---Cường’s Perspective---
I’m sitting in Plus Ultra’s Commonroom with Olga, Baorbo, Soo and Niy.
I’ve known Niyol for a long time, we met during the War and have been good friends ever since. Pulling people, barely clinging to life, out of rubble (while making sure you don’t accidentally hurt them worse than the building that just collapsed on them) and treating them together does tend to forge pretty lasting friendships, in my experience!
The other three… well I’m warming up to them and vice-versa.
The trickiest thing is fighting the intense curiosity about why Olga has never had her dwarfism treated… and then fighting the guilt about thinking of it as something that needs to be ‘fixed’, when that’s clearly not how she sees it.
‘First, do no harm…’! If she’s happy with herself the way she is, then it’s not my business to interject my opinion. It seems like she’s really done with people suggesting it should be ‘fixed’ and I’m sure she’s had the benefits of it listed to her by every other person she’s ever met! I just have to keep my mouth shut about it!
There’s not much to say about Baorbo… he’s a 3m tall frogman who barely speaks… he has the baring of a stoic, old man but doesn’t seem unkind in his silence… he sits with us and smiles at our jokes.
Soo… well… Soo’s odd…
She’s a Suigu… she’s also, technically, not a ‘she’, given that her species has no sexes… but the humanoid arrangement, of her transparent blue, gelatinous body, that she typically holds when around us is definitely feminine modelled and she’s indicated that she would prefer ‘she’ to ‘they’ or ‘he’.
Hers was one of the weirder species that I had to treat, during the War.
I understand, more or less, how it works but, instinctively, an amoeba that’s 20kg as opposed to 4μg just doesn’t seem like it should work as a lifeform! She’s literally five billion times more massive than an Earth amoeba!
Don’t even get me started on how she’s sentient without a nervous system! Her entire body is a single cell that’s, effectively, stomach, brain, liver, lungs, heart, nose/mouth and eye all at once but, somehow, it works… it produces an intelligent being.
In my peripheral vision, I can see that her face is turned to me… she always has her face turned to me and I don’t know why! She could look at me with any part of her body… it’s like she’s making a show of ‘looking’ at me… if she were from a sexual species, it would seem like… but she’s not from a sexual species… so it can’t be that!
“I’ve got one…” says Niy, before switching from Navajo to English “…what’s it called when a cowboy dies and gets reborn?”
“I don’t know, what is it called?” asks Olga.
“Reintarnation!” he says with a shiteating grin.
I burst out laughing.
Olga, being Russian, says “That was very funny.” while showing no sign of amusement in her face or voice. (She is amused, though)
Baorbo just smiles his avuncular, closed lipped, smile.
Soo, just keeps staring at me.
“Alright… My turn…” I say, trying to ignore the eyes that aren’t eyes, fixed on me.
I switch to French and say “Darth Vader goes into a boulangerie and asks for three bread and two tartes Tatin… you know why?”
The Humans shake their heads, the other two just look at me.
mf♫ Pain, pain, pain, tarte Tatin, tarte Tatin!♫mf I sing, to the tune of the Imperial March.
This prompts groans from Olga and Niy and… hysterical laughter from… who’s laughing?
I look to Baorbo, who’s just smiling at me… then I notice that Soo is twitching.
I look at her and see that she has arranged her pretty face into a Human grin.
Communicating via a pheromone based language, she doesn’t need to visibly move her mouth or any other part of her to speak… or, in this case… laugh… the effect is somewhat surreal, to hear this intense laughter but see only a grin and a twitch…
The joke really wasn’t that funny!
---later---
I’m sitting in my room, on my own.
I’ve heard that the Triple Ms have a massive… sleep heap where they all sleep together but I’m not sure how seriously I should take that(!)
I’m ruminating on Soo’s odd behaviour towards me.
The way she makes a show of always having her face-not-a-face pointed in my direction, the way she makes herself a more sexy shape when she and I are the only two in the room, the way she laughed, far too hard, at my joke, earlier… there’s something going on.
Could it be simple culture clash? She’s deemed me to be the correct recipient of this behaviour, in this context, for reasons that make sense to her but I’m completely ignorant of?
There’s nothing for it “I just have to talk to Soo…” I say aloud, bringing my hand to my forehead to massage my temples.
“Talk to me about what?” she answers, from behind me, nearly giving me a heart attack.
For a moment I feel like the seventy one year old I am, as opposed to the twenty five year old whose body I inhabit(!)
I shoot to my feet and whip around.
