Mama V Meets Queen Bea Shrunken First Semester: (S)Mothered chapter 2 by maximally

Victoria made it out of USD without hitting a student, a parent, or anybody with a title. For the three-inch passenger in the blouse, that was as close to luck as the morning had come. Being seen at all would have been bad. Being recognized would have been worse. He tried to work himself deeper into the heat and the fabric and the salt smell that lived in the crease.

 

“Whoa there, Romeo.” She felt him squirm and bit her lip, pleased with herself. “Buy a girl a drink first, why don’t you?”

 

“I’m not— this isn’t—” He got it. Another joke. “Very funny.”

 

“I thought so.”

 

Saturday on the quad was warm and loud and doing the thing Ventus did every weekend he had sat out. House Diana had a contact-heavy pickup game going on one side of the green, big girls hitting each other like it was a varsity film. A Minerva study knot was arguing anime loud enough to carry. Fortuna had an expensive-looking brunch spread planted in the middle of the traffic. Under an oak, Juno kids were muttering over what was either a joke or a summoning circle. Proserpina marked itself the usual way: stained clothes, greasy hair, the posture of people who had lost an argument with a pillow. Unaffiliateds drifted through all of it, including the version of himself from yesterday.

 

From the blouse, college still looked like a brochure he had not been allowed to enter. Beautiful women everywhere. The only one currently letting him near her chest was his stepmother. He was still the same kissless virgin he’d been four weeks ago. Stuck this small, the odds did not improve. He had felt invisible before. Now it felt like he didn’t exist. It did not help that most of the eyes on the lawn were on her.

 

Victoria was used to that. Modeling had trained it in. Crossing the grass, she could feel every young man and more than a few of the women, barely-concealed lust with the brochure smiles still attached, and she liked it the way she liked a good mirror. It was one of the only pieces of the old job she admitted missing. She put an extra wiggle in the step for the audience even though she knew exactly what that would do to the passenger.

 

For Max it was an earthquake. Hangover plus bounce plus the wet heat of her cleavage turned the walk into a ride he could not get off. Boob-sweat had a thick, close smell, skin and detergent and a long morning. He wanted off. He also wanted not to have the conversation that came with being plucked out in public. He stayed put and lost most of the sound outside the fabric.

 

The administrative building took them out of the sun. Marble and cold air. A lobby desk. The girl behind it was small even by normal standards — mousy, blonde, glasses, four-foot-something in a tight suit — and she sat up straighter when Victoria smiled down at her.

 

“Hello there. Victoria Vasquez-Calhoun. Here for Beatrice.”

 

“For Beatrice?” The receptionist frowned at her screen. “I can check, but she’s usually pretty busy—” She typed. Her eyes went wide. “What the. Wow. Okay. She cleared her whole afternoon.”

 

“Excellent. Where’s her office?”

 

“I— I can show you.” Already standing. Already treating Victoria like a problem her boss had ranked above the rest of Parents’ Weekend. “Follow me.”

 

“Thank you, dear.”

 

Wood-paneled hall. Portraits. Stairs. The last couple of decades had been good to Ventus, and the building wanted that known: crystal chandeliers, oil paint, marble busts, carpet thick enough to swallow a footstep. A sliver of a multi-billion-dollar endowment, hung where parents would see it. Max rode the bounce up the flights and felt the hangover start to win. Soft. Dark. Warm. His eyes went heavy in the pocket of her bra and he let them.

 

Another hall. A set of double doors that belonged on a different kind of school.

 

The receptionist raised her voice like she was approaching a throne. “Ma’am? Victoria, here to see you.”

 

“Thank you, Flo.” The voice on the other side was deep, confident, feminine. “Send her in.”

 

“Yes, ma’am.” Flo opened both doors, waved Victoria through, and shut them without another word.

 

The office matched the hallway’s opinion of itself. Huge desk. Leather chairs. Couches. A fireplace. Two dozen shelves of books. Four floor-to-ceiling windows looking down on the whole campus like a claim.

 

Beatrice “Queen Bea” Clydesdale stood at those windows with her hands on her hips and watched her domain. Victoria’s oldest friend, and the president of Ventus. Six-three, three-twenty, warm brown skin, deep brown eyes, a round pretty face that still stopped people. Rimless glasses. Silver hair in a bun. Closer to fifty than forty and dressed like the suit had been built around her: gray pinstripe, low-cut white blouse, black pumps. She had put on a little since the last time they’d been in the same room. It had not made her smaller.

 

She turned and wrapped Victoria in a hug that made the floor complain.

 

“Tori. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

 

“Oh, you know. Just passing through.”

 

“About time.” Bea steered her toward the fireplace. “How’s Izzy?”

 

“Still Izzy.” Victoria sat. The couch took the weight like it had been warned. “Her new thing is becoming a streamer, whatever that means. Last big idea was a weed operation out of her bedroom, so I think we’re making progress.”

