Calley's Chrysalis

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Note #2: And finally, thanks to volunteer Literotica editor TheNyxianLily for her help with editing.)

Calley awoke and looked over a chronometer on the room's wall to see she had slept a little over six hours. Never being one to lie around in bed, she rose and went to take her robe out of the storage unit when she saw that another of Alezanna's, a pale green one, had been moved to Calley's side. She smiled to herself and made a mental note to thank her shipmate for the gift as soon as she saw her. She also wondered what gift she could get the Bellixan. Clothes were out of the question, as anything Calley bought the fashionable mechanic wouldn't meet her high standards. A new garment stitcher was likewise a bad idea, as the young medic knew little about them overall. And she could already hear Alezanna's voice explaining that you don't buy an artist new tools, you let them choose the tools they use for themselves.

She continued to ponder the question as she grabbed the green robe and a pair of her own underwear of a matching shade. She made her way around the aft of the ship to the bathroom where she proceeded with her daily hygiene rituals. Being in the bathroom made her think about the previous day's sex with Sal. She wondered if she would have time for more with him today but doubted it as his watch would probably be beginning too soon. Unbidden, her mind re-examined the events with him in the last few days. She tried to heed his advice not to think about their relationship too much, but there was something about it nagging at her. She replayed what happened in her head and the more she did, the more she realized she'd need to talk to him to figure out the puzzle bothering her.

Her shower done, she slipped on the robe and her underwear before making her way to the galley. She found Sal sitting in the nearby communications station reading something from the ship's computer library. He was dressed in a closed black robe and a pair of green slippers. Calley had always noticed that while she and Alezanna usually went around the ship barefoot, Sal almost always wore slippers on the cold deckplates. It was the one way he was different than most spacers she'd encountered in her travels. "Good morning," she told him as she went to him and gave him a quick kiss.

"Good afternoon," he replied. Neither was referring to any particular time of day, as the Ravenfang was in deep space with no planetary revolution to reference. Spacers usually greeted each other by referencing how far away their duty shift on the ship's watch was. Since Sal's was coming up sooner than Calley's, it was her morning, his afternoon and Alezanna's evening.

"What's our status?" she asked him as she went to the galley's shelves and started putting together her breakfast.

"Normal," he said before correcting himself. "Well, about as normal as it gets for this run. We got the ship pointed in the right direction and sent out our last zaireon pulse right after you went to bed. Alez took the watch and is looking over the data. She hasn't reported any problems so we should be able to get underway again soon."

As she poured herself some vitamilk, Calley asked, "When you say 'our last pulse', do you mean it as our most recent or that we should get to Rangxu after this jump?"

"Based on how far we've come so far, I think this'll be our last puddle jump."

"One way or another."

Sal rolled his eyes as he told her, "Oh Gods, not you too! Bad enough I have one pessimist on my ship. The last thing I need is another one."

"Sorry," she said as she grabbed a citrus fruit out of the galley's refrigeration unit. "I guess Alezanna's rubbing off on me after all this time." She hadn't meant it as a double entendre, but after what the two women had gotten up to the day before, she realized it was.

As if reading her mind, Sal commented, "Not an unpleasant thing, in my experience." He then looked at her examining the galley's shelves for what to add to her meal and said, "Leave some room. Alezanna's watch'll be over soon and I was gonna make some sandwiches for the three of us."

"Okay," Calley said as she took a seat at one of the galley's two tables and started peeling the skin of her synthfruit. "I'll be glad when this run'll be over. Not just 'cause we'll be safe at last, but, I guess also because we'll have a better idea how to move forward with things."

Collondo closed whatever file he'd been reading and turned his attention to her completely. "Are you talking about the repairs, setting up the next run or something more personal?"

The question caught the medic by surprise and she answered, "I guess all three, honestly. The ship's usual business I trust you to handle. The repairs, Alez and I can tackle. Probably more her than me. I'll fix up communications and help out where I can, but some of the other systems are gonna be too tough for me."

