"Kee-rist fuckdamn," Guzza muttered, awed.
I looked at him, wearily. It was too fucking hot for this shit.
RustBucket is the closest thing to civilization left in the Wasteland, as far as I know, outside of warlord citadels or rover camps. Cobbled together corrugated iron shacks, small lean-tos of scrap lumber tents of canvass and hide, a small city of flotsam and jetsam in the middle of the desert, a hodge-podge modern-day Gomorrah. The babble of dozens of languages filled your ears the moment you entered; English and Spanish and Chinese and a couple Native languages too.
There was shade all around, from canvas canopies and metal overhangs, but fuck me if it didn't feel hotter than it did out there in the fucking desert. The sun was fucking beating down like it hated my ass, and while my hooded scarf kept it out of my eyes it trapped sweat and heat in. The hard-packed dirt underneath us reflected the heat right back at us, leaving us caught between a frying pan and a fire. The town stank like ass, too, from all the unwashed traders and slavers crowding its streets, and from the drunks marinating themselves in rogut and paint fumes at the local cantina.
Put that together with the headache I was getting from too much Blue Ruin at the Gutted Raider, and yeah, I was not in the fucking mood for Guzza pointing to shit and saying 'Look, mommy! I saw a thing! Lookit!' Look, he's a standup guy, and hell on wheels in a scrap, but goddamn does he have the attention span of a fucking mayfly sometimes.
We go way back, ok? He and I did some fighting for Warlord Rectus Rectum (yeah, that was his name, and yeah, he earned it in multiple ways) years ago back when we were dumfuck teenagers, then met up again a year or so after Rectus got hisself impaled on a steel pole from ass to mouth for crossing the Vulvalingas to do some caravan guarding, before joining up with the raider gang that ambushed us ten miles out of RustBucket. Traitors, you say? Survivors, more like. There's not much honor in the Wasteland. You do watcha gotta, or wind up like the traders did: your heads on spikes on a raider's fender, your goods in his trunk, and your meat in his stew pot (and his meat in your wife or daughter).
Hence us being here, doing some genu-fucking-ine legitimate trading on behalf of the Horsemeat Gang, who had an idiot for a leader and quite possibly the stupidest name since the Dickcheese Crazies all bought it trying to raid an old oil rig and got wasted by the remnants of the U.S. military. Long story. Apparently involved killer robots, I shit you not. I'll tell you some other time.
Anyway, Guzza and I had our asses parked on a set of ATVs hitched up to rickety old carts fulla supplies, just gently motoring our way on outa town, trying not to start shit by running anyone over, while also looking don't-fuck-with-me enough so that they wouldn't start shit with us. Handy skill to have in places like this. To be fair, there was a pole with the battleflag of the Horsemeat gang (horse skull and crossed drumsticks; yeah, I know) sticking up from the back of my ATV, and that probably scared away most trouble.
"What?" I growled, over the low grumble of the engine.
"Shit, didja see that! Cutcher engine, hold up!" Dumbass suited action to word, pulling over and frantically gesturing for me to do the same.
For fuck sake, Guzza. If this was him following his pecker again, I swear to- "What?" I repeated, pulling the ATV over, parking it under a tattered canvas overhang and knocking a vendor's case of mutfruit. A glare and a hand on my sword hilt made him fuck off with his complaints.
Guzza pointed, back at the auction block. I looked. A few slaves up for barter, these ones offered by the Bloodmouth gang. Huh, didn't know they even did slaving. Hardcore fuckers, I suppose they could capture the best merchandise if they put their minds to it. "Okay," I said patiently, "Slave. What about it? Boss Hoss doesn't do slaves, you heard him." One thing I agreed with that jock-brain on. Slaving's bad business, buying or selling. Always gotta watch your back for a knife, everyone hates you, you hate yourself, and you gotta pay a mint to feed 'em. Even leaving aside morals, slaves are the lazy idiot solution to manpower shortage.
"Yeah, but you should see this one!"