 

“That sounds like her.” Bea took the other couch. Reinforced woodwork creaked. “Always such a promising young woman. Give her my best. And just so it’s on the record — my offer still stands about getting her in here.”

 

“Obviously I’d love that. Just a matter of getting her highness on board.”

 

“Let me know when you do. People say I’m pretty good at getting my way.”

 

“You don’t have to tell me.” Victoria chuckled. “Remember the last time I came to visit?”

 

“How could I forget.” Bea licked her lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone cum that hard.”

 

“You set the bar pretty high. Can’t say anyone’s cleared it since.”

 

“Well.” Bea’s eyes dropped to the blouse long enough for Victoria to catch it. “Maybe we’ll have to do something about that.”

 

A beat of mutually-horny quiet. Their visits had a pattern. Victoria put a hand on it before the pattern finished itself. “Maybe later.”

 

“Alright.” A giggle. “Suit yourself. How’s the new husband?”

 

“Your guess is as good as mine. I think I’ve seen him two weeks this year. Europe, Asia, Australia. The usual disappearing act.”

 

“Two weeks. He’s got some nerve, leaving a woman like you alone.” Bea scoffed, fond. “You’ve got a stepson too, right? Mike?”

 

“Max. Believe it or not, he just started his freshman year here.”

 

“Really.” Actual surprise. “You’re joking.”

 

“No joke. He’s having some trouble adjusting.”

 

“Some girl?”

 

“Could be, now that you mention it.” Victoria reached into the blouse. “Here. Easier if I just—”

 

Max had almost made it to a real nap. Soft. Dark. The alcohol still working itself out. Then her fingers came in after him, huge and sure, and peeled him into light and air that felt too clean.

 

“There we go.” She held him out, still damp from the walk.

 

Bea’s grin arrived slow. “Well. Would you look at that.”

 

He met the look and felt the floor drop a second time. If he had known Victoria was friends with the president, he would have picked a school in another state.

 

“Max.” Victoria frowned. “Are you going to introduce yourself to Mama’s friend, or what?”

 

“Huh? O-oh. Sorry.” A cautious wave. “H-hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Max.”

 

“Nice to meet you too, Max. You can call me Bea.” A chuckle. “How’s the weather down there?”

 

“What? O-oh. Uh. Good?”

 

“Not the brightest bulb, eh?” Bea glanced back at Victoria. “So. What can I do for you two?”

 

“As you can see, Max had a little run-in with shrinking serum. First thought was take him home. He would rather stay and keep going to class.”

 

“Ah.” Bea nodded like this was a facilities problem. “Not out of the realm. You’d both sign waivers. We’d raise his tuition to make the room accessible. And we’d hire someone to get him around. Campus chaperone.”

 

“Funny you should mention that.” Victoria smiled. “I was thinking that someone could be me.”

 

Max’s throat clicked. Staying beat Sunnyvale. Staying with Victoria as a full-time shadow was the high-school loop with better weather. He had already had a lifetime of that. It was half of why he had graduated with no friends and no practice talking to girls.

 

“Well.” Bea smiled back. “Interesting. Assuming your stepson doesn’t mind spending four more years with mommy.”

 

“Who says I’ll stop at four?” They both laughed. “We should ask him, though. Max. How does that sound?”

 

He looked up at both of them and felt the old freeze — the family-movie-night freeze, except the vote was his whole life. What he wanted was Bea’s first version. A hired person who was not Victoria. Saying that out loud, in this room, with her standing there, was how you made the next four years worse if the hire turned out to be expensive. The remaining options were ugly. Stay-in-school still beat the drive north.

 

“Hello.” Impatience at the edge of Victoria’s voice. “Earth to Max?”

 

“Right. S-sorry. I, uh. I guess that works.”

 

“Alrighty then.” Smug. Back to Bea. “I’d call that a yes. What do you think?”

 

“I’d agree.” Same smug. “Have you two had lunch? Our chef does a mean taco platter.”

 

Victoria’s smile went all the way. “Say no more.”

 

He tried to smile too. Hopefully he would not regret it.

 

They hammered the new status out over heaping plates.

 

Bea had not been kidding about the chef. Two platters arrived that would have been a party in Sunnyvale: stacked tortillas, carnitas, carne asada, the good salsa, crema, lime, a hill of rice, beans that were going to be a problem later and that nobody at the table was treating as a problem now. Victoria ate like she had been promised this meal since the drive down. Bea matched her. They talked over the food the way they had probably talked over every meal in that first LA apartment — half logistics, half old jokes, half the thing they were not doing yet.

 

Max sat on the coffee table with a saucer.

 

Someone on staff had thought about the scale for three seconds and then stopped thinking. Cheese shredded too coarse to lift. A smear of bean. Salsa that was mostly liquid. A shred of meat the size of his torso if he wanted to commit to it. He picked. He listened. He had time to think, which was not the gift it sounded like.