Sure enough, there she is, standing a few paces behind the seat I was sat in looking up at me with that transparent blue face… that gorgeous face…
“FUCKING hell, Soo! Don’t sneak up on me like that!!!”
She affects a cheeky smile and answers “Did you think I was a tiger, or something?” her translated voice layered with mirth.
“No, I didn’t think you were a tiger! Terrans just get jumpy when we think we’re alone and it turns out we’re not! I know it’s less of a problem for you, being squidgy, but I’ve seen gardenworlders get bones broken by sneaking up on Terrans, you know!? It’s not a good idea to startle someone who could hurt you without trying to!” I pause to consider “How… how did you even get in here? I’m pretty sure I locked the door!… I didn’t hear it open…”
“There’s a [3mm] gap underneath it. It took a [minute] or so but I was able to squeeze under… hardest thing to get through was my translator but, once I aligned it edgewise, it fit.” she says, nonchalant.
“…*sigh*… and why?… I have to tell you, to a Terran, purposefully bypassing a locked door, that they’ve put between themself and everyone else, reads as rude, at best!”
“I wanted to talk to you…” she says, simply.
“…about what?”
“You first, what did you want to talk to me about?” she says with a playful cock of her ‘head’.
Is she for real?! “You know, it’s pretty brazen to sneak into a deathworlder’s room, startle them, then get cute with them when they ask you to explain yourself!!!”
She parts her lips, in that facsimile of a smile, and answers “I’m glad you think I’m ‘cute’.”
I stare in disbelief, for a few seconds, before saying “I… just wanted to ask you… why you… why you’ve been weird to me since we met… like, not unpleasant just… strange… why?” with resignation.
She gives a subtle smile and takes a step toward me “You can’t think of… any reason… with that high performance deathworld brain of yours?”
Uncertainly, I take a step back “None that… make sense…! The only thing I can think is that this must be something from Suigu culture that I’m not getting.”
One more step forward from the gorgeous woman and one more step back from me.
“It’s not cultural… What’s the reason that doesn’t make sense?” she asks with feigned innocence.
“Well…” I say, uncomfortably, taking one more step back, matched by a step forward from her “It sort of seems… I mean… it can’t be, but it seems like you’re attracted to me… but your species reproduces asexually, so it can’t be that!”
She smiles and with three steps forward, closes the remaining distance between us. I find myself with a wall at my back and her hands on my chest, her clear blue face looking up into mine.
“Can’t it?” she asks, cockiness gone, replaced with trepidation.
“Uhm, err… it’s… the thing… uuh…” I stammer, stupidly.
I’ve never been popular with the opposite sex! All my life, I’ve been passed over as plain to look at and plain to talk to! Being a Humanitarian Officer is interesting to some… but only for so long.
Sure, it’s not as if I’m a virgin but… no one’s ever shown interest like this!
Contracting herself, widthwise, to extend herself, heightwise, she brings her lips to the level of mine.
She doesn’t breathe, the way I do, but she’s close enough to me that I can feel my own breath reflected back onto my lower face.
She brings her mouth to mine and kisses me, gently, but with clear longing.
I reciprocate, bringing my hands from the wall to her back.
She squashes her front against mine, deforming it… ‘plastically’ isn’t the right word… ‘liquidly’?
A full 30 seconds pass with her facsimile of a mouth pressed against my genuine article, her hand formations moving over my chest and mine moving over the squashy membrane of her back.
My mind is clear, empty, blissful. I think of nothing but the moment… until I don’t…
Bringing my hands to her shoulders, I try to push her away, but find that there’s nothing to push against as they slip over the pliant… flesh(?)
I turn my head to remove it from her mouth and say “Stop… wait… just hang on…”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
She steps back with a look of desperation on her face and says “What’s wrong? Do I not look right?! I can make my boobs bigger if you want?” increasing the size of her chest “My waist thinner?” contracting her waist “Legs longer?” lengthening her legs “Would you prefer a different hairstyle?” cycling through a few “Would you prefer a boy?” morphing her whole appearance to the masculine, her translator rendering her voice huskier, while still recognisably hers “I’ll look however you want!”.
“It’s nothing like that… you’re gorgeous, whatever shape you are… just… I want to know why? I don’t want to seem unappreciative, I’m very glad you seem to be… into me. I just don’t understand!… Why would you be into me? There’s no reproductive reason for you to have romantic or sexual feelings… for anyone! But, if you have them… why would it be for a Human and why especially would it be for this Human? What’s so special about me to spur this behaviour?”
