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Coughing isn't anything to take note of at all out in the wastes, where the air is dry enough to parch you in minutes and sand is everywhere. So Max doesn't know how long he's had an itch in the back of his throat, at the base of his windpipe. An ache next to his heart.
Maybe it gets worse some times and not others, maybe it doesn't; he tries not to pay it any mind either way.
It first happens beyond what he can ignore when he's out in the wastes scavenging a car wreck and he thinks to himself, Furiosa could use that. He feels something in the back of his throat and he coughs, and coughs, and finally comes up with something that looks like a flower petal, pinkish-white.
He stares at it and then let its fall to the ground, sure it's a fluke. It's dry out here and he's taken too many hits to too many parts of his body to be alarmed that he's coughing up something from inside of himself.
It happens again when he's intimidating a couple of punks who are in over their heads and know it.
Max imagines the look Furiosa will give him when he tells the story, wonders if she'll do that thing where she isn't quite laughing but wants to, and then there's something that he hacks up from the back of his throat. He doesn't check to see what it is, just swallows it back down.
The third time happens when he's thinking about heading back and spends the night having one of his rare good dreams. It's muddled the way dreams are; one moment he's on a mattress rolling around with Furiosa, carefree in a way the world just doesn't allow for anymore while they play with each other and then he's driving his car, looking up at where she's her in her rig as sharp and focused as a knife, so beautiful he cuts himself with it.
He wakes up with a cough, flower petals falling from his mouth, hard in his pants. Max looks between the petals and his crotch, parts of his dreams playing in his mind, and thinks with a stab of fear that this isn't going to just quietly fade away.
There are more petals in the car by the time he's fit to drive, though he takes care to clean them out afterwards and to not think of anything that might bring them back.
For all they look identical without a microscope they're not really flower petals, though that's what people call them. Petals. Something pretty to dress up the fact that his body's slowly tearing itself open so he can present his heart to her.
Supposedly they can tell if you died while in love because there will be a flower inside your chest, blooming and healthy.
The whole thing is a mechanism mean to keep people honest, encourage the human race to pair up and reproduce. There are some of the same types of organs in a few other animals, but Max never bothered to learn anything more about it than he needed to- he just knows that that the only way to make it stop is to have the emotions that prompted it be removed, or returned.
And the latter isn't going to happen, so he tries to suppress what's happening inside his chest to hold off the deterioration.
He manages until he gets to the Citadel itself, and Furiosa greets him in what's become her usual way, heads together almost close enough that they could easily just slide into a hug- or a kiss- instead.
Max holds the cough in as long as he can, until he's separated from her just enough and looking off in some random direction. Petals fall from his lips to drift down to the floor of the lift room, pinkish and soft.
"Did you eat a flower?" Toast asks with audible distaste from off to the side.
"You should have just put it in your pocket," the Dag says, "I don't think anyone wants it now."
Max shakes his head and coughs again, but normal this time.
"Are you okay?" Furiosa asks, and when he feels petals in his mouth this time he forces them down his throat as he nods.
It was a mistake coming back, probably, but he already knows he can't manage to keep himself away for too long. The petals come back a few times during the day and he does his best to make it look accidental, happenstance.
He just won't let himself be alone with Furiosa too much and no one will pick up the connection, most likely- it isn't a common condition, and he'd be surprised if anyone in the Citadel ever suffered from it to really know what's happening to him.
Max started sleeping in her room at night within the first week of his first visit, when he accidentally fell asleep working on a project and slept better than he could remember in recent days, his mind calming in her presence. He had a mat on the floor after that which was plenty enough, until around his fourth or so visit when they'd had a little too much of the Vuvalini's freshly brewed whatever-they-were-calling-it and she'd said that her bed was big enough for the two of them, said that she didn't like seeing him on the floor like a dog.
He told her he didn't mind, but when she insisted he couldn't find it in himself to fight it.
He coughs petals up onto Furiosa's floor as they get ready for bed, and she doesn't say anything but she looks concerned, worried.
"‘M fine," he says.
She looks like she doesn't believe him, but she doesn't say anything about it as she crawls into bed.
He never sleeps as well as he does when he can feel her spine pressed against his, his breathing falling into her steady rhythm. His back's to the door like this but she's watching his blind spot, and that makes the difference.
Max coughs and swallows the evidence, feeling like his throat's tearing up. Like maybe he's starting to produce something harsher than just petals.
