"Was that Franky?"
A brunette boy asked, waving his hands over at Sanji who was sitting beside him in his hospital bed.
"Sounded like him. I was gonna pass you the snail transponder so you could talk to Zoro, but that dumbass hung up."
Sanji pouted, placing his hand over his cheek, sighing softly.
"Hey..."
His Captain stretched his arms out, pointing at the older male with a perplexed facial expression.
"What's up? Are you feeling alright?"
The Cook asked, raising an eyebrow at the younger.
"I'm Luffy! What's yer name? Ya' look familiar..."
The Captain's response left Sanji as confused as the look on Luffy's face.
"Huuuuh? What's with the introduction?" He questioned.
"Well, It is rude to not introduce yourself to strangers, ain't it?"
The curious boy replied with a contagious chuckle.
"Must be the anesthesia. I get it now." Sanji thought to himself.
"I'm Sanji, and you and I are definitely not strangers."
The man responded to his Captain, reaching forward to gently caress his dark strands of hair that were, surprisingly, still damp from the shower he had taken, a few hours ago.
"Eh? We- hic! We're not? Heeeey- Hic! Hey, what are we then?"
The younger asked, slurring his speech as the affects of the anesthesia caused him to fumble his words.
"Here, take a little sip before you continue. This'll help with your hiccups."
The Cook spoke, placing a straw in between a small opening in Luffy's chapped lips.
Closing his lips together, the boy took a small sip of water, feeling a sense of relief inside of him as the cold liquid reached the back of his throat that felt sensitive after he was intubated twice.
Apart from the breathing tube partially scrapping his trachea, the abuse that he had been through before was also contributing to the amount of pain that he felt, whenever he tried to swallow.
A pain that Sanji was also trying to endure, since both he and the Cook had been through the same situation.
Staring up at Sanji, Luffy pulled his lips away from the plastic straw and stared up at him, silently.
Being stared at with an unreadable demeanor made it challenging for the Cook to understand what was going through Luffy's mind as he looked at him.
But he didn't judge him for it either.
Instead, he offered the boy another gentle smile. One that Luffy didn't return or react to, in the slightest bit.
It was then that the Cook began to worry about the younger man's behavior.
"Did I say something to upset him, earlier?" He quietly thought to himself, feeling insecure.
"Sanji..."
"Let me think, let me think. What could it have been? What was the last thing I told him just now? I forgot."
As the man's mind started to race with many different thoughts, not a single one of them could help him remember if he said anything offensive to his Captain, at any point during their conversation.
This only worsened his state of mind as he was desperate to understand why the boy acted so distanced from him now.
"What was it!? What did I say?!"
