Blood, Sand and Crocodiles

He must have passed out, which seemed a silly, weak thing to do. Especially when there was sand pouring in on top of him, and he was choking and struggling for air while the hole through his chest made it feel like he was going to rip himself in two with each sandy breath. Crocodile had been stronger than he'd expected, and by comparison, he'd not been nearly strong enough.

He had the shichibukai's secret now, though. A key to fighting the sand man for real -- if he only lived to use it.

From what felt like a very long way away, someone said something about heading off to the capital, and someone else answered that they had time yet, reminding him of hourglasses and mockery, and his chest hurt with a different pain.

Luffy blinked open his eyes a crack, more weakness than caution at first, but then trying very hard not to move or make a sound. Everything hurt so much that the pain centred around the wound in his chest almost numbed his senses to the rasp of cloth against his sand-scoured skin.

He was lying on a bed, a big one, in a room with white curtains and a pale green and gold ceiling. The curtains were open, the windows wide, billowing the fabric gently in the barest breeze, but through them he could only see the tops of buildings and sky. His hat was on the windowsill. Someone was whistling on the other side of a doorway in what must be a bathroom. That woman was leaning over him, her head down as her hands moved, and he felt, on top of the pain, a soft constriction tighten over his midriff. She turned away and he heard water slosh as she lifted something and moved aside. Not for long, though. When she came back, she sat once more over him, her feathery touch exploring his shoulders and upper chest.

His pride in squashing his shout and the impulse to scoot away from her was squashed in turn when she smoothly said, "You can stop pretending. I know you're very stoic, but you were moaning while you were unconscious." Her touch rose to his face, and this time he didn't resist the urge to try and flee from her across the limited territory of the bed.

It was a bad idea, clearly something that shouldn't be attempted by people with holes through them. He moved about ten inches before he ended up curled around his ribcage trying not to scream.

The woman caught his head and shoulders and pulled him close with a soft "shh". And to the whistling somebody in the bathroom, she called with a hint of berating, "You're much too cruel."

"Look who's talking," the returning voice growled. "I was finishing him off decently. I don't even know how he's still alive now. You're the one who wants to play. Just cut his throat and dump him, since you can't snap his rubber neck."

"Quite heartless," the woman concluded, forlorn but somehow mocking. Luffy unapologetically dribbled blood down her cleavage. "Oh dear."

She had put bandages around his middle, cleaned off a lot of the caked sand and blood, and made a mess of the bed, though the worst of the sheets had been pulled into one corner. Luffy tried again to move, but it felt like there was nothing left of him outside that hole in his chest that was demanding to be the centre of everything, each and every part directly connected, causing inescapable flares of pain when he moved, even down to a twitch of his fingers. His hands closed around the woman's arms weakly, but she all but ignored the effort as she pushed him carefully flat on his back. She crouched over him, and he fuzzily realised there was a pair of hands more than there ought to be, and they were curled on each of his shoulders, keeping him lying down.

The green-gold ceiling reeled slowly and he gazed up at it, feeling like if he stopped trying so hard for every breath he would stop breathing altogether. In the heat of Alabasta's climate, his body felt cold despite the sweat that stood out on his skin. Was he going to die? He'd never been hurt so badly, and he couldn't escape from it, couldn't fight it... He remembered the shock of looking down and seeing Crocodile's arm end at his chest, knowing the rest of the hook was inside, feeling the pull on his shirt and realising... realising it'd gone right out the back...

He opened his mouth, then stopped and swallowed. Blood. Everything tasted of blood. What he needed was meat, but he wasn't going to ask for it. Not from them.

"I'm not gonna die," he decided aloud, with his shallow rasp of a voice. The man behind the door laughed derisively, but the woman smiled.

"No, I don't think that you are." A frown touched her face then, and her eyes travelled to the closed door, calculating, warningly, before they returned to Luffy's, and she tutted and wiped blood from his jaw with a corner of the already-ruined sheets. "Not without further assistance toward that end, in any case."

