Extra Credit

The last bell had gone nearly an hour ago. The rest of the college had emptied out into the long gold light of late afternoon, doors banging, sneakers squeaking off down the corridor — and then the building had gone quiet, the way it only got quiet for you. Five desks in the back row were still occupied. They'd stayed. They always stayed, your five, hands folded on the wood like good students, every one of them watching the door for the moment you walked back in.

You walked back in.

You should understand, first, what staying after meant for these five — because even at rest, even sitting still and trying to behave, they were already too much for the room. The desks had been built for ordinary girls and these were no longer ordinary girls. A sailor collar that had fit fine in September now sat strained across a back gone slab-thick and broad; a short white sleeve that used to flutter loose now lay molded to an upper arm like a second skin pulled over packed stone, the hem of it printing a deep red line into muscle that had no more give to surrender. None of them was monstrous yet. That was the point. That was the whole delicious distance of it — five girls who had started this semester soft and lean and unremarkable, and who had grown, for you, into something with so much further still to climb. You could see it in the way they sat: coiled, full, brimming at the edge of their own clothes, every one of them aching for the word that let them stop holding back.

You only had to look at the first of them and she broke.

---

*Lisa* couldn't wait. She never could. The instant your eyes landed on her she came up out of the desk with a squeak of delight, white hair swinging, that blue streak falling across one eye, and her grin split her whole face — all teeth, both rows, the helpless beaming grin of a girl who has been waiting all day for exactly this. Little hearts seemed to spin off her. Her green eyes had gone soft and round and adoring, the pupils blown wide and warm, fixed on you like you were the only fixed point in a turning world.

"You're back, you're back — okay, okay, watch me, watch this one—"

She planted an elbow on the desktop and curled her right arm, and her bicep answered.

It rose slow at first — she'd learned you liked it slow — gathering under the short white sleeve, a swell that started as a smooth round hill and then kept rounding, climbing past where an arm that nice had any business going, pushing up into a high hard peak that strained the cotton to a shine. The sleeve hem bit. The fabric over the belly of the muscle pulled tight, then tighter, then went faintly see-through with the strain, her skin tone glowing through the weave, and right at the crown of the peak a single vein surfaced — one clean blue line that hadn't been there a breath ago — and traced its way down the slope of the muscle toward the crook of her elbow. She was not a big girl. Her waist was still narrow enough for your hands. But the arm she was making for you stood up off that narrow frame like something borrowed from a body twice her size, dense and split-headed and glossy with a sheen of fresh effort, and when she gave it that last little extra squeeze you heard it — a soft, leathery creak from somewhere inside the muscle itself, the sound of fibers crowding for room.

"See?" she breathed, and the grin wobbled with how badly she wanted it to be right. She turned the peak toward you, presenting it, her free hand cupping under it like she was offering you something on a plate. "It's bigger than yesterday. I swear it's bigger than yesterday, I could feel it all through fourth period, I kept — I kept flexing it under the desk just thinking about—" She caught herself, blushed, and her pupils did a funny thing, going for a second into the shape of two little hearts. "Did I do good? Tell me I did good."

And when you reached out and laid your fingers on the peak — when your whole hand fit over the top of it and your fingertips couldn't reach halfway down its far side, when it was hot to the touch and didn't give a millimeter under the press — she made a sound like she might cry from happiness, and you felt the muscle jump under your palm, swell that last greedy quarter-inch just from being touched, like it grew toward your hand because your hand was there.

"More," she whispered, beaming, already filling her lungs. "I can do more. Tell me to and I'll—"

You told the others it was their turn first. You like to make her wait. She bit her lip and glowed.

---

*Alina* did not come up out of her desk. Alina stayed exactly where she was — bent forward over the desktop, chin propped sullen on her stacked forearms, black hair spilling down, blue eyes cutting sideways at you with a flat, put-upon little pout, as if this whole arrangement were beneath her and she was only tolerating it. "I don't see why I have to go," she muttered. "Lisa already did one. You saw a good one already."

But she'd arranged herself, hadn't she. She was already bent over the desk with her weight forward and her hips pushed back and that navy pleated skirt riding the upswell of her, already in the exact pose, because for all the pout she'd been getting ready for you since the bell. You let the silence sit. You let her feel you looking. And then you said one quiet word — show me — and the pout cracked.

"Fine," she breathed, going pink. "Fine."

She set her feet, and she pushed her hips back, and she straightened one leg under the desk, and her thigh came alive.

There was nothing sullen about that. The quad that filled out under the hem of her skirt was a single long sweep of muscle, a teardrop the size of a thrown football riding down the front of her leg, and as she locked the knee it carved itself into being right in front of you — the outer sweep flaring wide, then a deep clean trench splitting it from the inner head, then the whole mass dropping in a long taut line to a knee that suddenly looked far too small to be holding all of it up. The skin over it had pulled glossy and thin. Her skirt, which had hung loose this morning, now sat strained across the top of the thigh, the navy pleats forced apart over a curve they were never cut to cover, and when she shifted her weight to dig the leg in harder you heard the seam at her hip give a low, unhappy creak of warning. A vein had come up along the inner sweep, fat and blue, and it throbbed once, slow, as the blood went into the muscle.

