Chapter 5: Dinner Conversations
The mess hall was nearly empty at this hour, the dinner service long since ended, but Reilly had arranged for a late meal to be kept warm. The metallic table she had claimed was large enough for six, and the crew of the Meridian Star had drifted in over the past quarter hour, drawn by the promise of hot food and the simple gravitational pull of shared company.
Jeff sat beside Reilly, his posture easy but alert, watching the others settle into their seats. Marin had arrived first, nodding curtly before loading her plate with a portion of the station's vegetable stew that seemed too large for her small frame. Kor Bork followed, dropping into his chair with a heavy thump and immediately attacking his food with the single-minded focus of a man who considered conversation secondary to nutrition.
T'Lara and Sorvak entered together, maintaining the careful distance between them that had been present since their conversation in the observation lounge. Jeff noticed the way T'Lara's eyes found his across the table, the faintest softening around them that no one else would have registered as acknowledgment. He returned it with a small nod.
The meal proceeded in the comfortable rhythms of people who had shared something significant. Utensils clinked against plates. Steam curled from cups of replicated tea. The station's environmental systems hummed their constant, low drone.
Reilly set down her fork and leaned back slightly, surveying the table. Her voice, when she spoke, carried the warm curiosity that Jeff had come to recognize as her research persona, though by now the line between that persona and her genuine self had blurred beyond easy distinction.
"I've been thinking about the next phase of our work," she said. "The workshop gave us a foundation. But I'm interested in the customs that were lost. The practices that existed before the Purification Wars erased so much."
Marin raised an eyebrow. "You want us to dig up old traditions? I've seen enough cultures try to reclaim their past to know it often says more about the present than the history."
"That's precisely why it's valuable," Reilly said. "What we choose to remember, and what we choose to let go. The way shame attaches itself to some practices and not others."
She let the silence stretch for a moment before continuing.
"Take self-pleasure, for instance. Every culture I've studied has some relationship to it, whether that relationship is one of celebration, pragmatism, or suppression. But the Purification Wars targeted those traditions specifically. The records were destroyed. The songs were silenced. The rituals were purged." She gestured with her hand, palm up. "I want to hear what your people had. What you remember, if you remember anything at all."
Marin chewed a piece of bread slowly, considering. When she spoke, her voice carried the weight of someone who had lived long enough to see patterns repeat.
"We had communal bathing on my home colony," she said. "Before my grandparents' generation, anyway. The wars changed that. The histories say the bathhouses were where people gathered, not just for washing but for touch. For conversation that could grow intimate. There were attendants who understood the needs of the body, who could guide someone through pleasure the way a priest might guide them through prayer." She shrugged. "By the time I was born, the bathhouses were gone. Just ruins with plaques explaining what they had been, as if that made up for the loss."
Jeff watched Reilly's expression shift, cataloguing the detail with the careful attention of a scholar. He had seen her do this before, the way she collected fragments of intimacy the way others collected artifacts.
"Did you ever experience anything like that?" Reilly asked.
Marin laughed, short and genuine. "I experienced plenty in my youth. But it was all improvised. Stolen moments in cargo bays and rented rooms. Nothing like what those old cultures had, where pleasure was woven into the fabric of daily life rather than something you had to snatch in secret." She looked around the table. "Freedom has a different texture when you don't have to hide it."
Kor Bork set down his mug with a decisive thunk. "Tellarites never hid anything. That's the point of being a Tellarite. We argue about everything, we complain about everything, we take apart every assumption and examine its guts. But masturbation was never a matter of debate. It was practical."
"Practical?" T'Lara's voice carried genuine curiosity.
"Practical," Kor repeated, his tusks gleaming under the fluorescent lights. "You need a partner, you find one. But you don't always have a partner available. You're on a long voyage, or an outpost with limited companionship, or you simply want to sleep afterward without negotiating another person's moods. So you take care of it yourself. No shame, no ceremony. Just a necessity handled efficiently." He gestured at his own chest. "Tellarite children are taught that their bodies are theirs. That pleasure is healthy. That there's nothing sacred about refusing to touch yourself, and nothing profane about doing so."
