Author's notes: So here's the second chapter. It's also almost as long-winded and overwritten as the last, though much less family-friendly. Basically, I got tired of wading through so much internal dialogue just for some romantic catharsis, and jumped straight to penning Luffy's deflowering. Hope its bearable. Also, thanks to everyone who left reviews, it really helped me stay motivated to keep going. Thanks especially to mister Sagitarius, whose thoughtful critique was well-received. To address some of your valid points: 1) I draw my protocol for delineating characters' thoughts from the books I've read, mostly fantasy and sci fi novels (a la Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time) where thoughts are italicized but left unbracketed by quotation marks in order to specifically distinguish them from spoken words. Therefore I always end up using double quotes for direct speech and single quotes for speech repeated from another character. Still, I do see your point and will chalk it up to a difference in styles. 2) Also, to your very astute observation about Luffy's failure to register's Nami's love for him as the same as Robin's, I offer two different but related (and debatable) explanations: Firstly, my interpretation of Luffy's personality has always focused less on his obvious idiocy and more on his ability to focus most or all of his awareness on the circumstances of his present moment. His character, to me, has a kind of Forrest Gump-like zen about him, which I imagine made it possible for him - upon being told by Robin (whose opinion he trusts unquestioningly) that he doesn't need to worry about Nami's confession until she brings it up again - to set aside his problems with his navigator for later. That led me to think that Robin's far more physical confession would, I feel, completely occupy his attention and force him to confront the immediate circumstances of her advances. Larger, second-order thoughts about how similar the feelings Robin was describing were to what Nami had mentioned before are connections that, while I think Luffy is capable of, would be the furthest thing from his mind after experiencing his first kiss. 2) That said, I also don't want to rule out the possibility that Luffy has indeed made this connection in the back of his mind, but that it hasn't been yet mentioned in the narrative thus far, in order to leave room for that epiphany to come into play in his forthcoming encounter with Nami. Furthermore, we still don't know yet that Luffy quite understands all the implications of romantic love, since Robin reduced it into very simplistic and physical terms in the last chapter, a fact that I hope to bring to bear in the third installment. I don't know if any of that satisfies you, but that's my best logic. Regardless, all (ten) readers are likely to be disappointed by this chapter if they came to this fan-fic looking for a well-developed plot. Let me be clear: the primary and ongoing intent of this story is to be semi-canon, harem-smut wrapped in a passable plot. I claim nothing more, or less, than this mantle. That said, if that's up your alley, by all means, enjoy! Happy 2014!

In the nocturnal hush of the earliest hours of the maritime morning, two Straw Hats stole quietly across the lawn deck of the Thousand Sunny, their way lit only by the soft-glowing orb pitched high above in the inky firmament almost directly overhead. Their hands were linked; one, slightly taller, her curvaceous hourglass figure accentuated by the clinging sea breeze, conspicuous even in the dim lighting, moving with an alluring and impossibly feminine grace as she pulled along a slender young man, the silhouette of his head framed by an infamous thatched sun hat, his free hand securing it against the rush of the night air. They wound their way up one of the staircases to the ship's rear landing, the lady at the fore looking back to the owner of her affection trailing obligingly in her wake, as she bestowed on him a mysterious, inviting curl of the lips.

Monkey D. Luffy, for his part, gazed back with mute wonder at his elegant, dark-haired crew mate, appearing even more stunning than usual in the surreal moonlight. There was definitely something about the graceful sway of Robin's hips as she strode assertively through the darkness, all playful smiles and sultry seduction, that was mesmerizing in a way he had noticed instinctively before (despite what some believed, there was a heterosexual male psyche buried subconsciously under all his naivety), but had never been allowed to openly admire until now. A memory from two-years ago flickered into his thoughts, triggered by the context in a way that his conscious mind couldn't quite keep up with.

"Gomen, captain. Is there something I can help you with?"

"Oi, Robin. What are you doing?" Luffy approached his crew's newest member on the otherwise empty deck of the Going Merry, a look of childish curiosity plastered across his face.

The lovely Nico Robin eyed her captain with the same wary, if tolerant, neutrality that she normally reserved for the flirtatious banter and ogling stares of the ship's cook. Unbeknownst to Luffy, she was currently questioning her initial appraisal of him as too oblivious for her womanly charms to be advantageous with.

"Well... since everyone but you and Tanuki-san are still out in town, and it seems we'll be here for awhile, I had planned on sunbathing some." She answered serenely. When Luffy continued to stare blankly at her in a way he was, of course, completely unaware was making her slightly uncomfortable, she added coolly, "I wasn't necessarily looking for an audience, though..." The last thing she needed was for her new captain to turn out to be just a more repressed pervert than Sanji.

"Ne, but what's that stuff you have there?" Luffy asked, completely missing her hint and scratching his scalp as he pointed to the tube from which she was squeezing a dab of some fragrant creamy substance into her palm.

"This?" she said, as she spread the cream across her hands in smooth circular motions, her tone doubtful, as though she were reevaluating, yet again, in the brief time she'd spent with the Straw Hat crew, her estimates of her captain's intelligence. "Its just lotion. My plan is to tan, rather than burn." She explained.

She affected an air of nonchalance as she began applying the cream in front of him, up and down her unbearably long legs, smoothing it slowly across her silky, bare thighs. The Demon Child of Ohara (whose adolescence-referencing alias it had never been more abundantly clear was long since outgrown) wore a black two-piece bathing suit that left little of her ample endowments to the imagination and which the majority of teenage boys other than the captain of the Straw Hat pirates would have found irresistibly magnetic to the eyes.

Robin finished covering one leg, lowered it back to the floor, and proceeded to her other, placing it with bent knee atop her flattened tanning-chair. It didn't seem that Luffy was admiring her curves however, when he asked.

"Why does it smell like that, though? It smells tasty."

Robin gave him a puzzled look, then seemed to understand.

"Oh, that. It has cocoa butter mixed in. It does smell rather like a baking ingredient, I suppose." She was applying it across each slender arm now. She glanced over at her captain, seeing that he was watching her hands moving up and down her limbs with that same disconcerting inquisitiveness. "Would you like some as well, captain? You don't seem like you burn as easily I do, but there's plenty left, if you want."

"But why do you rub it on yourself? You said you didn't want to burn. You're not going to cook yourself, are you?" Luffy questioned ridiculously, without any idea how absurd his notion sounded.

Robin laughed as she finished coating her narrow shoulders, and began dabbing at her nose and cheeks.

"No captain-san, this is specifically to prevent me from being baked, see? If I lie too long in the sun without it, I tend to turn a particularly unpleasant shade of red." She answered with mirth.

Luffy tilted his head at her.

"But that stuff stops that?" He asked skeptically.

"Eh, indeed. I never travel without it. I'm surprised that you've haven't seen it before." She said, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice.

"So it's a mystery cream..." Luffy nodded to himself with comprehension.

Robin giggled again. "I suppose you could call it that." She conceded. She finished with the bottle and handed it to her fascinated captain for his inspection, meanwhile pulling her tresses back into bunch and tying them above her neck before she sat down at the edge of her tanning bed, stretching a towel over its length and then laying herself across it on her stomach. Folding her arms under her head and turning to rest the side of her face on her hands, she looked back at her captain.

Luffy took several deep sniffs of the open bottle, the sweet aroma making his mouth water. Below him Robin piped up, her tone suddenly different somehow from a few moments before.

"Ne, captain... you can actually help me out, if you like. " She crooned at him with a strange smile that Luffy was entirely too innocent to decode.

"Eh? How?"

"Can you cover my backside for me? I have a hard time reaching." She asked with an all-too-deliberate offhandedness. Had Luffy possessed a higher capacity for logical inference, he might've deduced that no one with Robin's particular set of handy supernatural powers would ever need assistance self-applying lotion. Instead he stared for a few moments down at the shapely form of his nakama, arrayed before him.

A confusing kind of hesitation that he had never felt before was plaguing him at that moment. He had no idea why, but the sight of so much of Robin's bare, pale skin, glistening in the sun with a buttery sheen, not to mention the thought of touching it, seemed to be engendering an unfamiliar restlessness within his body, and he swallowed slowly as he asked,

"You want me to put it on you? On your back?"

"If its not too much trouble." Robin replied with well-concealed amusement as she turned her head away to rest on the other side of her face.

There was another moment or two of silence as Luffy reexamined the tube in his hand, turning it upside down over his other palm, as he'd seen Robin do.

"Is there something wrong, captain?" Robin asked. "No need to be nervous."

Luffy crushed the tube in his fist with a complete absence of finesse, sending a ghastly stream of the lotion spurting into his palm, tossing the now-disfigured bottle over one shoulder.

"Yosh. I'm not nervous. I got it now." He responded. As he tried imitating the woman's early rolling hand movements, gobs of excess cream oozed over edge of his palms, dripping wastefully onto the deck. Moving his hands over Robin's prone figure, a large splotch of the ointment dribbled clumsily between his fingers, splattering across her smooth back. The bikini-clad archaeologist jerked with surprise.

"Luffy?! Are you sure you didn't pour too much?" Robin asked with a hint of annoyance.

But Luffy wasn't listening. The toned, reflexive ripple of her body's startled spasm had been utterly distracting for a moment, suddenly intensifying his bizarre feelings of arousal.

