1.
"There's a brothel on the island of Alabasta where they say you can fuck the world's most exotic devil fruit users for 10,000 berri a time. They call it an experience like no other." The interest sparks in their faces. They've heard of it, of course. Some of them lick their lips at the description. It's the reaction she both hoped for and dreaded.
A peacock fan-tail of hands spirals outwards from Robin’s back.
"Even they don't have anything like us."
*
They walk into the trap unsuspecting, the latest marine pursuit being, after all, long left behind them. A simple island stop, gentle rolling hills and wild grasslands, the intermittent punctuation of feathery trees.
An incautious foray, spun more from vacation than necessity; Luffy tackling Usopp and rolling them both, shrieking albeit for different reasons, down the springy soft slopes; Robin shadowing Chopper, carrying bag and sample tubs for the vegetation the little doctor constantly pauses to examine for medicinal use.
They thought they’d left the marines behind them.
None of them imagined the marines already there.
*
"The hearty 127th Division, the Penn Marines! Practicing love of life and experience in all its abundant forms!" Penn is an expansive man wearing immaculate marine uniform clashing violently against his curled red moustache and stubble of hair. Vast chest, masculine poise, and a grin more blinding than the sun. Whenever he says ‘Penn Marines’ he salutes and strikes a pose.
Even among the more typically staid ranks of the marines, every company has its own eccentricities and notorieties.
Some more than others.
*
Nico Robin, the world said, You are a demon and an abomination that can give the world no greater gift than your death. And she believed it, until she found a little ship, a pirate crew, and a captain who replied, "Hold on - no."
Even found, in a fellow freak and reject, the possibility of love.
Awkward for him and strange to her, the first time they kissed, their comfortable companionship expanding into something more. He wasn’t quite human; his mouth, not shaped quite like a man's; the brush of fur against her lips where they strayed too far off his; and she'd never been nervously kissed before.
Clack of teeth and bump of noses and a cautious retreat.
He would have retreated then, for good, but she quashed his protests with a schoolmarm wave of the hand grown from her back, and leaned in again to demonstrate for him how it should be done.
* "Usopp!" Run, dive and tackle, a tangle of limbs upon the deck; frantic yowling that not everybody’s made of rubber, idiot! Usopp’s nose gets bent out of shape, and they end up curled about each other, on top of each other, Usopp crouched in the crook of Luffy’s crossed legs. Warmth and hardness where their bodies meet.
Luffy squeezes in a pincer motion, rolls back onto his shoulders, and tips Usopp into his arms. "Heeeeey."
Inevitably, Nami finds them kissing and groping each other on the deck, and screams fit to bring down the sky. Then they get kicked below to their cabin, where they argue about who’s going to do what to who this time when neither of them really cares, and as usual it just comes down to who gets tired of the arguing and teasing and giggling and grabs the lube first.
Luffy is not complex. It feels good, and he likes things that feel good. He likes Usopp, and apparently Usopp likes him too. There is nothing else to be said that would prove worthy of analysis.
*
Under Penn’s heel, Usopp’s unconscious skull is poised to be crushed in an instant by the enormous marine commander. Behind him is Chopper in brain point form, likewise unconscious, a sergeant’s gun set to his head.
"Straw Hat Luffy and Nico Robin." Penn rolls their names with vibrant satisfaction. "What a fabulous experience it is to meet you both! The Penn Marines abhor the extinguishing of the great and glorious thing which is Life! ...but surrender now, Straw Hat, or we have no option but to dutifully shoot your crewmen dead!"
Circled by his men, tired and breathing heavily from the fight that’s brought them to this point, they scan the enemy and each other, as Penn calls again for them to choose - to sacrifice their lovers’ lives or all their freedoms.
Sometimes, all choices are reduced to one.
*
"I know a way to get us all safely out of this," she'd said, her voice low; surrounded by the men, the guns, the kairoseki darts. "But we will both have to carry the cost."
Luffy doesn't care about cost. He's gonna be pirate king. He's gonna take them all there with him. There's no question that he'll pay whatever it takes to do it.