Jeff found himself nodding before he caught himself. The bluntness was refreshing after the careful layers of human euphemism.
"And yet you sought out the workshop," Reilly observed.
Kor grunted. "I sought out debate. And the chance for connection that didn't require ten hours of preamble." He jabbed a thick finger toward Reilly. "You understood that. You spoke plainly. That's rare among your people, Commander. Your Federation is built on so many careful words that the meaning often suffocates beneath them."
"A fair critique," Reilly acknowledged.
T'Lara had gone still, her hands resting on the table before her. Jeff recognized the posture now; it was the Vulcan equivalent of gathering herself. When she spoke, her voice carried the measured cadence of someone translating thoughts that had been buried deep.
"Vulcans once had a practice known as the meditative touch," she said. "It was not widely documented. The archives I have studied reference it only obliquely, in commentaries and marginal notes. But the fragments suggest that it involved a private ritual of self-awareness through physical sensation."
"Self-awareness," Sorvak repeated. There was a careful neutrality in his voice, but Jeff caught the tension in his shoulders. "Is that what the texts called it?"
"Yes. And other things, I suspect." T'Lara met his gaze steadily. "The Purification Wars destroyed most of the primary sources. What remains suggests that Vulcans of that era understood the body as a terrain of study, and that solitude could be a form of meditation that included touch." She paused. "It was practiced in darkness. In silence. A way of knowing oneself completely before seeking to know another."
The table had grown quiet. Reilly leaned forward, her voice soft.
"Why darkness?"
"Because without visual distraction, sensation becomes the primary language. The fingers speak and the body answers." T'Lara's hand moved almost imperceptibly on the table. "It is a form of listening that requires no other participant. The transmitted texts suggest it was considered essential preparation before bonding. A Vulcan should know their own depths before claiming they could navigate another's."
Sorvak's jaw tightened. Jeff saw the flicker of something in his eyes, a resistance that seemed personal rather than intellectual.
"And now?" Reilly asked gently.
"Now it is forbidden." T'Lara's voice held no judgment, only fact. "The post-war councils determined that such practices were distractions from logical pursuit. The texts were sealed or destroyed. The tradition was allowed to die, and no new generation was trained in it."
"Allowed to die." Sorvak's voice carried a sharp edge. "Or deliberately extinguished because it served no purpose beyond indulgence."
Marin snorted. "There it is. The argument that always follows when people discuss pleasure. That it must serve a purpose. That it must be justified. That enjoyment of one's own body is somehow a failing rather than a foundation."
"I did not say that," Sorvak said.
"You implied it." Marin's eyes were steady. "I've heard that tone before, often from people who have never once allowed themselves to be touched without an excuse for it."
The silence that followed was thick enough to taste. Jeff watched Sorvak's hands where they rested on the table, the careful way he kept them still, as if any movement might reveal too much.
Reilly broke the tension by reaching for the teapot. "Shame is the most durable inheritance the Purification Wars left us," she said, pouring herself a cup. "More durable than any weapon. They could have destroyed all the records we have of intimacy, and in a hundred years someone would have rediscovered that pleasure feels good. But shame is taught. It is passed from parent to child, from culture to individual, and it does not require any physical object to survive."
She set down the pot and looked around the table. "That is why this research matters. Not because rediscovering old practices will restore what was lost, but because examining them gives us permission to question what we were taught. Was the shame justified? Or was it a weapon wielded by people who feared what they could not control?"
Kor Bork nodded slowly. "A Tellarite would answer that question by demanding evidence. And the evidence, Commander, is that empires have always feared the bodies of their citizens. Because a citizen who knows their own pleasure is harder to command. Harder to shame. Harder to control."
He looked around the table, his tusks gleaming in the harsh light. "You want to know what we lost? We lost the understanding that desire is not a weakness. It is the engine that drives us toward one another. And when you sever that engine, when you convince people that wanting is wrong, you create a population that can be managed like cattle."