Maybe...maybe I'm just hungry? He reasoned, turning his eyes to his cream-caked hands, and deciding then to satisfy his initial curiosity, bringing one of his fingers to lips and popping it in his mouth all at once.

His gag was instantaneous.

"ACK! Gross!" He spluttered with disgust at the instantly and unequivocally terrible flavor, spitting the taste of it from his mouth, a large wad of his spittle grazing his nakama's back.

"Luffy!" Robin raised her voice, sitting up with alarm at his outburst, and pulling her towel up to cover herself instinctively. "Did you actually try to eat some?!" she demanded with disbelief.

"Its nasty! It doesn't taste anything like butter!" Luffy whined, holding his slathered, dripping hands helplessly in front of himself.

"I told you! Its lotion, not butter!" She scolded with more than a hint of exasperation. "Please tell me you didn't spit on me... " She wiped at her back with the towel.

"I don't think it was a lot." Replied Luffy meekly, as if it were some kind of consolation. "Are you mad, Rob – "

"Oi! What's going on here?!" Shouted an already angry-looking Nami as she emerged on deck from the wooden ramp leading off the pier. A grocery-laden Sanji stood at her side and was now taking in the scene before them – the seemingly irritated swim suit-wearing Robin sitting upright, towel drawn protectively around herself, the guilty sunscreen-covered Luffy with his hands held incriminatingly in the air – and a slowly dawning rage twisted the curls of his eyebrows as he let his bags of produce fall to the floor.

"LUFFY, YOU DIRTY BASTARD! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO MY ROBIN-CHWAN!?" He roared, advancing on his captain with flames in his eyes.

"Robin-neesan! Are you alright?! Did Luffy try to do something perverted?" Nami darted to her sister Straw Hat's side, though she asked the last question with some incredulity, as if, knowing Luffy, she had a hard time believing the story her eyes had surmised.

"I'm fine, I assure you, Navigator-san." Robin answered quickly, realizing her practical joke had gotten a little out of hand. Behind Nami, her captain was being violently throttled by the cook, his head flailing back and forth with a whiplash that would've certainly made a quadriplegic out of anyone without a rubber spine. Sanji continued to strangle Luffy as he turned his face back to Robin, his expression making a quantum transition from a fang-bearing growl, to syrupy, hearts-in-his-eyes coo.

"Robin-chwan! I pray you're unharmed! You must've been so frightened by our dumbass of a captain!" He re-donned his enraged snarl as he turned back to Luffy. "You sick bastard! How DARE YOU LAY YOUR FILTHY HANDS ON ROBIN-CHAN!" Then he was all besotted, sycophantic smiles once more as he faced the sunbathing woman, "Don't worry, Robin-chwaaan~! I'll be sure to thoroughly punish this brute!"

"Oi! You guys got it all wron –" Luffy tried, but Sanji cut him off.

"QUIET, YOU SCOUNDREL! I'LL GET TO YOU!"

"There's really no need for this, Navigator-san, Cook-san. Luffy's telling the truth, he didn't do anything untoward. He was merely somewhat inept at applying sunscreen to himself and was asking me for help." Explained Robin smoothly.

The two looked suspiciously back at Luffy.

"That's not wha –" He started, only to be interrupted again

"Ne, Captain?" Robin interjected firmly, "I think you understand now, that it's a little troublesome to ask a woman to put lotion on you? And also that just because its called 'cocoa butter', doesn't mean its edible, right?"

Luffy hesitated, and then nodded. "Tastes gross..."

"Oi, you monkey." Sanji finally stopped strangling his captain, mitigating his punishment to a painful drilling of his knuckles into Luffy's skull. "Didn't anyone ever teach you not to ask a beautiful, delicate flower to do something so rude?"

"I'll give him a talking to, Sanji." Nami finally interrupted.

"Eh? But you needn't trouble yourself with this baka, Nami-swaaan! I'll take care of beating some manners into him!" The blonde-haired chef reassured her.

"I think it'd be a better idea if you got started making lunch, don't you think, Sanji?" She responded diplomatically, "I'm pretty starving, aren't you, Robin?" She turned to her fellow female Straw Hat.

"Eh, definitely. I would be thrilled to have some iced tea, too, if you have it?" Robin requested with a winning smile.

Sanji wavered only a moment, before releasing Luffy's limp form and turning instantly into his wavy, obsequious, singsong version.

"Haaaaaiiiiii! Right away then, Nami-swaan, Robin-chwaan! I'll make a meal to fill your hearts and your souls! One iced-tea to quench an angel's thirst, coming right up!" He tornadoed off to the kitchen without another word.

"Lunch!?" Luffy said, his head popping up at the mention of one of his favorite words.

"You! Come with me!" Said Nami menacingly, dragging her unhappy captain off by the ear, as he looked back over her shoulder at Robin's apologetic smile.

When he and his navigator were alone on the other side of the ship, Luffy immediately began complaining.

"Nami! It's not true! Robin was the one who asked me to put the butter on her! Then I tried it and it tasted terrible! Not like butter at all."

"Baka!" the fiery-tempered redhead admonished. "Even if that's what happened you should just be thankful a lady as beautiful and sophisticated as Robin-nee-san would offer you such an honor! You certainly don't deserve it. I'm not surprised an idiot like you managed to mess that up, either. And where did you get the ridiculous idea to taste that stuff?"

"It smelled good." Luffy said simply. "I can't help that I messed up, I never put butter on anyone before. You believe me, though?"

Nami sighed. "I suppose. It does seem unlike you to wear sun block yourself; especially considering you think its something you can eat. But you know Luffy, the offer to apply lotion to a beautiful lady doesn't come by very often, especially for a baka like you." She said, changing gears suddenly from admonishment to teasing. "If you're not prepared for it next time, you'll miss out."

She smirked as she went on. "In fact, I'm even feeling sorry for you. So...um... if you need a beautiful lady to... practice with... for the future, I suppose I'd let you try on me next time. I won't even charge you (very much). How's that? Pretty generous, aren't I?" She tried to smile seductively at him, but Luffy just inserted a finger in his ear as he stared blankly back at her.

"Why the heck would I pay to do that?" He asked dumbly.

He barely had time to notice Nami's sudden scowl, before his head was spinning from a stinging slap.

"BAKA!" She shouted as she stormed off.

Snapping out of his thoughts as Robin came to stop before a door that Luffy clearly recognized as the entrance to the kitchen, the pirate captain felt a thrill of puzzled excitement.

"Ne, Robin? Where are we going? Are we stopping to eat something?" He asked hopefully.

The gorgeous scholar's musical laughter only confused him more.

"Just somewhere with some privacy. Don't worry; I think you'll forget all about food in a little bit." Robin replied mysteriously, "And if you still want to eat something later..." The last part trailed away in a breathless whisper, the filthy, none-too-subtle vulgarity of her double-entendre flying completely under Luffy's innocent radar, though it would've shocked anyone else who knew the normally polite and reserved Robin. Then again, Luffy also couldn't know that it hadbeen years since this woman's last physical encounter with a man, and no matter what her typically demure demeanor might disguise, she did indeed have pent-up desires with which she dealt.

As she pushed open the entrance, all but yanking the bewildered Luffy in after her, she turned to enfold his neck in her arms as soon as they were inside, shoving the door closed with his body as she pressed him against its frame and attacked his mouth with impatient kisses.

Luffy was floored. He had, of course, never witnessed the cool and collected older woman exhibit this kind of raw, animalistic, passion before, but it took only seconds before her prediction started coming true and his passing interest in a midnight snack dissipated amidst the awakening of another of his body's long-dormant physical needs. They lasted a few seconds like that, Robin pressing her softness eagerly against her captain, lips lost in a fiercely sensual exchange, before she tore herself away to whisper hoarsely at him.

"Come on..." She grinned mischievously, "Not here. I don't want anyone to walk in on us."

She resumed hauling the nonplussed Luffy along by his wrist, through the mess hall, past the dining table and kitchen counters, to the base of the ladder at the back of the room that led up onto the landing of the rear, rooftop deck.

As she started nimbly up the rungs, she peered down to her shadowing captain.

"Follow me. And no peeking at my behind," She warned jokingly, "Its nothing you won't get to see soon enough..."

Luffy had no more than an obscure inkling of what the willowy woman meant, but he found his anticipation of this unknown growing, vaguely aware that Robin must have something in mind that would be an entirely new experience for him.

If it's anything like kissing... He thought to himself, and that same curious thrill raced through him as he followed dutifully up the ladder after his nakama.

Once outside through the open hatch, Robin turned around to offer Luffy a brief hand exiting the narrow space, not wanting to spare even a moment as she kicked the covering back closed and started hastily toward the rear of the landing with her captain tagging along behind, crossing over the bridge to the balcony of the observation deck. At the entrance to the library, she paused a heartbeat, once again twisting around to meet her lover, turning the door handle just as she faced him, causing the door to give way, and sending them they all but tumbling over each other backwards into the room.

As Robin regained her balance just in time to spin them around and nudge the door shut behind her, she seized Luffy by the collar of his cardigan, and resumed her earlier shower of lip-caresses, this time falling into briefer, more frequent sequences of kisses. Her captain, for his part, surrendered to her lead as he struggled to keep up with her long-withheld affections.

