Chapter Text
Praetorian Jack was a remarkably tactile man for someone who lived and survived in a radioactive wasteland, Furiosa had thought to herself many a time. From a knuckle to the head of a pouting war boy, a hand on an elbow steadying course or shoulders touching and leaning against her while making vehicle repairs together, it infuriated her. When she first joined the rig’s crew as his apprentice, pulled bloody and vicious straight from fury road, she’d wondered if he was testing her boundaries – seeing how far he could push before she snapped.
But he hadn’t.
Made all the more maddening by the sheer amount of time they spent in each other’s company - shared cabin, shared food, shared drink and even shared sleeping spaces.
Fuck.
The worst part of it all? She wasn’t even sure what she wanted. Leave him behind? Never think of the warmth of him at her back again, the feeling of his hand steadying her elbow? Or to just throw it all away and crawl under his fucking skin like that terrible, traitorous part of her wanted to.
She gripped the steering wheel harder and stared out into the red desert wasteland in a feeble attempt to steady her thoughts. Again.
Sun beat down overhead, the cabin of the war rig from growing from stifling to unbearable. Burning the shoulders and heads of the war boys scrambling the chrome hide of the vehicle. Black grease and sweat dripped down her forehead and into her eyes. As Furiosa reached up to wipe it away, an old rag appeared in her field of vision.
Jack seemed to be almost preternaturally aware of her sometimes, and the thought of being known like that was the most terrifying thing she had ever encountered, wasteland be dammed. She snatched the rag and scrubbed viciously at her forehead and eye before passing it back to Jack, that maddening touch between them lingering just a second too long.
Just like his gaze, she could feel it resting on her for just a heartbeat too long before returning to that red dirt road.
She couldn’t even be angry with him for it, she knew that she watched him just as much, worse still – she even liked the feeling of his gaze on her.
She was startled out of her spiralling thoughts when Jack broke the silence;
“We’ll need to stop for an engine cool off” he rumbled, checking the engine display, one corner of his scarred lip twisting ever so slightly.
Furiosa nodded and began the process of slowing the war rig for a stop – the horn screaming out into the wasteland once to give the war boys a chance to stow themselves on the seating between tankers.
Really though, anything to give her a break from this entirely one-sided dilemma she had created for herself.
It hadn’t always been this way, of course - her first few weeks as Jack’s apprentice had been full of fear and the unknown, how she would tackle being a boy-turned-woman in a society that didn’t value her, how she would navigate Immortan Joe and his quest for an heir. What she would have to give up.
But she hadn’t had to fight these battles. Jack had.
She still didn’t know what he’d said to the Immortan and his council on their return from that ill-fated escape attempt, but they had somehow agreed to let him teach her as a future praetorian.
“Stick close, you’re my apprentice now but that won’t keep you safe if I’m not around”
Dealing with the war boys had been much easier in comparison, that first evening in the sleeping quarters filled with stretchers, Jack had dragged her old mat and belongings next to his and against the wall.
Barricading her in, keeping them out.
And the message had been well and truly received, the war boys respected the praetorian for a reason. Those same war boys that she had slept beside, broke her meals with, farted and pissed and made a fool of herself around as a boy suddenly no longer joked or even spoke to her now she was a woman. Same went for the black thumbs and mechanics.
Perhaps the realisation that she was in fact, a woman, and no one had noticed embarrassed them.
She wasn’t really sure that they could be embarrassed.
Instead of giving things up, Furiosa only seemed to have gained – better sleep, better rations, more access to vehicles and some semblance of freedom in the great hulking form of the war rig and its driver.
And for all of his protection and privileges, Jack had only asked for one thing from her. Trust.
Furiosa pulled the rig to a stop on a patch of firm sand and killed the engines, while Jack began digging around under the seat for a stashed skein of half-warmed water to drink from as she watched him. The bob of his Adams’ apple holding her attention, the shine of his sweat visible under the leather collar.
She wondered what it would taste like.
She wondered if she had heatstroke, as if that could explain her sudden descent into madness.