"Don't worry about it. I can pitch in as well. Haven't had much call to use my mech skills since Alez came aboard, but I used to do my part to keep the ship up and running. I know my way around a set of tools, believe me. We'll all be busy for a while."

"At least we can sync up our sleep schedules. That'll be nice. Maybe even fun," she added suggestively. She'd enjoyed her first night in bed with both her shipmates at the same time and was looking forward to more.

"These are gonna be long days, Calley. Getting this wreck fixed up is gonna take a lot of effort, time and starcred. After a hard day of haggling with dealers over parts, welding the hull back together and dealing with half of our systems being damaged, I don't think I'll be up for any bedroom shenanigans."

"And I predict that when you slide into bed with two naked women, you'll find energy reserves you didn't know you had. If you're slow to get started, Alez and I can always take care of each other until you get in the right mood. Worse comes to worse, I can put together some pills in the medbay to help you out."

"Gods almighty!" Sal declared as he shook his head. "You're becoming obsessed! What kind of monster have we unleashed on this poor galaxy?"

"One that's hungry for flesh!" Calley growled in an exaggerated gravelly tone. "And fruit!" she added as she took a big bite out of her citrus and loudly chewed it with her mouth open to emphasize her bestial nature.

Sal burst out laughing at her act and cautioned her, "Be careful. You keep that up, I'll have to put you on a leash!"

The young woman took another bite of the citrus and arched an eyebrow at him suggestively.

"Not like that, you crazy girl! Talking to you today is like navigating a field of plasma mines!"

"I can't help it," she said after swallowing the citrus in her mouth. "It's been a crazy couple of days and I'm still getting my bearings. But y'know, leashes and all that stuff brings up something I wanted to ask you about."

Sal raised an eyebrow of his own as he told her, "Well, that opening makes me nervous, but the floor is yours, Calley. Ask away."

She finished off the rest of her vitamilk and left the table, taking the last of her citrus with her and splitting it into two slender halves. She moved to where the captain was sitting, trying to do it seductively as Alezanna might. Sal smiled at her as she approached, though she wasn't sure if he was charmed or amused. Regardless, she sat on his lap and casually slipped half of the remaining food in her mouth while putting the other half in his. As they both chewed it she put her left arm around the spacer's neck and reached up to stroke his hair. She chose her next words carefully and spoke them a little slower than her normal pace. Their conversation thus far had been fairly casual but she was about to make it more serious.

"Yesterday," the Gynapsi began, "in the hot tub, you told me I didn't need to call you 'Master' because you didn't need to have that kind of relationship with me. Okay, that's fine. But the day before, in the cockpit, you were kinda acting like my master. Ordering me around, getting me to do and say things I didn't wanna. I'm not saying I didn't deserve to be treated like that. You warned me you were gonna do it and I agreed to most of the punishment. But wasn't that you being the Master? Or was it you being the captain dealing with a bad crewmember?"

He thought about it for a few moments before answering. When he did, his words were careful and deliberate. Calley was happy to see he was not dealing with the subject frivolously. She had asked him the question in all seriousness, and he was answering in kind, slowly and carefully.

"That's a very good question, dear. My first reaction when I realized you'd been spying on Alez and me probably would have been anger. But at the time, we had to see what was happening to the ship and then figure out how much trouble we were in. So we all kinda forgot about the peeping situation to deal with the job at hand."

"Youdid," she corrected him. "You and Alezanna. Me, I had problems getting focused at first."

"I noticed. But anyway, I shelved the whole issue because we were all needed to get the ship moving again. Not the time to get upset and confine you to your quarters or anything like that. So we all got busy and did what we had to do. After your spacewalk and we got the zaireon pulse fired off, we suddenly had nothing to do so that was when we could deal with the voyeurism issue. But by then, I was kinda tired and not in the mood to blow up at you. Worse, I could see you were beating yourself up about everything way worse than I thought you deserved. What kind of asshole piles on when a girl's kicking herself like that? Not me, I can tell ya. That got rid of any anger I had left. So I decided I needed to take another tack with you entirely."