"Beautifully said," Marin murmured, and there was genuine respect in her voice.
"Beautifully said," Marin murmured, and there was genuine respect in her voice.
Kor Bork acknowledged the compliment with a shrug that was almost modest, though the gleam in his eyes betrayed his satisfaction. Reilly let the moment settle before she spoke again, her voice cutting through the comfortable silence with practical warmth.
"I want to thank all of you for sharing tonight. This conversation has given me more material than a week of archival research." She paused, letting her gaze travel around the table. "And I want you to know that the station's supply locker has been stocked with certain items. Lubricants, of course, but also a selection of personal pleasure devices. They are available to anyone who wants to take something back to their quarters. My research has shown that many species find the integration of such tools into solo practice to be a valuable data point, and I encourage you to experiment freely."
Marin raised an eyebrow, a hint of amusement playing at the corner of her mouth. "Forward of you, Commander."
"Practicality is a form of forwardness I admire," Kor said, standing and gathering his tray. "And I have never been one to let an opportunity pass unused." He paused, looking down at Reilly. "I will examine this locker before I retire."
One by one, the others rose. T'Lara caught Jeff's eye briefly as she stood, and the warmth in her gaze was a quiet reminder of what they had shared. Sorvak lingered a moment, his expression unreadable before he followed the others out of the mess hall. Jeff looked at Reilly, a question in his eyes, but she gave him a small shake of her head, a silent instruction that he understood. He collected his own tray and left, leaving her alone at the table.
Reilly waited until the mess hall had gone quiet, the only sounds the hum of environmental systems and the distant clatter of the kitchen crew closing down for the shift. She stood, smoothing her uniform, and made her way down the corridor toward the quarters assigned to the Meridian Star crew.
Kor's door chimed at her touch, and it opened almost immediately, as if he had been expecting her. He stood in the doorway, his broad frame filling the space, his tusks catching the dim light of his quarters.
"Commander. I assumed you would find the supply locker inadequate." He stepped aside, gesturing her inside with a sweep of his arm.
"I wasn't here about the supply locker," Reilly said, moving past him into the room. The quarters were utilitarian, standard Starfleet issue for visiting civilians, but Kor had already made them his own. A datapad lay open on the small desk, and the wall screen displayed a star chart marked with what she recognized as the Meridian Star's planned route.
Kor closed the door behind her, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "Then this is a social visit."
"Of a kind." Reilly turned to face him, her dark eyes steady. "I found what you said tonight genuinely arousing, Kor. Your candor. The way you speak about desire without shame, without hedging. It is rare, and it is compelling."
A ripple of surprise crossed the Tellarite's features, followed by something deeper, a kind of interested appraisal. "Arousing. That is an unexpected compliment, even from you, Commander."
"Call me Reilly." She stepped closer, not crowding him but closing the distance. "I want you to masturbate for me. I want to watch you take your pleasure in your hands, open and unguarded. And I want you to mark me afterward."
"Mark you." His voice was low, considering. "You mean as I imagine your young Ensign does. To leave proof of my desire on your body."
"Yes." Reilly reached up and slowly released the clasp at her collar, letting the fabric of her uniform top loosen. "I find that the Tellarite approach to physicality interests me. Your directness extends to pleasure, and I want to experience that."
Kor was quiet for a long moment, his eyes traveling over her face before dropping to the exposed line of her throat. When he spoke, his voice was gruff but threaded with genuine warmth.
"You say what you want. It is a quality I have learned to appreciate in you, Commander, despite the careful Federation polish." He moved toward the narrow bed, sitting heavily on its edge. "If you wish to watch, then watch."