She gives a sad smile and says “You don’t remember… why would you?!… it was just ‘Tuesday’ to you, I’m sure(!)”
“Remember what?”
She doesn’t answer, instead melting into a roughly spherical bubble on the floor… sort of has the effect of making her look like the first enemy you’d fight in a JRPG(!)
I walk to her and stoop, placing my hands on either side of the sphere and scooping it up to hold it against my chest.
I see the disturbance of two ‘eyes’ forming and wheeling up to look at me from the blob, but she says nothing.
I carry her to my bed and, gently, place her down before sitting beside her, putting my hand on top of her in a way I hope is comforting.
“Talk to me… when did we meet and what did I do to get you to feel like this?”
She’s still fixing me with the internal arrangement of photoreceptors that act as eyes.
“You think I’m ‘gorgeous’ like this(?!)” she asks, miserably.
I think for a moment before saying “…Yes… perhaps not exactly sexy but you’re definitely cute.” with, what I hope is, a reassuring smile.
She furrows her eyepatches, suspiciously.
“Vogo’a…” she says, spearing my heart with the bitterest regret of my life.
Vogo’a was the first gardenworld the UTC occupied in our counteroffensive. The casualties were immense, as gardenworlders were terrified of us so, every time we’d approach, there was a good chance that they’d choose the certain death of a long drop or a lazer weapon to the roof of the mouth, over whatever they thought we’d do to them. Not having realised the extent to which biocontainment was necessary, our biowaste rendered that planet uninhabitable, causing millions of refugees. I was there, following the infantry, helping whoever needed help… that was before I met Niyol.
“My [untranslatable concept. Closest approx.: progenitor/forebear/parent/mother] was offered a job on that planet, as an industrial water purifier in military manufacturing, for the War… She decided that, as work was good, she would mitose and me and my [untranslatable concept. Closest approx.: siblings] would all have jobs at the factory she worked at, immediately. Her boss was thrilled at the prospect… she began the process. We thought that there was no way the UTC could break the cordon and, thus, Vogo’a was a safe place for her to reproduce… by the time it turned out that wasn’t the case, it was too late… she couldn’t reverse it… she began splitting as fleets arrived in orbit, my [siblings] and I were born as a battle raged in our district. I half remember my [mother’s] impressions of the monstrous deathworld soldiers, in their black armour, not even seeming to notice being shot with the strongest antimateriel weaponry gardenworlders could produce… the same weapons she’d been employed in the manufacture of. Our house collapsed from an errant artillery shot… my [siblings] were killed. Their membranes were still taut and so they just… popped when the building came down on them. By some providence, I happened to be in a cavity and I was alive… but I couldn’t squeeze through any gaps to get out… I don’t know how long I was there… but I was dying… suffocating… dehydrating… starving… then you came…”
“And… what did I do?” I ask, rapt by her heartbreaking story.
“You picked up the piece of rubble that was acting as the roof of the cavity and tossed it aside, it was like it weighed nothing… you didn’t even notice the weight of the thing that I hadn’t even been able to visibly budge, the thing that I don’t think the strongest Threndian could lift the way you did! It was just something standing between you and me, so it got tossed aside… I was terrified… I recognised you as a Terran, and Terrans were enemies and monsters… my thoughts were addled from my condition and, my [siblings] not having made it, I hadn’t been able to copy the parts of my [mother’s] memory that they had inherited and I hadn’t, so it was just vague impressions of ‘bad’, ‘scary’, ‘enemy’, ‘monster’, ‘death’ in my mind but, articulating it now, I think I assumed that you were going to eat me and I’d be melted in that vat of acid you, just casually, carry around inside you(!) I would have tried to escape, if I’d had any strength left but I didn’t so, when you picked me up I resigned myself to die… then you splashed me with water and gave me a piece of chocolate… I didn’t understand why you weren’t being monstrous but, having some strength now, I tried to escape. You calmly held me with one hand and, every time I squeezed through your fingers, you caught me with the other… you didn’t have a translator so I couldn’t understand what you were saying but I think you were trying to be soothing. You brought me to a tent and I lived the first [years] of my life on Terran occupied worlds… because of you. It’s only because of you that I’m alive at all…!”
My mind is wheeling with words like ‘nightingale effect’, ‘suspension bridge effect’, ‘Stockholm syndrome’ and ‘imprinting’…
“I’m sorry, Soo, I really don’t remember this… You’re sure it was me? Couldn’t be a case of mistaken identity?” I ask, apologetically.