Luffy let his head loll to the side and blew pink spit bubbles, and she smiled and popped them with her fingertips. He parted his jaw, but didn't even have the energy to snap at her fingers.

He... didn't know what you did, when you lost. He wasn't sure how to feel, and didn't know what was going to happen. He'd expected to be dead. But since he wasn't going to die, he didn't know what was meant to happen now. When he won, he'd always sent his enemy flying or punched them out and left it at that. They'd said something about 'playing', but he didn't think of 'play' as something you did with an enemy, especially one so badly damaged. He wasn't naive enough not to fear how they'd used that word.

A door clicked and Crocodile walked into his small, blurred field of view. Of course it was Crocodile... he'd known that, hadn't he? The shichibukai loomed over them. Still loomed, for all that he seemed smaller in an unbuttoned shirt and loose black pants with a towel draped around his neck.

Luffy lay pinned under Nico Robin, blinking up at the man who'd bested him as that man quirked his eyebrows and smiled. As if it wasn't enough to fail Vivi, fail her kingdom, fail his crew... why'd he have to let himself get beaten by such an asshole? His face, amid the pain and the drag of blood-loss on his senses, managed to rearrange into a snarl.

"Feisty, isn't he?" Crocodile said dryly. He raised the hook and slid the point lightly across the skin of Luffy's throat -- too lightly to draw blood. "You're hanging onto this world by a thread, boy. Be grateful Ms All Sunday was feeling playful enough to request what's left of you. Or perhaps not..." He chuckled and drew the hook clear again.

Luffy squirmed, puzzled by how suddenly hot his body had become. The sensations that drowned out his focus had shifted, or at least were now shared with something else beyond the tearing agony beneath his breastbone. His shorts seemed to have shrunk.

Nico Robin looked down and his breathy rasp turned into a thready yell as she placed her hand on him. The reflexive movement pulled at his chest, but his arousal refused to be killed by the pain. If anything, it intensified. "Someone else is feeling playful," she remarked. "And with this much blood loss, too. Clearly a gifted boy..."

Crocodile grunted and removed himself from Luffy's field of vision. "Go ahead. I might watch, if it gets interesting." He sat down somewhere out of view, making the legs of a chair squeak.

"It wasn't me he reacted to," the woman teased. "Another one falls to your terse charms."

Crocodile just grunted again, unimpressed.

"What...? No..." Luffy struggled as her hands worked at the fastenings of his shorts. She'd already taken off his shirt to bandage him and he didn't want to be naked in front of them both. He got his fingers curled around the waistband, and tried to pull against her, but there wasn't enough strength in him for even that. She drew them down far enough that his cock sprang loose, making him squirm all the more at the sudden lack of constriction and the thought of them looking at him, then another tug left them tangled at his knees, out of reach. He groaned in protest as her fingers closed around him. Her hair tickled his hand as he fumbled blind, unable to strain to lift his head without shooting agony across the torn tissues of his chest, trying to stop her. But her mouth closed around him and the match was lost.

He set his jaw against a whimper, turned his head away and clenched his fingers in the sheets that were sticky with his blood while she worked her own fingers, tongue and teeth.

After a while he became aware of other sounds. He opened his slitted eyes and realised that in his confused state he'd turned his face towards Crocodile rather than the empty side of the room. The other man's attention was fixed on his expression, and in his lap -- in his lap, he'd opened up his pants, and was stroking himself while he smirked and watched. Their eyes met and Luffy dragged his away, wrenching his head to the other side. He gasped as a vibration in Nico Robin's throat caught him unaware and he almost-- almost--

"Stop," ordered Crocodile, and the wet warmth around his cock instantly pulled away. "Enough coddling the boy. Let me see you ride him."

Silence. Luffy didn't like how loud his strained breathing was within it, every twist of his pain and desperation made mercilessly clear. Then she finally said, with gentle rebuttal, "Sir Crocodile, his wound--"

"Does it matter to you if he fails to survive the exercise?"

"I'm not fucking a corpse," she said sharply. "Not even for your entertainment."

He grunted. "I've seen you do worse."

