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"Brooke!"
Brooke paused in his walking and turned at his captain's voice, to see him sitting up against one of Sunny's trees, half-asleep and content despite the bandages wrapped around his torso.
"Yes, Luffy-san?"
"C'mere and lay on me," said Luffy, voice muffled into petulance.
Brooke blinked (except that he had no eyes, yohohoho!) and said, "But, Luffy-san, I am merely skinless bones. I cannot imagine that I would provide any comfort."
"Brooke," said Luffy again, more sternly this time.
His eyes had opened slightly more and he looked less dreamily content. Brooke hated to be the cause of that, and understood a reprimand when he heard one, so he walked over and sat in front of his captain, cross-legged.
Luffy frowned at him. "No, lie on me."
"But, Luffy-san, I don't wish to cause you discomfort," protested Brooke. "Bones tend to be rather pointy and unpleasant."
"Brooke, if I order it, you have to do it, right?" It sounded more like a statement than a question.
"...yes, Luffy-san," acquiesced Brooke. "It would be disgraceful to disobey an order from my captain."
Luffy looked at him from under his hat, eyes sharp. "Then come lie on me, I'm ordering it."
"Very well, Captain," said Brooke, removing his own hat in defeat and moving to place his head on Luffy's lap. He was facing up, and he could see (although he had no eyes! ah... he had already used that one) Luffy's face soften into a gentle smile, shadowed spottily by the leaves of Sunny's tree above him and lit by Fishman Island's bubble-sky even further up.
"See?" said Luffy. "I'm just fine." He caught one of Brooke's curls in his fingers and stretched it out gently, then released it and let it pop back into place.
"Yes, Luffy-san," said Brooke quietly.
"You're not uncomfortable at all!" He laughed softly, shishishi, and grinned down at Brooke.
"I'm glad, Luffy-san."
Brooke let himself relax.
Luffy was comfortable to lay on, even for animated bones like him, and Brooke found that he could only realize how much he had missed real human contact when he wasn't missing it anymore. Unlike Luffy, he had never been an exceptionally tactile person, but fifty years alone in clammy fog would leave anyone with desperate desire to be touched. And yet, he never acted on it with the Straw Hats, too afraid that even Luffy who had deemed his skeletonized self "cool" would be repulsed, even for a second. That would have destroyed him, disrupted his fragile, reverent peace in an instant and left him drowning. So he kept out of rubber-armed reach and lost himself in his music.
And when Kuma tapped him on the back and sent him halfway across the world, he was surrounded by worshipful cultists, and then money-minded managers, and then oceans of fans who would all have loved to touch him except that none of them had saved him, so none of them were allowed.
And then Luffy.
His captain's eyes had slitted back to almost-shut, like a lizard in the sun, and he was still playing idly with Brooke's hair, and Brooke had not been this content in over fifty years. If he had a mouth, he would have been smiling.
"Hey, Brooke?" said Luffy, tentative.
It took Brooke a few moments for his brain (ah, but he does not have a brain!) to catch that Luffy had said anything at all. "What is it, Luffy-san?"
"I'm sorry for being so selfish."
"Hm? " hummed Brooke. What was there for Luffy to apologize about? He could come up with nothing.
"I left you alone for two years, even though being alone is worse than being hurt, even though you were already alone so long." His face twisted, just a little. "I made you stay away."
If Brooke had had a stomach, it would have dropped. "Luffy-san, it was necessary. You were putting the safety of the crew first, there is no—"
"I don't regret it," said Luffy, cutting across his objections. "And I'd do it again if I had to. But I have to be responsible for my decisions, especially about my crew. And that was really, really bad to you."
"Luffy-san..." said Brooke. He tried to gather his thoughts from the relaxed pile they had sprawled into. "Thank you for the apology, then. I don't believe... I am just grateful to be here with you and everyone now. And with what I learned while we were apart, I can be of better use to you than before." He stared up at Luffy's blank expression. "That is all I care about, in the end."
A soft, loving smile spread across Luffy's face, and Brooke's heart stopped. (Ah, but he had no heart! Yohohoho!)
Luffy moved a hand, placed it on the bone of Brooke's forehead. "I'm not gonna let you alone again," he said, voice colored with the low determination he used for promises and death threats and offers of protection. "My crew is too precious a treasure to lose ever again. And you're my musician, like I wanted from the very beginning. The best musician!" His smile turned crooked. "And you know Laboon, and you're a skeleton, and you say yohoho, and you can make things icy like Aokiji, and you can turn into a ghost!"
"Thank you, Luffy-san," said Brooke, unsure what he was specifically grateful for. The totality of his captain, perhaps, and his odd, accurate perception. Luffy had not removed his hand from Brooke's forehead, and Brooke drew on the careful touch for strength.
"I wanted a musician all the way from East Blue, you know," said Luffy, using his other hand to brush some hair out of his face. "Nami said we should get a cook, though, so we got Sanji, which was good cause I love Sanji, but it took so long until we found you!" He added, in an almost-whisper, "I'm really, really glad we found you, Brooke. I'm so glad you're mine."
"Me too, Luffy-san," said Brooke, letting a hint of the reverent awe that welled up in him whenever he looked at his captain into his voice. "Me too."
He hummed Binks's Sake under his breath, and together, they rested.