He unfastened his belt with deliberate slowness, his thick fingers working the clasp before pulling the trousers down over his hips. His cock emerged, already half-hard, thick and flushed at the tip, the skin taut and smooth but bearing pronounced ridges that ran its length like some strange fleshy labyrinth. It was easily three times the size of a human cock, its alien anatomy evident in the way it pulsed with a life of its own. Reilly felt her pulse quicken at the sight, at the unapologetic way he presented himself, the weight of his gaze meeting hers without hesitation. The air seemed to thicken around them as his scent rose, warm and male, filling her senses and making her breath catch.
He wrapped his hand around the shaft, stroking slowly, his eyes fixed on her face. "You said you found my words arousing. Tell me what words you want to hear."
"Anything you wish to say," Reilly said, her voice catching slightly. She stepped closer, standing at the foot of the bed, close enough to see the way his fingers moved over the ridged skin. "I want to see what you look like when you are not performing for an audience. When you are just a body finding pleasure."
Kor grunted, his rhythm steady. "Then listen, Commander. I find you interesting because you do not flinch. You look at desire and call it by its name." He stroked faster, his breath beginning to roughen. "I have been with those who need masks, who need lies to make the truth palatable. You are not one of them."
His words were interrupted by a low groan as his grip tightened. Reilly watched, transfixed, as his hips began to move in counterpoint to his hand. The muscles of his abdomen tensed, his broad chest rising and falling with increasing urgency.
"Undo your uniform," he commanded, and the request carried enough heat that Reilly complied without hesitation, shrugging off the top and letting it fall to the floor. She stood before him in her undershirt, her breasts outlined beneath the thin fabric.
Kor's eyes darkened. "Closer."
She moved to stand between his spread knees, and he reached out with his free hand, hooking a finger into the neckline of her undershirt and pulling her toward him. The rough texture of his palm against her stomach made her breath catch. He pressed his face against her chest, inhaling deeply, and the warm scrape of his tusks against the fabric sent a jolt through her.
She peeled away her undershell, the thin fabric sliding down her arms as she exposed her breasts to the cool air and his heated gaze. Her nipples pebbled in response, and she watched as his movements quickened, his hand becoming a blur on his thick shaft as he worked himself toward completion, his eyes locked on her bare chest.
His head fell back, tusks tilting toward the ceiling, and a guttural sound escaped his throat as his body locked. She watched the pulse of him, the sudden rush of his release as it spilled over his fist and splattered across her breasts. His hand continued to work through the final spasms, milking himself until his muscles slackened and his breathing began to slow.
Kor's chest heaved as he looked down at the mess he had made, his release cooling against Reilly's skin. A low sound of satisfaction rumbled from his throat, something between a grunt and a laugh.
"Now that is a sight worth arguing for," he said, his eyes tracing the path of his seed where it streaked across her breasts. "Tellarite appetites do not apologize for their ambition."
Reilly looked down at herself, at the evidence of his desire painted across her chest, and felt a flush of heat spread through her. She reached up, gathering some of the slickness on her fingers, and brought them to her lips. The taste was salt and something else, something distinctly alien, metallic and musky.
Kor watched her taste him with an intensity that made the air between them feel charged. His cock had softened only slightly, still thick against his thigh, already stirring again at the sight of her.
"Now I have a question for you, Commander," he said.
"Ask it."
He leaned forward, his weight shifting on the bed. "You spoke of marking. Of leaving proof of desire on the body. I have marked you. Would you mark me in return?"
Reilly felt something loosen in her chest, a permission she had not realized she was holding. She met his gaze, her voice steady.
"Yes. I want to."
Kor's tusks gleamed as he lay back on the bed, his broad chest rising and falling beneath the coarse grey bristle of his hide. He folded his arms behind his head, a gesture of offering that was almost theatrical in its completeness.
"Then take what you want, Reilly. I will not flinch from your scrutiny."
She moved to the side of the bed, her hands finding the fastenings of her trousers. She undressed with slow deliberation, letting each piece of fabric fall away as if she were unwrapping herself for examination. Kor's eyes tracked the movement of her hands with undisguised interest, but she saw something else there too: a respect for what she was doing, for the deliberate exposure of her own body to his judgment.