Behind him Furiosa shifts on the mattress, still awake, and he tries holding himself still for her sake. He makes it maybe an hour before some stray thought has him coughing again, and he feels her turn over to face him, to put her stump lightly on his shoulder.
"Are you okay?" she asks, her voice trying to be gentle. And he knows that she cares about him as a friend, knows she trusts him, knows she's been through some things but still lets him in like this, and he won't ever do anything to betray that trust.
"Fine," he says, and climbs not over her but to the foot of the bed to get out. "I'll sleep in the car."
"Stay," she says.
He shakes his head and gears back up; he's safe enough here to strip out of his layers, to take off his jacket and boots and somewhere along the way he even decided he was safe taking off his shirt some nights- not tonight, so fresh out of the wastes- but he won't be anything less than fully dressed outside of her room, even now. Max looks back at her because he can't help it and sees her sitting up on the rumpled bed frowning slightly in the dark, such an unguarded moment; he grabs his pack on his way out.
The petals he coughs into the hallway have a few drops of blood on them, not that he notices in the dimly-lit corridor.
His car is his safe place as much as anything can be these days, is the thing that gives him freedom and an escape route. He's trapped up in the Citadel's garage now and the space is echoing, dark. He nearly regrets not staying in her room where it's defensible. Where she is.
They've done a lot of good with the place but the hallways at night will always make him flinch and jump, always make him want to keep his back covered and have an eye out for people who don't even wear white paint anymore unless they burn in the sun. His car's alone in the little nook he's claimed for himself and he climbs in gratefully.
Max hasn't ever had to fight anyone for this space and he wonders suddenly what they do with it when he isn't here. If they see him rolling up and clear it out for him or if it's wasted space. He can't imagine Furiosa letting any space idle, not the way she runs her workshop, so most likely they store extra equipment here.
He coughs up petals a few times, but eventually he scrapes up something that resembles sleep.
In the morning he goes to the mess hall as quietly as he can, only to see that Furiosa is already there, looking as if she slept about as poorly as he did. He says nothing to her as he eats his way through the mushy grains they're serving, swallowing down petals as he does so. His throat feels raw, aching.
"You should see one of the medics," she says, and he shakes his head. "Max," she says, concerned but commanding, like they're in a situation where she needs to be Imperator again, and he bites down on his tongue.
"Gonna head out," Max tells her, scraping the last off his plate. Should have just taken off as soon as the lift was scheduled to run, but he hadn't been strong enough to resist wanting to see her one last time.
The girls somehow get alerted to this and ambush him with hugs goodbye, even the Daglet who's usually grumpy this early in the morning. He accepts them with better grace than he has in earlier times, but he's still jumpy from the outside world and his poor night's sleep, and they keep their touches brief.
Furiosa doesn't try and stop him but he knows he's disappointed her, and it's not until he's driving away that he realizes he hadn't even given her the salvage he brought for her.
Max was hoping that away from the Citadel, away from the source, that the petals would slow down. That maybe he could beat the condition that's making his chest ache and his ghosts scream about betrayal, scream warnings and threats and dire predictions.
But the petals keep coming until they're entire flowers, choking his throat, making him raw and bloody on the inside. Some of them start having projections like thorns and he wouldn't have expected otherwise; of course Furiosa's flowers would be protected like that, dangerous.
He goes an entire week- he thinks it's a week, anyway, time slips away from him easily even these days- without any petals and thinks maybe he's cured. Maybe he burned his emotions away.
He's wrong, of course. All it takes is one idle thought and the flowers are back, heavy on his tongue. They taste sweet for the most part, but bitter at the center.
The worst part is that Max knows exactly why this is happening. It's not just that he's forgotten how to keep his shields up and slipped into emotions he can hardly put name to for fear of what happens when he does- no, he's having flowers scraped up from inside his hollow chest because she doesn't love him back.
That's how it works, is what makes it such a terrible disease. He'll keep coughing up these flowers until he chokes on them for good because Furiosa doesn't, wouldn't, have feelings for him in return. He can't blame her for it at all either.
He doesn't deserve her love- doesn't deserve anyone's, but especially not hers.
It'll be fine. He'll stay out here until it's over one way or another, shouldn't have gone back in the first place.
The pinkish color of the flowers get covered over red with blood on a pretty regular basis, his throat raw, his lungs protesting. He can feel himself getting weaker, distracted. It's harder to trade for water and guzz when even things that don't have to do with her bring up petals now.
