Nothing to your Everything

Moonlight

It's a breath of fresh air, seeing Torao awake.

His form had been so lifeless and vacant on the bed, and he couldn't help but think the stark white of the sheets only helped make him appear more sickly. Worry had been alight in his mind since he'd first stumbled through the door, and while his friends did a great deal to distract him, his thoughts always wandered back to the prone man on the bed.

And now that he was awake and talking, glancing around the room with hazed eyes and perhaps a tinge of panic, Luffy is relieved, but terrified.

Because while Torao being awake is a million times better than him being asleep and corpse-like, swaddled up in linen like a mummy, Luffy also thought that right now, Torao looked anything but okay. It's a strange thought, because Torao always seemed like the composed type. Sure, he fumbled around sometimes and took himself way too seriously, but he was never quite as over the place and out of it as he was now.

(And when Luffy had asked, "Are you okay?", Torao had said no, and Luffy knows he was telling the truth, even if he wished he wasn't)

It's a stranger thought, that Luffy feels more stable than Law looks.

Luffy's always wild and feral, abiding by only the rules inside his own head. He's hyper and crazy, and he knows he's far from the most stable or competent person. And frankly, when he's around Torao, he's even more of a mess.

But maybe right now, Torao's the mess.

While it's always distracting to be in the same room as him (Luffy couldn't count the number of times he'd gotten lost in thought staring at his molten eyes and dark eyelashes, how long he'd spent tracing the letters on his bony fingers with his eyes till he'd engraved their pattern in his head), he barely even noticed his friends inquiries as he stared at him now, so caught up in the feeble attempts Torao made to sit up, the sheen in his eyes that made Luffy think he needed a hug more than anything else in the world right now.

Maybe Luffy should give him one.

"-someone call for the nurses?"

"Hmm?" Luffy thinks someone was talking to him.

"Luffy, we need to call the nurses," Nami tells him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her nails were painted blue today. Luffy thought it was a pretty color. Nami always knew what the prettiest colors were.

"Okay," he says absently.

Torao had finally managed to prop himself up against some pillows. His eyelids were flittering in a way that either meant he was about to cry or about to fall asleep. Luffy didn't know which one was better, right now. Honestly, right now, he doesn't really know anything.

Torao starts to say something before cutting himself off, a look passing over his eyes that drained any thought out of him. Torao's hands clenched in the fabric of his blanket.

Without really realizing, Luffy had started to shift in his bed, pushing the blanket off his legs and shifting till his legs were hanging over the edge. He puts his feet on the floor carefully, cringing as the cool tiles stick to the bottom of his feet.

Usopp makes a protesting noise, going to reach for Luffy before Zoro puts a hand out a stops him. He whispers something in Usopp's ear that makes him back up. Luffy will ask him what it was, later.

It takes more effort than it should to get his feet under him. His legs wobble about like a wooden boat in the middle of an ocean, threatening to collapse at any moment. He takes a step forward.

Luffy grits his teeth.

It hurts. A lot. Hurts like his legs are being stung by thousands of bees all at once, and they wobble, wobble, wobble, the boat getting rocked about in a hurricane.