Emily and Veronica begin settling in to their college dorm.

This work, the first of seven, is part of a trade with an anonymous commissioner. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in a commission.

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Emily’s fingernails clicked against the mechanical toy as she twisted and turned it over in her hands. Her focus was honed into it as she waited for her name to be called in the lively admissions office- some massive error with housing forced her, alongside a chunk of the student population, to this building to await their new lodgings, and now the college staff was in a flurry, trying to assign proper locations to all of the congregated students. She didn’t mind. The wait was dull, but she’d faced worse.

She almost liked how the toy felt against the calluses on her hands- they were testaments to the countless tools and endless hours she had spent honing her craft. She was an engineer, a builder. Nothing more, nothing less. Her brown hair was cropped short- out of her way and simple to maintain. Her clothes were rugged and plain, but each stitch and patch held a story, a tool, and a project behind them.

She paused and re-inspected the toy. She was close to solving it, not that she hadn’t solved it before. But it was something that she could do to distract herself from having to pump sometime soon. The afternoon was stretching on, and she had planned to express her milk while sorting out the smaller odds and ends her parents had packed without her guidance. This whole incident had messed with her plans, however. Emily sighed. She could wait and honestly didn’t mind it all that much, but it was starting to stretch on.

Across the room from her, Veronica sighed as she closed her book, letting it thump against her sizable chest. So much for this wait being a short one. After she found her assigned dorm already occupied, she hurried over to the admissions office to find out what had been going on, thankfully finding she wasn’t the only one with this problem.

She toyed with a piece of her dirty blonde hair. At first, she didn’t think the situation would be so serious. She had her usual bag with her, which included her portable pump and book she was currently reading. She knew she was near the end of it, but she had hoped her issue would be resolved before she got to that point for sure!

It would be wrong to say that this was the first time that Veronica’s optimism hadn’t panned out.

She had been reading to get things off her mind- mostly the boredom, but also the fact that her breasts were fuller than she liked them being when she was in public. It’s not that they let down with little notice, but this blouse didn’t have the breathing room that most of her other shirts did and she didn’t want to find out just how much give it would allow. She did have the small pump with her, but that thing really could only take the edge off, and the pumping room they had in this old building wasn’t built for a hypertropied woman like her. She really felt like she needed one- the fewer eyes were on her, the more she felt like she could relax. Veronica shrugged her shoulders, silently reassuring her poor breasts that relief would come soon.

A frazzled assistant stepped past the counter and called out two names, prompting the two students to perk up their heads. “Emily, Veronica?” Emily stood quickly, pocketing her toy, but Veronica’s attempt to stand only briefly got her off her seat before slipping back down. Emily paused and regarded Veronica, then turned and went back to Veronica to extend a hand.

Veronica looked up and paused. “Ah– um, thank you,” she hesitantly took Emily’s hand and stood up more steadily as Emily easily hauled her up, “but that wasn’t–”

“Mm.” Almost like she wasn’t listening, Emily turned and left as soon as Veronica was upright.

“… really necessary.” Veronica gave a frustrated noise, then picked up her bag and followed Emily.

== ==

Emily shouldered the door out of the way as Veronica followed, shrugging her bag back into a more comfortable position and squinting in the harsh sunlight.

Veronica cleared her throat. “So, Emily, do you need a hand moving your stuff in? My parents are helping me with my stuff, so I don’t think they’ll mind–”

“Won’t be necessary. I got everything packed into my car in an hour, and most of that time was just moving things to the car. Assuming I can get a good spot, I could probably get things done in forty-five minutes.”

“…Well, that’s good to know.” Veronica paused and wrung her hands. “Hey, if you get done moving your stuff early and wouldn’t mind, could you lend a hand in moving something of mine?”

Emily stopped in her tracks, turning and giving a confused glance. “First you offer your family’s help, then you ask for help? How are you squaring that circle?”

“My dad’s slipped a disc just as we were finishing up packing. He’ll be able to move light things, but anything else… Well, point is, my real pump’s not this light thing, and my mom and I aren’t going to be able to move it easily. So if you could, would you please help us?”

Emily continued walking. “Move the other light things first. We’ll see where we’re at when we get there.”

== ==

“How are the corners looking?”

“To your left a little more, Em.”

“Not much more I can go left. Let’s just go.”

