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War boys fuck like they're competing, but Praetorians fuck like they expect a knife in the ribs. Jack has never actually seen nor experienced a stabbing, but the thought sits in the back of his mind every time he follows a fellow war rig driver into a dark corner. Crushing together, trying to satisfy a primal need with the least amount of contact and vulnerability possible. He wonders, every time, if it was even worth it when they finish. It leaves him feeling more anxious after than he was before, worsening the headache he's carrying from the effort he put into looking calm and in charge all day. But it's the only real choice he has. He won't mingle with the war boys in his crew, because he's smarter than that. To much respect to be lost there. Then the option of his own hand- that usually proves even less satisfying, replacing the anxiety with loneliness. So here he is in dead of night, second time this week, walking back from another hidden corner with little more than a tired sigh in his lungs and a threadbare sense of satisfaction.
He takes the steps two at a time, rushing to nowhere, until an idea cuts his stride short at a junction. The night sky is clear, he thinks. No wind, cool darkness, bright stars. A glance over his shoulder, leaning around the corner, he checks the hallway behind him is still empty. Keeps checking as he moves along the metal walkway, towards the door in the wall that opens into the empty sky. The air grows more refreshing as he walks.
Leaning out the doorway, he inches onto the narrow ledge of stone, just like she'd showed him. It's only two steps he has to take, but when there's only emptiness beneath his heels, it feels like twenty. He spots the crevice in the shadows, and slides into the narrow passage. Stones scrape his chin when he turns his head, sucking in his stomach to make the squeeze. No wonder only Furiosa had every found the way through.
The night's disappointment eases off his shoulders as he steps onto the private, sandy stone ridge. Up here, it's unnervingly silent, save the trickle of water into the little pool. The moon is full, but half hidden around one of the towers of the Citadel. The light it offers it faint. Just enough to reflect off the rippling water. The cliff-side is painted by an ever dancing outline of cold and solitary peace.
Taking off his boots, he stands at the edge of the pool and breathes in.
It's empty and dark. That soothes his headache. Easy to see the stars drifting overhead, which he cranes his head back to do. The space feels less relaxing without her here, however. The few times she's brought him they've spent sitting silently together, looking at the far and empty horizons. Much like how they travel in the war rig. But their silence is companionable. It's the most he expects to get in return for what he's teaching her, and it's a fair enough trade. Having someone watching your back in the wasteland is as precious as the water they haul.
Furiosa. Thinking her name draws a noise from the back of his throat. Furiosa and her bottomless secrets. They'd been driving the war rig together for months, now, and he knows as much about her as when he first plucked her off the road. There were at least starting to be cracks in her armor. He's standing in one of them now.
His fingers stretch at the memory of the oasis's reveal, trying to touch the past. That day had been long and exhausting. Loosing half his crew had him slamming cab doors and snapping orders once they'd reached the Citadel. He'd found a bullet hole in his canteen, his day's ration of water wasted, and it felt like a final blow to his self control. But before he could throw it across the desert, Furiosa had pulled it from his hands. Turned it over, pressed her thumb against the hole, and then told him to follow her. No explanation given, walking off without looking at him. Evidently he didn't need explanations since he followed her without question. Now following her out onto the cliff face was a little harder to swallow, but he'd done that, too. She'd brought him to this little puddle of hers. Water as clean and fine as what Immortan Joe himself drank, leaking off a pipe high up on the cliff. Those first swallows of water washed away more than his thirst. It gave him something, too.
Things are never owned in the Citadel, as it all belongs to Immortan Joe in the end. But this space belongs to Furiosa.
Jack looks down at his rippled reflection in the water, and finds it hard not to smile. To not to feel at least a little proud that she deemed him worthy of sharing something so valuable. That she'd taken his hand and laid it against this crack in her armor of secrets.
The memory leaves him feeling better than the lack-luster hand job he'd just gotten, at least.
