Work Text:
“See how well I treat you,” Immortan Joe always told them, hands on hips, self-satisfied, as the musician, carrying a guitar, with a hood pulled over his head, settled himself on one of the ledges in the Milking Room. And the Milk Mothers knew better than to speak up: they’d all, each of them, fallen from Wives, and knew, all too well, how much further there was to fall. In case they ever forgot, the Milking Room's vista showed them the vista of the Wretched, gathered below.
Here, they had food, water, safety, and those were three enormous things they knew the value of. They didn’t need the reminder as much as the Immortan needed it, to remind himself of his own power.
Still, Tirra thought, even if it was a show, even if it was about showing off his own power, his own luxury, it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to enjoy the music. It had been too long since she’d heard anything other than a woman’s voice singing, and the songs the Mothers knew were mostly lullabies and grief, mourning over the imperfect sons and daughters they had lost. “Can he play something happy?” she asked, suddenly, because suddenly she needed something happy, even if it was something as ephemeral as music.
“He can play anything you want,” Joe said, smugly.
“And the hood,” Midiga, the oldest of the Mothers, said, wryly, “is obviously because we’re too beautiful for him.”
A round of titters through the room. The Mothers knew many things, and one of them was that they were, each of them, way past what the Citadel defined as beauty, in size, shape and age. Joe preferred the high breasted, slim hipped types, young enough to be his daughters. Midiga had been one herself, with thick, honeyblonde hair and chocolate eyes and old enough to remember both honey and chocolate.
Strange, Tirra thought, how a man’s use of you made you unbeautiful.
But they knew the truth, or suspected enough for it to edge on knowledge: the musician was malformed, unbeautiful in his own way. And like them, he had just enough use, just enough value, to be worth keeping alive.
“He can take off the hood, then,” Zhyllah said, firmly, looking up from the lace she was making, doubtless to be given to one of Joe's pretty wives. This was how the world worked. “We have all looked worse in the face.” She meant it as a dig against Joe, his scabrous body and bloated face, but there was a mournful edge to it: they’d all seen their own sons and daughters, malformed, mutated wrecks, dead or--worse yet--struggling not to die, in a world that had no kindness for suffering.
Joe felt the slight--they could see it in the way his forehead knit, his eyebrows almost colliding, before he went and jerked the hood off. “As you wish, ladies,” he said, and the saccharine kindness in his voice had gone rancid, and he swept from the room, hard on his heels.
He was ugly, Tirra thought, turning to the musician, because Joe's tantrums were just that, and not worth attention, pale as a War Boy, eyes flat and hollowed, skin pale and mottled. But he was a new kind of ugly, different from Joe and Rictus and Corpus, and in a place like this, anything can be a novelty, so the Mothers studied his face, as he settled down, tuning his instrument, with a sort of museum-interest, even if partly to spite Joe.
And then he began to play.
And Tirra lost herself in the melody, which started like the sound of wind through lush green leaves, and skittered around, before soaring over a bass line like a bird, strongwinged and sure, over the ochre wastes. It wasn’t ‘happy’ as she’d known it--a child’s delight in things, shortlived and silly--but a deeper kind, innate, a kind of wild joy in oneself. She felt tears on her cheeks, like desert rains, sudden and sweet, and she looked around as she brought her veil to her eyes, and saw she was not the only one.
He kept playing, and the milking time passed so much more quickly, and Tirra could leave her body, and the soreness of her badly used breasts, and the cloying sweet smell of the place, as his music took them out of this place, out of themselves, just...out of everything, a sort of pause that felt...transcendent. That was the word Tirra was looking for. Transcendent.
And then their time had passed, and the Mothers stood, slowly, unhooking themselves, draping the light shawls or vests or coverlets to cover their heavy breasts, but gently, nipples sore from the steel, each moving like a dreamer loathe to wake.
Tirra crossed over to where he sat, instrument idle in his lap, and he looked as drained as she felt. “Thank you,” she said, quietly, and he turned his face toward hers, and she could see the hollow sockets of his eyes, almost as if he could look right through her. His mouth twitched, as if he hadn’t ever quite learned expressions, and she thought, abruptly, how terrible it must have been, growing up blind, with no one to teach you, and Tirra leaned forward, throwing her fleshy arms around him in an awkward hug. And he responded, his hands leaving the guitar, circling her neck, accepting the touch, extending it.
