Chapter Text
Ace’s phone buzzed in his pocket, nearly startling him off the curb. He yanked it out—and saw Zoro’s name lit the screen. For a second he thought about ignoring it, about not admitting he’d lost Sanji in the dark, but his gut was already twisting with worry and can use the help . So He answered.
“How is he?” Zoro’s voice hit like a blade. No hello. No breath wasted.
But underneath the steel, Ace heard it—the edge of panic straining at the seams. The kind of fear that leaks through clenched teeth, that a man like Zoro would rather choke on than admit. It was in the clipped demand, in the ragged silence that followed, in the weight pressing through the speaker like Zoro was standing right beside him, shaking with it.
Ace’s throat worked. He glanced at the alley Sanji had vanished into, at the cracked neon sign above the corner store, at the broken windows lining the block. “Zoro… he’s here. Somewhere in this neighborhood.” His voice dropped low, rough. “It’s bad. You know the district down by Seventh? Burned-out buildings, gangs at the corners. He slipped me. I—fuck, I lost him.”
There was silence for a beat. Then Zoro’s hissed curse. “Stay there. Don’t move.”
“Ace,” another voice cut in—Luffy, snatching the phone. “We’re coming. Don’t let Sanji go deeper.”
“I told you, I already—” Ace started, but then Sabo’s steadier tone threaded in.
“You’re not alone in this. We’ll be there in twenty. Stay visible. If it gets worse, call don’t move alone “
Ace scrubbed a hand down his face, eyes fixed on the shadowed street where Sanji had disappeared. “He looked… bad. Not just sick. Scared. Like he was walking into something he couldn’t walk out of.”
“Then we don’t waste time,” Zoro bit out. “Wait. We’re on our way.”
The line clicked dead.
Ace shoved the phone back in his pocket, pulse hammering. He stayed where he was, every muscle tight, eyes scanning the broken glass and tagged walls. All he could think was: Hold on, blondie. Just hold on.
It was hell from the moment the door latched behind him.
There were Five of them this time ,He was almost sure there had only been three that night—three had been enough to ruin a life and make his body hurt till this moment. Five felt like a verdict.
He tried the only card he had left which was time. “What do you want,” he grated, jaw locked, “so you get off my back?”
They looked at him and burst out laughing. It wasn’t loud. It was worse than loud—soft, pleased, like they’d been waiting to hear him say that.
His heart kicked hard against his ribs.
A big man stepped forward—one with the old scar crawling up his neck, hair matted like it hadn’t seen water in months. “Oooh, sweetie,” he corned, mock-sympathy dripping. “You’re still thinking this is a deal you could negotiate.” His grin went knife-thin. “You’re not bargaining here dear, You’re belonging.”
Another flicked on a ring light. The room turned too bright, sick-warm. Cables snaked across the floor to a cheap TV. A third man lifted a phone and, with a thumb-swipe, a grid of thumbnails blinked up on the screen.
Folders. His name on one of them.
They opened it. Clips. Stills. One of the blurred uploads he’d already seen—paused on a frame that anyone who knew him would recognize. Then more he didn’t know at all—angles he didn’t remember, night he didn’t remember.
His mouth went dry. The edges of the world fuzzed and then snapped back into cruel focus.
“Sexy, right?” someone said. “We cleaned up the audio on a few. You beg so pretty.”
He swallowed acid.
“And here,” another voice chimed in—almost sound cheerful, like he was narrating a game show—“your cloud. Backup was a gift from heaven. Same password as your birthday? Tsk, tsk.”
The TV screen flicked. A contact list lit up in harsh blue: Zeff. Nami. Luffy. Robin. Zoro. Ace and on and on , Names Sanji couldn’t bear to see in their hands. Then came the photos—sunlit kitchen snapshots, staff dinners, mirror shots he’d never meant to share.
“Nice camera roll, pretty boy,” the man went on, smirking. “We’ll send party favors if you miss our calls.”
Sanji’s lungs locked. The room felt stripped of air, as though even breathing was a betrayal.