They remained enjoined like this as they stumbled their way over to the edge of the circular room to fall unceremoniously onto the plush bench lining the walls.

Here Robin's desperate displays of desire seem to finally settle slightly into a more comfortable rhythm of slower, drawn out strokes of her lips against his, as if satisfied for the first time that nothing would interrupt her blissful rendezvous now. Her hands shifted from his lapels, one sliding to the side to grip his shoulder, the other drifting downward, fingers widespread, to feel at the firmness of his torso, tracing the hardened ridges of his abs, but hesitating just before the waistline of his shorts.

After a minute or so, they finally parted for air, the both of them panting with roused passion as they paused to eye one another, Robin wearing a look of hopeless infatuation and exultant yearning, Luffy with breathless, wide-eyed wonder.

The break seemed to be a moment Robin was looking for, as she raised a husky and trembling voice.

"Luffy... I... can't even explain to you, how happy I feel right now... How excited you make me." She paused as she examined his innocent brown eyes.

Luffy grinned at her. "Me too, Robin. Kissing... I've never felt anything like this. I didn't know there was something this... amazing... you could do with someone." He told her.

She did her best to master the elated giggle that bubbled up inside her as she pressed her forehead intimately against his.

"Eh, Luffy. But believe me when I say there's more... a lot more that I really, really want to share with you." She said.

"Better than kissing?" He marveled with skeptical awe, "You mean, like the touching you talked about?"

She laughed softly, "Yes...that and more. But," She tried to imbue her tone with some seriousness as she went on, "at the same time, I want to make sure you understand. If this feels like things are moving too quickly... or if at any point you feel like I'm asking too much of you, too fast, all you have to do is say so, Luffy. I don't want you to feel pressured to do anything you're not ready for, or that feels uncomfortable. Normally..."

She paused with a shy embarrassment that seemed so strange for her.

"Normally two people would wait a lot longer before they did some of the things I want to do, especially if its your first time. So, you don't have to feel bad in any way if you change your mind about things part way through, because the truth is, I've been pushing you a lot tonight. And that's...just because... you make me feel so...incredible, Luffy... that it's hard to help myself. But that doesn't mean that I'm not asking you, and that you can't say no at any point, okay?" She looked at him with a reassuring smile, and he eyed her with that same curiousity before nodding earnestly to her.

As she saw this, her smile split even wider, and she closed her eyes and nuzzled his nose a moment, adding,

"That said, once I get started, unless you tell me to, I'm definitely not going to be able to stop. So... just try to relax and do what feels natural. And feel free to tell me what things you like or dislike and I'll try my best to make you feel good. I really want your first time to be a good experience."

After that she leaned forward once more and resumed her gentle kissing.

Luffy tried his best to return the kisses skillfully, relieved to be eliciting the soft, pleased, moans he had heard from her earlier, while his ill-equipped imagination attempted vainly to imagine what awesome and terrifying things Robin might have in store. Finally, she leaned one last press of her lips into his mouth, and pulled back from him suddenly, leaving a wondering Luffy gazing expectantly at her, until, just as he was about to open his mouth to say something, her hands left his body and went straight to the buttons of her coat. Luffy fell into an attentive silence as Robin's thin fingers traveled dexterously down the lining of the cotton clothing, unfastening one button after another until she was able to shrug her shoulders smoothly out of the jacket, which dropped down around her hips. She was wearing a tight, short-sleeved shirt underneath, and paused only a moment to smile forebodingly into his eyes, before she grasped at the hem and pulled it up and over her head in one swift motion.

Her captain eyed her with quiet nervousness as the shirt left her shoulders and was tossed aside, sending her bra-covered bosom into a momentary sway until Robin reached behind her back to unfasten her pale undergarment.

For Luffy it was only the third time in his life seeing a woman's bared breasts, especially one as classically gorgeous and statuesque as his erudite nakama. And as if that weren't enough of a display, Robin stood up swiftly then (Luffy's eyes were drawn again to the distracting bounce of her gravity-flouting chest), her hands moving to unfasten the buttons of her taut jeans, then inserting thumbs into the waistline of both pants and undergarment and pulling them down to her ankles to reveal, in one graceful movement, the entire length of her slender legs and his first glimpse of the mysterious triangular pinkness between her thighs.

Luffy balked at the sight of Robin's exposed curves. Unwittingly, they summoned to mind his very first encounter with the nude female form, long relegated to the archives of his subconscious.

Hopping to and from each leg, the slap of his wooden sandals against the cold stone floor echoing through the passageways of the Dr. Kureha's castle high atop the snow-capped peaks of Drum Island, Luffy clutched at his bladder and whined into the locked wooden door before him.

"Naamiiiii!" He groaned. "How long are you going to be in there? I really need to go!"

He raised a fist and pounded it against the door again.

"You idiot! Don't tell me that!" He heard Nami's muffled shout over the sound of running water from behind the barrier. "What makes you think I want to hear that!?"

"But Nami! Its true! I'm about to burst." Luffy complained, leaping from side to side with comical light-footedness and then starting to pound his head against the oak surface.

"Gross! I told you, keep that to yourself!" His recently ill nakama barked back at him, "Anyway, I'm about to take a bath. Just find some other place to go!

"Naaamiii!"

He lingered there hopefully for another moment more, but when she didn't answer, he grumbled with frustration and sprinted off down the hallways in search of another bathroom.

After a few turned corners, and unsuccessfully tried doorknobs, he found himself outside the open door to the laboratory of the furry, antler-headed physician, Tony-Tony Chopper, who stood atop a chair at his desk examining a liquid culture in a glass vial.

"Oi! Monster-san!" Luffy interrupted, "Is there another bathroom around here? Nami's in the other one and I'm about to go in my pants!"

The diminutive furball of a medicine man scoffed gruffly. He had only known this pirate two days, but already the human acted like they were on familiar terms, as though he hadn't spent half the first day trying to capture and eat Chopper.

"Stupid human!" He yelled back at the red-vested pirate without turning around. "There's only one bathroom in this wing. The rest are frozen shut in the other parts of the castle. You'll just have to wait until your nakama's finished."

"EH!?" Luffy cried frantically, hands still cradling his groin, before dashing back down the hall to the toilet entrance.

"Nami! There's nowhere else! Let me – " He trailed off as, upon banging his fist against the door, the entry swung open, letting a billow of steam escape from the room into the hallway.

"Nami?" Luffy called hesitantly into the obscuring clouds of vapor, before stretching his neck around the corner. Waving aside the fog, he saw after a few seconds, that the spacious floor-recessed stone bath within was empty and concluded that Nami must've finished quickly.

"Yosh!" He sighed with relief, and darted inside, kicking the door closed behind him, but not bothering to check if it shut completely. As he darted by the still water-filled basin, failing to wonder why Nami hadn't drained it yet, he passed the partial slate wall separating it from the toilet on the other side, a low-lying one-person granite seat depressed into the wall, with a hole carved in the middle. Luffy wasted no time audibly relieving himself and then, finishing up his business and about to leave, had just the presence of mind to remember Sanji's outrage the first time he tried to go straight from the bathroom to the dining table without washing his hands, and stopped in front of the small adjacent sink to run water and soap over his palms.

It was while he was washing up that he heard the bathroom door shut with a resounding thud and, moments later, someone's soft, bare footsteps on the stone floor. Switching the faucet off, and furrowing his brow as he wondered who had just walked in, he searched quickly and in vain for a cloth to dry his hands on, deciding then to step back into the bath area to look for one. He got there just in time to see Nami's bare backside slip smoothly into the steaming bathwater, which was deeper than he had realized and, when she crouched down, reached all the way to her delicate shoulders.

"Oh, Nami. You're still taking a bath?" Luffy said suddenly as he walked out of the haze to the side of the basin.

Nami's head jerked towards him at the sound of his voice, and she shrieked with shock at his unannounced appearance.

"LUFFY!" She screeched lividly, sinking lower into the water till she was covered up to her chin. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?! WHEN DID YOU GET THERE?!"

"Eh?" Luffy frowned indifferently at her embarrassed surprise. "I told you, I needed to use the bathroom."

"I thought I told you to go somewhere else! Can't you see I'm taking a bath here?" She retorted angrily.

"Chopper said there wasn't anywhere else. Besides, when I knocked on the door it was open. I thought you were done."

"I left because I forgot to bring a change of clothes! Obviously I wasn't done, it hasn't even been three minutes, you idiot! Don't lie, Luffy, you came to peek on me didn't you?!" She demanded with irate suspicion.

"Peek?" Luffy gave her a bewildered blink "At what? I didn't know you were coming back." He spotted her towel then, folded in a neat rectangle at the edge of the bath.

"Sure you didn't. I'm sure it was just an accident." Nami pouted with disbelieving sarcasm from the water's surface.

"Ne, Nami, can I borrow that towel?" He replied, ignoring her. "My hands are wet." He strode over to the corner of the bath and reached for the cloth.

"No, of course you can't! Don't just grab my stuff!" Nami shouted furiously, getting up halfway out of the water to strangle him, before she recalled her indecency, and shrank back into the scalding water, red-faced.

Luffy paid no attention to her as he seized the fabric and toweled his hands dry before dropping it back to the stone tile surface in a crumpled heap.