Luffy's thoughts weren't working much at all, but his instincts told him, strongly, that getting out of this alive depended on Crocodile getting exactly what he wanted. For himself, and possibly for the woman as well, which made no sense because she was Crocodile's ally, but he had the oddest impression that she was trying to help him, even while her hands and mouth misused him.

"I... won't... die," he forced out the words in short angry bursts. He didn't like them thinking he was weak, either. Even if he was still afraid that every next breath would be the one his body couldn't drag in. He twisted his head again, staring upwards defiantly. He wasn't gonna hide. If Crocodile wanted to see him have sex while he was hurt this badly, that was weird, but so be it.

"He won't die," Crocodile said after a pause. "Do it, Nico Robin."

The woman met Luffy's eyes archly, and he hoped Crocodile missed the fear that was in her expression too.

She rose above him, sliding the thin band of her skirt up to her hips. Her thumbs hooked in the fabric of her slight panties, and she eased them down. She slid one leg out, then the other, and cast the scrap of cloth on the floor. Luffy gulped, his eyes drawn to the tidy dark thatch between her thighs and unable to leave it as she crawled forward over him. As she lowered herself his cock, moist with spit and precum, slipped over her waiting mound, disturbing the soft hair. He whimpered at the feel of it against his tip. She rolled her hips, letting him slide around and smiling at his desperation as, wound or no wound, he bucked against her, then a guiding hand sprouted from his thigh and she brought her weight down to engulf him.

He had no experience to anticipate what it would feel like. He was wetter than she was at first, her initial noise containing a little discomfort, but as she moved on him her body grew slicker, easier. Each time her weight embraced his hips, the wound in his chest tugged, and his nerves screamed with the contradictory signals of pain/pleasure. His laboured breathing rose in pitch, and if it was only because he couldn't properly catch a breath that those noises weren't screams, he was glad of it.

Anyway, she was already louder than he was, and getting louder. The hands on his shoulders had disappeared. Maybe it was too much for her to concentrate on keeping them there. She leaned further over him as the rise and fall of her hips grew heavier and faster. The pain intensified too, and despite the heat of their bodies, so did that deep-set chill. He tried to focus on her and not Crocodile as the edges of his vision blurred and dimmed, pawing up with shivering hands to touch her breasts in an act of defiance -- and because, whatever else was going on, they were right there in front of him. Pausing an instant longer on a hard downstroke with their hips crushed together, she dragged her clothing up to bare them willingly for him.

Crocodile made a growled noise almost like a purr. A fast, reeling view showed him working his hand quickly in his lap.

"Nico Robin," Crocodile purred again, and Luffy only realised he'd got up as the weight shifted on the bed and his bulk loomed behind her. His large hands slipped under her skirt, and for a while, their movements were reduced to a slow, short push-push as whatever Crocodile was doing interfered. Her expression changed, her mouth hanging slack and her grunts low. Then, as she voiced an almost mute protest, her eyes darting to Luffy, he climbed onto her back.

Luffy choked on his distracted squeak as he felt Crocodile's rougher skin brush his thighs. Had that been--? He felt the heavy push transferred through Nico Robin's body, felt her clutch him convulsively tighter, and he couldn't hold in his yell as Crocodile shoved both of their full weight forward on top of him.

"You're going... to kill him," she protested tightly, her breasts squashed into Luffy's chin. Her arms braced to the sides, trying to take the weight, but Crocodile was a large man, and heavy. Luffy could feel the pressure from his body through her, and the strangeness of it made his skin crawl.

"You seem to care... too much." Crocodile thrust hard, making them both cry out. The woman arched her body and absorbed the weight. A tug on Luffy's leg surprised him, and he felt his shorts dragged loose -- then Crocodile forced his legs wide, and the woman's wider still, and rolled them both, pressing forward. Luffy's wound screamed but the only one who yelled aloud, this time, was Nico Robin.