Someday he'll be pirate king, and there'll still be men in the world who'll know they've had the pirate king stripped and groaning like an animal between the press of their bodies, on his knees with his mouth full and their hands clutching his hair, shoved down under them with their weight squashing his face in the dirt.
But then, Luffy's never had much use for dignity anyway.
2.
Two hands depart the swaying spiral, reaching forward to snap the fastenings on her bodice top and release her breasts. For those whose attention still isn’t fully riveted, the hand that sprouts from each man’s thigh goes to work to ensure nobody is left in any uncertainty of her intent.
Luffy’s eyes, first as big as saucers, narrow and harden. "You get me, too," he says, voice flat. No niceties or seduction, he doesn’t know how to use sex to entice. And why would he? No such history as hers, inveigling his way into others’ affections. All he’s ever done is fool around with Usopp.
Penn’s quick nod seals the deal.
*
"You're sure about this, Straw Hat? The captain himself, and a three hundred million berri celebrity in the bargain?"
The cheerful question - hearty laughter and all - continues to ring in his head when Commander Penn is voicing nothing but ragged, panting breaths against his ear, while the other man's weight bears down on his back.
*
There's only so much you can do with hands, even a hundred of them, before people realise you're trying to distract them with quirky trinkets and demand more.
She uses every trick she knows and a dozen made up on the spot, exhausting her imagination and her powers. Lets them play with her breasts, a pair each of their own wherever they want them. Tries to beguile them with the novelty of copies, fragments, pieces of her... all to stave off for as long as she can the moment they greedily grasp the real thing. Feels the hypocrisy of it with every moan and cry that exits Luffy’s lips like an accusation... Her captain, her nakama, has no such soft option. Her idea to bring this upon him.
In the end, though, it’s all the same. When everything else at her disposal is exhausted, it’s just her body and theirs.
They still want hands, of course. Where’s the experience in just fucking a woman? Take that away, and they might have to acknowledge this better resembles something else.
*
They should have fought.
Already too late, by the time he knows, to try fix anything with fists. When they finally fall on Robin, the scene caught in fleeting glimpses, odd-angled, disjointed, interrupted by the jarring rhythm of brutal thrusts, they’ve already had him six times or more. And after the fighting earlier, these men with the marks of his fists darkening on their skin, none of them have been gentle.
Even being rubber can only protect him so far.
It all becomes a blur. The sweat dripping off his hair into his eyes, the pounding of strangers’ bodies, the blood and grass that stains his knees, the slimy mess trickling down between his thighs. He no longer attempts to follow what’s happening to Robin. It isn’t as though he could protect her, if he did.
It’s a harsher contest for survival than any fight. He can only brace himself again, open his mouth again, and hope that with all the stamina he has, he'll wear them out while there's still enough of him left to walk away.
* She uses her hands to guide them into her, grasp their buttocks, squeeze their balls. Try to maintain control.
She can't pretend it's Chopper she attends - and wouldn't want to - but she has to remember it's for him, as she spreads her legs again, urges them in, and tries to make them feel good in all the ways she'd allowed herself to consider reserved for only one person, now.
It isn't as though she's never done this before when she didn't want to; not the first occasion in her life when the only leverage she could apply was with her body.
There are just more of them this time. That's all.
*
He's never considered sex that doesn't feel good. Like meat that doesn't taste good, such an idea would never enter his brain. But maybe it only works with Usopp.
He moans as many hands tug at his body, as new bodies press against him front and behind, push their combined girth inside, and new breathless voices marvel at the way every part of him can stretch. Rough fingers travel his skin, reach between the sweaty press and handle his cock - and someone else discovers that, yeah, that stretches too.
He moves obediently when they tell him to, a sideshow toy whose strings are theirs to pull. Gives no resistance as they stretch him out, tangle him up, fuck him while he barely resembles anything human, things that Usopp‘s never given any hint of wanting to do.
He takes them into his body, his hands and his mouth as if he‘s eager to, clenches down, squeezes and fondles, sucks and swallows, and acts out the lie.
*
In every way, this is not an act of love. And in every way, it is.
3.