The scarred one pushed off the wall, holding up a finger for each word, voice lazy but edged like glass. “Now. Our rules. One—you answer when we ping. Two—you show when we say. Three—no cops. Four—no daddy. Phone stays on. Always.” He tilted his head toward the glowing TV. “And five… you try to be clever?” His smile widened. “We get cleverer. Blur comes off. Everyone watches.”
Sanji stared at the ring light until it bled into a white sun.
Think. Breathe. Count the exits. Window—painted shut. Fire escape—one story down. Chain on the door. Three steps to the kitchen, four to the hallway. Count your breaths. Don’t give them your voice.
He flexed his fingers once, like he could wring blood back into them. “Delete it,” he said, with low voice . “All of it. Now.”
They smiled like cats.
“Heh who is talking? The toy? ,” said the man by the couch, as if correcting him gently. “Listen boy ,You’re our toy now ,You show up, we play and have fun. You don’t? we play to the crowd.”
Sanji gritted his teeth. A cold, hollow weight settled in his gut—less fear than the slow, grinding sense of being boxed in. He could feel as The room closed around him: the cheap carpet pressing at his ankles, the ring light’s glare like a sun he couldn’t look away from, the smell of stale smoke and cologne that clung to the air like a sticky shroud. Every laugh hit him like a thud against his ribs. Every joke about “toy” landed with the soft, final thunk of a lid being put on a coffin.
He tasted metal in his mouth—bitter, close, like rust on his tongue. Sweat slicked his palms, soaking into his sleeves. Every corner of the room was a trap: the bolted door, the painted window, the clutter stacked against the walls. He could map exits until his skull split, but maps didn’t matter when the room itself was a cage lined with hands and cameras.
And beyond the walls, the connections. His people.
The trap wasn’t just physical. It pressed into his skin, thick as iron, until his lungs felt too small to draw air. The urge to scream clawed up his throat and broke against the inside of his teeth, dying there—because his voice wasn’t his anymore. They’d stolen it the moment the first clip was uploaded. If he shouted, if he begged, it would only echo louder in the ears of everyone who mattered to him.
He saw Zeff’s face in his mind, that sharp mustache trembling with rage that would turn inward as blame. He saw Zoro’s fury, boiling until it curdled into something heavier, something Sanji couldn’t let him carry. He saw Nami, Luffy, Robin—all of them—with the world’s laughter scraping against their backs because of him.
That shame, that humiliation—it would stain them all. Drag their names through the mud, twist every bond he had into something ugly. They didn’t deserve it. None of them deserved to have his filth splashed over their lives, to have strangers mocking them for standing beside him.
Better me than them, he thought, chest burning, nails biting his palms. If he had to choke on it forever to keep them clean, then so be it.
So he folded himself smaller instead. Making his Shoulders hunched, eyes down, he forced his breathing slow and shallow so as not to show it. His mind went to mechanisms—small things he could hold onto: count the pattern of the light, the number of steps to the kitchen, the rhythm of the men’s speech. Keep time, keep count. Keep some part of him as a ledger instead of letting them write the whole thing.
Under the heat and the humiliation, something like a thin, animal willpawed at the edges of him—survive, trade any scrap of pride for air. He nodded once, barely, to show compliance. The motion felt like surrender and like strategy all at once: buy time, memorize faces, breathe through the next ten minutes. Survive the now, he told himself, because ten minutes could become an opening, and openings were how you crawled back from being erased.
He needed a plan. Any plan.
Because survival wasn’t guaranteed anymore—it wasn’t a given, not with them holding the leash. Survival was a wager, and tonight the odds were stacked so steep he could already feel the noose tightening.
They started talking over each other again , instructions, the little humiliations meant to grind the last of a person’s shape away. The ring light hummed. The TV screen dimmed to its menu and then brightened again. Someone turned the volume up on the too-quiet TV. Someone else set a bottle on the table like an inside joke.
In. Out. Ten minutes. Then the next ten. Find a seam. Live.
The rest of the night blurred into noise and orders, into the sick heat of the lamp and the scrape of chair legs and the burn of shame that didn’t need words. He held onto the ceiling chip like a lifeline, onto the count, onto the thought of a back door and air that wasn’t this.
