Seven Deadly Queens (The FuBar Book 3)

by Jess Whitecroft

  Adam snorted and lay back. “They were not. It’s like Helena says – it’s easy to tell fortunes, because people are self-obsessed. They want to recognize themselves in everything. Horoscopes are the exact same thing.”

  “Says the most typical Aries ever,” said Ryan. “Come on, how did Justin wind up with a fortune cookie that said ‘Live life like you’re on the bottom, even when you’re on top’?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe fortune cookie factories are hotbeds of voracious power bottoms.”

  “What did yours say?”

  Adam sighed, knowing this wasn’t going to help his argument. “‘A short person will bring blessings into your life.’”

  “Aha. See?”

  “No. You see what you want in it, Ryan. If Rose wasn’t around then I’d assume it meant Helena. She’s only five foot eight.”

  “Right. And Rose gets a fortune cookie that says ‘Every flower blooms in its time.’” Rose hadn’t been impressed at being the one to get ‘the Zen koan fortune.’ “Don’t you think that’s kind of eerie?”

  “Not really,” said Adam. “If Hu had opened a fortune cookie that said ‘You can never have too many smoke detectors, and by the way, you are not Spiderman,’ then maybe we might have something supernatural to talk about.” He lay back, enjoying the touch of Ryan’s strong hands moving up and down his thigh. “What did yours say?”

  “I thought it was stupid?” said Ryan, with a teasing smile. He pushed Adam’s knees apart and leaned in for a kiss. He was straining the limits of that gift ribbon.

  “It is, but tell me anyway.”

  “‘You will marry your lover.’”

  Adam felt the blood rush to his face. “Well, that’s definitely stupid,” he said. “They didn’t even specify which one.”

  Marriage. Jesus. Way to hatch a bombshell out of a fortune cookie. Adam thought he’d skimmed over the awkward moment, but Ryan knew him better than most, and laughed. “You should see your eyes right now,” he said, pulling off the Santa hat. His hair stood up in a tousled blond fluff at the back. “Talk about a Bunny in the headlights.”

  “Ry, I love you, but…”

  “Relax,” said Ryan. “It’s a fortune cookie, not a marriage proposal.”

  “Yeah. I gotta be honest with you, I wasn’t planning on moving that fast.”

  “I know. When are you going to move in with me?”

  Adam half-playfully swatted Ryan with the discarded Santa hat. “Not tonight, Josephine. Be nice. I’ve got a very stressful day ahead tomorrow. I’ve gotta dress up like a cross between Beetlejuice and Joan Crawford, soothe an anxious drag virgin, and play nice with Venus fucking Envy. While wielding an ax.”

  “Is the ax really necessary?”

  “Uh, duh. My entire concept is ax-focused.”

  “I know that, but try not to go Lizzie Borden on the Instagram queen, huh? I know she’s kind of annoying—”

  “—kind of annoying? On a scale of what? Anne Hathaway’s Oscar thirst phase? Donald Trump Junior?”

  “Just…try not to bury an ax in her spine, okay? For me.” Ryan smoothed his thumbs over Adam’s eyebrows. “And try to relax.”

  Adam sighed. “I know, baby. I’ll be so glad when this is all over. I’ll need a holiday to get over the holidays at this rate.” He closed his eyes and groaned as Ryan rubbed his temples. “You know, this time last year I was lying awake at night thinking that I’d be destitute by spring, and look at me now. A whole new different kind of stress.”

  “Stop it,” said Ryan. “You bitch now, but you’ll be bored out of your mind when everyone’s doing January detoxes and don’t come to the bar.”

  “Oh, I won’t. I’ll be glad of the rest. And maybe Justin will have finished his dick fast by then.”

  “Dick fast?”

  “What else are you gonna call it?” said Adam.

  “‘Trying to win a bet’?”

  “Dick fast is snappier.” Adam settled back happily on the pillows as Ryan slid south. “I can’t believe he got into that shit with Helena just when he was DTF. It’s so unfa-a-air…oh, what is your tongue doing down there?”

  Ryan pushed his hands under Adam’s ass, lifting him up to his mouth. Adam moaned and wrapped his legs around Ryan’s shoulders, fighting the urge to thrust. “So I guess you’ve abandoned all pretence of moisturizing me?”