Oh, Kee-rist, he's thinking with his cock again. I swear, half the trouble I get into comes from tagging along with Guzza during those times his balls climb outta their sack and hijack his brain. To be fair, those times did usually lead to us dropping some hefty payloads in some mighty fine varied terrain, so an ill wind and all that shit.
"Dicksucking lips, tight ass in leather pants, fucking cheekbones, man!" I couldn't see his expression under that gasmask he always wore, but I'll bet he was drooling.
"And way outside what we can buy with pocket change, idiot," I replied. I squinted. The black-haired one? With the- was that an undercut? Was that a gal or a fella? Not that either of us ever cared. "Unless you've been saving up so's you can buy yourself something wet to wick." Hah. Saving? As if.
"We can look, right?"
Oh, why the fuck not? We did our work for the day, and Boss Hoss could fucking wait for a bit. Besides, the drive back would be scorching, and there was goddamn shade and maybe even some complementary aqua-cola on offer. Didn't we deserve some goddamn entertainment?
What's the worst that could happen?
~o0o~
"Annnnnd for this fine piece of posterial pulchritude, this magnificent meritrix, this capital catamite, the bidding starts at thirty trade tokens or equivalent! We accept Citadel aqua credit chits, gallon canisters of guzz, or ingots of stainless!"
Bad alliteration aside, this wasn't that bad at all. People watching at these kind of things had a certain appeal. A nicely varied crowd of bidders; here a fancy-pants trader probably come from New Vegas in a patched leisure suit, there a raging feral in tattered rags, and over there some sort of weird crow-thing with a bone-white mask and bladed gloves whose sharp fingers clacked together nervously. The crowd of watchers, too poor to bid but enjoying the show like us, was even more varied,
Bidding rose sharply, and the Bloodmouths looked content, if bored, behind their red half-face masks. These rich fucks were desperate for a slice of this ass, and I didn't blame them. A fella, it turned out, real gorgeous femboy style of thing. Not a trace of whisker on his face, eyeshadow and eyeliner and fuck me if I didn't reckon there was lipstick on his gorgeous bj lips. Hair in an undercut, chest hidden behind a leather vest but not a trace of muscle on his arms; peach-like ass squeezed into leather pants that looked painted on.
He was doing a little shimmy up on stage, not quite a bump and grind, ass gyrating round and round, asscheeks like two coconuts in a sack, a wicked half-smile on his face.
A fucking flower in the desert.
God, I was popping a stiffy already, and they hadn't even gotten down to the demonstration yet.
Yeah, the demonstration, the reason Guzza was sticking around. You see, no one was going to pay that much fucking cash for for a slice of ass alone. What was on offer wasn't just an ass and a set of lips, no, this was something more valuable: a trained sex slave, an eager master of multiple methods of sexual gratification. Whether you had a cock or a cunt, this twink could have it fucking gushing in two minutes flat with just his pinky finger, or your money back.
With those kind of claims, you don't work on the honor system. You have to demonstrate it. Naturally, they'd have the boy demonstrate on one of their own; no sense risking him catching something from one of this lot before the buyer even took him home. I tried to guess which one it would be. Sure as fuck not the auctioneer, who was a waleyed scrawny fuck in a long coat. The shirtless brute with the polearm? The thin one with kohl under his eyes who kept swapping a switchblade back and forth from one hand to the other? The crossbow-wielding lady in the headscarf?
"Aaannndddd do I hear a hundr- oh, yes! Ladies and gentlemen, friends and enemies, we have a bid of one hundred trade token equivalents, and as promised, we are delighted and overjoyed to pause the bidding to demonstrate our fine little tease's"- for, indeed, the twink had been pouting and twirling and puckering his lips and turning and bending just right- "salacious, salubrious, sensual, sensational, sexual skillset!"
"Ah, shit yeah!" Guzza shouted, to the approving laughs of the crowd. The crow-thing made a weird "Ah-ah-ah-ah" that was probably approving, but who can shredding tell with those things? Only thing worse than a crow-thing is a frog muto, you ask me. Not that I hate all mutos, don't ever think that. Why, I once had myself a whore with three whole titties. Apparently the brothel had one with four, but that's just plain wrong in my opinion.