Zoro was angry. Furious. Enraged. Livid.

He flipped through his thesaurus for a moment, before continuing his mental rant.

Irate. Cross. Really Cheesed Off. He could be said to be literally angry with rage. And why? Because he had to watch this... this disgraceful display. This mockery of his feelings.

Luffy rolled over and stretched out onto the Going Merry's figurehead. He gave it an absent-minded pat before drifting off to sleep again.

Zoro seethed.

---

Zoro was not acting normal, and this concerned his captain. He wasn't sleeping, or drinking beer, or training, or stabbing things. And that was what Zoro did. Instead, Zoro was stalking back and forth on the deck, like a caged thing. Like a... a tiger. Or a wallabee. Or something. He picked at his food. He didn't sleep.

Thus the concern over wallabee-Zoro's behavior.

A Zoro that was not stabbing things was not a happy Zoro, and Luffy liked seeing his nakama happy.

It was on the third day of this unusual behavior that wallabee-Zoro snapped.

---

Luffy was sitting on his usual perch at the prow of the ship, gazing out onto the vast blue sea, and thinking deep thoughts. Most of which revolved around finding a way to get past Sanji's many and varied defenses of the meat locker.

He'd just thought of a way to get past the super-big mousetrap Sanji had set up last time (where did he buy human-sized mousetraps, anyway?) when Zoro stalked up, grabbed him by his vest, and slammed him into a convenient wall, shaking the entire boat and leaving a Luffy-sized indent.

Their navigator shouted curses and epithets and threats of castration from inside the ship, but neither paid it any mind. Zoro leaned in, his face inches from Luffy's, and hissed intensely, "She doesn't love you."

Luffy trumped Zoro's intensity with pure cluelessness. "Who? Nami?"

"No."

"Robin?"

"No."

"Usopp?"

"What?"

"What?"

"No."

Zoro pulled Luffy out of his perch in the wall, and slammed him back in to punctuate his next sentence: "You know who I mean." Nami's threats of castration were joined by Usopp's shrill cries to 'leave the ship out of this.' Zoro's eyes were wild with manly passion. "I tried to do the right thing, the noble thing... but she torments me so. I must have her!"

He dragged the rubber man out of his little hole in the wall, and pointed toward's Luffy's usual seat. "Look at her. So innocent, and yet, so sensual. So alluring. I cannot help myself!" Luffy finally seemed to understand where Zoro was going with this, and set his chin obstinately. "So, you want my special seat? Never, you mutinous dog!"

Zoro paused.

"Luffy, do you know what 'mutinous' means?"

"Nuh uh. I think Shanks said it once."

Zoro thought for a moment. "Fine, then, Luffy! You think that just because you're the Captain, you can chain her to you? She wants to be free! I will take her from you, by force if necessary!"

He seethed his way back below-decks to plan.

Luffy, not caring in the least, wandered off towards the kitchen.

Usopp's head (attached to the rest of Usopp's body, thank goodness) popped out of the crow's nest, staring at where the two crewmates had gone. "What the hell was that?"

---

And so closes another chapter in Zoro's tale of Secret Love. Thanks to Thermopylae and the rest of those who reviewed for giving me the will necessary to keep working with this silly, silly idea. And just so it doesn't blindside you guys... Zoro is just going to get more and more OOC as this thing goes on. You know what they say: Love makes you crazy, sometimes.

Stay tuned next time, when Usopp confronts Zoro about his fixation!