"Honestly, I kinda wished, some times in there, that you'd just get mad and yell at me. I could've handled that easier than what you made me admit."

"I know. That's exactly why I made you admit it. Sometimes, a guilty person is made to admit what they did so they can understand the punishment they're about to get. But in your case, the admissionwasthe punishment. So, yeah, to answer your question, that was me being the captain dealing out discipline to an officer. Maybe not the sort of discipline I saw dished out when I was in the militia, but the sort that seemed right for that moment."

"Oh, okay," Calley acknowledged his explanation. She'd gotten the answer she'd requested, and should have been satisfied with it. But then why did she feel disappointed, she wondered. She wanted something more, but didn't know what it was.

Sal seemed to have more he needed to say too. "But you know..." he said before he let his words trail off.

"Yes?" the medtech prompted him, grateful that he was going to continue. She wondered if he was realizing some truths about that night or trying to articulate what he already knew. Either way, she was happy he might give her whatever new explanation might satisfy her.

"After I made you admit what you did," Collondo finally continued on, "it could have stopped there. The captain side of me would have been satisfied. You'd crossed a line, I punished you by making you own up to it, end of story. But then, when I made you look at why you'd done it, I was crossing a line of my own. In the moment, I'd have said I was still being the captain, but I think the captain... receded for a while. And somebody else stepped up. Not the Master, I don't think. Just me. Just Sal. I wanted to know why you'd done what you'd done and since I was already pushing you past your boundaries, well, I figured a little more pushing wouldn't hurt. And then you said you were attracted to me. Well, to Alez and I at first, but I made you admit you fantasized about me solo too, didn't I?"

"You did," Calley confirmed. She then realized he might have asked the question rhetorically.

Either way, he continued on. "Alez said that was when she allowed herself to think about you as a possible lover. Same goes for me. I knew Alez would wanna take you to bed eventually, and again, same as me. But I also realized we had a huge problem. You didn't see yourself as a potential lover. You'd never make the first move to seduce either of us, and weren't ready to accept that move if it came from one of us. So I had to get you to a place where you could see that you could be desirable."

"By ordering me to strip down?" the young spacer asked incredulously.

"Well, yes," the older one answered sheepishly. "See, I thought you were beautiful. Still do, incidentally. But you didn't see yourself that way. So I made a conscious effort to try to make you see yourself as I saw you. I'd already seen you naked before so--"

"Wait a second," she interrupted him. "When did you see me naked?"

"A couple of sub-cycles after you came aboard. Alez was on watch and listening to that Bellixan opera music she likes. I can't stand that shit so I was in this very seat with the lights out looking up some info on where we were heading. Not trying to set up a run or anything, 'cause then I probably wouldn't have noticed you. You came out of your stateroom without a stitch of clothing on. By the time I noticed you, you'd already passed me by on the way to the head. A couple minutes later, you passed by again but this time I got a better look at you. You looked half-asleep so I didn't say anything 'cause I figured you'd be embarrassed. Anyway, you went back to your room and, I assume, back to sleep."

"But in the cockpit, you said I had to strip down 'cause I'd seen you naked and we had to even things out."

"I did. Now in my defence, you'd said you'd watched Alez and I make love a bunch of times, whereas I'd only seen you that one time. And even then, I didn't even see both your boobs. Just the left one when you were going back to your bed. And everybody knows it doesn't count unless you see the set."

Calley was about to ask what "it" was supposed to count towards but she realized that her lover was being flippant. So she steered the conversation back to the eventful confrontation in the cockpit by saying, "I just thought you were ordering me to strip 'cause... well, honestly, I couldn't figure out why you were interested."

Sal's tone turned serious again as he told her, "I was trying to empower you, Calley. It was a strange and, as I look back at it now, rather blunt way to do it. I think I could be accused of abusing my authority over you. But empowerment was what I was going for. And I use the word "empower" very deliberately here. When someone is attracted to you, you have a power over them. How you use it is up to you. You can just keep it light, maybe flirt a little or you can break their heart. It's your decision. That's a poweryoucan have, Calley. But I couldn't make you see it. So then I told you to take off my pants so you could see the effect your body had on me. And you finally saw it, meaning the effect, not my cock, but I guess my cock too. But that finally got the point across, thank the Gods. It was about the only thing I could think of, and I almost didn't ask you to do it 'cause I was afraid it might freak you out."