And it felt just so...human and real that she lingered for a moment, before slowly pulling away. “It was beautiful,” she said--his playing, the touch between them that just happened. They were already tangling together in her memory, a bright flare of heady freedom and rawness, and maybe it made her reckless, but the other Mothers were gone, now and it was just she and he in the room, so she planted a fast kiss on his cheek, feeling her own burn at her daring.
She traced the line of his jaw with one finger, cautious, wary for signs of rejection--no one knew rejection more than the Mothers, having been spurned from Joe’s bed and favor. She wasn’t sure why--maybe she just wanted to draw the moment out, to hold the afternoon in the cup of her hand. Maybe she wanted touch more than she could bring herself to admit. Maybe she just wanted to touch something that had created the closest this place had to magic.
She didn’t know, but when he pulled her closer, and their mouths touched, she didn’t pull away. Her heart fluttered against her chest, almost giddy, as his lips brushed over hers, his hand smoothed her hair back over her ear.
“We could…” she didn’t even know how to finish that sentence. ‘Fuck’ sounded so...brutal, so crass. And maybe that’s what it was, and maybe that’s all she had to offer, a poor gift, in return for a rich one.
But she didn’t have to--he understood, slipping back from her just enough to slide the guitar off his lap, and she took his hand, feeling that this had to be a dream, or some fantasy--maybe he was still playing and she was getting lost in the kind of childish, juvenile daydream that they so rarely got to indulge.
If it was a daydream, she decided, she refused to let logic or the practical stand in the way. If it was just her fantasy, she would let it run as free as it could.
And she led him back to her room, feeling a kind of ancient nervousness, half mingled with anticipation, sizzle through her, imagining those hands on her body, and the weight of a man on her after...far too long. Others had tried, once or twice, with Rictus, but despite his body, he had the mind of a child, and Tirra couldn’t shake that, somehow. And the War Boys called them ugly and old, and cow breeders--even though half of them, she thought, didn’t know what a cow was. They didn’t have to know for the insult to strike home, and the message was clear--the lean and beautiful War Boys, and even the tragically malignant, wanted nothing to do with the women who brought the Citadel its wealth and power--they hated the very bodies that produced the milk, that produced some of their own peers.
It was injustice, but the kind Tirra could only cry in the longest, most aching hours of the night about, powerless to do anything more.
Except now, with the musician, whose hand felt real and warm and wanting in hers, as she turned to face him, and there was no judgment, only a sort of animal eagerness in him. Tirra felt a matching eagerness, her breath shallow, as she slipped off her clothes--the light, soft vest she wore over her breasts, the long skirt, and it felt...free, somehow, to be naked in front of a man, again. Exposed and yet thrilling, even though he couldn’t even see to judge. But he seemed to know, his hands moving to find her, and he gave a soft, longing sigh as they found her body, cupping over the line of her shoulder, tracing the contour of her breast, and then he gave a sound, guttural and deep, and pulled her roughly against him. His hands clutched at her, kneading the satin of her flesh, and she felt his erection rise against her belly, hardness swelling into the softness of it, and she felt her body respond, warm and tingling, fluid and yearning.
“Come,” she whispered, stepping back, her hands on his elbows, praying he wouldn’t break contact with her, as she led him over to her bed. Another of Joe’s luxuries for his Mothers--metal framed beds, soft mattresses--another gift given with a closed hand. The metal shifted as she sat down, drawing Coma down with her, feeling the cool sheets against her bare skin behind her, and the heat of a man against her belly.
He sank on top of her, with almost contented sigh, before pushing up to wriggle out of his clothes.
Tirra had to admit she did enjoy the show--the slide of muscle under skin, the way the ribcage winged over the narrower hips, the complex shapes of the muscles on his arms and wrists, almost dancing together as they moved. And then he was back on her, skin against her skin, and Tirra felt the coarser texture of a man’s skin, wonderfully different, shifting under her hands, and the lean heat of his hips against her thighs.
She parted her thighs around him, feeling him sink into the cradle of her hips, muscle against her soft flesh, and his own hands roaming over her body. Her skin felt like velvet under his touch, plush and luxurious, his fingers coaxing pleasure from her, wakening long sleeping tingles and sighs. She didn't feel like a cow or breeder, she felt vast and beautiful, like the ocean Midiga had spoken of once, all liquid and surge and flow.
