Chapter Text
It’s a hundred and eighty-eight days later when Max comes back.
She hears Toast call out for her from the ascending lift and slides out from under the engine of the new rig they’re assembling from salvage and scrap. It’s not the War Rig, the machine she honed until it felt like an extension of her body, but it will be good enough to be getting on with when finished.
“Furi—” Toast breaks off because she can see that Furiosa sees.
He’s wheeling an unfamiliar bike, neither Vuvalini nor Citadel provenance. His beard has grown out and his hair is almost shoulder length, and his clothes are caked with wasteland dust, but not so much that she fails to notice he’s wearing the scarf she gave him.
He looks up and she can see the exact moment that he sees her. She can feel his eyes scan her, not the way some men do it, but checking for injuries, taking in health and strength and the new prosthetic attached to the same leather bindings she’d worn on the road. There’s a brief spasm of some emotion on his face, and she can’t quite read it from this distance but she thinks it might be relief.
“Max.”
He flinches slightly at the sound of his name and she sees his eyes skitter around the room before settling back on her. He licks his lips and swallows.
“Hey.”
His voice is raw, like he hasn’t spoken in a while. He accepts the cup of water Toast hands him.
She does not drop the wrench she’s holding. She places it very carefully on the workbench before crossing to him, until she’s close enough to touch him, if she wanted. His eyes are not so wild and twitchy as the first time she met him, but he can still only meet her gaze in half-glances. He licks water off his bottom lip.
“Mm…brought a…”
He turns to retrieve something from the pack on the back of the bike, and returns cradling a rough bit of cloth filled with dirt that’s barely more than sand. Nestled in the dirt is a broad, flat, oval-shaped green thing the size of a hand—a plant, she thinks, but not like one she’s ever seen before. It’s covered in spikes like needles and at the top of the green lobe is a single, delicate yellow flower.
“Cactus.” The unfamiliar word spurs some long-ago memory. He says something else that sounds like “prickly pair,” and she hasn’t a clue what that means.
“Used to be everywhere. Weeds.” (Another mystery word she’ll have to ask about later.)
“F’you, mm, plant this bit, it’ll grow. Grows fast. Survivor.” He licks his lips again; why the hell can’t she stop looking at his lips? “Makes a fruit. Sweet, once you take the spikes off. Can eat the green parts, too, and make medicine with ‘em. Good for burns. F’you dry it and make a powder, can use it to clean water. N’if you plant a bunch, like this—” He moves his hand to indicate a row of something close together. “Makes a fence. Can stop a bike, easy. Dead useful.”
She stares at him, his head slightly lowered, the cactus bundle tucked against his jacket, and some part of her registers that this may be the most words she’s ever heard him say at once, and another part wants to smack him, for thinking he can just turn up near two hundred days later with a “Hey” and fucking cactus—
“Is that why you came back, Max? To bring me a cactus?” She’s keeping her voice light, but she’s also aware that she said me and not us and she doesn’t care.
“Mm. Wanted to, um, see how things were.” He looks up at her, and this time he can hold her gaze.
She reaches out carefully to take the cactus bundle from him, and she can see something flick over his face when their hands touch, but she can’t identify it.
“Toast, would you take this up to Dag in the gardens?” She hands the bundle to Toast, whose eyebrows are so far up her forehead they’ve nearly disappeared into her hair.
“Evening meal soon. If you want to wash first, there’s a bath.” She is still keeping her voice carefully even, as if showing up for dinner is a thing he does all the time.
He nods and follows her toward the stairs leading up to the levels above, but at the entrance to the stone passageway she can hear his footsteps scrape to a stop, and when she looks his shoulders are hunched. She has to remind herself that the last time he was in these tunnels he was a prisoner.
“It’s okay. You’re safe here now.” She reaches out to take his hand, and he only flinches a little.
The Imperators had a private bath on the level with their quarters, with a door that bolts from the inside. The rooms on this level all have locking doors, in fact, a rarity in the Citadel that she hopes will make Max feel a bit more at ease.
She leaves him at the door to the bath. “My room just is down the hall. The one with the boltcutters.” There’s a twitch of a smile on his face at that.
She goes back to her room and leaves the door open just a little. Cheedo had painted the boltcutter symbol; she would never have thought to mark her own door any special way, and certainly not like that, but the Sisters had pointed out that all the other doors on the hall had pictures describing their purpose or their occupants, clear even to those who could not read.
