Sensation

Sammie smiled to herself as Dustin’s weave-presence hovered nearby. He always insisted on being with her at the start of flights, even now when she was confident in her own abilities and didn’t even feel dizzy afterward. His mind flowing into hers was a warm intimacy the pair of them shared, something uniquely theirs. She knew each of the women in their relationship had their own ways of loving and being loved by all their partners, and she held this thing between her and Dustin as precious.

Thoughts merged, she could sense his residual arousal from that morning’s play; it’d taken everyone a day to get organized after the meeting with Defia where they’d planned their next destination and picked a route, and she had joined Meli in giving Dustin a very fun start to the day. Her own thoughts drifted slightly for a moment at the memory before snapping back into focus as she felt the rest of his emotions; alongside the residual arousal, there was a level of excitement and apprehension in being joined with her like this, some nervousness about their plans for a date night that evening, and worries about if the system they were jumping to enroute to the seed world would be calm and safe enough.

His mind steered hers as they reviewed the threads; she relaxed into the guidance. Outside of this space, even in bed with him she might be firm and sure of her own mind and needs - but in the weave? She trusted Dustin and could let go. “That one” they-he said, finding a sparkling strand that linked them to their target destination. She-they disliked the finding of their target; it meant separation of him from her. As he slid away, she pushed the emotion of feeling safe out at him, hoping he could share at least a little in her delight at their closeness.

Dustin blinked as the weave arms retracted; Sammie had already skipped them into that alternate space between the stars. Her last thoughts being comforting put him at ease about his plans for later; he was in charge of actually organizing the date night for once, and given the way he’d been woken up that morning he was worried his plans might not be what she was expecting. Glancing around the bridge, he nodded to Meli and stretched. “You have the bridge, chief science officer. I’ll be in the garden if you need me.”

The garden was warm when he reached it; Rye had adjusted the thermostat recently to simulate summer, and the grass was growing longer by the day. Dustin picked his way carefully through the soft lawns and planters, dodging around a handful of couples - off-duty crew who were enjoying the parklike area. As he reached the midpoint he paused, then turned to head in the direction of one of the few remaining unfinished areas; while it wasn’t fully set up yet, it did have a few beds already overflowing with life.

Pausing in front of one of the raised planters, Dustin contemplated the blooms on offer. A mixture of Terran and extra-terrestrial flora in exotic colours were growing there, intended to be planted out in the larger beds when time permitted. In the meantime, however, it wouldn’t hurt for him to harvest a few of them; he selected a red rose and a handful of Feliaxian daisies, their pale purple flowers making the red of the rose pop. Pulling a ribbon from his pocket that he’d ordered up from an automat earlier that day in anticipation of being able to do this, he swiftly bound the blooms into a bouquet and went in search of some water to put them in until the weave jump was complete.

Sammie reached the golden glow at the end of the weave route they’d selected some time later. With a sigh, she glanced back along the thread she’d followed - another route that Sola’s database would track, and that could now be navigated without her input. The AI flying the ship did have it’s advantages; she could spend more time with her lovers, any one of whom would be a fun time - but on the other hand there was something uniquely freeing about navigating the weave, about flying along with her hand trailing on the thread to keep the ship on it’s course.

Reality faded back in, and she blinked. In front of her, the console appeared to have sprouted multicoloured petals. As her vision stabilized back in normal space, she realised that what she’d taken to be a kaleidoscope of light being handled poorly by a dimensionally shifted brain was in fact a bunch of flowers, being held out by Dustin. “Shift’s over, Sammie” he said, grinning down at her. “Meli’s scanned the system and there’s nothing here. Literally, there’s nothing here - she thinks the planets around the star coalesced on really erratic orbits and got thrown out of the system shortly after they formed. There’s a star and a few weave points and that’s all, so you’re officially off duty for the next twelve hours.