Her weight fell on top of him as her arms collapsed and Luffy clamped his teeth and felt his eyes bulge, then came with a ferocity that had him bucking his hips into her despite the further pain it ripped through him, helpless to hold anything back. It left him gasping and even more light headed, but Crocodile didn't allow his body any reprieve, ramming her forward brutally, and when he started to slip out of her, adjusting angle to force her onto him with maximum impact, until his hardness returned in full. He felt her clench around him again and again, and he didn't want to die, but he could see the blood from his bandages... daubing her, him and the bed with new scarlet smears. Crocodile was trying to kill him again, using her as the weapon.

He managed to curl his hands over her ribs and jam his elbows against the bed, making the muscles of his arms twitch and shiver as he tried to take the pressure off. In what he knew must be a heroic effort of concentration with both of them inside her, she closed her eyes and sneakily grew new arms to help.

It worked for a time, then either Crocodile guessed or just noticed there wasn't as much bleeding or yelling going on. He pulled out, and Nico Robin gave a harsh grunt at the suddenness. Her extra arms vanished as Crocodile rolled off the bed. His feet were heavy on the floor, walking around them. Luffy panted slower breaths as she continued to move gently on him, her eyes sliding to follow her boss.

A rough hand twisted in Luffy's hair, the smooth edge of the hook curled about his neck, and as he was being pulled up, already trapped in a silent scream at pain so bad it robbed him of all sound, a knee jammed in his back to compound it. He almost passed out as Crocodile used his body to shove them both over, so that Luffy was on top of Nico Robin, sprawled between her spread knees. Her hands gripped his shoulders and he could hear the rough shock in her voice. "You didn't need to--"

"Shut up." Apparently Crocodile hadn't noticed or didn't care that Luffy had slipped out of her when he moved them, or that they were no longer making any attempt to even look like they were doing anything.

Crocodile's hand curled again in his hair, a rough caress that doubled up with the purpose of pulling his head around and forcing their eyes to meet. "Ms All Sunday seems to have enjoyed you so far, in her unprecedentedly gentle fashion. Perhaps I should try you myself."

"Hunh?" Luffy gulped as the hand left his hair, letting his head flop onto Nico Robin's belly. She'd edged away a bit. There was a small thud, and something rolled across the floor, whatever thing Crocodile had just tossed away. He couldn't twist to clearly see what was happening.

"Sir Crocodile..." the woman began warningly.

"You have other things to concern yourself with," he responded curtly. It sounded like a dismissal. Luffy felt the hook around his calf, pulling his legs wide. Crocodile's weight bounced the bed and a knee got in the way when he tried to bring his other leg about, abruptly feeling far too vulnerable in whole new ways.

Crocodile's fingers, slippery with grease, slid against his buttocks. One after another, they pushed inside his ass, and screw his inability to catch his breath, Luffy YELLED. A second knee replaced the hook holding his legs apart, allowing that curl of metal to press down on his back when he tried to struggle. The fingers flexed inside him, experimenting with the way his flesh stretched, their owner releasing a chuckle. "No, damn it! STOP!" If Crocodile thought there was any way he wasn't going to fight this, even if he couldn't win, even if the effort killed him--

--And he realised that he couldn't even fight. Not with the hook and hand on him and inside him, crippled by his wound.

Nico Robin's legs pulled their warm support from under him, and she turned her back and slid off the bed, tugging at her clothes, retrieving her underwear. He wasn't sure whether to be glad she wasn't going to watch or sorry she was leaving him to face the rest of this without her. At least she'd been an ally of sorts.

The fingers pulled out roughly, and he felt the other man crouch over him, the hook landing in the sheets at his side. Another nudge against his ass -- something bluntly positioned, prodding -- then the hand curled around his waist, slipping in the blood there as Crocodile pushed, weight and bulk demanding, a large man all over and a few fingers hadn't been any warning of what it would feel like when that body forced its path through him and burrowed deep.

It dragged from him a desperate whine of a noise that he didn't like having made at all. Luffy wanted to fight, but other than trembling, he couldn't even move. Crocodile squeezed him close and, right next to his ear, gave a satisfied sigh that whispered nastily of the pleasure he was stealing and curled mockingly into his core.