"Happy?" she muttered — but her voice had gone thin and breathy and her ears had gone scarlet, and she wasn't looking at you with the flat eyes anymore. She was watching your face. Watching for the exact moment your expression changed. "It's — it's a stupid leg, it's not even — nngh —" She pushed it harder, deeper, and the teardrop swelled another half-inch and the trench down its middle deepened until you could've laid a finger in it, and the sound she made then wasn't sullen at all. It was small. Pleading. "...is it big enough? For you. Is it." A beat, and then quieter, almost angry at how much she wanted it: "Tell me it's big enough and I'll stop. Or — or tell me to make it bigger. Whatever you want. I don't care."

She cared. She cared so much she was shaking with it, the leg trembling under its own new weight, and when you said bigger without any heat at all, just an instruction, the pout dissolved completely and she shut her eyes and gave it to you, another slow throbbing inch of dense striated thigh, for you, only ever pretending she didn't want to.

---

*Linda* wanted to disappear.

She'd gone red the moment Alina finished — red all the way to the roots of the silver hair piled in those two soft buns, a blush so total it had spread down her neck. She was bent forward over her own desk with her hands braced flat on the wood and her head ducked, one amber eye squeezed shut, the other peeking up at you and then away, and away, and back, like she couldn't decide whether being looked at was the best or the worst thing that had ever happened to her. A bead of sweat ran down her temple. She hadn't said a word. She almost never said a word.

"I — you don't have to watch this part," she whispered, which meant please watch this part. "I'm not — I'm not as good as them, I haven't been doing it as long, I—"

You said her name. Just her name. And she made a tiny sound and braced her arms and did it anyway, because you'd asked, because she would always, in the end, do anything you asked.

She pressed down into her hands, and the forearm closest to you knotted.

It was the underrated one, the worship zone she didn't even know she had. The whole length of her forearm corded up as she gripped the desk — a dozen separate ropes of muscle surfacing and sliding under skin gone paper-thin and shining with nervous sweat, the wrist suddenly far too thick for the delicate hand at the end of it, a hand still small enough to look like it belonged to a different and much shyer girl. As she pressed harder the cords stood up higher and a web of fine veins rose to feed them, branching down from the elbow across the back of the forearm in a delicate vascular lace, every one of them pulsing in time with the heartbeat you could practically see hammering in her throat. The short sleeve over her upper arm had gone tight as a drum without her even trying — the muscle beneath it simply too full now to be contained at rest — and somewhere in the cotton a single stitch popped with a small audible tk.

She flinched at the sound. Her eye went wide. "Oh — oh no, I didn't mean to rip — I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

But you were smiling, and she saw you smiling, and something in her crumpled with relief and pride all at once. The blush, impossibly, deepened. She ducked her face down behind the swell of her own shoulder — that lovely mortified face, soft and round and sweet, perched now over a back and an arm that had quietly gotten frightening, the contrast of it so sharp it made your chest tighten — and she peeked up at you from down there, the one amber eye glistening, and whispered the bravest thing she had:

"...was it okay? I can — if you want — I think I could squeeze a little harder. I'd like to. For you. If — if that's okay."

It was okay. You told her it was okay. She squeezed harder, and bit her lip, and let one more stitch go tk, and almost smiled.

---

And all this time, in the second desk from the end, *Melanie* had been getting wet.

You'd left her to simmer on purpose — she liked it that way, liked being the last thing on your mind while she watched the others get touched, because watching the others did something to her. By the time your eyes came back to her she was a sight. She'd slid forward and draped herself over the desk, long orange hair hanging in heavy dripping ropes, and she was soaked — sheened head to foot in oil and her own sweat, the white of her shirt gone translucent and pasted flat to her so that every cut and ridge of her front printed through the wet cotton like the fabric wasn't even there. Her face was the giveaway. Her eyes had half-rolled, heavy-lidded and unfocused and shining; her cheeks blazed; her lip was caught between her teeth and a thin line of drool clung at the corner of her slack, blissed-out mouth. She'd been growing this whole time. Quietly. All by herself. Just from watching the rest of them be touched — and it had taken her somewhere far away and warm.