 

They did not look at him. That was the point of the saucer. Two women who had a history wrote his next four years on legal pads and extra-spicy pork, and the three-inch person the paper was about sat next to a lime wedge and tried to chew without becoming a topic.

 

Cure first, still. That had not changed because she had said the word permanent. Hospital was off the table until he could say the word without lighting her up, which meant it was off the table in this room, in front of the woman who ran the school. That left him permanent for now — maybe preventably — and safer with Victoria than with anyone else on this campus, which was not the same thing as free. She had just volunteered for four years. Bea was making it official between bites.

 

He watched Victoria’s mouth. He watched Bea’s hands. He thought about the hired chaperone he had not asked for out loud. He thought about Zeke waking up across the hall from a stepmother. He thought about the drive to Sunnyvale and Izzy’s bedroom door and the purifier. He lost track of a whole page of initialing because the bean smear was all he could manage.

 

Accidental death waiver. Kidnapping waiver. A Juno waiver and a Proserpina waiver whose details he did not read, on purpose, because the headers were enough and because looking closer felt like stepping onto a porch he was not ready to knock on. Victoria registered as a student. Signed up for his classes. A single in USD, across the hall from the old room. Hands, papers, more salsa, Bea calling someone to pull the RA suite, Victoria laughing at a line Max did not catch because he was trying not to drown in a drop of crema.

 

Four hours of signatures later she was technically the university’s oldest freshman, and the only woman on campus with a male roommate. The platters were wrecked. The office smelled like cumin and warm bodies. His saucer was a sticky little ruin. He had not been part of the conversation so much as furniture that occasionally coughed.

 

“Alright.” Bea eyed the stack like a finished meal. “I think that’s everything.”

 

“I hope so. My hands are cramping.”

 

“Well that’s no good.” The sly look came back. “Have you thought about switching to your tongue?”

 

“Don’t tempt me. Not that I could ever compete with yours.”

 

Max went red on the table. Victoria’s romantic week at Ventus was already outrunning his entire life. They were more than friends. They had been, before she had been his stepmother. Dad had never been especially committed to either of them.

 

BBBBBRRROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP

 

“Oh, my.” Bea waved a hand in front of her face, not sorry enough. “Pardon me. I’d been holding that one since we finished eating.”

 

It found the coffee table the way weather found a valley. As bad as Victoria’s. Maybe worse — more size, more time spent stewing. Max went into another coughing fit that did not look like independence.

 

“Don’t mind him.” Victoria scowled at the overreaction. “He does this all the time with me.”

 

“Does he now.” Bea watched, amused. “What a pity.”

 

“Quite. Anyway. I should go get the new room settled.”

 

“Of course. I had one of my girls tell Max’s old roommate you’ll collect his things. He can help you move. New room’s across the hall.” The smirk returned. “I’ll be working late if you want to come back for a drink.”

 

“I’ll think about it. Assuming I don’t get a better offer between now and then.”

 

“No shortage of good options on a night like this. Especially for a hot freshman transfer. Use your best judgment.”

 

“No promises.” Victoria caught the look on Max’s face — the sexual tension landing on him like a third plate of tacos — and opened her hand over the table. “Alright, sweetie. Ready to go?”

 

“Sure.” He tried to sound like he meant it. He was ready to get out of the office. The rest was still a maybe. “I’m good if you are.”

 

“Cool.” She scooped him off the saucer. Sticky. Bean on his hip. She did not wipe him off before she put him back in the bra, one motion that already felt practiced, and the office disappeared into the same hot dark he had napped in on the stairs.

 

“Thanks again, Bea. I really owe you one.”

 

“You owe me at least one.”

 

The second hug was not the doorway hug. That one had been hello. This one had four hours of tacos and two years of not-doing-it in it. Bea came around the table. Victoria met her halfway. Two chests that had no business in the same cubic foot closed around the blouse — and around him.

 

He had thought the walk across campus was smothering. This was a collapse. Victoria’s breast on one side, Bea’s on the other, blouse and suit-silk and skin, the heat of two women who ran hot even before lunch. Weight that made the underwire creak. Sweat that was not just Victoria’s anymore: perfume on perfume, cumin on skin, the sour edge of a held-in fart Bea had not quite finished apologizing for. No air worth naming. His face mashed into a seam of cleavage that did not belong to one person. The hug lasted longer than a goodbye. It lasted long enough that he stopped counting and started waiting to be let out like a man waiting for a door.

 

Bea’s hand left Victoria’s waist, traveled, and found the jeans.

 

“Don’t be a stranger.” A squeeze that lifted the ass and, through it, lifted him.

 

“I won’t.” Victoria squeezed back, which mashed the two chests tighter and put a fresh wave of heat over his head. “Trust me.”

 

They held it another beat. Someone laughed into someone’s shoulder. Then the pressure cracked, air rushed the blouse like a rumor, and he remembered what breathing was.

 

Bea opened the door. “Oh, and Tori?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

A grin. “Welcome to Ventus.”