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Toast wakes before dawn and lies there, trying not to think, until the room is bright with sunlight. She slides off the bed as quietly and carefully as she can, and locates the key to the shackles binding Slit. She hopes to unchain him without waking him and slip away, hopes he’ll just leave when he awakens and finds himself freed.
But the moment she unlocks the second shackle, his hand closes on her wrist. He sits up and hauls her against him, the chain in his other hand, as if he means to shackle her now.
Toast fights Joe with everything she’s got in her the first time he tries to “breed” her. But he’s prepared, he’s done this many times with many girls. He chains her down with her legs spread wide, unable to stop him as he…
“No,” Toast says, and the sound is more a panicked sob than anything else. “Don’t.”
She’s surprised when Slit actually drops the chain. He looks alarmed, as if she’s shocked him and he doesn’t know how to respond. But then he’s pushing her down onto the bed and he’s on top of her.
“Wait. Just wait. I need a minute.”
He rolls off her to lie beside her. Toast is too panicked still to read the look on his face. He isn’t making any move to get up and leave, but he doesn’t seem like he’s about to attack her either.
She turns onto her side, away from him, trying to distance herself from the memories of Joe. After a while, she reaches behind her and gropes for Slit’s arm and he allows her to pull it across her. He gets the idea, and fits his body against hers and wraps his arm around her.
Eventually the memories and the sick feeling they cause fade, and Toast relaxes. She becomes aware of the warmth of Slit’s breath on the back of her neck and how good his arm around her feels. It’s nice to be held like this, even if it is by him.
Somehow, somehow, that turns simply into feeling that it’s nice to be held by him. She thinks of how many things in the Citadel have been scavenged from wrecks or repurposed from their intended use. It’s how people manage to keep living in the wasteland.
Toast caresses the hand attached to the arm around her. It’s a large hand; she never realized how large until now. The desire to feel his hands on her breasts has returned and so Toast takes his hand and places the palm flat against her chest.
She hears the change in his breathing. She wriggles encouragingly, and turns her head to look back at him. Her lips are parted, but she doesn’t have to ask for the kiss. It’s different from the hard kiss he’d given her the first time they met, and different from the kisses she took from him last night. It stirs a feeling that isn’t sexual or physical - more of an emotion. Peace perhaps, or hope, but not really either of those things exactly. Something she can’t define.
His hands feel so good on her breasts. She turns and he shifts and now she’s on her back with him on top of her, but it’s alright. It’s more than alright, it’s perfect. Right now it’s exactly where she wants to be and where she wants him.
She can feel scars beneath her fingertips as she caresses his back and she realizes he has yet another of those crazy War Boy scarifications etched there too. It’s all along the center line of his back, right down his spine. He shudders as she traces the design.
He ends the kiss and presses his forehead to hers, staring down at her. Toast wants to close her eyes - this is too intimate - but she doesn’t. She wraps her legs around him to pull his hips against her.
Slit seems to want to say something, but he can’t quite bring himself to. Or perhaps he himself doesn’t know what it is he wants to say.
Anything either of them could say would only spoil this, so Toast just kisses him. He pulls back, after a moment, and grasps her waist and shifts them both further down the bed. Toast realizes he’s positioned them to avoid hitting his head against the headboard. She’s almost impressed that he’s already thought through the logistics of fucking her here. It helps dissipate the strange, too-intense emotion from before.
She looks up at his face as he slides his cock into her and sees the pleasure she feels mirrored there. She’s never noticed before that his face must have been handsome before the scars and the metal, or that his good eye is blue. It’s the first time she’s ever stared into someone’s eyes like this while fucking and it amplifies every physical sensation.
Her eyes close when she comes, but her fingers dig deeper into his shoulders. He continues supporting his weight above her even after he comes, but Toast needs him closer than that so she pulls him down fully onto her. He’s heavy, but it’s a good feeling to have him on her like this. It’s comforting somehow.
Slit kisses her temple and then sighs into her ear, “Valhalla.” He continues, “No wonder Immortan kept you locked away for himself, you take a man to Valhalla.”
There are worse things he could have said, but Toast can’t think of any right now. She shoves at him until he draws back, looking confused.
“Is that what you think?!” She almost chokes on the words. “You think it was like that for me with that bastard?! It wasn’t.” She’s aware of her voice rising. “It was horrible. I wanted to be dead every time.” She’s practically screaming at him now. “He said he wanted babies, but half the time he didn’t put it where babies could grow. The Dag says he’d probably rather have fucked you War Boys.”
Slit is sitting up now and Toast rises onto her knees so she can look him straight in the face without having to look up. She sneers at him. “Pity you didn’t get to experience getting fucked by your Immortan. I promise you, you would not have liked it.”
Silence.
Toast realizes that Slit doesn’t know how to react. He is incapable of comprehending that Joe was not only not a god but the lowest piece of filth that ever existed in the wasteland. He doesn’t know what to do next; he just stares at her without expression.
“Get out,” she orders.
It’s lucky for them both that the Organic Mechanic left trousers for him and he doesn’t have to leave naked.
Toast wants to scream in frustration, wants to hit something. She’s angry with herself for thinking for even a heartbeat that she could have something worth having here. She should have known better. The Citadel can keep you alive - give you water, food, shelter - but it will never allow life.