  Ryan hummed gently around a mouthful, then released Adam, making it deliberately sloppy. His spit gleamed on Adam’s dick. “Oh, I think you’re adequately moist right now,” he said.

  Adam physically flinched. “Well, that was a jarringly disgusting sentence,” he said.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened there.”

  “And you’re usually so good at dirty talk.”

  With an malevolent grin, Ryan reached for the tub of cold cream. “Maybe I should stick with moisturizing,” he said.

  Adam let out a small shriek, knowing what was coming next, but Ryan was kneeling heavily on the kimono, holding him in place. A blob of moisturizer landed on his crotch with a splat. “That’s freezing, you asshole.”

  “Not for long,” Ryan said, untying the gift ribbon. Adam moaned as the warm weight of his body settled on top, Ryan’s erection gliding through the mess of moisturizer, rubbing up against Adam. The slipperiness was instantly delicious, and Adam sucked greedily on Ryan’s tongue as he thrust up to meet him. “There,” Ryan whispered, his lips against the corner of Adam’s mouth. “Not so freezing now, huh?”

  Adam groaned. “Let me up a bit,” he said, wriggling his legs out from under Ryan, so that he could wrap them around them. Ryan made a gorgeous growling noise and ran his hand up the length of Adam’s thigh. “Your legs are so fucking beautiful,” Ryan said, and Adam crossed his ankles behind Ryan’s back, and gave himself over to pleasure.

  10

  “Look up…that’s it…don’t blink.”

  “You’re like, literally poking me in the eye with a pencil,” said Justin, once again trying to focus his eyes on the ceiling so Helena could apply eyeliner to his ‘waterline’, whatever the fuck that was. “How am I not supposed to blink?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t. And relax, for the love of God. I’ve never painted anyone so goddamn twitchy before.”

  “Yeah, but most of the people you painted were dead. Is that why you don’t understand how blinking works?”

  Helena sat back and sighed. She’d ditched the sexy librarian look for bored, horny housewife – shortie pink nightie, extremely frilly panties and a pair of white bunny slippers with pale pink marabou puffs on the ends of their ears. Her natural red hair was in pin-up girl curls, all carefully arranged around a propped-up sleep mask that said THE BITCH IS SLEEPING in silver letters. She looked beautiful, but smelled kind of weird. “Okay,” she said. “Where is all this anxiety coming from?”

  “Um…I’m wearing pantyhose and a padded bra,” said Justin. “Where do you think?”

  The pantyhose was a compromise. He’d tried to do the tuck thing, but the sensation of popping a nad back inside his body had made him so queasy he’d had to lie down. Shit just wasn’t right, he’d said. That was not a natural situation for testicles.

  So Helena had handed him a ‘gaff’ – a thing that looked like a cross between an athletic support and a slingshot – and now his favorite parts were squished between his thighs and sweating under three pairs of pantyhose. His ass had been padded, his bra was full of silicone chicken fillets and his hair was flattened under a stocking cap. Here he was, sitting in a booth in his own fucking bar, currently occupying the strange, wigless no-mans land between man and woman, a place where even the cutest drag queens usually looked their worst.

  Meanwhile Rose was up on the stage, doing some kind of Flashdance thing on the burlesque swing. And there was no no-mans-land about Rose. If you didn’t know you would have sworn she was a girl, even undressed as she was in something like a gold version of the diamond outfit from the Bad Romance video. Her hair, with
the help of some matching extensions, touched the floor as she leaned back, a string of fake diamonds between her teeth. Her gold-tipped eyelashes trembled. Every inch of her body was covered in glitter.

  “That’s it, darling,” Sheila was saying, snapping away. “Give me ecstasy. Give me dollar signs behind the eyes. You wank to your bank balance, baby.”

  Justin couldn’t even hide behind the excuse of being a drag virgin, because Rose was an unknown baby drag queen and she was clearly fucking killing it. Over by the window Tess – all wig and boobs in a purple Marie-Antoinette inspired get up – was carefully applying a blood spatter effect to Bunny’s make-up, which was a full white Sharon Needles face, with razor sharp eyebrows, dark red glitter lips and crazy eyes. They were still waiting on Pride – Misty Meanors – and naturally Venus was snatching the diva’s privilege of arriving late, but so far they all looked so goddamn good.