Nico Robin's back was to them and she stood in front of a mirror, brushing her hair.

"H-help me," he gasped, unable to stop himself, clawing his hand through the air toward her, but she didn't even react.

"Yeees," hissed Crocodile, easing out and then returning fiercely. "Listen to him beg, Nico Robin. A far better use for that annoying chirp of a voice."

Luffy clamped his teeth together, feeling stupid. She wasn't going to help. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't. Everyone was too afraid of Crocodile... everyone but him...

And look where he was.

Pretty funny, right? Before, the whole problem had been that he couldn't touch Crocodile. They were nothing but touching now.

With the next stroke he was stretched back, wringing another faint noise from him as muscles in his abdomen were pulled taut. His legs slid limply on the covers, supporting none of his weight. His head was flung against Crocodile's shoulder, his mouth pooling with blood. He realised, through slit-eyed, watering vision that Nico Robin could see them... there, in the mirror. A show for her, Crocodile fucked him like that, almost upright, crushed an arm across the wound hissing "Scream"... and Luffy would have, but he hadn't the breath. Stupid, stupid promise not to die...

Stupid body, responding to the treatment just as it had before, making him bafflingly aroused even while his senses reeled, circling death.

The woman set her hairbrush down and left the room in slow strides. The door shut softly behind her, giving nothing away. Crocodile chuckled.

They were alone now.

"Are you going to die after all, then?" He was cast face-first onto the covers. Only the grip on his hips stayed as Crocodile thrust into him with new frenzy and at least ignored, now, the wound. The jolts from his wild movements hurt, but they at least weren't aimed. Crocodile had worked himself up, Luffy figured blearily; now he just wanted to come. Maybe at that point, that would be enough for him.

He was still breathing yet.

"No," he managed to cough, sending blood spatters across the white of the sheet in front of him. Crocodile laughed and wrenched a knee high under his arm and slammed deeper.

"I'll make you a promise," he grunted, distorted by pleasure and amusement. "If you survive, I won't kill you." He seemed to find that very funny.

"Then I'm gonna find you... and kick your ass." Luffy's own promise was thin and rough, horribly weak even to his own ears. Crocodile laughed and squeezed a buttock in taunting reply.

He didn't want Crocodile to know that what he was doing sent sparks through him of more than just pain, but he couldn't hide that his cock was jutting and hard, jammed against the bed at every thrust. He didn't know why his body insisted on responding to Crocodile, from that first touch of the hook across his throat...

Just like with Nico Robin, there reached a point where he couldn't stop himself from adjusting, such as he could, for a better angle to meet the next thrust.

Crocodile stopped with a jolt that left him surprised and sickeningly bereft, and spun him over. He paused there, breathing heavily and his eyes scouring Luffy's face suspiciously. He dipped himself back in slowly, watching closely. He was clearly amused by the pain it was impossible to hide as Luffy's legs were pushed back and back for access from the new angle (trying to let his legs be rubber, bend as rubber, rather than pull the abused and shredded muscles of his abdomen...), less amused by whatever else he saw as he found that spot that sent excited sparks through the pain and Luffy clenched down, desperate to prolong the contact... Then... amused again, Crocodile was laughing out loud as he continued to thrust and watch the spectrum of results. Luffy wanted to stop, but he couldn't.

The hand left his hip and he felt it tighten around his cock, wringing the climax from him.

He struggled to get control of his breath in the aftermath. Whether Crocodile had done that to mess with him further or not, he thought the other man must be working himself up to finally finish. Unexpectedly, he pulled out completely and sat back on his haunches with his erection bared to the air, regarding Luffy with a nasty calculation.

Crocodile pulled him onto his side. It didn't even hurt much. Maybe that wasn't a good thing. Probably not-by-chance, the new angle gave him a better view of that doubly-smiling face as he delivered the ultimatum. "Your mouth, willingly, or the hole under those bandages. You get to choose."

