The Grande Futapest Hotel

FRIDAY

Layla couldn't remember the last time she'd made her bed when the sheets weren't still warm from being freshly cleaned. Her bed was only ever made from whenever she put them on until she pulled them out from their tucked position to wrap in them like a big cozy worm.

With all the huge beds Selena had in her house, even with two people in them, and no matter how soft they were... Layla felt like she was trying to sleep on a ping pong table. It was so big, she could barely tell where she was on the bed. She was used to being wrapped in the blankets and sleeping reasonably still on her apartment's tiny twin bed.

Maybe it was better to stay wrapped in the blankets and forget where the edges of the bed were. Maybe she'd reached her limits without noticing and only now found the edge that she would tumble over in her folly. Maybe she'd deluded herself into thinking she had what it takes to make in this line of work. In bed was where she belonged as a streamer... HER bed. On the Internet, where the only thing more discouraging than how easy it was to find haters and trolls... was how easy it was to find entirely sincere and eager fans.

Layla had ran upstairs to a bedroom because that's what she used to do at home when she was upset. She'd never once been in this bedroom before. Even when cleaning with Merri, Selena told her not to waste too much time upstairs since she hadn't been up there, either. When she got in this bed, she slipped into it as carefully as possible, barely disturbing the sheets with her thin form... all because she wanted to leave this bed as close to how she found it as she could so she wouldn't fuck up anything else.

She didn't dream, either because she simply didn't reach a deep enough state of sleep to do so... or because the dream had been the last few days she'd spent in the home of her hero... and now it was over.

Layla was pulled from her sleep suddenly as she felt a hand fall on her shoulder. She spun off her stomach, the sheets falling off her torso, one arm holding her up and one held in a defensive position.

It was Selena.

Of course it was, she thought. This is her house. Nobody else lives here. Once again, she'd forgotten where she was. This time, Layla had hoped she'd just wake up in her crappy apartment, and that none of this had really happened.

Layla pulled her hand to her face, wiping a bit of drool from her lips, inhaling slowly, trying not to sound like she was sniffling, glad that Selena hadn't turned on the light to see her worn red eyes.

"Hey." Layla said weakly.

"Hey." Selena parroted.

Layla looked down. Selena's upper body was nude, but there was something on her legs that Layla hadn't seen before.

"Are those... pants?" Layla asked.

"They're PJ's." Selena answered, hooking a thumb into the waistband. "This is how I normally sleep. I don't actually sleep totally naked. I know it's probably not as cool or sexy as my fans are hoping."

Even in the nearly nonexistent light, Layla found herself staring. "Well... that bulge is pretty sexy."

Selena moved in closer. Layla sniffed. Selena revealed an open box of tissues from behind her back.

"Thank you." Layla took a few and blew her nose gently into them. She crumpled the tissue in her palms and looked over the rim of the bed for a trash can.

"Just throw it anywhere. I'll clean it up tomorrow." Selena said. Layla dropped the wad over the edge of the bed.

"I'm surprised you don't have a bedside trash..." Layla commented. "You know, for late night whacking."

"But I don't do that." Selena said. "I can't."

Layla put her head back to the pillow.

"You mind if I sit here?" Selena asked.

"What am I going to say? No? It's your house."

Selena sat, and then brought herself next to Layla, staying on the duvet. Selena put her chin on Layla's bare shoulder. They both looked across the room to the large bookcase that lined that wall. It held some books, and a roughly equal number of porn accolades that Selena had been presented, most of them shaped like penises mounted to a piece of wood. In the middle of them all were about one hundred fifty Blu-ray DVDs.

"For someone in your line of work, and who seems to watch a lot of TV... I didn't think you'd be so into Disney movies."

"What can I say?" Selena said, putting one hand around Layla. "They're great."

A small silence. Layla didn't move out from under Selena's touch. Selena continued, "I wish... that I had a huge library that I could give you, like in Beauty and the Beast... but instead of books, it's just acres and acres of porn."

Layla laughed. "Well, that's pretty much my hard drive. And it's not even one-millionth of all the porn out there."

Selena chuckled. Then there was silence.

"They're remaking Beauty and the Beast, you know."

"I heard." Selena groaned. "Why? What's the point?"