Then he grinned again, and offered her a hand up out of the pilot’s chair. “And that means, for the next few hours at least you’re mine…” he added, before handing her the bouquet and offering his arm. “Shall we?”

Despite Dustin having planned the date, Sammie took the lead as they left the bridge. “These flowers are going in my quarters” she said, grinning despite herself as she held the bouquet like a rifle in her free arm. “Then we can do whatever silliness you’ve got planned, Captain.” Dustin winced at that, and she leaned in to briefly peck him on the cheek. “Sorry, Dustin, got put up to doing that - using your title I mean - by three different women this week. But seriously, I want to get these in water. Do you know how rarely pilots get flowers?”

Dustin leaned in and whispered “Pilots in general, or just the cute ones?” The blush from Sammie that he earned made the internal cringing at such a corny line worthwhile; he was even after all this time still struggling with not cringing visibly when he tried to say something overtly flirtatious or romantic. It was easier with the women he’d been with longer, sure, but it was still something he tried to work on when he could.

Sammie’s quarters were on the lower deck, despite her status as a member of the senior crew. She’d insisted on it; if she wanted luxury she could bunk with any of the others in Dustin’s harem or the ambassadorial quarters, and the rest of the time she wanted to sleep in the same sort of spaces as the rest of the pilots and their ground crew under her command. The only modest exception she made for herself was that she didn’t share her room with anyone - while the rest of the junior staff in the fighter craft crew section had bunk-beds, Sammie had replaced the top bunk with a crude shelf made out of the lid of a storage crate resting where the mattress should have gone.

Dustin stared at it as his lover fussed with the flowers, arranging them in a vase that appeared to have been made by taking a cutting implement to a used vodka bottle. The embossed letters still visible running up the side - V O D K - before the clean cut. “Rye made it for me” Sammie said, seeing his interest. “We shared the contents, and she said I was a good sport for trying to keep up with her and asked if I wanted to keep it. I was pretty drunk - a good chunk of a bottle of neat vodka will do that to you, so I asked her to turn it into a vase. Glad I did.”

Stepping back, she admired her handiwork, the vase resting on one of the official shelves built into the room - a narrow set of them in one corner, which currently along with the vase also contained her flight helmet, a spare pair of boots and a picture of her with her sister and parents taken when she was much younger. “That works. Alright, Dustin, what are we getting up to? I presume more than just…” She hooked her thumb towards the rumpled blankets on the lower bunk and grinned.

Dustin shook his head. “Maybe we’ll get to that later; although I’d rather we use my quarters if we’re going to… you know. The mattress is better in my bunk for one, and I won’t be afraid that an entire shelf full of random stuff is going to land on me halfway through. Seriously, why not ask Rye to get engineering to fix you up some proper shelves.” He replied, staring at her makeshift storage solution.

Sammie shrugged. “It probably wouldn’t fall on us, and if it did then the scars on your ass would be hilarious to tell people about in years to come right? And I don’t… I don’t really want it to be properly fixed. Having it makeshift kinda reminds me of home; dad would jury-rig stuff all the time, because when you’re three weeks out from Earth and the water line blows you either fix it with two pairs of tights and some bonding spray, or you end up having to suck your liquid ration out of the carpet every night. Got used to makeshift repairs and stuff cobbled together with good old human ingenuity.”

Stepping forward, Dustin wrapped his arms around the brown-skinned woman, kissing her forehead as he did so. “Fair enough. Alright, enough homesickness or reminiscing or whatever that just was. We’ve got a date to go on.” Sammie tilted her head up, earning herself a quick kiss on the lips before she was able to ask “So what are we doing then? Really?”

Breaking off the hug and stepping back, Dustin grinned and gestured to Sammie’s ‘wardrobe’ - the pilot being clearly of the opinion that the best way to store clean clothes is in a massive pile on the floor. “I’ll give you a clue” he said, bending down and picking up a bikini top that had somehow found it’s way to the top of the pile. “I hope you’ve got the rest of this swimsuit in here somewhere.”