"Yosh. That's better." He nodded with a grin before heading towards the door, "Okay, enjoy your bath, Nami, I'll see you later!"

"Wait, you asshole!" She called after him, staring incensed at the confused and impatient look he offered her, as though he was unaware of what an inconsiderate jerk he had just been, and actually thought she was inconveniencing him.

"You're actually going to barge in here in the middle of my bath, use my towel, leave it in a pile, and then just waltz right out of her? You ass!" She growled at him.

"Eh? But I didn't barge in, I told you, I jus –" He disputed, but she cut him off instantly.

"JUST SHUT UP AND PICK IT UP, YOU IDIOT!" She shouted at him.

"Hmmm... Fine then... I don't get why you're you so mad, Nami." He griped meekly, as if she was being unreasonable, and he strode back over to retrieve the discarded towel.

"Just fold it properly!" She ordered.

Luffy did as he was told, albeit clumsily, and placed the folded towel back at the edge of the bath. "Good?" He grinned, without waiting for an answer, and started heading back towards the door.

"Hold it right there, you!" Nami commanded, clearly not finished. "Come back here!"

"Ehhh?" Luffy froze just before the exit and turned to face her with a slighted scowl. "What'd I do now?" He asked, making his way reluctantly back over.

"Don't just walk away! I'm not done with you yet!" She snapped at him.

"Awwww..."

He sat down unwillingly on a short wooden stool next to the bath, wearing the look of a child being put on time-out as he faced his navigator's head, hovering above the reflective surface of the water.

Nami narrowed her eyes at his attitude and then asked,

"You swear you didn't come in here to peek on me, Luffy?"

"Hmmm? I promise, Nami! Like I said, I just needed to pee. Why would you peek on someone taking a bath, anyway?" He asked with a mystified look that was so in character for him that she could actually believe it.

Finally she seemed to relax visibly, and lifted herself up slightly in the water, till her underarms were just above the surface, approaching closer to the edge of the bath and smirking smugly at him.

"Well, I guess I can believe that of a baka like you. Sometimes I wonder if you even know what the difference between a man and a woman is." She teased.

"Hey, what's that's supposed to mean?" He protested, realizing she was insulting him, if not exactly how. "Of course I know that..." He said, gesturing to his chest with a pair of open, cupped palms as he started to reply, "Women have boo –"

"Just stop talking, Luffy." Nami interrupted before he could finish, face-palming at his complete absence of tact.

Her captain fell obediently silent, and she looked up at him for a moment, sighed, and seemed to decide something then. With an air of affected resignation, she finally said, slowly,

"Well...since you're already here... And since I still haven't had the chance, since we got here, to thank you for saving me... I suppose you can help me out. Hand me my towel, Luffy."

"The one I just folded?" Luffy asked confused, but did as he was told.

"Now turn around." Nami directed.

"Eh?" Luffy said, but stood up and obeyed wordlessly. After he faced the opposite wall of the room he heard the sound of movement in the water, followed by a dripping noise, as Nami stood up all the way in the bath and shuffled mysteriously behind him for a moment.

"Okay. You can turn around now, Luffy." She spoke afterwards.

As the young pirate captain whirled back, expecting her to have donned her towel again, he saw that his still-naked navigator had taken actually a seat right near the side of the bath, on a stone bench that lined the basin's edge, under the surface of the water. She was facing away from him, with her legs still submerged, but her whole bare backside was plainly visible, even amidst the humid haze of steam.

Luffy stared at the smooth, peach-colored sinuousness of her figure, still slick with wetness, thin trails of water leaving the soaked strands of orange hair plastered against her neck, and travelling down the channel of leanness flanking her spine. She turned her head back to him over her shoulder as she encouraged him to come closer.

"Come on, sit down already." She said with casual impatience.

"Oi, Nami...what do you want me to do?" Luffy asked, approaching with caution, and returning to the wooden stool, upon which his head was slightly above hers. He could see now that she was hugging the partially folded towel to her chest to cover her otherwise exposed bosom.

"Like I said, this is me repaying you for what you did. I need someone to wash my back. You can have the honor." She said, with a tone of playful banter, as she reached one arm back to him over her shoulder, and handed him a bar of soap.

"How is this payback? This just seems like a chore to me. Can't you pay me back in meat?" Luffy objected.

"Don't complain!" She rebuked, "There's no amount of meat that would satisfy you anyway. And even if you're too much an idiot to realize it, this is a much better reward than food. If it were Sanji, he'd be dying with gratitude. So just get started already, baka."

Luffy sulked under his breath for a moment longer, but eventually leaned forward on his seat and raised the bar of soap to her bare back. He could see now that the bathwater went only up to her tailbone, leaving everything but a heart-shaped halo around the top of her absurdly round behind exposed to him. His eyes traveled up from there, across the narrowing of her waist, whose edges widened in a pleasing approach to her upper torso. On either side of this, the abundant swell of her towel-flattened breasts peered just visibly between her upper arms.

Ignoring the uncomfortable feeling he experienced at that moment, Luffy pressed the bar of soap dutifully against her back and began scrubbing up and down vigorously. He felt Nami recoil with surprise a moment.

"Ah! Luffy! Jeez, not so rough, moron." She criticized irritably.

"Oh. Gomen, Nami. I've never done this before." Luffy changed pace to slower, longer strokes up and down the length of her spine.

"Its alright." Nami said forgivingly, sounding suddenly more diffident. "That's good now, actually." She lapsed into a long silence after that.

Luffy, for his part, said nothing either while he rhythmically slid his hand back and forth over her skin, and otherwise only shifted periodically on his stool, searching for a position that mitigated the constricting discomfort of his denim shorts, of which he was now acutely aware in the awkward quiet.

"Ne, Luffy?" Nami said at one point, her eyes closed as she reveled in the slippery massage of Luffy's sliding movements, all of her earlier levity seemingly gone in that moment, replaced by a shy, soft-spoken, tenor.

"Mmmm?" Luffy acknowledged wordlessly.

"I know I acted like I was joking just now...but... I really do want to thank you again. Properly. Dr. Kureha told me what you did to get me here. Climbing by hand all the way up this mountain, in the middle of a blizzard...carrying me AND Sanji both... all by yourself?" Her voice became hushed at the end, as if she still couldn't believe the improbable feats of endurance her captain was constantly demonstrating.

"Anyway, I don't know how you managed to do something that crazy... but... I'm really grateful. Apparently I wouldn't have lived more than another two days if it hadn't been for you... so... thank you. Again, Luffy. For being such a reliable nakama." She swiveled her head back to him to meet his eyes, trying to convey the sincerity of her meaning.

Luffy grinned at her.

"You're feeling better now though, right Nami? I'm just glad you're okay. You're our precious navigator after all."

"Yeah...but I wouldn't be okay if it weren't for you. Even when I was unconscious with my fever, I think I was able to hear your voice calling out to me from the darkness. You kept telling me to hold on, that we were almost there. Anyway, it comforted me. Gave me strength. I wouldn't have made it without that, I think." She offered him a heartfelt smile.

"How many times do you plan on saving my life, anyway?" She added, with a small laugh.

"Shishishi!" Luffy beamed at her, "As many as I have to, of course. You're my nakama, Nami. You can always count on me to protect you."

She laughed once more "Well, I suppose I can take it out of your debt to me. But even with that, you're still deep in the red. Guess I'll have to keep sticking around you if I ever want to get my money back." She joked, her earlier light heartedness returning.

Just then, Sanji's flattering voice echoed faintly through hallway and past the closed bathroom door.

"Nami-swaaaaan, dearest! Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes! Please look forward to a revitalizing meal!"

Nami smiled at Luffy after hearing that.

"Well...you heard him. I guess I should give you a chance to get a bath in before dinner too. I'm glad we could talk though."

As she said this she placed her towel aside, and moved back into the bath, immersing herself briefly past her head to rinse off the soap, before she stood suddenly upright, wiping her soaked hair out of her eyes, and turning to face him in all her unabashed splendor. Rivulets of bathwater glistened in the light as they trickled down the curves of her body, running between the roundness of her breasts, down her sides, collecting slightly in her navel. Luffy stared mutely as they drained down to the trimmed, elegant line of pale orange fuzz sitting just below her pelvis. His eyes were led to her exposed womanhood, framed by a fetching rectangle of negative space between her upper thighs and the water. If she seemed shy anymore about his watchful gaze, she hid it well behind a confident, knowing smile as she rewrapped her towel unhurriedly around her body.

"Nami..." Luffy said dumbly as she stepped lightly over the stone lip beside her captain, and dried her feet momentarily on the absorbent bath rug. One hand holding up the hem of her towel, she slipped her feet into her sandals and retrieved her untouched pile of folded clean clothes.

"Anyway, thanks for back scrub. Bath's all yours, Luffy." She said, crouching beside her still-seated captain. "Oh, and, um..." She added, pausing to place her fingers under his chin and plant a light, chaste kiss upon his cheek. "Your real reward for saving me..." She seemed to find the startled look in his eyes very amusing, and she smiled one last time, before standing swiftly and walking quickly out the door.

"See you at dinner." She called back over her shoulder as she shut the bathroom entrance behind her, leaving a bewildered Luffy alone.