When she was bare before him, she climbed onto the bed and straddled his chest, her thighs bracketing the broad expanse of his torso. The texture of his hide was rough against the sensitive skin of her thighs, and she let herself settle into the sensation, breathing through the initial prickling until it became something else, something grounding.
"You watched me," she said, her voice low. "You watched me watch you stroke yourself. You saw the way I looked at your cock, at the ridges along its length, at the way your hand moved over it like you were proving something to yourself."
Kor's jaw tightened fractionally. His eyes were fixed on her face.
"I found it beautiful," she continued, letting her own hand drift between her legs. "The unapologetic way you touched yourself. No hesitation. No shame. Just pure, honest appetite." She began to move her fingers over her clit in slow circles, gathering wetness, spreading it. "And when you came on my breasts, when I felt the heat of you against my skin, I wanted to touch myself so badly it was almost painful."
Her breath caught as she found her rhythm. She kept her eyes on his while her fingers worked between her thighs, her hips beginning to roll in counterpoint to the motion of her hand.
"You were magnificent," she said, and the words came easier now, lubricated by the growing tension in her belly. "Your cock was so thick in your hand, so eager under your grip. I could see the effort you were making to hold back, to draw out the moment for me. And I wanted you to lose control. I wanted to see what happened when a Tellarite man forgot to be careful."
Kor let out a low groan, his hands gripping the edges of the thin mattress. His cock had stiffened again, jutting up beside her knee, and he made no move to hide his arousal from her.
"Your words," he said, his voice rougher than before. "They reach somewhere I did not know could be touched."
"Arousal is a language," Reilly said, her fingers moving faster. "I have been learning the dialects. Your dialect is honesty. So I give you my honest response to what you showed me."
She was close now. She could feel the pressure building, a hot coil winding tighter with each stroke of her fingers. She looked down at Kor's chest beneath her, at the broad canvas of his hide, and knew where she wanted to share her release.
"Your body," she breathed. "The weight of you. The way you did not hide. You let me see everything, Kor. And I want to give you something back with the same openness."
He reached up and gripped her hip, his thick fingers pressing into her flesh with a possessive pressure that made her gasp.
"Then give it," he said. "Mark me."
The command unlocked something in her. Her fingers found their peak and she came with a cry that she made no effort to suppress, her body arching over him, her release flooding from her in a hot gush that splashed across his chest and stomach. She rode out the waves of pleasure, her hands gripping his shoulders for support, the rough texture of his hide scraping against her palms as she shuddered through the final contractions.
When she finally opened her eyes, Kor lay beneath her, his chest glistening with her release. He looked up at her with an expression she could not quite read, something that was neither shock nor displeasure. After a long moment, a sound escaped him, something between a laugh and a rumble of satisfaction.
For a long moment neither of them moved. Reilly's breath came in slow, shuddering waves as the last tremors of release faded from her limbs. Beneath her, Kor's chest rose and fell with the steady rhythm of a man who had just witnessed something he intended to remember.
She pushed herself up, swinging one leg over his torso and sliding off the bed. Her thighs felt weak, still prickling from the rough texture of his hide, and she took a moment to steady herself against the edge of the mattress before reaching for her discarded uniform.
Kor watched her dress, his head propped on one arm, his cock still half-hard against his thigh. He made no move to cover himself, and she appreciated that about him, the refusal to perform any post-coital modesty that neither of them believed in.
"You are leaving," he observed. It was not a question.
"I am," Reilly said, stepping into her trousers and pulling them up over her hips. She fastened them with neat, efficient movements, then reached for her undershirt and uniform top. "The night shift is short, and I have research notes to organize before I sleep."
Kor grunted. "Research notes. I have been reduced to data collection."
Reilly paused, one arm halfway into her sleeve, and looked at him. There was no real complaint in his voice, only the familiar Tellarite instinct to poke at any statement until it revealed its assumptions. She finished pulling on her top and fastened the clasp at her collar.
