A/N: I have no idea where this one came from but I am in love with Competent!Buggy. So I decided it was time for some feels! Enjoy!

Running towards the exit of Impel Down, Buggy and Strawhat fall a little behind the others. Exasperated and scared shitless, Buggy couldn't help but yell at the damn brat for dragging him into this mess.

'Really, the brat starts to behave more and more like Shanks.'

He shuddered at the thought of multiple Shankses running around while being a troublesome D.

Fucking D's.

But then, he stops when Strawhat looks at him with the damn blank face again and understanding passes through his eyes. Understanding for what, Buggy didn't know.

"Hey, Buggy."

"What?" Then Strawhat offers him a small but gentle smile, unlike all his previous ones.

"I am here."

'I am by your side. You are not alone.'

And suddenly Buggy cannot breath, cannot stop the painful flow of memories and definitely cannot stop his heart from both warming and breaking at the look in the brat's eyes.

'He understood.'

He looked and saw. He did something Buggy and Shanks had been hoping the Rogers to do but never did. Not even once when they were on Oro Jackson, not even when their Captain (father) was still alive and definitely not after his death. In Buggy's thirty years of piracy, the only people who ever acknowledged him were Shanks and Roger.

He had long stopped deluding himself the Rogers' had ever cared.

Not when they never looked at him and Shanks after Roger's death and left two broken children to deal with the world alone.

Not when after finally, finally, finding someone from the crew, Shanks came to him even more broken than before and refusing to tell him what happened.

Not when they left him and Shanks to die.

No, they never understood.

But here was Strawhat, just a brat, only around seventeen - eighteen and still too much of a child. Yet, he had that distant and foggy look in his eyes that Buggy remembered painfully well. It was hard to forget when he saw it every day in the mirror even after twenty two years. So Buggy could only curse Monkey D. Garp to hell and back for ruining Luffy's childhood and letting the marines capture his brother Fire Fist while biting down the tears threatening to spill.

Fuck Garp for choosing duty over family.

(Buggy couldn't help but wonder – did Shanks see the same thing in his little Anchor?)

'I am here.'

Because Luffy may be young. He may be a child; he may look like a complete idiot even though he is not and he may be completely unaware of the rest of the world affairs, but this. This, Luffy painfully understood. He, too, has been there before, wondering in the coldness and numbness, seeing the cracks and the shards. He had been holding to them for so long he had become acquainted with the feeling. But he carried on, didn't give up, found Ace and Sabo and then his nakama. So when he looked, really looked into Buggy's eyes, he couldn't help but freeze at the same loneliness, heart break, hopelessness and fear in these clear orbs. Suddenly he was seven all over again, left alone in a far too big house and a grandfather who comes home only once or twice a year. Suddenly he was back to being a powerless and lonely child, helplessness crawling at the back of his neck. So, he did what he wanted Garp, someone, anyone, to do to him – he smiled at Buggy and stood by his side.

"I am here."

'You are not alone. I am here so don't give up.'

Because Luffy just wanted somebody to be there. That tiny and hidden wish of his was fulfilled when he met Ace and Sabo. But Buggy was still lonely and they may be enemies but Luffy understood and didn't wish these dark and slimy feelings to fill Buggy's heart.

So, he stayed by Buggy's side even just for a fleeing moment of security.