Crouching down, he scoops water into his hands and affords himself the luxury of splashing it across his face. Scrubs his dirty palm across his dirty cheeks until the filth all balls together and flakes off into the sand. When his skin feels cool enough from the wash, he leans down again to drink. The gentle cascade of water reverberates around the stone hollow. Fills his ears as he swallows half a day's rations. It'll help him sleep in the heat downstairs, among the bodies of his crew, for a little while at least. Take his mind off how unsatisfied he feels.
When he leans back up, a new cold sensation presses into the nape of his neck. Knife point. The headache rages back up his neck as his body tenses.
"On your feet." The voice is muffled, but it catches the edge of his memory. Spins his thoughts around as he slowly does what he's told. He hears a hundred voices every day, hears an endless litany of war boys screaming their lungs out, but he knows this one. It makes his head pound to try and grasp it, blood rushing through his ears at the pace of his racing heart.
The knife drags along his neck until it lays along his vulnerable throat. Shifting noise- sand under bare feet- and a thin body presses into his back. Their hand slides under his jacket to press into his ribs, then slides forward slowly. He can't look down to see who it may belong to, knife edge cold at his jugular.
"I've seen what you do with the other Praetorians, behind the war rig," the voice continues. Their hand has reached his stomach. The fingers splay wide, and follow the rise and fall of Jack's breaths. Dip down to brush along his belt. Then a single finger, beneath his waistband.
Is this a power play? Blackmail? Whatever it is, they'll fucking regret it. He'll take a knife to the throat before he gives into whatever this is, and then he'll turn the blade around and make sure his attacker dies with him. He feels sorry it'll have to be Furiosa that finds them after, but she'd understand.
"It looks awful. Do you actually enjoy it?" the voice asks.
Is this... a proposition? He can see from the corner of his eye the skin of this person is not chalk white. Not a war boy, then. Not taller than him, based on the way the body leans into him and the arm rests on his shoulder. He might be able to swing his elbow back before the knife cuts deep enough to kill him. Advantage of his weight over their speed. A gamble, but he gambles every day.
He swallows against the blade and says nothing. Breathes through his nose, in and out, quick and steady. Feels his headache clawing at the back of his eyes as he stretches his vision down to the clean blade at his throat. Hunting for another clue.
The hand resting on his lower stomach stills. The one holding the blade- it shifts. Takes the pressure off. He hears the creak of soft leather behind him.
The voice asks, unobstructed- "Do you, Jack?"
And like the revving of a distant engine, he pinpoints it- hears who would dare try to catch him here, in this secret place.
He lets out a sharp gasp, whispering her name with it. "Furiosa?"
She drops the knife into the sand, and trades it for a hand that loops loosely around his throat. He can feel now the tangled of her hair caught against his wet neck. Her lips are at his ear. Close enough he feels her warmth when she speaks.
"I don't think I've ever seen you enjoy it." Furiosa says.
The wording feels like a weight on his voice, and it makes him struggle for balance. She had watched him more than once, then? How easy was it to find and watch him? It's not like that kind of thing was a secret, but he likes to pretend he could find at least a fraction of privacy. Or was it only easy for her? For Furiosa who was small, still, and deadly like a snake buried in the sand.
Her hand drops lower into his pants, until her fingertips brush just barely over his shaft. For all her callouses, the touch is so incomparable to anything else he's felt before, so soft. To date he's experienced little more than a parade of dry, dirty hands slicked spit. But this is... gentle. Barely a ghost of touch, and it fires off lights in Jack's brain he didn't know existed.
"No," he finally answers around the lump in his throat. Shakes his head for good measure, only to feel her fingers tighten at his neck.
"I can help."
He doesn't do that with his crew. It's always a mess. Tangled chains that fowl up the wheels and- he shouldn't. Can't. Not when he's at such a disadvantage. If it was any other Praetorian trying this, Jack would actually knife the bastard. Playing a game of power like this is a fool's idea. And it's Furiosa, with her silence, with her dark eyes and the secrets she doesn't share. Secrets he can't hunt down, can't warm her into speaking of. It's stupid and he's going to say no.