The slow-headed pirate captain sat in silence for a moment trying to make sense of what had just happened, and why he felt so strange at that moment. Finally coming to when he realized that he probably could use the bath Nami had suggested, he stood up to start taking his clothes off, confronting, as he did, something he hadn't seen in years.

Looking down in consternation at the pyramidal protrusion of fabric between his legs he realized the source of his earlier discomfort, which had been concealed while sitting, but was almost painful now that he was standing upright.

Not this again. He thought with confusion as he tried carefully to take his shorts off without touching himself. Where did you even come from? He wondered with a sigh and finished removing his clothes. Lowering himself into the now lukewarm water, he began employing the same strategy he had used for years to deal with these rare incidences: leave everything alone until it went away by itself.

Two years later, Luffy again found himself at a loss, as the same uncomfortable pressure in his lower body seemed to be returning with a vengeance. He tried his best to force his eyes upon hisRobin's face, as though still wrestling with guilty reservations about staring at the uncovered female beauty before him. But she seemed to notice his deflected gaze, and offered him a reassuring smile.

"Luffy..." she murmured softly to him, "Its okay. Please... I want you to look at me."

The inexperienced pirate captain could feel his heated blood rushing to his face in a way he had only ever experienced before after one too many drinks.

"Robin...are you sure this okay?" He asked hesitantly.

She moved quickly closer then, sitting back beside him on the cushioned bench, offering him the most genuine smile she could.

"Please, Luffy. There's no one else I want to see me like this." She pleaded, taking his chin in her fingers and turning his averted eyes back to her.

Luffy shivered uneasily as his gaze was redirected back at Robin's unclothed body. But he forced his eyes away from her face and made them absorb the fantastic sight of her uncovered, pallid curves, the ideal, implausible proportions of her hips and waist and bust, the absurdly unblemished pallor of her lovely skin, and the delicate pink slit of her modesty, crowned by a tiny, well-groomed line of fine black hair. By the time had seen everything, he found himself unable to pull his stare away.

For her part, the naked goddess was left shivering with self-consciousness as the man she loved so much that it felt like a kind of insanity eyed her nude form with an un-interpretable speechlessness. The last two decades since her pubescence had long instilled in her an acceptance, and even involuntary assumption of, her own physical appeal to the opposite sex. She could never really recall doubting, before this moment, that another man might find her attractive. Now she watched Luffy's silent evaluation with a brimming uncertainty that made her quiet breathing shallow, filled her with trembling nervousness.

"Ne, Luffy... Will you say something...please? Do you like... how I look?" she asked, aching with insecurity.

Luffy seemed to struggle with the concept of spoken words, as if he suddenly found the extent of his vocabulary woefully unmatched to his circumstances.

"Robin... you...I...uh...I don't know what to say..." His words died pathetically in his throat.

Fortunately, the recipient of his meager compliments seemed to receive his words well, beaming happily at his inarticulate apprehension, as though he had extolled her beauty in the most honest way possible. The last of her reservations vanished, and she pressed close to him, face and figure alike, and laid continuous insistent kisses upon him for minutes afterwards.

At length, she began to gasp out a few words during brief interludes for air.

"Luffy... Please... I want you to touch me..." Her quiet request was drenched with desire, and Luffy gulped as he asked unsurely.

"Um...touch you...touch you where, Robin?"

"I told you," she panted into his mouth, "Anywhere. Anywhere you want." She took his hands by the wrists, placing one on her shoulder and looking into his eyes as she guided the other palm to her sternum.

"Can you feel that? My heartbeat?"

Luffy nodded slowly, amazed by the rapid pulse beneath her warm skin.

"The reason it's so fast... that's because of you." She murmured. "That's how excited I am... when I think about you touching me... so... please..."

This was the last motivation Luffy needed before obliging her. He lifted his hands and placed them delicately around her the warmth of her breasts. Robin drew a sharp intake of breath at his contact but remained still.

"Amazing..." He whispered, as his mind reeled with the indescribable feel of her yielding flesh. He had never felt anything like her before, this inimitable blend of firmness and softness, the heat of her smooth skin. No wonder, he realized then, no wonder most guys seemed so interested in them. He had never understood before this moment.

His hands began to move on their own, as if his inexperienced brain were forming new neural connections with every second, in a frantic attempt to comprehend the completely novel sensations. Shifting his fingers back and forth across the supple roundness, he marveled at the texture and feel of her now swollen nipples, noticing that Robin's breathing grew heavier with his touch. Unable to resist any longer, he gave both soft mounds a slow, firm squeeze, captivated by the way her body gave under his handling, but he hesitated at the sound of Robin's sudden gasp, worried he might've gone too far.

"Ah! Luffy! Yes... like that... more... please." She said, leaning into his caress with her eyes closed, and putting his doubts quickly at ease.

Emboldened, Luffy continued, his instincts kicking in as he started to become closely aware of Robin's reactions to his various massages. He soon had a sense of just how firm was enough, and quickly made good use of his discovery that a gentle pinch or twist of her nipples was enough to send her into a fit of audible groans, until she eventually looped her arms around his neck again, pushing her form onto his in a spell of wanton kisses.

"Mmm! Luffy! God, more, please!" She huffed against his lips.

Luffy indulged, kissing back without thinking as his hands began to run unchecked all over her, grasping at whatever curves and warmth they could find. She was hot to the touch wherever he placed his fingers, and he floundered across the length of her back, over the smooth flatness of her stomach, clutching at the silken warmth of her thighs, plundering the impossible substance of her rounded hips and bottom.

By now she was standing aggressively astride him, her chest pressing up against his clavicle, her mouth planted wetly over his, but breaking away often to kiss wildly at his chin and cheek, neck and collarbone. The bottom half of her ground slightly against the now unbearable pressure in his groin, as her hands roamed wildly beneath his shirt – running across the hardness of his shoulders and torso, exploring the muscled ridges of his back – before tugging the thin red cloth entirely off his body.

"Robin..." Luffy wondered open-eyed at her, and she responded only by moaning into his neck, before her hand slid down the grooves of his abdomen, slipping boldly under the waistline of his shorts.

"Mmm!" Luffy grunted as her fingers found his swollen arousal, wrapping suddenly around his throbbing length. "Robin! What are you - ?" He hissed with surprise, and felt her pause, pulling back from his lips suddenly to look searchingly into his eyes.

"I'm sorry! Is it not okay, Luffy? I know I'm getting a little carried away, but...I really wanted to touch you." She sounded contrite as she asked, "I just... want to make you feel as good as I can. You trust me, don't you?"

Luffy could hardly think straight with the strain in his pants, the electric feel of her still coiled around his stiffness. Ultimately, the look in her eyes, almost begging him to let her continue, made him nod.

"Eh...I trust you, Robin. But...it feels weird... I've felt this before...but not this strong... Its like... I'm on fire down there." He tried to explain.

She tried to reassure him,

"That's okay. That's natural. That's why I want you to trust me. If you let me, I can help with that feeling. It'll be new for you...but I think...I think you'll really like it by the time I'm done."

She examined his face one last time,

"So...Can I keep going, Luffy?"

He acquiesced with another nod, and a moment later, heard himself groan as her hand encircled his length again in a slow sliding grip.

"Robin..."He rasped her name, and she leaned forward to connect her lips to his again as she continued her strokes.

This is too much... he thought, unaware that his nakama was just getting started. She released him for a moment, and slipped her hands back out of his shorts, but only long enough to unzip them.

Luffy watched her tensely as she grasped them at his waist, just long enough to look askance at him. As soon as he offered his gesture of consent, she kneeled before him and pulled the cloth down to his ankles, providing him palpable relief from the constriction he'd suffered for minutes now.

As the whole of him sprang forth in front of her face, he noticed with some insecurity, Robin's astounded stare.

"My god...Luffy" She seemed to swallow with trepidation and glanced up at his face to see him looking nervously back at her.

"What? What is it?" He asked of her reaction.

"Its just...I've just never... seen one this big before."

"Is that good or bad?" He questioned unsurely.

She stared, unanswering, at his imposing appendage – appearing to her like it might burst at any moment – as if unable to look away now, before smiling faintly.

"I'm certainly okay with it..." She said, though he had the strange impression that she was somehow more uncertain about that than she claimed. Much of her earlier confidence seemed suddenly subdued, as if the sight of him had intimidated her, somehow.

"Ne...Robin. Are you sure its okay?" He asked, concerned with her faltering resolve.

Instead of answering, her face assumed a determined look, and she waited no longer before she grasped him firmly at the base and shocked Luffy to the core by opening her mouth and sliding the flatness of her tongue up the whole span of him in one deliberate motion.

Her captain cringed instantly at the unfathomable sensation of her slickness against his skin. Never in his life had imagined that someone might do such a thing.

"Robin...what are you...?" He tried to ask, but she cut in.

"I told you...don't worry, Luffy...just let me take care of everything and I promise you'll feel good." She said, her calm voice belying the deep blush of her face as, without another word, she parted her lips to lick wetly at his tip, before stretching her jaw wide and plunging her mouth over his whole head, taking as much of his span as would fit inside her.

Luffy's mind went white and blank in an instant, his knuckles clawing at the bench cushion beneath him, eyes clenching tight. He couldn't believe this sensation existed, the cramped hot wetness of the inside of Robin's mouth as it enveloped the upper half of his aching length overwhelming all reason. The feel of her moist tongue cushioning beneath was surpassed only as she relaxed her jaw, pushed herself further down his length, until he felt the end of him clearly pressing against the back of her throat.