  “What if I suck?” said Justin. In the end that was what he was really afraid of, because drag queens could be evil. Bunny and Helena called one another cunts and whores and bitches all the time, and they were friends. Those who weren’t friends got tagged with things like ‘oxygen thief’, ‘late-term abortion’ and ‘haunted thirst puppet.’ “What if I look like a boy in a dress?”

  Helena batted her false lashes. “I think you underestimate my make-up skills,” she said, reaching for the eyeshadow palette. “I’ve made motorcycle crash victims fit for open casket viewings. Hiding your piercing holes is no challenge at all.” There was a strange fluttering sound from the stage, and they both turned to look. Sheila’s blond twins were firing money guns at Rose, making fake hundred dollar bills rain down all over her.

  “What’s with the studmuffins?” said Helena.

  “I don’t know. Sheila showed up with them Christmas Eve.”

  “Lucky ducky. Imagine being the filling in that sandwich.”

  Justin glared. “You can’t sabotage me, you know. I’ve resisted temptation this far.”

  “I was not trying to sabotage you, and I’m offended that you’d think I would.”

  “You would,” said Justin.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I would,” said Helena. “I’m sorry. I get a little bit Tonya Harding sometimes. I gotta watch that. I won’t mention any more sandwiches.” She got an evil twinkle in her eye. “Especially not your favorite.”

  Justin sniffed. What was that smell? “It’s funny you should say that, but I could totally go for a sandwich right now. Is Primanti Brothers open today?”

  “Stop it. You cannot eat Primantis in drag. It’s altogether too much sandwich to cram in a painted mouth. The only worst thing you can eat in drag is spaghetti.”

  “Why?” said Justin, but before he could figure out the logistics of eating spaghetti in drag, Bunny came over. She was in a red and black gown, with a high neck, long sleeves and a floor length chiffon skirt. The hair was black and white and big, Ursula the Sea Witch meets Beetlejuice.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “You look like Tallulah Bankhead and you haven’t even got the wig on yet. Trust you to do a Garbo eye, Helena.”

  “What eye?” said Justin, once again feeling like a canvas.

  “It’s that white sweep of shadow up towards the brow,” said Bunny. “Greta Garbo swore by it to add depth to the eye.”

  “Marilyn, too,” said Helena, busy with the brush. She sat back and glanced down at Bunny’s feet. “Are you wearing sneakers under there?”

  Bunny perched on the other side of the booth. “For now. Is my hem dragging?”

  “A bit.”

  “Shit,” Bunny said. Her eyes looked crazier than usual, and it took Justin a moment to realize she was wearing Halloween contact lenses that whited out most of her eyes, except for a black ring around the edge of the iris. She lifted one foot and poked at the ankle. Her fingertip left an impression in the flesh, like bread dough.

  “Yikes. What did you do?” said Helena.

  “I have no idea. Like, I spent next to no time on my feet yesterday, and it still swelled up like the Goodyear blimp. Do you think Sheila can film me from the shins up?”

  “I guess. At least it’s a floor length skirt.”

  “Tell me about it. I’d be screwed if I had to prance around in my underwear like Rose.”

  “Doesn’t she look hot, though?”

  “Oh my God. Crazy hot. Edible. Like one of those high end gilded candies.”

  “Venus is gonna shit,” said Bunny, with an evil grin. “Assuming she even shows up.”

  “And Misty,” said Helena, motioning that Justin should get up now. The dress was hanging on the back of the door. Showtime, apparently.

  “No, Misty’s on her way. She had to take the T across town in full make-up and a trenchcoat.”

  “Have you seen it? She’s been so mysterious about how she’s gonna do Pride.”

  “I got a peek,” said Bunny, as they hustled Justin into the gown. Seriously, what the fuck was that smell coming from Helena? “And it looks hilarious. Oh my God, Justin – your ass in this thing.”

  “It’s not my ass,” he said. “You built this ass out of foam rubber.”

  “I know. I’m a genius. You look like Jessica Rabbit from the rear already. Are we about ready for the wig?”

  “You betcha.” Helena took the blond wig from the stand on the bar. As she passed, Justin heard Bunny sniff.

  “Helena, what in the world is that smell?”

  “What smell?”

  “You smell it, too?” said Justin. “Thank God. I thought I was having a stroke.”

  “Uh uh,” said Bunny, helping him put on the wig. “It’s not just you. It’s…it’s food. Someone smells like food, and I don’t just mean Tess.”

