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It gets cold in the desert. Nux has always known this, but most of his life, he’s had the sun-warmed rocks of the Citadel to help him through the night, and the numerous warm bodies of his mates. Out here, there’s none of that. Just the wide open sky above him, the headlights of heroes long-witnessed strewn over it. Nothing to keep the heat it, and the metal around him, in his lookout perch, steals the warmth from his bones.
But then Capable joins him. He knows her name now, knows all their names. He knows, too, not to call them breeders or wives. They are not a purpose or a possession, and, one of them once tried to tell him, neither is he.
(He was hanging out of the racing war rig at the time, and she was pushing him out further, but the words stuck.)
Capable is warm, and the blanket she wraps around them lets that warmth stay and settle over Nux. The lamp she brings with her dims the headlights above and makes it hard to see the horizon, but that’s alright, because it lights up Capable’s face, and her hair looks like fire, tamed and bending to her will.
She is beautiful. They all are, of course. Shiny and chrome and perfect. But, as Nux traces the lines of her face with a hesitating finger and feels her softness curl up close against him, he decides she is beautiful. That must be better than all those other words.
Capable is many other things, he learns. Her namesake, of course, but also kind and caring, with a varnish of steel. The more he listens to her talk that night, and the more she lets him say, listening to his every word as if his thoughts truly matter, the more beautiful he finds her.
They’ve talked and slept through the night, and by the time the dawn comes, the air crisp and cool and still, Nux knows what it means that he finds her beautiful.
There is a better word for it after all.
Nux looks at Capable, sleeping on his engine-scarred chest with a Vuvalini blanket over her shoulders, and kisses her forehead. “I think,” he whispers, knowing she won’t hear him, “I think I’m in love with you.” It’s not a foreign concept, and the word itself did not take much drudging to remember. Nux even thinks he’s been in love before, but that drive was cut short.
Just like this one might. Or – and perhaps this is worse - it might not.
“I think I’m in love with you,” he repeats, looking out at the world, “and I’m terrified.”