“Whoa wait, wait!”

“It’s fine, I saw the corner, too. We’re clear, set ’er down.” There was a dull thump as Emily and Veronica set the surprisingly hefty pump down in the middle of the dorm room. Veronica, stumbling back as she tried to catch her breath, bumped into and eventually leaned back against her desk. “Seriously, third floor for a hyper? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I understand why you didn’t want to do this yourself.”

Veronica waved a weary hand. “Don’t worry. At least everything’s moved up here now.”

“Yeah, now it’s time for all the tedium to start.”

“Don’t look at it that way!” Veronica pushed herself off the desk, turning to unpack the first of her many unlabeled boxes. “We’re setting up our future lives and setting the mood for how our next year will play out! Don’t let this opportunity to shape your future pass!” She felt like she could see how her posters would add their splashes of color to the off-white walls, how she would arrange all the little chachkies her father collected for her on his travels, how she would arrange her menagerie of stuffed animals (oh, but what would Emily think of them? She didn’t seem the type to have any…).

“Well, aren’t you little Miss Sunshine.” She heard Emily open the first of her boxes.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Veronica smiled as she dumped the rolled-up posters onto her bed until she could find a proper order and picked up her next box. “Maybe you should give it a try sometime.”

“…I just think it’d be exhausting, constantly being energetic for every little thing.”

Veronica shrugged as she poured through the contents of the next box. “You don’t have to be. I’m certainly not. I just try and save it for the important things.” She weighed which tarot deck should get the honor of sitting next to her laptop. “With the right mindset, you can find joy in even the smallest of things.”

“Huh.”

“Hm?” Veronica turned and tilted her head.

“Didn’t think you’d be the philosophical type.”

“Well,” Veronica opened the next box, delicately maneuvering around her breasts, “I’m not here for the art classes.”

“Says the person unpacking an easel.”

“It’s a hobby! I loved being on the soccer team, but I had to pick a new pastime that didn’t involve me chasing things at full tilt.”

Emily briefly paused and pursed her lips. “At least you found something you like.”

“Oh, believe me, I have times where I hate painting as much as I’ve liked it. Damn painters’ block. Maybe I could paint something for you in the future.”

Emily chuckled at the response, and a lull fell between the two. Veronica found herself flying through her boxes and their contents in a satisfying blur, only broken up by the few moments where she found a different marker or magnet order that fit her mood better.

After a fairly grueling decision on where her pencil case’s new home would be, Veronica tossed the now empty box onto the small pile the grew by the door over the past half hour. She let herself drop on an empty part of her bed and congratulated herself on all the progress she’d made. As the moment bled away, her thoughts turned to her roommate. Something had occurred to her about their earlier conversation. “Hey, Emily?”

“Hm?” Emily finished tightening a screw, then looked away from her re-assembly of… something mechanical. She had not sat idle during this whole time, having all but set up her half of the room- her bedsheets were a boring but coordinated off-blue, the few items on her desk were squared away and tucked into their corners, and she was currently setting up a number of items which Veronica hoped could lead to an interesting conversation.

“This is a bit odd, but earlier, when I said that I had to stop playing soccer… I just wanted to thank you for not trying to say how sorry you felt.”

Emily raised an eyebrow. “Why are you thanking me for that?”

“Because every time I tell someone that I used to play soccer, I keep hearing the same things. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry that you had to give that up,’ ‘Oh, you poor thing, do you miss playing it?’. I’m not some helpless woman tied to her breasts by fate, I’m a person with agency. It’s just nice to have that recognized, sometimes.”

Emily blinked in surprise. “Uh, you’re welcome?”

“I warned you it’d be weird.” With a grunt of exertion, Veronica brought herself back upright, stretching her back as she finished. “Anyway. I’m going to deal with these things,” she patted the top of her breasts, “now that I’m kind of happy with how things are. Hopefully, I’ll figure out a proper order for my posters.”

Emily smiled to herself. “Alphabetical order? Maybe you could sort them by color?”

“Color order? What am I, a first year to you?” Veronica laughed as she made her way to her pump, then tipped it onto its wheels. “I mean, I’m obviously going to sort the colors alphabetically.”

Emily snorted in laughter. “Go empty your tits, Veronica.”

“Love you too, Em!”