"That live-action Jungle Book was good."

"But Beauty and the Beast is a masterpiece. There's nowhere to go but down."

More silence.

"You ever get invited to the premiere or something like that?"

Selena sighed. "I don't get invited anywhere. I'm a porn star. Nobody wants me around for their family-friendly event. I just stay at home."

"I know what that feels like."

More silence.

"When I was on the bus to go to the porn studio on Sunday..." Layla started. "I tried pulling my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket by the headphone cord, and it slipped out of the jack. So for one second, on the bus, everyone heard what I was listening to. And I thought... I am so glad I'm not the kind of person who watches porn on the bus."

"Was it Disney music?"

"No." Layla shook her head. "But I wouldn't be embarrassed by that."

"Would you be embarrassed if everyone thought you were watching porn on your phone?" Selena asked. "Because I've always thought that was a holdover from puritanical repression. Like... why shouldn't we all be free about what we like?"

"Well, most of us only watch porn to masturbate." Layla said. "I don't just sit around and watch it in public to kill time, but that's also because... I don't like being aroused in public."

"Being aroused in public is your job." Selena said.

"Well, being aroused while people watch. Not really in public."

More silence.

"Someone made a GIF of my orgasm tonight and put it on Reddit." Selena said. "It's on the front page. The top commenter linked to the archive of the stream, so even though your face isn't really visible, people can find your channel if they want."

Selena took in a deep breath. "I think this could be the moment when you're finally going to take off. Your channel is probably going to double in size overnight. You'll be able to support yourself more easily, build up a savings... get a car. What do they call this, the Colbert bump?"

Layla turned her head a bit. Selena kept going, "And if that's all you were looking for by coming here, I understand. I probably wouldn't have passed up that opportunity, either. So-"

Selena didn't get to finish her thought. Layla rolled on her side in the sheets and threw her lips against Selena's.

"The only bump I was hoping from you was to bump uglies. I don't need anything FROM you. I'm just so glad I met you and learned what a wonderful sweetheart you are in real life."

"Layla..." Selena whispered.

They kissed again. Selena worked her way under the sheets while keeping her lips pressed to Layla's, an act more complicated than building a ship in a bottle. Layla tousled Selena's soft hair with one hand and pawed her breast with the other.

Selena broke away, atop Layla, holding herself up with both hands. "There's something I need to tell you."

Layla felt like her heart would explode. "Yes?" She asked breathlessly.

"I lied to you."

Layla paused. That wasn't what she expected to hear. "About what?"

"You asked me if I took my stage name from Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande. I sort of dodged the answer. I didn't say 'yes.' I just said, 'well, duh' or something like that."

"OK..." Layla seemed confused.

"My career started in 2011. Selena Gomez was a rising star, but Ariana Grande was still just some singer on her Nickelodeon show at that point. She wasn't a superstar until 2013, when her first album went platinum."

Layla looked at her. "You DIDN'T take your name from them?"

"No!" Selena confessed. "It's just a coincidence that they both took off around the same time, and that porn stars sometimes make compound names from other famous people. Selena is my real first name. I just took 'Grande' because it was a pun about my big penis and because my real last name begins with a G, so my initials would be the same. Not sure why I cared about that back then."

Layla looked off, and then back. "Then...what is your real name?"

Selena answered quickly. "My real name is Selena. Selena Anne Gunnarson."

"Is that Swedish?"

"Yeah." Selena nodded. "Are you surprised? I mean... look at me." She sighed. "I just had to get that off my chest. The first thing I ever told you was a lie. It wasn't even meant to be a lie. It's just something everyone assumed, and I just decided never to correct anyone. It's not like the twelve-inch thing where people didn't believe the truth. I just let it become a lie about myself."

Layla looked off. "Did you change your name legally?"

"I was thinking about it, but... I've been dragging my feet. I actually had someone tell me that my stage name was cultural appropriation. I let her know my wrath. What culture do I have, exactly? I was one of the first one thousand futa births anywhere in the world! We all grew up completely without peers. I didn't meet another futa until I was a teenager! And now I have to deal with some fourteen-year-old prick on Tumblr calling me horrible names... all because I took a stage name with a Spanish word... even though 'grande' also appears in French, Italian, Portuguese... and, of course, Latin."

