Please note: Unlike my previous works, All Their Sins has a very definite M rating. While I don't feel it to be at the level where it would need to be moved to since there is not and will never be any graphic sex or similar which would cause me to raise the rating to NC-17, adult themes including but not limited to violence, prostitution and drug use will be present, along with coarse language. Some future chapter titles may be censored in the drop down menu for this reason. That said, I am perhaps being overly cautious here in offering this warning. I simply ask that you continue to read at your own discretion and that, if you are a younger reader or one who is at all uncomfortable with any of the aforementioned, you consider very strongly whether this, or anything with a similar rating, is the right story for you.
Alright, done with my severe and serious warning. As seems to be the norm for this story, this chapter was written around midnight and into the wee hours of the morning and has, once again, not been edited to the extent that I normally do. But real life is catching up to me, so I don't have time for the double proofs I normally subject my work to, being loathe to unleash something rife with typos on the public. On a final note, this chapter is deliberately somewhat confusing, for a reason that will, hopefully, become self-evident; please bear with me until things become clearer in later chapters. -Adali
All Their Sins
Drugs
Theoretically, Sanji should have loved this club. It was classy, had a good atmosphere, and was a gathering place for wealthy and good-looking people looking for a fun time. Or so said the little blurb in the town's visitors' guide. But it said much the same for all the town's clubs, and Sanji was pretty sure it was lying about every single one of them. This place was not classy; the Baratie was classy, even if it had pirates and marines and cooks getting into fights every couple of hours. This place was trashy, with a thin layer of assumed sophistication that would never fool anyone who had seen the real thing. The atmosphere was shit: the music was terrible, the lighting distasteful, the staff odious and unhelpful. No one here was wealthy, although they probably liked to pretend they were so that they could impress all the other faux-riche out there. They weren't good-looking, either, but they were all using the low lighting, eye-catching (tacky) clothes, and lots of makeup to suggest that they might be. They probably were all looking for a fun time, but Sanji supposed that even a propagandist rag like that visitors' guide couldn't be wrong all the time.
He'd meant to under-dress, hoping to spend the night in quiet obscurity with maybe one or two amiable young ladies and a lot of liquor. But his clothes were of good cut and quality, his hair tastefully done, and - if he did say so himself - his features regular and appealing, so that even in slacks and a plain white button-down he had a presence unequalled by anyone else in the club. Fuck. So much for not being noticed.
His dream was further destroyed by the women in the club. They weren't amiable or sweet: they were ravenous. Sanji might have claimed to be a lover of all women (all beautiful ones, anyway) and incapable of saying 'no' to a lady, but just now he wanted to tell the whole pack of them to get bent. It wasn't something a gentleman should do, and ordinarily Sanji would never be capable of such a thought but just now he was tired, and stressed, and these women resembled hyenas far more than they did ladies.
The worst, though, were the drinks. This bloody club was watering the drinks so that, even if they were still doing their job more or less to his satisfaction, they tasted like shit. It was a true affront to the craftsmen that had distilled all those enchanting bottles lining the shelves behind the bar. Well, maybe they had been craftsmen: more likely the bar had just refilled expensive bottles with cheap knock-offs and moonshine. And even still they were watering it down.
Through the dim light, the bar haze and the slight fog from the alcohol, Sanji could see them at the other end of the bar. They were sitting side by side, not looking at each other but still perfectly coordinated. Drink, glass down, Nami-san pours, drink, down, shithead pours, on and on. He thought they might be on their fourth bottle by now. There was a clear space around them, as though they were encased in a bubble of hostility that no one but the occasional petrified bartender dared breach.
Fuck. Even if he had wanted to - not that he did - Sanji couldn't have entered that space. In there was the world of the angry and the jaded, a realm that Sanji didn't understand even when he was sober. The blonde had seen a lot in his life: some of it had made him bitter, some cynical, sometimes it led him to be pessimistic even as he called himself a realist. But Sanji's internal scars were nothing like those carried by the two of them. Life at the Baratie had been good to him and Zeff, in his rough way, had taken care to smooth away the worst of the anguish and terror that had come of their month of starvation on that rock. There had been no one there to care for Nami-san after her mother's murder, no one to ease her suffering during her long years with Arlong. And Zoro... the cook didn't know what had happened to that man in the past, but his scars were as deep and twisted as the navigator's. He respected them both, and loved and adored Nami-san, but that wasn't enough to blind him to the angry brands on each of their psyches. Times like now, when they sat and drank and hated the world, these times that even Luffy couldn't sooth away entirely, they became inapproachable and remote, taking themselves off to a world that Sanji didn't understand. Didn't want to understand. Could never understand.
Always an outsider. Fuck. Maybe he wanted to be there for them. It's what nakama did, right? Sanji wanted to walk over and penetrate that bubble, sit down and drink with them even if he passed out hours before they were even tipsy, just wanted to be over there. But it was as if the bubble was exuding a force, pushing everyone away but most especially pushing him away. Don't come closer, it said. Don't dare. It kept him rooted at this end of the bar, surrounded by hungry eyes and questioning bodies that moved closer, queried, didn't understand the answer and withdrew to watch and to speculate and to hunger once more. Always, always outside, never getting inside, never even getting closer to getting inside.