Opening his eyes then to look down at her, he beheld her face, lips agape and flush against his skin, the first of seven inches of at him at least vanished impossibly into her mouth. He wondered with guilty astonishment, somewhere in the back of his mind, how she could even fit so much of his girth in such a small space, saw her swallow with the difficulty of it, her expression slightly uncomfortable.

"Robin...! You don't ha –" But he was unable to finish, forced instead to suppress another moan, as he watched her begin slide her head along his shaft, her cheeks collapsing as he felt her throat and tongue tighten around him in a vacuum pressure that dispelled words from his mouth. Then she was moving, back and forth with steady persistence.

For a second or two, the unreal ecstasy was almost manageable, until Robin's pace started to increase, her movement expanding as she grew more comfortable, so that she rose all the way to his tip and then plummeted smoothly back down, even further than before, until everything but the last few inches of him was snugly inside her again, her lips never breaking their hermetic seal for a moment, the sloppy sounds escaping them now irredeemably vulgar.

This he could withstand only a moment before the heat in his loins became intolerable, the scorching wet tightness of her throat impossible to endure, and he growled his last words, through gritted teeth,

"Robin! That's too much... I'm about to... " But she refused to heed him, and he was unable to end his sentence before the searing pressure that had been building exploded out of him all at once. His hand reached for her unthinkingly, seizing the back of her head and pulling her roughly closer, his hips thrust involuntarily forward to force his massive size even further against her throat as he felt a white hot liquid fire bursting forth from his groin and draining endlessly into her mouth. Robin was clearly caught off guard, her eyes widening with astonishment again as heat of him flooded down her throat, hands just barely catching herself against the edge of the bench, bracing against Luffy's sudden downward force.

Lost in the bliss of the ultimate release, he was vaguely aware of the feeling of Robin clenching around him multiple times as she was required to quickly to gulp down as much of Luffy's thick, blistering essence as she could to avoid choking. But she could endure only a few seconds, before her gag reflex kicked in, and Luffy became suddenly aware that she was pushing back against his hand. He released her immediately, his length slipping out of her mouth still mid-spray, and haphazardly covering her coughing face with the rest of his climax.

Luffy stared horrified at the sight of his soiled nakama's face, flushed and exhausted, as she wheezed and coughed at his feet, and began to apologize immediately for his unintentional coercion.

"Gomen, Robin! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to...I lost control for a moment and I –"

She rose swiftly to her feet to sit astride his lap and lay a silencing finger on his mouth.

"Its fine. You didn't anything wrong, Luffy. I was a little surprised at the end, for sure but I suppose that's what I get for taking things so fast your first time..." She smiled at him warmly, wiped away the mess from her lips and face and then kissed him with a saltiness on her lips that he realized probably came from himself, until she broke the kiss to ask teasingly of him.

"Ne...what did you think though, Luffy? You seemed enjoy it, at least from my point of view."

Luffy swallowed stiffly as he answered with honesty.

"Amazing, Robin... Its just like you said. More than I ever imagined. I've never felt anything even close to that incredible." He admitted, adding tentatively afterwards, "Thank you."

She giggled against his neck as she answered,

"You don't have to thank me Luffy. I'm just glad you enjoyed it. I told you, I really want you to feel good."

Then she asked, with that same playful tone with which she had started.

"So, do you want to keep going?"

Luffy gawked at her.

"More? There's even more than that?"

She laughed again, and said in a sultry, whisper.

"Yes, Luffy. I was hoping you'd touch me more. And... maybe use your mouth, too?"

"Um, sure." He agreed unsurely, "If that will make you feel good too."

He returned quickly to the task of reapplying his newly acquired techniques, his hands fondling her elastic breasts once more, pinching softly at her nipples, which turned swiftly stiff again at his touch. Soon he heard once more the music of her satisfied groans and breathless gasps as her hands migrated to his hair and began grabbing at his locks.

"Mmm! Luffy!" Robin breathed urgently, "Please... your mouth... I want you to taste me too."

He obliged her, lowering his face to her chest, and attempting to let his intuition guide him as he alternated kissing and licking wetly at her plump parts, squeezing at the same time, and listening closely for her responses, almost of all of which seemed to be intensifying murmurs of his name, and incoherent moans. She gave a small start and a precious little mewl as he took one the tip of one breast into his mouth and began an alternating attack, sucking and then licking at her areola, taking her reactions as license to even bite gently down against the nipple with a soft tug, pleased to feel her arch her back into his face and yelp with satisfaction.

"Aaaah! Oh god, yes, Luffy!" She cried, pulling his head against her, and then grabbing at one of his wrists. "Please, more! Touch me... touch me here!"

She guided his hand insistently down to the heat between her legs, pressing it up against her entrance. Luffy was stunned by the feel of her there, all scorching heat, and by now, drenched wetness, and he let her direct his hand as she rubbed his fingers against her, focusing it against the hardened nub at her apex, all the while grasping onto his neck andmashing her hips helplessly against his rhythmic strokes.

"Mmm! Mmmm!" She was unintelligible at this point, and became more so as she pressed two of Luffy's fingers, now slick with her juices, into the warm, wet embrace of the soft walls inside her. At this point, the movement of her hips seemed to take on a life of its own, and she held Luffy's hand in place by the wrist and braced herself against one of his shoulders, her upper-body tilted up against him and her face pressed into the other shoulder, panting blindly into his collarbone as she rode Luffy's fingers to a wordless, shattering orgasm.

Luffy started with the surprise of her insides contracting in sudden spasms, and the rush of steaming wetness that gushed abruptly from her gap and drenched his hands. The speechless whimper she issued with clenched eyes as she rode the last aftershocks of her climax – her hips twitching and her whole body shuddering with what he realized must be the same unspeakable pleasure he had just experienced – he found strangely thrilling, noticing then, that his earlier stiffness in the groin had returned.

Eventually, Robin finally pulled her tightness away, and collapsed against him. Pushing him flat on his back against the bench, she sprawled over his body, huffing with a spent and speechless satisfaction while she tried for several seconds to catch her breath.

Luffy did nothing during this time except to attempt delicately to shift his reemerged erection out from where it had landed between her legs, as the feel of its tip poking unintentionally against the firmness of her behind was already driving him slightly mad.

Robin, for her part, felt his careful adjustment beneath her and seemed then to be drawn out of her euphoric haze, at least enough to finally lift her head and look into his face again, with a lazy satisfaction.

"Mmm...sorry again, Luffy. I kind of got lost for a moment, too. That was amazing though." She thanked him, giggling happily as she added. "I haven't cum like that in so long I can't remember."

Luffy smiled at her, trying his best to conceal the resurging throb of his groin.

"Yosh. I'm happy I could make you feel good too, Robin." He replied sincerely. But she frowned as she lifted herself off his body slightly, and peered down between the two them at his revisiting arousal, visible through the gap between her parted legs.

"But it seems the rest of you is already waiting for the next part? I guess I shouldn't be surprised by how quickly you recover." She grinned.

Luffy stared dumbly at her again,

"Next part? What could possibly come after all that?" He asked incredulously.

"Luffy..." She kissed him and then laughed into his lips. "All of that was just foreplay. This is the real part of making love." She explained. "This is where people become one with each other. Its what I wanted to do with you from the very beginning."

"Foreplay?" He tried the unfamiliar word out.

"Eh, see how hard you still are?" She whispered as she stroked briefly at him, pleased to hear that gruff groan of his she enjoyed so much. "Can you feel me? How wet I am?" she asked as she guided his hand to her soaked sex. "That's our bodies telling us they want to be connected." She paused to kiss him again and then asked, "So...is it okay if I put it inside now, Luffy?"

"Inside? You're going to put me...inside of you...?" her captain seemed boggled by the thought, which only amused her more.

"Eh, if its okay? Please Luffy..." She begged, "I need you so badly."

Luffy hesitated only a moment, considering the fact that every one her suggestions so far this evening, though unimaginable at first, had turned out to be the most amazing experience of his life.

"Okay then. Please teach me everything, Robin."

Robin beamed and pressed her lips against his one more time, and then she was guiding his length to her opening, placing the tip of him right against the slippery heat of her outer folds. She waited just long enough to ensure they were aligned, pushing him slightly into her warmth with a soft gasp. Then she seemed to steel herself, and hold her breath before she plunged the rest inside in one swoop, a squeal of strained rapture tearing from her mouth as her hips came to rest atop his hilt and her body arced against the sudden penetration. She sat astride him for several moments with eyes clenched in a slight grimace, biting the knuckles of one hand, clamping the edge of the bench in white-knuckled desperation with the other, her entire body quivering from the hips up as she struggled with the barely manageable size of him.

Luffy was alarmed by her pained reaction, but had been rendered voiceless by the sudden mind-shattering grip of her taut insides. Somehow, it was even tighter than it had been in her mouth, the pressure around his circumference immediately and totally overwhelming.

"Robin..." He grunted desperately one hand clawing at her hips.

"Luffy..." She gasped back in a broken, strangled words, "You're...you're...too much... you're so big...inside me...it...it hurts..."

Luffy eyes shot open with dismay.