Selena rolled off Layla and stared at the ceiling. The room was dark enough that she could imagine the ceiling wasn't there at all, that it was the inky nighttime sky and all the stars had fallen away.

"The Comet... was probably the single most important event of the last twenty-five years. But by the time we reached adulthood, and I thought I could start making a living in the porn industry... the Internet had changed the way everyone looked at porn. Just like alcoholic punch bowls gave way to the cocktail, everyone wanted something specific. Porn on the internet got more segmented, more fragmented, more distinct.

"There are people who like futa, and there are people who like futa but only when the futa is a top, or only if they're topping men, or only if they're topping STRAIGHT men, or only if they're topping straight men and NOT wearing a condom, or they're wearing it and it breaks halfway through and she comes in him anyway, despite him begging her not to 'get his boy-ass-pussy pregnant.'"

"This is based on someone in particular, isn't it?" Layla interrupted. "This is too specific to just be made up on the spot."

Selena sighed through her nose. "I don't respond to all my fan mail, but I DO read it all. My biggest fans... their paraphilias grow like a fractal, ever more obscure and ever more necessary to satisfy the unending lust of a deeply secluded mind.

"One question I'm glad you didn't ask me is if it was a good time to get into porn. Honestly, it's no different from asking if it's a good time to get into Youtube. Every day that passes, it gets harder to break into it, and the competition grows every day, and the pie gets smaller. With porn, it might even be worse. With all the new websites, and with different fetishes and tribes that grow and splinter into smaller and smaller subfetishes... it's hard to see the emergence of a huge porn star like me ever again.

"I could retire right now and never make another frame of porn, and I'd be fine. Porn is a smaller and smaller part of my income these days. I keep doing it because I legitimately like doing it and the people I've chosen to work with. But to keep it going, I have to master my entire life, keep everything in order, keep myself fit, but not too fit, holding back every drop for that all-important money shot. My entire week revolves around it, my life.

"And the second..." Selena's voice cracked involuntarily. "The second someone came into my life and disrupted my obsessive rituals... I immediately turned into the bratty demanding star who bitched about not getting her way. 'I can't work like this. I'll be in my trailer.' That sort of thing. And I unloaded on someone who... I really can't overstate how taken I am with you. Having you around this week has been a blast, and I went and ruined it. I'll never forgive myself."

"No, please. Selena..." Layla held Selena tighter. "I want you to forgive yourself. It's not like I was right to yell at you when you've been so incredibly generous. We both messed up, and that's OK. Friends do that. Lovers do that. But I want you to forgive yourself. If you don't, then you're still obsessing over it. I want you to forgive yourself, more than I want you to forgive me."

Selena pulled away to look Layla in the eye. Their foreheads came together. "Please forgive me."

"I already have." Layla answered. "Do you forgive me?"

"Of course." Selena clutched Layla's head into her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Layla slipped out of the grasp for a kiss, the first of many. Layla wrestled her way above Selena, slipping her tongue into Selena's mouth, raking her fingers through her hair. Her other hand crept downwards, the back of her hand glancing between Selena's breasts and down her abs before she tugged at the waistband of Selena's pajama bottoms.

Selena's hand went down to her groin and held them up. "Layla... are you actually insatiable or what? We both just came."

"Why? What time is it?"

"It's not even midnight."

"Oh, I thought it was like three in the morning."

"Do you really want to go again?"

Layla took a moment. "Selena... it's you. And it's me. Of course I want to go again."

And Layla kissed her.

Selena shook her head gently, and left the bed.

"Let's do this properly, then." Selena threw the duvet off them and slipped her pajamas off her legs, freeing her cock from within to stand almost horizontally as it grew harder. Layla instinctively spread apart her legs.

"Guess again." Selena smiled, kneel-walking back onto the bed and taking hold of Layla's member, holding it straight up.

She lowered herself onto Layla's stiff cock slowly... as slowly as she could manage. Layla's hands and legs bucked out from under Selena like the legs of a spider held down by a single finger. With a sharp exhale, Selena came to rest on Layla's thighs.

Selena leaned forward and put her hands on Layla's breasts, looking Layla in the eye.

"Do you want to get your laptop out and give your fans in Australia something to watch?"

