@33occupant asked : catches up to him and reaches for his hat. "come on, let me wear it for a little while. please? i really don't want to get sunburnt out here. plus i promise i'll give it back when the sun goes down." that could be tomorrow or two days from now.
hand flies to his brim with startling reflex, pulling the leather down secure around his brow and patting the high crown for good measure. his head turns over his shoulder, warning apparent in his feature’s unaffected composition, and vision rakes her over from flyaway ponytail to scuffed brahmin - hide boots and back again. the girl’s got a point. she’s already too pink in the cheeks, mouth chapped by the high mojave winds, and that youthful old world beauty of hers has begun to turn sallow in the sunlight. though whether it’s from exposure or just the combination malnutrition and rad - poisoning, ghoul cannot say. ( he hasn’t traveled with a smoothskin in decades, maybe closer to a century if he accounts for the years in dom pedro’s captivity, and he’s forgotten how this world pecks at them ). regardless, the heat will take her down long before anything else can sink its fangs into her, and he really doesn’t want to break camp again – not this early, not this exposed. if they’re going to make it to the next settlement before dinner bell, he’ll have to give the brat something. if only he wasn't still missing the last personal effect she claimed off him.
“ no can do, miss maclean. yous not the only one wit’ a complexion to worry about. but i’ll tell you what : next time a radscorpion jumps out at you – and believe me, darlin’, there will be a next time – i’ll skin it. make it into a reaaaaal nice cap, just for you. ” there’s genuinity under his words, and he’s righted his orientation as he speaks, fingers going for the skin of purified water hitched to his beltloop. he works it loose, passes it to the vaultdweller with nary a second glance back at her. “ drink. it’ll help. ”
