Chapter Text
Niner wakes with a start, but he doesn't know exactly what it is that's woken him until he hears Six whimper at his side. Crying?
"Six?"
He fumbles for his travelling partner in the dark, finds something that may be an arm or maybe a leg. Six flinches back from his touch and warbles like an injured molerat but he doesn't sit up like he would have if he were awake, no shift of hand going to holster for a gun or a knife.
Still asleep.
"Six."
He responds with another whimper, struggles against some invisible demon haunting him in his sleep, and with a gasp finally kicks off his blanket. Niner yelps and just barely dodges a booted foot, but none of this wakes Six who, now without anything to cover his shoulders from the cold night, curls into a ball on his sleeping roll and seems to finally settle.
That ain't gonna do, though. If they sleep in, then Six might get burned by the sun in the morning, if he doesn't freeze to death first. Nine tries to drape that blanket back over his companion's body and actually does get kicked this time for the trouble.
"Ow! Six!"
From start to finish, Niner's only been awake for maybe all of two minutes.
Maybe something's wired bad in Niner's head, but he always thinks clearest in times like this, half-asleep or drugged out of his skull.
Six doesn't like to be covered.
He doesn't talk about what happened, with the guy in the suit and the thing where he got shot in the head. Niner only knows the very basics, inluding the fact that apparently Six had to be dug up out of a shallow grave by one of them creepy Securitrons with a fakey cowboy accent. Usually he brushes off questions about it by saying the bullet scrambled his memories and he doesn't remember... but Niner guesses that ain't quite right.
If nothing else, his body must remember. The bullet didn't kill him, so that dirt was tossed on him while he was still alive, trying to breathe. If nobody had found him, then he'd have suffocated by sunrise.
"Hey, hey... Six. Wake up. Six!"
Six shoots upright in an instant as soon as Niner puts hands on him to shake him up, and he has half a second to pin Six's wrist to the mat before he can reach for a weapon.
"Niner, the fuck! It's not even light out, what are you yelling about--"
"I need you to put on my jacket, okay?"
It's not a blanket, but it's weatherproof and it'll keep Six warm in the night, keep the sun off his skin during the day. At least until they figure something else out--it's the only thing he can think to do. He can just have Six's discarded blanket and call it even, take it back in the morning and hand it back at night.
"Your jacket? Why?"
"Just do it, okay, I'll tell ya in the mornin'."
Too tired to argue, Six takes it from him without another word. Niner's got no intention of telling him the truth, obviously. He'll say he was hyped up on some chems or something, a little midnight treat or whatever. Six won't argue with that, will roll his eyes and mumble about what a pain in the ass he is and maybe something something Niner's jacket is gross.
When they've made the swap, Niner sneaking the blanket away from an exhausted Six and wrapping himself up tight, he finds he can't sleep.
He's never heard Six cry before.