She is no longer called Imperator, just Furiosa, but she has kept her room, seeing no need for another and plenty of value in a door that locks. It’s simple and spare, no more than she needs: a mattress on the floor, a work table and bench and a few hooks and rock shelves for storage, but it has a window that lets in light and air.
(She spent her childhood sleeping in tents or under the open stars when it was warm enough. It took ages to get used to the rock between her and the night sky, and if she’s honest, it has never really been the same. The window helps, and she has the thought that it might help Max too, before she realizes that that thought meant she was assuming he would sleep in her room tonight; why would she think that; who knows if he wants that; does she want that; oh, but the idea of just sleeping next to him is unexpectedly nice; where is her mind even going with this?)
She sits down and busies herself with taking apart a crossbow that’s been jamming for mysterious reasons to keep that train of thought from going any further.
Except…
Except she remembers lying against his chest in the back of the Gigahorse, thinking about how it would be nice to kiss him, realizing she wanted that and wondering if he wanted it too.
She thought she had had her answer when he hadn’t stayed; she thought she’d made it more than clear that he had a place among them, and he hadn’t taken it, and when he had given her that tiny nod from among the crowd below she thought she should have known all along.
So she had put away those feelings; concentrated on remembering the times they fought together like they shared the same brain, reading threats and tactics without needing to exchange a word. Told herself he thought of her as a trusted comrade, and that that was already so much more than she had hoped to stumble across in the middle of the Wasteland that she should be grateful, and she was, she was. It felt selfish, almost shameful to want more, except…except she also remembered his hands on her face, wiping away blood, and the way it had felt waking up to his arm around her and his steady breathing beneath her, and the way his face had looked so soft and pretty when he slept.
And now he’s back and she can’t stop herself from thinking about those things and wanting, with a sudden fierce intensity that throws her off-balance. She cannot say that she’s been completely immune to desire in her many thousands of days, but the associated vulnerabilities had just never quite seemed worth it. But it’s Max, and nothing works quite the same with him.
He hadn’t come back running with a threat on his heels, she reminds herself, or to warn them of an impending attack. Flimsy horticultural excuses aside, he had come back because he wanted to.
Maybe he wants, too.
He spends quite a long time in the bath (she tries very hard not to think of various things he might be doing in there, and fails) and she almost goes to check on him when she hears his slightly uneven footsteps in the hall.
He pushes the door open and she sees that he's used the blades and bit of mirror that are kept in the bath to cut his hair and shave, and oh, he has a very nice face, doesn't he? She's reminded all over again. His haircut is a bit uneven and sticks up in the back. (She could have done it for him; she should have asked; but she has to admit that bit sticking up in the back is kind of adorable.)
He's put on the same grimy clothes over clean skin, jacket included, although it looks like he’s at least made an effort to beat some of the dust out of them. She'll remind him later that they have enough water here that he can wash them.
(Later, she keeps thinking about later, even though he’s said nothing about how long he’s planning to stay.)
He's just standing there in the doorway, as if he's waiting for her to give him a command. As if he’d thought as far as getting to the Citadel but no further.
She finds herself getting to her feet and crossing the room and he stands perfectly still as she rests her forehead gently against his, a proper greeting, and he lets out a soft huff of breath when she puts a hand on the back of his neck. She can’t quite manage I missed you, but she gets out “It’s good to see you,” and his voice is barely a whisper when he says, “You too.”
Out of the corner of her eye she can see his hands twitch, like he wants to touch her, and she wants him to so badly, just put a hand on the back of her neck to mirror her own, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t back away, though, either. The air between them feels electric and it would be so easy to kiss him like this, just a tilt of her head would align their lips, and she has almost worked up the courage to do it when the gong that signals mealtimes rings out, echoing through stone hallways. Max flinches and the moment is broken. She bites her lip.
“Dinner.”
Of course Toast has told her Sisters that Max is back, and at dinner they all crowd around the table where she and Max sit, the one in the corner she has picked specifically so his back can be against the wall, because she can see how twitchy and tense this many people and the cacophonous noise in the stone hall make him, although he’s doing his best to hide it.
The Sisters pelt him with questions about where he’s been (he answers with grunts and vaguely directional hand motions) and stories about how the Citadel has changed; how they survived the siege that came when the remnants of Joe’s army made it back through the pass and struck deals with the new leaders of the Bullet Farm and Gastown; how the Mothers who survived have already suggested ways to increase the crop yield and get more use out of the same amount of water.
