Chapter Text
The Gigahorse roared like a lion as its driver crested the dune at a clip. For a few graceful moments, the vehicle’s speed kicked it into the morning air before all four tires slammed back into the sand, barely jolting the two sole occupants inside the lower of its double Cadillac cabins. The fearsome visage of Immortan Joe’s respirator mask hid the workings of his mouth, but the corners of his eyes squinted in a way that indicated a smile.
“She handled that crest beautifully,” Kalashnikov, the Bullet Farmer, observed from the seat next to him. “I hardly felt a jolt.”
“Hmm,” Joe agreed as he spun the wheel, sending the car fishtailing through the sand.
Grunting, Kalashnikov twisted and jammed himself against the door and the dashboard with his elbows. “Fuk-ushima, Moore! Warn a man next time before you try to flip the goddamn thing. Especially since you never add seatbelts for some fuku-damned reason.”
Joe didn’t answer as he steered into each curve. In seconds, he had brought the vehicle back to heel.
“A little slower than I’d have liked,” he observed. “But acceptable.”
Nodding, Kalashnikov swiveled back around and pulled the notepad and stubby pencil from a pocket in one of his many empty artillery belts. As he scribbled down check steering, he tried not to listen for the clank of bullets around his waist and chest; tried not to anticipate their familiar weight in the bandoliers sewn into his sleeves and trousers. Most of all, though, he missed the twin Colt New Frontiers normally nestled in the holsters at his shoulders. Why the hell had he agreed to go on this little joyride completely unarmed again?
Fuk-ushima. It was like being naked. Worse than being naked.
“Kalashnikov?”
Unable to suppress one final touch to his empty right-hand holster, Kalashnikov looked across the seat at Joe and realized the car had come to a stop. As the great engine pinged beneath them, he swallowed.
“Moore? What’s the holdup? We’ve got to be in Gas Town by first light or we’ll never hear the end of it. You know how His Majesty gets when schedules aren’t kept.”
“We’ve got a good hour before then,” Moore rumbled. “And fuck his timetable. The new tower’s construction will start when the Immortan says it will, not when his ledger does.”
“Heh,” Kalashnikov barked out a laugh. “One of these days, you really ought to let me shoot him. He could feed half your army for a week if I did. Poetic justice, you know.”
Moore returned the chuckle. “If he ever says the word units again”—here he mimicked the People Eater’s whine—“I may just give you my blessing.”
Kalashnikov’s fingers were back to fidgeting again, this time in search of his bandoliers. He forced them to tuck the pad and pencil away instead. “Seriously, though, why have we stopped? Shocks, breaks, engine, everything seems fine, and even if there was a problem, you’ve sent everyone else on ahead, so there’s no fixing it until we go back to the Citadel. And a lot of faith you have in those testosterone-fueled tinkerers of yours, I might add, not to keep at least one mechanic on board with us.”
This time when his fingers hunted for his missing bandoliers, Joe reached across the cabin and stopped his hand.
“Twitchy without your weapons, aren’t you?”
“Damn straight I am,” he grumbled, wrenching his hand away. “Buzzards prowling the dunes, Thanatos’s gang trying to encroach on our territory. Why I let you talk me into this—”
The hand returned, this time in the form of a thick finger pressed against his lips. “Shh,” Joe soothed as he rustled the pad through ridges of chapped skin.
“I will not shush, you—”
“Remember all those years ago, when we dragged you out of that fortress in Toowomba?”
“I seem to recall that I agreed to come with you after you failed to invade it, but, you know, semantics.”
“Six to one.” Joe shrugged. “You told me you might as well have been naked without at least four firearms on your body.”
“Yes. And…?”
Joe chuckled again, circling Kalashnikov’s lips with a thumb now. The seat juddered and squeaked slightly as he slid his bulk across it. “You know, for a man that can kill two at the same time while blindfolded and drop half a dozen more before the smoke clears, you really are naïve sometimes.”
