Miriam Bayne had already had a very long day.
Extrasystem travel still, after all the advances in space travel even within her lifetime, sucked. There just wasn’t a good way to bend space that didn’t result in each individual atom in your body whining about it. So she’d hardly paid attention to the well-meaning tour guide welcoming her to Cyerce Station, orbiting above a beautiful planet that she was absolutely going to study the shit out of once she got a few hours of rest. The way the native species’ equivalent of DNA worked was genuinely fascinating, a new planet with carbon-based life was always exciting, and Miriam had worked for well over a year to push this grant funding through. As per usual, it was barely enough, hence her travel hangover. The amenities of the station were lost on her– something something schedule a spacewalk with our guides any time, what is this, a tourist station? Ugh. How is it that this place is just getting scientific funding for exploration but the tourist industry gets to come set up shop? Something pest problem something ring the front desk for any enquiries. Miriam lets it wash over her until the tour guide finally points her to her room.
She collapses on the little cot gratefully. This looks like one of the spare rooms for employees of the station. That, or this is one of those stations that tries to imitate how astronauts slept in Ye Olde Days, except of course it’s absolutely nothing like that. It’s designed to take as little space as possible. A tiny bed, desk roughly the size of a postage stamp, with a bureau crammed into the corner. Not even a coffeemaker. Good thing she brought her own. She’ll have to find where to get more, if she’s going to be here for a while, which she plans to be, thank you very much. The walls are the ever-present Space Station Gray, pressing in from all sides.
Her eyes close, in a long, exhausted blink that lasts until an alarm shrills through the room. Miriam groans. Why did she pick a branch of biochemistry that meant so much travel? It shrieks again, and she catches a flicker of movement. She riffles through the relevant memories from last night, under the gray fog of exhaustion, and comes up with pest problem.
Oooh, she hopes this is a new and fun pest at least. If they have mice, or roaches, or those damn unpronounceable bedbugs from Nordic III, she will be so very pissed that she wasted time on this. She crouches near where she saw the flicker and wiggles her fingers. “Come here,” she says, and then, “I’m UP, already!” to the never-ending alarm. It finally shuts off with an acknowledging beep. “Come here. You want food? I’ve got, uh, ration bars.” The real food is upstairs. The upside to a tourist space hotel is free breakfast, which means she has to eat slightly fewer ration bars during her million-hour fieldwork days. When she remembers to eat.
The flicker returns and resolves into a pointy-faced little something with a fat middle. Alien pest! Jackpot. Miriam fumbles for her field notebook and starts rapidly sketching. It’s sorta cute, in an alien bug way. Is it a bug? It looks pretty close to Earth’s slugs, actually oh fuck oh fuck it’s on her. Years of scientific instinct prevent her natural reaction, i.e. screaming and doing a high kick. This is a good thing. It wouldn’t be allowed on the station if it was toxic to carbon-based life forms. She keeps scribbling.
hello helllllohello hear me can you hear me
“Oh shit, you’re telepathic?” Miriam asks, not even breaking from her sketch. She scribbles a quick mind communication. Intelligent?? into her notes. “Hey, you hungry?” She’s met low-level telepathic creatures, mostly able to communicate concepts like hungry and tired and other basics, and several sentient telepathic species. They’re very helpful during first contacts, provided they’re disciplined enough. Not Miriam’s field in the least.
yesyes smart hear you can i can i you feed please
Miriam snorts. “The station management says you’re a pest,” she tells the little slug-thing, but she’s already reaching for her ration bar, resigning herself to hiding her new little friend.
that that not that show can i show you?
“Look, they don’t taste great, but they’re all I’ve got.” Miriam sighs. Maybe she can sneak this thing down to the planet that it’s obviously native to and get it some food there. “Yeah. Show me.”