Her thumb slides over the stubble on his jaw, and it's like he can feel each hair prick her calloused finger. The sensation feels unreal. Shudders in his mind and drips down into his chest. A new food, a taste of something he's never had before. Never even dreamed of existing.
"Go ahead," are the words he actually speaks.
"Good. Then do what I tell you."
Her hands disappear, and Jack makes to turn around, but she catches his shoulder before he does. With the both of her hands, she turns his head forward again.
"Look forward. Take off your jacket."
His shoulders tense, fingers grasping the edge of his leather armor. That's not something he does, not for anyone. He pulls at the seems of his jacket until the leather creaks softly.
"Now," she says. Her tone isn't angry, but it is stern. He knows the tone because it's the one he uses on his war boys when they've bumbled something on the rig. Daring of her.
Effective, too.
One breath, one moment to close his eyes against every warning blaring in his head, and Jack shrugs the jacket off his shoulders. She catches it and tosses it onto the rocks. The air is hardly cold, but it still makes him shiver to feel it without his little cage of security. He feels next to naked with just his shirt on, can suddenly sense every hole that's been torn in it over the years. What distracts him from the nagging anxiety is the heat of her hands touching him again, this time exponentially stronger. His shirt feels so fucking thin. As she runs her hand up his back, the fabric catches on a few of his deeper scars, and that makes him shiver again. Like a flame held to his skin, he feels the trail of every finger.
"Keeps your hands at your sides."
He hadn't even been thinking about his hands, but now he clenches them tightly.
Furiosa leans into him again as she reaches around to pry open his belt buckle. He cranes his head down to watch her fingers work, until she snaps at him to look ahead. He listens like a soldier, head up and back straight. And it gets only straighter when her palm presses over his pants and into his half-hard erection.
Normally, this is where things would quickly devolve. Some grunting, some sweating. Stroking, rutting, whatever is quickest. That little pinprick of pressure in his stomach would rise and burst in minutes, or it wouldn't and he'd grudgingly have to finish himself off. But Furiosa's hand does not grab him like a vice. She rocks her palm back and forth, and it makes Jack whistle an unsettled breath through his pursed lips.
Her hands don't stop touching him. One slides under his loose shirt to lay against the bare skin of his stomach. The fingers search for more scars, pressing into the rough cracks of skin. Sending sensation through nerves he'd thought long dead to any input. He's never been touched so much in his entire life, let alone it being bare flesh to flesh. The light raking of her nails is almost more enjoyable than the warmth being pooled in his stomach.
Before long the surplus of sensation has him panting lightly. He wants to feel that touch in other places. Simple places. His thigh, over the bruise he's been nursing for a week. His ribs, where fingers can follow the mountains and valleys of his oft-fractured bones. His chest, to drag at the hair. To grab and hold where his body is soft. They aren't places he's ever wanted to be touched by another person before, but each moment spent here lights up more hidden places in his brain. He's speeding down a road in the dark, chasing taillights that seem to multiply every time he crests a hill.
His shoulders are drooping. Head too, just a little. When he leans forward she follows. The pressure of her against his back draws a faint groan out of him. Low and satisfied. Her warmth replaces the loss of his jacket. Soaks into his tired muscles and up his aching neck until his headache is a memory. The only pulsing in his body is happening between his legs.
But just like the sun out in the wasteland, the heat cooks his brain. He lays his own hand over the one she presses into his stomach, and tries to guide it somewhere new.
She responds quick to his mistake. Hands vanish, cold encases him. Kick to the back of his knee so he stumbles, fists gripping and spinning him around. He can't get traction on the sand and trips over the rocky ground until he's pressed face first into the cliff wall. He hisses in pain as the sharp stone cuts his skin and pride.
Furiosa has one of his arms pinned at his back, stressing the joint. The other arm Jack braces against the wall, fingers clawed into the crumbling facade. When he tries to turn to look at her, she twists his arm higher until it hurts enough to make him gasp.