"Robin...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you... we should st –"

"No!" she cried emphatically, "No...no, its alright... I'm okay..." She tilted her head down slowly to face him, wincing as she shifted on his body. "I told you...I wanted this. This pain is nothing if it means I can be with you."

Bending forward at the waist to kiss him again, she grabbed both his hands and twined her fingers in his.

"I'm going to move now, Luffy" She warned, and then began to slide her hips slowly up and down his length, hissing softly with the soreness of the first several movements.

Luffy lost all ability to object as her searing tightness crushed him, squeezing out all rational thought.

"Robin..." He rasped with a desperation that made her name sound like a prayer.

This...this is impossible... He thought disjointedly. Nothing could possibly feel like this...

The hot pressure inside her was balanced precariously in some incomprehensible limbo between agony and ecstasy, and their hands gripped tighter at each other with every slow descent of her warmth around his stiffness.

The going remained slow for some time, Robin just barely able to handle taking him in with slow, deliberateness and frequent aching groans, Luffy exerting every fiber of his will into holding off the explosive heat he already felt piling up in his pelvis. Very gradually, though, her grip on his lower half seemed to acclimate, and the sliding of her hips settled into a smoother, more rhythmic sway. He was aware in a distant way, of how Robin's high-pitched grunts and pained groans began dissolving into pleased pants, as her walls relaxed somewhat around his length, allowing her to move more rapidly against him, and freeing her up to resume kissing his lips.

"Lu...Luffy...Mmm...This...this is it, Luffy..." She murmured, "This...is what I wanted...I love you...I love you so much."

Luffy, for his part, had fallen silent except for a heavy breathing through his nose, aware only of the press of his nakama's lip, grateful for how the painful squeeze of her had abated into an easy, wet friction, the now smooth sliding sensation of her heat against his groin making him feel as though they were melting into each other from the bottom up.

This new feeling was one he hoped could last forever: the back and forth of her hips, the weight of her thighs and buttocks striking against his pelvis, the obscene sounds of their moans and wetness mingling in the air, the taste of her mouth against his. After a few seconds though, it became clear that this would not be the case as Robin's pace seemed to intensify rapidly, her hands leaving his to brace herself against the wood of the seat, feminine gasps becoming more pronounced till her voice was raised in short, frantic whispers.

"Mm...mm...mm...Luffy...yes...yesss...yes...I'm going...I'm about to..."

Luffy didn't answer, his inhibitions blown away like balsa wood in the wind, at the sense of her amplified movements, his hips starting to drive upward in time with her rebounding impact, driving Robin likewise right over her edge...

"Oh god! Yes! Yes! Luffy! You're so deep! You're reaching so deep inside me! I can't...I'm going... I'm going to..." Was the last thing she said, all but shouted at him with a volume that could've easily been heard from outside the room by now.

"Me too...Robin...I feel it too..." Luffy growled back, understanding in the moment exactly what his partner meant, as though he was sure in that instant that they were feeling the exact same thing.

The teetered together precariously on the precipice of that burning hot bliss, and then reached their explosive peak simultaneously, Robin crying out as she felt Luffy's searing essence fill her up from inside. Luffy grunted with his hands gripping her sides and his body bent up into hers, the tightening of her convulsive climax squeezing the life right out of him.

His partner remained paralyzed and shivering over his hardness for a good several seconds, the waves of heat coursing through her body leaving her in a twitching mess. Then every muscle in her body seemed to go limp as she crumbled on top of him, covered in a sheen of perspiration, gasping for air.

Neither could be sure how long they spent slumped breathlessly against each other, bodies still entangled, wallowing in the intimate afterglow of their release. But eventually Luffy shifted beneath Robin's weight, pressing his face into her neck, inhaling deeply of the his nakama's intoxicating scent, now colored faintly with an exerted sweat that was not at all unpleasant.

"Robin...?" He whispered into her hair.

"Mmm... yes, Luffy?" She responded dreamily, as if still not quite down from her place somewhere in the clouds.

"You were right again... That was definitely the most amazing part. I've never felt anything like that... I never even knew that was it was even possible to feel that way..."

She giggled euphorically into his cheek.

"Eh, Luffy. For me, too. I've done it before but...it never felt quite like that. I'm glad you enjoyed it, as well."

There was another long silence and then Luffy said, his hands moving with languid strokes across the warmth of her back.

"Also...I don't why but...I'm really sleepy all of a sudden." He mumbled, feeling his eyes droop.

He heard her laugh again, shifting her head beneath his chin to rest it against his shoulder.

"Well...that's not surprising. I'm pretty tired myself, after all that. " Her own hand traced idly up the crest of his abdominals. "And it is pretty late by now. The sun will probably be up in a few hours... We should probably head back to our rooms soon..." She mumbled reluctantly against his chest.

Neither of them stirred, however, until Luffy, finally said, with a sleepy indolence.

"Ne, Robin...I'm tired...but...I don't really want to move either."

She sighed with agreement,

"Yes...I don't either...but..." She pushed her self slowly upright and got unsteadily to her feet. "Luckily for the both of us, I keep a pillow and blanket in this room for late nights."

She glided across the room to the hexagonal study at the center, one hand covering her modesty to avoid spilling the part of Luffy that was still leaking rather distastefully from her all over the floor. Luffy eyes trailed watchfully after her lithe form, still distractingly nude, mesmerized by the sight of so much of her flawless skin and the way parts of her toned curves moved enticingly with each step. She crouched next to the desk, and opened a cabinet door on its side, while Luffy's eyes widened with alarm as he felt himself twitching back to arousal at the sight of his nakama bent alluringly in front of the table.

Again? He thought, with disbelief. Deliberately, forcefully, he turned his head away from Robin back to the ceiling, concentrating on the sterile rectangularity of the wooden floorboards in an attempt to head off his resurging excitement.

Eventually he saw Robin straighten again from the corner of his eye, and make her way back to his side clutching a small throw pillow and a comforter in one arm, the other holding a box of tissues she had also retrieved from the cabinet.

She handed him the pillow and blanket with a smile, and Luffy sat up on his elbows to receive them, watching as she then removed several tissues from the box.

"Gomen, Luffy." She said with an embarrassed look. "I wanted to clean myself off first." She said as she folded the paper into a neat square and dabbed at her messier parts until she was dry. She removed a few more as she sat down next Luffy, unaware that he was doing his best to focus on her face.

"Let me do you too, Luffy. We shouldn't leave any stains, if possible." She explained as she leaned over and wiped him slowly clean as well, while Luffy stared at the ceiling and tried to think about anything the brush of her touch against him.

Finally she finished and stood again.

"There, that should be alright." She said, crossing the room again to dispose of the soiled tissues.

Retuning to the bench and seating herself beside her captain, who was sitting fully upright now, she turned to face him and smiled.

"So, Luffy...are you still tired? Do you want to sleep here?" She asked hopefully.

Luffy grinned. "Sure. Here's fine."

"We just need to make sure we wake up early, before anyone finds us here." She pointed out. "Although, I doubt anyone will be in before breakfast. And I'm sure you won't miss that." She smiled teasingly.

Breakfast, he thought with an unusual indifference. Somehow the pangs of attention-overriding hunger that usually came from merely hearing the word seemed less bothersome in that moment, as though the thorough contentment he was otherwise experiencing were somehow a balm for his stomach's itch.

"But... Robin... before we go to sleep... can we put our clothes back on, first? I don't think I'll be able to if we don't."

Robin laughed as she took his hand in hers and leaned her head into shoulder.

"Yes, that's probably a good idea, captain."

With that, they hurriedly gathered their clothes, strewn messily across the floor, and slipped on some layers, eventually reseating themselves. Luffy placed his hat deliberately to one side and Robin faced her captain then, and offered him another kiss, before handing him the pillow, and pushing him down flat upon the bench. At the same time, she stretched herself beside him and jerked the blanket over them into the air so that it billowed open and floated to rest covering their bodies. There was just enough width to the seat for them to lie side by side, facing one another, Robin placing her head against the crook of Luffy's outstretched arm – bent at the elbow and propped against the pillow – and curling up against the warmth of his core.

Gazing at his already falling eyelids, she smiled as she whispered her good nights to him.

"Ne, Luffy?"

"Mmm...?"

"Thank you, for tonight. It really was amazing. Hopefully we can do it again soon?"

Luffy smiled tiredly.

"Sure, that sounds great, Robin. Thanks for teaching me about mystery feelings... You're a really good teacher."

She laughed. "You're welcome, captain. Oh...and Luffy?"

"...Mmm...?"
"I love you." She whispered at his mouth. "You don't have to say it back yet. I just wanted to say it one more time."

When she didn't hear him respond, she glanced up at his eyes again and saw that they were closed already. After listening to the slow rhythm his breathing had settled into, she concluded he must've fallen asleep.

Oh well... she thought with an amused smile, there'll be time for that later.

"Good night, Luffy."

She pecked softly at his lips one last time, and closed her eyes, unsurprised when a deep, satisfied sleep overwhelmed her almost immediately.

On the other side of the ship, in the darkness of the women's quarters, Nami's started awake from the uneasy slumber she had settled into only a few hours before. It took her a moment to realize where she was, curled under the covers of her bed where she had retreated almost immediately after...

