Author's Note: You may enjoy this story more if you've read the preceding chapters (I possibly should have categorized this as Novel/Novella, but it has sf elements), but to summarize: it's the early 2040s, and Paul and Dianne are one of 60 couples competing in the X-rated Reality TV series 'Fucks for Bucks'. They've survived the first round: this is the evening before the second round.
Comments welcome, as always. All characters are 18 or over.
*
Paul groaned as Gudrun sank the 8-ball. "Just be glad we're not paying for money," she said, lining up a shot at the nine.
"I am," he said. "You play this a lot?"
"My husband likes looking at me as I bend over the table. It reminds him of one of his favorite Namio Harukawa drawings. And you might play better if you weren't distracted."
Paul bit his lip and looked away from where a slightly chubby but impressively busty young woman was trying on the shoes that had arrived with the fetishwear, seemingly unaware of showing off her hairy cunt to half the room. "I thought you liked women too," he said quietly.
"I do," she said, pocketing the nine. "But she's a bit young for my taste. I prefer women who know what they're doing, and I'm not sure she's even old enough to know what she wants." She looked at some of the other women who were modeling clothes ahead of the fetishwear fashion show planned for that evening: women in latex, leather or lace; in fishnet bodystockings or crotchless catsuits; in suspender belts and stockings and stripper heels. Candy Rue had donned a corset, Doc Martens decorated with pentacles to match the one tattooed around her navel, and black stockings printed with the word 'Slut'. Khaleesi was wearing a white Stetson, a gunbelt, chaps and cowboy boots. Other women were dressing up as French maids, bridesmaids, milkmaids, barmaids, handmaids, nurses, witches, cheerleaders, cops. "You're not dressing up?"
"I had a look at the outfits they had for men," Paul replied. "It's all Tom of Finland stuff. Not my scene. And women can look good wearing, I don't know, just a hat or a pair of shoes, and men doing that just look ridiculous. You like both women and men; which would you rather look at?"
"Oh, women, of course, but that's partly because straight white men have been told for too long that looking fuckable either doesn't matter or makes you gay. Some people have tried to break that trend and done okay for a while, but you can make a fuckton more selling fashion to women. You see a man who's put some effort into his appearance, paid more than two bits for a haircut, and you assume he's the woman's gay best friend, not her partner."
"I spend money on my suits," Paul protested mildly, "and my haircuts cost eight bits." A bit ($50) wasn't the smallest unit of US currency -- the minimum wage for tipped labor was still $2.13/hour, a Burger King Cheeseburger was only $25, and some items at Walmart still cost $49.99 before tax -- but there weren't many places where it would buy you a cup of coffee.
"To impress women, or to impress your clients?"
"Well... fair point. But I keep in shape, too."
"Uh-huh. But I don't think any of you would have passed the audition without a fuckable-looking partner. And look at the age range here. Oldest man is 68, and his trophy wife is 24. Oldest woman is 49."
Paul conceded that point, too. "So what counts as a hot woman for you?"
"A woman who's hot, for me, is a woman who's hot for me. That's 90 percent of what gaydar is. You see the woman with pink hair?"
"Difficult to miss her."
"Bisexual symbol tat just above where her pubes would have been, but the crosses are bigger than the arrow. I might not have noticed that at a glance, but what I did notice was her looking at me, and that made me look twice. Her nails are done in the colors of the bisexual flag, and like Professor White likes to say, they're just long enough to scratch your back but short enough to fuck your girlfriend."
"You went to Berkeley?"
"What? Oh. No, but I heard her lectures online, and I've seen a lot of her movies."
"Classics." Fuxtel ran an Angela White film festival at least once a year. "I'm going to grab a coffee. You want one?"
"Better make it an iced tea. We might be doing anal tomorrow."
"Peach or lemon?"
"Peach. Thanks. Another game?"
"No, thanks. If I want my butt kicked, I'll ask my wife."
"Please do. I'd like to watch. Especially if she wears a nice pair of boots."
#
The season's first episode of 'Fucks for Bucks: After Dark' started with softcore shots of contestants in the shower or the gym or the rec room (mostly rear angles of women bending over the pool table), but quickly moved onto sex scenes from Saturday and Sunday night. It showed on every screen in the complex, with no options of switching it off, and even the contestants who pretended not to watch sneaked peeks. An edited clip of Khaleesi and Paul sucking and fucking ran for 13 minutes, nearly a quarter of the show, before ending with a close-up of cum oozing from her gape; Paul was glad that his face was barely visible for most of it, but his name appeared below hers in a corner of the screen, and he could almost feel Dianne gritting her teeth as she watched. This was followed by shorter clips: mostly vanilla sex, apart from Tia playing with her enormous breasts while Zac licked her clit, the pink-haired woman fucking Briony with a double dildo, and Candy Rue jerking an older man off with her feet while sitting on his face. The bed assignments came up after the end credits had finished running over a montage of money shots, and even the contestants who'd feigned disinterest in the show drifted towards the nearest screen.
Dianne was disappointed to see that she'd been paired off with another woman, the pink-haired Rouge. "Let me guess," she said, looking at the superheroines and villainesses tattooed on her arms -- Marvel on the left, DC on the right. "You misspelled 'Rogue' on your application?"
The younger woman giggled, and tapped one of her tats. "Actually, that was my boyfriend. We were having a dirty weekend in New Orleans, and he claimed it was because I had a bat symbol here. Bat on Rouge. And it was when I was applying to be a Suicide Girl, not for this place. Just as well, because they already had more Rogues than Rouges. Rouge 66 was already taken, so I went with Rouge 666 when I went pink. You don't have any tats at all?"
"No."