They handled him like a thing — a doll to be posed, a stunt to be filmed, a punchline to be passed around. Orders snapped out and were obeyed: sit, stand, smile, don’t look at us. Open wide , When he tried to make himself small it only seemed to amuse them more; when he mouthed a refusal, it was answered with laughter and a throttle of someone’s hand at his wrist that said who kept the room’s rhythm.
They worked him into exhaustion. Not a single line of mercy. The lamp burned above them and the ring light kept eating the edges of the room until everything looked cheap and unreal. They trotted out their videos and stills like trophies, showed him new positions , new angles, the proofs that they had and were willing to share. They mocked him softly, as if pity were a spice they could sprinkle: “Pretty boy, good job. See how easy that was?” The words were a constant, low-level humiliation that wrapped around him tighter than any hands.
Pain was a chorus that never stopped. Old scars — the ones he’d thought sealed and behind him — flexed and burned like fresh wounds, tender and accusing. Every movement threaded new ache along the places that had once been maps of other people’s cruelty. He could feel the ghost-press of hands in places he refused to name; the pain and the memory braided together and then detonated: nausea, a cold sweat, a pressure behind his eyes.
He tried to imagine elsewhere as they fucked him raw — the warm spit of the Baratie stove, Zeff’s gruff breathing at dawn, Zoro’s stupid scowl that somehow always made him steady — but the image dissolved when someone laughed and the sound punched the air and the pain was unbearable His safe places receded; the apartment swallowed them and then spat more shame back in his face.
They told him what would happen if he didn’t obey over and over ,They named names. They described what would be sent and where. They promised escalation like it was a calendar appointment. That threat — of exposure and of the people he loved being forced to see him reduced to their spectacle — was a noose tighter than any physical grip.
At some point the room tilted and the night became a mechanical thing — checks, swipes, laughs, a flip of a switch to light the rig again. He stopped keeping time with clocks and started counting breaths: in, out. Ten seconds. Another ten. Not to think, not to feel, just to survive the shape of the moment. The mantras he’d rehearsed in the alley came back like vows: In and out. Find a seam. Live.
They were brutal , taking him in every way possible, on his back , knees on the wall , the dirty floor , testing his flexibility and boy they were impressed by it , they take him two at a time, it was painful he cried, begged them to take it easy , they never listen, they loved hearing him cry and whine .
It seems like everyone loved hearing him like that , it brings him memories from long time ago, when his own so called family loved hearing him beg like this .
Sanji felt like dying, he wanted to die , everything better than this hell .
And he beg and beg that he at least pass out, but he didn’t, he just became a pathetic mess in their hands .
A fuck toy.
When it ended finally and the lamp went dark and the last mock-pat came like a benediction — they left him with a final, poisonous kindness. “Good boy,” someone hummed. “We’ll be in touch whore.”he heard the Chains latched and then The door clicked. The hallway light buzzed; then silence swallowed the thin apartment.
He stumbled out into the stairwell with someone’s breath still in his hair and the taste of copper and cum on his tongue his ass felt sticky and stiff from blood cum and other fluids. Air that should have been clean tasted of something else entirely; his stomach lurched and he doubled over against the filthy wall. For a long time he couldn’t make his hands do anything but curl and unclench. Shame and fear and pain all braided into something that sat heavy and immovable behind his ribs.
When he finally forced himself to move, his legs were unsteady his The city outside was still indifferent. He found a reflected face in a cracked shop window and flinched at the stranger who stared back: hollow eyes, a mouth gone thin and pale, a man who had been broken down and painted in the colors some stranger wanted to keep on display.
He walked blind, a single track in mind — get somewhere no one could touch him again, buy time, figure out how to keep the next day from turning into another theater of shame.
The blackmail hung over him like weather. They had his contacts, his photos, the videos. He knew where they were mostly stored. He had felt, in the lamp’s glare, how much of his life they could make visible. The thought made his skin crawl: the texts, the thumbnails, the names. He had been reduced to a file, and the file could be copied and delivered.