Shit... She thought, unhappily, as the memory of her recent encounter with her captain came flooding back. A part of her had been praying that the whole experience would fade away in the moments after she awoke, proving to be merely an unpleasant dream. But to her dismay, she could still recall the conversation clearly, cringing as she remembered her unacknowledged and aborted confession. A mortified frustration seized her as the image of Luffy wearing that infuriatingly clueless expression of his flashed into her mind, and she buried her heated face in her pillow.

Baka, baka, baka! She swore furiously, He was such a bloody idiot!

Then as now, however, another more reasoned voice in her head whispered to her a painful truth: that she was, in fact, being unfair. The truth was Luffy had been no more or less an idiot than he ever was. On the contrary, the only thing her captain had done wrong that night was to be the exact same Luffy he always was, without exception.

That was the thing about the leader of the Straw Hats: he was only ever exactly himself, his intentions only precisely what they appeared to be, his words meaning only what they said. If she should blame anyone, she thought with irritation, it was her stupid self for falling so in love with such a moron.

She removed her face from the pillow and cradled it tightly against her chest, telling herself that she wasn't pretending as though it were her captain's warm, fit body.

Still, unlike her closest friend and confidant, Nico Robin, she had long since abandoned any illusions about her feelings for Luffy. Having admitted freely to herself as far back as Cocoyashi island – during the three-day celebration of the fall of Arlong Park – that her affection for her savior savant was no longer just platonic, she was now filled with frustration that in all that time since she'd sat in front of Bellemere's grave and whispered to her mother's spirit about her newfound dreams and burgeoning crush, she seemed, in one respect, to have come no further with him. Sure, the countless life-or-death experiences she had endured (often unwillingly) at her captain's side had brought them as close as friends could be, and instilled in her an unshakeable faith in Luffy's strength and resolve. But when it came to the aspect of their relationship that had kept her up so many sleepless nights for the past two years she could not seem to get past this maddening standstill.

Nami was not a woman who tolerated the frustration of her ambitions well. Ten years spent roaming the East Blue, boldly and efficaciously robbing criminals blind to achieve one vital imperative, had taught her to believe strongly in her self-imparted license to seize the things she desired most. So why then, when it came to this idiot she loved so much, did she feel so stymied and powerless at every turn?

It's his fault! She thought, angrily burying her face in her pillow again.

If only he weren't so utterly clueless! If only he'd had even a shred of common sense in his thick skull! Then she might not have to do all of the awkward work of making it clear to him. But the same voice of reason from earlier admonished her here, too, pointing out that Luffy's obliviousness, like almost every other facet of him, was something she absolutely adored about him as well. There was, truthfully, almost no single thing about her captain for which she didn't experience simultaneous extremes of infatuation and fury.

His goofy, unassuming grin could have her fawning inside one moment, and wanting to pull her hair out the next; his enormous strength was awe-inspiring when he used to easily diffuse dangerous situations or rescue her from harm, but it was the bane of her life when (more frequently) it led them headfirst into the very danger from which he had to save her; his childlike playfulness had sent her into fits of uncontrollable laughter before, only to then force her to beat him senseless, sometimes moments later. Even his sculpted, battle-scarred body – not to mention that damn crimson cardigan of his that did so little to cover it – was something she felt some ambivalence about, for though it wormed its way into her bedtime thoughts during nights of lonely arousal, it also had tendency to be ridiculously distracting when he stood too close her at the helm or bothered her during her map-sketching sessions. She blushed to admit, though, that this last point was definitely the part about him that troubled her the least.

Sighing helplessly to herself, she considered the pesky truth: that the real problem getting in the way of things was ultimately her pursuit of the same half-hearted strategy she'd employed since they'd first met. Even though she was always flirtatious hints and heavy innuendo when they were alone, she had been unwilling to deal with the recurring inadequacy of such banter to surmount Luffy's towering threshold of ignorance. Despite every smile of hers that he'd misread, every accidental brush of her body he'd shrugged off without pause, not to mention all the coy teases that had gone straight over his empty head, part of her still clung desperately to the notion that if she was just unsubtle enough or could find just the perfect hint to send his way, that eventually he'd have some romantic epiphany, see the light, and sweep her off her feet. That was a mistake, she realized now, after their previous conversation had literally taken her to the limits of how blunt she could be about her sentiments without pouncing on him then and there. And still she had failed to penetrate his wall of obliviousness.

She felt the same paralyzed hurt and humiliated tears creeping back as she recalled how passively he had received her declaration of love. It had been too difficult to remind herself, in that moment, who she was speaking to, or to avoid reading hidden meanings into his claims of ignorance. Instead she'd succumbed to the panic she'd felt at the time, heeding the voice that told her to retreat before he could do more damage to her heart. It had taken so much of her gradually accumulated courage just to reach the point of finally being totally honest with him that his misunderstanding had been impossible to believe.

What could he possibly misunderstand about the words "I love you"? She had thought with angry disbelief. Could anyone, even Luffy, really be that dense? How could she be more explicit without resorting to physical assault?

But after only a few hours of sleep to distance herself from it all, she was now filled with that sinking realization that she hated admitting the most: that she had been wrong.

She had known Luffy too long, loved him too well, to be able to deny his honesty. It was easy to forget that the man was pretty much intrinsically incapable of lying, even to spare another's feelings, and that when he said he 'didn't know what she was talking about', it could not be construed as 'I don't feel the same way,' or 'stop talking about this', but could literally only mean that he had completely missed the meaning of her confession.

She realized guiltily that the signs had always been there, that her captain was essentially a constant in the romantic equation and her behavior toward him the only variable. She had been plugging the same number in over and over, hoping to get a different answer from him, and now, for the first time she had tried something new, gotten closer than ever before to finding out the truth, but then bailed out of fear at the first sign that things were going south. And now she had probably left him more confused than ever before, for she knew Luffy would be wondering what he had done to upset her, and probably blaming himself unnecessarily.

She should've seen it through, she saw now, should've understood how promising that moment had been. If she'd kept her wits about her she would've noticed the true extent of Luffy's romantic deficits and grasped that what had seemed like rejection was actually the perfect moment to charge unflinchingly forward and drive home with actions, rather than words, exactly what she meant when she said she loved him. That was the only way that someone like Luffy would ever understand, for she saw now that the word "love" really had no meaning to her captain except in terms of what he had experienced first hand: the bonds of friendship he shared with his crew, or the brotherly respect he had felt for his brother.

I'll have to talk to him again... she realized with a grimace. As it was, things were only half-revealed. Still, she thought, it didn't have to be right away. She'd feel bad about letting Luffy stew in whatever turmoil she might have left him in last night, but she needed time to figure out what she should say and, more importantly, do, the next time she brought this up.

Sighing again and turning to glance at her roommates bed, Nami was surprised to see it still empty, Robin's sheets in the same disarray they'd been when she'd turned in.

Had she not come back since last night? She wondered curiously. She doubted the woman had returned and left again while she was still sleeping, so she assumed that she must've fallen asleep in the library again. It wouldn't be the first time it had happened, but it still wasn't common, and it made her wonder idly if her friend was dealing with something she didn't want to talk about... or even if she might be avoiding her.

This last was especially bothersome, for it reminded her of the one unspoken reason her fellow Straw Hat might have for avoiding her. Their mutual and conflicting affections for the same man were something that neither of them had ever acknowledged aloud, though from the way they avoided talking about their preferences in men (a topic she had explored at length with her only other close female friend and former crewmate, Vivi) it seemed impossible that they weren't both aware of it. She loved Robin dearly, but she couldn't deny having spent a non-trivial amount of time worrying about her relationship with their captain. The dreadful possibility occurred her at that moment of how Robin might've reacted if she had somehow witnessed, perhaps from fatefully aligned window, her advances with Luffy last night. It was an unsettling hypothetical explanation for both her roommate's absence upon her return to the room a few hours ago, and the currently empty state of her bed at what seemed, now that she looked out her window, to be mere minutes from dawn.

But she told herself that she was over thinking things, that her roommate had likely just been in the library the whole evening, that this was in no way uncommon, and that it would've been all but impossible for Robin to have spotted anything from there.

Peering at the soft glow slanting into the cabin, it occurred to her that Sanji would be up before too long to get a start on breakfast, an operation which took the better part of the morning when it involved catering the collective appetite of the entire Straw Hat Crew. Concluding that it was pointless to try and get back to sleep, she decided she should try to a get a few hours of sketching in before breakfast. It would give her a good excuse to visit the library and presumably seek out Robin. She was sure that after a few words with her friend she'd at least be able to put one of her doubts to rest.

Climbing out of bed, and showering hastily before changing into a clean set of clothes, she donned her sandals and slipped out into the fresh morning air, feeling better with each step. Surely, she told herself, there was no way her best friend would be unhappy to see her. And perhaps, it occurred to her for the first time, now might actually be the best moment for them to finally air this taboo subject openly for once. After all, she thought with growing confidence, she was sure their friendship could survive such a talk.

Footnotes: So there. Smut + minor plot development. The stage is set for some romantic conflict between characters. Stick around if you'd like to see what that is. Or if you like the idea of ridiculously overly-narrated threesomes between Luffy and his female crewmates. Reviews are, of course, appreciated. But if you're just here for some anonymous, fanfictional filth, well...I can condone that too...