She shakes her eyes from side to side, within her bubble, to mimic a ‘no’ “It was definitely you, Cu! You looked a bit older but there’s no mistaking the [smell/taste] of the first thing I ever [smelled/tasted] that wasn’t rubble! I’m sure you don’t remember it because you saved a dozen other people that day and a dozen more the next… why would you remember a tennisball sized blob who was one of maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of lives that you’ve personally saved?”
“It… is true that, those first few weeks of the occupation, I was utterly run off my feet… our projections had really underestimated the extent of the devastation, so there simply weren’t enough Humanitarians sent. I actually fainted from exhaustion a few times… I might not remember you. It would have had to be in the first few days, if I gave you chocolate… someone sent a rescue into toxic shock with chocolate, early on, so after that we were advised not to feed anyone anything until it was determined what might kill them. You’re lucky your species is one of the handful who have higher general toxin resistance than Humans(!)”
I think for a moment further “OK, but where did this become romantic?… I understand, if you feel like you owe me your life, feeling grateful but… Suigu don’t… well you don’t… err…”
“[Fuck]?” she asks.
“Well, I was trying not to put it like that but, yeah. Am I missing something?”
At this she morphs back into the shape of a gorgeous Human woman, her mouth bent in a mirthless smile, her eyes cast down, her arms on the bed, supporting her torso.
“Never underestimate the mimeticism of Terran culture… if we’d been occupied by any other species the best we could have hoped for was to be ignored… when your faeces rendered Vogo’a a toxic hellscape, we expected you’d leave us to die… like any other occupiers would… no other species would have gone to the effort of evacuating occupied populations of species they were at War with… if they did, they certainly wouldn’t waste resources on setting up refugee housing, schooling, entertainment… every Terran film I watched in that refuge (and since) every time there was a romance… I’d imagine you and I as the ones on screen… I may not, biologically, be capable of an orgasm, I may not need a partner for reproduction but that doesn’t mean I can’t love! And now… the universe has delivered you to me… the Superman to my Lois Lane… I want to be with you and I want you to let me love you!” she says, almost defiant at that last.
I bring my hand to her shoulder, it’s time to manage expectations “Alright, Soo, I’m very flattered but…”
Her face falls in horror and she tries to speak.
“Let me finish… I just need to tell you; the person you’ve been imagining me as, for 30+ years, is almost certainly not who I am! You’ll very likely be very disappointed if you’re anticipating I’ll live up to all your expectations… If your expectations around love are built on films… you might have some, shall we say, unrealistic ideas. In films, it’s usually all about the chase, the credits role when both the lovers accept eachother because that’s the happy end people want to see. In reality, love is an achievement. It’s not something you win, it’s something you build… as I said, I think you’re gorgeous but that’s attraction, not love, I can’t love you because I don’t really know you… you think you love me but that’s infatuation, not love. You’ve known me for a grand total of one rescue and a few weeks since we left port… you don’t love me, you love the idea of me.”
Her face hangs, miserable and dejected.
“But…” I say, causing her to perk back up, slightly.
“If you’re happy to try… I wouldn’t mind trying to build love with you… you’ll just have to bear with all the times when I’m more Clark Kent than Superman(!) I’m warning you now, that will be a lot!”
Joy breaks across her face.
“Alright… I don’t know what love is… show me!” she says, mischievously.
---Soo’s perspective---
I bring my hands to the collar of his shirt and begin unbuttoning it. I always imagined him in his red and white Humanitarian garb for this, like he was when he treated me, but, well, it’s the man I want, not the clothes!
He smirks “Err, Soo… sex is not equal to love…”
I smirk back “So you don’t want to have sex?”
“I didn’t say that…(!)” he chuckles.
I bring his shirt over his shoulders and he begins unbuckling his belt before pulling off his trousers shortly followed by his pants.
Entirely nude now, he pulls himself fully onto the bed.
I follow him, crawling on my hands and knees, the way a Human would.
Without exchanging memories with my [siblings] it took me [years] to relearn this level of control over my shapeshifting and [years] longer to get my humanoid shape just right but… as I [smell/taste] his skin through my hands… I have to say it was worth every second of workshopping I did in front of the mirror.
“Did you just make your boobs bigger?” he says with wry suspicion.
“I don’t know… why don’t you feel them(?) Check for yourself(?)” I grin.
He laughs at that… then he puts his hands on my chest… he’s so delicious!
Morphing through his hands, I take him by surprise with a kiss-attack.