He wanted to burn the phone, to tear the apartment down brick by brick, to run screaming to Zeff and throw himself into the old man’s chest and never come out. Instead,
When the first heat of panic dimmed enough that he could think in small, brutal steps, he forced himself to plan the next move like it was a recipe: clean the bleeding, take painkillers, keep the phone dead, hide. He’d learned from that alley that there were no easy outs. Survival would have to be tactical. He was hurt and filthy and terrified — but he was still breathing. That, he told himself, had to count for something.
Law sat at his desk in the clinic with his elbows braced, phone in hand, torn between his duty as a doctor and the threat Sanji had hurled at him earlier. Tell anyone and I’ll deny it. The words still rang in his ears. He could still see the panic behind them, the terror. Reporting would snap the fragile trust between them—but doing nothing felt like a slow death sentence.
So he compromised. No official call, not yet. Instead, an anonymous ping to the trauma center downtown, just enough to raise a flag in their system: “Potential repeat victim, male, twenties, East Side vicinity.” He didn’t give names. Just a shadow. A coward’s way out, maybe, but it was something.
His eyes flicked to the notepad on his desk. Scribbled numbers—plates he’d caught off that alley camera the night Sanji stumbled away half-conscious. He typed them into one of his less-official databases, the kind no doctor should’ve had access to. The hit came fast. The car belonged to a known associate of a mid-tier gang that ran the East blocks—they were known for extortion, smuggling, trafficking, the kind of crime reports that always ended with “insufficient evidence.” Law muttered a sharp curse. If Sanji had crossed paths with them, no wonder he wanted cops nowhere near this.
So Law kept digging. Cross-referencing ER records, injury reports. The pattern started to show—young women and occasionally men, usually alone, drifting into hospitals with unexplained trauma. None of them filed reports. Some vanished afterward, no follow-up visits, no forwarding addresses. Systematic. Organized. And Sanji, with his bleeding, his fever, his silence, fit the mold too perfectly.
Law pinched the bridge of his nose, bile rising. His gaze landed on the vials of Sanji’s blood he’d drawn earlier, labels sharp in his own neat handwriting. They sat there like silent accusations: proof of infection, proof of trauma, proof of fear carved into flesh. He thought of Sanji’s flinch when he’d said the word assault, the way he’d bolted from the room like a trapped animal. He thought of his threats, his denial.
“Whether you like it or not, Sanji,” Law muttered to the empty clinic, shoving his notes and phone into his coat, “I’m not letting you rot in their hands.”
He wasn’t reporting it officially Not yet. But he wasn’t letting it go either. The gang had a car. A plate. A trail. And if they had a base, Law would find it.
As Sanji staggered out into the night, breath raw in his chest, every inch of him screaming to keep moving despite the pain in every inch of his body he felt. The air was too thin, every shadow stretched teeth. His legs shook, but he forced them forward, one at a time, until he reached the edge of the street.
And then he froze in shock.
Cause They were there. Four figures he knows so well cutting through the dark of the night —Zoro’s heavy stride, Luffy’s wild energy tamped down to a tight coil, Sabo’s sharp gaze, Ace a half-step ahead like he was leading the hunt.
Sanji’s gut seized. Panic roared in his skull.
No. No no no. They can’t be here. Not here. Not now.
What the fuck they are doing here ?
Fuck fuck fuck .
He ducked fast, into the narrow wedge between a shuttered shop and a rusted fire escape, his heart hammering so hard it shook his ribs. Their voices carried through the air —low, urgent, searching. They hadn’t seen him. Yet.
What the hell are they doing here? Did someone tip them off? Did they follow me? His throat closed. He pressed back against the cold brick until it dug into his shoulder blades. Every instinct screamed cornered. If they saw him like this, they’d know. And if they knew… everything would come crashing down.
He stayed there, holding his breath, until their footsteps faded deeper into the block.
Only then did he force himself to move. Not toward the docks. Not back to Baratie. He couldn’t face Zeff’s questions, couldn’t face Zoro’s eyes—not now, not covered in this filth, not with their voices still in his ears.
Think. Hide. Somewhere .
A memory cut through the static—, two streets over from here , The only place in this part of the city where he wouldn’t be dragged by cops or forced to explain himself.
Sanji swore under his breath, shoved his shaking hands into his pockets, and turned his steps that way. One foot in front of the other. No plan, no courage. Just the desperate need not to be found.