  “Say what?” said Tess, part of whose Gluttony costume was a large tray of lavishly frosted cupcakes.

  “Oh, it wasn’t a read, honey. I was just saying that I could smell your cupcakes.”

  Tess raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, settle down, Multiple Miggs. That’s gotta be walking the line of workplace sexual harassment.”

  “It’s not cupcakes,” said Justin, sniffing. “It’s like, buttery. Oily.”

  “Sandwichey,” said Bunny.

  “It’s mayonnaise,” said Helena. “Okay? It’s fucking mayonnaise.”

  That obviously meant something, because Bunny’s mouth fell open in an ‘ohh’ of perfect understanding. “Well, your hair looks gorgeous.”

  Helena snorted and adjusted Justin’s curls. “Except for the smell. I shampooed it like three times to get the mayo stank off me, but Hu says I still smell like a footlong.”

  Justin heard Rose’s voice behind him. “Hey, can we turn the heating…oh…oh wow.”

  He turned. Rose stood shivering in a ratty old hotel robe, her gold-lipped mouth hanging open.

  “What?” said Justin.

  “Holy shit. Have you seen yourself?”

  “Bad?”

  “No, honey,” said Bunny, steering Justin towards the nearest full length mirror. “Quite the opposite.”

  He didn’t recognize himself at first. These days he tended to take it for granted that boys turned into girls, because he’d seen them in every stage of transformation. He no longer did that gasp that people did when they clocked Helena’s Instagram, and saw the night and day difference between the stubbled, plaid-shirted boy next-door and the glittery burlesque queen with the tiger eyes and blazing red hair. The magic wasn’t the same when you’d seen queens flat footed in pantyhose, or belching like men while they adjusted their tits.

  But this? He had no idea who this person was, this hourglass blonde siren with an Old Hollywood face. Arched brows and a dark, china doll mouth. And cheekbones. Jesus, had he always had those?

  “She’s a man-eater, honey,” said Bunny. “Look at those eyes.”

  “You think I should cover the tattoos?” said Helena, fussing over the figure in the mirror.

  “Nah. That body make-up just makes a mess. Besides, Sheila can get rid of the
m digitally if she hates them. I kind of like them. I’m getting an Angelina vibe from them.”

  “Angelina?” said Rose, pulling a face. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Bunny. “You’re too young to remember, but I’m thinking Angelina in her playing-with-knives-and-stealing-your-husband phase.”

  “Wearing blood vials around her neck and fucking Billy Bob Thornton in limos,” said Helena. “Justin, would you fuck Billy Bob Thornton in a limo?”

  Justin gave her a look, and was astonished to see that the woman in the mirror delivered a simultaneous sideeye. “Are you kidding? I’d fuck the limo right now.”

  Sheila came over and clocked Justin. “Fuck me. It’s like Jessica Rabbit and Marlene Dietrich had a baby and dipped her in the purest essence of Slut. Helena, you have outdone yourself with that make-up.”

  Helena dipped a comic curtsey in her bunny slippers. “Thank you. Dress by Rose, tits, ass and hair by Bunny.”

  “And I’m in here somewhere,” said Justin.

  “You look stunning,” said Sheila. “I think you might be turning me straight. I’m so confused.”

  “Well, that makes two of us.”

  Sheila laughed. “Come on, Norma. We’re ready for your close-up. Speaking of which, what are we calling her?”

  “Justine,” said Bunny, in a French accent. “No last name. Like the Marquis de Sade’s muse.”

  “Oh, it’s perfect.”

  Justin wobbled towards the stage on his red high heels. Hadn’t got the hang of those yet. “I know she walks like the Bride of Frankenstein,” he heard Bunny say. “But you can’t have everything.”

  There was a large mattress on the stage. It was covered in a sleazy expanse of creased black satin. The twin studmuffins were applying body glitter to one another.

  “You remember Trey and David, don’t you?” said Sheila. “They’re going to be working with you.”

  “Working?” Justin said.

  Sheila shrugged. “Okay. ‘Devoured by’ is probably more accurate,” she said. “Think of them as your prey. You’re a starving sex vampire who needs to feed. Lie on the mattress. That’s it. No, leave your shoes on for now. I think we need some high heels digging into backs, if that’s okay with you boys?”