"Mmh—? Oh—" She blinked up at you, swimming back into focus, and the blissed face spread into a loose, drunk, adoring smile. "You're looking at me now. Haaah. Finally. I've been so good — I waited, I didn't make a sound, I just—" Her hips rolled against the desk. The forearm folded under her flexed without her meaning it to, a thick oiled slab rolling under the wet skin, fat veins climbing it like rivers in flood, and she shivered head to foot at the simple feel of her own muscle moving. "I didn't even do anything and I just kept getting bigger. God. It feels so good when it just happens on its own, when I don't even have to try—"

She caught your wrist in one slick hand — gently, reverently — and drew your palm flat against the soaked cotton of her chest, against the slow heave of a pec that had no softness left in front of it at all, just a broad striated shelf of muscle that ticked visibly fuller under your hand. "Feel that? Feel how hot I am? That's all for you. Every bit of it grew for you, while I just lay here being good and watching." She rolled the muscle under your palm, one slow deliberate bounce, then the other, grinning dopily up at you when she felt you feel it. "Watch — watch, I can make them dance now, I learned how, I practiced so much—" One pec swelled and dropped, then the other, the wet shirt rippling over the motion, a single button straining and singing on its thread with each bounce. The bliss in her eyes went molten and her words started to slur at the edges. "Tell me to flex harder. Please? I love it so much when you tell me. I'll get as big as you want, I don't even care how big anymore, I just want you to keep looking at me—"

She wasn't scared of any of it. That was Melanie. The bigger she got the happier she got, drunk and grateful and bottomless, and you could have stood there feeding her commands until the shirt let go in wet shreds and she'd have thanked you for every inch of it. You left her flexing and dripping and beaming, simmering hotter, saving her for last.

Because someone at the end of the row had started to panic.

---

*Gina* hadn't meant to keep up.

She'd been watching all of it from the last desk — Lisa's peak, Alina's thigh, Linda's corded arm, Melanie melting into a happy puddle of herself — and somewhere in the watching she'd started trying to match them, quietly, the way the eager and the nervous always do. She didn't want to be the small one. She didn't want to be left behind. She didn't want to be the only girl in the row without something to show you. So she'd pushed, alone, in her seat, growing because everyone else was growing — and it had worked. It had worked far, far too well.

She stood up to show you. That was the moment it tipped.

Standing pulled her lower body into the light, and her legs had not been idle down there. She rose, and her thighs unpacked themselves — two columns of striated meat so thick they pressed together from hip to knee with no gap left to spare, sweeping out wider than her hips, wider than the desk, the navy skirt riding helplessly up on top of them because there was nowhere left for it to fall. From below, the way the low gold light threw her, she was suddenly enormous — one quad alone stacked into a long carved teardrop that eclipsed the chair behind it, a single bratwurst-thick vein crawling down the front of it and vanishing under the strained hem. And the muscle kept coming. Even standing still, even doing nothing, she was inflating — another inch onto the thigh, then another, her own skin creaking softly to make the room, the growth running away from her faster than she could follow it.

You watched it happen on her face in real time. The flush of effort drained pale at the edges. Her eyes went huge and round and orange and scared. Her teeth bared — not in pleasure, in a flinch — and her hands flew out to grab the desktops on either side of her, and against arms that had quietly doubled, those hands looked tiny.

"W-wait—" Her voice cracked, high and small and shaking. "Wait, it's — it's not stopping, why isn't it stopping, I only wanted to be big like them, I only wanted you to be proud of me too, I didn't—" Another inch poured down the thigh and the skirt seam finally gave with a rip, and she made a frightened little sound at the noise of it. She looked down at herself — at the monstrous columns her legs had become, at the way they'd swallowed the whole front of the desk — and then back up at you, only ever at you, tears starting at the corners of those enormous eyes. From the knees up she was barely a girl at all anymore, all freak, all too much; from the neck up she was still just a frightened orange-haired thing staring at you like you were the only safe thing left in the room.

"Am I — am I a m-monster?" she whispered. "I got too big, didn't I. I went too far. I—" Her lip trembled. "Did I do something wrong? I just wanted to be good like the others, I just wanted you to—" One huge, trembling arm reached out toward you, and the small soft hand at the end of it was still hers, still hers, still shaking. "...do you still like me? If I'm this big? Please — please tell me what to do, I'll do anything, just — just don't let go—"

And even then — even terrified, even shaking — when you stepped in and took that small hand in yours and told her, quietly, good girl — the thigh she was so frightened of swelled one more grateful half-inch all on its own, because some part of her, the part that would always belong to you, couldn't help offering you a little more even while she begged you to make it stop.

---

So this is where you find yourself, as the last of the gold light goes out of the windows and the empty college settles into evening around the five of them.

Lisa is bouncing on her toes with her hand back on her bicep, me next, do me next, I can be bigger than that, watch. Alina has straightened up off her desk and is staring at Gina's thighs with her pout hanging open and her own quads twitching jealously, I could get like that, if you wanted, I could get like that easy. Linda has both hands pressed to her flaming cheeks, peeking between her fingers at what Gina has become, her own arms swelling shyly in sympathy, do you want me to be scary too? I'll try. I'll try to be scary if you like it. Melanie is still draped over her desk in a puddle of her own making, flexing slow and blissful, drunk and beaming, don't forget about me, don't forget, I'll be whatever you want. And Gina is still holding your hand, still growing, still frightened, still — even now — flexing that thigh a half-inch bigger because she can't help offering it up while she begs you to stop.

Five girls. Five desks. A whole empty building, and all the time in the world.