"Alright! I'm sorry!" Is what he manages to growl into the stone. If he cranes his eyes to the side he can just catch the edge of her in his view. She is shadows through and through. Wearing her Praetorian markings, her hair a dark halo around her. Her eyes sharp points in the dark. No brighter than the stars that ring her head. She gives a look as cold and distant as horizon behind her, and Jack's stomach drops.
He tries again, swallowing his indignity.
"I'm sorry, I-" he says, speaking with honesty. Though it pricks his chest like the stones prick at his cheek. "It felt good. I got... lost. It won't happen again, I promise."
Her head tilts just a little, and the cold fades from her eyes.
There is the silence of her careful thinking that he dares not interrupt. When she's reached her conclusion, her lips press into a tight line. Jack feels the pressure of her look, as much as he feels the pressure of her fingers gripping his arm.
The hand pinning Jack's arm slackens. The space he made between them lessens, until he feels the brush of her legs at back of his own.
"Relax," she says.
She tangles her fingers through his hair. It makes his eyes widen. The sensation slithers into his brain until his lips part to help him breath better. As soon as he feels he's got a handle on it, got it in his head that they're just fingers and it's just hair, Furiosa grips tight and pulls his head back.
Jack swears softly, his eyes squinting closed, breath hitching. Which would be bad enough, except he also rolls his hips forward and tenses his spine like he's been struck. He presses his arousal into the stone because his body craves the pressure. A faulty wire between his head and body. He's afraid to look at Furiosa, to see those cold starry eyes again, so he keeps his eyes shut. Lets his focus drift in the dark of sensation. It helps keep him still when Furiosa lets go of his pinned arm and presses her hand into the small of his back. Does she want him to do it again?
She repeats her last order. " Relax ."
He wants to follow the suggestion, but nothing responds to the request. His spine stays rigid, his muscles tense. Like all of him is shrinking steadily inward. Tighter, tighter- a spiral to a unbearable little center of heat. Surely, at some point, his heart will stop racing faster. He feels like an over worked engine. Hot and thirsty, raring on the edge of disaster. And he's barely had a hand on his dick, and that doesn't make sense, but he also has no desire to alter what's happening. For so long, for as long as he's known, there has been little more than semi-slicked hands, hungry grunts, and off-beat panting. There's been his own hand in a joyless dance, or another's hand in an empty embrace. And this, here, is burning deep into him. This is branding him from the inside out.
Her fingers slide slowly down his spine, and in response he bends for her again. The soft touch makes his legs shake. That weakness comes for his heart, too, where its rapid beating begins to make him dizzy. He claws his fingers into the wall in a bid to keep himself standing. Forgets what "relax" means. Forgets it's even a word. There is a word tumbling in his head, but he shuts it firm behind his teeth to maintain his dignity. A dog snatching away the last morsel on the bone.
"Get on your knees," she says softly.
He falls immediately for her, forgetting his flirtation with strength.
When she releases her hold on his hair, she says next "Turn around."
He does that, too, immediately. Cannot fathom questioning the order now.
He looks up at her. He can't help himself, like he must ensure she's real. Not a heat mirage, not a ghost. Not a lie or a costume. She looks back, and the image of her is like a hand clutched at his throat. He struggles to breathe. Looks through the shadows, through the cold stars, the metal casings and bloody knives that make her. An ash dirtied face, and there in the center of her eyes a red hot iron. Warmth he's felt radiating from her fingertips. If he'd had his brain running cooler, he might have foolishly asked her why. But looking up at her, he doesn't need that answer. He sees in her face, in the pieces of it the shadows don't swallow a look he's never received from another soul.
Her fingers comb through his hair as he watches her. The fingers stiffen, press at the back of his skull, and he bows his head forward. She steps closer, and he's guided to lay his cheek against her leg.
He starts to shiver, and he finds he can't stop.
Eyes closed tightly, he leans in as much as he can. Lays his weight against her. Breathes deep of the leather, of the blood they're both specked with and can never be clean of.
As she cradles his head against her thigh, she leans down and squeezes his bicep with her other hand.
Her softened voice tells him "Use your own hand."