His saliva [smells/tastes] just as good as his skin… but not the same… I might be tempted to explore further… if I weren’t worried about the, however remote, possibility of causing him to gag to the extent that I make him vomit… there’s absolutely no way that my membrane keeps it’s integrity in the face of pH1 hydrochloric acid!
I can’t die right now, even if I’d die happy… I have a love to ‘build’.
I feel his cock start to stiffen, against my crotch.
It’s… definitely not the longest or thickest cock I’ve ever had but that doesn’t matter to me.
Every other cock I’ve ever had was just a substitute for his. It’s not as if I need him to fill me up to orgasm(!)… I just need to make him orgasm and I can do that no matter how impressive (or otherwise) his cock is. It’s the man I want, not the cock!
I press myself against his hips, enveloping his, now very hard, cock into me.
He shudders.
I smile and without ceasing our kiss, ask “Good?”
“Uhuksvektud!” he says, mouth muffled by mine.
It’s interesting that, even though translators work by thought, if you perceive yourself to have spoken incoherently, that’s what gets transmitted!
I begin undulating ripples of my membrane, drawing his cock deeper inside me, causing him to shudder more intensely.
[Fuck]! He [tastes/smells] so [fucking] good! I don’t envy Human women, who’d have to choose between [tasting] his mouth, skin or cock! Suck it, bitches! I can have all three at once!… Can… and am!
I redouble my internal ripples and he exhales hard enough to inflate my mouth, to twice the volume I had it before, with air pressure alone!
He grasps my arse and I [taste/smell] his hands through my cheeks.
He’s mine!… He’s finally mine!… I found him!… I have him!… It only took [33 years]! 2.2 trillion Humans… and I found him… he didn’t have a wife or husband… he didn’t find it gross to think of [fucking] a woman, made of blue jelly!
He didn’t even give me instructions on how he wanted me to look, the way so many of the substitutes for him have, over the [years]!
He told me I was ‘gorgeous whatever shape I was’… sure he may not have been turned on by me in my unaltered, bubble form but… he called it ‘cute’.
I know he told me I’d be disappointed if I expected him to live up to my every fantasy of him but… thus far, he’s lived up to the man I imagined him to be!
Kind, sweet, selfless… he’s on his way to a deathworld, seemingly just because he genuinely wants to help… I’m only going because the career I chose (in hopes of meeting him) meant that I had to.
He might be worried that he won’t be the man I expect him to be but… I also need to be the woman he deserves me to be!
I break my lips from his and make a show of throwing my head back, as if in ecstasy.
I am ecstatic, of course, but it’s really more of an emotional ecstasy than a physical one. That being said, just because evolution screwed me out of the chance at an orgasm doesn’t mean I get to be placid… he deserves to see how much I’m enjoying this.
I start to augment my internal motion, with external, bouncing my arse against his hips.
His pheromones are telling me that he’s most of the way there so I decide to pull a manoeuvre.
Without releasing my hold on his cock, I melt my torso and legs through my arse and reform my head with my mouth at his manhood, bobbing up and down in the same rhythm I had when it was my vagina.
I form up some photoreceptors to admire the face of pleasure he has.
He places his hand at the back of my head, not trying to push himself deeper into my mouth, just there, as if in appreciation.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” I ask, without removing my mouth from his member.
He gives a mirthful exhale “Bit weird when you talk to me while my brain is telling me my glans is clogging your glottis… but not unpleasant… there’s no straight man who wouldn’t be ‘enjoying himself’ with the lips of a gorgeous woman wrapped around his cock!”
“I can tell…! Your precum [tastes/smells] delicious, by the way(!)”
His face flushes but, visually and pheromonally, I can tell his pleasure is building to the point where it’s difficult for him to articulate.
I decide to break the simple upward ripple motion, of my membrane, into a dance of nodules moving in a coordinated vortex with, at once, synchronicity and unpredictability.
His muscles tense and I can [taste/smell] his pleasure, pheromonally, before it actually arrives.
I encapsulate his cum in a bubble of my membrane and absorb it.
I still may never have had an orgasm… but, swallowing Cu’s semen… I think I might have an idea of what it’s like(!)
---Cường’s Perspective---
The most gorgeous woman I’ve ever encountered… now has a bubble of my emission inside her, visible through her transparent flesh.
“Err, how long will it take to digest that?” I ask, slightly worried.
She smiles “Four or five hours until it’s not recognisable.”
“Damn… you want to sleep here, with me?”
Beaming now, she responds “I’d like nothing more… perhaps we could have breakfast together… I’ve always wanted to try pancakes…”