Max feels the ache like it's a living thing, balled up deep in his chest between his heart and his lungs. It throbs in counterpoint to his heartbeat, demanding attention, demanding to be fed or cut out.
They used to be able to do that. Slice a person open and take out the organ that's shedding petals into their throat, ending the condition with neat finality. Once the source of the 'flowers' is gone so are the emotions, a relief only the desperate seek, a relief he almost wishes he was brave enough to look for himself.
He wouldn't have minded feeling this on his own if it wasn't killing him, wouldn't have minded being able to just exist in the pull of her gravity.
Those he meet on the road see his condition and either laugh or show him pity, mostly depending on whether he's trying to trade or defend himself.
There are only two eventual outcomes when he's dripping flowers everywhere he goes like this: death or love, and everyone knows which is more likely in the wasteland.
It's a pair of kids that sees him driving him back to the Citadel. Max knows he's always been a soft touch with children even after trying to carve it away and these two are hollow-eyed, hiding scared and emaciated in the shadow of a car. There's a body in the front seat with a bullet hole in its head and he can't say anything these days without petals falling from his mouth, but he holds out his hands unthreateningly empty and tells them he knows a safe place.
The younger laughs once on the ride over, when Max coughs an entire flower and it gets stuck in the tangle his beard's grown into. He looks at the kid through the corner of his eye, surprised by the noise, and leaves the flower where it is.
Furiosa isn't there to greet him this time. Out on a trade run, Capable says before she ushers the kids away to be looked over. The younger grabs his hand and refuses to be moved, so Max follows them to the infirmary reluctantly.
"Still pining, then?" Mellita says with a disapproving shake of her head. She brushes petals off the front of his jacket without waiting for a reply, then leans down to talk to the kids.
"You never told us it was contagious," Capable says when they're being seen to.
He shakes his head. "Isn't," he says on a cough. He's gotten used to catching them with a hand, swallowing them back down. Waste not.
"Well Furiosa started doing the same not too long ago," she says, and the ball in his chest nearly stabs him with pain.
Because of course she'd eventually have feelings for someone, though how anyone could not return them is a mystery to him.
"And Melly says there's a cure but she won't say what it is, just that none of us can help," Capable says, and folds her arms over her chest. "You know how to fix it, don't you?"
Max shakes his head, though of course he knows. "Wouldn't be sick," he mumbles. He tastes blood more often than not these days when the petals come.
She stares at him, suspicious, but he keeps his mouth closed. It feels like someone's taking a dull spoon to his insides but he won't say anything if it means Furiosa might get to be happy with whoever she's hung up on.
The next time the lift lowers is to let their trading truck up, which means he isn't allowed to put his car on it for a quick escape. Max stands with the girls because he's here anyway so how could he not want to see Furiosa, not want to make sure she's okay with his own two eyes. Maybe see who it is she's looking at, who's making her choke on petals.
She's calling orders as the lift connects, voice maybe a little bit hoarse but nothing that couldn't be from hot sand and hotter exhaust, and he's coughing before she even comes into sight.
One of the girls- Cheedo, he thinks- rubs a hand over his back like she can soothe the ache inside of him.
"Max," Furiosa says like she's glad to see him, and he tries to muster a smile. She's only a little banged up from the trade run but she looks pale, eye sockets dark like she hasn't been sleeping well, and he hopes he figures out who it is soon so he can knock sense into their head.
She turns to the side and coughs petals into the crook of her elbow, and the sight hurts him on several different levels.
Max can't trust that he'll be able to speak at all so he hums in greeting, closes his eyes when he gets that moment of perfect contact as her head rests against his.
"The both of you are idiots," he hears Ace grumble from somewhere behind her.
"Ace," Furiosa says reprovingly, breaking the touch between them to shoot him a look.
"You know it's not unrequited if it's both sides, right?" he mutters anyway.
Max steps back from her to let the girls have their turn with greetings, far more casual when they get to see her every day. There isn't anyone she's paying more attention to than normal he doesn't think, no one acting cold to her.
He coughs violently, unable to hold back a bundle of thorns and petals, and Furiosa says, "I'm sorry." She's done getting things squared away, tasks delegated so she can take the list of what they bartered for to the council room. He follows in her wake helplessly as she walks the hallways with steady purpose.
He shakes his head. She has nothing to be sorry for, his condition is on him and it certainly isn't her fault that she's fallen for someone right in front of his eyes.
"I wish I could do something," she says around a cough of her own.