"You are more than that," she said. "But the research matters to me. And so does what just happened between us. Those are not mutually exclusive, Kor."
He sat up, the coarse hair of his chest catching the dim light. His expression was unreadable for a moment, then it softened into something approaching warmth. "No. I suppose they are not." He paused. "I have enjoyed your company tonight, Reilly. Both the argument and the aftermath."
Reilly felt a genuine smile cross her face. She moved to the foot of the bed and laid her palm flat against his chest, feeling the warmth of his hide beneath her fingers. The rough texture was familiar now, a remembered sensation rather than an alien one.
"Thank you," she said. The words carried weight she meant fully. "For contributing to my research with such candor. For what you shared in the mess hall and what you shared here. Both were valuable data points in their own way."
Kor's tusks lifted slightly at the corners, a gesture she had come to recognize as amusement. "Data points. You Federation types have a gift for making everything sound like a laboratory report."
"And for the release," Reilly continued, letting her hand rest on him a moment longer. She could feel his heartbeat beneath her palm, slower now, steadier. "I will sleep well because of it. Genuinely well. That is not something I say lightly."
Kor reached up and covered her hand with his own, his grip warm and slightly rough. "Good. A Commander who sleeps well is a Commander who thinks clearly. I would rather have you alert than exhausted when we continue this conversation tomorrow." He released her hand. "And I have no doubt we will continue it. You have awakened something in me, Reilly. An appetite for debate that goes beyond words."
She laughed softly, pulling her hand back and smoothing her uniform. "I would expect nothing less from a Tellarite."
"Then we understand each other."
They did, she realized. Perhaps more than she had understood anyone in a long time. There was a cleanliness to their exchange that she found rare and precious, a directness that required no translation.
Reilly moved toward the door, then paused and looked back. Kor had not moved from the bed, still naked, still unselfconscious, watching her with those sharp, intelligent eyes.
"The supply locker," she said. "If it proves inadequate, my quarters are two decks down, corridor seven. The lock code is the same as the workshop's override."
Kor's tusks gleamed. "Noted, Commander. I will remember that."
She stepped through the door as it slid open, then paused in the corridor, letting it close behind her. The station hummed its familiar quiet drone, the lights dimmed to night-shift levels. She stood there a moment, feeling the residual warmth in her body, the pleasant ache between her thighs, the drying slickness on her chest where his release had marked her.
She had not cleaned it off. She had dressed over it deliberately, wanting to carry the evidence of their exchange with her back to her quarters. The fabric of her undershirt clung to it, a private reminder beneath the regulation exterior.
The corridor stretched before her, empty at this hour. She began to walk toward her quarters, her steps unhurried, her mind already drifting toward the notes she would make. The Tellarite attitude toward self-pleasure as a practical necessity. The communal bathing rituals Marin had described. T'Lara's fragments of the meditative touch. Each piece was a thread in the larger tapestry she was weaving, a recovery project that grew more meaningful with every new voice that contributed.
Her quarters were quiet when she entered. The small bed was still rumpled from the previous night, when she had slept between Jeff and T'Lara, their bodies warm and trusting against hers. That memory surfaced now, layered upon the more recent one, and she felt a strange gratitude for the richness of her life. A month ago she had commanded this outpost with clinical distance, her research a matter of archives and theory. Now she lay down each night with her body full of evidence, her skin remembering the touch of three different species in as many days.
She stripped off her uniform, then her undershirt. The smell of Kor rose from the fabric, musky and distinctly alien, and she held it to her face for a moment before dropping it in the recycler. In the fresher, she stood under the hot spray and let the water wash away the evidence of their encounter, though the memory of it remained vivid in her muscles, in the sensitive places where his hands had gripped her.
The sleep that came to her was deep and dreamless, exactly as she had promised. She woke six hours later to the soft chime of her comm, feeling more rested than she had in weeks. The message was from Kor, a single line of text: "Your arguments were sound. I look forward to testing them further."
Reilly smiled, rose, and dressed for the day ahead.