand — and later, when Sanji inevitably found out, because Sanji always found out, Zoro decided he'd deal with that particular disaster when it came.
For now, his heart was racing, and for the first time in weeks, he didn't want it to stop.
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That particular disaster arrived approximately four days later, in the form of a group chat notification that made Zoro's phone buzz seven times in a row before he'd even finished lacing his shoes.
Sanji: WAIT
Sanji: WAIT WAIT WAIT BACK UP
Sanji: NAMI JUST TOLD NIJI WHO TOLD ME
Sanji: MOSSHEAD AND MY SISTER??
Ichiji's response came thirty seconds later, characteristically clipped, characteristically unbothered.
Ichiji: This was inevitable. I calculated a 73% probability three weeks ago based on observed proximity patterns.
Niji: SHUT UP NOBODY ASKED FOR YOUR PERCENTAGES ICHIJI THIS IS HUGE
Niji: MOSSHEAD. MY SISTER. I HAVE QUESTIONS. I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS
Yonji: wait who's mosshead again
Yonji: oh the swordguy
Yonji: WAIT THE SWORD GUY??? THE ONE WHO LOOKS LIKE HE FIGHTS RAKES FOR FUN
Sanji: YONJI FOCUS THIS IS A CRISIS
Reiju: It's not a crisis, it's adorable. I've been waiting for this since she started training with him.
Sanji: REIJU HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN
Reiju: Since roughly the same time Ichiji ran his percentages. Weeks.
Sanji: AND NOBODY TOLD ME???
Niji: because you'd have done exactly what you're doing right now
Zoro, watching all of this unfold from the safety of his own kitchen, briefly considered turning his phone off and pretending he'd never seen any of it. He did not get the chance.
Sanji: ZORO
Sanji: ZORO I KNOW YOU'RE IN THIS CHAT
Sanji: ANSWER ME YOU ALGAE-BRAINED GORILLA
He typed, deleted, typed again, and finally settled on the shortest possible response.
Zoro: yeah it's true
Sanji: THAT'S IT?? "YEAH IT'S TRUE"?? MY SISTER??
Niji: okay but genuinely mosshead. explain yourself. we're waiting
Ichiji: I'd also appreciate a statement of intent, for the record.
Yonji: yeah what he said
Reiju: Ignore them. Just make her happy, that's the only statement of intent that matters.
Zoro exhaled, set the phone face-down on the counter, and considered — briefly, seriously — moving to another country. Then his phone buzzed once more, a text from you this time, separate from the chaos still escalating in the group chat.
You: they're all losing their minds aren't they
Zoro: ichiji ran percentages. yonji still doesn't know my name. sanji's typing in all caps.
You: yeah that sounds about right. want me to call them off?
Zoro: nah. let 'em finish. this is somehow still better than the actual conversation i had with nami and robin.
You: lower bar than you'd think
He almost smiled at that, phone screen lighting up his kitchen at eleven at night, the group chat still buzzing furious and delighted in the background — Niji demanding a formal introduction, Yonji asking if swords could cut fruit "or just people," Ichiji drafting what appeared to be an actual pros-and-cons list, Sanji somewhere between outrage and, buried under six exclamation points, something that read suspiciously like relief.
None of it was a disaster, in the end. Just loud. Just theirs.
He set the phone down, and let it keep buzzing.
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