"It almost did. If you'd just pulled it out yourself, I probably would've panicked, I think. But the way you told me to do it, undoing your pants myself, that gave me a few seconds to get ready. So you handled it the right way. And now that I think about it, I guess I can say that about the whole scene in the cockpit overall. And if you crossed a line, well, I guess I can forgive you."

A silence descended on the two. It could have been a time for them to embrace but neither felt that would be right. Something was still nagging at Calley, and Sal could tell. Her brow furrowed in thought as she replayed the events of that fateful scene again. He'd just remembered them himself and cleared up his motivations. She felt she needed to do the same. And as she did, she found the truth that she was denying, the clarity she was seeking. Once she found it, she returned to the present to find Sal looking at her intently. He was waiting for her to speak so she could share whatever it was she had just found.

"Now that I think about it too," she began, "I have to admit something. When you made me strip, I was embarrassed, ashamed even. But, also... well, you had to see my panties were wet too, right?"

"Yeah, I noticed. I didn't think too much of it. I'd never seen a naked Gynapsi before that one time so I wasn't sure if that was just a quirk of your species or not. Like how Fakarrans all have inverted nipples, Palutans are all hairless or Daian women start lactating when they reach puberty and never stop. Or so I heard. I never met any Daians."

"No, it's true. I had a couple of Daian women co-workers when I served on a starliner. They had to drain their breast milk every morning." Her voice dropped to a near whisper as she continued. Despite the fact that no one was in the room with them, she couldn't help but treat the subject surreptitiously. "But no, my panties were wet for the normal reason a woman gets like that. You ordering me around, telling me what to do... Sal, I was turned on. I couldn't admit it to myself right then and there. But now, I can. And since we're going over it again, it's only fair that I be as honest with you as you were with me a minute ago."

She took a deep breath before continuing a little hesitantly. "Do you think... maybe... you could be like that again? In charge, I mean. Ordering me around. Not all the time. And not when Alez is with us too. But sometime, when it's just you and me... we could..."

Sal lowered his voice to match her pitch. "Yeah, we could. We'll have to take it slow at first. Figure out what is and isn't okay. Make sure we establish firm boundaries. Definitely use a safe word. But yeah, I'd be happy to help you explore that side of yourself."

She gave him a long kiss in gratitude. Its length gave her time to do a quick check on her feelings and she finally found herself content. She no longer felt anything eating away at her. It seemed like all her questions about that night, whether they were directed at Sal or herself, had finally been answered.

When the kiss ended and the two caught their breath, Sal's voice returned to its normal pitch as he stated, "But just to be clear: This exploration isn't happening today. This is the sort of thing we'll have to take our time with. And since it'll be my turn on watch soon, time is exactly the thing we don't have right now. Unless you wanna go explain to Alezanna why she has to pull two shifts on watch."

Calley let out a chuckle and told him, her own voice going back to normal as well, "No, I'm not sure she'd be too happy to do that. And I don't mind waiting a bit. The sex we've had so far has been great as it is. I'm more than happy to do more of that. Lots more." With this in her mind, she suddenly thought of something new. "Hey," she asked him, "can you do sixty-nines?"

"Oh sure, used to do 'em all the time when I was married. Not so much since Alez and I got together though."

"Yeah, she told me she had a problem with 'em. But if you're okay with 'em, then that's something else I wanna try out."

"Fine by me," he acquiesced with no resistance. He glanced at the chronometer on the comm station's display and suggested, "Let's get to the bed then."

"No, not yet. First, I wanna make sure I can handle my end of the fun." With that, she shifted herself off him onto her feet. Standing next to him, her hands quickly undid the knot of his sash. She opened his robe to find him wearing a pair of black boxer shorts. She reached for both its sides and pulled the waistband down.