They ply Max with second helpings from their own rations, and someone always refills his water cup, which he still drinks from like he won’t get more when it runs out. The food is not yet so plentiful that they can dish it out freely, especially since they’ve evened out the rations so that everyone gets the same, including the people below, but there is enough water to drink as much as you want with a meal.
Dag is sitting sideways at the end of the bench because her belly is now too big to fit under the table, leaning against Cheedo, who is no longer fragile-looking at all but strong and brown. Once Toast shoves in on their side of the crowded bench, there’s no way for Furiosa to avoid sitting right next to Max, the entire length of her thigh pressed up against his, their elbows brushing once in a while.
She’s finished eating and her hand is resting on her knee while Capable tells a long story involving trade negotiations and an amusing misunderstanding of Gastown hospitality rituals. She’s heard this one before (several times) and is not really paying attention to anything when she feels Max brush his fingers against hers under the table, the very lightest of touches. She is quite sure that no one but him registers the tiny hitch in her breath as he runs his thumb over the back of her palm.
She wants to let him know this is okay and see what he’ll do if she encourages him, so she flips her hand over, palm up, and briefly catches one of his fingers between hers, and there’s a miniscule twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Furiosa has completely lost the thread of Capable’s story and where she’s supposed to laugh at things. Max, however, seems quite skilled at pretending to pay attention while he plays with her hand under the table. He’s not even holding it, just touching, tracing the lines on her palm and trailing his fingers along the length of hers and it’s all she can goddamn think about. It’s just her hand; it shouldn’t go through her like a splash of nitro, but holy V8, if his touch on her hand is doing this, she can’t help thinking what—
“Furiosa?”
She realizes Capable must have asked her a question, but she has no idea what it was.
“You weren’t paying attention, were you?”
“Sorry.” She mumbles something about a long day in the garage and showing Max to the guest quarters and she’s sure that no one is remotely fooled as she and Max get up from the table at the exact same moment.
There are indeed guest quarters at the Citadel, but she leads him back to hers, and if he has thoughts on this he doesn’t voice them.
She sees him exhale a sigh of relief once they’re back in the cool quiet of her room, some of the tension dropping out of his shoulders.
“Better?”
“Mm.”
She turns to close the door and put the bolt over it, and she vows not to hesitate this time, because she can feel him standing right behind her. She only has to spin around on her heel to be close enough to grab a handful of his jacket and kiss him.
He makes a small noise of pleasure as he kisses her back and oh, that sends a thrill through her. His hands come up to cup her face as if he’s just been waiting for her cue, and his lips are just as soft as she imagined.
She pulls him closer and his hands slide to the back of her neck and the space between her shoulderblades as he kisses her deeper, and she can hear the sighs and little noises she’s making, and they’re as surprising to her as anyone.
His fingers are digging at the muscles in her back, like he can’t get enough of touching her, and she loves it, every little spasm creating a hot ripple of desire. It’s exhilarating, both wanting and being wanted. She’s never had them line up before and she wants more, she wants all of it.
She pulls away just enough to start undoing the straps of her prosthetic. She can do it easily without looking, but he leans in, careful and slow, and mouths at the spot just under the hinge of her jaw, and he’s so goddamn distracting that it takes her twice as long as usual to get everything off. She’s sure any other man in the Wasteland would be laid out with a punch to the throat by now, leaning into her space like that, but she’s also sure that if anything he did made her flinch even the slightest bit he would read it in a second.
She finally frees herself from the prosthetic and the leather underneath that spreads the weight from the straps, and he’s shucking off his jacket so that when she pulls them back together it’s just two thin pieces of cloth between them as she finds his mouth again, hungrily, as his arms come back around her and she runs her fingers through his hair.
He backs her up against the wall and she thinks she should feel trapped like this, but she likes it, likes the feeling of being pressed between the wall and his body as he kisses and nips at her throat, her shoulder, the hollow between her collarbones. His hand is on her waist and she puts hers over it, and she can tell from his twitch he thinks she wants him to remove it, but she slides it under her shirt because she wants to feel his hands on her skin, and she shivers when his fingers brush the scar on her side, the one he gave her.
She can feel him getting hard and she realizes that she likes that too; she thinks she should be scared but there’s a crackle of desire instead when his erection brushes against her leg; she likes the thought that she is doing this to him, so she hooks her fingers into his belt and pulls his pelvis against hers, and she loves the helpless little grunt he makes when she rolls her hips against him, and she wants more.