The slug thing huddles down in concentration and beams several images in Miriam’s head that make it extremely clear what it feeds on. Miriam has, to be clear, been around the sexual block between fieldwork assignments, but having the knowledge of other people arrive in her head like this is, well, different. Most of them are species native to the planet she’s supposed to study, but several are on the station, clearly guests, and oh no, one of them is DEFINITELY her fieldwork partner, a hot-tempered little stick human that she’s already had way too many inappropriate thoughts about without this thing’s help.
“Fuck,” Miriam mutters, making rapid notes in her field book. “Yeah, fuck breakfast, we’re absolutely doing this.” She wiggles out of her pajama pants. This is a scientific breakthrough. Also, how often does fieldwork get to be this fun? Usually it’s just making observations and notes until her eyes bleed, the light goes, and then a bunch more time debriefing and trying to reconcile who’s wrong when they come up with completely contradictory theories. Hell yes she’s letting the weird alien slug fuck her. It understands consent, it wants permission from her, it can communicate. That’s enough for her ethics.
The slug waits, politely, for her to finish hopping out of her pants before rapidly scaling her leg and wriggling into her underwear. It snuggles up against her clit, the tail teasing at her entrance, and yeah, that fieldwork assignment can wait thirty more minutes. Miriam falls back onto the cot with a gasp. It’s been a while. Fighting for grant money is a full-time job, on top of her actual full-time job. She slaps her hand over her mouth so she can whine freely.
The thing wriggles at her clit, and Miriam mmmmrphs into her hand. It’s sensitive, already, and whatever the slug is using to ease the way is pleasantly cool and making her tingle. The tail swells inside her, wiggling, stretching her. It probes, but it isn’t quite long enough to hit her g-spot. She is, for the moment, fine with this. The tingling at her entrance is delicious. She feels it radiating happiness as it absorbs her pleasure (and possibly her actual fluids? She has so many questions as soon as this is over).
good good girl good girl
The moan that comes out surprises Miriam. She didn’t think that was a thing, but it’s a morning for discoveries, apparently. Telepaths. They’ll dig stuff up you never knew about. “MmmmmmMMM!” She nearly bites her own hand as the tail retreats. “What are you–” She takes her hand off to protest, then bites her lip hard as something comes out of the slug and plunges inside her, curving smartly and undulating to probe everywhere. Her legs are shaking. It’s still after her clit, brushing over it almost experimentally, trying to figure out what gets the best reactions and gradually honing in. Images of the firm pressure Miriam prefers flash through her head, and in the next second, the slug is on her clit, pushing against it, up and down, all while the stinger or shaft or whatever the hell that is finds the good spot inside her and presses against that, swelling to put pressure on her internal clitoris. And Miriam isn’t doing a damn thing. All she can do is pant on the bed, swallowing whines.
hear you hear hear please hear want
“AH,” Miriam gasps out. Her breathing is ragged and harsh. “Ah, yes, there, please, please, more, right there.” The slug– the symbiote, Miriam suspects, presses harder, rubbing the spot inside her and applying more pressure to her clit until Miriam screams involuntarily and nearly rolls off the bed as she comes, back arching and rolling her hips into the symbiote that’s already lightening up, gentling her through it. It pulls away just before she can ask, sliding out of her and radiating a smug sort of self-assuredness in her head.
“Fuck,” Miriam gasps after she’s about ninety percent sure she can speak coherently. “Fuck, they called you a pest. That was the best fuck of my life. I have questions.” She gropes for her fieldwork notebook and pen. “Show me that bit you had in me again. Is that reproductive? Do you know how you evolved a shape-change like that? How often do you need to feed? Is it purely telepathic or–”
“BAYNE!!” There’s a hammering at her door. “If that was a heart attack or some shit, I am going to be SO beyond pissed with you. We were supposed to be on deck ten minutes ago! Get your space-bent ass in gear!”
And that’s her fieldwork partner. Miriam sighs and points at the pest. “I’ll be back tonight.”
wait wait you for you wait for you
“…Wanna come along?” Miriam asks, grinning and holding her underwear open in invitation.
It does, it turns out.
Never let it be said Miriam Bayne can’t multitask.
The Cyerce Symbiote can be found at Xenocat Artifacts!