Love me back, Max thinks unbidden with his mouth clamped shut. He shakes his head again, and brushes off a petal that's clinging to her shoulder. She takes his hand before he can draw it entirely away.
"Tell me who it is," she asks, voice low. "Let me help." Flowers fall from her lips, streaked with blood.
"Stop," he forces out, the word sounding like nothing so much as a plea.
Furiosa drops her eyes away from his face. She lets his hand go but instead brings hers up, rubs her thumb at the corner of his mouth where he's sure there's a mark from the bloody petals he's been coughing for months now.
Then she sways forward and presses her lips to his and he can do nothing for a second, too surprised to register much of anything, before jerking back. He can't survive this, her trying to pretend she feels for him when he has all the proof he needs that she's in love with someone else.
"I'm sorry," she says immediately, "I know there's someone but I had to."
Her hand is still raised in the air between them, slowly lowering from where she was touching him.
"Who is it," Max rasps out. He's going to leave as soon as he knows, as soon as he can get them to see who it is they're hurting, all the reasons she deserves better than to be left to waste away over them.
She sets her jaw and shakes her head, something hurt in her eyes.
"Who," he repeats, because he needs to know. Thorns catch at his throat as he swallows.
"You," Furiosa snaps out. "Of course it's you, fool."
He stares at her in shock, and shakes his head slowly because that's a lie, that's impossible.
"I'm sorry," she says again, voice terse, "It was fine until you started-" She breaks off with a sharp shake of her head and turns, disappearing down the hallway with a fast but measured stride.
Max stares after her, mind a fuzzy blank roar. The next thing he knows he's moving the same direction she went, and catches up with her just as she turns one of the corners in this maze of hallways. He puts his hand on her shoulder and she jerks around, defensive.
He's not thinking anything other than that she had kissed him, and said the flowers were for him when they can't be.
"Let me go," she says, though he's hardly got a grip that's keeping her in place.
"They're yours," he says, and her eyes go hard. She'd kissed him and he hadn't even gotten to enjoy it he was so surprised, and he's going to leave after this, leave and hope he hollows himself out before he bleeds his emotions to death. He presses forward and kisses her, selfishly taking the memory of it for himself.
"Fuck you," Furiosa says quietly against his lips, but she isn't moving away. She kisses him back and he wants to scream, wants to cry because it feels as if she means it. As if there isn't anyone she wants to be with more than him.
"I'll leave, won't bother you," he says. There's no point holding back now, he's already fucked up their friendship past the point he thinks it can survive and the petals will drown him soon enough anyway. "They're yours. I'm yours." Hers for all that she doesn't want him.
She has her hand on the back of his head, fingers tangled in his hair. "You're not lying," she says slowly, like she doesn't believe it but can't figure out how to disprove it.
Max shakes his head; he wouldn't know where to even start if he was going to lie about this, how he's tearing himself apart for want of her.
She yanks him forward to kiss again and he lets her, lets her back him up against the wall because he's weak, he's helpless to resist her. "It's you," she breathes, "The petals were for you."
He doesn't believe her but he kisses her anyway, again and again until he can't taste the flowers in their mouths because he doesn't think he can do anything else. She feels real in his arms, solid and living, but some part of him is sure this is just a dream, is sure nothing this good can be real. Something metal falls with a resounding clatter at the end of the hallway and they both jump in place, Furiosa staying just as close up against him and only turning her head to look.
"Sorry!" the person says, more metal bits and bobs escaping their arms as they try and pick up what they'd dropped. "Carry on. Didn't mean to interrupt."
"Come on," she says, turning back to him. No petals fall from her lips.
She gives the lightest tug and Max follows, because... what if she is speaking the truth? What if somehow she does feel for him the same he feels for her? Her flesh hand keeps holding on to his as they walk, leading him on.
They're silent the entire way to her room, until the door is securely barred behind them to turn it again into a rare safe place. He hasn't coughed once since they were interrupted.
"You got sick when I was gone," he says, and his mouth is free of flowers, of blood and thorns.
"I thought you found someone," she says. She lets him move close to her again, get in her space in a way she doesn't let others, and even with the wasteland still on his skin he finds he somehow finds it comforting to be close enough to reach out and touch, to see the flecks of colors in her eyes.
"You," he says with a shake of his head.
Furiosa puts both her hands on his waist and dips her forehead to meet his. "You," she replies, and it's such a simple word but he can't remember the last time his chest felt so whole.