When the last one pulls out, you’re still pushing yourself up again, bracing and readying for the next, until a laugh and rough caress upon your cheek tells you there are no more.
It’s over...
Except it’s not, and a part of you is always going to be trapped in these endless hours, holding in a scream because you can’t let it show in front of them, let alone the nakama enduring alongside you, and not the others, and especially not the one you did this for...
*
Penn strides back across to him, and Luffy can't hide his flinch. He thought it was over--
It is over. That's his hat in Penn's hand. The marine sets it on his head and Luffy tilts it slowly, moving like his limbs are set in treacle, and somehow manages to lift his chin to meet those eyes.
"The Penn Marines respect the limitless bonds of fellowship!" the big man booms, beats his chest with his fist. "To a man, they will speak of this to no other soul!"
Luffy blinks. He's swaying, barely upright, naked, too aware of their stains drying on his skin. Stares at this cheerfully bombastic monster while marines drag Usopp and Chopper over and leave them like gifts at his feet.
It's not the wisest choice, but the snarled words rise up within him and won't be kept behind his caked lips: "Go away."
*
The Penn Marines adjust their clothes, salute their commander, and fall into rank, setting down their skateboards - because apparently that‘s what they‘re experiencing this week, apart from devil fruit users.
They take their leave, but they don't really leave. They hang around, whispering the memory of a stranger's touch in every place that they've been - which is everywhere - and it'll be a long, long time before they ever truly go away.
*
Nico Robin is sore, and tired, and this is not a shining entry into the record of her life, but at least now it is over she knows that it worked. They are still alive, and free, and together. She holds Chopper's unconscious form against her knees, her hand over his chest so that she can reassure herself he's still breathing, slow and deep, in and out. Regulates her own breaths to match.
Standing rigidly over her until the last marine fades out of sight, Luffy finally falls again to his battered knees and, once there, chokes up the contents of his stomach onto the grass. Thick, liquid strings cling to his lips. When he finally sits back up, she dares turn her gaze to his face. His eyes are wider than usual, shock buried not far beneath the surface. He scrubs at the mess drying again around his mouth, but they're not going to be able to hide this, even if they find their clothes.
Robin wants to throw up, but she can't. Her body doesn't have the energy left even for that.
* They can't look at the expressions when they arrive back at the Sunny, Luffy's steps slow and heavy with Chopper and Usopp cradled over his shoulders, but Robin walking just as heavily a pace behind him.
"Nobody speaks about this," Luffy says in that voice, lifting off Chopper into Nami's arms, then Usopp into Zoro's. "Ever.
"We brought them back safe. They never need to know more."
A hand in the centre of Robin's back pushes her before him, inside the ship, towards the bathroom, away from the circle of stricken faces.
*
"An island!" Luffy, sitting on the prow, curls an arm around Usopp, fifteen feet away on the deck. "Ooh, it looks exciting!"
Usopp gestures dramatically. "Bird-man tribes! Cyclops...ses! Orange-skinned Amazon warriors! What adventures await?" ...And then decides maybe he doesn't want to go ashore after all. Luffy laughs at him.
"Careful, Captain," Robin says with a smile. "Remember, those strange marines may still be after us."
"But I want to go ashore," Chopper puts in nervously, touching her waist. "It's so green... I should be able to find lots of natural ingredients to replenish my medical supplies."
"That settles it!" cries Luffy. "We'll go together, and the rest can guard the ship in case the marines turn up again!"
*
Chopper turns over in soft sheets and drifts by inches back to awareness; blinks open his eyes to find Robin's face, worn and tired, red-eyed but smiling. She leans over him and presses her hand to his chest. Her hair is damp, a towel draped around her shoulders, the rest of her body buried in a fluffy, shapeless dressing gown.
Behind her, Luffy snores in a bruised sprawl of limbs and tangled sheets, skinny body taking up an impossible proportion of the bed. Usopp, a bandage around his head, sits reading at its foot.
Chopper remembers the marines, the gun in his face, the kick that stole his consciousness. Remembers, before the lights went out, wondering if it was the end.
But of course she saved him. Robin... and his captain. He should have known that they would bring them all through safely, somehow.
They always do.
END