She ran her hands up over his shoulders, fascinated, for a moment, with the feel of the muscles working under the skin, the slide of his scapula as he shifted touch, and grazed his mouth with hers, inviting a proper kiss. His teeth were sharp, like an animal’s, she thought, but his mouth moved almost gently against hers, soft and yielding, and almost shy, almost inexperienced.
But his body knew what it was doing, knew what it wanted, his hips slithering against hers, cock riding down her belly against her sex and then up, riding against the outside, the underside’s length along the line of her folds of flesh. She moaned, biting her lip against the sudden sharp wash of pleasure, as he moved again, slow, unhurried, his cock slicked and warm from her, smearing her fluid between them.
He broke the kiss with a shy, almost apologetic little nuzzle that was somehow endearing, curling down to kiss at her throat, across her chest, his hands seemingly fascinated by her breasts--large and soft and heavy, so unlike the flat planes of muscle of his own body. And she felt a kind of shame she’d worn like a second skin slip away under his touch, which was reverent, gentle, touching her as if every inch of her was precious, deserving of attention. His mouth followed his hands, as though they were exploring a beautiful wilderness, his tongue flicking out to taste her skin, little sharp points of heat and pleasure, following the track of his hands around the curve of her breast, and then up, as though tracing a contour map, until he came to the nipple. She sucked in a small hiss of air, the tender skin still chafed from the milking cap, but the heat and wetness of his mouth seemed to soothe that, or lose the pain in the arch of pleasure as his tongue traced a line up the nipple, covering it with his mouth.
She wanted to warn him--and she didn’t--that they were never entirely out of milk, that the machines were never entirely efficient, but it was too late, and she felt the warm push of milk in her breast, into his mouth.
He went still against her, even his hips, and Tirra feared the worst, but then the stillness broke with a shiver, and a sound almost like a whimper from his broken throat, and then he was moving again, riding his cock a little more urgently against her sex. And his lips tightened against her nipple, sucking again, wanting the milk, his hand kneading at her breast.
It was almost too much, right there, the way desire flamed over his body, the way the long thrusts of his cock against her matched the slow pull of his mouth suckling at her. She reached for his hand, guiding it to her other breast, squeezing his fingers around the other nipple, the heel of his hand pushing into the milk-heavy weight of it, and she felt the almost scalding heat of her milk leaking over his fingers, dribbling between their bodies as he moved against her, and the room filled with the smell of it, warm and sweet, mixed with the earthier scent of sweat and sex, and it was slicking their bodies, but it only made him move more insistently, ending each thrust with a sharp twitch and a sound like a muffled grunt, as if he’d gotten lost to everything but touch and craving more, as if he could feel the welling desire in her, like an aquifer, rising to the surface, and he was calling it forth with his hands and mouth and body, summoning out from her the wild richness of sensuality that had gotten smothered under grief, under years of having to trade her body for safety, for giving herself as a thing.
Tirra gave a half-shaped cry, one dragged along an edge of tears, feeling him release against her, his own liquid heat spent over her belly, and she curled herself around him, squeezing his hips tight to her, shuddering as her own orgasm overwhelmed her, cresting like a wave over her, flowing through her sex, her breasts, her entire body, and she felt almost shaken apart, loosened from herself, from all the things that constrained her, fluttering under her like a hundred sparkling wings or waves in a vast ocean. “Yes,” she heard her own voice, silk soft, and murmuring, as he moved, only drowsily now, against her, their fluids mixing between them, and he slithered up her body, smearing milk and semen over their bodies, covering her mouth with a blind-eyed milk-sweet kiss before he pillowed his head against her shoulder, his whole body softening against hers, as though losing itself against her skin. Tirra curled around him, and he didn’t resist, he didn’t pull away, he seemed content to lie there, postcoital and languorous, limbs tangled in hers, and it felt so new it was almost uncomfortable, that a man would want to stay with her, loath to break contact with her body. And his hand traced the contour of her breasts, as they shifted, fingertips light and gentle, before finding her hand and bringing it, flat, against his own chest, where she could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart under her hand, real and human and beautiful.
It meant nothing--it was just a small, wordless thing--but everything, both at once, and Tirra felt herself as a beautiful thing, a sacred vessel, something to be given and shared, not taken, and kept.