He nods against her body, just once. Does as he's told and slides his hand between his legs. It's a sensation that's never felt so good before. He's slick, and hot, and can feel an oppressive need pulsing through his stomach with each stroke he makes. Her touch and presence, the weight of her eyes looking down on him, has transformed reality. He knows really well how his own hand feels, and it's sure as shit not as good as what he's feeling now.
Furiosa's fingers stroke through his hair as she holds him up. As she watches over him. Truths slot their way into Jack's heart with each second they stay linked like this. The truth of how little he knows about her, but how much he trusts her anyway. The truth of how when she stands at his elbow, he feels his shoulders relax instead of tense. The truth of how she is holding his life in her hands now, and how he wants to find even more of himself to give over. Water spilling over a damn, flooding him with more than he can handle. Heat piercing him from throat to groin.
"Good boy," she says.
"Fuck, fuck fuck fuck, " he replies, trying to press even closer. Feeling her fingers tug at his sweat-soaked hair to make him shudder violently. He feels her words, every syllable of them, pressing somewhere unbearably pleasant and already too tight to handle them.
It must have pleased her, too, because she says it again. Quieter. A secret between them. "Just like that. Good boy."
This time he can't form words, but he hears a whimper in his throat. It's born of the heat that's overflowing in his stomach, burning his hand as he strokes. As she pets his hair, pulls him in closer. Leans over him so there is less and less space between them, less and less air for him to breathe.
That word he found before, that he held tight in his teeth- he doesn't care about it anymore. He opens his mouth and gives it to her.
"Please," he groans.
She listens. She says it a third time. Whispers it down at him as her nails claw the back of his red and glistening neck, over his branded skin.
"Good boy, Jack."
He gasps for air, because he cannot take the heat anymore. As the breath rushes in, the heat bursts free and takes his voice with it. Mouth open, hungry lips pressed into her leg, he tenses and shakes through an unbearable climax. It takes a moment before he can exhale again, and out of him comes all the noise he could not manage in the lightning strike of pleasure. He finds he's still shaking, too, and that he doesn't know how to stop.
Furiosa doesn't move. She keeps stroking fingers through his hair, and as his mind quiets he can hear the quickened pace of her breathing. To his surprise, he realizes he'd wrapped his arm around her leg while lost in his climax. Clawed his nails deep into the leather. He snatches his hand away like a scolded war pup. Tries to lean away to let her escape him.
Before he can get up, she catches him and pulls him back in. He obliges, pressing his forehead into her leg, knowing he didn't want to leave.
He speaks into her body. "I'll do anything you want," Breathes in and out, feeling his own hot breaths bouncing back into his face. "Anything."
Her fingers don't stop playing through his hair as she thinks, and he has never felt so grateful. The silence gives him time to calm, time to feel his heart slowing. Time to feel the lingering sensation of pleasure between his legs begin to subside. It's never lasted so long before.
"That isn't why I did it," she finally says.
Fighting his regrets, Jack leans his head back. Her hand follows after, trailing out of his tangle of hair until it cups his cheek. He keeps himself still and focused up at her, fighting the primal little part of his brain that wants to lean into that hand and continue to forget that thoughts exist.
The conversation they have is silent. Every word that could be spoken passes between their eyes, because words are too light and useless to be used here. Jack hears an emotion in the silence. The same emotion he found the day she stowed away on the war rig. In the place there was a balance between them, an understood desperation for living that made sure each shot counted. That kept either of them from firing a bullet into the skull of the other when it would have been the quickest solution to each of their problems. That's what he catches in her eyes. That need to keep moving, to keep trying to exist. That thing that told them it is safer together. This time, with this person, it's safer.
She could destroy him like this, and he knows she won't. Just like he didn't. Just like he sat in the seat of the war rig and clenched his teeth. Looked in the side mirror at her standing on the road. Thought: I can help her. I want to help her.
"We good?" She asks. Same thing he asks her after every battle out on the road, each of them checking the other for missed gunshot wounds or wayward knives. Reminding each other that they're facing it together.
He laughs lightly, and closes his eyes, and lets himself press into her hand. "We're good."