#excuse the goofs as usual I really can't see them past a certain point xD

[flannelshirtandjeans]

I found an old drabbly thing of Jay and Cait’s friendship in my folders, cleaned it up a little to salvage it, and so here it is now! ;u;, I have feelings about them as friends hhhhh. Also platonic sleepy snuggles. 8))))) Not shippy!!! Platonic.

unnamed snippets 1& 2 from the same night feat. ferals, an unfortunate selection of food, return of The Teddy Bear of Comfort, and platonic snuggles

~ 1500 words

As night and exhaustion fell and neither Jay nor Cait had any will to keep trucking deeper into the abandoned feral-infested building but also no interest in heading out to find a dry shelter in the pouring rain outside, they traced their steps back to an office they’d seen earlier with a sturdy door that they could lock. They made their way back slowly, still on high alert, stepping over corpses, and setting up noise traps and mines to the corridor on both sides of the door to alert them to any remaining ferals if they somehow managed to wander to their door. Once they’d locked themselves inside, they pulled a heavy bookcase against the door for good measure.

    ‘Well, if that doesn’t keep them out then I don’t know what will!’ Cait said in her best confident voice, brushing off the dust the bookcase had sprinkled on her, but there was an uneasy undertone to her words. She flicked the light switch on the wall, and somehow, against all odds, a naked light bulb flickered into life in the ceiling.

     ‘Let’s hope they don’t come back to this part of the building at all,’ Jay said, squinting in the sudden light. He was more out of breath than he liked, but he had to admit that it had been a long day, and that his latest brush-up with a deathclaw had left him in a pretty bad shape, so all things considered he was doing pretty well. He scratched absently at the scar on his side through his clothes, and shrugged off his bags to fish out a couple of Nuka Colas. He handed the other one to Cait, who took it, smashed the cap open against a shelf’s edge, and drank almost a third in one go. She half-stifled a burp and wiped her mouth with a relatively clean spot on her forearm.

    ‘You really think we’re gonna be that lucky?’ She sounded almost disgusted, but Jay knew her well enough to know that the disgust wasn’t directed at him. He gave her a lopsided shrug and the brightest grin he could muster before sipping on his own drink.

    ‘I'm an optimist,’ he said. It had never felt such a lie as it did now with the exhausted tremble in his limbs, a heavy fear in his gut, and all his nerves pulled tight enough to scream constantly in his head and heart.

    Cait scoffed. ‘More like a bloody fool,’ she said and let her own bags fall onto the floor with a crash that was really loud in the quiet of the building, and for a brief moment Jay was certain that every remaining feral in the building turned towards the sound in unison. Somewhere above them something fell over with a crash almost like an encho, and Jay heard something skittering across the ceiling of the room - could have been a feral, or could have been something else. He was too tired and too terrified to tell. He knew he’d be flinching at every sound all night.

    But Cait’s expression was almost affectionate behind her rat’s nest of red hair and disapproving tone, and that made Jay’s breath a little easier and the knot of fear a little lighter.

     ‘So what are we eatin’?’ Cait asked then, easily slipping into a different topic. ‘I'm starving.’

     Jay wasn’t particularly hungry - no, that was a lie: he was ravenous, but the tight heavy fear resting swollen inside him and the putrid smell of the building and feral-secretions had done a number on his appetite. He scratched the scar on his cheek absently, put his bottle on the corner of a table, and pulled his bag close with his foot to rummage through it for what remained of their food.

    ‘Pork'n'Beans or Pork’n’Beans’, he said, pulling a can into the light. Cait groaned good-naturedly and took the can. She was better at using the can-opener.

    ‘You didn’t look when you packed, did you?’ she teased. ‘Only a tit like you would only pack fricking Pork’n’Beans.’

    ‘No, I looked,’ Jay said, defensive but laughing. ‘But the only other travel food I found in the closets back home was mac and cheese and that would have made this even more of a living hell for me! Some gas we can at least deal with!’