She shifts so one of his legs is between hers so she can grind against his thigh, and once she gets a rhythm going it feels so good, all she wants is to pull him closer; her half-arm is hooked around his waist and her fingers tangled in his hair, his nails are digging into her back under her shirt, and then he slips a hand between her legs and gets his thumb in a spot that makes her gasp. “Mm?” he checks, and she gets out a breathless “Yes,” because having the hard nub of his thumb to grind against is even better, and he does this thing where he rolls his thumb around that makes her moan “Ahh, Max,” and she can feel him smile against her neck when she says his name.
He’s moving his hand against her, just slightly, adding a rhythm to the rock of her hips, and she’s found this spot before with her own hand but it was somehow never quite like this; it’s entirely different when it’s someone else doing it, when it’s Max doing it. She can feel the wave of pleasure building inside her, and she’s grateful for the wall and his arm around her, because her legs are shaking now; she’s getting close to the edge and then he shifts the motion just slightly and gets it exactly right, and she comes with a gasp and a dig of fingernails into the back of his neck.
Afterward she’s just hanging onto him, dazed, and he keeps nudging her with his thumb and surprising her with little aftershocks, until she has to push his hand away so she can catch her breath, and all she wants is to pull him as close to her as she can.
He’s still hard against her; she can feel it through both their pants, and after a moment he shifts and moves to pull away from her. “Mm…I have to—” He makes a motion to indicate putting his hand down his pants, and he actually blushes, and it’s so endearing she doesn’t want him to leave her side. She still has her half-arm around his waist and she tugs him firmly against her, and he asks the question with a raised eyebrow and she smiles and nods.
He keeps his eyes on her as he puts a hand down his pants and begins stroking himself, and she likes watching him, enjoying the thought that she’s made him so hard he had to touch himself, but then it gets too intense for him and he buries his face against her shoulder, his breath rough and damp against her skin. His hand is on the back of her neck, the exact touch she wanted earlier, and she wants to help him along like he did for her, but she's not exactly sure how and he seems to be doing fine on his own, so she settles for kissing his neck.
He makes a sound when her teeth scrape his skin, so she gives him a soft little bite, and he whimpers, and she likes that, so she does it again, harder, planting her teeth in the muscle where his neck meets his shoulder and slowly increasing the pressure, and that’s what sends him over the edge. He’s so quiet, but she can feel him twitching and gasping against her, and there’s something so vulnerable about it that it does strange things to her heart.
He needs some recovery time after, like her, and he rests his forehead against hers, sweaty and breathing hard, his hand rubbing the soft fuzz on the back of her head. He looks as stunned as she feels, and they hadn’t even taken their clothes off. When he opens his eyes the look in them is a mix of dazed and happy and shocked and like he can’t believe his goddamn luck, and she knows exactly how he feels.
She is feeling drowsy and sated now, and she wants nothing more than to lie down with him next to her.
“Sleep here?” she asks. She wants to make sure he knows it’s a request, not a command.
“I, uh….” He swallows, his gaze flicking away. “Have nightmares.”
She knows. She’s seen him wake up from them.
“Me too.” A deep breath. “Weapons out of grabbing reach, then?”
He has to actually think about it. She has no idea how long it’s been since he’s slept without a gun or a blade within arm’s reach. It’s not exactly easy for her either—instinct dies hard even behind a bolted door. After a moment, he nods.
He puts his sidearm and two knives on the ledge above the bed, too high to reach in a half-conscious lunge, and she extracts the shotgun from under the mattress, and the knife from under the other side of the mattress.
She ducks behind the curtain at the back of the room to change into the loose top and shorts she’s used to sleeping in. (Another relic of Imperator days, the luxury of having a separate set of clothes to do nothing but sleep in.) Max seems perfectly content to take off his boots and leg brace and lie down fully clothed. He makes a surprised noise of enjoyment when he stretches out on her bed. She gives him a questioning eyebrow raise.
“Your bed’s soft,” he mutters, looking up at her.
She slides in next to him, curling up with her back against him and his breath soft and even against the back of her neck.
“Should spend more time in it, then.” She finds she has the guts to say it when she’s not looking him in the eye.
She can feel him laugh softly and press a brief kiss just below her hairline. He puts one hand lightly on her side and she pulls his arm around her and that’s the way she falls asleep.