Layla swallowed hard and tried to catch breath that kept escaping her, possibly because she was pinned down. "Let's keep this one just for us. It might end up being... a short show."

"I'll go easy on you."

For once... everything that followed wasn't shared with anyone. It was just between the two of them.

--

Layla stirred suddenly, opening her eyes to the surprisingly bright light of this upstairs room, a room she'd never seen in daylight. She rubbed her eyes and rolled over.

For the first time, Selena was next to her as she woke. Her bare shoulders under the duvet, her blonde hair spread across the pillow, motionless but for faint breaths as she slept. The most beautiful and powerful porn star slept soundly beside her. This was a feeling Layla could get used to. She grinned, and slipped out of the bed gently to not wake Selena and walked to the bathroom.

"Layla?"

Layla turned very quickly in place, back to the bed. Selena turned in bed, holding the bed sheet up to her chest. In the other hand, she had her phone.

"How long have you been up?" Layla asked.

"An hour or so." Selena said. "I've just been on my phone. I got tons of stuff done."

"You had your phone with you last night?"

"No, I went downstairs and got it this morning."

Layla folded her arms. "I thought I'd finally woken up before you for once."

"You sleep like a rock." Selena commented. "I don't want to frighten you, but... do you think you might have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?"

"No! No, no, no." Layla said, shaking her head. "I mean, I was going to the doctor regularly up until a year ago. Like, there was a time where I was doing both the camgirl thing and the coffee shop, and I quit the shop just because I made as much in six hours of work a week in my bed as thirty-five at the shop."

"Are you making enough money to grow a savings?"

Layla looked away. "Sort of?" She looked back. "Did you ever think you were going to be this successful when you started?"

"Never."

"I thought I'd be successful at the camgirl thing if it paid for my phone plan. The fact that I don't have to do anything else to pay my rent is amazing."

Selena kept tapping at her phone, Layla reached her arm over and pulled herself closer. "You want to take a shower together?" Layla said softly.

"I already showered."

"Well, I could tell when I leaned in, because I can smell the soap. How do you do this? How can you get so much done?"

"It's all in my book, Being An Efficient Porn Star and Having Much Less Sex Than You Thought." Selena said sarcastically. "Until the irresistible futa cutie enters your life."

Layla froze. She turned to face Selena, looking up from the bed with a smile. Selena wasn't looking at her nude body, but her face.

She moved in and kissed Selena once, holding her head against her forehead.

"I'm so glad we didn't go to bed mad last night." Selena whispered.

"I'm so sorry about all that."

"I'm sorry, too. But we're past that. Go shower up and I'll tell you what the plan is for today."

Layla disappeared into the bathroom. Selena rolled onto her back, holding her phone to her beating heart.

In a career that wasn't without speed bumps or minor missteps, Selena had never felt such relief that the bridge she was standing on was not burned after all.

--

When Layla was out of the shower, Selena had evidently brought a set of clothes from downstairs for her to wear. That slightly surprised her, as strutting around nude had been acceptable before, even when the maid was over.

When she left the bedroom, Selena was dressed as well. They walked down the stairs together. into the kitchen.

Layla sniffed the air. "Did you make breakfast?"

"Nope." She said simply.

At the bottom of the stairs, Layla saw a curvy woman in Selena's kitchen, swirling something in a frying pan furiously. She looked over her shoulders, her hair slung about as she turned.

"Almost done!" She said, stirring the pan even harder. She had dark brown hair and eyes, her face round and perfectly shaped for a smile that was almost always there. She wore a black-and-white plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dark jeans. Before Layla and Selena could reach the island, she plated the scrambled eggs next to the bacon, sausage, toast and fried cubes of potato.

"This is Chrissie, my chef." Selena put out her hand, as if Chrissie was the solution on Wheel of Fortune.

"Calling me a chef is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm just a cook." She set the hot pan into the sink for now, the nonstick surface unsuitable for the dishwasher. "Selena told me you were a farm girl, so..." She wiped some perspiration from her forehead onto her sleeve. "I made you a farmer's breakfast. But..."

"You didn't expect me to be so thin?" Layla asked.

Chrissie's eyebrows fell, the smile leaving her face for the time being. "Please don't tell me you're vegetarian or something."