Kalashnikov swallowed again. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, attempting to keep his voice from wavering. It felt like sand in his throat, hot after a battle and filled with blood.
“It means,” Joe’s voice dropped to a whisper as he slid his hand from Kalashnikov’s lips and on down the angles of jaw, throat, and shoulder, “we’re alone in the Wasteland, you’re completely defenseless, and no one will come to your aid, should I decide…” His fingers ghosted down Kalashnikov’s stomach and cupped the organ he typically kept shielded. “…to have my way with you.”
“M-moore.” Another swallow as Kalashnikov pushed his hand away again. “Come on. We’ve got a project to oversee, and I really don’t think—”
Joe’s lips crushed against his own and didn’t let up, even when Kalashnikov turned and elbowed him in the chest.
“Stop resisting,” Joe growled as he grabbed for Kalashnikov’s knees to throw them wide.
“Do you think I’m kidding?” he snapped as he shoved Joe’s hands away again. “Fuk-ushima, Joe! What the hell’s gotten into you? This isn’t fucking around in the Wasteland anymore with more semen to spill than sense! You’ve got a family now—”
“A twelve-year-old who’s killed both his guards and a mother that’s too afraid to even hug him because of it—and who blames me for him.” Kalashnikov could practically taste the anger in Joe’s tone. It burned like paprika and chili powder—or at least the memory of them.
“She blames me for everything.” And now his voice was pure ash and bitteroot.
“So get another wife! Shoot the boy in the head. Don’t—I said no!”
Joe slapped him hard enough to turn his head, hard enough that his neck complained. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear,” he said as he clambered up onto his knees and thrust Kalashnikov’s thighs apart. “I own this entire territory and all the people in it. Including you. Or have you forgotten why you wear my symbol on your armor here?”
Kalashnikov grunted as Joe closed his hand around his cock and squeezed. Pain zapped through his thighs and into his stomach along with a traitorous jolt of pleasure.
“I said no, goddamn it!” Kalashnikov kicked out with a boot, wishing he’d at least insisted on weighing them down with bullets. Moore blocked it with a heavy sweep of his left hand and punched him in the jaw this time.
The pain dazzled him just long enough for Moore to whip his Frontiersman out of his holster and jamb it against Kalashnikov’s temple.
“Now,” he growled, his clear blue gaze darting down to Kalashnikov’s bobbing Adam’s apple. “Are you going to take those fatigues off so we can do this the right way, or are you going to make me strip y—uuungh!”
Moore jerked back from the kick Kalashnikov had just delivered to his plastic armor. That was all the time Kalashnikov needed to wrest the gun away from him and whip the butt against the back of his skull. In two cracks, Moore listed back, eyes blown wide with shock. His respirator hissed and slurred wetly, as though he was attempting to say something.
“You whore!” he rasped.
One more crack of the pistol and he slumped sideways against the dashboard, moaning thickly. “Nhhgh.”
After taking a few breaths to still his heartbeat, Kalashnikov nudged Joe’s shin with the toe of his boot as he worked to open the buckle of his own holsterless belt. When Moore grunted dimly and raised a hand to touch the back of his head, Kalashnikov sprung across the space and grabbed his wrists.
“K…,” Moore crackled out as Kalashnikov looped his hands to the steering wheel and buckled them in place, leaving Joe mostly sprawled on his back. A pause, another breath, and Kalashnikov clambered on top of him. The cab’s ceiling was high enough and the seat wide enough to permit him, with a few adjustments, to straddle Moore’s legs and lean forward to brace his forearms against the broad chest beneath him. With satisfaction he noted that his kick had dented Joe’s ridiculous vacuum-plastic chest armor, crumpling the painted-on muscles in like the skin of a rotting peach.
“If you think I’m helpless without a weapon,” he whispered, “then you’ve forgotten that’s also when I’m the most dangerous.”