     ‘Maybe the ferals will faint if they somehow manage to break in,’ Cait laughed, and started cracking open the can. Jay didn’t even try not to laugh as he pulled the trangia out of his bag and started getting it set up under the room’s boarded-up window.

When they’d set their bedrolls behind a table that covered them from view from the door and gave them just enough time to get up and find their bearings in case their traps were triggered, they crawled into their bedrolls, food warm and heavy in their bellies (sitting with varying degrees of ease), too exhausted to try to stay up and chat anymore. They rolled around restlessly, rustling their covers and makeshift pillows for a long time. Neither could sleep, however - their breaths didn’t slow down to a sleepy rhythm, their yawning didn’t stop. Finally Cait made a disgusted noise, and said: ‘Toss me your Pip-Boy. I can’t sleep.’

     Jay made a sleepy noise and pushed the device across the uneven rough carpet, letting his arm slump right there when he couldn’t push it further. Cait reached to grab the device and sat up in her makeshift bed, scooting backwards to lean against the crumbling wall, and turned the Pip-Boy on. The orange light - Jay had somehow managed to change it from the green that made any and all room look ghastly - flickered on and painted her face and most of the wall, and Jay squinted even with his eyes shut.

     ‘Turn the sound off’, Jay mumbled, words slurring because his cheek was mushed against the pillow. Pile of clothes covered with a little hand towel, really.

    ‘How?”

    ‘I don’t know! Just. Try something.’

    ‘You don’t have a game in?’

    ‘They’re in the little pocket of the backpack. I think, if I didn’t take them out since the last trip.’

    Cait sighed and pushed herself forward to drag Jay’s bag from the foot end of his bedroll. She found the holotapes from the third small pocket she tried, and settled back against the wall. Jay cuddled himself deeper into his bedrolls and pressed his face against the pillow to block out some of the light.

    He reached out some fifteen minutes later to grab the bag and pull out a tattered teddy bear, pulling it against his chest without a word, without as much as a glance towards Cait, and curled up.

    Cait didn’t ask, but her fingers slipped on the controls of the game. Nobody asked anymore. They said nothing because the bear made Jay feel better. 

    Cait wrestled with her heart for a moment. Now that she thought back on their day, Jay’d been subdued, a little off key from the get-go - she’d chalked it up to the knowledge that they’d be wading through ferals by the end of the day, and who would be excited about that? But now she had a sneaking suspicion that it was something else. Some days Jay ached to his bones, and instead of punching out in his pain in a way Cait would have understood very well, he curled up around it inside and smiled until it either got a little easier to breathe again, or it was night and he could no longer run away from all his thoughts.

    That’s when the teddy bear came out. Or weeding pavements started. Or the firewood pile in Sanctuary suddently started building up.

    The next deep breath Jay took shook around the edges a little - not enough to herald tears, but enough to be heard anyway, and Cait couldn’t sit still anymore.

    ‘Alright,’ she said, and scooted sideways on her bedroll, setting the Pip-Boy on her lap and extending her arm to make room at her side. ‘Come ‘ere. You look like you could use a cuddle.’

     There was a brief moment of silence.

    ‘You said the next person to try to snuggle you would get their ass kicked to next year,’ Jay said, and though there was a slight bubble to the first couple of words, he sounded a little amused. Tired, but amused.

     ‘I’m inviting you to, you ass! And anyway I know you won’t try to paw at me or anything by now,’ Cait said and gestured at him impatiently. ‘Worst you’re gonna do is smell, and than’t mostly because of the beans. Do you need the cuddle or what?’

     There was a brief pause again, and then Jay got up and dragged his bedroll next to Cait’s. He snuggled up back against her side and rested his head on her shoulder, radiating heat through the blankets. He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. He pulled the teddy bear close again, but didn’t hug it quite as tightly against chest.

     Cait found a comfortable rest for her arm on his shoulder and let it stay there, and turned her attention back to the Pip-Boy, a smile playing on her lips. She’d have to play one-handed, but that was all right. Maybe Jay wouldn’t sleep any easier, but maybe, just maybe, Cait could give him back just a fraction of the comfort he’d given her so far.