Fuckers. Who needed them. He downed another highball. His sixth? His tenth? He couldn't remember, didn't care. Smiled lazily, sloppily at the gathered crowd. "What paradise," he murmured, his voice taking on a much heavier tenor than normal. The words seemed thick and warm as they slid from his tongue, so much different from the usual carol with which he greeted Nami-san and Robin-chan. Maybe if he spoke like this they'd finally accept his advances. Maybe they'd reject him utterly. "Surrounded by so many beautiful ladies."
A smile, a flutter of his eyelashes that would have made Robin-chan laugh, and the women advanced. He could smell their desire, like a rolling stench of decay. It turned his stomach and lit his nerves on fire with a bitter, hateful flame. Not ladies, and not beautiful: dogs, to beg for his pleasure and come when he told them to. Their presence was revolting, intoxicating. They came closer, three, maybe five of them - they swam together in his vision, identical in presence and purpose, their features blurred by the alcohol in his system. Three, five, twenty, it made no difference; they were replaceable, forgettable. Not worth remembering so that they needed to be forgotten later.
The first reached him. A hand on his arm, uncertain at being allowed to approach after being kept so long at bay. He ignored it, but didn't push away. Bolder, it pressed a little harder, fingers fanning out to caress him. Another hand, another woman, this time at his knee. Breasts, soft and somehow limp against his shoulder. Hands moved, fluttered, skimmed his arms and brushed his knees, settling here and there, touching. Chest, legs, hands, but never his face. They left his face alone, wouldn't try to impose that intimacy. His light touches, fingers lighting briefly on arms or wrists or hips, encouraged them, drew them closer. Their hot, hopeful fingers burned through his clothes and against his skin, like brands of retribution. You deserve this, they said, this is what you are.
Another highball. His twelfth. His fifth? Lips on his neck, just below his hairline. Ankles tangled with his own. His hand, loose, forfeited to the one that held it, dragged down the slope of a breast. Fingernails teasing up his thigh towards his groin. Heaven, surrounded by these women that clung to him, begged him with their eyes and their bodies to take them and own them. Hell, caught by these mindless fucks he couldn't respect, couldn't adore, their movements those of enemies invading his stronghold.
Something else. Hot, burning cold, a dozen needles jabbing onto the underside of his wrist. A sword? Teeth? With an effort, he forced his eyes to focus. A small white patch, too pale even for his skin. A band-aid. Nothing, insignificant, the source of a fiery, wonderful pleasure spreading up his skin lighting his blood as nothing else he could remember. His skin crawled, writhed. The touches to his arms and legs were hotter, more insistent; now they made his nerves sing as they hadn't before. It was bliss: red hot metal being dragged across his body leaving seared, angry scars behind. Sweet agony.
A voice, from a long way away, was speaking loudly in his ear. "He's coming with me." He was being steered up out of his seat and across the room by the firm guidance of something that didn't seem to exist at all. Someone. Someone was taking him. The hands were still there, reaching across his skin, touching, teasing, scalding. Not across; through, under. The hands were reaching out of the band-aid, swimming through his blood to spark and land wherever they wanted. They were touching his face, an unwanted intimacy; all reverence and respect forgotten as they clawed through his veins. No. Not allowed.
Under the direction of that single clear, ringing thought, his fingers flew to his opposite wrist, grabbing the band-aid and ripping it away. It fluttered as it fell, a dead and mocking leaf that disappeared suddenly when his eyes could no longer track it. The breeze was still leading him, insistently pushing him out the door and down the narrow steps.
The cool air was like a slap in the face and left him reeling. He was outside. When had he gotten outside? There was a door somewhere: he must have come through that. Why? Voice, movement, blurs of dark colours and sparking lights.
"...pretty one... wrist... move..."
There might have been one voice, might have been five. They blended together, suddenly loud, suddenly quiet, a discordant symphony that made no sense.
"Oi." A note like a bell, brazen and angry, a warning of death cutting through the storm from the top of a cliff. The still wind that was holding him up disappeared and Sanji sagged, helpless and disoriented, against a wall. Rough brick cut into his cheek. He could taste bile in his mouth, spiked with the alcohol from his breath. He stumbled, caught himself on the wall, stumbled again. The wall ended suddenly and he twisted, trying to get back to it, his one anchor in this strange other-world. There was noise behind him - beside him? - a rough scraping sound over a harsh, uneven beat that was familiar yet impossible to place. He caught the wall again. It felt different than before, smooth and warm and he couldn't grip it. Falling again, his feet moving, unable to catch him.
He landed, a harsh impact that jarred him. There was something smooth and gritty under his face, but it was softening, accepting him, so it didn't really matter, did it? His body didn't want to move, just wanted to stay where it was and melt, collapse in on itself. He closed his eyes, shutting out the dark, confusing world. It didn't help: suddenly everything was spinning, tilting, or maybe it was just him and he was floating in space, with no direction to judge. He spun a half turn to his right - that was his right, wasn't it? Maybe it was up - and then he was back where he started, completing the same half circuit time and again.
A crash, and he wanted to open his eyes and see what was happening, get rid of this nauseating drifting feeling, but his eyes wouldn't do it. They stayed resolutely closed, preventing him from seeing anything but the pebble a few inches from his nose. His will to fight the heaviness was draining from him rapidly and, at last, he let go. Like a river it swept him up, dragged him under, and Sanji passed out completely.