"What'd you do?" he asked, turning to face her. She had her armored vest in one hand and the sleeve of her shirt in the other. Just the sleeve. "Oh."
"Yeah, oh." She sighed. "Goddammit, I liked this shirt."
"Cut some off the other sleeve and sew it to the shoulder hole?"
"Can't. Used the last of the thread on your bag yesterday, after that ghoul sliced it open."
"Ah."
Fixer was downright scowling at the remains of the sleeve, as though it had torn itself specifically to inconvenience her. "Armor's gonna chafe like a bitch," she muttered. "I could glue the sleeve to the armor, like a pad...? No, the glue would harden." She kept muttering, holding the sleeve up to the armor and back up to her arm like it would fuse itself together if she just thought about it hard enough.
Deacon reached behind himself, grabbing his bag by one strap and dragging it in front of him. Fixer was completely oblivious to him rummaging through it until he dangled an intact shirt in front of her.
"Wh - " She set her armor aside and took the shirt from him, holding it up. "This is one of your disguises."
"I got others."
"I can't - "
"We're out of thread," he reminded her. "I can't sew your arm back on when your armor chafes it straight off. "
She gave a snort of laughter, but shrugged out of the remains of her shirt, leaving her in just a tank top. He could see the scars criss-crossing her skin, lines and gashes and even round, puckered marks where bullets had punched through. Stimpacks couldn't heal everything.
She stood, slipping her arms into the sleeves of the button down. The cuffs hung down to her knees, her fingertips just barely peeking out when she raised them.
"Oh right," she said blandly. "You're a giant."
"You're a pixie," he countered, standing to help her roll the sleeves up to her wrists. "We could always cut them."
"I'm not cutting up your shirt," she said. "Can we spare a couple of bobby pins?"
"We can spare a dozen, the way you hoard them." He dug a pair of bobby pins out of their stash and handed them to her, watching as she clipped them over the fabric of the sleeves.
"Voila." She shook her arms experimentally, satisfied that the cuffs wouldn't come loose. "It'll last long enough for us to get to town, anyway."
Deacon paused, looking down at her. The sleeves still billowing around her wrists, the collar of it almost hitting her sternum, the shirttails flapping around her knees. His shirt, almost literally the shirt off his back, that he'd given her without a second thought.
"I know I look goofy," she said, crossing her arms. "You don't have to commit it to memory."
"...you look fine," he said quietly, turning away from her to fasten the straps on his bag. "Come on, if we hoof it we can be in a real bed by sundown."
The bright blue of the patch on his bag caught his eye, as it had every time, because it was bright blue on brown canvas. But this time it made him double-take, looking back and forth between it and the ruined shirt Fixer was stuffing into her bag.
Same blue.
"Did you - ?" He cut himself off when she looked up.
"What?"
"...nothing,” he said, running his thumb over the patch. “Let's get going."