Luffy flinched, and understood the conditions of his survival. He licked his lips, screwed shut his eyes, and nodded. "Not... for you," he growled, laboured. He'd do it for his nakama, who were expecting him back, whole. He'd do it for Vivi, whose kingdom he'd promised to save. He'd do it for himself, because he was going to be pirate king someday. And okay, maybe he'd do it a little bit for Crocodile, because he needed to live to kick the bastard's ass later, and dammit, he was going to do that. He was going to do that. He dragged open his eyes again.

"Just for me," Crocodile said, "you can crawl, as well."

He had his cock in his hand, stroking it slowly, like he was offering it up, but didn't move.

He'd meant it, Luffy realised coldly. He wanted him to do this himself, not just let it be something that was done to him.

He nodded numbly and drooled blood on the sheets and wondered all the same, how? He could barely move. How was he even going to reach Crocodile, or bring him off without suffocating, or support his own weight while he did it. But the other man wasn't about to help him, and that was all a part of this game, too.

He lifted himself, trembling, onto his arms. More slowly, he pulled up his knees, not rising on them but dragging them across the top of the sheets. Head hanging low, forcing his ill-used body to move, he made it by gradual, painful inches to Crocodile's lap, smearing new blood trails across the bed.

Crocodile didn't say anything, and he was glad of that as he sealed his mouth around the thick flesh the same way Nico Robin had done it to him, earlier.

Held up on shivery arms, he tried to ignore the taste and the humiliating thought of where it had recently been. A shudder ran through Crocodile, and he made his lips and tongue squeeze down in an ugly caress, trying to finish before he passed out. Then a hand on the back of his head forced the cock deeper, and the world greyed and spun as his arms lost their purchase and his face mashed into Crocodile's crotch. He started trying to rise again, making desperate sounds as he choked, and felt Crocodile explode into his throat. Hips jerked against his face and the tugging hand in his hair refused to let up.

"Swallow." He heard the order amid the rising darkness. Not like he had much choice anyway. He made his throat perform the motions, unable to make a sound, desperate for air, and really hoping he wasn't about to die this way.

Then Crocodile shoved him clear, and with a soft 'huff' of satisfaction cleaned himself off on the sheets and started re-fastening his pants. Luffy lay pulling shuddering breaths into his lungs; audible, wheezing sobs of air. His hands clenched fistfuls of the sheets.

Was... was that it? Did he dare believe that there was nothing else waiting?

Crocodile stood up, straightened his bloody shirt, then stripped it off with a noise of disgust and turned back... A glint flared in his eyes as they pinned Luffy's. Such as they were; only half-open as he continued his struggles, trance-like, semi-conscious. Conscious enough to hear. "Maybe you will live... looks like you win this time, after all, Strawhat."

It didn't much fall into Luffy's definition of a victory, but he was alive so he'd take what he could get.

Crocodile ignored him while he pulled on a clean shirt and, on top of that, his checked vest and big coat, and without looking at Luffy again, he left and didn't return.

Some indeterminate time later, Nico Robin did. Twice. The first time she seemed surprised to find him still alive. He'd dragged himself over onto his back, holding his eyes wide open and mouth the same, keeping up with his own private battle of gasping again and again for that next breath. At the sight, she left quickly. The second time she had water and bandages once more, and also meat.

"I'm sorry," she whispered as she pulled his clothes back on over the clean bandages and curled his slack fingers around the brim of his hat. The meat he'd eaten hadn't yet worked its way into his system and he didn't have energy to spare to ask why she was apologising. She'd saved him, hadn't she? And since she was his enemy, he didn't even know why she'd done that.

He blanked out for a while, because instinct told him that it would be okay now, and he woke swallowing, breathing easier, feeling stronger. Nico Robin was speaking to him from the open doorway.

"There's a man outside, looking for me," she said, "who'll help you get to Princess Vivi."

Then, she was gone.

It was hard to be sure how much longer it was before he could stand, wavering, on his own two feet, and set out -- stumbling, falling, unsteadily -- on his list of quests.

Find his sandals, on the floor. Find the man outside, who Nico Robin said would help. Find Vivi. Find his nakama. Find a lot of water. Find Crocodile.

...Find Crocodile. Again.

END