Jack passed her the same skein before sliding out of the driver’s seat onto the sand below, while Furiosa tried not to think about where his lips had just been.
x – x – x – x – x – x – x – x
Engine stops weren’t strictly necessary, really the rig could cope with a lot, but it helped to reduce the chance of an engine failure later on the road. And if Jack was anything, he was a man who didn’t take unnecessary chances. It was how he survived, how he earned his praetorian rank and the war rig.
However, all that careful planning and forethought seemed to be going out the window when it came to a certain apprentice of his.
Not that he really thought of her as an apprentice – someone he was teaching the art of road war, sure. But when he offered to help her reach whatever mirage she hunted, it surprised him as much as it surprised her.
The Citadel, Gas Town and the Bullet Farm. A monotonous route travelled week after week, the kick of adrenaline during each attempted hijack had even started to become boring. Until a black thumb he’d never looked at twice changed from a boy to a woman in front of his eyes and held a gun to his head. It was pure reflex that shoved her straight out of the cabin into the sand below, but stopping the war rig and going back for her? He was starting to think it was pure testosterone and stupidity.
Jack sighed as he walked along the hot sand and dirt beside the rig, war boys scrambled about pulling an old tarp across the side of the tanker to create shade to rest under. It wasn’t entirely stupidity that had driven him to help her, with his crew dead he needed someone to watch his back in the rig, someone competent. He saw that in Furiosa, the steely determination in her eyes, and the sheer drive that put her under the belly of the rig in the first place.
But helping her? Teaching her how to survive on the road and sending her off into the horizon with a car full of supplies? He wasn’t really sure where that had come from. A misplaced sense of duty and honour he supposed, digging into a rucksack full of hardtack. The war boys around him grumbled and shouted as they began setting up a space to rest out of the direct sunlight, some slathering petroleum jelly onto their comrades’ burned backs and heads.
Furiosa strode purposefully towards him as he chewed the hard salt and wheat, everything she did seemed determined and resolute, the half-smeared grease paint intensifying her eyes as she walked. Jack handed her a piece of hardtack and she murmured something in response, too low to hear over the one war boy yelp and whinge as a strip of skin the size of his palm was peeled from his back. Above the chatter, crows cried in the distance.
“How’s the engine cooling?” he asked, eyes following the length of her hair down her back.
“An hour or two, maybe” she replied, shrugging and turning to face him.
This thing between them had been growing for months now and Jack had to admit, Furiosa was the first woman he’d been this close to physically in a long time, but self-control had never been something he’d lacked in the past. He hadn’t noticed it at first, the touching, not really. A slap on the back or a hand on the shoulder was a comforting thing he’d never thought about twice, but Furiosa? She’d almost bitten him the first time he’d tried to correct her hand while driving. She’d actually stabbed a war boy that grabbed her once, so he supposed he should be grateful.
He'd been unable to completely avoid touching her though, nature of the job and all. But he’d come to notice that she’d relaxed a little, or at least hadn’t tried to bite him again, when he’d clapped her on the shoulder in congratulations one day.
And fuck didn’t that just make him feel something. Fury road, for all its gore and glory was monotony, but she seemed to be able to draw out life in him in ways he didn’t realise someone could.
Furiosa quirked an eyebrow and Jack realised he’d been caught staring, again.
He really had to get this thing under control.
Or the growing hold she had over him would become dangerous. Too dangerous.
Screaming of the war boys broke them out of wordless conversation, hands raised toward the war rig’s engine with fingers interlaced in a mimic of the pistons held high above their heads. Bloodshot eyes wide and focused on the object of their devotion, Jack took the opportunity to bump his shoulder against Furiosa’s. Turned his head and looked down toward her.
All that talk about self-control and look where he ended up. Again.
Furiosa bumped back against him comfortingly and his breath hitched, any small measure of trust, of touch, sent him reeling every single time.
“Engine check?” he offered in what he hoped was a casual voice, carefully not removing himself from her side. Letting her define the boundaries of this growing thing between them. He would take anything she gave him at this point.
Furiosa’s brow flexed in a way he couldn’t read, but she didn’t break the contact either.
“Should do” she returned, peeling herself away from his side to stalk through the crowd of cheering war boys toward the engine. He trailed after her, trying to convince his traitorous cock to settle, that he wasn’t mourning the loss of her warmth at his side.
He wasn’t particularly successful.
Fuck.